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[arabaliozian]

truth

Thursday, April 26, 2012
****************************************
TRUTH IS ONE,
LIES MANY
***************************
Where power enters, lies are sure to follow.
*
We all praise knowledge and understanding
but prefer to practice ignorance and misunderstanding.
*
An ideology of brotherhood is used to sow murderous enmity,
and a religion of love and compassion is exploited
to legitimize intolerance, hatred, and massacre.
*
What are wars and revolutions –
revolutions that replace czars with commissars,
and kings with dictators – if not gigantic movements
based on ignorance and misunderstanding?
*
We praise Greek contributions to world civilization
and we forget that the real Greece is not represented by Socrates
but by those who condemned him to death.
Philosophers may praise Socrates
but the average man in the street prefers to behave
like a member of his jury and an executioner.
*
Notwithstanding the countless crimes committed by religious leaders,
we – the majority at any rate – continue to take their dogmas seriously.
*
Is God one or many?
We don’t know.
Nobody does.
But we do know that reality is numberless.
*
When two men confront each other
and both say “I am right, you are wrong,”
the chances are both are not just wrong but dead wrong.
*
He who speaks does not know
and he who is silent is ignorant.
*
At the beginning was the word,
at the end garbage?
What difference does it make if the purpose of words
is to hide meaning?
#
Saturday, April 28, 2012
***********************************
WHAT IF?
***********************
What if “our betters” are in fact our worst?
*
If I am right, why is it that so many are against me?
And if I am wrong, why is it that so many are with me?
Wrong questions.
In our context, or placed in a historic context,
right or wrong might as well be irrelevant.
To be or not to be: that indeed is the right question..
*
The 99% are losers because they are disorganized, leaderless, and divided.
Workers of the world have failed to unite
because they have been divided by lies
(among them nationalism) devised by the 1%.
*
We have failed to unite because survival is our main concern.
To be on the safe side we have been willing to say “Yes, sir!”
to any power structure that promised to be on our side.
In the USSR we were more Bolshevik than the Russians.
In the Ottoman Empire even our best and brightest
were more Ottoman than Turks.
Consider the ease with which Armenians in America are Americanized.
*
We lament our martyrs with total unawareness of the fact that
they are “ours” – in the sense that they are victims
of our own ignorance, blindness, and fanaticism.
You don’t believe me?
Read Naregatsi’s LAMENTATIONS (in which he portrays himself
as “an abusive contradicter ever active in satanic inventions”
(or lies, for short).
Read Zarian (“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another”).
Read Raffi (“Where Armenian blood flows, search for the Armenian hatchet.”)
If our literature has a central message, this is it:
Our martyrs are our victims.
#
Saturday, April 28, 2012
*******************************************
PROFESSIONAL SECRETS
************************************
Write a page.
Keep the best line,
discard the rest.
*
Dissatisfied with what you have written?
Delete the first and last paragraphs. (Chekhov).
*
Dissatisfied with the final sentence?
Italicize a word in it. (Kenneth Tynan)
*
Your selection of words
is more important than your ideas. (Paul Valery)
*
On the subject of ideas: there are no new ones.
We are all in the business of recycling what has been said before
by far better men than ourselves.
*
Originality is an illusion.
Clarity is your most important asset.
*
Please note that none of the above is mine.
I have cited only the sources that I remember.
#



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fossils

Wednesday, May 02, 2012
**************************************
FOSSILS
*********************
Where literature is controlled and free speech suppressed
propaganda becomes the only mode of perceiving reality.
Where everyone thinks alike (thinks? wrong verb)
no one thinks.
To say “yes, sir!” is not to think.
*
We have become a nation (wrong noun) of non-thinking simpletons
who believe they are not just smart
but seven times smarter than Jews.
*
I repeat myself?
Where lies are repeated seventy-seven times,
I see nothing wrong in repeating myself seven times.
*
Everything I have been saying has been said before
by far better men than myself?
If they behave like Panchoonies,
why shouldn’t I recycle Odian seven times?
*
What do Jesus, Marx, and Freud have in common?
They were teachers (rabbis) who didn’t believe in rabbis.
To use Toynbee’s terminology:
they were teachers who rejected fossils;
unlike us who are zombies at the mercy of fossils.
#
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
**************************
SAROYAN AND I
********************************
I envy Saroyan – no, not his fame and fortune –
but because nobody ever told him to write like Saroyan.
*
Saroyan wrote to entertain his American audience.
I write to torment my Armenian audience –
assuming of course I have one.
*
Saroyan was Armenian.
So am i.
beyond that I doubt if we share anything else in common.
*
As for Michael Arlen – both Father and Son –
they might as well be from an alien planet.
#
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
***************************************
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
***********************************
We are not a divided nation;
we are a broken nation.
Being divided with us cannot be said to be
a bad habit or even an incurable addiction
but a character trait,
and character is destiny.
If you think I am being negative, think again.
If what I say is true,
truth is bound to set us free –
free from all the lies that have kept us divided
and continue to divide us today
with no end in sight.
#
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
*****************************************
DARK AGES
**************************
Christianity has been described as a religion
that allows a class of men –
from popes to televangelists –
to make a comfortable living
by exploiting someone else’s crucifixion.
Something similar could be said
of our Turcocentric ghazetajis and scholars
who write about massacres.
Some day historians will name our past –
from the beginning to the present and foreseeable future –
our Dark Ages.
#




