Saturday, April 20, 2013 ****************************************** BROTHERS ************************** If you go against the dominant mindset of your time, you can’t go wrong. You may be a perennial reject but the chances are you will be closer to the truth than the crowd. * At the turn of the last century Turks thought the fewer Armenians the better. During World War II Germans had a similar disposition towards Jews. Remember the American slogan: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” * One reason Americans did not exterminate Negroes is that Negroes played a key role in their economy. Closer to home: our own attitude towards our critics and dissidents: the fewer the better but none is best. (I speak from experience.) * All genocides begin in the hearts of men and we are no exception. Now then, go right ahead and assert moral superiority. # NOTES & COMMENTS ******************************* Using profanities in an argument is like raising your voice to strengthen your position. It works only if your adversary is intimidated by noise. * I no longer search for the company of good men. If I can recognize and avoid the proximity of cold-blooded killers I am satisfied. * To those who accuse me of seeing only the dark side of our reality, I say: We have a long-standing literary tradition that prefers fiction to fact. Mine is a balancing act. * To lose a false friend is like defeating a dangerous enemy. * In the world of scholarship as in life the most valuable asset is a readiness to renounce a cherished idea. # NOTES / COMMENTS ************************************ Individuals may admit their failings but nations never! All nations are habitual and compulsive liars. This is as true of Americans as it is of Russians; as true of Turks as it is of Armenians. * We like to say we had a Golden Age when the West was wallowing in its Dark Ages. The question we avoid asking is: Who is responsible for frittering away our heritage? * A new revolution or regime opens the path to a new class of mediocrities, opportunists, and bureaucrats – sharks for short. More often than not the difference between the old and the new is in name only. Scratch the label and expose the scum of the earth. #

Sunday, April 14, 2013 ********************************* ON WAR AND PEACE ************************************* There are no just wars. A war in which innocent civilians die cannot be said to be just. * Countless wars have been fought since the beginning of time and in all of them there were winners and losers. * No nation on earth can assert military invincibility or, for that matter, moral superiority. Only Americans believe in their own moral superiority only Muslims believe in theirs, and so on... * If Americans and Jews were to behave like Turks did at the turn of the last century the world would witness a series of genocides on several continents. * Muslims may think they are invincible because they have Allah and oil on their side, in the same way that we (Armenians) thought we had the might of the Great Powers of Europe, plus God and the justice of our cause (freedom from oppression) on our side. It didn’t do us any good. It was all an empty illusion. * All political leaders (including Kemal, Arafat, and our own) are first and foremost baloney artists. They may successfully brainwash their dupes but they cannot fool reality. * If so far Americans and Jews have not behaved like Turks it may be because there is a difference between the autocratic East and the democratic West. * If Muslims want to coexist with their enemies they have no choice but to reject their undemocratic ways and realize that the concept of fundamental human rights is not an invention of the corrupt and decadent West. But even if it were, that does not make Muslims more progressive, civilized, and just in the eyes of the world. * Our choice is seldom between good and evil but between bad and worse; and sometimes even between worse and worst. # Hegel’s famous last words: “No one understood me except one, and even he didn’t understand me.” # The Nazis believed God to be on their side. So do jihadists today. The God of fanatics is the Devil. # ON MODERATION ******************************* “Moderation in all things,” Greeks said even as they condemned Socrates to death. * For every believer there is a non-believer. Who is right? Neither. Who is wrong? Both. * Trust your friend but respect your enemy. * Modify your assertions with their contradictions. That may not be the best way to live but it is the only way to survive. # REFLECTIONS ********************************* My real education began on the day I realized I was a brainwashed dupe and a self-satisfied idiot. * Words and reality (like ideas and God) move in two different dimensions that like parallel lines never meet (except in eternity). * Scientists tell us space has an end. What does this end look like? Is there some kind of invisible wall? What’s on the other side of the wall? * God is not a being, Thomas Aquinas tells us, but “being itself.” Whatever the hell does that mean? * Plato put it best when he said reality is like fire and words only shadows. * It is to be noted that after having a mystical experience Aquinas gave up writing and said something to the effect that all writing was no better than verbal trash. #

