this/that

Sunday, May 27, 2012
*************************************
…AMONG OTHER THINGS
********************************************
As a child I believed everyone who was older
and pretended to know better.
When asked for solutions I am in the habit of saying “Honesty!”
Perhaps henceforth I should expand that to “Grow up!”
*
When dealing with compulsive liars
it is always safer to assume the opposite of what they say.
*
Belief systems in themselves may be harmless.
Men who assert monopoly on truth:
the hangman’s noose is too good for them.
*
In his memoirs, Frank Langella quotes Laurence Olivier
saying the following about Vivien Leigh:
“You know, she was a nymphomaniac!
And I’m a premature ejaculator!
Not a good matchup!”
Elsewhere he quotes an unidentified actress
saying the following about Anthony Quinn:
“I made a picture with Tony, he was a complete pig.
An animal. A rude, dumb peasant.
I will never forgive myself for letting him f*ck me.”
#
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
***********************************
THE UNSTATED REASON
***************************************************
For every stated reason there is an unstated one.
The stated reason for World War I was
“the war to end all wars.”
The stated reason of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire,
love of freedom.
The unstated reason: If the Great Powers of the West are on our side,
we can’t lose.
The stated reason of Hai Tahd or Genocide Recognition:
truth and justice.
The unstated reason: history is on our side.
But if history teaches us anything it’s that
it doesn’t choose sides;
and for every one of our historians and diplomats
Turks can produce ten or twenty of them
who are superior liars because they are the offspring of an empire
and they have been in the business of deception and propaganda
much longer than we have.
We may have the world’s sympathy
but not its justice,
assuming of course there is justice in this world,
which is as good as assuming we will have no more wars,
or if the West is on our side we can’t lose,
or if our struggle is for freedom and justice
sooner or later victory will be ours;
and if you believe that,
you will believe anything!
#
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
**********************************************
OBSERVATIONS
******************************
Ignorance is less absence of knowledge
and more a conscious and premeditated decision not to know.
*
The 1% create jobs
and the 99% create the 1%.
*
When a belief system acquires a million followers
it ceases to be an abstraction
and it acquires the solidity of a stone wall.
*
You cannot reason with a man
who takes money more seriously than ideas.
*
Kingsley Amis: “If you can't annoy somebody with what you write,
I think there is little point in writing.”
*
There is a type of philistine for whom the word culture
is almost synonymous with cuisine.
*
If shish-kebab-and-pilaf Armenians were to read
a single Armenian book every year,
Armenian literature would enjoy another renaissance.
*
Cicero defines freedom as “participation in power.”
If we are free, ours is the freedom
of ants, birds, and herbivores –
free to be stepped on, shot at, and devoured.
#
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
****************************************
THEOLOGY
***************************************
Christ was not crucified to save mankind.
Look around you.
Does anyone look saved?
Do you feel saved?
Christ was crucified for two very pragmatic reasons:
he refused to be
(one) a dupe to rabbis and
(two)a slave to Romans.
The rest is theology.
#



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1%

Thursday, May 24, 2012
***********************************
ON THE 1%
***********************************
The 1% have been in the business of deceiving the 99%
for such a long time that they think
it is their human right to do so.
*
If anyone had suggested to Sultan Abdulhamid II
that the Empire could no longer afford 1000 concubines in his harem
but only 750 or even 900, my guess is
the Sultan would have demanded the man’s head on a platter.
This may well be one reason why Kemal is now thought of
as a great statesman as opposed to a promiscuous alcoholic.
*
Some scholars have asserted that Louis XIV
never said “L’etat c’est moi.”
He didn’t have to.
Judging by the way he lived, he had no doubt on that score.
*
The 1% of small nations can commit big blunders
as surely as big nations can commit bigger ones.
*
The 99% have been duped for such a long time that
they consider being duped as an inevitable fact of life,
like death and taxes.
*
An eminent physician once asserted that
he had scientific proof of the fact that
death is not inevitable
and immortality is attainable here on earth.
He died a wealthy man.
#
Friday, May 25, 2012
**************************************
SUMMING UP (XIV)
********************************
What divides us is not truth but propaganda.
*
If genocide cannot unite us, what can?
Surely not a million
or, for that matter, a million and a half
sermons, speeches, editorials, and lamentations.
*
Behind every propaganda line there is a big lie,
and behind every big lie
there is a cunning operator whose ultimate aim
is not liberty, equality, and fraternity
but cannibalism.
*
In so far as they divide mankind,
rabbis, imams, and bishops preach not the word of God
but that of the Devil.
*
As long as they deny the Genocide
and as long as we remain divided
we speak not as men but as parrots.
*
The aim of all propaganda is
to paralyze the mind and to abolish thinking.
*
Think of propaganda as another dirty trick
that the 1% plays on the 99%.
#
Saturday, May 26, 2012
*************************************
PARAPHRASES & ASSERTIONS
**************************************************
I write for Armenians,
therefore my life has been a waste of time.
*
When a speechifier speaks of freedom,
he means slavery;
and when a sermonizer speaks of God,
he means the Devil.
*
I believe in one God
who is Unknown and Unknowable.
*
It is not my ambition to speak the truth,
only to advance in its direction.
*
Where the 1% are divided,
so will the 99%.
Where there are dividers,
there will be dupes.
*
To sum up the ideas of Baronian, Odian, and Massikian:
Ours is a leadership of morons and their brown-nosers.
*
If you can’t convince a hundred,
then sow seeds of doubt in just one.
#




