2827) Not Only Sex And Violence Lower The Moral Standards, But Also . .

We are told sex and violence in movies lower the moral standards of a nation. What we are not told is that intolerance in organized religions and ideologies, in addition to lowering moral standards, it claims many more innocent victims. Intolerance also divides a nation thus making it more vulnerable to rape and massacre (of the “red” as well as the “white” variants). Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating for more sex and . . violence in movies. What I am doing is exposing the double-talk of religious and political leaders who speak with a forked tongue and are believed by dupes.
*
The guiding principle of all men at the top is, if the truth will harm your power, prestige, and integrity, it's okay to lie your head off. But the problem with lies is that they invariably create a chain reaction of more lies until the truth is buried beneath them like a needle in haystack. Case in point: If the Turks are bloodthirsty savages, why were we their most faithful subjects for six hundred years? And if we are smart and they are dumb, why is it that it took us six centuries to unmask them? And even more to the point: if they are pathological liars and we speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, why are we against dissent and free speech? What are we afraid of? And if we have produced more heroes per capital than any other nation on earth, allow me to pose the following question: What could be more cowardly than fear of free speech?

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WHAT IS LITERATURE?
**********************************************
There is no consensus on the subject. Some say the function of literature is to understand reality. Others, to introduce or enhance moral standards. To educate, explain, and instruct. To fight corruption and injustice. To expose prejudices. To see beauty and eternity in a blade of grass.

Dissidents believe the function of literature is to question authority. Those in authority disagree: they say writers should behave like a chorus singing hymns to their infallibility, greatness, integrity, vision, and glory.

It has also been said what literature does is to make sh*t look like rose jam (Jean Genet).

Speaking for myself, I believe the first and most important function of literature is not to bore the reader.

And speaking of sh*t and rose jam: I am reminded of Saroyan defending his one-dimensional depiction of Armenian characters in his fiction by saying he had only “stylized” them -- probably meaning that he had done to Armenians what Leonardo had done to Mona Lisa, or what Balthus had done to his street scenes: that is to say, introduced something that is not present in reality.

---

AMERICANS AND GENOCIDE
*************************************
Hugo Chavez: “Columbus was the commander of an invasion that resulted in the greatest genocide the world has ever known.”
Now you know why American presidents promise but they hesitate to deliver. All the Turks have to do is tell them, “Armenians are our Indians.”
*
A WOMAN ON WOMEN
***********************************
Colette on feminists: “I would put them all in a harem.”
*
CIORAN ON THE FRENCH
**************************************
“They prefer an elegant lie to a clumsily expressed truth.”
*
ON SACRED COWS
*********************************
The only thing they are good for is shish kebab.

---

NOTES AND COMMENTS
*************************************
To understand how easy it is to be wrong, all I have to do is review my past, and I don't means my distant past. I mean yesterday.
*
There is more to being Armenian than hating Turks and lamenting our martyrs. Looking backward can be useful only if we learn from our blunders. What have we learned so far?
Life isn't fair?
Big fish eat small fish?
Politicians speak with a forked tongue?
But then, are we fair to one another? Are our big fish vegetarian? Are our politicians honest?
Don't make me laugh.
*
Truth may well be beyond our reach, but honesty is not.

---

THE INSULTED AND THE INJURED
**************************************************
One of the most astonishing things about human nature, Dostoevsky tells us, is that it can get used to anything.
For a thousand years we were ruled by tribal kings, princes, and nakharars. For six hundred years we were the obedient subjects of sultans and more recently of ruthless commissars. Today we find ourselves at the mercy of empty suits and bearded charlatans who rule by delivering empty verbiage and whose role models are not statesmen or men of faith but “crocodiles” (Chekhov). And whenever someone takes it upon himself to point this out, he is either starved or silenced permanently. And here I could make a long list of names from Abovian (who committed suicide) to Zarian (who for all practical purposes was buried alive).

Have I said this before? Why shouldn't I say it again, if what I and many others before me have said has so far failed to register on our collective consciousness?

“I can't write novels like Dostoevsky,” Oshagan is quoted as having said, “because we Armenians don't have Dostoevskian characters.” But what is the history of our nation with all its unspeakable betrayals, degradations, and suffering if not a character straight out of Dostoevsky?