Saturday, April 13, 2013 ************************************* SERMON ************************** In what way am I morally superior to a cold-blooded killer if I harbor a killer within me? In what way are Americans morally superior to Muslims if they (Americans) have killed more Muslims than Muslims have killed Americans? In what way Muslims are morally superior to Americans if the only reason they have killed fewer Americans is military inferiority? * Closer to home: we have been so busy exposing Turkish criminal conduct that our own moral status has become an alien dimension. As Zarian would say: “Danger, danger, danger!” * There is only one way to feel morally superior and that is (to echo Saroyan) by feeling sorry for the morally inferior. * The Scriptures tell us there is no difference between an adulterer and a man who lusts after another’s wife. Likewise there is no difference between a killer and a man who preaches hatred and revenge which he identifies as justice. * Perhaps what I have been trying to say here is we all swim in the same sh**! # Saturday, April 13, 2013 *********************************** THEOLOGY ********************** The aim of human speech is to say one thing and do the opposite: to say God is love and truth and to worship lies and the Devil; to say “Thou shalt not kill” and to go to war; to call Diasporan Armenians “aghber” (trash) and to behave like trash. Theologians and sermonizers are familiar with this phenomenon but prefer not to speak about it. * THERE WILL BE BLOOD ******************************** As soon as the Kremlin realizes the present regime in Yerevan to be a liability, it will replace it with another. Will anything change? It remains to be seen. “No one gives up power without a bloody fight,” Hegel tells us. Is he right? We may have an answer soon. * DOES POWER CORRUPT? ********************************* Power does not corrupt. It only exposes the corruption that was already there. * AMERICA AND ARMENIA *********************************** Unhappy is the nation whose two most important sources of education are TV ads and state propaganda. # FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ********************************* In life nothing works as planned. An honest autobiography would be a long list of disappointments. * My first book was a best-seller. My second book was banned. That’s when I knew I was on the right track. * We adopt a belief system because we are told all the others don’t make sense. * If you write in defense of dupes, deceivers will conspire against you. # REMEMBER! **************************** Patriotism is the favored word of tyrants. * Political parties need honest men as surely as religions need saints. * “A man of principle is a majority of one.” # Saturday, April 13, 2013 ************************************** SITUATION / SH*TUATION ************************************* In the eyes of the world our regime in Yerevan has lost its virginity. The people are against it. But even if replaced nothing will change. * Believe nothing you are told. There are no good guys in politics. Power prostitutes. * Some of our greatest brains praised Lenin and Stalin. Even our best and brightest are no better than a bunch of dupes. * Where there is too much talk of freedom and independence, oppression is sure to follow. * Throughout our millennial history foreign tyrants have always relied on their Armenian collaborators to moronize the people. # TURCOCENTRISM REVISITED ******************************************* In Turcocentric circles I am know only as someone whom Turks like to quote. All I can say in my defense is that the Devil too can quote the Scriptures. Does that mean the Good Lord is pro-Devil? * I gladly admit to being not a Turcocentric but an Armenocentric writer. So were Baronian and Odian; or for that matter Zarian and Massikian; and before them Naregatsi who in his LAMENTATION blames no one but himself for his many failings and transgressions. * A human being is not a lump of clay at the mercy of forces beyond his control. The Turks did not recreate us in their own image. We consented to be recreated. That is worth repeating and emphasizing. We are what we have become because we chose freely to be who we are. The rest is propaganda and our favorite sport: the blame game. # DIARY ******************** “I enjoy reading you.” I am less interested in your enjoyment and more in your torment. I don’t write to entertain. Flattery is as irrelevant to me as the words of a brainless critics or dupe who believes what he is told especially what he is told flatters his ego. * In Deirdre Bair’s SAUL STEINBERG: A BIOGRAPHY I am informed that if you are depressed you can go to the nearest emergency and ask to see a shrink. This may be common knowledge but it’s news to me. * I remember once when asked by a French friend if I have ever been analyzed I said something to the effect that analysis is for the bourgeoisie and that as a perennial slum-dweller it has never even occurred to me to visit a shrink. I was astonished when he informed me that in France analysis is available to everyone free of charge. * Perhaps deep inside somewhere I continue to be a subject of the Ottoman Empire where the insane were treated like criminals. #

questions

Monday, April 01, 2013 ************************************* TWO QUESTIONS *********************** Even after successive waves of Hamidian massacres in the Ottoman Empire and Stalinist purges in the USSR, Armenian writers like Siamanto and Totovents couldn’t stand life in America and returned to Istanbul and Yerevan respectively. Now then, my question is: How many of our writers now living in exile have returned to their homeland after Independence? Is it conceivable that there was more tolerance and freedom under the bloody Sultan and the iron rule of Stalin than under our own oligarchs? * I am personally acquainted with an Armenian writer in exile who is not allowed to visit his dying father in Yerevan. My second question is: Is it conceivable that our oligarchs are more commissars and less Armenian? Or more robots and less human beings? # Wednesday, April 03, 2013 ******************************************* ON LIFE, AFTERLIFE, AND RELATED ATROCITIES ************************************************ On life after death: the chances are we will return to wherever it was that we came from before we were born. But that may not be the end of the story… * Nationalism teaches us to have 20/20 vision when it comes to our assets and pretend to be deaf, blind and stupid when it comes to our liabilities. * There is a natural tendency in all of us to subscribe to dogmas whose sole intent is to divide the community and to reject what common sense, decency, logic, and self-interest dictate. * To contradict is a temptation an Armenian cannot resist. * When we rely too much on our understanding we tend to forget or ignore the fact that, that which is incomprehensible may well be closer to the truth. # Tuesday, April 02, 2013 ************************************ CRIME AND PUNISHMENT *************************************** We owe our dogmas and divisions to individuals whose ultimate