- This afternoon, I had the opportunity to ask former USSR
President Mikhail Gorbachev if, after November, he would please be so kind
as to lead and advise the next USA President as to how to get out of our
quagmire. This is what he replied, through a translator:
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- "The Middle East is what the entire world is watching.
If things go badly for the USA, things go badly for all of us. America
must not abuse the trust it has from its allies, much of which has virtually
stopped. I am glad to see in this election a resurgence of interest in
international affairs. As I will say in my talk tonight, judging from the
USA's military budget, your nation seems to be at war with the world, and
I sense that the American people don't like this at all. The size of your
weapons budget is larger than it was at the peak of the Cold War, and larger
all of the rest of the nuclear nations put together. Why do you continue
to build these weapons? This is amazing to me!
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- I think that [former Secretaries of State] George Schultz
and Henry Kissinger, [former US Senator] Sam Nunn, and [former Secretary
of Defense] William Perry have put together recently a very interesting
plan in this regard, for which I appreciate their initiative.
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- With a background of conflict, military budgets in the
USA continue to grow, and you produce more weapons. The next president
must show courage and responsibility to resist increasing your arms expenditures.
Most serious nations in the European Union are studying the proposal by
Schultz and Kissinger, and the USA should heed this proposal.
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- You must bear in mind, that many nations find it difficult
to trust America if it insists on maintaining its weapon superiority.
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- After January 1, 1986, when I proposed an abolition of
Nuclear Weapons, there was an immediate reaction, that many didn't trust
me, because of the USSR's massive ground forces and conventional weapons.
I replied by making some large cuts in spending for conventional weapons,
and eventually we signed a treaty in this context in Paris.
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- So I would put the same question to America and to Americans!"
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- At the beginning of today's Press Conference in Santa
Fe, Gorbachev defended Putin's concern over USA building extensive missile
defense systems in Eastern Europe, but said that it was good that Bush
and Putin took the time to recently meet, once before Bush leaves office.
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- He also stated that the USA needs to "elect a President
who gets along with the world, and doesn't brandish a big stick and make
threats."
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- This is "up to the American people to persuade its
leaders, and this burden can't be shouldered by others." After 15
years of "pushing" since leaving office in 1992, Gorbachev now
believes that most world leaders and heads of state are "lagging,"
and that what we need next is "planetary glasnost."
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- He is encouraged by the progress in Russia of the political
party he started, the Union of Social Democrats, given that more than 100
nations have the same kind of party, the Social Democrats. He said the
history of the USSR was a 70 year experiment with Communism in its extreme
Bolshevik form, and that Russia had "paid the price" for doing
so.
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- Gorbachev reminisced on Yeltsin being pressured by the
International Monetary Fund and a few US Think Tanks which came to impose
on Russia a free market approach, which did a lot of good. He called it
the "Washington Consensus" that was really the opposite ideology
and effect of Bolshevism.
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- I have met and talked with several Nobel Peace Laureates,
as well as several others I thought should have won that honorable prize.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to 95 individuals and 20 organizations
since 1901.
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- The Laureates I have exchanged extensive correspondence
with include His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and Kofi Annan. I have talked
at great length with Jody Williams. I asked Oscar Aria Sanchez, former-and-now-again
President of Costa Rica, to help create a branch in Santa Fe of the United
Nations University for Peace; Dag Hammarskjold's nephew Knut was on the
Board of Honorary Advisors of this conception, as was Gandhi's grandson,
Arun, and Einstein's granddaughter, Evelyn. So was former USA Secretary
of Interior, Stewart Udall.
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- As an organization making a huge difference in the world,
Doctors without Borders is my highest inspiration daily in my work to get
the neurotoxic and carcinogenic artificial sweetener, aspartame, off the
market by rescinding its approval to be sold.
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- Mairead Corrigan of Ireland was the first Nobel Peace
Laureate I talked with for several hours at the Second United Nations Special
Session on Disarmament in 1978. I also had a very long conversation with
Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and I have always thought he deserved
the Nobel Peace Prize. Certainly, George Mc Govern deserves something like
a Nobel Peace Prize, for his lifetime of pacifism.
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- Yet somehow, today former President Mikhail Gorbachev
was the most compelling. I am certain that because I was asking on behalf
of tens of millions of Americans and several billions people in hundreds
of nations, that he really will help to advise and guide the next USA President
to bring the USA out of the Middle East, and to end the war in Iraq.
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- There really is no choice.
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- _______
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- Stephen Fox is the Managing Editor of an alternative
and the owner of an art gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico
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