success

Sunday, May 31, 2009
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FUNNY BUSINESS
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Almost every other day our local paper prints a letter critical of its editorial policy. By contrast, our weeklies pretend not to have a policy, or if they do, it has only two criteria: truth and excellence. I dare you not to see any humor in this.
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At one time or another I have offended Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, dupes, fanatics, nationalists, communists, capitalists, racists, propagandists, lawyers, and chief executive officers, and by my rough estimate, several billion people. Why should I be surprised if so far I have failed to acquire the status of a best-selling author?
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If I repeat myself it may be because no one minds repeating “I love you” to the person s/he loves. Why should you mind if I say and repeat, I hate charlatans, bloodsuckers, and idiots who parade as leaders of men? -- unless of course you are one of them.
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I don't write about labels, I write about human beings and if most of them are Armenian it may be because I know them and myself better than I know the rest of mankind. I have at no time hidden the fact that in my formative years I was as big a dupe of our propaganda as those I now ridicule. You might say therefore that I attack and expose not just fools but also my former self.
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Truth sets you free only in theory. In practice it destroys an important fraction of your self. That is why it is ruthlessly shunned by most.
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Plot for a play: two characters agree to achieve perfection by exposing each other's failings, and they end up destroying themselves.
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Monday, June 1, 2009
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EDUCATION BY INDOCTRINATION
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Education by indoctrination should be a criminal offense. The only reason it isn't is that everybody does it and no one seems to mind.
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There is in all of us an infantile need to believe in lies and when no one deceives us, we deceive ourselves.
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As a child he was taught to speak the truth, and when the Turkish police came and wanted to know where was his uncle's hiding place, he said “In the well,” and he took them there.
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When God asked Cain where was his brother Abel (as if He didn't know), Cain replied, “Am I then my brother's keeper?”
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We are told violence in movies begets violence in life. What about intolerance in organized religions and ideologies? How many violent movies did Cain see? Was Genghis Khan influenced by John Wayne, and Napoleon by Brando?
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The Republicans (most of them White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are now calling the Hispanic Supreme Court nominee a “racist.” They forget that for more than a hundred years Supreme Court Justices (most of them WASPs) legitimized slavery and racism in America. These WASPs! – they sure know how to take care of their own. That may well be the secret of their success. You may now guess what is the secret of our failure.
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Question to our Turcocentric ghazetajis: “Does it ever occur to you that you may be barking up the wrong tree?”
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009
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SUCCESS
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Give a man the best education money can buy and a position of great responsibility and end up with an assh*le who thinks he deserves a fat bonus just for pulling his dick.
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Some readers disagree with me not because they find my arguments defective but because they think I stand between them and their chances to achieve success.
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There is a saying in Hollywood: “Success is relative, the closer the relative, the greater the success.”
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If we think what we are told to think, are we (brain)dead or alive? And if we are alive, is our life worth living?
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When I hear someone use the word “culture” I immediately assume he means his particular brand of barbarism.
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We say Naregatsi is our Dante and Shakespeare combined, but whereas Italian and English children can quote lines from Dante and Shakespeare, I have yet to hear a single Armenian boy or girl, or adult for that matter, quote a single solitary line by Naregatsi.
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We brag about our culture but we prefer to speak about massacres, as if being massacred were a great achievement.
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When your whole life is a big blunder, you hate like hell anyone who dares to suggest you may have made a mistake.
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009
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DIPLOMACY 101
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The Turks know better what happened if only because they know both sides of the story, unlike us who know only our side. They have a better grasp of world history too if only because they ran an empire for six hundred years. Which means they speak a language that is accessible to other empires. All they have to say to the Americans is, “Armenians are our Indians,” and all Americans have to do is think: “What if in time of war when our very existence may well be in peril our ethnic minorities behave like the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I?” Which may also explain why the Soviets opposed all talk of Genocide recognition.
When our first foreign minister visited Ankara and mentioned the Genocide, the Turks said, “This man hates us. We can't negotiate with him.” Our president agreed and immediately replaced him. He understood that you can't call a man a murderer and a barbarian and expect him to behave like a civilized human being.
Were the Turks murderers and barbarians? Yes, of course. No doubt about that. Even the murder of a single innocent human being is an act of barbarism. But that's in civilian parlance which has nothing to do with the semantics of diplomacy.
If the Turks behaved like bloodthirsty barbarians, so did the rest of mankind before, during, and after our Tragedy. We cannot educate, reform, and persuade mankind into behaving like the civilizations they pretend to be. We can only deal with them in such a way as to defend and protect our interests. So far we have failed to do so perhaps because we are not as smart as we pretend to be.
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