4
Monday, October 15, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Making War
Nothing was there. Just dirty sand and a few scrubby almost-bushes jutting up irregularly, and you wondered why the 6:30 news as showing this film clip of sand when so many people were breaking—Spiro Agnew's resignation and the Middle East war.
But the TV camera then moved from the sandy nothing to helpless tanks that were overturned and naked after the day's battle, and you realized that the nothing was really war. And then the camera showed the distorted bodies—whether Arab or Israeli, you really couldn't tell—sometimes curled painfully into human balls, sometimes sprawled face down next to the tanks.
And both sides told the TV world how many planes they had shot down, how much land they had lost and how much enemy thought they would win the war.
And the Syrians wailed about dead civilians in Damascus and Golda Meir warned Jordan to stay out of the war and to remember
1961. She said if the Russians didn't supplied the Arabs with SAMs and other military armaments, none of
this would be happening now
This was a very simple explanation, convenient for Americans to believe. So the United States began supplying Israel with arms to keep the status quo and the ever-important balance of power perfectly intact. The home audience even saw the plane carrying U.S. military supplies take off for Israel.
And everyone in the room who was watching TV decided whose side he was on, just as if the war were a Paul Newman movie and there were good guys and bad guys, and someone would win in the next hour and a half, even though the hero might die in the end.
And the United States is sending more ammunition to the Israelis because they cannot survive without military aid.
And the Soviet Union is sending more missiles and planes to the Arabs because they cannot survive without military aid.
And soon, if the United States and the Soviet Union insist on keeping their balance of power intact, all that will be left in the Middle East besides dirty sand and scrubby bushes will be military aid.
Carol Gwinn
BY ROBERT J. DONOVAN
U.S. Politics Faces Fragmentation
The Los Angeles Times
Parallel Italian, But Direction Japanese
NEW YORK—"Right now," said Zhigui Brzezinski, a distinguished Columbia University scholar in the field of government and foreign affairs, "we are in effect undergoing a process of Italianization of U.S. politics.
"The great danger to America today is that in this Italianized political system we can drift along and muddle through the fractures of the fight to confront increasingly great problems.
"In the long run, an effectively functioning government is the sine qua non of political and social stability, but I can envision a situation in which in the next three years we will be confronted with an eventually pervailing crisis. We know that in those三年will not be in the field of domestic policy but in the realm of foreign affairs.
"We have basic some basic choices to make in foreign policy. A paralyzed, demoralized and hostile nation."
"In the last few years or so it has been going along without any effective government or political power. Yet society gets by. The economy grows. But the government is not able to make choices. It is an inoperative government, to use Mr. Ziegler's word. We are in a bad government. Cleavages are developing among the three branches. Instead of co-operating they are often in conflict.
"We are facing a situation in which political power in the United States is fragmented," Breznetski said in an interview recently. "The administration is in a position of total control in America. Yet society continues to function, the economy continues to grow."
however, cannot make these choices.
Brezinski has supported a number of the Nixon-Kissinger initiatives. He believes, however, that in trying to reduce the pure anti-Communist element in American foreign policy the President and the military have been removing the moral content from this policy and hence risk losing public support or a return to isolationism.
"Mr. Kissinger can appeal to as many constitutives as he wishes. He can tell us how to behave, and did when he talked to the United Nations and to the senators, but even he will not be able to make basic choices because choice depends on objectives and a sense of legitimacy.
Is this a criticism of the President and his Secretary of State?
Secretary of State
"To some extent." Brzezinski replied.
"To some extent," Bierzalek said, "the United States, he said, are undergoing very basic changes in the way they operate and the way they select their leadership. This is creating a change in the American political landscape." Then, in the country is going more conservative.
"We see the dilemma surfacing in the very complex problem of civil liberty in the Soviet Union. People are confused. They see it as a political freedom, not an union. Yet for the last 30 years the public was called on to support high defense expenditure and make other sacrifices because it was told and believed that really nothing can be done at stake. You cannot have it both ways.
A key aspect of called power realist policy in the United States. The public will consider foreign policy not to involve the quest for world community, which is much less respect for human rights, but will increasingly regard foreign policy as a game played by a few practitioners almost as an end in itself."
"In a democracy like America, foreign policy must be supported through moral leadership."
