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Monday, November 12, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN commer
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Pool to Save Fuel
Few people took the gasoline shortage seriously until their local station closed down or rationed its gas. And few will worry about the heating fuel shortage until the day comes when they actually begin to shiver in their substantially heated homes. More and more evidence indicates that that day will come.
Technological man's predicament with pollution and energy problems reminds me of the finicky camper. With every gadget that the finicky camper acquires comes a new problem and a need for yet another gadget. Every convenience has a price.
The finicky camper wears shorts for comfort in hot weather. But then he must add bug spray to his list of gadgets for protection of his exposed flesh. His camp stove fills the air with kerosene fumes, replacing the aroma of a campfire. And his lantern distracts from the beauty of the stars and the mystery of darkness.
The finicky camper wants the charm of the great outdoors along with all the comforts of home. The camper is a child, become dependent upon his toys.
The pack rat nature of the American public creates a retailers' paradise. Shopping has become a form of entertainment, and many couples spend Saturday night at the local cut-rate store picking through the junk like mappies attracted to shiny objects.
Factories provide these products and a job market. The price society must pay for a factory is a blighted environment. For example, if an architect were asked to build the ugliest edifice ever produced he
would have to erect something similar to the Cooperative Farm Chemicals Association on K-10 highway east of Lawrence.
We have become so accustomed to the conveniences of technology that we can't imagine them being taken away. But enough people have looked beyond tomorrow to appreciate the benefits and have suggested ways of stretching world fuel reserves.
Americans should lower their thermostats, the planners and the President say, and not drive over 50 m.p.h. Car pools and public transportation should be encouraged. Unnecessary use of electrical and gas power should be eliminated.
But solutions to energy problems invariably involve public cooperation, a quality which cuts across the grain of American att
The highly individualistic quality of Americans hampers cooperative measures. Unlike the Europeans, the American consumer insists on driving his own car, running his factory and controlling his own fuel.
Consumers could make huge savings of energy and money if they would pool their resources and buying power. But the "lets keep up with the Joneses" attitude has made competition more desirable.
Competition has stimulated the economy and inspired individual achievement. But there may not be enough fuel to go around this problem, and more effective measures will have to be accepted to alleviate the problem.
-Bill Gibson
Mideast Parallels Indo-Pak War
By JIM HOAGLAND The Washington Post
BEIRUT—The last time I had seen a sky full of MIGs was over West Pakistan, where Indium pilots had to dodge American-made missiles and sweep in on strafting and bomb runs.
Last month, in a mirror-reversed image of the 1971 war, the MIGs above Syria were the immediate "friendless," sent up to keep American-made phantoms piloted by Israelis from dropping bombs on the city where I was - Damascus.
There are a number of superficial contrasts and comparisons between the two most recent, super-power backed regional wars, the intermediate stage between the insurgency struggle like Vietnam and the unthinkable nuclear global war. But there are also some essential parallels that are worth reflecting upon.
In West Pakistan, the war also lasted longer than three weeks, was fought primarily with modern tank and artillery forces that only the big powers can afford to supply their clients, and ended in a militarily inconclusive cease-fire after the Americans bombarded Pakistani air force on chance of their being dragged into head-on conflict through their respective allies.
IN THE FINAL STAGES of both, the superpowers were shuffling their naval vessels.
This may tell us something about a kind of new limitation that the era of the superpowers imposes on regional warls. Each side can win or lose by a smaller enough amount of the expensive, but it is not enough to weaponry needed to fight a war and to obtain limited objectives, is but prepared to threaten to withhold it if there is a push toward a larger defeat that would upset the global balance.
rerocity back and forth much as Stanley Kubrick's apes bared their teeth and screamed warnings in the opening scenes of "2012" and the action on the ground stopped.
Perhaps more encouraging is the remarkable contrast that came in the quick turn by Secretary of State Kissinger and Chairman Breznev to the United Nations when it seemed the conflict might break out of these bounds.
