Yesterday, April 21, 2006, the United Nations Environmental Program gave out awards to ???????the Seven protectors of the Earth.??????? These seven individuals are hailed by the UN as ???????the Champions of the Earth.???????

One of the seven ???????protectors of the Earth??????? and a United Nations ???????Champion of the Earth??????? is Mikhail Gorbachev!

This coming week will be the twentieth anniversary of what is commonly accepted as one of the worst environmental incidents of all mankind????????the Chernobyl disaster. On April 26, 1986, while plant operators were conducting a safety test on Chernobyl’s Unit 4, it overheated and caused a hydrogen explosion.

In the following days large clouds of radiation moved west across Europe and Scandinavia. Technicians in Scandinavia detected high radiation levels, and after a few days they realized that the radiation was coming from the Soviet Union.

The Russian government, then headed by the current United Nations ???????Champion of the Earth??????? Mikhail Gorbachev, categorically denied that there was a problem. Four days after the accident, Gorbachev????????s Soviet Union officially admitted that an accident had occurred at Chernobyl. Scientists, and even the KGB, had been warning the soviet bureaucrats for years about problems at Chernobyl. The KGB had issued a report, “Deficiencies in the Construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant,” which documented violations of construction specifications “that could lead to technical failures and accidents.”

To this day no one knows the full extent of the damage to human life (throughout the world) and to the environment caused by the accident. Although the official count of the dead at Chernobyl is 56, the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) estimated the number of Chernobyl workers who died from radiation exposure or committed suicide at 50,000. At least 330,000 people were relocated from the area of Chernobyl subsequent to the accident.

On top of this disaster, the Soviet Union was an environmental disaster, and the countries of the former Soviet Union are still trying to clean up the mess left by the negligent environmental activities of Gorgachev’s Soviet Union.

Maybe I am crazy, but it seems to me that someone who was the leader of an empire that was responsible for damaging the environment of fifteen countries, and would withhold from the world that there was a major accident at a nuclear power plant that was spreading a radioactive cloud around the world, is neither a ???????protector of the Earth??????? nor a ???????Champion of the Earth.???????