"The political phenomenon in the late 1960s was not the beginning of a new radical wave in this country but the decline of the liberal phase. The New Left was the last gasp of a liberalism which had outspent itself. Over the years, liberalism had won its objectives. After this happened it could no longer sustain itself. It was empty."
"Suppose someone were to write a script in which you had a vice president under a cloud, a president in an amenable position, to put it mildly, and some of his officials in charge who were supposed to illegal acts. And suppose at the same time you had an opposition party in which the choice of leadership to lie between an ideology"—meaning George McGovern—"and a politician who has a past which to be publicly responsible"—meaning Edward M. Kennedy.
"The Democratic candidate in 1976 will have to emphasize work, the family, religion and, increasingly, patriotism, if he has any desire to be elected. Kennedy went to visit (George) Wallace. I think that is part of the trend."
"Now we are witnessing the end of liberalism, and some new framework will have to emerge. In the meantime the dominant mood is bound to be conservative.
"You would say that such a script was unbelievable."
Author of a number of books on world affairs, Braziness, son of a Polish diplomat, is Herbert H. Lehman professor of government at Columbia. Currently he is on leave, serving as director of the Triennial Commission, an international body responsible for enactment of American European-Japanese co-operation in a variety of major fields.
"The new conservatism clearly will not go back to laissez-faire. It will be a philosophical conservatism. It will be a kind of conservative statism or managerism. There will be conservative values but not political values, between the state and the corporations."
He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard, where he later taught for several years before becoming director of Columbia's Institute on Communist Affairs. During the Johnson administration he was a member of the State Department's policy planning council.
"TSK TSK!"
To a listener the picture evoked was that of the United States moving in the direction northwest.
Consumers Are Unsafe
This may be the time for Ralph Nader to investigate . . . consumers.
IN THE MARKETPLACE, the seat belt
For sheer unreliability, you and I as consumers beat anything in the market. We want to be safe, safe and safe and mean it. Yet many of us persist in abusing our bodies by smoking cigarettes and drinking too much, not to mention taking unnecessary risks by not wearing gloves while working with them.
The lack of enthusiasm for auto safety devices was evident as early as 1955. Ford vehicles were sold in the 1960s and safety options known as Lifeguard and promoted them heavily in its advertising campaign for the 56 models. Among the options were two factory-installed seat belts.
Their skepticism appears to be well founded. Should belts can significantly reduce passenger injuries in auto accidents, but in some areas of the country as few as one per cent of drivers would them Safety Institute for Institute for Safety conducted a study last year.
By JOHN HENRY
And although there is mounting evidence to suggest a strong correlation between circulatory disease and heavy intake of foods with a high animal fat content, the growing popularity of hamburger joints and ice cream stores suggests that many people prefer foods with an immediate gratification of their appetites than warding off hardening of the arteries.
"With so many dangers confronting me, why worry about smoking?" is a response heard sometimes from cigarette smokers, says Dr. Alan Meyer, one of three researchers who highly considered motivational research for the Public Education Association.
BUT PERHAPS THE BEST example of consumer perversion remains the seat belt. The 1974 cars are so designed that they won't start until passengers in the front seat have "buckled up". Knowledgeable observers know that most motorists who chafe at the idea of being confined by belts will find ways to circumvent the new system.
Despite the widespread impression that "Smoking is dangerous to your health," as the cigarette packages say, total cigarete sales are growing at a rate two to three times faster than the population, according to John C. Maxwell Jr., chief tobacco industry analyst for What First Securities, Inc. The rate of increase is about the same.
Ironically, at least some students of consumer behavior think that the growing awareness among the public of the hazards associated with using a wide variety of products may have produced a fatalism about such things as cigarettes and seat belts.
In the late 1960s, Ford began offering improved brakes on its cars for $200 extra and for about the same price, a television set for the back seat. Hardly anyone ordered the better brakes, a company official said, or the TV set: "They went like butteuses."
But after allowances are made for the "con job" business may be doing on the public, the慕管帷 conclusion is that consumer cigarettes are more vulnerable for many of their woes. Even ant-smoking forces concede that 95 per cent of U.S. adults now believe cigarettes are harmful. Probably an equal number realize that seat belts—even if confining—can save lives.
option was a dud, Lee Iacocca, now Ford's president, said several years ago.
