Speaker 1: Calls media.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here today.
Speaker 2: It's me James and I'm joined by Nevdon jam Gochian.
Speaker 2: We're here to talk about Azerbaijan, Armenia and the increasingly
Speaker 2: genocidal rhetoric from Azerbaijan. But I want to start off nevdone.
Speaker 2: We're talking about COP twenty twenty four. I guess can
Speaker 2: you explain I think people will be sort of somewhat
Speaker 2: familiar with these series of climate conferences, but this one
Speaker 2: was held in Azerbaijan, Right, and can you explain a
Speaker 2: little bit about you've specialized in like these greenwashing, sports washing,
Speaker 2: various other sort of forms of laundering legitimacy. Right, I'd
Speaker 2: love for you to start off there and explain how
Speaker 2: this particular conference was used as a means of laundering
Speaker 2: legitimacy for what is it like a genocidal project.
Speaker 3: COP twenty nine, which was just concluded in Azerbaijan, is
Speaker 3: the deadly series and vital conversation about climate in the
Speaker 3: United Nations, which we absolutely need to have. But from
Speaker 3: the beginning it was a clown show. And the way Azerbaijan,
Speaker 3: a Petra dictatorship was able to proture this for themselves
Speaker 3: was at COP twenty eight, which was held in Dubai,
Speaker 3: another questionable location for a climate conference, where they had
Speaker 3: a pavilion, as reported by Political EU, where they had
Speaker 3: a giant advertisement that said Carabach is the first place
Speaker 3: to achieve net zero emissions in Azerbaijan, and that was
Speaker 3: one part of them getting the bid for COP twenty nine.
Speaker 3: And the way Zerbaijan was able to achieve net zero
Speaker 3: emissions in this particular location was they committed a genocide
Speaker 3: against all the people. If there's no people, there's no
Speaker 3: climate emissions. And that's probably not even true that it's
Speaker 3: a net zero emissions because they've engaged in so much
Speaker 3: of the eradication of any trace of Armenians in this
Speaker 3: place that Armenians been living in for at least two thousand,
Speaker 3: five hundred years. Destruction of buildings, of course is one
Speaker 3: of the huge source of pollution, and they've they've raised
Speaker 3: something like four cemeteries, thousands of the monuments, four churches
Speaker 3: have amolished, entire neighborhoods have been raised historical neighborhood So
Speaker 3: it's probably not even that zero, but that was their
Speaker 3: advertising claim. To get the bid. The top twenty nine
Speaker 3: was originally supposed to be in Europe, but Russia was
Speaker 3: vetoing every European bid, and Armenia, who Azerbaijan is currently
Speaker 3: occupying two hundred and fifteen kilometers of Armenian territory, was
Speaker 3: blocking Azerbaijan till Azerbaijan offered to give up thirty two
Speaker 3: Armenian hostages. So we've got a clean side, and then
Speaker 3: we've got a gangster hobstage situation, which they did. They
Speaker 3: gave up thirty two members of the Armenian military, and
Speaker 3: they made Armenia give up two other Bajigans that were
Speaker 3: reheld by Armenia because they had gone into Armenia and
Speaker 3: killed a local security guard trying to steal his car.
Speaker 3: They probably were lost and they killed this guy and
Speaker 3: they were trying to escape, but then just one of
Speaker 3: them had been sent to life imprisonment. But that's what
Speaker 3: Armenia gave up in exchange.
Speaker 4: To allow this climate conference to happen.
Speaker 3: That's correct.
Speaker 2: So let's stand back from this climate conference right like
Speaker 2: in this I think it's a really interesting place to start.
Speaker 2: The site of our genocide is a net zero area
Speaker 2: and it's a very bleak vision of the sort of
Speaker 2: greenwashing future. Let's expand a little bit of the history
Speaker 2: of the conflict between these two countries and also prepp
Speaker 2: more broadly. I think people will probably be familiar with
Speaker 2: the Armenian genocide if they've listened to this show, but
Speaker 2: of Armenian people as a subject of discrimination and hatred
Speaker 2: for centuries.
Speaker 3: Right, well, you know, I mean, Armenians are one of
Speaker 3: the ancient people of that area, Greeks, Jews, Persians, They're
Speaker 3: one of the people that have kind of stuck it
Speaker 3: out for a long time in that neighborhood. The Turkic
Speaker 3: people are more recent visitors to the neighborhood. And there's
Speaker 3: nothing wrong with migration of people, but there's something about
Speaker 3: populations that have been there for a long time that
Speaker 3: really strikes a nerve. If we want to be very
Speaker 3: mild about it, with the Turkic people, Turkey and Azerbaijan
Speaker 3: in the sense that they've been engaged in a policy
Speaker 3: of destroying any remnants of Armenians, including physical people, for
Speaker 3: least in eighteen eighties. They've been making them second class
Speaker 3: citizens since they came in in the Ottoman Empire. There's
Speaker 3: this myth of the a multicultural society, which is interesting
Speaker 3: Azerbaijan is also trying to promote. But it really was
Speaker 3: a second class situation where the minorities in the Ottoman
Speaker 3: Empire had a lot of extra taxes and duties and
Speaker 3: persecution than other people in the area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's talk about this this area then, specifically
Speaker 2: this area which would be called depending on who you asked,
Speaker 2: art Zach or Nagna Krabac, Right, I think probably it did.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I haven't looked on Wikipedia, but
Speaker 2: like what would the more commonly used terms for people
Speaker 2: wanting to look it up right in American English?
