OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
October 18,1983 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kaman (USPS 605 640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stuaffer Fint Hall, Kaman, 60045, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions, excluding the first two weeks of school. Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $27 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 for a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 a semester through the student activity fee. POSTMASTER SALE: $15 per month.
MARK ZIEMAN Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM STEVE CUSICK
Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DON KNOX Campus Editor
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
DAVE WANMAKER     MARK MEARS
Retail Sales         National Sales
Manager
PAUL JESS
General Manager and News Adviser
LYNNE STARK Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Advertising Adviser
Give them time
The Nicaraguan people threw off the yoke of oppression in 1979 when the Sandinista forces toppled the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. But the Reagan administration is trying to put it back on.
And Nicaragua will not be free until the administration quits meddling in its affairs, says Roberto Vargas, first secretary of the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington, D.C. He told a group of KU students Saturday that the United States would do well to quit supporting right-wing rebels in Nicaragua.
"The Reagan administration is taking your hard-earned dollars and translating them into death and destruction for our own little countries," he said. He appealed, and rightfully, for the United States to allow the Nicaraguan government more time to prove that its populist policies will work.
"We want peace. We need peace," he said. "I am not saying we are a paradise. We are a government in transformation with all the inherent economical and political changes."
Vargas pointed to improvements
in the literacy rate, health care and human rights, all of which suffered under the harsh, corrupt rule of the Somoza family - benefactors of ample aid from the United States.
Although the Sandinista movement may claim such improvements, it still has not turned the government over to the Nicaraguan people. Elections are planned for 1985, but the longer they are delayed, the less credible the government will appear. Arguments by the Reagan administration that the populist government is oppressive are only reinforced by the absence of democratic elections.
However, the Reagan administration has failed to prove that oppression. "Where is that overwhelming evidence of brutality?" asked Vargas.
Just like the democracy started in this country a couple of centuries ago, the new government in Nicaragua needs time to establish itself. The people should then determine whether it should remain, not a group of generals and politicians in Washington, D.C.
Hearings a wise idea
The Kansas Corporation Commission is showing responsible judgment in its decision to hold nine public hearings throughout the state on Southwestern Bell Telephone's record $213.7 million rate hike request.
But under the new arrangement mandated by the breakup of Southwestern Bell's parent company, American Telephone & Telegraph, residential phone customers would also have $2 tacked onto their monthly bills to cover the costs of tying into the long-distance network, whether they use it or not.
Southwestern Bell serves about 785,000 customers in 177 Kansas cities and towns. If Southwestern Bell's total request is approved, basic flat-rate monthly service for one-party residential customers would increase by $8.95.
This would mean that residential customers in Topeka could pay as much as $22.30 a month if the full rate increase is granted by the KCC, the state agency that decides such utility rate hikes.
Phone service could easily become the luxury of the '80s for elderly and low-income Kansans who might have to cut the service out of their already pinched budgets. Some of these individuals and families are already having to choose between food and heat.
But for the elderly especially, phone service is a link to the outside world. It is not so much a luxury, unless luxury can be defined as peace of mind that comes from knowing that the doctor, hospital and family members are just a dial away when they need them.
Job plan a cruel hoax
A great deal of emphasis is being put on training programs for the unemployed to place them in computer and high technology positions. Most of the money for such training programs is coming from taxpayers. Most of it will be wasted, if we are to assume the accuracy of figures recently issued by the federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Only 5 percent of the unemployment growth in this country during the decade of the 1980s will come in computer-related positions such as programmers, systems analysts, operators and data-entry workers, the agency reports. The jobs that will be available, those positions which employers will be trying hardest to fill, in descending order, include secretaries, nurses' aides and orderlies, janitors, sales
The blunt facts of the matter are that a vast majority of the jobs in this country that will become available in the next few years will require very little in the way of training or development of skills. All those vague and rosy promises by politicians and government functionaries that high technology and computer training will put unemployed Americans back to work in high-paying jobs are little more than cruel deceptions.
clerks, cashiers, nurses, truck drivers, fast food workers, clerks, waiters and waitresses.
It is a dreadful hoax on the part of government to leave those out of work with the idea that completing computer courses is a job guarantee.
—Fort Dodge (Iowa) Messenger
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-space and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff member. The Kansan and invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kanson office, 111 Staffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
LETTERS POLICY
Democrats forget main objective
WASHINGTON — Walter Mondale hoped to score a knockout in October in his drive for the Democratic presidential nomination. He has had to settle for a knock-out come out a little bloodied himself.
Mondale scored big this month. He won the endorsements of the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO. He won the Maine straw poll and appears headed for a strong upset in the behind favorite son Reuben Askew.
CLAY F. RICHARDS United Press International
in a state that had to be key to Sen. John Glenn's presidential strategy.
