Since presiding over the fall of Communism, Mikhail Gorbachev has moved on to a different mode for the imposition of a utopian vision on humanity. Perhaps sensing that religious impulses remain far more powerful than the dreams of Karl Marx, he is working to harness religion to environmentalism, via his new nonprofit vehicle, "Green Cross International":http://www.greencrossinternational.net/index.htm . Beneath a veneer of conventional do—gooder environmentalism is a pathway to worship Gaia, the earth as a goddess. I only learned of Gorby's new gig via Vasko Kohlmayer's apt "comment":http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=4599 in ??The American Thinker?? a few days ago. Mr. Kohlmayer is quite correct that the site mostly spouts platitudes. But I was deeply struck by the subliminal propaganda embedded in the graphic symbol created for the new organization. !http://americanthinker.com/images/greencross.bmp! Most people are unaware of the impact that symbols can have on their thoughts and feelings about the entity being represented. Going through life, we all learn to associate certain shapes, colors, sounds, smells, and other sensory data with feelings, thoughts, values, and other powerful motivating factors in our lives. The Green Cross symbol shows very careful planning and thinking about how to evoke from people the world over a religious impulse toward Mother Earth (or "Gaia":http://www.gaia.org/ ) Let's look at Green Cross as it portrays itself. In ancient Greece, the color green symbolized victory. Green means go, as in all systems are in order. Green is youthful. Green is the symbol of living growing things, a symbol of nature. A healing color, a soothing color. It's also the color of envy. It is also the recognized color of Muhammad and Islam. Next is the Cross. It is the Swiss adaptation of the Holy Cross, the most potent and memorable symbol of Christ and Christianity. However, there's already a Green Cross and has been for close to nine hundred years. The original Green Cross is attributed to the Hospitaliers of St. Lazarus, the Vert Cross. A religious order appearing in the First Crusade, famous for protecting lepers. Is Gorbachev subliminally informing us we're lepers and he's attempting to protect us? Today Hospitaliers are a humanitarian society primarily in Eastern Europe. In any case, the minds behind Gorbachev's Green Cross International chose to raid the treasury of historic symbols and combine Christ, Switzerland, the recognized color of Islam and identify themselves with the Cross Vert of St. Lazarus. It's a bad start for an organization trying to pass itself off as environmentally righteous. Gorbachev clearly means for us to assimilate and revere the idea of Christianity and environmentalism, by blending the color green with the Cross. His green cross is positioned behind an amalgam of other purloined symbols, potent with suggestion. There's a yin yang symbol of mighty Eastern currents describing powers at work in the Universe, with a diverse capacity for explanation based upon two primal, complimentary yet opposing forces. So two of three major graphic elements of Mikhail's Swiss based enterprise are the melding of powerful religious symbols — the Cross and the Tao of yin and yang. Just as obvious is the invitation to ascribe to environmentalism the same spiritual yearnings as professed by religious. The yin yang is further intentionally drawn to resemble a globe symbolizing Earth, and this globe is interrupted by a white line that ends in a stem. The darker part, or yin is cleverly designed to resemble an olive leaf, an ancient symbol of peace, with a stem protruding from the base of the globe. But a closer examination reveals the stem and main vein of the olive leaf cunningly represents the familiar scimitar of Islam, or even its crescent moon. Interestingly, the sword — a symbol of bloody domination — is inherent to the olive leaf as its stem, inseparable. A curious way to graphically symbolize the viewpoint of an environmental cult. Quite Islamic, that it is a sword that brings peace. As a child, Gorbachev was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, but professes to scientific atheism, the standard cant of Communists. It means he holds with neither religion nor Creator. He professes a Gaia impulse where "... nature is my god. Nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests my cathedrals ..." while also speaking against the evils of 'organized' religion. Yet he cloaks himself with the symbols of religions he renounces. Either this is schizophrenic or disingenuousness writ large. The Green Cross International is as steeped in ??naw'chash?? as can be, for it is a ruse, a ploy, a chimera masquerading to hide what it really is. It's all there in its logo. Islam, mangled Christianity, Eastern mysticism and global environmentalism married to the sword and the olive leaf. For a Lenin styled atheist that's an awful lot of religious symbolic power to invoke for one who doesn't cotton to religion. Cloaking your organization in the symbols of that which you seek to replace. We know all we need know about Mikhail Gorbachev and his Green Cross in that first he absconded with a religious order's name and symbol, and then subtly grafted onto this stolen property the fertile and influential symbols of three great religions, adding a sword and an olive leaf to the globe. Environmentalism seeks the ruin of religion, and the elevation of Gaia; replacing worship of the Creator with worship of things created. But they cannot be honest about their goal, and their logo stands as naked evidence of their chicanery for us to decipher.