as i see it

[arabaliozian]

diplomacy

Sunday, April 12, 2009
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THE LANGUAGE OF DIPLOMACY
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According to Talleyrand (see below) “Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.” Elsewhere he gives the following definition of non-intervention: “Mot metaphysique et politique qui signifie a peu pres la meme chose qu'intervention.” (A metaphysical and political word that means approximately the same thing as intervention.)
Had our revolutionaries known what Talleyrand knew, namely that, in diplomacy verbal support means the opposite of military intervention, the Genocide could have been averted.
What a difference a single word makes! No wonder medieval Jewish scribes copying the scriptures were warned a single wrong letter would mean the destruction of the world.
Which is why Turks are against the use of the word genocide: they know it would usher in escalating territorial and financial demands with no end in sight, in addition to legitimizing Kurdish territorial claims.
*
Talleyrand (1754-1838) maybe said to have been the French Mikoyan. No matter who was at the top he got along with him. He knew how to compromise, adapt, and survive. Like Mikoyan he was educated in a seminary and it was said of him (as it could have been said of Mikoyan): “He would sell his soul for money, and he would be right for he would be exchanging dung for gold.”
#
Monday, April 13, 2009
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MY FAVORITE AMERICAN WRITER
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It was in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones that I first “met” Gandhi, and it was in Gandhi's writings that I first read about Thoreau. I dare anyone to read him (Thoreau) and not be infatuated by his down-to-earth honesty and style that does not take any prisoners.
*
On politicians: “Office-seekers and speech-makers who do not so much as lay an honest egg.”
*
On patriotism: “The remembrance of my country spoils my walk.”
*
On society: “Pigs in a littler which lie close together to keep each other warm.”
*
On wealth: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
*
On his fellow men: “The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.”
*
On his choice of career: “I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil.”
#
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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ON BLUNDERS
******************
Since the number of blunders is infinite and man's capacity to commit them without limit, both the young and the old, the experienced and the inexperienced, the careful and the careless, and the wise and the fool are destined to commit an equal number of them.
*
MAN AND GOD
**************************
If to believe in God were the same as believing in men who speak in His name, a suicidal terrorist would qualify as a man of faith instead of a brainwashed fanatic and a brainless dupe.
*
THE GOOD AND THE BAD
*************************************
In the presence of a bad man I am diminished. In the presence of a good man I am born again.
*
ON BEING HONEST
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One of the benefits of being honest is to be shunned by crooks.
*
ON ECOLOGY
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God is not an ecologist. He exterminated dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, the mammoth, and countless other species.
#
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
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DRAGON'S TEETH
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“The Passage du Commerce Saint-André” by Balthus is no doubt one of the most mysterious paintings by one of the most enigmatic modern painters. The old man in it is identified by Balthus himself as an Armenian. See BALTHUS: A BIOGRAPHY by Nicholas Fox Weber (New York, 1999), page 27.
I am reminded of the words of a much traveled Dutch doctor who once told me: “No matter where you go, you will run into an Armenian.”
If Talaat were alive today he would be willing to concede that deporting Armenians was a blunder because it amounted to sowing dragon's teeth.
*
In DICTIONARY OF LITERARY AND THEMATIC TERMS by Edward Quinn (New York, 2000), there is an entry on “naturalism,” with a single bibliographic source, Y.H. Krikorian's NATURALISM AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT (1944).
*
ON THE ART OF WRITING
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Reduce a page into a single line.
*
ON THE ART OF LIVING
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“Divorce reason and marry booze.” This according to Omar Khayyam.
*
ACCORDING TO HORACE
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“Poems written by water-drinkers have a short lifespan.”
*
ON LITERARY IMMORTALITY
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It lasts as long as the blink of an eye when measured in cosmic time.
*
MORE WORDS OF WISDOM
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Viscount Samuel: “It is those who strive to make things better who save them from becoming worse.”
*
The TALMUD: “Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend's friend has another friend: be discreet.”
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Thursday, April 16, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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You may have noticed that, when an intelligent man behaves stupidly, the reasons he invents to justify his conduct will be even more stupid.
*
A fanatic will always have more enemies than a moderate because he will arouse hostility among fanatics in the opposite camp as well as moderates in his own.
*
Even when our predictions come true they do so in such an unexpected manner or context that their accuracy becomes irrelevant.
*
It is not at all unusual for our chauvinists to preach Armenian civilization and to practice Ottoman barbarism.
*
Where a part-time janitor makes more money than a full-time writer, there will be an abundance of trashy propaganda and a total absence of ideas.
*
In all political movements, lust for power is invariably hidden behind noble slogans: the greater the lust, the nobler the slogans.
*
The nobler the idea or ideology, the more crooks it will attract.
#
Friday, April 17, 2009
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CONTEMPT
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A couple of weeks ago I was exposed to a long televised lecture on solidarity and the primacy of Etchmiadzin by a former members of the Communist Party from the Homeland, that is to say, a full-time professional divider and atheist.
Because as an orphan during World War I my mother was brought up as a Catholic by nuns, my schoolmates made fun of me and treated me as a lesser Armenian, perhaps even a coward and a renegade, all because, it seems, during the massacres, when Turkish soldiers came to arrest Armenians, the Catholics would say, “I am not an Armenian, I am a Catholic.”
A loud-mouth taxi-driver uncle of mine held me in visible contempt and even ridicule because I dared to have ambitions beyond his attainments.
The secretary of a so-called cultural foundation, himself a writer and teacher, once screamed at me: “How dare you criticize us? Just who the hell do you think you are?”
In recounting these very few but representative anecdotes, my aim here is not to preach mutual respect – that would be highly premature – but to provide an objective assessment of our present situation that may lead to an enhanced awareness of where we stand as a community and as a nation.
To those who tell me I write about our problems but fail to provide solutions, I add the following solutions to this particular problem: If you want to be loved, don't make yourself hateful; and if you want to be thought of as a smart Armenian, don't behave like a damn fool.
#
Saturday, April 18, 2009
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MY FAVORITE BIBLICAL ONE-LINERS
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“Where there is no vision the people perish.”
*
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
*
“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
*
ON CONTRADICTIONS
*************************************
There are two kinds of contradictions: (one) the kind that leads to compromise and synthesis, and (two) the dead-end, dogmatic, or Armenian kind that arrests progress because reason is replaced with ego. Result: no vision, a house divided, death and destruction – that is, the Kingdom of the Devil.
*
HEADLINE
*******************************
“I am proud of my Armenian ass,” reads the headline of an article about an attractive wench in one of our weeklies. This vulgar boast is preferable to me to still another headline by one of our Turcocentric ghazetajis.
*
QUESTION
**************************
What is the difference between pride in one's ass and pride in one's ego?
*
ANSWER
***********************
One way to sum up the plot of Homer's ILIAD is to say it is about a war of egos over the abduction of an ass that resulted in the destruction of Troy and the death of countless “esh nahadags.” Because he was blind, Homer could not see this aspect of his story. As a result, he glorified militarism and heroism.
#

