diary

Thursday, November 12, 2009
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DIARY / 2
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“What Africa needs is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties to the larger loyalties of nationhood.”
I copy these lines from a magazine article for those of my readers who say we need solutions.
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To be a dupe in our context means to be deceived by frauds who have deceived themselves to believe they are leaders of men.
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Let us not confuse anti-Turkism with pro-Armenianism.
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Martin Scorcese: “...thanks to a professor named Haig Manoogian I discovered that I could express everything I felt through film.”
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Salman Rushdie: “My father was a great religious scholar, but he wasn't a believer.”
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David Lynch on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: “I owe him the discovery that the possibility for happiness dwells within us.”
A hundred years before Maharishi, Tolstoy based a belief system on a 2000-year old dictum: “The kingdom of God is within you.”
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There is only one religion: the search for meaning.
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There is a type of reader who reads not to learn but to settle scores; not to engage in dialogue but to insult; and an insult is as difficult to refute as a massacre, perhaps because it is verbal massacre.
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Nothing human is beyond criticism, including the Word of God as heard, interpreted, written down, translated, read and understood by man.
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According to Buddha: “That which is spoken, heard, and understood are three different things.”
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What a scathing book review Buddha would write of the Bible and the Koran!
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Friday, November 13, 2009
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DIARY / 3
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To understand Turks, all I have to do is examine my own heart.
To understand Turkish lies, all I have to do is consider our own.
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Why should I trust the judgment or integrity of men who hire belly-slitting lawyers whenever their sensibilities are offended?
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Northrop Frye on a common misconception of God: “...the ferocious old bugger up in the sky with the whiskers and the reactionary political views, who enjoys sending people to hell.”
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When I hear or read the word Islam, the first four words that come to mind are: giaour, imam, fatwa, and jihad; and I loathe these words as much I loathe the words boss, bishop, benefactor, and commissar.
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You cannot change that which you hate: that may explain my failure. Perhaps what we need is not critics but messiahs. Anyone interested in being crucified?
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There is something in our partisans that doesn’t like disagreement, dissent, criticism, dialogue, democracy, free speech, human rights, honesty, straight talk, common sense….
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The disagreement of a single honest man means much more to me than the agreement of a thousand fools and ten thousand dupes.
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Saturday, November 14, 2009
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DIARY / 4
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Sooner or later all lies are exposed and replaced by other lies.
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Truth is not a noun but a verb – it consists in shedding lies.
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Ottomanism, Sovietism, Armenianism: the only difference between them is the number of dupes and hoodlums they control.
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Northrop Frye's explanation of deconstruction: “Rousseau wrote on the origin of language, but he was primarily interested in masturbation.”
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Eduardo Galeano: “Hunting Jews has always been a European sport. Now the Palestinians, who never played it, are paying the bill.”
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Men need to believe in something, even if it is a lie that will enslave them.
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