aim is the destruction of the nation; and if they are not aware of this it’s because they have allowed themselves to be moronized by their own propaganda. * We have bosses, bishops, and benefactors by the dozen and dupes by the thousand but not a single consensus seeker. * Nationalism also means to believe nothing you are told except flattery. * It took Turks 600 years to realize sultans were up to no good. It may take them a little longer to realize Kemalism is a morally and politically bankrupt ideology. * If there is a god, garbage collectors will go to heaven and politicians to hell. * Where there is subservience there will also be intimidation -- or bullies and cowards. # Wednesday, April 03, 2013 ***************************************** UNDERSTANDING THE ENEMY ****************************************** We may understand why we hate our enemies but we don’t always understand why they hate us. * If we have trouble understanding our enemies it may be because we have been brainwashed to believe we are lovable; and we are lovable even when we behave like repulsive apes; and we are smart even when we speak like inbred morons. * We like to believe if our enemies hate us it’s because there must be something fundamentally wrong with them. Turks are bloodthirsty savages. In the eyes of Americans, Muslim terrorists are ignorant fanatics. * Instead of examining our conscience we blame others. We use the lies of our propaganda to reach a truth which is a bigger lie. * We forget that we are not as cute as we think we are. No one is. To take propaganda seriously means to moronize oneself. * Instead of wondering why Americans hate Muslims, Muslims should ask themselves why do Sunnis butcher Shias and vice versa? Instead of wondering why Turks hate Armenians, we should ask ourselves why does Armenian hate Armenian? * Why Muslim terrorists hate Americans unto death? Why did Americans hate one another unto death in their Civil War (in cosmic time, yesterday)? # Saturday, April 06, 2013 *************************************** ON CHARM ****************************** “Charm is shit!” I hate the man who said that. I should have said it first. * Death may be the end of the road for us but the road itself is without end. * Robert Frost: “And nothing to look backward to with pride And nothing to look forward to with hope.” Our history in two lines. * I am what my critics made me. * The 1% may be replaced but not toppled. * Beware of the man who is humble only before God. * Divide the enemy and the battle is half won. Let the enemy divide us and the war is lost. # Saturday, April 06, 2013 ***************************************** MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR ************************************** Unmask an Armenian and expose a celebrity without recognition, a king without a crown, and a tyrant without power. * I remember once when I tried to arrange an interview with a minor Armenian celebrity, I was treated with such contempt that I cancelled the interview without notice and decided never to interview another Armenian again. * Success has this in common with power – it corrupts. * The offspring of survivors I am myself a survivor: my parents survived Turks; I survived Armenians. * In the official version of our recent story, the operation was a success but the patient died. * Recycled propaganda is verbal vomit. # Saturday, April 06, 2013 ********************************** WAR CRIMINALS ****************************** Who is crazier – the Second Amendment gun nut or the unbalanced teenager or adult who kills defenceless children? Speaking for myself: I don’t know. Hard to say. * I suggest there is a mass murderer in all of us waiting for the right combination of circumstances to make an appearance. * Consider the frequency with which law-abiding patriotic citizens that have committed or cooperated in the commission of atrocities, massacres, and genocide in the past. How many of them surrendered and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity? What about political, military, and religious leaders who legitimize and promote intolerance, hatred, and war or mass murder? Last but far from least: How many popes, imams, and rabbis have been identified as war criminals? I am not casting aspersions, just asking questions. #

Thursday, March 28, 2013 **************************************** WHEN I THOUGHT I KNEW ************************************** When I thought I knew, I didn’t! * State a problem clearly and its solution will fall on your lap. * When it comes to solving our problems we may well be just about the dumbest people on earth. * In an anti-intellectual environment to call someone an intellectual is the same as identifying him as a mental masturbator, a parasite, and a daydreamer who knows nothing about real life. An Armenian may identify himself as a professor or an academic, but only a retard will call himself an intellectual. To those of my readers who dismiss me as an intellectual I therefore say, one does not have to be an intellectual, a vodanavorji, or anything else for that matter to recognize a jackass when he sees one. * To those who say “I know what I need to know,” I say: Knowledge is not and cannot be a final product but a work in progress. # Friday, March 29, 2013 ************************************ WHAT IF OUR BETTERS ARE OUR WORST? ************************************** The problem with a drug addict is not his addiction but his refusal to kick the habit. Likewise, our problem is not the absence of solutions but the rejection of all solutions, one of them being solidarity. * Next time you hear someone parrot the line “what we need is solutions,” you may classify him as a habitual and compulsive liar. * More often than not we are not deceived; we consent to be deceived. We are brought up to believe we are smart to cover up our status as dupes of idiots. * We believe our “betters” to be la crème de la crème when in fact they are la crème de la scum. # Saturday, March 30, 2013 *************************************** ON CROOKS AND LIARS ********************************* An honest man cannot solve the problems of a crook. Neither can he solve the problems of a nation run by crooks. Which may explain why our literature has failed to solve a single problem, prevent a single death, expose a single liar. * Between an unprofitable truth and profitable lies, most men will choose lies. This may explain why nationalist historians outnumber the others a thousand to one. * To write about crooks and liars means never to run out of things to say. * My ambition: to say things nobody says and everybody thinks. * Like the last Ottoman sultans who had a thousand concubines in their harems, the average propagandist has a thousand lies. You want proof? Think the opposite of what a speechifier says and you may see more sense there. #

