More On Gorbachev
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/englund5.html
So who are these former Reds who have converted to Green Socialism? One
excellent example is Mikhail Gorbachev. Mr. Gorbachev is now the
president of Green Cross International (a non-governmental environmental
organization). Among the many issues with which Green Cross
International has become involved, global warming is right at the top of
its list. Gosh, when Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret
Thatcher became so chummy in the mid-1980s, I never once heard the
Soviet dictator express concern about the environment. Clearly, Mr.
Gorbachev has identified environmentalism as a Trojan horse capable of
resurrecting socialism on a global scale.
How can I say that about Mikhail Gorbachev? Didn't he bring glasnost
(freedom of speech) and perestroika (economic and political reforms) to
the Soviet Union? Indeed he did. Yet, these were means to his end of
trying to save Soviet Communism and, therefore, to save his absolute and
unspeakable power (that brought human misery to millions).
Perhaps I am being too harsh on Mr. Gorbachev? To this I simply respond,
read Requiem for Marx (edited by Yuri N. Maltsev). Dr. Maltsev was a
reformist member of the Institute of Economics of the Soviet Academy of
Sciences until he defected in 1989 (he now is an Associate Professor of
economics at Carthage College and is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von
Mises Institute). In writing the introduction to this excellent book,
Dr. Maltsev states: "Gorbachev never learned economics in school. In all
my dealings with him I had never seen even a slight flash of economic
insight, or even the desire to learn more about economics. He preferred
to think like a communist: everything can be done by issuing orders and
demanding obedience, no matter how perverse, contrary to human nature,
and brutal they may be." This certainly isn't the image painted by the
United States' adoring press corps. Gorbachev seems to be so nice.
To this I respond with another excerpt (regarding the "nice" Mr.
Gorbachev) from Yuri Maltsev's introduction in Requiem for Marx:
What he did in the Baltic States - authorizing the Soviet military to
crack the skulls of innocent people in the Baltics - qualified him to be
included among history's litany of murderous rulers, but he was never
included. Even while he was heralded in the West as a great reformer, he
was also running labor camps, committing human rights violations, and
sending people to prison for speech crimes. As the Soviet Union came to
an end, the public had been reduced to a collective of hunter gatherers,
barely living at a subsistence level.
Maybe the former Soviet dictator has changed. Perhaps Mikhail Gorbachev
really does care about the environment and has no interest in
resurrecting socialism. To this, I simply refer one last time to Requiem
for Marx. Yuri Maltsev states: "Before the coup that removed him from
power, Gorbachev told a re****ter, 'I've been told more than once that it
is time to stop swearing allegiance to socialism.' 'Why should I?
Socialism is my deep conviction, and I will promote it as long as I can
talk and work'." Without a doubt, Mikhail Gorbachev views
environmentalism (with its anti-capitalist mentality) as the movement
most likely to succeed in defeating capitalism
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
"CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on
long, medium and even short time scales." R. Timothy Patterson,
Professor Of Geology, Director Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center,
Carleton University, Canada
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