Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/24/23 Dennis Marburger on the Brutal Nagorono-Karabakh Blockade

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Dennis Marburger returns to the show to talk about the humanitarian crisis occurring right now in Nagorno-Karabakh. Marburger gives the historical context behind what’s happening before digging into the details of the current blockade, which began late last year. Scott and Marburger then look at the geopolitical context and discuss how this can be resolved.  Discussed on the show: “The Crisis We Ignore” (The Critic) Origins Discovery Armenophobia Maro Kochinyan “‘They want us to die in the streets’: inside the Nagorno-Karabakh blockade” (The Guardian) “Nations by Consent” (Mises.org) Follow Dennis Marburger @DennisMarburge1 This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Pools Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey check it out you guys on the line i got my old friend dennis marburger how you doing man i'm doing very well scott how are you i'm doing great really appreciate you joining me on the show again today um thank and i appreciate you're inviting me. I know you're very busy and you keep doing wonderful work for

the cause of liberty and for the cause of peace and for the anti-war movement. And you're to be commended. So thank you for sharing some time with me. Yeah, yeah, happy to. And seriously, you're the one doing me a favor here. We got such important news to cover about what's going on in the kind of ever-simmering conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia and particularly surrounding Nagorno Karabakh or the Asht – how do you say it? The Ars – say it. Artsock Empire Republic there, which is essentially you got a piece of

Azerbaijan that is landlocked on the other side of Armenia on its kind of western border there. And then you have this Nagorno Karabok-Okarabakh-Artsok-Rubik Republic spot is a piece of Armenia that's wholly enclosed with. within Azerbaijan, but they're supposed to be humanitarian corridors, but the problem is they're all blocked by a lot of bad blood. So that's the very, oh, and of course they used to be both subsumed under the domination of Moscow in the USSR, and then, you know, kind of have been, I guess they fought right after the Soviet Union fell apart. they fought and there's been on and all conflict ever since then so now we're sort of kind of caught up with the background but now you take it from here and i guess philson maybe even the last year worth of what we need to know here okay and i'd like to uh slightly amend the the description

okay so arsac is actually an independent republic um so it's not part of armenia even though it is ethnically Armenian. Oh, I see. Right. And the people is indigenously Armenian. And there's another word, a Tonkinist, I think is how it was pronounced. I'm probably getting it wrong. But so in other words, ancient, the gist goes way back. It's been inhabited by Armenians for millennia. And what happened is that after the genocide, the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, the Syrians and Pontic Greeks, which basically went from 1895 through 19. And actually this thing before the end of that because that ended in 1923 but so there at the post world war one period um the new republic of armenia which which was a restoration of our armenia in the armenian homeland at least a

segment of it a small part of it was set up and that included this area of arsac which is a very culturally and historically important uh many important things happened there in it arctaq had been at times independent when other ways of conquists are going through the area. But Stalin is the commas of the nationalities in the Soviet Union was making a deal with the Turks because he wanted to get away for the Red Fleet to get out to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. And so he put Artsakhok and another area called Nakitjavan, which is if you look at a map and you say,

what's this part of Azerbaijan doing over here called Nikitjavan? And that was actually, that's actually Armenian, but Stalin put it under, along with Arzac, into the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. They were both made autonomous oblasts. That's the phrase they used. And there was supposed to be a lot of self-government, but was unlawfully put in under the overall jurisdiction of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. And now, did Stalin transfer Azis, ethnic Azis, into that area as well? Well, the Azeris did that. I see.

Yeah. Yeah. So Azerbaijan was doing that sort of thing. And the population of the population of makeup in Arpsok and in Khashvon, they tried to influence. They were much more successful, unfortunately, in Nakchivan, where they eventually, over time, wiped out the Armenian presence in Nakhivan. And even in more recent times, the Azerbaijani's destroyed the Armenian cultural heritage there, the churches, the graveyards, these kachkar, they have, which are these crossstones, which had great value. They just wiped it all out because their idea is to wipe out the memory of it, any trace of Armenian civilization there.

They're doing the same thing in the areas that they've occupied in Artsakh. They've done it in areas of Azerbaijan, which are not part of Artsakh, but there were large Armenian communities. They had horrible pogroms and mass killings in Baku and Tsungayak, Karibabad, in Shushi, which is an Armenian city, now totally devoid of Armenians because of these sorts of activities. The Azerbaijani have wiped out the Armenian population there. They either were killed or driven off, and now there were no Armenians left in this important Armenian cultural center. which is a very strategic location there. And that happened, the final thing there happened as part of the 40-40 terror war of aggression that Azerbaijan launched in 2020.

