Author: arabaliozian

Sunday, September 10, 2006
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Pericles as quoted by Thucydides in his PELOPONNESIAN WAR (5th century BC):”What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy, but our own mistakes.”
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Socrates as quoted by Plato in his REPUBLIC (473 BC): “Those who are now called kings and potentates must learn to seek wisdom like true philosophers in order that political power and intellectual wisdom may be joined in one.”
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I have yet to meet the partisan pundit who did not think of himself as smarter than Socrates.
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Socrates had many more questions and doubts than certainties. One of his very few certainties was the quintessentially anti-theological and anti-dogmatic assertion, “Of the gods we know nothing.”
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Gandhi once defined god as “truth.” One could therefore transliterate the Socratic assertion, as “Of truth we know nothing.” We may only aspire to advance in its direction by rejecting lies, half-lies, and propaganda.
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Propaganda does not solve problems, it creates them.
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Propaganda is propaganda regardless of race, color, creed, theology, and ideology
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The ultimate aim of all propaganda is to create bloodthirsty barbarians willing to kill in order to satisfy some moral moron’s lust for power.
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Massacres are not results of Asiatic barbarism but of propaganda.
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At one time or another we have all been dupes of propaganda because we have all been children.
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Dupes have two sets of enemies: (one) other dupes who believe in a propaganda line different from theirs, and (two) anyone who dares to identify them as dupes.
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A dupe without mortal enemies is unthinkable.
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Monday, September 11, 2006
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PARALLELS
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What happened on 9/11 was a clear-cut case of terrorism, no one denies that. And yet, the Bush Administration did not want it investigated. What happened to us in 1915 was also a clear-cut case of genocide, and yet, anyone who dares to disagree with our official version of the story is reviled as a pro-Turkish revisionist and a traitor to the Cause.
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Since 9/11 we have learned a great deal about the failures and incompetence of successive administrations in Washington, all of which treated acts of Muslim terrorism that preceded 9/11 as isolated incidents that did not require radical shifts in policy. In the words of a witness to the 9/11 Commission, “the terrorists were not just lucky once, but again and again.” In short, 9/11 could have been prevented if all the warning signs had not been ignored or covered up.
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1915 was also preceded by a series of massacres at the turn of the century except that in our case the number of victims far exceeded the number of American victims, and our position within the Ottoman Empire was far more vulnerable to punitive reprisals.
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1915 may be said to have been a perfect storm in which Turkish tyranny and Armenian incompetence and utter lack of foresight combined to produce what Toynbee called “one of the two greatest tragedies of the 20th Century,” the other being the Holocaust of Jews during World War II. But unlike our own historians and pundits, Toynbee refused to treat the Genocide as theology even at the cost of being called a Turcophile heretic and a denialist.
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It is the height of cynicism to think that the only lesson we can learn from 1915 is to spew anti-Turkish venom and to pretend that the conduct of our political leadership has been and continues to be blameless.
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We were vulnerable to genocide in the years preceding 1915 as we are vulnerable today to two genocides even if only of the “white” variant – assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus from the Homeland. And what’s being done? The answer to this question seems to be, playing the blame game by voicing the convenient formula “historic and social conditions beyond our control.” It follows, we are in good hands and our establishment types, who happen to be paragons of competence and integrity, are doing everything that needs to be done. To which I can only say, “Give me a break!”
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
KITCHENER-WATERLOO RECORD
********************************************************** Sept. 12 / 2006
GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE
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It is a thankless task to say the obvious, but there are times when it cannot be avoided. It was neither Jews nor the U.N. that created Israel but anti-Semites of all nations who prefer to identify themselves today as anti-Zionists. Before these gentlemen accuse the U.S. for its unconditional support of Israel, and Israeli aggression against Muslim terrorists, who prefer to identify themselves as freedom fighters, they should take a good look at themselves in the mirror and consider their contribution in shaping the status quo.

Ara Baliozian
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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
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By carefully interpreting news and editing facts, those in power can misrepresent bad news as good news, and the most abject defeat as the most glorious victory.
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Confronted by a tiny Roman legion, our most celebrated emperor, Dikran (or Tigranes) II is said to have run away. And yet, we continue to call him “the Great” instead of “the Coward.”
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Confronted by a mighty Persian horde and a wall of Indian elephants, Vartan Mamikonian is said to have scored our most glorious moral victory, meaning military defeat.
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More about the Battle of Avarair: my Mekhitarist teacher of history, who happened to be a highly respected medievalist and the author of several learned volumes, once said that this particular battle was pure invention, it never happened.
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G.B. Shaw’s dictum, “All professions are conspiracies against the laity,” fits nationalist historians like a glove.
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I once asked one of our historians what he thought of Shaw, and he replied, “He was a fool.”
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It is said to Yeghishe (the historian of Avarair) that he was a propagandist of the Mamikonian dynasty. Which may suggest that, when history is not the propaganda of the victor, it is the consolation of the loser.
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Speaking of the Mamikonians: I am told one of our bosses once bragged that his family tree could be traced all the way back to the Mamikonians. I wonder if this clown was aware of the fact that the Mamikonians were of Chinese descent.
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The only way to acquire an objective account of our past is to avoid our historians.
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If I repeat myself it may be because there is no other way to refute lies that have acquired the status of mantras in our tribal consciousness. And if you tell me, under pretense of exposing lies, I am demolishing whatever pride we may have as Armenians, I say, this so-called pride has created dupes at the mercy of tribal charlatans who have proceeded to divide, alienate, and destroy the nation. Pride that is based on lies is an ephemeral illusion. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for us. It is now time that we give truth or honesty a chance.
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Wednesday, September 13, 2006
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FAITH: A BLESSING OR A CURSE?
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If two enemies fight and both believe god is on their side, both will win: the victory of one will be military, the victory of the other, moral.
Faith may not move mountains but it can change defeat to victory.
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If god is on your side, you can’t be wrong because god can’t be wrong.
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If invisible god is the only reality, visible reality is an illusion.
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Faith and science are not mutually exclusive concepts, but religions and religions are.
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Authentic men of faith believe god is incomprehensible; the phonies use the scriptures as if they were god’s political and moral agenda.
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Tolerance teaches us to respect all religions, faiths, and gods. Intolerance tells us, “My god is god, and your god is the devil.”
