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From: rf@wu1.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Soviet Uncivilization (Charges against Yelena Bonner)
Message-ID: <309@wu1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 9-Aug-84 13:16:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: wu1.309
Posted: Thu Aug  9 13:16:16 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Aug-84 01:54:58 EDT
References: <292@genrad.UUCP>
Organization: Western Union Telegraph, Mahwah, NJ
Lines: 38

Stuart (genrad!stuart) writes:

  Isn't it digusting that the United States is doing commercial
  trade with a government that considers "punishing" an ailing
  old women for saying things against that government -- with a
  "punishment" of THREE YEARS AT HARD LABOR??  I think we should
  stop making believe that they're another civilized country
  over there. (They just believe in a different "social
  structure", you see.)

I should rather trade with them than war with them.  There are
several reasons:

  - Trade sanctions are not likely to cause their government to
    change its policies.  I'd guess that trade sanctions will
    only encourage their hard-liners.  "You're playing into
    *their* hands" is an argument heard on both sides of the
    ocean.

  - Given the enourmous arsenals of nuclear weapons that both
    the USA and the Russians have built, we should take steps
    that lead away from war, not towards it.

  - We cannot lay claim to moral superiority -- Russia is our
    competitor, not our congregation.  History is likely to
    judge *both* sides' claims of moral superiority as empty.


				Randolph Fritz
UUCPnet:			{ihnp4,decvax}!philabs!wu1!rf

"Sirronde stared at the Goddess.  'Are You saying, then, that You were
wrong to make heroes?'

"'Indeed not,' She said.  'But I should have warned them--if you save
the world too often, it starts to expect it.'"

(Diane Duane, *The Door into Shadow*)