UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of other editors.
February 7,1980
Forer effort welcome
Norman Forer is off to Iran again in another attempt to bring about a resolution of the American-Iranian crisis.
Forer, associate professor of social welfare, first went to Iran in early December. He came back three weeks later to face a storm of protest over the circumstances of his departure. This event has received permission to be absent.
The earlier trip generated criticism from many people, some of whom saw Foner as someone who ran off from his job and caused a lot of trouble medding in something he knew nothing about.
But that criticism may not have been justified. On his first trip, Foer met with Sadegh Gholzbadeh, Iranian foreign minister, and Abdassan Bani Sadr, now president of Iran and head of the Iranian Revolutionary Council. Foer had met the two in Paris in 1977, after he went to Iran to investigate alleged human rights violations under the shab's regime.
With these contacts, Forer has an 'in' with the current rulers of Iran that the State Department and its diplomats do not have. He also has an 'in' with the students holding the American hostages—he says they are the people who invited him back to Iran.
Fover claims that his contacts have already brought about some good. After he returned from his first trip, he said his talks were at least partly responsible for new peace initiatives from the Iranian government, for arrangements allowing the embassy to send Christmas cards from the United States to hostages and Christmas visits to the hostages by American ministers.
There has been no confirmation of these claims by Iran or from the United States. But the only real reason to disbelieve them is Forer's reputation: a bleeding-heart liberal who tends to dramatic exaggeration
and overblown rhetoric. We have heard nothing from anywhere else about why the Iranians decided to loosen up.
And Forer may achieve greater success with the present mission. He may come back with the hostages and an agreement between the Iranian people and the American people. Or he may come back with nothing.
But nothing is just as much as the State Department—the official representative of the American people—has been able to wring out of the Iranians since the hostages were taken.
Forer has said he is an unofficial representative of the American people. Many who criticized him for this during the first trip will probably be incensed when they realize who his current traveling companions are. The group is equally divided between whites and minorities and between whites and non-whites, not exactly representative of the population of the United States.
But the makeup of the group may help it become more effective. The Iranians see themselves as victims of white imperialist oppression through the shah, and they may be more inclined to deal with the minorities of the states: people who have, at least in their opinion, been similarly oppressed.
And while that group may not represent the feelings of the majority of Americans, it may succeed in its work. And that success is the issue.
The issue is not whether Norman Forer is interfering with the State Department, or whether he truly represents the people of the United States, or whether he is just a bag of wind. If Forer improves relations between the United States and Iran at all, he should be commended.
Let him do his thing—it may be the only solution to a crucial problem that "experienced diplomats" haven't been able to solve.
A list of Action 80 members reads like a roll call of local notables. the chairman is Warren Rhodes, president of the First National Bank of Lawrence. Other members include John M. McCullough color Arche R. Dykes; Todd Seymour, president of the Kansas University Enrollment Association; and Allen Wiechert, director of facilities planning for the University. Mayor Barkley Clark and City Manager Jeffrey Exico are ex-officio members of the group.
Action 80, a private, non-profit group, has run the project for the last of year. At the time, the group stated that its purpose was to study the advantages and disadvantages of locating the mail in or out.
location is still a mystery, but there are certain citizens who know more about the mall's location than the rest of us. I had been walking, however. The group calls itself Action 80.
ACTION 80 HAS been severely criticized by LAWRENCE neighborhood groups since it was announced that the progressive Association, in particular, has blasted the group and has labeled the exofficio memberships of Clark and Watson unethical because the two are public service
Because of the group's private, non-profit status, Action 80 is exempt from Kansas Sunshine Law, which requires certain members in their law firms and members also can refuse to make the change.
CITY COMMISSIONERS have played the role of ACTION 80 and have said that the group would have to come to the commission to request government funding for the project, but this would bring problems, such as neighborhood action, before the commission for action.
results of their meetings public—and they have.
The commission has entrusted Action 80 with the responsibility of making the right decisions on a touchy issue of public importance. Perhaps the commission wishes to shift from the criticism of mall planning to the criticism of those I do have to worry about be-re-elected.
Action 80 has raised money for surveys on public opinion about the mail; it had advised the city commission in choosing the developer for the project, Jacobs, Viscini of Cleveland, Ohio; and it has drawn up data according to its research and surveys.
At any rate, the commissioners have turned the future of east LAwerover to a group of people who are only interested in the past and not in future developments upon their own interests.
When members of Action 80 ask themselves why residents of east Lawrence are protesting their actions, they should ask themselves how they would feel if the city were to be closed or a committee to determine the location for commercial construction in Alvamar.
or so we are told. For who can assess the role of a group that conducts its business in secret?
