if?

Thursday, November 5, 2009
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WHAT IF I AM WRONG?
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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.
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Friday, November 6, 2009
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GREED
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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Saturday, November 7, 2009
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MY FRIEND, THE RABBI
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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.
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“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?”
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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.
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EMPTY SUITS
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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
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Kirk Douglas defines an actor
as “someone who loves rejection.”
Hollywood stars and Armenian writers:
who would have thought?
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