It Could Happen Here - Greenwashing Genocide In Artsakh

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Starting point is 00:02:26 genocidal rhetoric from Azerbaijan. But I want to start off, Nevden, we're talking about COP 2024, I guess. Can you explain, like I think people will be sort of somewhat familiar with these series of climate conferences, but this one was held in Azerbaijan, right? And can you explain a little bit about, you've specialized in like these greenwashing, sports washing, various other sort of forms of laundering legitimacy, right? I'd love for you to start off there and explain how this particular conference was used

Starting point is 00:02:58 as a means of laundering legitimacy for what is like a genocidal project. COP29, which was just concluded when Azerbaijan is the deadly serious and vital conversation about climate in the United Nations, which we absolutely need to have, but from the beginning, it was a clown show and the way was a clown show. And the way Azerbaijan, a petrodictatorship, was able to procure this for themselves was at COP28, which was held in Dubai, another questionable location

Starting point is 00:03:35 for the climate conference, where they had a pavilion, as reported by Politico EU, where they had a giant advertisement that said, Karabakh is the first place to achieve net zero emissions in Azerbaijan. And that was one part of them getting the bid for COP29. And the way Azerbaijan was able to achieve net zero emissions in this particular location was they committed a genocide against all the people. If there's no people, there's no climate emissions. And that's probably not even true that it's a net

Starting point is 00:04:15 zero emissions because they've engaged in so much of the eradication of any trace of Armenians in this place that Armenians have been living for at least 2,500 years. Destruction of buildings, of course, is one of the huge source of pollution. And they've raised something like four cemeteries, thousands of the monuments, four churches have demolished, entire neighborhoods have been raised, historical neighborhoods. So it's probably not even net zero. But that was their advertising claim to get the bid.

Starting point is 00:04:51 The COP29 was originally supposed to be in Europe, but Russia was vetoing every European bid. And Armenia, who Azerbaijan is currently occupying, 215 kilometers of Armenian territory was blocking Azerbaijan till Azerbaijan offered to give up 32 Armenian hostages. So we've got a clean of Shantzai, then we've got a gangster hostage situation, which they did. They gave up 32 members of the Armenian military and they made Armenia give up two Azerbaijanis that were held by Armenia because they had gone into Armenia and killed a local security guard trying to steal his car. They probably were lost and they killed this guy and they were trying to escape. But then just one of them had been sent to life imprisonment. But that's what Armenia gave up in exchange.

Starting point is 00:05:46 To allow this climate conference to happen. That's correct. So let's zoom back from this climate conference, right? Like in this, I think it's a really interesting place to start. Like the site of our genocide is a net zero area. And it's a very bleak vision of the sort of greenwashing future. Let's explain a little bit of the sort of greenwashing future. Let's explain a little bit of the history of the conflict between these two countries. And also perhaps more broadly, I think people will probably be familiar with the

Starting point is 00:06:12 Armenian genocide, if they've listened to this show, but of Armenian people as a subject of discrimination and hatred for centuries, right? Well, you know, I mean, Armenians are one of the ancient people of that area, Greeks, Jews, Persians, they're one of the people that have kind of stuck it out for a long time in that neighborhood. The Turkic people are more recent visitors to the neighborhood, and there's nothing wrong with migration of people. But there's something about populations that have

Starting point is 00:06:45 been there for a long time that really strikes a nerve if we want to be very mild about it with the Turkic people, Turkey and Azerbaijan, in the sense that they've been engaged in a policy of destroying any remnants of Armenians, including physical people. For at least since 1880s, they've been making them second-class citizens since they came in, in the Ottoman Empire. There's this myth of the multicultural society, which is interesting. Azerbaijan is also trying to promote. But it really was a second-class situation where the minorities in the Ottoman Empire had a lot of extra taxes and duties and persecution than other people in the area.

