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Sunday, November 28, 2010
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DIARY
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Antonia Fraser in her Pinter diary: “I need a $60,000 loan."
Even the wealthy have financial problems.
Ask a chief executive officer on Wall Street why the fat bonuses and he will probably make a list of all those things he can't afford.
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To tell right from wrong is easy. What's hard is why under certain conditions right becomes wrong and vice versa.
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On my way to the library yesterday, a black fellow walking in the same direction but on the opposite sidewalk wanted to know if had “any food.” “Sorry,” I said, “just books.”
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Very early this morning (5:07 to be exact) a Buddhist monk on the radio: “Salvation means avoiding the hell that we have made for ourselves.”
Makes perfect sense.
Hell is not an alien place. Hell is within us. Hell is a house that we have built for ourselves. We are its architect, contractor, digger of its foundations, bricklayer, painter, carpenter, plumber, electrician, carpet-layer, and decorator.
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If for an Armenian, hell is another Armenian, it may be because some Armenians, like some Turks, have made it a lifetime project never to take a hard look at themselves in the mirror.

Where does Ottomanism end and Armenianism begin? When it comes to them and us, I have more questions than answers.
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Be kind to your enemies, they will hate even more.
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Monday, November 29, 2010
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DIARY
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According to an article in our paper on the Hitchens/Blair televised debate, Christopher (GOD IS NOT GREAT) Hitchens believes organized religions have been a force for evil; and Tony Blair (a recent convert to Catholicism) believes atheists like Hitler and Stalin have done more harm than the Papacy, and that faith can be a force for good if it emphasizes not dogma but tolerance and understanding – thus implying so far it has failed to do so. Blair's view on faith reminds me of Dr. Johnson's remark on second marriages: “The triumph of hope over experience.”
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Have you heard this one? An Irish Catholic priest asks a little girl: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A prostitute,” she replies.
“Say that again?”
“A prostitute.”
“Thank God, I thought you said a Protestant.”
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My question to popes, imams, and rabbis: “Why is it that you can convince millions but not one another? If you cannot reach a consensus, you are as bad as Armenians. With one difference: Armenians harm only themselves. You harm all of mankind when you legitimize intolerance, wars, and massacres.”
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If not tomorrow or in ten years, and if not ten years, than a hundred years from now, a suicidal fanatic will detonate a nuclear device in a major city in the West. I say this to suggest that if World War III starts, it will be in the name of God.
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And speaking of Armenians: I wonder if they are mentioned in the recent batch of documents released by WikiLeaks. It would be interesting to know what politicians think of us when they don't need our votes.
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Turkish proverb as quoted by Hitchens in his memoirs: “When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said: 'At least the handle is one of us.'”
If this is an apology for treason, it must be a translation from the Armenian.
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I write as I do because I have read Zarian's posthumously published diaries, notebooks, and correspondence and I am not afraid to say publicly things that he dared to say only privately because he had a family to support.
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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DIARY
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The occupation by Israel of Arab lands has become an endless source of controversy in the international media and on discussion forums on the Internet, including our own. By contrast, only Armenians speak of the occupation of Armenian lands by Romans, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Russians, among others. Why this imbalance in media attention? My only explanation: Hatred of Jews runs deeper than affection for Armenians.
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Affection for Armenians? Why should the world have more of something which Armenians themselves have so very little of it?
Hatred of Jews? Bad choice of words. The politically “correct” word is anti-Zionism.
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Everything that is evil in us I ascribe to Turks. It's only fair. We were their scapegoats a hundred years ago. They will be ours now for a thousand years.
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How many absurd dogmas – like say, Papal infallibility – survive for the sake of consistency (which has been described as “the hobgoblin of small minds).
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Speaking of hobgoblins: Are there any references to condoms in the Scriptures? Once upon a time Christians challenged the Might of the Roman Empire. They are now gibbering about condoms.
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When the phone rings these days it's more likely to be a telemarketer. Gone are the good old days when senile vodanavorjis wanted me to translate their verse, or chic Bolsheviks tried to convince me that Russians were our big brothers.
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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In capitalist countries there are many government programs, organizations, and groups who look after the hungry, the homeless, and the unemployed. Lenin was against all of them because he explained charity does nothing but postpone the revolution.
One can say so much in a single line!
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Our propaganda tells us we are better than Turks. But I am of the opinion that we are as bad as the rest of mankind, including Turks.
To those who say we can't be as bad as them because we have at no time committed the unspeakable crime of genocide, I say: “Let us not confuse military inferiority with moral superiority.”
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God is our Father, we are His children, and all men are brothers. Unlike French grammarians, when God makes a rule, He makes them without exceptions.
All men are brothers is a knife that cuts both ways.
To my Turkish brothers who assert the Genocide is a big lie, I say our function is not to recycle state propaganda but to expose the lies of politicians, and to say or suggest that all politicians lie except Turkish politicians is to expose oneself as a dupe whose thinking has not yet emerged from its infantile stage. I am familiar with the type because the world is full of them and because I too believed everything I was told as a child.
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