On Sep 29, 7:49=A0am, hol...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Eugene Holman) wrote:
> I despise what the Americans did in Hawaii as much as I despise what the
> Soviets did in the Baltics. However, I recognize that the "official"
> historical narrative in the two countries downplays or ignores these
> tawdry episodes, and that the average American or Russian easily goes
int=
o
> denial when the facts and parallelism are pointed out.
"Linkage" of issues is a standard KGB dezinformacija / agit-prop
tactic.
> I feel extremely uncomfortable when people say, well, the Hawaiians were
=
just a bunch of
> childlike hula-hula dancers whose women walked around bare breasted in
> grass skirts, so the Americans civilized them by taking over their
> country, but the Soviets were a bunch of barbarians who brutalised the
> Baltic peoples and should be damned to the deepest region of hell for
> having done so. Even if this is a Baltic forum, the double standard is
> profoundly disturbing.
What's profoundly disturbing is your single-minded dedication to being
an apologist for the USSR / Russia. I feel extremely uncomfortable
when people like you link the Baltic issue to the Hawaii non-issue,
hoping that since people (especially Americans) don't give a ****
about how Hawaii came to be part of USA, you hope the linkage of
issues will plant the idea in their minds that it doesn't matter how
the Baltic states came to be part of USSR, or that Ossetia and
Abkhazia are right at this moment becoming part of the Russian Empire
by the same process. Your Leitmotiv is "Like, everybody does it, so
it's OK, it's no big deal."
Well, your linkage sucks. We, as civilised Europeans (i.e. =96 non-
Russians), need to be telling those eastern barbarians NOT that it's
OK to emulate what USA did more than a century ago, BUT we should be
telling them they have to emulate civilised countries, like
Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, that haven't attempted
imperialism for a couple of hundred years (Switzerland =96 never) and
most Western European countries, that have behaved themselves for more
than a century now, with the unfortunate exception of Italy and
Germany. But the great civilising force of the EU is here to stay,
and European standards (=3D EU standards) should be what all Europeans
strive for. If the Russians want to call themselves Europeans, that's
the standard they have to aim to meet. So stop making excuses for
them. Sorry, "Yankeeland does it too" doesn't get the Russians off
the hook.
|
