Wednesday, January 30, 2013 ***************************************** SMART ARMENIANS ********************************** A smart Armenian is first and foremost a self-assessed Armenian and in all self-assessments propaganda speaks louder than reality. * Whenever I speak of reality I am accused of being pro-Turkish probably because for 600 years our reality was not ours but theirs. When it came to the most important decisions in life, it was they who made them. We had no choice but to say “Yes, sir!” They dished it out and we took it. And when our revolutionaries decided to change that, we all know what happened next: reality turned against us. * How long before we create our own reality? My only tentative answer: I may not live long enough to see it. * I have dealt with many self-assessed smart Armenians and they were all idiots. So was I for most of my life. Everything I say about Armenians is based on self-analysis. * Gentle reader: If you think what I say does not apply to you because you are different, I am more than willing to apologize. Every rule has its exceptions. I have even heard it said that it is exceptions that certify the legitimacy of a rule. My hope is that really smart Armenians will decide to step forward and get involved in our community affairs instead of conducting an underground existence. * Did I say really smart Armenians? Strike that. Make it honest Armenians. Because it doesn’t take a high IQ to see that we are on the wrong path and on our way to the devil. * A warning: If you are an honest Armenian and decide to be pro-active, don’t be surprised if accusations of pro-Turkish sympathies are hurled against you by moronized self-assessed Armenians. # Monday, January 28, 2013 **************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ************************************** Propaganda is as addictive as nicotine, alcohol, and opium. * The hidden message in all propaganda is, what you think is right and anyone who dares to disagree with you is an enemy agent. * Now Barabbas was a publisher and Cain a fascist. * Speechifiers and sermonizers end up believing in their own speeches and sermons. Arguing with them is like trying to enlighten a source of light. * There are times when I get so depressed by my fellow countrymen that the thought of death cheers me up. * Dissent means questioning the integrity of individuals who believe in their own infallibility. * Propaganda sticks to children like crazy glue. # Tuesday, January 29, 2013 ************************************ IRRELEVANCE ******************************** Even in a land of the brave and the free there will be cowards and slaves; and if not slaves to human masters than slaves to ignorance, prejudice, and lies. * Our men at the top know that the best way to avoid international scrutiny is by achieving irrelevance, and irrelevance is thrust on some as greatness is thrust on others. * Who after all gives a damn about Armenia? Not even Armenians. Who gives a damn about our 1,500,000? Not even Obama. Who gives a damn about our ongoing “white genocide” (exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora)? Not even our superpatriots who prefer to speechify about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat. * God’s existence is as great a mystery to me as the Devil’s? # Wednesday, January 30, 2013 ***************************************** JESUS, MARX, FREUD ******************************** All of Freud may be said to be an expansion of the Biblical dictum: “The Kingdom of God is within you.” Or, the resolution of all your inner conflicts and contradictions are in your unconscious. * When Marx said “I am not a Marxist,” he was in a way questioning the legitimacy of all ideologies or closed systems of thought. * Einstein proved that all our fundamental assumptions about time and space are wrong; nothing is what it seems; a great deal of reality may be comprehensible but not everything. There are things we may never understand and explain. * What has been the most important contribution America has made to the world? Double-talk. To assert “All men are created equal,” and with the full cooperation of the Church to legitimize slavery. * What about Armenian contributions? Inbred morons pretending to be smart. * If the Kingdom of God is within you, so is the Empire of the Devil. #

Thursday, January 24, 2013 ************************************** WHY DO I GO ON WRITING? ************************************ That’s a question I ask myself again and again and I always come up with an answer that may make sense to me but no one else. * I write to settle a score, beginning with myself. I feel partly responsible for our leadership. I supported it for a number of years. I kissed its ass when I should have kicked it. * Our divisions go so far back in history that they have become invulnerable to dissent and criticism. It is also true that if a system is rotten it will fall if not tomorrow than the day after. Isn’t that what happened to monarchy, fascism, and Stalinism? * The reason our divisions have survived is that we have lived on the margins of history; and they have not so much survived as they have become, in Toynbee’s classification, fossilized. They are dead men walking. Case in point: by failing to unite the Armenian vote in America, our leadership has condemned itself to be a silent scream. No American presidential candidate will ever take us seriously so long as we divide our vote evenly between Republicans and Democrats. * As for our Turcocentric ghazetajis who pretend to be defenders of the Cause: so far all they have succeeded in doing is drive the Cause to a dead end. Their