Armenia and the information war

[Karabed]

Re: Armenia and the information war

^^^ Great read, thank you.

Shameless hypocrisy watch: Turkey condemns Israel's Gaza blockade, maintains blockade of Armenia
Turkey is angry. Turkey is outraged. Turkey says the Israeli blockade of Gaza is illegal.

Well, no: blockades are a permissible tool under the laws of war, and Hamas--and therefore Gaza--is at war with Israel. (See "Clarity about the deaths of the Gaza flotilla 'peace activists.'") The blockade, by making it more difficult to obtain materials for creating rockets and explosives, has undoubtedly saved Israeli lives. This in turn has saved Palestinian lives (not that Hamas cares about that), since fewer Israeli reprisals are required.

But if the Gaza blockade were unlawful, then what conclusions would we have to draw regarding Turkey's blockade of Armenia? This has been going on much longer than the Israeli blockade of Gaza--since 1993. The Turkish blockade was a response to the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Karabakh. Notice that Turkey isn't a party to that conflict, nor to the best of my knowledge did any treaty with Azerbaijan require its participation. Turkey simply sided with Azerbaijan and bullies Armenia because of ethnic ties (the Azeris are a Turkic people). Thus, the Turkish blockade of Armenia cannot even be justified under the laws of war.

In short, Turkey says, Your blockade is bad; my blockade is good. As Debbie Schlussel mordantly observes: "Turkey is very much in favor of blockades . . . when it involves Turkey 'defending itself' and attacking various ethnicities it hates, but not when xxxs try to defend themselves."
http://www.examiner.com/x-4814-LA-Mi...ade-of-Armenia

Perhaps Israel will now recognize the Armenian Genocide
National security concerns sometimes distort a country's foreign policy. ("They may be bastards, but they're our bastards.") Even the most powerful nations on occasion must hold their noses and make unsavory deals and alliances. How much more so for small countries, surrounded by enemies.

The traditional friendship between Israel and Turkey, now unraveled, was based in part on Israel's willingness to yield to Turkish insistence that the Armenian-whatever-the-Turks-are-calling-what-happened-in-1915 not be given its true name--genocide. And indeed, Turkey very explicitly expected Israel to "deliver" American xxxish pressure on Congress and the president not to use the G-word. At the same time, Turkey explicitly threatened its ties with Israel to pressure American xxxry.

However, Turkey has turned to the dark side, the Islamist side. It has not been a very reliable ally for Israel for some time, and there's little reason to look to the future with optimism. The current storm over Gaza indicates that Israel cannot expect much from the Turks.

The silver lining in this dismal state of affars may be that Israel will no longer feel constrained to pretend and protect Turkey. Israel's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide has always been a stain on its honor. With no diplomatic rationale for continuing to do so, we may hope that Israel will find its voice--and American xxxry will feel ungagged--on this important human rights issue.
http://www.examiner.com/x-4814-LA-Mi...enian-Genocide

[Tigranakert]

Re: Armenia and the information war

It is more than 100 years since Azerbaijan's first oil boom, but in the glitzy centre of the capital, Baku, it looks like the glory days never ended.

Concert halls, caviar restaurants and car showrooms stand alongside the turn-of-the-century apartments built on oil money at a time when British, Dutch and Russian extractors were rushing to the city.

Then, the prime beneficiaries were the local and foreign oil barons. These days, a new Azeri upper crust has most to gain from Azerbaijan's fortune.
West Azeri oil platform in Caspian (pic: BP Caspian and partners) Drilling for oil has spread in the Caspian Sea in post-Soviet times

The government controls the prices of most energy products and owns key enterprises.

In its 2009 corruption perceptions index Transparency International placed Azerbaijan at 143 out of 180 countries.

But it is the widening gap between rich and poor which is the most obvious result of the new energy boom.

The rich businessmen who preside over the city live in polished stone and marble mansions nestled among Soviet-era concrete blocks.

The Azeri elite keep themselves to themselves, but most people know who they are.

The Minister for Emergency Situations, Kamaladdin Heydarov, Transport Minister Ziya Mammadov and the president's security chief are the wealthiest and most powerful in the governing elite, according to some analysts.

