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Post by RocDoc on Jan 27, 2011 10:36:23 GMT -5
Mek Nes 1 hour ago
Terrible or downright misleading information. Chechnya Militants is never blamed. al Qaeda-linked Islamic Caucasus Emirate always claims these attacks. If people want better terrorist news they are better off reading The Long War Journal (google it) with gives details news on global terrorist attacks and U.S anti-terrorism operations.
Chechen are usually the front-line fighters against these Wahhabist Terrorist.
Moscow, January 24, Interfax - The head Islamiic Mufi of Russia called for stricter punishment for terrorists. He said ethnic groups populating Russia have good-neighborly mutual relations, and that this "is a source of anger for the pack of abominable jackals, who are trying to bite our powerful and healthy society at the heel."
"But carrion is all they can cope with. Yes, they are probably squeaking with pleasure now, being drunk with the smell of blood and thinking of themselves as heroes, but do real heroes bark like so many wretched curs," Huzin said
He expressed hope that "the dirty and stinking holes where those wretches take refuge will be destroyed at last and we won't have to mourn the innocent victims of their cowardly attacks."
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 27, 2011 10:38:42 GMT -5
mahmood 2 hours ago
it doesnt matter how much information you give to these average tend to low brains, they dont give up their ignorance, they need to hate someone and now thats the muslims...look at their posts, that make one puke to see how they refuse to see the other side of story which is a burnt land and thousands of people killed,mostly unarmed civilians, when a 17 years old girl blast herslef up in metro of moscow cant you ask yourself what has happened to this teenager that she is seeking revenge like this?no of course not1 you are unable of asking that question, all you can do is posting hate!, killing people in moscow airport is unacceptable,,but when are you going to condemn killing chechens...oh yeah!they are muslims, you just hate them...drop the mask,dont play humanitarian, if you really respect human rights, then you should condemn violence on both side..ordinary boring hypocrites!
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 27, 2011 10:40:00 GMT -5
Steve 2 hours ago
Hey Putin and Medvedev....keep making deals like heping Iran build the Bushehr nuke plant.
When they finally get the bomb remember that they don't like you guys much more than they like US.....and you're closer.
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 27, 2011 10:43:17 GMT -5
Bobi 4 hours ago
This is the most objective and factual article on the Caucasus region that I have read in years.
Concerning the forced migration of the people of Chechnya, I would add that although Khrushchev allowed them to return, those that tried to return had to cross a large part of central Asia, through mostly hostile regions without any government support or protection. The big flood began when the Soviet Empire collapsed.
My interpretation would be that at the time of the collapse Chechnya and a few other countries around it were so politically compromised that they couldn't sue for independence in the same way as Georgia and most of the other satellite countries did.
The reason that the effort is so fractionalized is that a lot of the activists are religious fundamentalists. If a nonreligous leader managed to survive Russian interference then there surely would be a massive united call for independence. So, my claim is that the resistance isn't fundamentally religous in nature anymore than is Georgia's fight for unity and independence. In this case Islam is being used as a scapegoat by Russia to mask the real root of the region's resistance to Moscow. Historically the people in this region have been religiously tolerant.
Russia still dreams of empire and in the Caucasus it also wants to control the oil pipelines. Russian hegemony is the problem in the Caucasus region, not the indigenous people or their religions.
i 'thumbs-upped' this one when i first read it 4 hours ago...THIS was the one i was really trying to find.
the ones above are incidental.
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 27, 2011 10:54:43 GMT -5
tangent, more or less... Trial of Faleh Hassan Almaleki, accused of killing daughter in 'honor killing,' begins in Phoenix
By Michael Sheridan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, January 24th 2011, 3:38 PM
The trial of a father accused of murdering his daughter in a suspected "honor killing" began in Phoenix on Monday.
Faleh Hassan Almaleki is accused of using his Jeep Cherokee to run over 20-year-old Noor Almaleki in October 2009. She died from her injuries days after the alleged attack, during which the mother of her boyfriend was also hurt.
The 48-year-old Muslim father was allegedly angry because he believed his daughter had become "too Westernized."
Almaleki later fled to Mexico, and then to England before being caught by authorities and shipped back to the U.S. to face trial.
"By his own admission, this was an intentional act, and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame on him and his family," Phoenix prosecutor Stephanie Low said last year, according to The Arizona Republic. "This was an attempt at an honor killing."
The case shines a light on an ancient practice that has spread around the world in recent years. It targets women for committing what a male decides is an immoral act, or acting in an immoral manner. Although largely praticed in Muslim countries, cases have been reported in Europe and South America, as well as the United States.
"It has been estimated that as many as one in three women across the world has been beaten, raped or otherwise abused during the course of her lifetime," said Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in March 2010. "The most common source of such violence comes from within the family. Amongst the most extreme forms of abuse is what is known as 'honor killing.'"
The brutal beheading of a television executive by her husband in Orchard Park, N.Y., in 2009 has been called an "honor killing," as was the murder of two teenagers in Texas by their father that same year.
In 2007, a London father was found guilty of murdering his daughter in an honor killing, in which he strangled the 20-year-old woman, stuffed her in a suitcase and buried her in his garden.
msheridan@nydailynews.com; or follow him at Twitter.com/NYDNSheridan
www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/01/24/2011-01-24_trial_of_dad_accused_of_killing_daughter_in_honor_killing_begins.html?obref=obnetworkjust some nice folks with 'morals'.... |
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 29, 2011 18:44:36 GMT -5
Tunisian women rally ahead of Islamist leader's return
no shit, huh.
and will it make a bit of difference, ya think?
do you suppose maybe THEY'll riot as well?
oh, the price one must pay for freedom. aHEM.
THIS is fucking sad as hell.
Tunisian women rally ahead of Islamist leader's return
by Sofia Bouderbala and Kaouther Larbi
– 2 hrs 14 mins ago
TUNIS (AFP) – Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi vowed a transition to democracy as hundreds of women rallied on Saturday in the Tunisian capital to express their fears of an Islamist resurgence.
Women's groups took to the streets of Tunis to defend the extensive rights for which they have fought for more than half a century, on the eve of the return of Islamist leader Rached Ghannouchi from exile.
Actresses, university lecturers and human rights campaigners said they wanted to make sure their rights stay intact despite the recent upheavals.
Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahdha (Awakening) movement, is due in Tunis on Sunday, having fled the country in the early 1990s after Ben Ali cracked down on Islamists, which is still officially banned.
"We want to send an important message to the Islamists, especially those from the Ennahdha movement -- that we are not ready to pull back on or abandon our rights," said Sabah Mahmoudi, a university lecturer.
Relative calm returned to Tunisia's capital a day after a new transition cabinet was sworn in and interim Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi vowed a transition to democracy and an economic revival.
After violent clashes with police Friday, only a few dozen youths were out protesting against the "brutality" of police treatment after soldiers sealed off the city's Medina market area where much of the violence took place.
Police fired tear gas later on Saturday after some youths attacked shops.
In northwestern Tunisia, two policemen and a soldier were hurt in clashes with demonstrators who set fire to a local police headquarters late Friday, the TAP state news agency reported Saturday.
Security forces later succeeded in restoring calm, TAP said.
For its part, Human Rights Watch on Saturday called on the interim government to urgently investigate the killings of protesters by security forces earlier this month by the old regime.
"The units and commanders responsible for these apparently unlawful killings should be identified and held accountable," Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director for the New York-based watchdog, said in Tunis.
The group said it had found evidence of at least 21 people killed with live ammunition earlier this month in the cities of Kasserine and Tala.
Tunisia's caretaker government said earlier that 78 people had been killed in total: the United Nations has said at least 100 people lost their lives.
Ghannouchi went on air late Friday to defend his reshuffled cabinet, saying talks on its composition had been opened "to all parties" including those from politics, civil society and universities.
"The two essential challenges facing Tunisia are the transition to democracy and relaunching economic activity" he told private television channel Nesma.
The country "has all the means necessary to succeed in this democratic transition that will allow all Tunisians, all political associations, to express themselves in complete freedom and to choose their leader after this transition phase," Ghannouchi said.
The 69-year-old prime minister -- a holdover from the Ben Ali regime who has been in office since 1999 -- has promised to hold democratic elections within six months.
Austria meanwhile announced it was freezing any possible assets belonging to Ben Ali, his wife Leila Trabelsi and close friends and relatives.