unspoken or real aim is not to get justice but to cover up the incompetence of the empty suits they work for. * A final note on Turks: they are not all butchers and murderers; they have their share of both as surely as we have our share of traitors, collaborators, and cover-up artists, # Friday, January 25, 2013 ***************************************** PARADOX *********************** We think with someone else’s thoughts and we believe by adopting someone else’s belief system. When it comes to the two most important things in life – thinking and believing, or that which makes us human -- we are more like apes than men. I think therefore I am not. * Our disagreements and conflicts are not ours but someone else’s. Neither are our wars. Only our victims may be said to be ours. * Absurdity is not a philosophical abstraction; it is embedded in our daily existence. * Question all certainties. Reject all dogmatic assertions. And never forget that what you borrow is not yours. # Saturday, January 26, 2013 *************************************** AS I SEE IT *************************** Our most popular school of criticism consists in slinging mud (such as pro-Turkish) hoping some of it will stick. * Identifying blunders in others can be useful only if it may help us identify our own. * Thirst for fame is the surest symptom of mediocrity. * Only pathological liars with political ambitions rewrite history in order to project a positive image. * A book is called bad or dangerous if it proves what you believe to be true is a lie. #

Sunday, January 20, 2013 *************************************** LIFE AND LITERATURE ********************************** Sartre is right. Literature saves no one. As a boy I entertained messianic ambitions. I know now that I cannot even make a discernible contribution to its salvation. * All I have been doing so far is drop a tiny pebble – or is it a feather – in the ocean of our millennial literature. * Compared to the sum total of my predecessors – from Khorenatsi to Naregatsi and from Abovian to Zarian – I am nothing. If they made no difference, can I ever hope to do any better? * Why do I go on writing? The only answer I can come up with is, to kill time and in the process to make a handful of friends who see things as I do. * The human body consists of billions of tiny particles working in harmony. There is life after death provided we don’t identify life as consciousness. * How much of “me” is in the cosmos? Or rather, how much of the cosmos is within me? Everything except my consciousness. If asleep I keep only a fraction of my subconscious (namely, the part that dreams) dead I keep nothing or the same degree of awareness before I was born. * Eternity exists but not as “I” but as something entirely different. How different? We will have the answer to that question only after we die. # Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ****************************************** PARANOIA ********************** For repeating what far better men than myself have said in their effort to solve our problems I am described as a pro-Turkish enemy. * They say nations have the leadership they deserve. No one deserves our leaders except perhaps Turks. * Propaganda is the opium of the people. * Where the dominant mindset is shaped by propaganda, there can be no progress, only gradual decline. * What a book one could write titled: ARMENIANS: SLAVES, VICTIMS, DUPES. * To be infatuated with one’s own prejudices is like compounding a felony. * The history of our literature is clear on this point: We don’t hate those who deceive us, only those who try to enlighten us. # Tuesday, January 22, 2013 ****************************************** REFLECTIONS **************************** There is nothing wrong in saying you were wrong. It means you are willing to move in the right direction. * An unspoken Armenian motto: “If you cannot reason, make a noise.” * A verbal avalanche is not always a valid counter-argument. * Depth and a facility with words are mutually exclusive concepts. * In our environment the more arguments you win the more enemies you make – enemies who will call you pro-Turkish because they cannot think of a worst insult. * We owe all wars and massacres to the propaganda of the 1%. # Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ************************************ AS I SEE IT ************************ If I believe in the absence of God I must also believe in His presence elsewhere. * In an environment where belief in propaganda is the norm, criticism of propaganda will be seen as a capital offense. * When I said I had been a dupe most of my life, a reader demanded: “How do you know you are not one today?” I don’t, and the moment you help me unmask my deceiver I may have a better chance to see the light. * The true atheist is not he who denies His existence but he who speaks in His name. * Dupes come in all sizes and shapes. In the latest issue of PARIS-MATCH I read the following headline: “Even Steve Jobs, creator of Apple, was victimized by a medical charlatan.” * You can recognize a charlatan by the fact that he proceeds from a position of infallibility. #