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Speaking of himself, a man of faith will say, “I believe therefore I am right.” Speaking of heretics and infidels (that is, the majority of mankind): “He believes therefore he is wrong.”
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If I knew how to pray I would say, “O God, save me from all men of god.”
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Thursday, September 07, 2006
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IN PRAISE OF FREE SPEECH
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The first sentence of a commentary in our paper today that bears the headline, “Newspaper must provide a forum for free speech,” reads: “It is easier to love the theory of free speech than the practice of it.” And the final sentence: “And it is the responsibility of the citizen to accept that free speech includes not only the viewpoints that the citizen agrees with, but also those which cause gravest and most heartfelt offence.” John Roe, the author of this commentary is identified as “the Editorial Page editor.” I should like to see one of our own editors writing and publishing such a commentary. As for our pundits and academics who contribute regularly to our papers: I don’t remember any one of them raising his voice against censorship. John Roe is right: we may love the theory of free speech but we, all of us, (publishers, editors, pundits, and citizens) hate the practice of it. Either that or we define free speech as the freedom to spew anti-Turkish venom.
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Friday, September 08, 2006
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TOWARDS A MORE BALANCED
VIEW OF REALITY
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Chamfort: “Everything I learned, I have forgotten: the little I remember, I guessed.”
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To understand one thing is to understand many other things.”
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An objective judgment is better than a prejudiced one.”
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By distorting reality, bias obstructs our path to understanding, and ultimately to consensus.
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These may not be as good or original assertions as Descartes’ celebrated “I think therefore I am,” but they are far more accurate than their opposites.
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Sooner or later all Armenians realize that to trust an Armenian on the grounds that he is Armenian is unwise. Among my friends and acquaintances I count several who began by trusting their fellow Armenians and ended by avoiding them like the plague.
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As a child I believed everything I was told by my schoolteachers and parish priest. As an adult I know that trusting mullahs and propagandists (regardless of race, color, and creed) is to consent to be brainwashed.
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To trust no one is as bad as to trust everyone. As an Armenian I may reject the Turkish version of the story. It doesn’t necessarily follow I accept the Armenian version.
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Our nationalist historians tell us the Turks planned to exterminate us long before the actions of our revolutionaries. What they don’t even try to explain is why would Turks do that to their “most loyal millet” at a time when enemies from within as well as without threatened their very existence?
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You don’t have to be a historian or a psychologist to recognize a contradiction when you see one. All you need is common sense, which, according to Descartes, is evenly distributed because no one complains that he doesn’t have enough of it.
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Common sense tells us, to trust the judgment of an objective outsider is wiser than to trust the judgment of participants in a quarrel or controversy. The justice system of the civilized world is based on that assumption.
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In addition to being one of the greatest historians of the 20th Century, Arnold J. Toynbee was also the first scholar to document the Genocide and to publish several studies on Turkish abuses of power. As an anti-nationalist he rejected both Turkish and Armenian versions of the story. In his version, the Genocide is undeniable fact. It is equally undeniable that by making unjustified territorial demands, Armenian nationalists were partly responsible in provoking it.
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If you reject Toynbee’s version on grounds that he is just another cold-blooded, dehumanized imperialist witness with an impaired sense of compassion and justice, I invite you to consider the testimony of an old Armenian lady who was also a survivor of the Genocide: “The Turks are nice people, provided you don’t step on their tails.”
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Is it conceivable that this traumatized old woman on her way to senility and death has a more balanced view of reality than all our pundits combined?
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A German philosopher once said, “The Germans are the best people in the world, but the trouble is there are so few of them.” Our problem may well be that our “betters” are our worst.
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Saturday, September 09, 2006
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Voltaire’s favorite prayer: “O Lord, please make all my enemies ridiculous.”
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The intolerant have a sharp eye for someone else’s intolerance, never their own.
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Once when I said that Germans had helped Turks in planning and executing the Armenian genocide, a German Armenologist reminded me that Germans had been the first scholars to establish the Sanskrit roots of the Armenian language. Academics!
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Friedrich Schlegel: “Words often understand each other better than the people who use them.”
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In his biography of Timothy Leary, of “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” fame, Greenfield writes: “Tim loved everyone as if they were his own children – except for his own actual children.” Another Saroyan!
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It has been said, when women want to behave like men, they seldom behave like gentlemen. One could also say that when Armenians behave like Turks, they seldom behave like good Turks. I shiver to think what would happen if this type of Armenian were given a yataghan and unleashed against defenseless civilians who happen to disagree with him.
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Only if you have lived in darkness may you see the light. This cannot happen to someone who assumes his darkness to be light.
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“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Our history in a nutshell. It has been the perennial function of our academics to cover up this obvious fact.
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Sunday, September 03, 2006
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In Voltaire’s play MAHOMET OU LE FANATISME, the Prophet says, “Whoever dares to think for himself is not born to believe in me. Silent obedience shall be your only path to glory.” One of Voltaire’s many biographers points out that MAHOMET is not a Christian’s attack on a false religion, but an attack on all organized religions, which “are an imposture in the service of political oppression.” See Roger Pearson, VOLTAIRE ALMIGHTY: A LIFE IN PURSUIT OF FREEDOM (New York, 2005).
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Napoleon didn’t like men who could think for themselves either. He once said, “A man with an idea is my enemy.”
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Most of my so-called critics attack not my ideas but my freedom to express them, that is, my fundamental human right of free speech. But like all born and bred fascists, they are not aware of this.
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Nothing enhances wisdom or the appearance of it than silence. But fools being fools are driven by an inner compulsion to confess who and what they are.
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I am not afraid of being wrong. Why should I be? Am I not human? I leave infallibility to imams, commissars, and my critics. What I am afraid of is turning into a fool. Because, according to Nietzsche, that’s what happens to people who make it their business to deal with fools.
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I have been a source of disappointment to many people, beginning with myself. If I knew how to pray I would go down on my knees and say, “O Lord, give me the strength to say ‘A plague on all your houses!’ and fall silent.”
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Samuel Beckett once said that his ambition in life was “to sit on my ass and do nothing but fart.” A line and an ambition worthy of a Zen master.
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Monday, September 04, 2006
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Since everything is connected with everything else, no one is equipped to know and understand everything about anything. Only god (if he exists) may know and understand everything. We miserable mortals are condemned to know and understand only a fraction of reality.