[arabaliozian]

ideas

Sunday, April 19, 2009
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ON RECEIVED IDEAS
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At a time when I didn't know who Shakespeare was, I heard an adult say, “HAMLET is Shakespeare's greatest play.” I immediately adopted that line as dogma and repeated it whenever Shakespeare was mentioned, until I heard someone say, “I prefer MACBETH.”
If all ideas are open to contradiction, received ideas are doubly so.
“Notwithstanding what the Good Book says about divided houses,” a reader tells me, “there are benefits to being divided. If one part is defeated and perishes, the other survives. Perhaps that's the secret of our survival."
Maybe so, but what kind of life is it whose sole aim is survival? No doubt to survive is better than the alternative, but I believe, and I hope you will agree with me when I say, there are greater goals in a nation's life than mere survival.
Such as?
Such as creating a new civilization.
We did that once.
Which means we can do it again.
And how do we do that?
We begin by questioning the validity of all received ideas, one of them being that since to endure is one of our greatest achievements, we can now relax and say “yes” to whatever we are told by our “betters,” who on closer inspection may well be nothing of the kind. They may even be our worst!
#
Monday, April 20, 2009
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REFLECTIONS
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The fascist mind comes in two parts: the ideological and the criminal; and the function of the ideological is to camouflage the criminal.
*
Politicians who profess family values see nothing morally inconsistent in screwing the nation.
*
Because our enemies won, we were not allowed to name our traitors.
*
Like most Armenians, I have followed many controversies in our media, and I have witnessed many more, but I have at no time heard an Armenian say: "I was wrong!" or, even better, "I was dead wrong because I placed my own ego, interests, family, political party, church, or tribe above the interests of the nation."
*
A power structure that has all the answers will view questions as subversive.
*
A woman raising her skirt in public will attract a bigger audience than a writer spilling his guts out.
*
At one end of the spectrum we have decent human beings who happen to be Armenian, and at the other, carcinogenic agents who wrap themselves up in the flag in order to hide their true colors.
#
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
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VARIATIONS ON A FAMILIAR THEME
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We are told sex and violence in movies lower the moral standards of a nation. What we are not told is that intolerance in organized religions and ideologies, in addition to lowering moral standards, it claims many more innocent victims. Intolerance also divides a nation thus making it more vulnerable to rape and massacre (of the “red” as well as the “white” variants). Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating for more sex and violence in movies. What I am doing is exposing the double-talk of religious and political leaders who speak with a forked tongue and are believed by dupes.
*
The guiding principle of all men at the top is, if the truth will harm your power, prestige, and integrity, it's okay to lie your head off. But the problem with lies is that they invariably create a chain reaction of more lies until the truth is buried beneath them like a needle in a haystack. Case in point: If the Turks are bloodthirsty savages, why were we their most faithful subjects for six hundred years? And if we are smart and they are dumb, why is it that it took us six centuries to unmask them? And even more to the point: if they are pathological liars and we speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, why are we against dissent and free speech? What are we afraid of? And if we have produced more heroes per capital than any other nation on earth, allow me to pose the following question: What could be more cowardly than fear of free speech?
#
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
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WHY HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
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History repeats itself for the simple reason that the men at the top are bastards and the people are as gullible as children. Thoreau was right when he said Egypt would have been better off if the people had drowned the pharaohs in the Nile like dogs instead of building pyramids for them; and Shaw was also right when he said we would have no more wars if soldiers took aim and shot not at the enemy but at their own sergeants. One reason he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Soviets is that Russian soldiers in World War I did exactly that.
*
Homer was dead wrong when he decided not to quote Greeks who said they resented killing and dying in defense of the non-existent honor of a slut who happened to be the wife of an impotent fool.
*
I once heard one of our notorious bloodsuckers say, if he were to work for an odar organization, he would make twice as much. In nature, parasites do their work in silence; among us, they demand our gratitude.
*
Among my readers, I have critics (which is understandable), enemies (which is less so), and mortal enemies (whose hatred of me is so visceral that it might as well be Ottoman).
#

[arabaliozian]

shrinks

Thursday, April 23, 2009
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ON SHRINKS
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After the composition of his First Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff is said to have experienced a crisis during which he became convinced he had lost his creative impetus permanently. But after seeing a psychiatrist he recovered his creativity and composed his Second Piano Concerto, or so we are told by his biographers. What we are not told is that if he had not seen a shrink, maybe he would have composed nine symphonies. Marlon Brando was under constant psychiatric care and instead of getting better, he got worse, in addition to making an unholy mess of his private life and his physique. Neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky were ever treated by a shrink, and my guess is, their problems were worse than Rachmaninoff's and Brando's combined.
*
Once upon a time, in the Middle Ages, we were celebrated for being good fighters. We still are, but only against the wrong enemy: ourselves.
*
I write for two totally non-literary reasons: to fight boredom and to acquire friends; and with every book I have published, I have acquired a new friend; also (alas!) twenty-two enemies.
*
There is no evidence to suggest that the average Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or Jew is a better human being than the average agnostic or atheist. Which amounts to saying: all organized religions are more or less alike and very often they succeed only in legitimizing prejudice, promoting a false sense of moral superiority, and dehumanizing a fraction of mankind with such labels as pagans, heretics, infidels or giaours.
#
Friday, April 24, 2009
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ARMENIAN MANIFESTO
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What choice did we have under the Ottomans and the Soviets?
Wrong question.
When we had a choice, we failed to present a united front to the enemy.
And what made our enemies invincible was their solidarity.
Let's not lose sight of that fundamental fact, which our dividers do their utmost to cover up in order to appear
(a) to be blameless, and
(b) to continue dividing us.
Blameless?
Why do you think General Antranik wanted to see them hanged from the nearest tree?
Why do you think Zarian called them “cannibals”?
And please,don't tell me our sermonizers, speechifiers, and Turcocentric ghazetajis know better than Zarian, the General, and Charents, whose final “Message” mentions neither Turks nor Russians.
Let's not have any illusions about our men at the top, who like Wall Street chief executive officers, care more about their powers and privileges than the welfare of the nation. Which is why, at the risk of repeating myself, I will say again:
Armenians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your dividers.
#
Saturday, April 25, 2009
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MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS
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It is not easy writing for readers who already know everything they need to know, even if what they really know happens to be recycled mumbo jumbo.
*
Work hard, but not too hard: you may be digging your own grave.
*
Authority thrives on ignorance. Where there are leaders (as opposed to public servants) there will be spin doctors, cover-up artists, an uninformed community, and dupes.
*
From nature’s point of view, chastity is a far more dangerous sexual perversion than all the others combined.
*
Venetian saying: "The priest’s friend loses his faith, the doctor’s his health, the lawyer’s his fortune."
*
Schopenhauer: "We pay an attention to the opinion of others which is out of all proportion to its value."
*
When midgets are in charge, giants become outlaws.
#
================================================== ====================
Ara Baliozian reads the Armenians, yo’
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by Christopher Atamian
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Published: Saturday April 18, 2009

"Lying is done with words and also *silence." -Adrienne Rich

The poetic genre known as the aphorism goes back at least to Hippocrates, in 5th-century B.C.E. Greece. The word aphorism derives from the Greek aphorismos and denotes an original and easily remembered thought, expression, or witticism. Popular aphorists of the past include Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and Erasmus. Armenians have a practitioner of this rarefied art as well, and he goes by the name of Ara Baliozian.

The author of some 20 books of prose, poetry, and plays, as well as translations of Armenian writers such as Zabel Yessayan and Kostan Zarian, Baliozian was born in Athens, attended the now-*defunct College Moorat-Raphael in Venice, and currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario. His newest work, a slim volume (56 pages) titled Pertinentes Impertinences, is a series of reflections and aphorisms in French translated from English by Denis Donikian, Mireille *Besnilian, and Dalita Roger, and published last year by Arvesd Aysor in Yerevan.