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plu

Sunday, May 20, 2012
******************************************
P.L.U.
*******************
“They are not P.L.U. (people like us).
They have no respect for the law.
They have ruined our image as a nation.”
“They” of course are Armenians from the former Soviet Union.
*
Armenian-Americans who speak in those terms
forget that in 1933 they staged
one of the most spectacular assassinations in American history
when a gang of fanatics butchered a bishop on Christmas eve
in a New York cathedral – an event and the trial that followed
that made a thousand headlines throughout the continent.
*
Most Americans may no longer remember this
but people who matter, high-placed individuals in Washington,
policy-makers, have a long memory
and have very illusions about their fellow men.
In their eyes, we are not P.L.U either.
*
Notwithstanding Saroyan, we are not cute.
If the Yanks are kindly disposed towards us
it may be because we speak too much of massacres
and they consider it their duty
to be on the side of innocent victims.
*
God did not create more Russians and Americans,
or for that matter Arabs and Turks.
There is a good reason why we are few:
cannibalism.
*
We either learn from our mistakes
or we develop a phobia of repeating them,
and fear is never a good policy.
#
Monday, May 21, 2012
**************************************
ENGINEERS OF DESTRUCTION
********************************************
Sermonizers remind us we are all sinners.
Speechifiers tell us we are not
as patriotic as we should be.
We are all sinners, granted, with one difference:
some of us don’t make a comfortable living
by exploiting someone else’s crucifixion.
In the eyes of God we are all fools.
But some of us don’t deliver sermons on wisdom.
If I knew how to pray I would say:
“Our Father, who art in heaven,
deliver us from our deliverers.”
#
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
**********************************
ON DISAGREEMENTS
*************************************
Men disagree because they are dupes
who believe they are too smart to be brainwashed.
Nationalists disagree because they believe
they are morally superior
even when they behave like the scum of the earth.
Wise men disagree because they rate self-interest
above truth which they believe to be
an invisible and unattainable abstraction.
In short, men disagree because
they are stupid, arrogant, and dishonest.
Which may suggest an “honest disagreement”
is an oxymoron
with emphasis on the last two syllables.
#
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
*****************************************
ON HISTORIANS
**************************
To understand history we must begin by understanding historians.
To what extend tribal loyalty and self-interest
color their values and worldview?
Why is it that the overwhelming majority of them
are subservient to the power structure within which they function?
If an independent body of experts
were to rate their integrity or objectivity,
how many of them would be classified as propagandists?
Why is it that the average dupe (or 99%)
treats them the way Italians treated Mussolini
(“Mussolini ha sempre ragione” = Mussolini is always right),
or Catholics treat the Pope,
or generally speaking, sheep treat their shepherd
whose ultimate aim is to deliver them to butchers?
The only plausible answer is that given by a lion tamer
when asked why he takes his lion to church every Sunday morning:
“He has to eat.”
#