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garbage

Thursday, May 03, 2012
******************************************
GARBAGE CAN
***********************
The average Catholic trusts the Pope much more
than his critics, among them Catholic theologians
who dare to question the dogma of papal infallibility. ,
The average German trusted Hitler;
the average Russian trusted Stalin;
the average Italian trusted Mussolini.
The average Greek of the 5th century BC
believed Socrates to be a criminal
guilty of a capital offense.
Closer to home, the average Armenian –
and by average I mean anyone who has not yet mastered
the art of thinking for himself,
is convinced it is his patriotic duty to trust the judgment
of bosses, bishops, and benefactors
and to question the integrity of dissenters
who may well be agents of the
CIA, the KGB, the Grey Wolves, or the Mossad
(I now speak from personal experience).
When it comes to ideas,
the average man – regardless of race, color, and creed –
is not so much a moron as a garbage can.
#
Saturday, May 05, 2012
*************************************
A CAPITAL OFFENSE
*******************************
We don’t know much about the Greek jury
that condemned Socrates to death,
but we do know that they were members
of a civilized, enlightened, and progressive community
who believed in false gods,
which happens to be the charge
they brought against Socrates.
*
Gods have always been and continue to
be the business – make it, the racket – of the 1%,
namely popes, imams, rabbis, among others –
who if they had their way,
they would gladly condemn one another to death.
And they would be right to do so.
*
Moral: Those who pretend to be our “betters”
may well be our worst.
#
Saturday, May 05, 2012
*******************************************
THIS AND THAT
***************************
There is no end to the tricks
that the 1% plays on the 99%.
When they say peace
they mean prepare for war.
When they say communism
they mean the capitalism of the state.
When they speak of brotherhood
they mean the Cain-and-Abel variant.
*
My aim in life:
to give the bastards insomnia
even if the insomnia lasts no more
than a fraction of a second.
*
In writing being irresistible is better
than being reasonable.
As for being both:
that would be like issuing invitations
to your own execution.
*
If you don’t know where to begin,
begin in the middle or even the end.
If what you say makes sense
it doesn’t matter where you begin.
#




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literature

Sunday, May 06, 2012
*************************************
RELIGION & LITERATURE
*******************************************
If god is in everything we know and see,
where is the devil?
*
Religion is a business like any other
and far more profitable than most.
That's why for every writer we have,
we have a hundred priests.
*
When a religion of love legitimizes
intolerance, hatred, and ultimately war and massacre,
it becomes an instrument of the devil.
*
The greatest argument against religion
is other religions.
*
Contemporary Armenian literature
may be summed up in two sentences:
(one) it says many things except that which must be said, and
(two) it takes money more seriously than ideas.
*
If the kingdom of god is within us,
is the empire of the devil around us?
#
Monday, May 07, 2012
*****************************************
LIES
*******************
All belief systems are big lies
because they pretend to provide answers to questions
that are unanswerable.
*
When is a question unanswerable?
When the answers are contradictions
that cannot be resolved.
*
Once when I quoted Erasmus of Rotterdam
in one of my commentaries
I was told I was being “vicious.”
*
To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say
what Tolstoy once said to a fellow passenger on a train:
“As long as there are people like you
we will have wars and massacres.”
*
What is patriotism if not the propaganda of individuals
who pretend to be our “betters”
but who are in fact our worst.
#
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
**********************************
WE ARE WHAT OUR ENEMIES MADE US
************************************************** **
When Einstein said he did not believe in the god of the Jews
he was told to go back where he came from.
*
Most Christians are Christian because
they were brainwashed as children.
The same could be said
of Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists.
*
I was born and raised as a Catholic
and my greatest enemies were neither Jews nor Muslims
but Protestants, in the same way that a Sunni’s greatest enemies
are Shias and vice versa.
*
Popes, imams, and rabbis are not just liars
but enemies of mankind.
*
The astonishing ease with which idiots assume to know better
or to be better on the grounds that
their god is the only true god.
*
When Socrates said “of the gods we know nothing,”
he relied on his reason.
When Hegel, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Shaw, Russell, Sartre,
and many other celebrated thinkers rejected the Bible
as the word of god, they did so only after they saw the light
and were born again as human beings.
*
Gandhi: “I am not superstitious. I am a super-atheist.”
#
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
****************************************
MORE ON
RELIGION & LITERATURE
***********************************************
After reading my recent comments on religion and literature,
a gentle reader informs me:
“Hegel and Einstein were theists.”
So was Voltaire who said:
“Since it was a religious war there were no survivors.”
*
I doubt if God recognizes Himself
in men who speak in His name.
The Devil, maybe.
God? Hell no!
*
Among “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”
(TIME, April 30, 2012) there are two Turks
but not a single Armenian.
If there is one and I missed him,
I am prepared to be verbally lynched by our superpatriots
who are never wrong.
*
To be wrong – nothing new in that.
We all make mistakes.
But to be catastrophically wrong
with the certainty that you are absolutely right:
that’s difficult to admit
and impossible to come to terms with.
*
The greater the gap between what we think of ourselves
and what others think of us,
the greater the number of brainwashed dupes.
*
Palestinians have three mighty allies:
fanaticism, money from oil, and universal anti-Semitism.
Who cares about Armenians?
Not even Armenians.
#




