FRIDAY,FEBRUARY 7.2003
NFWS
OPINION
4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY,FEBRUARY7.2003
SUBMITTING LETTERS AND GUEST COLUMNS
The Kansan welcomes letters to the editors and guest columns submitted by students, faculty and alumni.
The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length, or reject all submissions. For any questions; call Amanda Sears or Lindsay Hanson at 864-4924 or e-mail at opinion@kansan.com. If you have general questions or comments,
e-mail the readers' representative at reader
srep@kansan.com.
The Kansan will run as many submissions as possible that conform to these guidelines.
GUEST COLUMN GUIDELINES
**Maximum Length:**
650 word limit
**Include:**
Author's name
Class, hometown (student)
Position (faculty member)
Also:
The Kansan will not print guest columns that attack another columnist.
LETTER GUIDELINES
Maximum Length:
200 word limit
Include:
Author's name
Author's telephone number
Class, hometown (student)
Position (faculty member)
SURMITTO
E-mail:
opinion@kansan.com
Hard copy:
Kansan newsroom
111 Stauffer-Flint
Free for All Call 864-0500
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
My opinion is that KU is filled with liberal wimps, and the Free For All isn't gonna print this because they too are liberal wimps. Deal with it, liberal wimps.
-
格
Wheover said, "I was at this party the other night and there was this fat Asian guy going around calling himself Buddha. Isn't Buddha Indian?," somebody slap him...over and over and over again. Last time I checked, India was in Asia.
So I'm walking around at the career fair, and I see the Overland Park Police Department, and I look up and see that one of the cops is the cop that arrested me. Don't think I'll be working there.
I just want to tell the KU Girls Calendar to stop calling me, because I'm really not interested in subjecting my body like that! I know I'm beautiful, but stop calling me. Thank you
---
We're not bitter about not having a comic strip. We're just bitter about the fact that the comic strip's not funny.
I think every employee at the KU Bookstore should dress in condoms, because I got screwed.
图
This is to the hippies: sometimes war is the answer. Saddam is obviously hiding nuclear weapons, and frankly I don't want to get naked because you wanted to sit around and talk about things.
Cutting all the out-of-state National Merit funding really sucks, because I have a friend who, instead of coming to KU, has to go to Mizzou, Boo!
So I used to call the Free For All every day because it was a passion of mine, and I kind of stopped to give other people a chance. But let me tell you something, the comments suck. Come on, people, let's get some creativity going.
---
二
Is no one worried about North Korea?
For more info
I love all the negative communist
pulishit the Kansan prints.
Hes anyone seen that study class president, Jonathan Ng, walking around campus? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
EXQUISITE RELIEF
PERSPECTIVE
Headlines forbode war with Iraq
COMMENTARY
February is here, and the Bush war machine marches onward. Diplomacy may seem to be the current focus of the administration, but reading between the headlines reveals the full picture on the nearing, and seemingly expected, war with Iraq.
Cooper Wood
opinion@kansan.com
The U.S. government is certainly treating it as inevitable.
Regardless of opposition at home or abroad, a war with Iraq is coming, and everything the administration does is geared toward that violent conclusion. Only if you connect the dots will you see that the recent emphasis on diplomacy has little impact on the administration's attitudes toward starting a war with Iraq.
The parliament is also scheduled to vote Feb. 18 on whether to allow the U.S. to use its territory and bases as a staging ground for an invasion into northern Iraq. This approval is seen as inevitable and assured, which would be an enormous victory for the U.S. military. This would allow the creation of a northern front in an attack on Iraq, allowing for a double-edged attack from north and south in the march toward Baghdad.
Following the presentation by Colin Powell at the U.N. Wednesday, nations that had previously balked at supporting U.S. action are starting to fall in line behind the war drums, which is exactly the response Powell and Bush were looking for. Turkey's parliament voted Thursday to allow the U.S. to upgrade its air bases and naval ports, greatly aiding military capabilities for a conflict with Iraq.
Headline: Pentagon considering cremation of bio-weapon casualties from Iraq war.
Headline: Turkey allows U.S. full usage of their military bases for a possible war with Iraq.
