[arabaliozian]

Friday, December 28, 2012
********************************************
TO MY SWEET FELLOW ARMENIANS
*****************************************************
To how many of my fellow countrymen I could say:
“You are Armenian.
I am Armenian.
Therefore we have nothing in common.”
*
After Obama won the election
a young woman in the South was so angry that
when she found out her husband had not voted,
she ran him over with her SUV.”
My first thought on reading this story in my morning paper:
“She must have had some Armenian blood in her veins.”
Or, as Turgenev (who despised Dostoevky) would say,
“Straight out of Dostoevsky.”
*
Another story told by a Canadian-Armenian woman:
“I once met two elegantly dressed ladies in a supermarket
speaking Armenian. I approached them and said in Armenian:
‘You are Armenian?’ They immediately took a step backward
as if I were suffering from a contagious disease.”
And I remember to have thought:
They must have been from the Middle East,
who knew instinctively there is no such thing
as a friendly Armenian without ulterior motives.
*
Sometimes I am told I am consistently negative
about my fellow Armenians.
Others tell me I should write more like Saroyan
who despised his wife (whom he married twice)
and both his children.
#
Saturday, December 29, 2012
****************************************
TWO GENOCIDES
******************************
There are two genocides in our past
and the first one lasted 600 years
during which they re-created us in their own image.
I repeat, there are two genocides –
the remembered one and the unremembered or ignored one.
The documented and exposed one,
and the covered up and forgotten.
*
There is an entire library of material on the second genocide;
not even a whisper on the first.
No one can be as blind as the man who refuses to see.
Our blindness is a self-induced condition.
It is a blindness planned, organized, and implemented
by the pornography of our own phony patriotism and propaganda.
*
If we refuse to see the obvious
it’s because we are as guilty as the perpetrators.
We did not shape our history.
History shaped us.
And what shaped us more than any event or factor
is 600 years of subservience.
*
Nothing degrades and corrupts a man more
than subservience to a morally corrupt power.
Such subservience is worse than suicide.
In suicide only the body is killed.
In subservience, the spirit.
*
In the second genocide only our bodies were slaughtered.
In the first, our spirit.
Turks re-created us in their own image as surely
as God is said to have created us in His.
*
The 11th Commandment should read:
“Thou shalt not be subservient to any man.”
The Turks have programmed us to hate our fellow Armenians.
The massacre continues.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, December 30, 2012
***************************************
IN BRIEF
******************
A party of truth cannot survive
Without a big lie.
*
If you can’t throw the bums out
you can change nothing.
*
If the Pope is a crook
can his bishops be honest men?
*
As long as we remain divided
the Sultan continues to rule.
*
We agree only on one thing,
to remain divided.
*
Turks conquered Armenia
not after winning a war
but after we lost many small battles.
*
A member of a party is like a dog
who knows his master
but not his master’s master.
*
A religious leader
is a religious leader
regardless of belief system.
A politician is a politician
regardless of nationality.
Believe nothing they say.
#
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
****************************************
AS I SEE IT
******************************
Never underestimate the cunning of your adversary
especially if you have been moronized into thinking
you are smart.
*
I rate understanding above hating the enemy.
I believe the more we understand
the closer we get to God,
including the God who stood by and did nothing
to stop the massacre of the innocent.
*
We have been shaped by our mountains and valleys,
and where there are no mountains we raise them;
and where there are no valleys, we dig them.
*
Let Americans speak of the American dream;
we can only speak of the nightmares we must avoid.
*
Teach yourself to say and repeat:
God did not make me a dupe;
I chose to be one.
*
In politics a whore has a better chance to succeed than a virgin.
A bordello madam would make an ideal candidate.
#
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
************************************
BON APPETIT
******************************
Let the world celebrate the New Year;
I have more important fish to fry –
and today I propose to fry our revolutionaries.
*
When revolutionaries become politicians
they turn into cannibals.
This is what happened in France;
this is what happened in Russia;
and this is what’s happening with us.
Hence Zarian’s dictum:
“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.
*
Among Armenians it is impossible to be
a member of a political party
without being a moronized fanatic.
There are so many lies to swallow
and so many blunders to cover up!
*
Consider the Ottoman Bank caper as a case in point.
As a child I was brainwashed to believe
it was a major coup even though our “heroes” survived
and the people paid a heavy price –
as many as 4000 innocent civilians (some say 6000)
were brutally massacred in retaliation.
*
I was led to believe it was a major success
because the whole world learned about our plight.
In other words, it was a success as a publicity stunt.
We raised the consciousness of the world.
And what did the world do
in the catastrophe that followed?
Nothing!
What is the world doing today a hundred years later?
Even President Obama is afraid to use the “G” word.
Some success!
Some publicity stunt!
#
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
**************************************
“AGHBER”
******************************
“You are a disgrace to the nation.”
“Was your grandmother a Turkish whore?”
“Why are you single? Are you a homosexual?”
“How much are they paying you to write as you do?”
“You are full of ****, Baliozoglu!”
“You are a tavajan.”
“Nobody reads you any more. So why don’t you shut up?”
“Nobody gives a damn what you think.”
“You call yourself an Armenian?”
*
No! As a matter of fact I don’t.
I do my utmost to avoid labels.
First and foremost I identify myself
as a human being,
and I consider all other identifications
accidents of history.
Let others use them like flags
with which to cover their nakedness.
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 03, 2013
*****************************************
CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE
**************************************
Turks read and quote me?
Let them!
I refuse to join a conspiracy of silence
by writing about “nightingales serenading
the moon and the stars” (Leo).
*
If we are the mercy of “Turks who speak Armenian fluently,”
(according to one of our elder statesmen)
who will benefit by my silence?
If we are experiencing another genocide (“sbidak chart”) –
that is to say, exodus from the Homeland
and assimilation in the Diaspora –
will my silence slow down or accelerate the process?
If in the eyes of our “betters”
we are no better than garbage (“aghber”) and “****s,”
I see nothing questionable in pointing out the fact that,
very much like the rest of us,
they could be wrong.
*
If the Turks know us better than we know ourselves –
after all, it was they who initiated and implemented
a policy of “divide and rule” --
what’s new in what I have been saying?
*
I don’t adjust what I think and write
to please this or that imaginary audience.
I deal with facts.
I deal with reality.
I don’t control reality.
I try to understand it.
*
When told to give them hell,
Truman is quoted as having said:
“I don’t do that. I speak the truth
and they think they are in hell.”
If that’s good enough for an American presidential candidate,
it ought to be good enough for a minor Armenian scribbler.
*
Covering up the blunders of our political and religious leaders
has nothing to do with patriotism
and everything to do with subservience and cowardice.
#
Friday, January 04, 2013
**************************************
THROW THE BUMS OUT
*********************************
People don’t divide themselves; leaders do –
political leaders in cahoots with religious leaders;
bosses and bishops.
and what motivates them is not love of God or Truth
but lust for power.
*
They say they divide us in the name of dogmas
that are far more important
than the survival of the nation
and the welfare of the people.
If you believe that
you will believe anything.
*
All politicians are compulsive and habitual liars
who promise heaven and deliver hell.