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what.....

Thursday, May 10, 2012
******************************************
JUST A THOUGHT
*******************************
Men are seduced by lies,
communities divided, and
nations torn by war
because of the arrogance, greed, and stupidity of the 1%.
Remember that next time you see someone
speechifying, sermonizing and pretending to know
something you don’t know,
all the while doing his utmost to cover up the fact that
compared to what he doesn’t know,
what he knows is as nothing.
#
Saturday, May 12, 2012
**********************************
HOMO SAPIENS
***************************
You will never see an imam
arguing with a bishop?
They know better…
*
To be brainwashed means to believe
your convictions are your own not someone else’s.
*
To be brainwashed means to believe
your dogmas are god-given certainties
and someone else’s dogmas are fabrications of the devil.
*
To be brainwashed means to speak in the name of god
even when you do the devil’s work.
*
To be brainwashed means to be absolutely right
even when you are catastrophically wrong.
*
To be brainwashed means to believe
you sit at the right hand of god
and those who are against you
are in cahoots with the devil.
*
To be brainwashed means to believe you are blessed,
unlike the riffraff who bear the mark of Cain.
*
Homo sapiens?
Don’t make me laugh!
It is the wisest among us that are damn fools.
#
Saturday, May 12, 2012
****************************************
WHAT MUST BE DONE
**********************************
We don’t mind doing a thousand things
(sermonizing, speechifying, lamenting, praying, begging, protesting, and so on)
but we refuse to do the one thing that must be done.
We are divided and dysfunctional because
we don’t have a constitution that makes consensus a must.
America is very probably the most divided nation on earth.
What makes it a nation,
as opposed to a collection of unruly tribes,
is a constitution of which they are rightly proud.
Instead of a single constitution
we have several each with its own mafia
pretending to have truth and god on its side.
As for our pundits, academics, and ghazetajis
who ought to know better:
they prefer to speak of what the Turks did to us
a hundred years ago
and to cover up what we have been doing to ourselves
for two thousand years.
They behave like running dogs
who know their master
but not their master’s master.
#




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comments

Sunday, May 13, 2012
***************************************
WISDOM
*************************
Since life has an unhappy ending
(sometimes even an unhappy beginning and middle)
man has invented religion whose function is to cushion the blow of death
by making promises it is in no position to keep.
*
In metaphysics as in economics
it is always the 1% that makes a comfortable living
by exploiting the 99%.
*
I was educated by monks,
and I remember an older friend warning me:
“The problem with monks is that
they know little about the real world.”
And sure enough, these monks lost all their possessions
to a gang of crooks that promised to double the value of their assets
by making smart investments in a growing economy.
*
What do I know about the real world?
Very little—so little in fact that it might as well be nothing.
An angry woman once said to me:
“Yours is the kind of wisdom
that’s available to anyone with a library card.”
She was right.
Reading books – what could be easier?
Reading reality – that’s what’s separates the men from the boys,
and ultimately the deceivers from their dupes.
#
Monday, May 14, 2012
**************************************
METAPHYSICS
**********************
Truth shall set you free.
By contrast, propaganda shall poison the well,
shut the doors of perception,
and paralyze the mind.
*
If to recycle propaganda were a capital offense,
all dupes would plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
*
Whenever we say yes to lies,
we raise a wall between us and reality.
*
God knows everything, including all the phone numbers
in all the phone books of the world
even though he has no use for them.
*
A statement is absurd
when its contradiction makes as much or more sense.
*
God is love but prefers not to get involved in human affairs.
That’s the only way to explain the rape of children
and the massacre of innocent civilians.
*
We are not smart enough to understand God
but stupid enough to speak in His name.
#
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
**************************************
CIVICS 101
*******************************
ON DEMOCRACY
******************************
Democracy is a work in progress.
It creates an environment wherein dialogue, evolution, and progress
become possibilities.
By contrast, in all other forms of governance,
decline and degeneration become certainties.
What we have in Russia and Armenia today
is pseudo-democracy or a combination of oligarchy and kleptocracy.
Power is like money:
those who have it are never satisfied with what they have.
They want more…with no end in sight.
*
ON NATIONALISM
*******************************
We are not nationalists, we are tribalists.
Germans under Hitler were nationalists.
The first two letters of “Nazi” stand for nation.
When they sang “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles,”
they meant the nation stands over the provinces.
When we sing our national anthem we say
(or used to until very recently):
“Our homeland, miserable and masterless,”
meaning without a single master or power structure.
*
ON TURKS
***************************
Even if Turks were to agree with all our demands,
that would not be the end of our problems.
Turks are not a solution, they are an obstacle
if only because we put too much faith in what they can do
and not enough faith in what we can do on our own.
We call Turks denialists.
So are we whenever we place all our eggs in a Turkish basket.
#
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
To know better does not mean to be less confused.
*
There is always a residue of unforgiveness in all forgiveness.
*
If an imam or bishop were to say
the sun rises in the east and sets in the west
I would do my utmost to prove him wrong.
*
At one time or another even the most civilized people on earth
have behaved like Turks.
That’s why on the Genocide issue Americans are pro-Turkish.
*
A truth cannot be repeated often enough.
A lie stated once is already too many times.
*
At the source of all atrocities there is a belief system
based on absurdities.
*
If I ever write my memoirs
I will begin with a chapter titled “Childhood and Youth,”
which will contain only two words:
“Good riddance.”
#