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armenians/turks

Saturday, May 19, 2012
****************************************
MORE ON CROOKS
***************************
If our panchoonies had a credo,
its first line would read:
“I believe in the power of money
to solve all our problems,”
and its last line – you guessed:
“Mi kich pogh…”
*
A headline in my morning paper reads:
“Porn-importing bishop defrocked by Vatican.”
*
Never underestimate the power of crooks.
They have been in the business since the beginning of time –
remember the Serpent in the Garden –
and they are still going strong.
*
How many of our kings have been beheaded or assassinated?
What does that tell you about our character as a nation?
*
If you think you know all you need to know,
it only means you have reached a dead end.
*
When it comes to belief systems,
you will have a better chance to be on the right path
if you think against the majority.
#
Friday, May 18, 2012
*********************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**************************************
In a police state the police,
like the Vatican, is never wrong.
*
I committed my worst blunders
when I thought I could do no wrong.
*
If you try to be lovable
you will end up hating yourself.
*
I acquired my worst enemies
when I tried to be popular.
*
Among Armenians a “former friend” means
a mortal enemy.
*
Where would poetry, and the arts in general,
including philosophy be without women?
Even Socrates was willing to concede that
he owed his status as philosopher
to an incompatible wife.
#
Saturday, May 19, 2012
*****************************************
ARMENIANS & TURKS
**********************************
Nothing can be as ephemeral
as the distance that separates my faith
from someone else’s superstition
and vice versa.
*
In politics and history the rule is,
your truth is my lie
and vice versa.
*
Speaking as an Armenian,
one of the most incomprehensible things about Turks
is the fact that they are human beings
like the rest of us.
The only thing that separates us
is our respective educational systems.
Which amounts to saying,
as children we were brainwashed by individuals
whose belief systems are superstitions.
#




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wisdom

Sunday, May 13, 2012
***************************************
WISDOM
*************************
Since life has an unhappy ending
(sometimes even an unhappy beginning and middle)
man has invented religion whose function is to cushion the blow of death
by making promises it is in no position to keep.
*
In metaphysics as in economics
it is always the 1% that makes a comfortable living
by exploiting the 99%.
*
I was educated by monks,
and I remember an older friend warning me:
“The problem with monks is that
they know little about the real world.”
And sure enough, these monks lost all their possessions
to a gang of crooks that promised to double the value of their assets
by making smart investments in a growing economy.
*
What do I know about the real world?
Very little—so little in fact that it might as well be nothing.
An angry woman once said to me:
“Yours is the kind of wisdom
that’s available to anyone with a library card.”
She was right.
Reading books – what could be easier?
Reading reality – that’s what’s separates the men from the boys,
and ultimately the deceivers from their dupes.
#
Monday, May 14, 2012
**************************************
METAPHYSICS
**********************
Truth shall set you free.
By contrast, propaganda shall poison the well,
shut the doors of perception,
and paralyze the mind.
*
If to recycle propaganda were a capital offense,
all dupes would plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
*
Whenever we say yes to lies,
we raise a wall between us and reality.
*
God knows everything, including all the phone numbers
in all the phone books of the world
even though he has no use for them.
*
A statement is absurd
when its contradiction makes as much or more sense.
*
God is love but prefers not to get involved in human affairs.
That’s the only way to explain the rape of children
and the massacre of innocent civilians.
*
We are not smart enough to understand God
but stupid enough to speak in His name.
#
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
**************************************
CIVICS 101
*******************************
ON DEMOCRACY
******************************
Democracy is a work in progress.
It creates an environment wherein dialogue, evolution, and progress
become possibilities.
By contrast, in all other forms of governance,
decline and degeneration become certainties.
What we have in Russia and Armenia today
is pseudo-democracy or a combination of oligarchy and kleptocracy.
Power is like money:
those who have it are never satisfied with what they have.
They want more…with no end in sight.
*
ON NATIONALISM
*******************************
We are not nationalists, we are tribalists.
Germans under Hitler were nationalists.
The first two letters of “Nazi” stand for nation.
When they sang “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles,”
they meant the nation stands over the provinces.
When we sing our national anthem we say
(or used to until very recently):
“Our homeland, miserable and masterless,”
meaning without a single master or power structure.
*
ON TURKS
***************************
Even if Turks were to agree with all our demands,
that would not be the end of our problems.
Turks are not a solution, they are an obstacle
if only because we put too much faith in what they can do
and not enough faith in what we can do on our own.
We call Turks denialists.
So are we whenever we place all our eggs in a Turkish basket.
#
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
To know better does not mean to be less confused.
*
There is always a residue of unforgiveness in all forgiveness.
*
If an imam or bishop were to say
the sun rises in the east and sets in the west
I would do my utmost to prove him wrong.
*
At one time or another even the most civilized people on earth
have behaved like Turks.
That’s why on the Genocide issue Americans are pro-Turkish.
*
A truth cannot be repeated often enough.
A lie stated once is already too many times.
*
At the source of all atrocities there is a belief system
based on absurdities.
*
If I ever write my memoirs
I will begin with a chapter titled “Childhood and Youth,”
which will contain only two words:
“Good riddance.”
#





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what...