Switzerland has taken similar steps and the European Union is poised to do likewise.
On Wednesday, Tunis issued an international arrest warrant for Ben Ali, who with his wife and other members of his once all-powerful family is accused of illegally acquiring assets and transferring funds abroad during his 23-year rule.
Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia January 14 and 33 members of his extended family have been arrested in Tunisia.
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 30, 2011 8:19:48 GMT -5
i suspected it was jihadists primarily, but THIS is a bit chilling... Did Muslim Brotherhood Learn ‘Day of Rage’ Egypt Protest Tactics From Obama Allies Bill Ayers and Code Pink?by Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King
One year ago, Big Government reported the anti-American global left, led by Code Pink, traveled to Egypt to undermine the blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.
President Barack Obama funder and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, accompanied by Obama’s Hyde Park friends and neighbors – the former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn – organized an inside-outside game of political theater to bring pressure on the Mubarak regime to allow the aid for Hamas to be delivered though Egyptian checkpoints.
On one hand, Evans and Code Pink lobbied Mubarak’s wife for assistance, as well as the U.S. embassy in Cairo. On the other hand, the group led hundreds of Western leftists in challenging the Egyptian government with boisterous street protests.
Code Pink was not shy about its support for Hamas. The group bragged that Hamas terrorists guaranteed their safety in Gaza.
At the same time, Code Pink had also allied itself with the Muslim Brotherhood. Code Pink took out banner ads on the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English language Web site asking jihadis to “join us in cleansing our country” of so-called war criminals which included former President George W. Bush and wife Laura.
The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt and is widely considered to be the father of the modern Islamic terrorist movement.
It is telling that the protests Friday in Egypt were dubbed by the Muslim Brotherhood, a “day of rage.”
The Brotherhood said its members will demonstrate “with all the national Egyptian forces, the Egyptian people, so that this coming Friday [today] will be the general day of rage for the Egyptian nation.”
“Days of Rage” is what the Weathermen called their violent, riotous protests in Chicago in 1969.
The question is begged: What have Obama’s allies Ayers, Dohrn and Code Pink taught the Muslim Brotherhood and other anti-Mubarak organizations in Egypt about using protests, riots and the modern social media to coordinate their actions to undermine the Mubarak regime?
Being that they have common enemies–the United States, Israel, and governements allied with them–it is understandable that they would be allies. It must give them encouragement that President Obama has yet to disavow Jodie Evans and Code Pink, but instead continues to do business with them as Evans and Code Pink act as conduits between terrorists and Obama.
biggovernment.com/taylorking/2011/01/29/did-muslim-brotherhood-learn-day-of-rage-egypt-protest-tactics-from-obama-allies-bill-ayers-and-code-pink/
...certainly not at ALL farfetched either. you've got global reach and hollywood $$$ backing your bizarre bullshit 'altruism', why not, eh? UNfortunately. it WILL bite all of us too. |
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on Feb 4, 2011 16:13:11 GMT -5
Why don't you just start a blog?
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Post by RocDoc on Feb 7, 2011 15:37:02 GMT -5
Why don't you just start a blog? um, why? ~ excellent analysis here: Aiming to make a soft landing in Egypt
Charles Krauthammer
February 7, 2011
WASHINGTON — Who doesn't love a democratic revolution? Who is not moved by the renunciation of fear and the reclamation of dignity in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria?
The worldwide euphoria that has greeted the Egyptian uprising is understandable. All revolutions are blissful in the first days. The romance could be forgiven if this were Paris 1789. But it is not. In the intervening 222 years, we have learned how these things can end.
The Egyptian awakening carries promise and hope and of course merits our support. But only a child can believe that a democratic outcome is inevitable. And only a blinkered optimist can believe that it is even the most likely outcome.
Yes, the Egyptian revolution is broad-based. But so were the French and the Russian and the Iranian revolutions. Indeed in Iran, the revolution only succeeded — the shah was long opposed by the mullahs — when the merchants, the housewives, the students and the secularists joined to bring him down.
And who ended up in control? The most disciplined, ruthless and ideologically committed — the radical Islamists.
