Regional geopolitics

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Turkey: Sizing Up Ankara's Connection to ISIS
August 18, 2014
by Yigal Schleifer


With the power of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or, as it now calls itself, the Islamic State) growing and the amount of territory it controls increasing, Ankara is now facing some uncomfortable questions about what role it played in facilitating the organization's rise.

In a Washington Post piece from last week, reporters Anthony Faiola and Souad Mekhennet provide a fascinating insight into this issue, visiting Reyhanli, a Turkish town on the Syrian border where until recently ISIS fighters had the run of the place. From their article:

Before their blitz into Iraq earned them the title of the Middle East’s most feared insurgency, the jihadists of the Islamic State treated this Turkish town near the Syrian border as their own personal shopping mall.

And eager to aid any and all enemies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey rolled out the red carpet.

In dusty market stalls, among the baklava shops and kebab stands, locals talk of Islamist fighters openly stocking up on uniforms and the latest Samsung smartphones. Wounded jihadists from the Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front — an al-Qaeda offshoot also fighting the Syrian government — were treated at Turkish hospitals. Most important, the Turks winked as Reyhanli and other Turkish towns became way stations for moving foreign fighters and arms across the border.

“Turkey welcomed anyone against Assad, and now they are killing, spreading their disease, and we are all paying the price,” said Tamer Apis, a politician in Reyhanli, where two massive car bombs killed 52 people last year. In a nearby city, Turkish authorities seized another car packed with explosives in June, raising fears of an Islamic State-inspired campaign to export sectarian strife to Turkey.

“It was not just us,” Apis said. “But this is a mess of Turkey’s making.”

As the Post article makes clear, Turkey has since made it more difficult for foreign fighters to cross its border on the way to Syria, but the perception still lingers in certain quarters that Ankara remains an ISIS benefactor.

More worrying for Ankara, though, should be what ISIS might be up to inside Turkey. An interesting recent report on the Mashable website, for example, looked at how ISIS is recruiting young Turkish men to go fight for it in Syria and Iraq. And while reports of a "jihadi gift shop" in Istanbul selling ISIS-branded clothing and souvenirs might have drawn some chuckles, a recent Al-Monitor piece by Orhan Kemal Cengiz suggests that the organization may be behind much more troubling things in Turkey than just selling t-shirts.

As Cengiz writes, a "new Salafism" may be taking root in Turkey, a development that could lead Ankara to deeply regret its initial support for ISIS.

[arakeretzig]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Turkey: Sizing Up Ankara's Connection to ISIS

As Cengiz writes, a "new Salafism" may be taking root in Turkey, a development that could lead Ankara to deeply regret its initial support for ISIS.

Good. Let's hope the cancer Turkey and Qatar helped create, eats Turkey out from the inside.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Regional geopolitics

As Cengiz writes....

Writes from where? And from where does Yigal Schleifer write?

Ages ago, and on several occasions, I proposed that forum rules should be that anyone who copypastes material from another source without giving proper attribution should have that post deleted and their posting rights blocked for a period. But that will never happen because this is not a serious forum and to make it into a serious forum administrators/moderators need to cease being invisible arseholes.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Regional geopolitics

In Turkey, a late about-face on Islamic State’s fighters
BY ANTHONY FAIOLA AND SOUAD MEKHENNET

The Washington Post
13 Aug 2014

“Turkey welcomed anyone against Assad, and now they are killing, spreading their disease, and we are all paying the price.”
Tamer Apis, politician in Turkish border town of Reyhanli

REYHANLI, TURKEY — Before their blitz into Iraq earned them the title of the Middle East’s most feared insurgency, the jihadists of the Islamic State treated this Turkish town near the Syrian border as their own personal shopping mall.

And eager to aid any and all enemies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey rolled out the red carpet.

In dusty market stalls, among the baklava shops and kebab stands, locals talk of Islamist fighters openly stocking up on uniforms and the latest Samsung smartphones. Wounded jihadists from the Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front — an al-Qaeda offshoot also fighting the Syrian government — were treated at Turkish hospitals. Most important, the Turks winked as Reyhanli and other Turkish towns became way stations for moving foreign fighters and arms across the border.

