Entretien avec l’écrivain Ara Baliozian
par Liana Aghajanian
IanyanMag, 13.10.2009
« Les deux atouts majeurs d’un écrivain : une sensibilité d’écorché vif et le cuir d’un rhinocéros », écrit Ara Baliozian sur son blog, qui héberge ses réflexions quotidiennes sur des thèmes allant de la religion à l’argent, la politique, la littérature et naturellement des thématiques arméniennes. Les écrits de Baliozian, auteur et traducteur, lui valent nombre de flèches de la part du lectorat arménien, mais cela ne l’empêche pas de distiller ses critiques et observations.
Né en Grèce et éduqué à Venise, Baliozian vit actuellement à Kitchener, au Canada. Il a publié plusieurs ouvrages, dont Armenians : Their History and Culture et In the New World et en a traduit beaucoup d’autres. Il publie maintenant ses œuvres principalement sur des forums internet arméniens, mais il a accepté de répondre à quelques questions pertinentes.
- Liana Aghajanian : Ma première question sera simple, mais il sera peut-être difficile d’y répondre : pourquoi écrivez-vous ?
- Ara Baliozian : J’écris parce qu’écrire est devenu une habitude et, comme l’on sait, il est plus facile de conserver des habitudes que de s’en défaire.
- Liana Aghajanian : Quel est le meilleur conseil que vous donneriez à un jeune écrivain arménien comme moi ?
- Ara Baliozian : Etre honnête avec vous-même et vos lecteurs. Ne rien accepter sur quelque autorité que ce soit. Dans notre monde actuel, plus les gens s’élèvent, plus ils mentent.
- Liana Aghajanian : Beaucoup d’écrivains de votre génération, qu’ils soient arméniens ou non, ne se sont pas adaptés à internet avec votre facilité. Comment et quand avez-vous commencé à utiliser internet pour faire partager vos écrits ? Quel a été l’élément déclencheur ?
- Ara Baliozian : Je dois ma pratique d’internet à mon cher ami Noubar Poladian, qui est venu me voir à plusieurs reprises depuis Toronto (96 km) pour m’apprendre à utiliser un ordinateur alors que je lui disais ma résistance à abandonner ma vieille machine à écrire.
- Liana Aghajanian : Quels sont vos rituels d’écriture, si tel est le cas ? Ecrivez-vous à tel moment de la journée ou dans un lieu particulier ?
- Ara Baliozian : J’écris très tôt le matin, quand tout le monde dort et qu’il fait noir au dehors. Je n’écris qu’une simple page. Il m’arrive de prendre des notes durant la journée, dont j’écarte la plupart le matin venu.
- Liana Aghajanian : Que pensez-vous des protocoles entre l’Arménie et la Turquie et comment voyez-vous ceux qui dans la diaspora font campagne contre ces protocoles ? Si vous êtes opposé à ces protocoles, quelle est l’alternative ? Et selon vous, quel est le meilleur moyen pour la diaspora d’exprimer ses inquiétudes ?
- Ara Baliozian : Je suis totalement pour une amitié avec nos ennemis, du moment que nous pouvons obtenir davantage de concessions de leur part comme amis, plutôt que comme ennemis. J’ajoute que je ne prends pas au sérieux ces protocoles. Mais c’est un début, ce qui est mieux que rien. La mère patrie et la diaspora ont des priorités différentes. Il serait égoïste de notre part de considérer nos priorités comme supérieures ou plus urgentes que celle de la mère patrie. Laissons les choses suivre leur cours. Laissons la mère patrie gérer ses affaires. De toute manière, les Turcs savent que l’Arménie ne représente pas la diaspora. Quant à nos inquiétudes, je pense que les Turcs en sont aussi conscients. Et si leur intention est de nous diviser, à nous de ne pas tomber dans le piège.
- Liana Aghajanian : A quelles sortes de concessions pensez-vous ?
- Ara Baliozian : On pourrait commencer par demander aux Turcs de nous permettre de prendre soin de nos anciens monuments à Ani, Van et ailleurs. Quant aux concessions territoriales, il me semble que si nous nous dirigeons vers une sorte d’Union ou une liberté de circulation dans le cadre d’Etats-Unis du Moyen-Orient ou du Caucase, les frontières de l’Arménie historique et de l’Azerbaïdjan deviendront obsolètes.
- Liana Aghajanian : Vous faites l’objet de rudes critiques de la part de nombreux Arméniens qui n’approuvent pas vos écrits et vos opinions, allant même jusqu’à vous insulter à de nombreuses occasions. Comment vous en accommodez-vous et qu’est-ce qui dans vos écrits dérange les Arméniens ?
- Ara Baliozian : En règle générale, je suis insulté par des lecteurs endoctrinés, exposés à d’innombrables prêches et discours, sans avoir lu le moindre écrivain. Ce qui les dérange c’est le fait que je me refuse à recycler une propagande chauviniste. Des choses comme la bataille d’Avaraïr (dont même certains de nos historiens nient l’existence), être la première nation qui se soit convertie au christianisme (la véritable question est : avons-nous jamais été de bons chrétiens ?), la première nation à avoir été la cible d’un génocide (au nom de quoi s’en vanter ?). Nous serions intelligents ? En politique nous n’arrivons même pas à nous qualifier sur le tard.
- Liana Aghajanian : Vous avez récemment écrit sur votre blog : « J’estime que le génocide résulte de deux erreurs monumentales commises par des nationalistes fanatiques et forcenés des deux côtés. Il va sans dire que le massacre de civils innocents est un crime bien plus grave que la stupidité et l’ignorance. Il se peut que l’ignorance soit la plus innocente de toutes les transgressions, mais dans la vie c’est celle qui est la plus sévèrement punie. S’il est des lois inflexibles dans la vie, celle-ci en fait à coup sûr partie. En parlant de lois inflexibles, en voici une autre : si vous refusez de tirer quelque enseignement de vos erreurs, vous vous condamnez à les répéter. Qu’avons-nous appris de notre génocide ? Que dire, sinon que nous sommes à la merci de conditions historiques inévitables ou de forces qui nous dépassent ? Même erreur, même propagande, même Super Mensonge fabriqué et recyclé par des hommes qui sont trop paresseux ou stupides pour penser par eux-mêmes. » - Pourriez-vous être plus explicite ? Quels ont été les erreurs majeures de la culture arménienne en tant que telle ? Pouvons-nous faire des progrès, selon vous ?
- Ara Baliozian : Notre grande erreur – ou plutôt celle de nos révolutionnaires – a été de croire dans les promesses verbales des grandes puissances. A cette idée que leur soutien nous rendait invulnérable. Dans la diplomatie internationale, les promesses verbales, même les traités, n’ont aucune valeur si l’on n’a pas les moyens de les mettre en œuvre.
Notre seconde erreur est d’imputer nos malheurs actuels (l’expatriation et l’assimilation dans la diaspora – qualifiée aussi de génocide blanc) à des conditions sociales, politiques et culturelles qui nous dépassent… autrement dit, d’adopter une position passive, au lieu d’assumer un rôle actif en nous organisant, nous montrant solidaires, en mettant fin à des conflits et divisions mutuelles.
- Liana Aghajanian : Avez-vous des regrets, professionnels ou personnels ?
- Ara Baliozian : L’un de mes plus grands regrets est d’avoir attendu la trentaine avant de me consacrer à temps plein à l’écriture. J’aurais dû le faire plus tôt.
- Liana Aghajanian : Quels sont vos héros dans la vie ?
- Ara Baliozian : Platon, Gandhi, Thoreau… pour n’en citer que trois parmi tant d’autres.
- Liana Aghajanian : Si vous deviez choisir, quels seraient, selon vous, les meilleurs modèles ou dirigeants dans la communauté arménienne dont les Arméniens pourraient beaucoup apprendre ? Et s’il n’y en a pas, selon vous, pourriez-vous expliquer pourquoi ?
- Ara Baliozian : Nous pouvons apprendre un tas de choses de nos écrivains – Grégoire de Narek, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zohrab, Zarian, Massikian… Hélas, je ne vois personne de nos jours qui leur arrive à la hauteur !
- Liana Aghajanian : Pourquoi, selon vous, est-il si difficile pour les Arméniens d’avoir un débat franc et raisonné sans confrontation, préjugé ou a priori ?
- Ara Baliozian : Ceux qui ont subi un lavage de cerveau ont tendance à être dogmatiques, autrement dit, intolérants. Or les intolérants ne peuvent s’engager dans un dialogue, ils préfèrent donner des sermons et pérorer.
- Liana Aghajanian : Quand vous n’écrivez pas, que faites-vous de vos loisirs ?
- Ara Baliozian : Rien ne me fait davantage plaisir que jouer du Bach à l’orgue.
- Liana Aghajanian : Ayant décidé de vouloir être un écrivain, vous auriez pu facilement ne pas écrire à propos des Arméniens. Pourquoi avez-vous décidé de le faire ?
- Ara Baliozian : J’ai commencé par écrire et publier des romans, qui m’on valu plusieurs prix littéraires et bourses du gouvernement canadien – jusqu’à ce que je réalise que le but du roman est de divertir la bourgeoisie. Comprendre et expliquer la réalité : voilà ce que je veux faire maintenant… et j’y éprouve davantage de plaisir qu’à écrire des histoires d’amour ou, pour citer Sartre, sur « les affres mutuelles de l’amour ».
- Liana Aghajanian : Quels sont vos livres favoris ?
- Ara Baliozian : En arménien : Le Voyageur et sa route, de Zarian. En russe : Pères et fils, de Tourgueniev. En anglais : Reconsidérations, de Toynbee. En français : Les Mots, de Sartre. En grec : Zorba le Grec, de Kazantzakis.
- Liana Aghajanian : Quels sont vos plats arméniens favoris ?
- Ara Baliozian : Je suis végétarien.
