Author: arabaliozian

Thursday, April 26, 2007
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ON IDEALS AND THEIR ABUSERS
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To some misguided patriots, nationalism may appear as a noble, even a necessary, ideology; but like all ideologies (from Christianity to Marxism) it has had and will continue to have its share of abusers and perverts. Talaat was a nationalist, Stalin a Marxist, and Torquemada a Christian. Does that mean we should suspect all ideals and principles? Of course not! What we should suspect is power, doubletalk, and propaganda. That’s where critics come in, and that’s why brainwashed dupes are their greatest adversaries.
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All power is suspect; but even more suspect is the apathy of the average, well-intentioned, law-abiding citizen who thinks he is in good hands, and that those in power will leave him alone as long as he doesn’t dirty his hands by getting involved in politics. The root of all major tragedies may be traced to this mindset.
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The reason why I target Armenians rather than Turks for criticism is that there are better men than myself engaged in criticizing their fellow Turks. Another reason, attacking Turks has become a lucrative sport with our Turcocentric pundits and academics, whose aim is not so much to expose Turkish criminal conduct but to cover up our own.
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Friday, April 27, 2007
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PAST AS PROLOGUE
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A few years ago Church Unity was the hot topic in our press. There was an endless stream of commentaries, polemics, and letters to the editor. Everybody was for it, it seems. Both proponents of unity and the two sides in the controversy agreed that unity was an important goal and the sooner it was reached the better for all concerned. In the end nothing was done because both sides kept stonewalling. As a result, the controversy died down not to rise again. I suspect something similar will happen to the Genocide issue. It’s our style – the Ottoman way.
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OLD TIME RELIGION
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In a democratic environment there are investigative reporters and the loyal opposition whose combined job is to contradict, criticize, and expose corruption within the executive branch. Where are our investigative reporters? Where is our loyal opposition? Throughout our millennial existence, did we ever have them? When some of my gentle readers identify me as an enemy of the people who takes his marching orders from Ankara, what they really mean is, we have no use for democracy and free speech. The Ottoman way is good enough for us.
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Saturday, April 28, 2007
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BEN BAGDIKIAN ON U.S. MEDIA
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“Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s SAINT MATTHEW PASSION on a ukulele.”
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“The central function of journalism is to permit a more valid view of reality.”
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“Arguers against change like to say, ‘You can’t legislate morals,’ but it is hard to convince me that authority figures can’t evoke more humane attitudes, just as they obviously do the opposite.”
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“Our major media probably offer the narrowest range of ideas available in any developed democracy.”
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One point in favor of the American press: it has produced a major investigative reporter like Ben Bagdikian. Now then, name if you can a single Armenian journalist – and I don’t mean ghazetaji. I could name several who were rudely silenced by mediocrities whose “greatest enemy is free speech” (Zarian).
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Sunday, April 22, 2007
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WANTED: A MESSIAH
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Those who see the best in themselves will tend to see the worst in others. We all need scapegoats. Turks are ours, and we are theirs. Naregatsi – our Dante and Shakespeare combined – saw the worst in himself but the best in God, who, he said, would forgive all his sins not because he deserved His forgiveness but because His love knew no bounds. And then there are those who say, we all swim in the same soup; there is good and evil in all of us. It’s all a question of perspective. Talaat is a statesman of vision to them and the worst villain that ever crawled between heaven and earth to us. Or, as the African chieftain is quoted as having said to C.G. Jung: “When my enemy steals my wives, it’s bad. When I steal his, it’s good.”
Sometimes I am told I am on the wrong path, my efforts are misguided. I should change my style, way of thinking, and attitude towards my fellow Armenians. Instead of seeing the worst in them I should see the best, emphasize the good, stress the positive, ignore the negative. I find it hard to believe that we have failed as a nation because our writers failed in their mission. The history of our literature goes back 1500 years during which we have produced an astonishing variety of writers, some of whom, like Khorenatsi, pointed out our shortcomings, others saw the best in us (Abovian), still others (like Baronian and Odian) saw the worst; and then there is Raffi, who saw the best as well as the worst. Even more revealing is the case of Zarian, who began his brilliant literary career by calling us the real chosen people and concluded it by saying we survive by cannibalizing one another.
Do we really need a messianic figure with a new style and belief system that will set us on the right path? Speaking for myself, I don’t believe in messiahs and quick fixes. I believe in self-criticism more than in criticism. This may explain why sometimes I am perceived as anti-Armenian and pro-Turkish. To be misunderstood, rejected, silenced, and ignored: so what else is new?
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Monday, April 23, 2007
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A BATTLE ON TWO FRONTS
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Questions that I ask myself whenever I sit down to write: “Why bother? What’s the use? Why go on? To what end? What have I accomplished so far?” And the tentative answer that I come up with: “I am not sure. I have no idea…unless it is to let those in power know that they may fool most of the people most of the time, but there will always be one or two who will refuse to be taken in by their nonsense, even if the two happen to be a minor scribbler and his mother living in the middle of nowhere.”
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My mother has known all along that writing is a waste of time. In retrospect, I have to agree with her. I know now I would have been more useful to my fellow men had I been a carpenter or a bus driver. Or a travel agent. That’s what my mother wanted me to be, a pilot or a travel agent. She loves going places and I don’t even drive. The only two places that I visit regularly are the library and the church – both within walking distance. I go to church not to pray but to carry on a love affair with the organ works of J.S. Bach.
