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David Barsamian

David Barsamian

David Barsamian is the award-winning founder and director of Alternative Radio, the independent weekly audio series based in Boulder, Colorado. He is the author of numerous books with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Eqbal Ahmad, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy and Edward Said. His best-selling books with Chomsky have been translated into many languages. His latest books are How the World Works and What We Say Goes (both with Noam Chomsky) and Targeting Iran. David's interviews and articles appear in The Progressive, Z and other publications. He is winner of the Media Education Award, the ACLU's Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, and the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its Top Ten Media Heroes.
David Barsamian

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13 Comments

  1. These two paragraphs speaks volumes to me as to what is really going on in Armenia,we are in a catastrophic situation with people quitting Armenia in droves already we can witness the shortages of manpower.The plunder continues under this corrupt and criminal regime.

    Serge Sarkisian, the current president, his background is in the FSB, and in the Soviet period it was the KGB. So he was a KGB servant. He also has huge economic power.

    One of the most horrible deals that was strongly supported by the U.S. embassy was the privatising of one Armenia’s largest hydroelectric power stations, Vorotan Hydroelectric Cascade. It was sold to ContourGlobal. It is a company that is, again, registered offshore and doesn’t have a long history of existence. The scheme is just laughable, because the company doesn’t even have its own money, doesn’t even have its own loan. The way they purchased it means literally giving it away. The Armenian government always says, “Oh, we’re short of money, the budget is short, so we will sell this off and generate some revenues.” But this didn’t even result in revenues. This is going to be paid in instalments. That is almost like giving it away.

  2. I started reading this article with optimism, but ended thinking no wonder Armenia is in the state it is in if this is the juvenile level that opponents of the current situation operate at.
    Anna Shahnazaryan claims to be a “critical thinker” but all I see being expressed are views not grounded on a secure intellectual foundation but which appear to be held just for the sake of holding them. The result is a scattergun approach that moves between stating blatantly obvious things that everyone knows to be true, to attacking many wrong but otherwise unconnected things, to dishing out tired clichéd conspiracy theories and obsolete political dogma, to (by the end) descending into escapist fantasy. What is she really claiming – that Armenia can’t ever be free of its legal criminals and their plundering until international capitalism is toppled worldwide? The priests, politicians and oligarchs will be having a good laugh at that.

  3. A great interview – well done. It is indeed very very sad that the perpetrators of the injustices and the corruption which is a very big problem in Armenia is still a mamoth task to get rid off. Surely, there is somebody who has got to stand up and wipe these unbelievable injustices within the country. It is indeed very sad that this situation is not being actioned by authorities. Indeed SAD, it is after all Armenia we are talking and hearing about. Really AMOTH.

  4. Excellent comment is made by Steve: the interview is truly juvenile. The real roots are in the degradation of Armenian culture in its broadest meaning, i.e. including interpersonal and social relations, etc., and the dismal conditions of education. Intellectuals should be blamed as much as the oligarchs. The Great Hegel was right: every people deserves the government that it has. This is obvious in the Armenian case. Resistance is destructive, if it is not combined with intellectuality and civility.

  5. why we always think that Armenia is not part of this world.
    When we are going to learn to react by logic than emotion.
    Whom you are showing your weakness.
    We have enough enemies that are laughing by reading this useless and naive article.

    • Are you ashamed of the truth? The first step of any change is acknowledgment and the truth needs to be told. There is no “logic’ to ripping off the Armenian people. No logic to stealing for your personal gain because of your political position. Its called being a TRAITOR to your people and nation. Its outdated and needs to be exposed and RID..Its that simple.

  6. This is why the current regime WILL NOT allow diaspora youth to serve in the military. It would bring direct skin involvement from outside and possible influence, something the thieves…don’t want. They want emigration. That means less opposition and more for them, PURE traitors to the Armenian cause and nation. That simple. Its about them, their wealth and of course their maintenance of power.

  7. Here is an explosive takeaway from this knowledgeable concerned Armenian, Anna, about major regime-complicit diaspora people and organizations, like the AGBU, that are actually working AGAINST Armenia:

    “There are indirect linkages between the (dangerous) Amulsar mining project and him, for example, and other big businessmen who are considered philanthropists, such as Ruben Vardanyan, who is co-founder of the Aurora Prize. The bank he owns has given a pledge to finance part of this mining operation. People who are affiliated with AGBU, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, who are rich businessmen, also have shares in this company, or its subsidiaries.”

    And, here, she explains how we all can help:

    “I’m working intensively on trying to stop Amulsar. But locally it would not be possible. A lot of pressure also has to come from the Armenian community abroad. Because it’s Armenian businessmen and Armenian institutions like AGBU that support this mining project. So anything that the Diaspora Armenians who will read this or hear this radio program can do about this will be a great help.

    The Armenian Environmental Front, a grass-roots group, a civic initiative is coordinating a lot of these efforts. Their website is armecofront.net; I’m supporting this group and am involved in this campaign.”

    • Thanks, Robert D. for pointing to this very crucial passage on Amulsar and the linkages with AGBU and R. Vardanyan. I commend Anna for sticking her neck out to name names. Let us all take more risks to unveil such divisive and untransparent players in Armenia and the Diaspora, as well as to join forces with initiatives such as The Armenian Environmental Front.

  8. For some people to hear the truth is always very painful. They will say anything and do anything to justify such rip off deals.

  9. I agree with the critical responses to this article, because from the first part, my alarm bells already went off, and didn’t really care about the message this article was trying to convey. The first article introduced itself with the passages…

    “Anna Shahnazaryan, an environmental activist and a feminist based in Yerevan…

    Left with a legacy of 70 years of Soviet rule, Armenia has a major corruption problem. The adoption of neoliberalism by elites has produced massive inequality. Oligarchs dominate the state and the economy. Unregulated mining is causing environmental damage. Water supplies are being threatened. Quality healthcare, extremely expensive, is available for the rich. Education? More of the same. The media parrot the government line. Patriarchy and misogyny persist. Women are seen as child-producers for the defense of the nation. A decades-old conflict continues with neighboring Azerbaijan. Both that border and the one with Turkey are closed.”

    Whenever I see such key words as “feminist”, “neoliberalism”, “patriarchy”, “misogyny” etc. I don’t need to read more to see that there is a western liberal agenda at play, operating through a far left template similar to Communism.

    So some of these are legitimate concerns, yet others are realities that we must deal with, and yet others are directly from the western liberal playbook. And suggesting that we blame this all on “the government” is irresponsible reporting. I agree to blame the government where it is called for, but this is not always clear cut.

    And by the way, in regards to the evil “patriarchy” which sees women as “child-producers” for the nation’s security. Perhaps we should stop this idea all together and forbid women from having and raising children and instead “focus on their careers” like in the west where “the happiest women can be found”… and maybe wonderful things will await Armenia’s child-free future, right? Oh, Armenia will disappear? Oh, no problem… at least Armenia would go down in history books as having successfully fought the evils of patriarchy and wrongly seeing women as child-producers. Armenia will disappear, but hey at least in the FAKE western conflict and agenda, “feminism” will defeat “patriarchy”. S.M.H.

    • Spot on. I’m so glad I’m not the only one that realizes it. Whenever those keywords and phrases pop up (feminism, neoliberal, etc) an alarm should go off. How ironic is it that she mentioned ideology being preached to kids in Armenia, but studied in the U.S. and is now spewing leftist ideology. Laughable. Please Armenian Weekly, get us some decent perspectives.

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