And what they did there was they said, well, no more diplomacy, no more discussion about what would be a just situation to have between the people of Artsakh, who had rightfully declared independence following Soviet law when they were still part of the Soviet Union. And they had left the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. And then when the Soviet Union ended, the Artsakh said, well, we're not part of Azerbaijan anymore. We worked previously and we're not going to be part of it. And even the relationship of the people of Artsakh

is an autonomous oblast as part of their Soviet Socialist Republic and Azerbaijan, that ended because that was going to end when the Soviet Union ended. And the people had decided that was their right and their duty, something we know from the American Declaration of Independence, right, Scott? We don't want that abuse of government. So they said, no, we're not part of you anymore. And the Azerbaijani's attacked, the attacked Armenians living in Azerbaijan, and did terrible things there.

So the long train of abuses after these programs and mass killings and everything else that the Armenians of Artsakh had was even more harrowing than what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues wrote about in the Declaration of Independence. So they actually, there was a remission in Azerbaijani oppression of Armenians after the first Artsakh, or first Karabakh war, which ended in a ceasefire in 1994. But there were attacks by Azerbaijan intermittently. They launched aggressions. And then finally in 2020, they did what they just did. And they've captured the vast majority of Artsakh, including the majority of what was considered Nagorno-Karabakh.

back in the Soviet days, and they have made attacks on the people living there and in Armenia itself, and then in December of last year, in December of last year, they cut this lifeline, and you made a reference to it. It's the Baird-Zor-Lashin corridor, which goes from the Republic of Armenia, which is to the west, and it goes for several miles. It goes from there to the unoccupied surviving remnant, Varsak. And this was something that by agreement of the three parties, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, was supposed to be 10 kilometers wide. The Azerbaijani was supposed to come any closer than five kilometers on either side of it. And then people could travel back and forth and have trade in that sort of thing. And the Russian peacekeepers are in the area. We're supposed to have the ultimate control over this. But then in December, the Azerbaijani's decided they were going to put a total siege on the 120,000 people still living in the unoccupied surviving remnant of Artsakh. That includes like 30,000 elderly and I think 20,000 children. And what they did was they just cut that whole link.

They first started doing this, Scott. They had a fake protest. They said it was an ecological protest. It was about the ecology, and it was an environmental protest. And that was nonsense. There was nothing environmental or ecological about it. It was a, there were a lot of people out there, either students or government workers or soldiers paid by Aliyev,

who was the dictator, Ilham Ali, the dictator of Azerbaijan. And they had this massive, they said they were doing a protest and demonstration. You can't do those things in Azerbaijan. You look at what happens to people that try to do a protest in Azerbaijan, and they're brutalized terribly. And the environment, the ecology and areas under the conditions, control of Aliye of's regime in Azerbaijan is awful. The waters around Baku, the pollution from their various facilities, it is just terrible.

And so this was clearly a fake protest meant to starve the people. And eventually the Azerbaijani just gave up on even the pretense of this being an environmental or ecological thing. And they just completely shut it down. And they said, now there's nothing that. can come in to Artsakh. They eventually relented a little bit and said, well, the International Committee,

the Red Cross is going to take some people out to go from Artsakh to Armenia for medical care. We might allow that from time to time. There'd been some of that. And then they kidnapped one of the people that was being transported. A fellow who they falsely accused of various things, turns out it was a case of mistaken identity.

But they have kidnapped this guy, and they haven't returned them. And they said, oh, well, there's going to be this trial. We had, there were international warrants out for him, and there weren't. That was a lie. And so, and he's not the only person that's been kidnapped while this has been going on. But they basically have completely cut off any ability to get food or personal hygiene items or medicine or anything that you would need in daily living to get into this area. They have also attacked people working in fields who are raising food.

They shoot at their agricultural combines or tractors with the people themselves, and they'll say, oh, we had to do it because they were fortifying the area. And they said, well, you have a right to fortify, but that's not anything what's going on. I mean, you have a right to defense. But they were, so they're not even letting the people raise food, Scott. They're basically drowning them out. They interrupted the power supplies, and they don't let, they don't have natural gas or electricity coming in. It's very intermittent. They have a little bit of it, but it's not enough for the, for the,

operate they have to use hydroelectric power so that's drawn the big reservoir that's in the area down to critical levels they can't pump the have any running water so people have to walk long distances sometimes 20 kilometers to just get buckets of water to take back home and it's it's really an awful situation and the idea here evidently is to force these people either to starvation or the brink of starvation and or dehydration or other medical conditions and they're seeing all sorts of things. People feigning, people getting heart attacks, miscarriages. And it's just the most awful thing. And the goal of the Azerbaijani dictatorship, which has horrible human rights record towards people in Azerbaijan towards the Azeris, the goal is to drive out all of these people