Baliozian writes about a wide range of topics and people, though he seems particularly at home when perhaps justifiably lambasting Armenian politicians and leaders. Baliozian takes no prisoners - intellectual or otherwise. This hasn't necessarily made him the most popular writer in the Armenian diaspora, though an increasing number of people now read his work with passion and a deep-seated sense of appreciation for his daring to say what so many others think. Whether Baliozian's views represent those of an enlightened minority or of a silent majority, his work should be read by every Armenian, especially when they are young and in their formative stages, as a means of opening their minds to different ideas and ways of thinking about their culture.

In a sense, Baliozian is heir to the Armenian writers before him who dared to analyze and constructively criticize Armenian society. The Armenian mind that Baliozian deconstructs so ably is a direct descendant of the mentality that Hagop Oshagan describes in novels such as Mnatsortats and Haji Murad and that Constantinopolitan writers such as Krikor Zohrab wrote about before the Catastrophe of 1915. "If you want to understand Armenians," Baliozian writes, "don't read their nationalist historians; read instead a history of Armenian literature. The only reason we don't burn writers the way Indians burn widows is that we prefer to ignore them, which amounts to burying them alive." Baliozian on the sacred cows of Armenian culture: "Because I refuse to share their obsession with massacres and money, they call me negative. One way to be positive in their eyes is to adopt ‘Yes, sir!' as a mantra.'" (Both quoted from baliozian.blogspot.com. All quotes that follow are from Pertinentes Impertinences.)

Baliozian's oeuvre is in point of fact rather subversive. He uses repetition to his advantage and hammers away at his iconoclastic thoughts and ideas in the same way that the Armenian press and powers that be have drilled their own propaganda into Armenian minds and hearts for centuries now. It's a welcome counterbalance. While no one would deny, for example, the terrible suffering that successive Ottoman and Turkish governments have inflicted on Armenians and on the Armenian psyche, Baliozian is quick to confront the type of knee-jerk anti-Turkism that portrays Turks as somehow more cruel or barbaric by nature than others: "Our magazines regularly publish so many anti-Turkish commentaries that if our editors were to define what it means to be Armenian, I would imagine they would define it as hating Turks. And to think that these are the exact same people who criticize me under the pretext that I am a repetitive pessimist." (p. 18)

Baliozian's writing is also an intelligent and sometimes humorous call to introspection and societal self-criticism: "An Armenian-American composer admitted to me one day: ‘I hope that Armenians won't support me. I'd be grateful if they spared me their hostility.'" (p. 49) When analyzing the current Armenian craze for all things Gorky, Baliozian recalls the following: "Speaking of Arshile Gorky, one of our elder statesmen once told me: ‘Not a single Armenian bought a painting from Gorky while he was alive.'?" (p. 49)

The author is at his most incisive when taking on taboos in Armenian intellectual history and commenting on the behavior of certain contemporary leaders: "Our charlatans tell us that our patrons, bishops, and do-gooders know better than we do because they speak in the name of God and Capital. And when God and Capital speak, the scribblers are meant to shut their mouths and listen. Otherwise their mouths must be shut for them, that is to say, cut their tongues cut out, in good old Ottoman fashion." (p. 27)

There is isn't much to criticize about Pertinentes Impertinences apart from the fact that Baliozian, perhaps weary of repeating the same mantras that go unheeded, may indeed at times begin to sound repetitive. Baliozian's observations, however, are about as close as any contemporary Armenian writer comes to getting at the truth of things. And as the commonplace aphorism states, the truth will set you free. A fitting coda to this piece and to Baliozian's work comes from Kingsley Amis, whom the author quotes as saying: "If you don't disturb anybody with what you write, then I think there's no point in writing." (p. 47)

All (re)-translations of Baliozian's writing from French to English were made by Christopher Atamian.

[arabaliozian]

elegy

Sunday, April 26, 2009
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ELEGY
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An American chief executive officer – young, handsome, healthy, fabulously wealthy – has committed suicide. One down, ninety-nine to go.
*
Two American governors, Spitzer and Blogojevich, were caught red-handed. One resigned, the other impeached. But to me, the greater scandal is the fact that several of Obama's financial advisers are former Wall Street chief executive officers. If it takes one to catch one, how come no one has been caught yet? Bernie Madoff? If he is in jail today it's because he confessed. And then there are the senators who deny the reality of the Genocide not because they are convinced that to be the truth but because they are being handsomely compensated by Turkish lobbyists.
*
The rich are swine. Even as I curse my fate, I thank God for making me poor.
*
What is the penalty for being wrong? If nothing, anyone can say anything he wants.
*
To be easily satisfied with one’s own arguments is an unmistakable symptom of advanced cretinism.
#
Monday, April 27, 2009
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LIVE AND LEARN
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When it comes to learning about oneself, friends are useless, enemies more valuable.
*
Repeating oneself and being consistently negative are not mortal sins; being dishonest is.
*
A hundred years ago our political leaders were naïve daydreamers. Today they are – or rather they think they are – pragmatic operators. I have trouble deciding which is worse: being at the mercy of fools, or idiots who think they are smart?
*
Let others speak of the American dream, we can speak only of the Armenian nightmare.
*
What kind of loving Father is He that needs to be constantly reminded to “give us this day our daily bread,” after which He lets millions die of malnutrition and starvation.
*
You begin to learn only after you unlearn what you have been taught. Likewise, you begin to write only after you give up all literary ambitions.
*
I am grateful to readers who don't think highly of me. The temptation to believe sycophants can be overwhelming.
*
When experts disagree, prejudice casts the deciding vote.
*
Because the prodigal son returned, the fatted calf was butchered. Good news for the guilty son, bad news for the innocent calf. Why couldn't they have a vegetarian feast?
#
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
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FEEDBACK
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Do not bother reading what follows because I have said it before, and many others have said it before me.
*
Some readers tell me I make them laugh. Others say I depress them. I suggest it's not me they are talking about but our reality.
*
I wish I were a comedian. The ability to make people laugh at themselves I consider one of the rarest of all gifts.
*
We all have our share of failings, limitations, and blind spots. In religious parlance, we are all sinners, including saints. That's Naregatsi's message, in case you are not willing to take my word for it. With one difference. Some of us pretend otherwise, and they happen to be the worst, and it's their awareness of their condition that makes them compensate by assuming a holier-than-thou stance.
*
To my critics I say, criticize, if you must, the incompetence of our political leaders, the values of our merchants, the dogmas of our bishops, and the double-talk of our superpatriotic bloodsuckers. Do not shoot our critics, who like piano players in western saloons, are doing their best.
*
AMERICANISMS
**********************************
“What's your racket?”
“I am not a crook.”
“Do bears shit in the forest?”
“Does the Pope speak Latin?”
And the other day in a movie:
“Does the Pope shit in the forest?”
#
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
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SKELETONS IN THE CUPBOARD
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*********************************************
FIRST NATION?
*********************
Love our enemies?
We can't even stop hating one another.
*
EITHER / OR?
****************************
“Do you think of yourself as a success or a failure?”
Very much like the overwhelming majority of my fellow men, I think of myself as a working stiff.
*
MIRACLES
*************************
There are two kinds of miracles:
(one) useless – like walking on water; and
(two) dangerous – like promoting alcoholism by turning water into wine.
*
MEMOIRS
*********************
One reason I went into writing is that I hate working for nonentities who expect you to behave like a lesser nonentity – and all for minimum wage. I know now that writing for Armenians is no different – minus the minimum wage, of course.
*
WINNERS AND LOSERS
***********************************
“Just because you are a loser, it doesn't follow so is the nation. Stop projecting!”
I think of myself as someone who speaks of reality in an environment dominated by propagandists who speak of fantasy, which allows them to see moral victory in military defeat, and a Higher Truth in a Big Lie.
#