Monday, March 25, 2013 ************************************* NOTES & COMMENTS ******************************* If both sides believe Truth to be on their side it must be a Big Lie. If both sides believe God to be on their side, it must be the Devil. In a historic context Homo sapiens may be defined as a being who cannot tell the difference between God and the Devil. * Q: Is it true that you are more critical of Armenians than of Turks? A: As an Armenian I criticize Armenians. I leave to Turkish critics the task of criticizing their own. * When tyrants silence writers, they invariably target the best. * The reason I am a pessimist or see the dark side of things is that I refuse to be moronized by the 1%. * In murder it may be “cherchez la femme.” But in war and crimes against humanity it’s cherchez moral and intellectual hoodlums parading as statesmen. * The 99% don’t make history; they only suffer it. # ***************************************** NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS OR GENOCIDE BY OTHER MEANS ************************************************** Learning also means unlearning what you were taught as a child. Loving your people also means hating their enemies. The average dupe loves to brag about the lies he has been taught as a child and to ignore the evidence to the contrary. * We in Canada are brought up to brag about our multiculturalism and to forget that there was multiculturalism in the Ottoman Empire too; so much so that after 600 years of “brutal oppression” we produced literary giants like Baronian, Odian, Zabel Yessayan, and Zohrab. * Now then, name a single Canadian-born Armenian who is capable of writing a single decent line in his mother tongue. * I have heard smart Canadians define multiculturalism as “let them dance.” Obviously because they can read between the lines of their state propaganda better than outsiders like us. * In the obituary of the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, I read the following this morning: “He spent much of his adult life in the United States but resisted literary honors from a government he refused to accept.” In other words, he refused to be taken in by a policy of genocide by other means. * If you want to read more about the many ways the 1% has of misleading, deceiving, confusing, bamboozling, flimflamming, exploiting, and hoodwinking the 99% read MYTHOLOGIES by Roland Barthes. # IDIOTS *********************** Armenians who say there are divisions everywhere are simply parroting the words of an idiot whose sole aim is to explain and justify his own powers and privileges. * There are divisions even in the most advanced democracies? It is equally true that, unlike us, advanced democracies have a centralized power structure because they have been successful in overcoming their tribalism, namely the misconception that my political party, my church, my backyard and my chickens matter more than all others. * There are divisions everywhere? There are also rapists and murderers everywhere. Should we therefore accept them as inevitable facts of life and adopt a live and let live stance in the name of compassion, tolerance and patriotism? * There are divisions everywhere? There are also crooks and idiots everywhere. Does that mean we should allow them to be in charge of our collective destiny? # Wednesday, March 27, 2013 *************************************** MEMOS TO MYSELF ********************************** Political leaders prefer dupes to dissidents. * The plea of not guilty may be available to dupes but not to their deceivers. * Power corrupts, weakness castrates. * On the art of writing: the less art the better. * To write too much is not a sin; to discard too little is. #

Sunday, February 24, 2013 *************************************** TRUTH AND LIES ******************************** We love the truth and hate lies or so we say and like to believe. But truth is one and elusive and lies are real and without number. * The 99% don’t think. They let the 1% do the thinking for them. Until very recently the 99% didn’t even know they were 99%. * The 1% may know better but to know better is not the same as to know. The 1% is the most dangerous people on earth. * We are not survivors. We are dead men walking. So is all of mankind. * The real aim of justice is to legitimize injustice. Slavery and the torture of heretics were as legitimate undertakings as the massacre of innocent civilians was and continues to be today. * Our real enemies are not other people. Our real enemies are politicians beginning with our own. * Literature is powerless against propaganda. A ballpoint pen is not mightier than a tank. Writing is a waste of time. # Monday, February 25, 2013 ************************************************ ON BEING SMART AND PROGRESSIVE **************************************************** History is not written but rewritten, and rewritten history is a political tool. * Where politics enter, deceivers and dupes are sure to follow. * We like to believe we are smart and progressive and that it was these two attributes that allowed us to foresee the advent of Christianity as a universal religion. The question is: Why is it that we failed to foresee the Genocide? * Not only did we fail to foresee it, we also ignored the warnings of those who did. “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,” some said; and “the Turks wouldn’t dare!” said others. * One is therefore compelled to conclude that being smart and progressive are not permanent but ephemeral conditions and worse: even the smart can be systematically moronized. * Now then, imagine if