mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (11/24/83)
(1) What other country has murdered millions of its own citizens as the USSR
has under the leadership of Uncle Joe?
Would you trust a people who have done that to themselves with your life?
....
(2) There is a common thread between us and that is the fear of death.
....
(3) But why should I think that the leaders of the USSR think that way.
What evidence do I have from that closed society?
Michael R. Zboray
==============
(1) The USA. (Extermination of Indians not too very long ago, and
their forced removal to death camps or undesirable areas for reservation.
I don't think that was tremendously different in principle from the
genocides in the Ukraine. Both were Government policy, even though the
US Army's actions were abetted by popular action.)
As for trusting such a country with your life, you have been trusting
your life to the USSR as well as to the USA for at least 25 years.
Even if you don't buy the US efforts at genocide as balancing the
Russian version, either because they "didn't happen that way" or
because they were too long ago, you must still acknowledge that
you are still alive despite the Russians.
No-one thinks the USA would embark on genocide these days, do they?
Why should you not believe in the possibility that the USSR could
change?
2) Too true.
3) You should be able to believe it, since senior scientists from the
USSR were allowed to corroborate publicly the "Nuclear Winter" model,
and even to claim that they had previously obtained the same results
as the American analysts. I doubt they would have been allowed to make
these claims if somebody fairly high up politically had not approved.
(There are LOTS of other answers to question 1, of course. In the last
50 years, I think of Germany, Uganda, Kampuchea as the most dramatic
examples.)
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt