Silencing Protests With Balloons and Concerts
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/153858-Silencing-Protest-With-Balloons-and-Concerts
I’ve been meaning to write about this topic of Armenia’s presidential elections for some time now but have been putting it off. This seems to be the opportunity to stop putting it off. The main reason for having put it off so long is that in the middle of February (just days before the elections), there was an electrical problem in my building (increase in voltage due to a meter in the common area of our entrance catching fire/shorting out) that damaged, among other things, my laptop AC adapter/battery charger and surge protector. Due to this, I was reading SOTT at internet cafes or at a friend’s house, etc. and not reading for several weeks nearly as much as I usually do (everyday). Then there was the bureaucratic run around of getting the damaged appliances etc. fixed, which is a long story. Finally a few weeks back I got a new AC adapter/charger from overseas and have been trying to catch up with my SOTT & forums reading (always an important but seemingly endless task).
The Presidential elections in Armenia took place on February 19, 2008. I was not paying too much attention to the election campaigns during the 5 or 6 months prior as I do not take electoral politics too seriously. However several times I saw a few different polls in November 2007, December 2007, and up to about middle of January 2008 where Serge Sargsian, the candidate that won and was the Prime Minister from the same party as the President for the last ten years, Robert Kocharian, had a very large lead, with 8 other candidates very far behind. These different polls presented in different media outlets were pretty consistent. Sargsian had support in the mid to high 50% range and second place was usually about 14 to 18% and then the seven other candidates getting from high to low single digits.
Also consistently, the candidate who came in second place in the official results and began the so called demonstrations and protests after the elections, Levon Der Bedrossian (who was the first president after the fall of the Soviet Union, from '91 to '96 and again from '96 to '98) was in sixth place with low single digits in the polls.
Now the elections took place and the results were released: Sargsian won with a little over 52% and Der Bedrossian came in second place with about 21%. Now if no candidate had received more than 50% there would be a runoff, what they call here a second round, and the two leading candidates would face each other so that the winner has a majority of the electorate. So since Sargsian got over 52%, he was announced to be the new president elect.
There immediately began a very strange phenomenon. Der Bedrossian and his "supporters" began to gather in "Opera Square" and ostensibly protest the election results. Der Bedrossian from the start rejected the results, claimed some non-specific alleged irregularities, etc. During the whole campaign (and even before campaigning had begun) I had gotten the impression from different people from different backgrounds that Der Bedrossian was not very popular.
I had this impression even before this whole election season had begun. The background of Der Bedrossian is briefly as follows. In the late 1980's he was instrumental in beginning a movement for the independence of Nagorno Gharapagh, a region at that time under Azerbaijani administration but with an Armenian population of 90%. All other non-Armenian groups together made up the remaining about 10% with Azeri’s being in the low single digits. This "independence movement" was trouble from the beginning; the Soviet rulers in Moscow did not like it one bit; the Azeri’s even less, and the Azeri’s began to fall upon Armenian minorities in Azerbaijan and to massacre them.
Then a war was begun by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Gharapagh because they were agitated for independence. This war was a disaster for the Armenians in Nagorno Gharapagh as they were mostly farmers fighting with primitive rifles against a fairly well equipped modern army with tanks, air power, etc. But in the early '90's, after about a year and a half to two years of this disastrous state of affairs, the Armenians turned the war around, so to speak, and began to make gains.
During the war, Armenians from Armenia proper were being drafted into the army and sent to fight in Nagorno Gharapagh. The Armenians in Nargorno Gharapagh got some real military commanders and began to win some battles. Every battle they won, they confiscated more and more weapons from the Azerbaijani army and became stronger and began to win more battles. Among the tanks and other heavy equipment and not-so-heavy equipment were weapons from Turkey, Israel, and several other foreign countries that had sold (or in some other way transferred to) Azerbaijan these weapons.
During the war, eventually the Armenians gained control of all of Nagorno Gharapagh and also portions of Azerbaijan which became occupied by the Armenian Forces. Also the small minority Azeri population of Nagorno Gharapagh had been displaced as refugees to Azerbaijan. To make a long story short, by around 1994, there was a cease fire that did not last too long as the Azerbaijani Army kept violating the terms. Then in 1995 there was another, more comprehensive, cease fire that has "held" precariously ever since.
Originally, the Armenian stance was that they had won independence for Nagorno Gharapagh and when a final peace agreement was negotiated and signed by them with Azerbaijan, they would relinquish all occupied Azerbaijani lands that were not part of Nagorno Gharapagh. Now this whole conflict seemed very "manufactured" from the beginning, but I was observing it from far away in the USA when it first began without much reliable information being published about it. But I was getting information from an Armenian perspective from various sources. Also many "major powers" were and still are very interested in the outcome of this conflict.
When the conflict first began, it seems Russia was somewhat discreetly helping Azerbaijan. They probably did this for several reasons, one of which was that Der Bedrossian and his "movement" also began to agitate for Armenian independence from the Soviet Union shortly after the Nagorno Gharapagh demands and demonstrations began and shortly before the Soviet collapse. Then Russia began to subtly help both sides; and finally, they began to help considerably the Armenian side. The stakes in this region are very high because of the oil and gas in the Caspian Basin. There are various countries with overlapping mineral claims including Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan all claiming some of the same oil fields. The USA has been very interested to exploit these same oil fields and pipe them out with pipelines they financed and want to finance with several partner countries.
Now back to Der Bedrossian. He used these "independence movements" to parlay them for his own political advantage and became the first post-Soviet Armenian president. By all accounts, he was an autocratic and corrupt president that deepened the corruption and cronyism that had thrived under the Soviet system. He and his administration are widely held responsible for what has become known as the "dark years" which lasted from the early 1990’s to about 1995. During the height of the war in Nagorno Gharapagh, there was no electricity, natural gas, or any other modern form of energy in Armenia because of a total blockade enforced by Turkey who was prominently supporting Azerbaijan in the war. As a result people were cutting down trees and burning anything else they could get their hands on to keep warm and cook etc.
In 1996 Der Bedrossian was re-elected in elections that have come to be known as the most corrupt up to this point in time. He used military troops to squash the dissent and demonstrations against him and the corrupt elections, and tended to do so any time there was popular demonstrations during his two terms. In 1998, he was ousted from his position as president. Shortly before his ouster, he had made public statements that all of Nagorno Gharapagh may have to be given to Azerbaijan in order to have peace and security. Now needless to say that a whole generation of young people and also not-so-young people had died and been maimed, both physically and psychologically, because of the movement for the independence of Nagorno Gharapagh which Der Bedrossian was instrumental in starting and which had led to a brutal and disastrous war.
Also just before his ouster, much information and evidence was released that he had profited handsomely from the so called "dark years" and was in fact selling energy resources, mainly electricity, to Turkey at a lower price than what used to be sold in Armenia and pocketing the revenue. It was already widely known that he was corrupt and had many millions of dollars in overseas bank accounts. At that point, Robert Kocharian, who was originally from Nagorno Gharapagh, became the president (and was later re-elected in 2003) and reiterated the official stance that Nagorno Gharapagh was liberated and won a "war of independence" and would not be given to Azerbaijan, and that all issues with Azerbaijan would have to be resolved through a negotiated final peace agreement and that all Azerbaijani land that was occupied by Armenian Forces would be returned at the time of signing said peace treaty. Azerbaijan has steadfastly refused to negotiate for peace in good faith and just wants to turn the clock back and make believe the war never happened. They also regularly violate the cease fire terms and there are occasional skirmishes because of this.
By the by, Der Bederossian sent his family to live in France and basically was not involved with politics. At the time of his ouster, the USA for some time had been making statements very similar to Der Bedrossian’s statements that got him ousted. This was not inconspicuous to anyone paying attention.
Back to the presidential elections of February 2008. Around September of 2007, Der Bedrossian called a "meeting" to announce that he is considering a candidacy in the upcoming elections but will not become a candidate, unless he is sure he can win. A couple of weeks later, he officially announced his candidacy. Again all throughout the campaign, he was in the low single digits in the polls and pretty consistently in sixth place out of 9 total candidates. Then immediately after the elections, he began his allegations of vote fraud, irregularities, intimidation, etc. There were a pretty large number of international observers who all said that the elections were largely fair and transparent. There was an exit poll conducted by Populis that gave Sargsian a lead with 57%. In the official results, Sargsian got 52% and change; and Der Berdrossian came in second with around 21%.
For ten days after the elections a strange gathering took place at Opera Square organized by the Der Bedrossian camp. They consistently claimed twenty thousand people were participating in the demonstrations disputing the election results and the legitimacy of the newly elected government. Very early on, Sargsian made a public statement that he wanted to create a coalition government with the other major candidates' parties and platforms. Of course, he did not have to do this because he had received a majority of the vote, but perhaps felt that almost 48% of the voting public did not vote for him so that many people would not be represented in his government. Several candidates quickly accepted his offer for a coalition government and began discussing their political programs that they would like implemented. Der Bedrossian was not one of them. He said that such a thing was out of the question and called the candidates who agreed traitors. He had called anyone who didn’t support him traitors shortly before the elections also, and has several times (himself as well as some of his supporters) declared that "you are either with us or against us" since the elections.