[arabaliozian]

intellectuals

Thursday, April 30, 2009
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ON INTELLECTUALS
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Intellectuals are a nuisance to the rich and parasites to the poor. But their real enemies are neither the poor nor the rich but intellectuals.
*
ON TURCOCENTRISM
**********************************
The unspoken message of our Turcocentric ghazetajis seems to be, the keys to the Gates of Heaven will be ours only after we do to them what they did to us. These ghazetajis are the true offspring of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire who promised heaven and delivered hell.
*
ENEMIES
**********************
We are our greatest enemies. I can prove this by saying I have done more harm to myself than all my enemies combined.
*
CRITICS
************************
Socrates and Jesus had them, and as everyone knows by now, saints have been the most consistently and universally abused people on earth.
*
ON AUTHORITY
**********************
Respect for authority is the source of all evil.
*
ON REVOLUTION
**********************************
Revolutions are less about justice or the distribution of wealth, and more about the distribution of power, and power will be abused regardless of who is at the top. For the slave, it makes no difference if his master is Turk or Armenian.
#
Friday, May 1, 2009
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SIGNS
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Everything is as it should be. I never had it so good. The surest warnings of an impending catastrophe.
*
You say I always see the dark side of things. I say someone has to. Paranoiacs have enemies too. And who said pessimists are always wrong?
*
You cannot hide your ignorance. It is your most transparent possession.
*
When an Armenian defeats another Armenian, it is the nation that loses.
*
A lie is like a deadly virus. Left unattended it will poison and kill its promoter as well as his dupes, families as well as communities, tribes as well as nations, empires as well as civilizations.
*
In democracies, dissidents like Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell were (and still are) universally respected, sometimes even Nobelized. We all know what happened to dissidents in the USSR. I venture to suggest, we Armenians (judging by the number of writers we have betrayed, silenced, starved and driven to suicide) are more like Stalinists than the British.
#
Friday, May 1, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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We all make mistakes, especially the infallible.
*
The brainwashed never question their infallibility.
*
The brainwashed cannot speak for themselves, neither can they think, they can only follow orders, or, like monkeys, dance to the tune of an invisible organ-grinder.
*
The 5th century AD was our Golden Age, the 20th century our Stone Age.
*
When the old fight, it is the young who die.
When the rich fight, it is the poor who die.
If it were up to the old and the rich to do the dying,
we would have no more wars.
*
Where there is an Armenian church there will also be a wealthy merchant with a guilty conscience.
#

[arabaliozian]

literature

Sunday, May 3, 2009
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WHAT IS LITERATURE?
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There is no consensus on the subject. Some say the function of literature is to understand reality. Others, to introduce or enhance moral standards. To educate, explain, and instruct. To fight corruption and injustice. To expose prejudices. To see beauty and eternity in a blade of grass.
Dissidents believe the function of literature is to question authority. Those in authority disagree: they say writers should behave like a chorus singing hymns to their infallibility, greatness, integrity, vision, and glory.
It has also been said what literature does is to make "sh*t look like rose jam" (Jean Genet).
Speaking for myself, I believe the first and most important function of literature is not to bore the reader.
And speaking of sh*t and rose jam: I am reminded of Saroyan defending his one-dimensional depiction of Armenian characters in his fiction by saying he had only “stylized” them -- probably meaning that he had done to Armenians what Leonardo had done to Mona Lisa, or what Balthus had done to his street scenes: that is to say, introduced something that is not present in reality.
*
Monday, May 4, 2009
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AMERICANS AND GENOCIDE
*************************************
Hugo Chavez: “Columbus was the commander of an invasion that resulted in the greatest genocide the world has ever known.”
Now you know why American presidents promise but they hesitate to deliver. All the Turks have to do is tell them, “Armenians are our Indians.”
*
A WOMAN ON WOMEN
***********************************
Colette on feminists: “I would put them all in a harem.”
*
CIORAN ON THE FRENCH
**************************************
“They prefer an elegant lie to a clumsily expressed truth.”
*
ON SACRED COWS
*********************************
The only thing they are good for is shish kebab.
#
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
*****************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
*************************************
To understand how easy it is to be wrong, all I have to do is review my past, and I don't mean my distant past. I mean yesterday.
*
There is more to being Armenian than hating Turks and lamenting our martyrs. Looking backward is useful only if we learn from our blunders. What have we learned so far?
Life isn't fair?
Big fish eat small fish?
Politicians speak with a forked tongue?
But then, are we fair to one another?
Are our big fish vegetarian?
Are our politicians honest?
Don't make me laugh.
*
Truth may well be beyond our reach, but honesty is not.
#
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
*****************************************
THE INSULTED AND THE INJURED
**************************************************
One of the most astonishing things about human nature, Dostoevsky tells us, is that it can get used to anything.
For a thousand years we were ruled by tribal kings, princes, and nakharars. For six hundred years we were the obedient subjects of sultans and more recently of ruthless commissars. Today we find ourselves at the mercy of empty suits and bearded charlatans who rule by delivering empty verbiage and whose role models are not statesmen or men of faith but “crocodiles” (Chekhov). And whenever someone takes it upon himself to point this out, he is either starved or silenced permanently. And here I could make a long list of names from Abovian (who committed suicide) to Zarian (who for all practical purposes was buried alive).
Have I said this before? Why shouldn't I say it again, if what I and many others before me have said has so far failed to register on our collective consciousness?
“I can't write novels like Dostoevsky,” Oshagan is quoted as having said, “because we Armenians don't have Dostoevskian characters.” But what is the history of our nation with all its unspeakable betrayals, degradations, and suffering if not a character straight out of Dostoevsky?
#

[arabaliozian]

smile

Thursday, May 7, 2009
*****************************************
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT
OUR RULING CLASSES
**************************************************
We may not have an aristocracy or an elite, but we have always had a ruling class or classes, even if more often than not they were not our real rulers but “their” puppets – and by “their” I mean our masters and oppressors, that is to say, the enemy.
We have always had dissidents too, even in our Golden Age (5th century AD), even if their word didn't carry much weight, and whenever not silenced by the likes of Talaat and Stalin, they were alienated by our “puppets” and ignored by the people.
Consider our situation today: our ruling classes have the power and the money. They control our churches, community centers, schools, and the press. They run bureaucracies. They subsidize the publication of textbooks which legitimize and promote their own version of the past that is as objective and honest as any state-sponsored version of the past taught in, say, Turkish or even American educational institutions.
What has been the contribution of our dissidents in our context? The same as that of the people – only victims.
There is an American political saying, “Let the best man win.” In our case the chances are the winner will be “the best man” only for the enemy and the worst for the rest of us. This may explain why our dissidents, very much like the people, have been and continue to be perennial losers.
#
Friday, May 8, 2009
*****************************************
WHAT IF I AM WRONG?
**************************************************
A question that comes up again and again is:
“What would you have done in their place?”
One way to answer that question is by saying I am more worried about what I should be doing in my place: Should I join them in covering up their blunders and make a comfortable living, as most of my former friends and academics are doing? Or state honestly what I think, even if it means living in solitary confinement in my self-imposed gulag?
QUESTION: What if you are wrong?
ANSWER: There is always that possibility, of course. To say otherwise would be a declaration of infallibility, which, by the way, is what they imply when they blame all our misfortunes on others. Besides, I'd much rather be wrong as an honest man than right as a rascal. But assuming I am wrong: What's the harm done? I can always be corrected, insulted, silenced...and I have been -- insulted and silenced more often than corrected. But when the leadership is wrong the result may well be either a “red” or a “white” massacre, that is, alienation and assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus from the Homeland.
#
Saturday, May 9, 2009
*****************************************
GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER
**************************************************
Sex was a taboo subject in the Ottoman Empire but the Sultan could have as many as a thousand houris in his hourihouse. As for our own mini-sultans: after leading the nation to defeat, oppression, and massacre, they dare to speechify and sermonize on patriotism to the rest of us.
*
How do I know my version of the story to be the only true one? I don't. But unless proven otherwise, I shall continue to assert what I understand to be an honest and objective assessment of our situation.
*
Am I saying anyone who disagrees with me is dishonest? No! He could also be an ignoramus.
*
Another word for lamentation for the sake of lamentation is self-pity, and the aim of self-pity is to invite others to pity us. If you don't believe me, listen to Zohrab: “One should confront the misfortunes of life not with despair and dejection but in the same way that one confronts the sudden arrival of an unwelcome guest – with a smiling face. We Armenians should sing and laugh more often in order to develop that degree of emotional health and intellectual balance without which we can achieve very little in this world. A nation that is given to lamentation will never amount to anything.”
*
And here is Zohrab again on propaganda: “My code of ethics: between the real and the imaginary, choose the real; between truth and falsehood, choose truth, at all times, everywhere.”
#

[arabaliozian]

mart

Sunday, May 10, 2009
*****************************************
EXPLANATIONS
**************************************************
There is a type of liar who after lying repeatedly ends up believing in his own lies.
That's one way to explain the popularity of sermonizers and speechifiers.
*
Avedik Issahakian: “A wealthy man is nothing but a thief who has not yet been caught.” Perhaps because he does his thieving in a land whose legislators are themselves thieves.
*
Puzant Granian: “We have many national benefactors but not a single national writer.” That may be because benefactors prefer lies and flattery – that is to say, speechifiers, sermonizers, and brown-nosers.
*
Writers like Siamanto and Totovents could not stand life in America and returned to Istanbul under Talaat and to Yerevan under Stalin respectively only to be arrested and slaughtered, probably because they found the prospect of being dependent on the charity of swine worse than death.
*
The overwhelming majority of our writers agree in telling us that if we want to get at the roots of our misfortunes we must look within and that the blame-game is a Big Lie. Which means, our Turcocentric ghazetajis are no better than cretins whose sole aim in life is to moronize the people -- not a particularly demanding enterprise when dealing with a nation that has been brutalized by millennial oppression by some of the most ruthless and bloodthirsty regimes in the history of the world.
#
Monday, May 11, 2009
*****************************************
OF CABBAGES AND KINGS
**************************************************
We should treat Turks as friends if only because it is easier to negotiate with friends than with enemies. If so far we have failed to do that it may be because we cannot even treat our brothers as friends. When was the last time an Armenian trusted another Armenian?
*
According to Lobo Antunes, a celebrated contemporary Portuguese writer, the only way to write is “to imagine yourself naked, smelling of formaldehyde, flat on your back in a marble tub, waiting for them to cut open your ribs with a huge pair of scissors.”
A man after my own heart.
I too believe to write any other way is to recycle propaganda.
*
If you play poker with a king and you win his kingdom, don't be surprised if he says, “Off with his head!”
*
I envy the rich for being in a position to deliver the line, “Talk to my lawyer!”
*
And speaking of the rich: It is said of one of our national benefactors that whenever someone approached him directly with a request for financial support, he would say, “Talk to my people.”
*
Self-deception is escape from reality, and those who deceive themselves might as well be open invitations to deceivers.
#
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
*****************************************
MART BIDI CH'ELLANK
**************************************************
Do you want to understand Turks? Think of an Armenian with power.
*
The ideal dupe is someone who has been brought up to believe he is smart, he is progressive, and he is beyond criticism. Whereas a really smart person is more like Socrates who knew more than anyone else but who pretended to know nothing.
*
If I repeat myself it may be because I hope to have better luck with the next generation. Call me an optimist. In this line of work you have to be a little crazy to carry on.
*
What is the difference between literature and trash? The trash gets printed.
*
Our brainwashed dupes today are more pro-establishment than our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, in the same way that our oligarchs in the Homeland are more capitalist than Wall Street.
#
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
*****************************************
MART BIDI CH'ELLANK / II
**************************************************
Our struggle, our real struggle, is not against men but against an abstraction that is lighter than a feather but weighs on us like a mountain: our history.
Millennial oppression has so thoroughly dehumanized us that we can no longer act, we can only react blindly, and whenever we react blindly we do so not only against our own interests but also against reason itself.
Consider our genocide as a case in point: we didn't have to predict it in order to take evasive action. All we had to do is listen to the countless warnings of foreign observers, missionaries, and our own insiders within the Ottoman administration.
And consider what's happening today: our literature, our religion, and reason itself are unanimous in warning us that the only way to divide a house is by tearing it down. And yet...(the two saddest words in the English language, it has been said) we continue to waste millions by constructing two schools, two houses of worship, and two community centers when one would be not only sufficient but also the right thing to do.
We all know what happens to the blind leading the blind, let alone to the blind, deaf, and dumb leading the blind, deaf, and dumb who have somehow managed to convince themselves that not only they are smarter than anyone else but also that God Almighty Himself is on their side.
#

[arabaliozian]

mart/iii

Thursday, May 14, 2009
*****************************************
MART BIDI CH'ELLANK / III
**************************************************
To say, “We don't need critics, we need solutions,” is another way of saying, we don't give a damn about our literature and its central message.
To self-assessed enlightened readers who like to say, “Why should I waste my time with second-raters when I can read Plato, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky?” I say, our writers may indeed be second-raters compared to the three gentlemen mentioned above, but they have come up with first-rate solutions.
*
Naregatsi's solution paraphrased: “If you want to understand the source of your problems, look within, examine your conscience, analyze yourself.” It follows, the blame-game of our Turcocentric ghazetajis and speechifiers is a sham if only because after a century of verbiage and venom, it has failed to resurrect a single victim or annex a single square inch of soil. But even if some day in the near or distant future we are successful in getting an apology, a billion dollars, and our historic lands, problems like corruption and incompetence in high places, and such iniquities as destitution, prostitution, alienation, and assimilation will not go away.
*
The solution of writers from Yeghishé (5th century AD) to Charents (20th century) paraphrased: “Where dividers enter, death follows.”
*
If I repeat myself it may be because sometimes with the deaf I don't have a choice. If on the other hand, you say “Naregatsi, Yeghishé, and Charents are dead men and their solutions are as defunct as they are. We need new thinking, we need creative brains.” I say, if by new solutions you mean verbal formulas like abracadabra, you will never find them. And if by creative thinking you mean a messiah, you are barking up the wrong tree because no one in his right mind will volunteer to be crucified by brainless dupes.
#
Friday, May 15, 2009
*******************************
OUTSIDERS
**************************************************
What has been the influence of Armenian literature on Armenian history?
That's an easy question with an obvious answer:
Nothing, zero, nada, nil, vochinch.
What has been the influence of Socrates on Greek history?
Same answer.
Socrates influenced only other philosophers and no one else. After Socrates, Greek history went into a steady decline never to recover its former glory.
What has been the influence of Christianity on the West?
The destruction of classical cultures, the introduction of dogmatism, intolerance, the Dark Ages, twenty centuries of internecine wars and slaughter, the Crusades, persecution of heretics, the Inquisition, and more recently, televangelists and a child-molesting clergy – that is to say, moral bankruptcy.
Christianity may have influenced artists like Michelangelo, thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas, composers like J.S. Bach, and poets like Dante, but not kings, politicians, and in general those in charge of human affairs, who went about their business as if Christ had never been born.
What am I driving at?
Oh! nothing much. Only this: men are swine who have no use for common sense and decency. Keep that in mind and you will have no more unanswered questions.
Why do I go on writing?
Habit. Also to let our charlatans know that there is at least one Armenian who refuses to be their dupe, whatever the hell that's worth...probably no more than a second's insomnia.
#
Saturday, May 16, 2009
*******************************
A LITANY OF LIES
**************************************************
“Because we were a small Christian island in a vast Muslim sea” -- I am now paraphrasing our party line -- “we were set upon and victimized by a wide assortment of imperialist barbarians on the warpath.”
In other words, we are without blame. It's the fault of our geography and religious faith.
Rubbish!
To begin with, in the Middle Ages, Armenians were the most highly paid mercenaries in the region. Some of the most ruthless emperors and generals in the Byzantine Empire were of Armenian descent. We were at no time an “island” since Georgia to the north was also Christian. Furthermore, throughout our historic existence, we have served our masters, be they Christian, pagan, atheist, Muslim, fascist, and Bolshevik, with greater zeal than we have defended our own interests. Or, as Raffi puts it: “Whenever we have been invaded by Persian, Greek, Arab, Seljuk, or Mongol armies, these armies have advanced under the leadership of an Armenian. Armenians have always fought side by side with the enemy against their own people.” Elsewhere, “Where Armenian blood flows, look for an Armenian hatchet.”
Why these distortions and lies?
Because everybody does it.
Americans and Turks may not speak the same language but they share the same grammar – that of power. Where would America be today without its systematic extermination of the natives and the cheap labor of slaves who died by the million while being transported from Africa?
Here is how Nigoghos Sarafian sums up our past: “Our history is a litany of lamentation, anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception and abysmal naiveté mixed with the smoke of incense and the sound of sacred chants.”
#

