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Thursday, October 19, 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
R.I.P. Activism
Activism in America is dead and on its way to burial. The eulogies have been written and read, and the memorials are now being disbanded and the disairing dust of cynicism.
But perhaps the whole ceremony is premature. Not that anything living or hopeful is being buried. On the contrary, activism is dead, thoroughly and completely dead. But it seems that the remains are being disposed of while the cause of death remains unknown. In the rush to bury the dead, the autopsy has been forgotten, leaving the future's historians with no alternative but to someday exhume the ghastly debris.
What did kill activism? Some would say that it starved to death when discontent, its main foodstuff, vanished. They would say that the end of the draft, the disentanglement of American ground troops from Vietnam, the East-West detente and the proliferation of controls all conspired to drown discontent in a flood of satisfaction and good feeling and thus leave activism with nothing on which to feed.
But this is not the case, for discontent is still plentiful. Seventy per cent of the people, according to a Cambridge survey, still don't like the current state of affairs and believe that "America needs a drastic change to get going again." Thirty-two per cent of the population is disenchanted with the nation's top leadership, according to a New York Times survey. Seventy-one percent, in the President's survey, believe the President lies. There is plenty of discontent ripe and ready for harvesting. Activism didn't die of starvation. Activism died of acute frustration.
All its life Activism had been fascinated with national and international affairs. Every day it drank deeply of the intoxicating media brew of politics, the environment, business and economics, foreign relations, poverty, the war and the national sports competition.
It began to scorn all that was not of national import, so much so much chaff in the wind. The important thing was national and international affairs.
Activism could not afford to be distracted by the trivial and local, for activism was destined to influence the flow of national history.
densome responsibility of redirecting the nation's energies so that the national problems of injustice, crime, poverty, corruption, pollution, ignorance and misinformation could all be solved. Activism was obsessed with the vision of itself as healer of the nation's wounds, as savior of the national glory.
Activism assumed the bur-
But as time passed, it became clear that activism could not redirect the nation's energies. Indeed, no single person or force could exert enough influence over national affairs to completely redirect the nation's energies. Activism had become enamored of an impossible goal and yet was unwilling to give it up. Impotent in the national arena, as are all military forces and persons, fought and fruitless struggle and quite literally died of frustration, leaving only a large and disillusioned following who soon attached themselves to the cause of cynicism.
To the end Activism pursued his goal with a valliance, an honesty and a determination that deserve only admiration. Had Activism chosen to challenge foes more vulnerable to its attack, it would have exited victorious, ironically, had activism, for example, chosen to purge local politics of corruption and patronage and incompetency, then surely it would have succeeded, not only in cleansing the mundane but in redirecting the magnificence of national body as well. The nation, drawing direction and leadership as it does from the ranks of local politics, could not help but suck in some fresh breaths of purity and honesty once the lower levels were cleansed of the rotting garbage there.
But activism chose a different path; it chose the path of national frustration. Thus activism died ironically, but perhaps, not in vain. If Activism in dying has shown others the futility of attempting to influence national affairs and leadership without first moving to independence, then activism shall have served a noble purpose. Indeed, a death that teaches others how to use power effectively, instead of dissipating it against invulnerable foes, is perhaps the most noble death a true libertarian can die.
— Robert Ward
U.S. Supports Saigon Luxury
Jack Anderson
WASHINGTON-While South Vietnamese soldiers have been falling in battle, their manicured leaders in Saigon have been falling in tears on French brandy, Taiwan fruits and Japanese TV sets.
These elegant goods are purchased with special funds that should be used to bring necessities to Vietnam, or impoverished people in poor-impoverished areas. Around $194 million is set aside each year in an "open import budget" for these imports. A generous 80 per cent of the money is being donated to tax payers through U.S. purchases. Vietnamese pasters.
The money is desperately needed for rice and medicine for families whose menfolk are off fighting the North Vietnamese. The Navy and Army have issued for fiscal year 1972 show that South Vietnamese officials have actually spent $21 million on luxury items like vintage wine, Italian motorcycles, expensive shoes and gourmet foods of all kinds.
