secrets

Thursday, October 4, 2012************************************** OPEN SECRETS**************************** On the day good Turks and good Armenians are allowed to form an alliance, all their differences will be resolved amicably and to their mutual advantage. *As for bad Turks and Armenians: all I can say about them is that they deserve one another. *Did I say good Turks and good Armenians? Make it, good half-Armenians and good half-Turks. Pure-blooded Armenians and Turks are a fiction of nationalist propaganda. They don’t exist. Very much like Americans, both Turks and Armenians have been thoroughly bastardized. Nothing wrong in that. On the contrary. Very much on the contrary! Bastardization promotes co-existence, peace, and prosperity. That’s an open secret. You want proof? Everybody wants to immigrate to America. Who in his right mind would want to move in the opposite direction?*Both good Turks and Armenians are today at the mercy of bad men who owe their position of eminence to big lies (the deification of Kemal) and fear (constant and endless talk of massacres). Nothing good can come from lies and fear. That’s another open secret.#Friday, October 05, 2012************************************* ECONOMICS 101****************************** Who understand economics? Not even economists. For every economist who says one thing there is another who says the opposite. Truman once said he would like to meet an economist with only one hand, because after each statement they make, they add “on the other hand.” *The favorite word of my professor of economics was “interdependence.” He used it in every other assertion he made. That’s because every factor in economics is dependent on another. *Corporations prosper only when the middle and lower classes can afford to buy their goods and services. The state is not a corporation whose priority is to balance books, show a profit, and to trim the fat by eliminating programs and decreasing spending. *Economics cannot be divorced from history. They are interdependent. FDR, like Obama, had to deal with depression and war. He increased the number of government programs. And it worked. Under Eisenhower (a Republican) the tax rate for the wealthy went up 91%. America survived as well as prospered. So did Europe with American help (the Marshall Plan). *Bush (II) was right when he said the wealthy don’t pay taxes because they have smart accountants who take advantage of loopholes and when they run out of them they hide their savings in offshore banks. (Does that ring a bell?)By contrast the middle and lower classes spend what they make and whenever money moves, a fraction of it goes to creating jobs and taxes. *Who understand economics? The answer is those who in the past confronted and were successful in solving the same problems that we confront today.#Saturday, October 06, 2012***************************************** WHAT’S IN A NAME?****************************** Iraklis (Greek), Hercules (English), Hercule (French), Ercole (Italian), Hergele (Turkish). Moral: One nation’s hero is another’s hoodlum.*In a book on Azerbaijan, I remember to have read once that General Antranik’s name is as well known to Azeris as Talaat is to us.*PRIDE AND PREJUDICE********************************* For everyone who brags “I am proud to have been a member of the Communist Party,” I should like to hear at least two who say “I am thoroughly ashamed to have been a member of a criminal gang.”* A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH**************************************** I once received the manuscript of a short story with a note that said: “Do you think I should encourage my son’s literary ambitions?” In my reply I said: "If your son is in need of encouragement, he cannot be a writer.” I had another hidden reason for saying that. Only a sadist would condemn an innocent boy to the fate of a perennial loser forever dependent on the charity of swine.#