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   AJ Sadauskas (ajsadauskas@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Saturday, 30-Nov-2024 15:59:03 JST AJ Sadauskas

   in reply to

   @mekkaokereke @professorhank On 22 May 1972, a chap named Richard Nixon visited Russia.

   Kalanta set himself on fire on 14 May, just over one week earlier.

   Nixon's visit was literally at the same time Moscow is rounding up and torturing people for protesting the occupation, and sending in troops and tanks to violently crush an uprising in Lithuania.

   It's inconceivable that Khrushchev wouldn't have been briefed about it.

   So let's break it down:

   During the visit Khrushchev talks about how great life is in Soviet Russia. Knowing — and I'm being extremely generous here — that's not the full story.

   The US intelligence agencies had friends in the Kremlin. Even if not the full details, they would most likely have known something was up and briefed Nixon.

   So Nixon, rightly, raises human rights abuses in the countries Russia occupies, without directly naming the still ongoing uprising. A justified comment in my book.

   Khrushchev does his whataboutism.

   Whatabout Black people in the US. Whatabout Vietnam.

   He was simultaneously being truthful and disingenuous.

   He called out anti-Black racism and America's war crimes in Vietnam. With complete justification.

   At the same time, it was also a deflection of Russia's own mistreatment of its occupied ethnic minorities.

   Both things are simultaneously true.

   3/3