Liana Aghajanian est rédactrice en chef d’IanyanMag, tout en étant éditeur à temps plein et écrivain à ses heures à Los Angeles. « Je prends mon tchaï sans sucre, mais mon dolma avec beaucoup de yaourt ! »
Blog d’Ara Baliozian : http://baliozian.blogspot.com/
Source : http://www.ianyanmag.com/?p=1230
Traduction : © Georges Festa pour Denis Donikian, 10.2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
less......
Thursday, November 26, 2009
**********************************
MORE IS LESS
******************************************************
A Turkish-Armenian is more Turkish and less Armenian.
A Soviet-Armenian is more Soviet and less Armenian.
An Armenian-American is more American and less Armenian.
An Armenian from the Middle-East is more Levantine and less Armenian.
Something similar could be said of French-Armenians, Greek-Armenians, Italian-Armenians (assuming there are some left), and so on.
That's because, in Krikor Zohrab's words: “As impressionable as soft wax, the Armenian acquires indiscriminately the virtues as well as the vices of the country in which he happens to be living.”
And I remember a retired Armenian schoolteacher in her eighties (may she rest in peace and may the blessing of the Lord be upon her) saying, “Armenians are fast learners of all the wrong things.”
*
When Isaac Babel was silenced by the Soviet regime, he said he had invented a new genre: “Silence.”
*
To those who brag about our survival, I say, I would like to hear the testimony of those who did not survive – victims of massacres, earthquakes, starvation, betrayal, and idiots pretending to be leaders of men.
*
Literature flatters no one. Propaganda flatters everyone -- hence its popularity.
*
My severest critics are readers who have not yet mastered the difficult art of understanding simple sentences in the English language.
*
I have discovered that one of the hardest things to explain to a smart (self-assessed, of course) Armenian is this: to refuse to say “yes, sir!” to idiots is not treason.
#
Friday, November 27, 2009
**********************************
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN THE WORLD
******************************************************
The disciple of an infallible master will think of himself as infallible.
*
When asked what was the most beautiful thing in the world, Diogenes (4th century BC) replied: “Freedom of speech.” Ask one of our commissars what's the worst thing in the world, and he will give you the same answer.
*
There are those who believe our religion has civilized us. There are also those who believe our religion has made of us passive cowards and ideal subjects of tyrants (both foreign and domestic). Who is right? It depends on your choice of evidence: historic reality or narcissism; facts or wishful thinking.
*
Standards have fallen so low that if a man with money can draw the outline of a fish, write a grammatically correct sentence, and quote a line from Shakespeare, he is immediately declared to be a scholar, a gentleman, and a Renaissance man.
*
Armenian Ottomanism? Observe a brother on the warpath trying to get even with a fellow Armenian who has dared to question his judgment.
*
Armenian stages: acceptance, suspicion, dissent, anger, disgust, resignation, despair, alienation, assimilation.
*
Kierkegaard's question: “How many so-called Christians are really Christian?
#
Saturday, November 28, 2009
**********************************
WHAT A WORLD!
******************************************************
When the judge and jury are murderers and the defendant is also a murderer whose motive is as clear as daylight, why should we be surprised if he is found not guilty by reason of insufficient evidence? That's one way to explain why the Yanks refuse to recognize the Genocide.
*
It was a case of the blind leading the blind, but they blame the Turks, they blame the West, they blame the opposition, and some of them even blame the victims for their refusal to join their ranks, after which they parade as men of vision.
*
What would you have done in their place? I am asked again and again. Probably what they did and what they are doing. Understanding must begin somewhere and the best place is the self.
*
“A writer without a homeland is like a king in exile,” writes Golo Mann. Speaking for myself I feel more like the inmate of a Gulag whose existence the regime denies and is believed by dupes.
*
If you ask a serial adulterer why he is always the one to cast the first stone, my guess is, he will answer: “It's good PR!”
*
An alienated Armenian is one who after rejecting his Ottomanism, Sovietism, Levantinism, and Americanism, is now in search of his humanity.
*
A headline in my morning paper reads, “Want monogamy? Marry a swan.” The first line of the article informs us: “Actually, it turns out swans cheat, too.” Who would have guessed we live in a world where even swans behave like swine?
#
**********************************
MORE IS LESS
******************************************************
A Turkish-Armenian is more Turkish and less Armenian.
A Soviet-Armenian is more Soviet and less Armenian.
An Armenian-American is more American and less Armenian.
An Armenian from the Middle-East is more Levantine and less Armenian.
Something similar could be said of French-Armenians, Greek-Armenians, Italian-Armenians (assuming there are some left), and so on.
That's because, in Krikor Zohrab's words: “As impressionable as soft wax, the Armenian acquires indiscriminately the virtues as well as the vices of the country in which he happens to be living.”
And I remember a retired Armenian schoolteacher in her eighties (may she rest in peace and may the blessing of the Lord be upon her) saying, “Armenians are fast learners of all the wrong things.”
*
When Isaac Babel was silenced by the Soviet regime, he said he had invented a new genre: “Silence.”
*
To those who brag about our survival, I say, I would like to hear the testimony of those who did not survive – victims of massacres, earthquakes, starvation, betrayal, and idiots pretending to be leaders of men.
*
Literature flatters no one. Propaganda flatters everyone -- hence its popularity.
*
My severest critics are readers who have not yet mastered the difficult art of understanding simple sentences in the English language.
*
I have discovered that one of the hardest things to explain to a smart (self-assessed, of course) Armenian is this: to refuse to say “yes, sir!” to idiots is not treason.
#
Friday, November 27, 2009
**********************************
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN THE WORLD
******************************************************
The disciple of an infallible master will think of himself as infallible.
*
When asked what was the most beautiful thing in the world, Diogenes (4th century BC) replied: “Freedom of speech.” Ask one of our commissars what's the worst thing in the world, and he will give you the same answer.
*
There are those who believe our religion has civilized us. There are also those who believe our religion has made of us passive cowards and ideal subjects of tyrants (both foreign and domestic). Who is right? It depends on your choice of evidence: historic reality or narcissism; facts or wishful thinking.
*
Standards have fallen so low that if a man with money can draw the outline of a fish, write a grammatically correct sentence, and quote a line from Shakespeare, he is immediately declared to be a scholar, a gentleman, and a Renaissance man.
*
Armenian Ottomanism? Observe a brother on the warpath trying to get even with a fellow Armenian who has dared to question his judgment.
*
Armenian stages: acceptance, suspicion, dissent, anger, disgust, resignation, despair, alienation, assimilation.
*
Kierkegaard's question: “How many so-called Christians are really Christian?
#
Saturday, November 28, 2009
**********************************
WHAT A WORLD!
******************************************************
When the judge and jury are murderers and the defendant is also a murderer whose motive is as clear as daylight, why should we be surprised if he is found not guilty by reason of insufficient evidence? That's one way to explain why the Yanks refuse to recognize the Genocide.
*
It was a case of the blind leading the blind, but they blame the Turks, they blame the West, they blame the opposition, and some of them even blame the victims for their refusal to join their ranks, after which they parade as men of vision.
*
What would you have done in their place? I am asked again and again. Probably what they did and what they are doing. Understanding must begin somewhere and the best place is the self.
*
“A writer without a homeland is like a king in exile,” writes Golo Mann. Speaking for myself I feel more like the inmate of a Gulag whose existence the regime denies and is believed by dupes.
*
If you ask a serial adulterer why he is always the one to cast the first stone, my guess is, he will answer: “It's good PR!”
*
An alienated Armenian is one who after rejecting his Ottomanism, Sovietism, Levantinism, and Americanism, is now in search of his humanity.
*
A headline in my morning paper reads, “Want monogamy? Marry a swan.” The first line of the article informs us: “Actually, it turns out swans cheat, too.” Who would have guessed we live in a world where even swans behave like swine?
#
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
more.......
Sunday, November 22, 2009
**********************************
ON INDEPENDENCE
*******************************
Simon Rodriguez is a 19th-century South-American writer and educator who could have had Armenians in mind when he wrote: “We are independent but not free. Something must be done for these poor people, who have become less free than before. Before, they had a shepherd king who did not eat them until they were dead. Now the first to show up eats them alive.”
On education: “Teach children to be curious so they learn to obey their own minds rather than obeying authorities the way the narrow-minded do, or obeying custom the way the stupid do. He who knows nothing, anyone can fool. He who has nothing, anyone can buy.”
*
ON JUSTICE
*************************
We should speak about the Genocide less to demand justice and more to remind ourselves where we live. Justice is a noble goal but it is not always attainable.
*
YANKS
***********************
You want to know why Americans refuse to recognize the Genocide? Read their history and their treatment of Blacks, Indians, and Latinos; or listen to their music; or watch their gangster movies in which the criminals are the heroes.
*
PIERRE BOULEZ SPEAKS
**********************************************
On funerals: “It's depressing to revive a part of your life that's dead. I am not one who goes to funerals for enjoyment.”
On patriotism: “I heard too many of Petain's disgusting speeches during the Occupation to give patriotism a single thought.”
#
Monday, November 23, 2009
**********************************
ON KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
******************************************************
The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for its brainless(*) to assume they are the brains of the people.
*
First they assumed to be smart – which was a serious blunder.
Then they assumed to know better – another serious blunder.
And now they spend most of their time and energy covering up both blunders – which is the greatest blunder of all, because it keeps them so busy that they don't have the time to identify and focus on our present problems.
*
The solution is obvious:
the first step is to admit they are not as smart as they think they are. But even if they were, that doesn't mean they are without limitations. Even the wisest men on earth don't know and understand everything.
*
To be smart or to know better does not mean to understand reality. No one can truly say he understands all of reality. The very best we can do is understand a small fraction of it.
*
When asked why things exist, all scientists and philosophers can say is, existence “is just one of those things,” which translated into dollars and cents means “we don't have a clue.” Which also means, to know a great many things does not mean to know the most important things. Or, to be the best Oriental carpet dealer in the world does not mean to know how to lead a dog to the nearest fire hydrant or to catch a cold in a flu epidemic.