to have them just give up. Or if they want to stay, they have to say, okay, we'll agree to give up our independence and be conquered by Azerbaijan and to be subjugated by that regime. And Azerbaijan says, oh, you'll have the same rights as Azerbaijani's who have no rights and who are brutalized by their government, whether they're protesters or media people, you know, reporters or somebody who is a professor or somebody that says the wrong thing. The human rights record in Azerbaijan is akin to that in North Korea. and the Azerbaijani regime, when they do get control of areas where there are Armenians, they have ISIS-like behavior, and they videotape it and put it in social media channels,

beheading people. And in the last year, they actually attacked areas of Armenia, not Arzac. They took territory in Armenia on the border. They captured prisoners. They put out a video showing them shooting, unarmed prisoners of war, just murdering them right there. They put out videos showing them doing horrible things. things to female prisoners of war and bragging about it and you know mass rape and and bodily mutilation and and the whole thing and they they they thought this was funny and their

telegram channels apparently people that were watching this are saying they're the people in Azerbaijan have been so propagandized by the regime with hateful or menopobic lies and ethnocentric racist hate mongering that that they mock the difficulties of people in Artstock. They mock when somebody dies. They mock when the babies are born. They say terrible things about what they would like to do to the young women. It's just the sort of thing that is beyond the pale. They descend into the depths of demonic depravity and word and indeed. And it all flows from the dictator and his family, the ally of dictatorship of Azerbaijan and their desires to have total control, not only over the people there,

but to get the people there angry at the other, the outsider, which is the Armenians. And so they focus other people on these other people and have just the kind of mindset. So there's no way these groups can live together, but we want reintegration, which is a lie. But it's a very sad thing. And then sadly, Scott, I say shockingly, but this won't shock you because you're very smart about these things and you're knowledgeable. United States government sends subsidy taxpayers money over this dictator in Azerbaijan in violation of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. There's, that's been waived for a number of years, but now apparently they might enforce it again. And in our local Michigan Republican congressional district, we actually passed a resolution calling for that.

So no more subsidization, no more cooperation and collaboration. between the U.S. military and the Azerbaijani military, we shouldn't be doing that, and calling for the lifting of the blockade, the returning of prisoners that they've held, that they're abusing in their prisons, they're holding them unlawfully and against agreements. And so we passed that. And then the International Court of Justice came out and issued an opinion, a ruling. And they said to Azerbaijan, you have to leave that court are open. You must do that.

and they've reiterated that and Azerbaijan refuses to comply and they say oh well we'll send supplies from this other area from this city town called Agdam but what they're trying to do with that is then say okay now we've got you by control if you agree to that now you've agreed you don't have independence

now you agree we're in control and they can use that as a felony Paul Bryan who just wrote a really good article called The Crisis We Ignore at publication of the critic and it's from the United Kingdom as he pointed out, they could use it, they could poison the people, and that's not beyond the pale in this situation.

Something like this happened before, and they've used starvation and blockades before against the Armenian people there. So they're saying, you know, give up everything, and we'll give you what we want to give you from Ogdam, but it's a very cynical ploy way to trap the people. And after they've done these kidnappings, folks are very, very illyriad that. They're just not going to do it. So they're resisting in a Gandhi-like fashion, Scott. They are not fighting violently, though it's their right to defend themselves. But like Gandhi and like the people back in India, they're enduring great hardship to protect their independence and to say we do not consent to rule imposed by this dictator from Baku. All right.

Well, we know how important Azerbaijan is to the American Empire. They have that all important BTC pipeline that runs through there from Azerbaijan, through Georgia and into. Turkey. And so, and, you know, really just keeping Caspian oil out of Russian hands as much as possible by staying dominant there. So the Armenians are at a severe disadvantage there, even though there are a lot of Armenians and an Armenian lobby here in the United States. They don't have the kind of resources that the Americans need to exploit, or even, I guess, they don't have the geography that the Americans require for their specific interests here. So that leads to the question.

You mentioned American aid, but in this crisis, which it is acknowledged to be a crisis in the global media to some degree, it's not like there's a complete blackout on it, although obviously it's not a chosen topic, you know, of the news cycle to be spotlighted. but it's not exactly secret either. So what can you tell us about the role of the United States, the UN, the EU, regional governments like Turkey, in terms of discussion, diplomacy, accusations, arguments back and forth, or are they all just ignoring it? And I guess on top of that, well, I'll save the next part. Go ahead. okay well that's that's a next question so um the united states uh government officially um or what they've actually been doing is again sending this money over there having u.s military work with them and then um you know then they say um well we we want both sides to come together here and come to an agreement

and and and do it in a way that will um ensure the rights of all the people including the the rights of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and maybe they can figure out a way that they can live inside of, you know, it'd be part of Azerbaijan, but they say, well, the problem, it's not a both-sides type of a conflict, right? I mean, one group is doing terrible things to another group, and the U.S. government is not speaking out clearly about it, which is typical.