you can a political candidate running for office on a platform that says we are or have become a bunch of moronized dupes. My progressive instinct (whatever traces are left in me) tells me such a candidate will have a far better chance to be elected if he runs as a deceiver and treats his supporters as dupes by saying they are the opposite of what they really are– namely smart and progressive. # Tuesday, February 26, 2013 ************************************** HOMO IGNORAMUS ******************************** Turks are brought up to believe they are noble specimens of humanity and it is their patriotic duty to be proud of who they are. * Armenians are brought up to believe they are smart, progressive, civilized, compassionate and so on and so forth and an Armenian who is not proud of his identity must be classified as the lowest scum on earth. * More often than not conflicts and disagreements arise from the clash of two sets of lies as opposed to lies and the truth. The bigger the lies the more ferocious the disagreement. Hence Voltaire’s dictum: “Since it was a religious war there were no survivors.” * The biggest and most universal lie is to speak in the name of God (in theory) and to do the Devil’s work (in practice). * Religious and political leader may disagree on many important issues but they are unanimous in the necessity of brainwashing children and deceiving the masses. * More often than not our choice is not between a lie and the truth but between a lie and a bigger lie. # Wednesday, February 27, 2013 **************************************** THEORY AND PRACTICE ****************************************** God is love. Justice for all. All men are created equal. Generalities, abstractions, and theories are one thing, reality another. * The unspoken aim of all ideologies, belief systems, and political parties is to moronize the masses and turn them into dupes. * Justice favors the mighty. Justice is on the side of top dogs. Justice is with the more competent lawyer or dream team. Justice is for the 1%. Justice is anything but justice. Justice is full of holes. * Marxist theory contradicts Marxist reality. Communism is state capitalism. Or, in the words of a Polish slogan: "In capitalism man exploits man. In communism it’s the other way around." * To the 99% I say: Don’t be duped by the 1%; and it makes no difference if his first name is Serge or Raffi. # Thursday, February 28, 2013 ******************************************* THE MORE THINGS CHANGE… ******************************************* Nothing changes. Life continues to be one damn thing after another. Everybody tells a writer what to write and writers tell everybody what to think. Result: no one profits from the other’s advice. There you have it: a profile of our history and culture. * Our destiny as a nation has been shaped not by statesmen or philosopher-kings but by sultans, shahs, pashas, padishahs, czars, commissars, our own wheeler-dealers, and mass murderers like Abdulhamid II, Talaat and Stalin. The only variable in this equation has been the number of victims per year. * Will anything change in the foreseeable future? Can anyone see the distant glimmer of a light at the end of our endless tunnel? You say we have survived and we will continue to bugger on – or is it buggered on? You may call it survival if you are so inclined; I call it the death of ten thousand cuts. # Saturday, March 02, 2013 ************************************ ON PRIDE ************************ If proud Turks, Armenians, Americans, Germans, Greeks, Russians, Jews, and the rest of mankind were to spend five minutes reflecting on their own failings, blunders, and unsolved problems, they would have a thousand reasons to be humble and not a single reason to be proud. * If you were to say Russians could be proud of their literature, I would say, if we were to take a closer look at the lives of their great writers we would discover that most of them were persecuted, excommunicated, misunderstood, rejected, exiled to Siberia, murdered and on the whole treated the way most other nations, including Armenians, have treated their own great writers and thinkers beginning with Greeks and Socrates. * Why do nations treat their best and brightest abominably? The answer must be, because those in power are almost always hopeless mediocrities and moral midgets whose greatest enemy is excellence. To cover up their status as nonentities they preach, promote, and legitimize pride, that is to say, prejudice and contempt for others and ultimately hatred, war, and massacre. # Saturday, March 02, 2013 ******************************************** ON NATIONALISM ***************************** The first time I heard a Canadian say “We stole the land from the Indians fair and square,” and no one contradicted him, I remember to have thought: “So it is possible to be objective about one’s homeland without being accused of treason!” * One way to judge your degree of objectivity is to consider the distance that exists between your infantile illusions and adult convictions. The greater the distance, the more objective the judgment. * How did Urartu become Armenia? Was it marriage or rape? * An empire without plunder is like an omelet without eggs. * In the 19th century nationalism made perfect sense because it was an ideology that opposed imperialist oppression. * An infallible dupe is a contradiction in terms, and yet, there are so many of them! #Sunday, March 03, 2013 ************************************** HISTORY: WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN **************************************************** When Madoff and his most important clients were identified as Jews, my first thought was: “They trusted Madoff; they did not trust Jesus.” * Has anyone ever written an autobiography in which the stress is not on what was done but on what was not done out of ignorance, stupidity, and fear? Sartre came close with his memoir, WORDS, whose final message is: literature is a useless passion and writers are dreamers who hate to give their infantile illusions. * What happened to Urartu? Until the appearance of the Armens, Urartu was an empire that successfully resisted one of the mightiest military powers in the history of