ARMENIA TO LET AZERBAIJANI MILITARIES TO ITS BASES WITHIN NATO TRAININGS
Prime News Agency, Georgia
March 14 2006
Tbilisi. March 14 (Prime-News) – NATO Rescuer 2006 training will be
held in Yerevan at the end of June, PanARMENIAN.Net says, as quoting
Artur Agabekian, Deputy Armenian Defense Minister.
According to him, the representatives of 20 countries, including
those of the South Caucasus, will arrive in Yerevan.
“Armenia has always been supporting cooperation after Partnership
for Peace principle and now is ready to receive the representatives
of Azerbaijan and Turkey”, he said.
Artur Agabekian also said that a conference for final planning would
be held in Armenia in April to define a precise date of trainings
and list of participants.
Ten arrangements are to be held in Armenia in 2006 within the
frameworks of the Armenian-NATO cooperation.

AZERBAIJAN’S MINISTRY OF CULTURE ADDRESSES “EUROVISION” CONTEST ORGANIZERS WITH LETTER OF PROTEST
Prime News Agency, Georgia
March 14 2006
Tbilisi, March 14 (Prime-News) – Statement of Ministry of Culture and
Tourism of Azerbaijan reads that the Ministry is worried with the
fact that the singer from Armenia – Andre notes his place of birth
as Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh at contest’s official site.
As a result, the letter was sent to contest organizers, where this fact
is recognized as “disrespect of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity”
and “provocation, which can be interpreted as support of Armenia’s
aggressive politics”.
Such facts can have a negative influence on the process of conflict
resolution, the statement reads.
‘Eurovision’ representatives have told that information about Andre
soon will be changed.
Svante Stockselius, European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) Executive
Supervisor of ‘Eurovision’, stated that the contest isn’t a political
event, and information on the official site has no hidden political
motives.
Singer Andre will represent Armenia at the contest, which will be
held in Athens on May 18-20. Armenia is the only country from South
Caucasus, which will participate in the prestigious song contest
organized by EBU.
Trend News agency informs that the Eurovision management corrected
the mistake on their website and have taken off all the materials on
the birthplace of Armenian singer Andre, who has mentioned it as the
Nagorno-Karabakh republic after the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of
Azerbaijan has addressed the contest organizers demanding to correct
the mistakes on their website, Abulfaz Garayev, Azerbaijani Minister
of Culture and Tourism, stated.

ARMENIAN VIOLINIST, 21, DAZZLES CROWD IN S.F.
By Richard Scheinin
San Jose Mercury News, USA
March 14 2006
A kid named Khachatryan played music by Khachaturian in San Francisco
on Sunday. Sergey Khachatryan, a 21-year-old violinist from Armenia,
was making his local debut; he played like a poet, with a subtle and
commanding mix of confidence, sensitivity and craft.
This charismatic newcomer was performing with the venerable London
Philharmonic Orchestra, which made the event extra-special. The entire
program at Davies Symphony Hall was defined by the unexpected.
Scheduled conductor Kurt Masur, who suffered heart palpitations in
Dublin, Ireland, a few days earlier, sent along a protege as his
substitute: Brazilian conductor Roberto Minczuk stepped up and did a
superb job with Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony
No. 1.
So the night, part of the San Francisco Symphony’s Great Performers
Series, offered its audience a double discovery: new soloist, new
conductor. But the kid, Khachatryan — he was the show.
The concerto by Khachaturian, a father of Armenian “nationalist”
music in the last century, is spiced with folkloric rhythms, themes and
inflections. It also is sensuous, a little bit schmaltzy, and sheerly,
at times eerily, beautiful. From the opening bars, the orchestra
sounded exceptionally luminous — those strings!
And then came the soloist: crisp attack, warm singing tone, spot-on
intonation. He is slender, with a thatch of curly black hair, and he
isn’t a showman; he is about clarity and control and expression.
His cadenza in the first movement was cleanly delivered — all those
keening, up-sliding double-stops — and emotionally full-blooded,
without knocking you on the head. As it ended, with the orchestra
sliding back in behind Khachatryan, a comfortable “duet” was going
on between the soloist and his famous accompanists from London.
The orchestra sounded great (not a big surprise): sparkling clarinet
and winds; bounding cellos; and clarity all around, down to each
ping of the harp. Minczuk, whose gestures are flowing and emphatic,
seemed to have established a balance that allowed his players to
speak as individuals and as a collective.