You ask about the European Union, and there's a hot button on this, because they have this Ursula von der Leyen who says, oh yeah Azerbaijan is a reliable supplier of gas here to Europe and and so and she shakes hands with Aliyev and they had these these photo ops together and they say yeah we're getting the gas from Azerbaijan well what they're getting is in many cases is Russian gas and Russian energy that would otherwise have been going through the Nord Stream pipeline and then you say well wait a minute now the Nord Stream pipeline some people say well Joe Biden was the the Nord Stream bomber He's been alleged to have been that.

He knows a lot of that discussion about that. And there's concern about Europe being deindustrialized and Germany being deindustrialized. And people say, well, we'll justify that in some way because we think that might hurt Russia and that sort of thing. Well, the Russians are apparently sending gas through Azerbaijan. So it's just another route. But now it lets this genocidal terror state of Azerbaijan

benefit from it. And so it's really a rotten deal. There's also Charles Michel. I think there's another person over at the European Union. And again, he talks very much in sort of this, well, you know, we got to get both sides to work together. And they seem very afraid of upsetting or offending the Ali of regime. Sometimes a politician or a government person will say things that they really object to. In fact, the Belgian foreign minister just did, apparently. And she visited Armenia. And she visited Armenia. And she visited. I think she's in Baku. We're going there to Azerbaijan. And Ali refuses to meet with her. Their state media propaganda outlets, one of them is called Calibur,

are saying terrible things about her. Turkey has a role, which would not be surprising to anyone familiar with this part of the world in this situation. Turkey actively supports everything Azerbaijan wants. They helped Azerbaijan in the terror war. They helped

get Syrian and Afghan get another mercenaries, jihadist mercenaries, to fight on the Azerbaijani side. Their commentary is always pro-Azerbaijani, and so they favor putting maximum pressure on the Armenians. Erdogan and Aliyev are joined at the hip on this, and they support each other politically. They meet together in places, like I say, like Shushi. Erdogan's gone there into other parts of occupied Artsok and celebrated the Azerbaijani conquest, and that's the cleansing of the Armenians there. He goes to Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani leaders go to Turkey. So they're very forthright in their support for that. France is a country that has had said some positive things. The new French ambassador to Armenia has been very good. The American ambassador to Armenian has not been good, by the way. She has said some things that are incomprehensible, and she kind of took them back and tried to modify him a little bit. And then NATO, I don't know, NATO has really said anything,

with NATO and Azerbaijan were together on some things. Azerbaijan's got sort of a quasi, and they're not the only country that has this, but they've got sort of a quasi-junior partner or special observer status with NATO. And so there's interaction between NATO and Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani military, as there has been with the U.S. military

and even the Oklahoma National Guard and Azerbaijan. And then there are some, the Azerbaijani state media and the Azerbaijani, they call it diplomatic corps, they're not very diplomatic and their social media warriors are very active spreading disinformation and lies about the historical situation and lies about what's going on here there was just a meeting at the united nations scott they had a security council meeting and so people were talking about this at the united nations what was going on and the ambassador from

Azerbaijan are saying oh see there's no no problem look and he was showing these these pictures that some of their people had gotten from Instagram, pictures, which generally speaking, were not of this time frame, but of before the blockade. And they would show people, you know, celebrating and having good times and he held this one, but you just, oh, look, they have tasty cookies. Oh, there can't be a problem over there, or there would be weddings. And they even made a big deal out of this wedding cake that turned out was made on a cardboard. People still are trying to live, so there are still some weddings there.

And so there was a cardboard wedding cake to give some semblance of joyfulness and celebration. So that's been going on. But there's not been, you know, in terms of the official discussion of this, there's been a lot of both-sidisms. The International Court of Justice has come out at least in terms of the corridor and saying you've got to open up the corridor. Some politicians of some countries have said you have to do that. I think the foreign minister of Canada is at Melanesia Lee.