I was going to an internet café across the street from Opera Square at this time (and also passed by different sides of the square a couple of times during these days) and the crowd was at the very most usually around 5,000 people – again, at the very most. There was great opportunity to lay out their political demands, a program or platform, etc. But this did not occur. The crowd would just chant "Levon, Levon," Der Bedrossian’s first name. They played what is known here as "rabeez" music (which would translate approximately to bad taste or crude or of low culture - but popular) and danced and drank alcohol etc. All through the campaign also, Der Bedrossian did not lay out any kind of political program or platform, but (whenever I happened to see his speeches televised, as I was not really following the campaigns) talked non-sense and never raised any serious issues, but tried to exploit any general discontent while presenting himself as a "natural" leader and the answer to any and all discontent. These gatherings at Opera Square continued for ten days and the crowd was made up of pretty diverse groups without any coherence that I or anybody else could really discern. Although there was rather ridiculous hearsay of sorts circulating, and even before the elections, that Der Bedrossian and his "supporters" were "intellectuals."
In the first few days, the crowds also interrupted traffic here and there, but then just gathered in Opera Square and some even camped out overnight in tents. After ten days of having taken over Opera Square and lingering around without any discernible political message, other than the not very credible claims of illegitimacy of the elections and newly elected president made by Der Bedrossian immediately after the elections, they were moved from this square to a different part of the city. Then all hell broke loose.
On the evening, night and early morning of May 1/May 2 a part of this crowd went on a rampage burning cars, buses, ambulances, looting stores, etc. They also attacked and beat people including unarmed crowd control police that had only shields and batons, no fire arms. Things escalated into an all out riot type situation. The following days, video footage started coming out of the whole incident. Apparently, the whole incident began when the crowd was moved from Opera Square to an area around what would be City Hall in a USA city. That morning, based on information gathered over several days that the crowd was being armed, the police began to search the tents and crowds in Opera Square for said arms and proceeded to move the crowd to the City Hall area. The crowd began throwing large stones and then molotov cocktails at the unarmed police. Then there were several people who tried to influence the crowd in different ways. One organizer, realizing that the crowd was becoming a dangerous mob, tried to calm people and tell them to march peacefully to another location where there is a museum of ancient manuscripts. Some others tried to incite the crowd. One in particular, by the name of Nicol Pashinian, told the crowd to grab whatever could be used as a weapon, sticks, metal bars, etc. and go on the attack. This was shown on video following the riots.
Apparently the organizers had earlier agreed to move the crowd to the area of the museum of ancient manuscripts but then there was a split and certain organizers refused to move. Well, as evening was turning to night, the crowd began to make barricades and set fires etc. Then they began to throw large pieces of pavement, cobble stones they tore up from the sidewalks, and molotov cocktails at the crowd control police that had gathered. When the police would lift their shields to protect themselves, some armed groups began to shoot at their legs and then run and blend into the rest of the crowd that did not seem armed. There was more and more video released over the days after the incident showing what had happened. Several hundred police and security officers, and civilians were said to have been injured, mostly police, many pretty seriously. Eight people originally died, including one police officer. Recently a security service officer died from his injuries after having come out of a coma.
Now before the rioting, on maybe the sixth day of gathering at Opera Square, there was video footage shown on TV that showed a very large Israeli flag being flown in the crowd while Der Bedrossian danced on stage. This struck me as rather odd and I’ll give some background on the days after the elections while these gatherings were happening in Opera Square. I kept hearing some strange conversations here and there mainly from my brother’s girlfriend who (the girlfriend) is ten years younger than me, just having turned 31 about a week after I turned 41 in the second half of February. Now she has a pretty large network of people she knows in this age range, some a little younger, some a little older, most involved in the arts and many also involved with social and political issues. She is a pretty bright and talented woman, a feminist and an artist who tackles social injustice issues, and in recent years has been focusing heavily on environmental issues, especially the problems of modern urban culture and architecture, the monstrosities of industrialization and mechanization, and how all of these, combined with a lack of respect for and connection to nature, have been increasingly imposing on and oppressing the human space of the city dwellers.
Well she was a key part of some of the very strange goings on that followed in that her large network of friends and acquaintances became a sort of an informal and curious feedback loop. I’ll explain what I mean. During these days, there was talk among these young people about the goings on. And I also noticed a strange effect on my brother’s girlfriend. Her mood would be noticeably changed to the worse, whenever she went to observe these gatherings at Opera Square, showing a vague agitation and worry or concern that I could not clearly define and she could not clearly articulate. But on several occasions, I told her not to take all this too seriously, that it is just theatrics and a distraction; that nothing anywhere in the world could really be changed for the better through elections, and if they could, elections would be outlawed.
She also seemed to be negatively effected by this large network’s influences. Then when the riots and looting happened, a truly bizarre process of false rumor spreading began and much of it was repeated in the media as claims by the "opposition" although Der Bedrossian did not represent any legitimate opposition to speak of. One of the first was that the government killed 58 people during the whole incident. Then there were rumors that the government may have infiltrated the crowd with agents provocateur to cause the violence to break out. As we all know, this is a pretty common practice in the US and elsewhere, so I was trying to find some way of getting information and verifying it, trying to get as accurate a picture of what happened as possible. During the time I was going to the internet café to read SOTT, my impression of the people’s reaction to the whole gathering was that they were pretty indifferent, in the beginning when there was traffic disruption, it wasn’t much more than slight annoyance. At no time did I get the impression of a popular movement gathering steam to confront a fraudulent election and an unpopular government.
But the people that I was observing that I did not know were a mix of regular people who seemed to be pretty indifferent to the whole Der Bedrossian gathering, as was I to a certain extent until the escalation into violence and riots. The day after the violence, there was an announcement by President Robert Kocharian that he was going to declare a state of emergency. There would be no curfew or martial law, but there would be increased security and army reserve troops in various places in the city. The day after the state of emergency was declared, my brother, his girlfriend, and I went to a resort about 45 minutes by car outside of the capital, Yerevan, which we had planned about a week before. There was a noticeable troop presence around the city and on the outskirts, but they were just hanging around, not bothering anyone or searching anyone, randomly or otherwise, and everybody went about there business as usual. So after returning from the skiing and swimming trip, which was just one day, in other words, we came back to Yerevan the day after we went, having spent the night at a hotel, and leaving the following late afternoon, the strange rumors continued to circulate and become more and more fantastic.
I began to question my brother’s girlfriend and some of her friends about some of the really disturbing rumors that already seemed pretty clear to me at that point that they were just rumors and nothing more. The whole thing leading up to the violence seemed manufactured and manipulated already to me, but it was just lurking in the background because I was not invested in any of it one way or the other. But for instance, I had mentioned to my brother’s girlfriend that this whole thing had a strange feel to it and that Der Bedrossian was quite likely a foreign agent, consciously or unconsciously. She and my brother had already had several similar conversations, as it turns out, and one of her friends who works at HSBC bank who was really struggling to decide who to vote for (he didn’t like the incumbent party for which Sargsian was running as a candidate nor Der Bedrossian who, shortly before the elections, had suddenly become the only other viable candidate) had said that all of the funds for Der Bedrossian’s campaign were being wire transferred from England, etc. So when that footage was shown on TV with the Israeli flag being flown (this was a very large flag and very prominent right in front of the stage where Der Bedrossian was dancing to the “rabeez” music) we also had a discussion. My brother had a strong reaction and burst out saying how stupid can these people be, that now they gave away the fact that the whole thing is a foreign financed and manipulated fraud, etc. and that to anyone with two brain cells firing this should already become clear. I wasn’t so sure, and said probably more than stupidity it was arrogance, which is a different kind of stupidity, I guess. Anyway, my brother’s girlfriend asked her friend who was going to the gatherings as a participant, if he saw the Israeli flag. He said that yes he had, to which she responded that at least he and whoever else saw the Israeli flag being one of the most prominent things in the staging of this show should have left the gathering at that point.
Her friend responded something to the effect of "yeah, the Jewish community has joined us in this movement" against government corruption and election fraud. Now you must understand that Armenia is a tiny country with an overall population of about 3 to 3.5 million people about 97% to 98% being Armenian and all the rest being non-Armenian, including Russians, Persians, Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, (Indians, Pakistanis, & Bengalis mostly here to study medicine or some other scientific field) Assyrians, Jews, etc. And then, strangely enough, over the next couple of days this rumor of "the Jewish community" having joined the Der Bedrossian movement had spread seemingly having started from this very conversation and perhaps other people’s reaction to the Israeli flag being flown so prominently in front of the stage where Der Bedrossian was dancing. Immediately, there was an official announcement carried in the media from the Jewish community that they in fact had not joined this "movement," had accepted the election results and congratulated the newly elected president, Serge Sargsian. Hmm.
I proceeded to try to find out roughly how many Jewish people lived in Armenia because these same excuses kept being brought up as an answer as to why the Israeli flag was flown so prominently even when those making this excuse were told that the Jewish community in fact had disavowed having joined the "movement" and declared that those who were at the gathering and those flying the Israeli flag did not speak in their name. I, myself, also mentioned to several of those claiming the Jewish community had joined this "movement" that the Israeli flag was in fact the flag of Israel and not of "the Jews;" an important distinction, especially what the Israeli flag had come to symbolize in the world, its origins in the Zionist movement, and its meaning with the two stripes standing for the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Nile, the land between which is eventually supposed to be conquered by the Zionists, the occupants ethnically cleansed and "Greater Israel" established.
It was difficult getting a firm number for the Jewish community in Armenia, but two figures that were bandied about were ten families and about 300 people total. I had also asked those claiming the Jewish community had joined the "movement" how many total Jews lived in Armenia, 1,000, 1,500? Most said probably not that much. I asked if it seemed odd that (besides the Israeli flag being flown which is not a Jewish symbol per se but the flag of a specific country with a very bad record) if it was not strangely out of proportion to be flying such a large flag so prominently displayed for such a small community. Anyhow, the strange false rumor spreading and the "feedback loop" escalated after the violence broke out. I’ll give a few specific examples.
When there was the rumor that the government had infiltrated agents provocateur into the crowd to incite violence, I said that that was a distinct possibility, but that given the circumstances, it did not make sense, since there was no popular movement against the government or the election results; since Sargsian had gotten a clear majority (and won by a landslide) that was validated by the international observers, he had nothing to gain and much to lose from such a move; that on the contrary, the obvious beneficiary from violence, chaos and instability was Der Bedrossian and his handlers and very probable foreign masters; that this was a "great game" in terms of geopolitics and economic interests that was long in the works in which Armenia was but a pawn, and Russia and China and their level of influence in the region and the global scene in general were a much larger piece of the puzzle; that a small nation like Armenia so strategically located could not be truly independent and was either going to align with the Western interests or, as they have shown, prominently align with Russia and China, and made other such points. Shortly thereafter, more rumors started coming back from the same circle of young artists and social and political activists that seemed to be reformulated propaganda to answer just the points I had raised, including that the government had long planned, prepared, and orchestrated everything because there was major cheating in the elections and they had made contingency plans (including releasing criminals from jail to later go on a rampage) because they had always expected a possible unpleasant backlash, and so on and so forth.
Concerning the 58 deaths (of presumable innocent civilians) I had said that such an incident would be very difficult to cover up; that the names, ages, addresses and circumstances of death would soon come out; what had been done with the corpses? That in a country like Armenia, and a city like Yerevan, everyone knew everyone in a certain sense and that they know this to be so; for instance, the large networks of friends and acquaintances all would either personally know someone who died from such a number or know someone who knew someone who died, and so on. Some responses came back through this network of people that had become an unexpected feedback loop tailor-made to answer the points I had raised. Among the gist of it was that they had made people sign documents that the people killed had died of car accidents and the like to which I responded that if that was the case, again everyone would talk to everyone they knew and the truth with all the details would soon come out. I added that under some of the presumably bogus scenarios that were described, that if anyone would ever get a backbone, muster the courage and refuse to sign such a document when they in fact knew that their loved one or friend had been unjustly killed by government forces it would be exactly in such scenarios as were described. During these days I had a fever for one day, and literally this spread among this network (most of whom I don’t know and the rest I don’t know too well) very quickly and the next day we were gathered at my brother’s girlfriend’s apartment where a few of this network were there and my fever inadvertently came up and I joked that see, a practically invisible person like me catches a fever and everybody quickly knows about it, yet 58 people were killed and no one could produce any verifiable details about them.
One of the younger girls, an architect, said (but this time half heartedly like she also didn’t believe what she was saying) that they made people sign these documents in order to release the bodies to their loved ones. This time it really struck me that all of these conversations were going back to the originators of these false rumors and coming back tailored exactly to the points I kept raising about these same rumors. As I said, this last one, the young architect, didn’t have her heart in even responding and the rest of the response about Armenians being naïve and not knowing their legal rights, etc. just trailed off. I want to make clear that these young people are sincere but misinformed and, unbeknownst to them, part of a hidden network imbedded within their own that was instrumental in manipulating the unfortunate events by rumor mongering and propagandizing in the hopes of infecting more and more people to turn against the government. Now in the case of this last half-hearted response, it is clear that if the government had done such a thing, then the proof of the corpse being handed over right after the coerced signing of the document claiming that they were killed in car accidents (besides the extremely suspicious fact that all 58 people died in car accidents on the same night in addition to any real deaths from car accidents that night) would be very unwise and dangerous for the government agents. Because now everyone who in fact knew the real cause of death had the corpse as evidence to get an independent autopsy and establish the cause of death, holding a very grave and inconvenient piece of evidence against the government who would only dig themselves in deeper if they tried to produce so many signed statements that the desist were in fact killed in car accidents.
As the days went on after this tragic violent escalation, I also kept responding to the many rumors that everyone (except me and my brother who refuse to have cell phones) has a cell phone either with a still photo camera or both still and video. Besides many of them are into the arts and carry palm-corders and digital cameras with them. Now how come there was no footage at all to back up some of these rumors. By this time the government was releasing more and more video, some of which was sent to authorities as evidence by regular citizens who shot the footage. One such video was of a crowd attacking a helpless man and beating him viscously and mercilessly for what reason was unclear. But over the video that was shot from a balcony above the scene there are occasional comments heard from what seems to be a husband and wife.
Some of the automatic comments were that there probably was plenty of video footage with damning evidence against the government forces but was unable to be shown. To which I commented that such footage was being put on the internet everyday and forcing official stories concerning police brutality to be revised, and so on; and that if, for whatever reason, they could not get it on the internet, how about burning CDs & DVDs and whatnot and circulating and distributing it to everyone they knew. Well a few days later an obviously doctored video was released to the news media showing several riot police running into the shot and firing somewhere unseen out of frame with automatic rifles, basically machine guns. The authorities showed that these had the wrong tip at the ends. They demonstrated that with the attached tips shown in the videos that you can only fire one tracer bullet at a time and not live battle ammunition and not in machine gun mode. They said if real bullets were to be put into the guns and fired with those attachment tips that the guns would basically backfire and explode. They also said that it is clearly doctored footage because the machine gun fire using live bullets with the accompanying audio track would not show the kind of laser beam like straight white lines tracing the path of the bullets. All of their rebuttals and claims were clearly demonstrated on camera by going outside in a courtyard with the press conference following them. They also invited anyone who has served in the armed forces, which is mandatory in Armenia, to come and verify or rebut all that they were claiming about the guns, attachment tips, and ammunition.
All throughout these events, no one in this circle of friends claimed to be supporting Der Bedrossian, but were clearly agitated to be anti-government. There were claims such as in every country there is corruption and injustice but at least there is the rule of law in other countries and you get your day in court. I asked which particular countries were being referred to, and America was given as a response. I told this person that this was naïve in the extreme, that in fact their view was just American propaganda, that I lived for 31 years in America and that especially in recent years there was no rule of law, in fact much less so than in Armenia and that it was a fully militarized and fascist state.
During the days of gathering at the Opera Square, before the violence, there were complaints presented claiming election irregularities and demanding a recount. There was an investigation and a recount was done. After the recount Der Bedrossian got 100,000 less votes than the original count and all evidence of fraud was produced against Der Berdrossian including bribes, and false certification of sealed and signed ballots with final results written on the outside, which when opened did not in fact match the results inside. The one prominent such case that had given Der Bedrossian 649 votes for that district when he had actually received 41 was investigated and opened for a recount because there was more than 120 total votes counted more than there were registered voters for that district. Also as the rumors of every kind were flying, I was telling some of the people who were unknowingly participating in spreading disinformation, that yes, election fraud and irregularities occur everywhere but that it has to be a close race to win by cheating which was not the case here.
The only thing, I pointed out, that statistically had a bad odor was how in a few weeks Der Bedrossian went from sixth place with single digits in the polls to second place with over 20% of the vote in the elections. There were no political scandals or anything else that could explain his incredible jump. The exit polls (the most accurate and time tested measure) showed Sargsian winning with 57% of the vote, while in the official results he got 52% and a fraction. So there is nothing suspicious except that he maybe should have won by a larger margin.
This rather large network of friends and acquaintances are connected to several foundations for the arts and NGO’s all with foreign funding. It seems to me that these organizations are the main thrust of spreading disinformation and brainwashing and possibly the main sources from where the reformulated propaganda was coming from, tailored to any points that cast doubt on the original rumors and disinformation raising the danger of the members of the network beginning to question things and use more critical thinking. These organizations give small grants and access to facilities and other resources to the young artists and social and political activists so that they can control them and shape their views.
After the state of emergency was declared for twenty days, there was more and more information being reported from the point of view of the government with the media responding to it with the claims of this most strange "movement," that after ten days of "illegal" demonstrations, erupted into mob violence. The gatherings to demonstrate against the election results did not have a permit to gather with date, time, estimated number of people, the organizers, etc. as is common for governments to be able to provide emergency services such as crowd control, ambulance service, general logistics, etc. However, for ten days the government allowed the gathering to proceed without permits because there seemed no real reason not to do so. But as these gatherings continued, there were certain mutterings that it was dangerous, that the government should make them comply with permit requirements or disperse the crowd, and so on.
The morning that an investigation and searches began, based on information that the crowd was being armed, was the last day of gathering at Opera Square, and when the crowd was moved, that’s when tensions rose and the confrontation with crowd control police began. The next couple of days, video was released showing the police searching and confiscating all manner of firearms, ammunition, hand grenades, inflammable liquids and glass containers, metal bars, wooden clubs, etc. However, all of this seemed to be footage shot by the police and other government forces. Nevertheless, as many arrests were made during the night of violence, all sorts of strange confessions began to come out. First of all, there was abundant footage of the looting as well: people coming out of grocery stores, supermarkets, and stores of all sorts carrying away from cases of bottled water, liquor, paper products, pastries and other food, to everything else you can think of. Some of the arrested people were claiming that they were given wine and beer to drink but in jars, not their original containers. One guy on camera claimed he did not drink that much, but became disoriented and detached, unable to think clearly, etc. He claimed that he drank alcohol regularly and that it never had such an effect on him before.
Later, some psychologists were analyzing what had happened to cause this escalation, and on one program, there were claims made that neuro-linguistic programming was used on the crowd all throughout the days of gathering at Opera Square and culminating in the final incitements. Also, all through this time Der Bedrossian kept saying that this is a revolution, and in fact, had said this before the elections took place as well. There were claims that some of the organizers began to tell the crowd to attack and loot the stores because they were owned by "rich people." Then there were the peculiar comments (coming from Der Bedrossian and his camp) made that the current political clique are a bunch of foreigners, "Mongols and Tartars and Turks," because many of them were originally from Nagorno Gharapagh and not from Armenia proper and that, therefore, they were enemies of the Armenian people and more such ludicrous nonsense.
Several days, after the violence broke out, my brother, his girlfriend, and myself walked to the parts where most of the looting and mayhem had taken place. There were a lot of damaged stores and property and empty stores, but everything was being cleaned up and fixed pretty quickly. Across the street from City Hall there is a large park where much of the metal bars from the fencing around it were cut to be used for weapons. My brother’s girlfriend was photographing it all, and we also noticed that they were very clean cuts, seemingly torched off, so that it gave the impression of being well planned and coordinated ahead of time rather than a spontaneous eruption of violence.
The night after the state of emergency was declared, Azerbaijani Forces attacked Nagorno Gharapagh region and for several hours occupied positions usually under control of Armenian Forces from Nagorno Gharapagh. They were then driven back leaving 8 or 9 dead Azeri soldiers. For more than six months before this incident, Azerbaijan kept escalating threatening rhetoric that they will resort to military means to retake control of Nagorno Gharapagh by force, something they had been doing for a long time, but now took it to a new level. During that attack, Azerbaijani officials had announced that this time they would not only conquer all of Nagorno Gharapagh, but drive all the way to Yerevan. The Nagorno Gharapagh and also the Armenian governments claimed that this new attack by Azerbaijan was not the usual skirmishes and violations of the cease fire agreement, but much heavier battle equipment was used that could only have been planned and moved into position for several weeks from a logistical point of view. They further claimed that this must have all been coordinated with a crisis caused in the capital of Armenia proper, Yerevan, and then use the opportunity of having troops, resources and other forces and attention busy with dealing with the crisis in Armenia to then attack Nagorno Gharapagh.
Again, some of these claims were discussed with my brother’s girlfriend and her network of friends and acquaintances and it was said that the governments could be making the whole thing up and using it as propaganda to silence and calm the opposition movement against them. I said that time would tell, and that the Minsk Group who oversee the cease fire and security and stability situation in Nagorno Gharapagh would certainly dispute these claims if they were not true, and that they had not yet done so. Shortly afterward, the Minsk Group in fact did confirm the claims made by the Armenian and Nagorno Gharapagh governments, even the representative from the US did not dispute any of the claims.
During the days after the rioting, the usual Western propaganda organs began writing the most blatant propaganda pieces about all the events and circumstances in Armenia, the most notable among them the BBC, and even more so, the New York Times. As I was trying to get as accurate, impartial and objective a picture of just what had happened and what was going on, these two models of professional propaganda, psyops, and opinion shaping that has become so famous (or infamous) only added to my suspicions of all the strange shenanigans that had transpired. We even analyzed the language of one New York Times piece that someone had emailed to my brother’s girlfriend looking closely at the techniques used and language manipulation and pointing it out to her; she even noticed a couple of silly and manipulative phrases and sentences that we did not point out and she is not nearly as fluent in English as we are. These mainstream media articles were much more blatant in their propagandizing than this Moscow Times article by Mathew Collins that I am responding to, but Collins has enough propaganda techniques in there for the reader to see for himself; one blatant lie stands out though: "From morning, the *CITY* had been under lockdown." Perhaps only one example from the New York Times will suffice which was rather nonchalant and less blatant compared to some of the other manipulations: The Bush Administration hasn’t *FULLY* accepted the election results.
In the days following the riots, when I was watching more television than usual (which is almost none – only what I see by chance when the TV is on and others are watching), I saw via satellite dish Russia Today report that the prominent media outlets in Russia were reporting that this was another attempted "color revolution" (like the ones in Georgia and Ukraine financed by CIA and other US agencies) in Armenia that failed from the beginning.
Also after the election results were announced and Der Bedrossian began disputing them and trying to discredit them, he made the outlandish claim that he had in fact received 65% of the vote but was cheated. Now it was becoming clearer that this guy was a putz, perhaps a vile and unscrupulous putz, but a putz nonetheless. He could, for instance, have claimed to have gotten say 42% (instead of the official 21%) of the vote and further claimed that if the true results had been produced, then Sargsian would not have gotten the required majority and there would definitely have to be a runoff or something similar that would be a more plausible lie than his 65% claim. Again there seemed to be that kind of hubris, and the Big Lie doctrine that was being applied, but it just wasn’t flying in this case.
Der Bedrossian had filed an official claim with the Constitutional Court just a day or two before the violence broke out, two days after another candidate had filed one who was getting pretty consistent 2% in the poles before the elections and got something less, like 1%, (who also wanted the results nullified) and was demanding his 2% I guess. Now this other candidate is another doozy; he takes mostly elderly people, and some young people of low income, who don’t have any way of leaving their villages and brings them by bus to one of the most famous sightseeing places in Armenia, Lake Sevan. Now this seems like a nice thing to do, but then he videotapes it all and interviews everyone giving gushing testimonials of what a wonderful and kindhearted person he is, and so on, and then broadcasts it all on the TV channel he owns; and then after a year or so of doing this, becomes a presidential candidate. To each his own.
Back to Der Bedrossian’s claim in the Constitutional Court to nullify the election results: by law, the court has a set amount of time to hear the case and hand down a ruling within 10 days after the claim was filed. Right after the violent outbreak, the court began the preliminary process of the hearings to proceed with the full process, finish up and give their ruling in the allotted time prescribed by law. Der Bedrossian made the false claim that he was under house arrest and could not attend the court as required to proceed with the case he had filed. This false claim became the latest false rumor flying around and being repeated. The side representing Sargsian, immediately refuted this claim and said that Der Bedrossian was free to come but was in fact lying and playing games. Then Robert Kocharian, the current president at that time, stated on television that Der Bedrossian was not under house arrest, in fact, under Armenian Laws, house arrest was illegal, and pondered if perhaps it would not be an idea to consider to amend the law so that house arrests would be legal in certain cases. The next day, Der Bedrossian showed up at court at the appointed time and didn’t even try to acknowledge or explain his dissimulations about house arrest.
Then, as the court case was winding down, and it was becoming clear that there was no evidence of any legitimate standard presented to the court to support his claims, Der Bedrossian made a declaration that even if the Constitutional Court rules against him, it would be a totally illegitimate ruling because since the case was filed, a state of emergency was declared (which he had very cleverly triggered, and by this time it seemed that it was a very intricate, long planned affair and not spontaneous by any means) and that since technically the election process was not over until all claims were filed with the proper procedures and jurisdiction, heard and ruled on, then any ruling that was handed down, and in fact the hearings themselves for the ruling being carried out in a state of emergency, that no such election process could be considered legitimate. This was declared through the media, qualified by plausible deniability tactics such as "this is what Der Bedrossian’s side is likely to claim" under the proper article of the elections laws.
So it was becoming rather clear that the whole thing had turned into a process of casting doubt on every legal process and to continue to do so on the elections and the results. And if it was a failed color revolution, now every opportunity would be utilized to maximum effect to smear the legitimacy of Armenia in a general way in any international relations and transactions.
Some more of the rumor mongering follow. Shortly after the rioting, my brother’s girlfriend came back from talking to her friends and said that there were armored vehicles and tanks that were trying to herd the crowd into a certain area when they had moved to City Hall. The only way this was stopped was that some of the people lay down in front of the vehicles which then stopped. I said that it was a very hopeful sign that they stopped and did not run over anyone. She replied, well how could they do otherwise, they wouldn’t just run over people, nor even shoot into the crowd. I said that was my point exactly; in some countries they treat people brutally for no reason, even when there is no circumstances such as had developed, whether provoked or not. There was never any footage showing armored vehicles or tanks before the state of emergency was declared either.
Some of the most outlandish rumors came from overseas from the diaspora, particularly the US. One of the early ones was from Glendale, California that the whole "dark years" meme was a myth that never occurred. Well everyone, even these younger people, lived through these years so they definitely knew that it occurred. Then Der Bedrossian added to this that everyone should remember that the "dark years" took place during war. True enough. But we are still technically in war, and the blockade is still officially in effect. I guess, we shouldn’t remember any role played by Der Bedrossian in those events nor his personal profit. How to explain the vast improvements in the daily lives of the citizens of Armenia and the state of the country in general?
Certainly there are many problems in this country. There is garden variety corruption, cronyism, and monopolies that is a scourge of the planet; the job market is very limited by the types of jobs available, the economy not being very developed; but when push came to shove, and opportunities were presented to the government to really crack the fascist whip, only hopeful signs emerged that perhaps, overall, this society is not as sick as some others. This was evident to me from various other aspects. The level of surveillance is so much less than so many other countries that it truly is amazing.
Finally, there were emails coming from US promulgating the mainstream media accounts of how brutal the crackdown by the government was, etc. As if it was more clear to people thousands of miles away what had actually taken place than those who were living through it.