Starting point is 00:07:32 Yeah. So let's talk about this area then, specifically this area, which would be called, depending on who you ask, Artsak or Nagorno-Karabakh, right? I think probably it's, I don't know if I haven't looked on Wikipedia, but like what were the more commonly used terms for people wanting to look it up, right? In American English, but let's explain why there is a conflict in this area. And then what has happened since, I guess we can go from like the fall of the Soviet Union would be a place to start. Sure. I mean, we talked about earlier, that's the tough thing about talking to our Indians, like where I would start would be sixth century in the fall of the Soviet Union would be a place to start? Sure, I mean, we talked about earlier, that's the tough thing about talking to Armenians.

Starting point is 00:08:06 Like where I would start would be sixth century in the fall of the Kingdom of Ratu. But I guess we don't have that much time. So basically, and I do have to put this in there because there's this big Azerbaijani narrative that Armenians are effective people, they're effective presence, and I'll deal with that in a little

Starting point is 00:08:25 bit. But, you know, it's just been recorded by Grieg. I mean, I don't know why I should have to prove our existence, but we do. Yeah. So anyway, it's recorded history that it's where the Armenian alphabet was invented. These people have been indigenous to the region for thousands of years. They've got a deep connection with the land. Follow the Soviet Union.

Starting point is 00:08:44 Fast forward. for thousands of years, they've got a deep connection with the land. Follow the Soviet Union. Fast forward. The area had been under the territory of the Azerbaijani SSR as an autonomous oblast, as they called it. It had been given to the Azerbaijani SSR because of Stalin, who was the commissioner of minorities. Stalin has this big project to divide the people, the minorities in the Soviet Union to fight each other, which is ramped up in the 1960s when the Soviets start inventing fake history to pit people against each other, which is wild.

Starting point is 00:09:13 But Soviet Union is crumbling, the people of Artsakh, which is the Armenian indigenous name, Nagorno-Karabakh is generally acceptable as well. That would be the colonial name or the name that the Azeris call the region. They are fed up with not being able to learn the language because of Azerbaijan. They're fed up with not being able to have any of the rights as Soviet citizens because the father of the current dictator of Azerbaijan was ruling Azerbaijan since 1969, and his policy was to try to get as many Armenians to move out of the region as possible.

Starting point is 00:09:51 So they're fed up with this and they're like, okay, enough. They legally secede from the Soviet Union. It's allowed in the constitution, which of course infuriates the Azerbaijani SSR. You know, so there's a bunch of conflicts, there's some pogroms that happen against Armenians in cities of Baku and Sumgait, and at which point they secede fully from the Soviet Union, one of the first areas to do so, in 1991. They actually left the Soviet Union before Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan, with the Soviet Union's troops in bay. There's this bloody

Starting point is 00:10:28 mess, it's called Operation Ring where they're killing Armenians in the area. There's a a war that erupts when everybody secedes. Armenians in Artsakh get the upper hand due to they really cared about it and also probably because of racism within the Soviet Union where they trained Armenians a little bit better than they did Azeris. It's a humiliating defeat for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has pushed back.

Starting point is 00:10:54 Armenians seize about 9% of Azerbaijani territory beyond Artsakh. And that was a stasis until 2020. Yeah. Really. Yeah, sort of 30 years of... But it was always disputed, right? This area was there as Vajan continued to lay claim to the Aad Tauq region, is that correct? For some reason, it was never recognized by the UN as being a real country, similar to some other places. Why that is, is confusing to me because they did leave earlier than anybody else.

Starting point is 00:11:26 It is an ethnic minority that chose to leave the area, but they weren't considered legitimate by the UN, by Azerbaijan. And secondarily, we have this brutal dictatorship that's held together by ethnic hatred. Really, I cannot overstate how terrible the Aliyev regime is in Azerbaijan. But, you know, Armenian forces committed at least one war crime that I'm aware of during that time in a place called Kholjoli, where they killed 180 to 600 Azeri civilians. And they've used this event, and think one other to really hold their country together in this pit of frothing broth of hatred. So not till 2020 does that really coalesce, does it become strong as a petro state to take back large portions of the country?

