Posted by panch from host-148-244-221-77.block.alestra.net.mx (148.244.221.77) on Tuesday, August 13, 2002 at 12:25PM :
>Martyr= One who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious or political principles.
****Thank you for that. The operative word is "chooses". You can be the most devout person alive...in fact you can be on your way to a place where your fate will be determined...a tribunal where you will be asked to renounce whatever...marshmallows, Jesus, you name it...and you are going there fully prepared to die for your beliefs...BUT...on the way there someone comes up behind you and shoots you in the head. Are you a martyr?
>The Assyrian nation has suffered since the fall of our ancient empire for these two reasons, Jesus (religon) and Atour (politcal principles)
***Iīm afraid that is too vague. Letīs say you can get away with this stuff when preaching to the choir...to those who donīt need convincing...and thatīs the problem, for so long as we stay locked within ourselves..for so long then can we get kicked around without anyone knowing it...and also for just as long will we remain unable to go outside and explain ourselves anywhere. I donīt know what political principles you are refering to...and I donīt know that we died "for" Jesus...or were killed "beacuse" our treachery to the nation-states we lived in...States which were Muslim, and believed that their own external Christian enemies would find a ready source of instability within their borders by appealing to their fellow-Christians inside. Itīs a reasonable fear...look at how white America is reacting towards darkies and Muslims and even people with turbans on...obviously the Muslim nations were not the only ones to feel threatened by minorities within their borders...and the United States was only hit ONCE!
****I am not defending anyone...I just know we have to have a tight argument before we can make any points stick out there.
>I dont know if you have read history, but thousands of Assyrian men and women fought and died because they did not want to become moslem, or because they did not want to become kurdish, turkish, or arab, or because of lack of national or religous rights
***I would have to know which history books you mean. If they were written by priests...forget it. If they were history books written by Jews in Alexandria, you can also forget it. If these books were written by real scholars without an axe to grind...and if these books were open to peer review, and formed any part of a curiculum anywhere...then give us their titles.
No wagrams please, and no missionaries either...they are good at one position only.
***Thousands of Assyrians willingly turned to Islam...as many turned to Christianity...I know this is a pill bitter for you to swallow, but it defies Reason to think otherwise. I am Assyrian and I think Christianity is ridiculous...I think Islam and Judaism arenīt any better. Each has some good to it, and each got that good from a much more refined source...US.
***Every time an Assyrian dies it is not for Christ, or politics...not every death is a momenteous confrontation between the forces of Light and Darkness. You people try way too hard to make an Armageddon out of this thing...you scare me, like the extremist Muslims and Jews and Christians...you are all three clamoring for even more death, you eagerly anticipate the clash of armies and Dooms day and the rest of it...each convinced you will win...when weīll all lose...as we are now.
****No Assyrian was taken out and given the choice to become Muslim, or else. Not a one. Where is there any evidence? Assyrians were indeed killed...but they were also rescued by Muslims...as Thea Haloīs mother readily admits the Turks were good people...it was the policy of that moment that caused them so much misery.
...You also made a statement saying that any man would rape if he had the chance to, WRONG, Assyrian men never killed innocent women and children when they would run in to kurdish villages or rape women and children during any war with the moslems
***Excuse me...there were Assyrian soldiers in Vietnam, and you have no way of knowing what they did...I would venture to say they did the usual. Right now inncoent children and women are dying in Iraq...and may be killed some more...also carried out by Assyrian American soldiers...not to mention Assyrian American civilians. You have a noble fantasy about Assyrian men...you people still prefer to live that dream...even though our reality is about as low a thing as you could want...for the descendants of such a race.
.......We are known to be Noble Warriors, so instead of attacking the honour of them Warriors who died so that your foolish character would be alive now, do something positive.
***We were known for many things we are not now. We were known as followers of Ashur too...at a time when we were truly great. You are Christian now...followers of Christ, a Jew...not Ashur...and the damage this has done our people is all around for you to see. That you refuse to see it...prefering instead this soft focus fantasy memory of being noble and brave...is part of what makes us all insane...as if we live in another world altogether..and will live in that delusion till the last of us dies.
***I want us vital and relevant NOW...to learn to deal in the world as it is and not as you would wish it to be. It suits you to believe we are all noble and have been led off to slaughter...far more than the truth suits you...that we have become divided from our essential nature, and after that first division, have gone on dividing and dividing into varoius sub-sects till we have our own several churches and petty loyalties.