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All conflicts and disagreements are results of partial understanding and knowledge. Religions are popular because to believe in god means to follow the guidance of one who knows everything and is never wrong. But since “of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates), all assertions made in the name of god are based on total ignorance.
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Perhaps the most useful kind of knowledge is that which reveals to us the depths and breadth of our ignorance.
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Voltaire and Tolstoy saw no merit in Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky loathed Brahms, and Nabokov didn’t much care about “Faulknermann” and “Tolstoevsky.” Great men are poor judges of other great men. So are gods of other gods. And when gods disagree, massacre is sure to follow. Hence the dictum: “Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors” (Voltaire).
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A wise man once said, “I am willing to worship a man who is searching for the truth, but I would gladly kill him if he said he found it.”
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Tuesday, September 05, 2006
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Speaking of the mindset of drunk drivers caught on the scene of an accident, a policeman is quoted as having said in today’s paper, they begin with a “sense of invincibility” and end by trying to “blame it on somebody else.” Overconfidence followed by the blame game: it explains so much about human nature, or life as we experience it, reality as we perceive it, and history as we write it.
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You want to learn from history? Examine your own heart.
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There are those who see nothing questionable in being subservient to an imbecile with more money. There are others who find the prospect unspeakably degrading and unbearably repellent.
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Unmasking a lie does not necessarily mean the destruction of the lie. That’s because what motivates most men is not love of truth but loyalty to self-interest. Where self-interest enters, black lies and white truths turn into shades of gray.
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The crimes of capitalism are many – no doubt about that. But so are the crimes of Christianity, Islam, and Communism. Where power enters, abuse of power is sure to follow.
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Wednesday, September 06, 2006
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Armenian literature is a riskier racket than the mafia, and the only way the survive it is by dying young. Organized crime has two enemies: the police and rival families. Armenian literature has many more, among them tuberculosis (in the 19th century), Talaat and Stalin (in the 20th), and (in the 21st) censorship, audience apathy on the part of the majority, verbal abuse on the part of a faceless and anonymous minority, and last but far from least, the doubletalk of bosses, bishops, and benefactors, and their flunkies, who publicly deliver speeches in support of literature but the moment the sun sets they get their shovels out and start digging.
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I remember one of our bosses once delivering a speech in which he said, “Writers and poets have more influence in shaping the minds and souls of people than anyone else in the community.” Stalin once delivered a similar speech in which he called writers “engineers of the soul.” What happened next we know.
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I remember another one of our bosses saying in another speech, “My fondest ambition is to retire on a distant island and spend the rest of my life in solitude reading…” That one committed suicide, some say he was assassinated by members of a rival family.
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Thursday, August 31, 2006
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As a child I don’t remember to have ever tried to reconcile the mantra of my elders “mart bidi ch’ellank,” (freely translated, “we shall never acquire the status of human beings”) with the propaganda line that said we are just about the smartest and most civilized people on earth. As an adult I know that our defects and deficiencies, our intolerance, tribalism and incompetence are like a city set of a hill – they cannot be hidden. The world knows us better than we know ourselves – that’s another thing we share in common with Turks, who like to project the image of a civilized nation that has victimized no one, let alone defenseless women, children, and old men.
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In his travel impressions of Turkey, Lord Kinross, a notorious Turcophile and biographer of Ataturk, tells us he met old Turks who not only knew all about the Genocide but also bragged about it to him. He quotes them as saying, “We taught Armenians a lesson they’ll never forget,” or words to that effect.
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We flatter ourselves when we think people can’t see through us. We are not enigmas but walking clichés. Our rhetoric and propaganda may convince the dupes among us but no one else. We like to believe ours is a success story because we survived where many others did not. It is equally valid to say that we are a failure because with solidarity and statesmen as leaders (as opposed to petty tribal wheeler-dealers) we could have been a mighty empire.
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Political correctness deals only with appearances. A man can be politically correct and harbor racist sentiments. An Armenian can say, “I don’t hate Turks,” but given an opportunity he would gladly exterminate not only them but also anyone who disagrees with him.
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Speaking of solidarity: In an article about the recently arrested polygamist “prophet” Warren Jeff and his community of fundamentalist Mormons, I come across the following sentence: “The situation is so toxic that brothers don’t speak to brothers, depending on which leader they follow.” Does that ring a bell?
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And speaking of intolerance: In the obituary of Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arab writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize, I read: Because he was “a strong voice for moderation and religious tolerance… he was accused of blasphemy and survived a stabbing attack twelve years ago.”
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Friday, September 01, 2006
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We make better servants than masters. As masters we can be merciless, especially if our servants are Armenian.
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We have made many more significant contributions to foreign empires (Byzantine, Ottoman, Soviet, American) than to our own nation. I call that our “Gulbenkian complex” – give only 7% to your own people and 93% to odars.
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When a friend of mine asked the late and lamented Sylva Kaputikian (may the blessings of Karl Marx be upon her) about the chances of having his translation of Nikos Kazantzakis published in Armenia, she replied: “We don’t publish books written in West Armenian.” A big lie that! I have seen many books in West-Armenian (by Zohrab, Baronian, and Odian, among others) published in Yerevan. Why lie? Is it because we can’t handle the truth? We are not worthy of it? Is it more convenient to lie than to speak the truth? Masters are under no obligation to level with servants?
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Pablo Casals to one of his students on how to play Bach: “Put some gypsy in him.” I like that. He didn’t say, “Make it more Germanic!”
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Speaking of Bach: How to explain the fact that the greatest Bach interpreters were not German but Landowska (Jew), Glenn Gould (Canadian), Casals (Spaniard), and Schweitzer (French) — also the author of the most insightful and readable book on Bach.
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Voltaire on democracy: “Le gouvernement de la canaille [riff-raff].” And yet, it was intellectuals like him who inspired and provided the impetus for the French Revolution.
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Stendhal: “We commit the greatest cruelties but without cruelty.” Perhaps because that which comes naturally to us we don’t consider cruel or criminal or even abnormal. (A possible explanation of Turkish attitude towards the Genocide?)
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There are three ways to wisdom: by way of books, by word of mouth, by one’s own mistakes. The most painful of these is the third way, but also the surest – provided of course one survives.
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God is on the side of bigger battalions and better lawyers.