Starting point is 00:12:22 Yeah. Talking of taking back, I'm going to have to take back 30 seconds of everyone's time for an advertising break here. So let's do that and we'll come right back. In late 2024, strange aircraft began mysteriously appearing in the New Jersey skies, sparking rumors and questions that no one could answer. But before that, an equally bizarre and possibly connected phenomenon unfolded over Colorado and Nebraska. I'm Gabe Linners from Imagine, I Heart Podcasts and Lenners Entertainment.

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Starting point is 00:16:06 Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. All right, we're back. One thing I think that might be illustrative to hear is that like in the first Azak war, Turkish, I guess, irregulars or mercenaries or what you want to call them, people associated with the gray wolves fought on the side of Azerbaijan, right? And keen history understanders will know that there is some history of anti-Armenian sentiment among the gray wolves and indeed in Turkey as a country. So perhaps this is a good point to talk about the international involvement here, because

Starting point is 00:16:47 I think it's very misleading to do this, as we're seeing in Syria right now. People want to divide the world into blocks, right, with like this sort of Cold War narrative that we have of Russian interests and US interests. And I think this is an excellent example of why that is not necessarily a great way to perceive the world. So can you explain the international involvement in Artsakh and in this ongoing conflict, which we'll get to it beginning again in 2020, I think in a second. In addition to Turkish forces being used in that 2020 war, which I guess we'll have to get into a little bit.

Starting point is 00:17:21 There are Syrian mercenaries were used as well. They were acuted. They were put on the front lines as kind of a candidate fodder. They're given something like a hundred dollar bonus that they beheaded a civilian, a $200 bonus if they beheaded an Armenian soldier there. But of course, Israel is the primary supplier of Azeri weapons and weaponry going so far to test some of their drones on manned Armenian outposts early on before the war started. It's fair to say that Azerbaijan could not have been so successful without the aid of their ally Israel.

Starting point is 00:17:57 Israel has been deeply involved in Azerbaijan for a long time. They use Azerbaijan as a listening post against Iran. Israel stages raids from Azerbaijan on Iran, and that has to do with the ethnic minority on Iran. There's a lot of Azeris down there. Israel gets something like 40% of its oil from Azerbaijan. Right after the Palestinian genocide started, Israel awarded two contracts to the state oil company, Socar, in Azerbaijan that's right adjacent to the Palestinian gas field and the Lebanon oil field to Socar to explore. It cannot be overstated how complicit these two groups are with each other. They really, really need each other in the region. And the United States also likes Azerbaijan as well.

Starting point is 00:18:47 They see it as a friendly Muslim country, the bulwark against Iran as well. Yeah. And I think they also have some Turkish drones. Is that right? The Bayakar drones, absolutely. So let's talk about that 2020 war, because that was a war that relied heavily on these drones, right?

Starting point is 00:19:04 So it's a major means of destroying Armenian armor Let's talk about that 2020 war, because that was a war that relied heavily on these drones, right? It's a major means of destroying Armenian armor and pushing that offensive. So what happened in 2020 along this disputed border? Well, you know, it's called Mount Nisqaraba. It's an area that's great defensively if you're fighting in a pre-drone world. But, you know, as you've discovered with your Kurdish friends, the drones are amazingly destructive against people hiding in caves, which is what the Armenian response had been. Armenians have been a bit lazy. They've been relying on Russian tanks and weaponry, whereas Azerbaijan is buying from Israel. They're buying from all, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:45 many, many different sources, which reflects the wealth of Azerbaijan, of course. So in 2020, there's some indication that Aliyev, the dictator of Azerbaijan, had been planning this for a while. He had this playbook called Operation Azeri Smile 2020. The troops move in, they encounter more resistance than they thought, and they get most of the Armenian held territory of Nagorno-Karabakh back. They're stopped at the last minute, probably by Russian intervention at this time. Armenia was a member of the Russian alliance at that time, which they're leaving just because it's the Russia has failed to live up to its treaty obligations anyway, and it left a kind of a skeletal state of Artsakh left,