“Turkey welcomed anyone against Assad, and now they are killing, spreading their disease, and we are all paying the price,” said Tamer Apis, a politician in Reyhanli, where two massive car bombs killed 52 people last year. In a nearby city, Turkish authorities seized another car packed with explosives in June, raising fears of an Islamic State-inspired campaign to export sectarian strife to Turkey.

“It was not just us,” Apis said. “But this is a mess of Turkey’s making.”

The U.S. military is back in action over the skies of Iraq, launching airstrikes against the Islamist militants who have taken control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria. But for many months, the militants were able to grow in power partly by using the border region of a NATO member — Turkey — as a strategically vital supply route and entry point to wage their war.

Alarmed by the growing might of the Islamic State, Turkey has started cracking down. Working with the United States and European governments, Turkish officials have enacted new safeguards to detain foreign fighters trying to get into Syria and launched a military offensive aimed at curtailing the smuggling of weapons and supplies across the border.

But in a region engulfed by a broadening conflict, Turkey is also reaping what it sowed. It is engaging in border shootouts with rebels it once tactically aided. It is confronting spillover violence, a cutoff in its trade routes and a spreading wave of fear in Turkish towns as the Islamic State wins over defectors from rival opposition groups.

And despite the new measures, the Islamic State is still slipping through Turkish nets — raising doubts about international efforts to put a stranglehold on a radical Sunni group known for public crucifixions and the beheading of enemies.

“It is not as easy to come into Turkey anymore,” Abu Yusaf, a 27-year-old senior security commander for the Islamic State, said in a recent interview conducted in the back seat of a moving white Honda in Reyhanli. “I myself had to go through smugglers to get here, but as you see, there are still ways and methods.”

Wearing a polo shirt and white baseball cap to blend in on the more secular streets of Turkey, Yusaf, the nom de guerre of the European-born fighter who joined the group 21/ years ago,

2 added: “We don’t believe in countries . . . breaking and destroying all borders is our aim. What matters are Islam and a Sunni reign.”

Asked about the United States’ role in the region, Yusaf said, “We don’t fear the U.S., we only fear God. We fight whoever are fighting us. If the U.S. hits us with flowers, we will hit them back with flowers. But if they hit us with fire, we will hit them back with fire, also inside their homeland. This will be the same with any other Western country.”

For Turkey, it was not supposed to be this way.

Initially a close Assad ally, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan broke with Damascus after the Syrian leader launched a bloody assault on opponents in 2011. Erdogan quickly emerged as a leading voice calling for international action to topple the Syrian leader.

But for Erdogan, a charismatic autocrat once filled with notions of building a neo-Ottoman sphere of influence across the Middle East, the move to tactically support a broad swath of the Syrian opposition has backfired, resulting in one of a series of recent setbacks for him at home and abroad.

During its push into the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in June, the Islamic State seized 80 Turkish hostages — including a gaggle of diplomats — 41 of whom are still being held. More than 1 million refugees have poured into Turkey since the start of the Syrian conflict, costing the government more than $3 billion. Billions more have been lost in business and trade across its borders with Syria and Iraq.

“This is destroying us,” said Huseyin Surucu, owner of ReyTur, a Reyhanli transport company that has seen its business plunge by 60 percent since the start of the Syrian conflict. One bomb blast that hit the city last year went off several feet from his company, killing a family friend. “We are all afraid because we know more trouble is coming.”

Turkish officials have publicly offered support for more mainstream factions of the Syrian opposition. Yet only in more recent stages of the conflict has it labeled some extremist factions as terrorist groups. And given the difficulty of accurately assessing loyalties among the opposition, Turkey indiscriminately allowed weapons and fighters to flow across the border, Western diplomats, local officials and security experts say.

Of massive concern are thousands of increasingly radicalized foreign fighters, including many carrying U.S. and European passports, who have gone to fight in Syria. One senior Turkish official who declined to be identified blamed Western allies for not fully cooperating in the hunt to stop “the wrong ones” from crossing the border.

Citing privacy laws, for instance, European governments would often provide limited information to Turkish intelligence about suspects. “They were not giving us all the information they had,” the official said.

