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[arabaliozian]

Thursday, October 18, 2007
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MEMO TO OUR PUNDITS
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They were discussing the recent Congressional vote on the Armenian Genocide on CNN and I heard one of the talking heads say that Turks and Armenians hate each other and they have hated each other for a very long time. It is human, and therefore understandable, to hate the enemy, especially when he is guilty of an unforgivable, unacknowledged, and unatoned crime – and what could be more unforgivable than the massacre of innocent women and children? Understandable, yes, but also politically, diplomatically, and legally incorrect. Hatred and justice might as well be mutually exclusive concepts. For the ultimate goal of hatred is not justice but the total ruin and destruction of the guilty party.
All the Turks have to do to reverse the American initiative to recognize the Genocide is to emphasize Armenian hatred and the unreasonable demands it inspires.
*
Whenever I mention hatred to our Turcocentric pundits, they tell me I am wrong, they hate no one, they want only justice. Whether they believe this themselves or not is irrelevant. The truth is, so far they have convinced only themselves and no one else. I would therefore urge them to cease and desist. If they carry on as they have until now, they may do more harm than good to our cause. No one in his right mind wants a new gang of terrorists killing innocent civilians and endangering the lives of others who had nothing to do with what happened a century ago. Let cooler heads, preferably diplomats, historians, and experts in international law, handle the subject. But if these pundits are so addicted to their Turcocentrism that they cannot stop writing about it, I urge them to read Saroyan, Toynbee, and Turkish writers like Pamuk, Akcam, and Safak, all of whom have dealt with the subject without hatred. Saroyan went further and said he felt sorry for the Turks. After writing several books on the brutal tyranny of Turks and the Armenian massacres, Toynbee acquired Turkish friends, learned the Turkish language, and became a Turcophile; but went on asserting the reality of the Genocide in nearly all his future books, including the last one. As for the Turkish writers mentioned above: only a handful of petty bureaucrats, fascists, and fanatics accuse them of insulting Turkishness, and what leads them to do so is blind hatred. There is more than enough hatred in the world and the last thing mankind needs is more of it.
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Friday, October 19, 2007
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AN ARMENIAN DECALOGUE
& A PRAYER
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I.
Thou shalt not believe in white men for they speak with a forked tongue.
*
II.
Thou shalt not believe in self-appointed pundits and ghazetajis whose role models are not historians but other self-appointed pundits, ghazetajis, and partisan agitators for whom objectivity and impartiality are alien concepts.
*
III.
Thou shalt not hate thine brothers for hating them means adopting Cain as a role model.
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IV.
Thou shalt not believe in charlatans who know everything but understand nothing.
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V.
Thou shalt not believe in salesmen of bridges and overly generous Nigerian royalties with vast fortunes.
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VI.
Thou shalt not believe in those who read between the lines for the Writing on the Wall has only one line.
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VII.
Thou shalt not play the blame-game for it is the favorite sport of baloney artists.
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VIII.
Thou shalt not oppose or suppress free speech for fear of free speech is the worst kind of cowardice.
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IX.
Thou shalt not believe everything thou readest in the papers.
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X.
Thou shalt not believe the promises of politicians for they are written on water.
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A PRAYER
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Let us now pray for our million and a half who were victimized because their self-appointed, unelected, and non-representative leaders believed in the empty verbiage of white men.
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Saturday, October 20, 2007
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TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
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Gostan Zarian: “The complex psychology of small nations. Their naïve and tragic readiness to entertain great illusions. Their tendency to see decisive historic moments in petty occurrences and insignificant details.”
*
After accusing us of being liars, they now tell us we speak the truth (which they knew to be the case all along).
*
It took them nearly a century to decide that the Genocide is not a figment of our collective imagination. Why the sudden change of heart? One possible explanation: the Dems demanded a raise from Turkish lobbyists and were turned down. The irony here is that the Americans didn’t want any Turkish money; only a partial refund…
*
Anonymous (American): “Our Congress is the best money can buy.”