Thursday, May 10, 2012
******************************************
JUST A THOUGHT
*******************************
Men are seduced by lies,
communities divided, and
nations torn by war
because of the arrogance, greed, and stupidity of the 1%.
Remember that next time you see someone
speechifying, sermonizing and pretending to know
something you don’t know,
all the while doing his utmost to cover up the fact that
compared to what he doesn’t know,
what he knows is as nothing.
#
Saturday, May 12, 2012
**********************************
HOMO SAPIENS
***************************
You will never see an imam
arguing with a bishop?
They know better…
*
To be brainwashed means to believe
your convictions are your own not someone else’s.
*
To be brainwashed means to believe
your dogmas are god-given certainties
and someone else’s dogmas are fabrications of the devil.
*
To be brainwashed means to speak in the name of god
even when you do the devil’s work.
*
To be brainwashed means to be absolutely right
even when you are catastrophically wrong.
*
To be brainwashed means to believe
you sit at the right hand of god
and those who are against you
are in cahoots with the devil.
*
To be brainwashed means to believe you are blessed,
unlike the riffraff who bear the mark of Cain.
*
Homo sapiens?
Don’t make me laugh!
It is the wisest among us that are damn fools.
#
Saturday, May 12, 2012
****************************************
WHAT MUST BE DONE
**********************************
We don’t mind doing a thousand things
(sermonizing, speechifying, lamenting, praying, begging, protesting, and so on)
but we refuse to do the one thing that must be done.
We are divided and dysfunctional because
we don’t have a constitution that makes consensus a must.
America is very probably the most divided nation on earth.
What makes it a nation,
as opposed to a collection of unruly tribes,
is a constitution of which they are rightly proud.
Instead of a single constitution
we have several each with its own mafia
pretending to have truth and god on its side.
As for our pundits, academics, and ghazetajis
who ought to know better:
they prefer to speak of what the Turks did to us
a hundred years ago
and to cover up what we have been doing to ourselves
for two thousand years.
They behave like running dogs
who know their master
but not their master’s master.
#




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religion and lit.

Sunday, May 06, 2012
*************************************
RELIGION & LITERATURE
*******************************************
If god is in everything we know and see,
where is the devil?
*
Religion is a business like any other
and far more profitable than most.
That's why for every writer we have,
we have a hundred priests.
*
When a religion of love legitimizes
intolerance, hatred, and ultimately war and massacre,
it becomes an instrument of the devil.
*
The greatest argument against religion
is other religions.
*
Contemporary Armenian literature
may be summed up in two sentences:
(one) it says many things except that which must be said, and
(two) it takes money more seriously than ideas.
*
If the kingdom of god is within us,
is the empire of the devil around us?
#
Monday, May 07, 2012
*****************************************
LIES
*******************
All belief systems are big lies
because they pretend to provide answers to questions
that are unanswerable.
*
When is a question unanswerable?
When the answers are contradictions
that cannot be resolved.
*
Once when I quoted Erasmus of Rotterdam
in one of my commentaries
I was told I was being “vicious.”
*
To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say
what Tolstoy once said to a fellow passenger on a train:
“As long as there are people like you
we will have wars and massacres.”
*
What is patriotism if not the propaganda of individuals
who pretend to be our “betters”
but who are in fact our worst.
#
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
**********************************
WE ARE WHAT OUR ENEMIES MADE US
****************************************************
When Einstein said he did not believe in the god of the Jews
he was told to go back where he came from.
*
Most Christians are Christian because
they were brainwashed as children.
The same could be said
of Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists.
*
I was born and raised as a Catholic
and my greatest enemies were neither Jews nor Muslims
but Protestants, in the same way that a Sunni’s greatest enemies
are Shias and vice versa.
*
Popes, imams, and rabbis are not just liars
but enemies of mankind.
*
The astonishing ease with which idiots assume to know better
or to be better on the grounds that
their god is the only true god.
*
When Socrates said “of the gods we know nothing,”
he relied on his reason.
When Hegel, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Shaw, Russell, Sartre,
and many other celebrated thinkers rejected the Bible
as the word of god, they did so only after they saw the light
and were born again as human beings.
*
Gandhi: “I am not superstitious. I am a super-atheist.”
#
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
****************************************
MORE ON
RELIGION & LITERATURE
***********************************************
After reading my recent comments on religion and literature,
a gentle reader informs me:
“Hegel and Einstein were theists.”
So was Voltaire who said:
“Since it was a religious war there were no survivors.”
*
I doubt if God recognizes Himself
in men who speak in His name.
The Devil, maybe.
God? Hell no!
*
Among “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”
(TIME, April 30, 2012) there are two Turks
but not a single Armenian.
If there is one and I missed him,
I am prepared to be verbally lynched by our superpatriots
who are never wrong.
*
To be wrong – nothing new in that.
We all make mistakes.
But to be catastrophically wrong
with the certainty that you are absolutely right:
that’s difficult to admit
and impossible to come to terms with.
*
The greater the gap between what we think of ourselves
and what others think of us,
the greater the number of brainwashed dupes.
*
Palestinians have three mighty allies:
fanaticism, money from oil, and universal anti-Semitism.
Who cares about Armenians?
Not even Armenians.
#