During one week when the North Vietnamese offensive was at its hottest, for example, Saigon bought $333,000 worth of brandy.
What the desk-bound generals and officials don't use for themselves from this golden cornucopia is frequently sold on the black market to bank up their Secret Swiss bank accounts.
In 10 months alone, this
aristocratic liquor cost the hard-
pressed Vietnamese people a
bounty of $3.3 million in U.S.
funds.
The State Department has assured Congress, meanwhile, that Saigon is "buying American." But the truth is that the South Vietnamese actually spent 44 per cent of the $194 million they invested in U.S. products, the documents show.
In long talks with AID officials, we were told these luxury items are heavily taxed by the Saigon government. Supposedly, this helps to control inflation. They also also offer a $194 million open import budget is virtually impossible. But this hand-wringing attitude does not square with the fact that AID has been able to keep a reasonably tight rein on how SAigon spends $300 million in imports.
While the State Department has been keeping a sharp eye on
the $330 million, it has let the $21 million in "open import" booze and bric-a-brac slip into Saigon almost unnoticed.
TESQUES ON WAR!A!
The Tesques Pueblo refused to join the Apaches and Comanches in the past wars against the white men. Now some Tesques are grumbling about missing the chance.
TESUQUES ON WARPATH
For they have been ensured in the fine print of a white man's contract which gives up to 5,400 of their 15,000 tribal acres, much of them being most of their dignity to a controversial land development firm.
The Tuesnes are dust boy poor. Their average income is 1,450 a month, and their miserable lot, they asked their guardians, the Interior Department, to help them lease some仓 in New Mexico t developers.
Having neither lawyers nor real estate men in the tribe, the Tesuques depended almost entirely on the government to make it easier for the sculpted in the deal. A contract was signed on April 17, 1790.
Only now are the Indians learning that the Colonias de Santa Fe project of the Sangre De
Cristo Development Company, will get hundreds of acre feet of their scarce water, not to mention land and septic tanks. The contract also gives the developers an escalating financial bonanza and other assets as part of their 99-year lease.
Angry over the discovery that they had been short-changed again by the whites, some Teuque Council leaders went to Washington of the Native American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The lawyers are now charging that none of the important terms of the contract were translated into the Tesuques' language and that the Council wasn't even present when the Interior department sewed up the deal with Sangre on water rights.
In fact, the dissident Council members claim the Tesques were told that only a golf course could be built on their subdivision by 17,000 palaces.
Lately, the case has also taken a political turn. The Tesuques' lawyer, former New Mexico governor Jack Campbell, has resigned following disclosures that he is associated with a law
firm which also represented Sange. Campbell admitted to us helped him with his attorneys helped him with his legal work for the tribe. But he insisted the conflict of interest are "insidious suggestions."
Sangre's corporate secretary, Fred Standley, also happens to be a former campaign manager for Sen. Joseph Montaya, D-N.M., who helped push through a bill permitting the lease to Sanne.
Standley, reached in Santa Fe, denied he had used Montyola's political influence to help the developers. Standley also swore that the Indians knew exactly what they were doing when they got two other tribes. They get twice what other tribes in similar land deals, he said. Montyola agreed there was no "fix."
Footnote: The Tesquies aren't the only Indians who are giving up vast tracts of land to developers. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is supposed to protect the Indians in such deals, more often seems to act as the agent for the real estate man.
Copyright, 1972 by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
James J. Kilpatrick
A Long Wav from Miami
SCRABBLE, VA. —The best of all ways for a man to find pleasure in the glories of gardening is to find pleasure in the landscapes that this relieves him of both responsibility and labor, but permits him to share equally in the harvest. By dispensation of Presidency she has green thumbs while she works. She works. I admire.
We are nuts, in a modest way,
on this business of organic
gardening. Such gardening incru-
mentation is hard to paraphrase the Prayer Book,
to the earth: All things come of
thee, O soil, and of thine own have
we given them. Just about
these trees go back—and more besides.