There were ghostly tremulous effects in the low strings as the slow,
lyrical second movement began. Here, Khachatryan showed a sort of
late-night, bluesy restraint, clarifying the schmaltz. And as the
third movement began, with a blast of brass, and then more bounding
strings — they sounded like a giant mandolin — again he held himself
in check, building tension.
He pulled earthy sustained notes from his low strings, then soared
way up high, before flying back downward, decelerating and shifting
into a new tempo, dovetailing expertly with the orchestra as he went
on to gobble up all the notes of the final racing sequences.
The audience brought him back for several bows and, finally,
Khachatryan offered an encore. It was nothing showy or fast; just the
opposite, in fact: the Adagio from Bach’s Sonata No. 3 in C major
for Solo Violin, which unfolded sweetly, with beautiful control of
the instrument (Khachatryan plays the “Huggins” Stradivarius, built
in 1708).
The violinist has been taken under Masur’s wing. He also has performed
with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in
Amsterdam and, based on Sunday’s evidence, is a winner.
He returns soon, on March 29, for a recital at the Florence Gould
Theater of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco ().
Poor Mahler. He played second fiddle to the young violinist on
Sunday. His Symphony No. 1 in D major, known as the “Titan,” was
given a strong performance, with all its swooping and swooning bows
to the natural world, its raspy horns, waltzing interludes and great
brass anthems.
It wasn’t as refined and lovingly nuanced as the Mahler performances
we’ve been hearing from the San Francisco Symphony and conductor
Michael Tilson Thomas the past few years. The peeping pastoral sounds
that dot the first movement weren’t always exactly in place; there was
some ragged brass playing in the third movement, where the orchestra
momentarily lost its bearings amid klezmer-ish and other dance rhythms.
But the fourth movement was high impact — literally. The orchestra
summoned entire storm systems of sound: crashing cymbals, tolling
timpani, screeching strings and great brass pronouncements, with all
eight horn players on their feet as Heaven’s Gates, figuratively,
opened.
Even so, Khachatryan was the show.
news/columnists/14094288.htm

TURKS STEP UP EFFORTS AGAINST ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLAIMS
New Anatolian, Turkey
March 14 2006
The Turkish diaspora is stepping up efforts to rescind recognition of
Armenian genocide claims and to win support against its proponents
ahead of April 24, the date Armenians say is the anniversary of the
so-called genocide.
While Turkish associations in France joined forces under an umbrella
committee to overturn the 2001 French law recognizing the Armenian
genocide claims, the Workers’ Party (IP) gathered over the weekend
in Istanbul to outline plans for the Talat Pasha Movement, which
will include a mass rally in Berlin on Saturday to denounce the
Armenian claims.
The Turkish groups’ decision to put forward a unified response to
French recognition of Armenian genocide claims came during a meeting on
Sunday with the participation of representatives from 10 associations
under the leadership of the Anatolian Culture Center and the Kemalist
Thought Association.
Besides starting an initiative to bring about the repeal of a the
French law that recognizes the Armenian genocide, the umbrella
committee decided to launch an initiative to give concrete answers
“based on historic realities to foreign claims that aim at damaging
Turkish independence.” They also decided to conduct programs to
inform and inspire Turkish society against Armenian claims and to
inform French society about the realities of the issue.
Representatives of Turkish associations in France stressed at the
meeting that they are not against the existence of Armenians but aim
at making the historic realities supported by documents an issue of
discussion for French citizens.
Turkish associations also stated they will give priority to the
publishing of a book in French. They also announced that they will
gather again next month to view strategies and activities that will
be followed during the campaigns.
At a press conference last week, the groups organizing the committee
meeting demanded that the French Parliament’s recognition of the
alleged genocide in 2001 be reversed, saying that judging history
was up to historians not lawmakers, making reference to an earlier
statement by French President Jacques Chirac.
As part of the activities to overturn Armenian claims, the organizers
of the Talat Pasha Movement met over the weekend in Istanbul to
finalize preparations to launch the movement in Berlin beginning
on Saturday.
A mass demonstration aimed at denouncing Armenian genocide claims, to
be held in Berlin under the slogan “Take your flag and come to Berlin,”
has caused tension between Turkey and Germany. Flyers announcing the
movement read, “If Western capitals don’t want to be burned like Paris,
unjust treatment towards Turkey must end.”
