THE DEFENSE ************************ The Turkish line of defense is simplicity itself: “We did to the Armenians what you did to your Indians.” * The only people who refuse to acknowledge the finality of this statement are our fund-raisers and Hai Tahd (Armenian Case) tax collectors. * If the Greeks in their Golden Age ... found Socrates guilty of a capital offense and executed him, how dare we hope we can get justice from a jury of convicted liars and cut-throats? # ON STATESMANSHIP **************************************** You say he was a great statesman? Tell me, how many of our problems did he solve? A statesman is first and foremost a man of action: he formulates and implements policies which he can do only after developing a consensus. * You say Armenians are ungovernable? In that case a statesman’s function is to make the ungovernable governable. If he cannot do what must be done, he is a failure or, at best, a man not of action but of contemplation. He is more like Naregatsi and less like Gandhi, Churchill, and Mandela. * “He was a man of vision, a great patriot, sincere in his commitments to ideals?” So were Hitler, Mussolini, and Mustapha Kemal Ataturk. # A STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING ******************************************* When asked to name his favorite role model, one of our intellectuals (let’s call him Comrade Panchoonie) named one of our benefactors (let’s call him Jack S. Avanakian) and was amply rewarded. * SHAHAN SHAHNOUR SPEAKS **************************************** "A French whore is a whore. A German whore is a whore. A Greek whore is a whore. But a whore who writes is an intellectual." * QUESTION *********************** To the anonymous critic who reads and curses everything I write: “Are you the one I once called an inbred moron?” * JUST A GUESS ************************** I wouldn’t be surprised if they said: “Let’s do to our Armenians what the Americans did to their Indians.” But I would be surprised if one of our revolutionaries said: “What if they do to us what the Americans did to their Indians?” #