Headline: U.S. connects Envoy killing to Iraqi based Al Qaeda cell.
The Pentagon is considering a policy to allow the cremation of American military casualties for the first time, out of concern that Saddam Hussein will use chemical weapons on a large scale against a U.S. invasion. This could involve the construction of a crematorium in the Middle East, allowing the military to contain harmful biological or chemical agents without infecting other military personnel or civilians.
The military is preparing to deal with its wounded and killed. Stories like these, coming in the wake of national grief stemming from the Columbia tragedy, seem to escape the American people, who fail to realize that a war with Iraq means hundreds, if not thousands, of American deaths. A war in Iraq will make the deaths of the Columbia seven seem like a miniscule loss of life.
In yet another move to morph Saddam into Bin Laden, the Powell presentation included intelligence from the interrogation of a captured Al Qaeda operative, who informed U.S. officials that the killing of American diplomat Laurence Foley last October was an
Lance Menley for The University Daily Kansas
assassination planned and coordinated by a well developed Al Qaeda cell operating out of Baghdad.
Powell said this cell was being harbored by the Iraqis and that the capture of the operative and discovery of this cell alerted authorities to planned attacks against as many as six European countries. This included the recent capture of Al Qaeda operatives planning a Ricin gas attack in Britain.
Connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda allows the U.S. government to press forward with the war as part of the fight against terrorism; a connection seen as spurious by most of the international community.
The U.S. seems to be pushing the diplomatic front as of late, with Powell leading the charge at the U.N. Wednesday and Congress Thursday.
The truth becomes blurred by America's indifference to international opinion and its public reluctance to wait for international support. France, Germany, and those opposed to the war seem all too aware of this fact, and their continued opposition seems to be the last barrier to invasion, as even Russia and China have softened their opposition to war following Powell's presentation.
The countdown to war has begun, as neither side seems inclined to move, and the U.S. and its increasingly supportive allies continue to prepare for conflict, with or without U.N. support.
The international community, the concerned public and Iraq all seem to be hearing the same thing. War is coming.
Boom.
Can you hear the beating of the U.S. war drum?
Wood is a Topeka sophomore in sociology
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Confusing the issue
In the Jan. 24 The University Daily Kansan, David Gittrich claimed "science has proven beyond dispute that human life starts at conception." This is false. Science has not proven that human life starts at conception for the very simple reason that science has proven that human life does not start at conception
Fetuses and, for that matter, newlyfertilized human ova are, of course, alive and human. But the sperm and the unfertilized ovum that are the precursors of the human-fertilized ovum are also alive and human. Human life does not begin at conception. It existed before conception.
Should we therefore agree with Beth Peterson's claim in the Jan. 27 Kansan that "no one knows when life, full human life begins"? Beth Peterson's claim is true, for the notion of 'full human life,' or, for that matter, 'human life,' is sufficiently imprecise that we would not be able to determine at what point in the history of the evolution of primates full, human life begins. However, truth is obtained at the price of utter irrelevance to the issue of abortion. We know that human life begins neither at birth, nor at some time during pregnancy, nor at conception, nor when one is old enough to drink legally, nor at any other time that would give aid and comfort either to the pro-abortion or to the anti-abortion side of the abortion issue. The abortion issue is not really about the issue of when human life begins.
Don Marquis, professor of philosophy
I have just finished reading "Take Revenge on Recording Industry," published in The University Daily Kansan Jan. 31. I have a single word to sum up the average consumer of modern popular
No grounds for revenge
Recently, a court ruled on behalf of the
Don Marquis, professor of philosophy
After we, the recording industry, give away $150 million and let people obtain free music via file-sharing programs, we're seeing the words "Take Revenge on Recording Industry" in print. The average consumer wants the same quality product, but he does not want to pay for it.