=========================================================
(*) Avedik Issahakian's characterization of our leadership.
##
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
**********************************
GEOGRAPHY
******************************************************
To those who blame our misfortunes not on our rotten leadership but on geography, consider the following passage from Eduardo Galeano's MIRRORS, which may best be described as history stripped of all propaganda.
After decapitating everyone who had taken part in the Boxer rebellion in China at the turn of the last century, we read, “Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Russia, Japan, and the United States...sliced up China as if it were a pizza, and each took ports, lands, and cities that the phantasmal Chinese dynasty bestowed upon them as concessions for periods of up to ninety-nine years.”
Closer to home, consider the case of the natives in America, Mexico, and Canada who were too busy slaughtering one another to present a united front to the handful of white men who ended up slaughtering them. Now then, tell me, what part did their geography play in their defeat and subjection?
*
Elsewhere, Galeano identified Heinrich Goering, father of the Nazi Hermann, as “one of the perpetrators of the first genocide of the 20th century.” The victims are identified as the Hereros of Namibia. The order for their annihilation, we are told, was issued and carried out in 1904. And, “Of every four Hereros, three were killed, by cannon fire or the desert sun.”
If you don't know who the Hereros are and where Namibia is, no matter. Very probably, my guess is, the Hereros, like so many Canadians I have met, don't know either who the Armenians are and where Armenia is.
#
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
**********************************
MORE FROM GALEANO
******************************************************
Armenians are not mentioned in the index of Eduardo Galeano's MIRRORS but are discussed on page 300, where we read:
“The Ottoman Empire was falling to pieces and the Armenians paid the price. While the First World War thundered on, government-sponsored butchery did away with half of the Armenians in Turkey:
homes ransacked and burned,
columns of people fleeing without clothes, water, or anything else,
women raped in town squares in broad daylight,
mutilated bodies floating on the rivers.
Whoever escaped thirst or hunger or cold died by the knife or the bullet. Or the gallows. Or by smoke: in the Syrian desert, Armenians driven out of Turkey were forced into caves and suffocated with smoke, in what foreshadowed the Nazi gas chambers to come.
“Twenty years later, Hitler and his advisers were planning the invasion of Poland. Weighing the pros and cons, Hitler realized there would be protests, diplomatic outrage, loud complaints, but he was certain the noise would not last. And to prove his point, he asked:
“Who remembers the Armenians?”
*
Galeano is identified as “one of Latin America's most distinguished writers [whose] work has been translated into twenty-eight languages."
I have every reason to suspect if MIRRORS is ever translated into Turkish, this passage quoted above will be omitted. But if it isn't and the translator is an Armenian, he will be accused of insulting Turkish honor, arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to ninety-nine years in prison.
Lord have mercy on honest witnesses for they shall never be forgiven by crooks.
#
**********************************
ON INDEPENDENCE
*******************************
Simon Rodriguez is a 19th-century South-American writer and educator who could have had Armenians in mind when he wrote: “We are independent but not free. Something must be done for these poor people, who have become less free than before. Before, they had a shepherd king who did not eat them until they were dead. Now the first to show up eats them alive.”
On education: “Teach children to be curious so they learn to obey their own minds rather than obeying authorities the way the narrow-minded do, or obeying custom the way the stupid do. He who knows nothing, anyone can fool. He who has nothing, anyone can buy.”
*
ON JUSTICE
*************************
We should speak about the Genocide less to demand justice and more to remind ourselves where we live. Justice is a noble goal but it is not always attainable.
*
YANKS
***********************
You want to know why Americans refuse to recognize the Genocide? Read their history and their treatment of Blacks, Indians, and Latinos; or listen to their music; or watch their gangster movies in which the criminals are the heroes.
*
PIERRE BOULEZ SPEAKS
**********************************************
On funerals: “It's depressing to revive a part of your life that's dead. I am not one who goes to funerals for enjoyment.”
On patriotism: “I heard too many of Petain's disgusting speeches during the Occupation to give patriotism a single thought.”
#
Monday, November 23, 2009
**********************************
ON KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
******************************************************
The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for its brainless(*) to assume they are the brains of the people.
*
First they assumed to be smart – which was a serious blunder.
Then they assumed to know better – another serious blunder.
And now they spend most of their time and energy covering up both blunders – which is the greatest blunder of all, because it keeps them so busy that they don't have the time to identify and focus on our present problems.
*
The solution is obvious:
the first step is to admit they are not as smart as they think they are. But even if they were, that doesn't mean they are without limitations. Even the wisest men on earth don't know and understand everything.
*
To be smart or to know better does not mean to understand reality. No one can truly say he understands all of reality. The very best we can do is understand a small fraction of it.
*
When asked why things exist, all scientists and philosophers can say is, existence “is just one of those things,” which translated into dollars and cents means “we don't have a clue.” Which also means, to know a great many things does not mean to know the most important things. Or, to be the best Oriental carpet dealer in the world does not mean to know how to lead a dog to the nearest fire hydrant or to catch a cold in a flu epidemic.
=========================================================
(*) Avedik Issahakian's characterization of our leadership.
##
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
**********************************
GEOGRAPHY
******************************************************
To those who blame our misfortunes not on our rotten leadership but on geography, consider the following passage from Eduardo Galeano's MIRRORS, which may best be described as history stripped of all propaganda.
After decapitating everyone who had taken part in the Boxer rebellion in China at the turn of the last century, we read, “Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Russia, Japan, and the United States...sliced up China as if it were a pizza, and each took ports, lands, and cities that the phantasmal Chinese dynasty bestowed upon them as concessions for periods of up to ninety-nine years.”
Closer to home, consider the case of the natives in America, Mexico, and Canada who were too busy slaughtering one another to present a united front to the handful of white men who ended up slaughtering them. Now then, tell me, what part did their geography play in their defeat and subjection?
*
Elsewhere, Galeano identified Heinrich Goering, father of the Nazi Hermann, as “one of the perpetrators of the first genocide of the 20th century.” The victims are identified as the Hereros of Namibia. The order for their annihilation, we are told, was issued and carried out in 1904. And, “Of every four Hereros, three were killed, by cannon fire or the desert sun.”
If you don't know who the Hereros are and where Namibia is, no matter. Very probably, my guess is, the Hereros, like so many Canadians I have met, don't know either who the Armenians are and where Armenia is.
#
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
**********************************
MORE FROM GALEANO
******************************************************
Armenians are not mentioned in the index of Eduardo Galeano's MIRRORS but are discussed on page 300, where we read:
“The Ottoman Empire was falling to pieces and the Armenians paid the price. While the First World War thundered on, government-sponsored butchery did away with half of the Armenians in Turkey:
homes ransacked and burned,
columns of people fleeing without clothes, water, or anything else,
women raped in town squares in broad daylight,
mutilated bodies floating on the rivers.
Whoever escaped thirst or hunger or cold died by the knife or the bullet. Or the gallows. Or by smoke: in the Syrian desert, Armenians driven out of Turkey were forced into caves and suffocated with smoke, in what foreshadowed the Nazi gas chambers to come.
“Twenty years later, Hitler and his advisers were planning the invasion of Poland. Weighing the pros and cons, Hitler realized there would be protests, diplomatic outrage, loud complaints, but he was certain the noise would not last. And to prove his point, he asked:
“Who remembers the Armenians?”
*
Galeano is identified as “one of Latin America's most distinguished writers [whose] work has been translated into twenty-eight languages."
I have every reason to suspect if MIRRORS is ever translated into Turkish, this passage quoted above will be omitted. But if it isn't and the translator is an Armenian, he will be accused of insulting Turkish honor, arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to ninety-nine years in prison.
Lord have mercy on honest witnesses for they shall never be forgiven by crooks.
#
Saturday, November 21, 2009
KBO
Thursday, November 19, 2009
**********************************
CANADIAN VALUES
*****************************
Two widely held views on Canada by Canadians:
“This country was founded on Christian values.”
“Canada is ours: we stole it from the Indians fair and square.”
*
ARMENIAN VALUES
**********************************
It makes no difference whether you cut a writer's tongue out or you silence him.
Neither does it make any difference whether you kill him or you ignore him.
The result will be the same.
*
CATECHISM 101
********************************
Q: Do you believe Jesus was the son of God?
A: Aren't we all? We don't say “Our stepFather who art in heaven,” or “Our Father-in-law...” We say “Our Father...”
Q: Do you believe He rose from the dead?
A: I believe he never died. All gods are immortal. They don't die. That's a rule without exceptions.
*
DENIALISTS
***************************
Q: How do you explain American academics who deny the Genocide?
A: Promise an academic a regular salary and he will deny his own existence.
Q: What about Jews who deny the Genocide?
A: Jews don't, Israeli politicians do, and politicians have no principles, only interests.
*
ON TREASON
**************************************
“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly, but the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. “
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 42 BC
#
Friday, November 20, 2009
**********************************
ON REPETITION
*******************************
Advertisements and propaganda
appeal to our lowest instincts
and they thrive on repetition.
Do I repeat myself?
Why shouldn't I?
If repetition works for the devil,
it can work for Jesus,
which is what Martin Luther said
when he adapted drinking songs to church hymns.
*
CRITICS
*********************
To subscribe to a belief system
means to reject all others
as aberrations, deviations and heresies.
To say I am against criticism
is also criticism.
*
INFANTILE CRITICISM
**************************************
Because I write against prejudice,
I am accused of being prejudiced.
Because I write against subservience and ignorance,
I am accused of both transgressions.
The offspring of perennial victims,
I am accused of being on the side of victimizers.
Because I refuse to be a dupe,
I am told I am a dupe of enemy propaganda.
I call this type of criticism
tit-for-tat, senile, or infantile criticism.
*
LIES
*********************
What is the biggest Armenian lie?
That Armenians are honest.
What is the dumbest Armenian lie?
