Thursday, September 16, 2004
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To speak of the wisdom of propaganda is like speaking of the shadow of a non-existent object in a dark room.
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Fascists make good speechifiers, but I see more eloquence in the braying of an ass.
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Two individuals from two different cultural environments do not speak the same language even when they speak the same language.
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Confucius: “Clever talk and a pretentious manner are seldom found in the Good.”
A variant translation: “A garbage-mouth cannot harbor a golden tongue.”
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I am not in the business of changing anything. I am in the business of understanding, and whenever I am allowed, to share my understanding.
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When a reader tells me he hates what I write, I make an effort to be more hateful. I don’t write to entertain, amuse, and flatter.
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All censors are cowards because they are afraid of ideas, especially ideas that will expose them as cowards.
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Judge a tree by its fruit, a man by his ideas, and a belief system by its history.
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To say nothing is better than to call someone an ignoramus, especially if he is one.
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An easy riddle: “What does an Armenian with an opinion have in common with the Rock of Gibraltar?”
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Friday, September 17, 2004
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AGAINST TURKISH MEMBERSHIP IN THE EU.
ON THE ORIGINS OF PROVERBS.
WAS KOMITAS A TURK?
THE FALLACY OF CENSORSHIP.
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In an interview published in LE POINT (Paris, August 12, 2004) Pierre Moscovici, a member of the European Parliament, cites the following three reasons why Turkey cannot be admitted into the European Union: “The role of the military on the margins of the regime;
the rights of minorities, notably that of the Kurds; and
the recognition of the Armenian genocide – this final point is for me decisive.”
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If “to kill with words is also murder” (German proverb), who among us will dare to plead not guilty to the crime of massacre?
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Anonymous: “Let not your tongue cut your throat.”
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More and more frequently now, in English-language books of quotations, Armenian proverbs are identified as Turkish. Since no one has ever come forward and said: “I was there when this proverb was first spoken,” I suppose, any nation can identify a proverb as its own. The same applies to the origin of dishes and folk tunes.
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I remember to have read somewhere that in some Turkish reference works Komitas is identified as a Turkish musician, I suppose, in the same way that Mikoyan and Khachaturian are identified as “Soviet,” Saroyan as “American,” and Adamov as “French.” But since present-day Turkey has disassociated itself from its Ottoman past and its many crimes against humanity, it would be more accurate to use the qualifier “Ottoman” in reference to Armenian proverbs and personalities who were active in Istanbul before World War I.
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By silencing a writer and suppressing his testimony, censorship attempts to arrest the advance of time, but the best it can do is to slow it down and to postpone the final catastrophe.
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Whenever I reflect that a fellow Armenian, who insults me or bans me from a forum, would have betrayed me to the authorities or put a bullet in my neck in a different time, place, and regime, I feel like celebrating.
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To how many of my Armenian critics I could say: “Your aim is not to contradict but to murder with words.”
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Saturday, September 18, 2004
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ON PROPAGANDA AND
RELATED ATROCITIES.
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Propaganda is the enemy of literature because literature is the enemy of propaganda.
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Speechifiers and sermonizers are not used to being contradicted.
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One of our elder statesmen once told me: “Why do you bother replying to your readers? F*** them!” To which I remember to have replied: “No, I refuse to adopt our leaders as my role models.”
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I write brief sentences to fit the attention span of my readers. To write long paragraphs would be like serving gourmet dishes to addicts of junk food.
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When a jackass brays he does not expect to have the applause of his audience. But if the jackass is an Armenian he is sure to think his braying is as good if not better than an aria from DON GIOVANNI or THE BARBER OF SEVILLE.
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I grew up among survivors of the massacres who spoke Turkish among themselves. They had no illusions about their fellow men regardless of nationality. They may have been functional illiterates but they had an instinctive understanding of the role of destiny in human affairs. They didn’t make a career of hatred and a full-time job of the massacres. If someone had said to them, by writing books, newspaper articles and letters to the editor, or by delivering speeches and sermons we may be able to persuade the Turks to apologize, they would have looked at him in silent astonishment as if to say: “Of the forty-four types of insanity I have heard about, this must be one of them.”
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