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crooks/2

Saturday, May 19, 2012
****************************************
MORE ON CROOKS
***************************
If our panchoonies had a credo,
its first line would read:
“I believe in the power of money
to solve all our problems,”
and its last line – you guessed:
“Mi kich pogh…”
*
A headline in my morning paper reads:
“Porn-importing bishop defrocked by Vatican.”
*
Never underestimate the power of crooks.
They have been in the business since the beginning of time –
remember the Serpent in the Garden –
and they are still going strong.
*
How many of our kings have been beheaded or assassinated?
What does that tell you about our character as a nation?
*
If you think you know all you need to know,
it only means you have reached a dead end.
*
When it comes to belief systems,
you will have a better chance to be on the right path
if you think against the majority.
#
Friday, May 18, 2012
*********************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**************************************
In a police state the police,
like the Vatican, is never wrong.
*
I committed my worst blunders
when I thought I could do no wrong.
*
If you try to be lovable
you will end up hating yourself.
*
I acquired my worst enemies
when I tried to be popular.
*
Among Armenians a “former friend” means
a mortal enemy.
*
Where would poetry, and the arts in general,
including philosophy be without women?
Even Socrates was willing to concede that
he owed his status as philosopher
to an incompatible wife.
#
Saturday, May 19, 2012
*****************************************
ARMENIANS & TURKS
**********************************
Nothing can be as ephemeral
as the distance that separates my faith
from someone else’s superstition
and vice versa.
*
In politics and history the rule is,
your truth is my lie
and vice versa.
*
Speaking as an Armenian,
one of the most incomprehensible things about Turks
is the fact that they are human beings
like the rest of us.
The only thing that separates us
is our respective educational systems.
Which amounts to saying,
as children we were brainwashed by individuals
whose belief systems are superstitions.
#




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Plu

Sunday, May 20, 2012
******************************************
P.L.U.
*******************
“They are not P.L.U. (people like us).
They have no respect for the law.
They have ruined our image as a nation.”
“They” of course are Armenians from the former Soviet Union.
*
Armenian-Americans who speak in those terms
forget that in 1933 they staged
one of the most spectacular assassinations in American history
when a gang of fanatics butchered a bishop on Christmas eve
in a New York cathedral – an event and the trial that followed
that made a thousand headlines throughout the continent.
*
Most Americans may no longer remember this
but people who matter, high-placed individuals in Washington,
policy-makers, have a long memory
and have very illusions about their fellow men.
In their eyes, we are not P.L.U either.
*
Notwithstanding Saroyan, we are not cute.
If the Yanks are kindly disposed towards us
it may be because we speak too much of massacres
and they consider it their duty
to be on the side of innocent victims.
*
God did not create more Russians and Americans,
or for that matter Arabs and Turks.
There is a good reason why we are few:
cannibalism.
*
We either learn from our mistakes
or we develop a phobia of repeating them,
and fear is never a good policy.
#
Monday, May 21, 2012
**************************************
ENGINEERS OF DESTRUCTION
********************************************
Sermonizers remind us we are all sinners.
Speechifiers tell us we are not
as patriotic as we should be.
We are all sinners, granted, with one difference:
some of us don’t make a comfortable living
by exploiting someone else’s crucifixion.
In the eyes of God we are all fools.
But some of us don’t deliver sermons on wisdom.
If I knew how to pray I would say:
“Our Father, who art in heaven,
deliver us from our deliverers.”
#
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
**********************************
ON DISAGREEMENTS
*************************************
Men disagree because they are dupes
who believe they are too smart to be brainwashed.
Nationalists disagree because they believe
they are morally superior
even when they behave like the scum of the earth.
Wise men disagree because they rate self-interest
above truth which they believe to be
an invisible and unattainable abstraction.
In short, men disagree because
they are stupid, arrogant, and dishonest.
Which may suggest an “honest disagreement”
is an oxymoron
with emphasis on the last two syllables.
#
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
*****************************************
ON HISTORIANS
**************************
To understand history we must begin by understanding historians.
To what extend tribal loyalty and self-interest
color their values and worldview?
Why is it that the overwhelming majority of them
are subservient to the power structure within which they function?
If an independent body of experts
were to rate their integrity or objectivity,
how many of them would be classified as propagandists?
Why is it that the average dupe (or 99%)
treats them the way Italians treated Mussolini
(“Mussolini ha sempre ragione” = Mussolini is always right),
or Catholics treat the Pope,
or generally speaking, sheep treat their shepherd
whose ultimate aim is to deliver them to butchers?
The only plausible answer is that given by a lion tamer
when asked why he takes his lion to church every Sunday morning:
“He has to eat.”
#