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Cui bono? Who benefits? Whoever gets your vote, that’s who.
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Memo to our Turcocentric ghazetajis: If you think you have the persuasive skills to change a politician’s mind, I suggest you apply them next on our own.
*
Gostan Zarian: “What are we but a handful of persecuted exiles at the mercy of the wind, like dust clinging on stones on dirt roads and assuming their shapes – grateful whenever we fall on a vegetable planted by someone else.”
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[arabaliozian]

x/24

Sunday, October 21, 2007
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MAXIMS & REFLECTIONS
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When gentlemen disagree, they apologize; when hoodlums disagree, they vandalize.
*
Bullying may work with children; reason has a better chance with adults.
*
If you are smart, don’t pretend to be smarter because you won’t fool even fools.
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I don’t write to be believed – I am not a preacher. Neither am I a salesman. If what I have to offer doesn’t appeal to you, take your business elsewhere. Our marketplace has many peddlers that cater to all tastes, age groups, and IQs.
*
Speaking of bullies and charlatans, allow me to quote the elegant words of a Canadian poetess on publishers: “Just when you think you have been screwed every possible way, you run across someone who has read the KAMA SUTRA.”
*
I believe politics to be a filthy business because all power is filth, including our own.
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Even when I paraphrase ideas expressed by la crème de la crème of our literature, I am contradicted by our crème de la scum.
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An unspoken Armenian mantra: “We have no use for writers. We are smarter than any dozen scribblers combined.”
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I have no need to read the mind of philistines. At eleven we are all philistines. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against philistines. They are my bread and butter. All the good ideas I ever had came to me while reading them.
*
Suppress a trauma and the result will be a neurosis, or so we are told by Freud and Co. Our Turcocentric pundits do not suppress our trauma, they make an obsession of it. The result is the same.
*
An Armenian discussion forum is a microcosm of the nation. Irreconcilable differences and divisions exist because fanatics exist – infallible men who speak in the name of god and do the devil’s work; and if it’s not god it is an ideology or dogma. The problem with ideologies and dogmas is that there will always be another brand of ideology or dogma that will stand in direct contradiction to them.
*
If I have said this before it’s because to repeat that which needs to be repeated is not redundant but necessary.
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Monday, October 22, 2007
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DEFINING TURCOCENTRISM
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The aim of Turcocentrism is to remind us that the Turks occupied our lands, desecrated our holy places, forced our boys into the rank of Janissaries and our girls into harems, oppressed us for six centuries, butchered our ablest intellects, raped our women, eviscerated our children, massacred innocent civilians by the million, drove us out of our ancestral lands and into deserts to die of thirst, starvation, and disease. There is no end to the crimes they committed against us – crimes that remain unacknowledged and unatoned to this day.
Turcocentrism is more than an ideology; it is a theology whose god is the devil and the devil is the Turk. Turcocentrism is a reaction to Turkish criminal conduct, and in its extreme forms it is more akin to Ottomanism than Armenianism, and Ottomanism not in the Turkish sense of the word (as referring to a glorious imperial past) but in ours (as evoking defeat, degradation, and death).
“Where there is no vision the people perish,” we are told. In that sense Turcocentrism is not a vision but a nightmare, and as such it is a dead end. It is a wound that cannot heal. It is a trauma that cannot be analyzed, explained, understood, overcome, and forgotten. It is a cancer that cannot be treated. Even if they were to accede to all our demands – which they will never do – our score with them will never be settled because it cannot be settled. What are a few billion dollars and a slice of real estate compared to the martyrdom of millions?
Our choices are therefore clear and the Writing on the Wall unambiguous: Either we come to terms with this reality and look forward or we turn into pillars of salt.
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Tuesday, October 23, 2007
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S.O.B.s
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It is said that the Roman senators attacked Julius Caesar with such blind fury that they injured one another. Moral: Even when the cause you are defending is right (Caesar had declared himself dictator for life) it never pays to go about it like a fanatic.