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Saturday, September 02, 2006
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Whenever a Christian dares to criticize Muslim fundamentalism, a so-called moderate Muslim is bound to raise his voice against the infidel dog. Oriana Fallaci may be right: a moderate Muslim is only a fundamentalist with a mask.
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When wise men disagree, they may settle their differences without bloodshed. But when fools disagree, the chances of developing a consensus range from slim to nil.
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It is not the truly wise who assume to know better because they know wisdom to be a search without end; it is rather the arrogant ignoramus.
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And speaking of their imams and our commissars (and all their neo- and crypto- variants, of which we Armenians have more than our share) what they have in common is an inability to learn from history or their version of it, which, if it is not the propaganda of the victor, it is the consolation of the loser.
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Sunday, August 27, 2006
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CRITICIZING CRITICS
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When I criticize Communists our crypto-Stalinists accuse me of McCarthyism. When I criticize Muslim fundamentalists our anti-Semites (meant to say anti-Zionists) accuse me of racism. And when I criticize Armenians, I am described as a self-hating pro-Turkish whining ignoramus. If I am to believe my critics, verbal abuse is the most legitimate school of criticism or the only good critic is a dead critic.
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I am all for analyzing and understanding hatred, intolerance, and prejudice, but may I confess that I feel helpless with individuals who combine prejudice, hatred, and intolerance with perversion; as when an Armenian expresses nothing but visceral contempt for Americans and Jews but has nothing remotely unkind to say about Bin Laden, mullahs, ayatollahs, and fundamentalist fascist fanatics who hate not only Jews and Americans but also modernity, the West, an important fraction of their fellow Muslims, and women in general (which amounts to about 90% of mankind), and in whose eyes all Christians are infidel dogs unfit to share the earth with the children of Allah and the followers of the Guidance.
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When asked in a televised interview about Muslim terrorists killing defenseless civilians, Bin Laden replied: “Americans have killed many more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” I find that many pro-Muslim and anti-American Armenians from the Middle East use the same argument to explain and justify Muslim terrorism, which may suggest that there are self-assessed smart people out there who find Muslim propaganda more credible than its American counterpart. What Bin Laden and his followers forget is that Americans dropped atomic bombs on Japan only after calculating that civilian as well as military casualties on both sides of the conflict would have run into millions had they continued the war with conventional weapons, and that even after Hiroshima the Japanese refused to surrender because to them surrender is worse than death.
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Diplomacy and dialogue become inadequate tools when one’s adversary values death more than life. Muslim extremists believe they will win in the end because, in their own words, “You [in the West] love life; we love death.”
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Europe thinks “that to achieve peace no price is too high: not appeasement, not massacres on its own soil, not even surrender to terrorists… Europe is impotent, a foul wind is blowing through [it]… the idea that we can afford to be lenient even with people who threaten us… This same wind blew through Munich in 1938… It could turn out to be the death rattle of a continent that no longer understands what principles to believe.” This is not Oriana Fallaci speaking but Marcello Pera, President of the Italian Senate. See WITHOUT ROOTS: THE WEST, RELATIVISM, CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM by Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera (London, 2006). Please note that Pera’s co-author is today’s Pope of Rome.
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Monday, August 28, 2006
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When I ignored his repeated insults, a reader complained that it was getting increasingly difficult to insult me, implying perhaps that I have a thick skin. I don’t. I am as vulnerable as anyone else, but I also make allowances for youth, inexperience, ignorance, poor upbringing, Ottomanism, and a taste for the gutter.
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My most cherished illusion, which so far I have been unable to shed, is that Armenia is a state and Armenians are a nation — as opposed to being fragmented and scattered collections of disoriented tribes without a common language, purpose, and character.
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In our environment, the very same people who created our problems and are now actively engaged in perpetuating them say, “What we need is not criticism but solutions.” But since doubletalk is their only medium of communication, they see nothing inconsistent between their actions and words.
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Never trust anyone who knows more about the law or can afford a better lawyer.
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Tuesday, August 29, 2006
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WHAT IS AND IS NOT CRITICISM
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Criticism whose aim is to prove the critic’s moral, intellectual, or patriotic superiority is not criticism but hypocrisy whose sole aim is to mislead and deceive.
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The function of a critic is not to solve problems but to expose contradictions. I recognize contradictions because I harbor them. To expose a contradiction also means to identify the individuals who are at its roots.
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The problem with Nazi Germany was National Socialism or Nazism or Hitler. The problem with the USSR was Bolshevism. And the problem with both Nazism and Bolshevism was contempt for human rights and free speech. (What is the aim of Solzhenitsyn’s magnum opus, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, if not a detailed documentation of this aberration?)
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Human problems should not be confused with abstract mathematical or scientific problems, which may be solved by a single mind on a piece of paper. To find solutions to human problems is easy (e.g. the problem with alcoholics is alcoholism), implementing them is not.
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I once heard a preacher say that if mankind had followed Christ, there would have been no need for Karl Marx and other reformers who operated on the assumption that they could change the world by ignoring the Word of God. Whenever I am told, “We don’t need critics, we need solutions,” I think of this preacher and cannot help wondering: “If the Son of the Almighty could not solve our problems, what makes anyone think a minor scribbler can?”
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Why do I go on? Good question. Two tentative answers follow: When you witness an injustice or a crime, you are confronted with two options: to expose the criminals or to join them in covering it up. Since this example may imply moral superiority on the part of the witness, here is a better and more selfish one: The house next door is on fire. You either ignore it and hope for the best or you call 911, which is what I have been doing – calling 911, even after being told repeatedly by the voice at the other end to shut up and mind my own business, as if my own home were not my business.
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Wednesday, August 30, 2006
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The Word of God: the quintessential hearsay evidence.
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You want to be objective? Begin by thinking against yourself. Question your fondest assertions in which the “I” is present. Your “I” may be your most valuable possession but to the rest of the world it is the least significant.
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I don’t remember to have ever met a man about whom I could not say, “There by the grace of God…”
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As victims of racism, racism comes naturally to us. For many years I instinctively denied the existence of good Turks, and to this day the combination of these two words – “good Turks” – has to me an oxymoronic aura, like “cold fire,” or “compassionate sadist.”
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Charm and honesty are mutually exclusive concepts. In the kind of world we live in, being honest means being obnoxious.
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Caravans are magnates for idle dogs and dung beetles.
