UP Ibalon Bicol: USSR

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Gorbachev pessimistic over US winning the Afghan war

11/11/2009 | Posted by mesiamd | Edit Post

A day after he attended the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, USSR's former president Mikhail Gorbachev, the architect of perestroika (rebuilding) in the 1980’s which led to Soviet Union's dissolution spoke his thought. He said the United States would not win in Afghanistan war.

Gorbachev advised against beefing up US troops to combat the lawless Taliban--- Thinking that it would be better to withdraw, he based his advice from USSR’s experience learned from the Soviet's military campaign in the 1980’s. The Russians concluded that Afghanistan was too fractious and divided by clans, making it very hard for the poorly developed country to be united.

As the 78-year old Soviet leader said this, he was not banking that Pres. Barack Obama would heed his advice. He thought there was nothing to be gained from continued engagement with the Afghans. So in 1988 till early 1989, Soviet forces pulled out from the Afghanistan.

“Obama is considering a military request to send as many as 40,000 more U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan, on top of the 68,000 due to be stationed there by the end of the year. Other North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, comprising personnel from 42 countries, number about 36,000.”---- Bloomberg.com (11/10/09, Burns, C; Donohue, P.)

Afghanistan is struggling to control the heightened attacks of the Taliban who harbors the terrorist group Al Qaeda. Alhough Pres. Hamid Karzai is declared the winner in the contested election, his continued stay in power has to deal with massive government corruption which is difficult to eradicate. (Photo Credit: ctv.ca)=0=

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Labels: Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, Mikhaiil Gorbachev, Russia, Taliban, USSR, war

The US-supported Middle East Bully Invades Gaza

1/06/2009 | Posted by myty555 | Edit Post

Israel is lucky they are the favorite client state of the US. It invades Gaza and US reaction is mute. Even the US press is relatively subdued in its reactions with some major news agencies having no commentary at all regarding the invasion.

When Russia made their incursion into the Abkhazia region of Georgia in August 2008, the US nearly went ballistic. The US press condemned it, too, without verifying the history and situation of the region. Abkhazia is historically distinct from Georgia and its people are not Georgians ethnolinguistically but related to the Russian North Caucasus. They even differ in religion. It was only Stalin who added it to the old Georgian SSR of the former USSR and when it broke up Abkhazians held on to their Russian passports.

And it was Georgia, bent on ending the autonomy earlier granted to Abkhasia, who started the crisis. Its armed venture against Abkhazia was prepared with US and Israeli help.

This was the same hypocrisy as the shootdown of KAL 007. Reagan was bristling but when one US warship shot down a Iranian airliner which was flying over Iranian territory the reaction was mild. And it conveniently forgot that Israel shot down a Libyan airliner in 1973.

Everybody knows Israel has nuclear weapons. South Africa, when Mandela came to power, surrendered 8 atomic bombs that Israel gave to the apartheid government in exchange for its use of a secluded South African island for nuclear tests. Yet when the US invaded Iraq in 2003 its primary "reason" was Saddam was on the verge of acquiring WMDs. Ho-hum!

This is the double standard in the world. Obviously, the US has the most foreign invasions of the last century but the US media blithely ignores that most of the time. But when an foreign incursion is made by a state not their ally the condemnation is fast and strident.

Israel has no right to be in Gaza. It is Palestinian land from time immemorial. I say the UN decision to divide Palestine in 1947 was wrong because it is a contravention to the declared principle of the UN regarding the right of self-determination of nations. They never consulted the Palestinians then. The Jews had no right to half of Palestine. Maybe it was just the payback of the British to Jewish capital that was instrumental in its rise to being the strongest country in the world in the 1700s and 1800s.

After the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967 Israel formally annexed conquered Palestinian territories which is a direct violation of UN statutes. Yet Israel was never expelled from the UN because the US protects Israel.

60 years after the division of Palestine the Palestinians still does not have a state of their own. It is because Israel opposes it and I wonder why it should be Israel's decision. Nothing will move because Israel still occupies Palestinian territory and Israel doesn't want to give it back (the problem if Israeli settlers and the holy sites). Here you have a people forced into diaspora forcing other people into diaspora. Maybe there is no word for justice in the Hebrew and Yiddish languages.

And all of these incongruities are not fully exposed because US media generally supports US foreign policy. And US media dominates the world.

That's the reason why most Filpinos do not understand this issue.

Sheer hypocristy and double standard, I say.

[photo credit:iranian.ws]

Labels: Abkhazia, Georgia, Iranian airliner shootdown, Israel nuclear weapons, KAL 007, Libyan airliner shootdown, Mandela, Russian North Caucasus, South Africa, USSR

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Gorbachev pessimistic over US winning the Afghan war

The US-supported Middle East Bully Invades Gaza

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