That Armenians are smart.
#
Saturday, November 21, 2009
**********************************
TO MY CRITICS
*******************************
If you have irrefutable evidence that suggests I am wrong,
then I must be wrong and I plead guilty as charged.
If, on the other hand, your evidence is based
on hearsay, propaganda, or a belief system,
then I suggest it is suspect
and therefore inadmissible.
*
Belief systems are infallible only to their dupes.
*
Knowledge based on propaganda
(and the favorite medium of all belief systems is propaganda )
is worse than ignorance.
*
When belief systems speak in terms of certainties,
they lie. And because they lie,
we have heresies, holy wars, and jihads
all of which operate like licenses
to commit crimes against humanity
in the name of an idol parading as God Almighty.
*
In a biography of Churchill I read today that
one of his favorite mottoes when in trouble was:
KBO = Keep Buggering On.
Perhaps that’s what I have been doing all along too
but didn’t know what to call it.
#
**********************************
CANADIAN VALUES
*****************************
Two widely held views on Canada by Canadians:
“This country was founded on Christian values.”
“Canada is ours: we stole it from the Indians fair and square.”
*
ARMENIAN VALUES
**********************************
It makes no difference whether you cut a writer's tongue out or you silence him.
Neither does it make any difference whether you kill him or you ignore him.
The result will be the same.
*
CATECHISM 101
********************************
Q: Do you believe Jesus was the son of God?
A: Aren't we all? We don't say “Our stepFather who art in heaven,” or “Our Father-in-law...” We say “Our Father...”
Q: Do you believe He rose from the dead?
A: I believe he never died. All gods are immortal. They don't die. That's a rule without exceptions.
*
DENIALISTS
***************************
Q: How do you explain American academics who deny the Genocide?
A: Promise an academic a regular salary and he will deny his own existence.
Q: What about Jews who deny the Genocide?
A: Jews don't, Israeli politicians do, and politicians have no principles, only interests.
*
ON TREASON
**************************************
“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly, but the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. “
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 42 BC
#
Friday, November 20, 2009
**********************************
ON REPETITION
*******************************
Advertisements and propaganda
appeal to our lowest instincts
and they thrive on repetition.
Do I repeat myself?
Why shouldn't I?
If repetition works for the devil,
it can work for Jesus,
which is what Martin Luther said
when he adapted drinking songs to church hymns.
*
CRITICS
*********************
To subscribe to a belief system
means to reject all others
as aberrations, deviations and heresies.
To say I am against criticism
is also criticism.
*
INFANTILE CRITICISM
**************************************
Because I write against prejudice,
I am accused of being prejudiced.
Because I write against subservience and ignorance,
I am accused of both transgressions.
The offspring of perennial victims,
I am accused of being on the side of victimizers.
Because I refuse to be a dupe,
I am told I am a dupe of enemy propaganda.
I call this type of criticism
tit-for-tat, senile, or infantile criticism.
*
LIES
*********************
What is the biggest Armenian lie?
That Armenians are honest.
What is the dumbest Armenian lie?
That Armenians are smart.
#
Saturday, November 21, 2009
**********************************
TO MY CRITICS
*******************************
If you have irrefutable evidence that suggests I am wrong,
then I must be wrong and I plead guilty as charged.
If, on the other hand, your evidence is based
on hearsay, propaganda, or a belief system,
then I suggest it is suspect
and therefore inadmissible.
*
Belief systems are infallible only to their dupes.
*
Knowledge based on propaganda
(and the favorite medium of all belief systems is propaganda )
is worse than ignorance.
*
When belief systems speak in terms of certainties,
they lie. And because they lie,
we have heresies, holy wars, and jihads
all of which operate like licenses
to commit crimes against humanity
in the name of an idol parading as God Almighty.
*
In a biography of Churchill I read today that
one of his favorite mottoes when in trouble was:
KBO = Keep Buggering On.
Perhaps that’s what I have been doing all along too
but didn’t know what to call it.
#
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
more.......
Sunday, November 15, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 5
*****************************
When an American capitalist first heard the passage in the Scriptures that says a wealthy man cannot go to heaven in the same way that a camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle, he hired a succession of theologians and demanded an explanation. Only one came up with the answer that pleased him which was this: The “Eye of a Needle” was the name of a narrow passage under a low bridge in Jerusalem. That theologian went home with a fat check in his pocket.
*
I suspect if you were to ask one of our bishops to explain the line “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” he will say neither can a house with rotten foundations, and what could be more rotten than a heresy?
*
Theologians are like lawyers, they will plead not guilty even if their client is a serial killer who may kill again.
*
“The law is the law,” they say. So is the Word of God. But both cease to be what they claim to be if they are interpreted to mean the opposite of what they say.
*
I enjoy reading pundits who are on my side. I enjoy even more reading pundits of the opposition. But my very favorite pundits are liberals who turned conservative and vice versa.
*
I don’t read to have my ego massaged or my prejudices reinforced, but for the exactly opposite reason.
*
Dostoevsky began his literary career as a liberal and became conservative. By contrast, Thomas Mann began as a conservative right-wing nationalist and ended as a left-wing cosmopolitan liberal. I enjoy reading both. I enjoy them even when they express views with which I am in complete disagreement.
#
Monday, November 16, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 6
*****************************
What Romans did to their Christians,
Christians did to their heretics.
Religions and regimes may change,
but man stays the same
and the scum of the earth
always rises to the top.
*
The people who do the most harm to mankind
are, as a rule, the least aware of it.
They may even think of themselves
as the best and the brightest,
or promoters of virtue,
or representatives of God on earth.
Kings, popes, imams:
we may be justified in calling them
certified moral morons.
*
Something to remember and repeat:
Self-criticism is not unpatriotic.
Silencing critics is.
*
It was Kant who said that very often
ignorance is nothing but
cowardice in the face of knowledge.
*
When a chauvinist who recycles crap says:
“Criticism must be constructive!”
what he really means is:
“If recycling crap is good enough for me,
how dare you think otherwise?”
#
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 7
*****************************
I am grateful to all charlatans who,
with their example, taught me the value of honesty.
*
People profess to love the truth
but live as though they were afraid of it --
hence the old Armenian saying:
"If you speak the truth,
you will be chased out from seven villages."
*
The very same people
who pour venom on every line I write
and sling mud at me
(hoping some of it will stick),
accuse me of being negative.
*
In a dictionary of philosophy:
“Generally speaking megalomania is a reaction to failure.
The megalomaniac represents himself
as he would like to be
but as he is not.
Megalomania may also be a symptom
of the decline of one’s critical faculties.”
*
On dogmatism:
“It stands in direct contradiction to criticism,
skepticism, empiricism, and realism.
It fosters intolerance and fanaticism.”
*
To be read by friendly readers:
nothing unusual in that.
To be read by hostiles:
That’s where the money is,
because it means being allowed the opportunity
to introduce ideas where none exist.
#
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
**********************************
ON THE DEATH
OF ARMENIAN LITERATURE
*****************************
Poverty should not be confused with destitution.
Poverty is the total absence of all luxuries.
Destitution means anxiety, fear, subservience, uncertainty, degradation, envy, anger, hatred, and worse of all, dependence on the charity of swine.
This may explain why our writers, who ought to know better, are more than willing to crap on one another and kiss the posterior not only of an empty suit with money but also his flunkies and hirelings.
Their central concern is not producing a decent line but getting closer to the money tree even if the tree bears poisoned fruit.
*
What is an old man if not a fool with wrinkles?
*
A common Armenian misconception promoted by our ubiquitous and dime-a-dozen Turcocentric ghazetajis: to equate anti-Turkism with pro-Armenianism.
*
Our collective self-esteem is so low that it needs constant positive feedback. Hence the mantras first nation this and first nation that...
*
There is no such thing as an average Armenian. An average Armenian is a self-assessed genius and an unappreciated and misunderstood Armenian.
*
Asked what he thought of Nietzsche, Jules Romain replied: “There are too many unnecessary letters in his name.”
*
After reading one of my things,
an old friend writes: “I am glad you continue to be a patriotic Armenian.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him that
I loathe patriotism.
I love honest men and loathe charlatans regardless of nationality;
and some of the worst charlatans I have met are Armenian patriots.
#
**********************************
DIARY / 5
*****************************
When an American capitalist first heard the passage in the Scriptures that says a wealthy man cannot go to heaven in the same way that a camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle, he hired a succession of theologians and demanded an explanation. Only one came up with the answer that pleased him which was this: The “Eye of a Needle” was the name of a narrow passage under a low bridge in Jerusalem. That theologian went home with a fat check in his pocket.
*
I suspect if you were to ask one of our bishops to explain the line “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” he will say neither can a house with rotten foundations, and what could be more rotten than a heresy?
*
Theologians are like lawyers, they will plead not guilty even if their client is a serial killer who may kill again.
*
“The law is the law,” they say. So is the Word of God. But both cease to be what they claim to be if they are interpreted to mean the opposite of what they say.
*
I enjoy reading pundits who are on my side. I enjoy even more reading pundits of the opposition. But my very favorite pundits are liberals who turned conservative and vice versa.
*
I don’t read to have my ego massaged or my prejudices reinforced, but for the exactly opposite reason.
*
Dostoevsky began his literary career as a liberal and became conservative. By contrast, Thomas Mann began as a conservative right-wing nationalist and ended as a left-wing cosmopolitan liberal. I enjoy reading both. I enjoy them even when they express views with which I am in complete disagreement.
#
Monday, November 16, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 6
*****************************
What Romans did to their Christians,
Christians did to their heretics.
Religions and regimes may change,
but man stays the same
and the scum of the earth
always rises to the top.
*
The people who do the most harm to mankind
are, as a rule, the least aware of it.
They may even think of themselves
as the best and the brightest,
or promoters of virtue,
or representatives of God on earth.
Kings, popes, imams:
we may be justified in calling them
certified moral morons.
