Armenia and the information war

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Armenia and the information war

That is a great idea and I encourage everyone to do the same. Need to put this b!tch in her place.

The difficulty is that "her place" is as a journalist of a world-famous newspaper, "yours place" is amongst the countless angry unknown on the internet.

Just came here to post this too. It's absolute crap. Do you guys want to draft an e-mail we can all send or should we go solo?

If you really want to help, all of you, then, really, just send nothing. I shudder at the thought of the sort of crap that could be sent.

You are all great experts at making suggestions about how to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. Maybe you should start to think about locking the door when the horse is still inside!

You (the collective Armenian you) seem to not have an understanding about how to approach the problem. For most of you, Azeris are vermin ((that opinion is expressed here often), you don't even recognise that the term "refugee" should be applied to Azeris from NK. So, in that mindset there is no place for an examination of how those Azeri refugees are exploited by Azerbaijan, how for almost two decades they have been deliberately left by Azerbaijan to live in misery to create precisely the effects recorded in this article. But if you had done your job, the world (and that journalist) would have been fully aware of all that in advance, and the resulting article would have had an entirely different slant to it. Obviously that journalist is not a particulartly intelligent or observant person (i.e. is a typical journalist) - if she were she would be questioning why those people are still living in squalor after two decades. People like her need to be spoon-fed truth in easy to swallow chunks,but it is not her fault if there is nobody doing the feeding. Don't blame the baby, blame the parents!

[Davo88]

Re: Armenia and the information war

The author responded to my e-mail, saying that she would talk to her editors. She also invited me to write a letter to the editor, which she says is sometimes the best way to draw attention to the other side of a story. Perhaps we can do that (with [email protected]).

[Federate]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Just came here to post this too. It's absolute crap. Do you guys want to draft an e-mail we can all send or should we go solo?

I think both. A common email should be out there for people who do not feel or know how to write a proper email, anyone wanna take a crack at writing the common email?

The difficulty is that "her place" is as a journalist of a world-famous newspaper, "yours place" is amongst the countless angry unknown on the internet.

Yes, and what she writes is intended for the "countless [angry] unknown on the Internet" and we're angry and we demand answers.

If you really want to help, all of you, then, really, just send nothing. I shudder at the thought of the sort of crap that could be sent.

You are all great experts at making suggestions about how to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. Maybe you should start to think about locking the door when the horse is still inside!

We want to lock the door but unfortunately, we expect too much from these "journalists" and no-names like this woman blindside us. We expect too much from the New York Times, Euronews and all the other organisations in their hiring process, thinking they hire intelligent writers given their reputable status.

You (the collective Armenian you) seem to not have an understanding about how to approach the problem. For most of you, Azeris are vermin ((that opinion is expressed here often), you don't even recognise that the term "refugee" should be applied to Azeris from NK. So, in that mindset there is no place for an examination of how those Azeri refugees are exploited by Azerbaijan, how for almost two decades they have been deliberately left by Azerbaijan to live in misery to create precisely the effects recorded in this article. But if you had done your job, the world (and that journalist) would have been fully aware of all that in advance, and the resulting article would have had an entirely different slant to it. Obviously that journalist is not a particulartly intelligent or observant person (i.e. is a typical journalist) - if she were she would be questioning why those people are still living in squalor after two decades. People like her need to be spoon-fed truth in easy to swallow chunks,but it is not her fault if there is nobody doing the feeding. Don't blame the baby, blame the parents!

That's not true. Armenians have long pointed out the fact that their "refugees" are living in tin cans while billions are made in petrodollars by the state. It has been repeated to death but who the fuk cares as long as BP is making money, right? We have mentioned too often that Armenia with all its problems has managed to at least provide housing for its refugees in new villages while at the same time trying to cope with the Spitak Earthquake. Just because we do not view the Azeris as refugees does not mean we do not criticise them on the issue. On the contrary, if we do not view them as refugees, then we have even more reason to bring up the point that they have not been settled into the population already. When we commonly bring up the point of the squalor in which they live in, we get the common answer that they don't want to settle them because they will be settled back in NK .