And so… and so, the Armenian government is accused in this article of silencing protests with balloons and concerts. Well I never had a horse in this race, but they also had the chance to silence everyone by much more brutal means, a chance that many other governments dream about. But they didn’t take it.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/153858-Silencing-Protest-With-Balloons-and-Concerts
I’ve been meaning to write about this topic of Armenia’s presidential elections for some time now but have been putting it off. This seems to be the opportunity to stop putting it off. The main reason for having put it off so long is that in the middle of February (just days before the elections), there was an electrical problem in my building (increase in voltage due to a meter in the common area of our entrance catching fire/shorting out) that damaged, among other things, my laptop AC adapter/battery charger and surge protector. Due to this, I was reading SOTT at internet cafes or at a friend’s house, etc. and not reading for several weeks nearly as much as I usually do (everyday). Then there was the bureaucratic run around of getting the damaged appliances etc. fixed, which is a long story. Finally a few weeks back I got a new AC adapter/charger from overseas and have been trying to catch up with my SOTT & forums reading (always an important but seemingly endless task).
The Presidential elections in Armenia took place on February 19, 2008. I was not paying too much attention to the election campaigns during the 5 or 6 months prior as I do not take electoral politics too seriously. However several times I saw a few different polls in November 2007, December 2007, and up to about middle of January 2008 where Serge Sargsian, the candidate that won and was the Prime Minister from the same party as the President for the last ten years, Robert Kocharian, had a very large lead, with 8 other candidates very far behind. These different polls presented in different media outlets were pretty consistent. Sargsian had support in the mid to high 50% range and second place was usually about 14 to 18% and then the seven other candidates getting from high to low single digits.
Also consistently, the candidate who came in second place in the official results and began the so called demonstrations and protests after the elections, Levon Der Bedrossian (who was the first president after the fall of the Soviet Union, from '91 to '96 and again from '96 to '98) was in sixth place with low single digits in the polls.
Now the elections took place and the results were released: Sargsian won with a little over 52% and Der Bedrossian came in second place with about 21%. Now if no candidate had received more than 50% there would be a runoff, what they call here a second round, and the two leading candidates would face each other so that the winner has a majority of the electorate. So since Sargsian got over 52%, he was announced to be the new president elect.
There immediately began a very strange phenomenon. Der Bedrossian and his "supporters" began to gather in "Opera Square" and ostensibly protest the election results. Der Bedrossian from the start rejected the results, claimed some non-specific alleged irregularities, etc. During the whole campaign (and even before campaigning had begun) I had gotten the impression from different people from different backgrounds that Der Bedrossian was not very popular.
I had this impression even before this whole election season had begun. The background of Der Bedrossian is briefly as follows. In the late 1980's he was instrumental in beginning a movement for the independence of Nagorno Gharapagh, a region at that time under Azerbaijani administration but with an Armenian population of 90%. All other non-Armenian groups together made up the remaining about 10% with Azeri’s being in the low single digits. This "independence movement" was trouble from the beginning; the Soviet rulers in Moscow did not like it one bit; the Azeri’s even less, and the Azeri’s began to fall upon Armenian minorities in Azerbaijan and to massacre them.
Then a war was begun by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Gharapagh because they were agitated for independence. This war was a disaster for the Armenians in Nagorno Gharapagh as they were mostly farmers fighting with primitive rifles against a fairly well equipped modern army with tanks, air power, etc. But in the early '90's, after about a year and a half to two years of this disastrous state of affairs, the Armenians turned the war around, so to speak, and began to make gains.
During the war, Armenians from Armenia proper were being drafted into the army and sent to fight in Nagorno Gharapagh. The Armenians in Nargorno Gharapagh got some real military commanders and began to win some battles. Every battle they won, they confiscated more and more weapons from the Azerbaijani army and became stronger and began to win more battles. Among the tanks and other heavy equipment and not-so-heavy equipment were weapons from Turkey, Israel, and several other foreign countries that had sold (or in some other way transferred to) Azerbaijan these weapons.
During the war, eventually the Armenians gained control of all of Nagorno Gharapagh and also portions of Azerbaijan which became occupied by the Armenian Forces. Also the small minority Azeri population of Nagorno Gharapagh had been displaced as refugees to Azerbaijan. To make a long story short, by around 1994, there was a cease fire that did not last too long as the Azerbaijani Army kept violating the terms. Then in 1995 there was another, more comprehensive, cease fire that has "held" precariously ever since.
Originally, the Armenian stance was that they had won independence for Nagorno Gharapagh and when a final peace agreement was negotiated and signed by them with Azerbaijan, they would relinquish all occupied Azerbaijani lands that were not part of Nagorno Gharapagh. Now this whole conflict seemed very "manufactured" from the beginning, but I was observing it from far away in the USA when it first began without much reliable information being published about it. But I was getting information from an Armenian perspective from various sources. Also many "major powers" were and still are very interested in the outcome of this conflict.
When the conflict first began, it seems Russia was somewhat discreetly helping Azerbaijan. They probably did this for several reasons, one of which was that Der Bedrossian and his "movement" also began to agitate for Armenian independence from the Soviet Union shortly after the Nagorno Gharapagh demands and demonstrations began and shortly before the Soviet collapse. Then Russia began to subtly help both sides; and finally, they began to help considerably the Armenian side. The stakes in this region are very high because of the oil and gas in the Caspian Basin. There are various countries with overlapping mineral claims including Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan all claiming some of the same oil fields. The USA has been very interested to exploit these same oil fields and pipe them out with pipelines they financed and want to finance with several partner countries.
Now back to Der Bedrossian. He used these "independence movements" to parlay them for his own political advantage and became the first post-Soviet Armenian president. By all accounts, he was an autocratic and corrupt president that deepened the corruption and cronyism that had thrived under the Soviet system. He and his administration are widely held responsible for what has become known as the "dark years" which lasted from the early 1990’s to about 1995. During the height of the war in Nagorno Gharapagh, there was no electricity, natural gas, or any other modern form of energy in Armenia because of a total blockade enforced by Turkey who was prominently supporting Azerbaijan in the war. As a result people were cutting down trees and burning anything else they could get their hands on to keep warm and cook etc.
In 1996 Der Bedrossian was re-elected in elections that have come to be known as the most corrupt up to this point in time. He used military troops to squash the dissent and demonstrations against him and the corrupt elections, and tended to do so any time there was popular demonstrations during his two terms. In 1998, he was ousted from his position as president. Shortly before his ouster, he had made public statements that all of Nagorno Gharapagh may have to be given to Azerbaijan in order to have peace and security. Now needless to say that a whole generation of young people and also not-so-young people had died and been maimed, both physically and psychologically, because of the movement for the independence of Nagorno Gharapagh which Der Bedrossian was instrumental in starting and which had led to a brutal and disastrous war.
Also just before his ouster, much information and evidence was released that he had profited handsomely from the so called "dark years" and was in fact selling energy resources, mainly electricity, to Turkey at a lower price than what used to be sold in Armenia and pocketing the revenue. It was already widely known that he was corrupt and had many millions of dollars in overseas bank accounts. At that point, Robert Kocharian, who was originally from Nagorno Gharapagh, became the president (and was later re-elected in 2003) and reiterated the official stance that Nagorno Gharapagh was liberated and won a "war of independence" and would not be given to Azerbaijan, and that all issues with Azerbaijan would have to be resolved through a negotiated final peace agreement and that all Azerbaijani land that was occupied by Armenian Forces would be returned at the time of signing said peace treaty. Azerbaijan has steadfastly refused to negotiate for peace in good faith and just wants to turn the clock back and make believe the war never happened. They also regularly violate the cease fire terms and there are occasional skirmishes because of this.
By the by, Der Bederossian sent his family to live in France and basically was not involved with politics. At the time of his ouster, the USA for some time had been making statements very similar to Der Bedrossian’s statements that got him ousted. This was not inconspicuous to anyone paying attention.
Back to the presidential elections of February 2008. Around September of 2007, Der Bedrossian called a "meeting" to announce that he is considering a candidacy in the upcoming elections but will not become a candidate, unless he is sure he can win. A couple of weeks later, he officially announced his candidacy. Again all throughout the campaign, he was in the low single digits in the polls and pretty consistently in sixth place out of 9 total candidates. Then immediately after the elections, he began his allegations of vote fraud, irregularities, intimidation, etc. There were a pretty large number of international observers who all said that the elections were largely fair and transparent. There was an exit poll conducted by Populis that gave Sargsian a lead with 57%. In the official results, Sargsian got 52% and change; and Der Berdrossian came in second with around 21%.
For ten days after the elections a strange gathering took place at Opera Square organized by the Der Bedrossian camp. They consistently claimed twenty thousand people were participating in the demonstrations disputing the election results and the legitimacy of the newly elected government. Very early on, Sargsian made a public statement that he wanted to create a coalition government with the other major candidates' parties and platforms. Of course, he did not have to do this because he had received a majority of the vote, but perhaps felt that almost 48% of the voting public did not vote for him so that many people would not be represented in his government. Several candidates quickly accepted his offer for a coalition government and began discussing their political programs that they would like implemented. Der Bedrossian was not one of them. He said that such a thing was out of the question and called the candidates who agreed traitors. He had called anyone who didn’t support him traitors shortly before the elections also, and has several times (himself as well as some of his supporters) declared that "you are either with us or against us" since the elections.
