I’ve come across a wonderful site called Common Dreams and that link is to a piece by Mikhail Gorbachev. The whole site is filled with idiotarian and tranzi puff pieces, it exudes a miasmic stench as the unthinking classes unload their prejudices. It has a value as a one stop shop for fisking practice and that’s what I shall use it for today. But beware, I will actually end up agreeing with Gorby.
I did note their copyright disclaimer :

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

I translate this as ” We stole this and you can’t because we’re good guys “.
An interesting view of the law.

Published on Thursday, April 22, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
For A Global Glasnost
by Mikhail Gorbachev

“MOSCOW — Market-driven globalization tends to enforce the notion, derived from neo-liberal theory, that gross domestic product indicators are the only measure of national wealth and progress. “

Er, no. Neo-liberal theory tends to state that Gross National Product is an indicator of the wealth of a society. That’s because we believe in trade you see, and the differenece between GDP and GNP is that the latter accounts for trade.

“Capital accumulation and individual consumption are given a higher status than social and spiritual values or cultural heritage.”

Wrong. In measuring GNP cultural, social and spiritual values are ignored. We are trying to measure the economic activity within a society. So, we measure the economic activity. This gives us a number that measures the economic activity. It’s like saying that while we are measuring the bedroom it’s awful that we are ignoring the gardern. We can measure the bedroom and then go and measure the garden. Which is what we do. And if you look at American politics at the moment, convulsed over things like gay marriage, abortion, war, terrorism, can you really say that all such politics is concentrated on economic issues ?

“The cumulative results of all the individual decisions based on this logic lead in the long run to unforeseen and dangerous consequences for both the environment and society.”

Yup, like getting rich, longer life spans, falling child mortality, cleaner rivers and air. Wow, that individualist society just doesn’t pay dividends does it ?

“The sponsors of this ideology — notably the United States –benefit most from its spread across the planet. “

Um, the people who’ve benefitted most are your own countrymen Mickey. The incomplete process of the globalisation of human rights has meant the end of the Gulag for a start.

” One often comes across the argument that globalization, as we know it, is a fait accompli, a process entirely outside our control.
Particularly vociferous with this argument, unsurprisingly, are those who want to instill in the public mind the futility and pointlessness of any opposition to globalization.
But globalization, like all other economic regimes, is a political choice. That politics lies behind globalization is unquestionable. “

No. Politics is what lies behind resistance to globalisation. The process itself is simply better transport and communication technologies working themselves through the system. It takes politics in the form of quotas, tariffs, interference to stop it.

“In recent years this has been clearly illustrated by the pursuit of an imperialist policy of force by neo-conservatives in the United States who seek to take advantage of globalization to impose their will upon the rest of the world.”

??

“Why has the factor of force come to the fore? There are a few simple facts.
Natural resources are finite. “

No, resources are not finite. Sorry, you still haven’t grasped economics. For someone brought up in a Marxist state one can make allowances, but you are a Nobel prize winner and you’re supposed to be , at least, not dumb.

“Their use has already exceeded a critical point. For a smaller (and decreasing) portion of humanity to capture the lion’s share of resources means depriving the rest of the world (and the growing majority) of equal access to those resources and, in many cases, to the essential means of subsistence. By recalling the U.S. signature from the Kyoto Protocol and opening hostilities against Iraq based on false intelligence, in breach of international law and bypassing the U.N. system, President George Bush has demonstrated blatant disregard for world opinion and the interests of others.”

Sigh.

“In the first two years of his presidency, under the pretext of liberating business growth, Bush made several major changes to national environmental policies that have substantially undermined the central pillars of ecological legislation in America established during the previous four decades.”

No, he didn’t. He stopped a series of tightening of rules that would have done little to control pollution at extortionate cost.

” Yet he did not think twice before spending billions (not to mention thousands of human lives) on the war in Iraq.”

To save many more lives. It’s called a trade off : lives now or lives later ?

“Such a course of action is fraught with danger, not only for the environment but also because it exacerbates the global conflicts between the North and the South, between the rich and the poor. The terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, were a graphic display of what can emerge from deep disparity.”

