Thursday, August 26, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***********************************************
Our body language is a medium that is more accessible to others than to ourselves.
*
Bolivar: “We have seen the light and it is not our desire to be thrust back into darkness.”
That's what I think when I think of my homeland. And my guess is there are millions out there who think and feel as I do.
*
Brazilian saying: “We progress at night when the politicians sleep.”
Judging by the amount of progress we have made, our politicians MUST suffer from chronic insomnia.
*
It took me a long time to realize that the -ian ending was not a guarantee of nobility.
*
Perhaps what I am trying to say is that it is possible to think about Turks without turning into one.
*
Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), American politician: "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."
*
The truth is, no one likes to be told he is morally inferior to anyone; and to brag about moral superiority is the surest way of provoking universal contempt, and what's even worse, of forfeiting all credibility.
*
Some readers approach my writings as lovingly as a starving cannibal marinating a fat missionary.
*
Our knowledge is limited and our ignorance infinite. Only fools and fanatics forget this.
#
Friday, August 27, 2010
************************************
ISLAMOPHOBIA?
***********************************************
Irrational fear of Islam?
A complex? A prejudice?
Both?
Not so fast, my Muslim friends.
It seems to me Muslims have as many reasons to fear Islam
as the rest of us in the West.
*
Embedded gangs of terrorists among us plotting to destroy and kill indiscriminately.
Sharia law and its treatment of women.
Endless fratricidal Sunni-Shiah confrontations.
Deranged imams issuing fatwas and declaring jihads.
Bloodsucking multi-billionaire desert kings.
Sex-starved suicidal fanatics.
The destruction of ancient religious monuments.
Fascist regimes.
Contempt for democracy and fundamental human rights.
Honor killings.
*
Accusing the West of Islamophobia makes as much sense as accusing a sardine swimming in a pool of sharks of sharkophobia.
#
Saturday, August 28, 2010
************************************
DECLINE AND FALL
***********************************************
Men of vision show the way,
their followers make signs that say “Dead End.”
*
Jesus and Marx were dissenters.
Their followers see no contradiction in being yes-men.
*
An organization can never live up to the original aim of its founder.
From Marx to Stalin, from Jesus to televangelists and child molesters:
all great movements begin as visions and end as bureaucracies,
and bureaucracies are mechanisms
that promote yes-men and unprincipled mediocrities.
*
The history of all movements
is one of gradual decline and disintegration.
*
In all organizations conformism is in, dissent out.
Where there is no dialogue there can be no progress.
*
All men of power pretend to be better than they are,
and eventually the worst end up parading as the best.
*
Bureaucrats are like dogs who know their master
but not their master's master.
*
Who governs Armenia today?
Clearly not the government.
Armenia's capital is not Yerevan but Moscow.
#
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
free book
FOR a free copy of ZOHRAB: AN INTRODUCTION
go to Google.com,
type ZOHRAB: AN INTRODUCTION by Ara Baliozian,
and click on "digitized copy"
go to Google.com,
type ZOHRAB: AN INTRODUCTION by Ara Baliozian,
and click on "digitized copy"
illusions
Sunday, August 22, 2010
************************************
ILLUSIONS
***********************************************
We all have illusions.
Mine is the belief that man is open to reason.
*
God did not create belief systems, men of vision did.
Men of vision see things that the rest of us cannot see.
They also hear words that the rest of us cannot hear.
It follows, when we speak of belief systems,
whatever we say will be based on hearsay,
and therefore inadmissible evidence.
*
“Where there is no vision the people perish,” we are told.
But where visions clash, the result will be the same.
Remember Voltaire's dictum:
“Since it was a religious war,
there were no survivors.”
*
One nation's vision may be another's nightmare.
*
Two recent books published in England:
50 PEOPLE WHO BUGGERED UP BRITAIN, and
THE DICTIONARY OF POLITICAL BULLSHIT.
When, O when will our writers write less about massacres
and more about the b.s. of our buggers?
#
Monday, August 23, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***********************************************
How much of what you think is based on hearsay?
Next question: Can you tell the difference between the inadmissible and the unreasonable?
*
When hungry you don't think of the contents of a sausage.
Keep that in mind next time you fall in love.
*
Men fall in love with their convictions as surely as with a pair of shapely legs in nylons.
*
He who lies to himself cannot speak the truth to others.
*
To express their contempt for English cuisine, the French like to say that Joan of Arc “is the only thing the English have ever cooked properly.”
*
George Orwell (1903-1950), British author: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
*
We are all assassins in the sense that if we are not legally guilty of murder, we are morally guilty of wishing someone dead.
*
Some of the most dangerous lies come to us as religious dogmas and ideological truths, sometimes even as undeniable facts.
*
All speechifiers and sermonizers speak with a forked tongue.
*
A writer cannot make readers think, he can only hope to underline their secret thoughts, thus letting them know there are others who think as they do.
*
If we had the power, would our enemies escape total extinction?
#
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
************************************
A READER WRITES
***********************************************
Some of my most ferocious critics are individuals who have not yet mastered the art of reading and understanding simple sentences in the English language. But I shouldn't complain. I also have readers who are not just with me but ahead of me. A case in point follows.
************************************************************
When I first stumbled on your 'reflections',
'notebooks' and 'diaries', I just couldn't help
wondering -- why is this fella trying, with such an
admirable persistence, to do what is so strongly
discouraged in Matthew 7:6 ?
[something to do with pearls and swine, i suspect].
What's the good of
devoting one's precious kilobytes to fighting the
revered ancient wisdom, just to get another
confirmation that the stuff between an Armenian's
squarehead's ears is immune to the 'virus' of the voice of
reason, and his hostility more toxic than the
most deadly roach poison advertised on TV ?
On second thought, however, I realized that was
indeed arrogant and unfair of me to think that
way, for which I apologize. In fact I've been
intending to email you with a little word of
encouragement for a while now, but, firstly, I wasn't sure
you really needed one, or expected any feedback.
In fact, what you say has never sounded to me "so
eccentric and odd that you might as well be an
enemy of the people". Rather, most of the points
you make would seem rather natural if prejudice and
irrationality were put aside, traditional
'taboos' broken, and viewing the situation from an
unbiased perspective, legitimized. But after you
wrote that you felt like a Muslim among Christians,
and like a giaour among jihadists, I
figured a little note that there is someone there
feeling the same way won't do you much harm, after all.
Secondly -- and that was the main reason for not
writing before -- I realized I hardly belonged to
your target audience, as I wasn't among those you
seemed to be trying to reach: reading your posts,
I just felt that agreeable and somewhat
mischievous pleasure of seeing the tenets of my heresy
professed by someone better suited for the
'mission'. It's not that I considered it as a real
heresy; but the truth is, and you know that better than
anyone, that the traditional thinking is so
deeply ingrained in Armenian communities that it is like
a computer virus: reality becomes twisted and
distorted in a way that reason and common sense are
seen as a heresy while religious obscurantism and
genocide fetishism are regarded as the norm. Only
running an antivirus program won't do in this
case: the only way of eradicating it is teaching
people to think for themselves, rather than just
blindly follow what has been drilled into them by the
propaganda, and that's exactly what you've been
trying to do.
Oxford professor Richard Dawkins once wrote that
"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet
somebody who claims not to believe in evolution,
that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or
wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." Later he
added that there is perhaps a fifth category,
which may belong under "insane" but which can be more
sympathetically characterized by a word like
tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people
who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked
can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the
massive evidence of science on the one hand, and
their understanding of what their holy book tells
them on the other. It seems that this, mutatis
mutandis, obtains in Armenians: a great many people
who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked
may not dare think for themselves under the
suffocating peer pressure from those who actually are
ignorant, stupid, and, more often than not,
wicked. Like those people who don't believe in
evolution because nobody has ever told them what
evolution is, many sincere an Armenian might not realize
that what they believe in is a prejudice and a
fallacy because no one dared to expose it as a
prejudice and a fallacy.
So it is indeed comforting that some have the
courage of challenging the traditional view.
However, it seems strange that most of your readers won't
engage in any meaningful discussion on this
subject. So keep on
posting your 'reflections', no matter what the
reaction of 'the ignorant, the stupid, and the
wicked' -- that's the only way of engaging a sheep's
brain into the long process of transformation into
that of a human being.