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garbage

Thursday, May 03, 2012
******************************************
GARBAGE CAN
***********************
The average Catholic trusts the Pope much more
than his critics, among them Catholic theologians
who dare to question the dogma of papal infallibility. ,
The average German trusted Hitler;
the average Russian trusted Stalin;
the average Italian trusted Mussolini.
The average Greek of the 5th century BC
believed Socrates to be a criminal
guilty of a capital offense.
Closer to home, the average Armenian –
and by average I mean anyone who has not yet mastered
the art of thinking for himself,
is convinced it is his patriotic duty to trust the judgment
of bosses, bishops, and benefactors
and to question the integrity of dissenters
who may well be agents of the
CIA, the KGB, the Grey Wolves, or the Mossad
(I now speak from personal experience).
When it comes to ideas,
the average man – regardless of race, color, and creed –
is not so much a moron as a garbage can.
#
Saturday, May 05, 2012
*************************************
A CAPITAL OFFENSE
*******************************
We don’t know much about the Greek jury
that condemned Socrates to death,
but we do know that they were members
of a civilized, enlightened, and progressive community
who believed in false gods,
which happens to be the charge
they brought against Socrates.
*
Gods have always been and continue to
be the business – make it, the racket – of the 1%,
namely popes, imams, rabbis, among others –
who if they had their way,
they would gladly condemn one another to death.
And they would be right to do so.
*
Moral: Those who pretend to be our “betters”
may well be our worst.
#
Saturday, May 05, 2012
*******************************************
THIS AND THAT
***************************
There is no end to the tricks
that the 1% plays on the 99%.
When they say peace
they mean prepare for war.
When they say communism
they mean the capitalism of the state.
When they speak of brotherhood
they mean the Cain-and-Abel variant.
*
My aim in life:
to give the bastards insomnia
even if the insomnia lasts no more
than a fraction of a second.
*
In writing being irresistible is better
than being reasonable.
As for being both:
that would be like issuing invitations
to your own execution.
*
If you don’t know where to begin,
begin in the middle or even the end.
If what you say makes sense
it doesn’t matter where you begin.
#




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fossils

Wednesday, May 02, 2012
**************************************
FOSSILS
*********************
Where literature is controlled and free speech suppressed
propaganda becomes the only mode of perceiving reality.
Where everyone thinks alike (thinks? wrong verb)
no one thinks.
To say “yes, sir!” is not to think.
*
We have become a nation (wrong noun) of non-thinking simpletons
who believe they are not just smart
but seven times smarter than Jews.
*
I repeat myself?
Where lies are repeated seventy-seven times,
I see nothing wrong in repeating myself seven times.
*
Everything I have been saying has been said before
by far better men than myself?
If they behave like Panchoonies,
why shouldn’t I recycle Odian seven times?
*
What do Jesus, Marx, and Freud have in common?
They were teachers (rabbis) who didn’t believe in rabbis.
To use Toynbee’s terminology:
they were teachers who rejected fossils;
unlike us who are zombies at the mercy of fossils.
#
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
**************************
SAROYAN AND I
********************************
I envy Saroyan – no, not his fame and fortune –
but because nobody ever told him to write like Saroyan.
*
Saroyan wrote to entertain his American audience.
I write to torment my Armenian audience –
assuming of course I have one.
*
Saroyan was Armenian.
So am i.
beyond that I doubt if we share anything else in common.
*
As for Michael Arlen – both Father and Son –
they might as well be from an alien planet.
#
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
***************************************
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
***********************************
We are not a divided nation;
we are a broken nation.
Being divided with us cannot be said to be
a bad habit or even an incurable addiction
but a character trait,
and character is destiny.
If you think I am being negative, think again.
If what I say is true,
truth is bound to set us free –
free from all the lies that have kept us divided
and continue to divide us today
with no end in sight.
#
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
*****************************************
DARK AGES
**************************
Christianity has been described as a religion
that allows a class of men –
from popes to televangelists –
to make a comfortable living
by exploiting someone else’s crucifixion.
Something similar could be said
of our Turcocentric ghazetajis and scholars
who write about massacres.
Some day historians will name our past –
from the beginning to the present and foreseeable future –
our Dark Ages.
#




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