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There are some things that one is destined to understand only at the end of one’s life. Youth is a time for daydreams and megalomania. I know now that a writer doesn’t have much of a chance because his war is a battle on two fronts: (one) against those in power, their hirelings, and dupes; and (two) the philistines in whose eyes writers, poets, philosophers, and intellectuals in general are at best daydreamers and at worst mental masturbators.
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Who is to blame for World War II and the Holocaust? Most people will say, Hitler and the Nazis. Strangely enough, Thomas Mann put part of the blame on German literature. Unlike their French counterparts, German writers, he said, had spent more time exploring their inner life and less time on social issues. As a result, the German people had lacked the sophistication and political awareness to see the Nazis for what they were – not the future saviors of the nation but its destroyers. True or false? False, according to a French contemporary of Mann, who concluded his memoirs with the words: “Literature saves no one,” and “…no man is ever anything but a swindle.” (See Jean-Paul Sartre, THE WORDS.)
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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THE TRIUMPH OF MEDIOCRITY
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Nothing can be more misleading than to approach reality with received or preconceived notions, especially notions cunningly and carefully chosen by those in power to flatter our collective ego and to cover up their mediocrity. If you want to understand your fellow Armenians or, for that matter, your fellow men, begin with yourself and forget what you were taught as a child. The first step in all learning is unlearning.
Instead of bragging about being the first nation to convert to Christianity, ask yourself: “How good a Christian am I?” Next question to ask: if our ruling classes saw the light and converted to Christianity at the beginning of the 4th Century, they just as readily saw the darkness and converted to atheism in the 20th. What are we to make of that?
By teaching us to brag, our leaders hope to convince us we are in good hands and we have nothing to worry about, when the exact opposite is the case.
We brag about our survival in order to forget that most of us, including the best and the brightest, did not survive.
If we assume the invisible and hostile forces of history (assuming of course such forces are not within us but in a realm beyond our reach and control), had targeted us for extinction but only a few of us managed to survive, we could just as easily assume that, with less mediocre, corrupt, incompetent, and divided leaders not seven but seventy million of us could have survived. Very probably there are more than seventy million Armenians today, but most of them prefer to identify themselves as Americans, Hungarians, Italians, Bulgarians, Russians, even Kurds and Turks.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying there is something fundamentally wrong with our DNA. We are people like any other people. We have produced many great leaders, even leaders of mighty empires, and I don’t mean Dikran, the so-called,“Great” and his Mickey Mouse ephemeral empire. Oswald Spengler, one of the greatest historians of the 20th century has called such an Armenian leader (Basil I, founder of the greatest dynasty in the Byzantine Empire) “a Napoleonic figure.” And Toynbee, the other great historian of our time, has written a huge scholarly biography of Basil’s son and successor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus.
What I am saying here is that, where mediocrities are in charge, excellence will be persecuted; where crooks are in charge, honesty will be anathema; where fascists are in charge, the rule of law and accountability will be seen as unpatriotic; and where the unprincipled are in charge, opportunism will be the norm.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2007
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IDEAS IN HISTORY
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Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were Greeks; the prophets of the Old Testament and Jesus were Jewish. And yet, the history of Greeks and Jews has been a concatenation of defeats, tragedies, and oppression. Now then, go ahead and blame Khorenatsi and Naregatsi, or Raffi, Baronian, and Zarian for all our problems.
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Trying to change a situation without first understanding it is like trying to put out a forest fire with a bottle of soda water.
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Some people have been traveling on the road of dishonesty for such a long time that honesty appears to them as cynicism, objectivity as charlatanism, and straight talk as venom.
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If Turkish denialists question the reality of the Genocide, we deny the depth of our malaise. There are those who think, if a handful of dedicated individuals with good intentions get busy within our communities, we have an excellent chance to extricate ourselves from the abyss. Inevitably, they reach the conclusion that things are not as easy as they thought they would be and they give up in disgust. Their line of thinking goes something like this: If I can be more useful to my fellow men in an alien environment, why bother with a bunch of ingrates who, in Zarian’s assessment, “survive by cannibalizing one another”?
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Instead of saying my assessment of our present situation is inaccurate, they call me, at best, a pessimist, and, at worst, a charlatan.
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The trouble with being brainwashed is that you become fixed in your thinking; you cannot move ahead or go beyond of what you think you think, and when it comes to thinking, what matters above all is going beyond and moving ahead.
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
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THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION
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We have become such compulsive players of the blame-game that it doesn’t even occur to us to ask the most important of all questions: Where did we go wrong? Were we justified in trusting the Russians, the Great Powers, and the Young Turks? Was our trust in them based on historic precedent or propaganda? Was our optimism a result of objective analysis or wishful thinking?
My purpose in raising these questions is not to find fault with our past conduct – after all, what’s done is done and cannot be undone – but to ask, how justified are we when we predict the future by saying such things as, it will take two or three generations for our bloodsuckers to see the light and behave like servants of the people? Or, how justified are we in sinking millions on our anti-Turkish campaign in the hope that, since historic Armenia was ours 600 years ago, it will be ours again in the near or distant future because a fraction of the civilized world is with us? Or again, how justified are we in placing our trust in the verbiage of our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and Turcocentric baloney artists?
Another reason I ask these questions is that, if we want to convince the Turks to behave with some degree of honesty and decency, we must first put our own house in order. If we want to educate that fraction of the so-called civilized world that is not with us, we must begin by educating ourselves. If we want others to do the right thing, the least we can do is refrain from doing the wrong thing.
