Armenia and the information war

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

well Azerbaijan is a dictatorship with a state policy of Armenians = Fascists, so no surprise....

[Muhaha]

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

What was the story with Western Union?

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

This it the text of the Lisbon declaration:

"With our vision of a Euro-Atlantic area at peace, the persistence of protracted regional conflicts in South Caucasus and the Republic of Moldova continues to be a matter of great concern for the Alliance. We urge all parties to engage constructively and with reinforced political will in peaceful conflict resolution, and to respect the current negotiation formats. We call on them all to avoid steps that undermine regional security and stability. 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.”

I don't think one can say that NATO is heavily biased towards Azerbaijan from this text....I mean all countries including Russia have stated that they support Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, it's nothing new...

[Federate]

Re: Armenia and the information war

What was the story with Western Union?

Armenia banned Western Union from doing business in Armenia after it gave in to Azerbaijan pressure to stop servicing Artsakh. Check the first ever post in this thread here.

I don't think one can say that NATO is heavily biased towards Azerbaijan from this text....I mean all countries including Russia have stated that they support Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, it's nothing new...

The bolded part of your quote is half the problem. What comes next is more important:

“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.”

Bloody NATO dogs. Everyone from Serge Sargsyan to LTP has denounced NATO's statement and Azerbaijan is climaxing over it. This basically means that territorial integrity is the only thing we should take into consideration while solving the Artsakh issue. Mos, the entire world recognises everyone's territorial integrity. The difference is that OSCE Minsk Group members, including Russia, have also recognised at the same time the principle of national self-determination. Without the inclusion of this, there is no indepedent Artsakh.

NATO Summit Approves Declaration Denounced By Armenia

22.11.2010
Emil Danielyan, Sargis Harutyunyan

The leaders of NATO’s 28 member states singled out Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity as the guiding principle of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict’s resolution in a weekend declaration denounced by Armenia but welcomed in Azerbaijan.

A senior Azerbaijani official on Monday portrayed that as further proof that Armenia is an “aggressor state.” Leading Armenian opposition groups were also quick to pounce on what they called a serious diplomatic setback for Yerevan.

The wide-ranging declaration adopted at a NATO summit held in Lisbon on Saturday, says: “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.”

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian boycotted the summit in protest against this general reference to unresolved ethnic disputes in the former Soviet Union. His spokesman, Armen Arzumanian, warned on Friday that it will complicate international efforts to broker a peaceful solution to the Karabakh conflict.

Arzumanian argued that 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 non-use 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 OSCE Minsk Group.

NATO officials have still not reacted to Sarkisian’s dramatic move. Armenia was represented at the summit by Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian.

The two ministers attended only a session of the summit devoted to the situation in Afghanistan. Nalbandian did not mention Karabakh in his speech at that meeting.

The Azerbaijani government did not officially react to the Lisbon declaration. Still, the deputy executive secretary of the ruling Yeni Azerbaycan Party, Mubariz Gurbanli, hailed it as “quite significant.”

“The adoption of this document is an open message to circles infringing on Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, and it confirms that Armenia is an aggressor state,” Gurbanli told the APA news agency. He called it a “success for our diplomacy.”

Representatives of Armenia’s leading opposition forces likewise described the NATO declaration as a serious blow to the Armenian position on the Karabakh conflict. “The Armenian side failed to make sure that all three principles, notably the principle of self-determination, are included in this document,” said Vladimir Karapetian, the foreign policy spokesman for the Armenian National Congress (HAK).

“This means a serious change in NATO’s attitude to the conflict because in all its statements issued for over ten years, NATO had echoed the positions and approaches of the OSCE Minsk Group,” Karapetian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “Now NATO has its own approach and this could have very serious consequences for the conflict’s resolution.”

Giro Manoyan, a senior member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), said the declaration shows the Sarkisian administration has failed to boost Armenia’s standing in the West despite his policy of rapprochement with Turkey. “The fact is that that standing is not quite high because they just don’t listen to our views,” he told RFE/RL.

Manoyan added that Yerevan should retaliate by formally annulling the Western-backed Turkish-Armenian normalization protocols signed a year ago. “This is yet another occasion for Armenia to withdraw its signature from the protocols with Turkey so that they start treating us seriously in NATO,” he said.

A parliament deputy from Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) insisted, meanwhile, that the NATO support for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity is not a setback for Yerevan. Gagik Melikian argued that both the U.S. and France stand by the Minsk Group’s existing peace plan that upholds the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination.

“I don’t consider this a diplomatic defeat,” Melikian told a news conference on Saturday. “On the contrary, I consider this yet another important and positive step on the path to our diplomatic victory.”

The two opposition figures disagreed on practical implications of the NATO document. Manoyan suggested that it will not have a “fundamental impact” on the Karabakh peace process, while Karapetian predicted that Baku will toughen its stance ahead of the December 1-2 OSCE summit in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana.

The mediating powers and Russia in particular hope that Sarkisian and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev will bridge their differences over the peace formula proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs in time for the summit.

In an apparent effort to nudge the conflicting parties closer to a long-waited peace deal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hosted fresh talks between his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts in Moscow on Monday. Official sources in the three countries gave no details of the meeting.

Nalbandian and Azerbaijan’s Elmar Mammadyarov already had a brief conversation on the sidelines of the Lisbon summit.

http://www.azatutyun.am/content/article/2227376.html

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Russian ambassador to Azerbaijan has even publicly confirmed that the “agreement” reached in July between the Russian and Azerbaijani presidents (during Medvedev’s visit to Baku) in which Russia pledged to uphold Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity still remains in force.

