random

July 25, 2010
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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An Armenian will disagree with you even when he agrees. His aim is not dialogue but monologue; not being smart but to appear to be smarter than you; not consensus but oneupmanship.
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It is not that the world is moving at a faster rate than we are, the situation is much worse. We are moving backwards. Compare the first half of the last century with the present. In the first half we had Oshagan, Zarian, General Antranik, Karekin Nejdeh, Roupen Der Minassian, Nikol Aghbalian, and many others. Today we have nothing but Turcocentric ghazetajis and brainless, faceless empty suit.
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To those who say our problems are the world's problems, I say: Name a single nation that has been at the mercy of brutal foreign oppressors for as long as we have been.
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If at times I am merciless in my criticism, it’s because life has been even more merciless to us collectively. Compared to how tough life has been, I don’t even qualify as a marshmallow.
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July 26, 2010
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MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS
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They recycle propaganda and call it free speech.
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No dupe can ever be free.
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The greatest enemy of liars is not the truth but reality.
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Instead of speaking about Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, and Turks, we should teach ourselves to speak of human beings. That way we may learn to emphasize that which we share.
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Shakespeare (THE WINTER’S TALE): “I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty; for there is nothing the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting, drinking.”
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On more than one occasion I have been taken to task (a euphemism for “I have been verbally abused”) for not being as brilliant as Hagop Baronian. If that were a crime, I deserve to be hanged.
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Giambattista Vico:
“Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty…. Emancipated from ethics generally, they live by mutual spying and deceit.”
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If you can’t contradict the idea, insult the man.
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An Armenian who is about to lose an argument turns into a Turk.
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July 27, 2010
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IT TAKES ALL KINDS
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In his youth Koestler was taken in by Soviet propaganda and became a member of the Communist Party. But after Stalin's show trials and purges of the 1930s he published DARKNESS AT NOON, one of the most anti-Soviet books in world literature.
Stalin's countless crimes have had no effect on our chic Bolsheviks however. To them Stalin is no more than McCarthy's counterpart.
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Nabokov, the offspring of multimillionaire Russian aristocrats, hated the Communists to such a degree that he even supported the war in Vietnam.
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As a petit-bourgeois, Sartre hated the French bourgeoisie, including De Gaulle, so much that he sided with Stalin, Mao, and Castro.
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Thomas Mann wanted to save Germany from the Nazis but he succeeded only in making enemies of his fellow Germans who looked up to Hitler for guidance and accused him (Mann) of treason.
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Hitler and Mussolini counted among their early admirers many great men in politics and literature, among them Shaw, Churchill, Knut Hamsun, and Heidegger.
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Even men with 20/20 vision have their blind spots; and sometimes to know more is to understand less.
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In an environment where Abovian was driven to suicide and Zarian was silenced,
what chance does a minor scribbler have?
Why do I go on?
Call it art for art's sake,
A waste of time.
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July 28, 2010
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THE SOUIND AND THE FURY
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Instead of writing MADAME BOVARY
he should have written MONSIEUR FLAUBERT.
The result would have been
a much more authentic and believable work.
He knew everything there is to know about Flaubert,
little or nothing about the Bovarys
and what he knew about them
was based on hearsay, projection, research, and imagination
and as such, inadmissible evidence.
This is a mistake we all make:
we prefer to speak about things
we know little or nothing about,
and more often than we rely on hearsay.
Consider ideologies, religions, gods, and prophets.
What are holy scriptures if not hearsay?
What is the infallibility of prophets, popes, imams, and rabbis
if not pure fiction and collective illusion?
What are wars and massacres
if not hysterical or psychotic outbursts?
Leave it to historians to see meaning in them,
with the result that one man's meaning or truth
is another's nonsense and lie,
not to say the seed of another war and massacre,
followed by more sound and fury signifying nothing.
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