The glamorous first lady of Azerbaijan, Mehriban Aliyeva, is a known sponsor of major cultural projects and elite tourism ventures in Baku.
Hunting for information

However, the precise wealth of these powerful Azeris is not known. The BBC made contact by letter with the offices of each of them, but did not receive a reply.
Azerbaijan map

I did get through to the son of the Emergencies Minister, Tale Heydarov. His official title is president of Gabala Football Club, the very same one where Tony Adams, the former England and Arsenal star, has signed a lucrative contract as coach.

But Mr Heydarov's personal fortune is cloaked in mystery.

His powerful family is believed to run a huge company called Gilan - which owns the football club - although he prefers to keep the exact details quiet.

As he sits in a large office with plush carpets, marble lamps, four telephones and a large desk, I ask him whether the widening wealth gap and talk of corruption is a problem.

"As a normal citizen, I can say that any country faces challenges [after its] independence. We are a very new and independent country and among the ex-Soviet countries, Azerbaijan is one of the most developed," he says.
Corruption questions

Investors - particularly in construction - also appear to be reaping handsome profits while the energy boom lasts.
Bibi Heybat Mosque next to oil derricks on the shore of the Caspian Sea just outside the Azeri capital, Baku (file picture 2005) Azerbaijan's oil riches have left a big mark on the landscape

Baku-based Turkish businessman Yavuz Keles, director of Tusiab - a construction company based in Baku with $3bn (£2.1bn) of assets - says corruption is not unique to Azerbaijan.

"It is a regional problem," he says. "Officials are already talking about the problem, that is a start."

A feature of this boom is the concentration of oil revenue in the hands of the political elite, one local expert says.

"Azerbaijan's oil is monopolised by the state, so of course the state benefits," says Ilham Saban, an analyst at Turan news agency.

"The spending of oil money is only done with the approval of the president."

The situation is unlikely to change in the very near future.

President Ilham Aliyev's second five-year term is due to expire in 2013, but a referendum in 2009 made it possible for him to run for office as many times as he wants.

Critics say this will allow him to preside over Azerbaijan's oil production as it reaches its peak. With new explorations being launched in the Caspian Sea by BP and others, the expected decline in production might yet be postponed.

Recently, the Washington Post reported that nine waterfront mansions in Dubai, worth a total of $44m, were purchased in the name of President Aliyev's 11-year-old son.
Continue reading the main story

The rich rule society and that means we don't have access to the same parts of the city as they do - they drive the four-by-four cars and have access to big social events - we don't

Farhad Baku taxi driver

A senior official, Ali Hasanov, would not answer questions about the story when he was contacted by the BBC in March by phone.

But, later, to local media, he did not deny it.

"Every person may possess anything. This is normal as long as he gets it within law and the constitution," he told the Azeri newspaper, Yeni Musavat.
Them and us

Outside Baku, there are signs of widespread unemployment and poverty.

The way Azerbaijan spends its money is frowned upon by Western governments.

A Baku taxi driver, calling himself Farhad, drove me towards villages just 20km (12.4 miles) from the capital which have limited gas and water supplies.

"The rich rule society and that means we don't have access to the same parts of the city as they do. They drive the four-by-four cars and have access to big social events. We don't," he says.

The divide is as clear-cut as the glass-and-metal skyline of booming Baku.

[ninetoyadome]

Re: Armenia and the information war

Today.Az » Analytics » Concentration camp in Armenia: Do Armenian children have a promising future?

05 June 2010 [14:25] - Today.Az

International Children’s Day is celebrated across the globe June 1. Children are born free and happy throughout the world.

Later, we become socialized and shape our views on life, either accepting or opposing the conditions in our country. Whether a newborn baby will remain free and happy throughout his her life depends on the environment in this country. Thus, the Strugatsky brothers were right when they argued that personal happiness is impossible without public happiness. In other words, unhappy and unfree societies cannot have happy and free individuals. This is the destiny of those who are part of a society that is deprived of the God-granted right to happiness and freedom and resembles some sort of a concentration camp.

In case with Armenia, there is not one, but rather several lost generations. This is the result of the triumph of the selfish interests of Armenian idea-mongers around the world who were put above the interests of Armenian citizens. This has encouraged the oligopoly in the country.

