BY GAREN YEGPARIAN
It looks like we may have a brand new squealer joining the passel of swine inhabiting Azerbaijan’s sty of hackneyed howlers. Let’s see if he’ll play well with the old timers – Alexander Murinson, Brenda Schaffer, Jason Katz, Stephen Kinzer, and all the others who prostitute themselves, in one way or another, for Baku’s black-gold based blood money and brutality. By listing these creatures, in no way do I want to “demean” the much larger barnful of beasts that do Turkey’s bidding. Of course the lists of the two countries’ lackeys overlap.
This new shoat’s name is Neil Richards.
His short piece “Is Tiny Armenia’s Out-Sized Political Clout in Washington Being Used by Russia” appeared last week in International Policy Digest.
In it, he attempts to delegitimize the “Armenian lobby”, take a shot at Russia and Iran, and question the loyalty of Armenian citizens of the U.S., all at once.
Richards’ logic follows this track: the Republic of Armenia has essentially allowed the ANCA and Armenian Assembly to do its Washington advocacy; the RoA is a client of Russia; Russia and Iran are allies; Russia doesn’t want the Iran nuclear deal revised; Armenians in the U.S. are being asked to lobby in favor of Iran (who knew?) to serve Russia’s interests.
Maybe this guy is just a Russophobe capitalizing on the current anti-Russia fervor that has found favor in the U.S. Another piece of his that I found, “Russia’s Spooks Are No Joke, but They’re Not Geniuses” would certainly support that perspective.
But, there is also “Is tiny Armenia’s out-sized political clout in Washington being used by Russia? – IPD” which appeared on Azerbaijan’s propaganda site Trend. Naturally, the author, Leman Zeynalova, unsurprisingly uses the Richards article to attack Armenians. But the two pieces appeared one day apart, on November 21 and 22. Given the time difference between the U.S. (home to the original article) and Azerbaijan, it means that Zeynalova saw, read, digested, wrote, and published in half a day or so. It’s certainly not impossible, but just as easily, it could be that Baku, likely through its paid hacks in D.C., had solicited the original article, therefore knew it was coming, had an advance copy, and gave it to Zeynalova who had abundant time to prepare the Trend hit piece.
I don’t know International Policy Digest’s political proclivities, positions, or associations. Regardless, they should be hammered with complaints about such despicable articles as Neil Richards’ before they became another Turko-Azeri mouthpiece.