This is why our paramount moral and strategic interest in Egypt is real democracy in which power does not devolve to those who believe in one man, one vote, one time. That would be Egypt's fate should the Muslim Brotherhood prevail. That was the fate of Gaza, now under the brutal thumb of Hamas, a Palestinian wing (see article 2 of Hamas' founding covenant) of the Muslim Brotherhood.
We are told by sage Western analysts not to worry about the Brotherhood because it probably commands only about 30 percent of the vote. This is reassurance? In a country where the secular democratic opposition is weak and fractured after decades of persecution, any Islamist party commanding a third of the vote rules the country.
Elections will be held. The primary U.S. objective is to guide a transition period that gives secular democrats a chance.
The House of Mubarak is no more. He is 82, reviled and not running for re-election. The only question is who fills the vacuum. There are two principal possibilities: a provisional government of opposition forces, possibly led by Mohamed ElBaradei, or an interim government led by the military.
ElBaradei would be a disaster. As head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, he did more than anyone to make an Iranian nuclear bomb possible, covering for the mullahs for years. (As soon as he left, the IAEA issued a strikingly tough, unvarnished report about the program.)
Worse, ElBaradei has allied himself with the Muslim Brotherhood. Such an alliance is grossly unequal. The Brotherhood has organization, discipline and widespread support. In 2005, it won approximately 20 percent of parliamentary seats. ElBaradei has no constituency of his own, no political base, no political history within Egypt at all.
He has lived abroad for decades. He has less of a residency claim to Egypt than Rahm Emanuel has to Chicago. A man with no constituency allied with a highly organized and powerful political party is nothing but a mouthpiece and a figurehead, a useful idiot that the Brotherhood will dispense with when it ceases to have need of a cosmopolitan frontman.
The Egyptian military, on the other hand, is the most stable and important institution in the country. It is Western-oriented and rightly suspicious of the Brotherhood. And it is widely respected, carrying the prestige of the 1952 "Free Officers Movement" that overthrew the monarchy and the 1973 October War that restored Egyptian pride along with the Sinai.
The military is the best vehicle for guiding the country to free elections over the coming months. Whether it does so with Mubarak at the top, or with Vice President Omar Suleiman or perhaps with some technocrat who arouses no ire among the demonstrators, matters not to us. If the army calculates that sacrificing Mubarak (through exile) will satisfy the opposition and end the unrest, so be it.
The overriding objective is a period of stability during which secularists and other democratic elements of civil society can organize themselves for the coming elections and prevail. ElBaradei is a menace. Mubarak will be gone one way or the other. The key is the military. The U.S. should say very little in public and do everything behind the scenes to help the military midwife — and then guarantee — what is still something of a long shot: Egyptian democracy.
Washington Post Writers Group
Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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Post by RocDoc on Feb 10, 2011 15:12:56 GMT -5
Concerns grow over Egypt's WMD research
With Egypt in revolt and the country’s future uncertain, concern is growing over whether a new government in the Arab world’s most militarily and industrially advanced country could accelerate an arms race in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
At the heart of the concern is intelligence indicating that Egypt has quietly carried out research and development on weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, biological and missile technology.
The research and development has continued virtually without pause over the past three decades, according to interviews with U.S. officials and a review of intelligence and other government documents by NBC News.
Specifically, the intelligence indicates that Egypt has carried out experiments in plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment, helped jump-start Saddam Hussein’s missile and chemical weapons programs in Iraq, and worked with Kim Jong Il on North Korea’s missile program.
“If we found another country doing what they’ve done, we would have been all over them,” said a former U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
well, well, well....nor should obama even intimate to try to maintain some influence there, eh?
in the name of self-determination.
hint: there's NEVER going to be any self-determination.
they're going to be shepherded by SOMEONE into something which ain't going to make a LARGE constituency happy as clams in the sand.
the brotherhood's going to give them the choice:
sharia OR....
SHARIA.
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Post by RocDoc on Feb 10, 2011 15:20:37 GMT -5
further down the comments section at the eastern european blog from which i c&p'd the above this very trenchant comment:
D**** J****** said...
Yes, Unter. But more to worry is our own incompetence of better monitoring that development.
Bu as I have stated before main worry is illustrated by some comments by Srdja Trifkovic:
Free election in Egypt will not produce a Western-style democracy. Political Islam, embodied in the Muslim Brotherhood, is the only well organized force capable of supplanting the regime and the only group with deep popular roots. The Brotherhood has let the secular reformists take the lead in the streets, confident that it will reap the benefits.