Online distribution IS the distribution method of the future. Record labels want online distributions to happen because they won't have to pay to physically manufacture and ship the CDs.
music: disrespectful. For the past two years, the Recording Industry Association of America has incessantly sought the aid of the federal government to help shut down the illegal piracy of copyrighted musical compositions. But the federal government kept denying the industry any assistance in this matter. To make matters worse, a couple of months ago the federal government ruled against the industry, requiring them to "pay back" society for over pricing CDs. What the article didn't mention was that only about 47 percent of the industry's $143 million payment would be in the form of cash reimbursement. The other portion of the money will be in the form of CDs distributed to not-for-profit, charitable, governmental or public entities to be used for music-related purposes or programs.
Your favorite recording artist only gets paid about $47,800 for every $5.49 million that it makes for the recording company. It costs several million dollars to properly launch and release a professional quality commercial recording. Only one out of every five records released make its money back.
Just because music pervades our life as ubiquitous doesn't mean that it's in the public domain.
Contrary to popular belief, the recording industry is not anti-technology. The recording industry is simply anti-stealing.
industry allowing it to pursue and prosecute anyone that it catches illegally distributing copyrighted works. So go ahead, "Take Revenge on Recording Industry."
Women: Protest, don't fight
Jesse Atwell, Verdi senior
In response to Maggie Koerth's commentary entitled, "Women in draft necessary part of quest to end discrimination," she argues for "gender equality" in the military draft.
She writes that if women want equality, they should be drafted just like men and be willing to do the dirty work of fighting war.
While her argument asserts that we should not accept the dichotomous construction of "an unreliable, delicate womanhood and a macho, war-loving manhood," is extremely important, I think it would be more helpful to transcend the construction that anyone at all - male or female - should do mandatory military service.
If one is interested in promoting a feminist agenda or a humanist agenda, for that matter, our efforts would be better expended resisting and transforming the values that promote militarism. This includes working to end violence against women, child abuse, poverty, racism, homophobia and other forms of oppression.
If we're going to "stand up and fight" for anything it should be in protest against a war in a country of 24 million citizens who have already been devastated enough by unjust U.N. sanctions.
Loretta Pyles. Lawrence doctoral student
By accepting the notion that the draft is inevitable and that true equality would mean women's participation in it, we have been lured in by a seductive patriarchal narrative, hook, line and sinker.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Answer call for mentors
All students should aim to give two years, over the course of their lives, to a child.
Along with discussing war on Iraq and the faltering economy in his State of the Union Address, President Bush called for Americans to commit at least two years to volunteering. Specifically, Bush would like to see that every child who is in need of a mentor gets one.
The University of Kansas provides an excellent breeding ground for mentors. Just by being in college, a student embodies possible future goals for a young child.
In the United States, 3.3 million young people participate in the Boys and Girls Club after-school programs. Half of these children are from single-parent homes and 40 percent are from families with annual incomes of less than $22,000. In Lawrence, The Boys and Girls Clubs serve about 50 children each at nine elementary schools.
Since 1990, the Center for Community Outreach, has helped KU students become active citizens in Lawrence. The center has four youth programs focused on college students mentoring elementary and high-school children. Ten other youth programs serve young people in Lawrence. These programs offer children tutoring, music, art and a chance to spend time with a "big kid."
College is a time of learning and preparing for the future. Mentoring a child is a skill most students already possess.
Bush said that one of the roles of government was to ask people to serve their community by finding a program that would make a difference.
The center also has information about volunteer opportunities with the homeless, senior citizens and people with disabilities.
"It doesn't matter how big or small," Bush said. "What matters is your love and your energy and your participation."
Meghan Brune for the editorial board
TALKTOUS
Kristi Henderson editor
editor
864-4854 or kkunderson@kansan.com
Jenna Goepert and Justin Henning
managing editors
864-4854 or jgoepert@kansan.com and
ihenning@kansan.com
Leah Shaffer
readers' representative
864-4810 or lshaffer@kansan.com
Amanda Sears and Lindsay Hanson opinion editors 864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
Eric Kelting business manager 864-4358 or adsales@kansan.com
Sarah Jantz
retail sales manager
864-4356 or adsales.kansan.com
Maicoim Gibson
general manager and news adviser
864-7683 or mgibson@kansan.com
Matt Fisher
sales and marketing adviser
884-7666 or mfisher@kansan.com
---