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Saturday, January 1, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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We search for meaning in a meaningless world
and when we can't find it, we invent it
driven by the same urge that a drowning man
is said to cling to a serpent.
*
Life is made unbearable by ignoramuses
who make a comfortable living
by pretending to know better.
*
For every economist who says one thing
there will be another who says the exact opposite.
*
Mankind has always been at the mercy of a majority of dupes
and a minority of flim-flam artists
whose number one concern is number one.
*
No one has ever seen the mind of God
or the soul of man but theologians and psychologists
pretend to understand and explain both.
*
Socrates and Jesus did not write a single line
but ten thousand books have been written about them.
*
Logicians don't agree on the rules of logic
and philosophers can't explain why things exist.
*
Dupes of the world unite,
the light you pretend to have seen
is only the mirage of a black hat in a dark room.
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Sunday, January 2, 2011
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MEMOS TO OUR WRITERS
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MEMO I:
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If you are paid by the line,
resist the temptation of being long-winded.
*
MEMO II:
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If you deal in propaganda,
be honest enough not to pretend to believe everything you say.
*
MEMO III:
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If you are a Turcocentric ghazetaji
or a member of the Genocide mafia
(i.e. academics whose field is massacres)
it would enhance your credibility if once or twice a year
you were to admit that not all Turks are bloodthirsty savages
and not all Armenians are civilized.
*
MEMO IV:
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If you are a brown-noser
have the decency not to say it smells like roses.
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Monday, January 3, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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ON REWRITING HISTORY
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We rewrite history for a number of reasosns, among them:
to cover up blunders;
to misrepresent military defeats as moral victories;
to prepare the nation for another war;
to play the favorite sport of nationalist historians
and their dupes – namely, the blame-game.
To project a better image of ourselves,
and since none of us is perfect,
we can all use some cosmetic surgery.
*
JUDGING MEN
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If we judge men not by their words but by their actions,
how do we judge men like, say, our activists,
who do nothing but speechify and raise funds?
*
SCAPEGOATS
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Turks believe Kurds to be disguised Armenians
in the same way that Egyptians today
believe recent shark attack in the Red Sea
are the actions of Mossad agents
disguised as man-eating sharks.
Even as we say and repeat all men are brothers,
we fabricate ten thousand lies, fallacies, and misconceptions
to prove that most men are our enemies,
including our own brothers.
*
UNSPOKEN AMBITION
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The secret ambition of all rulers
is to have subjects who are such simpletons that
they will believe everything they are told.
To our bosses, bishops, and benefactors,
a thinking Armenian might as well be as dangerous
as a bloodthirsty Turk with a yataghan
let loose in a crowd of unarmed giaours.
*
THE CONSTITUTION
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In America even criminals use the Constitution to their advantage.
Is that option available to the innocent in Armenia?
More questions:
Do we have a constitution?
And if we do, how much of it is empty verbiage –
is it 99% or 98%?
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Tuesday, January 4, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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The world as we know it
and the life as we experience it
cannot be the beginning and end of all things.
What makes me say that is neither faith nor logic
but wishful thinking.
A gloomy view of life and death?
Maybe, but also the only one I can entertain
without running the risk of making a damn fool of myself.
*
The two theological assertions that make sense to me are:
“Of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates) and
“The kingdom of God is within you” (Jesus).
*
Ten thousand speeches and ten thousand sermons
delivered by the greatest speechifiers and sermonizers of all time
are not worth a single statement by an honest man.
*
How to recognize an honest man?
Both Socrates and Jesus were dirt poor
and were condemned to death by bullies
parading as political and religious leaders.
*
And now from the sublime to the ridiculous:
“Our political parties have been of no political use to us.
Their greatest enemy is free speech” (Zarian).
That to me is the only assertion worth making about Armenians.
The rest is propaganda.
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Wednesday, January 5, 2011
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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For a thousand years we dreamt of freedom;
and now that we are free,
we have succeeded only in turning a blessing to a curse.
And this is especially true of the Diaspora.
*
By emphasizing one aspect of an occurrence and ignoring another,
one can speak the truth and lie at the same time.
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Loyalty for the powerful by the powerless
is the foundation of fascism.
*
Under fascism free speech is defined
as the right to recycle propaganda.
*
Patriotism does not mean supporting the leadership
or being subservient to it.
It is this very misconception that is at the root of all massacres.
*
Fascism may be abolished but fascists live.
*
Marxism in a nutshell:
There is a slave in all of us.
The capitalist is a slave to his capital
as the exploited or unemployed worker is to his poverty.
And both are slaves to dead matter.
*
If there is a God and He is Almighty,
I can't imagine Him to be cruel.
And yet, look at history.
God may be incomprehensible but history is not.
*
When I read a bad writer
I can't help thinking that either his prose is unreadable
or I suffered a stroke in my sleep.
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