But that has changed. Since the fall of Mosul in June, the Europeans and Americans have been sharing more details, he said, and the Turks have stepped up detentions of suspected foreign fighters. The Turks refuse to disclose the number of recent arrests and repatriations.

Meanwhile, Turkish calculations in the Syrian conflict are fast evolving. The Turks have started cooperative talks with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish separatist group whose brothers in arms have fought a long guerrilla war against Turkey. The reason for the possible new alliance: The PYD controls a swath of Syria and is fighting against the Islamic State.

But Turkey’s about-face may be too little, too late.

Yusaf, the Islamic State commander who traveled to Reyhanli from Syria for an interview with The Washington Post, suggested that the group had the Turks to thank in part for its current success.

“We used to have some fighters — even high-level members of the Islamic State — getting treated in Turkish hospitals,” he said. “And also, most of the fighters who joined us in the beginning of the war came via Turkey, and so did our equipment and supplies.”

He conceded that the recent crackdown had made it more difficult to continue using Turkey as a supply route. But he added that the group had grown so strong in Iraq — where it won fast allies among the Sunni tribes — that it no longer needed to rely on the Turkish border.

“Now we are getting enough weapons from Iraq, and there is enough to buy even within Syria,” he said. “There is no real need to get things from outside anymore.”

Meanwhile, Turkey remains a lucrative market for bootlegged gasoline coming from Syria and Iraq, some of which is almost surely coming from areas controlled by the Islamic State. In Haji Pasha, a Turkish town in the shadow of the hilly Syrian border, dozens of farmers and laborers have switched jobs. Now, they are gasoline smugglers.

On a recent drive through town, Turks on tractors were pulling wagonloads of plastic 60-liter tanks to fill up with smuggled Syrian and Iraqi gasoline being sold for a fraction of legal retail prices. Asked whether the gas was coming from Islamic Statecontrolled zones, a 35-year-old businessman-turned-smuggler who gave his name as Takim, said: “Here, we do not ask those kinds of questions.”

New sweeps by Turkish authorities have prevented smugglers from hauling Syrian and Iraqi gasoline in over land. So ingenious townspeople have built dozens of makeshift underground pipelines that run under the border. On a recent afternoon, plumes of smoke billowed up from one pipeline being destroyed by the Turkish military.

“That’s okay,” said Tahir, 39, another self-described smuggler, standing on the roof of a friend’s house to watch the Turkish troops in action. “We’ve got many more.”

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Good. Let's hope the cancer Turkey and Qatar helped create, eats Turkey out from the inside.

It would be better justice if that were "Let's hope the cancer America helped create, eats America out from the inside." Probably won't happen though - and even examples of poetic justice like US ambassadors being murdered by the very same terrorists they personally helped arm and bring to power are rareties




The terrorists fighting us now? We just finished training them.
By Souad Mekhennet
The Washington Post, 13 Aug 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/18/the-terrorists-fighting-us-now-we-just-finished-training-them/

In recent years, President Obama, his European friends, and even some Middle Eastern allies, have supported “rebel groups” in Libya and Syria. Some received training, financial and military support to overthrow Muammar Gadhafi and battle Bashar al Assad. It’s a strategy that follows the old saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and it has been the American and allied approach for decades in deciding whether to support opposition groups and movements.

The problem is that it is completely unreliable — and often far worse than other strategies. Every year there are more cases in which this approach backfires. The most glaring and famous failure was in Afghanistan, where some of the groups taught (and supplied) to fight the Soviet Army later became stridently anti-Western. In that environment, Al Qaeda flourished and established the camps where perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were trained. Yet instead of learning from its mistakes, the United States keeps making them.

Washington and its allies empowered groups whose members had either begun with anti-American or anti-Western views or found themselves lured to those ideas in the process of fighting. According to interviews with members of militant groups, such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s Al Nusra Front (which is aligned with al Qaeda), that is exactly what happened with some of the fighters in Libya and even with factions of the Free Syrian Army.

“In the East of Syria, there is no Free Syrian Army any longer. All Free Syrian Army people [there] have joined the Islamic State,” says Abu Yusaf, a high-level security commander of the Islamic State, whom The Washington Post’s Anthony Faiola wrote about last week.