[arabaliozian]

democracy

Sunday, May 17, 2009
*******************************
UNTITLED
**************************************************
Einstein didn't believe in God and when he said so publicly he received death threats. This may lead one to suspect that love of God can make a killer out of a law-abiding citizen.
*
I was brought up as a devout Catholic and when I first met an atheist I was sure he wasn't what he pretended to be because if he were he would be a dangerous madman, which he wasn't.
*
Both Napoleon and Dostoevsky thought belief in God is necessary for the people because if God didn't exist “everything would be permissible” (Dostoevsky) and “the poor would butcher the rich” (Napoleon), which of course is nonsense because Napoleon ruled with the help of a mighty police force, and what sent Dostoevsky to Siberia for five years was not God but the Czar.
*
God must exist because something (in this case the universe) cannot come out of nothing. But that doesn't answer the question whether or not God cares to get involved in human affairs, because so far He has behaved like an absentee landlord. What kind of loving Father would allow the rape and murder of an innocent child?
*
We are told we cannot understand God because His mind works in mysterious ways. If so, then there isn't much we can do except to say “of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates) and go about our business as if He didn't give a damn.
*
Some of my readers may not be aware of the fact that there can be such a thing as an atheist religion. Buddhism, for instance, as popular in the East as Christianity in the West, is an atheist religion. I also suspect there are many Christians out there who are not aware of the fact that a good Christian can also be an atheist (Tolstoy was one).
#
Monday, May 18, 2009
*******************************
OPPRESSORS
**************************************************
We have survived our oppressors only at the cost of becoming our own oppressors.
*
“The Kingdom of God is within you,” we are told by the Scriptures. So is the kingdom of knowledge, according to Socrates, and by knowledge he did not mean such things as the capital of Egypt or the distance between Sparta and Troy (which is information) but the ability to tell right from wrong.
*
“Let us reason together,” we are also told by the Scriptures. But so far we have consistently preferred to “unreason” against one another. What am I driving at? Nothing much. Only this: the blame-game is for idiots.
*
Because I like to quote Socrates and the Scriptures (“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” “Where there is no vision the people perish”) I am told I hate myself. If true, I suppose something similar could be said of Socrates and Jesus. In his APOLOGIA, Plato tells us Socrates almost challenged, not to say provoked, the Athenian jury to condemn him to death. And Jesus knew what Judas was up to but did nothing to stop him. Does that mean their executioners were not idiots?
#
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
*******************************
DEMOCRACY
**************************************************
On the radio, three professors of philosophy arguing about democracy. Where philosophers disagree, lawyers enter; and where lawyers enter, big money casts the deciding vote. Hence boom-and-bust capitalism in America, and kleptocracy in Armenia.
*
Spengler on democracy:
“A small number of superior heads, whose names are very likely not the best known, settle everything, while below them are the great mass of second-rate politicians selected through a provincially-conceived franchise to keep alive the illusion of popular self-determination.”
*
I once asked the son of our local mayor if he plans to go into politics. “It's not up to me,” he replied. “It's up to the people on King Street.” (Our King Street is the equivalent of Wall Street in New York.)
*
Since I can't hang them, I write about them.
*
If you have enough money for bread and books, making more of it is a waste of time.
*
To be a man of faith means to reject all evidence to the contrary regardless of its merits.
*
In our belief systems we resemble parrots, and in our defense of these belief systems, we behave more like cannibals.
#
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
*******************************
CONSENSUS
**************************************************
We will promote ourselves from tribalism to nationalism, and from nationalism to multiculturalism – because whether we like it or not we not only live in a multicultural world but we are ourselves multicultural – on the day our “betters” adopt the mantra “the principle of solidarity is not negotiable,” which translated into dollars and cents means, consensus is more important than dead-end discord and strife, and consensus does not mean agreement on all points but only agreement to advance in the same direction.
*
I have never met an anti-Semite who was not as bad as his distorted image of Jews.
*
I am more than suspicious of all claims of moral superiority, especially of the self-assessed kind, which is always symptomatic of moral inferiority.
*
My question is: Why is it that some Armenians who have been fully aware of corrupt practices in the Homeland from day one are heard from only when they are personally stung by them? Don't they know that by keeping silent they actively legitimize the very same system whose victims they now claim to be? What about the countless other victims, who cannot afford lawyers, are in no position to make headlines, and whose sole alternatives are either emigration or prostitution?
#

