MADE IN ARMENIA

Most experts are of the opinion that pirate goods are a serious problem of the world economy today. In other words, the production of goods under the labels of the world's leading brands which nobody knows what they were made of, where they were made or by whom. According to the most modest calculations, by 2015 the losses to the world economy from pirate goods will amount to no les than 1.5 trillion dollars.

Pirate goods are a problem that is well-known and is the subject of much debate. And they are being tackled by the most varied means. Contracts and conventions are being concluded to protect copyright and intellectual property and national and international structures are being created…

But the success of their work is being measured in different ways. Some justifiably complain that you don't have to go far for pirate goods in both the direct and the figurative sense. Others no less justifiably point out that those fighting fraud have succeeded in perhaps their main aim - they have now made it disreputable to deal in pirate goods. Public opinion places the purchase of obviously counterfeit goods almost on a par with theft. This means that those producing pirate goods are now either selling them through a secret password or under the counter or in any case with sticky fingers and trying not to draw attention to themselves.

But recently I came across quite an egregious case where a deliberate forgery was not simply being distributed under a well-known brand name, which had no relation to it whatsoever, but attempts were also being made to attract unprecedented attention to this forgery. I am talking about the website under the pretentious name of "Interfax-Armenia".

Let me explain. The Russian "Interfax" news agency is recognized all over the world as a popular and authoritative part of the media. It currently has several regional branches, too. But this is what has happened: We already have "Interfax-Russia", "Interfax-Belarus" and "Interfax-China". But Interfax's editorial board has not created any branch called "Interfax-Armenia", despite the allied relationship between Russia and Armenia, the large number of Russian journalists of Armenian extraction and the nothing less than titanic efforts of the Union of Russian Armenians, especially after "Interfax-Azerbaijan" began to assert itself on the world information market.  It very quickly transformed itself into a bilateral "information corridor", allowing not only Azerbaijani subscribers to receive the Interfax "tape", but also "Interfax" to obtain much more detailed and complete information about Azerbaijan, which came on to its general "tape" in precisely the same way. Clearly, in Armenian circles they were not averse to receiving such an information tool.

But the information market has its own rules. Desire and lobbying are not enough to open a regional branch of a large news agency. News from this corner of the world must also be interesting enough for a "large" audience. And here the difference between a rapidly developing country like Azerbaijan, which is in the centre of "oil", "gas" and "logistics" projects, on the one hand, and a rapidly emptying and sliding into poverty country like Armenia, on the other, has become so striking that Interfax's "Armenian" branch never emerged.

But Yerevan made a surprise, but perhaps not altogether unexpected, move. And very soon a website with the name "Interfax-Armenia" and the address Interfax-am appeared on the Internet.

To be perfectly honest, in order to understand that we are talking about a forgery, and what's more a crude and unprofessional one, all one has to do is to open up the "Interfax-Armenia" website. The primitive and not very professional reproduction of the "Interfax-Azerbaijan" news agency's design speaks volumes of this "our response to Chamberlain" from Yerevan. News that was plucked out of a number of "open" news agencies without a single news item of its own, liberally dashed with negative reports about Azerbaijan - this "Armenian radio station carrying the brand name Interfax" stood out from the real Interfax far more glaringly than an amateurishly crooked article knocked together in a Chinese basement did from the real thing by Parisian fashion designers.

Denial from the real Interfax was not long in coming. Soon a number of the Armenian media were forced to publish this statement: "The Interfax international news group officially states that it has nothing in common with the www.interfax.am website which has appeared in the internet and is disturbed by the agency's violation of copyright and the illegal use of the 'Interfax-Azerbaijan' trade mark.   The pseudo website is a compilation of material taken from the "Interfax-Azerbaijan" website and various remarks of dubious content. The Interfax international news group regards the appearance of the pseudo-website as causing damage to its business reputation and intends to protect its violated lawful rights and interests by all available legal means," the journalists warned with more than understandable indignation.

And the widely advertised "Interfax-Armenia" website immediately imploded. But then it was replaced by another crooked "news product" - the "Interfax-Region" website. The same crudely prepared forgery, which on this occasion was supplied with "our response to Chamberlain", apparently challenging Interfax. This time it said: "following the broad public response, we report that the 'interfax-region.com' website has been created by a group of enthusiasts for the distribution of news and information covering topical events of states in the South Caucasus region. Our news website has no racist or xenophobic aims and addresses no offensive remarks to anyone, and does not claim to be in communication with any other media". And in general, "we urge all participants in the news information space to comply with the rules of journalist ethics and we advise those parties who detected a violation of copyright in our initiative to put on their glasses". Why did these "enthusiasts" who, apparently, "do not claim to be in communication with any other media", call their fledgling "Interfax-Armenia", and now "Interfax-Region" and not, say, "Cognac-News" or "Armenian Radio-Online"? Who in this instance needs to "wear glasses" and who, pray, wash their hands? The answer, alas, is all too clear.

On top of all that this is not the first time that Armenia has played such games. It will be recalled that several years ago in the Russian media network, and for some reason or other in its Ukrainian sector, a website suddenly appeared, full of cheap and false negatives about Azerbaijan, - the "namesake" of a notorious Baku publication, which by then no longer existed. True, the site didn't last long. From the outset it was disowned by former employees of the notorious publication, and after that the site disappeared into the sunset.