#
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
************************************
CRACKPOTS
***********************************************
The function of politicians is to convince the people that they are the most qualified members of the community to count chickens before they are hatched, even when – especially when – they are the least qualified. Recent history, including our own, provides many examples of this abortive claim.
*
Politicians can't learn because their central concern is asserting if not infallibility than the kind of superior wisdom that authorizes them to speak in terms of certainties. But the only thing that is certain in them is their lust for power.
*
When power enters the equation, catastrophe is sure to follow. That's because power acts on the brain like an intoxicant. Power is the opium of politicians.
*
A headline in this morning's Op-Ed page reads: “American leaders often make important decisions based on conjecture, questionable advice and blind faith.”
If this is true of democratically elected leaders, it must be doubly true of our own.
A typical passage of this commentary reads:
“How could such a careful and seasoned statesman [Eisenhower] have concocted such a crackpot scheme [the Bay of Pigs fiasco]?
*
World history, including our own, may be said to be a long catalog of crackpot schemes concocted by screwballs parading as our “betters.”
*
The universe was created not by a tender-loving God but a very tough hombre who can watch crackpots concocting catastrophes without lifting a finger.
#
************************************
ILLUSIONS
***********************************************
We all have illusions.
Mine is the belief that man is open to reason.
*
God did not create belief systems, men of vision did.
Men of vision see things that the rest of us cannot see.
They also hear words that the rest of us cannot hear.
It follows, when we speak of belief systems,
whatever we say will be based on hearsay,
and therefore inadmissible evidence.
*
“Where there is no vision the people perish,” we are told.
But where visions clash, the result will be the same.
Remember Voltaire's dictum:
“Since it was a religious war,
there were no survivors.”
*
One nation's vision may be another's nightmare.
*
Two recent books published in England:
50 PEOPLE WHO BUGGERED UP BRITAIN, and
THE DICTIONARY OF POLITICAL BULLSHIT.
When, O when will our writers write less about massacres
and more about the b.s. of our buggers?
#
Monday, August 23, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***********************************************
How much of what you think is based on hearsay?
Next question: Can you tell the difference between the inadmissible and the unreasonable?
*
When hungry you don't think of the contents of a sausage.
Keep that in mind next time you fall in love.
*
Men fall in love with their convictions as surely as with a pair of shapely legs in nylons.
*
He who lies to himself cannot speak the truth to others.
*
To express their contempt for English cuisine, the French like to say that Joan of Arc “is the only thing the English have ever cooked properly.”
*
George Orwell (1903-1950), British author: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
*
We are all assassins in the sense that if we are not legally guilty of murder, we are morally guilty of wishing someone dead.
*
Some of the most dangerous lies come to us as religious dogmas and ideological truths, sometimes even as undeniable facts.
*
All speechifiers and sermonizers speak with a forked tongue.
*
A writer cannot make readers think, he can only hope to underline their secret thoughts, thus letting them know there are others who think as they do.
*
If we had the power, would our enemies escape total extinction?
#
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
************************************
A READER WRITES
***********************************************
Some of my most ferocious critics are individuals who have not yet mastered the art of reading and understanding simple sentences in the English language. But I shouldn't complain. I also have readers who are not just with me but ahead of me. A case in point follows.
************************************************************
When I first stumbled on your 'reflections',
'notebooks' and 'diaries', I just couldn't help
wondering -- why is this fella trying, with such an
admirable persistence, to do what is so strongly
discouraged in Matthew 7:6 ?
[something to do with pearls and swine, i suspect].
What's the good of
devoting one's precious kilobytes to fighting the
revered ancient wisdom, just to get another
confirmation that the stuff between an Armenian's
squarehead's ears is immune to the 'virus' of the voice of
reason, and his hostility more toxic than the
most deadly roach poison advertised on TV ?
On second thought, however, I realized that was
indeed arrogant and unfair of me to think that
way, for which I apologize. In fact I've been
intending to email you with a little word of
encouragement for a while now, but, firstly, I wasn't sure
you really needed one, or expected any feedback.
In fact, what you say has never sounded to me "so
eccentric and odd that you might as well be an
enemy of the people". Rather, most of the points
you make would seem rather natural if prejudice and
irrationality were put aside, traditional
'taboos' broken, and viewing the situation from an
unbiased perspective, legitimized. But after you
wrote that you felt like a Muslim among Christians,
and like a giaour among jihadists, I
figured a little note that there is someone there
feeling the same way won't do you much harm, after all.
Secondly -- and that was the main reason for not
writing before -- I realized I hardly belonged to
your target audience, as I wasn't among those you
seemed to be trying to reach: reading your posts,
I just felt that agreeable and somewhat
mischievous pleasure of seeing the tenets of my heresy
professed by someone better suited for the
'mission'. It's not that I considered it as a real
heresy; but the truth is, and you know that better than
anyone, that the traditional thinking is so
deeply ingrained in Armenian communities that it is like
a computer virus: reality becomes twisted and
distorted in a way that reason and common sense are
seen as a heresy while religious obscurantism and
genocide fetishism are regarded as the norm. Only
running an antivirus program won't do in this
case: the only way of eradicating it is teaching
people to think for themselves, rather than just
blindly follow what has been drilled into them by the
propaganda, and that's exactly what you've been
trying to do.
Oxford professor Richard Dawkins once wrote that
"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet
somebody who claims not to believe in evolution,
that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or
wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." Later he
added that there is perhaps a fifth category,
which may belong under "insane" but which can be more
sympathetically characterized by a word like
tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people
who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked
can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the
massive evidence of science on the one hand, and
their understanding of what their holy book tells
them on the other. It seems that this, mutatis
mutandis, obtains in Armenians: a great many people
who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked
may not dare think for themselves under the
suffocating peer pressure from those who actually are
ignorant, stupid, and, more often than not,
wicked. Like those people who don't believe in
evolution because nobody has ever told them what
evolution is, many sincere an Armenian might not realize
that what they believe in is a prejudice and a
fallacy because no one dared to expose it as a
prejudice and a fallacy.
So it is indeed comforting that some have the
courage of challenging the traditional view.
However, it seems strange that most of your readers won't
engage in any meaningful discussion on this
subject. So keep on
posting your 'reflections', no matter what the
reaction of 'the ignorant, the stupid, and the
wicked' -- that's the only way of engaging a sheep's
brain into the long process of transformation into
that of a human being.
#
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
************************************
CRACKPOTS
***********************************************
The function of politicians is to convince the people that they are the most qualified members of the community to count chickens before they are hatched, even when – especially when – they are the least qualified. Recent history, including our own, provides many examples of this abortive claim.
*
Politicians can't learn because their central concern is asserting if not infallibility than the kind of superior wisdom that authorizes them to speak in terms of certainties. But the only thing that is certain in them is their lust for power.
*
When power enters the equation, catastrophe is sure to follow. That's because power acts on the brain like an intoxicant. Power is the opium of politicians.
*
A headline in this morning's Op-Ed page reads: “American leaders often make important decisions based on conjecture, questionable advice and blind faith.”
If this is true of democratically elected leaders, it must be doubly true of our own.
A typical passage of this commentary reads:
“How could such a careful and seasoned statesman [Eisenhower] have concocted such a crackpot scheme [the Bay of Pigs fiasco]?
*
World history, including our own, may be said to be a long catalog of crackpot schemes concocted by screwballs parading as our “betters.”
*
The universe was created not by a tender-loving God but a very tough hombre who can watch crackpots concocting catastrophes without lifting a finger.
#
Saturday, August 21, 2010
kemalism
Thursday, August 19, 2010
************************************
KEMALISM AND ITS FALLACIES
*************************************
The absence of the fez does not absolve the crimes committed with the presence of the fez.
Imagine the following scenario if you can:
A cold-blooded killer is arrested, tried, and pronounced guilty by a jury of his peers. When asked by the judge if he has anything to say, he replies: “How can I be guilty, your Honor, if after shooting my victim I threw my hat in the nearest trash can?”
*
The difference between East and West is that in the West reason and common sense enjoy more prestige than in the East.
The East: that's a place where after abolishing a hat they proceed to abolish not only reality but also reason itself.
*
Kemal was an alcoholic who sodomized boys and had sex with girls -- not exactly unheard of practices among his predecessors, the sultans.
Lies! Enemy propaganda! Calumnies!
But if true, in what way was he different from Catholic priests?
*
Genocide? What genocide?
It was a military victory.
Deportations and atrocities?
Collateral damage. All wars have them.
*
Armenians cannot be objective about Turks, granted.