Countries like Serbia and Moldova will also support Azerbaijan in this, since they have similar problems. Everybody wants to be cozy with Azerbaijan because they have oil and gas. During Kosovo war, everybody was preaching "self-determination" of the oppressed people, but of course people are hypocrites and only care about their economic interests.

[Muhaha]

Re: Armenia and the information war

NATO Summit Approves Declaration Denounced By Armenia

Wait, they all voted unanimously? The article sort of makes it sound like the U.S and France opted out, but I'm not sure.

[Federate]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Countries like Serbia and Moldova will also support Azerbaijan in this, since they have similar problems. Everybody wants to be cozy with Azerbaijan because they have oil and gas. During Kosovo war, everybody was preaching "self-determination" of the oppressed people, but of course people are hypocrites and only care about their economic interests.

Of course and they already have voted against us in UN resolution votes in the past. In the case of Moldova, its membership to GUAM also fuels its pro-Azerbaijan voting.

Wait, they all voted unanimously? The article sort of makes it sound like the U.S and France opted out, but I'm not sure.

What the article is saying regarding the U.S. and France is that they are basically being contradictory. Russia, U.S. and France are members of the OSCE Minsk Group tasked with being mediators to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two basic principles recognised by all three of them, that will presumably solve the conflict, are: a) the right for national self determination b) territorial integrity. France and the U.S. are both members of NATO and in this NATO statement, only one of two principles is being recognised as the path the solve the conflict.

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Of course and they already have voted against us in UN resolution votes in the past. In the case of Moldova, its membership to GUAM also fuels its pro-Azerbaijan voting

But can you really say moldova is anti-Armenian? It's not like they are voting based on the fact that they think Karabakh should be Azerbaijan, they are just doing it because they want their breakaway state back...

[Federate]

Re: Armenia and the information war

But can you really say moldova is anti-Armenian? It's not like they are voting based on the fact that they think Karabakh should be Azerbaijan, they are just doing it because they want their breakaway state back...

Nah you can't say Moldova's anti-Armenian. There are really only three anti-Armenian states in the world and those are Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan.

[londontsi]

Re: Armenia and the information war

http://www.mndaily.com/2010/11/22/u-could-face-lawsuit-over-list-unreliable-sources

Lawsuit brewing over U website warnings

A Turkish group threatened to sue after a U department called its site “unreliable.”

By Laura Sievert

The University of Minnesota has reached a tenuous agreement with a Turkish cultural group in the face of a potential lawsuit over its classification of the organization’s website as “unreliable.”

Until about a week ago, the University’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies included a box on its website classifying certain websites as untrustworthy sources on the history of 1915 Armenian genocide. The department removed its list of “unreliable” websites after receiving the draft of a complaint that could lead to a lawsuit.

The draft came from the Turkish Coalition of America, whose website, among others, was included in the list, which was visible to all students.

As a result, TCA, in collaboration with University first year Sinan Cingilli, began gathering the necessary information to file a claim against the University.

The two major grounds for the complaint, according to TCA’s local counsel Larry Frost, are the violation of the right to free speech and access to information and the right to due process, as TCA didn’t know how they were put on the “unreliable” list or why. They are also claiming defamation, or harm to TCA’s reputation.

“A public university has no business telling students in advance that you can’t use these websites,” Frost said.

Cingilli said he and TCA were pleased the University decided to take the list down. However, the claim may still move forward.

“At a state university, where, funnily enough, the motto is ‘Driven to Discover,’ they are basically saying to students that you are incapable of thinking critically,” Cingilli said.

University general counsel Mark Rotenberg said the list was taken down for academic reasons, not legal ones.

“As a legal matter we didn’t find anything defamatory or inconsistent with academic freedom in that little box,” he said. “There was no restriction on free speech.”

On Friday, the University sent a letter agreeing to remove the list. After reading the University’s letter, Bruce Fein, attorney for the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund said that there are some things the organization is still unhappy about.

For example, the letter said CHGS Director Bruno Chaouat had been planning to remove the box for a month before the complaint was sent. According to Cingilli, Chaouat had called those websites “scarlet letters” in a conversation Nov. 5, which was less than a month earlier.

Fein said he will talk with his clients before deciding whether — or how — to proceed with the claim. He is hoping to reach a decision by next week.

Rotenberg said he believes the websites were deemed “unreliable” because of their representation of the alleged Armenian genocide in 1915.

This is a highly controversial topic in which some claim that the Ottoman Empire executed approximately 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians. Others claim the Armenians were revolting against the Ottoman Empire, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million Ottoman Muslims.

TCA’s website clearly defends the Ottoman Empire and calls the traditional view of the conflict “one-sided.”

“Those sites were considered unreliable for students and shouldn’t be used by students when they are writing their papers and such,” Rotenberg said. “The Center [for Holocaust and Genocide Studies] gets to have its opinions about certain materials.”

Beginning in 2009, the Washington, D.C.-based organization began communicating with University President Bob Bruininks regarding the “unreliable” list by sending letters threatening a legal claim. These letters were not well received, Cingilli said. The University, he said, responded with a letter saying it had no intention of changing the website.

Fein and Frost speculated that donors to CHGS have had some say in the content of the website, which would be the reason for the department’s decision to determine what sources aren’t dependable.

Rotenberg said he didn’t know anything about that.

“The U[niversity] administration does not condone any coercion or influence peddling by a donor to an academic program to alter the academic view points of the students and scholars that work in the program.”