[arabaliozian]

maybe

Thursday, May 21, 2009
*******************************
IDIOTS
**************************************************
On child-molesting priests, the official defense of the Catholic Church goes something like this: Sexual molestation of defenseless children is not a crime but a sin that required repentance followed by forgiveness and renewal. The degradation and damage to the child is not taken into consideration because less relevant or real than the sin of the priest. Leave it to theologians and lawyers to explain and justify criminal conduct.
*
When we speak of the blunders and crimes of the Vatican, one of the first instances that comes to mind is the persecution of Galileo Galilei. It took centuries for the Vatican to admit error. It may take many more centuries for the Church to realize that covering up the “sins” of the clergy was even a bigger crime because it amounted to issuing a license for abuse.
*
The world will be a better place on the day theologians concentrate their efforts in exposing the shortcomings of their own belief systems as opposed to asserting moral and intellectual superiority with arguments that convince no one but themselves and their dupes.
*
If the Pope doubts his faith seven times every day, as Italians are fond of saying, let him say so if only because in matters of faith doubt is more civilized than certainty.
*
And if God is infallible, why did He create an imperfect world in which man's inhumanity to man is a constant and war and massacre are routine occurrences? To those who say wars and massacres are men's doing, not God's, because God has given men free will that allows them to choose between good and evil; I say, the free will argument may apply to the victimizer, not the victim. Given the choice, who would freely choose to be the victim of self-righteous idiots?
#
Friday, May 22, 2009
*******************************
WHAT I BELIEVE
**************************************************
I believe God is not who we think He is, and when we speak in His name, we lie.
I believe with Socrates that “of the gods we know nothing.”
I believe with Gandhi that God is Truth provided we agree that none of us knows the truth or is in a position to grasp all of Reality, only a fraction of it.
I believe the Bible is not “the word of God,” but a search for truth, which is endless.
I believe with Tolstoy that “the Kingdom of God” is within us and to look for it in heaven or anywhere else is a waste of time.
I believe to speak of God as if He were not the Unknown and the Unknowable is to try to make comprehensible that which is incomprehensible by bringing it down to our own level.
I believe when Popes, Imams, and capitalists speak in the name of their conception of God it is impossible to tell to what extent they identify God with their own power and I believe power corrupts everything it touches.
I also believe with Socrates, Christ, and Tolstoy that poverty is the surest proof of honesty.
#
Saturday, May 23, 2009
*******************************
MAYBE
**************************************************
If no one in a position of power speaks as I do, it may be because I have nothing to defend but my fundamental human right of free speech.
*
If you think I am the bearer of bad tidings, it may be because you prefer your illusions to my reality, which may well be another illusion.
*
During the Soviet era, I remember, one of our elder statesmen wrote me an angry letter in which he said, “How dare you criticize the Homeland. Saroyan never did. You think you are better than Saroyan?” To which I could only say: “Far better men than Saroyan have been critical of the Soviets, including a good number of Soviets.” That may have been good enough to shut him up for a while but not to convince him, because shortly before he died he sent me a venomous missile.
*
We are not what we think we are. Our identity revolves around this fact and the way we fail to come to terms with it. Which amounts to saying, our identity is as intangible as the shadow of a black hat as reflected in an invisible mirror in a dark room.
*
To believe a nation's own version of its past amounts to believing a criminal's plea of not guilty.
*
If a ruthless serial killer were to write his memoirs, you can be sure of one thing: he would portray himself as a victim rather than a victimizer.
#

http://baliozian.blogspot.com/

[arabaliozian]

lies

Sunday, May 24, 2009
*******************************
A LIE EXPOSED
**************************************************
We have been exposed to the lie that we are smart for such a long time and so often that we now believe it to be a self-evident truth.
It isn't!
Some of us may be smart in the marketplace, but when it comes to such far more important matters as defending our fundamental human rights, we might as well be just about the dumbest people on earth.
*
Our leaders are to us what the Pope is to Catholics – infallible. This is what our nationalist historians tell us and this is what, as Orthodox dupes, we believe.
*
If theology is a branch of science fiction, Armenian history is pure fiction.
*
For six hundred years we were at the mercy of Turks. The unspoken message of our Turcocentric ghazetajis today is, we still are....
*
Since I don't have any political ambitions, I refuse to say “Yes, sir!” to idiots.
#
Monday, May 25, 2009
*******************************
FREE PRESS
**************************************************
We don't have a free press. We never had one. But that's not the real scandal. The real scandal is that no one seems to care. No one seems to know that a community without a free press is a blind and deaf community. And I am not talking about the Homeland now. I am talking about the Diaspora.
Once, when an editor exposed the corrupt practices of one of our political parties, he was nearly beaten to death. The perpetrators were never caught. Which may suggest that, when it comes to silencing critics, we go about it with professional efficiency and know-how. We expect this sort of thing to happen in the Homeland where a free press is an anomaly. But not in the Diaspora, and definitely not in a democratic environment.
How do they get away with it? Easy! The very same people who are in the business of silencing dissent also keep telling us we are smart, we are progressive, we are civilized, we are freedom-loving, when in reality, we are nothing of the kind.
“You speak of corruption,” a friend, himself a writer, once said to me. “Do you have any evidence?” That's when he harbored political ambitions. Shortly thereafter he called again to say that his latest commentary had been censored and he was planning to take legal action. Did he? I don't know. But I do know that he quit writing.
About a month ago I watched a televised speech by an official from the Homeland (a former member of the Party) in which I heard a great deal of palaver about the importance of preserving our mother tongue, the bane of mixed marriages, the primacy of Etchmiadzin and so on and so forth. But not a single word on human rights. Judging by the prolonged applause, no one seemed to have noticed that.
Smart, civilized, progressive, freedom-loving?
Don't make me laugh!
#
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
*******************************
PROFILES IN COURAGE
**************************************************
Readers who know little or nothing about Armenian literature call me brave for writing as I do.
I am nothing of the kind.
Raffi (1835-1888) was brave when he said, “There is more profit in defending the interests of wolves against sheep than the other way around,” and, “The fiercest enemies of critics are those who serve tyrants.” A notorious Kurdish assassin was hired to have him silenced permanently.
Zarian (1885-1969) was brave for exposing the moral bankruptcy of the Soviet regime long before Solzhenitsyn did, returned to Yerevan, where, some say, he was murdered.
Bakounts (1899-1937) was brave when he described the regime as a “disease,” was arrested, jailed, tortured, and shot.
Shahnour (1904-1974) was brave when he said, “An Armenian's indifference for the collective good of the people is a thick, impenetrable shield which dulls and neutralizes his soul. What insufferable rottenness, especially when he is educated.”
Aramais Sahakian (b. 1936) was brave when he said “Let us learn to be human by observing animals.”
And I could go on and on...
Compared to them I am no better than a scarecrow whose words carry as much weight as an ant's fart.
As for those who insult me on the Internet, they are no better than faceless, gutless, anonymous scum.
#
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
*****************************************
WHAT I DON'T BELIEVE
************************************
After saying and repeating “All men are created equal,” Americans look down at the rest of mankind, including the majority of their fellow Americans because they happen to belong to a different race or nationality.
If Americans can deceive themselves, why can't we?
If all nationalist historians place the demands of propaganda above objectivity, why should we be the only exceptions?
Why shouldn't we say and repeat, in our failings we are like everyone else, but in every other respect we are unique, that is to say, superior?
Why shouldn't we brag about our small and ephemeral empire under Dikran the Great and call our military defeats moral victories?
If reality is against us, why shouldn't we invent a lie and repeat it until it acquires the sheen of a self-evident truth?
If we are dupes, why can't we brainwash ourselves into believing we are just about the smartest people on earth and it takes seven Jews to fool an Armenian?
As for our writers who tell us a different story, who cares what a few malcontents think?
*
I don't believe in small or harmless lies because they may lead to big and dangerous lies.
The American belief in their own invincible military might led to the disaster in Vietnam. And their belief in their superior brand of democracy may lead to more tragedies in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
*
I think of a childhood friend who believed in cigarette commercials, became a chain-smoker, and is now dying of terminal cancer.
*
A headline in one of our weeklies today reads: “Armenian police vow to end attacks on journalists.” To which I can only say, “If you believe that, you will believe anything!”
#

[arabaliozian]

alas!