These same methods are still being used in Yerevan today, albeit with slight adjustments. Having taken "as a basis" the no longer notorious but serious and prestigious "Interfax-Azerbaijan" agency and added the word "Region" to it - painfully concordant with the name of "Region-Plyus" magazine, published in Azerbaijan - the new-sprung "pseudo-Interfaxes" are again trying to sell the same hurriedly knocked-together crooked "product", supplied with an attractive "label", on the information market.

Then something unimaginable began. The Times.am website soon published a sensational report: the "Interfax-Armenia" website had been created by the infamous Modest Kolerov, who even on his own page on Facebook pointed out: "Interfax-Azerbaijan" has begun broadcasting to Armenia in the shape of the "Interfax-Armenia" website. It was now Modest Kolerov's turn to come out with the denial: as if to say, I am not me and the forgery is not mine.

But it was precisely the aggrieved Kolerov who came out with the most important thing. As if to say, see who the Times.am website belongs to, the site which reported that "Interfax-Armenia" is the fledgling of Kolerov who has been deprived of control over "Regnum". It belongs to…Grant Melik-Shakhnazaryan, the son of the notorious Levon Melik-Shakhnazaryan, who regularly makes, pardon me for being frank, ludicrous attacks on Azerbaijan on the "Voskanapat" website and more frequently on the pages of "Voice of Armenia". Both websites - "Voskanapat" and "Times.am" - are registered in the village of Ptkhni near Yerevan. 

As far as "Interfax-Armenia" is concerned, it is apparently registered in the name of one Tamara Avanesova who, and this is the most remarkable thing, belongs to the panorama.am website, one of the leading information structures in Armenia. In short, he is not one who likes creating false accounts of "stars" in social networks but a serious man who by virtue of his status is not one to deal in such petty backstabbing.

And it is already only too clear what is going on in a country where the information elite is engaged, if you will pardon my saying, in such cheap "dirty tricks".

In one popular Hollywood blockbuster the main hero says: if you throw a frog in hot water it will jump out. But if you place it in cold water and gradually warm it up, the frog will sit there until it boils. And asked by one of his colleagues: "Is this a recipe for soup?" he answered: "It's a recipe for disaster."

A disaster can, indeed, start in various ways - sometimes dramatically and distinctively, sometimes gradually and by degrees. In Armenia, judging by the many signs, it is the second scenario that is now happening. When the economy gradually slips to complete collapse the more active, qualified and industrious people leave the country and, more importantly, there are no prospects ahead.

As history teaches us, in such situations much depends on the national elite. It is precisely they who must assume the role of "generator of ideas", proposing a way out of the impasse, finally, at least calling a spade a spade.

But the elite also consists of real people who prefer to "survive independently", especially as everything is happening against a background of indifference.

They have been talking about this in Yerevan with abject wonder for many years now: Armenia is losing the information war to Azerbaijan. It is losing despite its evident initial advantage: in the early stages of the Karabakh conflict Armenia, unlike Azerbaijan, had impressive information levers at its disposal thanks to its diaspora. But today the situation is fundamentally different. Independent Azerbaijan has been able, as much as anything else, to build a successful information strategy, which came as a complete surprise to the Yerevan strategists. Already in July 2008 Serzh Sargsyan, the current President of Armenia, declared: We shall wage an information war at the highest level! And he promised to create a special department "for the struggle against disinformation", i.e. an Orwellian "Ministry of Truth". 

Only the question was what should this ministry deal with? Prove that a town like Xocali did not exist and the incumbent Armenian president had not blown his horn with tales of his personal involvement in the reprisals against his innocent civilians in an interview with the British journalist Thomas de Waal? "Invent" a new wording for the UN Charter?

But considerable sums by local standards are being allocated on the "information war at state level" even in a poor and hungry country like Armenia. They are also being used to finance unseemly "operations" like the out-of-the-blue subsidiary of the solid "Interfax", about which Interfax itself had not the slightest inkling. And it seems that the Armenian "information elite" is not only ready to carry out such "orders", but also to seriously compete for them, even if expressions such as "quarrelled" or "didn't give enough cash" set some people's teeth on edge.

And the ordinary people of Armenia find this the most offensive thing in the current situation. They have the right to say that state money - i.e. taxpayers' money! - should be spent on their - the taxpayers' - needs, and not on obviously dubious projects such as information forgery. But it seems that the real elite in today's Armenia is afraid to raise its voice against these forgeries.

For my part I would like to inform the Armenian elite that the forgeries I have quoted will be included in the next volume of my book "The destroyers of forgeries", and this will continue so long as the Armenians continue to serve up new facts such as "Interfax-Armenia" and "Interfax-Region". 

FROM FIRST HAND

"The Interfax international news group officially states that it has nothing in common with the www.interfax.am website which has appeared in the internet and is disturbed by the violation of copyright of the agency and the illegal use of the 'Interfax-Azerbaijan' trade mark. The pseudo website is a compilation of material taken from the "Interfax-Azerbaijan" website and various remarks of dubious content. The Interfax international news group regards the appearance of the pseudo-website as causing damage to its business reputation and intends to protect its violated lawful rights and interests by all available legal means".