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Friday, April 20, 2007
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AN ESSAY THAT COMES WITH A WARNING
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In what follows I speak only for myself and all those who brought me up to hate Turks. Repeat: none of the sentiments and thoughts expressed here applies to our Turcocentric pundits and miscellaneous baloney artists who, very much like all baloney artists, speak with a forked tongue when they say they hate no one, they only ask for what is theirs.
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What does it take to understand a nation? The jury of historians and psychologists is out on that one, because, like individuals and human nature in general, nations are bundles of contradiction. They harbor within them the best and the worst. It is the easiest thing in the world to love or hate them by selecting and cataloguing their crimes or selfless heroic deeds and triumphs over adversity – an academic field of enquiry favorite by nationalist historians.
It may be flattering to our vanity to divide mankind into two, the good (us and our friends) and the bad (our enemies and their partisans). But how objective or valid is it? If we paint ourselves all white and our enemies all black, we shouldn’t be surprised if they do the same. Do we judge Germans by Bach and Beethoven or by Hitler and the Holocaust?
By repeating ad nauseam as we do that we are the victims and they are the victimizers, we may eventually end up convincing ourselves that we can do no wrong even as we behave like swine.
Zohrab observes somewhere that there are as many kinds of Armenians as there are environments in which they live. So that an Ottomanized Armenian and a Frenchified Armenian are as different from one another as a Turk is from a Frenchman – assuming of course there is such a thing as a typical Turk or Frenchman.
“Betrayed by an Armenian, he was saved by a Turk.” I remember to have heard or read this sentence somewhere in reference to Gomidas (Komitas) Vartabed. To make sure my memory is not deceiving me, I consult a recent biography, where I read the following: “Komitas’s opponents [among them Patriarch of Istanbul Ghevont Turian] contacted the Turkish secret police and falsely accused him of including politically subversive songs in his concert program.” (Rita Soulahian Kuyumjian, ARCHEOLOGY OF MADNESS: KOMITAS – PORTRAIT OF AN ARMENIAN ICON [Princeton, NJ], Gomidas Institute, page 74.)
Speaking of religious faith, Sartre says somewhere: “We believe that we believe, but we don’t believe.” Likewise, we may believe that we understand Turks and Armenians, but we don’t.
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Saturday, April 21, 2007
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WHY I WRITE THE WAY I WRITE
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Whenever I see someone’s two cents’ worth on my monitor, I am provoked into posting my own one-cent’s worth. If that’s vainglorious, I plead guilty as charged.
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There are many good Armenians, concerned readers remind me once in a while, but I keep harping on the bad ones thus projecting a bad image. Image is a PR concern and I have no desire to muscle in their territory. My concern is elsewhere. My concern is the nation’s direction. If you read our writers from Khorenatsi (5th century) to Zarian (20th) you may notice they too were concerned with the same thing.
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Good Armenians exist in the same way that good Turks do. But these good men are not represented in Yerevan and Ankara. There may even be good bosses, bishops, and benefactors, but they are as much at the mercy of their bad counterparts as the rest of us who are in no position to change the direction of our collective destiny.
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Those who oppose the war in Iraq today are convinced the Bush administration is ego-driven, misinformed, and wrong, in addition to being corrupt and incompetent. That doesn’t mean everyone in the executive branch is rotten. None of us can predict the future. If tomorrow or next month or year the Middle East is democratized, I am sure everyone will rejoice – everyone, including those who oppose the surge today. Likewise, if one of these days or before I drop dead, our leaders see the light and change direction, I will be the happiest Armenian alive. But until then I will continue to be critical of our charlatans and dupes who in the name of misguided patriotism try to convince us we are in good hands and Turks are the source of all evil.
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Finally, I don’t write against anyone. I write against the self-centered, prejudiced ignoramus that I was, and according to some of my gentle reader, I still am.
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Because I speak of tolerance I am accused of being intolerant. Because I speak against the knee-jerk anti-Turkism of our Turcocentric pundits, I am accused of being anti-Armenian. That’s not criticism. That’s infantile nonsense. And remember: bad leaders have ruined empires; bad writers – in addition to being unreadable — have harmed no one but themselves.
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Sunday, April 08, 2007
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EASTER SERMON
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If Socrates, Jesus, and Gandhi had enemies who hated them unto death, who are we to say we should be immune?
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One way to explain hatred is to say that we all have our limitations, prejudices, and perspectives that are not results of free choice but conditions beyond our control, such as place of birth and education, which may narrow our vision of the world and our understanding of our fellow men. There will always be something in a devout Christian that will reject all other religions; and there will always be something in a good Armenian that will not like Turks (and vice versa). Our choice is between believing those who legitimize hatred and those who promote understanding.
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There are those who allow their words and actions to be driven by a political agenda, and there are also those who place their own humanity above such agendas. The trouble with nationalism, and all other ideologies and closed systems of thought, like organized religions that claim to have a monopoly on truth, is that ultimately they dehumanize man even if their original aim was the exact opposite. Jesus tried to humanize the rituals and doctrinal paraphernalia of the Old Testament; Marx exposed the sinister power of capital to dehumanize both capitalist and worker, and ultimately society as a whole; and Gandhi attempted to end the “satanic” aspects of colonialism. What happened next we know: Christianity brought forth the Inquisition, religious wars, and the Crusades; Marxism generated Lenin, Stalin, commissars, and the Gulag; and Gandhi’s non-violent campaign against the British was replaced by internecine religious massacres during which millions perished.
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I am not suggesting here that Armenians and Turks should love one another. What I am saying is, don’t believe everything you are told by sermonizers, speechifiers, and editorializers. The chances are, anyone who has assessed himself to be la crème de la crème is more likely to be la crème de la scum.
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Generally speaking, it is safe to assume that people who are themselves in need of understanding are in no position to understand others. On the other hand – there is always another hand when it comedy to understanding and explaining – on the other hand, manure and roses are not mutually exclusive concepts, and no one (in the words of the Mahatma) is beyond redemption. Amen.
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Monday, April 09, 2007
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LAW AND DISORDER
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Denis Diderot: “The more reasonable a man is, the more honest he is bound to be.”
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The difference between serial killers and tyrants is that tyrants operate within the law. It follows, the law has produced more dangerous criminals than the underworld.
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Only the naïve, the uninformed, and the inexperienced with a single-digit IQ are astonished when managers mismanage, leaders mislead, liberators oppress, and pundits are hired to convince the people that the nation is in good hands and there is nothing to worry about.
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All it takes for an Armenian to be an expert on Armenian history and culture is to have heard of Saroyan, to recognize the “Saber Dance,” and to know the number of Genocide victims.
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I have yet to meet the Armenian who underestimated his intelligence or patriotism. “I know better” is the subtext of all criticism and contradiction. Socrates never said “I know better.” What he said was, “The only thing I know is that I don’t know.” Philosophy is a Greek word that means love of wisdom, and love of wisdom does not mean possession of wisdom; rather, it means search for wisdom or perpetual rejection of ignorance. It follows, he who is infatuated with his own ignorance cannot be said to be a philosopher.
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I repeat myself? Only people who read me regularly would know that.
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I repeat myself? If that’s a problem, it has a very easy solution.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
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LA CRÈME DE LA SCUM
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I am fully aware of the fact that I will never be able to convince anyone who thinks he knows better because he has more money or power. Power corrupts: only the powerful pretend to be unaware of this fact. Either that or they think corruption is one of the privileges of power.
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To those whose favorite sport is the blame-game, I ask: “If we deceive ourselves, whom do we blame?”
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Turks are not exactly a popular subject among us. If they have become so in our press it may be because they are safe to attack; and if we don’t blame all our problems on them, we may have to redirect our focus on other and more vulnerable players, such as the incompetence of our “betters,” who may well be our worst.
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
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FROM MY DIARY
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To those who want to know how many times I have been to Armenia, I say: “Why should I travel all the way there to starve when I can just as well starve here?”
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When a charlatan calls me a charlatan, I conclude that (a) he is smart enough to know the meaning of the word, and (b) he is too dumb to know he is one.
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We think of temptation as a negative word; but it can also be used in a positive context, as when one is tempted to be honest, to speak the truth, to do the right thing if one operates within a power structure where deception is the norm.
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In the editorial of our local paper today I read: “A bush league is a minor, often second-rate sports organization that, like fungus, grows most successfully away from the biggest crowds and brightest light.” A good definition of our leadership.
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On the same page, a letter to the editor suggests the only way to end wars is to let the politicians do the fighting. You may have noticed that the most ardent patriots among us happen to be speechifiers, sermonizers, and editorializers, that is to say, charlatans whose chances of going to war are nil.
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Elsa Triolet: “Always and never – one is as long as the other.”
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Pierre Reverdy: “Barriers are the best and surest bonds between people.”
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Victor Hugo: “Half a friend is half a traitor.”
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Thursday, April 05, 2007
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VICTIMS AS VICTIMIZERS
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Armenians as victims: I will let more competent and qualified men than myself to deal with that aspect of our history and identity. Armenians as victimizers: that’s what I propose to explore here.
If you are one of those brainwashed dupes who believe, since Armenians can do no wrong, they cannot victimize anyone, allow me to quote two well-known and highly respected sources who cannot be said to be dissidents or anti-establishment critics because, in addition to being members of a political party, they were on friendly terms with a good number of establishment figures in both the Homeland and the Diaspora, among them several bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
Antranik Zaroukian (1912-1989), poet, novelist, critic, editor: “They speak of the cross and nail us to it again as they speak.”
Hagop Garabents (1925-1996), novelist, short story writer, essayist, and Voice of America broadcaster: “Once upon a time we fought and shed our blood for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.”
In our context, to be afraid of free speech means, anyone who dares to deal honestly and objectively with facts is ruthlessly silenced and alienated on grounds of anti-Armenianism.
To those who say, at least we don’t victimize others, only ourselves; I say, that’s because the weak cannot victimize the mighty; the weak can victimize only those who are weaker; in the same way that capitalists do not exploit fellow capitalists, only workers.
Before I rest my case, allow me to quote Zaroukian again: “What kind of people are we? What kind of leadership is this? Instead of compassion, mutual contempt; instead of reason, blind instinct; instead of common sense, fanaticism.”
Contempt, blind instinct, fanaticism: that sounds to me less like Armenianism and more like Ottomanism.
And now, listen to one of those silenced and alienated writers speaking:
Stepan Voskanian (1825-1901): “For thirty-five years I did not write a single line in Armenian. I was treated so shabbily by my fellow Armenians that I could not help hating everything that I held dear as a young man; and since I was starved by my own countrymen, I had to write in French in order to survive.”
Next time you lament our victims, I suggest you remember all our victims, not just a fraction of them.
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Friday, April 06, 2007
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ON OPTIMISM
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After contributing an optimistic commentary to one of our weeklies, a friend writes: “I wonder, was I deceiving myself and my readers?”
