Comments

[arabaliozian]

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.
#





Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it. It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

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.”
#




Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it. It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

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.
#




Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it.
It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

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.
#



Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it. It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

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?
#




Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it. It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

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
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it. It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

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]

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.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, June 17, 2012
*************************************
THE SULTAN IS DEAD
*******************************
People change.
Nations change.
Consider the Chinese:
from communists to capitalists in a single generation.
Consider the Mongols:
who is afraid of them today?
Consider the Yanks:
from happy-go-lucky under Eisenhower and “I Love Lucy”
to the post-Vietnam, Watergate, and “All in the Family” generation.
*
What about us?
We too have changed – but only two words in our national anthem
(from “Tshvar ander" to “azad angakh”).
What else?
I don’t know.
You tell me!
I am all ears.
If our 99% are taken in by our 1%
it may be because they want to be taken in.
They demand to be duped.
They beg to be duped.
They are grateful to their deceivers.
The Sultan is dead.
Long live Putin!
#
Monday, June 18, 2012
****************************************
QUESTION
************************
Reality is a jungle
and we are as backward and naïve as jungle tribes.
Our friends have been our worst enemies
and our flatterers our most dangerous liars.
For every truth we have invented a Big Lie.
*
Zohrab trusted Talaat.
Mikoyan trusted Stalin.
Gulbenkian left only 5% of his wealth to us,
and who can blame him?
*
Raffi is right.
We don’t have an aristocracy.
We don’t have elites.
Even our best and brightest were taken in by riffraff.
If I see the dark side of things
it’s because I have earned the right.
*
Because I refuse to flatter your ego,
am I then your enemy?
#Tuesday, June 19, 2012
**************************************
NAPOLEON
********************
Napoleon Bonaparte:
I suspect at least one of his contemporaries saying:
“With a name like that he will never amount to anything!”
*
No more wars?
Only if you eradicate the Big Lies of the 1%
and the idiocy of the 99%.
*
You can argue against half-truths
but not against Big Lies.
*
I have been exposed to so much Armenian venom
that I have every reason to suspect
among ten Armenians
nine are sure to be Turks.
#
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
***************************************
INSANITY
************************
The aim of all propaganda is to assert superiority:
my god, or king, or nation, or race (blood)
is better than yours.
*
Propaganda cannot be outlawed
because everyone practices it.
*
When a transgression enjoys universal approval
it ceases to be a transgression.
*
Anything that places a distance between reality and us
leads to insanity.
*
The real danger in propaganda is not that
it legitimizes prejudice, intolerance, and lies
but that it leads to collective insanity.
*
Germans under Hitler experienced collective insanity
as surely as the Chinese under Mao,
Italians under Mussolini,
Soviets under Stalin…
and in general, all people
under authoritarian or undemocratic rulers.
*
Propaganda and sanity are mutually exclusive concepts.
*
Religious wars in Europe
(one of which lasted a hundred years)
may be seen as eruptions of collective insanity.
*
Moral: If it makes you feel good,
take a second look,
and if you see nothing wrong, take a third look…
and a fourth... until you unmask the deception.
#



Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it. It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, June 21, 2012
***********************************
COFFEE
************************
Is coffee good for you?
Yes. No. Maybe. No one knows.
There are, it seems, a thousand ingredients in coffee.
How many of them are good and how many bad?
Remains to be seen.
Who would have thought such a simple question
would have so many complicated answers?
But there are more complications
that have nothing to do with coffee itself.
Those who say coffee is bad
also say that coffee drinkers are prone to acquire other
bad habits – such as smoking, drinking, and a sedentary life.
So that even after determining the nature
of the thousand ingredients it may be necessary to factor in
personality traits.
*
Is nationalism good or bad?
Is democracy better than monarchy?
Do angels and demons exist?
What about God and the Devil?
Is there life after death?
Was there life before birth?
*
When asked what he thought of Armenians,
George Bernard Shaw is quoted as having said –
I am now paraphrasing:
“Armenians are a great people
provided they are periodically massacred.”
So much for the usefulness of answers
provided by great intellects.
#
Saturday, June 23, 2012
************************************
POWER
********************
Where there is power,
there will be criminals.
My guess is – and it’s only a guess
because there are no statistics:
the criminal rate on Wall Street, the Kremlin, and the Vatican
are about the same.
*
Speak truth to power?
What nonsense!
Power knows already.
The challenge – the real challenge -- is
convincing the 99%,
which amounts to saying
unbrainwashing the brainwashed.
#
Saturday, June 23, 2012
***************************************
SCENARIO
**************************
Cosmologists tell us planets, stars, and galaxies are born and die.
In a billion years or so the earth will be incinerated by the sun
and our solar system and eventually our galaxy (the Milky Way)
will enter a black hole and emerge as a new galaxy
with its own stars, solar system, and planets.
Perhaps this has happened many times before
and it is happening elsewhere even as I write.
Perhaps in the next cycle the Ottoman Empire will be
an Armenian Empire and we will do to them
what they did to us.
I for one wouldn’t be surprised if in another cycle
Hitler dies of inanition in an Israeli concentration camp
and Stalin freezes to death in a Siberian gulag.
And these things may happen immediately after we die,
because to die means to enter a timeless realm
wherein a fraction of a second is as long as a billion years.
You don’t believe me?
Too good to be true?
Listen to a cosmologist and see how much of what
he says, assumes or supposes rings true
and how much like pure fantasy.
*
If God exists He must be just.
And when I speak of divine justice
I mean the kind of justice beside which
human justice is as nothing!
#




Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it. It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, June 24, 2012
****************************************
RECAPPING
********************
Belief systems are useful in so far as they expose
the fallacies of other belief systems,
but dangerous when they assert orthodoxy or monopoly.
Marxism was useful in so far as it exposed the fallacies
of feudalism and capitalism but dead wrong
when it legitimized crimes against humanity.
Something similar could be said of Christianity and Islam
whose innocent victims are without number.
*
We have no choice but to come to terms with the fact that
what we know, what we can know,
is only a tiny fraction of what we don’t know.
Metaphysical systems may allow us to travel from A to B,
sometimes even from C to D,
but we will never make it to XYZ.
*
All belief systems are like the Tower of Babel:
sooner or later they will collapse
like the World Trade Center on 9/11.
#
Monday, June 25, 2012
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
********************************
Propaganda is invisible to the brainwashed.
*
Dissent is a crime only in a state
whose legislators are criminals.
*
In the NEW YORKER (June 18, 2012) I read:
“Greeks invented democracy;
they invented tragedy too.
The problem is that in recent years
they haven’t invented much of anything.”
What about us?
What’s our next “first”?
What if we have run out of them?
*
I may not know better
but I may see something you cannot see.
#
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
*********************************
COMMENTS
****************************
Everything I say is guesswork.
I leave truth to our imams, commissars, and their dupes.
*
For more than a thousand years
the ancient Greeks believed in non-existent gods
and built magnificent temples in their honor.
Which may suggest that a god doesn’t need to exist
in order to be believed and worshipped?
*
We emphasize the importance of good manners to our children;
also the necessity to murder the enemy in time of war.
#
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
************************************
SLOGANS
**************************
“Black is beautiful.”
“Armenians are smart.”
“Jews are the Chosen People.”
These assessments have as much validity or objectivity
as their contradictions.
*
Slogans maybe defined as lies
with political ambitions.
“Separate but equal.”
“Russians are our Big Brothers.”
*
My favorite slogans are the ones
that are contradicted by other slogans:
“All men are brothers.”
“Homo homini lupus”
(Man is wolf to other men).
#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, June 28, 2012
********************************************
IS JUSTICE BLIND?
*****************************
Justice may be blind but she has a sensitive nose
and can smell the unwashed.
Remember that next time you decide to take a wealthy man to court.
*
The wealthy are so used to having their asses kissed
that they now expect you to also tell the world they smell like roses.
And you will be surprised how many are more than willing
to grab the opportunity.
*
A gentle reader writes: "If, as you say,
Armenian literature is a dead end,
why not give up writing?"
I write for two totally non-literary reasons:
To fight boredom and to acquire friends;
and with every book I have published,
I have acquired a new friend;
also (alas!) two enemies.
#
Friday, June 29, 2012
********************************************
ON –ISMS AND RELATED ATROCITIES
**************************************************************There is God;
there are men who represent Him on earth;
and there are the unwashed
whose sole option is to say “Yes, sir!”
There you have it:
as good a definition of Ottomanism and Armenianism as any.
*
What is Turcocentrism?
Like all –isms it is a closed system of thought
that legitimizes prejudice, intolerance, and hatred,
*
The aim of all –isms is to moronize.
*
The stated aim of patriotism is to promote love of Country
(not necessarily fellow countrymen).
Its unstated aim: to hate and kill the enemy.
Which is what moronized Turks did to us.
Which is also why they refuse – make it, they can’t –
plead guilty as charged.
*
What is historicism?
In my morning paper today
I read the following quotation by Napoleon Bonaparte:
“History is the version of past events
that people decided to agree upon.”
There you have it:
as good a definition of historicism as any.
*
What is the true aim of literature?
To unbrainwash the unwashed.
#
Saturday, June 30, 2012
*****************************************************
OBSERVATIONS
***********************************
Can a writer who belongs to a failed nation by a success?