IP leader Dogu Perincek and former Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
(TRNC) President Rauf Denktas will lead the planned demonstration
with the participation of many representatives from Turkish political
parties and European non-governmental organizations (NGOs) within the
framework of the Talat Pasha Movement. The main aim of the group is to
put pressure on the German Parliament to remove official recognition
of the Armenian genocide claims. The movement also aims to attract
some 5 million supporters, including some 1,000 from Turkey.
Denktas is expected to lay flowers at the place in Berlin where
Talat Pasha was assassinated on March 15, 1921 by an Armenian, and
an assembly will gather in a memorial for Talat Pasha on Sunday.
In an effort to hamper these efforts, the German Embassy in Ankara
turned down yesterday visa applications for some who might be intending
to participate in the demonstration.
The same group last year also held a demonstration to mark the
82nd anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne. At that demonstration
Perincek lashed out at a decision by Switzerland to punish those who
deny the Armenian genocide claims, saying, “The Armenian genocide is
an international lie,” after which the prosecutor from Winterthur
opened an investigation into Perincek and the incident turned into
a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Switzerland.
Czech president: Who will benefit from Turkish recognition of Armenian
‘genocide’?
Czech President Vaclav Klaus stressed on Sunday that stirring up and
bring the past events back to the agenda of the international community
is useless, saying, “Who will benefit from Turkish recognition of
the Armenian ‘genocide’?”
Speaking to German daily Der Spiegel, Klaus questioned the necessity of
facing the past, saying, “The past is the past. Nowadays the European
Parliament is urging Turkey to recognize the Armenian genocide
claims. Who will benefit from this recognition? Russian President
Vladimir Putin apologized for the suppression of the Prague spring
reform process by harsh methods in 1968, saying that his country takes
moral responsibility for the events of 1968. This was a gesture for the
Czech Republic but I don’t think that we have to discuss with Putin
the things a former Soviet leader did to us. In other words Putin is
not the inheritor of Leonid Brezhnev and I am not the inheritor of
the communist regime that took power in 1948 in my country.”

ARMENIA EXPORTS WOODS CUT IN NK – ARIF ISGANDAROV
Author: S.Aliyev
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
March 14 2006
“The woods cut in the territory of Azerbaijani reserve in Zangelan
District, which is under occupation of Armenia, is exported to
Italy, France, Greece and Iran,” Arif Isgandarov, the head of the
Ecology and Nature Protection Policy Department of the Azerbaijani
Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, told Trend in an exclusive
interview. The woods are used in different purposes, including
manufacturing of furniture and ship-building.
At present the price of wood material is $1,000 per 1000 cu m.
Isgandarov also heads the Operative Center on Definition (observation)
of Destructive Impact on the Environment and Natural Resources on
the occupied territory of Azerbaijan.
Mahabbat Gurbanov, the head of the Zangilan Bureau of the Ministry
of Ecology and Natural Resources, Mahabbat Gurbanov, at present the
valuable species of trees are being cut in the territory of Basitchay
state reserve. “Armenian side terminates a platan forest an only
Europe and the second in the world,” he said.
According to the Director of the Reserve, Khudush Isgandarov, at
present the Armenian side opened a wood processing workshop, which
operates all day. The place of cut trees is fired and frequently
blasted to conceal the traces. The new trees are planted in these
areas. The Ministry obtained the information from Iran, which borders
with Zangilan District and Azerbaijani citizens who were in Armenian
captivity earlier. Moreover, the Ministry has photos and video
materials on then occupied territory of Azerbaijan.
The Director of the Reserve noted that reserves and platans that are
in this forest were included in the Red Book. They are also included
in the Red Book of Armenia. Some platans existing in the territory
of Armenia are preserved, whereas they are cut predatorily in the
occupied territory of Azerbaijan.
The trees that grow in this territory age 1500 years. The area of
the reserve was 117h when it was founded in 1974. However, further
it was reduced to 107h.
According to officials of the Ministry, the statement on facts
of termination of relict forest has been repeatedly made at
international conferences. However, no step had been taken against
such ‘ecological terror’. To solve the problem Azerbaijan suggest to
establish an international expert group which will pay an expedition
to the region, hold monitoring and assert the facts submitted by
Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is a member of a Convention on bio-variety and
maintenance of genetic fund of plantings, which it strictly observes
in difference to Armenia, another member of the convention.