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ON INTELLECTUALS
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Our intellectuals (so-called), whose function is to expose the lies of propaganda, the double-talk of speechifiers and sermonizers, and the shenanigans of those in power, now allow themselves to be feted by bishops, awarded grants by benefactors, and hired by bosses, all the while shedding crocodile tears over our martyrs. “Danger, danger, danger!” (Zarian).
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ARMENIAN ETIQUETTE
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I have spent a lifetime trying to understand my fellow Armenians. After reading a line or two, a Jack S. Avanakian thinks he has me all figured out as an enemy agent. No one can combine loudmouth stupidity with ignorance and arrogance to the same degree than a phony patriot or a brainwashed dupe “whose tongue is sharper than a Turk’s yataghan.”(Zarian again.)
We have an expression: “We are all Armenians here!” meaning, “Why bother with conventional rules of etiquette when we can revert to our Ottoman ways?” Or, “Why stand on ceremony and say ‘I disagree’ when you can kick him in the groin?”
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ON REVOLUTIONARIES
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Our revolutionaries (so-called) are now bourgeois reactionaries whose number one concern is keeping up with the Joneses. The only revolutionary thing about them is their fiery speeches. We have another expression, “chartel, peshrel!” — literally, “slaughter and smash!” — that describes the daring of a speechifying revolutionary charlatan.
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Saturday, April 07, 2007
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ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY
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There are people who study history to prove themselves right and everyone else wrong, and there are others whose purpose is to learn what happened and to understand why it happened. What have we learned from our history? That we are the first nation to convert to Christianity, and the first nation in the 20th Century to be subjected to ethnic cleansing. Which proves that (one) we are better than anyone else, (two) everyone around us is either a bloodthirsty barbarian or a conniving bastard, and (three) everyone who disagrees with us is anti-Armenian.
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Once in a while I too am called anti-Armenian. If true, then I have some bad news to impart: there are a great many of us out there. So many in fact that all resistance is futile and unconditional surrender is the only option. But I believe the true anti-Armenian is he who thinks his understanding of the past is right because he is infallible. If you are one of them, I say:” You want to understand Turks? Begin with yourself.
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In movies, a happy ending is a happy ending. In life, it’s more likely to be an unhappy beginning.
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Paul Eluard: “The inspiration in a poem is nothing; its power to inspire others is everything.”
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André Malraux: “Being a king is idiotic; making a kingdom – that is what counts.”
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “Name a gentleman and there will be at least twenty people who will tell you he is the son of a scoundrel.”
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Thursday, March 29, 2007
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Victor Hugo: “The smallest animals are the greatest vermin, and the smallest minds have the greatest number of prejudices.”
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Keith Duckworth: “It is better to be un-informed than ill-informed.”
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We like to forget that the Armenian elite at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire was divided between the optimists and the realists. The optimists (i.e. the revolutionaries) prevailed and survived to write their version of the story. What happened to the realists? I suspect they became so disgusted with their adversaries and their campaign of deception that they went underground where they or their offspring continue to live, unlike the offspring of our “heroes” and “statesmen” who carry on their campaign of deception. In this connection it is worth mentioning that General Antranik shared the disgust of the realists and at one point he went as far as declaring the revolutionaries to be war criminals who deserved to be hanged.
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For more on this subject see Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993); and the second volume of Gourgen Mahari’s memoirs titled MANGOUTIUN (Childhood), (Yerevan, 1967, page 228).
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For a more panoramic view of events under discussion see also Philip Mansel’s CONSTANTINOPLE: CITY OF THE WORLD’S DESIRE, 1453-1924 (London, 1995).
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A typical passage in Mansel’s book reads: “In 1914 some Armenians helped Russian troops in Anatolia against Ottoman Forces. There was an Armenian rising in Van. In Constantinople itself some Armenians were seen gloating over the first Russian victories. The Committee [of the Young Turks] decided on a policy of extermination. In Anatolia, between six and eight hundred thousand Armenian men, women and children died during deportations, epidemics and massacres (many thousands of Turks and Kurds also died in the same region during the war). From Constantinople itself 2,432 men, the elite of the Armenian community, were deported. Among them Krikor Zohrab, deputy for Constantinople, who had given shelter to Talaat during the counter-revolution in April 1909. Few were seen again.”
Elsewhere we read: “Some Armenians hoped for a massacre in the belief that it would provoke the intervention of the great powers.”
And: “In 1895-6 both the Sultan and the Armenian revolutionaries treated the Armenians of Constantinople as pawns, without regard for human life.”
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Friday, March 30, 2007
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
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It is the emotionally involved more than anyone else who are in need of impersonal and objective advice, and they are the least appreciative of it.
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Idiotic arguments can be contradicted even by an idiot.
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Mirna Douzjian: “PATRIOTISM. A justification for racism. 2. A sentiment that is inborn in all exemplary Armenians.”
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Socrates was silenced because he insulted the gods. Solzhenitsyn was silenced because he insulted Stalin. It’s always the same story. Just because they are on top, they think they dwell on Olympus.
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Henry de Montherlant: “Blessed are my enemies for they will not betray me.”
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Jean Daniel: “Even in the best of cases, power degrades those who exercise it.”
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Saturday, March 31, 2007
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PERSISTENT BUGGERS
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A politician’s most valuable possession in his image, and his central concern is his power. But he will never tell you that. That’s why everything he says is as distant from reality as propaganda is from truth. This applies not only to their politicians but also to our own, and in general to all politicians regardless of race, color, creed, tribe, and ideology.
*
We shouldn’t believe everything we read in the papers. Neither should we believe anything politicians tell us. As when their side expects us to believe they acted in self-defense even when they massacred unarmed civilians; and when our side tells us they did whatever they did in the interest of the people, even when they were too busy saving their own skins to defend a single victim. These musings occur to me while reading Antonia Arslan’s SKYLARK FARM, translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock (New York, 2006).