Starting point is 00:20:36 which was only supplied by this one road called the Lachin corridor. That was only one road from Armenia to supply the 120-some thousand Armenians who lived in Artsakh left, which brings us to 2023. Yeah. So you have this situation where we now have this massive area that's, I guess, occupied. A lot of people began leaving at that time, right? Through that Lachin corridor, people didn't feel like they could safely remain there. I mean, the indigenous people of Artsakh

Starting point is 00:21:15 have this profound relationship with the land and the people. I am an icon painter. I was talking to my priest, and he was comparing the people there to the elves and the Lord of the Ring. You know, they they whistle to the birds, you know, they've just been living with the land for a long time. So there was a drain, but it's not as big as you would have thought, just because there's this intense millennia-old connection with the places connection with the places of Artsakh. So what Azerbaijan did, and this is, I think, unprecedented is they had a fake ecological protest that stopped the Lachin corridor from

Starting point is 00:21:57 supplying food and medicine to the people of Artsakh. So they starved those people. They denied them medicine, people had missed carriages, the Azeris were firing at farmers in the field, they were trying to collect food. That went on for nine months. And what stopped it was Azerbaijan claimed it was a group of ecological protesters who were stopping trucks of food coming into Artsakh for any reason, which, you know, is enough of a smokescreen for the Western world to really throw up its hands. Yeah. Fascinating. So they literally had a blockade of these protesters? These protesters blocked it. The Russian troops that were the peacekeepers refused to disperse

Starting point is 00:22:40 these protesters. They were these old, approximate kind of looking people wearing fur coats. They were identified on social media as actually being members of the Azeri military. And they had these printed signs that said things like protect nature, stop pollution. It's very generic. Wildly generic things. Ostensibly, they were against the gold mining operations in Artsakh, which is nuts because a protest is not allowed in Azerbaijan and B there had been an actual protest against a real gold mine that was owned by the daughters of the dictator and they were brutally shut down before. So anybody who's paying any kind of attention to this knew that it was fictive,

Starting point is 00:23:24 but I think the EU in particular needing enough of a smoke screen not to support these people. EU of course is getting its gas through Azerbaijan because they've said they don't want it from Russia but Russia is just feeding its gas to Azerbaijan and then Azerbaijan is selling its Azerbaijani gas to the EU. So they were just trying to do that. Yeah, we've just created a pass through and like someone who can live off that rentier income. So let's go to 2023.

Starting point is 00:23:51 What do we see happening in 2023? So the, the eco protestors, they kind of run their course and then there's a lightning operation. ArtSoc's attacked, positions overrun. There's this massive exodus of people, people who have to leave their houses immediately. The road is blocked. People are dying on this road on the way out,

Starting point is 00:24:17 fighting each other just to leave their houses. In 2020, Azerbaijan has said, sure, Armenians can come back. We're just taking back our territory. You live here, you can do that. But when Armenians did, there's this one case of a 69-year-old farmer who went back to get his possessions, the Zary troops cut off his head. Jesus.

Starting point is 00:24:39 They put it on a dead pig. And they put all those images on social media they raped and tortured Anybody that they could find left behind and they turned it into memes on telegrams stickers That were you know something like down like 20,000 times in the five days. They were being monitored for this So there was absolutely no question that people could stay behind. Yeah zero You so and there's no Armenians left. And so there's literally been daily ritual that's been going on for 1,700 years that doesn't go on anymore.