The Operative Center on Definition (observation) of Destructive Impact
on the Environment and Natural Resources on the occupied territory
of Azerbaijan was founded in 2001. Since that period the Center has
developed two reports on environmental impact and an action plan. At
present the Center possesses huge amount of materials confirming the
destructive actions by Armenia on environment and natural resources
of Azerbaijan in the occupied territory.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EUROVISION MANAGEMENT CORRECTED THE MISTAKE ON THEIR WEBSITE, CULTURE MINISTER
Author: S. Agayeva
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
March 14 2006
Website of the song contest Eurovision has taken off all the materials
on the birth place of Armenian singer Andre, who has mentioned it as
the Nagorno-Karabakh republic, Azerbaijani minister of Culture and
Tourism Abulfaz Garayev told Trend.
According to Garayev, after the Ministry of Culture and Tourism
of Azerbaijan has addressed the contest organizers demanding to
correct the mistakes on their website, the latter have considered
demands of Azeri side as legitimate and have taken the decision to
take the article off. Andre will represent Armenia in this contest,
the minister said. And the name of Nagorno-Karabakh was completely
deleted from the website.
Autobiographical material of one of the contest participators-
Armenian singer Andre was recently published at the Eurovision
website. According to that material the singer was born in the
so-called ‘Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’.
Regarding this fact, Azerbaijani side demanded contest organizers
to put an end to injustice and respect the territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan, as Nagorno-Karabakh is an inseparable part of Azerbaijan.

Friday, March 10, 2006
**************************************************
Whatever I know, which is not much, has come from books. My knowledge of the real world is so limited that it might as well be non-existent; and whenever I have ventured outside in search of knowledge, I have returned to my books bloodied and defeated. But am I alone in this? Consider our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century. As long as they became intoxicated with Western ideas, they did no harm. But when they decided to act on them in the real world, their dreams turned into a nightmare. And consider what’s happening in Iraq today….
*
Socrates understood many things but he failed to understand one of the most important things, namely the fact that some day his conversations with fellow Athenians would be seen as a capital offense.
*
In a letter to the editor and speaking about “the authority of the scriptures,” a fundamentalist speaks of “the very foundation of facts that have withstood centuries of brutal attacks.” Astrology too has “withstood centuries of brutal attacks.” So what?
#
Saturday, March 11, 2006
***************************************
OTTOMANIZED ARMENIANS
***********************************
Some Armenians have been so thoroughly Ottomanized that their only source of wisdom seems to be Turkish sayings; and judging by the number of Armenian sayings and writers they quote, they have not heard or read a single one. Talaat and Stalin exterminated two generations of our ablest writers. These Armenians went further: they buried and forgot these writers ever existed.
*
GOSTAN ZARIAN
ON SOVIETIZED ARMENIANS
*****************************************************
In his TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD and speaking of Sovietized Armenians who recycled Bolshevik propaganda to him, Zarian writes: “They are spitting on Raffi. They are spitting on Aharonian. They are spitting on Derian. And that with the borrowed, consumptive spittle of Muscovite ‘masters.’ Even their filth is second hand. Even their words have not been picked up from our streets. Danger, danger, danger!”
*
OUR PRESENT SITUATION
***********************************
If our situation is shituation today it may be because we are at the mercy of Sovietized bloodsuckers and Ottomanized charlatans whose Turcocentric view of life and understanding of their fellow men begins and ends with massacres. “You either massacre or are massacred,” they seem to be saying. “And if you can’t massacre your enemy with fire and sword, choose a more defenseless victim and massacre him with words.” And who could be more defenseless than Armenian writers? If they are no longer spitting on Raffi, Aharonian, and Derian, it may be because they don’t even know who these writers are.
*
AM I REPEATING MYSELF?
****************************************
If I am, it is because our Ottomanized and Sovietized brothers repeat themselves too by recycling filth that has not even picked up from our own streets but from alien gutters.
### [/B]

Sunday, February 26, 2006
************************************
The many ways those in power have to control our thoughts and emotions, especially the emotions of the thoughtless.
*
Most of his life, Gide writes in his World War II diaries, his efforts have been concentrated on understanding “the other,” that is to say, the enemy. It is such a pity that the world is run not by men like Gide but by the likes of Hitler and his dupes.
*
Armenian problems? What problems? Since we haven’t been able to solve them so far we must assume them to be an integral part of the human condition, like death and taxes.
*
Patriotism allows us to do nothing and to feel good about it.
