notes/comments

Thursday, July 14, 2011
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ON KEMAL (III)
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In asserting the reality of the Armenian genocide
I am not relying on Armenian historians and
eyewitness accounts by foreign diplomats and observers,
but Kemal’s own treatment of the perpetrators.
So that when brainwashed Turks call Armenians liars,
they unknowingly also apply the same label on Kemal,
who may indeed have been one
but not in his treatment of the Ittihadist criminals.
The only other alternative is accusing Kemal
of gross incompetence, not to say criminal conduct,
in his persecution, prosecution, and execution
of high-ranking military and political leaders
whose actions were based on the firm belief that
they were following orders and acting
in the best interest of the nation.
Because if these gentlemen were innocent,
as Turkish denialists maintain,
then it goes without saying that
Kemal got away with murder.
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Friday, July 15, 2011
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NOTES / COMMENTS
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Every day something happens to remind me
that I am not the center of the universe
and every day I choose to ignore the evidence.
*
You may have noticed that
people are more willing to help you
if in the process they can also help themselves.
*
Originality: to be unpredictable and inevitable at the same time.
*
Everybody wants to be rich and famous.
I have come to terms with my own obscurity and poverty
because I see no merit in being like everyone else.
*
The ambition of all authority figures is
to appear infallible in the same way that
the ambition of every scarecrow is to terrorize.
*
Freud's grand-daughter is reported to have said:
"The 20th Century produced two major charlatans:
Hitler and Freud."
My first thought:
Her legal claim on the Freud estate
and a fraction of his royalties must have been rejected
by a court of law.
(In this connection see also Aram Saroyan's memoir
of his father, LAST RITES).
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Saturday, July 16, 2011
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RE-READING TOYNBEE
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ON OUR FAVORITE SPORT:
THE BLAME-GAME
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“It is always easier both intellectually and morally, to debit one’s ills to the account of some outside agency than to ascribe the responsibility to oneself.”
*
ON UNDERSTANDING
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“Comprehension sometimes consists in just a correct understanding of questions that are unanswerable.”
*
CONNECTIONS
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“Every human being now alive has links, however tenuous, not only with every one of his contemporaries, but also with every other human being that ever lived.”
*
“In this sense human history is one single seamless web, and any dissection of it is an arbitrary misrepresentation of Reality.”
*
ON WAR
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“It is part of the nature of war, once started, to get out of hand; and many belligerents who have made war ‘justly’ at the start have drifted into commission of injustice before the end of the story.”
*
ON REFORM
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“I do not know of any human society in which drastic social reform has not been overdue at every stage of its history.”
*
ON IRREVERANCE
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“I am convinced that irreverence, where irreverence is due, is one of the cardinal virtues.”
*
ON DEATH
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“Death limits life’s liabilities. This boon that death confers is supremely valuable, and ought therefore to be immensely consoling.”
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