Only the brainwashed take them seriously
and a brainwashed Armenian is a moronized dupe
who believes he cannot be fooled
because he is smart.
Smart when it comes to selling Oriental rugs, maybe;
but a damn fool when it comes to politics, certainly!
*
To divide and undermine the integrity of the nation
is enemy action, therefore treason.
*
The ideal dupe is a child that cannot yet think for himself.
Hence schools run by political parties
on the theory that once brainwashed always a dupe.
There it is, an outline of our central problem.
The solution is obvious
and if you can’t see it it’s because you have been “educated”
to be blind. And when “the blind lead the blind
both shall fall into the ditch.”
#
Saturday, January 05, 2013
************************************
ON PROPAGANDA
*******************************
Propaganda dehumanizes as well as
moronizes its dupes.
*
The difference between someone
who thinks for himself
and another who recycles propaganda is that
the first is a human being, therefore fallible,
and the second is a parrot
who has no conception of right and wrong
and is therefore infallible.
I speak from experience.
I was brought up as a parrot
and remained one for most of my life.
*
One way to tell the difference
between a parrot and a human being
is by their vocabulary.
Parrots read from the same script,
deliver the same line,
and use similar phrases, expressions and verbal formulas,
one of them being:
“We owe our continued existence
to our heroic freedom fighters;
if it weren’t for them
there would be no Armenia today.”
*
Our Stalinists could say the same thing
with one significant difference.
Whereas we know 350,000 Armenian boys died
during World War II fighting the Germans,
we have no idea how many freedom fighters died
in World War I.
If that is a state secret
there must be a good reason for it.
What is the reason?
I ask because I don’t know.
As always I have more questions than answers.
*
Why is it that we know the number of innocent civilians
that were slaughtered in 1915
but we don’t know the number of our heroes that fell?
*
In the Ottoman Bank caper
about a dozen heroes took part
and about four perished;
we also know that about 4000 (some say 6000)
innocent civilians were slaughtered in retaliation.
The ratio here is 1000 civilians to one freedom fighter.
Next question: does this ratio hold true
for the next chapter of our history?
Again I have more questions than answers
and as always I look forward to being enlightened.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, January 06, 2013
***********************************
WORK WITH ME
***********************
“What motivates you to write as you do
is self-hatred.”
There is some truth in that;
but hatred only of my former self
when I was a dupe and believed everything I was told
by my elders.
*
“How dare you blame the victims?”
I blame them only in so far as they allow themselves
to be victimized all over again by charlatans
who speak in the name of God and Country
but whose first and most important priority
is their own powers and privileges.
*
“You are an enemy of the nation.”
An enemy yes, but only of perennial losers
who speak with a forked tongue
and have consistently refused to learn from their blunders.
An enemy to them certainly,
but the best of friend to the ignorant,
the oppressed, the dupe,
and the slave who have been subservient
to brutal tyrants for so many centuries
that they can’t imagine
what it means to be free.
*
“I believe nothing you say!”
That’s because very much like me
you were “educated” to place your trust
on our dividers, that is to say gravediggers
who pretend to be unaware of the fact that
by dividing the community and the nation
they carry on a policy initiated and implemented
by sultans and commissars.
*
“Sometimes I have no idea what you blabber about endlessly.”
I can give you arguments,
cite historic precedents,
quote an international array of pundits, intellectuals, philosophers,
and even our own writers on our character as a people…
I can do all that and more
but what I cannot do is
give you understanding.
#
Monday, January 07, 2013
*****************************************
REFLECTIONS
**********************************
If I were to use a less rude and crude style of writing
when dealing with our foibles and failures
would I have a better chance of convincing some of my readers
that they are brainwashed dupes?
Maybe. I am not sure.
But I am sure of one thing.
It would be unspeakable arrogance on my part
to think I can say something that hasn’t been said before
by far better men than myself.
*
If I write the way I write it may be because
deep inside somewhere I have given up.
If 1500 years of literature failed to change a single iota
in our collective existence what chance do I have?
Think of what I write as another lamentation –
the lamentation of an unbeliever or an atheist
who believes in god but a god
who is unknowable and incomprehensible
and wants to stay that way.
*
I believe the best argument against the existence of god
is organized religions.
I know now that even if I were to speak
with the tongue of angels and prophets
I would make no difference because an Armenian
is first and foremost an impenetrable wall.
#
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
***********************************
ARMENIANS AND JEWS
***************************************
No one is beyond salvation.
But my guess is
if 1500 years of literature failed to save us,
only a messiah may have a better chance.
*
I once heard an Armenian lady say:
“I don’t care what everyone says.
Jesus was not a Jew but an Armenian.
They crucified him;
we were the first to accept him.”
*
A Jewish friend once said to me:
“You are lucky. Only Turks are after your ass.
The whole world is after ours.”
*
As a young man Zarian had messianic ambitions.
But in America they spread the rumor
that he was a madman.
In Armenia they silenced him.
We did not crucify him.
We buried him alive.
*
I once heard an Armenian Negro –
that’s right: a black Armenian from Africa
who spoke Armenian fluently say:
“Jews have a superior mutual support system.”
That’s common knowledge of course.
It is also common knowledge that
we speak about it all the time,
but nobody does a damn thing.
Talk is cheap.
Actions may boomerang.
*
Suppose a bishop were to sermonize on unity,
a member of the congregation would be justified in asking:
“Would you consider resigning your position
for the sake of unity?”
*
Some Armenians –
especially Armenians from the Middle East –
see Jews everywhere.
By contrast I see Armenians everywhere.
Officially there are no more than
a dozen Armenian families where I live
(population 500,000).
But whenever I open the telephone book
I see an Armenian on every page.
*
Our chief of police is an Armenian.
For many years our orchestral conductor
was also an Armenian.
I once wrote him a letter asking
if he would be willing to be interviewed –
that’s when I contributed regularly to several weeklies.
There was no reply.
#
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
*****************************************
THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW
*****************************************
All dupes identify themselves as patriots
and all idiots like to be called smart.
And that’s exactly what propaganda does:
it flatters as it moronizes.
*
I am not smart.
I just deviated from the conventional and narrow path
by a fraction of an inch and saw a different horizon.
*
An Armenian is another Armenian’s Turk.
If all Turks were to disappear tomorrow,
nothing would change.
*
If there are no atheists in foxholes it’s because
in foxholes one becomes a target of the unpredictable,
that is to say the Incomprehensible and the Unknowable,
which is as good a definition of God as any.
*
If “taxation without representation is tyranny,”
fund-raising without accounting is larceny.
*
The ambition of every sardine is to be a shark.
*
On the day I realized I could say what I think
(as opposed to parroting a propaganda line)
I felt as though I had discovered a new continent.
*
The only thing our political leaders have learned from history
is how to create a new generation of dupes and idiots.
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 10, 2013
****************************************
SURVIVORS
************************
To understand history
you must first understand the history of historians
and their criteria for selecting facts.
*
The Ottoman Empire on the eve of its collapse:
a regime of degenerate sultans,
ruthless bloodthirsty buggers
clinging to power by massacring innocent civilians
by the thousand.
Can you imagine anything more repulsive? –
except perhaps a regime of former KGB agents.