Thursday, January 17, 2013 ************************************** PHOBIA ************************** Because I am against divisions and dividers on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” I am identified by some readers as an enemy motivated by “self-hatred.” The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say but to discharge verbal manure – in the words of one such critic from the Homeland: “You are full of shit, Baliozoglu!” * The fact is, our dividers divide us not because they think divisions are good for us or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas but because that’s how they make a living. Divisions are their bread and butter in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige. To attack their source of income or to expose them as charlatans, as they see me doing is almost to condemn them to starvation. * If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché, fear of starvation must be a phobia shared by all dividers who must know they can’t fool all the people all the time and anyone who can think for himself will sooner or later identify them not as the saviors of the nation but as its gravediggers. # Friday, January 18, 2013 **************************************** EXTRAPOLATING ********************************** Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it. It’s much worse! If for a hundred years after our genocide we have failed to develop a consensus, can we even dare to hope that some day jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs? * We live in a world where everyone thinks everyone else has been brainwashed and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation. In such an environment World War III, that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable. This is now as clear to me as daylight. What is the solution? There is none! * When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus. And when Armenian meets Armenian – you may now draw your own conclusions. The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind and by the time our superpatriots realize we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text it will is too late. * In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world has already committed murder and suicide in the name of a dehumanized god that rules over a dehumanized mankind. * There is a 1952 French film titled NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins). If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution on one level and World War II on another. I know now that it deals with the world in which we live. # Thursday, January 17, 2013 ************************************** PHOBIA ************************** Because I am against divisions and dividers on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” I am identified by some readers as an enemy motivated by “self-hatred.” The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say but to discharge verbal manure – in the words of one such critic from the Homeland: “You are full of shit, Baliozoglu!” * The fact is, our dividers divide us not because they think divisions are good for us or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas but because that’s how they make a living. Divisions are their bread and butter in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige. To attack their source of income or to expose them as charlatans, as they see me doing is almost to condemn them to starvation. * If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché, fear of starvation must be a phobia shared by all dividers who must know they can’t fool all the people all the time and anyone who can think for himself will sooner or later identify them not as the saviors of the nation but as its gravediggers. # Friday, January 18, 2013 **************************************** EXTRAPOLATING ********************************** Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it. It’s much worse! If for a hundred years after our genocide we have failed to develop a consensus, can we even dare to hope that some day jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs? * We live in a world where everyone thinks everyone else has been brainwashed and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation. In such an environment World War III, that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable. This is now as clear to me as daylight. What is the solution? There is none! * When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus. And when Armenian meets Armenian – you may now draw your own conclusions. The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind and by the time our superpatriots realize we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text it will is too late. * In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world has already committed murder and suicide in the name of a dehumanized god that rules over a dehumanized mankind. * There is a 1952 French film titled NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins). If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution on one level and World War II on another. I know now that it deals with the world in which we live. # Saturday, January 19, 2013 ***************************************** NOTES & COMMENTS ***************************** The shortest list in the world, that of Armenian statesmen. * The least quoted document in the world: the Armenian Constitution. Speaking for myself, I don’t even know if it has a single Amendment. * How many Armenians? Hard to say. What if most Armenians are ashamed to identify themselves as Armenian? * More often than not Armenian readers disagree less with my ideas and more with my right to think. * Where there is too much propaganda there will be too little free speech. * Silence reason and usher in insanity. Silence dissent and tyranny is sure to follow. * An Armenian is a white Negro to another Armenian. * Some of my readers want me to write about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat and nightingales serenading the moon so that they can safely ignore me. * Two recent books of great photographs: KARSH: BEYOND THE CAMERA, Selected with an Introduction and Commentary by David Trevis, and KALOUST: RETROSPECTIVE (Toronto Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society). #

