tagged w/ West Germany
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Carlos Boozer’s complete name is Carlos Austin Boozer. He was born on 20th November 1981. He is a professional player of basketball. He plays on behalf of Chicago Bulls. Chicago Bulls is a participant of National Basketball Association. He has won an Olympic bronze medal on behalf of Team USA. This bronze medal he won in 2004’s Summer Olympics. After this he won a gold medal in the same Olympics in 2008.Carlos Boozer’s complete name is Carlos Austin Boozer. He was born on 20th... more
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Last week was the 20th anniversary of the breaching of the Berlin Wall. It also found President Barack Obama still deliberating about what to do with the US Commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McCrystal’s request for 40,000 more American troops. If you think about the kind of world that we began to enter 20 years ago, perhaps the two events of last week are somehow related.
As I mentioned briefly last Thursday, in March of 1989 in Budapest, Hungary, I covered the first breach of what used to be called the Iron Curtain—the physical, coercive, and legal barriers keeping the people in Communist eastern Europe from entering western Europe. Back then, I didn’t know the significance of what I was seeing in Budapest. But when the Wall fell in November of 1989, it was assumed, via Cold War logic, that the East Germans pouring through the wall were joining us, that we had won and they had lost. Because that’s how the zero sum logic of the era worked.
Coincidentally, in October of 1989, the month before the Berlin Wall began to fall, I was working in Afghanistan, where under an agreement between the US and the Soviet Union, Soviet troops had recently withdrawn after a decade of futilely struggling against Afghan insurgents who had been supplied with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in weaponry by the Reagan Administration. Part of the agreement leading to the Soviet troop pull-out was that the US would stop funding the insurgents.
And that made sense under the logic of the Cold War, where you had to either be in the Soviet camp or the American camp. Once the Soviets left Afghanistan, the insurgents were in our camp, and would do our bidding, regardless if we continued to pay them or not.
But maybe when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, we didn’t assume control of the whole world. Maybe we entered a different world.
In May of 1994, I went to Afghanistan with Lisa Ling, and we found it far from US control, or anyone’s control. After the Soviet pull-out, the insurgents fought on, first driving out the Soviet installed government, and then, turning their US supplied weapons on one another. In speaking engagements, Lisa sometimes mentions our visit, because while I was rolling on Lisa doing a stand-up in the midst of some insurgents, one of them, an adolescent who didn’t know how old he was, pointed his weapon at us and threatened to kill us—or at least pointed his weapon at us and made me jump, and it’s tough to jump with a 22 pound betacam on your shoulder but you can check the footage and see that I did.
A few years later, in January of 1997, Lisa and I drove from Peshawar, Pakistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan, a few weeks after a new group called the Taliban had captured the Afghan capital. By then, it was impossible to imagine that the anyone every had control of this place. Ten years to the week of that visit, I was back in Kabul with Kaj Larsen. In the intervening decade, the Taliban had been defeated by the US, after a brief post-9/11 bombing campaign, and then re-vitalized.
And now we have the dilemma that President Obama is facing, and thanks to the events of 20 years ago last week, facing it in a world that might not be zero sum game, where one side loses and the other wins, but something more uncontrolled, where all sides might be able to win, if Thomas Friedman and his “race to the top” theory is correct—albeit tough to believe in during this year of terrible economic decline—but it might also be a world where all sides can lose, because there might be no entity enforcing the rules.
Fear of Spring (Video)
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Does porn have the answer? - Christof Putzel
- What world have we entered? - Mitch Koss
- Hey Electronic Arts, when you going to do a pirate video game? - Kaj Larsen
- Christof’s Doc, the Porn Community, and Obscenity… - Mitch Koss
- You Have a College Degree: So What? - Tracey Chang
- What Transformers 2 has to do with Japan's falling population - Adam YamaguchiLast week was the 20th anniversary of the breaching of the Berlin Wall. It also found... more
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I actually don't remember where I was when I found out that the Berlin Wall fell twenty years ago. Strange because I have such clear memories of other 1980s landmarks like the Challenger explosion. What I do remember most clearly about the reunification of East and West Germany was from German class a few years later. Our textbooks were a few years old, still in good condition, but completely outpaced by the movement of history. Everyday there would be a new page we would read with an outdated cultural reference to a divided Germany. It was the first I'd ever really learned about East Germany - and it sounded terrible.
Share your memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall with us.
A few sites with some great anniversary coverage:
German magazine Der Spiegel has a collection of articles worth reading.
On Tumblr, Best of Life is posting some gripping images out of the Life magazine archives of the Wall throughout its infamous life.
And Magnum has a picture essay of years in East Germany.
Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Chavez: Prepare for war
- Al Qaeda has a magazine!
- Recession and the college graduate - The Real Recovery
- Meet Mahmoud Vahidnia: Mathlete, Iranian opposition hero
- Unemployment spikes to 10.2 percent - The Real RecoveryI actually don't remember where I was when I found out that the Berlin Wall fell... more
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I actually don't remember where I was when I found out that the Berlin Wall fell twenty years ago. Strange because I have such clear memories of other 1980s landmarks like the Challenger explosion. What I do remember most clearly about the reunification of East and West Germany was from German class a few years later. Our textbooks were a few years old, still in good condition, but completely outpaced by the movement of history. Everyday there would be a new page we would read with an outdated cultural reference to a divided Germany. It was the first I'd ever really learned about East Germany - and it sounded terrible.
Share your memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall with us.
From the News Blog:
http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/09/fall-of-the-berlin-wall-20-years-later/
A few sites with some great anniversary coverage:
German magazine Der Spiegel has a collection of articles worth reading.
Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,k-7540,00.html
On Tumblr, Best of Life is posting some gripping images out of the Life magazine archives of the Wall throughout its infamous life.
Best of Life: http://bestoflife.tumblr.com/
And Magnum has a picture essay of years in East Germany.
Magnum: http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/pictures-vanished-countryI actually don't remember where I was when I found out that the Berlin Wall fell... more
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~y2009m11d9-Berlin-Wall-and-Ronald-Reagan-Video
President Ronald Reagan's demand that the Berlin Wall be torn down became a reality. Video with his actual words.~y2009m11d9-Berlin-Wall-and-Ronald-Reagan-Video
President Ronald Reagan's... more
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For nearly three decades the Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War - it divided a city and in effect the entire country. And then on November 9th, 1989 it crumbled and with it Communist East Germany and the Cold War itself.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-11-02-voa37.cfmFor nearly three decades the Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War - it divided a... more
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