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1%

Thursday, May 24, 2012
***********************************
ON THE 1%
***********************************
The 1% have been in the business of deceiving the 99%
for such a long time that they think
it is their human right to do so.
*
If anyone had suggested to Sultan Abdulhamid II
that the Empire could no longer afford 1000 concubines in his harem
but only 750 or even 900, my guess is
the Sultan would have demanded the man’s head on a platter.
This may well be one reason why Kemal is now thought of
as a great statesman as opposed to a promiscuous alcoholic.
*
Some scholars have asserted that Louis XIV
never said “L’etat c’est moi.”
He didn’t have to.
Judging by the way he lived, he had no doubt on that score.
*
The 1% of small nations can commit big blunders
as surely as big nations can commit bigger ones.
*
The 99% have been duped for such a long time that
they consider being duped as an inevitable fact of life,
like death and taxes.
*
An eminent physician once asserted that
he had scientific proof of the fact that
death is not inevitable
and immortality is attainable here on earth.
He died a wealthy man.
#
Friday, May 25, 2012
**************************************
SUMMING UP (XIV)
********************************
What divides us is not truth but propaganda.
*
If genocide cannot unite us, what can?
Surely not a million
or, for that matter, a million and a half
sermons, speeches, editorials, and lamentations.
*
Behind every propaganda line there is a big lie,
and behind every big lie
there is a cunning operator whose ultimate aim
is not liberty, equality, and fraternity
but cannibalism.
*
In so far as they divide mankind,
rabbis, imams, and bishops preach not the word of God
but that of the Devil.
*
As long as they deny the Genocide
and as long as we remain divided
we speak not as men but as parrots.
*
The aim of all propaganda is
to paralyze the mind and to abolish thinking.
*
Think of propaganda as another dirty trick
that the 1% plays on the 99%.
#
Saturday, May 26, 2012
*************************************
PARAPHRASES & ASSERTIONS
**************************************************
I write for Armenians,
therefore my life has been a waste of time.
*
When a speechifier speaks of freedom,
he means slavery;
and when a sermonizer speaks of God,
he means the Devil.
*
I believe in one God
who is Unknown and Unknowable.
*
It is not my ambition to speak the truth,
only to advance in its direction.
*
Where the 1% are divided,
so will the 99%.
Where there are dividers,
there will be dupes.
*
To sum up the ideas of Baronian, Odian, and Massikian:
Ours is a leadership of morons and their brown-nosers.
*
If you can’t convince a hundred,
then sow seeds of doubt in just one.
#