At an opposition, the Armenian National Congress rallied in Gumri. A local resident admitted sadly that “today we have poor conditions in our country. The situation is even worse in Gumri. People are out of work, and children are looking for a piece of bread in rubbish. Gumri residents have nothing left to be proud of.” This mood will last as long as Armenia’s economic problems deepen.

Having committed aggression against Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan’s occupied territories, Armenia deprived itself of development and large regional projects. The country cannot even hope for investments as investments are only made in attractive industries that will ultimately bring profit. They cannot hope for any loans either. The authorities have failed to address the country’s deepening economic problems and they have made the economy even more dependent on the outside world. Armenia's leaders also failed to attract the funds of the diaspora to revive the economy. The money allocated by the diaspora is not enough to fund state-building.

There are a number of reasons. First, Armenian idea-mongers want Armenia to depend on myths passed on from generation to generation. They want Armenian citizens to be dependent on idea-mongers who transfer funds to Armenia and lobby international loans. Dependent and hungry men are easier to rule than well-fed and independent citizens.

Secondly, fed up with the hard life in Armenia, Armenian citizens are leaving the country together with their families. They are escaping from the concentration camp set up by the authorities. Building their lives in free countries abroad, they grow to care even less about Armenia’s problems. They begin to understand that the ideology of Armenia's nationalists, which is plagued by a paranoia of “genocide” and constant territorial claims against their neighbors, is nothing more than a failure. Current Armenian rulers are not strong enough to admit this fact. They are setting a trap for new generation of Armenians.


A. Hasanov
/Day.Az/

URL: http://www.today.az/news/analytics/69297.html

[ashot24]

Re: Armenia and the information war

I found these paper excerpts on articles about Karvatchar in 1993-1995 period, interesting to read

[ashot24]

Re: Armenia and the information war

[Davo88]

Re: Armenia and the information war

American xxxish community ends support of Turkish interests on Hill

By Eli Lake

In October 2000, the government of Turkey had a problem.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert had promised to bring a resolution commemorating the Armenian genocide to the floor for a vote, a move that Ankara said would be a slap in the face to a NATO ally.

The Turks called up Keith Weissman, a senior researcher from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and asked him to intervene.

Mr. Weissman said in an interview this week that AIPAC lit up the phones and managed at the last minute — with the help of the State Department — to persuade President Clinton himself to write a letter to Mr. Hastert saying a vote on the resolution would cause strategic damage to U.S. interests.

The last-minute push worked. Mr. Hastert removed the resolution from the floor, and the full Congress has yet to take up the matter to this day.

But the American xxxish community is no longer helping Turkey, after a tumultuous deterioration of ties between Israel and Turkey in the past four years. The government in Ankara last week decried a botched Israeli raid on a Turkish aid flotilla, which claimed at least nine lives, as an act of "state terror."

In some ways, the Memorial Day flotilla affair marks an end of Israel's more than 20-year strategic alliance with Turkey, and the resulting support from the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

Turkey, which has a secular constitution, was the first Muslim state to recognize Israel, in 1949. Israel has historically sought to form alliances with countries on the periphery of the Arab world such as Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia.

In 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon, its army destroyed training camps affiliated with the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, a terrorist organization responsible for the slayings of Turkish diplomats.

Turkey rewarded Israel's counterterrorism operations with increased intelligence ties. The intelligence relationship soon blossomed into full ambassadorial relations, and increased commercial trade and closer military cooperation. In exchange for arms sales from Israel, Turkey allowed the Israeli air force to use Anatolian airspace for training purposes.

The relationship began to sour in the early 2000s with the election of the Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish), which is based on elements of parties that had been banned for Islamism.

Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American xxxish Organizations, said, "It's not completely over. There are still close ties between many in Turkey and the community and there are still a lot of common interests."

But Mr. Hoenlein added, "The Turks happen to have a government that is extremist, that has chosen a path that is violative of the past relationship. It has been a steady process, not just related to the most recent incident. This began with the election of this Islamist government in 2002."

Barry Jacobs, the American xxxish Committee's former director of strategic studies in the office of government and international affairs, also noted Turkey's critical stance toward Israel's 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon to root out Hezbollah terrorists attacking the xxxish state.