Speaker 4: But let's explain why there.
Speaker 2: Is a conflict in this area and then what has
Speaker 2: happened since I guess we can go from like the
Speaker 2: fall of the Soviet Union would be a place to start.
Speaker 3: Or I mean we talked about earlier. That's the tough
Speaker 3: thing about talking to rannions, like where I would start
Speaker 3: with the sixth century and the fall of the king
Speaker 3: in Maratu. Okay, But I guess we don't have that
Speaker 3: much time. So basically, and I do have to put
Speaker 3: this in there because there's this big Azerbaijani narrative that
Speaker 3: Armenians are effective people, they're effective presence, and I'll deal
Speaker 3: with that in a little bit. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 3: it's just been recorded by Greek. I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: know why I should have to prove our existence, but
Speaker 3: we do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, if record to history that it's where the
Speaker 3: Armedian alphabet was unvented. These people have been indigenous to
Speaker 3: the region for thousands of years. They've got a deep
Speaker 3: connection with the land fill. The Soviet unions fast forward
Speaker 3: there it had been under the territory of the Azerbaijani SSR,
Speaker 3: as in a autonomous oblast as they called it. It
Speaker 3: had been given to the Azerbaijani SSR because of Stalin,
Speaker 3: who was the Commissioner of Minorities. Colin has this big
Speaker 3: project to divide the people, the minorities in the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union to fight each other, which is ramped up in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties when the Soviets start in ing fake history
Speaker 3: to pit people against each other, which is wild, but
Speaker 3: Soviet Union is crumbling. The people of Artsak, which is
Speaker 3: the Armeni indigenous name Nagaro Karaba, is generally acceptable as well.
Speaker 3: That's that would be the colonial name or the name
Speaker 3: that the Azeris called the region. They are fed up
Speaker 3: with not being able to learn their language because of Azerbaijan.
Speaker 3: They're fed up with not being able to have any
Speaker 3: of the rights as Soviet citizens because the father of
Speaker 3: the current dictator of Azerbaijan was ruining Azerbaijan since nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine, and his policy was to try to get
Speaker 3: as many Armenians to move out of the region as possible.
Speaker 3: So they're fed up with this and they're like, okay, enough,
Speaker 3: they legally seceed from the Soviet Union. It's allowed in
Speaker 3: the constitution, which of course infuriates that Azerbaijani SSR. You know.
Speaker 3: So there's a bunch of conflicts. There's the pogroms that
Speaker 3: happen against Armenians and cities of Baku and Ungate, and
Speaker 3: at which point they seceed fully from the Soviet Union,
Speaker 3: one of the first areas to do so. In nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety one. They actually left the Soviet Union before Azerbaijan.
Speaker 3: Azerbaijan with the Soviet Union's troops in Bay there's this
Speaker 3: bloody mess it's called Operation Ring where they're killing Armenians
Speaker 3: in the area. There's a war that erupts when everybody seceedes.
Speaker 3: Armenians in Artsak get the upper hand due to they
Speaker 3: really cared about it and also probably because of racism
Speaker 3: within the Soviet Union where they trained Armenians a little
Speaker 3: bit better than they did Azeris. It's a humiliating defeat
Speaker 3: for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijean is pushed back. Armenian sees about nine
Speaker 3: percent of Azerbaijani territory beyond Artsak, and that was a
Speaker 3: stasis until twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah really yeah, sort of thirty years of right, but
Speaker 2: it was always disputed right. This area was as we
Speaker 2: don't continue to lay claim to the ad Tuk region.
Speaker 4: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: For some reason, it was never recognized by the UN
Speaker 3: as being a real country, similar to some other places.
Speaker 3: Why that is is confusing to me, because they did
Speaker 3: leave earlier than anybody else. It is an ethnic minority
Speaker 3: that chose to leave the area, but it was they
Speaker 3: weren't considered legitimate by the UN. By Azerbaijan, and secondarily,
Speaker 3: we have this brutal dictatorship that's held together by ethnic hatred. Really,
Speaker 3: I cannot overstate how terrible the Alif regime is in Azerbaijan.
Speaker 3: But you know, Urmeni forces committed at least one war
Speaker 3: crime that I'm aware of during that time in the
Speaker 3: place go Kolzoli where they killed one hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: to six hundred Azari civilians. And they've used this event
Speaker 3: and I think one other, to really hold their country
Speaker 3: together in this pit of broath of it think hatred.
Speaker 3: So not until twenty twenty does that really call last
Speaker 3: do they become strong as a petro state to take
Speaker 3: back large portions of the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talking of taking back, I'm gonna have to take
Speaker 2: back thirty seconds of everyone's time for an advertising break here,
Speaker 2: So let's do that and we'll come right back.
Speaker 4: All right, we're back.
Speaker 2: One thing I think that it might be illustrative to
Speaker 2: hear is that, like in the first Adzakh War, Turkish
Speaker 2: I guess it regulars or mercenaries or and what you
Speaker 2: want to call them, people associated with the gray Wolves
Speaker 2: fought on the side of Azubijan. Right and keen history
Speaker 2: understanders wonder that there is some history of anti Armenian
Speaker 2: sentiment among the gray Wolves and then indeed in Turkey
Speaker 2: as a country.
Speaker 4: So preps.
Speaker 2: This is a good point to talk about the international
Speaker 2: involvement here, because I think it's very misleading to do this.
Speaker 2: As we're seeing in Syria right now, people want to
Speaker 2: divide the world into blocks, right with like sort of
Speaker 2: this sort of Cold War narrative that we have of
Speaker 2: Russian interests in US interests, And I think this is
Speaker 2: an excellent example of why that is not necessarily a
Speaker 2: great way to perceive the world. So, can you explain
Speaker 2: the international involvement in artsak and in this ongoing conflict
Speaker 2: which we'll get to it beginning again in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: I think in a second.
Speaker 3: In addition to Turkish forces being used in that twenty
Speaker 3: twenty war, which I guess we'll have to get into
Speaker 3: a little bit. Yeah, there, Syrian mercenaries were used as well.
Speaker 3: They were acuted, they were put on the front lines.
Speaker 3: It's kind of candid fodder. They're given something like one
Speaker 3: hundred dollars bonus that they beheaded a civilian, a two
Speaker 3: hundred dollars bonus that they beheaded in Armenian soldier there.
Speaker 3: But of course Israel is the primary supplier of Azeri
Speaker 3: weapons in weaponry on so far to test some of
Speaker 3: their drones on manned Armenian outposts early on before the
Speaker 3: war started. It's fair to say that Azerbaijan could not
Speaker 3: have been so successful without the aid of their ally, Israel.
Speaker 3: Israel has been deeply involved in Azerbijan for a long time.
Speaker 3: They use Azerbaijan as a listening post against Iran. Israel
Speaker 3: stages raids from Azerbaijan on Iran and has to do
Speaker 3: with the ethnic minority in Iran. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: Azari's down there. Israel get something like forty percent of
Speaker 3: its oil from Azerbaijan. Right after the Palestinian genocide started,
Speaker 3: Israel awarded two contracts to the state oil company SOCAR
Speaker 3: in Azerbaijan. It's right adjacent to the Palestinian gas field
Speaker 3: and the Lebanon oil field to SOCAR to explore. It
Speaker 3: cannot be overstated how complicit these two groups are with
Speaker 3: each other. They really really need each other in the region.
Speaker 3: In the United States also liked Azerbaijan as well. They
Speaker 3: see it as a friendly Muslim country bulark against Iran
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they also have some Turkish drones. Is
Speaker 2: that right the Bajakar y, Yes, absolutely, So let's talk
Speaker 2: about that twenty twenty war, because that was a war
Speaker 2: that relied heavily on these drones, right, some major means
Speaker 2: of destroying Armenian armor and pushing that offensive. So what
Speaker 2: happened in twenty twenty along this disputed border, Well, you.
Speaker 3: Know, it's called mountainous Karaba. It's an area that's great
Speaker 3: defensively if you're fighting in a pre drone world. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know, as you've discovered your Kurdish friends, the
Speaker 3: drones are amazingly destructive against people hiding in caves, which
Speaker 3: is what the Armenian response had been. Armenians had been
Speaker 3: a bit lazy. They've been relying on Russian tanks and weaponry,
Speaker 3: Whereazerbaijan's is buying from Israel, buying from all, you know, many, many,
Speaker 3: just different sources, which reflects the wealth of Azerbaijan, of course.
Speaker 3: So in twenty twenty, there's some indication that Alif, the
Speaker 3: dictator of Azebaijan, had been planning US for a while.
Speaker 3: He had this playbook called Operation Aszeri Smile twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: The troops move in, they encounter more resistance than they thought,
Speaker 3: and they get most of the Armenian held territory of
Speaker 3: Nigardo Karaba back. They're stopped at the last minute, probably
Speaker 3: by Russian intervention. At this time. The Armenia was a
Speaker 3: member of the Russian Alliance at that time, which they're
Speaker 3: leaving just because it's the Russia has failed to live
Speaker 3: up to its treaty obligations anyway, and it left a
Speaker 3: kind of a skeletal state of Artak left, which was
Speaker 3: only supplied by this one road called the Latchin Corridor,
Speaker 3: that was only one road from Armenia to supply the
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty some thousand Armenians who lived in
Speaker 3: Artzok left, which brings us to twenty twenty four, twenty three.
Speaker 4: Twenty three or yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you have this situation where we now have
Speaker 2: this massive area that's I guess occupied a lot of people.
Speaker 2: People began leaving at that time right through that latching Corridor,
Speaker 2: like people didn't feel like they could safely remain there.
Speaker 3: I mean, the indigenous people of art Sooc have this
Speaker 3: profound relationship with the land and the people. I am
Speaker 3: an icon painter, and I was talking to my priest
Speaker 3: and he was comparing the people there to the elves
Speaker 3: and the lord of the ring. You know, they whistle
Speaker 3: to the birds. You know, they've just been living with
Speaker 3: the land for a long time. So there was a drade,
Speaker 3: but it's not as big as you would have fought,
Speaker 3: just because there's this intense millennia old connection with the
Speaker 3: places of Artsock. So what Azerbaijohn did, and this is
Speaker 3: I think unprecedented, is they had a fake ecological protest.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that stopped the Lachin Corridor from supplying food
Speaker 3: and medicine to the people of Artsac. So they starved
Speaker 3: those people, They denied the medicine, people had miscarriages as
Speaker 3: areas were firing at farmers in the field that were
Speaker 3: trying to collect food. And that went on for nine months.
Speaker 3: And what stopped what's oether by John claimed it was
Speaker 3: a group of ecological protesters who were stopping trucks of
Speaker 3: food coming into Artsack for any any reason, which you
Speaker 3: know is enough of the smoke screen for the Western
Speaker 3: world to really throw up its hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fascinating. So they literally have a blockade of these protesters.
Speaker 3: These protesters are blocked it. There'sn't The Russian troops that
Speaker 3: were the peace coopers refused to disperse these protesters. They
Speaker 3: were these old appraching kind of looking people wearing fur coats.
Speaker 3: They were identified on social media as actually being members
Speaker 3: of the Zari military, and they had these printed signs
Speaker 3: that said things like protect nature, stop pollutionsic wildly generic things. Ostensibly,
Speaker 3: they are against the gold mining operations in Artsk, which
Speaker 3: is nuts because a protest is not allowed. And Azerbaijan
Speaker 3: and THEI there had been an actual protest against a
Speaker 3: real gold mine that was owned by the daughters of
Speaker 3: the dictator and they were brutally shut down, you know before,
Speaker 3: So anybody who was paying any kind of attention to
Speaker 3: this knew that it was fictive. But I think the
Speaker 3: EU in particular needing enough of the smoke screen not
Speaker 3: to support these people. EU. Of course it's getting its
Speaker 3: gas through Azerbaijan, Yeah, because they've said they don't want
Speaker 3: it from Russia. But Russia's just feeding its gas to Azerbaijan,
Speaker 3: and then Azerbaijean is selling it's Azerbaijani gas to the EU.
Speaker 3: So they were just trying to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we've just created a pass through and like
Speaker 2: someone who can live off that rentier income, so let's
Speaker 2: go to twenty twenty three. Okay, what do we see
Speaker 2: happening in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: So the eco protesters they kind of run their course
Speaker 3: and then there's a lightning operation art sucks attacked positions overrun.
Speaker 3: There's this massive exodus of people, people who have to
Speaker 3: leave their houses immediately. The road is blocked. People are
Speaker 3: dying on this road on the way out, fighting each other,
Speaker 3: you know, just to leave their houses. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: Azerbaijan has said, sure, you know, our Meetians can come back.
Speaker 3: We're just taking back a territory. You live here, you
Speaker 3: can do that. But when Armenians did, there's this one
Speaker 3: case of a sixty nine year old farmer who went
Speaker 3: back to get his possessions. Every troops cut off his
Speaker 3: head Jesus. They put it on a dead pig, and
Speaker 3: they put all those images on social media. They raped
Speaker 3: and tortured anybody that they could find left behind, and
Speaker 3: they turned it into memes on telegrams, stickers that were
Speaker 3: you know, something like down like twenty thousand times in
Speaker 3: the five days that were being monitored for this. So
Speaker 3: there was absolutely no question that people could stay behind. Yeah. Zero, Yeah,
Speaker 3: So there's no Armenians left, and so there's literally been
Speaker 3: daily ritual that's been going on for a thousand, seven
Speaker 3: hundred years that doesn't go on anymore, and there's a
Speaker 3: tragedy in that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's been lost.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, it's hard to quantify the like you know
Speaker 2: the meaning of that loss. I think, especially for folks
Speaker 2: who aren't familiar with people and their culture and like
Speaker 2: that connection to these things. Talking of quantifying things, I
Speaker 2: need to look at the amount of time we got
Speaker 2: here and pivot again to advertisements.