Yup, so let’s get out there and solve those disparities shall we? Let’s get everyone rich. And how do we do that ? The system you ran which failed ? Or the one that beat you ?

“Is there any alternative? Yes.
History is not predetermined. There is room for an alternative in any situation. It was this pursuit of an alternative model that led to the elaboration of a sustainable development program for the world back in 1992.
Agenda 21 was supported by the United Nations and endorsed by the heads of state and government of most states in Rio. For the first time in history, the world community managed to map out and agree on a strategic plan designed to address the twin problems of poverty and ecological disruption.
However, serious obstacles emerged as implementation moved forward. By and large, the governments of the industrialized countries chose to retract their commitments, in particular those regarding development aid contributions, in favor of the philosophy of economic liberalism, deregulation and accelerated economic growth. “

Those dastards ! I say I want growth for the poor in the world and then they go and adopt policies which will provide growth for the poor in the world ! I mean, how cynical can they get ?

” In the meantime, opponents of the sustainable development paradigm have spared no effort in trying to discredit the idea in the public mind. And yet, the interest is still there. The so-called “anti-globalization movement” (in effect, a movement against market-driven fundamentalism) is in favor of an alternative development model. Its motto is “Another World Is Possible!” International social democratic parties, rural slow food and “green” movements worldwide as well as thousands of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) representing millions of members also stand behind the sustainable development principle. Together, these groups and movements are a powerful force whose pressure is being increasingly felt by the ruling elite. “

So, you and yours support precisely the economic ideas which will prevent the poor from becoming rich. Way to go Mick !

“So, what can we do to make a difference? First of all, we need to bridge the gap between our moral consciousness and the challenges of our time. Consumerism and national egocentrism continue to pose a serious threat to achieving sustainable development goals. A turnaround will not be possible unless the gap between the objective need to reverse currently prevalent behavioral patterns and the subjective unwillingness of states, communities and individuals to do so is closed. This turnaround must begin with changes in the human spirit through a reprioritization of our value system.
Today I am convinced that the citizens of the world need a reformulated “glasnost” to invigorate, inform and inspire them to put the staggering resources of our planet and our knowledge to use for the benefit of all. We must not go back to the days of prolific military spending and fear of people whose ways are different from our own. Once they know that they have the power to change it, people cannot long tolerate living on a planet where millions of children have no clean water to drink and go to sleep hungry.
Glasnost could serve as a catchall phrase for all means and methods in the struggle for global awareness. Glasnost is a demanding, long-term process of awakening that inevitably leads to calls for fundamental changes.
Such a process is urgently needed to address the dominance of short-term interests and lack of transparency at the level where the planet’s fate is being decided.
I have faith in humankind. It is this faith that has allowed me to remain an active optimist. “

And here is where I agree with Misha. Glasnost. It means openess, a search for objective reality, rather than cant or received opinion of any kind. I’m all for it. Fossil fuels polluting the air ? Great, let’s build nuclear. People dying of malaria ? DDT’s cheap and effective. Poor people out there ? We got fat happy and rich via capitalism. In fact, everyone who got fat happy and rich did so via capitalism, and every society which is not capitalist is not fat happy and rich and every society which is not fat happy and rich is not capitalist. That’s a pretty strong correlation there, and you might want to take a moment or two to think about whether there might also be some causality.
And maybe we could take another one of Splotchtop’s ideas : perestroika. This means reordering society and the economy in the light of those objective truths that we have discovered via glasnost. As you might imagine, I’m all for that too. The biggest cause of poverty ? Idiot governments. Most African ones could be cleared out by a battalion of Marines. Works for me. The second biggest cause ? US and EU farm protection. So both those will be scrapped tomorrow morning.
The third ? Raving moonbats firmly grasping the wrong end of the shitty stick. It isn’t globalisation that causes poverty. It’s a lack of globalisation that causes poverty.

“Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for helping to bring the Cold War to an end. He is now president of Green Cross International. “

I’m not sure that we can really blame Gospodin Gorbachev for not understanding all of this. He did, after all, spend his entire life up to retirement being force fed Leninist idiocies. Yet that is no reason for the rest of us to follow him in condemning 2 billion of our fellow humans to continued abject poverty. Capitalism, trade and regime change, that’s what we need more of.