"This started in 2006 when I remember one Israeli diplomat complained that Turkish support for Hezbollah had 'out-Arabed the Arabs,'" Mr. Jacobs said, adding that Turkey's unconditional support for Hamas since 2007, combined with xxxish discomfort with defending the Turks on the Armenian issue, led to a dampening of support.

"The major xxxish organizations decided in 2008 that the question of the Armenian genocide resolution was so sensitive we would no longer take public and private positions to oppose it," Mr. Jacobs said.

Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he thinks the Turks made a strategic decision to break with Israel during the Gaza war. He pointed to a heated exchange in 2009 at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked out of a session with Israeli President Shimon Peres, telling him: "When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill."

"We saw things deteriorating but it did not surface publicly until Davos," Mr. Foxman said. "Until then, the trade continued, the military continued. It did not happen till the Gaza war. My feeling is that Turkey made a geopolitical decision before, but it needed an excuse to turn so dramatically."

Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Weissman were in some ways the architects of the xxxish community's support for Turkey in Washington that began at the end of the Cold War. Both men led delegations of xxxish community leaders to Istanbul and Ankara. Mr. Weissman said AIPAC's leaders even offered training to Turkish Americans on how to establish a successful lobby.

In Congress, the xxxish organizations lobbied for an oil pipeline from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, a pipeline that bypasses Turkey's rival Armenia entirely. The xxxish lobby in Washington helped protect U.S. arms sales to Turkey, on which the Greek lobby often tried to block or impose conditions.

Henri Barkey, a former State Department Turkey analyst and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said, "The most important element of the relationship with Israel for the Turks in the late 1980s was improving relations with the United States through the American xxxish community."

In the 1980s, Turkey often lost major fights in Congress to the Greek and Armenian lobbies.

"It made Turkey's strategic value to the United States more visible and understandable when supporters of Israel would go to bat for them," said Douglas J. Feith, a former undersecretary of defense for policy who represented Turkey when he was out of government in the early 1990s. "All of the sudden, you not only had strong support for Turkey in elements of the executive branch, you also had then some serious debate on [Capitol Hill] in favor of Turkey as well."

Today, far from being an asset for Turkey, the American xxxish community appears to becoming a potent foe of Turkish interests in Washington.

On Tuesday for example, the Anti-Defamation League issued a press release calling on the State Department to designate the IHH, the Turkish charity that helped organize the free-Gaza flotilla as a foreign terrorist organization. In Turkey, the IHH has been praised as a group of peace activists and humanitarians.

"In terms of the xxxish community and Israel, neither one of us wants to throw it away and hope it is not over," Mr. Foxman said. "But every day there is another provocation. Every day the Turkish government goes out of its way to be insulting to Israel and another link is broken."

Morris Amitay, a former executive director of AIPAC who has also represented Turkey, was more blunt.

"If someone asked me now if I would try to protect Turkey in Congress, my response would be, 'You've got to be kidding,'" he said.

The liberal xxxish organizations J Street and Americans for Peace Now declined to comment on the deterioration of Israeli-Turkish ties in Washington.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/8/xxxish-community-ends-support-turkey-capitol-hill/

[Haykakan]

Re: Armenia and the information war

American xxxish community ends support of Turkish interests on Hill

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-capitol-hill/

The link doesnt work

[Yedtarts]

Re: Armenia and the information war

The link doesnt work

Just replace the xxx in the link with j3w with an e of course

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/8/xxxish-community-ends-support-turkey-capitol-hill/

[gegev]

Re: Armenia and the information war

How BP expected bankruptcy would affect Britain-Azeri love?
Eventually, I guess, drilling deep in the sea, for oil, will be banned worldwide.
Any ideas?

[Haykakan]

Re: Armenia and the information war

I dought the Caspian basin is anywhere as deep as the one off Luisiana's coast. I am pretty sure the caspien rigs are much shalower and less risky thus i dought they will be effected by the BP disaster. Should deep sea drilling be banned (i dought that will happen) the dependence on the Azeri oil will increase not decrease. I dought the British factor is even relavent anymore anyways since azeri oil is gona flow through Russia.