Neither can Turks be objective about Armenians, themselves, and Kemal.
Some Catholic priests behaved like swine, true.
But as far as i know none of them is considered a role model to future generations. Their pictures don't hang in classrooms and government offices.
No monuments have been erected to them in public squares.
None of them rewrote history.
None of them ever dared to think that by discarding their biretta or, for that matter, their cassock, they could declare themselves beyond the reach of the law.
None of them entertained the absurd notion that discarding a ridiculous item from one's wardrobe had the magic power of changing one's moral values, character, and identity.
None of them would dream of calling Kurds “mountain Turks,” Armenians “Christian Turks,” and Hittites “proto-Turks.”
None of them has ever been called or will ever be recognized as the “father” of a nation.
#
Friday, August 20, 2010
************************************
ON CRITICISM AND PROPAGANDA
***********************************************
Between propaganda that flatters and criticism that exposes contradictions, the unthinking masses will always choose propaganda.
*
The Nazis asserted racial superiority to cover up their moral inferiority.
In propaganda always search for the failing that it attempts to hide.
The propaganda of the brainless will assert superior intelligence, and the propaganda of the barbarian a superior brand of civilization.
*
Our convictions are formed more by the heart and less by the head.
Prejudices are all guts and no brain.
*
Armenians and Turks spend too much time criticizing others and very little time criticizing themselves. Narcissism is in, objective judgment out. Hence one thousand speechifiers and not a single philosopher.
*
If we don't understand one another it may be because we don't understand ourselves; and the more exposed we are to propaganda the less we understand ourselves.
*
Propaganda raises a wall between us and reality. Its unspoken goal is to convince us that the aim of life is to kill and die in defense of charlatans who place their own powers and privileges above our own life and limbs.
#
Saturday, August 21, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***********************************************
When I was young I thought I had all the answers.
I know now that I don't even have the questions.
*
Fanatics would rather shoot the messenger
than understand the message.
*
To divide is bad enough,
but to divide in the name of a religion
that asserts “all men are brothers”
is the height of perversion.
*
It is not that I no longer believe in what politicians say,
I question the sanity of those who do.
*
Some of our patriots should be reminded once in a while
that patriotism and civility are not mutually exclusive concepts.
*
To speak the truth means to contradict
one Big Lie,
a hundred small lies,
and a thousand liars.
*
What is censorship
if not fear of being exposed
as a fool, a dupe, and a liar?
#
************************************
KEMALISM AND ITS FALLACIES
*************************************
The absence of the fez does not absolve the crimes committed with the presence of the fez.
Imagine the following scenario if you can:
A cold-blooded killer is arrested, tried, and pronounced guilty by a jury of his peers. When asked by the judge if he has anything to say, he replies: “How can I be guilty, your Honor, if after shooting my victim I threw my hat in the nearest trash can?”
*
The difference between East and West is that in the West reason and common sense enjoy more prestige than in the East.
The East: that's a place where after abolishing a hat they proceed to abolish not only reality but also reason itself.
*
Kemal was an alcoholic who sodomized boys and had sex with girls -- not exactly unheard of practices among his predecessors, the sultans.
Lies! Enemy propaganda! Calumnies!
But if true, in what way was he different from Catholic priests?
*
Genocide? What genocide?
It was a military victory.
Deportations and atrocities?
Collateral damage. All wars have them.
*
Armenians cannot be objective about Turks, granted.
Neither can Turks be objective about Armenians, themselves, and Kemal.
Some Catholic priests behaved like swine, true.
But as far as i know none of them is considered a role model to future generations. Their pictures don't hang in classrooms and government offices.
No monuments have been erected to them in public squares.
None of them rewrote history.
None of them ever dared to think that by discarding their biretta or, for that matter, their cassock, they could declare themselves beyond the reach of the law.
None of them entertained the absurd notion that discarding a ridiculous item from one's wardrobe had the magic power of changing one's moral values, character, and identity.
None of them would dream of calling Kurds “mountain Turks,” Armenians “Christian Turks,” and Hittites “proto-Turks.”
None of them has ever been called or will ever be recognized as the “father” of a nation.
#
Friday, August 20, 2010
************************************
ON CRITICISM AND PROPAGANDA
***********************************************
Between propaganda that flatters and criticism that exposes contradictions, the unthinking masses will always choose propaganda.
*
The Nazis asserted racial superiority to cover up their moral inferiority.
In propaganda always search for the failing that it attempts to hide.
The propaganda of the brainless will assert superior intelligence, and the propaganda of the barbarian a superior brand of civilization.
*
Our convictions are formed more by the heart and less by the head.
Prejudices are all guts and no brain.
*
Armenians and Turks spend too much time criticizing others and very little time criticizing themselves. Narcissism is in, objective judgment out. Hence one thousand speechifiers and not a single philosopher.
*
If we don't understand one another it may be because we don't understand ourselves; and the more exposed we are to propaganda the less we understand ourselves.
*
Propaganda raises a wall between us and reality. Its unspoken goal is to convince us that the aim of life is to kill and die in defense of charlatans who place their own powers and privileges above our own life and limbs.
#
Saturday, August 21, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***********************************************
When I was young I thought I had all the answers.
I know now that I don't even have the questions.
*
Fanatics would rather shoot the messenger
than understand the message.
*
To divide is bad enough,
but to divide in the name of a religion
that asserts “all men are brothers”
is the height of perversion.
*
It is not that I no longer believe in what politicians say,
I question the sanity of those who do.
*
Some of our patriots should be reminded once in a while
that patriotism and civility are not mutually exclusive concepts.
*
To speak the truth means to contradict
one Big Lie,
a hundred small lies,
and a thousand liars.
*
What is censorship
if not fear of being exposed
as a fool, a dupe, and a liar?
#
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
turks
Sunday, August 15, 2010
************************************
EXPLAINING AND UNDERSTANDING
THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
*************************************
We all swim in the same soup.
There is a Cain in all of us, including Abel.
Am I saying anything you don't already know?
*
Armenians and Turks will begin to understand one another only when they say, “In their place, we would have done the same thing.”
*
Armenians have no choice but to accept their degrading history of subservience to the same degree that Turks have no choice but to accept their role as oppressors; and of the two I find it difficult to decide which is more morally reprehensible.
*
Do you really want to know what I think of imperialism? True, I don't have first-hand knowledge of what it means to be the subject of an empire; but I have dealt with Ottomanized and Stalinized Armenians, and the best thing I can say about them is that, if they class themselves up two or three notches, they may qualify as the scum of the earth. That's the best thing I can say about oppression and subservience.
Let others believe the Ottoman Empire was a progressive and civilizing force. As they say, there is no accounting for tastes, it takes all kinds, and against stupidity even the Gods compete in vain.
*
What could be more preposterous than to suggest all the nations that rose against the regime of the sultans (and I am not excluding Turks themselves) during the last decades of the Empire's existence were wrong and the Sultan right?
*
Under pressure or when provoked, all people, even the most civilized, are capable of committing crimes against humanity. Now then, go ahead and say six hundred years of oppression does not qualify as provocation.
#
Monday, August 16, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
Historian Nial Ferguson to the question, “Are we all doomed?”
“Definitely. The question is, will it be a bus this afternoon, or will I wheeze my last in some old folks' home, aged 90?” (London: NEW STATESMAN. July 26, 2010.)
*
Jean Rostand: “The world belongs to the superior second-raters.” And “Let a dictator perform an act of good sense, and people immediately hail him as a genius.”
Now you know all you need to know about Kemal's popularity. I speak as a “Christian Turk,” and I suspect the only people who will agree with me are “Mountain Turks.”
*
Turks are brought up to believe they are brave warriors – warriors who are now afraid of words – and the words that scares them the most are “Armenians” and “Kurds.” Compliments of Kemal.
*
La Rochefoucauld: “A man is never more easily deceived than when he believes he is deceiving others.”
*
Some day someone may write a history of Ottoman philosophy, but until then I will continue to think of Ottomanism and philosophy as mutually exclusive concepts.
*
La Rochefoucauld again: “It is only those who are despicable who fear being despised.”
*
The victor and the vanquished, the capitalist and the worker, the master and the slave, the boss and the hireling, the rich and the poor: relax the rule of law and they will tear one another to shreds.
*
If there are alienated Armenians today it's because they have had it up to here with Armenian nonsense. You may now guess why the best brains that Turkey has produced in recent times live in exile.