This is based on a well established precedent: in 1979 Khomeini’s followers forged a tactical alliance with the reformist opponents of the Shah, only to eliminate them once the job was done. The process was completed in 1981 when Khomeini’s former ally, Iran’s first president Abolhassan Bani Sadr, was impeached and had to flee the country.
The oft-repeated media claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is “moderate,” or likely to become so when burdened with the responsibility of power, is absurd. It is a hard-line group based on a simple credo: Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. It was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, an Egyptian school teacher nurtured on Wahhabism, as a revivalist movement explicitly opposed to the ascendancy of secular reformism. It started performing terrorist acts in Egypt, which led to a ban on its activities. An Ikhwani tried to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser in 1954 and four others succeeded in killing his successor Anwar al-Sadat in September 1981. Today the Brotherhood has branches in every traditionally Muslim country and all over the world, including the United States.
February 8, 2011 10:46 AM
pray the military keeps its power there.
sensibly.
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Post by RocDoc on Feb 24, 2011 8:10:27 GMT -5
news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110224/wl_time/08599205350300
Eyewitness Account: The Battle for Gaddafi's Capital
By Francesca Spinola / Tripoli – 2 hrs 48 mins ago
On Tuesday, Feb. 22, I woke up to the scrap-metal sound of a Kalashnikov outside my window. I looked at the clock. It was four in the morning. For three years, I lived in Libya as the only accredited western journalist in the country. By Wednesday, I would leave a city that was no longer itself.
...this ^ story is one of many but in the 'comments' this guy gave a spot on analysis: McAuleys World 1 hour ago
Reuters May 20, 2010: 9 short months ago / Obama Whitehouse / Clinton State Department
The United States and Libya signed a trade agreement on Thursday underlining their switch from decades-long hostility to lucrative business ties.
* Agreement sets up joint trade, investment council
* Washington to advise Libya on WTO membership bid
* U.S. firms seeking share of lucrative Libyan market
U.S. companies lagged their European rivals in entering the Libyan market after international sanctions on Tripoli were lifted in 2004. Washington is now striving to catch up.
Under the agreement, a joint council will be set up to handle issues including market access and intellectual property, and Washington will help Libya with its application to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), officials said.
"The importance of this agreement is to build trust," Libyan Trade Minister Mohamed Hweji told Reuters.
Christopher Wilson, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East, was in the Libyan capital to sign the agreement.
From CNN World: 12.20.03
Bush, Blair: Libya to dismantle WMD programs
Libya has tried to develop weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles in the past, but has agreed to dismantle the programs, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday in simultaneous televised speeches.
Bush said Libya's leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, had "agreed to immediately and unconditionally allow inspectors from international organizations to enter Libya.
"These inspectors will render an accounting of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and will help oversee their elimination," Bush said.
Libya's nuclear weapons program was "much further advanced" than U.S. and British intelligence had thought, and included centrifuges and a uranium enrichment program, all necessary components in making a nuclear bomb, a senior administration official said Friday.Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, said Saturday Libya's decision to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction, is "welcome" and surmised the action might have been spurred by Gadhafi's fear over "what he saw happen in Iraq."
AFTER HAVING BEEN BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD FOR 30 YEARS ... Col. Moammar Gadhafi's "rapprochement" with the Great Satan (the United States) was seen as the vilest type of betrayal by the Muslim Brotherhood...
This is the 1st opportunity that the Brotherhood has had for “payback” for what was seen by the “Brotherhood” as treason on the part of Gadhafi.
The outcome will rest with the Military, just like in Egypt. After the killing stops either Gadhafi or the Brotherhood will remain standing …
Democracy? Please, let’s be serious. After 40 years of authoritarian rule under Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Libya doesn’t have a single vestige of Democratic Government.
Either Gadhafi or the Brotherhood will win… and for the people of Libya it may well be a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire …he points out the very moment of the gaddafi 'rehabilitation' and why it was such a slap in the face to 'the brotherhood' that he would DARE to stand down while their worldwide operations were succeeding so smashingly. pun intended. ...and again show the conundrum of politics re the USA and re moammar gaddafi himself 'fucked if you do and fucked if you don't' so you pick the way you think you'll be LESS fucked. and STILL lose. wow. it sure blurs who is 'right' or 'wrong' for me...
