In article
<403d9b46-05d8-4ae9-bcdf-adefd4107a6c@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
tadas.blinda@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> Your Leitmotiv is "Like, everybody does it, so
> it's OK, it's no big deal."
No it isn't. I despise what Russia did in the Baltics as much as I despise
what the Americans did in Hawaii. It is not OK, nor can you excuse what
one country did because it happened a hundred and ten years ago to
Polynesians but excoriate the other one becase it happened only sixty-five
years ago and to Europeans if you are going to be intellectually honest.
> 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.
I don't know about you, but I have actually done that. I worked for a
summer in New York and Kiev with the Freedom Sup****t Act helping teenagers
from the former USSR who had been awarded a year's scholar****p to live in
the USA attending American high schools to understand how American society
and families work, and I have worked publi****ng books, films, and teaching
packages to help young Estonians and Estonia-resident Russian speakers
understand such issues as democracy, tolerance, and majority-minority
relations.
> 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.
Here we agree one hundred per cent.
> 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.
I am *not* making excuses for them. Russia and the United States both have
a history of imperialism. What I am objecting to is that some of the same
people expressing amazement that Russians can deny the fact of the Baltic
countries having been occupied, but denying that Hawaii came to be a part
of the United States according to precisely the same scenario, but, unlike
the three Baltic countries, is still under foreign occupation. It ain't
OK, and I do not make excuses for either.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
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