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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Let them eat the Gross National Product
Message-ID: <137@l5.uucp>
Date: Sat, 21-Sep-85 14:10:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.137
Posted: Sat Sep 21 14:10:57 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 08:18:25 EDT
References: <3476@topaz.UUCP> <28200078@inmet.UUCP> <1790@psuvax1.UUCP> <192@gargoyle.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 22

Richard, what you are saying is that the British government did not do a
good job in dealing with the famine. I agree. I expect that the Red
Cross and the Salvation Army could have done a better job.  That the
government did a worse job than it could is another reason why sticking
your eggs in one basket and assuming that ``the government'' will do a
proper job is a poor idea.

I come from a line of Irish immigrants who really believe that the problem
was worse than that -- that without prior government restrictions on
farming *there* *would* *have* *been* *no* *famine* and worse, that
elements of the government viewed the famine as a good way to end the
Catholic problem that Ireland (a subject nation, ruled by force for
generations which *still* hasn't solved Catholic Irish/Protestant English
problems) once and for all.  I do not know how to verify these claims, but
if they are true then the government's activity becomes all the more
reprehensible.  i think that you are wrong in viewing the Irish famine as
a ``free trade'' famine since Ireland more closely resembled a colony or
an occupied territory at that time. 
-- 
Laura Creighton		(note new address!)
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa