OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
October 26,1983 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 bv students of the University of Kansas
The University, Kanyan Daily Kansas (USPS 605-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Finst, Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 605-640; daily during the regular school year and twice weekly during the student section, excluding classes on Monday through Saturday. Students with student registration are $13 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $1 for six months or $3 for a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $1 a semester paid through the student activity fee *POSTMASTER*. Send address changes to the University of Kansas.
MARK ZIEMAN Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
Managing Editor
Editorial Editor
DON KNOX Campus Editor
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
LYNNE STARK
Campus Sales Manager
JOIN OBERZAN
JOIN ADVERTISING Advisor
MARK MEARS National Sales Manager
DAVE WANAMAKER
Retail Sales
Manager
PAUL JESS
General Manager and News Adviser
In a move a lot less dramatic than Moses' parting of the Red Sea, but impressive just the same, Skip Moon seems to have solved, at least for now, the financial trouble surrounding his Lawrence Opera House.
Moon pulls it off
And he seems to have done it almost single-handedly. Just as the Douglas County sheriff was stepping up to the auction block, just as potential tenants and customers were pulling up stakes driven in the days of the Red Dog Inn and leaving for more secure hangouts, and just as this editorial staff urged him to "Give it up" and escape the long legal battles and transient tenants that seemed sure to follow, Moon pulled off the improbable.
A Lawrence National Bank foreclosure suit against the Opera House has been dismissed because Moon was able to get a loan from University State Bank to cover the loan at Lawrence National. Surely, a
loan is a loan is a loan, as Gertrude Stein probably never would have said, but the recent loan does give Moon room to breathe.
Now that Moon has possession of the building again and a new mortgage, he can continue his efforts of renovating the Opera House for use as a school for the performing arts and an audio studio.
Or perhaps this turn of events will prove to the City Commission that the Opera House is still a valuable property and may be, as Moon has attested, an ideal piece of property for the city to buy as a civic center. Another bright possibility for Moon is the third downtown redevelopment plan, submitted by Town Center Venture Inc., which proposes incorporating the Opera House into the project.
Whatever the future of the Opera House, it's considerably brighter than it was just a week ago. Congratulations, Skip.
Making life miserable
Life is becoming more miserable for the people of Nicaragua, and the Reagan administration is to blame. U.S.-backed rebels have blown up nearly 4 million gallons of fuel in the past month, leaving the Sandinista government with no alternative but to tighten fuel rationing, shorten the workweek and turn off street lighting.
For now, the Nicaraguan们 will have to go without fuel, tomorrow they may have to part with food. But that doesn't seem to bother those in Washington who want to strangle, or starve, Nicaragua into submission — into the Reagan administration's "right" way of thinking.
The measures were announced earlier this week and they will take effect Nov. 1. By that time, the situation is likely to be worse. The rebels, with blessings and money from the United States, have promised to continue their war against the spirited Sandinista regime by sinking ships bringing fuel to Nicaragua.
The rebels won't stop there. With their rich American benefactor, they can keep up their hit-and-run tactics. They won't stop until the country reaches a cruel state of misery from shortages and the ravages of war — prime time for another right-wing little Hitler like Anastasio Somoza Debyale to appear with a deceptive morsel of salvation in his blood-stained hands.
That's what Reagan wants. Forget the pain it may bring to the Nicaraguan people. Forget the cruelty. Just keep the commies out of this hemisphere.
But by disrupting Nicaragua's government, which has not been given a chance, and by invoking the bullying, but long outdated, principles of the Monroe Doctrine, the Reagan administration is only asking for a superpower confrontation close to home.
It is likely to get it. Both superpowers will pour more weapons into the region, and maybe troops will follow. And the Nicaraguans will suffer some more.
Henry's good rebels
After having announced that the Central America commission would not confer with people "engaged in guerrilla warfare," Henry Kissinger had a meeting with Alfonso Robelo Callejas, leader of the Revolutionary Democratic Alliance, the Nicaraguan rebel group that takes CIA money and converts it into attacks on the forces of Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Robelo is, in other words, an official U.S.-sponsored guerrilla, and so is
Kissinger should have stuck to his butter. If he wasn't going to meet with renegade gunmen, he shouldn't have made an exception for Robelo. Kissinger's digression could badly compromise the aura of impartiality the commission needs if its ultimate recommendations about long-range policy in Central America are to have any credibility.
exempt from Kissinger's self-imposed flat.
The Miami News
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LETTERS POLICY
The week of missile protests wanes to a close. Protesters' cries flutter in the winds and falter, as the autumn earth with the leaves.
Deployment nears, protest wanes
Despite the fervent objections of more than a million Europeans, the United States intends to deploy 572 Pershing II and ground-lead cruise missiles in Italy, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands
by hawks, but some pollsist claim that less than 50 percent of the populations of NATO countries want the updated nuclear arms to rest on their ground. But the United States bullies its allies into submission by pushing them out and failing to reflect the will of their people on this issue. The United States dominates NATO just as the Soviets dominate the Warsaw Pact.
of every new missile, the United States increases the chance of an accident beginning to the world's ending.
Deployment snags efforts for a peaceful solution to the arms race. The Soviet Union threatens to abandon arms talks, and they are right to do so. Obviously, a nation that insists on a "build-down" of weapons while building up nuclear missiles in the Soviet backyard cannot be trusted to keep its promises. The blatant hypocrisy obiterates any chance of trust-building.
Staff Columnist
and West Germany. Deployment will begin in December.
KIESA HARRIS
By deploying missiles in Western Europe, the United States creates modern targets for Soviet aggressors and has used these targets pulled into this conflict may be led
The U.S. government is arming Europe for participation in a limited nuclear war that will grow. Escalating the arms race increases hostilities and draws the world closer to a violent finish. With the deployment
Some "experts" claim that the updated weaponry will balance the threat imposed on Europeans by the presence of Soviet SS-20 missiles in East Germany and the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet and U.S. arms now there are enough to destroy the Earth more than once. Pershing II missiles will be deployed to seven sites in West Germany, and their range of destructive capability has been estimated at 1,100 miles. Leningrad and Moscow will be beyond the range of these fast, accurate weapons. GLCMs will take care of that.
During the July 1982 "walk in the woods" talk, U.S. ambassador Paul Nitzte and Soviet ambassador Yuli Kvitinsky agreed to a package that called for a ban on some missiles, a freeze on the deployment of S-205 and a balance of arms between American and Soviet forces. This package was rejected, and escalation was not.
The more than $6 billion being spent to heighten danger and infuriate enemies could be put to better use. An official testifying before a congressional committee said that for the price of only 10 missiles, poverty in the United States could be all but eliminated.
A handful of Americans have rallied to oppose the missiles, but neither the Lawrence Commission on Peace and Justice nor Let Lawrence Live had time to plan much organized opposition. The groups are amassing an army, by concentrating on a softy long-term goal they minimize their effectiveness in combating missile deployment.
Last weekend in Kansas City, only about 130 protesters marched under ominous clouds. In Topeka, 7 gathered in better weather. Hawks had subdued the meek whispers of doves in this part of the nation, and the resulting apathy could be fatal. Protest deployment. Write to congressman. Fight against the escalation of worldwide animosity
Southerners weren't culprits in King vote
WASHINGTON — Nearly one of every four U.S. senators voted against the creation of a national holiday in tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., who was an injustice, despite the temptation, to label them all racists.
There were legitimate reasons, at least in their minds, not to elevate the martyred civil rights leader to a footing equal only with George Washington and Christopher Columbus.
Yet is seems inescapable, in the cases of some of these 22 senators, that race and politics did play a role in their vote.
Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., a man not given to verbal extremes, flatly accused North Carolina Sens. Jesse Helms and John East of ponding to base anti-black feelings.
STEVE GERSTEL
United Press International
But far from substantiating a return to the '60s, the roll call shows that Southern senators, by
By instinct, as well as past records, the inclination is to hunt for Southern senators in search of those who opposed the King holiday. After all, it was the Southern senators in the 1960s who used every means available to prevent passage of the goals that King's nonviolent revolution sought.
