Gorbachev at George Mason University Part 2
The last post about Gorbachev talked about his policies of glasnost and perestroika, this time I’ll tell you what he had to say about point number two (of a total of five points) on the event’s agenda:
President Gorbachev dedicated himself to building a relationship of mutual trust between the Soviet Union and the United States, signing two broad disarmament pacts that dramatically reduced the danger of worldwide nuclear destruction. For his extraordinary efforts, he was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.
Now, if you recall from the last post, I attended a lecture given by Gorbachev at GMU, see the first post for more on this, and I have now set out to explain the message he and the coordinators of this event had in mind. But first, let me say something about this:
Obama, Medvedev to sign declaration on nuclear arsenals
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama will sign a declaration next week committing them to talks on reducing their countries’ nuclear arsenals, a Kremlin aide said on Saturday.
Gorbachev actually talked about this during the event. He had just met with Obama and Biden himself, and he told the crowd, and this is a direct quote from the translator:
I am optimistic about the strengthening of the relationship between the United States and Russia
This seems all fine and good, but what does this entail?
Now we can address Gorbachev’s ideas for disarmament. And, remember, this is all from the notes that I took during the event.
Gorbachev said that:
As long as the nuclear club does not fulfill its obligation of non-proliferation, there will be dozens of countries with nuclear technology.
When he says “nuclear club” he means, first and foremost, the USA, then England, France, China and Russia. He surely does not mean any country with nuclear weapons and or technology, e.g. North Korea, Iran, etc. If that is what he meant, then he would have no point other than the tautology, “If nations keep their nuclear weapons, then nations will have nuclear weapons.” That would have been an absurdly obvious point. No. What Gorbachev was saying is, as long as the United States, the UK, France, etc. have nuclear weapons, then other nations will have nuclear weapons too, therefore, if the “nuclear club” got rid of their nukes, so would the rest of the world.
This argument, of course, is dangerously flawed.
But that’s not it.
Gorby went on to say that that is not enough:
If we could somehow get rid of all nuclear weapons, then the United States would still possess more weapons and more powerful weapons [sic] than the rest of the world combined. Would the other nations think that acceptable? No. Therefore, we need to focus on the de-militarization of the U.S.
Is there really a need for me to comment on this? I was left speechless, and felt like leaving after I heard him say this. What makes it worse is that immediately after this quote in my notes, I record the comment about him meeting with Obama and Biden and being “optimistic.” To be honest, though, I don’t think Obama will take this de-militarization idea as far as Gorby would like. I hope not, at least.
Octovian (lines 0137 – 0207)
The two MSS have diverged considerably now, so I’m just translating the Lincoln version.
No Kiddin’
Well, duh…
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) looks like he may be facing a fresh political firestorm.
Dodd just admitted on CNN that he inserted a loophole in the stimulus legislation that allowed million-dollar bonuses to insurance giant AIG to go forward – after previously denying any involvement in writing the controversial provision. .
“We wrote the language in the bill, the deal with bonuses, golden parachutes, excessive executive compensation that was adopted unanimously by the United States Senate in the stimulus bill,” Dodd told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon.
“But for that language, there would have been no language to deal with this at all.”
Gee. Maybe shenanigans like this are the reason so many people are against government intervention in the first place.
A Conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev
On the 24th of March I’ll be attending “A Conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev,” at GMU:
Former Soviet President and Nobel Laureate Mikhail Gorbachev will deliver the keynote address at a conference at George Mason University on March 24, 2009. The conference, “1989: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” will offer a critical perspective on how the lessons of the end of the Cold War should be applied to the promotion of peace and international cooperation in the coming decades.
I’ll probably have something to say after the “conversation.”
Octovian (lines 0102 – 0136)
Here’s the next page of Octovian. I would like to make a remark now, and after the chunk of text. For now, I want to not that the two manuscripts I am using don’t always agree and my translation is sometimes based on one more than the other. I like to have both in front of me so that I can compare and try to get a better sense of what’s being said. However, in this part of the poem the two manuscripts are three lines off.
Anyway here it is:
The (Don’t) Watchmen
Melo just forced me to watch the most horrid movie I’ve ever seen in a theater: The Watchmen. If you want to watch a movie that’s 2+ hours long, just get The Godfather, or The Godfather II from Netflix.
svmer is icvmen in
It was about 70 degrees here today. Sing ‘cuccu.’
Ancient Roman Quote of the Day
The following comes from Suetonius’ 12 Caesars, from the life of Vespasian. These are supposed to have been his dying words:
‘uae… puto deus fio.’
Or in English:
“Dear me… I reckon I’m turning into a god.”
Making Jindal into a Strawman
I’ve been hearing the term “volcano monitoring” too often lately, so today I decided to see what this was all about:
After President Obama’s speech on the economy last night, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal criticized government spending in the stimulus bill, citing examples including “$140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’”
…
Most of the money from the stimulus bill earmarked for monitoring (only about a tenth of the total going to the USGS) will go to modernizing existing monitoring equipment, including switching from analog to digital and installing GPS networks that can measure ground movements, said John Eichelberger, program coordinator for the USGS’s Volcano Hazards Program. Much of the expense of this technology comes from the manpower required to make and install it, he added.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here“Ultimately most of this creates jobs or saves jobs that would have been lost” to recent budget shortfalls Eichelberger told LiveScience.
When he heard Jindal’s remarks, Eichelberger said he “was frankly astonished” that the governor would use this particular example, given his own state’s recent brush with a catastrophic natural disaster.
Oh yes.
All of us would-have-been-laid-off geologists and volcanologists need this stimulus more than you or anyone else. We’re the bedrock of the nation.
But seriously, this criticism of Jindal is a strawman. If this is supposed to be a stimulus bill, make it a stimulus bill. If we need more funding for geology, write up another bill. The “stimulus” bill is too complicated and, methinks, deliberately obtuse, as it is.
New Comments