NEW YORK TIMES BETRAYS ITS OWN INVESTIGATION AND GETS IT WRONG ON KARA

[Yervant1]

NEW YORK TIMES BETRAYS ITS OWN INVESTIGATION AND GETS IT WRONG ON KARABAKH

Thursday, September 11th, 2014
http://asbarez.com/126891/new-york-times-betrays-its-own-investigation-and-gets-it-wrong-on-karabakh/

Screengrab from the New York Times

BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN

A mere two days after publishing an expansive and informative expose
about foreign powers buying influence with US-based think tanks to
affect US policy, The New York Times published a sloppy article by
long-time Azerbaijani collaborator, Brenda Shaffer, who by using
official Baku's vernacular sounds the alarm for supposed plans by
Russia to engineer another "land grab" in the region--this time in
Nagorno-Karabakh.

In The New York Times article, "Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think
Tanks," correspondents Eric Lipton, Brooke Williams and Nicholas
Confessore diligently combed over hundreds of pages of documents to
detail how foreign--among them Azerbaijani-monies to think thanks
are adversely impacting academic research and are influencing US
foreign policy.

It seems the Times frowns upon foreign powers influencing US policy,
but its editorial board does not mind publishing pieces by known
lobbyists who use their years of entrenched advocacy for foreign
governments to advocate issues that official governments cannot and
influence public opinion.

That's exactly what Shaffer does in her piece, "Russia's Next Land
Grab" to convince the Russia-weary readers of the Times to beware of
a supposed land grab that will adversely impact Baku's interests.

Prof. Brenda Shaffer

Shaffer, who has been described by the Azerbaijani press as a
"well-known Azeri government lobbyist," last year vocally defended
Aliyev's re-election, which was panned by most observers including
the State Department. Throughout her career as an "academic," Shaffer
has been a fixture at Azerbaijan-centric conferences and symposiums,
always advocating on behalf of the Baku government and its oil riches.

The New York Times described Brenda Shaffer as "a professor of
political science at the University of Haifa and a visiting researcher
at Georgetown." What the paper neglects to say is that Shaffer is also
a visiting professor at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy and has
spent almost two decades lobbying for Baku by presenting testimony
to Congress and speaking and international conference organized by
some of the think thanks that were at the center of the New York
Times investigation.

The premises she presents to convince readers that Russia's "land grab"
of Karabakh is imminent, are assertions that Russia's interests in
Armenia make Karabakh the natural choice for such a move, claiming,
with substantial evidence, that Russia masterminded the Oct. 27,
1999 attack on the Armenian Parliament.

She also claims that the meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani
presidents in Sochi was a plan devised to move a military mission
to Nagorno-Karabakh, a fact that was not reported by either party to
the meeting. In fact, if such was the case, the US and France would
not have welcomed Putin's efforts to broker peace. It turned out that
Putin's meeting with Armenia's Serzh Sarkisian and Azerbaijan's Ilham
Aliyev did not differ much from a meeting held last week between the
presidents and Secretary of State John Kerry in Newport, Wales on
the sidelines of the NATO summit.

By publishing the Shaffer piece The New York Times deflects the
real reasons hampering a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict--Azerbaijan's continued threats of war, violation of the cease
fire and inciting anti-Armenian hatred--and blames the villain du jour,
Russian President Vladimir Putin for the unrest in the Caucasus.

[onjig]

Other than what we print, there seems to be no one, with power, speaking for us. There is none in our government, at this time, who would listen, but it would be great to hear a voice in our favor.

[Yervant1]

Such is the fate of small nations. No one is interested in a minnow when there are big salmons out there.