more interviews

INTERVIEW (IX)*********************************** ON GENOCIDE RECOGNITION OR TURCOCENTRISM************************************** Q: If you were to condense your message in a single sentence, what would it be?A: We are not who we think we are, neither is the world what we think it is.Q: Isn’t ignorance of the self and the world a more or less universal condition?A: It is, yes, but as always there are degrees of ignorance. In our case it is more rather than less.Q: In what way our understanding of the world is different from anyone else’s? A: To begin with we rely too much on the propaganda of our speechifiers and sermonizers and less on our intellectuals. Case in point: Had we followed Raffi’s advice when he said the Ottoman Empire is no place for us because they have no respect for human life there, we would have avoided the Genocide.Q: How do we explain our exaggerated reliance on propaganda?A: Ignorance or innocence compounded by anti-intellectualism.Q: In what way are we different from Jews, among many others, who suffered similar fates?A: Jews are far ahead of us in their alliances. While Americans are ready to defend them against their enemies in the Middle East, they (Americans) have consistently refused even to acknowledge the reality of our genocide.Q: How do we overcome American anti-Armenianism?A: Not an easy question with an easy answer. All I know is that we are wasting valuable resources on genocide recognition. A genocide is like a city set on a hill; it cannot be hidden or covered up forever. We have many other serious and pressing problems in both the Homeland and the Diaspora. I grew up in a ghetto among survivors. They were less Turcocentric than Armenians in the United States and Canada today.I have every reason to suspect Turcocentrism – the fallacy that all our problems begin and end with Turks – is an illusion promoted by our ruling classes whose central concern is not to demand justice but to cover up their own corruption and incompetence.# INTERVIEW (X)************************************ TWO PROBLEMS**************************** Q: We all agree that we have problems –A: And that’s the only thing we agree on.Q: What we don’t agree on is their solutions even when the solutions make perfect sense. Divisions versus solidarity, for instance, or a free press versus a controlled press. Can you explain that?A: We are a tribal people. Our first loyalty is to the tribe or chief and not the nation which is an abstraction.Q: All nations, or even empires for that matter, begin as tribes and gradually evolve to nations. Why are we an exception to this rule?A: Some say it’s our geography – mountains and valleys, isolation during long winters, over forty more or less mutually incomprehensible dialects.Q: Do you buy that?A: No, I don’t. In the 19th century the Caucasian tribes to the north of us united under Shamyl the Avar and successfully resisted Russian expansion for several decades. But eventually they too were torn asunder by tribal loyalties, treason, and betrayal – a chapter of which is beautifully dramatized by Tolstoy in his novella and final work of fiction titled HADJI MURAD. Our Raffi may indeed be right. What makes Armenian solidarity an unattainable goal is less our geography and more our propensity for treason and betrayal.Q: Second problem, which may well be an extension of the first: a free press versus a controlled press. We all agree that a free press is more democratic and progressive than a controlled press, and yet –A: Ah! “And yet!” the two saddest words in the English language it has been said. The irony here is that our press enjoyed greater freedom in the Ottoman Empire. Baronian and Odian are unthinkable in today’s Armenian-American environment. Baruir Massikian, their only legitimate successor in the 20th-century Armenian diasporadied a thoroughly disappointed, bitter, and angry man. When a delegation of Armenian elders visited his deathbed and appealed to him to leave his considerable wealth – he was a successful lawyer in Egypt, and a bachelor– to the Armenian Educational Foundation, he said he’d much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.#TO UNDERSTAND ANOTHER IS TO UNDERSTAND MYSELF********************************************** CHINA THROUGH CHINESE EYES************************************************ “How do you see the future of China?”“Fear, worry, deception, distress, collapse.”*“We will die slowly and miserably.”*“No hope for political reform. There will be bloodshed.”*“Idiots will cause more and more people to emigrate.”*“There are too many books to read, too many people to meet, too many fun things to do. China, stay away from me.”*“When the Chinese begin to reflect on their mistakes, then China’s ‘good future’ begins.”*“China’s future will be the opposite of the present.”**Sixty years of systematic brainwashing means that at least two generations of people will continue to suffer from spiritual pollution.”#From NEW STATESMAN (London, 19-25 October, 2012): an issue dedicated to China today.)#