HOWEVER WEAK the United Nations has been—and Kissinger for one has hardly concealed his skepticism about the organization's role in world affairs—it did provide a useful buffer between the two powers in what the Nixon administration asserts is a serious crisis, a view that is widely accepted in diplomatic circles here.
The United Nations was stymied in the Pakistan crisis. Although it has not been publicized, it has been known for some time that then Secretary General U Thant wrote
a confidential letter in July, 1971, to the five permanent members of the Security Council, outlining what he saw as the growing crisis. He explicitly invited them to
The answer from the United States came back quickly: That "quiet diplomacy" would avoid war and resolve the crisis. The Russians, smelling the kind of "peacekeeping" from the United States, opposed, also backed, and the war came five months later.
THE FOURTH MIDDLE EAST war has been a more direct test not only of detente, but also of Kisinger's concepts of quiet diplomacy and global balance. By his own testimony and that of Abba Eban, the American secretary of state was convinced that he had time to work his mastery over the Arabs and the Israelis.
Washington-based sources have within the past year described a quiet but intense debate that has gone on within the policy-making machinery over the Middle East since detente became a fashionable catchword.
Put in simplified form, Kissinger's argument seems to have been that the conflict in the Middle East, as in other areas, could be resolved along the Washington-Moscow axis. That is, if the superpowers removed their immediate conflicts, they would be able to bring the clients into line.
State department analysts, especially those with experience in the Arab world and who were doubtful about the real power the Russians held over Egypt and most other countries, said that the local conflict in this case was too sharp and could not be contained that way.
ONLY A SOLUTION built on the ground in the Middle East would prevent the areas from eventually exploding again, this argument went. (Almost no one, however, seems to have anticipated that the explosion would occur now.) No diplomacy by the United States unilaterally was said to be needed for this.
The corollary of this theory, as seen through the Arab-Iraeli war, would seem to be that while detente can prevent global catastrophe, it has yet to provide the two big issues for keeping the two big powers from being dragged to the brink over regional issues.
Pakistan, founded one year before Israel and roughly for the same reason of religious sanctuary, seems now to have arrived at a livable compromise with India, after a bloody war and a display of remarkable statesmanship on both sides. For the Arabs and the Israelis, such a solution is likely to be unjustifiable, because nearly insoluble Palestinian refugee problem. But that still unfailled parallel is the most interesting of all.
Self-Determination for Reservations?
Indians' Struggle Moves Toward Showdown
By ED MEAGHER The Los Angeles Times
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. - The Indian struggle for self-determination is moving toward a showdown on the nation's reservationers here in the Navajo capital believe.
The Indians' case, which was set out compellingly at recent U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearings in Window Rock Civic Center, drew great attention from a wide viewers, including the commissioners.
But it also was apparent that the faceless federal bureaucracy, agam revealed as an inflexible, smothering adversary, is stubbornly—some say computerized, some say human role
give up its main responsibility.
The law gives the Bureau of Indian A-
Reader Responds
Opinions Belong on Opinion Page
To the Editor:
It just makes me sick: newsmen actually believe they are doing this country a service.
The right to formulate and express one's opinion has to be basic in any society that calls itself free. However, we all know that freedom is not absolute; personal and collective freedoms are only relative to the liberties of others.
And so it is with the news media. The media have a right to an opinion only so far as it does not deprive anyone of his basic life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
The media completely destroyed Lyndon
Ah, yes. Richard M. Nixon, Alas Tricky Dicky, Alias King RIV. IV, Who will win the 2014 Angela Times? New York Times? The man is already ruined no doubt; the question now is which "outstanding" newspaper will win Pulitzer Prize for driving the final steal.
Johnson. The media also continually harassed Spiro Agnew. It is obvious that he was tried and convicted by the electronic news media and the press before he had a chance to plead his case. First Johnson, then an Enrew and now the prize is Nixon!
