Ed T: I think the comment he made that the "police state in the USA is worse than it ever was in the Soviet Union" gives an insight into the amount of credence that can be put on his comments.

I've said myself in the past that I've found some aspects of US society to be "akin to a police state"....the treatment meted out to a Norwegian colleague who didn't understand about "baggage tag matching" at LA airport was shocking, and some of the encounters I've had with immigration authorities have been horrible ( I have a namesake born in the same year as me who was convicted of arms smuggling in UK and EVERY time I enter the US I spend 3-4 hours in isolation, on top of the immigration queue time, while they check me out). I've witnessed other worrying incidents, too.

However, to compare it to the repression in the Soviet Union is just a total disconnect from reality. Many of my wife's family in Estonia were murdered by Stalin....just herded into railcars and shipped east without food or water. The reason for most of them going was that they lived on the island of Saaremaa which was wanted for a naval base and they were simply in the way. Very few came back. I pass the remains of 2 huge gulags whenever I go to the countryside with my local friends in Sakhalin. That's just 2 of literally dozens on the island. And how many Americans risk being shot in the back fleeing from the USA to Canada, as happened to hundreds, possibly thousands, of East Germans? I think the guy's sitting under a tinfoil hat!