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Sunday, May 27, 2012
*************************************
…AMONG OTHER THINGS
********************************************
As a child I believed everyone who was older
and pretended to know better.
When asked for solutions I am in the habit of saying “Honesty!”
Perhaps henceforth I should expand that to “Grow up!”
*
When dealing with compulsive liars
it is always safer to assume the opposite of what they say.
*
Belief systems in themselves may be harmless.
Men who assert monopoly on truth:
the hangman’s noose is too good for them.
*
In his memoirs, Frank Langella quotes Laurence Olivier
saying the following about Vivien Leigh:
“You know, she was a nymphomaniac!
And I’m a premature ejaculator!
Not a good matchup!”
Elsewhere he quotes an unidentified actress
saying the following about Anthony Quinn:
“I made a picture with Tony, he was a complete pig.
An animal. A rude, dumb peasant.
I will never forgive myself for letting him f*ck me.”
#
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
***********************************
THE UNSTATED REASON
************************************************** *
For every stated reason there is an unstated one.
The stated reason for World War I was
“the war to end all wars.”
The stated reason of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire,
love of freedom.
The unstated reason: If the Great Powers of the West are on our side,
we can’t lose.
The stated reason of Hai Tahd or Genocide Recognition:
truth and justice.
The unstated reason: history is on our side.
But if history teaches us anything it’s that
it doesn’t choose sides;
and for every one of our historians and diplomats
Turks can produce ten or twenty of them
who are superior liars because they are the offspring of an empire
and they have been in the business of deception and propaganda
much longer than we have.
We may have the world’s sympathy
but not its justice,
assuming of course there is justice in this world,
which is as good as assuming we will have no more wars,
or if the West is on our side we can’t lose,
or if our struggle is for freedom and justice
sooner or later victory will be ours;
and if you believe that,
you will believe anything!
#
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
**********************************************
OBSERVATIONS
******************************
Ignorance is less absence of knowledge
and more a conscious and premeditated decision not to know.
*
The 1% create jobs
and the 99% create the 1%.
*
When a belief system acquires a million followers
it ceases to be an abstraction
and it acquires the solidity of a stone wall.
*
You cannot reason with a man
who takes money more seriously than ideas.
*
Kingsley Amis: “If you can't annoy somebody with what you write,
I think there is little point in writing.”
*
There is a type of philistine for whom the word culture
is almost synonymous with cuisine.
*
If shish-kebab-and-pilaf Armenians were to read
a single Armenian book every year,
Armenian literature would enjoy another renaissance.
*
Cicero defines freedom as “participation in power.”
If we are free, ours is the freedom
of ants, birds, and herbivores –
free to be stepped on, shot at, and devoured.
#
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
****************************************
THEOLOGY
***************************************
Christ was not crucified to save mankind.
Look around you.
Does anyone look saved?
Do you feel saved?
Christ was crucified for two very pragmatic reasons:
he refused to be
(one) a dupe to rabbis and
(two)a slave to Romans.
The rest is theology.
#



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[arabaliozian]

comments /

Thursday, May 31, 2012
*************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**********************************
Our eyes are not equipped to see everything.
Our brain perceives only a fraction reality.
Comprehension deals with fractions, not wholes.
*
If only we could doubt when we are sure!
*
Perhaps sanity consists in coming to terms
with your own brand of insanity.
*
The source of all self-inflicted misery:
the need to love and be loved.
#
Friday, June 01, 2012
*********************************
SMART ARMENIANS
*********************************
There is no limit to how dumb a smart Armenian can be.
Because I was brainwashed to believe Armenians are smart,
I thought I was being smart even I behaved like an inbred moron.
*
“A good man is hard to find,”
reads the title of a famous American short story.
What about a good Armenian?
In case you didn’t know, they exist;
I have met one or two of them myself.
*
In a commentary in this morning’s paper
I read that American intellectuals
have been seduced by big money
(Wall Street, lobbyists, Obama).
My first thought as an Armenian:
So what else is new?
*
I would like to read a history of philosophy
that is as accessible to laymen as
“There is nothing new under the sun,”
“My poverty is proof of my honesty,”
“I think therefore I am,”
“Workers of the world unite,
you have nothing to lose but your chains,”
“Hell is other people.”
#
Saturday, June 02, 2012
************************************
REFLECTIONS
***************************
Take yourself seriously and no one else will.
*
If a billion people believe in one thing
and another billion in another,
the chances are neither side is right.
*
Prejudice speaks louder than reason
even when it whispers.
*
Tip O’Neill on Clinton: “Women go wet.”
*
Carl Sandburg: “The past is a bucket of ashes.”
*
I QUOTE FROM MEMORY
****************************************
“The function of a jury is to decide
which side has the better lawyer.”
*
“Science is our only source of knowledge.
Metaphysics is empty verbiage.”
*
“Metaphysical systems are more vulnerable to boredom
than to disproof.”
*
“…as desirable as someone else’s wife.”
*
“He is such a nobody that
when he goes out of a room
it feels as though someone came in.”
*
“When you are young,
you pull up your own pants
and go wherever you want to go.
But when you are old
someone else pulls up your pants
and takes you where you don’t want to go.”
#




Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me

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please ignore it.

It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

wrong?