Cioran, Ionesco, Adamov, Nabokov:
if they are respected names today
it’s because they gave up their homeland and their mother tongue
and adopted French or English as their medium.
*
In order to survive, our crème de la crème
had no choice but to kiss the ass of our crème de la scum.
Zarian.
*
In my dealings with our Turcocentric scholars and ghazetajis
I have noticed that their greatest enemy is not the Turk
but an Armenian who dares to question their methods,
doubt their efficacy, question their messianism,
and expose their true intent
which is not justice but covering up
the cowardice, dishonesty, and incompetence
of our ruling classes.
*
To be powerless may not be a crime
but it is treated as if it were a capital offense.
#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, July 01, 2012
************************************
IF…
***********************
If we cannot learn from our mistakes,
who is going to teach us?
Has anyone ever taught us anything?
The Great Powers of the West?
The only thing we can learn from them
is double-talk and deception.
Isn’t that what they did to us
at the turn of the last century?
They promised their support
but when we needed them most
they assumed the role of passive spectators.
The Russian, our so-called Big Brothers?
Don’t make me laugh!
All they have done so far is
purge our best and brightest thus reducing us
to the status of perennial brown-nosers.
The Yanks?
They can’t even speak the G word
because they are afraid to alienate the criminals.
Turkish friendship means more to them
than the slaughter of countless innocent civilians.
And speaking of countless victims:
Very probably they have themselves slaughtered as many,
If not more of them, as their friends, the Turks.
As for Turks themselves:
give them half a chance and they will tear us to shreds,
feast on our carcass,
after which they will plead not guilty
by reason of manifest destiny.
Are we then condemned to remain
cowardly nonentities without cojones?
As if that weren’t bad enough,
we like to make a spectacle of ourselves
by bragging about our highly developed survival tactics.
You call that survival?
I call it dragging out a shameless existence.
*
Now you know why I will never be a popular Armenian writer.
I am the bearer of bad tiding because
I refuse to flatter, lie, misrepresent, and mislead.
#
Monday, July 02, 2012
*****************************************
FROM A BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES
AS TOLD BY HIS WIFE
********************************************
Four words – that’s all I need to sum up his life:
All talk -- no action.
What did he talk about?
I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
I have too much respect for the law
to meddle into matters that are none of my business.
In the eyes of his friends he may be the wisest Athenian.
I am not sure about that.
What kind of wisdom is it
that drives you to an early grave, may I ask?
They say he was unjustly accused.
Let them say what they want.
I for one will not question the integrity of our justice system,
which, as far as I am concerned,
is the most advanced in the world.
Sometimes I am asked if he was gay.
I don’t think so.
In his youth he was a passionate lover,
but gradually he lost interest in sex.
He preferred the company of men.
That’s all I have to say on the subject.
#
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
***************************************
Q/A
**********************************
“If you can’t change things,
why even bother to speak of change?”
Because if you don’t say the right thing
you may end up kissing the wrong ass.
There you have it:
our millennial history in a nutshell.
*
Worth remembering:
the so-called “Great Powers of the West,”
Russians, Turks, and Yanks, among many others,
are first and foremost their own worst enemies;
and empires fall not because
they can no longer defend their borders
against a more powerful enemy
but because of internal conflicts, decline, and generation.
*
To those who are brainwashed to think
if better nations than us are divided,
divisions must be an inevitable fact of life;
therefore we must be on the right path.
I ask: Who benefits from this line of thought?
Only the corrupt and the incompetent.
To which I can only say,
if kissing ass is your aim in life,
be my guest.
#
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
***********************************
TOO BIG TO FAIL?
*********************************
There is not a single big truth
but only many small truths
and twice as many big lies.
*
Too big to fail?
What nonsense!
Empires rise and fall,
and when they fall,
people are liberated from the grip
of bloodthirsty parasites.
#





Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me
asking for financial assistance,
please ignore it. It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, July 05, 2012
******************************************
SOMETHNG ROTTEN
******************************
“There is something rotten in the State of Denmark.”
That’s one way to sum up the central message of our literature
from Khorenatsi and Yeghishe
to Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zarian, and Massikian.
*
As for the contrary view,
it goes something like this:
“We are a people like any other people.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with us.
But there is something horribly wrong with our scribblers
who do nothing but bitch simply because
their readers are too smart to be taken in by their bull****.”
*
To which I can only say:
“If you believe that, you will believe anything,
including the Big Lie that
our 1% 'ha sempre ragione”'(is always right),
and we never had it so good
because we are in the best of hands."
*
There is no limit to how blind our 99% can be
and how effective our 1% has been
in their systematic and organized effort
to control our educational system
and to brainwash our defenders of the faith.
*
FOOTNOTE
************************
For more details see my
DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS
and Naregatsi’s LAMENTATIONS.
*
WARNING
***************
No need to take everything I say literally
or seriously, or as the last word on the subject,
but only as a tiny piece in a vast mosaic or
a single line in a long narrative.
#
Friday, July 06, 2012
**********************************
ON LOYALTY
**************************
The body language of some of my critics is so unfriendly
that I have every reason to suspect
if they and I had been citizens of the USSR
they would have denounced me to the KGB –
in the name of patriotism and loyalty to the regime, of course.
Which is why I am suspicious of both patriotism and loyalty
and I consider them not as assets but as liabilities.
*
ON BENEFACTORS
************************
Great wealth and atheism might as well be synonymous.
The fact that our benefactors build churches
is proof only of the fact that they think they can bribe God –
they can manipulate Him
the way they manipulate their workers and hirelings.
To me that’s worst than atheism – it is blasphemy.
#
Saturday, July 07, 2012
************************************
DIARY
**********************
A line from a Polish movie:
“The law is the law even when it is unjust.”
*
According to some observers,
drone attacks create more terrorists.
*
As the West argues endlessly for or against intervention in Syria,
al-Qaeda has decided unilaterally for intervention.
My guess is, on the day al-Qaeda joins the dissenters in Russia and China,
it may even enjoy American support.
*
If your favorite sport is the blame-game,
don’t be surprised if you run into someone
whose favorite sport is “blame the victim.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Wednesday, July 11, 2012
***************************
MEMOIRS
*******************
If I were to make a list of all my blunders,
I could write an encyclopedia on the subject,
and the first entry would be
my decision to write for Armenians.
*
Writing for Armenians is like
sending memos on strategy to Napoleon
or teaching counterpoint to Bach.
*
In the land of the insane,
can you plead not guilty by reason of insanity?
*
After I drop dead some of my readers
(no more than a dozen) may remember me
as a grouch who hated everyone
beginning with his fellow Armenians.
But if you were to ask anyone
who has been personally acquainted with me or met me,
you will be told I am as timid, withdrawn, and unassertive
as a sardine in a pool of sharks.
I have relatives who live no more than a couple of blocks from me
who haven’t seen me in years.
*
What I have been saying to our 1% is this:
You may moronize most of the 99% most of the time
but you cannot moronize all of the 99% all the time.
There will always be one who will object,
and where there is one there will be another.
#
Monday, July 09, 2012
****************************************
KISMET
*****************************************
To justify their imperialist ambitions,
Americans have invented the concept of Manifest Destiny.
To justify our status as losers,
we have swallowed the concept of fatalism or jagadakir –
literally, written on our forehead.
It was our fate (jagadakir) to be slaughtered by the million.
Therefore, there was nothing we could have done to prevent it.
*
Whenever our 1% wants to justify its blunders or incompetence
it evokes the very convenient concept of jagadakir.
It is the same today.
To justify their total inability to prevent our “White Genocide”
(assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland)
our leadership is united in evoking
the philomoronic concepts of cultural, historical, and economic forces
beyond their control.
They expect us to believe they are all for solidarity
but our fate or the Will of God is against it.
*
If we are to believe our 1%,
nations may be divided into two:
those whose manifest destiny is to win
and those who manifest destiny is to lose.
You may not guess to which category we belong
and why is it that there is absolutely nothing wrong with our 1%.
*
For every philosophy there is a philomoronism
and of the two philomoronism will be more readily accepted by dupes.
#Tuesday, July 10, 2012
**************************************
PERVERSITIES
******************************
There are atheists in all walks of life,
in all lines of work,
and in all places of worship
beginning with the Vatican
and not excluding Etchmiadzin.
*
Overheard:
“Banks are not too big to fail,
but bankers are too big to jail.”
*
Speaking of the 1% in general:
What could be more criminal than
the slaughter of countless innocent civilians?
And yet, sometimes it is treated as if it were
a necessary step in establishing and maintaining law and order.
*
Why is it that the demand
for a peaceful and fair distribution of wealth
is called “class warfare”?
*
Speaking of the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians:
Was the Genocide premeditated, planned and inevitable?
If yes, was our 1% blind not to see it coming?
As a nation today, do we go on living in darkness?
*
Why is it that whenever I try to be honest and objective
I am treated as if I were guilty of treason and betrayal?
In another time and place, and under a different regime
I would be arrested, tried, found guilty, and shot –
all in the name of law, order, and justice, of course!
#
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
**************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*********************************
The 1% invented both class and warfare
and they now accuse the 99% of class warfare.
In psychology that’s known as projection.
By projecting the evil that is within onto others,
one exorcises it.
*
I wonder if the scientists who discovered the God particle
believe in God.
*
If I am or appear to be a heartless son of a bitch
it may be because I believe with Bismarck
that the only way to deal with a pirate
is to be a pirate and a half.
*
If I survived World War II and the Civil War in Greece,
it was by pure luck.
I cannot brag about it.
But I can brag about the fact that
I have survived countless Armenian verbal assaults.
#