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In April 1987, when I was assigned to write the speech, the celebrations for the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin were already under way. Queen Elizabeth had already visited the city. Mikhail Gorbachev was due in a matter of days... I was told only that the President would be speaking at the Berlin Wall, that he was likely to draw an audience of about 10,000, and that, given the setting, he probably ought to talk about foreign policy...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security" and the U.S. likely will be dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report. The report says that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts. "Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations," former U.S. Army chief of staff...

Western leaders searching for a long-term strategy to defend our civilization from fundamentalist Islam ought to reread the speech President Reagan delivered at the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month. It was neither democracy nor capitalism Reagan foresaw bringing down the wall. It was Christianity. Reagan's demand that Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the wall was the defining sound-bite of that speech, but it was another passage that defined the core meaning of the Cold War. Pondering what sustained Berliners, surrounded as they were by the Soviet menace, Reagan concluded: "Perhaps this gets to the root of the...

BERLIN - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday she led a congressional delegation to Greenland, where lawmakers saw "firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality," and she hoped the Bush administration would consider a new path on the issue. After meeting with German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Pelosi praised Berlin for its leadership on the issue. Her trip comes ahead of next week's Group of Eight summit and a climate change meeting next month involving the leading industrialized nations and during a time of increased debate over what should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps...

MOSCOW: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Thursday criticized Washington's plans to deploy a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, saying it could threaten international security. The United States plans to place a radar base in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland as part of a missile defense shield it says would protect against a potential threat from Iran. Moscow does not trust Washington's claims, saying the shield or its technology could be used to spy on Russia or pre-empt a strategic missile launch. In comments on Ekho Moskvy radio, Gorbachev echoed remarks made by President...

With $20 billion per annum in public funding the modern earth cult can easily spend some nickels to attract cult members. I can well imagine that soon, on prime time TV, [or a gay sitcom], will be the tax-payer funded eco-cult recruitment, 'You must join us' advert. It will show a wide expanse of meadow populated by masses of automatons with arms outstretched resembling a fuehrer cult rally. Their laconic voices will repeat the intonation, 'save the earth goddess...save the earth goddess...' The camera will sweep in and out showing mindless, fixated faces with dilated pupils staring upwards, saliva seeping...

May 11, 2007 Unmasking Global Warming: The Case of Mikhail Gorbachev By Vasko Kohlmayer | View comments It is as paradoxical as it is revealing that the man who now parades as an angel of ecological salvation is by virtue of his actions at Chernobyl and elsewhere responsible for more environmental destruction than any other person alive. The most remarkable aspect of the man-made global warming claim is the lack of solid scientific evidence for it. Yet there are those whose apparent goal it is to advance this theory at all costs. Blatant in their disregard of the facts, they...

Boris Yeltsin, who died on April 23, was a towering figure in Russian political history. But was he, as so many US obituaries and editorials have described him, the "Father of Russian Democracy"? As though a wave of historical amnesia had swept over the media, few commentators seemed to remember that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, upon becoming Soviet leader in 1985, who launched the democratic reforms of "perestroika" and "glasnost"--ending censorship, permitting, even encouraging, opposition rallies and demonstrations, beginning market reforms and holding the first free, multi-candidate elections. (Indeed, Yeltsin was the chief beneficiary of those reforms.) [...] After August...

MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, now head of a socioeconomic and political think tank, said opposition marches in Russia only undermined stability in the country. Opposition protests, March of Dissent, were held in Russia's two largest cities over the weekend. Rights groups, oppositionists and journalists have accused Russian police of abusing their power in dispersing the unsanctioned opposition demonstrations. A total of 250 and 170 people were detained respectively. "Somebody wants to complicate the situation in the country and push for instability," Gorbachev told a RIA Novosti news conference. "We must learn our lesson, and...

KALININGRAD - Deployment of U.S. missile-defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic is an attempt by the U.S. to control Europe, the former Soviet president said Thursday. "It is all about influence and domination in Europe," Mikhail Gorbachev said. "I believe it is wrong that America did not even bother to consult its NATO allies." Russia, which has been anxious about NATO bases that have appeared in former Communist-bloc countries and ex-Soviet republics, has blasted the plans to deploy anti-missile systems in Central Europe as a national security threat and a destabilizing factor for Europe...