Starting point is 00:25:16 And there's a tragedy in that. Yeah. Yeah. It's been lost. It's hard to quantify the meaning of that loss, I think, especially for folks who aren't familiar with people and their culture and their connection to these things. Talking of quantifying things, I need to look at the amount of time we got here and pivot

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Starting point is 00:29:14 Network, the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. And we're back. So what we see in ArtsArc, especially in 2023, is a project of ethnic cleansing, right? Genocidal violence, whatever, however you wish to phrase it. I mean, ethnic cleansing is not a term that has really like a definition in national law. Genocide does. It often very much like in this instance, I'm using them to mean one and the same thing. It's the removal of people either through killing them or forcing them to leave or starving them. The International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Lumpkin Institute, Luis Moreno Campo was the founding prosecutor of the ICC,

Starting point is 00:30:00 Juan Rastromendez, his special advisor to the secondary general on genocide prevention, they all call it genocide. So we can call it that. Yeah, we can call it genocide. It'd be fairly safe. Yeah. There have been many genocide projects in history. What is Azerbaijan's goal with this?

Starting point is 00:30:16 Is it the removal of Armenian people with the area such that Azeri people can occupy it? Is it access to the resources that are there? Is it settling a historical score? If you look at a map, there's this idea of pan-Turanism. Is that something that you're familiar with? Yeah. Can you explain that to listen to or not?

Starting point is 00:30:38 Pan-Turanism is this Turkish idea of an ancient Turkish state that stretches from the Bosporus all the way over to Mongolia. Yeah. And there's one little country in the way that is blocking this empire that should exist, according to Pan Tyrannus. And this is an old idea. It's a 19th century idea. It's lumping in with every Nazi and race junk scientist idea that you have.

Starting point is 00:31:08 But that's the idea. And the secondary thing is, you know, again, Aliyev is raping his people. He's imprisoning every journalist. He's any scientist. It's really on a level with Turkmenistan or what was happening in Syria or North Korea. And he needs ethnic hate to keep his country together. He's made an ethnic hate theme park. It's not called that, but that's what it is against Armenians. So really, I see it as a consolidation of power. He needs an enemy. He needs to move forward, which is why he's threatening to invade Armenia proper.

Starting point is 00:31:48 Next. Yeah. And like, I think one of the things that like happened with the, with the conflict in Artsak, I'm just, I'm thinking about this, this pan-Turkic stuff, because I see it every single day in the replies to my posts on social media, right? In my case, it's with reference to my time in Kurdistan and in Roshaba. Disinformation played a massive role in the 2023 conflict, in the 2020 conflict too, right? And I think people who are hearing about this for the first time are at massive risk for

Starting point is 00:32:19 finding out some of that disinformation, right? They hear about this driving tool work today on our podcast and they go to Google it. There's a lot of crap out there, right? So like, can we address that, the role that it's played and continues to play? The load of crap or the panteranism or both? Well, the panteranism generates a lot of crap, right? Like, I'm convinced that some of the accounts in my replies are not real human beings. Oh, that's been a well established phenomenon, the number of bots that Azerbaijan, to a lesser extent Turkey, because I think Turkey is more secure in its genocidal aspect, whereas Azerbaijan is really, really going for it. You know, so not only the bots in the replies, which just come up

Starting point is 00:33:04 no matter what you put in a keyword, there's going to be lots of mentions on your social media, not to mention there's a pretty vicious campaign out there to dox anybody who talks about this is that's happened to me before, and it's not pretty. Yeah. But also, there's this thing called mirror propaganda. I don't know if you've heard of that, but the Azeris will take something that Armenians say, like, oh, Armenians should be able to have a right to return. So they throw up this huge cloud of, they'll take actual documents that have been produced by,

Starting point is 00:33:39 I don't know, Freedom House, right? And then they'll copy the entire document and format things, the right of Azeris to return to Western Azerbaijan, which is their new concept. And Western Azerbaijan is the country of Armenia. So they have these maps where they renamed all the towns of Armenia with Azeri names. They claim Armenians only came to the region in 1828 with the Russians, that they're a fake people. Another tragedy of Artsakh is they're taking these monasteries and places, not only destroying them, but chiseling off ancient inscriptions to prove that Armenians didn't exist there. They've

Starting point is 00:34:15 already done this in this other place called Nakhchivan, which they call the largest cultural genocide of the 21st century, where they destroyed thousands of medieval monuments and stones with bull josers and sledgehammers. So they're just wiping them out any record of Armenian. Anything in their claim in Armenia is really should be called Western Azerbaijan. And anytime Armenians talk about Artsak going back, they're like, well, they made cookbooks, they've got a television show about Western Azerbaijan. And it's just, it's what you're laughing and I laughed too, but it's so ugly, so scary, but it's funny too. Yeah, well, these things are until it's your grandma or what have you being beheaded.