Thursday, May 28, 2009
*****************************************
ALAS!
************************************
You want to be a benefactor? Making a million or a billion is the easy part. What's hard is the realization that all they want is your money, and when they look at you they don't see a face but a dollar sign.
You want to be a boss or bishop? Nothing to it. You start by saying “Yes, sir!” to the idiots who are ahead of you and the chances are you will have no trouble filling vacancies all the way to the top.
You want to be a writer? You have two options: (one) to write what they want to read, and (two) to write what you think. If you choose the first option, they may do you the favor of printing you; if the second, you may be free to live in the gulag of your choice.
*
Literature: a field of human endeavor in which even the Turks are ahead of us.
*
Journalism: ditto, alas!
*
In a letter to the editor in our local paper today I read the following: “The general public, poorly educated for the most part and in many cases barely literate, is bamboozled by the media and lulled by game shows and sports extravaganzas.”
Replace “games” and “sports” with “atrocities” and “massacres” and you will have a fairly honest and objective assessment of our situation, alas!
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Friday, May 29, 2009
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ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
AND PRO-MESSIANISM
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On more than one occasion I have been attacked and insulted by readers on the grounds that so far I have failed to come up with the right verbal formula that will save the nation, as if such a formula ever existed in some yet undiscovered dimension and it was up to me to fetch it. Illusions, like fools, come in all sizes and shapes. There are still Russians today who believe in Stalin's propaganda line and call Solzhenitsyn a traitor, as there are Germans who are for Hitler and against Thomas Mann, who exposed Hitler's charlatanism. Fascism is not dead in Italy, neither is Maoism in China.
The ancients may not have known much about balanced diets but they knew that one way to kill a man was to condemn him to eat the same food for forty days. Hence the spectacle of dupes who after being fed the same propaganda line for a generation become living cadavers. I have yet to meet the Armenian dupe or Turcocentric ghazetaji who was not brain-dead.
Perhaps our anti-intellectualism is nothing but an extension of our pro-messianism.
And the problem with pro-messianism is that it completely ignores the fact that messiahs don't solve problems, they compound them by making unreasonable demands on us poor mortals – such as loving our enemies. The only Armenian I know who dared to speak of sympathy for the Turks was Saroyan. As for our sermonizers whose job it is to preach the message of our Savior: the less said about them better.
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Saturday, May 30, 2009
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VARIATIONS ON ABRACADABRA
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At the end of his career as teacher and philosopher, Plato had every right to believe that he had been successful in solving most of mankind's problems, one of them being that rulers should also be philosophers. We know now that power and wisdom are mutually exclusive concepts and mankind prefers to be ruled not by philosophers but by philomorons.
When Marx toiled on his magnum opus in a London library writing against exploitation, did it ever occur to him that some day his ideas would be exploited by bloodthirsty barbarians who would victimize millions of innocent human beings? And to think that he was fully aware of the fact that for nearly two millennia mankind had exploited even the Word of God by reducing it to “opium" thus legitimizing the rule of the Devil.
What are ideas if not variations on abracadabra?
We like to say if it weren't for good men, mankind would be in a far worse shape. Maybe so. But what kind of consolation is that for the hungry, the sick, the dying, and the dead? Illusions are for the living and the favorite occupation of the living is to spin illusions. There you have it, a history of human thought in a single sentence.
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[arabaliozian]

101

Sunday, May 31, 2009
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FUNNY BUSINESS
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Almost every other day our local paper prints a letter critical of its editorial policy. By contrast, our weeklies pretend not to have a policy, or if they do, it has only two criteria: truth and excellence. I dare you not to see any humor in this.
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At one time or another I have offended Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, dupes, fanatics, nationalists, communists, capitalists, racists, propagandists, lawyers, and chief executive officers, and by my rough estimate, several billion people. Why should I be surprised if so far I have failed to acquire the status of a best-selling author?
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If I repeat myself it may be because no one minds repeating “I love you” to the person s/he loves. Why should you mind if I say and repeat, I hate charlatans, bloodsuckers, and idiots who parade as leaders of men? -- unless of course you are one of them.
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I don't write about labels, I write about human beings and if most of them are Armenian it may be because I know them and myself better than I know the rest of mankind. I have at no time hidden the fact that in my formative years I was as big a dupe of our propaganda as those I now ridicule. You might say therefore that I attack and expose not just fools but also my former self.
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Truth sets you free only in theory. In practice it destroys an important fraction of your self. That is why it is ruthlessly shunned by most.
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Plot for a play: two characters agree to achieve perfection by exposing each other's failings, and they end up destroying themselves.
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Monday, June 1, 2009
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EDUCATION BY INDOCTRINATION
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Education by indoctrination should be a criminal offense. The only reason it isn't is that everybody does it and no one seems to mind.
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There is in all of us an infantile need to believe in lies and when no one deceives us, we deceive ourselves.
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As a child he was taught to speak the truth, and when the Turkish police came and wanted to know where was his uncle's hiding place, he said “In the well,” and he took them there.
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When God asked Cain where was his brother Abel (as if He didn't know), Cain replied, “Am I then my brother's keeper?”
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We are told violence in movies begets violence in life. What about intolerance in organized religions and ideologies? How many violent movies did Cain see? Was Genghis Khan influenced by John Wayne, and Napoleon by Brando?
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The Republicans (most of them White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are now calling the Hispanic Supreme Court nominee a “racist.” They forget that for more than a hundred years Supreme Court Justices (most of them WASPs) legitimized slavery and racism in America. These WASPs! – they sure know how to take care of their own. That may well be the secret of their success. You may now guess what is the secret of our failure.
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Question to our Turcocentric ghazetajis: “Does it ever occur to you that you may be barking up the wrong tree?”
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009
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SUCCESS
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Give a man the best education money can buy and a position of great responsibility and end up with an assh*le who thinks he deserves a fat bonus just for pulling his dick.
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Some readers disagree with me not because they find my arguments defective but because they think I stand between them and their chances to achieve success.
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There is a saying in Hollywood: “Success is relative, the closer the relative, the greater the success.”
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If we think what we are told to think, are we (brain)dead or alive? And if we are alive, is our life worth living?
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When I hear someone use the word “culture” I immediately assume he means his particular brand of barbarism.
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We say Naregatsi is our Dante and Shakespeare combined, but whereas Italian and English children can quote lines from Dante and Shakespeare, I have yet to hear a single Armenian boy or girl, or adult for that matter, quote a single solitary line by Naregatsi.
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We brag about our culture but we prefer to speak about massacres, as if being massacred were a great achievement.
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When your whole life is a big blunder, you hate like hell anyone who dares to suggest you may have made a mistake.
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009
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DIPLOMACY 101
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The Turks know better what happened if only because they know both sides of the story, unlike us who know only our side. They have a better grasp of world history too if only because they ran an empire for six hundred years. Which means they speak a language that is accessible to other empires. All they have to say to the Americans is, “Armenians are our Indians,” and all Americans have to do is think: “What if in time of war when our very existence may well be in peril our ethnic minorities behave like the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I?” Which may also explain why the Soviets opposed all talk of Genocide recognition.
When our first foreign minister visited Ankara and mentioned the Genocide, the Turks said, “This man hates us. We can't negotiate with him.” Our president agreed and immediately replaced him. He understood that you can't call a man a murderer and a barbarian and expect him to behave like a civilized human being.
Were the Turks murderers and barbarians? Yes, of course. No doubt about that. Even the murder of a single innocent human being is an act of barbarism. But that's in civilian parlance which has nothing to do with the semantics of diplomacy.
If the Turks behaved like bloodthirsty barbarians, so did the rest of mankind before, during, and after our Tragedy. We cannot educate, reform, and persuade mankind into behaving like the civilizations they pretend to be. We can only deal with them in such a way as to defend and protect our interests. So far we have failed to do so perhaps because we are not as smart as we pretend to be.
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