It is the belief of Donald McAlvany, who publishes the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, that the coup was a hoax. Only a minimal number of troops participated in the coup, the internal or international lines of communication were not cut, the press was not controlled, and the airports were not closed. A very strange "coup" indeed.

Gorbachev asks Gates to spare teacher By Our Foreign Staff Last Updated: 2:09am GMT 06/02/2007 Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, yesterday asked Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder, to intervene on behalf of a headmaster who faces jail in Siberia for using pirated software in his school. In an open letter, Mr Gorbachev said Alexander Ponosov, from a village in the Urals, should be shown mercy because he did not know he was committing a crime by using unlicensed copies of Microsoft software. "A teacher, who has dedicated his life to the education of children and who receives a modest salary...

MOSCOW - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is recovering after undergoing surgery in Germany on a key artery in the neck that supplies blood to the brain, his foundation said Wednesday. Gorbachev, 75, had surgery on his carotid artery at a clinic in Munich on Tuesday after being hospitalized there Sunday, the Gorbachev Foundation said in a statement posted on its Web site. "The post-operation phase is proceeding normally," it said. Gorbachev has not had any major health problems in the past. Gorbachev went to a Moscow hospital 10 days ago feeling tired and somewhat unwell after a busy year,...

[snip] I have known Mr. Gates for almost two decades and I can tell you whose guy Mr. Gates was originally. From that point on, I watched Mr. Gates with especial interest and dined with him from time to time. Anyone who thinks Mr. Gates lacks grit or an independent mind is mistaken. He was clear-headed on the Soviets and will be clear-headed on the Islamofascists. I well remember when he was drafting a speech in late 1989 or 1990 in which he presciently expressed doubt as to the effectiveness of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Though the content of...

While Soviet troops occupied Afghanistan in 1980, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) worked in close concert with high level Kremlin officials to alter the direction of U.S. policy, according to documents made available through a KGB defector.

János HorváthThe 1956 Hungarian Revolution in the Eyes of Ronald Reagan* President Ronald Reagan had a great interest in and knowledge of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and this knowledge helped to shape his world views and contributed to his morally firm statesmanship. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of his time, he understood that the Soviet Union was not the strong, stable superpower and the wave of the future that it pretended to be. Moreover, he was aware that the smaller nations that had been engulfed into its colonial empire strongly resented the yoke under which they were held. As President...

It's not too late for the United States to bring other countries in on an exit strategy for Iraq, former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev said while visiting Midland Tuesday, adding he felt the war was a mistake from the start. Gorbachev, 75, spoke through an interpreter to a nearly packed Chaparral Center on the Midland College campus as part of the John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute Distinguished Lecture Series. JBS is housed at University of Texas of the Permian Basin. When the war in Iraq began, Gorbachev said he was on a Toyko subway being interviewed by a Russian...

Border Security: Mikhail Gorbachev stepped over the boundary of elder statesmanship by accusing the U.S. of erecting a Berlin Wall on its border. It shows the old Soviet still can't distinguish criminals from dissidents. Addressing a news conference Tuesday at the University of Texas, Midland, Gorbachev leveled his charge as if there were no difference between building a fence to keep foreign intruders out and erecting a vast prison wall to seal citizens in. "You remember President Reagan standing in Berlin and saying, 'This wall should be torn down'? Now the United States seems to be building almost the Wall...

Contrary to what these so-called news reporters lead their readers to believe, ex-Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbechev did NOT help us "end the cold war" in any other way but to LOSE it! He was not on the same level with Ronald Reagan who is really the one responsible for ending the Cold War. I have seen this many, many times, but it is always a good idea to continue pointing out this bias to keep people aware of just what Gorbachev's role was in the Cold War. "News" services like Reuters continue to uplift Gorby to the level of benevolent...

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who played a key role in ending the Cold War, said the United States had squandered an opportunity to improve global politics after the Cold War, a paper said on Friday. In comments that were among the harshest he has made about the United States, Gorbachev compared U.S. foreign policy to one of the deadliest diseases on the planet — AIDS. "Today our American friends are suffering from an illness worse than AIDS. And I would say this is the victor's complex," Gorbachev was quoted as saying in an interview with the Netzzeitung. Unable to...