]]]]]]]]]]]] WHY YOU CAN TRUST THE SOVIETS [[[[[[[[[[[[[[
(1983)
Are you confused about trusting the Soviets? You don't know
enough about the SALT Treaties to know whether the Soviets are break-
ing them? And more qualified people than you are arguing aout Yellow
Rain? And the Soviets are no worse than the Latin American dictators?
Then consider three points where YOU have all the knowledge
needed to decide whether you can trust them:
1) The USSR signed, and is legally bound by the following Uni-
versal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations:
"The General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of
Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and
all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of
society, keeping this declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by
teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and
freedoms...
* The right to freedom of opinion and expression.
* The right to leave one's country and return to it.
* The right to exercise one's religious beliefs and to educate
one's children in those beliefs.
* The right to found organizations, and to receive and
disseminate information.
* The right of man to be respected.
2) On 1 August 1975, the Soviets signed the "Helsinki Agreement,"
pledging themselves to respect "fundamental freedoms, including the
freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief;" among the stated
objectives were: freer movement of persons, institutions and organiza-
tions; wider exchange of information; increased cultural exchanges and
broader dissemination of books, films, other media, and artistic
works.
Far from keeping the agreement, Soviet citizens who attempted to
form groups checking on how the Helsinki Agreement was being observed
in the USSR were arrested, sentenced to long terms in concentration
camps or imprisoned in "psychiatric clinics" without trial.
3) There are at least three substantial differences between the
repressive regimes of the Third World and those of the USSR and her
colonies (and please do not mistake the listing of these differences
for approval):
* The repression is usually political, with at least some econo-
mic freedoms preserved, and the government claims little or none of
the citizens' own free time. Totalitarian repression is total.
* The dictators of the Third World are not a menace to the
freedom and survival of the United States.
* The lowliest black in South Africa or the poorest peon in
Argentina is free to avoid repression by leaving his country. But even
that freedom of last resort is denied to the serfs of the Soviet Em-
pire by a wide belt of mine fields, police dogs, watch towers, barbed
wire barriers, and machine gun nests along the borders of the USSR and
her colonies.
* * *
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