A fanatic may be thought of as harmless on the grounds that “he may be a son-of-a-bitch but he is our son-of-a-bitch.” But even his friends will reject a pathological case. During the Cold War, Americans supported a good number of corrupt dictators on the above-mentioned s.o.b. principle. One such dictator was Saddam. Moral: An s.o.b. is bad news if not today than tomorrow, and if not tomorrow than the day after.
*
The great French writer, Céline, was such a pathological case of anti-Semitism that he saw Jews everywhere. At one point, during the German occupation of Paris, he even accused his Armenian doctor of being a Jew, and the poor fellow came very close to being shipped to a concentration camp. For more details, see PARIS: THE SECRET HISTORY, by Andrew Hussey (New York 2006), page 374.
*
When a character in Shakespeare’s HENRY IV says, “I can call spirits from the deep,” another replies, “Why so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call them?” An Armenian who makes all kinds of extravagant claims on behalf of his fellow Armenians or against Turks will be contradicted not only by moderates but also by his fellow chauvinists. The result will be not dialogue but a dead end. Fanatics are not in the habit of admitting error. If they were, we would now be if not an empire than a serious contender. The very reasons that have made of us a beggar among nations continue to obstruct our path today, but we are too busy playing the blame-game and injuring one another to admit the obvious.
*
The Dalai Lama being honored in Washington and soon in Ottawa, reminds me of our own religious leaders who said “Yes, sir!” to notorious s.o.b.s like sultans and commissars ostensibly to save the church and the nation, but ended up saving no one and nothing, not even themselves.
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
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LABELS
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When it comes to reading, I prefer to read a human being rather than a label. Even when I read an expert, I prefer one in whom the human being speaks louder than the expertise, the role, the profession, or the angle. By human being I mean someone with more doubts and uncertainties and less dogmas and infallible assertions. Even when wrong, a personal view has a better chance of being right than the best propaganda line that is dogmatic, self-righteous, infallible, and intolerant. I don’t ask anyone to agree with me. All I ask is that he deviate a fraction of an inch from the particular propaganda line that stands between him and reality.
*
Victims need victims too. Victims also victimize. It is this that makes them as bad as their victimizers.
*
Question and answer sessions are based on the assumption that the questioner knows nothing and he who answers them knows everything even when it’s the other way around.
*
Sometimes I am accused of hating myself, to which I can only say, god save me from a narcissist (surely, one of the most loathsome labels) who thinks just because he is infatuated with himself, others should follow his example.
*
I admire a writer who can say in a single sentence what I have been struggling to express in ten or a hundred pages. Example: “No people can be genuinely free so long as they look to others for their deliverance.” From Glenn Loury’s ONE BY ONE FROM THE INSIDE OUT.
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[arabaliozian]

notes

Thursday, October 25, 2007
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THE CROCODILIAN BRAIN
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Writers like Zohrab and Zabel Yessayan make it abundantly clear in their fiction that enlightened Turks respected enlightened Armenians. Our conflict today is not between enlightened men but between our respective lowest common denominator. But then, so are all conflicts. Enlightened men engage in dialogue and reach a consensus simply because it is in their mutual interest to do so. It is different with barbarians.
*
Who is a barbarian? In the eyes of millions, among them learned scholars, Alexander the Great, Suleiman the Magnificent, and Genghis Khan were great men. It is said of Genghis Khan that, when he asked what was the greatest pleasure in life and one said falconry and another something else, he dismissed them with contempt and said, “The greatest pleasure, my friends, is killing the enemy and f***ing his wife.”
Who is the enemy? Anyone whose aim in life is to kill you. Even the church tells us to kill in self-defense is no sin, and the justice system of all civilized and progressive nations agrees. Cherchez not la femme but the crocodilian brain in all of us.
*
When power goes unchecked, it is abused. Who checks the power of our mini-sultans and neo-commissars?
*
An ideology or religion that divides a nation is not a blessing but a curse, it serves not god but the devil, it promotes not progress but degeneration.