Sunday, January 13, 2013 *********************************** ACTION ********************* We didn’t have to rise against the Sultan to topple him: the Young Turks were going to do that for us. As for the Young Turks: Kemal was going to deal with them in his own time. And Kemal had his own nemesis and killer: booze. * We were wrong again when more recently we adopted Palestinians as our role models and engaged in random acts of assassination. * When I say “we” I don’t mean the majority of the people who after long centuries of subservience under brutal tyrants learned to wait, but a non-representative group of self-appointed “freedom fighters” (in their own version of the story) and terrorists (as others, not all of them odar, saw them). * For once history was on our side but we were too blind to see it; and “when the blind lead the blind…” * Moral: Sometimes inaction is the best action. * Moral II: “Nothing can be as terrible as ignorance in action.” # Monday, January 14, 2013 ************************************** RECAPITULATING ******************************* In politics and diplomacy objective judgment is better than emotional involvement. The Brits are right: there are no friends and enemies in politics; only interests. * Anger is a short madness. So is hatred and in general all emotions that cloud and distort one’s judgment. * There are two kinds of leaders: the competent and the incompetent. Avedik Issahakian is right: we have been cursed with earthquakes, a bad neighborhood, and fools as leaders. * The astonishing ease with which a fool will convince himself or allow himself to be brainwashed to believe he is smart. * Memo to our leaders: Unless you study history and learn from your blunders, you will be a curse not a blessing to you nation. * Our enemies, our real enemies are neither Turks nor Russians but Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenians. * Q: The brainwashed: are they men or apes? A: Apes who speak like parrots. * In an article dealing with the leadership of native Indians in Canada I read the following words in this morning’s paper: “mismanagement, misappropriation, incompetence and poor accountability.” Poor Indians. Poor Armenians. # Tuesday, January 15, 2013 ***************************************** CALLING A SPADE A SPADE *********************************** All power structures engage in propaganda, including the Catholic Church. As a child I once met Cardinal Aghajanian who handled Vatican’s propaganda department– identified as “propagation of the faith.” He was a sweet old man, all smiles and small talk. * The aim of propaganda is to legitimize political gangsterism by moronizing the masses. Like all Armenians I have been exposed to my share of speechifiers who engaged in partisan propaganda. It didn’t even occur to me to question their integrity. * Propaganda and commercial advertising might as well be twins. The aim of advertising is to sell more products by emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative, like cancer in tobacco. * The hidden aim of political propaganda is to raise another generation of killers. * Dupes of propaganda come in all sizes and shapes, including highly intelligent men with impeccable credentials. Two cases from the Vietnam era that come readily to mind: George Romney (a governor as well as a presidential candidate, very much like his son Mitt) and Robert McNamara, one of Kennedy’s “best and brightest.” Romney admitted publicly to have been “brainwashed” (his word) and McNamara acknowledged his blunder in his war memoirs. * Remember, no one can claim a monopoly on truth. If you want to be born again as a human being as opposed to a moronized dupe, reassess periodically your fundamental assumptions and the dogmas of your belief system. # Wednesday, January 16, 2013 **************************************** STATUS QUO ************************* Three generations of our ablest men have lived and died trying to solve our problems. Result? We now have a generation of dupes who believe we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands and that our greatest problem is a handful of malcontents whose sole aim in life is to promote gloom and doom, pessimism, negativism, and defeatism. * And then there are the brainless who think (if you will forgive the overstatement) just because they have a computer they are also entitled to have an opinion. Or, in the words of an eminent Canadian poet (may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul) “just because they have an asshole, they must also have an opinion.” * To say we are free to subscribe to a belief system of our own choice even when it is a false one is like saying we are free to choose slavery. Or again, if I believe my lie to be the truth, no one is in a position to tell me otherwise because I know what’s best for myself. * When this kind of mentality because the dominant mindset, genocide becomes not a possibility but a certainty. * When on the eve of the Genocide Zohrab warned “This time they will slaughter us indiscriminately,” they said “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,” thus implying they knew better. What has changed? #

