Wake Up! magazine, November/December 1994, reported (page 131) on the plan for a TUNNEL BENEATH THE BERING STRAIT to establish a direct road and rail link between North America and Eurasia. This was a story previously carried in a little more detail by the Spotlight, Washington, 22nd March 1993. We learned then that it would mean: 'a person would be able to drive from London to Buenos Aires, a distance of approximately 22,000 miles.' No doubt there would be sufficient reason for making such a journey, but at this distance it has not yet registered with us.

'Nevertheless, we now have to report that the Savoy, London, as recently as 24th- 26th September, provided the venue for George Koumal, Chairman and Dr. Victor Razbegin, Executive Director of The Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel and Railroad Group, Washington, D.C. & Moscow, to host The Third International Bering Strait Tunnel & Railroad Conference. Attending it were the expected array of politicians and diplomats, rail and tunnel experts, development banks and agencies, multinationals and financiers, strategic planners and the world press.

'An invitation to express an interest in and learn more about this US$40 billion project -- which could, in the end, cost twice as much -- was published in The Economist, London, just a month earlier. One of the keynote speakers was Walter Hickel, Governor of Alaska (1991-94), who, in the earlier Spotlight report, expressed the hope that 'this tunnel will become a reality in my lifetime.'

'Who also learned at that time that 'the plan has the support of everybody who is anybody in Russia, including the Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomydin,' a statement made by George Koumal, Chairman of the tunnel group.

'Another of the speakers was Lord Skidelsky, Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University, and author of the acclaimed The World after Communism, concerning which we are bound to note that until the entire machinery of Communism has been gathered together and destroyed along with the structures it has created; and until the great deception carried in the minds of those souls, wherever they may be, who have believed it held the only solution to the world's problems is seen for what it is, any talk about the time after Communism is futuristic. Communism's demise is coming, that is certain. It will happen soon, but not yet.

'Perestroika is still not understood by the west, and the fact that businessmen, particularly at the international level, can make headway within its parameters is not surprising: they have not found great difficulty crossing political boundaries when it suited the ourse of the dealers. No doubt the STRUNNEL has great potential for the merchants, but will America cope when Russian, eastern European and oriental goods flood a market now endangered by the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) agreement, which has already added 350,000 to its unemployed?'

-- Wake Up! magazine, September/October 1995.