The Islamic State is the most successful group for now, controlling the main areas of Syrian oil and gas fields. It has also acquired large amounts of cash, gold (from banks in the areas they control) and weapons in its fight against the armies in Syria and Iraq. “When the Iraqi Army fled from Mosul and the other areas, they left behind all the good equipment the Americans had given them,” Abu Yusaf says.

“From IS to the Mahdi army you see groups that basically are not our friends but who became more powerful because we have handled the situations wrong,” says a senior U.S. security official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity.

Some European and Arab intelligence officials also voiced their worries and frustration about what they call the mistakes the United States has made in handling the uprisings in Arab states. “We had, in the early stages, information that radical groups had used the vacuum of the Arab Spring, and that some of the people the U.S. and their allies had trained to fight for ‘democracy’ in Libya and Syria had a jihadist agenda — already or later, [when they] joined al Nusra or the Islamic State,” a senior Arab intelligence official said in a recent interview. He said that often his U.S. counterparts would say things like, “We know you are right, but our president in Washington and his advisers don’t believe that.” Those groups, say Western security officials, are threats not only in the Middle East, but also in the United States and Europe, where they have members and sympathizers.

The official’s account has been corroborated by members of the Islamic State in and outside the Middle East, including Abu Yusaf, the military commander. In several interviews conducted in the last two months, they described how the collapse of security during Arab Spring uprisings helped them recruit, regroup and use the Western strategy – to support and train groups that fight dictators — for their own benefits. “There had [also] been … some British and Americans who had trained us during the Arab Spring times in Libya,” said a man who calls himself Abu Saleh and who only agreed to be interviewed if his real identity remained secret.

Abu Saleh, who is originally from a town close to Benghazi, said he and a group of other Libyans received training and support in their country from French, British, and American military and intelligence personnel — before they joined the Al Nusra Front or the Islamic State. Western and Arab military sources interviewed for this article, confirmed Abu Saleh’s account that “training” and “equipment” were given to rebels in Libya during the fight against the Gadhafi regime.

Abu Saleh left Libya in 2012 for Turkey and then crossed into Syria. “First I fought under what people call the ‘Free Syrian Army’ but then switched to Al Nusra. And I have already decided I will join the Islamic State when my wounds are healed,” the 28-year-old said from a hospital in Turkey, where he is receiving medical treatment. He had been injured during a battle with the Syrian Army, he said, and was brought to Turkey with false documents. “Some of the Syrian people who they trained have joined the Islamic State and others jabhat al Nusra,” he said, smiling. He added, “Sometimes I joke around and say that I am a fighter made by America.”

For a long time, Western and Arab states supported the Free Syrian Army not only with training but also with weapons and other materiel. The Islamic State commander, Abu Yusaf, added that members of the Free Syrian Army who had received training — from the United States, Turkey and Arab military officers at an American base in Southern Turkey — have now joined the Islamic State. “Now many of the FSA people who the West has trained are actually joining us,” he said, smiling.

These militants are preparing for the day that Western governments catch on. “We do know the U.S. will go after the Islamic State at some stage, and we are ready for it. But they should not underestimate the answer they will get,” said an IS sympathizer in Europe who goes by the name Abu Farouk. He added that the “unconditional support” of the United States toward the government of outgoing premier Nuri al-Maliki, which he says has oppressed Iraqi Sunnis, and America’s “pampering Iran,” which is mainly Shia, made the Islamic State a more attractive alternative for some Sunnis who felt angry about double standards.

“Thanks to the Arab spring and the West fighting all these rulers for us, we had enough time to grow and recruit in the Middle East, Europe and the U.S,” Abu Farouk said. Then he paused for some seconds and smiled. “Actually, we should say, thank you, Mr. President.”

[Hakob]

Re: Regional geopolitics

It would be better justice if that were "Let's hope the cancer America helped create, eats America out from the inside." Probably won't happen though - and even examples of poetic justice like US ambassadors being murdered by the very same terrorists they personally helped arm and bring to power are rareties




The terrorists fighting us now? We just finished training them.
By Souad Mekhennet
The Washington Post, 13 Aug 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/18/the-terrorists-fighting-us-now-we-just-finished-training-them/

In recent years, President Obama, his European friends, and even some Middle Eastern allies, have supported “rebel groups” in Libya and Syria. Some received training, financial and military support to overthrow Muammar Gadhafi and battle Bashar al Assad. It’s a strategy that follows the old saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and it has been the American and allied approach for decades in deciding whether to support opposition groups and movements.

