The controversy over the attendance of 60 New Zealand Defence personnel at a "Masters of Business" seminar in Auckland featuring Mikhail Gorbachev and Stormin Norm "Desert Storm" Swartzkopf contains some sweet irony.
The New Zealand government and opposition are both outraged at the cost $40,000 for the Defence Force delegation.
There has since been some discussion of the merits of the seminar with the consensus appearing to now be that Mikhail and Norm were okay but the rest was a bit shallow.
Now, admittedly $40,000 is a lot of money, and while loath to agree with the New Zealand Herald on anything , Scoop wonders in light of the following two items - found on the web circa 1995 - - whether it might in fact have been a bit of an over reaction to so summarily dimiss the benefits of attendance at this seminar.
It seems that aside from touring the world Gorby is still backing a few causes - and the following, is in this Scoop's view, a true gem.
Source.: http://www.netwizards.net/~godi/rebel/mnfst.html
Links:
Manifesto - World Without Wars
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE9908/S00082.htm
"That the use of weapons ends, that wars stop..."
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE9908/S00081.htm
Both in the General wire. in the wire.