Downtown merchants and people living near the downtown area, particularly residents of east Lawrence, have not been told which locations are being considered by Action 80 as possible mall sites. Action 80 has said it was considering locations in east Lawrence.
Private mall planning ignores public rights
IN SPITE OF such moves, Action 80 and the Lawrence City Commission will ignore the needs of east Lawrence residents. The city is planning to plan for the mall behind closed doors.
It has been more than a year since the city planners of Lawrence began discussing the construction of a regional shopping mall. The great was greeted with immediate controversy.
bob COLUMNIST pittman
TODAY, THE DEVELOPERS still plan to locate the mail downtown. The exact
ELIA REPRESENTATIVES have said that they would have been surprised if Action 20 had been carried out by residents of east Lawrence, Steve Treater, an ELIA board member, has said that ELIA representatives have asked Action 80 to give that action to the city in that if they have always been turned down.
A Blue Ribbon Shopping Mall Committee has been formed by ELIA to study possible negative effects of the mall.
Last spring, merchants protested plans that would locate the mall on the south side of Lawrence, at Armstrong Road and U.S. Highway 59. The merchants feared that a take business from downtown merchants and turn the center of the city into a shadown street.
After weeks of protest, the developers of the proposed mail abandoned the plans to locate it at the edge of the city, and instead turned to the downtown area as a possible
Nuclear arms peace was a dream
It been a common assumption ever since the first Israeli missile on Japan back in 1945 that nuclear sabre-rattling would take the place of armed skimishes would future international threats.
The catch phrase for this idea, which was trotted out during negotiations for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and during the more recent SALT I and II bargaining, is "nuclear deterrence." Military strategists have argued that a national notion that arming to the teeth with weapons could literally annoy the world is the best way to keep the peace.
It's the grandaddy of all Catch-22. We rely on nihilistic nuclear devices, of all things, to blackmail our world into a precarious peace.
On the surface, it doesn't seem so far-fetched. The logic of nuclear deference is best illustrated by a question: "If a war would invariably destroy the world as we know it, who would ever want to start one?" With Richard Nixon, who was obsessed with the nuclear and the history books, relished the notion of being remembered for that.
AND SO, LIKE Laurel and Hardy, the United States and the Soviet Union have bumbed along for the past 35 years,
grumbling and insulting one another, but blithely assuming that neither one has the right to use nuclear weapons seems as if the only reason the United States or any other nuclear weapon welder would have to fire a bomb is that deployment would be to save a few bucks rather than build some hideous weapon that can kill thousands of people.
Somewhere along the line, the possibility that two nuclear powers could confront each other in a limited, "conventional" conflict was obscured by the mushroom cloud of
brenton r.
COLUMNIST schlender
nuclear rhetoric. It seemed as if american military strategists, the ones who are so fond of contingency plans and backup systems, have a distinct advantage in possible scenarios in their defense planning.
THAT'S NOT SO surprising. After all, thanks to detente and a relatively stable subservient Third World, the United States and the Soviet Union didn't directly control their allies in the post-Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Not even the war in Vietnam threatened to escalate into a
Then came Afghanistan. Now we are beginning to see that nuclear deterrence not only has become more ironically, precludes anything but a mild rebuke for even the most unconscionable action—shoot of nuclear attack. In other words, it is no longer escalating into a holocaust prevents the United States from doing anything besides using two world tanks rumble through Kabul.
head-to-head battle between the superpowers. Nuclear deterrence seemed to be working.
I SUPPOSE THIS IMPLOYANCE is reflexive. If Jimmy Carter decided to seize a pip-sucked country half a world away from the United States, it just as the Soviets have in Afghanistan.
Which points out precisely why the whole world has been delayed by the notion of a weapon that doesn't necessarily deter anybody, weapons doesn’t necessarily deter anybody, if anything, a bomb bay full of warheads amounts to a license to plunder. Deterrence lies only in the conscience of the bomber.
Of course, any talk of nuclear disarmament these days elicits jeers and swift dismissal. The whole world is hooked on nuclear weapons, despite the fact that we
got along quite well before they were in charge, some historian might be able to prove that the armed conflicts since the advent of weapons than before, that doesn't do much harm. But they didn't do much.
WHAT DO WE Do? we do ask Jimmy Carter, he d'ay "Rattle the sachet a little loader, boycott the Moscow Olympics and computers to the Soviets. That'll show 'em."
