The Forum was sponsored by the Supreme Soviet and the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity, along with the Temple of Understanding and the U.N. Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development.
It was there that Gorbachev stated that “Perestroika has changed our view of ecology; only through international efforts can we avert tragedy.”
He called for each nation to produce state-of-the-environment reports on the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. He reiterated an earlier call for a U.N. “green cross”, an international emergency task force that could be rushed to the scene of an ecological disaster.
Transportation to the Forum was provided to invited participants—free of charge by Aeroflot--and local expenses were paid by the host country.
Less than a year ago, rumours about Gorbachev’s sudden “secret conversion” to Catholicism were reported as fact by the international mainstream media.
The rumours began circulating after Gorbachev and his daughter, Irina visited the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi (Italy), home to the saint’s relics. Italian daily La Stampa called the event a “spiritual perestroika”.
“Over the last few days some media have been disseminating fantasies—I can’t use any other word—about my secret Catholicism, citing my visit to the Sacro Convento friary, where the remains of St. Francis of Assisi lie,” Gorbachev said. Instead he insisted that he undertook the trip, not as a pilgrim, but as a “tourist”.
“In the past he visited Orthodox monasteries in Russia and abroad, Catholic and Protestant churches, synagogues in Israel and mosques in Arab countries as well as Buddhist monasteries, but “nobody related me to this or that belief during all these years. To avoid misunderstandings I would like to say—I was atheist and I stay atheist.” (
Christianpost.com, March 24, 2008).
As recently as October 23, 1996, Gorbachev appeared on the popular Charlie Rose PBS television program, where he said:
“We are part of the Cosmos…Cosmos is my God. Nature is my God… l believe that the 21st century will be the century of the environment, the century when all of us will have to find an answer to how to harmonize relations between man and the rest of Nature…
We are part of Nature…”
And of course it would be unlikely that someone in partnership with
Maurice Strong to change the 10 Commandments of Moses for the Earth Charter would be a sincere Christian.
Held in awe by dint of having won a Nobel Peace Prize, Gorbachev became an America basher in his adopted country.
“America is intoxicated by its position as the world’s only superpower. It wants to impose its will. But America needs to get over that. It has responsibilities as well as power,” Gorbachev told Times Magazine writer Sally B. Donnelly in an interview for his then new book, To Understand Perestroika.
“Who is Gorbachev, who made a soft landing in America after the collapse of the Soviet Union and who would have had nothing without the United States, to criticize it?”
Canada Free Press (CFP) asked on April 3, 2006.
It was the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Pew and Mellon Funds that provided the soft landing before Gorbachev even set foot in America as his chosen place to live.
Indeed, a $3.5-million bailout preceded Gorbachev’s celebrated arrival in America to the Presidio, after a fundraiser was held in his honour at the posh Waldorf-Astoria.
In April of 1993, Mikhail S. Gorbachev became the first civilian tenant at the prestigious Presidio in San Francisco. In a dedication ceremony, the former Soviet President and his wife were given the keys to a Coast Guard officer’s house by a three-star American general, where they were to run the Gorbachev foundation. The mission of the Foundation was to conduct research on global political and environmental issues.
“For two centuries, the Presidio has stood as a sentinel for the San Francisco Bay area,” Lieut. Gen. Glynn Mallory Jr., commander of the Sixth Army, said at the ceremony. “It is only fitting for the leader of a peace foundation to be welcomed by a soldier, showing that the defenders of the Golden Gate have been a success.” (The New York Tines, May 18, 1993).
The Presidio was one of more than 90 military installations being closed under the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1988, an initiative launched by some of Gorbachev’s Democrat friends.
Ironic that the former Soviet leader who said in a 1987 speech to the Politburo, “Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep” got to pitch up at the Presidio.
Even as the recipient of a $3.5 million bailout, Gorbachev was crying poor when Donnelly reached him for an interview. Asked by Donnelly, “Are you enjoying life?” Gorbachev responded, “Yes, but there are some difficulties. Traveling is physically hard. And my (government) pension is only 40,000 rubles a month (about $1,400).
In advising the adoption of Perestroika for Obama, Gorbachev told Italy’s La Stampa that “The world is waiting for Obama to act.”
“This is a man of our times, he is capable of restarting dialogue, all the more since the circumstances will allow him to get out of a dead-end situation. Barack Obama has not had a very long career, but it is hard to find faults, and he has led an election campaign winning over the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton herself. We can judge from this that this person is capable of engaging in dialogue and understanding current realities.”
“Former Russia oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of the now defunct Yukos oil giant, who is in prison on fraud and tax evasion charges, also used the word perestroika in discussing the future course of the Obama administration. (
newzeal.blogspot.com, Nov. 11, 2008.) “He said that, “being a liberal himself, he thinks that the world will take a left turn”, and that “a global perestroika would be a logical response to the global crisis.
“The paradigm of global development is about to change. The era inaugurated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago is over.”
Meanwhile, even as the far left celebrated the arrival of Gorbachev on American soil, he was working with the global elite to take down the U.S. from the inside.
It didn’t take former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev the proverbial New York minute to pounce on an America in distress.
Gorbachev came forward last week advising that the Obama administration needs “far-reaching `perestroika’ reforms to overcome the financial crisis and restore balance in the world.
The former Soviet leader has been trying to put wings on his dream for a worldwide-adopted Perestroika as far back as 1990, when he attended a Forum in Moscow with then-U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