*
Something to remember and repeat:
Self-criticism is not unpatriotic.
Silencing critics is.
*
It was Kant who said that very often
ignorance is nothing but
cowardice in the face of knowledge.
*
When a chauvinist who recycles crap says:
“Criticism must be constructive!”
what he really means is:
“If recycling crap is good enough for me,
how dare you think otherwise?”
#
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 7
*****************************
I am grateful to all charlatans who,
with their example, taught me the value of honesty.
*
People profess to love the truth
but live as though they were afraid of it --
hence the old Armenian saying:
"If you speak the truth,
you will be chased out from seven villages."
*
The very same people
who pour venom on every line I write
and sling mud at me
(hoping some of it will stick),
accuse me of being negative.
*
In a dictionary of philosophy:
“Generally speaking megalomania is a reaction to failure.
The megalomaniac represents himself
as he would like to be
but as he is not.
Megalomania may also be a symptom
of the decline of one’s critical faculties.”
*
On dogmatism:
“It stands in direct contradiction to criticism,
skepticism, empiricism, and realism.
It fosters intolerance and fanaticism.”
*
To be read by friendly readers:
nothing unusual in that.
To be read by hostiles:
That’s where the money is,
because it means being allowed the opportunity
to introduce ideas where none exist.
#
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
**********************************
ON THE DEATH
OF ARMENIAN LITERATURE
*****************************
Poverty should not be confused with destitution.
Poverty is the total absence of all luxuries.
Destitution means anxiety, fear, subservience, uncertainty, degradation, envy, anger, hatred, and worse of all, dependence on the charity of swine.
This may explain why our writers, who ought to know better, are more than willing to crap on one another and kiss the posterior not only of an empty suit with money but also his flunkies and hirelings.
Their central concern is not producing a decent line but getting closer to the money tree even if the tree bears poisoned fruit.
*
What is an old man if not a fool with wrinkles?
*
A common Armenian misconception promoted by our ubiquitous and dime-a-dozen Turcocentric ghazetajis: to equate anti-Turkism with pro-Armenianism.
*
Our collective self-esteem is so low that it needs constant positive feedback. Hence the mantras first nation this and first nation that...
*
There is no such thing as an average Armenian. An average Armenian is a self-assessed genius and an unappreciated and misunderstood Armenian.
*
Asked what he thought of Nietzsche, Jules Romain replied: “There are too many unnecessary letters in his name.”
*
After reading one of my things,
an old friend writes: “I am glad you continue to be a patriotic Armenian.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him that
I loathe patriotism.
I love honest men and loathe charlatans regardless of nationality;
and some of the worst charlatans I have met are Armenian patriots.
#
Saturday, November 14, 2009
diary
Thursday, November 12, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 2
*****************************
“What Africa needs is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties to the larger loyalties of nationhood.”
I copy these lines from a magazine article for those of my readers who say we need solutions.
*
To be a dupe in our context means to be deceived by frauds who have deceived themselves to believe they are leaders of men.
*
Let us not confuse anti-Turkism with pro-Armenianism.
*
Martin Scorcese: “...thanks to a professor named Haig Manoogian I discovered that I could express everything I felt through film.”
*
Salman Rushdie: “My father was a great religious scholar, but he wasn't a believer.”
*
David Lynch on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: “I owe him the discovery that the possibility for happiness dwells within us.”
A hundred years before Maharishi, Tolstoy based a belief system on a 2000-year old dictum: “The kingdom of God is within you.”
*
There is only one religion: the search for meaning.
*
There is a type of reader who reads not to learn but to settle scores; not to engage in dialogue but to insult; and an insult is as difficult to refute as a massacre, perhaps because it is verbal massacre.
*
Nothing human is beyond criticism, including the Word of God as heard, interpreted, written down, translated, read and understood by man.
*
According to Buddha: “That which is spoken, heard, and understood are three different things.”
*
What a scathing book review Buddha would write of the Bible and the Koran!
#
Friday, November 13, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 3
*****************************
To understand Turks, all I have to do is examine my own heart.
To understand Turkish lies, all I have to do is consider our own.
*
Why should I trust the judgment or integrity of men who hire belly-slitting lawyers whenever their sensibilities are offended?
*
Northrop Frye on a common misconception of God: “...the ferocious old bugger up in the sky with the whiskers and the reactionary political views, who enjoys sending people to hell.”
*
When I hear or read the word Islam, the first four words that come to mind are: giaour, imam, fatwa, and jihad; and I loathe these words as much I loathe the words boss, bishop, benefactor, and commissar.
*
You cannot change that which you hate: that may explain my failure. Perhaps what we need is not critics but messiahs. Anyone interested in being crucified?
*
There is something in our partisans that doesn’t like disagreement, dissent, criticism, dialogue, democracy, free speech, human rights, honesty, straight talk, common sense….
*
The disagreement of a single honest man means much more to me than the agreement of a thousand fools and ten thousand dupes.
#
Saturday, November 14, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 4
*****************************
Sooner or later all lies are exposed and replaced by other lies.
*
Truth is not a noun but a verb – it consists in shedding lies.
*
Ottomanism, Sovietism, Armenianism: the only difference between them is the number of dupes and hoodlums they control.
*
Northrop Frye's explanation of deconstruction: “Rousseau wrote on the origin of language, but he was primarily interested in masturbation.”
*
Eduardo Galeano: “Hunting Jews has always been a European sport. Now the Palestinians, who never played it, are paying the bill.”
*
Men need to believe in something, even if it is a lie that will enslave them.
#
**********************************
DIARY / 2
*****************************
“What Africa needs is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties to the larger loyalties of nationhood.”
I copy these lines from a magazine article for those of my readers who say we need solutions.
*
To be a dupe in our context means to be deceived by frauds who have deceived themselves to believe they are leaders of men.
*
Let us not confuse anti-Turkism with pro-Armenianism.
*
Martin Scorcese: “...thanks to a professor named Haig Manoogian I discovered that I could express everything I felt through film.”
*
Salman Rushdie: “My father was a great religious scholar, but he wasn't a believer.”
*
David Lynch on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: “I owe him the discovery that the possibility for happiness dwells within us.”
A hundred years before Maharishi, Tolstoy based a belief system on a 2000-year old dictum: “The kingdom of God is within you.”
*
There is only one religion: the search for meaning.
*
There is a type of reader who reads not to learn but to settle scores; not to engage in dialogue but to insult; and an insult is as difficult to refute as a massacre, perhaps because it is verbal massacre.
*
Nothing human is beyond criticism, including the Word of God as heard, interpreted, written down, translated, read and understood by man.
*
According to Buddha: “That which is spoken, heard, and understood are three different things.”
*
What a scathing book review Buddha would write of the Bible and the Koran!
#
Friday, November 13, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 3
*****************************
To understand Turks, all I have to do is examine my own heart.
To understand Turkish lies, all I have to do is consider our own.
*
Why should I trust the judgment or integrity of men who hire belly-slitting lawyers whenever their sensibilities are offended?
*
Northrop Frye on a common misconception of God: “...the ferocious old bugger up in the sky with the whiskers and the reactionary political views, who enjoys sending people to hell.”
*
When I hear or read the word Islam, the first four words that come to mind are: giaour, imam, fatwa, and jihad; and I loathe these words as much I loathe the words boss, bishop, benefactor, and commissar.
*
You cannot change that which you hate: that may explain my failure. Perhaps what we need is not critics but messiahs. Anyone interested in being crucified?
*
There is something in our partisans that doesn’t like disagreement, dissent, criticism, dialogue, democracy, free speech, human rights, honesty, straight talk, common sense….
*
The disagreement of a single honest man means much more to me than the agreement of a thousand fools and ten thousand dupes.
#
Saturday, November 14, 2009
**********************************
DIARY / 4
*****************************
Sooner or later all lies are exposed and replaced by other lies.
*
Truth is not a noun but a verb – it consists in shedding lies.
*
Ottomanism, Sovietism, Armenianism: the only difference between them is the number of dupes and hoodlums they control.
*
Northrop Frye's explanation of deconstruction: “Rousseau wrote on the origin of language, but he was primarily interested in masturbation.”
*
Eduardo Galeano: “Hunting Jews has always been a European sport. Now the Palestinians, who never played it, are paying the bill.”
*
Men need to believe in something, even if it is a lie that will enslave them.
#
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
fools
Sunday, November 8, 2009
*****************************************
FOOLS
*************************************
They don't brag about their culture
and they have a Nobel-Prize winner.
We brag about ours,
and what have we got?
Ask an Armenian to name a contemporary Armenian writer
and he will give you a dirty “Who-gives-a-damn?” look.
*
Will Safire (may he rest in peace) once said
Germans have a tendency “to look the other way
when moral values are threatened.”
Ask an Armenian
what a moral value is
and the chances are he will give you
a “What-the-hell-is-that?” look.
Ask him what a human right is
and he will give you a hostile “Don't-waste-my-time” look.
Ask him if we are civilized, progressive, and smart
and he will reply
“Of course we are!” with a look that says
“How dare you ask such a dumb question, you fool?”
*
After centuries of life under sultans and commissars,
we might as well be blind
to moral, aesthetic, and democratic values.
*
No use blaming others.
The fault is in us or rather
in our mini-sultans and neo-commissars.
*
All nationalists lie
when they speak about themselves
and their enemies.
*
“For a fool he sure is smart!” I used to think,
until I realized he was not the fool,
I was.
#
Monday, November 9, 2009
*****************************************
LIES
*************************************
If a man marries seven times
it only means one thing:
he is a poor judge of feminine flesh.
Likewise, if a nation has been subservient
to alien tyrants for a thousand years,
it only means one thing:
its unspoken motto is not
“freedom or death”
but “survival at all cost.”
*
Instead of raising our children
to brag about our survival,
we should teach them honesty.
And since we don't have an Armenian word for honesty,
we should invent one.
The alternative is rewriting history
and engaging in double-talk.