mankind, namely the Assyrians next door. * When the Armens appeared from the West they were either welcomed or tolerated; and that, in retrospect, may have been the worst political blunder Urartu made. * For unlike Urartians, Armens were not warlike and, to compound the felony, their sense of solidarity was deficient. Again unlike Urartians, they were not a single entity with its own clearly defined ethos and character, but a collection of wandering tribes that either refused or could not give up their tribal ways. The rest, as they say, is history. * And that is the kind of unwritten history I would like to read – a text in which the emphasis is on blunders as opposed to victories, be they military, moral, or imaginary. A text moreover in which all facts would be as clearly seen and accessible as traffic signs. # Monday, March 04, 2013 ************************************** ENCOUNTER WITH A PARTISAN ****************************************** One of our elder statesmen came to see me once. During the course of our conversation I noticed two things: (a) he didn’t agree with my definition of words, and (b) he couldn’t stand being contradicted. At one pointed he even raised his voice and lost his temper reminding me of the Chinese dictum “He who loses temper has wrong on his side.” * I never saw him again. Shortly thereafter he died (may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul). * Who among us will dare to suggest that (a) in political action we have been consistently guided more by reason and knowledge and less by emotion and ignorance; and (b) emotion is a more reliable guide to action than objective judgment, knowledge, and understanding? # Tuesday, March 05, 2013 *************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ************************************* Dashiell Hammett on speechifiers: “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.” * Syria today: what happens to a country whose leaders cease to think of themselves as public servants.” * Armenia today: Syria without the bloodshed. * A world without Turks: What a subject for an Armenian science fiction novel! * When God created angels, he also created devils, which may suggest God rates balance or equal opportunity above love, truth, mercy, and justice. * He who trusts liars cannot be an honest man. # Wednesday, March 06, 2013 ****************************************** AS I SEE IT ************************* Individually we have excelled in all fields of human endeavor; collectively we have developed the profile of useful idiots. For 600 years we were faithful servants to Turks and for 60 years little brothers to Russians. * To console ourselves we count the number of tribes, nations, and empires that have ceased to exist. * What matters in writing is to say what everybody thinks but refuses to say it. * No one knows all there is to know or, for that matter, knows enough to form an infallible opinion. * There is an old saying: “If you sit by the river long enough, you will see your enemy’s carcass float by.” The opposite is also true: the carcass may be yours and the fellow by the river your enemy. # Thursday, March 07, 2013 ************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ********************************* Our enemies come in all sizes and shapes but their favorite disguise is as Armenian political leaders. * At the beginning the Turks were few and we many… * I do my utmost to avoid my fellow Armenians. I can deal with them only in my writings which I do at a safe distance. * I became an atheist on the day I realized God was not on my side. * Of how many Armenians I could say, “To contradict is a temptation he cannot resist.” * Isolated voices of dissent have no effect on a brainwashed majority. * Madmen at the top outnumber madmen at the bottom. * We were defeated by our enemies, destroyed by our own leadership. # Friday, March 08, 2013 **************************************** PREDATORS **************************** With the blessing of a bishop, a regular paycheck from a boss or the financial support of a benefactor, any idiot can assert moral, intellectual, and patriotic superiority. There you have it: the profile of an average fund-raiser, Turcocentric ghazetaji, academic, speechifier and sermonizer whose main function is to brainwash children and to convince the masses that they never had it so good because they are in the best of hands. * In the 19th century we were “sheep without a shepherd” (Raffi). Today we are sheep at the mercy of wolves disguised as shepherds. * Our elites are the scum of the earth. # Saturday, March 23, 2013 ************************************* FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ********************************* After we were overrun by barbarians we became barbarians. Some day we may be civilized. But that is only a hope and hope is not a policy. * To be an authentic Armenian means to be constantly engaged in shedding the impurities of alien cultures. * To paraphrase a Mexican saying: “Armenians: so close to Turkey, so far away from God. * “Because we hate to say we don’t know and we don’t understand, we have created gods, angels, devils, and life after death –a veritable Tower of Babel without foundations. * I don’t write for my friends; I write against my enemies beginning with myself. * People tend to be more fanatical when they are wrong. One could go further and say, fanatics are wrong even when they are right. # Sunday, March 10, 2013 **************************************** QUESTION ************************* The average patriotic Armenian sees himself through the eyes of our historians, speechifiers, and sermonizers. I see myself as a member of a perennially divided nation that has suffered a long series of defeats – some of them catastrophic – and continues to be at the mercy of corrupt and incompetent leaders who appear to be more interested in their own powers and privileges than in the welfare of the people. * Now then, gentle reader, tell me who is closer to reality? Who is more objective? Whose judgment is more to be trusted? Finally, who is more patriotic -- the dupe who believes everything he is told or the other, who thinks twice before saying “Yes, sir!” to someone whose number