---

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**************************************
We all make mistakes, especially the infallible.
*
The brainwashed never question their infallibility.
*
The brainwashed cannot speak for themselves, neither can they think, they can only follow orders, or, like monkeys, dance to the tune of an invisible organ-grinder.
*
The 5th century AD was our Golden Age, the 20th century our Stone Age.
*
When the old fight, it is the young who die.
When the rich fight, it is the poor who die.
If it were up to the old and the rich to do the dying,
we would have no more wars.
*
Where there is an Armenian church there will also be a wealthy merchant with a guilty conscience.

---

SIGNS
**************************************
Everything is as it should be. I never had it so good. The surest warnings of an impending catastrophe.
*
You say I always see the dark side of things. I say someone has to. Paranoiacs have enemies too. And who said pessimists are always wrong?
*
You cannot hide your ignorance. It is your most transparent possession.
*
When an Armenian defeats another Armenian, it is the nation that loses.
*
A lie is like a deadly virus. Left unattended it will poison and kill its promoter as well as his dupes, families as well as communities, tribes as well as nations, empires as well as civilizations.
*
In democracies, dissidents like Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell were (and still are) universally respected, sometimes even Nobelized. We all know what happened to dissidents in the USSR. I venture to suggest, we Armenians (judging by the number of writers we have betrayed, silenced, starved and driven to suicide) are more like Stalinists than the British.

---

ON INTELLECTUALS
**************************************
Intellectuals are a nuisance to the rich and parasites to the poor. But their real enemies are neither the poor nor the rich but intellectuals.
*
ON TURCOCENTRISM
**********************************
The unspoken message of our Turcocentric ghazetajis seems to be, the keys to the Gates of Heaven will be ours only after we do to them what they did to us. These ghazetajis are the true offspring of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire who promised heaven and delivered hell.
*
ENEMIES
**********************
We are our greatest enemies. I can prove this by saying I have done more harm to myself than all my enemies combined.
*
CRITICS
************************
Socrates and Jesus had them, and as everyone knows by now, saints have been the most consistently and universally abused people on earth.
*
WHAT IS EVIL
**********************
Respect for authority is the source of all evil.
*
ON REVOLUTION
**********************************
Revolutions are less about justice or the distribution of wealth, and more about the distribution of power, and power will be abused regardless of who is at the top. For the slave, it makes no difference if his master is Turk or Armenian.

---

SKELETONS IN THE CUPBOARD
*********************************************
FIRST NATION?
*********************
Love our enemies?
We can't even stop hating one another.
*
EITHER / OR?
****************************
“Do you think of yourself as a success or a failure?”
Very much like the overwhelming majority of my fellow men, I think of myself as a working stiff.
*
MIRACLES
*************************
There are two kinds of miracles:
(one) useless – like walking on water; and
(two) dangerous – like promoting alcoholism by turning water into wine.
*
MEMOIRS
*********************
One reason I went into writing is that I hate working for nonentities who expect you to behave like a lesser nonentity – and all for minimum wage. I know now that writing for Armenians is no different – minus the minimum wage, of course.
*
WINNERS AND LOSERS
***********************************
“Just because you are a loser, it doesn't follow so is the nation. Stop projecting!”
I think of myself as someone who speaks of reality in an environment dominated by propagandists who speak of fantasy, which allows them to see moral victory in military defeat, and a Higher Truth in a Big Lie.

---

FEEDBACK
**************************************
Do not bother reading what follows because I have said it before, and many others have said it before me.
*
Some readers tell me I make them laugh. Others say I depress them. I suggest it's not me they are talking about but our reality.
*
I wish I were a comedian. The ability to make people laugh at themselves I consider one of the rarest of all gifts.
*
We all have our share of failings, limitations, and blind spots. In religious parlance, we are all sinners, including saints. That's Naregatsi's message, in case you are not willing to take my word for it. With one difference. Some of us pretend otherwise, and they happen to be the worst, and it's their awareness of their condition that makes them compensate by assuming a holier-than-thou stance.
*
To my critics I say, criticize, if you must, the incompetence of our political leaders, the values of our merchants, the dogmas of our bishops, and the double-talk of our superpatriots. Do not shoot our critics, who like piano players in western saloons, are doing their best.
*
AMERICANISMS
**********************************
“What's your racket?”
“I am not a crook.”
“Do bears shit in the forest?”
“Does the Pope speak Latin?”
And the other day in a movie:
“Does the Pope shit in the forest?”