Can the state do more in exploiting this issue of them being exploited? Sure. I have long complained that the Armenian government does not do its best in combatting information warfare and seeking out justice when it is pretty much given to us on a platter, such as Julfa.

The author responded to my e-mail, saying that she would talk to her editors. She also invited me to write a letter to the editor, which she says is sometimes the best way to draw attention to the other side of a story. Perhaps we can do that (with [email protected]).

Good stuff Davo, if you still have your original composition you can just copy paste that to the [email protected] email with modifications obviously of talking to the editor now and not the "journalist".

[ninetoyadome]

Re: Armenia and the information war

The author responded to my e-mail, saying that she would talk to her editors. She also invited me to write a letter to the editor, which she says is sometimes the best way to draw attention to the other side of a story. Perhaps we can do that (with [email protected]).

ya i just got a response also, she said alot of people have wrote her an email about the article.

also a hilarious article

US Azerbaijanis raise Armenian mafia fraud with Congress
Wed 01 June 2011 07:05 GMT | 0:05 Local Time


The Azerbaijani Diaspora members in the US have started a new campaign by sending hundreds of letter to the Congress members and local media regarding the recent Medicare health insurance fraud by Armenian mafia.

“In May 2011, Arsen Bedzhanyan and Sargis Tadevosyan were arrested by US Secret Service and the West Virginia State Police in connection to Medicare fraud in West Virginia”, the letters inform.

“On February 16, 2011 nearly 100 criminals of Armenian Power gang in Los Angeles, CA, Miami, FL and Denver, CO, arresting 74 individuals on charges of racketeering, bank fraud schemes, identity theft, kidnappings and drug trafficking”.

According to the authors, the criminals have used credit card skimming tools and fraudulent checks to steal credit and debit card information and empty accounts of hundreds of customers of retail stores; conducted a mega-fraud scheme targeting bank accounts of elderly US citizens causing losses of over US $10 million.

“This is the third time in less than a year when Armenian-American criminal groups have been busted for defrauding the government, businesses and specifically elderly citizens. In October 2010, FBI, IRS and local law enforcement agencies arrested 52 ethnic Armenians across the US in an attempt of stealing $163 million from Medicaid”, the letters remind adding, “this is not the first case of fraud by Armenian gangsters in the US, nor is it the biggest. Just two years ago, in 2008, some 6 Armenians were indicted by the FBI on a US $2m fraud case. In 1999, we were all shocked to learn that Armenian criminals defrauded Medi-Cal (that’s California’s Medicaid) of US $1 billion. That’s one billion dollars! That’s by far the largest medical fraud case in the history of the world”.

“Nevertheless, we as a nation keep providing massive annual financial aid to Armenia and to the criminal regime in Nagorno-Karabakh. This must stop!” say the Azeri Diaspora members. “We should not allow Armenian criminals to easily come into the US and cheat us out of our money, whilst enjoying a safe-heaven back in Armenia, under the protection of the president of the country, who in turn takes our aid dollars and then ships weapons to kill our soldiers in Iraq”.

“As US taxpayers, we are very much concerned about fraud, racketeering and taking advantage of our elderly citizens and call on you to be wary about financial aid to Armenian government linked to Armenian fraudsters in US and ask you to increase the funding for our law enforcement agencies instead”.

APA

[TomServo]

Re: Armenia and the information war

I like how the caption says that the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave is "now populated by ethnic Armenians," as if it wasn't before.

Ellen Barry's regional area of expertise is Russia and her series on corruption within the Russian justice system (which won a Pulitzer Prize) is worth reading. This article, though, seems to have been conceived and written as some sort of human interest piece rather than an investigative story.

[Davo88]

Re: Armenia and the information war

You can now post comments related to the article here : http://community.nytimes.com/comment...zerbaijan.html

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Good job Guys, that's the way to do it. I am more than certain some Azeri was pulling her strings when she wrote that article. We have to be vigilant.