*
Patriotism also allows us to think that if our heart is in the right place, we can’t go wrong. But what if the heart is controlled by a dysfunctional psyche?
*
An honest man is a charlatan’s worst nightmare.
*
That which we learn from books may not even register on our consciousness. But that which we learn from experience we can’t forget.
*
If your understanding focuses on yourself and ignores the other, your understanding of yourself as well as reality is bound to suffer because you are only a tiny fraction of a far larger reality, and tiny to the point of being invisible. And what is patriotism if not an extension of the self?
#
Monday, February 27, 2006
***************************************
In a tribal environment the myth of “pure blood” is taken seriously. It is different with the ruling classes and elites in general where mixed marriages are the norm rather than the exception.
*
After centuries of intermarriage a Turk is more difficult to define than an American. Something similar could be said of an Armenian. In the ghetto where I was born and raised there were Armenians who looked like Mongols, Germans, and Negroes but they all identified themselves as Armenian because (a) Armenians were the dominant tribe, (b) to identify themselves as anything else would have been against their own interests, and (c) because the offspring of mixed marriages were looked down at as mongrels.
*
There are harmless idiots and then there are dangerous idiots. A dangerous idiot is one who believes what his political and religious leaders tell him.
*
I understand idiots because I was one most of my life. Perhaps I still am for thinking that common sense and decency are transferable.
*
I was born again as a human being on the day I said to myself, “I am an Armenian, therefore I am an idiot.”
*
There exists an American school of thought that says, if you repeat to yourself “Today I like myself more than yesterday. Tomorrow I will like myself even more,” you will cease being a lousy bastard.
*
There is also an Armenian school of thought that says, if you repeat to yourself every day, “I am smart,” or “I am smarter today than I was yesterday,” you will cease being an idiot.
*
If two idiots meet and one says to the other “You are smart,” and the other replies, “You too are smart,” they will part with the conviction that, unlike most of their fellow men, they are not idiots.
#
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
*************************************
There is more to America than cowboys and Indians. There is also more to Armenians than the massacres. And yet, our press, our educational system, our editorialists, pundits, and academics conspire to reduce our identity, to distort our worldview, and to narrow our horizons when they emphasize the dark side of our recent past. They go further and cover up our failures and shortcomings, of which we have more than our share, because, they tell us, they come under the general heading of “dirty linen.”
*
Anyone who dares to discuss our problems is told to shut up unless he can solve them, or rather make them disappear as if by magic with a single verbal formula like abracadabra.
*
We are more, much more than misunderstood victims if only because we are human beings, or rather, it is within our powers to be born again as human beings.
*
We have a small army of lawyers, PR men, lobbyists, propagandists, and fund-raisers who are fully equipped to handle our grievances. We don’t have to brainwash our children to think and behave as their unpaid hirelings or crusaders.
*
In a commentary in our local paper today I read: “A smart country is a country brimming with ideas, a country open to pioneering minds, a country not fearful of intellectual fertility, experimentation and daring – a thinking country.”
*
Even more to the point: “We need to be careful in our use of language, avoid reductionist marketing strategies, and celebrate the fully broad nature of smartness. Otherwise we will miss the Mozarts and Platos in our midst. And that would not be a smart thing to do.” Where, O where is the Armenian pundit capable of producing such a paragraph?
#
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
***************************************
Renan: “A good policy consists not in opposing what is inevitable but in being of use to it and in making use of it.”
We have been better at “being of use to it,” than “in making use of it,” alas!
*
Robin Hood did not steal from the rich, he simply returned to the poor that which had been stolen from them.
*
Gide in 1941, after the German occupation: “For years now, France has hardly given us any reason to be proud. The France of today has ceased to be France.” By France I assume he meant the leadership and its dupes.
*
Genocide is a plant whose seed is prejudice, and prejudice comes to us disguised as love of God and Country.
*
As the offspring of perennial underdogs and victims I refuse to assert moral superiority because to do so would mean adding hypocrisy to my previous list of vices.
*
If someone I don’t trust were to agree with me, I would disagree with myself.
*
Andrea De Carlo: “He tells me to follow my instinct. But what if I have two of them?”
*
ON WRITING (THREE PARAPHRASES)
*********************************************
If the first sentence comes from the gut, the rest is bound to follow. (Hemingway)
*
Before you sit down to write you must stand up and live. (Thoreau)
*
Force yourself to be brief and miracles may happen. (Chekhov)
#

Thursday, February 23, 2006
**************************************
Gide: “Faith moves mountains; yes, mountains of
absurdities.”
