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From: holt@parsec.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: RE(2): Nicaragua - (nf)
Message-ID: <2687@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Sep-83 23:49:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.2687
Posted: Thu Sep  1 23:49:43 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Sep-83 07:47:54 EDT
Lines: 32

#R:parsec:40500003:parsec:40500004:000:1891
parsec!holt    Sep  1 16:50:00 1983

    I may not have done a very good job of explaining myself in the article,
so I will try again.
    The USSR is not a good place to live.  There are many other countries
in the world that are not good places to live.  Most of these other countries
not trying to export their version of unpleasent life to their neighboring 
countries and other countries around the world.  The USSR is.  If you don't 
understand by now that the Russian revolution replaced one ruling class
with another more ruthless ruling class, then you should go live in
the USSR for a couple of months.  It would become extremely clear to you.
The reason that the USSR spends so much of its GNP on the military is
twofold.  One, they are a very paranoid people.  They have paid a very high
price in human life in both of the World Wars.  The people there understand
this, and this is how the government sells the necessity of buying massive
quantities of arms.  Two, the ruling class in the USSR wants to expand its
influence, and thus its power to encompass the world.  I can sympathise
with the first reason, it's the second one that scares me and causes me to
support our active resistance to Soviet expansionism.
    By the way, as I write this, a large furror has been created by the
downing of a Korean 747 commercial airliner over a Soviet claimed island just
to the north of Japan.  This was not an act of a "nice guy".  United States
intelligence has manuscripts in Russian of the pilots conversations with 
their ground control.  Everyone was fully aware that the plane was a
commercial flight, and that they were shooting it down.  No radio contact
was made to warn it to alter its course, etc.  This kind of action can only
highten tensions in an already tense world.  Isn't the question of who is
the "bad guy" kind of silly in light of this action?

				Dave Holt
				{allegra,ihnp4,uiucdcs}!parsec!holt