@Cat

Exactly what Federate said. The article is written in a way depicting Azeris as the only people who suffered during the war. Like Armenians weren't massacred and forcibly kicked out of Azerbaijan - a total disregard to the other side's suffering. Plus, she never connects the dots that the government specifically lets those people live in those kind of hell holes in order to propagandise their side, and show gullible reporters what kind of conditions their refugees are staying in. In reality, those people should be angry at the government for using them like that while making millions from oil.

[Federate]

Re: Armenia and the information war

New York Times’ Shameful Breach of Standards



In a page four article in Wednesday’s edition of New York Times, titled “‘Frozen Conflict’ Between Azerbaijan and Armenia Begins to Boil,” Moscow bureau chief Ellen Barry describes in detail makeshift and government-sanctioned sniper schools teaching Azeri youth the fine art of sniper fire to fight Nagorno-Karabakh.

In what can be described as a breach of simple journalistic standards, Barry provides a detailed account of Azeri “refugees” living in squalor and turning to the sniper schools to prepare for war against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Her story is peppered with official and person-on-the-street accounts of how war is the only option to resolving the Karabakh conflict.

It is ironic. After all it was Felicity Barringer of the New York Times who broke the news of the 1988 peaceful demonstrations in Armenia and Karabakh, prompted by Glasnost and Perestroika, that started what is now known as the “Karabakh conflict.” Her newspaper diligently chronicled the savage Azeri pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Shahumian and the resulting war that Barry now references in her disheveled piece and attempt at reporting.

Barry quotes a 34-year-old and a 15-year-old student, both of whom express their willingness—and readiness—to go to war and in one instance also talks of the young Azeris’ shame for living in squalor as the impetus for their military outlook.

It was also the New York Times that expressed outrage and condemnation at the Madrassas being operated in Pakistan that trained young Muslims to fight Osama bin-Laden’s Jihad against the West. Barry’s piece seems to endorse the Azeri belief that the only way out of the situation is to establish free sniper schools to teach the young to fight. One wonders how the same publication can have such divergent views on what is essentially the same approach.

The reporter also discusses the matter with Azerbaijan’s presidential adviser, Ali Hasanov, who tells Barry, “There is no guarantee that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia won’t start,” adding, “If necessary we are ready to give our lives for territorial integrity.”

An obvious question for a presidential aide perhaps would have been: why isn’t Baku spending all the riches it has amassed from oil and gas deals to provide better living conditions for these refugees, who Barry describes as “living along a dank, fetid hallway, on one floor of a former office building” with “three rough, foul-smelling holes in the concrete floor served as toilets for 21 families.”

Barry’s attempt to provide clarity of the international context of the conflict also echoes the Azeri cries that they have been left alone to fend for themselves.

“The United States, France and Russia do not do what they promised,” Barry quotes Hasanov. “America now thinks Afghanistan and Iraq are more important — and North Africa, and the missile defense shield in Europe — than such regional conflicts as Nagorno-Karabakh.”

There is no mention of the OSCE chairman’s appeal—which Azerbaijan unequivocally rejected—to both sides to withdraw their snipers from what is known as the “line of conflict.” No mention again of last week’s statement by president Obama, Sarkozy and Medvedev calling on the sides to finalize the so-called “basic principles” and condemned use of force in resolving the conflict. Nor, was there any mention of the Azeri threats to down civilian aircraft. The latter threat was even condemned by the most pro-Azeri US diplomat, Matthew Bryza.

The most incendiary part of Barry’s article is her conclusion where she quotes Shaxxx Ismailova, a 34-year-old student at the sniper school as saying: “We had a genocide, and no one helps us. Not America, not Russia.” The New York Times, which covered the Armenian Genocide as it was happening, should not allow such callous use of the word and must warn its bureau chiefs and reporters to be more sensitive in such matters.

The timing of the piece is also suspect. During a period when international attention has been focused on Karabakh, including a meeting by Armenia’s foreign minister with Hillary Clinton on the matter, the New York Times has mentioned the conflict in passing only once when reporting on Azerbaijan’s victory in the Eurovision 2011 song competition.