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Wars between men end, but wars between gods never do.
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If their Allah and our God ever met, would they need a translator?
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Thursday, August 24, 2006
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If Beethoven is a revolutionary, Bach fully qualifies as a prophet. “Every piano concerto in the history of Western music,” writes James R. Gaines “has its antecedent in the fifth Brandenburg Concerto, when the lowliest member of the orchestra [the harpsichord] was turned loose to become Liszt.”
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In music as well as in all the arts, ideologies, and religions, the medium is not the message, in the same way that the vestments are not the man. To confuse the medium (the packaging, the style, the rituals, and mumbo jumbo) with the message may even be said to be the source of all evil.
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After saying all men are brothers, organized religions divide mankind into two camps, the Cains and the Abels. The message (all men are brothers) is thus perverted to: “Before the Cains kill us, let’s kill them!” In other words, after identifying themselves with Abel, the children of Adam adopt Cain as their role model.
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A crook in denial thinks of himself as an honest man, and Cain in denial thinks of himself as Abel. It follows, to say “God is great!” justifies behaving like swine.
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A few years ago an Armenian by the name of John Douglas published a book on Armenian history. When asked why the false name, he said out of fear of Turkish persecution. Shortly thereafter Vahakn Dadrian published his definitive study of the Armenian Genocide. What happened to him? His book was translated into Turkish and he was invited to Turkey.
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We share this in common with Turks: we identify ourselves with Abel, and when we say Turks are bloodthirsty Asiatic savages, they tell us we are confusing the medium with the message, the message being they are just people like any other people. So are we.
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Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, not only made history but, like Caesar before him and Churchill after him, he also wrote it. In a letter to a friend, he makes the following observation: “To write history is to compile the follies of man and the blows of fate. Everything runs on these two lines, and so the world has gone on for eternity.”
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The quotations above are from EVENING IN THE PALACE OF REASON: BACH MEETS FRDERICK THE GREAT IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, by James R. Gaines (New York, 2005).
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Friday, August 25, 2006
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TWO SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM
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The two most popular schools of Armenian criticism are (one) censorship by editors, and (two) verbal abuse by faceless and anonymous bullies.
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Editors exercise censorship because they have no choice but to follow a policy set by their publisher, whose aim is to maximize the number of subscribers and advertisers. If one or more readers or advertisers take a dislike at a writer or disagree with his views, that writer becomes persona non grata, that is, bad for business, and a publisher’s business, like America’s, is business. Gone are the good old days in Istanbul when an idealistic editor like Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915), who was also a highly respected author, statesman, lawyer, and a contemporary of Sultan Abdulhamid II and Talaat, who could say: “A newspaper is not a chameleon. It should not change its colors to please readers. It is bound to make enemies. I would measure the moral success of a newspaper by its willingness to make enemies.”
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As for faceless and anonymous bullies who are active mainly in discussion forums on the internet: the reason why they refuse to identify themselves is that they are afraid by other anonymous and faceless bullies who may do to them what they do to others, which may be interpreted as an awareness of the fact that what they are doing is worse than wrong, it is also cowardly. There is only one kind of coward who willingly admits to being one, namely, a coward who is also a self-satisfied fool. Next time these bullies think of verbally abusing someone anonymously, I suggest they ask themselves the following question: Why should anyone take seriously the words of a coward and a fool who is not embarrassed to admit to being both?
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Am I wasting my time on riffraff, as some of my friends like to remind me? Let me quote Zohrab again: “So-called important and unusual events leave me cold. I prefer to unmask the hidden meaning of every-day occurrences which tend to be ignored by the majority.”
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Saturday, August 26, 2006
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UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
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There is an old saying, “Even if a blunder were made of the most expensive fur, no one would want to wear it.” We don’t mind admitting that like all human beings we are fallible, but we hate to admit specific blunders, especially when they are of the catastrophic variant. This is true of all of us, including politicians. For a politician to admit an error amounts to admitting incompetence or bad judgment, both of which may be terminal to his career. This point is brilliantly dramatized in WITHOUT PRECEDENT: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION, by Thomas H. Kean and Lee Hamilton (New York, 2006). The co-authors, who were also the co-chairs of the Commission, write: “The starting point for our report was that it would focus on facts. We were not setting out to advocate one theory or interpretation of 9/11 versus another.” But since the American people were polarized, the challenge they confronted consisted in reconciling two contradictory theories: “…there was no middle ground: either the response to 9/11 was heroic and as good as it could have been, or it was a terrible failure, and individuals had to be blamed.” In its efforts to cover up its failures, the Bush administration set up so many roadblocks that it soon became clear to the authors that the 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail.”
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No one denies the facts surrounding our Genocide, in the same way that no one denies the destruction of the Twin Towers and the death of 3000 innocent civilians. It doesn’t necessarily follow we have all the answers. “Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom; we are now afraid of free speech.” These are not the words of a dissident or critic but a darling of our establishment, Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian). And in a letter to a friend, Gostan Zarian said this about our political parties: “Their greatest enemy is free speech.” Why? What are they hiding? What is it that they don’t want us to know? In the minds of many Armenians, these questions remain unanswered.
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Sunday, August 20, 2006
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Some of my very best friends (no poetic license intended) have become my worst enemies (ditto) because they disagreed with something I said. So much for Armenian friendship, tolerance, dialogue, and Ottomanism….
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One can speak of facts and nothing but facts and one can lie; all one has to do is ignore other equally valid and important facts.
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Since I was brainwashed to believe I was smart, I thought I was being smart even when I behaved like an idiot. That’s what propaganda does to innocent and defenseless minds.
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Readers, who have programmed themselves to disagree with you, will contradict you even when they agree with you. It is almost as if they preferred to disagree with themselves rather than agree with a mortal enemy.
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When it comes to writing about Turks, the challenge for an Armenian is to be readable by Turks without running the risk of being dismissed as another unforgiving victim with a score to settle.
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Anyone can persevere if he thinks he has even a remote chance to win. The trick is persevering when you know you will lose.
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Monday, August 21, 2006
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THE FIRE NEXT TIME
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Since they couldn’t save us from the massacres, they now want to make up for it by convincing the world that we were massacred. First they bite more than they can chew and now they expect us to chew on an imaginary carrot…as the massacre continues.
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There is a tendency in all of us to pretend to know more than we do, except when we run the risk of testifying against ourselves. And yet, it is in our efforts to avoid confessing that we confess.