The problem is that it is completely unreliable — and often far worse than other strategies. Every year there are more cases in which this approach backfires. The most glaring and famous failure was in Afghanistan, where some of the groups taught (and supplied) to fight the Soviet Army later became stridently anti-Western. In that environment, Al Qaeda flourished and established the camps where perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were trained. Yet instead of learning from its mistakes, the United States keeps making them.

Washington and its allies empowered groups whose members had either begun with anti-American or anti-Western views or found themselves lured to those ideas in the process of fighting. According to interviews with members of militant groups, such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s Al Nusra Front (which is aligned with al Qaeda), that is exactly what happened with some of the fighters in Libya and even with factions of the Free Syrian Army.

“In the East of Syria, there is no Free Syrian Army any longer. All Free Syrian Army people [there] have joined the Islamic State,” says Abu Yusaf, a high-level security commander of the Islamic State, whom The Washington Post’s Anthony Faiola wrote about last week.

The Islamic State is the most successful group for now, controlling the main areas of Syrian oil and gas fields. It has also acquired large amounts of cash, gold (from banks in the areas they control) and weapons in its fight against the armies in Syria and Iraq. “When the Iraqi Army fled from Mosul and the other areas, they left behind all the good equipment the Americans had given them,” Abu Yusaf says.

“From IS to the Mahdi army you see groups that basically are not our friends but who became more powerful because we have handled the situations wrong,” says a senior U.S. security official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity.

Some European and Arab intelligence officials also voiced their worries and frustration about what they call the mistakes the United States has made in handling the uprisings in Arab states. “We had, in the early stages, information that radical groups had used the vacuum of the Arab Spring, and that some of the people the U.S. and their allies had trained to fight for ‘democracy’ in Libya and Syria had a jihadist agenda — already or later, [when they] joined al Nusra or the Islamic State,” a senior Arab intelligence official said in a recent interview. He said that often his U.S. counterparts would say things like, “We know you are right, but our president in Washington and his advisers don’t believe that.” Those groups, say Western security officials, are threats not only in the Middle East, but also in the United States and Europe, where they have members and sympathizers.

The official’s account has been corroborated by members of the Islamic State in and outside the Middle East, including Abu Yusaf, the military commander. In several interviews conducted in the last two months, they described how the collapse of security during Arab Spring uprisings helped them recruit, regroup and use the Western strategy – to support and train groups that fight dictators — for their own benefits. “There had [also] been … some British and Americans who had trained us during the Arab Spring times in Libya,” said a man who calls himself Abu Saleh and who only agreed to be interviewed if his real identity remained secret.

Abu Saleh, who is originally from a town close to Benghazi, said he and a group of other Libyans received training and support in their country from French, British, and American military and intelligence personnel — before they joined the Al Nusra Front or the Islamic State. Western and Arab military sources interviewed for this article, confirmed Abu Saleh’s account that “training” and “equipment” were given to rebels in Libya during the fight against the Gadhafi regime.

Abu Saleh left Libya in 2012 for Turkey and then crossed into Syria. “First I fought under what people call the ‘Free Syrian Army’ but then switched to Al Nusra. And I have already decided I will join the Islamic State when my wounds are healed,” the 28-year-old said from a hospital in Turkey, where he is receiving medical treatment. He had been injured during a battle with the Syrian Army, he said, and was brought to Turkey with false documents. “Some of the Syrian people who they trained have joined the Islamic State and others jabhat al Nusra,” he said, smiling. He added, “Sometimes I joke around and say that I am a fighter made by America.”

For a long time, Western and Arab states supported the Free Syrian Army not only with training but also with weapons and other materiel. The Islamic State commander, Abu Yusaf, added that members of the Free Syrian Army who had received training — from the United States, Turkey and Arab military officers at an American base in Southern Turkey — have now joined the Islamic State. “Now many of the FSA people who the West has trained are actually joining us,” he said, smiling.