Could it be that Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov’s current visit to New York has promoted such a despicable piece in the New York Times? Or, has Azerbaijan’s $35,000-a-month contract with Patton, Boggs, LLC. to promote its interests in the US finally breached the most impenetrable walls of the Gray Lady?

Whatever the case, it is pieces such as Barry’s and those editors who approve their publication that might bring this “frozen conflict” to a “boil.”

http://asbarez.com/96267/new-york-times%E2%80%99-shameful-breach-of-standards/

[Mos]

Re: Armenia and the information war

^^^ Nice to see the quick response, we can't let these things go. We should demand NY Times make an article talking about the plight of Armenian refugees.

[Tigranakert]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Armenians send a protest message to “New York Times” newspaper
BY TIMES.AM AT 2 JUNE, 2011, 1:37 PM

A message is spread by Facebook social network, which informs about an anti-Armenian article published in New York Times on May 31. The article is named “Frozen Conflict Between Azerbaijan and Armenia Begins to Boil” and aims to present Azerbaijanis as victims, confirms Azerbaijani moral right to restart war against NK and “restore Azerbaijani territorial completeness”. The initiators offer Facebook users to send many messages to NY Times editorial and tell them truth about NK issue and Azerbaijan. Here is a text of message which is offered to be edited, changed somehow, may be shortened.

“Mr. Bill Keller,
I have read Ellen Barry’s recent article which caused me great frustration. Mrs. Barry’s biased approach in the article makes me think that the article was written under the influence of the Azerbaijani propaganda.

This article is mostly dedicated to the description of undesirable consequences for Azerbaijan that were caused as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. But the author is silent about the fact that it was Azerbaijan first to launch an aggressive war against Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as to organize the bombing of some border areas of Armenia itself. Moreover, both international and Soviet law did allow Nagorno-Karabakh to achieve its independence. The fundamental human rights of Karabakh Armenian population had been violated for decades, and the culmination of violations was the ethnic cleansings of late 1980s. The population of Karabakh had the right to exercise remedial secession, just as the Eritrea, East Bangladesh, East Timor, Kosovo, South Sudan and other cases.

There are also detailed sad stories of Azerbaijani refugees, but the author is tacit about Azerbaijan’s brutal policy towards its own population. Azerbaijan, unlike Armenia, views its refugees only as a tool of its policy. For many years refugees in Azerbaijan were not allowed to leave their tent camps as if they were kept in concentration camps.

Mrs. Barry repeats the official position of Azerbaijan and insists that the current framework of the OSCE Minsk Group negotiations have exhausted itself. But she is silent about the fact that the main barrier of progress in the negotiations is Azerbaijan’s destructive approach of failing the negotiation (incidentally she talks as if the international community is negotiating with Armenia (yet, the negotiations are between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with the participation of Nagorno-Karabakh, and mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs)). The point is that Azerbaijan has been poisoning its own population with Armenophobia and revanchism for about two decades, and now the government doesn’t know what to answer to the people of Azerbaijan, when the OSCE Minsk Group mediators insist that the status of Karabakh should be decided through a legally binding free expression of will of its people. Moreover, calls for a new aggression are repeatedly cited in the article, and the author treats those calls quite normally.

However, the OSCE Minsk Group mediators in their statements clearly point out that the resumption of war is unacceptable for the international community, that the settlement of the conflict should be based on a comprehensive application of the three basic principles: the prohibition of threat or use of force, self-determination and territorial integrity. Mediators also stress that all conflicting parties should prepare their people for peace and not for war. In fact, the citations of aggression used by the author in fact endorse the fact that the international mediators’ calls for peace are directed at Azerbaijan. Any use of force is clearly prohibited in international law, and this time the international community is determined to prevent the repetition of such actions by Azerbaijan.

But from the New York Times’ article from May 31 one gets the impression that it is natural that Azerbaijan is preparing for war, as if it is a party that has been treated unjustly.

Mr. Keller, I sincerely hope that your editorial would be more careful in printing such biased articles in the future. Azerbaijan spends millions of dollars for its PR campaign abroad. And I hope the New York Times’ esteemed reputation can not be marred by the petrol-dollars from the Caspian Sea.

Best Regards”

/Times.am/