I was going to an internet café across the street from Opera Square at this time (and also passed by different sides of the square a couple of times during these days) and the crowd was at the very most usually around 5,000 people – again, at the very most. There was great opportunity to lay out their political demands, a program or platform, etc. But this did not occur. The crowd would just chant "Levon, Levon," Der Bedrossian’s first name. They played what is known here as "rabeez" music (which would translate approximately to bad taste or crude or of low culture - but popular) and danced and drank alcohol etc. All through the campaign also, Der Bedrossian did not lay out any kind of political program or platform, but (whenever I happened to see his speeches televised, as I was not really following the campaigns) talked non-sense and never raised any serious issues, but tried to exploit any general discontent while presenting himself as a "natural" leader and the answer to any and all discontent. These gatherings at Opera Square continued for ten days and the crowd was made up of pretty diverse groups without any coherence that I or anybody else could really discern. Although there was rather ridiculous hearsay of sorts circulating, and even before the elections, that Der Bedrossian and his "supporters" were "intellectuals."
In the first few days, the crowds also interrupted traffic here and there, but then just gathered in Opera Square and some even camped out overnight in tents. After ten days of having taken over Opera Square and lingering around without any discernible political message, other than the not very credible claims of illegitimacy of the elections and newly elected president made by Der Bedrossian immediately after the elections, they were moved from this square to a different part of the city. Then all hell broke loose.
On the evening, night and early morning of May 1/May 2 a part of this crowd went on a rampage burning cars, buses, ambulances, looting stores, etc. They also attacked and beat people including unarmed crowd control police that had only shields and batons, no fire arms. Things escalated into an all out riot type situation. The following days, video footage started coming out of the whole incident. Apparently, the whole incident began when the crowd was moved from Opera Square to an area around what would be City Hall in a USA city. That morning, based on information gathered over several days that the crowd was being armed, the police began to search the tents and crowds in Opera Square for said arms and proceeded to move the crowd to the City Hall area. The crowd began throwing large stones and then molotov cocktails at the unarmed police. Then there were several people who tried to influence the crowd in different ways. One organizer, realizing that the crowd was becoming a dangerous mob, tried to calm people and tell them to march peacefully to another location where there is a museum of ancient manuscripts. Some others tried to incite the crowd. One in particular, by the name of Nicol Pashinian, told the crowd to grab whatever could be used as a weapon, sticks, metal bars, etc. and go on the attack. This was shown on video following the riots.
Apparently the organizers had earlier agreed to move the crowd to the area of the museum of ancient manuscripts but then there was a split and certain organizers refused to move. Well, as evening was turning to night, the crowd began to make barricades and set fires etc. Then they began to throw large pieces of pavement, cobble stones they tore up from the sidewalks, and molotov cocktails at the crowd control police that had gathered. When the police would lift their shields to protect themselves, some armed groups began to shoot at their legs and then run and blend into the rest of the crowd that did not seem armed. There was more and more video released over the days after the incident showing what had happened. Several hundred police and security officers, and civilians were said to have been injured, mostly police, many pretty seriously. Eight people originally died, including one police officer. Recently a security service officer died from his injuries after having come out of a coma.
Now before the rioting, on maybe the sixth day of gathering at Opera Square, there was video footage shown on TV that showed a very large Israeli flag being flown in the crowd while Der Bedrossian danced on stage. This struck me as rather odd and I’ll give some background on the days after the elections while these gatherings were happening in Opera Square. I kept hearing some strange conversations here and there mainly from my brother’s girlfriend who (the girlfriend) is ten years younger than me, just having turned 31 about a week after I turned 41 in the second half of February. Now she has a pretty large network of people she knows in this age range, some a little younger, some a little older, most involved in the arts and many also involved with social and political issues. She is a pretty bright and talented woman, a feminist and an artist who tackles social injustice issues, and in recent years has been focusing heavily on environmental issues, especially the problems of modern urban culture and architecture, the monstrosities of industrialization and mechanization, and how all of these, combined with a lack of respect for and connection to nature, have been increasingly imposing on and oppressing the human space of the city dwellers.
Well she was a key part of some of the very strange goings on that followed in that her large network of friends and acquaintances became a sort of an informal and curious feedback loop. I’ll explain what I mean. During these days, there was talk among these young people about the goings on. And I also noticed a strange effect on my brother’s girlfriend. Her mood would be noticeably changed to the worse, whenever she went to observe these gatherings at Opera Square, showing a vague agitation and worry or concern that I could not clearly define and she could not clearly articulate. But on several occasions, I told her not to take all this too seriously, that it is just theatrics and a distraction; that nothing anywhere in the world could really be changed for the better through elections, and if they could, elections would be outlawed.
She also seemed to be negatively effected by this large network’s influences. Then when the riots and looting happened, a truly bizarre process of false rumor spreading began and much of it was repeated in the media as claims by the "opposition" although Der Bedrossian did not represent any legitimate opposition to speak of. One of the first was that the government killed 58 people during the whole incident. Then there were rumors that the government may have infiltrated the crowd with agents provocateur to cause the violence to break out. As we all know, this is a pretty common practice in the US and elsewhere, so I was trying to find some way of getting information and verifying it, trying to get as accurate a picture of what happened as possible. During the time I was going to the internet café to read SOTT, my impression of the people’s reaction to the whole gathering was that they were pretty indifferent, in the beginning when there was traffic disruption, it wasn’t much more than slight annoyance. At no time did I get the impression of a popular movement gathering steam to confront a fraudulent election and an unpopular government.
But the people that I was observing that I did not know were a mix of regular people who seemed to be pretty indifferent to the whole Der Bedrossian gathering, as was I to a certain extent until the escalation into violence and riots. The day after the violence, there was an announcement by President Robert Kocharian that he was going to declare a state of emergency. There would be no curfew or martial law, but there would be increased security and army reserve troops in various places in the city. The day after the state of emergency was declared, my brother, his girlfriend, and I went to a resort about 45 minutes by car outside of the capital, Yerevan, which we had planned about a week before. There was a noticeable troop presence around the city and on the outskirts, but they were just hanging around, not bothering anyone or searching anyone, randomly or otherwise, and everybody went about there business as usual. So after returning from the skiing and swimming trip, which was just one day, in other words, we came back to Yerevan the day after we went, having spent the night at a hotel, and leaving the following late afternoon, the strange rumors continued to circulate and become more and more fantastic.
I began to question my brother’s girlfriend and some of her friends about some of the really disturbing rumors that already seemed pretty clear to me at that point that they were just rumors and nothing more. The whole thing leading up to the violence seemed manufactured and manipulated already to me, but it was just lurking in the background because I was not invested in any of it one way or the other. But for instance, I had mentioned to my brother’s girlfriend that this whole thing had a strange feel to it and that Der Bedrossian was quite likely a foreign agent, consciously or unconsciously. She and my brother had already had several similar conversations, as it turns out, and one of her friends who works at HSBC bank who was really struggling to decide who to vote for (he didn’t like the incumbent party for which Sargsian was running as a candidate nor Der Bedrossian who, shortly before the elections, had suddenly become the only other viable candidate) had said that all of the funds for Der Bedrossian’s campaign were being wire transferred from England, etc. So when that footage was shown on TV with the Israeli flag being flown (this was a very large flag and very prominent right in front of the stage where Der Bedrossian was dancing to the “rabeez” music) we also had a discussion. My brother had a strong reaction and burst out saying how stupid can these people be, that now they gave away the fact that the whole thing is a foreign financed and manipulated fraud, etc. and that to anyone with two brain cells firing this should already become clear. I wasn’t so sure, and said probably more than stupidity it was arrogance, which is a different kind of stupidity, I guess. Anyway, my brother’s girlfriend asked her friend who was going to the gatherings as a participant, if he saw the Israeli flag. He said that yes he had, to which she responded that at least he and whoever else saw the Israeli flag being one of the most prominent things in the staging of this show should have left the gathering at that point.
Her friend responded something to the effect of "yeah, the Jewish community has joined us in this movement" against government corruption and election fraud. Now you must understand that Armenia is a tiny country with an overall population of about 3 to 3.5 million people about 97% to 98% being Armenian and all the rest being non-Armenian, including Russians, Persians, Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, (Indians, Pakistanis, & Bengalis mostly here to study medicine or some other scientific field) Assyrians, Jews, etc. And then, strangely enough, over the next couple of days this rumor of "the Jewish community" having joined the Der Bedrossian movement had spread seemingly having started from this very conversation and perhaps other people’s reaction to the Israeli flag being flown so prominently in front of the stage where Der Bedrossian was dancing. Immediately, there was an official announcement carried in the media from the Jewish community that they in fact had not joined this "movement," had accepted the election results and congratulated the newly elected president, Serge Sargsian. Hmm.
I proceeded to try to find out roughly how many Jewish people lived in Armenia because these same excuses kept being brought up as an answer as to why the Israeli flag was flown so prominently even when those making this excuse were told that the Jewish community in fact had disavowed having joined the "movement" and declared that those who were at the gathering and those flying the Israeli flag did not speak in their name. I, myself, also mentioned to several of those claiming the Jewish community had joined this "movement" that the Israeli flag was in fact the flag of Israel and not of "the Jews;" an important distinction, especially what the Israeli flag had come to symbolize in the world, its origins in the Zionist movement, and its meaning with the two stripes standing for the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Nile, the land between which is eventually supposed to be conquered by the Zionists, the occupants ethnically cleansed and "Greater Israel" established.
It was difficult getting a firm number for the Jewish community in Armenia, but two figures that were bandied about were ten families and about 300 people total. I had also asked those claiming the Jewish community had joined the "movement" how many total Jews lived in Armenia, 1,000, 1,500? Most said probably not that much. I asked if it seemed odd that (besides the Israeli flag being flown which is not a Jewish symbol per se but the flag of a specific country with a very bad record) if it was not strangely out of proportion to be flying such a large flag so prominently displayed for such a small community. Anyhow, the strange false rumor spreading and the "feedback loop" escalated after the violence broke out. I’ll give a few specific examples.