*
It is to be noted that sultans were both
political as well as religious leaders --
the equivalent of emperors and popes.
My question is:
why would a religious leader need a harem
of a thousand concubines most of them,
like himself, the offspring of “infidel dogs"?
*
The hardest thing in the world:
to be an Armenian without making enemies.
The easiest: to make enemies –
enemies who have no interest in understanding
what you are saying and why you are saying it.
What they hate more than anything else, it seems,
is your right to say what you think.
*
We fool ourselves when we say we are survivors.
The real survivors are the Sultan and Stalin.
#
Friday, January 11, 2013
************************************
NATIONAL HONOR
*******************************
When was the last time any one of our former KGB agents in the Homeland
and merchants in the Diaspora dared to utter the words “national honor”?
*
Thomas Jefferson: “Merchants have no country.
The mere spot they stand on
does not constitute so strong an attachment
as that from which they draw their gains.”
*
Now listen to our Raffi
saying the same thing with fewer words:
“Merchants are men without a country.
Profit is their only homeland.”
*
Instead of Goya Aivazovsky;
and instead of Shostakovich, Khachatourian.
*
Goethe: “Nothing is more terrible
than ignorance in action.”
*
If I am a second-rater it may be because
our first-raters have been systematically silenced
by KGB agents and merchants.
Armenian literature has been an endless war on two friends.
*
They don’t like what I say
because I don’t write what they think.
They think?
Strike that.
Make it, “they think they think.”
*
They resent me because I refuse to behave
like their unpaid secretary
taking down their unspoken words.
*
An American on America,
a Russian on Russia,
a German on Germany:
Don’t expect to hear the truth unless of course
they are dissidents:
Thoreau, Solzhenitsyn, Thomas Mann.
#
Saturday, January 12, 2013
************************************
FASCISTS
********************
When Hitler lost World War II
he blamed it on the German people.
That’s the way it is with all fascists –
they never make mistakes.
*
When Romney lost the election
he at no time blamed it on his ineptitude
and verbal blunders.
*
To this day our own revolutionaries expect us to believe
their operation was a success even if the patient died.
*
Turks worship Kemal and they have every right to:
after degenerate sultans any half-assed boozer and fornicator
would be seen as a great statesman worthy of universal adulation.
*
The common language of all political leaders is the same –
propaganda, based on the assumption that
the masses are so dumb that they will believe
anything they are told.
*
To this day Jews believe they are the Chosen;
Brits believe they were born to civilize the rest of the world;
and Armenians believe they are smart.
*
Speaking for myself:
I believe only idiots fall for a propaganda line
that flatters their vanity.
On the day this is understood,
mankind will be born again.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, January 13, 2013
***********************************
ACTION
*********************
We didn’t have to rise against the Sultan
to topple him: the Young Turks were going to do that for us.
As for the Young Turks:
Kemal was going to deal with them
in his own time.
And Kemal had his own nemesis and killer: booze.
*
We were wrong again when more recently
we adopted Palestinians as our role models
and engaged in random acts of assassination.
*
When I say “we” I don’t mean the majority of the people
who after long centuries of subservience under brutal tyrants
learned to wait, but a non-representative group
of self-appointed “freedom fighters”
(in their own version of the story)
and terrorists (as others, not all of them odar, saw them).
*
For once history was on our side
but we were too blind to see it;
and “when the blind lead the blind…”
*
Moral: Sometimes inaction is the best action.
*
Moral II: “Nothing can be as terrible
as ignorance in action.”
#
Monday, January 14, 2013
**************************************
RECAPITULATING
*******************************
In politics and diplomacy
objective judgment is better than emotional involvement.
The Brits are right: there are no friends and enemies in politics;
only interests.
*
Anger is a short madness.
So is hatred and in general all emotions
that cloud and distort one’s judgment.
*
There are two kinds of leaders:
the competent and the incompetent.
Avedik Issahakian is right:
we have been cursed with earthquakes,
a bad neighborhood, and fools as leaders.
*
The astonishing ease with which a fool
will convince himself or
allow himself to be brainwashed to believe
he is smart.
*
Memo to our leaders:
Unless you study history and learn from your blunders,
you will be a curse not a blessing to you nation.
*
Our enemies, our real enemies are
neither Turks nor Russians
but Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenians.
*
Q: The brainwashed: are they men or apes?
A: Apes who speak like parrots.
*
In an article dealing with the leadership
of native Indians in Canada I read the following words
in this morning’s paper:
“mismanagement, misappropriation, incompetence
and poor accountability.”
Poor Indians.
Poor Armenians.
#
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
*****************************************
CALLING A SPADE A SPADE
***********************************
All power structures engage in propaganda,
including the Catholic Church.
As a child I once met Cardinal Aghajanian
who handled Vatican’s propaganda department–
identified as “propagation of the faith.”
He was a sweet old man,
all smiles and small talk.
*
The aim of propaganda is to legitimize
political gangsterism
by moronizing the masses.
Like all Armenians I have been exposed
to my share of speechifiers
who engaged in partisan propaganda.
It didn’t even occur to me to question their integrity.
*
Propaganda and commercial advertising
might as well be twins.
The aim of advertising is to sell more products
by emphasizing the positive
and covering up the negative, like cancer in tobacco.
*
The hidden aim of political propaganda
is to raise another generation of killers.
*
Dupes of propaganda come in all sizes and shapes,
including highly intelligent men with impeccable credentials.
Two cases from the Vietnam era that come readily to mind:
George Romney (a governor as well as a presidential candidate,
very much like his son Mitt)
and Robert McNamara,
one of Kennedy’s “best and brightest.”
Romney admitted publicly to have been “brainwashed” (his word)
and McNamara acknowledged his blunder in his war memoirs.
*
Remember, no one can claim a monopoly on truth.
If you want to be born again as a human being
as opposed to a moronized dupe,
reassess periodically your fundamental assumptions
and the dogmas of your belief system.
#
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
****************************************
STATUS QUO
*************************
Three generations of our ablest men
have lived and died trying to solve our problems.
Result? We now have a generation of dupes
who believe we never had it so good
because we are in the best of hands
and that our greatest problem
is a handful of malcontents
whose sole aim in life is to promote gloom and doom,
pessimism, negativism, and defeatism.
*
And then there are the brainless who think
(if you will forgive the overstatement)
just because they have a computer
they are also entitled to have an opinion.
Or, in the words of an eminent Canadian poet
(may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul)
“just because they have an asshole,
they must also have an opinion.”
*
To say we are free to subscribe to a belief system
of our own choice even when it is a false one
is like saying we are free to choose slavery.
Or again, if I believe my lie to be the truth,
no one is in a position to tell me otherwise
because I know what’s best for myself.
*
When this kind of mentality because the dominant mindset,
genocide becomes not a possibility but a certainty.
*
When on the eve of the Genocide Zohrab warned
“This time they will slaughter us indiscriminately,”
they said “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,”
thus implying they knew better.
What has changed?
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 17, 2013
**************************************
PHOBIA
**************************
Because I am against divisions and dividers
on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,”
I am identified by some readers as an enemy
motivated by “self-hatred.”
The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose
contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say
but to discharge verbal manure –
in the words of one such critic from the Homeland:
“You are full of ****, Baliozoglu!”
*
The fact is, our dividers divide us
not because they think divisions are good for us
or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas
but because that’s how they make a living.
Divisions are their bread and butter
in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige.
To attack their source of income
or to expose them as charlatans,
as they see me doing
is almost to condemn them to starvation.
*
If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché,
fear of starvation must be a phobia
shared by all dividers who must know
they can’t fool all the people all the time
and anyone who can think for himself
will sooner or later identify them
not as the saviors of the nation
but as its gravediggers.
#
Friday, January 18, 2013
****************************************
EXTRAPOLATING
**********************************
Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it.
It’s much worse!
If for a hundred years after our genocide
we have failed to develop a consensus,
can we even dare to hope that some day
jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs?
*
We live in a world where everyone thinks
everyone else has been brainwashed
and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation.
In such an environment World War III,
that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable.
This is now as clear to me as daylight.
What is the solution?
There is none!
*
When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed
there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus.
And when Armenian meets Armenian –
you may now draw your own conclusions.
The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind
and by the time our superpatriots realize
we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text
it will is too late.
*
In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world
has already committed murder and suicide
in the name of a dehumanized god
that rules over a dehumanized mankind.
*
There is a 1952 French film titled
NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins).
If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution
on one level and World War II on another.
I know now that it deals with the world in which we live.
#
Thursday, January 17, 2013
**************************************
PHOBIA
**************************
Because I am against divisions and dividers
on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,”
I am identified by some readers as an enemy
motivated by “self-hatred.”
The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose
contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say
but to discharge verbal manure –
in the words of one such critic from the Homeland:
“You are full of ****, Baliozoglu!”
*
The fact is, our dividers divide us
not because they think divisions are good for us
or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas
but because that’s how they make a living.
Divisions are their bread and butter
in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige.
To attack their source of income
or to expose them as charlatans,
as they see me doing
is almost to condemn them to starvation.
*
If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché,
fear of starvation must be a phobia
shared by all dividers who must know
they can’t fool all the people all the time
and anyone who can think for himself
will sooner or later identify them
not as the saviors of the nation
but as its gravediggers.
#
Friday, January 18, 2013
****************************************
EXTRAPOLATING
**********************************
Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it.
It’s much worse!
If for a hundred years after our genocide
we have failed to develop a consensus,
can we even dare to hope that some day
jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs?
*
We live in a world where everyone thinks
everyone else has been brainwashed
and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation.
In such an environment World War III,
that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable.
This is now as clear to me as daylight.
What is the solution?
There is none!
*
When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed
there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus.
And when Armenian meets Armenian –
you may now draw your own conclusions.
The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind
and by the time our superpatriots realize
we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text
it will is too late.
*
In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world
has already committed murder and suicide
in the name of a dehumanized god
that rules over a dehumanized mankind.
*
There is a 1952 French film titled
NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins).
If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution
on one level and World War II on another.
I know now that it deals with the world in which we live.
#
Saturday, January 19, 2013
*****************************************
NOTES & COMMENTS
*****************************
The shortest list in the world,
that of Armenian statesmen.
*
The least quoted document in the world:
the Armenian Constitution.
Speaking for myself,
I don’t even know if it has a single Amendment.
*
How many Armenians?
Hard to say.
What if most Armenians are ashamed
to identify themselves as Armenian?
*
More often than not Armenian readers disagree
less with my ideas and more with my right to think.
*
Where there is too much propaganda
there will be too little free speech.
*
Silence reason and usher in insanity.
Silence dissent and tyranny is sure to follow.
*
An Armenian is a white Negro to another Armenian.
*
Some of my readers want me to write
about the eternal snows of Mt.Ararat
and nightingales serenading the moon
so that they can safely ignore me.
*
Two recent books of great photographs:
KARSH: BEYOND THE CAMERA,
Selected with an Introduction and Commentary
by David Trevis,
and
KALOUST: RETROSPECTIVE (Toronto Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society).
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, January 20, 2013
***************************************
LIFE AND LITERATURE
**********************************
Sartre is right.
Literature saves no one.
As a boy I entertained messianic ambitions.
I know now that I cannot even make
a discernible contribution to its salvation.
*
All I have been doing so far is
drop a tiny pebble – or is it a feather – in the ocean
of our millennial literature.
*
Compared to the sum total of my predecessors –
from Khorenatsi to Naregatsi and from Abovian to Zarian –
I am nothing.
If they made no difference,
can I ever hope to do any better?
*
Why do I go on writing?
The only answer I can come up with is,
to kill time and in the process
to make a handful of friends
who see things as I do.
*
The human body consists of billions of tiny particles
working in harmony.
There is life after death provided
we don’t identify life as consciousness.
*
How much of “me” is in the cosmos?
Or rather, how much of the cosmos is within me?
Everything except my consciousness.
If asleep I keep only a fraction of my subconscious
(namely, the part that dreams)
dead I keep nothing
or the same degree of awareness before I was born.
*
Eternity exists but not as “I”
but as something entirely different.
How different?
We will have the answer to that question
only after we die.
#
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
******************************************
PARANOIA
**********************
For repeating what far better men than myself have said
in their effort to solve our problems
I am described as a pro-Turkish enemy.
*
They say nations have the leadership they deserve.
No one deserves our leaders except perhaps Turks.
*
Propaganda is the opium of the people.
*
Where the dominant mindset is shaped by propaganda,
there can be no progress, only gradual decline.
*
What a book one could write titled:
ARMENIANS: SLAVES, VICTIMS, DUPES.
*
To be infatuated with one’s own prejudices
is like compounding a felony.
*
The history of our literature is clear on this point:
We don’t hate those who deceive us,
only those who try to enlighten us.
#
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
******************************************
REFLECTIONS
****************************
There is nothing wrong in saying you were wrong.
It means you are willing to move in the right direction.
*
An unspoken Armenian motto:
“If you cannot reason, make a noise.”
*
A verbal avalanche is not always a valid counter-argument.
*
Depth and a facility with words
are mutually exclusive concepts.
*
In our environment the more arguments you win
the more enemies you make – enemies who will call you
pro-Turkish because they cannot think of a worst insult.
*
We owe all wars and massacres
to the propaganda of the 1%.
#
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
************************************
AS I SEE IT
************************
If I believe in the absence of God
I must also believe in His presence elsewhere.
*
In an environment where belief in propaganda is the norm,
criticism of propaganda will be seen as a capital offense.
*
When I said I had been a dupe most of my life,
a reader demanded: “How do you know you are not one today?”
I don’t, and the moment you help me unmask my deceiver
I may have a better chance to see the light.
*
The true atheist is not he who denies His existence
but he who speaks in His name.
*
Dupes come in all sizes and shapes.
In the latest issue of PARIS-MATCH I read the following headline:
“Even Steve Jobs, creator of Apple, was victimized by a medical charlatan.”
*
You can recognize a charlatan by the fact that
he proceeds from a position of infallibility.
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 24, 2013
**************************************
WHY DO I GO ON WRITING?
************************************
That’s a question I ask myself again and again
and I always come up with an answer
that may make sense to me
but no one else.
*
I write to settle a score, beginning with myself.
I feel partly responsible for our leadership.
I supported it for a number of years.
I kissed its ass when I should have kicked it.
*
Our divisions go so far back in history
that they have become invulnerable to dissent and criticism.
It is also true that if a system is rotten
it will fall if not tomorrow than the day after.
Isn’t that what happened to monarchy, fascism, and Stalinism?
*
The reason our divisions have survived is that
we have lived on the margins of history;
and they have not so much survived as they have become,
in Toynbee’s classification, fossilized.
They are dead men walking.
Case in point: by failing to unite the Armenian vote in America,
our leadership has condemned itself to be a silent scream.
No American presidential candidate will ever take us seriously
so long as we divide our vote evenly
between Republicans and Democrats.
*
As for our Turcocentric ghazetajis
who pretend to be defenders of the Cause:
so far all they have succeeded in doing
is drive the Cause to a dead end.
Their unspoken or real aim is not to get justice
but to cover up the incompetence
of the empty suits they work for.
*
A final note on Turks:
they are not all butchers and murderers;
they have their share of both as surely as
we have our share of traitors, collaborators,
and cover-up artists,
#
Friday, January 25, 2013
*****************************************
PARADOX
***********************
We think with someone else’s thoughts
and we believe by adopting someone else’s belief system.
When it comes to the two most important things in life –
thinking and believing,
or that which makes us human --
we are more like apes than men.
I think therefore I am not.
*
Our disagreements and conflicts are not ours
but someone else’s.
Neither are our wars.
Only our victims may be said to be ours.
*
Absurdity is not a philosophical abstraction;
it is embedded in our daily existence.
*
Question all certainties.
Reject all dogmatic assertions.
And never forget that what you borrow
is not yours.
#
Saturday, January 26, 2013
***************************************
AS I SEE IT
***************************
Our most popular school of criticism
consists in slinging mud (such as pro-Turkish)
hoping some of it will stick.
*
Identifying blunders in others can be useful
only if it may help us identify our own.
*
Thirst for fame is the surest symptom of mediocrity.
*
Only pathological liars with political ambitions
rewrite history in order to project a positive image.
*
A book is called bad or dangerous if it proves
what you believe to be true is a lie.
#

[arabaliozian]

Wednesday, January 30, 2013
*****************************************
SMART ARMENIANS
**********************************
A smart Armenian is first and foremost
a self-assessed Armenian and in all self-assessments
propaganda speaks louder than reality.
*
Whenever I speak of reality
I am accused of being pro-Turkish probably because
for 600 years our reality was not ours but theirs.
When it came to the most important decisions in life,
it was they who made them.
We had no choice but to say “Yes, sir!”
They dished it out and we took it.
And when our revolutionaries decided to change that,
we all know what happened next: reality turned against us.
*
How long before we create our own reality?
My only tentative answer: I may not live long enough to see it.
*
I have dealt with many self-assessed smart Armenians
and they were all idiots.
So was I for most of my life.
Everything I say about Armenians is based on self-analysis.
*
Gentle reader: If you think what I say does not apply to you
because you are different, I am more than willing to apologize.
Every rule has its exceptions.
I have even heard it said that it is exceptions
that certify the legitimacy of a rule.
My hope is that really smart Armenians
will decide to step forward and get involved
in our community affairs instead of conducting
an underground existence.
*
Did I say really smart Armenians?
Strike that. Make it honest Armenians.
Because it doesn’t take a high IQ to see that
we are on the wrong path and on our way to the devil.
*
A warning: If you are an honest Armenian
and decide to be pro-active, don’t be surprised
if accusations of pro-Turkish sympathies are hurled against you
by moronized self-assessed Armenians.
#
Monday, January 28, 2013
****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**************************************
Propaganda is as addictive as nicotine, alcohol, and opium.
*
The hidden message in all propaganda is,
what you think is right
and anyone who dares to disagree with you
is an enemy agent.
*
Now Barabbas was a publisher
and Cain a fascist.
*
Speechifiers and sermonizers end up believing
in their own speeches and sermons.
Arguing with them is like trying to enlighten a source of light.
*
There are times when I get so depressed
by my fellow countrymen that
the thought of death cheers me up.
*
Dissent means questioning the integrity of individuals
who believe in their own infallibility.
*
Propaganda sticks to children like crazy glue.
#
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
************************************
IRRELEVANCE
********************************
Even in a land of the brave and the free
there will be cowards and slaves;
and if not slaves to human masters
than slaves to ignorance, prejudice, and lies.
*
Our men at the top know that
the best way to avoid international scrutiny
is by achieving irrelevance,
and irrelevance is thrust on some
as greatness is thrust on others.
*
Who after all gives a damn about Armenia?
Not even Armenians.
Who gives a damn about our 1,500,000?
Not even Obama.
Who gives a damn about our ongoing “white genocide”
(exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora)?
Not even our superpatriots
who prefer to speechify about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.
*
God’s existence is as great a mystery to me
as the Devil’s?
#
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
*****************************************
JESUS, MARX, FREUD
********************************
All of Freud may be said to be an expansion
of the Biblical dictum:
“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Or, the resolution of all your inner conflicts and contradictions
are in your unconscious.
*
When Marx said “I am not a Marxist,”
he was in a way questioning the legitimacy of all ideologies
or closed systems of thought.
*
Einstein proved that all our fundamental assumptions
about time and space are wrong;
nothing is what it seems;
a great deal of reality may be comprehensible
but not everything.
There are things we may never understand and explain.
*
What has been the most important contribution
America has made to the world?
Double-talk.
To assert “All men are created equal,”
and with the full cooperation of the Church
to legitimize slavery.
*
What about Armenian contributions?
Inbred morons pretending to be smart.
*
If the Kingdom of God is within you,
so is the Empire of the Devil.
#

[arabaliozian]

Wednesday, January 30, 2013
*****************************************
SMART ARMENIANS
**********************************
A smart Armenian is first and foremost
a self-assessed Armenian and in all self-assessments
propaganda speaks louder than reality.
*
Whenever I speak of reality
I am accused of being pro-Turkish probably because
for 600 years our reality was not ours but theirs.
When it came to the most important decisions in life,
it was they who made them.
We had no choice but to say “Yes, sir!”
They dished it out and we took it.
And when our revolutionaries decided to change that,
we all know what happened next: reality turned against us.
*
How long before we create our own reality?
My only tentative answer: I may not live long enough to see it.
*
I have dealt with many self-assessed smart Armenians
and they were all idiots.
So was I for most of my life.
Everything I say about Armenians is based on self-analysis.
*
Gentle reader: If you think what I say does not apply to you
because you are different, I am more than willing to apologize.
Every rule has its exceptions.
I have even heard it said that it is exceptions
that certify the legitimacy of a rule.
My hope is that really smart Armenians
will decide to step forward and get involved
in our community affairs instead of conducting
an underground existence.
*
Did I say really smart Armenians?
Strike that. Make it honest Armenians.
Because it doesn’t take a high IQ to see that
we are on the wrong path and on our way to the devil.
