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On Feb 28, 2025, quadibloc wrote
(in article<a7ab496af26f8eb5b564dd6300a35d59@www.novabbs.com>):

> Your tongue-in-cheec comment about Chernobyl in your review of _In The
> Drift_
> was amusing.
> And unlike the scenario in that book, fallout from Chernobyl didn't even
> kill vast numbers of people! No; but because rumors after the disaster
> grossly exaggerated the number of casualties - a consequence of the
> distrust which exists in closed societies - Gorbachev decided to press
> harder
> on his policy of _glasnost_... which turned out to be fatal to an empire
> that
> was built on lies (surprise!).
> And we all know the politics we've lived through following that.
> China, scared by Russia's cautionary example, doubled down on being a
> closed
> society. Thus, doctors who tried to warn the public about COVID-19 were
> beaten by police and silenced.
> So the COVID-19 pandemic _was_ the fault of China's totalitarian regime.
> While it
> is not impossible that the virus escaped from a Chinese germ warfare
> lab, we
> really have no evidence of that, so I see no reason to make stuff up
> when within
> the facts we know we already have enough proven facts to show the
> Chinese
> regime is at fault.
> Russia had an eventful history. Hard-line Communists tried overthrowing
> Gorbachev,
> leading to Yeltsin defeating them and coming to power. But Yeltsin's
> response
> to Chechen terrorists - indiscriminate bombing of Chechen civilians -
> was a
> harbinger of what was to come after he chose Vladimir Putin as his
> successor.
> Russia under Vladimir Putin isn't Communist. It wasn't going around
> telling
> the workers of the world to unite.
> Just as the United States fought Communism in Korea and Vietnam, but it
> did
> _not_ fight fascism and Nazism in Ethiopia or in the Spanish Civil War,
> therefore, Putin's forays into Georgia and Ukraine basically flew under
> the
> radar of the U.S.; what's a little foreign aggression if you're not seen
> as
> an existential threat to Big Business?
> Unlike Italy, Russia was never known for having severe problems in
> getting the
> trains to run on time; what Russia has is a drinking problem, but past
> leaders
> who tried to clear that up found they were undermining one of the key
> pillars
> of the power of dictatorial rule in Russia, and so Putin has been
> cautious in
> this area.
>
> John Savard

it’s hard enough to read your stuff when the line length is something 
sensible. Try to fix.