---

LIVE AND LEARN
************************************************
When it comes to learning about oneself, friends are useless, enemies more valuable.
*
Repeating oneself and being consistently negative are not mortal sins; being dishonest is.
*
A hundred years ago our political leaders were naïve daydreamers. Today they are – or rather they think they are – pragmatic operators. I have trouble deciding which is worse: being at the mercy of fools, or idiots who think they are smart?
*
Let others speak of the American dream, we can speak only of the Armenian nightmare.
*
What kind of loving Father is He that needs to be constantly reminded to “give us this day our daily bread,” after which He lets millions die of malnutrition and starvation.
*
You begin to learn only after you unlearn what you have been taught. Likewise, you begin to write only after you give up all literary ambitions.
*
I am grateful to readers who don't think highly of me. The temptation to believe sycophants can be overwhelming.
*
When experts disagree, prejudice casts the deciding vote.
*
Because the prodigal son returned, the fatted calf was butchered. Good news for the guilty son, bad news for the innocent calf. Why couldn't they have a vegetarian feast?

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ELEGY
************************************************
An American chief executive officer – young, handsome, healthy, fabulously wealthy – has committed suicide. One down, ninety-nine to go.
*
Two American governors, Spitzer and Blogojevich, were caught red-handed. One resigned, the other impeached. But to me, the greater scandal is the fact that several of Obama's financial advisers are former Wall Street chief executive officers. If it takes one to catch one, how come no one has been caught yet? Bernie Madoff? If he is in jail today it's because he confessed. And then there are the senators who deny the reality of the Genocide not because they are convinced that to be the truth but because they are being handsomely compensated by Turkish lobbyists.
*
The rich are swine. Even as I curse my fate, I thank God for making me poor.
*
What is the penalty for being wrong? If nothing, anyone can say anything he wants.
*
To be easily satisfied with one’s own arguments is an unmistakable symptom of advanced cretinism.

---

Fw: Love This Doctor!!

It's so good to read the truth at last??
I love this Doctor !

Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?
A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it... Don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster.. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A:! You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q:Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit.
Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain.
Bottoms up!

Q:How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q:What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good!

Q:Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!!!
......... Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.


Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: Are you crazy?
HELLO
Cocoa beans! Another vegetable!!! It's the best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! 'Round' is a shape!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.

And remember:

'Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO, What a Ride'

AND......

For those of you who watch what you eat , here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
4. The Italians drink a lot of red! wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.


CONCLUSION
Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

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MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS
************************************************
It is not easy writing for readers who already know everything they need to know, even if what they really know happens to be recycled mumbo jumbo.
*
Work hard, but not too hard: you may be digging your own grave.
*
Authority thrives on ignorance. Where there are leaders (as opposed to public servants) there will be spin doctors, cover-up artists, an uninformed community, and dupes.
*
From nature’s point of view, chastity is a far more dangerous sexual perversion than all the others combined.
*
Venetian saying: "The priest’s friend loses his faith, the doctor’s his health, the lawyer’s his fortune."
*
Schopenhauer: "We pay an attention to the opinion of others which is out of all proportion to its value."
*
When midgets are in charge, giants become outlaws.

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ARMENIAN MANIFESTO
************************************************
What choice did we have under the Ottomans and the Soviets?
Wrong question.
When we had a choice, we failed to present a united front to the enemy.
And what made our enemies invincible was their solidarity.
Let's not lose sight of that fundamental fact, which our dividers do their utmost to cover up in order to appear
(a) to be blameless, and
(b) to continue dividing us.
Blameless?
Why do you think General Antranik wanted to see them hanged from the nearest tree?
Why do you think Zarian called them “cannibals”?
And please,don't tell me our sermonizers, speechifiers, and Turcocentric ghazetajis know better than Zarian, the General, and Charents, whose final “Message” mentions neither Turks nor Russians.
Let's not have any illusions about our men at the top, who like Wall Street chief executive officers, care more about their powers and privileges than the welfare of the nation. Which is why, at the risk of repeating myself, I will say again:
Armenians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your dividers.