That sounds pretty good to most people, hawks have no ability to endangered species. The United States reflects our time-worthy reliance on the idea of nucleus deterrence. Meanwhile, MG-125s of the United States reflect that.
The fact is that nuclear weapons need were meant to be the salvation of our warragged world. They aren't an answer, but a tool. We don't want them to destroy us or to destroy ourselves once and for all.
No, there's not a whole lot we can do. But the war lies not solely with the Soviet Union but also with other countries, thinking that nuclear weapons can be used for any purpose but to make war. We decided to build a world of peace upon us and we would have all we have to show for it is a feeling ofoom.
As Laurel said to Hardy, "A fine mess you've gotten us into, Ollie."
Restaurant policy just didn't 'suit' him
By DAVID FINKELSTEIN
NEW YORK - The emphasis at Windows on the world, the restaurant on the top floor is always busy. The view outside the view outside to the view inside, as sharpeed doormen, hostesses and waiters appear.
I had been warned. Lilia, a Wall Street investment analyst, had called early that morning to remind me that because she had invited me to eat in at the 10th floor of her building, I would like to club members and their guest! It was not to wear my usual T-shirt and jeans.
I congratulated myself for having anticipated the admotion. In preparation for the event that day I had already gone through my long-motivated wardrobe, consisting of three suits, and had taken out the best of an admittedly sorry let it. It was a small mistake, but it made nothing else at least passed muster throughout most of the civilized world.
MY FIRST INKLING that something was amiss came as I waited on the ground floor of the World Trade Center for the elevator to lift me. It wasn't there, and someone's eyes were on me. I looked up and sure enough the dispatcher was scrutinizing me disapproximately. Secondes later, when I furiously outweighed out the closing door, I noticed that he was mumbling over the telephone.
The woman at the reception desk upstairs had indeed been tipped off and she went right to the point, "I'm sorry, sir, you need a jacket and tie here."
I EXPLAINED THAT I was in fact a waiter, and I had to wear one of the restaurant's kind-lendies, however ridiculous it might look with a safari suit, if that would meet the dress code.
"Well, I'll have to take this matter up with the assistant maire d'or," she said, picking up the phone with the seriousness of a
senator investigating the Three Mile Island incident.
Another supernumerary, who was dressed in a black shirt and who had waved his eyes to avoid glare, suddenly noticed my feet and sneered like a coward taking one last snipe before he came.
"And he's wearing sandals, too!"
HACKLES UP, I STRUCK back. "Those two women you just let in were both wearing open-toed sandals."
I had apparently hit a sensitive nerve, for the receptionist interrupted her phone conversation with the assistant maitre d' and, with the haughty airy of an indignant person whose Maragua had just been dismissed from his office, sir, isir, are hieh-heel, oen-feod shoes."
"Whatever you call them, that's sex discrimination," I said, and threatened to sue.
The receptionist must have realized that this was serious business because she
"We've never faced this problem before," he said, unhappily, and then ran off to his office, presumably to consult the regulations.
Another 10 minutes went by before the dinner room hostess came to inform us that permission to enter the dining room had, at least, been granted - but not without conditions.
quickly decided to go beyond the assistant maitre d ' him and summon the assistant d' himself. Since he wasn't in his office, a busboy was sent to round up him.
"WHEN YOU LOCATE the matre d, he
hem there's a man here wearing a short-
sleeved saffari suit and sandals—though he
is well-socks," said the receptionist,
solemily.
Ten minutes elapsed before the maitre d arrived at the scene, panting.
"OTHER CLUB MEMBERS" might complain, so would you please remain seated at your table throughout the course of this lesson. With correspondence, with a trace of anxiety in her voice.
We were halfway through lunch when *Lilia* looked up and recognized a friend of her—a prominent banker and a regular teacher. We approached her nearby table. She invited him over and introduced us. Despite my reluctance to call attention to myself, I had to stand up to her.
"That's a smart suit you are wearing," said the banker. "Very practical for these summer days in New York. Can you tell me where I can get some made?"
Kennedy is a graduate of Hancock University and was daily August through May and January of 1965. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in biology and also later attended summer, summer and winter colleges. In addition to his six months at $77 per month in Colorado ($280 each for six months) he was $120 per month in Florida ($420 each for six months) and $77 per month in Texas ($380 each for six months). He a $2 semester, a graduate student through the student entrance program.
Postmaster Send changes of address to the University Daily Kansas, First Hail, The University of Kentucky
Jamee Jones PBIa PBA
Manager Marketing Browne
Dana Miller Brown Walsh
Business Manager
General Manager Advertising Advisor
General Manager