"They are running the old campaign, as old as the interaction of race and politics in America," Bradley said. "They are playing up to old 'Jim Crow' and all of us know it."
a wide margin, voted for the holiday.
Only three Southerners — John Stennis of Mississippi, Stromthurd of South Carolina and Russell Long of Louisiana — who served in the Senate in the 1960s still survive.
Stennis, after voting against Helms-engineered amendments, in the end cast his ballot against the King holiday.
But Thurmond, who rivaled George Wallace as a segregationist, and Long both voted to set aside the seat of January in honor of King.
But Helms, East and Stennis represent only a tiny fraction of what was once the Dixie bite. The rest of the Southerners. Jeremiah Denton of conservative Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, voted for the holiday.
Another argument, dear to the hearts of conservatives, is that the King bill created a 10th holiday for federal workers, so no one was sure how much that would cost the taxpayer.
Who else then voted against the legislation — refusing to accord this high honor to the catalyst of the civil rights movement?
A legitimate argument could be made that Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln among presidents deserve equal stature and perhaps so do Theodore and Franklin Dearborn Roosevelt.
They were, for the most part,
conservative Republicans from
Midwestern and Western states.
More money must go toward conservation
EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — What should be a great local resource is turning into a local disaster at the hands of the Reagan administration
In this resort community on eastern Long Island, several hundred acres of federal land — surrounded by state and county park land — will be auctioned off to the highest bidder for development. Although the town and the state have given the city permission to assert that this property — the former Montauk Air Force Station — be transferred to the local government as park land, the federal government will not budget
What makes the Interior Department's plans to sell environmentally sensitive property it owns here particularly galling is an executive order, signed by President Reagan on Feb. 25, 1982, that reverses standing policy of making surplus federal property available to local governments for public purposes at a nominal fee.
RANDALL PARSONS
East Hampton, N.Y.
Councilman
In response to this official intranglement, the town of East Hampton, where I have served as a councilman for the past four years, is preparing to use new techniques that could become models for the rest of the country.
With backcuts in state and federal expenditures, the burden for preserving this way of life falls more rapidly than government, citizens and businesses.
The resort industry has gained momentum in East Hampton, but the prime farmland, fragile marine ecosystems, underground water supply and the community's way of life have been rudely eroding.
East Hampton can use its zoning powers to direct and limit development. But only two members of the five-member Town Board should vote on proposed proposals for certain ecologically significant areas in the town
Suffolk County, in which East Hampton is located, established the nation's first farmland conservation
program. In this, the county pays a landowner the difference between the property's value as farmland and as, vacation-home, lots
The proposed zoning powers and the farmland plan fall pitifully short of accomplishing the desired result. It is this shortfall that leads me to my conclusion. There must be an enforcement mechanism to save funds for conservation efforts.
Working through successful conservationist organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the American Farmland Trust, corporations and private individuals can obtain tax advantages by contributing to conserving our natural resources.
Further, federal and state governments should encourage investment by increasing tax abatements for gifts that promote conservation. The government now pays millions of dollars for improvements of roads, sewers, and other public works.
Why should we place so much emphasis on growth and development with little or no special encouragement for conservation? Rather than collect taxes and then distribute them to localities to buy property, the federal government should encourage local planning agencies to designate conservation areas. Federal and state governments then pass legislation providing tax abatements to attract significant corporate and private investment. This is the missing link in our current national land conservation program.
Copyright 1983 the New York Times, Randall Parsons, a part-time farmer, has been a councilman since 1979.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Let's demonstrate sorrow
To the Editor:
On behalf of the General Union of Palestinian Students, I would like to express our deep feelings of sorrow and loss that American lives lost in Beirut on Sunday.
Kamal Sinnokrot
Let's all demonstrate — students and staff — to express our sympathy at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow in front of Strong Hall.
President of the General Union of Palestinian Students