Reliving The Soviet Experience In Afghanistan
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posted by eagle on January, 2011 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Reliving the Soviet Experience in Afghanistan
By Tom Engelhardt
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s(Haymarket Books).
If, as 2011 begins, you want to peer into the future, enter my time machine, strap yourself in, and head for the past, that laboratory for all developments of our moment and beyond. Just as 2010 ended, the American military’s urge to surge resurfaced in a significant way. It seems that "leaders” in the Obama administration and "senior American military commanders” in Afghanistan were acting as a veritable WikiLeaks machine. They slipped information to New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins about secret planning to increase pressure in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, possibly on the tinderbox province of Baluchistan, and undoubtedly on the Pakistani government and military via cross-border raids by U.S. Special Operations forces in the new year. In the front-page story those two reporters produced, you could practically slice with a dull knife American military frustration over a war going terribly ... >> full
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Window On Eurasia: Russia At Risk Of Disintegration Within 25 Years, Zlobin Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: Russia at Risk of Disintegration within 25 Years, Zlobin SaysPaul Goble
Vienna, January 3 – The Russian Federation runs the risk of falling apart sometime within the next quarter century if Moscow fails to do away with its non-Russian republics or alternatively tries to do away with those territorial units in an incautiously rapid way, according to a leading Moscow analyst.
In an article on the Snob.ru portal last week, Nikolay Zlobin argues that "without doing away with [its existing] internal national-administrative arrangements, Russia risks falling into pieces in the next few decades” for many of the same reasons that led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 (www.snob.ru/selected/entry/29528).
Zlobin says that he recalls the way in which the national formations within the USSR worked not only because of their impact on the USSR but also because "at a recent session of the State Council of Russia unexpectedly arose the question about the Soviet experience of nationality relations.”
Both Vladimir Putin ...
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Window On Eurasia: New Russian Nationalists Very Different From Their Predecessors, Activist Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: New Russian Nationalists Very Different from Their Predecessors, Activist SaysPaul Goble
Vienna, January 3 – Such unity as exists among Russian nationalists, acknowledges one of their number, is the product of a common opposition to the "russophobic” regime of Vladimir Putin, but the current generation of Russian nationalists, a nationalist analyst says, is very different from its more familiar predecessor of late Soviet times.
In an essay on the "Pravy vzglyad” portal, Dimitry Savvin suggests that "the destruction of the Putin regime, a regime neo-bolshevist by its essence, is the task of the next few years” and that "any new political system which will be formed in Russia "will be forced to consider the Russian question” (www.rusimperia.info/catalog/1030.html).
"Today,” he acknowledges, "the Russian National-Liberation Movement, just like the White Movement of 1918-1922 is unified chiefly by a common opponent, the genocidal russophobic regime” rather than on the basis of any common platform. Consequently, it is important to recognize the divisions within it.
According to ...
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Window On Eurasia: West Failing To Defend Its Values In Russia, Ukraine And Belarus, Moscow Commentator Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: West Failing to Defend Its Values in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Moscow Commentator SaysPaul Goble
Staunton, December 31 – Even as some in Europe and the United States are taking pride in their criticism of Moscow’s persecution of Khodorkovsky, a Moscow commentator is warning that the West is failing to defend its values in the face of the rise of neo-totalitarian regimes in the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus.
In an essay on Grani.ru, Dmitry Shusharin says that at present "as in earlier years,” Western elites are viewing "the social-political processes which are leading to the formation of regimes hostile to Europe’s Judeo-Christian civilization” as manifestations of "temporary difficulties” rather than of "an all-European crisis … of identity and values.”
What is going on, he suggests, is "the collusion of elites” and the willingness of "those who hold power in the free world” of hostile and for civilization fatal values and strivings as equal alternatives” rather than as a challenge that they ...
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Window On Eurasia: Putin’s Return To Presidency Wouldn’t ‘Automatically Solve Anything,’ Dugin Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: Putin’s Return to Presidency Wouldn’t ‘Automatically Solve Anything,’ Dugin SaysPaul Goble
Staunton, December 31 – "Russia is living through the end of the Putin cycle,” Aleksandr Dugin says, and consequently, "even if Putin will come back, his return will not automatically decide anything.” Instead, the Eurasianist commentator says, that step "will be not an answer but a new question.”
In an essay on the Evrazia site today, Dugin says that he along with many others feel that "together with the end of 2010 is ending a definite cycle in Russian politics” and that while those in power seek to "give the impression that all is as before,” this "does not convince anyone” that things are not shifting in a fundamental way (http://evrazia.org/article/1545).
Dugin begins with the assertion that "the power of Yeltsin in the 1990s was illegitimate” and that Vladimir Putin ultimately legitimized his position by taking steps like preventing the disintegration of Russia, building the vertical of power, driving the oligarchs ...
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