Hvorfor faldt Sovjet-blokken?

The Gorbachev Files – Secret Papers Reveal Truth Behind Soviet Collapse

By Christian Neef – August 11, 2011

Communist hardliners staged a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev 20 years ago, and the Soviet Union collapsed soon afterwards. Previously unknown documents, which SPIEGEL has obtained, show just how desperate the last Soviet leader was as he fought to retain power — and how he begged Germany for money to save his country.

There is one moment — a single decision — that some people still hold against Mikhail Gorbachev today, 20 years later.

Gorbachev, the last leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and last president of the Soviet Union, his wife and his closest confidants had survived the attempted coup by the KGB, the military leadership and the interior minister. They returned to Moscow from their house arrest at Gorbachev’s vacation home in the Crimean resort of Foros. Their plane landed in the capital at 2:15 a.m., local time, on August 22, 1991.

Mere HER i Der Spiegel. Jeg har valgt at linke til print-versionen for at undgå det der pjat med sideinddeling.

Opdatering: Foreign Magazine har en foto-serie fra perioden her.

Video: Ezra Levant om Nordkorea

Nordkorea skal lede FNs kommende nedrustningskonferece. Det er jo en parodi. Hvorfor forlader Danmark ikke det latterlige foretagende?

Ezra Levant: Time to quit the U.N.

Brian Lilley – Time to quit the U.N.

Audio: Anders Fogh Rasmussen om Libyen & Afghanistan

Anders Fogh Rasmussen er i USA lige nu. Det kaster lidt materiale af sig. Intervieweren på Radio WBEZ hedder Jerome McDonnell:

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Startes HER – åbner Windows Media Player. Varighed 20½ minut. I udsendelsen omtales en artikel, skrevet af Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Den er indsat nederst i denne post. Der følger også en artikel med audioen:

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says Europe is too dependent on U.S. defense funding

by Worldview – May 12, 2011

Europe is too dependent on American defense spending, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday, citing the drastic change in the breakdown of defense expenditures under NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Previously, 50 percent of its defense budget was provided by the United States; that portion now stands at 75 percent. 

NATO Secretary General was in town this week to speak at the University of Chicago about the military alliance’s evolving relationship with Russia.  The stop was part of his four city tour of the U.S.

Mere HER hos WBEZ.

NATO, Russia coming to an agreement on missile defense

By Anders Fogh Rasmussen – May 11, 2011

When I took office in 2009, many were surprised that I devoted my first keynote speech to Russia. And some may be surprised again that during my visit to the United States this week, one of the themes I will speak about is the NATO-Russia relationship. There is a very good reason for this.

With its allies in NATO, the United States has worked hard to create a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. Over the past two decades, we have come closer to achieving that goal.

Mere HER  i Chicago Tribune.

Andre kilder: Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Voice of America,

FN er en skandale

U.N. Ignores Haiti and Darfur But Points Fingers at U.S., Israel

By Anne Bayefsky – November 23, 2010

Over in Turtle Bay, the U.N. General Assembly is now wrapping up its key fall session. After taking a good hard look at human rights violations around the globe, it has come to the following conclusions about the world’s ills: In 2010, eighty percent of all its condemnations of alleged human rights abuses – twenty-one resolutions – will have been directed at Israel alone.

The Assembly will also finish the year having decided that only six more of the 192 U.N. member states raise human rights concerns. Warranting a single resolution each are Afghanistan, Burma, Georgia, Iran, North Korea, and the United States.

This astonishing result percolates up primarily from the General Assembly’s main committees, such as the third committee on humanitarian affairs and the fourth committee on decolonization which finish their business before Thanksgiving. All U.N. members sit in each of these committees, so that over the past two months a thousand diplomats have huddled in meetings and churned out documents, speeches, webcasts and press releases.

 Mere HER hos FoxNews. Kan også læses her hos Canada Free Presss.

Demokratiets dage er talte?

Is the age of democracy over?

By Francis Fukuyama – February 10, 2010

Twenty years ago, Francis Fukuyama forecast the final triumph of liberal democracy and the ‘end of history’. As pro-democracy movements falter from Ukraine to China, he revisits his thesis — and asks if history has a few more surprises to spring

It looked like a revolution in reverse. The announced victory of Viktor Yanukovich in Sunday’s Ukrainian presidential election undid that country’s Orange Revolution of 2004 by returning to power the very man whom tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters came out to defeat. And this is only the latest in a series of apparent setbacks for democracy in recent years. Over the last decade we have seen the collapse or discrediting of not just the ‘Orange’ movement, but many of the other so-called ‘rainbow revolutions’ across eastern Europe: the ‘Rose’ revolution in Georgia, the ‘Cedar’ revolution in Lebanon. Then there’s Vladimir Putin’s transformation of Russia into an ‘electoral authoritarian’ state, the undermining of democratic institutions by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and the rise of China as a successful authoritarian moderniser.

 Mere i The Spectator HER.

Beriget uran sælges til islamister

Der findes åbenbart russere, der ulovligt afhænder højt beriget uran, som kan anvendes til atombomber. Og sælger til islamister. Russernes officielle reaktion er mærkværdig. Den kan jeg ikke forklare. Politiken har denne korte historie i dag:

Rusland: Anholdelse i Georgien er en provokation

Anholdelse af russisk statsborger, der forsøgte at sælge uran i Georgien, skaber vrede i Moskva.

Georgiens anholdelse af en russisk statsborger, som havde forsøgt at sælge uran i Tbilisi, er en ‘provokation’, siger Ruslands udenrigsminister, Sergei Lavrov.

Ifølge det russiske nyhedsbureau RIA Novosti siger Lavrov, at »i henhold til de kendsgerninger, som jeg har, så er dette en provokerende handling«.

Han tilføjede, at han håber problemerne kan løses af ‘eksperter’.

Uran fra Novosibirsk
Det britiske nyhedsbureau Reuters skrev tidligere i dag, at dokumenter tyder på, at den russiske statsborger har fået fat på uran i byen Novosibirsk i Sibirien.

Georgien meddelte i går, at det havde anholdt russeren Oleg Khintsagov sidste år, efter at han havde forsøgt at afhænde højt beriget uran, som kan anvendes til atombomber, til agenter, som gav sig ud for at militante islamister.

ritzau