Sunday, June 3, 2012
***************************************
IF I AM WRONG…
*********************************
If I am wrong,
why so many are with me?
And if I am right,
why so many are against me?
*
The brainwashed will never be with me
for the simple reason that they believe – as I did –
everything they are told by priests, schoolteachers, and scoutmasters.
I remember as a teenager
when I first met someone who spoke as I do today
I dismissed him as a megalomaniacal eccentric
on the verge of insanity.
*
The politically ambitious will never agree with me either
because in an authoritarian environment
they know instinctively there is no future in dissent
which they equate with treason.
They believe to be – or rather, they are brainwashed to believe
they stand for God and Country
and anyone who is against them
must be on the side of the Devil and the enemy.
*
In politics instinct speaks louder than reason.
That’s the only way to explain the success of dictators like Hitler,
or for that matter, our own speechifiers and charlatans
who pretend to be right
even when they are criminally and catastrophically wrong.
#Monday, June 04, 2012
***********************************
LAMENTATION VII
***********************************
“Where many other nations perished, we survived!’ – implying,
we must be doing something right.
What exactly did we do right?
We allowed them to legally rape our daughters and kidnap our sons.
We survived, yes, but at what cost?
That’s a question we don’t like to ask
perhaps because the answer is too depressing.
*
We survived – if that’s what you want to call it –
only to die by the million –
and I am not just talking about massacres now.
What’s done is done.
Let bygones be bygones.
The question we must ask at this point is:
In what way the conditions of our survival
radically altered our character as a nation?
What if we survived only to be subservient to alien commissars
and our own agha babas?
*
We praise freedom even as we bury it.
We speak of independence even as we go down on our knees
in fear of our own executioners.
If that’s survival, I want not part of it.
*
No need to lament our dead
when it is the living that are in need of our tears.
#
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
***************************************
ON GENOCIDE RECOGNITION
**************************************
The Turks refuse to recognize the Genocide
for a number of reasons, beginning with the fact that
they are brainwashed to believe
they belong to a great and noble race of men
known as the Turanic race
(known only to them and no one else
and invented by Kemal, who like all dictators ,
felt fully qualified to rewrite not only history
and the laws of the land but also biology).
It follows, the descendants of such a noble race
are “incapable of committing atrocities” (Erdogan).
*
Turks know that the dead cannot testify
and the survivors are living proof of the fact
there was no extermination or a plan to exterminate
(which is how genocide is defined).
*
They also know if they plead guilty as charged
they stand to lose not only face
but also billions in reparations
as well as vast tracts of land.
*
Last but not least, they know that truth may be on our side
but the world is on theirs because all imperial powers
as well as nations with imperial ambitions,
including the most civilized and progressive,
have at one time or another committed
unspeakable crimes against defenseless civilians.
*
All this is known not only to the Turkish leadership
but also our own Turcocentric academics and ghazetajis
whose central concern is neither justice
nor documenting crimes against humanity
but covering up the incompetence and blunders
of our own leadership.
#
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
****************************************
CONTRADICTIONS
*****************************
You cannot reason with the brainwashed.
Neither can you reason with an imam, rabbi, or bishop.
What does that mean in practical terms?
Simply this:
if you are accused of murder one
(cold-blooded and premeditated)
and you are innocent,
at the end you will be found guilty.
*
Where others see men of God,
I see cold-blooded killers.
*
Instead of brainwashing children,
religious leaders should engage with one another
and reach a consensus
beginning with the following three assertions:
(i) all dogmas are inherently wrong;
(ii) the will of God is an unknown quantity; and
(iii) to doubt is more human than to be certain.
*
At the root of all wars and massacres
you will find certainties that are not only false
but also criminally and catastrophically absurd.
*
After asserting all men are brothers,
they choose to behave like Cain.
Contradictions?
What contradictions?
#




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[arabaliozian]

on the 1%

Thursday, June 07, 2012
****************************************
ASSETS & LIABILITIES
**************************************
A failed nation is defined as one
... that has not been successful in reconciling
its internal factions.
It follows, notwithstanding our many assets
(high IQ, progressive, adaptable, first nation this, first nation that)
we are a failed nation
very much like Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, and Syria.
*
What’s the use of being smart
if we are too stupid to reach a consensus?
What the hell is the use of doing a thousand things
if we cannot do that which must be done?
And when I say “we” I mean not only our leaders
but also those who support them.
If our leaders divide us
it’s because we allow them to do so.
We are as responsible as they are.
*
Sooner or later all internal divisions
lead to massacre – both “red” and “white.”
And speaking of massacre,
you may have noticed that
when I made a short list of our assets,
I included our genocide
(“first nation to experience genocide in the 20th century"),
which of course is not an asset but a liability
and the worst failure that a nation can experience.
# Friday, June 08, 2012
************************************************** ******
COMMENTS
***************************
To say philosophy is useless is to imply
philomoronism is a superior discipline.
*
The only reason the number of my blunders
has been going down steadily is that
so is the variety and frequency of my activities.
The dead don’t make mistakes.
As for the frequency and variety of my written comments:
more often than not what I do is speak in defense of Socrates
and against the jury that condemned him to death.
*
If you want to get ahead in our environment
study the art of kissing ass.
You need no other qualifications.
*
The greatest source of error is self-assessed infallibility.
#
Saturday, June 09, 2012
**************************************
ON THE 1%
*************************
We are told the 1% create jobs.
What we are not told is where would the 1% be
without the blood and sweat of the 99%?
And even important:
who would wipe their asses
when they are too young and too old?
*
ON BEING PREDICTABLE
***************************************
If I am predictable
it’s because I am consistently against
recycling propaganda,
promoting subservience,
and legitimizing prejudice.
If being unpredictable means
adopting the opposite disposition,
I solemnly swear here and now
never to be unpredictable.
*
ON WOMEN
**************************
The worst thing I can say about women is that
they are like men.
#




Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me

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It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

observations

Sunday, June 10, 2012
*************************************
OBSERVATIONS
*****************************
A man who kills in the name of God
worships the Devil.
*
You are not brainwashed for your own good;
you are brainwashed to better serve their interests.
*
Failure is the key to success,
and success on one level
may spell ruin in another.
*
Tell me what is it that you want more than anything else
and I will tell you, if you get it, you will be disappointed.
*
Too big to fail or too insignificant to survive? – like kings…
#
Monday, June 11, 2012
************************************
MORE OBSERVATIONS
********************************
If I were a wealthy man
I would be surrounded by brown-nosers.
Ah! the privileges of poverty!
*
“If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger!”
That indeed is the philosophy of all authoritarian rulers.
Did I say philosophy?
Make it philomoronism.
*
The destiny of all organizations
is to become a mafia.
*
Where there is power
the devil is sure to be in charge.
*
It took mankind many centuries to conclude that
kings don’t rule by the will of God.
It may take many more centuries for mankind to realize that
men who speak in the name of God
engage in charlatanism.
*
Believers have doubts as surely as
skeptics thirst for certainties.
Is there life after death?
Nobody knows.
Speaking for myself,
I think the universe is too complex and magnificent
piece of machinery
to end with a whimper.
But that may well be wishful thinking on my part.
#
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
***********************************
THEORIES & FACTS
******************************
If you define patriotism as love of homeland,
how do you define homeland?
Speaking for myself I would define it
as anywhere I am allowed to work and make a living.
If thousands of Armenians have emigrated to Turkey,
does that mean Turkey is now their homeland?
A good question for which I don’t have an easy answer.
I only know that when
facts contradict theories,
you discard the theories and keep the facts.
Next question:
Is Armenia our homeland
if it’s at the mercy of former KGB agents
and Bolshevik mafias?
Another good question.
Speaking for myself,
I would have a better chance to survive in Turkey.
#
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
************************************
EMPTY VERBIAGE
*****************************
To speak of Turks and Armenians
is to engage in fiction.
There are no Turks and Armenians.
There are only mongrelized Mongols
and bastardized Armenians.
The rest is nationalist propaganda
and all talk of “pure blood” is fascist nonsense.
#

[arabaliozian]

memos

Thursday, June 14, 2012
*******************************************
MEMORANDA
************************
Historians are first and foremost
propagandists of state-sponsored lies.
With them presumption of guilt or innocence comes first,
selection of evidence after.
*
Writing is easy.
Deleting – that’s where creativity and originality move in.
*
To know when to shut up:
birthplace of all masterpieces.
*
All organized religions have failed.
If they continue to have followers
it's because any meaning,
even when meaningless,
is better than no meaning.
*
Strong convictions are the surest symptoms
of weak minds.
#
Friday, June 15, 2012
*********************************
IDIOTS
********************
Canadians and Americans appear to be obsessed
with their unemployment rates,
not to say corruption and incompetence in high places.
I have been watching Armenian news on TV
for more than ten years now
and I don’t remember a single mention
of unemployment, corruption, and incompetence.
All I see is a bunch of bureaucrats or “suits”
(also identified as “kheyars,” meaning cucumbers)
in official ceremonies,
children and teenagers singing and dancing,
and the rich variety of delicacies served at banquets.
Idiots!
*
Turks are so busy being proud of their Turkishness
that they pretend to be offended
when massacres are mentioned.
And we are so proud of our Armenishness
that we consider unemployment, corruption, and incompetence
alien concept not worth mentioning.
Idiots!
*
We are not so much a divided nation
as a broken one – a broken one, moreover,
that refuses to mend itself
though it has all the means to do so.
Idiots!
#
Saturday, June 16, 2012
*********************************
DZOUR NESDINK,
SHIDAG KHOSSINK
**************************************************
Burma has its San Suu Kyi,
Tibet its Dalai Lama,
Tunisia its Buazizi,
Egypt its Muslim Brotherhood,
and once upon a time we had Khrimian Hairik
who dared to say No to the Czar.
Whom do we have today?
Only empty suits, brown-nosing wheeler-dealers,
and gutless nonentities whose #1 concern is #1.
This is true not only of the Homeland
but also the Diaspora.
That’s what a thousand years of subservience has done to us.
We lament our million-and-half every year on April 24.
We should lament our loss of manhood every day.
#