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If you are going to plead “Not guilty,” make sure not to sweat bullets. The body language of bad liars invariably contradicts their words.
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Propaganda is the body language of nations.
Even as they assert Armenians victimized them, they go about victimizing Kurds and anyone else who dares to deviate from their propaganda line.
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To be born again sometimes consists in replacing one racket with another. I am personally acquainted with an academic who taught atheism in Yerevan, but after the collapse of the USSR he came to America, saw the light, and is now making a comfortable living as a minister praising the Lord from Whom all blessings flow.
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The more you sermonize, speechify, and editorialize the less you act. Action and palaver are mutually exclusive. I speak from experience. Palaver is my racket.
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The Chinese say of the 36 (or is it 63) ways to fight, running away is the best; and we say of the 36 or 63 ways to solve a problem, procrastination is the best. That’s because Father Time is the universal problem solver and God is an Armenian.
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A headline in today’s paper reads: “Arab leaders discuss rebuilding Lebanon.” Either they are jumping the gun or they have so much money that they don’t know what to do with it…a clear-cut case of the triumph of hope over experience, or the triumph of illusion over reality, or the triumph of garbage over the Word, or that which is said to have been at the beginning of all things.
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
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ON FUNDAMENTALISTS,
FANATICS, AND RIFFRAFF
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When it comes to ideologies, religions, and metaphysical systems in general, a truly civilized and tolerant person does not say, “I am right,” but “I could be wrong.”
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Dogmatism and intolerance promote the kind of mindset that says, “My belief system is the only true one and all others are heresies”; or “My values and ideas are positive and the values and ideas of those who disagree with me are negative and should be anathematized.”
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Muslim fundamentalism is the central theme of Oriana Fallaci’s LA FORZA DELLA RAGIONE (The Force of Reason), now available in English (New York, Rizzoli, 2006). Far more dangerous than Muslim terrorism, Fallaci writes here, is Muslim immigration because “Muslims breed like rats.” She quotes the Orientalist Turcophile Bernard Lewis to the effect that in less than a hundred years “Europe will be numerically dominated by Muslims.” Further down she argues that there is not and cannot be such a thing as a moderate Muslim because all Muslims believe in the suras of the Koran, five of which clearly state that infidel dogs don’t deserve to live. The real ambition of all Muslims, she explains, is to dominate Europe, which is not a recent development but a policy that has a millennial history.
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Fallaci is fair enough to also point out that fundamentalism is not an exclusively Muslim aberration and that all closed systems of thought (like Mussolini’s Fascism, Hitler’s National Socialism or Nazism, and Stalin’s Bolshevism) spawn fundamentalist riffraff who adopt an ideology or religion only to legitimize their murderous instincts and bloodthirsty disposition.
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When Marx said he was not himself a Marxist, he meant to say that he was not a killer but a thinker whose theories attempted to explain a fraction of reality that had been misinterpreted or neglected by his predecessors. By contrast, Stalin’s commissars were not thinkers but killers in search of a belief system that would allow them to murder with a clear conscience. Something similar could be said of our own phony patriots and partisans who pretend to be on a mission from God and armed with that conviction they feel authorized to silence or insult anyone who dares to contradict them. But as Fallaci says and repeats like a mantra, “Their insults are my medals.”
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
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OF CABBAGES AND KINGS
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It is said of Augustus II, The Strong, king of Poland (1670-1733) that his illegitimate children numbered exactly 354 and some of his many daughters became his mistresses who also had affairs with their half-brothers. Since he ruled by divine right and with the approval of the Church, my guess is, his conduct did not attract media attention, his approval rate didn’t go south, and no one dared to whisper the word impeachment in his presence. If you consider the abuse leveled at Clinton and Woody Allen, you may have to conclude that the masses and the media today have higher moral standards than the Good Lord and his representatives on earth.
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What do we know about our own kings and “betters” in general? How many Armenians know that Calouste Gulbenkian believed fornicating with young girls would prolong his life?
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I remember to have read somewhere that old age has three consolations: power, wealth, and fame – provided of course one is not saddled with impotence, Alzheimer’s, and scandal. Tolstoy had more fame than anyone else, except perhaps Napoleon and Elvis, but he had a very miserable old age. In his eighties he ran away from home and died in the middle of nowhere in the house of a total stranger.
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We expose ourselves as dupes and unreliable witnesses when we expect people to believe that our leaders don’t make mistakes, they don’t lie, mislead and propagandize, lust for power is a vice alien to them, and butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth or anywhere else.
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Thursday, August 17, 2006
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Armenians may be perennial losers, Saroyan says somewhere, but they are inextinguishable. After which he challenges the world to exterminate us, clearly implying that it can’t be done.
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What is it that makes of us perennial losers and why would anyone want to exterminate us? If Saroyan had the answers to these questions he kept them to himself, probably because he didn’t want to risk his popularity among his fellow Armenians, who idolized him together with Mikoyan and Gulbenkian.
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Since Saroyan could not read Armenian, he was probably unaware of the fact that our status as perennial losers has been a central theme of our literature from Khorenatsi and Yeghishe in the 5th Century to Zarian, Shahnour, and Massikian in the 20th.
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Had Saroyan known that only 7% of Gulbenkian’s money is earmarked for Armenians and Mikoyan played a key role in the Stalinist purges in Armenia during which our ablest men were systematically and ruthlessly exterminated, he could have said to the world, “No need to go out of your way to exterminate Armenians. Left to their own devices they will be glad to do it themselves.”
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Friday, August 18, 2006
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ZEN MOMENTS
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D.T. Suzuki, the author of a best-selling INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM, was having lunch in a restaurant when he was approached by another patron who interrupted his own lunch to ask for an explanation in layman’s terms of what exactly was Zen. After a brief moment of reflection, Suzuki replied, “Eat.”
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To the question by a journalist as to why he had devoted decades of his life writing his STUDY OF HISTORY in twelve thick volumes, Toynbee replied, “Curiosity.”
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When a factory owner once said to Karl Marx, “If I understand your economic theories correctly, all you want is our money.” Marx replied, “That’s right.”
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In addition to being one of the greatest composers of all time, J.S. Bach was also a celebrated virtuoso organist. Once when asked by an admirer what it takes to master such a demanding instrument, Bach replied, “You just press the keys.”
