Sunday, January 16, 2005
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NOTES / COMMENTS
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If fools outnumber the wise, they will choose a fool as a leader.
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Some of my critics pretend to know better, but instead of sharing their wisdom, they prefer to share their venom.
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Because three readers disagreed with me, a fourth reader writes: “If one man calls you a fool, you may not have a problem. If two men call you a fool, you may have a problem. If three men call you a fool, you might as well resign yourself to the fact that you are a damn fool.”
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Maybe so, but it is also written: “Not everyone who identifies himself as a man is one.”
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It is also written: “You cannot contradict the braying of an ass. Neither can you contradict the braying of three, or, for that matter, four asses.”
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Let it be said, if this is not written, it shall be.
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I knew we were in deep trouble on the day one of our elder statesmen wrote me a letter saying he could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was spelling my name wrong.
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“May you go to hell!” might as well be synonymous with “May you spend the rest of your life working for an Armenian.” I know what I am saying; I have been in both places.
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A tolerant atheist is closer to god than an intolerant Christian.
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I wish someone had warned me that in the first thousand days of every important undertaking, you will make a thousand mistakes; and the worst mistake you can make is to assume that in the second thousand years, you will make only 999 mistakes.
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Monday, January 17, 2005
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In the December 16, 2004 issue of LE POINT, a Paris-based French-language illustrated weekly, there are a number of articles, commentaries and a long interview about Turkey in which Armenians are inevitably mentioned and discussed.
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“There is a Christian – a Bulgarian or an Armenian – in the family tree of every Turk [alive today],” states Levent Yilmaz, identified as a young Turkish intellectual.
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To the question, “Why is it that there is a law that prohibits all mention of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916?” Yilmaz replies: “No, that is not true. The law does not mention this or any other event specifically. It speaks only of blasphemy against the integrity and unity of the Republic – a judge is free to interpret the law in many ways.”
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To the question whether or not Turkey is in denial of the Armenian genocide, Yilmas is willing to admit that the Armenian genocide is the last great national taboo, and it must be openly discussed, which is being done by a number of Turkish historians, among them Taner Akcam and Tayyip Erdogan. He goes on to say that Vahakn Dadrian’s book was published recently without cuts. The debate, he adds, is whether or not the word genocide, “which was coined in 1948 in reference to the Jewish genocide,” can be applied to the Armenian experience.
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In the concluding remarks of the editorial on page 3 by Claude Imbert, we read: “Turkey’s ambition is to be part of the West, but its interests lie in the East with the Turkish-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and by the Caspian Sea. Turkey also comes with a heavy freight of controversies (Cyprus, Armenia, Kurdistan)….”
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A subtitle in an essay titled “Europe: The Battle of Turkey,” reads: “The Non-Recognition of the Armenian Genocide: Is It an Obstacle to
Its Membership?” It goes on to say that it will be a point of contention during the next ten years of negotiations.
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Far from being “forgotten,” it looks like our genocide is very much alive and kicking.
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Elsewhere, in the same issue, and on the occasion of the sale of one of his paintings at Christie’s in London, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) is identified as a Russian. It seems, an anonymous buyer paid 2.1 million euros for it – “a record so far for a 19th-century Russian painting.”
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005
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The internet is a useful medium in so far as it allows hoodlums and cowards to expose themselves.
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There should be an unspoken law that says, if you are going to attack or insult someone on the internet, you should identify yourself, because to do so anonymously is a sure symptom of cowardice.
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We are insensitive to human rights issues. We don’t even like to mention free speech. After all, who among us can plead not guilty to the charge of not having violated the free speech of a fellow Armenian by means of insults masquerading as criticism?
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And since literature is inconceivable without free speech, it follows, we are all guilty of implementing a policy of systematic extermination of our intellectual class. But perhaps what I am talking about here is not free speech but civilized conduct.
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When was the last time any one of our academics spoke up in defense of free speech? As for our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (our axis of evil): what can I say about them that has not already been said by Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Voskanian, Shahnour, Massikian, and Zarian, among many others?
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Wednesday, January 19, 2005
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When I first met an assimilated Armenian in Italy, I remember, he looked down at me as an odd curiosity, and I looked at him as a brazen renegade. I was wrong and he may have been right. Because, as a teenager, I might as well have been a walking encyclopedia of chauvinist clichés and a dupe who believed my elders knew better and they had done whatever was humanly possible to save and preserve the nation. I know better today.
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In a commentary, I read the following: “The inhabitants in many of the hardest hit areas [by the tsunami] are amongst the poorest in the world. One reason they live in squalor is that the governments in their countries rule by force, keeping everything for the ruling class. Long before the tsunami hit, peasant populations had been excluded from aid programs intended to benefit them.”
My first thought: our homeland too has been hit by an invisible and slow-motion tsunami of bureaucratic corruption and incompetence. We, in the Diaspora, may be better off financially, but are we really better of morally?
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A headline in our paper reads: “Pope wants more dialogue between Jews and Catholics.” I can’t help wondering what were they doing during the last 2000 years? – except perhaps calling one another blasphemers. And what will they call one another after 2000 years of dialogue? Brothers? Maybe. But perhaps the real question should be: Will they ever stop thinking of one another as blasphemers? Can they, without sacrificing a central tenet of their faith?
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