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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Wednesday, April 9, 1986
Finally, one of the lingering bastions of this country's racism is stepping down.
Last week, George C. Wallace, who became a symbol of segregation in the United States, announced that he would not seek a fifth term as governor of Alabama.
In 1963, his rally cry was "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
That was a mountain he took too long to climb.
None too soon
It is fortunate that those words did not fester into reality, although Wallace was an obstacle in the path that lead to equality.
governor of Alabama. "I have climbed my last political mountain," Wallace
By 1964, almost 10 years after the U.S. Supreme Court
It is clear by his words that Wallace thought he was saving whites from a tainted world that was open to blacks.
declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional, Wallace still refused to integrate schools in Alabama.
While speaking to a white audience in 1970, Wallace said, "If the black bloc vote determines who will be governor of Alabama this year, they'll determine every governor for the next 50 years. Then who will stand up for you?"
Wallace was a racist in his own right. Even though he later considered himself a changed man on the race question, history cannot wipe clean the state of his segregationist politics. It is fortunate that he has slid down his political mountain.
A familiar tune
If at first you don't succeed, then try, try again.
At least this seems to be the motto of the Kansas City Power & Light Co., which last week asked the Kansas Corporation Commission to reconsider that part of its rate increase request turned down only six months ago.
The KCC had cut by more than two-thirds the initial rate increase request to protect consumers from the follies of the three utility groups that built the state's white elephant.
Months of testimony revealed a pattern of mismanagement and miscalculations by KCP&L and its partners, which the KCC said the utilities should have to absorb.
KCP&L is crying poverty again because of the horrendous costs incurred in the construction of the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant.
These groups face a difficult task in the light of improved performance by the utilities, which have finally managed to get the controversial plant operational and have streamlined their operations.
The utilities have a case pending before the state's Supreme Court arguing that the KCC's decision was unprecedented and illegal.
They might not be able to build a nuclear power plant efficiently, but they deserve credit for their persistence. The battle also promises to bring out the various groups of interveners that are no less persistent in their resistance to unreasonable increases.
Deterrence. Punishment. The terms dominate the debate on capital punishment.
Chances are that in the long run, the utilities will win out. The losers will be the consumers, who will pay higher rates, and the state, which will face yet another difficulty in attracting new businesses.
Distasteful politics
But another issue lurked in the shadows as the Kansas Legislature this session argued the merits of the death penalty.
Election year.
When the death penalty was passed by the House on March 28, its supporters ignored Gov. John Carlin's promise that he would veto any death penalty bill, as he has done four times since 1979.
Death penalty advocates have no better chance of overriding a veto this year. But they have a chance to go on record in favor of a measure that remains popular among voters.
Speaker of the House Mike Hayden, R-Atwood, promoted the death penalty with enthusiasm this session. He amended the original bill, which would apply the death penalty only to those who kill corrections or law enforcement officers, to include those convicted of any premeditated murder.
Hayden's aggressive support of the bill doesn't ensure enough votes to override a veto. But it does publicly link
his name in support of the death penalty.
This is of no small importance. If Hayden grabs the Republican nomination for governor, then he's quite likely to face LL Gov. Tom Docking in November. Docking has said that he too would veto every death penalty measure.
Political maneuvering like this is to be expected in an election year and is bad enough when applied to school finance or pari-mutuel betting.
But it leaves a bad taste when used with an issue like the death penalty, which demands statesmanship and not politicking.
Despite its popularity with voters, the death penalty is bad policy. It's expensive — more expensive than keeping a killer in prison for the rest of his life — and it does not deter potential murderers.
Worse, the state itself becomes a killer. And legislators, whatever their motives, become accomplices as the state takes a human life with the same bureaucratic sureness with which it revokes a driver's license.
Because of technical errors, this editorial was only partially printed yesterday.
News staff
News star
Michael Totty...Editor
Lauretta McMillen...Managing editor
Chris Barber...Editorial editor
Crystal McCurry...Campus editor
David Giles...Sports editor
Wilfredo Lee...Photo editor
Susanne Shaw...General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Brett McCabe...Business manager
David Nixon...Retail sales manager
Jim Williamson...Campus manager
Lori Eckert...Classified market
Xolina Times...Production manager
Pallen Lee...National manager
John Oberzan...Sales and marketing adviser
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Persecution transcends denomination
Clergy support of Sandinistas odd
"Curiouser and curiouser" said Alice of the things she saw in Wonderland. The U.S. clergy's defense of the Sandinistas is equally curious in light of that regime's repression of many elements of the Nicaraguan religious community.