Starting point is 00:34:57 Yes, it does seem obscene and it's so obscene that it's funny, right? But like this is a concerted state project that like, it's easy to get caught up in. And it's easy to get caught in this disinformation machine. Not just from like, yeah, like a bot in your replies, but from news, like you say, news outlets or like doctored reports or things that look very convincing. Search results that go to the top. I mean, you know, and this course started with the Armenian genocide, which of course Turkey

Starting point is 00:35:28 and Azerbaijan and Pakistan for some reason say it was fake. If you search for that, the top results are gonna be Armenians are lying, they committed genocide with us. And then they'll throw these numbers like, oh yeah, Armenians killed 3 million Turks. Like, what are you talking about? These are just like, words have meaning, you know, but increasingly less and less, less and less. You know, there's a great Hannah art line about constant lying is not aimed at making people believe a lie,

Starting point is 00:35:55 but ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. And that's what they want. We're an obscure part of the world. This is a bunch of shit, and people throw up their hands and walk away. Yeah, it's too complicated. And so they sort of too complicated. Right. Yeah. Or, you know, they'll say, Oh, it's ancient hatreds. And like, that's bullshit. It's not ancient hatreds. It's a very modern thing. These are real people who have real understandable issues. You know, like in Gaza, it's like, it's very clear. What's going on. Yeah. Yeah. I know the difference there is that it has received a lot more coverage and

Starting point is 00:36:27 longer attention. So where does this leave us now? Right. As of John has just hosted this conference and like, it's important to recognize that this conference is, it's a project of kind of global liberalism, right? Like the COP conference and like it conveys legitimacy. And in this case, it's a means of kind of laundering legitimacy for this Karabakh project

Starting point is 00:36:54 in their case, right? Through the lens of protecting the planet. Where do they go from there? Well, so what makes the dictatorship of Azerbaijan a little bit different from these other dictatorships I mentioned is I think they care about what people think a little bit. They bring in F1 racing, they have Eurovision. They really do these projects because they want to be seen as a legitimate state. Whereas I think those other than like North Korea, they don't do that. Like no one's gonna like us no matter what we do. Yeah, they've given up. They want

Starting point is 00:37:30 to play on the international stage. So that's one aspect. Another aspect, it legitimizes themselves to their internal critics. People in Azerbaijan are smart. They know what's going on. But they say, oh, the world is coming to us. The world accepts us. They must, you know, accept the brutal dictatorship that's cracking down on anybody's gay, lesbian, anything. You know, torture is a feature of this regime. So it legitimized themselves internally. Yeah. And what they fear, I guess, is people would getting angry that they invade Armenia So it's just I think it's that sheen now we could argue whether that was effective because cop 29 was an absolute Trainwreck for them, but I'm not sure that matters to them right matters for the environment

Starting point is 00:38:19 Yeah, I think probably these cop conferences are not gonna be the way we solve our Our issues with climate change, but that's another conversation. Going forward, what is the status of ATA? What can those people, those people who were able to leave, what does the future hold for them? Are they refugees in Armenia now? The refugees are in Armenia. Armenia is a poor state, doesn't have the oil reserves.