#
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
************************************
FROM EMPIRE TO NATION
*************************************
Because I am critical of my fellow Armenians, I am thought of as pro-Turkish by readers to whom labels are more important than human beings. Hence the fallacy: You are either with us or against us, and if you are against us the hangman's noose is too good for you.
*
The Ottoman Empire of the sultans was an octopus.
Kemal's Turkey is a monopus – all trunk, no limbs, forever at the mercy of tides. Rejected by Israel, it embraces Iran. It moves backwards thinking it has taken a step in the right direction.
*
The central and unspoken tenet of Kemalism is the refusal to come to terms with the fact that the nation was born from the rotten corpse of the Empire. It is a zombie not a phoenix. On the map, it looks like a castrated member – a dick whose cojones have been surgically removed. A Viagra induced erection that does not flag, neither can it connect, let alone penetrate, the object of its perennial desire – the West.
*
To be at the mercy of imperialists: what could be worse? -- except perhaps to be at the mercy of nationalists.
#
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
************************************
TURKS (II)
*************************************
The laws of the land are designed to legitimize the power structure and to support the ruling class even when the rulers happen to be cold-blooded sadistic serial killers.
*
The slave is brought up to feel guilty even when innocent. It's the other way with the master – his conscience has been atrophied, his sense of justice perverted; so much so that he can slay the innocent with the conviction that he is discharging his duty in the eyes of the Lord. There you have it: the roots of denialism.
*
I believe Turks when they plead not guilty to the charge of genocide. I also believe these Turks think and feel with the old Ottomanized brain. Deep in their hearts (if you will forgive the overstatement) they have the unshakable conviction that the sultans were always right (remember the Italian slogan, “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” = Mussolini is always right) and their(sultans') function in life was to carry out the will of the Almighty. The difference between the East and the West is that Mussolini was shot and hanged on a public square.
*
To speak of genocide in an Ottomanized context amounts to accusing the Lord of murder – an unthinkable blasphemy that in another time and place would have been seen as a capital offense. If the sultans came back to life today, they would issue a fatwa against all Armenians who utter the word genocide.
Let us therefore count our blessings!
#
************************************
EXPLAINING AND UNDERSTANDING
THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
*************************************
We all swim in the same soup.
There is a Cain in all of us, including Abel.
Am I saying anything you don't already know?
*
Armenians and Turks will begin to understand one another only when they say, “In their place, we would have done the same thing.”
*
Armenians have no choice but to accept their degrading history of subservience to the same degree that Turks have no choice but to accept their role as oppressors; and of the two I find it difficult to decide which is more morally reprehensible.
*
Do you really want to know what I think of imperialism? True, I don't have first-hand knowledge of what it means to be the subject of an empire; but I have dealt with Ottomanized and Stalinized Armenians, and the best thing I can say about them is that, if they class themselves up two or three notches, they may qualify as the scum of the earth. That's the best thing I can say about oppression and subservience.
Let others believe the Ottoman Empire was a progressive and civilizing force. As they say, there is no accounting for tastes, it takes all kinds, and against stupidity even the Gods compete in vain.
*
What could be more preposterous than to suggest all the nations that rose against the regime of the sultans (and I am not excluding Turks themselves) during the last decades of the Empire's existence were wrong and the Sultan right?
*
Under pressure or when provoked, all people, even the most civilized, are capable of committing crimes against humanity. Now then, go ahead and say six hundred years of oppression does not qualify as provocation.
#
Monday, August 16, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
Historian Nial Ferguson to the question, “Are we all doomed?”
“Definitely. The question is, will it be a bus this afternoon, or will I wheeze my last in some old folks' home, aged 90?” (London: NEW STATESMAN. July 26, 2010.)
*
Jean Rostand: “The world belongs to the superior second-raters.” And “Let a dictator perform an act of good sense, and people immediately hail him as a genius.”
Now you know all you need to know about Kemal's popularity. I speak as a “Christian Turk,” and I suspect the only people who will agree with me are “Mountain Turks.”
*
Turks are brought up to believe they are brave warriors – warriors who are now afraid of words – and the words that scares them the most are “Armenians” and “Kurds.” Compliments of Kemal.
*
La Rochefoucauld: “A man is never more easily deceived than when he believes he is deceiving others.”
*
Some day someone may write a history of Ottoman philosophy, but until then I will continue to think of Ottomanism and philosophy as mutually exclusive concepts.
*
La Rochefoucauld again: “It is only those who are despicable who fear being despised.”
*
The victor and the vanquished, the capitalist and the worker, the master and the slave, the boss and the hireling, the rich and the poor: relax the rule of law and they will tear one another to shreds.
*
If there are alienated Armenians today it's because they have had it up to here with Armenian nonsense. You may now guess why the best brains that Turkey has produced in recent times live in exile.
#
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
************************************
FROM EMPIRE TO NATION
*************************************
Because I am critical of my fellow Armenians, I am thought of as pro-Turkish by readers to whom labels are more important than human beings. Hence the fallacy: You are either with us or against us, and if you are against us the hangman's noose is too good for you.
*
The Ottoman Empire of the sultans was an octopus.
Kemal's Turkey is a monopus – all trunk, no limbs, forever at the mercy of tides. Rejected by Israel, it embraces Iran. It moves backwards thinking it has taken a step in the right direction.
*
The central and unspoken tenet of Kemalism is the refusal to come to terms with the fact that the nation was born from the rotten corpse of the Empire. It is a zombie not a phoenix. On the map, it looks like a castrated member – a dick whose cojones have been surgically removed. A Viagra induced erection that does not flag, neither can it connect, let alone penetrate, the object of its perennial desire – the West.
*
To be at the mercy of imperialists: what could be worse? -- except perhaps to be at the mercy of nationalists.
#
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
************************************
TURKS (II)
*************************************
The laws of the land are designed to legitimize the power structure and to support the ruling class even when the rulers happen to be cold-blooded sadistic serial killers.
*
The slave is brought up to feel guilty even when innocent. It's the other way with the master – his conscience has been atrophied, his sense of justice perverted; so much so that he can slay the innocent with the conviction that he is discharging his duty in the eyes of the Lord. There you have it: the roots of denialism.
*
I believe Turks when they plead not guilty to the charge of genocide. I also believe these Turks think and feel with the old Ottomanized brain. Deep in their hearts (if you will forgive the overstatement) they have the unshakable conviction that the sultans were always right (remember the Italian slogan, “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” = Mussolini is always right) and their(sultans') function in life was to carry out the will of the Almighty. The difference between the East and the West is that Mussolini was shot and hanged on a public square.
*
To speak of genocide in an Ottomanized context amounts to accusing the Lord of murder – an unthinkable blasphemy that in another time and place would have been seen as a capital offense. If the sultans came back to life today, they would issue a fatwa against all Armenians who utter the word genocide.
Let us therefore count our blessings!
#
Saturday, August 14, 2010
comments
Thursday, August 12, 2010
************************************
REBUTTAL
*************************************
After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends, himself the author of a fat denialist tome, has written a detailed rebuttal which I stop reading when I run into the kind of fallacy that is bound to undermine the validity of everything that follows in addition to demolishing his much vaunted objectivity.
*
My good friend seems to be saying that truth is on the side of big battalions. If revolutionaries win, he explains, they are heroes. But if they lose, they are criminals guilty of a capital offense and as such they deserve to die, and not just they but also their women, children, parents, and everyone else that shares their ethnic origin. That's because in time of war it is not always easy to separate the sheep from the goats even when the sheep may outnumber the goats.
*
Another implication that comes across loud and clear is that, if the overwhelming majority of Western historians assert the reality of the Genocide, it may be because (one) they, unlike my good friend, haven't done their homework, and (two) like most of their Armenian counterparts, they have an anti-Turkish bias. It follows, only historians who deny the reality of the Genocide are true historians. The rest are dupes of Armenian propaganda.
*
Another curious point that I noted about my good friend is that he doesn't like proverbial sayings and he dismisses their wisdom as old wives' tales. I disagree. I love words of wisdom, especially when they challenge my fundamental assumptions and expose my prejudices and bias. I believe a single proverb is worth more than a thousand documents whose relevance and authenticity may well be bogus. Which is why I cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from the TALMUD that I read early this morning:
“Let the honor of thy fellow be as dear to thee as thine own. Be not easily angered. Repent one day before thy death. And keep warm at the fire of the sages, but beware of their glowing coal lest thou be scorched: for their bite is the bite of a jackal, and their sting the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss the hiss of a serpent – moreover all their words are like coals of fire.”
