Garen Mouths Off
Disinformation, Near and Far
Earlier today (Sunday, November 8), a friend called asking me if I’d heard the news that Shushi had fallen to the Turkic invaders. I was stunned and saddened, since I’d been in the mountains for the preceding day and a half and hadn’t heard.
But something didn’t seem right. I visited the Facebook page of the Armenian Unified Info Center, which is a gold mine of current and factual data. It turned out the news was fake. The enemy had released two videos showing what were presented as the mosque and fortress of Shushi under their control. Our side debunked the videos by juxtaposing pictures of the real and fake structures and pointing out the differences.
Already a subscriber?Log in here
This story is FREE for you...
Create a free account to access this and four more articles, and get more sent to you with our e-newsletter.By submitting your email address you agree for Hairenik Association, Inc. to send you communication by email.
But what about this?
https://www.tert.am/en/news/2020/11/09/vahram-pogosyan/34384961
and this
https://news.am/eng/news/612318.html
Both come from Armenian media. We need the truth, and it seems very sad. All this time we were told that the attacks were “repelled”, “thwarted”, “neutralized” and so on. But the enemy has control over the South, and keeps advancing, just search for the maps showed by the MoD days ago. The same applies to Shushi, “all attacks repelled and the enemy retreating”, should we have to believe this too?
Where are the retaliations and the counter attacks promised so far? Please, don’t get me wrong, I am not criticizing our soldiers, I believe in their bravery and heroism. But I think all we need to know the truth.
Arayik Harutyunyan, acknowledged Tuesday that “had the hostilities continued at the same pace, we would have lost all of Artsakh within days.”
Pashinyan said in a series of video statements on his Facebook page that it was “extremely painful for me personally and for our people,” calling the situation a “catastrophe.” On Wednesday, he said he signed the agreement to avoid “a full collapse” of the region and deaths of thousands of troops.
I am not Armenian, but I am following this conflict.
Whenever I try to get information from the internet about it, the overwhelming majority of articles, youtube videos, commentaries are clearly azerbaijani and turkish propaganda depicting Armenians as aggressors and war crime perpetretors.
In this information war, Armenians are simply not fighting.
No one has to convince ME who the aggressor is and who is using cluster and phosphorus bombs against civilian targets,(I know that Azerbaijan and Turkey are doing it) but if I were a lambda citizen who would just like to know more and browse the internet for it, I’d definitely think that Azerbaijan is the victim, and that is fighting a righteous defensive war against the evil Armenian aggressors.
Sure, one is usually cautious enough not to trust the very first source of information he gets, but when you get the same story from dozen of different sources, no matter how false they are, you start believing them.
Everything you said there, Marino, is absolutely correct, and too often ignored. I’ve seen the same thing, for a very long time. Both Azerbaijan and Turkey pour a lot of money into lobby industries, to spam information sources with their deliberate lies and falsehoods. One problem is that Armenia itself is too poor to make use of similar lobby firms; and; you’re right that Armenians (in general) have failed to take on the Internet. Azerbaijan’s Khojaly (Xojaly) accusation has been thoroughly debunked, but the slanderous lies about it are carpet-bombing the Internet. Now, the Armenian Stronghold has lost the war, largely because Armenians failed to mobilize adequate sympathy from worldwide governments. Even Russia backstabbed Armenia, because they failed to intervene militarily.
Wrong, Lawrence. Armenians were working very closely with mainstream media. The problem did not rest with the Armenians. MSM has been willfully ignorant, tone deaf and invested in publishing fake news. I think deep down you know why.
Dutch warfare research group Oryx, which documents visually confirmed losses on both sides, Armenia lost 200 tanks (destroyed: 122, damaged: 5, captured: 73), 53 armored fighting vehicles (destroyed: 24, captured: 29), and 507 trucks, vehicles and jeeps (destroyed: 244, damaged: 8, captured: 255), while Azerbaijan lost 32 tanks (destroyed: 20, damaged: 8, abandoned: 1, captured: 2, captured but later lost: 1), 13 armored fighting vehicles (damaged: 1, abandoned: 4, captured: 8), 30 trucks, vehicles and jeeps (destroyed: 16, damaged: 6, abandoned: 6, captured: 2), as well 11 old An-2 aircraft, used as unmanned bait in order for Armenia to reveal the location of air defense systems.
Oryx only counts destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available, and therefore, the actual number of equipment destroyed is higher.
Garen, you may wish to add the 11 No’s Anton AN-2 aircraft to your list.