*
When reality is against us, objectivity becomes a hostile concept.
*
Jean Cocteau: “Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it.”
#
Friday, October 26, 2007
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ON MORAL SUPERIORITY
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Whenever I make an honest effort to understand and explain my fellow Armenians, I invariably run across a self-righteous charlatan who reacts with such hatred and venom that I am reminded of a born-again Armenian in his eighties who once said to me: “The Turks were right to massacre Armenians. Armenians are evil. The Genocide was God’s punishment.”
Never mind about being tolerant of Jews and Turks, most of whom have done no harm to us and may even be on our side. We must first learn to be tolerant of our fellow Armenians.
*
But perhaps, instead of speaking of Jews, Turks, and Armenians, we should teach ourselves to speak of our fellow men.
As children we are all brought up to believe we are normal and we can rely on our understanding of what’s right and wrong. Some of us never outgrow that infantile stage. What does it mean to be normal? Who decides? Our environment of course, or rather, the majority within our environment. What if the majority is abnormal? In Nazi Germany, in Soviet Russia, in Mussolini’s Italy, the majority was dead wrong but only assumed to be right. It went further and it persecuted the minority by supporting a criminal regime. Hence the post-World War II slogan: “We are all assassins!”
*
Well, not quite. Where there are assassins, there will be victims. Is it not safe to assume that the victims are morally superior to their victimizers?
Who is a victim? At all times and everywhere societies may be divided into masters and slaves, top dogs and underdogs, exploiters and workers, killers and victims. One way to define a victim is to say that given the opportunity he would prefer to be a master rather than a slave, a top dog rather than an underdog, and a killer rather than his victim. Now then, who is right and who wrong? Who is morally superior, the killer or the victim who would gladly change places with him? (Remember, even the Church sanctions killing in self-defense.) In such a context, can one really speak of moral superiority?
*
God and his angels may be right or morally superior but for reasons of their own they don’t get involved in human affairs or take sides. Why not? Theologians have come up with many answers that may make sense to them and to their brainwashed disciples and followers but to no one else.
Where does mankind stand today? When it comes to morality and justice, have we made any progress? Do you think God is on your side? You are of course free to think so but don’t expect others to agree with you.
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
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ON FORGIVENESS AND UNDERSTANDING
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My Turkish friend and I agree on many things except the word genocide. He denies its reality with the same visceral certainty that I assert it. Last time the subject came up, I suggested the source of our disagreement may well be the fact that as children we were brainwashed by two different sets of charlatans. The main thing is, we don’t allow our disagreement to end our friendship. This is not what happens with fellow Armenians. Even when the disagreement is minor to the point of being insignificant, the friendship comes to a violent end with a torrent of verbal abuse.
*
When I was a little boy I would try to see the positive in the negative and I would invariably find it. Like Pollyanna, after every misfortune, I would play the glad game. At one point I even saw something good in the Genocide: if it weren’t for the Genocide, I thought, we would still be Turkish citizens and share our existence with bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians, instead of living in the enlightened West. One good thing about the Genocide was that it had liberated us from the shackles of Ottomanism!
*
What does the average citizen know what goes on in the world or, for that matter, in the next village? He has no choice but to rely on politicians, editors, and ghazetajis – at best dupes (like our own Zohrab) and at worst, riffraff.
*
In 1981 a Turk by the name of Ali Agca (who, like most Turks, may have been part-Armenian) tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II. Three years later the Pope visited him in his cells and forgave him. He forgave him, yes, but he did not set him free. He set himself free. To forgive is a selfish act. It sets one free from the shackles of hatred. It does not say let bygones be bygones, let’s forget the past and bury the hatchet. It does not cancel the debt the criminal owes to society.
*
Unlike the Pope, who forgave his would-be assassin, we are no longer in a position to forgive Talaat and the perpetrators of the Genocide. But perhaps what we can do is understand the denialists who are denialists not by choice but by indoctrination.
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