*
No one likes liars.
Even liars prefer to deal with honest men.
*
We are divided because both sides
are too busy covering up their lies
to be honest with themselves,
their counterparts, and the people.
*
For an adult to believe in Santa is bad enough,
but what is infinitely worse
is to be an habitual and compulsive liar
and to brag about one's honesty and love of truth.
#
REPLIES
TO A STUDENT'S QUESTIONS
*****************************************************************
Question: Do you believe what the Turks did to the Armenians in 1915 was genocide?
Answer: I do.
Q: Do you believe it was a deliberately adopted and systematically implemented policy by the Turkish government?
A: No doubt about that. It was planned and executed in cold blood. The evidence -- the testimony of survivors, eyewitness accounts, historians who have studied the record, not all of them Armenian, some of them Turkish -- is overwhelming. Besides, no nation in the history of mankind has ever fabricated a genocide and believed in it for nearly a century.
Q: Do you know or have you ever met a survivor?
A: I grew up in a ghetto near Athens, Greece, populated by several thousand survivors. Most of them were not educated or literate. They didn't like to reminisce. Besides, they were engaged in the serious business of surviving World War II, the German occupation, blockade by the Allies, the Greek Civil War... The poverty was appalling. The housing a disaster area -- as bad as the worst slums in South America and India.
Q: Some say the so-called deportations were flight from the violence – true or false?
A: My father was a teenager in 1915 and he was lucky in that a friend of the family, a Turkish cop, warned the family of the coming deportations. He was able to flee the violence but only with the shirt on his back. My mother was only a tiny baby who ended up in an orphanage in Lebanon run by Catholic nuns.
Q: Do you think the Armenian genocide has had any impact on the world?
A: None whatever! There have been more genocides in the last century than at any other time in the history of mankind.
Q: In your opinion, what is the most important thing you have heard concerning the genocide?
A: The unimaginable cruelty of the sadistic criminals – and they were criminals – who carried out the deportations.
Q: Do you believe that the deportations and marches of Armenians in 1915 were deliberately designed by the Turkish government to lead to the death of the deportees, or do you believe that it was unintentional?
A: It was deliberate and intentional – no doubt about that. The only explanation I have is that, the Turks were convinced they were fighting for their own survival against overwhelming enemies from without as well as from within, among them the Armenians.
Q: What do you think is the most important thing that people can learn from the Genocide?
A: Like all belief systems and ideologies, nationalism can also be abused. It was in the name of nationalism that our revolutionaries challenged the might of the Ottoman Empire, and it was in the name of nationalism that the Young Turks thought the only way to defend the integrity of their nation was to exterminate the Armenians.
Q: What are your impressions of people who say it wasn't really a genocide?
A: People can be brainwashed to believe anything. Luckily not everyone is vulnerable to being brainwashed. There is now a generation of Turkish intellectuals that no longer believe what their politicians dictate.
Q: Did your mother or anyone you know who went through the genocide ever mention concentration camps, mass burnings, starvation or massacres?
A: Both my father and mother were among the lucky ones who did not witness or experience these things – except near starvation and abominable poverty in an alien environment.
Q: What is the single most important thing you would tell someone who questions the reality of the Armenian genocide?
A: Only this: state propaganda cannot be a reliable source of information.
#
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
**********************************
DIARY
*****************************
With reasonable men, reason is enough.
With children, repetition has a better chance.
*
No one can be as dumb
as he who has been brainwashed to believe he is smart.
*
According to Northrop Frye, the foremost Canadian authority on the Scriptures, the aim of the Bible is to expand human consciousness.
*
Philosophers are more modest than prophets. They don't pretend to speak in the name of God. No one has ever declared a war or tortured a fellow human being in defense of Plato's or Schopenhauer's theories.
*
The day man invented God,
he let loose the equivalent of ten thousand atomic bombs.
Who thinks of God as a weapon of mass destruction?
And yet...(the saddest words in the English language, it has been said).
*
For writing as I do, once upon a time I would have been sliced into ribbons and fed to the dogs by the Pope's henchmen.
*
Believing in miracles is bad enough.
Believing that man is worthy of them is worse.
*
To punish the guilty, sometimes Canadians send them back to their homeland.
I can't imagine a worse punishment.
*
Are we worthy of our martyrs?
What about our heroes?
Do we have them?
*
Every house in which I have lived has been torn down by either war or real-estate developers. My alma mater is now a motel. Which is almost like saying, my childhood sweetheart is now a bordello madam.
*
I have been a source of disappointment to everyone I have met, including myself, and I cannot decide whether that's an asset or a liability.
*
Good Armenians?
One in a thousand --
and I belong with the 999.
*
Eduardo Galeano in his MIRRORS writes: “Those who knew Leonardo said he never embraced a woman. Yet from his hand was born the most famous portrait of all times. A woman.”
And:
“Queen Elizabeth of England and the Sun King of France ate with their hands. When Michel de Montaigne ate in a hurry, he bit his fingers.”
*
When an old Indian predicted a bad winter and was asked how he can tell, he replied: “White man make big wood pile.”
#
*****************************************
FOOLS
*************************************
They don't brag about their culture
and they have a Nobel-Prize winner.
We brag about ours,
and what have we got?
Ask an Armenian to name a contemporary Armenian writer
and he will give you a dirty “Who-gives-a-damn?” look.
*
Will Safire (may he rest in peace) once said
Germans have a tendency “to look the other way
when moral values are threatened.”
Ask an Armenian
what a moral value is
and the chances are he will give you
a “What-the-hell-is-that?” look.
Ask him what a human right is
and he will give you a hostile “Don't-waste-my-time” look.
Ask him if we are civilized, progressive, and smart
and he will reply
“Of course we are!” with a look that says
“How dare you ask such a dumb question, you fool?”
*
After centuries of life under sultans and commissars,
we might as well be blind
to moral, aesthetic, and democratic values.
*
No use blaming others.
The fault is in us or rather
in our mini-sultans and neo-commissars.
*
All nationalists lie
when they speak about themselves
and their enemies.
*
“For a fool he sure is smart!” I used to think,
until I realized he was not the fool,
I was.
#
Monday, November 9, 2009
*****************************************
LIES
*************************************
If a man marries seven times
it only means one thing:
he is a poor judge of feminine flesh.
Likewise, if a nation has been subservient
to alien tyrants for a thousand years,
it only means one thing:
its unspoken motto is not
“freedom or death”
but “survival at all cost.”
*
Instead of raising our children
to brag about our survival,
we should teach them honesty.
And since we don't have an Armenian word for honesty,
we should invent one.
The alternative is rewriting history
and engaging in double-talk.
*
No one likes liars.
Even liars prefer to deal with honest men.
*
We are divided because both sides
are too busy covering up their lies
to be honest with themselves,
their counterparts, and the people.
*
For an adult to believe in Santa is bad enough,
but what is infinitely worse
is to be an habitual and compulsive liar
and to brag about one's honesty and love of truth.
#
REPLIES
TO A STUDENT'S QUESTIONS
*****************************************************************
Question: Do you believe what the Turks did to the Armenians in 1915 was genocide?
Answer: I do.
Q: Do you believe it was a deliberately adopted and systematically implemented policy by the Turkish government?
A: No doubt about that. It was planned and executed in cold blood. The evidence -- the testimony of survivors, eyewitness accounts, historians who have studied the record, not all of them Armenian, some of them Turkish -- is overwhelming. Besides, no nation in the history of mankind has ever fabricated a genocide and believed in it for nearly a century.
Q: Do you know or have you ever met a survivor?
A: I grew up in a ghetto near Athens, Greece, populated by several thousand survivors. Most of them were not educated or literate. They didn't like to reminisce. Besides, they were engaged in the serious business of surviving World War II, the German occupation, blockade by the Allies, the Greek Civil War... The poverty was appalling. The housing a disaster area -- as bad as the worst slums in South America and India.
Q: Some say the so-called deportations were flight from the violence – true or false?
A: My father was a teenager in 1915 and he was lucky in that a friend of the family, a Turkish cop, warned the family of the coming deportations. He was able to flee the violence but only with the shirt on his back. My mother was only a tiny baby who ended up in an orphanage in Lebanon run by Catholic nuns.
Q: Do you think the Armenian genocide has had any impact on the world?
A: None whatever! There have been more genocides in the last century than at any other time in the history of mankind.
Q: In your opinion, what is the most important thing you have heard concerning the genocide?
A: The unimaginable cruelty of the sadistic criminals – and they were criminals – who carried out the deportations.
Q: Do you believe that the deportations and marches of Armenians in 1915 were deliberately designed by the Turkish government to lead to the death of the deportees, or do you believe that it was unintentional?
A: It was deliberate and intentional – no doubt about that. The only explanation I have is that, the Turks were convinced they were fighting for their own survival against overwhelming enemies from without as well as from within, among them the Armenians.
Q: What do you think is the most important thing that people can learn from the Genocide?
A: Like all belief systems and ideologies, nationalism can also be abused. It was in the name of nationalism that our revolutionaries challenged the might of the Ottoman Empire, and it was in the name of nationalism that the Young Turks thought the only way to defend the integrity of their nation was to exterminate the Armenians.
Q: What are your impressions of people who say it wasn't really a genocide?
A: People can be brainwashed to believe anything. Luckily not everyone is vulnerable to being brainwashed. There is now a generation of Turkish intellectuals that no longer believe what their politicians dictate.
Q: Did your mother or anyone you know who went through the genocide ever mention concentration camps, mass burnings, starvation or massacres?
A: Both my father and mother were among the lucky ones who did not witness or experience these things – except near starvation and abominable poverty in an alien environment.
Q: What is the single most important thing you would tell someone who questions the reality of the Armenian genocide?
A: Only this: state propaganda cannot be a reliable source of information.
#
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
**********************************
DIARY
*****************************
With reasonable men, reason is enough.
With children, repetition has a better chance.
