Thursday, October 07, 2004
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THEM AND US
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Let me put it bluntly for a change.
The Turks are guilty of covering up our genocide (number of victims 1,500,000).
We are guilty of perpetrating two genocides, albeit of the “white” variant – (one) exodus from the Homeland (number of victims so far 1,500,000 and counting) and (two) assimilation in the Diaspora (number of victims many more than 1,500,000 and counting).
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my question to you is: Whose burden of guilt is heavier? Or, if you prefer: In what way are we different from them?
And before you answer that question, please take into consideration the following two factors: The Turks are motivated to cover up their crime by self-interest — if they plead guilty as charged, they may lose a chunk of their homeland.
By contrast, we are so blinded by our incompetence, corruption and greed that we don’t even bother asking: Who is going to defend the Homeland if it is depopulated?
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Friday, October 08, 2004
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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I experience a state of mind that is akin to a combination of compassion, pity, self-disgust and helplessness whenever I see someone who is beyond my reach committing the same blunder that I committed twenty or thirty years ago.
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We sometimes forget that those who disagree with us are also human beings, and like all human beings, they have their own set of blind spots and limitations as a result of a limited number of experiences. After all, who among us will claim he has experienced everything and he knows and understands everything?
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As soon as I think I have explained a very small fraction of reality, something happens to remind me that I have been on the wrong track, and I must go back to square one and start from scratch.
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A woman is just a woman to another woman. But she is pure magic and the promise of heavenly bliss to a man. The more distant and inaccessible she is the more powerful her spell. Which may explain why the Muslim version of heaven is much more irresistible to a sexually starving and voracious teenager than its Christian counterpart is to Christians of all ages.
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Saturday, October 09, 2004
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FROM MY DIARY
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Whenever I am told “I love to read but I don’t have the time,” I translate it to mean, “I hate to read.”
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In his PRISON DIARY, Jeffrey Archer writes that some inmates are “genuinely evil,” and others “congenitally stupid.” But isn’t that true of men on both sides of prison walls?
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According to a Mahdi in today’s paper: “Islam is a religion of peace. A true believer cannot be a terrorist.” But what if the credo of a religion is contradicted by its history?
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Newspaper headlines speak louder than sermons because “actions speak louder than words.”
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Are young terrorists innocent dupes? Yes, of course. But then, all followers are because, to paraphrase Krishnamurti, “If you follow someone, you cease following the truth,” or “the Kingdom of God” which is within you.
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Religions and ideologies survive and prosper because “there is a sucker born every day.”
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Belief systems create dupes because between a pleasant lie and a demanding truth, man will invariably choose the lie.
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The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize is announced. She is an Austrian novelist about whom I know nothing. Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and Philip Roth must be three of the most disappointed men in the world today, except perhaps Saddam in his cell and Osama in his cave.
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As soon as I sense where a sentence is leading, I skip the whole paragraph. I read as though I were about to catch a train. No patience with most 19th-century novels. Tried George Eliot and gave up after a dozen pages.
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