Armenia and the information war

[Federate]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Armenians should boycott this Russian company altogether to force them to either GTFO of Armenia or offer tours to Artsakh once more. Profits or giving in to Azerbaijani pressure, that should be their choice. I wish the government of Armenia caught up on these things and took action, like it did with Western Union a long time ago.
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Russian company stops organizing tours to Nagorno-Karabakh
19 November 2010 [11:20] - Today.Az
The Russian "Astravel" travel company has stopped organizing tours to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Azerbaijani embassy in the Russian Federation had informed that the Astravel Company, located in Moscow, organized a 14-day tour 'Golden Ring of Armenia', within which three-day trip was organized to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's press service said on Thursday.

The embassy of Azerbaijan appealed to the company's president Valery Loshxxxxsu in connection with this matter and explained that organizing trips to the occupied Azerbaijani territories is illegal.

Despite all sorts of pretexts of the Astravel Company, the embassy categorically stated that organizing trips to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan is unacceptable, and during such travels, the lives of the Russian citizens could be threatened.

As a result of work carried out by the embassy, Loshxxxxsu said that the travels to the occupied territories have been cancelled.


/Trend/

http://today.az/news/politics/76827.html

[ninetoyadome]

Re: Armenia and the information war

i dont know what these idiots are talking about, UNESCO accepted the nomination of “Symbolism and Craftsmanship of Khachkar – Armenian Cross-stone.”

Armenia's falsification attempts prevented in UNESCO
Sat 20 November 2010 05:41 GMT | -3:41 Local Time
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The 5th session of UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was held in Nairobi on November 15-19.
Foreign Ministry’s press service reported that the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity will be enriched by new elements. On this occasion, the Committee will examine nominations from 29 States, including Azerbaijan with its nomination of 'The Azerbaijani Carpet'. As a result of discussions and voting, Azerbaijan’s nomination of 'The Azerbaijani Carpet' was included in the List of UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Armenia’s next attempts of falsification were prevented at the session. Thus, Armenian delegation’s nomination on carpets was discussed. The nomination reflected untrue information contrary to the interests of Azerbaijan.

Territorial claims were put forward, Nagorno Karabakh was presented as an independent state and it was claimed as if Khachkars belonged only to Armenian people in the headline. As a result of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s immediate interference in the issue Armenia’s next attempts of falsification were prevented.

APA


also this guy is hilarious:
Sargsyan's bellicose rhetoric just 'senseless sound'
Sat 20 November 2010 05:59 GMT | -3:59 Local Time
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Bayram Safarov
Head of the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno Karabakh Bayram Safarov voiced his attitude to the bellicose rhetoric recently voiced in Armenia.
'I would recommend our journalists not to pay attention to the bellicose statements of Serzh Sargsyan since this is a senseless sound and they do not mean anything. Army is at the verge of collapse in Armenia, they have no modern technique, ammunitions and in order to keep the army from the complete collapse, he takes the bellicose rhetoric. Threats are the prerogative of a weak person.(So he basically called aliyev a weak person)

He is frightened with the growing strength of the Azerbaijani army, therefore, he is threatening. Sargsyan understands well that Armenia is unable to resist the Azerbaijani army in both quality and quantity', Safarov said.

1 news.az

[londontsi]

Re: Armenia and the information war

http://www.rferl.org/content/Armenian_President_To_Skip_NATO_Summit_In_Protest/2225244.html

Armenian President Skips NATO Summit In Protest

YEREVAN -- President Serzh Sarkisian has announced that he will boycott the NATO summit in Lisbon because of the alliance's plans to uphold the principle of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports.

Sarkisian's spokesman, Armen Arzumanian, said in a statement that a draft resolution due to be adopted at the weekend summit in Portugal calls for solutions to the ethnic disputes in the South Caucasus reflecting only on the principle of territorial integrity.

The statement warned that this "unacceptable" wording would complicate the Karabakh peace process "especially against the backdrop of the recent unprecedented rise in Azerbaijan's military spending and its leaders' Armenophobic rhetoric."

"Given this concern, the president of the Republic of Armenia has decided not to depart to Lisbon," he said, adding that Armenia will be represented at the summit by its defense and foreign ministers.

NATO did not immediately react to the move. The draft resolution that Arzumanain cited and strongly opposed has not been made publicly available.

The United States and another key NATO member, France, advocate a Karabakh settlement based on territorial integrity and two other internationally recognized principles: peoples' right to self-determination and the nonuse of force.

A combination of these principles is at the heart of a framework peace accord put forward by the U.S., Russian, and French co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Minsk Group.

Earlier this year, the mediators urged the conflicting parties to refrain from a selective interpretation of the elements of the proposed settlement.

Sarkisian was invited to the NATO summit along with the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, and other partner states.

Speaking in Yerevan in September, NATO Special Representative to the South Caucasus Robert Simmons portrayed that invitation as a further sign of Armenia's growing ties with the Western alliance. Simmons singled out Armenian participation in the NATO-led multinational force in Afghanistan.

Arzumanian said in the statement that Yerevan remains committed to stepping up cooperation with NATO and considers that one of the "components" of its national security strategy.

"We highly appreciate NATO's contribution to the process of reforming the Armenian armed forces," he said.

But he added that Armenia cannot accept "generalized formulations" relating to different regional conflicts.

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

I'm interested to see what NATO passes over the weekend regarding Karabakh.

[londontsi]

Re: Armenia and the information war

I'm interested to see what NATO passes over the weekend regarding Karabakh.

I am more interested to see which countries are the initiators of the draft. Cannot believe it to be just Turkey.

Whatever happens, from the preliminary work it appears to be negative for Armenia.

The facts are you could fill libraries with “passed” resolutions.

The reality is “it takes two to tango”.

[ninetoyadome]

Re: Armenia and the information war

ive noticed azeris get there news about Armenia from http://armtoday.info/.
what kind of website is this? it seems like a stupid website.

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

WOW! look at these two links. Azeris stole Armenian carpet as their own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Armenia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijani_rug

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Why are you lying through your teeth?

Simply because you decided that machine-cut khachkars are no longer considered "khachkars," it doesn't make it so. Although I agree most of them are not as beautiful as ancient ones, they are still khachkars, and no other nation makes them. In ancient times, they made khachkars as a religious ritual, and used stone only. Today, it's evolved into a unique cultural/traditional form of art made from various materials (stone, wood, glass, etc.), and is part of the essence of our identity as Armenians. If you don't like machine-made khachkars, then you can go ahead and look at modern hand-made khackars (these as masterpieces today as well). People still carve Khachkars every day in Armenia. One of my relatives in Armenia was a khachkar carver himself. Also, don't forget that khachkars are still used for their original purpose as gravestones in Armenia. So I'm curious to find out where you're pulling this bull xxxx that Khachkars are an extinct form of art.

The part where you fail is that you dismiss non-mainstream traditional practices as "extinct." Consider martial arts in Eastern Asia. Modern culture overwhelms it, but it's still widely practiced, and is far from being an "extinct culture." Initially, in ancient times, it was used for military reasons, today, it's for self-defense, hobby and health. The purpose of it changed, the way it is being practiced changed, its look changed, but it's still martial arts! Heck, there still are Samurais to this day in Japan! Simply because modernized culture overwhelms more remote, ancient traditional cultural practices it doesn't mean that they are extinct. You can consider them extinct if you want, but logic says that everything, from biology to cultural traditions evolve and modernize. Dreamcatchers are still made, lyres are still played, Strabo is still read, and Khachkars are still made!

You seen to have such a complete ignorance of your own culture that it is hard to know where to begin.

There are no Samurais in today's Japan - there may be role-playing Japanese who for leisure purposes dress as samurai did, and know (from third-hand sources like books) a lot about samurai - but they are NOT Samurai (any more than the robed individuals who parade around Stonehenge each June are real druids).

Similarly, nothing that is produced in Armenia today can count as a real khachkar. The culture that produced real kachkars is dead. What is produced today is nothing more than ugly pastiches or lifeless copies. As for khatckars being used as gravestones - go to any old Armenian graveyard and what you will see is a pile of smashed-up real medieval khachkars that have been cleared away for modern graves that always consist of large rectangular plots headed by huge stone slabs of shinny granite enblazoned with photos of the dead.