#
Friday, August 13, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
Let's get one thing straight: I am not anti-social. Rather, it is society that is anti-individual. And if I am not active in the community it may be because the community has no use for the likes of me and it prefers to deal, support, and compensate bearded hoodlums armed to the teeth with guitars and braying like jackasses, or idiots who hit a ball with a stick. I don't see why I should moronize myself to please my moronized fellow men.
*
Throughout history man has hated in the name of love, committed injustice in the name of justice, and professed dedication to truth in the name of a Big Lie. Which is why after centuries and millennia Jews and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, supporters and opponents of capital punishment, abortion, and war, have failed to resolve their differences.
*
An Armenian has two sets of enemies, Turks and Armenians, and of the two, he hates Armenians more.
*
Eventually all thinking Armenians will have to ask themselves the question: What if it is not God at whose right hand we sit but the Devil?
*
I am willing to concede that all my observations on Armenians are also confessions.
*
“Where there is a trough, there will be swine.”
Likewise, where there is a benefactor, there will be brown-nosers.
And where there is propaganda, there will bedupes and one or more dissidents.
*
No matter how good the theory, there will be another that will contradict it.
*
The American illusion: “We may not be very smart but with the dollar we can hire the best brains.”
*
What if in the next life – if there is one -- the final questions will remain unanswered?
#
Saturday, August 14, 2010
************************************
TH RELIGION OF DENIAL
*************************************
Assertions are not made in a vacuum but within a context of unspoken assumptions whose absurdity may be hidden to insiders but as clearly visible to outsiders as a city set on a hill. In what follows I will list a handful of these assumptions made by our denialist friends.
*
Our books are based on authentic evidence. By contrast, books of the opposition are based on hearsay, old wives' tales, and forgeries.
*
Some of our key documents are of Armenian origin, and when an Armenian is on our side, he is an honest man; but when he is against us, he is a charlatan, a crook, and a liar whose testimony should be dismissed as inadmissible.
*
The authority of the state is sacrosanct. To challenge it is to incur its wrath.
*
If the authority of the state is sacrosanct, its assertions cannot be questioned. If the present regime says there was no genocide, there was no genocide. End of story.
*
When Talaat and Co. challenged the divine authority of the Sultan, they were right to do so. When Kemal did the same to Talaat and Co., he too was right. But when Armenians did the same, they were guilty of a capital offense and what followed was justified retaliation with some inevitable peripheral casualties.
#
************************************
REBUTTAL
*************************************
After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends, himself the author of a fat denialist tome, has written a detailed rebuttal which I stop reading when I run into the kind of fallacy that is bound to undermine the validity of everything that follows in addition to demolishing his much vaunted objectivity.
*
My good friend seems to be saying that truth is on the side of big battalions. If revolutionaries win, he explains, they are heroes. But if they lose, they are criminals guilty of a capital offense and as such they deserve to die, and not just they but also their women, children, parents, and everyone else that shares their ethnic origin. That's because in time of war it is not always easy to separate the sheep from the goats even when the sheep may outnumber the goats.
*
Another implication that comes across loud and clear is that, if the overwhelming majority of Western historians assert the reality of the Genocide, it may be because (one) they, unlike my good friend, haven't done their homework, and (two) like most of their Armenian counterparts, they have an anti-Turkish bias. It follows, only historians who deny the reality of the Genocide are true historians. The rest are dupes of Armenian propaganda.
*
Another curious point that I noted about my good friend is that he doesn't like proverbial sayings and he dismisses their wisdom as old wives' tales. I disagree. I love words of wisdom, especially when they challenge my fundamental assumptions and expose my prejudices and bias. I believe a single proverb is worth more than a thousand documents whose relevance and authenticity may well be bogus. Which is why I cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from the TALMUD that I read early this morning:
“Let the honor of thy fellow be as dear to thee as thine own. Be not easily angered. Repent one day before thy death. And keep warm at the fire of the sages, but beware of their glowing coal lest thou be scorched: for their bite is the bite of a jackal, and their sting the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss the hiss of a serpent – moreover all their words are like coals of fire.”
#
Friday, August 13, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
Let's get one thing straight: I am not anti-social. Rather, it is society that is anti-individual. And if I am not active in the community it may be because the community has no use for the likes of me and it prefers to deal, support, and compensate bearded hoodlums armed to the teeth with guitars and braying like jackasses, or idiots who hit a ball with a stick. I don't see why I should moronize myself to please my moronized fellow men.
*
Throughout history man has hated in the name of love, committed injustice in the name of justice, and professed dedication to truth in the name of a Big Lie. Which is why after centuries and millennia Jews and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, supporters and opponents of capital punishment, abortion, and war, have failed to resolve their differences.
*
An Armenian has two sets of enemies, Turks and Armenians, and of the two, he hates Armenians more.
*
Eventually all thinking Armenians will have to ask themselves the question: What if it is not God at whose right hand we sit but the Devil?
*
I am willing to concede that all my observations on Armenians are also confessions.
*
“Where there is a trough, there will be swine.”
Likewise, where there is a benefactor, there will be brown-nosers.
And where there is propaganda, there will bedupes and one or more dissidents.
*
No matter how good the theory, there will be another that will contradict it.
*
The American illusion: “We may not be very smart but with the dollar we can hire the best brains.”
*
What if in the next life – if there is one -- the final questions will remain unanswered?
#
Saturday, August 14, 2010
************************************
TH RELIGION OF DENIAL
*************************************
Assertions are not made in a vacuum but within a context of unspoken assumptions whose absurdity may be hidden to insiders but as clearly visible to outsiders as a city set on a hill. In what follows I will list a handful of these assumptions made by our denialist friends.
*
Our books are based on authentic evidence. By contrast, books of the opposition are based on hearsay, old wives' tales, and forgeries.
*
Some of our key documents are of Armenian origin, and when an Armenian is on our side, he is an honest man; but when he is against us, he is a charlatan, a crook, and a liar whose testimony should be dismissed as inadmissible.
*
The authority of the state is sacrosanct. To challenge it is to incur its wrath.
*
If the authority of the state is sacrosanct, its assertions cannot be questioned. If the present regime says there was no genocide, there was no genocide. End of story.
*
When Talaat and Co. challenged the divine authority of the Sultan, they were right to do so. When Kemal did the same to Talaat and Co., he too was right. But when Armenians did the same, they were guilty of a capital offense and what followed was justified retaliation with some inevitable peripheral casualties.
#
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
notebooks
Sunday, August 8, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
The thought that writing for Armenians is a waste of time never leaves me.
*
I am all for tolerance, but I am myself tolerant only when drunk. Koestler may be right. What the world needs is a tolerance pill, if only to numb the crocodilian brain in us.
*
If in the next life (assuming there is one) the riddle of life and death is solved, will we say, “But of course, I should have guessed!” or will we say, “I should never have guessed this!”
*
When after World War II the victorious Allies decided to reduce Germany to a shadow of itself, they divided it into two. We don't need anyone to divide us into two; we can divide ourselves into twenty-two on our own.
*
When asked why he had hardly moved from his house for twelve years, Vladimir Horowitz is quoted as having said: “You don't like my house?” And when asked why he plays Clementi Sonatas, he replies: “You don't like Clementi?”
The other day a reader wanted to know if I was priest. I should have pulled a Horowitz on him and said, “You don't like priests?”
*
And speaking of rabbis, in the TALMUD I read: “He that does not increase shall cease, he that does not learn deserves to die, and he that puts the crown to his own use shall perish.”
Tough buggers, those old rabbis.
*
Anonymous: “The drowning man has no fear of rain.”
*
Avedik Issahakian: “The rich reap the fruit, the poor pluck the thorn.”
#
Monday, August 9, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
Everyone in Washington is on the take.
So what else is new?
The American Congress is the best Congress money can buy.
Why don't you tell me something I don't know?
What about us? Do you think we are morally superior? What about our bosses, bishops, and benefactors? Are they all gentlemen?
What kind of people assert moral superiority?
Only the scum of the earth.
*
When we brag about survival, let us not forget that treason and betrayal also qualify as survival tactics.
*
What if life after death is as different as being is from nothingness?
