Misplaced Pages

• Earthquake source. Hey Peter, here is another source from TIME Magazine that supports Melkonian: A Journey into Misery (page 3): "Sometimes these tales of grief from the earthquake zone merged seamlessly with horror stories of brutal rapes and beatings during ethnic clashes last February in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait. The people I spoke with insisted that after the earthquake, Azerbaijanis refused to help, announcing that "Allah has finally heard us." Some claimed that trains from the neighboring Muslim republic were even scrawled with graffiti reading DECEMBER 7. HAPPY HOLIDAY!" If it would help I can replace his book with this source. Zinevich falls under a CIS mercenary, Basayev is included because he is a notable figure.--MarshallBagramyan 16:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
• On citation style. I believe you are right Peter but I think that adding the template would easily add several kilobytes of space on to the article.--MarshallBagramyan 16:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment: What's ridiculous is the "CIS mercenary" terminology (?!) - the Maj-General ended up staying in Armenia and dying there just some time ago, and was far more important and prominent than any mercenaries that fought on Azerbaijani side. Moreover, the page lacks references and citations of UN documents, which outline several instances of mercenaries fighting for Armenia, including Russian Spetsnaz (Special Forces), who were captured in 1993 and released because of an appeal of President Yeltsin. Then what about the EXECUTION of several Azerbaijani POWs, which Western human rights organizations have slammed?

Meanwhile, the most ridiculous of all is the total disrespect to, and lack of knowledge of, the fact that Azerbaijan SSR and Azerbaijanis were among the FIRST to help Armenia after the eqrthquake -- even though it coincided with a mass-scale ethnic cleansing of 165,000 Azerbaijanis from Armenia in Nov-Dec 1988 (plus the remaining 50,000 or so thousand Azerbaijanis and Kurds later)! That's right -- Azerbaijan sent a military plane full of supplies to Yerevan, and due to a very suspicious "mistake" by ground operators, the plane crashed and all but one have died. No one in Armenia mentions this, and there is no memorial or otherwise thanks. Also, all hospitals and spas (pansionats) of Kelbajar region were urgently made room at, so as to accomodate Armenian victims of the earthquake -- some 2,000 people, from what I remember reading the Soviet press back then (it should be available in the FBIS translated into English articles too, see December 1988 digests). Also, there are references in Azerbaijani press that all the blood donated by Azerbaijanis was smashed by Armenians with exclamations "We don't need blood of Turks". However, not very sure if all these references from both sides are appropriate for an encyclopedia article. Long thing short -- this article is not ready, it is POV and lacks balance. --AdilBaguirov 04:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment: This is becoming ridiculous. Including Azerbaijani members know very well that Azeri having celebrated the earthquake is well documented, here another two sources.

A sever earthquake hit northwestern Armenia on December 7, 1988. The news was greeted in Azerbaijan by cheers in student dormitories and celebration in the streets. Armenia- portraits of survival and hope Par Donald E. Miller, Lorna Touryan Miller, Jerry Berndt, University of California Press, p.7

However, even the massive earthquake which devastated parts of Armenia failed to bring about a diminution of tensions in the area, and the Soviet press noted that some Azerbaijanis openly rejoiced over this tragedy. Niall M. Fraser; Keith W. Hipel; John Jaworsky; Ralph Zuljan, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), p.668

Some members would really like to have this article as a conform copy of the official Azerbaijan republic vision.

And here, I am addressing to non-Armenian, non-Azeri members. I advice those members to go on and read the Khojali section of the article. Marshall has tried to do everything to satisfy the Azeri members, even as far as tainting sections with Azeri POV. The wording is harsher than the Armenian Genocide intro. If some Azeri members are not satisfied now, with such unjustifiable concessions, does anyone think they will ever? Both Azeri and Armenian members know that while Marshal has presented the moderate estimates of the losses of Khojali to be on the over 400, the moderate estimates in scholarship publications is in the range of between 100-200. See for instance, Roberta Cohen and Francis M Deng book The Forsaken People- Case Studies of the Internally Displaced, Brookings Institution Press 1998 p.260, or Vitaly V. Naumkin book, Central Asia and Transcaucasia: Ethnicity and Conflict, Greenwood Press, 1994 p. 95. I have also provided the fist Azerbaijani official figures supporting that contention and many other sources on that, on Khojali tragedy article itself.

Marshall has gone out of his way to voluntarily make concessions, and various, here was one example, to taint a little bit to satisfy the Azeri members. And this is how he is thanked by those same members.

But here is the situation; many of the members here are not in Misplaced Pages in good faith. Tabib who has voted, works in a tink tank organization which work with political parties in Azerbaijan, was a real life friend with Adil, who has associated himself with think thank organizations members of the republic of Turkey, like Sedat Laciner, and even got articles published by their journals, among many things denying the Armenian genocide and adhering to Laciner ultra nationalistic views. Then we have new members just recently created suspected to be socks, like Atabek, Dacy etc., who had no better than maintaining Adil versions and pushing over them.

So, if Raul want to take a fair decision, and while I admit to be maybe biased, while this would be involuntarily, I think it would be best to only take into consideration members who have not been involved with Azeri-Armenian conflicts on Misplaced Pages. For now, this is all what I wanted to say. Fad (ix) 17:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment: This is truly ridiculous -- Fadix is overstepping all boundaries with his repeated defamation and harassment of myself and another user, Tabib, as well as groundless and false claims about other well-established users like Dacy69 and Atabek. Additionally, the above two references are worthless -- both are co-written by Armenians, such as Touryan and Zuljian, and that's POV, no need to pretend it is from unbiased Western sources. --AdilBaguirov 04:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Resorting to personal attacks instead of responding to criticism is not the best way to deal with the issue. It is very sad that Fadix consumes so much space to slander other Misplaced Pages contributors, who do not hide behind the nicknames and contribute under their real names. Adil has a very good point. How come that the article lists Shamil Basayev as an Azeri commander, while he was never in charge of any unit of Azerbaijani army and never commanded any military operation during the NK war, and at the same time, the article never mentions such a prominent Russian mercenary as Zinevich, who was a chief of stuff in the Armenian army, let alone listing him as a commander. This shows that the article is very superficial. As for the telegram, neither of the quotes presented prove its existence. Time Magazine reporter only repeats what he heard from Armenians, plus they told him about some graffiti, and Fadix’s quotes are not about the telegram either. Grandmaster 18:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Slandering? No, I am actually describing the situation in which we are. Fad (ix) 22:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Where does it say Bassayev was an Azeri commander? Am I blind or are you blind? The footnote states he was in command of Chechens fighting against Armenian, for Azerbaijan obviously. No point to list mercenaries, unless they are notable individuals. I don't se how this guy is notable. Besides, Azeris had more money and had more mercenaries, if we start listing them guess who gets the shorter end of the stick.-- Ευπάτωρ 19:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Create an article on Zinevich and I'll include his name in the column (that is if it falls under WP:N. Your vague, stonewalling objections are becoming more superficial and non-existant as they come. Most of the neutral observers have pointed out actual problems in the article that I have no objections to rectify, but POV issues is not one of them. --MarshallBagramyan 19:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)