Yesterday, nasty, jerkish frat-boy George took a cheap, cowardly swipe at U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Now, I can understand why George can't go near a word that includes anything like the word "genius".  

In a fantasy world where you could actually talk to George Bush, using small words, perhaps you could make him understand that the negotiation and communication process he mocks was actually a fundamental part of Ronald Reagan's cold war strategy.

Adrian Blomfield and Mike Smith of the The Daily Telegraph write:

^{Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the United States of mounting an imperialist conspiracy against Russia that could push the world into a new Cold War.}

Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, Mr Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia.
From Nato's expansion plans in the former Soviet Union to Washington's proposals for a bigger defence budget and a missile shield in central Europe, the US was deliberately quashing hopes for permanent peace with Russia, Mr Gorbachev said.

"We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them," he said.

"The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. ...

"The problem is not with Russia," he said, speaking at a friend's château outside Paris.

"Russia does not have enemies and Putin is not going to start a war against the United States or any other country for that matter.

"Yet we see the United States approving a military budget and the defence secretary pledging to strengthen conventional forces because of the possibility of a war with China or Russia.

"I sometimes have a feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world."

While Gorbachev has criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past, he also has advised him on foreign policy for some time. Putin handed over the reins to Dmitry Medvedev Wednesday, but is expected to be an éminence grise in the new government.

Gorbachev's comments stand somewhat at odds with the Kremlin's stated position, which has softened recently and been redirected at getting security guarantees from the West.

Although the language was stronger this time, the Telegraph interview isn’t the only time the first and last president of the Soviet Union has expressed concerns about deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations. In December, the 77-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner was interviewed by Anna Badkhen of  the Ideas section of the Boston Globe

IDEAS: How do you view the latest developments of relations between Russia and the West? You said recently that you see the US plan to deploy a missile defense shield in Central Europe as targeting Russia, not Iran, as the United States claims. Do you see your achievements in ending the Cold War being depleted?

GORBACHEV: What we see is the beginning of a new arms race. The United States has a super-large military budget; its military budget is even larger than it was during the Cold War.

IDEAS: What about your comment regarding the true purpose of the proposed missile defense shield?

GORBACHEV: There is truth in this. It's too early to talk about Cold War, but I think we are seeing some frost.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

We had eight years of Ronald Reagan. When Gorbachev ended the cold war Reagan blustered about evil empires and grabbed the credit. He sent hundreds of marines to Beirut for no good reason only to see them get blown to pieces for no reason at all. He invaded Grenada to draw attention away from the slaughter and scored a glorious victory against an impoverished speck of an island with no army, navy, or air force. He armed the whacked out Iranian mullahs in order to finance the whacked out Nicaraguan contras. The former took our weapons and the latter our dough and both had a good laugh at our expense. He grew senile in office and no one noticed the difference. He was a feeble doddering old fool who in his younger days was just a fool.

We had four years of George H.W. Bush. He used the mightiest army in the world to invade Panama and had to blast its leader out of hiding with rock music.

When Mikhail Gorbachev took at face value American assurances that, if Russia acquiesced before reunified Germany's membership in NATO, the alliance would move no further east, why should new assurances be trusted?

Those words are from a column by James Carroll in the Boston Globe entitled Paranoia backed by just cause in which he is highly critical of the anti-missile system we are moving to install in the nations of the former Warsaw pact.   Despite the fears of some on the lef the possibilities of missiles in the hands of nations such as Iran, I agree with Carroll that the actions we have been taking, frist in expanding NATO as we did and now in moving aggressively on missile defense may have an unfortunate destabilizing effect upon peace in Europe.   I will explore the Carroll column to try to show why I feel that way.

Lost in the hoopla and frenzy of the 2008 Presidential Campaign over the past couple of weeks was an overlooked (though important) anniversary in the Peoples Republic of China.  In February 1978 -- a year or so after Chairman Mao Zedong's death -- the Chinese communist government lifted a ban on the writings of three of the greatest minds the world has ever seen.

This was a critical development for from their graves, three men long dead -- Aristotle, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens -- were finally free to peddle their 'subversive' ideas about the complexity of the human condition.

Aristotle, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens

Friend,

I am writing to tell you about my new environmental film, "The 11th Hour." The film documents the environmental crises we face and the solutions we must begin to implement.

Please take a look at the trailer here: http://www.11thhouraction.com/...

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev yesterday pronounced George W. Bush "dangerous," stating that under Bush's watch "[t]he world is experiencing a period of growing global disarray."

"When I look at today's world I have a worrying feeling about the growth of world disorder," he said.

Not until Bush has been run out of office, he said, will it be possible for Americans to understand that George II and his ilk have made "a massive strategic mistake: no single center can command the entire world, no one. No single group of countries, like the G-8, can do it. There is no option other than to build a multipolar world order, no matter how complicated this is."

"Current America has made so many mistakes."

What the hell is wrong with this country when we continue to allow the squandering of goodwill in the world? When we allow an arrogant administration and the party that backs it, walking in lock step with it, to weaken our position as leading example for the world?

And why, why, why, is a former leader of the former Soviet Union a far better spokesman for reason, democracy and freedom than the current president of the United States?