*
A warning: If you are an honest Armenian
and decide to be pro-active, don’t be surprised
if accusations of pro-Turkish sympathies are hurled against you
by moronized self-assessed Armenians.
#
Monday, January 28, 2013
****************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**************************************
Propaganda is as addictive as nicotine, alcohol, and opium.
*
The hidden message in all propaganda is,
what you think is right
and anyone who dares to disagree with you
is an enemy agent.
*
Now Barabbas was a publisher
and Cain a fascist.
*
Speechifiers and sermonizers end up believing
in their own speeches and sermons.
Arguing with them is like trying to enlighten a source of light.
*
There are times when I get so depressed
by my fellow countrymen that
the thought of death cheers me up.
*
Dissent means questioning the integrity of individuals
who believe in their own infallibility.
*
Propaganda sticks to children like crazy glue.
#
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
************************************
IRRELEVANCE
********************************
Even in a land of the brave and the free
there will be cowards and slaves;
and if not slaves to human masters
than slaves to ignorance, prejudice, and lies.
*
Our men at the top know that
the best way to avoid international scrutiny
is by achieving irrelevance,
and irrelevance is thrust on some
as greatness is thrust on others.
*
Who after all gives a damn about Armenia?
Not even Armenians.
Who gives a damn about our 1,500,000?
Not even Obama.
Who gives a damn about our ongoing “white genocide”
(exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora)?
Not even our superpatriots
who prefer to speechify about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.
*
God’s existence is as great a mystery to me
as the Devil’s?
#
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
*****************************************
JESUS, MARX, FREUD
********************************
All of Freud may be said to be an expansion
of the Biblical dictum:
“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Or, the resolution of all your inner conflicts and contradictions
are in your unconscious.
*
When Marx said “I am not a Marxist,”
he was in a way questioning the legitimacy of all ideologies
or closed systems of thought.
*
Einstein proved that all our fundamental assumptions
about time and space are wrong;
nothing is what it seems;
a great deal of reality may be comprehensible
but not everything.
There are things we may never understand and explain.
*
What has been the most important contribution
America has made to the world?
Double-talk.
To assert “All men are created equal,”
and with the full cooperation of the Church
to legitimize slavery.
*
What about Armenian contributions?
Inbred morons pretending to be smart.
*
If the Kingdom of God is within you,
so is the Empire of the Devil.
#



Thursday, January 31, 2013
**********
…AND SO IT GOES
**********
The aim of politics is power.
The aim of literature is understanding reality.
When the two meet, literature loses.
And when literature loses,
murder, war, and massacre become inevitable.
*
Writers are dreamers?
Yes, but only in so far as they think
they can survive in a fascist environment.
*
The attitude of the average dupe towards literature?
“He is a writer? An Armenian writer?
He must be a daydreamer.
Let’s have some fun with him.”
*
Armenians are different from Turks?
In their treatment of dissent
they might as well be identical twins.
*
Dupes rate the lies of propaganda
above the truths of literature.
*
One reason why our dividers are more popular
than our dissidents is that
the IQ of the average Armenian is a negative digit;
which is why he is constantly reminded he is smart.
*
One of my most dedicated readers is a
Second-Amendment gun nut and racist
who thinks he fully qualifies as a commissar culture
and based on that assumption
he issues daily memoranda
reminding me that unless I follow instructions
I will never amount to anything.
*
When reason meets prejudice,
reason is bound to lose.
So what else is new?
Mart bidi ch’ellank.
#
Friday, February 01, 2013
**********
AS I SEE IT
**********
Some lies are so transparent that
they might as well be confessions.
*
There are no more deep truths,
only platitudes in fancy uniforms.
*
There are Armenians today who are pro-Assad.
I have met some of them myself.
What’s next?– being pro-Talaat?
*
To those who demand that I explain my explanations,
I say: I have already done so in the past
and I will again in the future.
*
Toynbee:“Comprehension sometimes consists
in just a correct understanding of questions
that are unanswerable."
#
Saturday, February 02, 2013
**********
ON OUR 1%
**********
Why did Raffi say “we are sheep without a shepherd”?
Why did Avedik Issahakian call our leaders “brainless”?
And why did Zarian call them “useless”?
Were all three wrong or dupes of enemy propaganda?
*
Baruir Massikian, a successful lawyer in Egypt
in addition to being a brilliant writer:
as he lay dying in hospital he was approached
by a delegation community leaders
who suggested he leave his considerable wealth
(he was a bachelor) to an Armenian educational foundation.
His reply:“I’d much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.”
Was he anti-Armenian or pro-Turkish?– two charges
that are leveled against anyone
who dares to refuse being a dupe.
*
Why do our academics prefer to write
about the Middle Ages and the Genocide?
And why is it that whenever someone tries to expose
the corruption and incompetence of our 1%
he is insulted by our superpatriots
and experts on any given subject?
*
Please note that I am only asking questions.
I am not making dogmatic assertions whose sole intent is
to divide the community into members of the club
and alienated degenerates.
*
I repeat myself and the 1% does not?
*
In the opinion page of my local morning paper
a pundit begins his commentary with the following words:
“We live, breathe and exist in an age of apocalyptic uncertainty.”
If you were to ask one of our pro-establishment propagandists,
my guess is he would say:
“We never had it so good
because we are in the best of hands.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, February 03, 2013
******************************************
DEAD END
*********************
If I criticize the 1%
it’s because I am on the side of the 99%.
If I don’t enjoy the support of the 99%
it may be because the secret ambition of most of them
is to join the 1%.
*
Freedom of religion also means
the freedom to brainwash children.
If we don’t see the harm in that
it’s because we live in a world
in which subservience is valued more than freedom,
intolerance more than tolerance,
revenge more than justice,
and ultimately war and massacre
more than peace and coexistence.
*
On the day we learn to think for ourselves
we may have a better chance to achieve solidarity
not only with our brothers
but also with our enemies.
*
Always treat today’s enemy
as if he were tomorrow’s friend.
*
If I am different it’s only because I rely
more on my own thinking than on the thinking of
empty suits and bearded charlatans
who make a comfortable living by deceiving
the defenceless and the ignorant.
#
Monday, February 04, 2013
*****************************************
SOUND BITES
********************************
If Christianity has legitimized
intolerance, persecution, torture, war and massacre,
can we really say “There are good religions?”
*
I don’t believe in optimism.
Hell, I don’t even believe in pessimism.
In pessimism we construct a narrative that makes sense.
But evil is incomprehensible.
So is reality. That’s why every historian
creates his own version of the past.
*
Does it make sense to say what’s theirs is bad
and what’s ours is good
when that’s exactly what they say too?
*
If you make a list of writers who preferred exile
to life in their own homeland,
you may end up with a who’s who is contemporary literature.
*
Our reality is so unbearable that my objectivity
is sometimes confused with self-hatred.
*
“When we kill them it’s good;
when they kills us it’s bad.”
What’s the difference between this mindset
and the one expressed by an African tribal chieftain
quoted by C.G. Jung in his memoirs:
“When my enemy steals my wives, it’s bad;
when I steal his it’s good.”
*
To those who say “I don’t agree with you.
Human beings are better than that; so is life.”