*
Every time a man speaks the truth he makes a thousand enemies; that’s because for every bitter truth there are a thousand sweet lies and as many dupes who hate to give up their illusions.
*
Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus. Reason has at no time played a central role in Armenian affairs. The gut, yes. The brain, no!
*
The secret ambition of every windbag is to be a fire-breathing dragon.
*
Propaganda is a tree that needs the manure of rhetoric. Truth can stand on its own even in the middle of a desert.
#
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
************************************
GOOD MEN
*************************************
After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends accuses me of anti-Turkish bias. I try to explain to him that my “bias” is not against people in general regardless of race, color, and creed, but against regimes, and more specifically, against individuals who formulate criminal policies and their underlings who implement them because not implementing them would mean loss of power, prestige, title, and income.
*
There are good men everywhere, granted. But good men cease to be good when they become dupes of leaders who abuse their power.
*
Speaking of good men: I owe my very existence to a kind Turkish cop who warned my father's family of the coming catastrophe, even when this warning, if exposed, would have cost him his job or even his life.
#
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
************************************
READING
*************************************
What makes Andre Agassi's AUTOBIOGRAPHY compulsively readable is its colloquial style and searing honesty. At one point he identifies his father as an Armenian from Iran who curses in Assyrian (probably because Assyrian sounds more menacing). Speaking of an opponent he writes: “His serve is uncannily accurate. If he misses, it's only by a bee's dick.”
Agassi writes like someone who has been in hell and back. The moral of his story seems to me, never do what someone else wants you to do even if by following his instructions may take you to the top of the world and into the bed of the likes of Brooke Shields and Barbra Streisand (which at the time was rumored to be less a May-December than an AD and BC affair).
*
Some of my readers inform me that I am a pessimist, probably because I have a grim view of our present reality. Others tell me I am an optimist, probably because they think I write hoping I can make a difference or change things. These contradictory reactions confirm my own view of myself as someone who thinks as a pessimist but works as an optimist. As for changing things: to entertain such an illusion would be less optimism and more megalomania bordering on insanity. The only thing I want to accomplish is to give insomnia to our charlatans and bloodsuckers, and I shall consider my mission accomplished even if the insomnia lasts no more than a fraction of a second.
*
Once upon a time, about 2000 years ago (give and take a decade or two) there lived a Roman emperor by the name of Vespasian (no, he was not of Armenian descent). He was a good emperor -- much better than average, according to most historians. But since the Senators didn’t like some of his policies, they demoted him to Supervisor of Public Urinals. Vespasian was not in any way offended or discouraged. He said to his staff, “I intend to discharge my duties as Supervisor of Public Urinals as competently and diligently as I discharged my duties as emperor.”
To this day Italians use his name instead of giovanni (john). To say “I am going to pay a visit to Vespasian,” means I am going to the john.
I think of Vespasian often perhaps because what keeps me going is the thought that, if my detractors are right and I am in fact nothing but an extremely minor scribbler, I will at least be an honest one.
#
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
The thought that writing for Armenians is a waste of time never leaves me.
*
I am all for tolerance, but I am myself tolerant only when drunk. Koestler may be right. What the world needs is a tolerance pill, if only to numb the crocodilian brain in us.
*
If in the next life (assuming there is one) the riddle of life and death is solved, will we say, “But of course, I should have guessed!” or will we say, “I should never have guessed this!”
*
When after World War II the victorious Allies decided to reduce Germany to a shadow of itself, they divided it into two. We don't need anyone to divide us into two; we can divide ourselves into twenty-two on our own.
*
When asked why he had hardly moved from his house for twelve years, Vladimir Horowitz is quoted as having said: “You don't like my house?” And when asked why he plays Clementi Sonatas, he replies: “You don't like Clementi?”
The other day a reader wanted to know if I was priest. I should have pulled a Horowitz on him and said, “You don't like priests?”
*
And speaking of rabbis, in the TALMUD I read: “He that does not increase shall cease, he that does not learn deserves to die, and he that puts the crown to his own use shall perish.”
Tough buggers, those old rabbis.
*
Anonymous: “The drowning man has no fear of rain.”
*
Avedik Issahakian: “The rich reap the fruit, the poor pluck the thorn.”
#
Monday, August 9, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
Everyone in Washington is on the take.
So what else is new?
The American Congress is the best Congress money can buy.
Why don't you tell me something I don't know?
What about us? Do you think we are morally superior? What about our bosses, bishops, and benefactors? Are they all gentlemen?
What kind of people assert moral superiority?
Only the scum of the earth.
*
When we brag about survival, let us not forget that treason and betrayal also qualify as survival tactics.
*
What if life after death is as different as being is from nothingness?
*
Every time a man speaks the truth he makes a thousand enemies; that’s because for every bitter truth there are a thousand sweet lies and as many dupes who hate to give up their illusions.
*
Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus. Reason has at no time played a central role in Armenian affairs. The gut, yes. The brain, no!
*
The secret ambition of every windbag is to be a fire-breathing dragon.
*
Propaganda is a tree that needs the manure of rhetoric. Truth can stand on its own even in the middle of a desert.
#
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
************************************
GOOD MEN
*************************************
After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends accuses me of anti-Turkish bias. I try to explain to him that my “bias” is not against people in general regardless of race, color, and creed, but against regimes, and more specifically, against individuals who formulate criminal policies and their underlings who implement them because not implementing them would mean loss of power, prestige, title, and income.
*
There are good men everywhere, granted. But good men cease to be good when they become dupes of leaders who abuse their power.
*
Speaking of good men: I owe my very existence to a kind Turkish cop who warned my father's family of the coming catastrophe, even when this warning, if exposed, would have cost him his job or even his life.
#
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
************************************
READING
*************************************
What makes Andre Agassi's AUTOBIOGRAPHY compulsively readable is its colloquial style and searing honesty. At one point he identifies his father as an Armenian from Iran who curses in Assyrian (probably because Assyrian sounds more menacing). Speaking of an opponent he writes: “His serve is uncannily accurate. If he misses, it's only by a bee's dick.”
Agassi writes like someone who has been in hell and back. The moral of his story seems to me, never do what someone else wants you to do even if by following his instructions may take you to the top of the world and into the bed of the likes of Brooke Shields and Barbra Streisand (which at the time was rumored to be less a May-December than an AD and BC affair).
*
Some of my readers inform me that I am a pessimist, probably because I have a grim view of our present reality. Others tell me I am an optimist, probably because they think I write hoping I can make a difference or change things. These contradictory reactions confirm my own view of myself as someone who thinks as a pessimist but works as an optimist. As for changing things: to entertain such an illusion would be less optimism and more megalomania bordering on insanity. The only thing I want to accomplish is to give insomnia to our charlatans and bloodsuckers, and I shall consider my mission accomplished even if the insomnia lasts no more than a fraction of a second.
*
Once upon a time, about 2000 years ago (give and take a decade or two) there lived a Roman emperor by the name of Vespasian (no, he was not of Armenian descent). He was a good emperor -- much better than average, according to most historians. But since the Senators didn’t like some of his policies, they demoted him to Supervisor of Public Urinals. Vespasian was not in any way offended or discouraged. He said to his staff, “I intend to discharge my duties as Supervisor of Public Urinals as competently and diligently as I discharged my duties as emperor.”
To this day Italians use his name instead of giovanni (john). To say “I am going to pay a visit to Vespasian,” means I am going to the john.
I think of Vespasian often perhaps because what keeps me going is the thought that, if my detractors are right and I am in fact nothing but an extremely minor scribbler, I will at least be an honest one.
#
Saturday, August 7, 2010
notebooks
Thursday, August 5, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
One reason I am overly critical of Armenians is that I see too many of my own failings in them.
*
It is not that like all nations or human institutions tribal people are sometimes wrong; rather, they can do nothing right. Everything they do contributes to their disintegration.
*
A pundit is useless to an audience of superpundits.
*
Capitalism is morally superior to Communism if only because greed for money is less lethal than greed for power.
*
More often than not bias is expressed in the selection of facts rather than in their misinterpretation.
*
Jean Rostand: “There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.”
*
Thomas Hardy: “More life may tickle out of men through fear than through a gaping wound.”
*
Anonymous: “Skinheads have more hair than brains.”
*
Anonymous: “A friend in need is history.”
#
Friday, August 6, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
The difference between verbiage and garbage is that garbage may be recycled and verbiage cannot because it may contain dangerous contaminants.