I think she said some things and came under brilliant attack from the Osirians. by John. He's a former international criminal court chief prosecutor. I believe his name is Luis Marino Ocampo. He's come out and said, he said, it looks like genocide. He says, it's reasonable to call this genocide. And so they impugn his character and attack him. The Lempkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has spoken out about this. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has, but it's still relatively low key. Fortunately, there are people. I mentioned Paul Brian. He had this excellent article. Also, Uze Buellet, who is a lady of Turkish birth, I believe in Turkish ethnicity. She has written about this extensively and has done

great work. And there are some others as well, but it's been, it's been difficult to get a lot of people to actually focus on this. And there are lots of folks on Twitter that are doing good work, actually, that I could point towards, like a Twitter site Origins Discovery, another one, Arminophobia. dot org and maro cochinian and and there are many others that are doing good work but it's kind of like a grassroots volunteer effort um which is trying to break through the fog of not just the fog of war but the fog of of either disinterest or a lack of knowledge about this that there seems to be so pervasive particularly in american mass media you know nightly news type things but we're starting to get a little bit of discussion of it the guardian just had an article finally

somebody said after eight months of silence. And so some people are beginning to waken up to this and we're seeing people all over the world start to look at it. But the geostrategic idea, and where, as you say, geography and the geostrategic geopolitics have worked in Ali's favor where people seem to be afraid to confront him on this. And he's got a number of countries that work with him. Pakistan has been notoriousness. I mentioned Turkey. Israel is a big weapon supplier there. The United States has been collaborating with them. But maybe we're going to see a change in this. But again, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline is an interesting aspect to consider because I think that ramps up the alleged importance of the Azerbaijani connection to get gas from the Caspian or from other areas, including Russia, into Europe for their purposes for industrial use and also for heating. Hang on just one second for me.

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Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org. I'm the director. Then we've got Sheldon Richmond, Kyle Anzalone, Keith Knight, Lori Calhoun, Jim Beauvard, Connor, Connor, Conner Freeman, Will Porter, Patrick McFarlane, and Tommy Salman's on our staff, writing and podcasting. And we've also got a ton of other great writers, too, like Walter Block, Richard Booth, Boss Spleat, Kim Robinson, and William Ben Wagonin. We've published eight books.

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It's also hike season, pool season, picnic season, and yeah, I'm down season. So drink it up with Tim's ice lattes, now whipped for a smooth taste. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Right, so let me ask you, I mean, what exactly is the Aziri's goal here? They just want that territory kind of for petty and historical reasons, or it's extremely important to them for current day policy as we discussed the btc pipeline runs through Azerbaijan Georgia and Turkey and you know bypasses Armenia there right you're right Scott yes and of course that was that is a deliberate route to do

that so well the the Azerbaijani regime as I say I think the number goals here they they have said if Armenians want to get on, who live in Artsakh, want to leave this historic ancient homeland in the land of their birth and just leave, well, they'll open the road from, okay, see ya. So what they want to do is complete the takeover of this area, which is not Azerbaijani, but they want it. And one reason why the leader there wants it is because he is a megalomani who has evil designs and also needs to appease his people or keep his people focused on something other than. their misery at home, which he and his family largely cause. So I think that's a big part of it. And then he has said, too, they've started this recent campaign coming up with a totally

a historical, a totally false narrative that the Republic of Armenia itself is actually, they will call it falsely Western Azerbaijan. Their goal is nothing less ultimately than the total conquest of Armenia and the destruction of the Armenian people and the Armenian heritage there. And you say, well, what are they're going to gain from there? is it looks like Turkey and Azerbaijan are working together to create a neo-Ottoman caliphate, including countries on the other side of the caspian, you know, in Central Asia. In fact, they just had, I think, was the president of Uzbekistan over to Shushi.

And so he was hanging out there with Aliyev. And then we know that Turkey is doing terrible things in Iraq and in Syria, threatening Greece. They were involved in the Libya. I thought I saw yesterday the day before. There are Libyan groups now that are saying that they want the Turks out of Libya. So it looks like Turkey's doing what it can to resurrect the old Ottoman Empire as much as they can. It creates this neo-Ottoman caliphate. And they see the Armenians who are the original inhabitants of the Armenian highlands and the mountains of Artsakh.

They see them being between Turkey and Azerbaijan. They see Turkey and Azerbaijan as two states and one people. And the goal of the dictatorial and oligarchic leaderships of those two states, is to wipe out Armenia and then to link up and then to continue along with their imperial expansionist conquest design. You know, I never did understand why after ISIS took Mosul, the Turks didn't just roll right in and say, yeah, thanks for, you know, using ISIS as their shock troops. But it seemed like that was the goal was to expand the empire right then and there.

And possibly Obama told Erdogan no at that, you know, point. But, you know, so speaking of the Islamic State, you mentioned some of these atrocities. And I wondered whether these are Syrian or other Arab veterans of Obama's dirty war in Syria who are now cutting the heads off of. You tell me, they're cutting the, they're beheading Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh now in Artsakh? Right, right. But those were actually Azerbaijani troops, Azerbaijani troops. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, they did it.