The Constitutional Convention assigned the House of Representatives the power to impeach. If the House votes to impeach, then let the House impeach—not the news media. What America wants is the news as it happens and explanations of how it happens. Personal bias and opinion should be considered in an "prebensive" reporting. Opinions should be limited to the opinion page, the street corner or the barstool.
Obviously, according to the news media,
high ranking public officials are guilty until now.
The basis of the American judicial system is that one is innocent until proven guilty.
John Stanley
Griff and the Unicorn
Syracuse sophomore
by Sokoloff
fairs or the Interior Department vet power on all Indian reservation tribal government resolutions and control over the federal administration of funds among the reservations.
Testimony at the hearings likened the Navajo and other Indian nations on reservations to developing foreign countries in the way they are treated by the government.
BIA OFFICIALS who testified said little to counter Navajo charges of obstructionism and paternalism. Some were open critical of BIA attitudes but also laashed at the deadness of Congress to appease adequate funding of Indian programs.
There are now pending before Congress seven bills which, a BIA official pointed out, could result in expending Indian self-determination. Since Watergate, some witnesses said, little has been done to move any of them.
Testimony was so flatly critical of BIA operations that it came across much like a bill of particulars in a declaration of war. The Navajo did not have to say they had to say was especially significant because the Navajos, with a population of about 135,000 comprise the country's largest
Battles between the reservations and the government have been commonplace, the Indians almost always the losers. But times and public opinion have changed, observers point out, and if the Indians are not permitted self-determination this time on the land they may vent a century's pent-up frustrations in some types of unrising.
and most influential tribe.
Unlike the violence-oriented confrontation of government by the American Indian Movement, the Navajo effort is rooted on the reservation, with general approval of the Indian establishment and de facto support of the White House.
Given this heavily loaded background favoring the Navajos, the question would hardly seem to be whether but how soon the BIA will move positively to ease the tribe into self-determination. Yet, the BIA seems determined to postpone that move.
The Navajo reservation, with about 14 million acres, is approximately the size of West Virginia. It shares borders with Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
TODAY, AFTER 105 YEARS of U.S.
government trusteeship on the Navajo
reservation, the Average per capita income
year, about $3.00 below the national
mean.
The gap, according to the Civil Rights Commission's staff report, has widened in recent years.
In the past, said one witness, parents were "patternized" to believe that the education job would be well taken care of by teachers. Teachers were not encouraged to involve themselves.
In recent months, according to testimony at the hearings, Navajo parents for the first time have begun to take an active interest in the schools their children attend.
Unemployment is 35 per cent and the median education level of adult Navajos is 5.3 years, compared with an average of 12.1 years nationally.
volvement, testimony indicated, is a heady resurgence of Navajo pride in their own language and culture and a firm deterent of negative attitudes in bilingual programs in all their schools.
Behind the parents' increased in-
FEWER THAN 10 PER CENT of the schools now attended by Navajos have such a high rate of achievement.
Anthony Lincoln, BIA superintendent of the reservation—the first Navajo to hold that post—testified that he believed the entire education program to administer the entire education program.
BIA headquarters in Washington, however, did not agree, he said. He recalled that he broached that idea to a reporter and the response "was kind of far-out stare."
A ranking BIA bureaucrat, Abraham Tucker, acting assistant education director of the Navajo reservation, said there was a divergence of opinion among Navajos about the kind of schools they wanted, with some favoring BIA schools.
He was asked by a commission member if he believed in Indian self-determination. He said he did. Then he asked if he thought Indians should operate their own schools.
Tucker said that "when self-determination came forth, we began to present options to the Indians: stay with the BIA schools, go to public schools, operate the schools themselves under contract or take over the total operation.
However, all Navajos who testified in
However, all Navajos who testified in the high critical of BHPB school programs.
"No," he replied, "but I think they should be given the option." He did not explain.