*
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923): “Non-rational beliefs are more important in spurring men to action than logical demonstration.”
It is also true that non-rational beliefs generate masters of persuasion who speak in the name of reason and common sense. Aquinas learned more from Aristotle and less from the prophets.
*
According to Pavese, who killed himself because an American starlet did not return his love: “One does not kill oneself for love or a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.”
*
Pascal: “The 'I' is hateful.”
Fichte: “For he who still has a self – in him assuredly there is nothing good.”
It follows, if the “I” or the “self” or the individual is nothing, the state must be everything. Hence the universal appeal of patriotism, nationalism, fascism, and ultimately war and massacre.
I am reminded of Erdogan's dictum: “Muslims don't commit genocide.”
That's because Muslims act in the name of an all “merciful” and “compassionate” Allah. Or rather, their actions are not theirs but Allah's. Now then, go ahead, accuse the Almighty of criminal conduct.
*
It is the questions that cannot be answered that are asked again and again. And it is the incomprehensible and inexplicable that generates the greatest number of explanations.
*
Where there is censorship, seek to be among the silenced.
*
Andre Agassi in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY: “Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink.”
If life does that to his kind, imagine if you can what it does to the rest of us.
#
Saturday, August 7, 2010
************************************
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
*************************************
Our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire had little knowledge of the Great Powers, little knowledge of the Ottoman temperament, little knowledge of the consequences of their actions, little knowledge of politics, history, and diplomacy, and no knowledge at all of the proposition that a leader is first and foremost a servant of the people and a revolution without popular support is doomed to fail. And they appear to have learned not little but nothing.
*
The Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenian today is as merciless as his prototypes. With one difference: he doesn't have a license to kill. But in every other respect he might as well be an agent of the Sultan or the Kremlin.
*
When a man selects his evidence, seek for the truth in the unselected fraction.
*
The true intention of Turkish denialists is not to convince the jury but to instill the shadow of a doubt in a single juror, because that's all they need for a mistrial.
*
More often than not our disagreements are not between two conflicting ideas but between an idea and nothing, and I consider recycled propaganda less than nothing.
*
Imagine a sardine in a pool of sharks. Imagine an honest Armenian.
*
Rosa Luxemburg: “Freedom means freedom to those who think differently.”
*
Amu Djoleto (African poet):
“What you expect me to sing, I will not,
What you do not expect me to croak, I will.”
#
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
One reason I am overly critical of Armenians is that I see too many of my own failings in them.
*
It is not that like all nations or human institutions tribal people are sometimes wrong; rather, they can do nothing right. Everything they do contributes to their disintegration.
*
A pundit is useless to an audience of superpundits.
*
Capitalism is morally superior to Communism if only because greed for money is less lethal than greed for power.
*
More often than not bias is expressed in the selection of facts rather than in their misinterpretation.
*
Jean Rostand: “There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.”
*
Thomas Hardy: “More life may tickle out of men through fear than through a gaping wound.”
*
Anonymous: “Skinheads have more hair than brains.”
*
Anonymous: “A friend in need is history.”
#
Friday, August 6, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
The difference between verbiage and garbage is that garbage may be recycled and verbiage cannot because it may contain dangerous contaminants.
*
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923): “Non-rational beliefs are more important in spurring men to action than logical demonstration.”
It is also true that non-rational beliefs generate masters of persuasion who speak in the name of reason and common sense. Aquinas learned more from Aristotle and less from the prophets.
*
According to Pavese, who killed himself because an American starlet did not return his love: “One does not kill oneself for love or a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.”
*
Pascal: “The 'I' is hateful.”
Fichte: “For he who still has a self – in him assuredly there is nothing good.”
It follows, if the “I” or the “self” or the individual is nothing, the state must be everything. Hence the universal appeal of patriotism, nationalism, fascism, and ultimately war and massacre.
I am reminded of Erdogan's dictum: “Muslims don't commit genocide.”
That's because Muslims act in the name of an all “merciful” and “compassionate” Allah. Or rather, their actions are not theirs but Allah's. Now then, go ahead, accuse the Almighty of criminal conduct.
*
It is the questions that cannot be answered that are asked again and again. And it is the incomprehensible and inexplicable that generates the greatest number of explanations.
*
Where there is censorship, seek to be among the silenced.
*
Andre Agassi in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY: “Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink.”
If life does that to his kind, imagine if you can what it does to the rest of us.
#
Saturday, August 7, 2010
************************************
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
*************************************
Our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire had little knowledge of the Great Powers, little knowledge of the Ottoman temperament, little knowledge of the consequences of their actions, little knowledge of politics, history, and diplomacy, and no knowledge at all of the proposition that a leader is first and foremost a servant of the people and a revolution without popular support is doomed to fail. And they appear to have learned not little but nothing.
*
The Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenian today is as merciless as his prototypes. With one difference: he doesn't have a license to kill. But in every other respect he might as well be an agent of the Sultan or the Kremlin.
*
When a man selects his evidence, seek for the truth in the unselected fraction.
*
The true intention of Turkish denialists is not to convince the jury but to instill the shadow of a doubt in a single juror, because that's all they need for a mistrial.
*
More often than not our disagreements are not between two conflicting ideas but between an idea and nothing, and I consider recycled propaganda less than nothing.
*
Imagine a sardine in a pool of sharks. Imagine an honest Armenian.
*
Rosa Luxemburg: “Freedom means freedom to those who think differently.”
*
Amu Djoleto (African poet):
“What you expect me to sing, I will not,
What you do not expect me to croak, I will.”
#
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
more memos
August 1, 2010
**********************
#4 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS:
ON NATIONALISM
****************************************************
What nationalism does is to create an a priori positive image of one's nation (“my country, right or wrong”) and to automatically reject anything that may be remotely negative.
Nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology – a pathology if only in the sense that it divides mankind into us and them, Abels and Cains, friends and enemies -- the kind of enemies that, if you don't kill them first, they will kill you. As a result, murder one is classified as self-defense or at worst justified manslaughter.
*
My nationalist Turkish friends expect me to believe their version of the past as gospel truth and to reject the version of my own nationalist brothers as a pack of distortions and lies. And because I have been critical of our nationalists too, they think I am on their side and I qualify as an honorary Turk.
I am told some of them even quote me in their writings, websites, and speeches to buttress their denialist position. Which may suggest that they are so hungry for evidence that they are even willing to fabricate it.
*
What they miss is that my anti-nationalism targets not just Armenian nationalists but all nationalists, including theirs.
Their bias is such that it makes them blind to the reality of their position.
In their view it was not Turks but Armenians who committed atrocities against unarmed civilians. The bones in the desert are not Armenian but Turkish bones. Talaat is not a criminal but a statesman of vision who did not deserve to be gunned down like a dog in the street by a deranged Armenian assassin.
*
A final comment on the myth of Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire.
Gandhi once called the British Empire “satanic.” As far as I know, no one in his right mind has ever described the Ottoman Empire as more civilized and humane than the British Empire. And if some day an ultra-nationalist Turkish historian somewhere calls the regime of the sultans “angelic,” that should be seen as irrefutable evidence of the fact that nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology, and as such in need of medical treatment rather than philosophical refutation.
#
August 2, 2010
**********************
GROUPS
****************************************************
“On your own you can do nothing. You must join a group,” I am told again and again.
Join a group? How can I if my aim in life is to expose the moral bankruptcy of all groups?
*
What Shaw said of professions (that they are “conspiracies against the laity”) applies to groups regardless of credo, ideology, or political orientation.
*
Speaking of Zarian, a Tashnak editor once wrote to a fellow Tashnak:
“If we publish him he may come to our side.
When he didn't, not only was he silenced but also rumored to be unpredictable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and mad.
Later when the Soviets promised to publish him, he believed them and by the time he realized he had been taken in, it was too late. He spent his final years as an outcast in his own homeland and died with the conviction that he had been killed.
*
In their efforts to assert their own intellectual superiority and moral integrity, our mediocrities now spread the rumor that Zarian was an agent of both the CIA and the KGB.
I too have been accused to being an agent of, among others, the Mossad and the Grey Wolves. To which I can only repeat the words of Socrates: “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”
*
Sooner or later all groups become criminal conspiracies.
*
The longevity of a group or belief system guarantees nothing. Astrology has been with us longer than any organized religion.
*
Where there is a belief system that asserts monopoly on truth, there will also be deceivers and dupes.
*
Where faith enters, lies and prejudices are sure to follow.