So, yeah. When was that? And in what quantity? Oh, I'm not sure what the quantity was, but I mean, there were several videos of people being beheaded. And when was this? During the 2020 war and right after it. For those people that were, you know, caught behind the lines. And we're talking elderly civilians, Scott.

We're not talking about, I mean, if they did it to soldiers, that'd be, they'd be terrible, too. And they did some of that, you know. Well, that's what Al-Qaeda did to Kurds in Syria, for example. So that's what made me wonder whether it was some of these same guys. But no, you're saying this was the Azeri troops, actually, were the ones doing it, huh? The Azerbaijani military, and they have a special forces group, I think it's called Yasmah or whatever. And they're the ones who did the terrible atrocities to the female soldiers that they captured in 2020, actually in Armenia proper. One of the ways they used to the jihadist mercenaries, I think in the 2020 war, was basically a cannon fodder.

in the early days, things were going well for the people of Artsakh on the Armenian side. But what the Azerbaijani's and Turks did was they used these jihadist mercenaries to send them in like these large assaults. You know, they sent them out first. And then to see where the defensive positions were,

that were shooting them, they left their bodies out there to rot, probably for a couple of reasons. And then they would go on from there. So, yes, we see the ISIS, people do these sorts of things and HTS and El Shom and all this said

Lindsay, by the way, Lindsay Snell does excellent work tracking all okay. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her, but she does excellent work so you could follow her work. You know what? I am familiar with who you're talking about. I know she's done some great work on the terrorists home base in the Idlib province.

Speaking of the Islamic State, there's an entire Al-Qaeda homeland in the Idlib province for the last decade here that America and Turkey support and nobody cares anyway except her but I do confess that I do not follow her closely because

I just got too many jobs man but I know that she is very good on this stuff I do see you know tweets from time to time and things right in fact I think she was she was a prisoner of either Turkey or ISIS or maybe different time that maybe maybe each of those

at a little different times but she's safe now but she really hammers home the point of the of the Turkey ISIS this connection, what's going on there, and with Azerbaijan and everything they're up to, including, and she's pointed this out, and she's not the only one. But what they try to do is they say, oh, look how liberal we are. We're letting these people go through the, through the Lachine corridor and here, you know, and we're having, what they do is if you need medical attention, they apparently say,

well, you have to submit to a medical examination by an Azerbaijani doctor or some other person or whatever, which is, of course, you say, well, this is horrific when you consider the implications of all that and then they they are videotaping people uh children and adults uh without their permission and just for propaganda purposes and they had just again i think was yesterday of the day before there was a young lady who was um leaving uh to go to army for university study and they they're videotaping her and they wanted to get she didn't want to say anything but finally you know they have all these soldiers there and this is one female reporter comes up to her and say yeah isn't everything great you know and they said oh see she she wasn't she

was she was real happy and then she later said oh no i wasn't happy at all and just she was terrified and she just wanted to get out of there but it's it's it's really a horrific situation of what they have done and what they're planning to do and again apparently there are all sorts of like either telegram channels or or on Twitter or Facebook where there are sometimes Azerbaijani officials but other times people who are apparently just run on the middle folks in Azerbaijan that are either enjoying the suffering of the people or rooting for more or saying they want to participate in creating more. And you say, how does this happen?

How does the human race reflect this sort of thinking in this day and age? And I believe the reason for this is the 24-7 stream of our menopobic lies and hate-mongering and propaganda that they hear from Alia. And he basically takes pages out of the Nazi playbook. Some of it is just the same thing as the Nazi. These videos, but you only just change the names of the targets, you see. And that's what they're doing over there. So it's a horrible thing.

Well, can you elaborate about that? You're saying there's like a full Joseph Gerbil style propaganda campaign in Azerbaijan at all times right now? Yes. And it's been going on for quite a long time. And in fact, people noted it. It happened back when I think it was back in 1990 when they did the programs in Baku. and there were several hundred thousand Armenians that were attacked in Baku

and in other areas. It was preceded by the Joseph Kobus-like campaigns against, it probably began against the Armenian people that were living in those areas then. There's a lady, Anna Astavitschurian Turkot, who talks about this. She wrote a book, I witness. She was, I believe she was a 12-year-old girl

at the time in Baku, and she and her family managed to escape and she survived, and she talks about this. but they have in their schools 24-7 anti-Armenian racist propaganda in activities in their textbooks. That is a change. Apparently back in 1972, their textbooks said, oh, yeah, the Gorda Karbakhara Ratsk, like, that's Armenian is always, you know, and they recognize it. But Ilham Aliyev, who's the son of Haidar Ali, who was the dictator of Azerbaijan and a former KGB official that was, you know, very important in the Soviet. Tatorship there. And who the British installed in a coup in 1993 and overthrew a democratically elected leader in favor of him. So, yeah, that's right. So you have all these other