Thursday, January 10, 2013 **************************************** SURVIVORS ************************ To understand history you must first understand the history of historians and their criteria for selecting facts. * The Ottoman Empire on the eve of its collapse: a regime of degenerate sultans, ruthless bloodthirsty buggers clinging to power by massacring innocent civilians by the thousand. Can you imagine anything more repulsive? – except perhaps a regime of former KGB agents. * It is to be noted that sultans were both political as well as religious leaders -- the equivalent of emperors and popes. My question is: why would a religious leader need a harem of a thousand concubines most of them, like himself, the offspring of “infidel dogs"? * The hardest thing in the world: to be an Armenian without making enemies. The easiest: to make enemies – enemies who have no interest in understanding what you are saying and why you are saying it. What they hate more than anything else, it seems, is your right to say what you think. * We fool ourselves when we say we are survivors. The real survivors are the Sultan and Stalin. # Friday, January 11, 2013 ************************************ NATIONAL HONOR ******************************* When was the last time any one of our former KGB agents in the Homeland and merchants in the Diaspora dared to utter the words “national honor”? * Thomas Jefferson: “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.” * Now listen to our Raffi saying the same thing with fewer words: “Merchants are men without a country. Profit is their only homeland.” * Instead of Goya Aivazovsky; and instead of Shostakovich, Khachatourian. * Goethe: “Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.” * If I am a second-rater it may be because our first-raters have been systematically silenced by KGB agents and merchants. Armenian literature has been an endless war on two friends. * They don’t like what I say because I don’t write what they think. They think? Strike that. Make it, “they think they think.” * They resent me because I refuse to behave like their unpaid secretary taking down their unspoken words. * An American on America, a Russian on Russia, a German on Germany: Don’t expect to hear the truth unless of course they are dissidents: Thoreau, Solzhenitsyn, Thomas Mann. # Saturday, January 12, 2013 ************************************ FASCISTS ******************** When Hitler lost World War II he blamed it on the German people. That’s the way it is with all fascists – they never make mistakes. * When Romney lost the election he at no time blamed it on his ineptitude and verbal blunders. * To this day our own revolutionaries expect us to believe their operation was a success even if the patient died. * Turks worship Kemal and they have every right to: after degenerate sultans any half-assed boozer and fornicator would be seen as a great statesman worthy of universal adulation. * The common language of all political leaders is the same – propaganda, based on the assumption that the masses are so dumb that they will believe anything they are told. * To this day Jews believe they are the Chosen; Brits believe they were born to civilize the rest of the world; and Armenians believe they are smart. * Speaking for myself: I believe only idiots fall for a propaganda line that flatters their vanity. On the day this is understood, mankind will be born again. #

Sunday, January 06, 2013 *********************************** WORK WITH ME *********************** “What motivates you to write as you do is self-hatred.” There is some truth in that; but hatred only of my former self when I was a dupe and believed everything I was told by my elders. * “How dare you blame the victims?” I blame them only in so far as they allow themselves to be victimized all over again by charlatans who speak in the name of God and Country but whose first and most important priority is their own powers and privileges. * “You are an enemy of the nation.” An enemy yes, but only of perennial losers who speak with a forked tongue and have consistently refused to learn from their blunders. An enemy to them certainly, but the best of friend to the ignorant, the oppressed, the dupe, and the slave who have been subservient to brutal tyrants for so many centuries that they can’t imagine what it means to be free. * “I believe nothing you say!” That’s because very much like me you were “educated” to place your trust on our dividers, that is to say gravediggers who pretend to be unaware of the fact that by dividing the community and the nation they carry on a policy initiated and implemented by sultans and commissars. * “Sometimes I have no idea what you blabber about endlessly.” I can give you arguments, cite historic precedents, quote an international array of pundits, intellectuals, philosophers, and even our own writers on our character as a people… I can do all that and more but what I cannot do is give you understanding. # Monday, January 07, 2013 ***************************************** REFLECTIONS ********************************** If I were to use a less rude and crude style of writing when dealing with our foibles and failures would I have a better chance of convincing some of my readers that they are brainwashed dupes? Maybe. I am not sure. But I am sure of one thing. It would be unspeakable arrogance on my part to think I can say something that hasn’t been said before by far better men than myself. * If I write the way I write it may be because deep inside somewhere I have given up. If 1500 years of literature failed to change a single iota in our collective existence what chance do I have? Think of what I write as another lamentation – the lamentation of an unbeliever or an atheist who believes in god but a god who is unknowable and incomprehensible and wants to stay that way. * I believe the best argument against the existence of god is organized religions. I