All I can say is: “Enjoy your innocence (or is it ignorance?)
while you can. It won’t last.”
*
How often do I find myself saying:
“I would have agreed with you thirty years ago.”
#
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
**************************************
COMMISSARS OF CULTURE
***************************************
Q: Who are they? Could we have a definition?
A: They are Armenians who know what must be said and done
but who want someone else to do it for them.
Q: Why?
A: The obvious answer is, they don’t know.
They only pretend to know. They are bluffing.
Just like their role models in the USSR who trusted Stalin
more than Solzhenitsyn. Our commissars today trust more
our bosses, bishops, and benefactors than our writers.
Q: Why do they?
A: My guess is they believe literature to be a dead end.
No money in it. No power. No future.
Our history is clear on this point:
To write for Armenians is a waste of time.
Q: Knowing this you go on writing, why?
A: A good question, but I have a better one for you:
Why do Armenians who are brought up to believe
they are smart, progressive and civilized
choose to behave like inbred morons
when it comes to politics and collective action?
More precisely, why do they support our dividers
and grave-diggers?
Q: You must have an answer to that question.
A: I don’t! Unless of course we say they behave like morons
because they are in fact morons.
Q: I wouldn’t describe that as a diplomatic explanation.
A: Literature is not diplomacy. Neither is it a profitable enterprise
unless of course you decide to write
about the Middle Ages and the massacres.
But that’s a subject for another conversation.
#
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
*******************************************
ON BEING AN ARMENIAN WRITER
********************************************
Q: What are some of the positives and negatives
in being an Armenian writer?
A: Positives? None! Negatives? To begin with
you work for nothing;
you are treated like an unemployed and unemployable misfit,
a mental masturbator;
morons take it upon themselves to tell you
what to write and how to write it;
and worst of all, you are dependent on the charity of swine.
A: Aren’t you afraid that by using angry words
you may run the risk of undermining your own objectivity?
A: I am more than willing to take that chance.
Those who are against me will be against me
even if I were to speak like an angel.
And I have every reason to suspect
if so far Armenian writers have been ignored
it’s because they were afraid to go down into the gutter
where our self-appointed “betters” and their dupes live.
Some day if these gentlemen are unmasked,
they will be exposed as bottom-of-the-barrel
egomaniacal sociopaths and bullies
who operate on the assumption that
they know better and our only option is to say “Yes sir!”
Q: "The Sultan is dead, long live the Sultan?"
A: That’s true for Ottomanized Armenians.
For Sovietized Armenians it’s “Stalin is dead,
long live our commissars!”
Q: Do you see a light at the end of the tunnel?
A: For me, no! For those who may follow me, maybe.
You never know…anything is possible.
And they say I am a pessimist.
What the hell do they know?
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, February 07, 2013
***************************************
NAMING NAMES
*****************************
Q: You never name names. Why?
A: In our environment naming names doesn’t work.
Q: What do you mean it doesn’t work?
A: Last time someone named names he was taken to court,
his sources evaporated, he was found guilty, he suffered a stroke,
and shortly thereafter he died.
Q: His sources evaporated, how?
A: They refused to testify in court.
Q: Why?
A: Obviously they didn’t want to lose their only source
of financial support.
Q: I see.
A: That’s the way it has always been in our environment:
those in power and the establishment in general
have been invulnerable. This was true
even in the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union.
Even on the eve of the Genocide there were
Armenians – and I don’t mean dupes --
who worked for the Ottoman and Soviet administrations,
which means they supported the Sultan and the Young Turks.
Krikor Zohrab, an eminent lawyer, diplomat,
and intellectual leader was one of them –
he was a close friend and supporter of Talaat
who had him murdered in cold blood.
I am myself personally acquainted with writers
who make a comfortable living as secretaries of bishops.
Do you think they will even consider testifying
against their only source of income
and start looking for another job?
Who would hire them?
Armenian writers are not exactly in great demand
in today’s marketplace. But all that is theory.
In reality it has never happened.
We don’t have a system or cultural environment
that supports individuals who place truth or principle
above self-interest. And we have always had
ruthless manipulators willing to take advantage of this situation.
#
Friday, February 08, 2013
***************************************
ON READING
**************************
Q: What are some of the books you have reread more than twice?
A: Lesley Blanch’s SABRES OF PARADISE,
Toynbee’s RECONSIDERATIONS (volume xii of his STUDY OF HISTORY),
and Sartre’s WORDS.
Q: A strange trio.
A: I forgot Nabokov’s LOLITA, and of course Zarian
whom I have translated into English,
and to translate a book is equivalent to rereading
it ten times if not more. There may be others
but these are the ones that come readily to mind at the moment.
Q: What is it about Zarian that fascinates you?
A: His daring and uncanny ability to say
what you almost think…and his unique grasp of reality.
Q: What about books that have changed your worldview?
A: Dostoevsky’s IDIOT, Turgenev’s FATHERS AND SONS,
and Suzuki’s INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM,
all of which I read as a teenager --
and Plato’s DIALOGUES. Also Shaw’s plays,
or rather their prefaces which are longer than the plays themselves.
And Thomas Mann’s MAGIC MOUNTAIN.
Q: Do you have a favorite genre?
A: All of them – fiction, essays, biographies, memoirs, diaries,
conversations, crime novels, encyclopedias…
everything but poetry. I don’t remember to have ever read
a collection of verse from beginning to end.
Isolated poems now and then, here and there,
but Milton, Dante, and T.S. Eliot, no!
As for Pushkin: I might as well be deaf, dumb, and blind.
I have always suspected that in poetry
manner is more important than substance.
Q: Do you think Armenians read enough?
A: Somewhere Zarian says that what Armenians preferred to read
at the turn of the century in Istanbul were best-sellers
like Zevaco and Eugene Sue – whom no one reads these days.
I know Armenians who love books for purely cosmetic reasons,
to make an impression on visitors.
I am beginning to suspect an Armenians’ greatest enemy
is neither the Turk nor his fellow Armenian
but the written word.
#
Saturday, February 09, 2013
**************************************
FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE
**********************************
Gandhi once said you can evaluate a civilization
by the manner in which it treats its animals –
and, I would add, its writers.
If you make a list of our writers
you will be astonished to discover
an astonishing number of them
were either silenced, ignored and exiled or
betrayed to the authorities,
murdered and committed suicide.
*
Armenia has been called “the cradle of civilization”
by an Irish academic who enjoyed the financial support
of the Gulbenkian Foundation,
the wealthiest foundation in the world, it has been said.
But it would be even more accurate to call it its grave.
*
And speaking of Gulbenkian:
Why did he leave only 7% of his wealth to Armenians?
Did he know something we don’t know?
Did he guess that if he were to leave
all his wealth to Armenians,
93% of it would end up in the wrong pockets?
I am not casting aspersions,
just asking question and searching for answers.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, February 10, 2013
******************************************
HOLY BOOKS
**********************
We all have our own.
To some it’s the Bible,
To others the Koran,
to still others the UPANISHAD.
In my twenties my holy book was
Thomas Mann’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
in which there are endless arguments
about all the important issues in life.