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ON SHRINKS
************************************************
After the composition of his First Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff is said to have experienced a crisis during which he became convinced he had lost his creative impetus permanently. But after seeing a psychiatrist he recovered his creativity and composed his Second Piano Concerto, or so we are told by his biographers. What we are not told is that if he had not seen a shrink, maybe he could have composed nine symphonies. Marlon Brando was under constant psychiatric care and instead of getting better, he got worse, in addition to making an unholy mess of his private life and his physique. Neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky were ever treated by a shrink, and my guess is, their problems were worse than Rachmaninoff's and Brando's combined.
*
Once upon a time, in the Middle Ages, we were celebrated for being good fighters. We still are, but only against the wrong enemy: ourselves.
*
I write for two totally non-literary reasons: to fight boredom and to acquire friends; and with every book I have published, I have acquired a new friend; also (alas!) twenty-two enemies.
*
There is no evidence to suggest that the average Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or Jew is a better human being than the average agnostic or atheist. Which amounts to saying: all organized religions are more or less alike and very often they only succeed in legitimizing prejudice, promoting a false sense of moral superiority, and dehumanizing a fraction of mankind with such labels as pagans, heretics, infidels or giaours.

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WHY HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
************************************************
History repeats itself for the simple reason that the men at the top are bastards and the people are as gullible as children. Thoreau was right when he said Egypt would have been better off if the people had drowned the pharaohs in the Nile like dogs instead of building pyramids for them; and Shaw was also right when he said we would have no more wars if soldiers took aim and shot not at the enemy but at their own sergeants. One reason he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Soviets is that Russian soldiers in World War I did exactly that.
*
Homer was dead wrong when he decided not to quote Greeks who said they resented killing and dying in defense of the non-existent honor of a slut who happened to be the wife of an impotent fool.
*
I once heard one of our notorious bloodsuckers say, if he were to work for an odar organization, he would make twice as much. In nature, parasites do their work in silence; among us, they demand our gratitude.
*
Among my readers, I have critics (which is understandable), enemies (which is less so), and mortal enemies (whose hatred of me is so visceral that it might as well be Ottoman).

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REFLECTIONS
************************************************
The fascist mind comes in two parts: the ideological and the criminal; and the function of the ideological is to camouflage the criminal.
*
Politicians who profess family values see nothing morally inconsistent in screwing the nation.
*
Because our enemies won, we were not allowed to name our traitors.
*
Like most Armenians, I have followed many controversies in our media, and I have witnessed many more, but I have at no time heard an Armenian say: "I was wrong!" or, even better, "I was dead wrong because I placed my own ego, interests, family, political party, church, or tribe above the interests of the nation."
*
A power structure that has all the answers will view questions as subversive.
*
A woman raising her skirt in public will attract a bigger audience than a writer spilling his guts out.
*
At one end of the spectrum we have decent human beings who happen to be Armenian, and at the other, carcinogenic agents who wrap themselves up in the flag in order to hide their true colors.

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ON RECEIVED IDEAS
************************************************
At a time when I didn't know who Shakespeare was, I heard an adult say, “HAMLET is Shakespeare's greatest play.” I immediately adopted that line as dogma and repeated it whenever Shakespeare was mentioned, until I heard someone say, “I prefer MACBETH.”

If all ideas are open to contradiction, received ideas are doubly so.
“Notwithstanding what the Good Book says about divided houses,” a reader tells me, “there are benefits to being divided. If one part is defeated and perishes, the other survives. Perhaps that's the secret of our survival.

Maybe so, but what kind of life is it whose sole aim is survival? No doubt to survive is better than the alternative, but I believe, and I hope you will agree with me when I say, there are greater goals in a nation's life than mere survival.

Such as?
Such as creating a new civilization.
We did that once.
Which means we can do it again.
And how do we do that?
We begin by questioning the validity of all received ideas, one of them being that since to endure is one of our greatest achievements, we can now relax and say “yes” to whatever we are told by our “betters,” who on closer inspection may well be nothing of the kind. They may even be our worst!

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MY FAVORITE BIBLICAL ONE-LINERS
************************************************
“Where there is no vision the people perish.”
*
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
*
“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
*
ON CONTRADICTIONS
*************************************
There are two kinds of contradictions: (one) the kind that leads to compromise and synthesis, and (two) the dead-end, dogmatic, or Armenian kind that arrests progress because reason is replaced with ego. Result: no vision, a house divided, death and destruction – that is, the Kingdom of the Devil.
*
HEADLINE
*******************************
“I am proud of my Armenian ass,” reads the headline of an article about an attractive wench in one of our weeklies. This vulgar boast is preferable to me to still another headline by one of our Turcocentric ghazetajis.
*
QUESTION
**************************
What is the difference between pride in one's ass and pride in one's ego?
*
ANSWER
***********************
One way to sum up the plot of Homer's ILIAD is to say it is about a war of egos over the abduction of an ass that resulted in the destruction of Troy and the death of countless “esh nahadags.” Because he was blind, Homer could not see this aspect of his story. As a result, he glorified militarism and heroism.

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CONTEMPT
***********************************
A couple of weeks ago I was exposed to a long televised lecture on solidarity and the primacy of Etchmiadzin by a former members of the Communist Party from the Homeland, that is to say, a full-time professional divider and atheist.
Because as an orphan during World War I my mother was brought up as a Catholic by nuns, my schoolmates made fun of me and treated me as a lesser Armenian, perhaps even a coward and a renegade, all because, it seems, during the massacres, when Turkish soldiers came to arrest Armenians, the Catholics would say, “I am not an Armenian, I am a Catholic.”

A loud-mouth taxi-driver uncle of mine held me in visible contempt and even ridicule because I dared to have ambitions beyond his attainments.
The secretary of a so-called cultural foundation, himself a writer and teacher, once screamed at me: “How dare you criticize us? Just who the hell do you think you are?”
In recounting these very few but representative anecdotes, my aim here is not to preach mutual respect – that would be highly premature – but to provide an objective assessment of our present situation that may lead to an enhanced awareness of where we stand as a community and as a nation.

To those who tell me I write about our problems but fail to provide solutions, I add the following solutions to this particular problem: If you want to be loved, don't make yourself hateful; and if you want to be thought of as a smart Armenian, don't behave like a damn fool.

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***********************************
You may have noticed that, when an intelligent man behaves stupidly, the reasons he invents to justify his conduct will be even more stupid.
*
A fanatic will always have more enemies than a moderate because he will arouse hostility among fanatics in the opposite camp as well as moderates in his own.
*
Even when our predictions come true they do so in such an unexpected manner or context that their accuracy becomes irrelevant.
*
It is not at all unusual for our chauvinists to preach Armenian civilization and to practice Ottoman barbarism.
*
Where a part-time janitor makes more money than a full-time writer, there will be an abundance of trashy propaganda and a total absence of ideas.
*
In all political movements, lust for power is invariably hidden behind noble slogans: the greater the lust, the nobler the slogans.
*
The nobler the idea or ideology, the more crooks it will attract.

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Ara Baliozian

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Reader's Comment

Dear Ara Bey,

I do not know how many of your readers, read like I do and try to get in your frequency of sentiments. You have at least “one admirer”.

MORAL STANDARDS: Superb, excellent and yes what could be more coward than free speech or talk together?

LITERATURE: Yes certainly not to bore! But you make readers THINK, and that is even more UNWANTED!

NOTES: Yes truth may well beyond our reach, but honesty is not! I believe you are dangerously honest!

FROM NOTEBOOKS: Yes, when the old fight, the young die. When rich fight, the poor die. Wealth now goes much beyond church or mosques! (Our PM, twenty years ago was a penniless worker in the Metropolitan Bus administration, he went on strike with the workers, now he is the richest 8th P.M. in the world. His old time friends became ministers in the cabinet).

SIGNS: Yes, lies are like a deadly virus. The very last one on the stock market killed the world economy!

TURCOCENTRISM: Ghazetajis everywhere are much alike to promise heaven, bring hell and care their pockets.

AMERICANISM: Best is the “bear that eats the Pope and shit it in forest!”

LIVE & LEARN: Excellent.

ELEGY: I will be pleased to know “which Turkish lobbyists, pay what senator”, so that I can present it to my State and demand at least my printing and overall expenses in this “electronic war of information”. If of interest to you, I can find a long list of contributors to Senator Schiff of New Jersey , over $ 300.000, half of them out of N.J: and surprisingly, not one name which is not Armenian!