*
THE VOICE OF TWO ARMENIAN POETS
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Narine Avedian:
“I have not yet written
A single poem
On the heroic past
Of my nation.
Neither do I feel like writing
On what’s going on today.”
*
Armen Shegoyan:
”The past: what is it to me?
Meaningless lines,
Infinite sorrow,
Not much faith.
*
A FRENCH THINKER SPEAKS
***************************************
Nicolas de Chamfort: “In France they leave alone those who set fires and persecute those who sound the alarm.”
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Sunday, March 25, 2007
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THE VOICE OF GOD
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When an Armenian speechifies or editorializes he does so not only as the voice of the people but also as the voice of God, and that’s the only time he comes close to believing in His existence.
*
Politics is not theology. One should never speak of black-and-white certainties. To do so is to expose oneself as a fanatic and a fascist. If so far Turks and Armenians have been unable to reach a consensus it may be because they have consistently ignored the gray areas that they share in common.
*
The aim of literature is to raise consciousness; the aim of propaganda is to lower it.
*
No one wants to be identified as a racist; and people will say anything to improve their image. Once I even cornered a notorious anti-Semite to say “I love Jews.” But forever after he hated me. And whenever I corner an Armenian to say, “I don’t hate Turks,” I make another enemy for life.
*
It’s the easiest thing on earth to make an Armenian enemy. Sometimes all it takes is to begin a sentence with the words “I think…” That’s because he will immediately assume you are muscling in his territory.
*
An Armenian will always prefer the company of yes-men and brownnosers. He has no use for thinkers. That’s why to be an Armenian writer means to be the wrong man at the wrong time and place and in the wrong line of work; that is also why to read the biography of an Armenian writer is to read a tragedy.
*
Our writers may no longer die of tuberculosis in their late teens or early twenties; Talaat’s and Stalin’s henchmen may no longer be around, but philistines and commissars are very much alive. How else to explain the death of Armenian literature?
*
Voltaire: “The surest thing is to be sure of nothing.”
*
Joseph Joubert: “The sound of drums dissipates thoughts; it is for this very reason that this instrument is eminently military.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
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TRUTH AND JUSTICE
***********************************
To speak of truth and justice is to deal in shadowy theological terms and moral/judicial concepts on which even theologians, moral philosophers, and legislators disagree. A lawyer will tell you that his primary concern is not justice but evidence and interpretation of the law. A judge will tell you that courthouses are not courts of justice but courts of law. A politician will tell you his primary concern is not and has never been truth but self-interest. Hence the slogan of the British Empire: “We have neither friends nor enemies, only interests.”
*
I was brought up to believe the Turks did what they did to us because they are bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians. Though I am no longer a child, deep inside somewhere I still feel and think so. But I also know that there is a barbarian in all of us. If only because, according to psychologists and biologists, part of our brain is crocodilian – i.e. it has the same shape as the brain of crocodiles. I also know that when a man thinks his existence is in peril, he will not stand on ceremony and behave like a civilized human being – which is why to kill in self-defense is not a crime.
*
In 1915 did the Turks believe their existence to be in peril? Or rather, was it reasonable of them to think so? What about us? Can we really plead not guilty on all counts? Were we right to believe in the verbal commitments or propaganda of the Young Turks, the Great Powers of the West, the Russians, and last but not least, in the reality or possibility of a recaptured Historic Armenia? If we were wrong on all these counts, can we really assert we played no part in digging our own graves and that our revolutionaries were not blundering fools but heroes and statesmen of vision? If smart, cosmopolitan, educated people like us were justified in being deceived by practically everyone we came into contact, is it conceivable that dumb and primitive savages fresh out from the depths of Asian steppes, were also justified in being deceived into thinking we were their mortal enemies and together with the rest of the infidel world, we threatened their very existence?
*
The aim of these questions is not to establish truth and justice but to ask: Where do we go from here? Do we advance towards mutual understanding or do we continue to hurl insults at one another? — which is what we have been doing for nearly a century, in addition to wasting millions on lobbyists, academics, and propaganda.
*
By the way, I do not think we are smart, except perhaps when it comes to selling Oriental rugs. I also do not think Turks are dumb: those who planned and carried out the Genocide were born, raised, and educated in Europe, and some of them may even have been part-Armenian.
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Sunday, March 18, 2007
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THE BLACK AND THE YELLOW
**********************************************
Time is the greatest magician. It turns black to white, and night to day; it exposes crooks and does away with the obnoxious effortlessly, all the while remaining invisible. Writing history is trying to understand and explain the incomprehensible tricks of this magician knowing full well that one’s efforts are doomed to failure. That is why historians from Herodotus to Toynbee have been accused of lies and charlatanism. And speaking of black and charlatanism: there is a Canadian by the name of Black, Conrad Black, who had everything any man ever desired —wealth, power, intellect, looks, and an attractive, young, and smart wife (both Lord and Lady Black are prolific writers) who now stands accused of crimes that could land him in prison for 101 years. And then there is Bush whose understanding of history never went beyond Hollywood westerns — a good guy on a white horse liberating Dodge City from the nefarious grip of a bad guy and his gang of cutthroats. With one difference: unlike Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, and Alan Ladd, this particular Texan never planned to confront the bad guy himself at high noon or at any other time of day or night. He was going to let others do the killing, dying, maiming and being maimed. He may think of himself as the leader of the mightiest empire in the world but he is neither Caesar nor Alexander the Great or Napoleon. Even Hitler had more first-hand experience of war than he.