When there was the rumor that the government had infiltrated agents provocateur into the crowd to incite violence, I said that that was a distinct possibility, but that given the circumstances, it did not make sense, since there was no popular movement against the government or the election results; since Sargsian had gotten a clear majority (and won by a landslide) that was validated by the international observers, he had nothing to gain and much to lose from such a move; that on the contrary, the obvious beneficiary from violence, chaos and instability was Der Bedrossian and his handlers and very probable foreign masters; that this was a "great game" in terms of geopolitics and economic interests that was long in the works in which Armenia was but a pawn, and Russia and China and their level of influence in the region and the global scene in general were a much larger piece of the puzzle; that a small nation like Armenia so strategically located could not be truly independent and was either going to align with the Western interests or, as they have shown, prominently align with Russia and China, and made other such points. Shortly thereafter, more rumors started coming back from the same circle of young artists and social and political activists that seemed to be reformulated propaganda to answer just the points I had raised, including that the government had long planned, prepared, and orchestrated everything because there was major cheating in the elections and they had made contingency plans (including releasing criminals from jail to later go on a rampage) because they had always expected a possible unpleasant backlash, and so on and so forth.
Concerning the 58 deaths (of presumable innocent civilians) I had said that such an incident would be very difficult to cover up; that the names, ages, addresses and circumstances of death would soon come out; what had been done with the corpses? That in a country like Armenia, and a city like Yerevan, everyone knew everyone in a certain sense and that they know this to be so; for instance, the large networks of friends and acquaintances all would either personally know someone who died from such a number or know someone who knew someone who died, and so on. Some responses came back through this network of people that had become an unexpected feedback loop tailor-made to answer the points I had raised. Among the gist of it was that they had made people sign documents that the people killed had died of car accidents and the like to which I responded that if that was the case, again everyone would talk to everyone they knew and the truth with all the details would soon come out. I added that under some of the presumably bogus scenarios that were described, that if anyone would ever get a backbone, muster the courage and refuse to sign such a document when they in fact knew that their loved one or friend had been unjustly killed by government forces it would be exactly in such scenarios as were described. During these days I had a fever for one day, and literally this spread among this network (most of whom I don’t know and the rest I don’t know too well) very quickly and the next day we were gathered at my brother’s girlfriend’s apartment where a few of this network were there and my fever inadvertently came up and I joked that see, a practically invisible person like me catches a fever and everybody quickly knows about it, yet 58 people were killed and no one could produce any verifiable details about them.
One of the younger girls, an architect, said (but this time half heartedly like she also didn’t believe what she was saying) that they made people sign these documents in order to release the bodies to their loved ones. This time it really struck me that all of these conversations were going back to the originators of these false rumors and coming back tailored exactly to the points I kept raising about these same rumors. As I said, this last one, the young architect, didn’t have her heart in even responding and the rest of the response about Armenians being naïve and not knowing their legal rights, etc. just trailed off. I want to make clear that these young people are sincere but misinformed and, unbeknownst to them, part of a hidden network imbedded within their own that was instrumental in manipulating the unfortunate events by rumor mongering and propagandizing in the hopes of infecting more and more people to turn against the government. Now in the case of this last half-hearted response, it is clear that if the government had done such a thing, then the proof of the corpse being handed over right after the coerced signing of the document claiming that they were killed in car accidents (besides the extremely suspicious fact that all 58 people died in car accidents on the same night in addition to any real deaths from car accidents that night) would be very unwise and dangerous for the government agents. Because now everyone who in fact knew the real cause of death had the corpse as evidence to get an independent autopsy and establish the cause of death, holding a very grave and inconvenient piece of evidence against the government who would only dig themselves in deeper if they tried to produce so many signed statements that the desist were in fact killed in car accidents.
As the days went on after this tragic violent escalation, I also kept responding to the many rumors that everyone (except me and my brother who refuse to have cell phones) has a cell phone either with a still photo camera or both still and video. Besides many of them are into the arts and carry palm-corders and digital cameras with them. Now how come there was no footage at all to back up some of these rumors. By this time the government was releasing more and more video, some of which was sent to authorities as evidence by regular citizens who shot the footage. One such video was of a crowd attacking a helpless man and beating him viscously and mercilessly for what reason was unclear. But over the video that was shot from a balcony above the scene there are occasional comments heard from what seems to be a husband and wife.
Some of the automatic comments were that there probably was plenty of video footage with damning evidence against the government forces but was unable to be shown. To which I commented that such footage was being put on the internet everyday and forcing official stories concerning police brutality to be revised, and so on; and that if, for whatever reason, they could not get it on the internet, how about burning CDs & DVDs and whatnot and circulating and distributing it to everyone they knew. Well a few days later an obviously doctored video was released to the news media showing several riot police running into the shot and firing somewhere unseen out of frame with automatic rifles, basically machine guns. The authorities showed that these had the wrong tip at the ends. They demonstrated that with the attached tips shown in the videos that you can only fire one tracer bullet at a time and not live battle ammunition and not in machine gun mode. They said if real bullets were to be put into the guns and fired with those attachment tips that the guns would basically backfire and explode. They also said that it is clearly doctored footage because the machine gun fire using live bullets with the accompanying audio track would not show the kind of laser beam like straight white lines tracing the path of the bullets. All of their rebuttals and claims were clearly demonstrated on camera by going outside in a courtyard with the press conference following them. They also invited anyone who has served in the armed forces, which is mandatory in Armenia, to come and verify or rebut all that they were claiming about the guns, attachment tips, and ammunition.
All throughout these events, no one in this circle of friends claimed to be supporting Der Bedrossian, but were clearly agitated to be anti-government. There were claims such as in every country there is corruption and injustice but at least there is the rule of law in other countries and you get your day in court. I asked which particular countries were being referred to, and America was given as a response. I told this person that this was naïve in the extreme, that in fact their view was just American propaganda, that I lived for 31 years in America and that especially in recent years there was no rule of law, in fact much less so than in Armenia and that it was a fully militarized and fascist state.
During the days of gathering at the Opera Square, before the violence, there were complaints presented claiming election irregularities and demanding a recount. There was an investigation and a recount was done. After the recount Der Bedrossian got 100,000 less votes than the original count and all evidence of fraud was produced against Der Berdrossian including bribes, and false certification of sealed and signed ballots with final results written on the outside, which when opened did not in fact match the results inside. The one prominent such case that had given Der Bedrossian 649 votes for that district when he had actually received 41 was investigated and opened for a recount because there was more than 120 total votes counted more than there were registered voters for that district. Also as the rumors of every kind were flying, I was telling some of the people who were unknowingly participating in spreading disinformation, that yes, election fraud and irregularities occur everywhere but that it has to be a close race to win by cheating which was not the case here.
The only thing, I pointed out, that statistically had a bad odor was how in a few weeks Der Bedrossian went from sixth place with single digits in the polls to second place with over 20% of the vote in the elections. There were no political scandals or anything else that could explain his incredible jump. The exit polls (the most accurate and time tested measure) showed Sargsian winning with 57% of the vote, while in the official results he got 52% and a fraction. So there is nothing suspicious except that he maybe should have won by a larger margin.
This rather large network of friends and acquaintances are connected to several foundations for the arts and NGO’s all with foreign funding. It seems to me that these organizations are the main thrust of spreading disinformation and brainwashing and possibly the main sources from where the reformulated propaganda was coming from, tailored to any points that cast doubt on the original rumors and disinformation raising the danger of the members of the network beginning to question things and use more critical thinking. These organizations give small grants and access to facilities and other resources to the young artists and social and political activists so that they can control them and shape their views.
After the state of emergency was declared for twenty days, there was more and more information being reported from the point of view of the government with the media responding to it with the claims of this most strange "movement," that after ten days of "illegal" demonstrations, erupted into mob violence. The gatherings to demonstrate against the election results did not have a permit to gather with date, time, estimated number of people, the organizers, etc. as is common for governments to be able to provide emergency services such as crowd control, ambulance service, general logistics, etc. However, for ten days the government allowed the gathering to proceed without permits because there seemed no real reason not to do so. But as these gatherings continued, there were certain mutterings that it was dangerous, that the government should make them comply with permit requirements or disperse the crowd, and so on.
The morning that an investigation and searches began, based on information that the crowd was being armed, was the last day of gathering at Opera Square, and when the crowd was moved, that’s when tensions rose and the confrontation with crowd control police began. The next couple of days, video was released showing the police searching and confiscating all manner of firearms, ammunition, hand grenades, inflammable liquids and glass containers, metal bars, wooden clubs, etc. However, all of this seemed to be footage shot by the police and other government forces. Nevertheless, as many arrests were made during the night of violence, all sorts of strange confessions began to come out. First of all, there was abundant footage of the looting as well: people coming out of grocery stores, supermarkets, and stores of all sorts carrying away from cases of bottled water, liquor, paper products, pastries and other food, to everything else you can think of. Some of the arrested people were claiming that they were given wine and beer to drink but in jars, not their original containers. One guy on camera claimed he did not drink that much, but became disoriented and detached, unable to think clearly, etc. He claimed that he drank alcohol regularly and that it never had such an effect on him before.