know now that even if I were to speak with the tongue of angels and prophets I would make no difference because an Armenian is first and foremost an impenetrable wall. # Tuesday, January 08, 2013 *********************************** ARMENIANS AND JEWS *************************************** No one is beyond salvation. But my guess is if 1500 years of literature failed to save us, only a messiah may have a better chance. * I once heard an Armenian lady say: “I don’t care what everyone says. Jesus was not a Jew but an Armenian. They crucified him; we were the first to accept him.” * A Jewish friend once said to me: “You are lucky. Only Turks are after your ass. The whole world is after ours.” * As a young man Zarian had messianic ambitions. But in America they spread the rumor that he was a madman. In Armenia they silenced him. We did not crucify him. We buried him alive. * I once heard an Armenian Negro – that’s right: a black Armenian from Africa who spoke Armenian fluently say: “Jews have a superior mutual support system.” That’s common knowledge of course. It is also common knowledge that we speak about it all the time, but nobody does a damn thing. Talk is cheap. Actions may boomerang. * Suppose a bishop were to sermonize on unity, a member of the congregation would be justified in asking: “Would you consider resigning your position for the sake of unity?” * Some Armenians – especially Armenians from the Middle East – see Jews everywhere. By contrast I see Armenians everywhere. Officially there are no more than a dozen Armenian families where I live (population 500,000). But whenever I open the telephone book I see an Armenian on every page. * Our chief of police is an Armenian. For many years our orchestral conductor was also an Armenian. I once wrote him a letter asking if he would be willing to be interviewed – that’s when I contributed regularly to several weeklies. There was no reply. # Wednesday, January 09, 2013 ***************************************** THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW ***************************************** All dupes identify themselves as patriots and all idiots like to be called smart. And that’s exactly what propaganda does: it flatters as it moronizes. * I am not smart. I just deviated from the conventional and narrow path by a fraction of an inch and saw a different horizon. * An Armenian is another Armenian’s Turk. If all Turks were to disappear tomorrow, nothing would change. * If there are no atheists in foxholes it’s because in foxholes one becomes a target of the unpredictable, that is to say the Incomprehensible and the Unknowable, which is as good a definition of God as any. * If “taxation without representation is tyranny,” fund-raising without accounting is larceny. * The ambition of every sardine is to be a shark. * On the day I realized I could say what I think (as opposed to parroting a propaganda line) I felt as though I had discovered a new continent. * The only thing our political leaders have learned from history is how to create a new generation of dupes and idiots. #

Sunday, January 06, 2013 *********************************** WORK WITH ME *********************** “What motivates you to write as you do is self-hatred.” There is some truth in that; but hatred only of my former self when I was a dupe and believed everything I was told by my elders. * “How dare you blame the victims?” I blame them only in so far as they allow themselves to be victimized all over again by charlatans who speak in the name of God and Country but whose first and most important priority is their own powers and privileges. * “You are an enemy of the nation.” An enemy yes, but only of perennial losers who speak with a forked tongue and have consistently refused to learn from their blunders. An enemy to them certainly, but the best of friend to the ignorant, the oppressed, the dupe, and the slave who have been subservient to brutal tyrants for so many centuries that they can’t imagine what it means to be free. * “I believe nothing you say!” That’s because very much like me you were “educated” to place your trust on our dividers, that is to say gravediggers who pretend to be unaware of the fact that by dividing the community and the nation they carry on a policy initiated and implemented by sultans and commissars. * “Sometimes I have no idea what you blabber about endlessly.” I can give you arguments, cite historic precedents, quote an international array of pundits, intellectuals, philosophers, and even our own writers on our character as a people… I can do all that and more but what I cannot do is give you understanding. # Monday, January 07, 2013 ***************************************** REFLECTIONS ********************************** If I were to use a less rude and crude style of writing when dealing with our foibles and failures would I have a better chance of convincing some of my readers that they are brainwashed dupes? Maybe. I am not sure. But I am sure of one thing. It would be unspeakable arrogance on my part to think I can say something that hasn’t been said before by far better men than myself. * If I write the way I write it may be because deep inside somewhere I have given up. If 1500 years of literature failed to change a single iota in our collective existence what chance do I have? Think of what I write as another lamentation – the lamentation of an unbeliever or an atheist who believes in god but a god who is unknowable and incomprehensible and wants to stay that way. * I believe the best argument against the existence of god is organized religions. I know now that even if I were to speak with