LOVE THIS DOCTOR: I “survived” all of the cardiovascular disease, but for how much longer, that’s the secret!

REFLECTIONS: I know “how little I know” and this is why I read your carefully. Let idiots think they know all !

ARMENIAN MANIFESTO: All “heroic humpabets” (Pastermadjian, Antranik, Drastamat) were the first ones to flee and leave their people flat, when they lost the wars and hundreds of thousand lives! Antranik, General?

Suggest you read this first

Second: Page.44)

Question 1: Wasn’t he victimized also ? Question 2: If 1 million was killed, how there was 1.4 million alive in 1922 ?

REFLECTION: Women and skirt: Depends on the legs and what’s under the skirt! There is always “worst” than writers !

BIBLICAL LINES: God sellers “prefer today’s” cash in exchange of “ tomorrow’s promised heaven” !

HEADLINES & HOMER: Yes, many male donkeys die for female ass and they are all the same! The nice ones can go in the harems of sultans and give birth to tyrants!

CONTEMPT: You have brought clarification to a very important fact. This is that the “Catholic” and “Protestant” Armenians, were excluded from relocation after end of August 1914, because they were not considered as dangerous as Gregorian Church which served Russians. Of course, it was the Austro-Hungarian Catholics and the American Protestants that put the pressure on the Young Turks. I am glad that it did at least partial good, and your mother was saved to bring you into life to defend decency and truth we can discover.

FROM NOTEBOOKS: “Armenian civilization versus Ottoman barbarism”: I will be much pleased if you review, and bring an understandable explanation as regards what did those persons mean by “refinements of cruelty”!

Take care Ara, live and hit well… I really don’t mind if you sometimes miss the nail and hit the horse only!

Best regards

Aya
+++++++
(Gen. Harbord Commission)
From: Report of Capt. Emory Niles and Arthur Sutherland, 1919

IV Atrocities.
Although it does not fall within the exact scope of car investigation one of the most salient facts impressed on us at every point from Bitlis to Trebizond was that in the region which we traversed the Armenians committed upon the Turks all the crimes and outrages which were committed in other regions by Turks upon Armenians. At first we were most incredulous of the stories told as, but the unanimity of the testimony of alt witnesses, the apparent eagerness with which they told of wrongs done them, their evident hatred of Armenians, and, strongest of all, the material evidence on the ground itself, have convinced as of the general truth of the facts, first, that Armenians massacred Musulmans on a large scale with many refinements of cruelty, and second that Armenians are responsible for most of the destruction done to towns and villages. The Russians and Armenians occupied the country for a considerable time together in 1915 and 1916, and during this period there was apparently little disorder, although doubtless there was damage committed by the Russians. in 1917 the Russian Army disbanded and left the Armenians alone in control. At this period bands of Armenian irregulars roamed the country pillaging and murdering the Musulman civilian population. When the Turkish army advanced at Erzindjan, Erzerum, and Van, the Armenian army broke down and all of the soldiers, regular and irregular turned themselves to destroying Musulman property and committing atrocities upon Musulman inhabitants. The result is a country completely ruined, containing about one-fourth of its former population and one-eighth of its former buildings, and a most bitter hatred [of] Musulmans for Armenians which makes it impossible for two races to live together tat the present time. The Musulmans protest that if they art forced to live under an Armenian Government, they will fight, and it appears to as that they will probably carry out this threat. This view is shared by Turkish officers, British officers, and Americans whom we have met!

A further aggravating condition is the state of affairs across the border. We have no way of knowing how far the complaints of the refugees prove true and how far the Musulmans are themselves to blame by organizing resistance to the Armenians. In any case, the inhabitants of the Turkish side of the frontier believe that their co-religionists on the Armenian side are being massacred and treated with utmost cruelty and this belief intensifies the feeling against the Armenians. It is most strongly urged that conditions in the Caucasus be investigated with a view to ascertaining the true state of affairs, and if the Musulman reports are true, that steps be taken in order to prevent disorders that make a permanent settlement in this region mare difficult that the present circumstances already make inevitable.

Attention is called to the annexed statements of refugees and inhabitants regarding atrocities. (not appended in this text]

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