Gorbachev Tours Lower 9th Ward

[cal04]

Source: Associated Press

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev toured New Orleans on Friday as an emissary of the global environmental movement, but his first view of the devastated Lower 9th Ward inspired a momentary return to his socialist past.

"If things haven't changed by our next visit, we may have to announce a revolution," he said through a translator, as he walked the lifeless streets with well-wishers and staff members of Green Cross International, a non-governmental organization which he chairs.

Gorbachev promised to return in five years to measure the city's recovery from Hurricane Katrina, which has so far been tangled by bureaucratic delays.

"No matter the flooding and the hurricane, the red tape and bureaucracy survive," he said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071006/ap_on_re_us/katrina_gorbachev_1

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Ironic, we cannot get the leader of the free

world to go there, but Gorbachev is there

Oh and revolution... this government needs perestroyka

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

2. Too Bad He Can't Run nt

[dickbearton]

10. Red tape and bureaucracy, boy did he miss the truth...

How about the Criminal Bush's and the Corrupt Republican's
motives: greed, fear, and hatred.

[martymar64]

21. Our next President will be our Gorbachev

Overseeing the fall and dissolution of the American Empire.

[Devlzown]

3. I wish he'd said, "Mr. Bush,

rebuild this city!":7

[uppityperson]

4. k&r. Now that would've been a good thing to say.

[liberalmuse]

6. Perfect!

I wish he would have said it too. There are so many disgraces from this administration, but this is probably the worst aside from the Iraq War.

[Patchuli]

13. The mess made from No Child Left Behind

will be seen in the future, don't forget!

[dickbearton]

11. Exactly, K&R.

[Frances]

5. Please rate this story

No one had rated it when I read it (& rated it)

[emilyg]

8. OK.

[NoGodsNoMasters]

7. The cold-warriors must be spinning in they're graves.

The day a soviet would come to THIS country and be amazed by poverty and pathetic living conditions. how things have changed.

[tom_paine]

9. As a freshly minted Third World Country, Imperial Amerika needs to get used to contempt

from foreigners, especially free ones (though I am not sure Gorby would qualify for that, although the Bushie Tyrants could do with a little glasnost, so Gorby is clearly a greaster believer in freedom than the Bushies).

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me, if somewhere down the road, Caligula P. Bush will fully resurrect old Soviet practices of controlled visits and Potemkin (Bushemkin?) villages.

[alcibiades_mystery]

15. Potemkin Villages, of course, long precede the Soviet era

which you know, of course?

[tom_paine]

18. Yes I do. However, like most things, exponential technological leaps

changes the scope, nature and power of the Potemkin Village into something vastly different than it was centuries ago.

Something analogous would be the process of gerrymandering. When the Constitution was written and for two centuries after, this was a constitutional weakness, but no armchair quarterbacking of one of the greatest documents in all of human history...the Founding Fathers didn't HAVE random number generators in those day and probably couldn't even conceive of a way to randomly select distric boundaries based on a certain simple set of rules, such as, say, a rule that one must be able to walk/drive from one part of a distrcit to nother in a striaght line without crossing another district (this is just an off-the-cuff suggestion, an idea thrown out, as possible solution).

My point is that, before massive increases in comptuing power, gerrymandering was a weakness, a loophole, but not a great weakness, nor one that threatened the future of the Republic. Add massive computing power and massive organized societal recordkeeping, as well as the ability to rapidly analyze and dissect it, and gerrymandering becomes the severe (one of the many) dangers to the Republic and Liberty, as now it can be used by the ruler to choose their "voters" with near-pinpoint accuracy and create a situation where the rulers enjoy a 95%+ retention rate.

So it is with Soviet and now Bushie "Potemkin Villages" of all types and shapes.

Actually, I am not terribly fasmiliar with the details of the uses of Potemkin Villages (other than as military strategy/deception) as it relates to the medeval and ancient worlds. If you have any links to the info, I'd love to read them and fill this gap in my knowledge.

[UncleSepp]

23. You're both being funny :-)

The expression comes from the time of Catherine the Great, and the story behind it may or may not have been true: Catherine seems to have left many interesting legends and half-truths as part of her legacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Oh please

You think poverty and deplorable liuving conditions are new in this country?

The "Cold Warriors" enabled poverty and deplorable condition in the United States and elsewhere. I would spit on their fucking graves given half the chance, and that includes Walt Rostow, a war criminal of first order.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. Not exactly those propaganda late-80's supermarket tours, eh?

After the fall of communism, the Russians had a saying:

Everything the government told us about communism was a lie. Everything they told us about capitalism was true.

Indeed.

[TomClash]

16. The ironies abound here nt

[GeminiProgressive]

17. I read an interesting piece

on Gorbachev a while back. Apparently he still considers himself to be a socialist and his reformswere meant to strengthen and open up the Soviet Union...he and his reformer allies didn't know that it would actually collapse. He is VERY unpopular in Russia now.

[TomClash]

20. I don't think anyone believes him in Russia

though he may be telling the truth in an odd sort of way. I think when his complete story is told a very different picture will emerge.

[humbled_opinion]

19. Isn't it Ironic.... Don't You think ...n/t

[BlueIris]

22. Kick.