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These laconic replies leave a great deal unsaid (reminiscent of “Shut up! he explained”) but to the perceptive mind they speak volumes. Consider Suzuki’s “Eat,” as a case in point. In reality we never just eat. We also think, reminisce, plan, worry, imagine… Zen consists in doing what you are doing at any given moment and nothing else. This may sound easy but it is not. It is, as a matter of fact, as difficult as understanding, let alone, loving the enemy. And understanding the enemy is difficult because by understanding him we may begin to perceive the evil within us.
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Saturday, August 19, 2006
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OF TRIBES, NATIONS, AND EMPIRES
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Once upon a time there were 42 (or is it 56) tribes in the Caucasus. If most of them have not survived it’s because, unlike us, they didn’t have what it takes, or so I was told as a child. Which meant that we were, if not the master race of the Caucasus, then something in that neighborhood. Now that I am no longer a child I know that these 42 or 56 tribes did not perish. They survive in us.
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Tribes, nations, and empires share this in common: they need constant foreign transfusions to survive because if left on their own they would end by moronizing themselves.
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Armenians come in all sizes and shapes. In the ghetto where I was born and raised there were Armenians who looked like Mongols, Tartars, Negroes, Germans, and so on, but they all spoke Armenian and identified themselves as Armenian because in a tribal or ethnic environment most people tend to identify themselves with the dominant minority, the way we did in the Byzantine Empire, and after that in the Ottoman and Soviet Empires, and the way we do today in America.
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In the Byzantine Empire, for example, some of the most powerful imperial dynasties and their military leaders were Armenian or part Armenian, but their foreign policy was consistently anti-Armenian.
Smart Armenians know that the only way to get ahead in the kind of world we live in is to serve the interests of those in power even if they happen to be our mortal enemies. Grub first, then ethics.
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One of our elder statesmen once told me that some of the key players in our organizations are not Armenians but Turks. I didn’t believe him. All I can say today is that after six centuries of cohabitation it’s not easy to tell a Turk from an Armenian.
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Race, color, creed – these are poorly defined terms that according to scientists and historians are nothing but figments of our imagination.
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What could be more Russian than Russian literature? And yet, if you take a closer look, you may discover that some of the greatest and most influential Russian writers were not Russians. Pushkin was a Negro, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn Ukrainians, Pasternak and Brodsky (two Nobel Prize winners) Jews. Something similar could be said of all literatures. Most French writers are not French but Jews (Montaigne, Barthes), Italian (Zola), Irish (Beckett), Rumanian (Ionesco), Armenian (Adamov).
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How many Armenian writers are Armenian? I don’t know and I don’t care to know because what I admire in a writer is not his race, color, or creed, but his work, his ideas, his worldview, his style, his humanity, none of which recognizes any man-made boundaries.
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Sunday, August 13, 2006
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DO YOU DISAGREE WITH ME?
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Nothing unusual in that. Our bosses, bishops, and their main supporters, our benevolent benefactors disagree with one another all the time. Why shouldn’t we?
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As a child I believed everything I was told by my elders. As a teenager I believed nothing. As an adult I see very little value in both belief and unbelief, or agreement and disagreement. Disagreement in itself is meaningless. What matters is whose disagreement, or what is the stage of development or arrested development of the person who disagrees. Is he a six-year old who cannot yet think for himself, a sixteen-year old rebel, or a sixty-year old who has not yet outgrown his Peter Pan stage?
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AM I BORING YOU?
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Nothing unusual in that either. Even my most favorite writers sometimes bore me stiff, but I go on reading them because if I were to skip a paragraph or page or chapter I may miss a line that may change my life. Call it one of the superstitions of the trade.
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I love Shakespeare. I have learned to recite entire soliloquies from RICHARD III and HAMLET by heart not because I was told to do so by a teacher but because rereading and reading these two plays is to me a perennial source of pleasure. This much said, however, I don’t mind admitting that I have not yet read his complete works and I don’t plan to do so in the near future. And consider Shakespeare’s counterpart in music, J.S. Bach. Everyone loves his Toccata and Fugue in D minor, but only organists know his Toccata and Fugue in F major, probably because the first is an accessible masterpiece and the second sounds like a boring academic exercise.
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ON BEING HUMAN
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We all make mistakes, except self-appointed Armenian pundits. Being wrong to them would be akin to the collapse of the papacy and the disintegration of Vatican’s moral authority.
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Do I make mistakes? Since I have made it my business to question the legitimacy of those in power and the nonsense in all dogmatic assertions, I am less vulnerable to that particular charge. But if it will make you feel better, I am willing to reiterate that the subtitle of everything I write could be “I Could Be Wrong.”
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I mentioned above lines that may change one’s life. Here is a sentence that may change if not your life than some of your fundamental assumptions on Asiatic barbarians versus their European counterparts. Speaking of 17th-century Europe, an American historian writes: “Rape and massacre became the soldiers’ recreation, and revenge was terrible when peasants with pitchforks found themselves in a position to exact it.” (James R. Gaines, EVENING IN THE PALACE OF REASON: BACH MEETS FRDERICK THE GREAT IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT [New York, 2005], page 20.)
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Monday, August 14, 2006
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Because the Armenian is a bundle of contradictions, Neshan Beshigtashlian once described him as an enigma that resists all solutions. If true, one of these contradictions must be that he thinks he is smart and behaves like a fool.
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Because I am for solidarity I have becomes an enemy; and because they divide the community they are patriotic activists.
Because I expose the dangers of intolerance and tribalism I am accused of repeating myself, and because they keep preaching dogmas that are of use to no one but themselves, they expect us to believe they are defenders of the faith.
Even as they commit suicide by the death of a thousand cuts they brag about their highly developed instinct of survival.
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What have they learned from the Genocide except to hate Turks? And because lying comes naturally to them they say they hate no one, they want only justice; and they love justice so much that anyone who disagrees with them is stigmatized as a pro-Turkish revisionist, that is to say, the lowest form of animal life.
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The virtue they value most is unquestioning obedience and loyalty, which is why they consider dogs superior to men.
Because they can dish it out but can’t take it, they consider dialogue anti-Armenian.
Some day the Pope of Rome and his Muslim counterpart in Mecca may engage in dialogue and reach a consensus of sorts, but I doubt if two Armenians who hold opposite views will ever concede that as human beings they could be wrong.