*
The easiest thing in the world, to solve someone else’s problems; the hardest, to solve one’s own.
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Monday, March 19, 2007
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FROM MY DIARY
****************************
Once in a while, when I’ve got nothing better to do, I google myself and read some of the comments. When the insults or words with more asterisks than letters outnumber the positive comments, I know I have not lost my touch and must be on the right track.
*
It is said, on the day Christians discovered the Bible, every Protestant became a pope. Something similar could be said of the average Armenian who discovers a belief system or ideology: he becomes either a Torquemada or a commissar.
*
War becomes a viable option provided (a) it is winnable, and (b) the enemy is in the league with the devil.
*
Most Americans are against the war in Iraq today because (a) the war seems unwinnable, and (b) the only way to win it is to adopt the tactics of the enemy by doing to them what they would do if they had weapons of mass destructions, i.e. nuke them back to the Stone Age.
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
**************************************
WHEN YOU SEE A BAD MAN
**************************************************
In an Armenian-Turkish discussion forum on the Internet, a Turkish writer has posted an article in which he quotes several foreign and ostensibly objective observers to prove that Armenians are no better than the worst scum on earth, thus implying that if [that “if” must be emphasized] if the Turks did what they are accused of having done to the Armenians, they did the world a favor by cleansing it of such vermin. What seems to escape this particular Turkish patriot’s attention is that, if what he says is true, then part of the blame must be shouldered by the Turks themselves because after 600 years of uninterrupted life in the Ottoman Empire, Armenians must be seen as products of Ottoman culture.
*
Question: What was it that made the Turks wait for 600 years to do what must be done? Compassion? Next question: Has anyone ever advanced the theory that compassion has been a central concern of the Ottoman Empire, or for that matter, of any other empire, especially at a time when its own survival was at stake?
*
This Turkish writer forgets that until the turn of the last century Armenians were known as “the most loyal [and therefore the most desirable and useful] millet” within the Ottoman Empire. It is only when the Empire began to disintegrate and every national group claimed its place in the sun that Armenians became the worst scum on earth. In other words, the reason why Armenians were targeted for extermination was not their moral turpitude or defective DNA but the most human and universal desire of all: that of self-determination. But again, it should be emphasized that most Armenians, very much like most Turks, lacked political awareness. The troublemakers were as non-representative of the nation as a whole as was the Young Turks’ ephemeral regime.
*
The world will be a better place on the day we all stop projecting our worst instincts on an alien group and start examining our own conscience. There is an old saying: “When you see a good man, emulate him. When you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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ON A COMMON FALLACY
****************************************
Politicians operate like lawyers: it is their job to defend their side at any cost even if their side or client happens to be a serial killer. To this day Talaat, Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler have their friends in the same way that Lincoln, FDR, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King have their enemies.
*
Most political controversies are based on the assumption “our side speaks the truth, the other side lies.” Translated into dollars and cents, this simply means: my self-interest matters more than your self-interest. Whenever I read an opinion or commentary that assumes this fallacy to be a self-evident truth, I know I am dealing with a dupe and a moral moron.
*
We all know there is a difference between self-interest and self-sacrifice. We look up to heroes and martyrs and down on charlatans and swindlers. A politician is more akin to a charlatan than to an honest man, and propaganda works because there is a swindler in all of us.
*
THE VOICE OF WISDOM
******************************
Georges Braque: “Art disturbs, science reassures.”
*
Choderlos de Laclos: “Crooks have virtues as honest men have weaknesses.”
*
André Gide: “The appetite for knowledge is born in doubt. Stop believing and start learning.”
*
Claude Lévi-Strauss: “Wisdom consists not in providing true answer but in asking the right questions.”
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
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MAFIAS
************************
The problem with our so-called cultural foundations is that they are staffed by self-assessed intellectuals, poets, writers, and pundits with their own narrow agendas and criteria, whose central concern is the ruthless elimination of the competition. Translated into dollars and cents this means, when mediocrities are in charge, only lesser mediocrities will have a chance to qualify for support.
*
The immediate satisfaction of our instincts makes stronger demands on us than reason, common sense, and decency. There you have the source of much human suffering.
*
I will be a popular Armenian writer on the day mice become infatuated with mousetraps.
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Friday, March 16, 2007
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FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS
****************************************************
When Dorothea Ertmann’s son died, her piano teacher came to see her but “instead of expressing his sympathy with words, he sat right down at the piano, without a word, and extemporized at length.” Dorothea Ertmann is identified as a Bach interpreter and her piano teacher as Beethoven. I read this in Martin’s Geck’s J.S. BACH: HIS LIFE AND WORK (Illustrated, 738 pages, Index, Bibliography. New York: 2006) and in connection with the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue D minor. Geck goes on to explain that Beethoven “knew the Chromatic Fantasy, which since 1802 was widely available in Vienna in print as well as in manuscript, indeed, he copied parts of it himself in 1810.” Elsewhere he explains why one sometimes responds to Bach’s music with laughter and tears at the same time. Though at times scholarly and overly technical, as all books on Bach tend to be, this is no doubt one of the very best books on the subject that contains many accessible pages to the average layman.
*
Marcel Proust: “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.” Maybe so, but so far, all grief seems to have done for us is develop our ability to sell Oriental rugs. To those who object and say, there are at least a thousand Armenian academics in America alone, I say, most of these academics are alienated Armenians and have not written a single line on Armenians; the rest are mostly genocide pundits who go about their business the way Oriental rug dealers do.