*
Misunderstanding is a constant theme in Gide’s
final diary entries.
“When an intelligent man makes an effort not to
understand, he naturally succeeds much more
cleverly than a fool.”
But I have also discovered that, when it comes to
misunderstanding, fools can be surprisingly
creative.
*
After seeing Olivier’s production of KING LEAR
Gide goes at some length to explain why he thinks
this to be Shakespeare’s worst play. Odd that he
does not mention Tolstoy, whom he admired, and
who also hated this play about which he wrote a
long essay as if he were trying to settle an old
score with a rival.
*
Communism has been defined as state capitalism,
and capitalism as socialism for the rich. Private
enterprise promotes greed, and government
programs legitimize waste. All systems are
designed by elites to favor elites.
As for revolutions: they only replace one set of
rascals with another. Which is why, during the
final years of his life,
Arthur Koestler (one of the most politically
astute writers of the 20th century) refused to
discuss politics.
*
Zarian observes somewhere that we are on the
verge of extinction not because we have been
victimized by ruthless tyrants, but because we
have lost our bearings, we have assimilated the
values of our oppressors, and we have betrayed
all those among us who have attempted to define
what is and is not Armenian.
#
Friday, February 24, 2006
***********************************
David Irving is now willing to concede that
millions of Jews died during World War II, but he
refuses to use the word Holocaust describing it
as a concept that “became cleverly marketed, like
Tylenol.” In view of his past blunders and
dishonesty, I find his semantic sensitivity
fraudulent.
*
Indifference is sometimes confused with strength.
It seems to me it is more akin to moral
feebleness.
*
The very same extremists who mounted violent
demonstrations against cartoons of the Prophet
are now demolishing holy shrines and beheading
teachers in front of the class for refusing to
teach only religion and riot.
*
Whenever I mention the many crimes committed by
organized religions I am reminded that atheism
too has produced its share of criminals, such as
Stalin. But I maintain that, unlike Marxism,
which is an ideology, Stalinism became a religion
and a highly organized one at that. Let me quote
Nikita Khruschev on Stalin: “It is impermissible
and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to
elevate one person, to transform him into a
superman possessing supernatural characteristics
akin to those of a god.”
*
Mohammed is only a prophet and a messenger; and
yet, he is treated as a god in whose name all
kinds of unspeakable crimes are committed every
day. This is clearly seen by the overwhelming
majority of mankind except the criminals.
*
Because I have consistently refused to confuse
ideology with theology some of my partisan
friends think of me as a heretic and an enemy of
the people.
#
Saturday, February 25, 2006
************************************
In some people the instinct to assert
intellectual superiority is stronger than the
need to learn and understand.
*
Gide quotes Leon Bloy as saying: “One must puke
on others!” How about that for French refinement,
etiquette, and elegance?
*
At the turn of the last century Baronian made
savage fun of our leadership but history advanced
as if he had not written a single line.
*
Before I blame anyone, I blame myself – a
quintessentially unArmenian trait that. Before we
blame ourselves, we prefer to blame the rest of
the world, not just Turks and Kurds but also
Bolsheviks, the West, and the Good Lord Himself.
We never bother to ask what have we done to
deserve so many enemies?
*
A contemporary Baronian is unthinkable perhaps
because after the Genocide, and unlike the Jews
(who have produced some brilliant satirists and
comedians) we prefer to lament crocodile tears
rather than have a good laugh at ourselves – at
our vanity, at our illusions, at our propaganda,
and ultimately at our lies.

Sunday, February 12, 2006
*************************************
Please note that the following notes and comments are meant for a mature audience. For children of 14 years of age and under, and Armenians of all ages, parental guidance is advised.
*
When I retire I may go into crocodile wrestling. After thirty years of writing for Armenians, it may be a safer and an easier way to make a living. It may even be more fun.
*
My credibility with some readers goes south whenever I assert that the very same people who speechify and sermonize about our culture are engaged in lobotomizing our literature. But consider the facts: under Sultan Abdulhamid II in Istanbul and under Stalin in Yerevan, we had many more brilliant writers than we have today under the leadership of our bosses, bishops, and benevolent benefactors.