Later, some psychologists were analyzing what had happened to cause this escalation, and on one program, there were claims made that neuro-linguistic programming was used on the crowd all throughout the days of gathering at Opera Square and culminating in the final incitements. Also, all through this time Der Bedrossian kept saying that this is a revolution, and in fact, had said this before the elections took place as well. There were claims that some of the organizers began to tell the crowd to attack and loot the stores because they were owned by "rich people." Then there were the peculiar comments (coming from Der Bedrossian and his camp) made that the current political clique are a bunch of foreigners, "Mongols and Tartars and Turks," because many of them were originally from Nagorno Gharapagh and not from Armenia proper and that, therefore, they were enemies of the Armenian people and more such ludicrous nonsense.
Several days, after the violence broke out, my brother, his girlfriend, and myself walked to the parts where most of the looting and mayhem had taken place. There were a lot of damaged stores and property and empty stores, but everything was being cleaned up and fixed pretty quickly. Across the street from City Hall there is a large park where much of the metal bars from the fencing around it were cut to be used for weapons. My brother’s girlfriend was photographing it all, and we also noticed that they were very clean cuts, seemingly torched off, so that it gave the impression of being well planned and coordinated ahead of time rather than a spontaneous eruption of violence.
The night after the state of emergency was declared, Azerbaijani Forces attacked Nagorno Gharapagh region and for several hours occupied positions usually under control of Armenian Forces from Nagorno Gharapagh. They were then driven back leaving 8 or 9 dead Azeri soldiers. For more than six months before this incident, Azerbaijan kept escalating threatening rhetoric that they will resort to military means to retake control of Nagorno Gharapagh by force, something they had been doing for a long time, but now took it to a new level. During that attack, Azerbaijani officials had announced that this time they would not only conquer all of Nagorno Gharapagh, but drive all the way to Yerevan. The Nagorno Gharapagh and also the Armenian governments claimed that this new attack by Azerbaijan was not the usual skirmishes and violations of the cease fire agreement, but much heavier battle equipment was used that could only have been planned and moved into position for several weeks from a logistical point of view. They further claimed that this must have all been coordinated with a crisis caused in the capital of Armenia proper, Yerevan, and then use the opportunity of having troops, resources and other forces and attention busy with dealing with the crisis in Armenia to then attack Nagorno Gharapagh.
Again, some of these claims were discussed with my brother’s girlfriend and her network of friends and acquaintances and it was said that the governments could be making the whole thing up and using it as propaganda to silence and calm the opposition movement against them. I said that time would tell, and that the Minsk Group who oversee the cease fire and security and stability situation in Nagorno Gharapagh would certainly dispute these claims if they were not true, and that they had not yet done so. Shortly afterward, the Minsk Group in fact did confirm the claims made by the Armenian and Nagorno Gharapagh governments, even the representative from the US did not dispute any of the claims.
During the days after the rioting, the usual Western propaganda organs began writing the most blatant propaganda pieces about all the events and circumstances in Armenia, the most notable among them the BBC, and even more so, the New York Times. As I was trying to get as accurate, impartial and objective a picture of just what had happened and what was going on, these two models of professional propaganda, psyops, and opinion shaping that has become so famous (or infamous) only added to my suspicions of all the strange shenanigans that had transpired. We even analyzed the language of one New York Times piece that someone had emailed to my brother’s girlfriend looking closely at the techniques used and language manipulation and pointing it out to her; she even noticed a couple of silly and manipulative phrases and sentences that we did not point out and she is not nearly as fluent in English as we are. These mainstream media articles were much more blatant in their propagandizing than this Moscow Times article by Mathew Collins that I am responding to, but Collins has enough propaganda techniques in there for the reader to see for himself; one blatant lie stands out though: "From morning, the *CITY* had been under lockdown." Perhaps only one example from the New York Times will suffice which was rather nonchalant and less blatant compared to some of the other manipulations: The Bush Administration hasn’t *FULLY* accepted the election results.
In the days following the riots, when I was watching more television than usual (which is almost none – only what I see by chance when the TV is on and others are watching), I saw via satellite dish Russia Today report that the prominent media outlets in Russia were reporting that this was another attempted "color revolution" (like the ones in Georgia and Ukraine financed by CIA and other US agencies) in Armenia that failed from the beginning.
Also after the election results were announced and Der Bedrossian began disputing them and trying to discredit them, he made the outlandish claim that he had in fact received 65% of the vote but was cheated. Now it was becoming clearer that this guy was a putz, perhaps a vile and unscrupulous putz, but a putz nonetheless. He could, for instance, have claimed to have gotten say 42% (instead of the official 21%) of the vote and further claimed that if the true results had been produced, then Sargsian would not have gotten the required majority and there would definitely have to be a runoff or something similar that would be a more plausible lie than his 65% claim. Again there seemed to be that kind of hubris, and the Big Lie doctrine that was being applied, but it just wasn’t flying in this case.
Der Bedrossian had filed an official claim with the Constitutional Court just a day or two before the violence broke out, two days after another candidate had filed one who was getting pretty consistent 2% in the poles before the elections and got something less, like 1%, (who also wanted the results nullified) and was demanding his 2% I guess. Now this other candidate is another doozy; he takes mostly elderly people, and some young people of low income, who don’t have any way of leaving their villages and brings them by bus to one of the most famous sightseeing places in Armenia, Lake Sevan. Now this seems like a nice thing to do, but then he videotapes it all and interviews everyone giving gushing testimonials of what a wonderful and kindhearted person he is, and so on, and then broadcasts it all on the TV channel he owns; and then after a year or so of doing this, becomes a presidential candidate. To each his own.
Back to Der Bedrossian’s claim in the Constitutional Court to nullify the election results: by law, the court has a set amount of time to hear the case and hand down a ruling within 10 days after the claim was filed. Right after the violent outbreak, the court began the preliminary process of the hearings to proceed with the full process, finish up and give their ruling in the allotted time prescribed by law. Der Bedrossian made the false claim that he was under house arrest and could not attend the court as required to proceed with the case he had filed. This false claim became the latest false rumor flying around and being repeated. The side representing Sargsian, immediately refuted this claim and said that Der Bedrossian was free to come but was in fact lying and playing games. Then Robert Kocharian, the current president at that time, stated on television that Der Bedrossian was not under house arrest, in fact, under Armenian Laws, house arrest was illegal, and pondered if perhaps it would not be an idea to consider to amend the law so that house arrests would be legal in certain cases. The next day, Der Bedrossian showed up at court at the appointed time and didn’t even try to acknowledge or explain his dissimulations about house arrest.
Then, as the court case was winding down, and it was becoming clear that there was no evidence of any legitimate standard presented to the court to support his claims, Der Bedrossian made a declaration that even if the Constitutional Court rules against him, it would be a totally illegitimate ruling because since the case was filed, a state of emergency was declared (which he had very cleverly triggered, and by this time it seemed that it was a very intricate, long planned affair and not spontaneous by any means) and that since technically the election process was not over until all claims were filed with the proper procedures and jurisdiction, heard and ruled on, then any ruling that was handed down, and in fact the hearings themselves for the ruling being carried out in a state of emergency, that no such election process could be considered legitimate. This was declared through the media, qualified by plausible deniability tactics such as "this is what Der Bedrossian’s side is likely to claim" under the proper article of the elections laws.
So it was becoming rather clear that the whole thing had turned into a process of casting doubt on every legal process and to continue to do so on the elections and the results. And if it was a failed color revolution, now every opportunity would be utilized to maximum effect to smear the legitimacy of Armenia in a general way in any international relations and transactions.
Some more of the rumor mongering follow. Shortly after the rioting, my brother’s girlfriend came back from talking to her friends and said that there were armored vehicles and tanks that were trying to herd the crowd into a certain area when they had moved to City Hall. The only way this was stopped was that some of the people lay down in front of the vehicles which then stopped. I said that it was a very hopeful sign that they stopped and did not run over anyone. She replied, well how could they do otherwise, they wouldn’t just run over people, nor even shoot into the crowd. I said that was my point exactly; in some countries they treat people brutally for no reason, even when there is no circumstances such as had developed, whether provoked or not. There was never any footage showing armored vehicles or tanks before the state of emergency was declared either.
Some of the most outlandish rumors came from overseas from the diaspora, particularly the US. One of the early ones was from Glendale, California that the whole "dark years" meme was a myth that never occurred. Well everyone, even these younger people, lived through these years so they definitely knew that it occurred. Then Der Bedrossian added to this that everyone should remember that the "dark years" took place during war. True enough. But we are still technically in war, and the blockade is still officially in effect. I guess, we shouldn’t remember any role played by Der Bedrossian in those events nor his personal profit. How to explain the vast improvements in the daily lives of the citizens of Armenia and the state of the country in general?
Certainly there are many problems in this country. There is garden variety corruption, cronyism, and monopolies that is a scourge of the planet; the job market is very limited by the types of jobs available, the economy not being very developed; but when push came to shove, and opportunities were presented to the government to really crack the fascist whip, only hopeful signs emerged that perhaps, overall, this society is not as sick as some others. This was evident to me from various other aspects. The level of surveillance is so much less than so many other countries that it truly is amazing.
Finally, there were emails coming from US promulgating the mainstream media accounts of how brutal the crackdown by the government was, etc. As if it was more clear to people thousands of miles away what had actually taken place than those who were living through it.
And so… and so, the Armenian government is accused in this article of silencing protests with balloons and concerts. Well I never had a horse in this race, but they also had the chance to silence everyone by much more brutal means, a chance that many other governments dream about. But they didn’t take it.