*
No one can be as dumb
as he who has been brainwashed to believe he is smart.
*
According to Northrop Frye, the foremost Canadian authority on the Scriptures, the aim of the Bible is to expand human consciousness.
*
Philosophers are more modest than prophets. They don't pretend to speak in the name of God. No one has ever declared a war or tortured a fellow human being in defense of Plato's or Schopenhauer's theories.
*
The day man invented God,
he let loose the equivalent of ten thousand atomic bombs.
Who thinks of God as a weapon of mass destruction?
And yet...(the saddest words in the English language, it has been said).
*
For writing as I do, once upon a time I would have been sliced into ribbons and fed to the dogs by the Pope's henchmen.
*
Believing in miracles is bad enough.
Believing that man is worthy of them is worse.
*
To punish the guilty, sometimes Canadians send them back to their homeland.
I can't imagine a worse punishment.
*
Are we worthy of our martyrs?
What about our heroes?
Do we have them?
*
Every house in which I have lived has been torn down by either war or real-estate developers. My alma mater is now a motel. Which is almost like saying, my childhood sweetheart is now a bordello madam.
*
I have been a source of disappointment to everyone I have met, including myself, and I cannot decide whether that's an asset or a liability.
*
Good Armenians?
One in a thousand --
and I belong with the 999.
*
Eduardo Galeano in his MIRRORS writes: “Those who knew Leonardo said he never embraced a woman. Yet from his hand was born the most famous portrait of all times. A woman.”
And:
“Queen Elizabeth of England and the Sun King of France ate with their hands. When Michel de Montaigne ate in a hurry, he bit his fingers.”
*
When an old Indian predicted a bad winter and was asked how he can tell, he replied: “White man make big wood pile.”
#
Saturday, November 7, 2009
if?
Thursday, November 5, 2009
****************************************
WHAT IF I AM WRONG?
********************************************************
That would be too good to be true!
Because if I am wrong, it means our writers from Khorenatsi (5th century) to our own days have been wrong in accusing our political leadership of incompetence and corruption.
It means no foreign or domestic tyrant has ever been successful in dividing us.
It means our bishops and benefactors have at no time used to the power of God and capital (make it, Capital and god) to divide us.
It means when Raffi said “treason and betrayal are in our blood,” he was only voicing his deep-seated hatred of his fellow countrymen.
It means when Baronian said, “If you want to wine and dine every day, be a bishop,” he was writing under the influenced of cynical and atheist French intellectuals who were in vogue at the turn of the last century in Istanbul.
It means our revolutionaries were at no time taken in by the empty promises of the West and the Turks had no reason to exterminate us because, as “the most loyal subjects” of the Empire, they needed our help against foreign and domestic enemies who were unanimous in their desire to see the Empire dismembered and buried never to rise again.
It means our post-World War II repatriates were treated by the natives not as “white trash” but as “brothers.”
Finally, it means when Gostan Zarian returned to the Homeland during Khrushchev's thaw, he was treated by his fellow writers as a literary giant rather than as an undesirable midget.
#
Friday, November 6, 2009
****************************************
GREED
********************************************************
When belief systems are bureaucratized, they become interchangeable.
The Vatican and the Kremlin: two opposing systems, same number of innocent victims.
Criticism becomes treason when it targets in Infallible.
Greed for power turns decent men into cannibals.
That is why the wise shun power and in doing so they become victims.
In a dog-eat-dog world, the wise defend their humanity and are devoured.
*
An Armenian writer's first and only commandment:
“Thou shalt not write a single word that may offend a future source of income.”
Nothing comes easier to an Armenian writer than to verbally abuse a fellow writer.
I once heard an 80-year old writer refer to Zarian as “boy” and to an empty suit as “baron.”
*
Americans were defeated in Vietnam, but as far as I know no American ever called it a “moral victory.”
Moral victories are for losers.
No one ever goes to war to prove the moral inferiority of his enemy.
*
Can God speak to man?
Of course He can.
God can do anything!
But can man understand God?
Of course he cannot.
If man understood God, there would be only one God as opposed to ten thousand of them.
#
Saturday, November 7, 2009
*****************************************
MY FRIEND, THE RABBI
*************************************
I have been cheated so many times
by so many people
in so many different ways that,
theoretically speaking,
the only time I should feel comfortable
is when I do the cheating,
which I never do,
not because I am morally superior,
but because I have had so little practice
that I am liable to get caught and fry.
*
“Why do the wealthy cheat the poor?
Why would someone who has everything
cheat someone like me who has nothing?”
I said, and he explained:
“How do you think they got to be wealthy?”
*
If an Armenian can be a friend to the devil,
he can be a friend to the Turk.
But to another Armenian? -- that's different.
*
EMPTY SUITS
**********************
First, they exploit their workers,
then they overprice their product
and after they make their first billion
they hate paying taxes
and love parading as kings,
and then they realize
being an Armenian is a bloodsport.
I speak from experience.
I write for them
*
Kirk Douglas defines an actor
as “someone who loves rejection.”
Hollywood stars and Armenian writers:
who would have thought?
#
****************************************
WHAT IF I AM WRONG?
********************************************************
That would be too good to be true!
Because if I am wrong, it means our writers from Khorenatsi (5th century) to our own days have been wrong in accusing our political leadership of incompetence and corruption.
It means no foreign or domestic tyrant has ever been successful in dividing us.
It means our bishops and benefactors have at no time used to the power of God and capital (make it, Capital and god) to divide us.
It means when Raffi said “treason and betrayal are in our blood,” he was only voicing his deep-seated hatred of his fellow countrymen.
It means when Baronian said, “If you want to wine and dine every day, be a bishop,” he was writing under the influenced of cynical and atheist French intellectuals who were in vogue at the turn of the last century in Istanbul.
It means our revolutionaries were at no time taken in by the empty promises of the West and the Turks had no reason to exterminate us because, as “the most loyal subjects” of the Empire, they needed our help against foreign and domestic enemies who were unanimous in their desire to see the Empire dismembered and buried never to rise again.
It means our post-World War II repatriates were treated by the natives not as “white trash” but as “brothers.”
Finally, it means when Gostan Zarian returned to the Homeland during Khrushchev's thaw, he was treated by his fellow writers as a literary giant rather than as an undesirable midget.
#
Friday, November 6, 2009
****************************************
GREED
********************************************************
When belief systems are bureaucratized, they become interchangeable.
The Vatican and the Kremlin: two opposing systems, same number of innocent victims.
Criticism becomes treason when it targets in Infallible.
Greed for power turns decent men into cannibals.
That is why the wise shun power and in doing so they become victims.
In a dog-eat-dog world, the wise defend their humanity and are devoured.
*
An Armenian writer's first and only commandment:
“Thou shalt not write a single word that may offend a future source of income.”
Nothing comes easier to an Armenian writer than to verbally abuse a fellow writer.
I once heard an 80-year old writer refer to Zarian as “boy” and to an empty suit as “baron.”
*
Americans were defeated in Vietnam, but as far as I know no American ever called it a “moral victory.”
Moral victories are for losers.
No one ever goes to war to prove the moral inferiority of his enemy.
*
Can God speak to man?
Of course He can.
God can do anything!
But can man understand God?
Of course he cannot.
If man understood God, there would be only one God as opposed to ten thousand of them.
#
Saturday, November 7, 2009
*****************************************
MY FRIEND, THE RABBI
*************************************
I have been cheated so many times
by so many people
in so many different ways that,
theoretically speaking,
the only time I should feel comfortable
is when I do the cheating,
which I never do,
not because I am morally superior,
but because I have had so little practice
that I am liable to get caught and fry.
*
“Why do the wealthy cheat the poor?
Why would someone who has everything
cheat someone like me who has nothing?”
I said, and he explained:
“How do you think they got to be wealthy?”
*
If an Armenian can be a friend to the devil,
he can be a friend to the Turk.
But to another Armenian? -- that's different.
*
EMPTY SUITS
**********************
First, they exploit their workers,
then they overprice their product
and after they make their first billion
they hate paying taxes
and love parading as kings,
and then they realize
being an Armenian is a bloodsport.
I speak from experience.
I write for them
*
Kirk Douglas defines an actor
as “someone who loves rejection.”
Hollywood stars and Armenian writers:
who would have thought?
#
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Q/s
Sunday, November 1, 2009
****************************************
MALEFACTORS
********************************************************
If I write what I think, it may be because so far no one has paid me to write what he thinks. And since no one has made that kind of indecent proposal, I have not even been tempted to surrender my virginity.
*
I don't trust the judgment of the powerful and the rich.
The greater the wealth, the emptier the suit.
In an environment where benefactors are kings, only brown-nosers prosper.
*
The establishment our capitalists support is reactionary, anti-intellectual, narrow, and intolerant.
It is against dissent and dialogue.
It is for decline and degeneration.
To our hirelings they may be manna from heaven, but to all honest men, they are no better than malefactors.
*
Turks quote me?
So what? I don't consider that a liability.
They quote me not because I am anti-Armenian or pro-Turkish but because I expose Armenian lies, in the same way that we quote Turks who expose Turkish lies.
Not all Turks are liars and not all Armenians are honest men.
If and when Armenians and Turks develop a consensus it will be because of the effort of dissidents, not those who trumpet chauvinist crapola from podiums and newspaper editorials.
#
Monday, November 2, 2009
****************************************
RECAPITULATIONS
********************************************************
Our propagandists tell us we are the smartest people on earth.
Our writers are unanimous in telling us we are our own worst enemies.
How smart is that?
*
After creating an environment in which only bottom-feeders are allowed to survive and prosper, our propagandists tell us we are survivors par excellence.
*
Everyone likes to be told he is smart.
No one likes to be told he is dumb.
Our propagandists know this, but like all propagandists, they view deception as an integral part of their job.
*
Propaganda consists in exploiting lies.
Literature consists in exposing them.
You may now guess which branch of human endeavor prospers and which starves.
