Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: Notesfiles; site ucbvax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!whuxl!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!hpisla!hp-sdd!ucbvax!wildbill
From: wildbill@ucbvax.UUCP (wildbill)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <6034@ucbvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Apr-85 21:19:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.6034
Posted: Thu Apr  4 21:19:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Apr-85 08:05:16 EST
References: <333@ihlpg.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard
Lines: 42

>>     "More than 1000 business officials and landowners gathered here [in
>> Managua, Nicaragua] to denounce the Government, eat hearty lunches,
>> denounce the Government some more and then return home."
>>     "Their convention held in a private theater and attended by delegations
>> from all over the country passed without incident. No policement were visible,
>> and a handful of militiamen assigned to the small guard post across the
>> street seemed bemused as the well-dressed businessmen filed in and out."
>>               -NY Times 3/31/85 p.4
>>              
>>         Andy Berman
>
>	The Times also reported in 1957 how Krushchev allowed "A Day in
>the Life of Ivan Denisovich" to be published.  So much for all those
>stories about the U.S.S.R. being less than democratic!
>
>Jim Matthews
>matthews@harvard

Or how about the "Hundred Flowers" movement in China. Regardless of the
stated motives for this development, it did provide an excellent means of
getting the intellectuals and other "disruptive [to a totalitarian state]
elements" to identify themselves and their friends so the Red Guards could
shoot them, torture them, and "reeducate" them in the fine art of slopping
pigs, a few years later. Enough similar nonsense has occurred to make this
approach part of the required curriculum for Dictatorship 1A: Governing
through Intimidation. It allows you to be much more precise about whom
to suppress, as opposed to the broad-based techniques of Hitler's Germany
(non-Aryans) or Pol Pot's Cambodia (eyeglass wearers).

DISCLAIMER: These tactics are not the exclusive province of the left; they
may be employed by dictators and autocrats of any stripe. I am *not*
accusing the Nicaraguan government of such tactics.

For those interested in trying a short thought-exercise, try replacing
"Cuban" with "French", "American" with "British", "Contra" with "Indian
and Hessian", "Ortega" with "Washington", and "Nicaragua" with "America";
now step back a couple of hundred years and north a couple of thousand
miles and ask yourself if it all sounds reasonable. Interesting...

                                        Bill Laubenheimer
----------------------------------------UC-Berkeley Computer Science
     ...Killjoy went that-a-way--->     ucbvax!wildbill