Thursday, April 13, 2006
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No one in his right mind now questions the fact that the attacks of 9/11 were planned and executed by Al Qaeda terrorists. Many books have already been written on the subject. But increasingly now books are also being written about the failures of the Bush administration to prevent it. In one of them, titled FOG FACTS: SEARCHING FOR TRUTH IN THE LAND OF SPIN by Larry Beinhart (New York, 2005) I read: “The standard excuse for having ignored the warnings is that such attacks were unimaginable.”
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Was our Genocide unimaginable? Not if you consider the warnings that preceded it in 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1909.
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For every ten or even a hundred books on the Genocide we need at least one that will document the failures of our own leadership. If so far our academics have ignored that aspect of the Genocide it may be because our leadership does not relish the idea of being investigated, in the same way that no one within the Bush administration wanted an investigation, because, writes Larry Beinhart, “the kindest thing that could be said about them was that they had been asleep at the wheel.”
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Four days ago, not far from here, eight members of a motorcycle gang were massacred by fellow members. At the funeral of one of them, the rabbi is quoted as having said this in his eulogy: “He was the sort of guy who could manage to get reservations at a restaurant when nobody else could.” My first thought: Is that something to brag about? My second thought: I will be more than happy if in my eulogy (assuming there will be one) a priest says: “He was the sort of guy who would never eat in a restaurant that required reservat
Thursday, April 13, 2006
************************************
No one in his right mind now questions the fact that the attacks of 9/11 were planned and executed by Al Qaeda terrorists. Many books have already been written on the subject. But increasingly now books are also being written about the failures of the Bush administration to prevent it. In one of them, titled FOG FACTS: SEARCHING FOR TRUTH IN THE LAND OF SPIN by Larry Beinhart (New York, 2005) I read: “The standard excuse for having ignored the warnings (of the 9/11 holocaust) is that such attacks were unimaginable.”
*
Was our Genocide unimaginable? Not if you consider the massacres that preceded it in 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1909.
*
For every ten or even a hundred books on the Genocide we need at least one that will document the failures of our own leadership. If so far our academics have ignored that aspect of the Genocide it may be because our leadership does not relish the idea of being investigated, in the same way that no one within the Bush administration wanted an investigation, because, writes Larry Beinhart, “the kindest thing that could be said about them was that they had been asleep at the wheel.”
*
Four days ago, not far from here, eight members of a motorcycle gang were massacred by fellow members. At the funeral of one of them, the rabbi is quoted as having said this in his eulogy: “He was the sort of guy who could manage to get reservations at a restaurant when nobody else could.” My first thought: Is that something to brag about? My second thought: I will be more than happy if in my eulogy (assuming there will be one) a priest says: “He was the sort of guy who would never eat in a restaurant that required reservations.”
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Friday, April 14, 2006
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WHY I WRITE THE WAY I WRITE
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I write as I do because if you don’t know what went wrong, you can’t fix what’s going on.
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CARCINOGENIC AGENTS
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It is a well-known fact that many illnesses have psychosomatic origins. Norman Mailer may have been justified is describing a certain type of nasty characters as “cancer.” I remember to have read somewhere that no inmate of an insane asylum has ever died of cancer. After writing for Armenians for more than three decades I am tempted to ascribe my present cancer-free state to a miracle, and I don’t believe in miracles.
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STATISTICS
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Victims of tuberculosis, terror, treason, neglect, starvation, and miscellaneous carcinogenic agents, the average lifespan of Armenian writers has been about 31. The average lifespan of bosses, bishops, and benefactors, about 89. I have a theory about that….
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POLLYANNA’S GLAD GAME
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When teenagers insult me, I think, “They read me because I am accessible.” When adults insult me, I think, “I must have exposed a raw nerve.” When a moderator silences me, I think, “He is a yellow-belly fascist afraid of free speech.” When I meet a wall of silence, I think, “They are afraid to make asses of themselves by contradicting the obvious,” even as I suspect the cause may well be apathy.
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IN PRAISE OF SLUMS
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One good thing about being a slum-dweller is that you will never have a lawyer as a neighbor.
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Saturday, April 15, 2006
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A TURKISH EDITOR
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Whenever Armenians are discussed in odar circles these days it is in connection with the Genocide. Take away the Genocide and the chances are we will be reduced to the status of an anonymous displaced minority on its way to extinction. On the radio an interview with someone identified as “a Turkish editor in France.” The subject, you guessed it — the Genocide. “The only way to solve our differences is by engaging in dialogue,” the Turkish editor says, and goes on: “I understand Armenians…their feelings, their frustrations. I am myself an Armenian….”
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THE GREAT ONES
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There are only passing references to the Genocide in Antranik Zaroukian’s gossipy and compulsively readable last book, THE GREAT ONES…AND THE OTHERS (Beirut, 1992), a memoir of such contemporaries as Oshagan, Zarian, Shant, Aghbalian, Chobanian, and Shavarsh Missakian. In the chapter on Oshagan, Zaroukian quotes an Armenian hotel owner in Aleppo saying, Oshagan can stay in his hotel for as long as he likes free of charge, because “Oshagan is a great man, and that’s the least I can for him.” Zaroukian comments: “Mihran effendi [the owner] was an illiterate man, and for him anyone who had written a book was a great man. One day, after being informed that I had published a critical article about His Holiness Ardavast, he reprimanded me with the words, “That will not do, my boy – criticizing His Holiness…the man has written three books.”
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THE OTHERS
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I look around in search of a “great one” today and I only see pundits and academics who write as if they were interchangeable units. And what do they write about? Turkish barbarism.
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CONFESSIONS
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I point out contradictions in others because I have observed the same contradiction in myself. In that sense my criticism is also a confession. But perhaps all criticism is. I ask our forum moderators and editors, whose favorite subject is Turkish barbarism: “What is the difference between silencing a writer and cutting his tongue out?”
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