He picked up a number of key endorsements, including G. Mario Cuomo and Sen. Daniel Moynihan of Illinois in the delegation of the delegate selection procedure
Mondale's October victories will add money, volunteers and organization to a campaign that already has 400,000 registered Democrats in all those categories.
But the gains did not seal up the nomination for Mondale. And despite their new momentum, the Mondale camp is getting increasingly nervous that the premiere of the movie "The Right Stuff" — which glorifies Glenn's space hero image — will translate into votes and delegates in the caucuses and primaries.
So in October Mondale and then Glenn brenn what Ron Reagan can calls the 11th commandment "the pill of a politician in your own party."
Mondale said he is a "real"
Democrat, implying Glenn is less of
a party man. He criticized Glenn for his opposition to the SALT II Treaty and for voting for Reagan's tax and spending cuts program and in favor of nerve gas. He tried to paint Glen with a bloodshot eye, even though the senator has a voting record rating of about 80 percent by most liberal organizations.
Glenn responded by saying Reaganomics may not be the best thing, but was better than the "failed policies" of the Carter administration when Mondale was vice president. And he said it was time for new ideas, not just a polishing off of the New Deal Democratic politics that he implied Mondale was identified with.
And worst of all from Mondale's point of view, Glenn labeled the former vice president as the candidate special interests, especially labor.
Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, whose campaign is going nowhere, tried to spark some press attention by criticizing Glenn for refusing to take part in the non-binding straw polls. That prompted some critics to suggest that Hollings was hammering at Glenn to earmark his campaign's second real goal — the ticket spot on the Mondale ticket.
Watching the Democrats do what they too often do best — chew on each other — must warm the hearts of the Reagan folks as they gear up for what apparently will be a re-election effort.
The irony of it is that either Mondale or Glenn or any of the Democratic contenders would be a dramatically different president from Reagan. But the Democratic candidates for the moment have forgotten their main goal.
Kissinger commission faces tough task in Latin America
GUATEMALA CITY Jeered in Nicaragua and courted elsewhere, the Kissinger commission wound its way through Central America for six days, searching, probably ineffectively, for a bi-partisan compromise on U.S. policy for the region.
The National Commission on Central America "went to these countries somewhat uncertain what we would find." Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. ambassador in Washington, it "was an area in crisis but it was also an area of great hope."
He said the officials in each country that the commission visited had prepared long and thoughtful problems it with had the U.S. policy
"We were all very touched by the expectations they had of a coop-
FREDERICK KIEL
United Press International
Kissinger himself, however, caused anger among several commission members when he met with pro-U.S. Nicaraguan rebel leader Daniel Ortega, who he had announced that the group would not talk to any guerrillas.
rebels, who are Marxist and anti-U.S.
erative effort between the U.S. and their countries” he said. “We’re coming back with confidence we will make a contribution — a united contribution to a solution to some of these problems.”
San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, a liberal Democrat and commission member, let reporters know that the meeting with Robelo upset him because there was no similar discussion with Salvadoran
The Kissinger report is scheduled to be delivered to President Reagan in January, when the presidential election year will begin. And it is doubtful that partisan politics will be kept out of it.
Sources in Washington have said Cisneros has already decided to issue a separate minority report that would differ from Kissinger's.
Each nation except for Nicaragua asked for, formally or informally, massive infusions of U.S. aid to help its economy out of the region wide mission. Costa Rica asked for the most $10 billion over a 10-year period.
Devoting one day to each country, the commission visited Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
The stopover in Nicaragua developed differently. U.S.-backed rebels have carried out successful sabotage raids against oil storage sites in the past two weeks and have increased the gasoline supplies in the country.
when Kissinger arrived in Nicaragua, demonstrators estimated at 50,000, chanting "Kissinger, messenger of murder," marched to the convention center where he was meet with junta leader Daniel
Kissinger responded by implicitly criticizing the Marxist one-party state that Washington says is being instituted in Nicaragua.
"I said in Salvador that we should not be asked to choose between security and human rights. I say here we should not be asked to
choose between peace and democracy," Kissinger said.
But even Nicaragua acknowledged U.S. power in the region.
"The United States is the great destabilizing factor and can also be the great stabilizing factor." Ortega said.
The difficulty in comprehending the volatile forces in Central America was illustrated by the wide range of violence and unrest on countered in Guatemala.
Jorge Carpio Nicole, publisher of EI Graffite newspaper, met with the commission because he is the head of new political groups in Guatemala.
Tall, dressed in an elegant suit and smoking a cigar, Carpio cast doubts about the commission's handmade Guatemala "in such a short visit."
"Two societies function in this country, an anarchic one that is almost still in the stone age (the Indians who constitute at least 50 percent of the world's complex, modernizing society that we call 'indio.'" Carpio said.
Carpio and other ladino politicians said they warned the commission that the army, which has controlled Guatemala for the past 30 years, could exploit the Indians to control Guatemala and return to democracy next year.
Sorting out the wetter of such claims and counterclaims in each country, with one eye on U.S. domestic politics, Kissinger and the other commission members face a formidable if imminent challenge from Central America policy acceptable to liberals and conservatives.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Professor outraged by 'trust walk'
I have read your article of Oct. 7 in which you describe the experiences of a dozen students who "voluntarily gave up their sight" in order to experience "trust." I am amazed at the willingness of the Kansei to publish an account of such a misguided and unfortunate activity.
Several references in the article indicated that these students regarded their experience as showing them what it is like to be blind. They imagined before their "trust walk" and are now more convinced than ever that to be blind is to be helpless, to be obliged to "trust blindly" in the help of other people who can see, or else to be doomed to stumble around
To the Editor:
tripping over things and running into bushes and obstacles.
Most of us find that our blindness is at worst a nuisance, but it is generally not a barrier to meeting routine tasks in our daily lives. Our worst problems are those that originate in the heads of well-intentioned strangers who imagine that we must be helpless and must be doomed to a stumbling, bumping, tripping and lost existence.
Most of us who are blind are engaged in the same kind of things everyone else is engaged in. The thing that is most amazing about us is that we manage to achieve as much as we do, given the incredible barrier of negative image and focus exhibited by Professor Sheily's students and promulgated by the Kansan article last week.
Charles E. Hallenbeck Professor of nschology
I try to imagine how I would feel, were I a black person, if a group of white folks blackened their faces with cork and put on their oldest clothes and then paraded around smiling and dancing to see what it is like to be black in our society. Where is the outrage on our behalf which would surely result from this hypothetical exercise? I dare say (maybe I should say that I hope and trust) that Kansas representatives would not be quite as quick to publicize the experience of the white minstrels passing as blacks. We used to have to flip by the adoption of an instructor or by misguided instructors. I am now dismised that the idea appears to have acquired a momentum of its own. I am intrigued.
NATO nears crucial test
BONN, West Germany — The North Atlantic Alliance is fast nearing one of the most testing times in its 34 year history with a focus on unity in its relations with the Soviet Union but also its own stability and unity.
It appears virtually certain the alliance will proceed in December with its planned deployment of a new generation of intermediate-range U.S. cruise and Pershing 2 missiles. And that makes it all but inevitable that the Soviet Union will walk out of arms talks in Geneva to protest a development it says upsets the military balance in Europe
The swelling protests in West Germany and elsewhere remind governments that they are going to have an alienated and frustrated
Although the Reagan administration can live easily enough with the decision to install the 572 new missiles, deployment day is being approached in a mood of pessimism and misgiving in Western Europe.
BARRY JAMES United Press International
opposition on their names, even they can claim electoral support for their defense policies.
When NATO decided in December 1979 to install the missiles, it was hoped that the threat of deployment would cause Moscow to agree to get its missiles then be trained to Europe in increasing numbers.
The fact that the Soviets went to the conference table in Geneva in November 1981 was hailed as a success for NATO's arm-to-disarm, "twin-track" policy. But the negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear forces now are bogged down on Soviet insistence that British and French nuclear weapons must be included, a demand that makes agreement difficult to envisage Meanwhile, the Soviets have continued to deploy one new SS-20 a week since the talks began.
Throughout the negotiations, the United States has tended to emphasize the deployment aspect of the 1979 decision. European governments have been pressured by their oppositions and by the perception that everything possible was being done to achieve disarmament.
If the Soviets do walk out of the Geneva talks, it will leave the Alliance stuck with deployment, without the parallel move toward arms control that would help make Germany politically more palatable.
NATO leaders are reluctant to postpone for the simple reason that, in the present state of political uncertainty, it would be taintamount to cancellation and call into question the alliance's resolve to carry out a decision collectively arrived at and repeatedly reaffirmed.
On balance, therefore, deployment in December presents fewer political risks than postponement. But it will leave European Union's largest gale of Soviet bluster, threats and possible military countermeasures.
Failure to deploy on schedule not only would be seen as a capitulation to Soviet intransigence but also would create mistrust between the United States and its European partners.
Soviet leader Yuri Andropov already has curtly dismissed President Reagan's most recent arms proposals as "prattle" Detente, what is left of it, is unlikely to survive.
But despite the opposition, NATO leaders believe they have the broad support of their populations to carry out what they say is in the Netherlands, it is in any doubt.
Although France is not receiving the American missiles, President Francis Mitterrand is radically improving the independent French nuclear deterrent. As he succinctly noted in Belgium last week, "The pacificists are in the West, but the missiles are in the East."