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From: eich@uiuccsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Stalin and Slavery - (nf)
Message-ID: <4652@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Dec-83 22:29:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4652
Posted: Tue Dec 20 22:29:00 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Dec-83 11:49:19 EST
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#N:uiuccsb:11000091:000:3096
uiuccsb!eich    Dec 20 07:59:00 1983

>/***** uiuccsb:net.politics / minn-ua!tim /  3:10 am  Dec 17, 1983 */
>
>Come on, are we all that better?  The people in Russai, even those in charge,
>are human, too.  Lets not be so self righteous.  We still discriminate, use

You should recall that Yuri Andropov was foreign minister to Hungary in
1956.  His humanity has been well-documented since then.  As KGB chief,
he was chief architect of the psychiatric hospital gulag system, where
residents are treated with insulin overdoses.  I believe the head of
the Anti-Soviet Peace movement was arrested and tried recently; he is now
bound for one such hospital.  But relativism and abhorrence of self-
righteousness cause me to pause.  Andropov is better than Stalin, who
when wakened by a barking dog, had both dog and master shot.

>propaganda, and do injustices every day.  Don't think so?  Do you know how

This loathing of yours, generalized to `we', is in itself self-righteous.

>easy it is to get thrown into a mental institue never to be seen again. 
>Don't tell me that the CIA is any better than the KGB.  Look at our foriegn

The KGB is much, much larger than the CIA; it has a proportionately larger
charter (foreign subversion/espionage along with GRU plus internal security).
Your comparison is ridiculous.  Acquaint yourself with the facts.  Levchenko,
a KGB defector, or Arkady Schevchenko, who hailed from the politburo until
defecting in the mid 70's, know the situation first hand and have commented
on it in various media.  See Barron's "Inside the KGB".

>policy: I am not very proud of it.  Amoung other things, we are the ones who
>are making and placing all the new nuclear weapons.

That is incorrect.  SS-20 production has been constant throughout the
period of NATO's two-track approach.  Soviet strategic production proceeds
under SALT I, with whatever excess the Russians can get away with through
legalism and Western ignorance.  The MX is being built (it isn't yet deployed,
remember) because the USSR developed and deployed many very accurate SS-18s
over the last decade, when we did nothing but Minuteman updates.  Under your
thinking, the Western alliance should not even have bothered with the two-
track policy, and just deployed Pershing IIs forthwith.  At least, that is
the policy your perverse view yields if applied to a Western Europe besieged
by a peace-is-war-mongering USSR.

>  Don't get me wrong; I am happy, even privileged, to be able to live in
>this country.  Lets keep nationalism and propaganda down, though.  Remember, 
>we *have* to live in the same world with them and if we don't do it well, we 
>will *all* suffer.  
>/* ---------- */

If you oppose propaganda, then stop leveling distinctions.  The "pox on
both your houses" view is as extreme and ludicrous a position as the
line that we are angelic and they satanic.  If left and right could
agree on that (and on this net leftist recidivism is dominant, witness
rlgvax!plunkett's appropriate trashing in net.flame with no corresponding
outcry on the matter at hand), debate would be so much nicer.

	Brendan Eich
	uiucdcs!eich