*
Ignorance, intolerance, and subservience to authority are not assets but they are touted as such by all propagandists.
*
The fact that I disagree with propagandists may well be irrelevant.
What is relevant however is that propagandists disagree with one another too – and I am not talking about Armenian versus Turkish propagandists but Armenian versus Armenian propagandists.
Case in point: Once, many years ago, after I interviewed a Tashnak leader, a Ramgavar wrote a letter to the editor in which he accused the Tashnak of being a compulsive and habitual liar. But what really surprised me was the fact that in his defense, the Tashnak did not deny the charge; instead he retaliated by dismissing the Ramgavar as a brainwashed Bolshevik.
Hatred of Turks also means hatred of fellow Armenians who do not share our ideology.
*
The two pillars of propaganda, loyalty and respect for authority, have been at the root of some of the worst crimes against humanity, including our own genocide. So much so that, “following orders” is no longer thought of as a legitimate legal defense.
*
No one can be as easily manipulated as a cowardly ignoramus. Such a one can even be brainwashed to die like a hero -- or, as the Armenian expression has it, as an “esh nahadag” (=a jackass martyr).
*
To brainwash innocent children is not thought of as a crime against humanity but as education; and to brainwash a nation is thought of as a patriotic duty.
*
On the Genocide: I am so busy examining my conscience that I leave the legalities to lawyers.
*
If you are arrogant enough to think that you know and understand all you need to know and understand, learning will become such an unbearably humiliating experience that ignorance will be seen as the more comfortable alternative.
*
Where there is a pundit there will also be a counter-pundit.
Whom to trust?
My answer: The pundit whose views are less flattering to my ego.
#
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
****************************************
HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
********************************************************
Historians don't understand history, or so we are told by historians themselves, who, as a rule, are also critics of their predecessors and contemporaries.
In his criticism of Karl Marx, Toynbee tells us one cannot explain historic occurrences by the faulty distribution of wealth. In other words – to somewhat simplify matters – money is not the only source of evil in human affairs; sometimes it's faith or organized religions. That's why he concluded his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY by saying mankind will know peace only when all religions are reorganized on the basis that Truth (Gandhi's definition of God) is One. The rest is propaganda.
Trevor-Roper criticized Toynbee – criticized? make it, savaged; make it, tore him to shreds – for being not a historian but a mystic and a prophet.
Were Toynbee and Trevor-Roper fair in their critiques of Marx and Toynbee respectively?
*
After an interview with Hitler in the 1930s, Toynbee stated “Herr Hitler is a man of peace.”
And Trevor-Roper: after publishing a best-selling book on the last days of Hitler, he authenticated Hitler's diaries which were later exposed as forgeries.
We all have our blind spots and historians are no exception.
Do Historians understand history?
They do, but only a fraction of it.
*
What about our own historians?
I am afraid the massacres in the Ottoman Empire have acted on them the way the Greek mythological figure of Medusa is said to act on those who beheld her: they (the massacres) have turned them(our historians) into stone.
*
Has any one of our historians been successful in explaining our decline and degeneration?
Why is it that for six hundred years we were not only subservient to a brutal empire but also acquired the reputation of being its “most loyal millet [subject nation]?”
To what extent subservience and massacre have combined to make of us what we have become?
Finally, has any one of our historians attempted to expose the absurdities of our propagandists?
Why not?
Is their intellectual blindness a result of ignorance or cowardice?
#
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
****************************************
QUESTIONS
********************************************************
Never ask “Is he with us or against us?”
Ask instead, “Am I right or wrong?”
*
I like this thought by Jean Rostand: “In a future age we shall be just as astonished to find that we have had politicians as leaders as we are, today, to find that we once had barbers as surgeons.”
*
Gostan Zarian: “With us, the emphasis is on cunning: a character trait of slaves, devoid of creative impetus, never a source of strength.”
*
Nietzsche: "What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness."
*
Eric Hoffer: "Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many."
*
Is what I am doing of any use to anyone?
I have no idea.
Why am I doing it?
I don’t know.
If I fall silent, will anyone miss me?
I doubt it.
After twenty years of hard labor have I accomplished anything?
I don’t think so – unless you consider perforating a few swollen egos
an accomplishment….
#
****************************************
MALEFACTORS
********************************************************
If I write what I think, it may be because so far no one has paid me to write what he thinks. And since no one has made that kind of indecent proposal, I have not even been tempted to surrender my virginity.
*
I don't trust the judgment of the powerful and the rich.
The greater the wealth, the emptier the suit.
In an environment where benefactors are kings, only brown-nosers prosper.
*
The establishment our capitalists support is reactionary, anti-intellectual, narrow, and intolerant.
It is against dissent and dialogue.
It is for decline and degeneration.
To our hirelings they may be manna from heaven, but to all honest men, they are no better than malefactors.
*
Turks quote me?
So what? I don't consider that a liability.
They quote me not because I am anti-Armenian or pro-Turkish but because I expose Armenian lies, in the same way that we quote Turks who expose Turkish lies.
Not all Turks are liars and not all Armenians are honest men.
If and when Armenians and Turks develop a consensus it will be because of the effort of dissidents, not those who trumpet chauvinist crapola from podiums and newspaper editorials.
#
Monday, November 2, 2009
****************************************
RECAPITULATIONS
********************************************************
Our propagandists tell us we are the smartest people on earth.
Our writers are unanimous in telling us we are our own worst enemies.
How smart is that?
*
After creating an environment in which only bottom-feeders are allowed to survive and prosper, our propagandists tell us we are survivors par excellence.
*
Everyone likes to be told he is smart.
No one likes to be told he is dumb.
Our propagandists know this, but like all propagandists, they view deception as an integral part of their job.
*
Propaganda consists in exploiting lies.
Literature consists in exposing them.
You may now guess which branch of human endeavor prospers and which starves.
*
Ignorance, intolerance, and subservience to authority are not assets but they are touted as such by all propagandists.
*
The fact that I disagree with propagandists may well be irrelevant.
What is relevant however is that propagandists disagree with one another too – and I am not talking about Armenian versus Turkish propagandists but Armenian versus Armenian propagandists.
Case in point: Once, many years ago, after I interviewed a Tashnak leader, a Ramgavar wrote a letter to the editor in which he accused the Tashnak of being a compulsive and habitual liar. But what really surprised me was the fact that in his defense, the Tashnak did not deny the charge; instead he retaliated by dismissing the Ramgavar as a brainwashed Bolshevik.
Hatred of Turks also means hatred of fellow Armenians who do not share our ideology.
*
The two pillars of propaganda, loyalty and respect for authority, have been at the root of some of the worst crimes against humanity, including our own genocide. So much so that, “following orders” is no longer thought of as a legitimate legal defense.
*
No one can be as easily manipulated as a cowardly ignoramus. Such a one can even be brainwashed to die like a hero -- or, as the Armenian expression has it, as an “esh nahadag” (=a jackass martyr).
*
To brainwash innocent children is not thought of as a crime against humanity but as education; and to brainwash a nation is thought of as a patriotic duty.
*
On the Genocide: I am so busy examining my conscience that I leave the legalities to lawyers.
*
If you are arrogant enough to think that you know and understand all you need to know and understand, learning will become such an unbearably humiliating experience that ignorance will be seen as the more comfortable alternative.
*
Where there is a pundit there will also be a counter-pundit.
Whom to trust?
My answer: The pundit whose views are less flattering to my ego.
#
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
****************************************
HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
********************************************************
Historians don't understand history, or so we are told by historians themselves, who, as a rule, are also critics of their predecessors and contemporaries.
In his criticism of Karl Marx, Toynbee tells us one cannot explain historic occurrences by the faulty distribution of wealth. In other words – to somewhat simplify matters – money is not the only source of evil in human affairs; sometimes it's faith or organized religions. That's why he concluded his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY by saying mankind will know peace only when all religions are reorganized on the basis that Truth (Gandhi's definition of God) is One. The rest is propaganda.
Trevor-Roper criticized Toynbee – criticized? make it, savaged; make it, tore him to shreds – for being not a historian but a mystic and a prophet.
Were Toynbee and Trevor-Roper fair in their critiques of Marx and Toynbee respectively?
*
After an interview with Hitler in the 1930s, Toynbee stated “Herr Hitler is a man of peace.”
And Trevor-Roper: after publishing a best-selling book on the last days of Hitler, he authenticated Hitler's diaries which were later exposed as forgeries.
We all have our blind spots and historians are no exception.
Do Historians understand history?
They do, but only a fraction of it.
*
What about our own historians?
I am afraid the massacres in the Ottoman Empire have acted on them the way the Greek mythological figure of Medusa is said to act on those who beheld her: they (the massacres) have turned them(our historians) into stone.
*
Has any one of our historians been successful in explaining our decline and degeneration?
Why is it that for six hundred years we were not only subservient to a brutal empire but also acquired the reputation of being its “most loyal millet [subject nation]?”
To what extent subservience and massacre have combined to make of us what we have become?
Finally, has any one of our historians attempted to expose the absurdities of our propagandists?
Why not?
Is their intellectual blindness a result of ignorance or cowardice?
#
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
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QUESTIONS
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Never ask “Is he with us or against us?”
Ask instead, “Am I right or wrong?”
*
I like this thought by Jean Rostand: “In a future age we shall be just as astonished to find that we have had politicians as leaders as we are, today, to find that we once had barbers as surgeons.”
*
Gostan Zarian: “With us, the emphasis is on cunning: a character trait of slaves, devoid of creative impetus, never a source of strength.”
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Nietzsche: "What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness."
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Eric Hoffer: "Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many."
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Is what I am doing of any use to anyone?
I have no idea.
Why am I doing it?
I don’t know.
If I fall silent, will anyone miss me?
I doubt it.
After twenty years of hard labor have I accomplished anything?
I don’t think so – unless you consider perforating a few swollen egos
an accomplishment….
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