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Comment by V-2 | Hacker News Reader

> The worst thing he could say about Poland was a corrupt police.

It hardly means that this is the worst thing that could be said about Soviet-controlled Poland

> Constrast with the hundrends of innocent police killings in the US

US police is notorious for its brutality, but are these killings ordered by top officials in chain of command?

If factory workers go on a strike in the US, are police troops sent in to "shoot to kill" them? They did in Poland 30 years ago, eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek

> E.g. now nobody is guaranteed to have a job or a home

A guaranteed home for which you would wait 20 years :))

While earning 20 bucks a month.

For which you often couldn't even buy basic goods...

http://i.wp.pl/a/f/jpeg/22380/kolejka_prl_internauta_550.jpe...

http://i.wp.pl/a/f/jpeg/23333/puste_haki_550.jpeg

^ Equality.

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>US police is notorious for its brutality, but are these killings ordered by top officials in chain of command?

Directly no. They are just nurtured by top officials in chain of command, who could have stopped this shitty behavior in a day if they wanted to, but instead either ignore it or even encourage it.

From people arming police departments with military grade equipment and allowing SWAT teams etc to be used for BS offenses, to right-wing politicians speaking of blacks, latinos etc as lazy, criminals, gloryfying the use of police force, etc.

>If factory workers go on a strike in the US, are police troops sent in to "shoot to kill" them? They did in Poland 30 years ago, eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek*

Back in the day, yes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

And if unions got that organised again to be a threat, then I have no dount they would. Heck, they even killed students:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Not that I'm a fan of those "eastern bloc" states, but I want to put things in some perspective. Saying "they just earned 20 bucks a month" is not enough -- one also has to know how things were for the majority of people in these countries before socialism, in order to compare.

> Saying "they just earned 20 bucks a month" is not enough -- one also has to know how things were for the majority of people in these countries before socialism, in order to compare.
Well, before the war literacy rate was low and noone had a TV set, the socialist state has come and these things took a fortunate turn ;)
Or if we truly want to put things into perspective, prewar Poland, while obviously poorer than Germany or the UK, was better off than Spain or Portugal (not to mention eg. [South] Korea). A few decades later did young Spaniards dream of picking strawberries in Poland, or was it the other way round?

> US police is notorious for its brutality, but are these killings ordered by top officials in chain of command?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Fred_Hampton
> If factory workers go on a strike in the US, are police troops sent in to "shoot to kill" them? They did in Poland 30 years ago, eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek
Oh god yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_cannery_strike_of_193... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_sanitation_stri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Lite_strike#The_.22Battle... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Steel_strike

Well, it's hard not to notice that most of these examples happen to be from before the war... closer to the Victorian era than modern times. So that's getting kind of ahistorical.
Secret service functionaries in communist Poland assassinated nearly 100 people in 1980s alone; mainly oppositionists, priests (the most famous father Popiełuszko wasn't the only one), who were unarmed and not affiliated with organized crime.
Furthermore, you wouldn't go to jail for as little as mentioning Fred Hampton (or Wacko siege) in public - let alone trying to write about it... and an anti-government organization such as Black Panther Party, armed and openly denouncing the state, now that's something utterly unthinkable in any "people's republic", they would all get killed. Solidarity was a trade union which formally called for improving socialism.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that the US was or is a paradise on Earth, you are obviously right to point out that Eastern bloc did not have a monopoly on political killings or unlawful surveillance.
But to insist that this was ever on par with Soviet-controlled countries in terms of freedom and lawfulness would be a doomed task... you'd quickly start scraping the bottom of the barrel in search of counterexamples; that's sort of like "project Steve" ;)

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