the tongue of angels and prophets I would make no difference because an Armenian is first and foremost an impenetrable wall. # Tuesday, January 08, 2013 *********************************** ARMENIANS AND JEWS *************************************** No one is beyond salvation. But my guess is if 1500 years of literature failed to save us, only a messiah may have a better chance. * I once heard an Armenian lady say: “I don’t care what everyone says. Jesus was not a Jew but an Armenian. They crucified him; we were the first to accept him.” * A Jewish friend once said to me: “You are lucky. Only Turks are after your ass. The whole world is after ours.” * As a young man Zarian had messianic ambitions. But in America they spread the rumor that he was a madman. In Armenia they silenced him. We did not crucify him. We buried him alive. * I once heard an Armenian Negro – that’s right: a black Armenian from Africa who spoke Armenian fluently say: “Jews have a superior mutual support system.” That’s common knowledge of course. It is also common knowledge that we speak about it all the time, but nobody does a damn thing. Talk is cheap. Actions may boomerang. * Suppose a bishop were to sermonize on unity, a member of the congregation would be justified in asking: “Would you consider resigning your position for the sake of unity?” * Some Armenians – especially Armenians from the Middle East – see Jews everywhere. By contrast I see Armenians everywhere. Officially there are no more than a dozen Armenian families where I live (population 500,000). But whenever I open the telephone book I see an Armenian on every page. * Our chief of police is an Armenian. For many years our orchestral conductor was also an Armenian. I once wrote him a letter asking if he would be willing to be interviewed – that’s when I contributed regularly to several weeklies. There was no reply. # Wednesday, January 09, 2013 ***************************************** THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW ***************************************** All dupes identify themselves as patriots and all idiots like to be called smart. And that’s exactly what propaganda does: it flatters as it moronizes. * I am not smart. I just deviated from the conventional and narrow path by a fraction of an inch and saw a different horizon. * An Armenian is another Armenian’s Turk. If all Turks were to disappear tomorrow, nothing would change. * If there are no atheists in foxholes it’s because in foxholes one becomes a target of the unpredictable, that is to say the Incomprehensible and the Unknowable, which is as good a definition of God as any. * If “taxation without representation is tyranny,” fund-raising without accounting is larceny. * The ambition of every sardine is to be a shark. * On the day I realized I could say what I think (as opposed to parroting a propaganda line) I felt as though I had discovered a new continent. * The only thing our political leaders have learned from history is how to create a new generation of dupes and idiots. #

Thursday, January 03, 2013 ***************************************** CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE ************************************** Turks read and quote me? Let them! I refuse to join a conspiracy of silence by writing about “nightingales serenading the moon and the stars” (Leo). * If we are the mercy of “Turks who speak Armenian fluently,” (according to one of our elder statesmen) who will benefit by my silence? If we are experiencing another genocide (“sbidak chart”) – that is to say, exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora – will my silence slow down or accelerate the process? If in the eyes of our “betters” we are no better than garbage (“aghber”) and “shits,” I see nothing questionable in pointing out the fact that, very much like the rest of us, they could be wrong. * If the Turks know us better than we know ourselves – after all, it was they who initiated and implemented a policy of “divide and rule” -- what’s new in what I have been saying? * I don’t adjust what I think and write to please this or that imaginary audience. I deal with facts. I deal with reality. I don’t control reality. I try to understand it. * When told to give them hell, Truman is quoted as having said: “I don’t do that. I speak the truth and they think they are in hell.” If that’s good enough for an American presidential candidate, it ought to be good enough for a minor Armenian scribbler. * Covering up the blunders of our political and religious leaders has nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with subservience and cowardice. # Friday, January 04, 2013 ************************************** THROW THE BUMS OUT ********************************* People don’t divide themselves; leaders do – political leaders in cahoots with religious leaders; bosses and bishops. and what motivates them is not love of God or Truth but lust for power. * They say they divide us in the name of dogmas that are far more important than the survival of the nation and the welfare of the people. If you believe that you will believe anything. * All politicians are compulsive and habitual liars who promise heaven and deliver hell. Only the brainwashed take them seriously and a brainwashed Armenian is a moronized dupe who believes he cannot be fooled because he is smart. Smart when it comes to selling Oriental rugs, maybe; but a damn fool when it comes to politics, certainly! * To divide and undermine the integrity of the nation is enemy action, therefore treason. * The ideal dupe is a child that cannot yet think for himself. Hence schools run by political