one concern is number one? # Monday, March 11, 2013 *************************************** AS I SEE IT *************************** To be objective means to ask: What if what others (including our enemies) think of us has more merit than what we think of ourselves? * “Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.” PROVERBS, 23:9 * How could I have said or done that? Happy is the man who doesn’t ask that question at least once every day. * The longer I live the greater the distance between my countrymen and myself. * After the break-up of the Soviet Union, we are told, over a million Russians emigrated. Which raises the question: Is Armenia on its way to becoming a no-man’s land? # Tuesday, March 12, 2013 ************************************* SLAVES ******************* A thousand years of subservience to bloodthirsty tyrants has taught us to value pilaf and shish-kebab above ideas. We even have a popular saying to that effect that has been quoted to me on several occasions by my critics: “You cannot cook pilaf with words.” * If you say, “What choice did we have?” I will invite you to reflect on the following words of William Pitt: “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” The creed of slaves! Some words are worth repeating even when they cannot produce a single spoonful of pilaf. * Mankind may be divided into masters and slaves and the ambition of every slave is to be a master. This has been said before but it bears repeating. Moral superiority is a fiction of our collective imagination. * An empty bag cannot stand upright. Likewise, an empty brain cannot be right. # Wednesday, March 13, 2013 **************************************** NOTES & COMMENTS ********************************* Good laws are useless in a country of bad judges. * The truth is never in the lines but between the lines – unseen, unread, ignored. * Lies come in all sizes and shapes – small, white, big… and worst of all, propaganda. * Disagreements are almost always between dupes and opponents of propaganda. * Armenians and Turks agree on nothing because they continue to trust their propagandists more than their dissidents. * We are divided because we see all our hidden failings in the opposition. * I judge my success by my degree of popularity: the less popular I am, the better I feel. * We are not what we could have been. After centuries of subservience we are not even the shadows of what we could have been. # Thursday, March 14, 2013 **************************************** WORTH REMEMBERING ******************************** Two things that we forget at our own peril: (one) a belief system can be as misleading as a big lie; and (two) where there are sheep there will be wolves. * To have all the answers is a luxury only dupes and fanatics (but I repeat myself) can afford. * Our understanding of history is never finished, only interrupted. * There is a good reason why we prefer to speak more about the past and less about the present. We can blame the past on our enemies… # Saturday, March 23, 2013 *********************************** PROBLEMS ******************************************** The source of all our problems, too much history – and bad history at that. * Brainwashed dupes are blind to contradictions. They would be fully justified in pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. * The road to hell is paved with propaganda. * Seeing the invisible and questioning the infallible – that indeed is the aim of literature. * Armenia’s destiny is now in the hands of thieves, liars, and brown-nosers. In short, nothing has changed and it’s business as usual. # Saturday, March 23, 2013 ************************************* SATANIC RELIGIONS ******************************* When Salman Rushdie published his SATANIC VERSES many intellectuals, diplomats and politicians in the West sided with the imams who issued a fatwa (or contract) on him on the grounds that he was guilty of insulting “a great religion.” But there is no such thing as “a great religion.” It is a mistake to judge the magnitude of a religion by the number of its adherents or dupes. One could go further and say the greater the religion the greater the number of its victims, or crimes against humanity, or death of innocent civilians. Think of what’s happening today in Syria. And consider the number of victims of illegal abortions and AIDs in South America and Africa all because the Catholic Church refuses to sanction the use of condoms and legal abortions. # Saturday, March 23, 2013 ************************************* DANGEROUS WORDS ******************************** The two most dangerous words in the world: “I believe.” * Like most people I too was brought up to respect men of faith. I now view them as potential criminals without a conscience. * As a child I too subscribed to many fallacies one of them being all Armenians to be my friends. * Half-truths can be as dangerous as big lies. * Any one who claims to have found the truth is an enemy of mankind. * Once upon a time, for every faithful member of the Communist Party in Soviet Armenia, there was a “chic Bolshevik” in America who believed Russians to be our big brothers. Speaking of such a specimen a friend once said to me: “I don’t blame him. He was sincere in his beliefs.” I know now that to be sincere in one’s beliefs is the same as pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. * If you say “I know many men of faith who have harmed no one,” I say, when we speak of faith and belief systems in a historic context, we mean not the sheep but the wolves; we mean not the meek and the humble who believe what they are told but the policy-makers. * In a historic context the meek and the humble might as well be anonymous, irrelevant, and marginalized to the point of disappearance. # Monday, March 18, 2013 ************************************** A BILLION CATHOLICS ************************************ Q: There are a billion Catholics in the world, and yet you expect me to believe they are all wrong and you are right? A: Why not? There are a billion Muslims in the world and you expect me to believe they are all wrong. Q: You may have a point there… A: Listen, when it comes to belief systems, numbers are meaningless. All religions are