BTW, I do love how you exceed my existing stereotype of you. I bet you are the sort who hangs fake samurai swords on your wall, ninja-filled dvds, and has "Art of War" on your meagre bookshelf.

[ninetoyadome]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Georgia Declares NATO Summit a Success While Armenia Boycotts
November 21, 2010 - 11:42am, by Joshua Kucera

While most of the headlines from the just-concluded NATO summit in Lisbon have focused on the news that the alliance would remain in Afghanistan through 2014, and probably longer, behind the scenes there was plenty of action on the Eurasia front, as well.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili went to the summit, and got a much-coveted meeting with his U.S. counterpart, Barack Obama, and afterwards he took great pains to emphasize how special and unique the meeting was (via Civil.ge):

“I am very satisfied with this meeting,” Saakashvili told a group of Georgian journalists in Lisbon after meeting with President Obama late on November 19 evening. “As you know this was President Obama’s only meeting here at NATO summit, apart his meetings with [Afghan] President Karzai and with the hosts [referring to Portuguese leaders] – and you know that Afghanistan tops the agenda of this summit; actually he had no other meetings here except of these ones. Of course this is already in itself an important message.”

The White House also notes that Obama met with Turkish President Abdullah Gul. And the Kazakhstan state news agency Kazinform says that its president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, also met with Obama, but no one else, including the White House, seems to be reporting that.

The Georgian government also announced it was adding a bit to its contingent of troops in Afghanistan, by sending 20 trainers for the Afghan National Army. And it praised the joint communique issued by the summit participants for reiterating its support for Georgian membership in NATO. (The title of the email I got was "Georgia 'Will Become a Member of NATO,' Declares NATO As Lisbon Summit Concludes.")

That communique, however, caused some consternation in Yerevan, for declaring its support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan (among other states) and not mentioning self-determination:

We remain committed in our support of the territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova, and will also continue to support efforts towards a peaceful settlement of these regional conflicts, taking into account these principles.

Translated into the context of Nagorno Karabakh, of course, this would mean that it should belong to Azerbaijan, not the Armenians who exercise de facto control there. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, aware that NATO was going to make that statement, stayed away from the summit in protest. It seems that the statement was not particularly directed at Armenia: One member of the presidential party says it seems to have been put there by Georgia, and Sargsyan's office's statement just warned that "generalized formulations" of the various Caucasus conflicts were "unacceptable."

But the joint communique from the 2008 summit used exactly the same language with respect to Armenia, so one has to wonder what has changed in Yerevan that they decided they needed to make this move.

The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, did go to Lisbon, but aside from Nazarbayev, no other Central Asian leaders appear to have.

The most talked-about Eurasia-related issues leading up to the summit -- Turkey's participation in the NATO missile defense system, and NATO's own "reset" with Russia, unfolded without drama.

NATO and Russia announced a new "strategic partnership," and Turkey got its way in regard to the proposed NATO missile defense system, and Iran was not mentioned as the target of the system, thus not forcing Ankara to choose between its NATO ties and its improving relations with Tehran. But that does not end the discussion on Turkey's participation in the shield, and Ankara is making some demands on control of the system. Reports Hurriyet:

“Turkey was asking to be part of the command system especially on matters directly concerning Turkey,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said.

Ankara seeks to have NATO’s İzmir headquarters designated as the missile-defense command center instead of Germany’s Ramstein base, as the United States has insisted. Turkey’s good relations with countries such as Iran and Syria – both believed to be developing nuclear weapons – will help reduce the tension between the alliance and these countries, Ankara has argued.

NATO had planned to close the İzmir base as part of a restructuring program of its operational headquarters and command centers, but Turkish officials want it to remain open in order to retain Ankara’s influence within the alliance.

To me, the most intriguing bit of news from a not-very-newsworthy summit is Armenia's move. Armenia's relations with NATO countries have never been especially tight, and it certainly seems possible to read too much into Sargsyan's boycott, but they seemed to be intent on making a statement by it. Are they just trying to call attention to the issue, or was it a rebuke directly aimed at NATO? Any ideas?

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62416

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

The thing is Azerbaijan has more to offer to NATO than Armenia. Serzh just wanted to make a statement with this, and bring attention to it, in my opinion. I don't think though this will hamper Armenia-NATO cooperation.