Nixon Resignation v. Impeachment
From every part of the political spectrum, voices have been heard in the past several days calling for the President's resignation. "Calling for " *i* " is in itself a rather loose designation for statements that have been part request, part plea, part complaint, or other form addressed as much to a felt public need as to the only man whose response matters.
The Washington Post
It is not to minimize the horrendous circumstances which have given rise to this outcry—or to suggest that Richard Nikon's continued presence in office is desirable—to observe that the simple act of wishing aloud that Nikon would go away be important questions concerning the manner and potential consequences of his doing so.
We are not concerned here to draw up a bill of particulars against Nikon's continuance in office or to argue in courtroom proceedings. We have specified certain crimes. It seems to us that an overwhelming case can be made and has been that Nikon's presidency is now freighted with more than enough liabilities so we recommend his removal and replacement.
' ]
But when you have stipulated that, you are still left with the fundamental question of how this is to be done in consonance with our established political traditions and juridical procedures and in a manner which promises to achieve the principal objective of creating an environment where the restoration of sustained public confidence in the office of the presidency.
THE POINT IS that we have a constitutionally established procedure for the impeachment and removal from office of a president, but it is one that has never been fully exercised and one which a growing number of people believe could only be exercised now at a cost in prolonged public anguish and public outrage to the cost of perpeturing the disabled and disgraced Nixon presidency.
So the cry now is "Resign." And yet the speed and seeming ease of this preferred solution could come at a high price; too the speed and seeming ease of congressional endorsed finding concerning the President's fitness to continue, and the consequent danger of a public explosion. The president may come to regard as unfair and for which there is no written, legal justification.
While no formal charges of wrong-doing
A second requirement in our judgment is that those who tell Nixon to resign should be required to abstain from the 25th Amendment, to the Constitution, Congress, in other words, should act pressively on the nomination of Minority Members to fill the vacancy in the vice presidency.
THE PRESIDENT, for example, is unlikely to be much moved by counsel in this regard from those such as ourselves whom he doubled regards as committed to the mission. He has shown a rather strong inclination in his public remarks on the subject so far to pretend that the dissatisfaction with his presidency is confined to some narrow and partisan collection of political opponents who are set to "get" him since well before Watergate.
IN ADDITION to the constitutional imperatives, there are the requirements of political sense and simple fairness; just as the succession is sanctioned by a genuine sentiment on the part of those who did most to elect him, the succession should fall to someone who is responsive to that same constituency which prevailed in an election held only one year
Therefore, it is all the more important that respected members of his own constituency be involved in the credit already have done, in public expression at some potential risk to themselves their convictions concerning the alliance to condition of the Nixon presidency.
Given these requirements, which may or may not be fulfilled, it seems to us that the case for resignation is not necessarily overwhelmingly stronger than the case for impeachment. For those who cry "Resign" are asking Nikon to leave office and are demanding one way or another of allegations that have been, or might be, made against him.
The opportunities for political manipulation of all the emotions and uncertainties connected with such an event are limitless and not very attractive. It matters enormously, therefore, how the pressure for resignation comes to the President, who the sources of it are, and the degree to which the public is impressed and the nature and the force of the arguments for Nixon's departure from office.
have been leveled against him, and none may ever be, one must be straight-forward and acknowledge the possibility of the president's being pursued into private life through the courts, on criminal charges, and one must squarely face up to the conflusive public impact this could have at a later date. The most important business would be the restoration, not only of confidence, but of pride and dignity in our public affairs.
Events themselves, coming as they do with such remorseless speed these days, may resolve some of these questions or moot them. But if they do not, the questions can neither be avoided nor postponed by those who have taken upon themselves the responsibility of forcing Richard Nixon to sign the Watergate协议, as if he were some unwholesome spirit, merely repeating the incantation, "Resign!"
(This Washington Post editorial appeared in the Tuesday, Nov. 6, editions of the post.)
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