minority religions. The overwhelming majority of mankind is neither Catholic nor Muslim but Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, Mormon, and so on. Q: But you are against all of them, right? A: When it comes to belief systems I say to each his own. What I am really against is brainwashing children. I will go further and say I consider brainwashing children if not a crime against humanity than the source of intolerance and countless wars and massacres. # Tuesday, March 19, 2013 **************************************** GREAT IDEAS **************************** Great ideas are conceived by great men, implemented by nameless mediocrities, and perverted by faceless nonentities. That may explain why if a belief system preaches love it ends up practicing hatred; and if it preaches communism it ends up practicing state capitalism. * Sooner or later all belief systems and ideologies degenerate to the point of becoming their own contradictions because where power enters, greed is sure to follow; and when greed becomes the driving force nothing good survives. * Martin Luther was right when he said you don’t need the Pope to go to heaven; all you need is a copy of the Bible. But he was wrong when he failed to predict the advent of televangelists. * And speaking of bloodsuckers: Republicans tell us the 1% are job creators even when recent history tells us they are job killers; and if they create jobs they are not motivated by altruism but by self-interest, that is to say, greed, and where greed enters catastrophe is sure to follow. * I therefore feel justified in saying, if you ever come up with a great idea, mankind maybe better off if you keep it to yourself. # Wednesday, March 20, 2013 ************************************ FOR THE RECORD ****************************** Q: Let me begin by quoting some of your critics. Are you a denialist? A: No! Q: A self-hating Armenian? A: I can’t say I am particularly fond of myself, no. Q: Why not? A: Because like most Armenians I allowed myself to be moronized by morons. Q: Do you hate Armenians? A: Only the shish-kebab and pilaf variants, Turcocentric ghazetajis and their dupes. Q: Turcocentrism: could you define the word for us, please? A: The misconception that all our problems begin and end with Turks. Q: Isn’t the recognition of the Genocide a central issue? A: So is the responsibility of our leadership that promised freedom and our historic lands and delivered the hell of massacres followed by dispersion, division, alienation, and assimilation or bloodless slow-motion genocide. It seems to me, it is dishonest to emphasize their responsibility and cover up our own. Q: How do you explain our survival? A: You call it survival; I call it the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts. Q: So far you have said nothing positive. A: The only positive I can think of is our literature. Notwithstanding the fact that our ablest writers were either systematically slaughtered or silenced for refusing to moronize the people by recycling the propaganda of foreign and domestic apes, they carried on. They are our greatest heroes and our only hope. # Thursday, March 21, 2013 ***************************************** ON GOLDEN AGES ****************************** The trouble with golden ages is that they don’t last and they are not even golden. This is as true of the Greek Golden Age (5th century BC) as it is of our own (5th century AD). As for the American Golden Age: they don’t have one. Their brief history may be divided into two distinct periods: barbarism and neo-barbarism -- (I am now paraphrasing better men than myself). * Both Socrates and Dostoevsky were condemned to death for exercising their fundamental human right of free speech. The execution of Socrates was carried out; Dostoevsky’s wasn’t because seconds before the execution the Czar sent a messenger with a pardon. The experience so traumatized Dostoevsky that he became more Czarist than the Czar. In today’s parlance, he was born again as a member of the Tea Party. * As for our treatment of our own writers: it has been more Ottoman and Stalinist than Armenian. Like the rest of mankind we too appear to be infatuated with our own limitations, prejudices, and ignorance. * American writers are seldom silenced by repressive administrations; they prefer to silence themselves by committing suicide or becoming alcoholics or drug addicts. # Friday, March 22, 2013 ************************************** WAR OF WORDS ******************************** Turcocentrism is a recent misconception or fallacy. It is absent in the works of Baronian and Odian, and more recently in Arlen and Saroyan. There is even a key passage in Saroyan where he states we should feel sorry for Turks. * Turcocentrism is less an ideology and more a tool of propaganda whose ultimate aim is to convince dupes there is nothing wrong with us because we are role models of what a nation should be – united against all enemies foreign and domestic and immune to corruption, therefore morally superior. It further states, whatever problems we have we must ascribe to Turks. If it weren’t for Turks we would now be living in our own Eden happily ever after. * To combat this propaganda line Turks have come up with their own whose aim is to convince their dupes that like all truly civilized and progressive people Turks are against violations of fundamental human rights, except when they do the violating; and they have always been against murdering defenceless civilians except when they do the murdering. # Saturday, March 23, 2013 ************************************** DEAD OR ALIVE? ************************************ The King is dead. Long live the King. Stalin is dead but Stalinists continue to rule. Jesus was crucified but supporters of crucifixion are very much alive. They may no longer use trees, hammers and nails but they exist as surely as racists in post-Civil War America. * Nothing bad ever dies. Moral progress is an illusion. There is no such thing as collective enlightenment. Instead of a single sultan we now have many mini-sultans, and we cannot say “Forgive them, Lord, for they don’t know what they are doing,” because they are too damn smart to plead not guilty by reason of ignorance. #