(This story includes an embedded 45 minute video. For reasons not clear to me, this struggle has not been reported on either Russia's RT news service nor Iran's PressTV news service.) Following the arrival of the march from the Armenian province of Tavusch to save province from annexation by neighbouring Azerbaijan, Archbishop Bagrat Gastanyan, who led that march, in his address to the assembled crowd, called for the resignation of Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan. The size of the crowd was estimated to be 100,000 . Those who have followed the history of Armenia, particularly since Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan came to power in the US-orchestrated colour revolution of 2018, will understand that this demand for the removal of Pashinyan is well overdue.
The war, fought in 2020 against Azerbaijan in defence of the Armenain enclave Artsakh (aka Nagorno-Karabakh), was sabotaged by Pashinyan and much of the territory of Artsakh was lost. Following the war, a number of officers who had fought bravely in that war were imprisoned by Pashinyan and remain in prison to this day.
On 19 April, after President Ilham Aliyev of neighbouring Azerbaijan demanded the annexation of Tavusch, Pashinyan did not object. He did not organise the Armenian nation, including its defence forces, to defend Armenian territory from Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's planned land grab. Instead, following a past pattern of surrender after surrender since his inauguration in 2018, Pashinyan immediately sent Armenian soldiers and polices to facilitate Azerbaijan's aggression by dismantling measures taken to defend Tavusch. These measures include the deactivation of minefields.
How to explain Pashinyan's treason?
This degree of submission to a neighbouring country, which has openly stated that it plans to annex all of Armenia, which it labels "West Azerbaijan," is, as far as I am aware, unprecedented in history. The only way I can see how this might be explained is that the United States has decided that its efforts to achieve hegemony in that part of the world requires the total eradication of the Armenian nation. So, the United States has told its puppet ruler Nikol Pashinyan to yet again submit to Azerbaijan's demands for territory.
However, this time many Armenians including Archbishop Bagrat Gastanyan have woken up to Pashinyan. Prior to this, without access to social media and other Internet services they have been fooled several times by printed newspapers and news services on radio and television and have accepted Pashinyan's claim that Armenia was not strong enough to resist Azerbaijan and that each successive surrender was necessary to buy time.
A new episode, from the new Armenian YouTube channel @Hairenik/videos">Hairenik Media, which is embedded below, is presented by Armenian activist Alison Tahmizian Meuse. It includes footage of the process and interviews with a number of partcipants in that protest.
Armenians Unite en Masse Under the Church, Calling for Pashinyan's Ouster
Hairenik Media Newscast
Comments
Sheila Newman
Sat, 2024-05-11 09:33
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About time someone focused on Armenia and Azerbaidjan
Once again, James, you are covering an area glaringly ignored by the mainstream. The silence is particularly odd when, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-armenian-genocide-1915-16-overview), the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916
"[...]triggered an unprecedented public philanthropic response in the United States, involving President Woodrow Wilson, Hollywood celebrities, and many thousands of Americans at the grassroots level who volunteered both domestically and abroad and raised over $110 million (over $1 billion adjusted for inflation) to assist Armenian refugees and orphans."
Also, when you think of how US-NATO is engaging in mass pro-Zionist propaganda in the face of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, in part rationalised as through reverence for Jewish suffering in the Nazi holocaust, yet the same parties are supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine, and many Jews are protesting about the massacre of Gazans, this is all excruciatingly ironic and utterly mystifying.
Add to that that Azerbaidjan and Armenia would strike most westerners as exotic ancient place-names, hard to imagine as living polities. Then throw in the confusing geography whereby a part of Armenia had persisted on a landlocked hilly region in Azerbaidjan, and its a recipe for too hard to understand and report on for most writers.
This area really needs attention, especially since Azerbaidjan is also an oil producer, currently still supplying Israel, via Turkey, despite Turkey's new policies to stop trade with Israel due to Israel's treatment of Gaza.
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