Posted by panch from pool0080.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.80) on Tuesday, September 03, 2002 at 8:38AM :
Now now pancho, who said i was speaking to you? i am speaking to the Assyrians out there who have not one drop of Assyrianism in them, I believe that Assyrianism is the only way, and i believe that if the nation does not have Assyrianism watered in to the souls of our Assyrians we wont do the work of Assyrianism.
I mean how can i Christian do the work of god if he has not the Holy Spirit upon him???
How can i Assyrian do the work of Assyrianism if he has not Assyrianism in him which comes from the holy spirit?
++++The reason that I'm being banned and deleted is because these guys feel compelled to let no post of mine go unanswered. They are afraid that to leave them that way indicates to people that I am "right" and there is no answer to be made. Since I post "so much", they exhaust themselves trying to say SOMETHING. When that gets too hard they complain to "Ross" Jatou and in order to make things easier on our historians and journalists and activists he merely waves his magic button and PRESTO...no more difficulties for them.
There's no use in pointing out that you can't do this in out in the world. This fellow Mark and Anu and Ankidu...all of them likely to be the same person, or ones who've written before under other names, are the champions of the moment...they have delegated themselves the task of answering everything I write, regardless of how little they have to say...or say to the point.
I could write down a recipe for chocolate fudge and get this for a response...
"panco, pancho,pancho...what's the matter, did I get to you lol. Do you think we are fooled by walnuts? What's the matter...can't stand almonds in your fudge hehehe lol. You are working for Arab fudge...you don't fool me lol."
This is how dissent is stifled. When people can't speak to an issue, they go for your family, they imply you must be a paid agent because they can't imagine themselves getting up at four in the morning to write...or coming back to it several times a day, in between other work. If you were to spend four years writing an opera...keeping yourself alive by waiting tables...or being a night clerk somewhere, living on a couch or in your car...you would be accused of being a fanatic, of being an agent of some Arab government...and all because people can't conceive of someone being so dedicated or moved that he or she would make such an effort...one that your critics could never imagine themselves or any sane person doing.
For me to have made this many Assyrian sculptures, when coupled with what they perceive to be my "anti-Assyrian" stance...especially my lack of interest in Christianity...makes them uncomfortable. How can it be, they ponder, that he hates Assyrians...yet has done so much work ? The answer must be...that I am an Arab agent??? Has to be because the alternative is too painful to bear...the alternative being that since I accept some responsibility for where we are...I also realize I have a responsibility to DO something about it. It is indeed much easier to claim total and complete and eternal "Victimhood". If nothing is your doing...and there isn't anything you ever did wrong, and there isn't anything you can ever do right...then you might feel justified in sitting back and DEMANDING the world finally do the right thing by you...and nothing you could do would make the slightest difference since you never did anything before that had the slightest bearing on what happened to you.
I am not the only one who says that Assyrians in Iraq made a big mistake aligning themselves with the Brits...of taking their weapons and wearing their uniforms and being used by them as a colonial police force to put down Iraqi dissatisfaction and increasing hatred and distruct of the British. At the time Simele happened, my grandfather and others warned Assyrians to lay low, to not "assert their National Questions". That doesn't excuse anything...it simply says that we made decisions that had an impact on events...that Simele didn't happen out of the blue.
That was back then...and in another hemisphere. We are here now, and have been for over a century. Simele has nothing to do with our experience over here...indeed the AANF was formed to do something about Simele. But what? What can we do over here about Simele, especially after all these years? Obviously the Federation hasn't "done" anything about it. Unless dancing and wiggling and jiggling are Assyrian political maneuvers.
What I fault us for is not learning how to function in America, how to work the system for our benefit...for driving away and suspecting all those Assyrians who could have made a difference, to make the world "safe" for the Assyrians whose idea of action is a LOT of crying.
And that hasn't changed. people still think the monuments are about me making money, or seeing my name in lights. They still regard it as an issue of one upmanship...that I am maligning THEM...that I am Bragging...that I am putting THEM down. This is how our "patriots" have always reacted to any call to excellence from us...they have responded by telling us about Simele and all the damage done to us for the last 2000 years...as if that excuses us.
It is "excuses" they deal in...that and evasion...and when all else fails its back at your family or accusing you of being a spy. If you drive out every Assyrian until only the addled and incompetant are left...you will have "unity". But what kind will it be? As it stands right now the activists we have and the lovers of Assyria can't do squat for Assyria...except remind us constantly of how bad things were in Simele, and still are in Iraq because a nun got killed. So?
If anything these are more reasons to begin to reverse the flow...to create positive expressions of what being Assyrian means...rather than wallowing in all our failures of the past. If we HAVE been marked for slaughter...or dying from neglect and boredom in the West...isn't it MORE imperative that we come together and DO something?
Note: That "we" is my mother and I...the "they" is at least two Assyrians who fit the bill...and there are plenty more than two.
-- panch
-- signature .