It may be hard to convince yourself that you need seat belts if auto travel is portrayed as that good, safety expert, who is comfortable with the carfans had purposely set out to make the seat belt-shoulder harness apparatus hard to adjust and uncomfortable to wear, they might well have ended up with a broken equipment featured in this year's models.
"It's discouraging," says a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a non-profit group funded by auto casualty firms. "There's so much money spent on advertising seat belts, yet there is no proof of evidence that it's doing any good."
THE TENDENCY OF AUTOMAKERS, of course, has been to romanticize cars in much the same way as a recent Chevrolet Camaro. You might get to you, the road goes anywhere you say.[19]
Free University lives and, believe it or not, has some funds—at least temporarily. In addition, its future does not appear bleak. It may be a sign of progress on the front page of the Kansas Monday.
The financial support I speak of is in the form of emergency funding being provided by Student Union Activities. SUA is currently considering the possibility of extensive future involvement in Free U. We are aware that Free U has in fact had problems with organization and leadership, and others hopefully will provide leadership in the future and SUA will help with organization and programming.
Reader Responds Free U Lives
True, Free U has fallen into some hard times. Until very recently credit for the mere existence of any program at all belonged to Susan Lominaka. Due to her interest and hard work the program occasionally is functional. In our fall outline. Information on all these courses is currently available from the Information Center.
Steven Warren President of SUA
The role of SUA in the Free U' s future has not been clearly defined yet. We encourage with suggestions or interest the choice of service or Susan at the Information Center.
Tidy Living Can Be a Real Mess
By JACK SMITH
The Los Angeles Times
Among the other household chores I undertook last week was the periodical winnowing of my library, a collection which contains a wealth of interesting times seems to be more chaff than meat.
Still, I find it hard to part with a book, whatever its merit. If I dispose of one that has been of absolutely no use for 10 years, it becomes indispensable the next day.
I enjoy being surrounded by books. They give me a small sense of security against the growing perimeter my ignorance has as a defense. I am the doomed French fort in "Bau-Geste."
The trouble is, I can rarely find the book I need at the moment. Recently I had occasion to consult James Thurber's classic work on sex “Is Sex Negature?” I knew he it; I knew it was in the room with me; a presence as strong as the scent of musk. It had been in the house for 20 years. But it was not to be found.
FINALLY I PHONED the downtown library asked for the literature department.
"Do you have 'Is Sex Necessary?' I asked the woman who answered. There was a moment's silence. It occurred to me that she was probably used to wise guys, and thought she had one on the line. "By James Thurber," I added quickly.
"Oh." she said. "I'll see."
She had a copy and agreed to hold it for
me until closing time, an hour away. I had my wife drive me downtown and go around the block while I went in for the book. The next day I found my own copy, on the show floor, in the back room where it reaches from my typewriter. By the time I got the library book back the fine was $2.30.
THERE IS NO PROBLEM in which a man is alone. The other day, right in the middle of my latest reorganization, I received a letter from Edgar E. Banybur, of Glendora, a certified public accountant with a mind as tidy as my own.
It was that column I had written about “is S Sex Necessary,” he said, that had gotten him to thinking about Thurber’s War. War is an important word, and the entire subject of orderliness vs. chaos.
That very night Banbury organizes his life. He not only sorted out all of his records, but also his tapes, snapshots and movies, and hit upon the extraordinary idea of classifying all of his books according to the Dewey decimal system, like the
Banbury realized how deep his trouble was one night when some of his guests wanted to hear a record from "My Fair Lady," and he was still looking for it, much to his disgust, when the last guest departed the house.
He put biography (900) in the front bedroom) cookbooks (600) in the hallway; religion (200) in the west back bedroom; and so on. Pornography (unclassified) and so on.
all of his accounting books he put out in the lawn shed.
FOR A MOMENT, AS I READ, it seemed once that Banbury must be some kind of a friend.
"But the trouble is," he said, "that every time my wife rearranges the furniture or buys a new piece, some part of one of our collections gets rearranged. Our books are not going to be the same being the Spanish style highboy in the living room, in which my wife wants to shelve only pretty or expensive-looking books. Most of our art books (Dewey 700) are there. Unfortunately some of our art book are houses that doesn't want showing in the living room.