***No one died for me...they died for themselves. I donīt accept human sacrifice...Jesus did NOT die for me...Ashur LIVED for us.
i understand your career did not go the way you wanted to go, does not mean you have to take it out on the DEAD WHO DIED FOR YOU TO BE ALIVE NOW!!!! i dont think thats noble, do you?
***My career is doing excellently well thank you. It had to come to this eventually...it was in the cards. It is the fate of any Assyrian who comes to his people to be scorned and reviled...if he is any good. The mediocre are always welcome because we feel sorry for them...because we feel only pity for ourselves, as the eternal and wronged victim. I got what William Daniel got, but Iīm going to return what he couldnīt, and go where he wouldnīt. Do you think I wanted money that I came to Assyrians??? Would that strike you as a sound business plan? Iīve been told by many people to get out...to leave and go seek my fortune and fame elsewhere...and all because these leaders and patriots, such as yourself, want this Heritage to remain infantile so you can be assured of an easy place to strut your poor stuff...the poor stuff you donīt want to improve upon because then you would no longer have the comfort of being pathetic and an object of pity. You people do NOT overcome adversity...you cherish and make love to it...you dig and pick at your scabs each year and remind yourselves you have good reason to wail and whine...good reasons why no one should expect too much of you...good reasons why dances donīt start on time...good reasons why no one bothers to proof read a letter sent to the president of the country...good reasons why you canīt afford to hire a professional grant writer...good reasons why you wont apply to serious organizations for serious funds to do serious work...you always have Simele and various other diasters to fall back on because you are too damn insecure to put the past behind you and begin to act a little like people living in THIS century who have real work to do. You donīt even believe your own line...this is how great and noble people behave?
***I stayed in the community until the leaders drove me out...I stayed until they made enough mistakes so I can catch them all...so I might be able to convince the next bold leader of ours not to remove a young artistīs painting or he might get a lawsuit up his arse...let them find out the hard way what the value and uses of Art are...and what it means to really live in a Democracy...not a converted Fascist State...which we can see is what they would make of any Assyria.
****Iīm going now to an outside gallery...I always held off before...I am going because a Jew saw my Assyrian pieces and fell in love with them...and also because he thinks others will want to own them..."they are so unique". I will open in his new gallery the same week the Assyrian convention opens in Detroit...the one to which Atour and Janey Golani have invited every artist we have to show EXCEPT me...because my works have to be kept out...because my works screw up the "curve"...because I am an Assyrian who makes the rest of you look shabby by comparison. I am one of many we have...but the rest ran screaming in the night...as I did once...but never again. This time itīs your turn. You would like nothing more than to keep us reading these history books of yours that tell us to weep and wail...that we must remain backwards and hidden from view..and in your case it is true...you WOULD make a fool of yourself outside of here...but that doesnīt mean therefore that being Assyrian in the modern era has to be kept a foolish secret just so youīll have a place to feel "proud".
****And if you canīt catch my act at the gallery, you can see my sculpture at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco the night Narsai has his first annual fund raiser to benefit the AAS. It will cost you $250.00 per person to get in, but it will be the swankest affair any Assyrians ever saw anywhere, naturally youīll resent it, naturally youīd prefer a night at the Civic Club in Turlock where you can feel "at home" and know what it REALLY means to be a "proud Assyrian...because to you pride does indeed come easily...and you want it to stay an easy thing. Well we just raised the standrad fella...if you can make it, welcome...if not, the Civic Club and books by Aprim will always be there for you. There may even be more non-Assyrians than Assyrians there...and that is exactly what we need...to tell our story to OTHER people...that will be the beginning of the end for you...either that or it will be a real re-birth for you because youīll have to read better and write better and speak better and DO better because the whole world will be watching and THAT is exactly why Nimrod and Golani and Bejan wanted me out and gone...because we will bring attention to this Heritage, and they wont know where to hide their heads...and they can begin practising to hide their heads when they appear in court and repeat under oath the things they did and said...the usual Assyrian things we do in the dank basement clubs and back alleys we are used to occupying.
***My carrer is right on track...and will continue there until some Assyrian Christian puts a bullet in my head...for the greater glory of Jesus...what else. Maybe itīs time we had a secular martyr for a change.
-- panch
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