Starting point is 00:38:47 The Azerbaijan just announced that they're increased their military budget by 20%. Jeez. It was already incredibly high. Last time I got statistics, the flights from Ovda, which is the Israeli military insulation for flying equipment to Azerbaijan has ramped up. It's higher than it was in 2020 before their invasion. It's in on par for 2023. So that's a pretty

Starting point is 00:39:13 clear sign that they're getting all their equipment from Israel. They stopped before COP and so I haven't been able to get data on that since then. Azerbaijan just issued a declaration that parents cannot visit their children in the military. Oh, well. And that's a bad, bad sign. Yeah. So the question is not if it's when. It is winter. Armenia has a lot of mountains. Those are pretty good to defend. People are figured out. I, you've talked to your friends who are Java. They figured out drones a little bit. How to deal with them better. Armenia has reached out to France, who's been helping them a little bit. Azerbaijan says there's some conditions for peace that are insane. Like change your constitution is one. Get rid of all EU observers is another.

Starting point is 00:40:06 Don't get any new weapons. And then give us the what's called this Zangar corridor, which is like this road that goes to their exclave, Nakhchivan to the west there. And it's just like you can't stay there. No country's going to do that. Oh, and they've got another claim, which is they say, allow the UNESCO to visit Armenia to check out erased Azerbaijani sites, which is just a mere propaganda insanity because UNESCO is already in Armenia. And Armenia asked that of UNESCO for Azerbaijan. But of course, they just copy that. Right. And say, well, why don't you do it? Yeah. Right. Which, you know, is not a real thing. But anyway, so those are don't you do it? Yeah. Right. Which, you know, is not a real thing. But anyway, so those are the conditions.

Starting point is 00:40:46 So it seems probable that Azerbaijan will invade, possibly in spring because the snow will melt it away, possibly now. Because Aliyev seems like he's very angry that the world kind of paid attention to COP 29 and figuring out that he's a dick. And he's ramped up in um arrest in his own country. He just arrested an entire television station of people that were you know, again it's it's one of the least press free countries on earth but I guess people were doing something before that and uh they'll either take the southern half of Armenia or they'll take

Starting point is 00:41:30 All of it because they say Yerevan the capital of Armenians is historically part of Azerbaijan So that's the state where we're at there and I really think any other perspectives are Wishful thinking and I'm sorry to be so grim about that, but it's, I think it's a very real possibility that this Armenian genocide, that it's killed literally, you know, countable millions of Armenians since the 1890s and ramped up through 1915 through 1923 and then society a little bit is, is ongoing and their project will be completed in the next year. Yeah. So that's pretty bleak. How can people, they want to be in solidarity, they want to support,

Starting point is 00:42:10 and this is something that doesn't get reported on right in the US, even if they just want to learn more, how can they do that? Where can they go? There's a good site, this is Learn for Artsoc, that's a good site. There's a bunch of Armenian websites that people can go to. May I post some links on the show notes? Would that be good? Yeah, well, absolutely. But as in the show notes, yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:35 Yeah, I would be very happy to do that if you want to donate things. But it's similar to Gaza or other places. Like, what does awareness do? I guess it could slow things down. Yeah. But really we just need state actors to respond to this. Armenians get very cynically used in France and in the United States by right-wing politicians who claim that they're protecting Christians.

Starting point is 00:43:03 But I don't think that's something that will actually happen. Yeah, I mean, people think the same thing for Assad, right, that he protected Christians in Syria while he murdered and gassed his own people. Exactly. That's a best of cynical thing and a worst of justification. I mean, what have you seen that's effective in terms of world action for these things with the Kurds or other people.

Starting point is 00:43:25 I mean, look, when we talk about how the Kurds have defended themselves from a state project to eliminate them, right. In some areas they haven't been able to, right. And when they have, it's through their own armed initiative for the most part, right, that they were very fortunate to have the support of the United States. That was only ever in the battle against ISIS. It wasn't when genocidal violence, right? This genocidal project in Afrin, where we're seeing it right now in Tahrir Afat, the US

Starting point is 00:43:56 didn't stand beside them there and it's not in its nature to. And I think this is a really difficult situation that we find ourselves in all around the world right now, where we see, we've seen this in Africa too, right? Like it's not really in the nature of the United States done in this century to intervene simply for human rights reasons, simply because it, because genocide is wrong. We had a person, Samantha Power, who wrote a book on how genocide is wrong and we should intervene and then what happens when she's in power with Obama and Biden? We draw red lines and then let's side walk over them.