*
Writing for Armenians is like fighting a war on two fronts – against the leadership and against the readership (as you can see I have successfully resisted the temptation of replacing the letter p with t). Instead of wrestling with a single crocodile maybe I should wrestle with two…
*
You cannot argue with someone who is in a position to silence you, as Socrates discovered 2500 years ago, and more recently Solzhenitsyn. As the French are fond of saying, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme merde.”
*
Writers cannot solve the problems created by politicians for the simple reason that politicians are the ones who acknowledge the existence of problems, and whenever they create them they refuse to acknowledge them. The reason why we have so far failed to solve our problems is not that we lack the IQ and the motivation but that the men at the top (a) hate to share power, and (b) they have become masters of the blame game. Which means that as long as there are Turks (and it looks like they will be around for some time) the blame-game will continue to be our national sport.
#
Monday, February 13, 2006
*************************************
NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER
**********************************************
My guess is the EU will eventually agree with us on the Genocide controversy and ask the Turks to acknowledge responsibility. It may also agree with Turks by saying Armenian claims of monetary reparations and territorial claims are unrealistic because monetary compensation would make Turkey even more economically dependent on the EU, and because territorial concessions would create more problems than solve them.
*
ANOTHER SCENARIO
******************************
If the Turks agree to offer monetary compensation to survivors, they may set up criteria so easy that many phony claimants will abuse them. At which point they will set up a bureaucratic system so complex and tough that it will be a nightmare for the applicants and enrich only their lawyers.
*
DO YOU WANT TO BE POPULAR?
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If you say capitalists amass their fortunes by exploiting cheap labor or overpricing their products or both, you will not be very popular with our benefactors and their assorted hirelings. If you say the universal medium of all political parties regardless of race, color, and creed is propaganda, our partisans will call you an enemy of the people. If, on the other hand, you teach yourself to say “Yes, sir!” to everything you are told, you have a much better chance to achieve popularity.
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MEMO TO MY CRITICS
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What you say is not what you think. What you say is what you were told when you could not yet think for yourself.
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TWO INDECENT PROPOSALS
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Our benefactors are avid readers of our weeklies but only of articles in which their selfless generosity is discussed. This suspicion became a certainty to me when one of them once asked me to ghost his memoirs.
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An editor once complained to me that a benefactor had agreed to support his weekly only if the editor agreed to publish a minimum of one article about him per week.
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Tuesday, February 14, 2006
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In the Byzantine Empire Christians who supported the depiction of images (iconolaters) and their opponents (iconoclasts) fought wars and massacred one another. Did the defeat of iconoclasts make for a better brand of Christianity? An irrelevant question. I mention this to point out the fact that history teaches us that man has consistently refused to learn from past blunders.
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We say we want the truth but we are willing to die only for a lie — the bigger the lie the better.
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Propaganda cannot solve problems. It can only create new ones. When Czarist propaganda in the 19th century was replaced by Communist propaganda in the 20th, things went from bad to worse.
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By brainwashing people propaganda narrows their minds and reduces them to the status of apes who cannot think for themselves, they can only echo their leaders who rule by lies, coercion, and terror.
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In a letter to the editor in our local paper I read the following Arab proverb: “The truth is good, but better to talk of the palm trees.”
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For every propaganda line there will be a counter-propaganda line. In the same way that for every organized religion there will be one or more heresies. That’s because truth is one, but lies many.
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One could also say that truth is one but the roads leading to it many; and when one kills one does not kill in the name of truth or God but in the name of a lie or Satan.
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To say my road is the only true road is the biggest of all lies.
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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
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In a commentary in our paper this morning I read: “Muslims are offended and insulted, and rightly so, by the controversial cartoons published in papers around the world.” If I were to demonstrate every time I feel offended and insulted, I would be a full-time 24/7 demonstrator and the earth from where I stand to the horizon would be scorched.
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Perhaps I should feel sorry for the lawyer accidentally shot by Vice-President Cheney, but I don’t. He should have been more careful in his choice of friends and hunting companions. If I feel sorry for anyone it’s the quails.
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Speaking of hunting expeditions, one of Norman Mailer’s novels is titled WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM which is about a hunting expedition in an American forest and in which the word Vietnam is not even mentioned. To dramatize the kind of mindset that drove the U.S. to the war in Vietnam, what Mailer does, and he does it brilliantly, is to quote from the hunters’ incessant talk which is crude, coarse, and peppered with profanities. To some Americans, Mailer is saying here, war is nothing but a hunting expedition.
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