At the moment, Banbury his wife was in England, and was taking care of the children.
"You can imagine how upsetting it is when me have to furniture and its curtains and cut flowers."
"She expects me to vacuum the carpets once a week, but I am only going to do that on the last day before she gets back. That will be a big day for me—making the bed for the first time in a month, vacuuming, dusting and hiding the bourbon . . ."
For all his ingenuity, I have a feeling there is something illustrated about Banbury. My guess is that when his wife comes home and reshuffles the house again, she'll find the bourbon and he won't be able to find the pornography.
Weather-New Weapon
By CLAIBORNE PELL
The reality of the threat, and the need for action to forestall it, has already been recognized by the Senate. By an overwhelming vote of 82 to 10, the Senate on July 11 adopted my resolution urging the government to prohibit the use or development of any environmental or geophysical warfare techniques.
That is why, in my view, it is imperative that the U.S. government take the leadership among lockdowns and warfare against the Pakistan's box of environmental warfare before it is too late.
By CLARENCE BELLE
Special to the Los Angeles Times
The unease or devastation from a whole new kind of warfare—environmental warfare—is moving all too rapidly from the realm of science fiction toward reality.
THE PROSPECTIVE RANGE of such warfare is awesome—from simple rain-making to possible earthquake stimulation, to the controlling of ocean currents or the creation of tidal waves. In real-world direct design attempts of such activities, the danger of unforeseeable repercussions from tampering with complex and not fully understood forces.
My own concern over the prospects of environmental warfare, I regret to say, was aroused by reports that our government waged a war on chemical techniques in the war in Southeast Asia.
"The National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere—a Presidentially appointed body—in its first annual report to the President and the Congress recommended that the United States "descale all international efforts to pursue purposes."
The National Academy of Science's review panel on weather and climate modification recommended that the United States take international leadership through the United Nations to dedicate all weather modification to peaceful purposes.
Unofficial reports in the press indicated that the United States was utilizing rainmaking techniques in an apparent effort to muddy the Ho Chi Minh Trail to bog down the 'other side' in a sea of enemy tanks and rainmaking efforts, in the monsoon climate of Southeast Asia, may have played a part in the floods that devastated the diked riclands of North Vietnam. And there were reports that a refinement of this weather warfare was a method of precipitation in corrosive rainfall on the trucks, radar and equipment of the enemy.
I HAVE NOT BEEN ALONE in my concern about the prospect that environmental warfare might become a part of the arsenal of future wars. Within the past year these distinguished organizations have appealed for caution:
The Federation of American Scientists
bv Sokoloff
Griff and the Unicorn
”
urged the President to make a full public disclosure of any offensive military weather-modification activities in Southeast Asia. That appeal, like my own earlier requests, was met with a non-substantive response.
A disastrous crop failure in the Soviet Union, placed that nation in a state of despair.
A cyclical change in ocean currents off
Peru devastated that nation's anchovy harvest, one of the principal world sources of oil, with worldwide economic repercussions.
The North Atlantic Assembly, composed of members of parliament from NATO nations, adopted a resolution recommending a treaty to ban environmental modification except for peaceful purposes.
WITH THIS BACKGROUND, the Senate
Senate Relation, Committee and
Regional Affairs committees are
working to ensure that the legislature
These were natural events. They demonstrate man's increasing dependence on the whims of nature. God forbid that such events should ever depend on the strategic planning and technological capabilities of any nation.
A drought in West Africa is threatening the lives of millions.
If these words go unheard, perhaps recent natural events should speak loudly to the administration of the potential horror of environmental warfare:
(Clalborne Pell, the junior Senator from
Albany, is a member of the Foreign Relation
Committee.)
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily
examination papers. Mail subscription rates: $4
for examinations and $8 for post-dismissal.
At Lawrence, KA 60045. Student subscription
rate: $1.5 a semester paid in student activity fee.
Advertised offered to all students without regard
pressed are not necessarily those of the Universi-
ties.
NEWS STAFF
News adviser .. Susanne Shaw
Editor Bob Simpson
Business Advisor . . Mel Adams
Business Manager
Steven Liggett