*
What needs to be glorified is not faith but doubt.
*
The destiny of blind men is to be at the mercy of other blind men who will invariably lead them into the ditch.
*
A member of a party is like a dog who knows his master but not his master's master.
#
August 3, 2010
**********************
#5 MEMO
TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS
****************************************************
You dare to speak of six centuries of peaceful Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire. You forget that during this so-called brotherly co-existence you raped our daughters and forced them into concubinage; and you abducted our sons and forced them to kill and die in your imperialist wars of conquest. You did these things legally of course because your legal system was rotten.
*
Times change and laws change but you continue to think with the old Ottomanized brain, hence the absurd notion that, like the Sultan before them, both Talaat and Kemal represented the Almighty on earth and as such they could do no wrong, and anyone who says otherwise is guilty of treason and deserves to die.
*
A man can get used to anything. You got used to your own vileness and we got used to our own cowardly subservience. In that sense, the Ottoman Empire was not the blessing you like to believe it was, but a curse to both of us.
And if we massacred you whenever we had the upper hand it may be because as your subjects, we adopted and put into practice the values and methods of our masters. Before you blame us, blame yourself.
*
In one of his Anatolian travelogues Lord Kinross, a notorious Turcophile and the future author of a mammoth biography of Kemal, quotes an old Turkish peasant as having said: “We taught the Armenians a lesson the will never forget.” This illiterate peasant understood what educated, modernized, denialist scholars pretend not to understand today, namely that, what you did to us can neither be forgotten nor forgiven or, for that matter, covered up.
#
August 4, 2010
**********************
DIARY
****************************************************
Reading the TALMUD. Some good lines in it. “Love work, hate lordship, and seek no intimacy with the ruling powers.”
*
A hundred years ago our writers knew how to deal with our bosses, bishops, and benefactors. We appear to have lost the art and with it our cojones. The offspring of our revolutionaries now refer to one another as “boys” and to our benefactors as “baron.” The only lesson they appear to have learned from their experience in the Ottoman Empire is respect for authority and everyone in its neighborhood even if they are no better than yes-men, brown-nosers, and the scum of the earth. Hence the saying, “Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.” And this in the land of the brave and the free.
*
Because I am critical of Armenians, my Turkish friends think I must be blind to their shortcomings. I will not apologize for disappointing them.
*
Yesterday’s friend may be (and often is) today’s enemy, but today’s enemy will never be tomorrow’s friend.
*
If you are wrong, they may forgive you. But if you are right, they will silence you.
*
In the late 1860s Dostoevsky wrote: “Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century – that’s my passionate belief.”
There you have it: one of the greatest writers of all times confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course.
*
In a dictionary, I read the following definition:
“Party politics: Politics conducted only through the machinery of the party and against people’s interests generally.”
#
**********************
#4 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS:
ON NATIONALISM
****************************************************
What nationalism does is to create an a priori positive image of one's nation (“my country, right or wrong”) and to automatically reject anything that may be remotely negative.
Nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology – a pathology if only in the sense that it divides mankind into us and them, Abels and Cains, friends and enemies -- the kind of enemies that, if you don't kill them first, they will kill you. As a result, murder one is classified as self-defense or at worst justified manslaughter.
*
My nationalist Turkish friends expect me to believe their version of the past as gospel truth and to reject the version of my own nationalist brothers as a pack of distortions and lies. And because I have been critical of our nationalists too, they think I am on their side and I qualify as an honorary Turk.
I am told some of them even quote me in their writings, websites, and speeches to buttress their denialist position. Which may suggest that they are so hungry for evidence that they are even willing to fabricate it.
*
What they miss is that my anti-nationalism targets not just Armenian nationalists but all nationalists, including theirs.
Their bias is such that it makes them blind to the reality of their position.
In their view it was not Turks but Armenians who committed atrocities against unarmed civilians. The bones in the desert are not Armenian but Turkish bones. Talaat is not a criminal but a statesman of vision who did not deserve to be gunned down like a dog in the street by a deranged Armenian assassin.
*
A final comment on the myth of Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire.
Gandhi once called the British Empire “satanic.” As far as I know, no one in his right mind has ever described the Ottoman Empire as more civilized and humane than the British Empire. And if some day an ultra-nationalist Turkish historian somewhere calls the regime of the sultans “angelic,” that should be seen as irrefutable evidence of the fact that nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology, and as such in need of medical treatment rather than philosophical refutation.
#
August 2, 2010
**********************
GROUPS
****************************************************
“On your own you can do nothing. You must join a group,” I am told again and again.
Join a group? How can I if my aim in life is to expose the moral bankruptcy of all groups?
*
What Shaw said of professions (that they are “conspiracies against the laity”) applies to groups regardless of credo, ideology, or political orientation.
*
Speaking of Zarian, a Tashnak editor once wrote to a fellow Tashnak:
“If we publish him he may come to our side.
When he didn't, not only was he silenced but also rumored to be unpredictable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and mad.
Later when the Soviets promised to publish him, he believed them and by the time he realized he had been taken in, it was too late. He spent his final years as an outcast in his own homeland and died with the conviction that he had been killed.
*
In their efforts to assert their own intellectual superiority and moral integrity, our mediocrities now spread the rumor that Zarian was an agent of both the CIA and the KGB.
I too have been accused to being an agent of, among others, the Mossad and the Grey Wolves. To which I can only repeat the words of Socrates: “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”
*
Sooner or later all groups become criminal conspiracies.
*
The longevity of a group or belief system guarantees nothing. Astrology has been with us longer than any organized religion.
*
Where there is a belief system that asserts monopoly on truth, there will also be deceivers and dupes.
*
Where faith enters, lies and prejudices are sure to follow.
*
What needs to be glorified is not faith but doubt.
*
The destiny of blind men is to be at the mercy of other blind men who will invariably lead them into the ditch.
*
A member of a party is like a dog who knows his master but not his master's master.
#
August 3, 2010
**********************
#5 MEMO
TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS
****************************************************
You dare to speak of six centuries of peaceful Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire. You forget that during this so-called brotherly co-existence you raped our daughters and forced them into concubinage; and you abducted our sons and forced them to kill and die in your imperialist wars of conquest. You did these things legally of course because your legal system was rotten.
*
Times change and laws change but you continue to think with the old Ottomanized brain, hence the absurd notion that, like the Sultan before them, both Talaat and Kemal represented the Almighty on earth and as such they could do no wrong, and anyone who says otherwise is guilty of treason and deserves to die.
*
A man can get used to anything. You got used to your own vileness and we got used to our own cowardly subservience. In that sense, the Ottoman Empire was not the blessing you like to believe it was, but a curse to both of us.
And if we massacred you whenever we had the upper hand it may be because as your subjects, we adopted and put into practice the values and methods of our masters. Before you blame us, blame yourself.
*
In one of his Anatolian travelogues Lord Kinross, a notorious Turcophile and the future author of a mammoth biography of Kemal, quotes an old Turkish peasant as having said: “We taught the Armenians a lesson the will never forget.” This illiterate peasant understood what educated, modernized, denialist scholars pretend not to understand today, namely that, what you did to us can neither be forgotten nor forgiven or, for that matter, covered up.
#
August 4, 2010
**********************
DIARY
****************************************************
Reading the TALMUD. Some good lines in it. “Love work, hate lordship, and seek no intimacy with the ruling powers.”
*
A hundred years ago our writers knew how to deal with our bosses, bishops, and benefactors. We appear to have lost the art and with it our cojones. The offspring of our revolutionaries now refer to one another as “boys” and to our benefactors as “baron.” The only lesson they appear to have learned from their experience in the Ottoman Empire is respect for authority and everyone in its neighborhood even if they are no better than yes-men, brown-nosers, and the scum of the earth. Hence the saying, “Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.” And this in the land of the brave and the free.
*
Because I am critical of Armenians, my Turkish friends think I must be blind to their shortcomings. I will not apologize for disappointing them.
*
Yesterday’s friend may be (and often is) today’s enemy, but today’s enemy will never be tomorrow’s friend.
*
If you are wrong, they may forgive you. But if you are right, they will silence you.
*
In the late 1860s Dostoevsky wrote: “Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century – that’s my passionate belief.”
There you have it: one of the greatest writers of all times confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course.
*
In a dictionary, I read the following definition:
“Party politics: Politics conducted only through the machinery of the party and against people’s interests generally.”
#
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