countries that get involved in that sort of thing. And Ali really promotes this, this, this, hate mongering, even in his speeches. I mean, he has said, oh, the Armenians aren't even worthy of being servants, you know, and we're going to chase them out like dogs. I mean, he gives these speeches, go like, holy smokes. The American media heard this. The American And people knew this. Why are we giving this guy money? This is terrible. But that's what they're doing. And they got the people so conditioned, so badly conditioned in this way that there was actually an attempt to protest in an area in Azerbaijan where the local villagers were set over some mining activity that was happening there, polluting their water and things. And they accused, they accused Ali of being an Armenian. You said, well, why would they do that? Well, he's got them thinking that that's the worst thing in the world. And so no, that's what they called him. And that these people suffered. They were. were, they were beaten and there were some video coming out about this about how they were treated by the special police forces and all that sort of thing in their country. Yeah.

So it's, it's, it's, it's an unremitting stream of hatred and lies for the same reasons that the Nazis did it in Nazi Germany. Yeah. All right. Now, look, it's a complicated mess that nobody can solve. So I've got to ask you to solve it for me here real quick. Basically, Dennis, you know. it would be great if everybody could just be treated as an individual and you had the extremely

limited government of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and it didn't matter who owned property, you know, which ethnicity of which people, which language group of which people lived in which neighborhood here because the local security force has so few jobs to do other than protecting people's property rights and everything that it essentially doesn't matter who runs the local security force anyway and everybody gets along great and yeah it's libertarian land but instead it's the curse of the old world that people are so divided by ethnicity and you have so many of these conflicts I don't know what the total number of them is in the world you know right now but a lot of these borders you know drawn through violent conflict in the past especially created by the

European empires. I don't know how relevant that is in this particular case. But when you have this weird West Berlin inside East Germany type situation here, we have this piece of Armenia, you say, and I can see to you, I don't know the entire history, but this has been Armenian territory for a very long time. But man, it's surrounded by a foreign nation, and that just leads to such a difficulty here. You have the corridor or you don't, they can turn it on, they can turn it off, all these kinds of things. And then, as we mentioned, and this always comes up, but I guess

there's not so much problems in strife. I don't know exactly what's the deal with, and I forgot what you called it earlier, this piece of Azerbaijan that's actually on the other side on Armenia's western border with Turkey there as well.

So, when you have just such a mess and all this historical resentment, and as you say, political interests involved in making it worse, not better. What do you do? What do you see is like a long-term solution, you know, if they

would only listen to you type of thing? How can we resolve this in a way where it's pretty dang resolve? It's not just going to flare back up again. Right. Well, yeah, no challenge is there, but

so a couple things. Yes. Nikitjavan is that other area. And frankly, you don't hear much about Armenian versus Azerbaijani a thing going on there because they wiped out the Armenians there. And that's when they talk about reintegration and having peace. That's their idea. That's Ali's idea of it, you see. So what do we do about the other areas that were illicitly put under his control

or that he just seized control of what's the solution here? I do believe a big part of it, Armenia has to be able to be strong enough to defend itself. Otherwise, Azerbaijan is going to eventually go rolling into there, too, when they think they can get away. And they've already done that to some degree. For the people of Artsakh, I think a couple of things can be done. Again, enforcement of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act would be a good first step. Ending U.S. military collaboration with Azerbaijan would be another step to be taking, putting actual diplomatic pressure on them. And frankly, I know that we always say, you know, from the libertarian standpoint, we don't like sanctions.

Though, of course, and because they hurt the common people and not the people in charge. We have all these different examples and they're usually used in wrong ways. Some people think, well, the Alia family needs to be sanctioned and that has to happen. So he feels a pain from this. There are those who are calling for an airlift and say, let's say, we can airwilt. There's an airport there in Stepaniker, which is the capital of what's left. And they do have an airport. The Russians use it to feed their peacekeepers.

say they fly supplies in and out of there, apparently. So that would be a way to do it. There has to be a way to get that corridor opened. And those people, their right to self-defense and their right to live as free people in this land needs to be respected. And for that, they need to be able to have the military capability to do that and to keep the corridor open. So supplies go back and forth. And I'm thinking about it. I'm just rereading it earlier today, and I think maybe you just reread it,

Barry Rothbard's Nation's by Consent, because he's talking about exactly what you're talking about. And he wrote that back in 1987. No, it's just that me and him have a lot in common. Go ahead. Yes, I know. You are a Rothbardian, and you express it very well, and that's a very positive thing. I've actually never read him on this. You're saying he uses this example in that?

