Chernobyl's meltdown accelerated that of the Soviet Union (Mikhail Gorbachev Op-Ed)

Daily Star ^ | April 18, 2006 | Mikhail Gorbachev

[Paloma_55]

Memo to Gorby:

Socialism is a failed system.


Reading this guy is about as good a use of time as reading Arianna Huffington...

[frankiep]

There sure is a whole of of chunky vomit in this article isn't there.

[Yo-Yo]

Whoops, there goes another Gorbasm.

[gipper81]

Gorby on-the-wrong-side-of-history-again bump

[keithtoo]

"Socialism's meltdown accelerated the fall of the Soviet system."

[Paloma_55]

Sorry, but I had to read a little.... "Moreover, the Academy of Science established a group of leading scientists, who were immediately dispatched to the Chernobyl region."

LOFL!!!

What does not follow.... "And then suddenly, we were losing our leading scientists to a strange illness...their hair was falling out..they were losing their vision...and then they just died... it was the strangest thing! So then we got some more of our leading scientists and sent them over to Chernobyl... and they got sick too.."

[dead]

Wherein the captain of the Titanic explains how a boiler malfunction caused the ship under his command to sink.

In reality, the USSR was a crappy ship, with an incompetent captain, and it ran into an iceberg named Reagan.

[Plutarch]

Let us neither forget nor forgive Time stiffing Ronaldus Maximus, and making this pathetic lousy commie:

[GSlob]

"The morning of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear station on April 26, 1986, the Politburo met to discuss the situation, and then organized a government commission to deal with the consequences. "
Garbage. The morning of the explosion all those immediately involved were very busy covering their derrieres and/or trying to deal with the problem locally: "an accident which has not happened does not need to be reported, and an accident which has not not reported did not happen". For the news to make it to the Politburo level in real time, the laws of nature would have to be abolished.

[GSlob]

an accident which has not not reported = an accident which has not been reported

[Michael.SF.]

Three key and not mentioned often enough, factors in the collapse of the USSR:

Vietnam -- Even in our defeat, we demonstrated the price we were willing to pay to stop Soviet expansion, the costs to the USSR were more significant then the dollars that we spent.

Afghanistan -- The Soviet defeat by those they viewed with disdain and contempt demonstrated that with proper support of their opposition that they could be made to suffer both economically and in the eyes of the world.

Ronald Reagan -- He warned them, he told them, he showed them and he did it through determination.

The left cannot stand being proved wrong.

[bondjamesbond]

Y'know, Gorby... It was your glorious Soviet system that created the Chernobyl disaster. I remember reading in Soviet Life back in 1985 about how the Chernobyl reactor was absolutely safe and could not possibly melt down or release radiation, unlike inherently unsafe Western designs.

The Soviet Union was a ecological disaster at every level. Why should any sane person listen to you now?

[ansel12]

"The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later."



Modest, isn't he ?

[When do we get liberated?]

No. He is less of a Communist that Ms. Huffington

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

"The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later."

. . . because it dramatized the price you could find yourself paying for having been kept in the dark and fed B.S.

[enviros_kill]

Chernobyl was a non-event in terms of people killed and injured. I studied this in detail while working in the commercial nuclear industry.

More background:
The Chernobyl Catastrophe Reassessed
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.632/news_detail.asp

The UN report emphasizes a factor that the anti-nuclear and other activist groups always ignore: the greatest threat from the Chernobyl accident, and even more so in the case of Three Mile Island earlier, was the fear factor, the "mental health impact," as the report terms it. Somewhere between 200,000 and 350,000 people were evacuated from the area over the subsequent years, although three out of four of the reactors resumed operation before the end of 1986. The earth and water near the facility were heavily contaminated, but again, the report noted that, for the overwhelming majority, stress and anxiety -- the fear of radiation effects, the loss of homes and livelihoods -- were more serious problems than the actual radiation.

"Fear of radiation is a far greater threat to the affected individuals than radiation itself," UN Assistant Secretary General Kalman Mizsei told a conference on Chernobyl. Those relocated went through "a deeply traumatic experience."

Tourists Flock to the Dead Zone of Chernobyl
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/25/wcher25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/25/ixnewstop.html
Many locals are surprisingly unconcerned by the legacy of Chernobyl. About 600 people have returned to live inside the dead zone. Maria Dika, 42, leaning from a balcony in Chernobyl town, said she had suffered no long-term ill effects after three months of treatment for acute radiation sickness. She was working as a security guard at Reactor Four on the night of the disaster.

"We're fine," she joked. "No health problems. The radiation has got used to us." Tatiana Khrushch, 66, agreed. "The air's clean, the water's lovely and the mushrooms are great," she said. "This is a fine place."


Lessons of Chernobyl: Nuclear Power is Safe
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Spring2004/Jaworowski_on_Chernobyl.pdf

[Thunder90]

I see that old Gorby is protected by Vladimir Putin.

[Thunder90]

Too bad that we slacked off and have ignored Russia's slip back into totalitarianism.

[RusIvan]

You are wrong.

Vietnam -- Even in our defeat, we demonstrated the price we were willing to pay to stop Soviet expansion, the costs to the USSR were more significant then the dollars that we spent.==

You sound like Soviets got afraid of America? Laughable. Soviets withstood huge war with Htler which costed 20 mlns of lifes. Do you ready to pay 20 mlns of lifes to crush Soviet Union?

Afghanistan -- The Soviet defeat by those they viewed with disdain and contempt demonstrated that with proper support of their opposition that they could be made to suffer both economically and in the eyes of the world.==

Eyes of the world doesn't much matter. Especcially the world is not end on West. There are many other sides of the world.

Ronald Reagan -- He warned them, he told them, he showed them and he did it through determination.==

When Reagan proclaimed his program of Star wars he accualy helped soviet hardliners to strenthen thier power. If America continued such program then today we would see Soviet Union standing there stronger then ever. And America would need to start thermonuclier war to crush Soviet Union.

Would you ready to start thermonuclier war with SOviet Union?

I don't think so if today America is catious to start war even with North Korea under real fear that they may use thier allergedly nuclier bomb.