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Post by RocDoc on Feb 24, 2011 8:42:07 GMT -5
well except for the part where he brings iin african mercenaries to quell this bit of a dustup they're having. he (like mubarak....and by extension the US of A) needs to admit that he's absolutely stuck in a zero-win situation.
'ze jig...she is opP!'
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Post by RocDoc on Mar 1, 2011 15:47:48 GMT -5
Gorbachev blasts Russia's rulers as he turns 80
By Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press – Tue Mar 1, 6:35 am ET
MOSCOW – Approaching his 80th birthday, Mikhail Gorbachev jokes about his age but frowns when he speaks of Russia sliding back into Soviet authoritarian ways he thought he defeated.
For much of the nearly 20 years since the Soviet Union collapsed under his leadership, Gorbachev has been something of a dim figure in his homeland, mostly staying out of public view despite being lauded in the West.
These days, Gorbachev, who turns 80 on Wednesday, is becoming more visible and outspoken, even recently doling out harsh criticism of Vladimir Putin — as painful memories over the anxiety and suffering that followed the USSR's disintegration grow fainter.
Although his legacy remains controversial, Gorbachev is at last getting some recognition as an elder statesman, including a large photo exhibition on his years in power, displayed in a prestigious hall just outside the walls of the Kremlin that he once ruled.
And despite his years, he still shows the vigor and humor that captivated the world after a long series of sickly and tongue-tied Soviet leaders.
"I don't believe I'm 80 and didn't hope I'd make it (this far) — but I'm not going into physiological details here," he joked at a recent news conference.
But his remarks on Russia's current politics were pointed. He described Russia as an "imitation" of democracy where parliament and courts lack independence from the government and the main pro-Kremlin party is a "bad copy" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev, whose attempts to reform the Soviet system led instead to its death, says many of his democratic achievements have been reversed — and could not hide his contempt for the current leadership.
"Incredible conceit!" he snaps when asked about Prime Minister Putin and his protege, President Dmitry Medvedev, saying they will decide between them who should run for president in Russia's March 2012 presidential vote.
Gorbachev accuses Putin, who was president in 2000-8, of taking the country back to the times of a one-party state, manipulating elections, media-censorship and a crackdown on dissent. Gorbachev said his own attempt to found a political party failed when a Kremlin aide bluntly told him that authorities wouldn't register it.
Recalling his push for liberalization of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev said he understood that it would erode his own authority but launched the reforms because the country desperately needed change.
"I could have enjoyed being in power like other politicians had done before me and are doing now," he said in a recent interview with the liberal Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which he co-owns. "But ... I felt an enormous and impatient public demand for changes."
Gorbachev was 54 when he took the helm as the General Secretary of the Communist Party in March 1985, his relatively young age and open manner contrasting sharply with his predecessors.
A month after his appointment, he announced sweeping political and economic reforms that were enthusiastically greeted by people striving for a change after decades of repressive Soviet rule.
He allowed dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov to return home from internal exile, quickly launched disarmament talks with the West, signing a 1987 deal to cut an entire class of nuclear missiles with President Ronald Reagan, and ended the war in Afghanistan.
But while he quickly became an icon in the West, his popularity at home took a nose-dive under the impact of hasty and ill-fated domestic reforms. His attempt to limit alcohol consumption was marred by excesses, and he failed to deliver on his promises to raise living standards.
The one area where Gorbachev quickly succeeded was his campaign of glasnost or openness, which allowed the media to criticize authorities and expose the crimes of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Changes continued in avalanche. In 1989, Gorbachev championed the first relatively free parliamentary elections in which many Kremlin critics won seats, and he didn't stop protest movements from driving out Communist regimes across Eastern Europe.
Then Gorbachev also began losing his grip on power, facing attacks by the Communist old guard, who were accusing him of betrayal, and from liberals complaining that his reforms were not moving fast enough.
Ethnic conflicts, which had been ruthlessly suppressed by Soviet rulers over decades, flared up and secessionist movements spread quickly across all 15 Soviet republics. An attempt to free prices and ease centralized controls over the economy emptied shelves and fueled inflation, and a badly planned money reform added to public dismay.