Yes, he brings that up. And then he actually brings up, because it was interesting, he brought up the point you made. Well, you know, if we had an area where it was, say, a stateless society and it was truly free markets and private property owners, and then they could work this idea. You wouldn't have the problems there, which is true most of the time, but for a while to see, there's going to be this problem. There's so much hatred and so much bitterness spread through the propaganda and the lies of the Alian regime. it's anybody that's over there, they would say, well, gee, I don't think I would trust that right now. We need to be militarily strong, really strong enough so that the Azerbaijani's don't be like to just go in there and wipe everybody out. And right now, I mean, when they go in, the one thing he doesn't lie about, he being Ali of is when he makes threats, he generally follows through on him.

And then he does set up the area. Just so I'm trying to figure out how to get them to live up to the agreement they made in November 2020 and to comply with the International Court of Justice ruling that they have to leave that court or open is a great question. I like to think of at the moment is heavy diplomatic pressure put on them, much heavier than they're getting heavy media pressure and people shining a light on this like you're doing here, Scott. So thank you for that. the U.S. government actually enforcing Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. The U.S. government reducing the size and scope of the global empire, which taxes Americans, which inflates Americans currency and creates huge increases in debt here, which has a deflationary aspect,

but all that being bad economically, but also leads to these atrocities overseas. So we need to stop working with this guy, make him a pariah, put in some incentives for them to reduce their amount of terror and aggression, occupational, oppression, and genocidal ethnic cleansing. And then in terms of how is it going to be what's going to be the long-term solution, that's a great question. I think it's going to require, you're probably right, I would agree that a private property owner, a system would be much better. The question is, how do we get, say, Turkey and Azerbaijan to both agree to go in that direction and that sort of thing? So there's going to have to be increased scrutiny, I think, from the West and also from other countries in the East.

I know India is quite interesting what's going on here. And they've been somewhat constructive in this area. And so there needs to be pressure put on Azerbaijan diplomatically, economically, politically, the light needs to be shown on this. It needs to be called up for what it is. There needs to be, I believe, you know, there's UNICEF. Why is the UNICEF helping these children that are over there? They were just sitting there silently. So I think there's going to have to be, and then they're saying, well, the Russian peacekeepers,

their job was, among other things, was to keep this thing open. And Azerbaijan agree they would not impinge on it like they did. So it's going to have to be agreement amongst the nations to get the Azerbaijani's to leave this corridor alone and to let these people live. And frankly, for Azerbaijan to withdraw from all of the areas of ARPAC that they've occupied and from all of the Armenian land they've occupied and to for the other countries of the world to recognize the independence of Art Sox. Some U.S. states have done that, including our state of Michigan and numerous other American states.

But we need the United States government to recognize Arts Sock. That would be, I think, a very important step. And so those are things that I can come up with. Your idea, Scott, the Rothbardian private property owner system, someone of voluntary cooperation and not having a political manipulation and coercion, absolutely. That's the way to go. But as others would point out, we're familiar with this. At this point, right now, what there needs to be is enough teeth and enough strength for people resisting Al-Yev and is evil for him to see that it doesn't help him.

You know, maybe what's going to happen is in Azerbaijan itself, where there seems to be some degree of growing unrest. maybe he'll overplay things with his oppression of his own people and something can be something can happen positively there in that regard but in terms of saying well how do we get this thing to be a good long-term solution where it doesn't flare up again I mean right at the moment it's hard to see us getting there in the in the relatively near term but right now we have this horrible crisis with these people I mean it's the urgency of this can't be overstated

yeah but they're going through yeah the starvation possibilities and everything else and and and the in the illnesses it's just um beyond the pale that in the 21st century um unfortunately the vast majority people in media and in government are not paying attention to it unlike yourself and our friend david garnisci and some others that are talking about this uh and mouet and lindsay snell and and others um and brian and paul brian thanks thanks to him for what he did um So it's depressing, but it's something we need to address and we need to find solutions for it. And we need to end the reign of care and aggression and genocidal ethnic cleansing that comes from Ilham Aliyevin and his criminal Punta in Beku. All right, you guys, that is our good friend from way back to Dennis Marburger.

Thank you very much for your time, Dennis. Thank you, Scott. I very much appreciate it. And please, everyone, what you can do politically to get through resolutions of pressure on our politicians in America. to end the collaboration of the two militaries and to enforce Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act and to call for an end of this terrible blockade. Right on, man. Thank you again.

You're welcome. Thank you. Bye-bye. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.