Speaker 4: And we're back. So what we see.
Speaker 2: In odds, especially in twenty twenty three, is a project
Speaker 2: of ethnic cleansing, right, genocidal violence, whatever however you wish
Speaker 2: to phrase it. I mean, ethnic cleansing is not a
Speaker 2: term that has really like a definition in natural law.
Speaker 2: Genocide does often very much like in this incidence, I'm
Speaker 2: using them to mean one and the same thing, the
Speaker 2: removal of people, either through killing them or forcing them
Speaker 2: to leave or starving them.
Speaker 3: The International Association Genocide Scholars the Lumpkin Institute. Luis Moreno
Speaker 3: Campo is a founding prosecutor of the ICC. You on
Speaker 3: Your RESTR. Mendez a special advisor to the second General
Speaker 3: on genocide prevention. They all call it genocide, so we
Speaker 3: can call it that, Yeah, we can call it really safe. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there have.
Speaker 2: Been many genocide of products in history. Like what is
Speaker 2: as Abajan's goal with this? Is it the remove full
Speaker 2: of Armenian people with the areas such as a repeople
Speaker 2: can occupy it? Is it access to the resources that
Speaker 2: are there? Is it settling a historical school?
Speaker 3: If you look at a map, there's this idea of
Speaker 3: pan Turanism. Is that something that's you're familiar with?
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you explain that to listen to a not.
Speaker 3: Pan Turanism is this Turkish idea of an ancient Turkish
Speaker 3: state that stretches from the Bosphorus all the way over
Speaker 3: to Mongolia and there's one little country in the way
Speaker 3: that is blocking this empire that should exist according to
Speaker 3: the pan Tyrannism. And this is an old idea, it's
Speaker 3: a nineteenth century idea. It's blumping in with every Nazi
Speaker 3: and race junk scientist idea that you have. But that's
Speaker 3: the idea. And the secondary thing is, you know, again,
Speaker 3: Aliaf is raving his people, he's in prison. Every journalist
Speaker 3: is any scientists, it's it's really on a level with
Speaker 3: truth Mingistan or what was happening in Syria or North Korea.
Speaker 3: And he needs ethnic hate to keep his country together.
Speaker 3: He's made an ethnic hate theme park. It's not called that,
Speaker 3: but that's what it is against Armenians. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: so really I see it as a consolidation of power.
Speaker 3: He needs an enemy, he needs to move forward, which
Speaker 3: is why he's threatening to invade Armenia proper. Next.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like I think one of the things that
Speaker 2: happened with the with the conflict in art Zak, I'm
Speaker 2: just I'm thinking about this, this Panturkic stuff because I
Speaker 2: see it every single day and their applies to my
Speaker 2: post on social media. Right. In my case, it's a
Speaker 2: reference to my time in Kurdistan and in Rishaba. Disinformation
Speaker 2: played a massive role in the in the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three contract, in the twenty twenty conflict too, right, And
Speaker 2: I think people who are hearing about this for the
Speaker 2: first time are a massive risk for finding that some
Speaker 2: of that differentormation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: They hear about this driving to work today on our
Speaker 2: podcast and they go to google it. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of crap out there, right, So, like, can we address
Speaker 2: that the role that it's played and continues to play.
Speaker 3: The load of crap, or the pan Turanism or both.