This means compost: grass cuttings, shredded leaves, kitchen garbage, and because we live in cattle country, an ooak tree is a great source of meadow muffins. The stuff mounts up, rich beyond the
For the Good Lord, when he got around to making Rappahannock County, was thinking in terms of rocks and red clay. Without compost, the most succulent soil remained cloaked. But once a few cartloads of compost have been dug in, and turned over, and dug in again, the plot begins to smile and the earthworms appear. One of these days, so help me, I shall compose an Ode to the Earthworms. From God's creatures, but he is a thing of beauty all the same.
dreams of J. Paul Getty, and up here we need it.
Early this year we bought some 2 x 6 planks, and against the advice of Organic Gardening magazine, which is no more infallible than the rest of the press, coated them firmly with vinyl. So if your creosote will kill every tender root that comes in contact with it, but it's not necessarily so. Anyhow, we built half a dozen inthe ground frames, each 6 x 12 feet, and another frame 6 x 17, and heaps them knee-deep in Behold our Virginia plantation.
The lettuce has come and gone, and the snap beans have had it, but everything else is going superbly. We planted one box in black-eyed peas, the Noble tomatoes, and the first luxurious mess this weekend. The tomatoes, cucumbers, lima beans and cantaloupes are producing in abundance. Zucchini is what we grow best. You never saw such zucchini. Not even Mr. Burgee, Mr. Snyder, or Ms. Zucchini. These are zucchini by Cellini; they are works of art.
As one consequence, the kitchen smells heavenly most of the time. It smells of vinegar and dill and the spices that go into chutney. The panty sheaves are glowing on top and emerald. My function is to sit at the kitchen counter and applaud.
Readers Respond
Improvement.
Boycott, F-111 Defense, Birth Control...
Lettuce
To the Editor:
All of the elections held in the Salinas Valley (the main lettuce-producing region in California) were contested by the workers, no question that the workers are represented by the UFW; therefore, the term "jurisdictional dispute" is wholly the issue behind the lettuce boycott.
Though we appreciate Mary Ward's efforts to focus attention on the national lettuce boycott, we feel that her editorial "Behind the Boycott" was somewhat vague as to the genuine purpose of the national movement. The article seemed to imply that the business centers on a single business as opposed to the farm workers' legitimate right to self-determination and justice.
There is no jurisdictional dispute between two unions and there never was. Jurisdictional dispute implies that two unions have workers. There never was any question of representation among the farm workers—they went on strike for the right to be represented by the United Farm Workers when the growers requested an injunction against the strike, two judges denied the request on the grounds that there was no evidence that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union represented the farm workers.
This the Teamsters realize; they themselves requested the growers to cancel those contracts they had already signed and to negotiate directly with the UFW that workers who have refused. Their objectives are based on fear of losing tight control over decision making, hiring procedures, workers' rights, pesticide use
and, of course, having to bargain with organized minority laborers. Because the farm workers have a different color, language and culture, they have been exploited by the growers. Therein lies the real reason for the struggle of the farm workers.
The UFW, being a union of and for farm workers, presents a threat to the growers in that it will force them to surrender their traditional powers over the lives of the laborers. The farm success depends on the cooperative and the public bringing economic pressure on the growers. Please help—boycott boycott (head) lettuce.
Gene Johannes
Elaine D'Amato
Lawrence Lettuce
Boycott Committee
Dr. Clinton's characterization of the examination and the tests performed in this study is accurate picture of their importance to the life and health of the client and, in lesser degree, perhaps, to the health and safety of the patients.
Health
Douglas County residents should be very grateful to Dr. E. D.Lyman, director of the Kansas Department of Health, and Dr. Lyman's decision to cut off state funds for the Douglas County birth control program, mentioned in the same article, mentioned in the same article, is that Dr. Dale Clinton, Douglas County chairman and certain director and director of our birth control program, refused to meet the state requirements: a physical examination and certain information for each birth control client.