parties on the theory that once brainwashed always a dupe. There it is, an outline of our central problem. The solution is obvious and if you can’t see it it’s because you have been “educated” to be blind. And when “the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch.” # Saturday, January 05, 2013 ************************************ ON PROPAGANDA ******************************* Propaganda dehumanizes as well as moronizes its dupes. * The difference between someone who thinks for himself and another who recycles propaganda is that the first is a human being, therefore fallible, and the second is a parrot who has no conception of right and wrong and is therefore infallible. I speak from experience. I was brought up as a parrot and remained one for most of my life. * One way to tell the difference between a parrot and a human being is by their vocabulary. Parrots read from the same script, deliver the same line, and use similar phrases, expressions and verbal formulas, one of them being: “We owe our continued existence to our heroic freedom fighters; if it weren’t for them there would be no Armenia today.” * Our Stalinists could say the same thing with one significant difference. Whereas we know 350,000 Armenian boys died during World War II fighting the Germans, we have no idea how many freedom fighters died in World War I. If that is a state secret there must be a good reason for it. What is the reason? I ask because I don’t know. As always I have more questions than answers. * Why is it that we know the number of innocent civilians that were slaughtered in 1915 but we don’t know the number of our heroes that fell? * In the Ottoman Bank caper about a dozen heroes took part and about four perished; we also know that about 4000 (some say 6000) innocent civilians were slaughtered in retaliation. The ratio here is 1000 civilians to one freedom fighter. Next question: does this ratio hold true for the next chapter of our history? Again I have more questions than answers and as always I look forward to being enlightened. #

Sunday, December 30, 2012 *************************************** IN BRIEF ****************** A party of truth cannot survive Without a big lie. * If you can’t throw the bums out you can change nothing. * If the Pope is a crook can his bishops be honest men? * As long as we remain divided the Sultan continues to rule. * We agree only on one thing, to remain divided. * Turks conquered Armenia not after winning a war but after we lost many small battles. * A member of a party is like a dog who knows his master but not his master’s master. * A religious leader is a religious leader regardless of belief system. A politician is a politician regardless of nationality. Believe nothing they say. # Wednesday, January 02, 2013 **************************************** AS I SEE IT ****************************** Never underestimate the cunning of your adversary especially if you have been moronized into thinking you are smart. * I rate understanding above hating the enemy. I believe the more we understand the closer we get to God, including the God who stood by and did nothing to stop the massacre of the innocent. * We have been shaped by our mountains and valleys, and where there are no mountains we raise them; and where there are no valleys, we dig them. * Let Americans speak of the American dream; we can only speak of the nightmares we must avoid. * Teach yourself to say and repeat: God did not make me a dupe; I chose to be one. * In politics a whore has a better chance to succeed than a virgin. A bordello madam would make an ideal candidate. # Tuesday, January 01, 2013 ************************************ BON APPETIT ****************************** Let the world celebrate the New Year; I have more important fish to fry – and today I propose to fry our revolutionaries. * When revolutionaries become politicians they turn into cannibals. This is what happened in France; this is what happened in Russia; and this is what’s happening with us. Hence Zarian’s dictum: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another. * Among Armenians it is impossible to be a member of a political party without being a moronized fanatic. There are so many lies to swallow and so many blunders to cover up! * Consider the Ottoman Bank caper as a case in point. As a child I was brainwashed to believe it was a major coup even though our “heroes” survived and the people paid a heavy price – as many as 4000 innocent civilians (some say 6000) were brutally massacred in retaliation. * I was led to believe it was a major success because the whole world learned about our plight. In other words, it was a success as a publicity stunt. We raised the consciousness of the world. And what did the world do in the catastrophe that followed? Nothing! What is the world doing today a hundred years later? Even President Obama is afraid to use the “G” word. Some success! Some publicity stunt! # Wednesday, January 02, 2013 ************************************** “AGHBER” ****************************** “You are a disgrace to the nation.” “Was your grandmother a Turkish whore?” “Why are you single? Are you a homosexual?” “How much are they paying you to write as you do?” “You are full of shit, Baliozoglu!” “You are a tavajan.” “Nobody reads you any more. So why don’t you shut up?” “Nobody gives a damn what you think.” “You call yourself an Armenian?” * No! As a matter of fact I don’t. I do my utmost to avoid labels. First and foremost I identify myself as a human being, and I consider all other identifications accidents of history. Let others use them like flags with which to cover their nakedness. #