Speaker 2: Well, the pan Turanism generates a lot of crap, right,
Speaker 2: Like I'm convinced that some of the accounts in my
Speaker 2: replies are not real human beings.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's been a well established phenomenon. The number
Speaker 3: of bots that as of by genre to a lesser
Speaker 3: except Turkey, because I think Turkey's more secure in its
Speaker 3: genocidal aspect, whereas and it's really really going for it,
Speaker 3: you know. So not only the bots in the replies
Speaker 3: which has come up, no matter what you put in keyword,
Speaker 3: there's going to be lots of mentions on your social media,
Speaker 3: not to mention there's a pretty vicious campaign out there
Speaker 3: to docks. Anybody who talks about this is that's happened
Speaker 3: to me before and it's not pretty. But also there's
Speaker 3: this thing called mirror propaganda. I don't know if you've
Speaker 3: heard of that. But the Assaris will take something that
Speaker 3: Armenians say like oh, our Armenians should go be able
Speaker 3: to have a right to return, so they throub this
Speaker 3: huge cloud of They'll take actual documents that have been
Speaker 3: produced by I don't know, freedom House, right, yeah, and
Speaker 3: then they'll copy the entire doc document and format things
Speaker 3: the right of Azaris to return to Western Azerbaijan, which
Speaker 3: is their new concept, and Western Ivverdjan is the country
Speaker 3: of Armenia. So they have these maps where they renamed
Speaker 3: all the towns of Armenia with Assari names. They claim
Speaker 3: Armenians only came to the region in eighteen twenty eight
Speaker 3: with the Russians, that they are fake people. Another tragedy
Speaker 3: of Artsak is they're taking these monasteries and places, not
Speaker 3: only destroying them but chiseling off ancient inscriptions to prove
Speaker 3: that Armenians didn't exist there. They've already done this in
Speaker 3: this other place called Natchivan, which is they call it
Speaker 3: the largest cultural genocide of the twenty first century, where
Speaker 3: they destroyed thousands of medieval monuments and stones with bull
Speaker 3: josers and sledgehammers. So they're just wiping them out, any
Speaker 3: record of our medium anything in their claiming Armenia it
Speaker 3: is really should be called Western Azerbaijan. And anytime Armenians
Speaker 3: talk about arts that going back, they're like, well, we
Speaker 3: they've made cookbooks, they've got a television show How Western
Speaker 3: as the Baisan, and it's just it's what you're laughing,
Speaker 3: and I laugh too, but it's it's so ugly, so scary,
Speaker 3: but it's funny too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what if these things are intil it's your grandma
Speaker 2: or have you been beheaded? Like yes, it does seem
Speaker 2: it does seem obscene, and it's so obscene that it's funny. Right,
Speaker 2: But like this is a concerted state project, right that,
Speaker 2: like it's easy to get caught up in. And it's
Speaker 2: easy to get caught in this disinformation machine, not just
Speaker 2: from like like like a bot in your replies, but
Speaker 2: from news like you say, news outlets or a doctored
Speaker 2: reports or things that look very convincing.
Speaker 3: Search results that go to the top. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: on this course started with the writing and genocide which
Speaker 3: ors Turkey and Azebaijan and Pakistan for some reason, say
Speaker 3: it was fake. If you search for that, the top
Speaker 3: results are gonna be our means are lying they committed
Speaker 3: to genocide with us, And then they'll throw these numbers
Speaker 3: like oh yeah, Armenian's killed three million Turks, Like what
Speaker 3: are you talking about? These? It's just like like words
Speaker 3: have meaning, you.
Speaker 4: Know, but increasingly less and less, less and less.
Speaker 3: You know, there's that great Hannah Art line about constant
Speaker 3: lying is not aimed at making people believe a lie,
Speaker 3: but ensuring that no one believes anything anymore, and that's
Speaker 3: what they want. We're an obscure part of the world.
Speaker 3: This will say a bunch of shit and people throw
Speaker 3: up their hands and walk away.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh it's too complicated, and so they.
Speaker 3: Too complicated, right, yeah, Or you know, they'll say, oh,
Speaker 3: it's ancient hatreds, and like that's bullshit. It's not ancient hatreds.
Speaker 3: It's a very modern thing. These are real people who
Speaker 3: have real understand all issues, you know, like in Gaza,
Speaker 3: it's like it's very clear, Yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: The different areas that it has received a lot more
Speaker 2: coverage and long body attention.
Speaker 4: So where does this leave us now?
Speaker 2: Right, as ab Giant has just hosted this conference, and
Speaker 2: like it's important to recognize that this conference is it's
Speaker 2: a project of kind of global liberalism, right to the
Speaker 2: cop conference, and like it conveys legitimacy, and in this case,
Speaker 2: it's a means of kind of laundering legitimacy. Right for
Speaker 2: this Carabuck project in their case right through through the
Speaker 2: lens of protecting the planet.
Speaker 4: Where do they go from there?
Speaker 3: Well, So what makes the dictatorship as a down a
Speaker 3: little bit different from these other dictatorships I mentioned is
Speaker 3: I think they care about what people think a little bit.
Speaker 3: They bring in f one racing, the Eurovision. They really
Speaker 3: do these projects because they want to be seen as
Speaker 3: a legitimate state, whereas I think those others like North Korea,
Speaker 3: they don't do that, like, no one's gonna like us
Speaker 3: no matter what we do. They want to play on
Speaker 3: the international stage. So that's one aspect. Another aspect, it
Speaker 3: legitimizes themselves to their internal critics. People as their Bajana
Speaker 3: smart they know what's going on, but they say, oh,
Speaker 3: the world is coming to us. The world accepts us.
Speaker 3: They must, you know, accept the brutal dictatorship that's cracking
Speaker 3: down anybody's gay, lesbian, anything, you know. Orture is a
Speaker 3: feature of this regime. So it legitimizes themselves internally, and
Speaker 3: what they fear I guess is people were getting angry
Speaker 3: that they invade Armenia. So it's just I think it's
Speaker 3: that chene. Now we could argue whether that was effective
Speaker 3: because COP twenty nine was an absolute train wreck for them.