The rising tensions culminated in the botched August 1991 hardline coup that briefly ousted Gorbachev and precipitated the Soviet collapse. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet President on Christmas Day 1991 after several leaders of republics declared the Soviet Union extinct.
Many praise Gorbachev for not resorting to military force to stay in power.
"He faced a dilemma: he could only preserve the Soviet Union by spilling a lot of blood, and he didn't do that," Liliya Shevtsova, an expert with Carnegie Endowment's Moscow center, wrote in a commentary. "Gorbachev killed a Soviet leader in himself even before the Soviet collapse."
Gorbachev doesn't regret launching the reforms which eventually cost him his job. "I only can be grateful to destiny for giving me the opportunities that I had," he said in a TV interview.
He still feels bitter about his mistakes — admitting that he underestimated his foes when he left on a seaside vacation days before the planned signing of a crucial agreement that could have saved the Soviet Union. Emboldened by his absence, hard-liners in the Soviet leadership launched the coup.
"I shouldn't have left, it was exactly what they wanted," he said last week. Asked what he can't forgive, he answered with a terse "betrayal."
Gorbachev was reviled at home for years after he lost power, as many held him responsible for the Soviet collapse and the economic meltdown that cost most of the population their lifetime savings. It was his wife Raisa's death of blood cancer in 1999 that melted many hearts, softening the public attitude to Gorbachev.
He speaks about Raisa with tenderness, saying he remains grateful to fate for their 46 happy years of marriage. "I want to believe that we can meet again behind the grave," he said in Sunday's television interview.
Gorbachev said he will celebrate his birthday with family and friends in Moscow on Wednesday and on March 30 attend a charitable gala concert in London's Royal Albert Hall to help raise money for treating patients with blood cancer.
...a man following his convictions all these years.
to the 'liberals' probably simply reagan's version of tony blair?
tho the libs also would say, 'aw the SSR just died on it's own!'...giving reagan and gorby no credit whatsoever.
and they'd be wrong.
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skvorecky
Streetcorner Musician
Now I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.
Posts: 32
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Post by skvorecky on Mar 3, 2011 14:20:39 GMT -5
The whole Reagan as the great "deregulator" is a bunch of shit. He deregulated only when it was convenient for his corporate masters.
The Great Communicator talked a good game, but did little to improve our lives; and, he had eight years in which to do it. The Reagan promises to inaugurate a new era of liberty and free markets, were worse than empty promises, Reagan assaulted our liberty, our future prosperity, and free markets with unprecedented spending, increased taxes, more governmental regulations, bigger bureaucracies, and unwise trade policies. Government spending, during Reagan’s administration, was double that of the preceding Ford and Carter administrations.
Reagan promised to cut personal income and business taxes, but the so-called Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act – the largest tax increase in American history up to that time – was enacted in 1982. Then Reagan proposed increased taxes on the trucking industry, which drove up prices of food and other commodities, all prior to his increase of $165 billion on Social Security taxes.
Then in 1986 came Reagan’s deceptive Tax Reform Act, (TRA) which shifted $120 billion from personal income taxes to taxes on small businesses, the fountainhead of what was once our middle-class affluence. The Reagan administration loudly promoted the lower tax rates of TRA, but said little about the increased taxes to our most valuable economic segment; nor was much made of how TRA repealed or reduced many tax deductions on all tax returns.
The government that Reagan claimed he wanted to get off the backs of the American people never came to pass, and Mr. Reagan made sure of it by initiating what would later become the greatest world-wide economic crash in recorded history, with his de-regulation of banks.
Reagan de-regulated at exactly the worse place possible. It could even be said that Reagan is the “Father of the World’s Greatest Depression.”
It was, also, Reagan who appointed the little reptile – Alan Greenspan – as chairman of the Federal Reserve System, the gremlin, who along with Bill Clinton, carried Reagan’s banking de-regulation policies to the ultimate crime against humanity.
And Reagan’s trade policies? All protectionism, which drives up the price of imported consumer goods; but, that is all too boring to go further into.
And we could go into Star Wars, Iran/Contra, funneling money to terrorists during the Soviet/Afghanistan conflict, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I'm with you Matheus but there is much more than the simplified version of Reagan's policies from the article.
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