These militants are preparing for the day that Western governments catch on. “We do know the U.S. will go after the Islamic State at some stage, and we are ready for it. But they should not underestimate the answer they will get,” said an IS sympathizer in Europe who goes by the name Abu Farouk. He added that the “unconditional support” of the United States toward the government of outgoing premier Nuri al-Maliki, which he says has oppressed Iraqi Sunnis, and America’s “pampering Iran,” which is mainly Shia, made the Islamic State a more attractive alternative for some Sunnis who felt angry about double standards.

“Thanks to the Arab spring and the West fighting all these rulers for us, we had enough time to grow and recruit in the Middle East, Europe and the U.S,” Abu Farouk said. Then he paused for some seconds and smiled. “Actually, we should say, thank you, Mr. President.”

To this, I should add that similar deeds US and Allies have committed in Ukraine. Using people's anger at corruption and frustration at Russian meddling in countries' affairs west has supported and strengthened the far right radicals in such extent that Kiev government has fallen under control of neonazis. Regardless whatever the outcome of civil war will be, this all threatens the very spread of nazism in Europe. A waive of nazy groups are supporting the fight against Russia from Poland, Baltic states, European other countries like Italy, Croatia even Russia itself. This wave is going to spread to neighboring countries and heart of Europe. It could also generate threats on peace as Ukrainians have also territorial claims from Poland, Hungary and Romania.
This also could rekindle nationalistic movements and old territorial and ethnic rivalries that mistakenly are thought as things of past, those that threw Europe into hell of two world wars, because of currently raising frustrations about emigration and economy .

[Artashes]

Re: Regional geopolitics

All that's written above is for the publics consumption. Look here, concentrate on this.
It's a front.
Chaos is the goal.
Behind the scene, is one with a tight inner core.
Between the population reaching phenomenal numbers & terrorism reaching USA and other major western players is this goal --- marshal law ---.
All you see is manipulated to this purpose.
World control right down to each individual is the prize.
The big player & inner circle have no alligence to any country.
USA & Britain sold out.
This is accomplished through the merchant and monetary/financial sector.
USA is the junk yard dog.
The foibles of man are being exploited.

[Eddo211]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Writes from where? And from where does Yigal Schleifer write?

Ages ago, and on several occasions, I proposed that forum rules should be that anyone who copypastes material from another source without giving proper attribution should have that post deleted and their posting rights blocked for a period. But that will never happen because this is not a serious forum and to make it into a serious forum administrators/moderators need to cease being invisible arseholes.

Hey whats up with the name calling insults against the Mod team?........and the articles you posted belong in the " Can Turkey Learn Tolerance" thread, not here jingle bells.

--------

btw guys, the Turkish islamist are nothing compared to our real enemy......the ulta-nationalist Fascist Ergenekon with their Graywolf dogs. These Txxks have their Islamist under control, no problem.

[Hakob]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Here is Sergei Glaziev, Advisor to president Putin.
He talks some stunning deep ideas which at least are going to determine at least russian future politics.
I miself think that hes got some clear picture there about some stuff.
There are subtitles in english so everyone can understand.

I have posted Arman Boshian's inteview which touches some of the same ideas.
Sorry Haykakan, I did not have time to translate. Arman's interview is large. But watch the clip above and to it I will add that Arman was talking wests desire to engulf Russia, Iran with ring of fire by inciting wars.
Arman says that in Armenia too just like in Ukraine, west has financed a media and opposition whos main goal is to depose the current government. But interestingly this opposition talking in the name of democracy, in essence destroys not only the government but the state too. he brings the examples of Ukraine, Libia, Syria.
Thus, according to him, wests true goal is not to bring democracy in those countries, but to destabilize or to destroy them. By such actions west creates dependent vasal states, in an ultimate goal of destroying Russia.

[Haykakan]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Ahh yes macro economics.. This guy is right on in his assessments. Here in USA we suffer from offshoring also but you do not hear anyone talking about it like this guy did. I just wrote a paper about related issues. Arman is spot on in his assessment as well. Great examples of the western tools for destabilization are Lragir. Muradian, Vrej1915.. these are the enemies in disguise. We will not let Armenia become the next Ukraine, Syria, Libya..