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On the day they teach themselves to say “I could be wrong,” I will be out of business.
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Tuesday, August 15, 2006
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IN THE DEVIL’S KINGDOM
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In a book from J.S. Bach’s library an underlined passage reads: “If you try to help people they will express their gratitude with a kick, after which they will wipe their shoes on you. Before you try to change the world, try to understand that the world is not disposed to accept your suggestions or follow your directives.”
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What have I accomplished so far? How many minds have I changed? I cannot even identify myself with Sisyphus – he hoisted a rock, it seems all I have been doing is hoisting a feather. My defeats have been many; my victories few and most of them I now suspect may well have been figments of my imagination. The one or two real victories have left a bitter aftertaste. Were they worth the effort? What if the damage I caused was disproportionate to the injustice that was inflicted on me?
I am not made for conflict and I find all conflict distasteful. But what I find even more distasteful, not to say repellent, is to say “Yes, sir” to fools who pretend to know better.
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Another passage underlined by Bach reads: “A fool is of no use to himself, and fools are everywhere. We have no choice but to live among them and to work for them. The world as we know it is the devil’s kingdom.” Further down: “If you expect things to go your way, prepare yourself for disappointment, sadness, and heartache.”
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What if, when in the Lord’s Prayer, we say “Thy kingdom come,” we express an awareness of the fact that the kingdom we live in today is not His but the Devil’s? And what if further down when we say “Do not lead us into temptation,” we go further and identify Him with the Devil?
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Wednesday, August 16, 2006
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The Middle East is the cradle of civilization and judging by its recent history its ambition now is to be its grave.
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Beirut is the Paris of the Middle East but a Paris without its Enlightenment, which may suggest that its mindset belongs to the Dark Ages.
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Where philistines and fanatics are in charge, it’s always the Dark Ages.
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J.S. Bach had his share of critics and he took them seriously because he was financially dependent on the goodwill and generosity of his philistine employers.
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Armenians are guilty of “ethocide” (the murder of ethics), according to a Turkish writer, because they ignore Turkish victims. Turks by contrast cannot be said to be guilty of the same crime (ethocide) on the grounds that you cannot ignore something that doesn’t exist.
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To know only one side of the story is worse than not to know the story.
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Why read the plays of a phony like Shakespeare? It’s common knowledge that he did not write them. It was another fellow whose name also happened to be Shakespeare.
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Thursday, August 10, 2006
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It never fails. Whenever I run out of things to say, one of my gentle readers takes it upon himself to inform me that, compared to our literary giants of the past (there follows a short list of familiar names), I am a hopeless mediocrity that will never amount to anything.
Some poets are inspired by beautiful landscapes, sunsets, and faces. I am stimulated by ugly Armenians, and the uglier the Armenian the more intense and long-lasting the stimulation.
Anyone who knows anything about literature also knows that debunking writers is an integral part of literary life. All writers from Plato to Sartre have been debunked not only by faceless and anonymous kibitzers but also by their peers. What has been the damage on their reputation? Nothing, nada, zero, vochinch!
Consider Tolstoy’s ferocious demolition job on Shakespeare, Turgenev’s on Dostoevsky (and vice versa), Nabokov’s on Thomas Mann, Faulkner, and Sartre, Canetti’s on T.S. Eliot; and closer to home, Zarian’s on Charents, and Oshagan’s on Zarian. Solzhenitsyn himself has been referred to as a “hooligan,” a “nitwit,” and a “goddamn horse’s ass” – for more choice abusive terms, see David Remnick’s REPORTING: WRITINGS FROM THE NEW YORKER (New York, 2006).
But all that is irrelevant, because my intention here is not to produce great literature but to be an honest and objective witness. I don’t ask for anyone’s admiration. As for trust, I am fully aware of the fact that I shall never have the trust of our commissars and all their crypto- and neo- variants, the very same species that betrayed, exiled, starved, and sometimes even tortured and shot the very same literary giants they now pretend to admire. Why should I be surprised if in their eyes I am the lowest form of animal life? I wear their venom as a badge of honor.
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Friday, August 11, 2006
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Men have invented many strategies to avoid facing facts, especially when the facts are against them. When I was subservient, I called it respect for authority; and when they massacre, they say they are following orders.
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If you make it your business to expose crooks and liars, liars and crooks will conspire against you, and by the time they are through, you will be the liar, the crook, and the pervert.
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An honest man is a permanent insult to deceivers.
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Because we come from a long line of victims, we hate to lose the opportunity of victimizing others, even when they happen to be the weakest and most defenseless among us; and who could be weaker and more defenseless than a minor scribbler who is foolish enough not to learn from history by resigning himself to the fact that Armenians may praise dead writers but they don’t give a damn about living ones; they may even think a writer becomes a writer only after he is dead and buried — preferably in the hands of a foreign butcher like Talaat or Stalin.
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Because czarist Russia persecuted its great writers it dug its own grave; and because Bolshevik Russia did the same, it was consigned to the dustbin of history. Writers are like canaries in a mine. We ignore their fate at our peril.
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Do you know what’s the most widely held view of Armenians by Armenians? Sure you do. But in case you have forgotten, allow me to remind you: “Mart bidi ch’ellank!” Freely translated: We will never acquire the status of human beings. Or, we may survive as Americans, Russians, perhaps even as Turks, but as Armenians we might as well be subhumans on our way to the devil.
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Saturday, August 12, 2006
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It has been said that the best way to get rid of a fellow is to tell him something for his own good.
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The goal of education is to make you a better person not a wealthier man. Tell that to our Levantine academics.
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An Armenian who doesn’t know what he is talking about will assume you know even less.
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My aim is not to be original or to advance new theories, but to paraphrase and emphasize views that were formulated long before I was born not only by odar writers but also our own. But since in the eyes of our anti-intellectual philistines literature is a worthless commodity, it follows writers are nobodies whose sole aim in life is to make nuisances of themselves.
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I look forward to the day when I will see the light and fall silent. In the meantime I console myself by wondering how many leopard spots did Shakespeare change?
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After writing an unreadable book one of our Levantine wheeler-dealers wanted to know all about copyright laws. He didn’t want anyone stealing from the fruits of his intellectual labor, he explained; and he didn’t believe me when I told him he had nothing to worry about on that score.
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