Wednesday, May 29, 2013 ********************************* A PROPOSAL ************************** The Allah of Turks and the God of Armenians may not recognize each other when they meet; but the God of Catholics, Protestant, Etchmiadznagans and Anteliassagans is one and the same. The least we can do is worship Him from a single church thus saving millions for the poor, the sick, and the unemployed. * I am not asking our bishops to give up their cherished dogmas, prejudices, secretaries, accountants, and fund-raisers. Only the address from which they operate. * You say it can’t be done? I say where there is a will there is a way; and where there is no will there are men whose number one concern is number one and to hell with common sense and decency. * As for those who want to solve the problems of the Homeland, I say to them: Start with your own backyard. Deal with your own bishops, vartabeds and derders – they may be more amenable to reason and compromise than our crypto-Stalinist neo-commissars in the Homeland. * You say I repeat myself? I say sometimes with unruly children you have to. # MEMORANDA ******************************* No writer has ever silenced a tyrant. * In my formative years I could not recognize a big lie when I saw one. * “Most theoretical ideas turn out to be wrong.” * When I steal I am plagiarized. * In Dante’s INFERNO our Turcocentric monomaniacs will be condemned to write about Armenians without mentioning Turks. # THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE ********************************************** Let others count their positives; I prefer to count my negatives beginning with the fact that I am an Armenian who compounded the felony by choosing to be a writer. * My father was born in Sivrihisar, birthplace of Nasreddin Hodja. that’s my only positive I can think of. * When I was a brown-nosing and cowardly yes-man, I thought of myself as a loyal, obedient patriotic Armenian. inferiority complex or objective assessment? * Whenever a reader says something remotely positive about me, I think: What if he is deceived? What if I have achieved excellence only in deceiving others? * After each positive assessment I think of its contradiction and see more sense in it. * We were subservient to Turks for 600 years. Did anyone ever identify that fact as a negative? # ON WARS AND REVOLUTIONS ******************************************** All wars and revolutions are driven by lies and illusions. * Our revolutionaries thinking with God and the great powers on their side they couldn’t lose. * Palestinians thinking as the offspring of empire builders, Allah and Arab oil on their side they couldn’t lose. * Thinking is more like an orchestral performance and less like a solo recital. Many factors must be carefully and objectively assessed. * What a book one could write on the role of wishful thinking in human affairs! * To how many of my patriotic readers I could say, to prove you are a good Armenian it is not necessary to behave like a bad Turk. * Censorship and propaganda are Siamese. * As a nation we are not guilty of genocide; only in creating conditions in such a way as to make genocide possible. * You cannot reason with a man who is blinded by his own greed for power. #