Starting point is 00:44:32 It happens all over the world and I think, yeah, we're probably in a post-hegemonic era, but that doesn't mean that people deserve to die because we're in a post-hegemonic era. I don't know, look, if I look at the other genocide, which I've spent more time with than, than most genocides, which is the weird thing to say. It's the genocide in Myanmar of the Rohingya people. They are still facing genocidal violence now, even from anti-hunter groups. But I also see Muslim people in the Karen national liberation Army. I see them fighting with the KNDF and the way that those people liberated themselves

Starting point is 00:45:13 was like from the bottom up. And I think that like, I find some hope in what's happening in Kurdistan and what's happening in Myanmar. And I don't see very much from the community of states and much of the thing that even fucking exists. I don't really believe that states have a conscience and I don't think it's in their nature to care about people because people are inherently valuable. But I do think people do. And I do think it is in the nature of people to care.

Starting point is 00:45:37 So I guess we have to continue to hope. And there has been some positive statements by your Java regarding Armenians and there's some been a lot of solidarity there. Yeah, it was great. You know, Kurds helped commit the first Armenian genocide and they've apologized. And so I'm seeing a little glimmers of hope in terms of the solidarity of people who see what's right and wrong who aren't state actors. That's absolutely right.

Starting point is 00:46:01 Yeah, one of the things people, there's another thing that will be deployed very often. The Kurds are responsible for the Armenian genocide. Kurdish people were part of the Armenian genocide and they will acknowledge that and they've tried to make amends for it. Yes, exactly right. And that's all. And you think it's great. We're here now. We're not prisoners of our history, but we have to acknowledge it so

Starting point is 00:46:20 that we can move from it. Thank you for sharing all that. Yeah, thank you. Is there anything else that we've failed to address that you want to get all that. Yeah, thank you. Is there anything else that we've failed to address you want to get in quickly before we... I mean, yes, there's thousands of years of stuff, but... You know, visit Armenia, it's still called one of the safest places on Earth. It's been rated as safer than Japan. Oh, wow. It's a beautiful place. It's a struggling democracy, but it's the only democracy in the area. Try to pay attention to the news. You know, it's hacky as it seems, right? Your senator, you

Starting point is 00:46:53 know, like, I just feel wrong saying that, but what else can we do, right? If you're in Britain, UK is an incredibly egregious supporter of Azerbaijan through British petroleum. Really, you people probably can have the biggest effect because the UK is the biggest enabler of those dirt bags. And thank you for the time. I really appreciate it. And I don't feel like I've done justice to 2,500 years of history.

Starting point is 00:47:27 But thank you so much. No, I think that's great. Is there anywhere people can follow you online if they'd like to? Oh, absolutely not. I'm tired of getting doxxed. Excellent. Yeah, that's probably for the best. I have to say, you know, that's why I paint icons is because it's anonymous, you know. Yeah, very offline. Yeah, but thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Starting point is 00:48:06 You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated

Starting point is 00:48:33 by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming February 11th, a new podcast, Obscuro, invasion of the drones. Somebody's making money doing this, otherwise it wouldn't exist. Actually rotated around our house, looking as if it was peering in each window of our home. They were visibly dropped. They had reports of shots fired at drones. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told,

Starting point is 00:49:25 where I dig into crimes where a woman is not just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or some mix of those roles, because these are the stories we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the workings of the human psyche. Listen to The Greatest True Crime Stories ever told starting on February 11th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why would you do that to me? Los Angeles, 2021.

Starting point is 00:49:55 A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist. So you didn't stand a chance. my dreams come true.

It Could Happen Here - Greenwashing Genocide In Artsakh

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