The lead story last week had to do with a bear that broke into two houses at Broad Hollow, a few miles away. He tore up a door screen and a camper bed, and I read 'she pleaded on my wife and then glanced out the kitchen window; no bear, but just then a doe and a bake leaped a rail fence in Mr. Mainwaring's place, as gracefully for Fonteney and Nureye, and wailed loudly while the quail marched up for dinner. Miami Beach, I will tell you, is ten thousand miles away.
To the Editor
-Tuberculin skin test. (Does the client have tuberculosis?)
These are the state requirements as reported in the Journal-World of Sept. 25, with my comments in parentheses:
—Pap smear. (Does the client have cancer of, or a pre-cancerous condition of, the cervix?)
—Urinalysis. (Does the client have diabetes or kidney disease?)
(C) The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
—Physical examination. (Does the client need immediate treatment for a disease or infection?)
And for the general welfare of the community, it seems advisable to diagnose diabetes, cancer or any such potentially
The importance of these requirements to the life and health of the client is at once obvious. The need to care for the community and to public health is less apparent, but becomes obvious when we give them care.
We know tuberculosis is highly infectious. So we imply that it is important to know about VD. So the physical examination is important to all of us.
Meanwhile, one reads the Rappahannock News and the Piedmont Virginian, to find out how our war against Progress is going. We are doing fairly well. One of the splendid things about Rappahannock is that Rappahankowners positively oppose Progress. We will have none of it. With only two exceptions, in 1880 and again in 1920, our county has lost population in every census since 1850. We are down to 5,199 now, which is a great improvement. We are dead set against subdivisions, supermarkets, dam power, lines, and all Civic
dangerous condition in its early stages before serious disability has resulted and when it still may be prevented.
I first became concerned over Dr. Clinton's policies several years ago. In January 1967 I was a consultant and then chairman of the Douglas County Health Board, to which body Dr. Clinton is responsible. I was in the critical of Dr. Clinton, "I was disturbed to learn that he omitted certain safeguards in treating patients with diabetes or obtained oral contraceptives or who came for the insertion of intruderate devices (IUDs), these were also the examinations and tests to rule out conditions in the patient which might make either pills or IUDs or even the health or possibly even fatal."
We do not know if any of the contracreptives from the Douglas County Health Department have died as a result of the omission of these animals.
Dr. Clark did not answer my letter.
know, however, that they may have.
Mrs. Raymond Cerf 1000 Sunset Drive
It is time for the residents of
changing their behavior in
change, either in policy or
leadership. "Public Health" does
NOT mean: "To hell with the
women."
Bird
Please accept this letter as an expression of disappointment and a caution to the readers of American Bird "October 11, 1972" expresses an opinion of an airplane which was qualitative and unnecessary. A human being, with a responsibility to judge only
To the Editor:
If the varsity athletic team keeps its players hidden from an audience, they well understand. It baffles me, then, why you wish the Pentagon to give out information (good people who would use it against me).
when he is qualified to do so. Phrases such as, "undoubtedly the worst flying record," "very time" and "most time" were very distasteful to me, as was the editorial "caroon." To judge the work of another man, be it dental technician or construction engineer. To judge the work of a thousand engineers is an overstimation of one's ability. A team of engineers and businessmen plan a large project in a different team evaluates it.
Howard W. Smith Associate Professor Aerospace Engineering
LETTERS POLICY
A letter to the secretary for typewritten documents, double-spaced and should not exceed 100 words is required. The secretary must specify a date of submission, and family and staff must provide their names, especially if老人需要 assistance from
*1 REF the MAD MEN STRONG STACK AGAIN BULLEV UP THE PERISHMENT MISSION AND
AGAIN LAST NEXT BATTLE. MY BODY THEY WERE CAME IN MY MASK AND
AGAIN LAST NEXT BATTLE.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
America's Pacemaking college newspaper
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Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
(C) 1972, Universal Press Syndicate