Apolologists of the Sandistas claim there is no religious persecution by the government in that socialist's paradise. Reports by priests and defectors fortunate enough to get out of Nicaragua alive testify otherwise. What the defenders of the Sandistas say are only blinders or errors are actually actions of a policy of religious harassment and persecution.
Catholic clergy members who dare criticize the Sandistas are beaten up and discredited. Worship services are interrupted by government-controlled turbals divinas, or divine mobs, who shout anti-church slogans.
The popularity of the peasant-born Archbishop of Nicaragua Miguel Obando y Bravo, a leader in the fight against Somalia who now leads the fight against the Sandinistas, has panicked the Sandinistas. They've confiscated the Catholic newspaper, shut down the Catholic radio station, expelled pro-Obano priests from the country and banned Obano himself from speaking on television or radio.
Miguel D'Escoto, a Maryknoller
Paul Campbell
Staff columnist
priest who serves as the Sandistaff foreign minister, has said of the Catholic services that "what we are talking about is not only religious activity, we are also talking about treasonous activity."
Protestant and Jewish groups also have suffered at the hands of the Sandinistas. Humberto Belli, a former editor of the heavily censored La Prensa, the only independent newspaper in Nicaragua, documented the harassment of the Protestants in his book "Persecution of Protestants in Nicaragua." The Neglected Story."
In the early days of the revolution, Belli wrote, "the Protestant pastors were conscious of their vulnerability and tried to abstain from . . . commentaries touching the political field."
Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan Interior Minister, has since said in Radio Sandino broadcasts that the Protestants are financed by the CIA and should be dealt with by "police actions" in order to "neutralize them."
Jewish businesses have been seized. Death threats have been made against prominent Jewish community members. Most notoriously, as reported by Shoshanna Byron for the Wall Street Journal, a Managua synagogue was confiscated and burned. Another has been converted into a Sandimita social club.
The only response to the claim that there is no longer any persecution of the Jews in Nicaragua is that most of them have managed to flee the country.
The Sandinistas think their internal order is protected by harassing religious communities, publicly embarking priests on Sandinista television and confiscating churches.
This is not to say that all the churches receive this treatment. The Sandinistas have established a "popular church," which is designed to "confuse the people," according to Miguel Bolanos Hunter, a former security official for the Sandinistas. It tries to espouse the Sandinista line while providing a veneer of religious respectability.
Every religious practice becomes subject to the ideological thrusts of the Sandinistas. Most recently, NBC News reported that Jesus himself had been revolutionized — the body of a Sandinista soldier complete with fatigues and a rifle has replaced the
crucified Jesus on the cross.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, members of the U.S. clergy — including the Maryknollers, some Jesuit organizations and the World Council of Churches — continue to labor under the naive delusion that the Sandinistas are committed to freedom of religion and pluralism.
The argument that closing down churches is made necessary by the civil war is ludicrous. If nothing else, the repression and harassment of the churches intensifies the resolution of the opposition.
U. S. churches have been politically influential in previous contexts. Their struggle against the tortuous extremes of the Argentine military provided needed support and comfort to the grieving mothers of the sons and daughters who disappeared. Their aid to families who have suffered at the hands of the Guatemalan military is another courageous testimony of faith.
But in Nicaragua, the church support of the Sandinistas presents a curious situation, curious in that the Sandinistas are committed Marxist-Leninists bent on spreading the communist revolution, which is inherently atheist, to their neighbors. Such support isn't just curious; it's damning.
Mailbox
Wrong side of rally
Friday I sat down on Wesco Beach to attend the KU rally for divestment from South Africa. Obviously I was on the wrong side of the street.
Certain members speaking at the rally took it upon themselves to segregate the crowd — those on their side of the street in front of Strong Hall were anti-apartheid, and those of us on the Beach were not. I think this presumption was a grave mistake.
I was digusted at being branded a racist and a supporter of aparthied by certain speakers. I became more and more angry and defensive when someone shouted at me how comfortable I looked on the other side, as if my presence there implied that I live in an impenetrable bubble of apathy.
The self-righteous and condemning attitude of the demonstrators did not aid their appeals for support, instead it broadened the division between active and passive opponents in the race. They implied that all members of the rally employed these tactics; they did not.
I admire the efforts of the KU Committee on South Africa to increase the awareness of apartheid and the need for KU to divest. I also hope they realize there is a reservoir of support if only they can learn the right way to tap it
Karen Schmidt
Karen Schmiller
Leawood senior
Timothy Cooper
Great Britain graduate student
Another side to story
This is in response to Adam Herman, Michael Geller and Malek Bouzid, members of Total Response Agenda who wrote a letter in the April 3 Kansan denouncing the General Union of Palestini-
nian Students.
These three find that the latest peaceful Palestinian rally on campus was an "incredible act." They go on to draw a bizarre parallel between the Palestinian students at KU and the Palestinians in the Middle East who "threaten American interests there."
Frankly, I do not see how a peaceful march can threaten U.S. interests anywhere, except perhaps in the mind of paranoid people such as Herman, Geller and Bouzid. If some Palestinian students have marched on our campus, it is because they are denied that right in their homeland by the occupying Israeli forces.
TRA accuses the GUPS of "freely and willingly deceiving the students of KU." Obviously, this accusation was made on the hypothesis that the rest of the students at KU share the view of TRA members. Did these members conduct interviewing asks KU students their thoughts about the so-called deceitful rally? Until they do, TRA's groundless accusations can only reflect the prejudice and imbecility of its members.
These three also say Israel, a country that was started by the gun and rules by the gun like its racist sister South Africa, is a democratic country. A democratic country with a grazy sense of logic
— bombard here and there, kill innocents to “punish terrorists” and violate the sovereignty of less armed countries.
If other countries behaved like Israel, Spain would bomb Blairzir in France to punish the "terrorist" Basques. Italy would bomb Paris because France keeps receiving members of the United States would bomb the Republic of Ireland at least once a year to punish the IRA.
And last July we should have
seen New Zealand launch its air force to bomb the Matignon hotel and the Elisee in Paris in retaliation for the sunken Rainbow Warrior.
The problem with Israel is that it wants everything — all the territories; Jerusalem in its totality; none of the Palestinians; subdued, divided and backward Arab neighbors; and a yearly $5 billion from U.S. taxpayers.
TRA members say, "Palestinian Land Day is a fallacy, since the land that they claim already is known . . . as the state of Israel." The question is not whether the Palestinian Land Day is a fallacy, but whether the establishment of Israel is a legality.
Today when a person denounces Israel, he immediately is accused with that 33-year-old boring label of anti-Semitism, regardless of the veracity of the denouncement.
The rulers of Israel "make justice hateful and wrist it from its straight course, building Zion in bloodshed and Jerusalem in iniquity. Her rulers sell justice, her prosecution for a bribe" (Mirah 3:9-11).
Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah,
Jesus of Nazareth, all would be denounced as anti-Semitic today.
In all fairness, I think it is time for all Americans to hear the victim's side of the story.
The members of TRA seemed offended by the literature in front of Stauffer-Flint Hall. Why? Because they want the criminal actions perpetrated by Israel (Sabra and Chatilla, among others) to be hidden from the U.S. public.
Understanding vital
Louqmane Tidjani Algiers, Algeria, graduate student
We would like to congratulate Adam Herman, Michael Geller and Malek Bozuid for proving in
their letter (Kansan, April 3) that bigotry is alive and well on the KU campus.
As American students, we cannot understand why these American students were offended by the General Union of Palestinian Students simply recognizing Palestinian Land Day. We cannot deny the fact that Hatem Husseini is a controversial speaker. Agreement with speakers should not be the basis for an invitation to speak on campus.
As respectable students, we should not infringe upon anyone's freedoms, be they academic or constitutional. The GUPS had as much a right to recognize Palestinian Land Day as the Jewish organization Hillel had to sponsor Israel Awareness Week.
The GUPS is an established student organization which represents students of Palestinian descent who wish only to inform the misled American public about the culture of the Palestinian people.
Pakistanian Land Day is not a fallacy. The Palestinian people had been living on the land now called Israel for centuries before it was taken away from them in 1948. They have since wandered from country to country in search of a home. Furthermore, Jordan is internationally, recognized as a sovereign nation and is not the Palestinian homeland.
We, as students and future world leaders, should not accept presented issues or opinions without proper examination. We will only be able to improve our current world situation through a common set of each other, not by attacking each other, belief and opinions.
Noelle Jibril
Wichita senior
Nida K. Zada
Mo. freshman
St. Louis, Mo., freshman