Today there was a very good interview with Mikhail Gorbachev on CNN International. It was interesting to hear a reasoned international figure talking about the arrogance of the United States right now. It was clear that he wasn't talking about the country as a whole, but the Bush administration. Despite that, it was also clear that much of the world is beginning to tire of trying to discern the difference.

"Life dictated that our fates crossed. Together in important posts, we had to solve problems linked with the changes that were occurring in the country, democratic changes. We were able to do a lot, but we had serious differences — very big differences that the forces against perestroika and changes took advantage of."
— Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The heady days of 1991--the fall of the Soviet Union, the bringing down of the Berlin wall, the end of apartheid in South Africa--are hazy memories just a decade and a half later. The end of history certainly has turned out the way we, and particularly Fukuyama had envisioned. So Boris Yeltsin's death reminds us of those days past, when this man helped change the course of the world.

In America, of course, the fall of the Soviet Union is generally couched in terms of the masterful policy of the neocons and the take-no-prisoners leadership of Ronald Reagan. What's forgotten generally, on this side of the Atlantic, is the transformative leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev and the reformer he brought to power, Boris Yeltsin. Gorbachev recognized that in order for Communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular to thrive, some of the basic tensions between a civil society and an authoritarian system of government would have to be loosened.

Gorbachev brought Yeltsin with him to power in 1985, installing him in the Politburo. Gorbachev's reform efforts, glasnost, perestroika, and uskorenyie, weren't moving fast enough for Yeltsin. After a confrontation with Gorbachev over the pace of reforms in 1987, Yeltsin was kicked out of the Politiburo but elected to the new Congress of People's deputies in 1989, elevating him to a prominent position. His reputation as a reformer made him an early hero of a populace feeling their way toward a civil society.

The disastrous economic situation brought on by the years of quagmire in Afghanistan, and the growing movement of nationalism, particularly in the Baltics and Central Asia (a result, ironically, of Gorbachev's reforms) added to the increasing tensions within the Soviet Union, between republics, and between the people and the Politburo. But particularly between the Politburo and Gorbachev.

That very loosening of tension that Gorbachev knew was necessary to save the Soviet Union precipitated its entire unraveling, and in a desparate attempt to bring it to an end and restore the Soviet Union that was, hardliners in the Kremlin staged the August coup. And Yeltsin the hero was made, organizing a popular resistance from atop a tank near Russia's parliament. The coup was put down, Gorbachev all but deposed, and Yeltsin became the leader who would try to bring Russia to democracy.

His legacy is certainly mixed. The war in Chechnya, rampant corruption, and his championing of the Vladimir Putin, Russia's new tyrant, all mar his place in Russian history and are perhaps the inevitable coda to Yeltsin's life. But primarily, he will be remembered for his stand on the tank in front of Russia's "White House," staving off at least for a while a return of the bad old days of Soviet rule.

"Yeltsin gave our citizens freedom," said Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, Monday. "He himself loved it, and he loved our homeland. Remember what he told Putin when he left: He said, 'Protect Russia.' "

I know this is a little off topic and does not have a lot to do with today's issues, but I need a quick vent.
I have begun lately to (again) read and hear the great conservative myth that Ronald Regan ended the Cold War.  It has been on a few newscast and newspaper reports this week and I don't understand how this untruth continues to be spread.

I couldn't help but read of intrepid Condi Rice's sojourn in the Land of the Rising Sun today without thinking, "Why is the US abandoning Japan?"  and "How did we get this way?"

More below...

Senator Feingold on North Korea:

"North Korea represents a true threat to our national security. By firing a number of test missiles this week, North Korea has broken the trust of the international community. These latest actions will harm, not help, the North Korean position at the negotiating table. The U.S. must step up its efforts to strengthen the multilateral framework that was established to deal with North Korea, and the North Koreans must recognize that a diplomatic solution is in their interests. But we can't fully address this crisis, or the stand-off with Iran, if we remain bogged down in Iraq. A more aggressive and fully engaged effort to address the threat North Korea poses to our country and our allies must start with a reevaluation of our current, misguided policies in Iraq."

I was in the Soviet Union in 1987. I was there as a US delegate to the International Women's Congress on Peace and Justice--an international gathering of woman that was hosted by the Soviet Women's Committee. I was a mascot, really, invited because of the work I'd done for an Academy Award winning, anti-nuclear documentary called Women for America, For the World (1987's Fahrenheit 911.) I'd been an administrative support person for the filmmaker, Vivienne Verdon-Roe and she'd seen to it that I was invited along with her as a thank you for countless hours of hard, underpaid work.  I was young and out of my league amongst some of the most powerful women in the world, (a subject for another diary at another time.) What I want to talk about in this diary is my impressions of the Soviet Union and the "feel" I got for a state emerging out of totalitarian rule.  

Bruce Fein, the former Associate Deputy Attorney General under Reagan already quoted by kos as speaking against the illegal wiretaps on Diane Rehm's show, has a scathing comment piece in the Washington Times today:

President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. He cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses. Congress should swiftly enact a code that would require Mr. Bush to obtain legislative consent for every counterterrorism measure that would materially impair individual freedoms.

Ouch! But it gets even better, as Reagan is brought into play...