Speaker 3: But I'm not sure that matters to them right, matters
Speaker 3: for the environment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think probably these COP conferences are not going
Speaker 2: to be the way we solve our our issues with
Speaker 2: climate change. But that's another conversation going forward, Like what
Speaker 2: is the status of odds? What can those people, those
Speaker 2: people who were able to leave, Like what does the
Speaker 2: future hold for them? Are they sort of refugees in media?
Speaker 3: Now? There are refugees in are Armenia. Amenia is a
Speaker 3: poor state, doesn't have the oil reserves. The Azerbaijan just
Speaker 3: announced that they're increased their military budget by twenty percent. Jesus,
Speaker 3: it was already incredibly high. Last time I got statistics,
Speaker 3: the flights from of Dah, which is the Israeli military
Speaker 3: insulation for flying equipment to Azerbaijan, has ramped up. It's
Speaker 3: higher than it was in twenty twenty before their invasion.
Speaker 3: It's not a part for twenty twenty three. So that's
Speaker 3: a pretty clear sign that they're getting all their equipment
Speaker 3: from Israel. They stopped before copp and so I haven't
Speaker 3: been able to get data on that since then. Azerbaijan
Speaker 3: just issued a declaration that parents cannot visit their children
Speaker 3: in the military, and that's a bad, bad sign. So
Speaker 3: the question is not if it's win, it is winter.
Speaker 3: I mean, he has a lot of mountains. Those are
Speaker 3: pretty good defend. People are figured out. Sure, you've talked
Speaker 3: to your friends of our Java. They figured out drones
Speaker 3: a little bit, how to deal with them better. I
Speaker 3: mean he has reached out to France, who's been helping
Speaker 3: them a little bit. Azerbaijan says, there's some conditions for
Speaker 3: peace that are insane, you know, like change your constitution
Speaker 3: is one. Get rid of all EU observers is another.
Speaker 3: Don't get any new weapons, and then give us the
Speaker 3: what's called this Zeger Corridor, which is like this road
Speaker 3: that goes to their exclave Nacheban to the to the
Speaker 3: west there, and it's just like you can't stay. No
Speaker 3: country is going to do that. Oh and they've got
Speaker 3: another claim, which is they say allow the UNESCO to
Speaker 3: visit Armenia to check out erased Azerbaijani sites, which is
Speaker 3: just a mirror propacanda insanity because unesca's already in our
Speaker 3: media and Armenia asked that of UNESCO for Azerbaijan.
Speaker 2: But yeah, of course they just copy that right and say, well,
Speaker 2: why do you do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, which you know is not a real thing,
Speaker 3: but anyway, so those are a conditions piece. So it
Speaker 3: seems probable that Azerbaijan will invade, possibly in spring because
Speaker 3: the snow will melt it away. Possibly now, because Alia
Speaker 3: seems like he's very angry that the world kind of
Speaker 3: paid attention to Cop twenty nine is figuring out that
Speaker 3: he's a dick, and he's ramped up in arrest in
Speaker 3: his own country. He does arrest an entire television station
Speaker 3: of people that were you can't it's it's one of
Speaker 3: the least press free countries on Earth. But I guess
Speaker 3: people are doing something before or that, and they'll either
Speaker 3: take the southern half of Armenia or they'll take all
Speaker 3: of it, because they say Yerevan, the capital of Armenians,
Speaker 3: is historically part of Azerbaijan. So that's the state where
Speaker 3: we're at there, And I really think any other perspectives
Speaker 3: are wishful thinking, and I'm Sartaly so grim about that,
Speaker 3: but it's I think it's a very real possibility that
Speaker 3: there's Armenian genocide that it's killed literally, you know, caluntable
Speaker 3: millions of Armenians since the eighteen nineties and ramped up
Speaker 3: through nineteen fifteen through nineteen twenty three, and then Society
Speaker 3: a little bit is ongoing and their project will be
Speaker 3: completed in the next year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's pretty bleak.
Speaker 2: How can people they want to be in solid director
Speaker 2: if they want to support I think this is something
Speaker 2: that doesn't get reported on right in the US, even
Speaker 2: though they just want to learn more. How can they
Speaker 2: do that? Where can they go?
Speaker 3: There's a good side has learned for art SoC that's
Speaker 3: a good site. There's a bunch of Armenian web sites
Speaker 3: that people can go to. May I post some some
Speaker 3: links on the show notes? Would that be? That'd be good?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well absolutely Betters in the show notes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would be very happy to do that
Speaker 3: if people want to donate things. But it's similar to
Speaker 3: to Gaza or other places, like what what does awareness do?
Speaker 3: I guess it could slow things down. Yeah, but really
Speaker 3: we just need state actors to respond to this. Our
Speaker 3: meetings get very cynically used in France and in the
Speaker 3: United States by right wing politicians who claim that they're
Speaker 3: protecting Christians, but I don't think that's something that will
Speaker 3: actually happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean people did the same thing for a
Speaker 2: sad right that he protected Christians in Syria while he yeah,
Speaker 2: murdered to gas his own people.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 4: That's a best of cynical thing and a worst justicy.