*
In a commentary in our paper today, titled “Iraqi terrorists are targeting intellectuals,” we read: “The terrorists who are fighting for control of Iraq realize that freedom of expression and learning are their enemies.” This is true not only of terrorists in Iraq today but also fascists, authoritarian regimes, and intolerant people everywhere.
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Saturday, March 17, 2007
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ON POWER
************************************
“Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Wrong. Don’t trust anyone with power, even if he is in his teens or twenties; or anyone without power whose ambition is to become powerful. In short: don’t trust anyone. I remember, the first thing I did when I acquired some power was to abuse it. My power was mostly in my imagination and the abuse was as severe as a harmless practical joke. But the fact remains that I abused it as naturally and as thoughtlessly as I breathe or sneeze. Which is why I don’t trust anyone with power, or “the insolence of office,” as the Prince of Denmark (who ought to know) puts it. I have yet to meet a partisan or panchoonie, a bishop or archbishop, who did not abuse his power whenever he thought he could get away with it. Power corrupts because it promotes abuse, and no one is as severely and promptly punished as he who takes it upon himself to expose the abuse.
*
Cain killed Abel not because he was a born killer but because he had the power and the opportunity. To say that empire builders like Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon were better than Cain is an illusion advanced by militarist historians — the very same militarists who supported the likes of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao who killed more innocent people than a thousand serial killers.
*
Where men are in power, women will be abused. But not just women. It was G.B. Shaw who once observed that an upper-class lady spends enough money on her clothes and jewelry to feed a thousand hungry children a year.
*
People mourn when solders die. They should mourn on the day war is declared.
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Sunday, March 11, 2007
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ANSWERS
***********************
Organized religions are the best proof of the fact that an answer, any answer, even the wrong one, is better than no answer. The same applies to ideologies when they are confused with theology.
*
One of our ideologies stands for independence and freedom. But how independent and free can they ever be if they live in fear of free speech?
*
A GUESS
*********************
There are more Armenians today who don’t identify themselves as Armenians than Armenians of the opposite disposition.
*
PEARLS
*************************
Francis Ponge: “It is by his death that a man proves he deserved to live.”
*
Jean Cocteau: “The future belongs to no one. There are no precursors, only retards.”
*
Julius Caesar: “I’d rather be first in this village than second in Rome.”
*
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “The most important prediction we can make is that we cannot predict everything.”
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Monday, March 12, 2007
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ON REVOLUTIONARIES
***********************************
I have at no time questioned the good intentions of our revolutionaries. What I have been doing is reminding them that hell is paved with good intentions.
*
In an intolerant environment, even an often-repeated cliché can make one an enemy of the people.
*
What could be more cowardly than fear of clichés?
*
No writer has ever silenced a politician. Censorship has always been a one-way street.
*
ON SERIAL KILLERS
**********************************
Serial killers operate on the assumption that truth is as easily killed as defenseless civilians.
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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A REQUEST
************************
Before you contradict me, I beg you to reflect for ten minutes. Because everything I say is a result of at least twenty and sometimes thirty years of experience, study, and reflection.
*
CONFESSION
***************************
I don’t mind admitting that I have been wrong so many times in the past that I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if someone were to prove me wrong not just on this or that specific point but on everything. I say this because just when I think I have committed every conceivable blunder I commit a new one. But the blunder that I keep committing again and again is trying to reason with fellow Armenians who know better. For I have yet to meet an Armenian who did not know better.
*
SOCRATES
***********************
Socrates never said “I know better.” What he said was “The only thing I know is that I don’t know.” What would happen to Socrates in New York, Moscow, or Toronto today? He would be ignored as a harmless and unemployable misfit, eventually acquire the status of a homeless street person, and die of exposure. There are better ways of getting rid of a nuisance than a public trial and the administration of hemlock, both of which cost money.
*
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
*********************************
Nobody takes philosophy seriously these days; and yet, everyone has a philosophy, even when it happens to be a cliché. “Live and let live, that’s my philosophy,” they say; or “You only live once.” These “philosophers” never ask whether or not they deserve to live at all.
*
ENEMIES
*************************
The hardest thing to explain to an Armenian is that divisiveness, corruption, and incompetence are a far greater threat to our survival today than Turks were a hundred years ago. And yet, what we get from our Turcocentric pundits and media is endless talk of past atrocities. After which they accuse me of being negative.
*
PAUL JOHNSON ON CROCODILES
*******************************************
“Everything about a croc is efficient. It copulates under water and takes exactly ten minutes, which oddly enough is the time it took Napoleon Bonaparte.”
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
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MEN AND APES
******************************
The status quo will always have its supporters. Even criminal regimes had their rostrum of friends, among them famous writers, composers, scientists, conductors, and Nobel Prize winners. And where there are great men who support a regime for their own reasons, there will also be an abundance of mediocrities and dupes who will support it because better men than themselves do so.
In my anti-Soviet days this type of ape in human form would write me angry letters saying, “Do you think you are smarter than Saroyan?”
What happened to these famous men who supported Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini? Some committed suicide, others like Ezra Pound were declared insane and spent a number of years in an asylum, a few wrote books admitting their mistakes.
It is said that when asked about Jesus, the dying Pilate replied: “I don’t remember anyone by that name.”
The human brain is a marvelous, not to say miraculous, tool a thousand times smarter than the smartest computer. Learn to use it. And if you have your own, why rely on someone else’s? To put it more bluntly, if you are a man, why behave like an ape?
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