The two fictional characters who engage in these arguments
are Naphta (authoritarian, mystical, fascist)
and Settembrini (a liberal humanist).
The arguments are so convincingly done that
at the end you cannot tell who is right and who wrong.
*
In my thirties my other holy book was
Toynbee’s RECONSIDERATIONS
(volume xii of his STUDY OF HISTORY)
in which ideas about the past, that is to say life,
are carefully analyzed and discussed at considerable length.
*
It is to be noted that Mann’s character of Naphta
is based on the famous communist critic and philosopher Lukacz
with whom he was personally acquainted
(Lukacz was later to write a book on Mann);
and in RECONSIDERATIONS Toynbee quotes
many of his critics except Hugh Trevor-Roper
whose attack on him was so ruthless and rude
that its intent was not to question Toynbee’s ideas
but to destroy him personally.
*
Also to be noted, both Mann and Toynbee
were great readers of the Bible.
Mann even wrote his longest book,
the tetralogy JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS,
based on an episode in GENESIS.
*
When told the Bible was written by the Holy Ghost,
Shaw is said to have replied,
“All books are written by the Holy Ghost.”
What about LOLITA, one is tempted to ask.
LOLITA too, Shaw would have replied
(the book was published after his death)
because THE SONG OF SONGS in the Old Testament
fully qualifies as an erotic rhapsody in which,
Hebrew scholars tell us,
there is even talk of oral sex – obviously lost in translation.
#
Monday, February 11, 2013
*************************************
SOUND BITES
***************************
*
COMMON KNOWLEDGE
*********************************
“The small state, racked by internal dissension,
invites the foreign conqueror.”
This is a line that occurs in a short story by Mary McCarthy.
I quote it to point out the fact that far from being
the best and the brightest, we are a cliché known by all except us.
That’s how cunningly and thoroughly we have been brainwashed.
*
SUICIDE
****************
Instead of blabbering endlessly about murder,
we should speak of suicide by a thousand self-inflicted cuts.
*
THE ENEMY
***********************
He who is his own worst enemy
does not need an enemy.
*
THE WAY OF THE COMMISSAR
****************************************
You don’t like what he says?
Shoot him.
You can't shoot him?
Silence him.
You can’t silence him?
Call him “son of a Turkish whore.”
*
TRANSLATION
***********************
“A government by the people for the people.”
Translation:
“A government by the mafia for the mafia.”
*
WORDS
********************
Instead of analyzing my words
teach yourself to analyze your actions.
Unawareness, according to Freud and Jung,
is the source of all evil
*
PROPAGANDA
**************************
The real aim of propaganda is not to misrepresent lies as truths
but to moronize the people,
and the most effective way to moronize the people
is to call them seven times smarter than Greeks and Jews.
#
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
***************************************
CONTROL FREAKS
****************************
The Pope telling Galileo what to think
and imams telling women how to dress
spring from the same source:
ignorance, arrogance, and greed for power.
*
Unmask religion and expose the primitive in man.
*
If you cannot deal with reality,
invent your own fiction.
*
A man of faith believes his faith to be infallible
and with God on his side he can do no wrong.
This fallacy has claimed more innocent lives than any other.
*
There are as many paths to God or Truth
as there are human beings.
To say otherwise is to legitimize intolerance
and ultimately war and massacre.
This is not theory but reality,
that is to say, history.
*
The same applies to patriotism.
There are as many variants of patriotism
as there are patriots.
To say, suggest, or imply that your kind of patriotism
is better than mine or anyone else’s is to justify
all kinds of aberrations, including crimes against humanity.
*
To say my faith, my God, my Truth and no other
is to be on a path that leads not to God but to the Devil.
#
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
*******************************************
NOTES & COMMENTS
*********************************
The phoniest Armenians are those
who never miss an opportunity
to assert their superior brand of patriotism.
*
As children we are taught big lies
and forbidden to speak little ones.
*
Because I expose contradictions
I am told I hate myself.
*
The biggest lies are fractions of the truth.
*
In a trial by jury,
the function of the jury is not to separate
the guilty from the innocent
but to decide which side
has the more competent lawyer.
*
Nationalist historians are not liars;
they only emphasize the positive
and cover up the negative.
I know how that’s done because I have done it myself.
See my ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY & CULTURE.
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, February 14, 2013
***************************************
WHO LOVES ARMENIANS?
****************************************
In his youth Zarian loved Armenians
because he saw himself as a messianic figure
and his fellow Armenians as a crucified nation.
In his old age he saw himself as a victim
of intolerance and envy,
and he died with the conviction that
he had been murdered.
*
Saroyan loved the whole world including Armenians
but he couldn’t stand his own family
including his half-Armenian son and daughter.
*
Michael (GREEN HAT) Arlen loved his fellow Armenians too
but he warned his half-Armenian son to stay away from them.
The son followed his father’s advice
with only one interruption
that lasted long enough for him to write
PASSAGE TO ARARAT that became a best-seller.
*
Because I hate myself, some of my critics tell me,
I am in no position to love or understand my fellow Armenians,
and armed with that conviction
they feel justified in calling me “son of a Turkish whore,”
among other abusive terms.
*
I have noticed that Armenians who speak endlessly of love
are the least lovable specimens
and though I have tried very hard to love them
I have failed.
But that’s my fault rather than theirs.
#
Saturday, February 16, 2013
*****************************************
LIES, BIG LIES, AND
CONTRADICTIONS
*****************************************************
In politics don’t judge the man,
judge the men behind the man.
*
The same Leonardo who said war is
“pazzia bestialissima” (the most beastly madness)
also designed war machines.
*
Even Jesus failed to unmask Judas
until it was too late.
*
If Zohrab was Talaat’s dupe,
who among us will dare to say
he is nobody’s dupe?
*
One reason I keep coming back to dupes is that
I have been one most of my life…
with no end in sight.
*
If I were to make a list of Big Lies we believed in,
I would begin with
“The Turks would not dare to massacre us,” and end with
“Russians are our Big Brothers.”
*
To preach love and legitimize hatred is a contradiction,
and yet most religious leaders appear to be unaware of this fact.
*
Love of God (religion) and love of homeland (patriotism)
have justified more crimes against humanity
than hatred of the Devil.
#
Saturday, February 16, 2013
******************************************
WHO LOVES ARMENIANS? (II)
**************************************
There are systems of ignorance as surely
as there are systems of knowledge
and we choose both by the degree of flattery they contain.
*
Christians believe they are worthy of the Crucifixion,
Jews believe they are the Chosen,
and Muslim believe non-Muslims to be “infidel dogs.”
*
What about Armenians?
To begin with we don’t much care
about Turks, Kurds, Azeris, Georgians,
“onion-head” Russians, and the so-called “civilized West”
which fought its lousy World War I
instead of coming to our aid.
Neither are we fond of Protestants and Catholics
even when they happen to be fellow Armenians.
Native-born Armenians look down at Diasporans (“aghber”) --
I have myself been called “a piece of ****” by a fellow Armenian
born and raised in the shadow of Mt. Ararat.
*
Who loves Armenians?
Not even Armenians.
As the popular refrain has it:
“Mart bidi ch’ellank!”
Literally: “We will never acquire the status of human beings.”
#