Speaker 3: I mean, what have you seen that's effective in terms
Speaker 3: of world action or these things with Kurds or other people?
Speaker 2: I mean, look when we talk about how the Kurds
Speaker 2: have defended themselves from get a state project to eliminate them,
Speaker 2: right in some areas, they haven't been able to write,
Speaker 2: and when they have it's through their own armed initiative
Speaker 2: for the most part, right, they were very fortunate to
Speaker 2: have the support of the United States. But that was
Speaker 2: only ever in the battle against Isis. It wasn't when
Speaker 2: genocidal violence, right, this genocidal project in a free and
Speaker 2: where we're seeing it right now, in power of fact,
Speaker 2: the US didn't stand beside them there, and it's not
Speaker 2: in its nature too. And I think this is a
Speaker 2: really difficult situation that we find ourselves in all around
Speaker 2: the world right now. Right, we've seen this in Africa too, right,
Speaker 2: it's not really in the nature of the United States,
Speaker 2: not in this century, to intervene simply for human rights reasons,
Speaker 2: simply because because genocide is wrong.
Speaker 3: We had a person that Sam had the power, who
Speaker 3: wrote a book on how genocide is wrong and we
Speaker 3: should intervene. And then what happens when she's in power
Speaker 3: with Obama and Biden.
Speaker 2: We draw red lines and then less sad walk over them,
Speaker 2: like it happens all over the world. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're probably in a post hedge and monic era, but
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that people deserve to die because we're
Speaker 2: in a post hedgemonic era.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: Look, if I look at the other genocide, which I've
Speaker 2: spent more time with than most genocides, the weird thing
Speaker 2: to say, it's the genocide in Meammar of the Rahine
Speaker 2: of people. They are still facing genocidal violence now, even
Speaker 2: from anti hunter groups. But I also see Muslim people
Speaker 2: in the current National Liberation Army. I see them fighting
Speaker 2: with the k and d F And the way that
Speaker 2: those people liberated themselves was like from the bottom up,
Speaker 2: and I think that, like I find some home, and
Speaker 2: what's happening in Kurdistan and what's happening in me, amma,
Speaker 2: And I don't see very much from the community of states,
Speaker 2: so much of the thing that even fucking exists. I
Speaker 2: don't really believe that states have a conscience. And yes,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's in their nature to care about people,
Speaker 2: because people are inherently valuable. But I do think people do,
Speaker 2: and I do think it is in the nature of
Speaker 2: people to care. So I guess we have to continue
Speaker 2: to hope.
Speaker 3: And there has been some positive statements by your Java
Speaker 3: regarding our Medians, and there's a lot of solidarity there,
Speaker 3: which it was great. You know, Kurt's helped commit the
Speaker 3: first Armenian genocide and they've apologized, and so I'm seeing
Speaker 3: a little glimmers of hope in terms of the solidarity
Speaker 3: of people who see what's right and wrong who aren't
Speaker 3: state actors. That's absolutely right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the things people, there's another thing that
Speaker 2: will be deployed very often. The Kurds are responsible for
Speaker 2: the Armenian genocide. Court if people were part of the
Speaker 2: Armenian genocide, and they will acknowledge that, and they've tried
Speaker 2: to make amends for it.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly right, and that's all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we're here now, we're not is no to
Speaker 2: our history, but we have to acknowledge it so that
Speaker 2: we can move from it.
Speaker 4: Thank you for sharing all of that.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else that we've failed to address? You
Speaker 2: want to get in quickly before we I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: thousands of years of stuff.
Speaker 3: But you know, visit or Armenia. It's still called one
Speaker 3: of the safest places on earth. Is it's been rated
Speaker 3: safer than Japan. It's a beautiful place. It's a struggling democracy,
Speaker 3: but it's the only democracy in the area. Try to
Speaker 3: pay attention to the news, you know, is Hackeys. It
Speaker 3: seems right, your senator, you know, like I just feel
Speaker 3: wrong saying that, But what else can we do? Right?
Speaker 3: If you're in Britain, the UK is an incredibly agregious
Speaker 3: supporter of Azerbaijan through British petroleum. Really, you people probably
Speaker 3: can have the biggest effect because the UK is the
Speaker 3: biggest enabler of those dirt bags. And thank you for
Speaker 3: the I really appreciate it. And I don't feel like
Speaker 3: I've done justice to three thousand, five hundred years of history,
Speaker 3: but thank you so much.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's great. Is there any way people
Speaker 2: can follow you online if they'd like to.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely not. I'm tired of getting docs.
Speaker 4: Excellent, Yes, pretty fit.
Speaker 3: You know. That's why I pin icons. This is because
Speaker 3: it's it's anonymous, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very offline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but thank you so much, great, thank you.
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