Page 4--Saturday, October 20, 1979-The Michigan Daily

i



WASHINGTON WINDOW

Uble £icgan 1aiIy
Ninety fears of Editorial Freedom

Kennedy, Carter Florida bout a dry run

'Vol. LXXXX, No. 39 News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan

U.S. must now alter

;Moroccan arms sales
SarNCE AGAIN, the United States has another losing m
'L the chance to shore up her mounting anti-
sgging prestige among the nations of abroad.
black Africa while making an impor- Basically, the 1V
tant commitment to the principle of down to a q
self-determination. And, as in the case determination for
of:the Shah of Iran, Anastasio Somoza, presently without
and other U.S. bedfellows, the ad- co's claims to hist
,sinistration has the opportunity to the disputed Saha
*rease the skids of another monarch more or less tha
'Who, by all indications, may soon be expansionist Kinj
ollowing the Shah and Somoza. egotistical desig
This time, the scene is Morocco, Morocco." To sel
here King Hassan is bogged down in naissance planes
hopeless desert war in the Western ships he has requ
%ahara with guerillas of the Polisario make the U.S. th
Front. The guerillas are fighting for an Morocco's aggres,
dependent Sahawi Arab Democratic us squarely at odd
epublic for the Sahara region, and which have alrel
teir claims have already been endor- Sahawi Arab Dem
d by the Organization for African
Unity. The Carter a
'But until now, the Carter ad- rhetoric on hum
ministration has continued to tinuously profess
Mcognize Morocco's "administrative self-determinatio
control" over the disputed territory, with the 80,000
ind has continued to supply defensive Western Sahara
arms to the king to help him beat back finally winning-
the insurgency. Only now, with the determination, th
var turning more in favor of the the chance to ma
guerillas and Hassan crying for more more than hollow
irms, have top administration cing Morrocco'
'nalysts begun to reexamine this now, refusing t
,picy. A Cabinel Level Policy Review weapons, and re
Committee wound up evenly divided on state, the U.S. c
rhether to give Hassan more arms, or tant step higher in
.reak off America's ties early before as a true crusa
Ois country is caught supporting human rights.

policy

onarch in the face of
American feeling
Moroccan war comes
question of self-
an indigent people
a homeland. Moroc-
oric sovereignty over
ra amount to nothing
n a land-grab by the
g bent on his own
ns for a "Greater
1 Hassan the recon-
and helicopter gun-
ested would not only
e arms merchant in
sion, but would place
Is with the 33 nations
ady decognized the
ocratic Republic.
dministration, in its
tan rights, has con-
ed a commitment to
n of all peoples. Now,
inhabitants of the
struggling for-and
-their rights to self-
e administration has
ke their commitment
rhetoric. By denoun-
s territorial claims
he sale of offensive
cognizing the SADR
ould move an impor
n the eyes of the world
Eder in the cause of

AP Photo

Teddy and Jimmy both claimed big victory after the Florida caucuses, but everyone knew that the contest was just a dry heat.

WASHINGTON (UPI) - The
Florida Democratic convention
next month will hold a mock. elec-
tion in which, according to those
who are supposed to know,
President Carter will win.
The vote will have no part in
the selection of Florida's 1980
national convention delegates.
The delegates will be chosen next
March in a presidential primary;
the significance of the straw vote,.
at the St. Petersburg party con-
vention Nov. 18 must be assessed
on its own merits.
AND. JUST WHAT does the
Florida straw vote mean?
Because it was touted as the
first head-to-head confrontation
between Carter and Sen. Edward
Kennedy, some said it was an
important measure of rank and
file sentiment for the president
and his expected challenger.
Because it is a "beauty con-
test" with no delegates at stake,
others say the Florida ballot is

By Arnold Sawislak .

not even as useful as a properly
conducted public opinion survey.
As usual, the truth is probably
somewhere in the middle.
IN THE FIRST place, the vote
at the convention certainly has
less meaning than was the
process of electing county
delegates. The counties are sen-
ding 879 delegates, and the Ken-
nedy and Carter camps battled in
most of the 67 counties to get their
people into the delegations.
The elected county delegates
will be joined at the state conven-
tion by 839 others who will be ap-
pointed by state Democratic of-
ficials or get automatic delegate
status by holding public or party
office. In as much as the state
Democratic establishment in
Florida is overwhelmingly loyal
to Carter, the president seems
sure to have the edge in the final

balloting.
So the county voting was the
real test, and the two camps
spent about a half a million
dollars in the most basic kind of
political organizing.
THE FLORIDA pro-Kennedy
group, noting that the Carter
campaign got a pretty good
psychological lift when it
defeated George Wallace in the
.state's 1975straw vote, decided to-
turn the tables this year. It hoped
to sweep the county caucuses and
then declare to the world that
Kennedy had whipped Carter in
his'own back yard.
But they made so much noise
about it that the Carter people
became alarmed and laid on their
own campaign. Their intention
was to beat or fight Kennedy to a
standstill and raise their own
hurrah about the president's

political strength.
Even though the county results
were mixed, both sides tyried to
claim big victories. The Carter
people said the president was the
big winner because he came in
late and 'demonstrated that the
vaunted Kennedy appeal to
Democrats was not all that un-
beatable. And the Kennedy sup-
porters said the senator had
shown for all to see that the in-
cumbent president was fatally-
vulnerable.
There is a lot of nonsense in
these claims from both sides. The
battle for the Florida county
delegates was a good test of cam-
paign organizations, but
everyone knew it was a dry run.
It didn't give either Kennedy or
Carter the Democratic
nomination. The two men seem
headed toward some serious and
vital confrontations in a struggle
for the Democratic presidential
nomination, but the Florida
caucus vote wasn't one of them.

Take back the night-

E VERY TIME an Ann Arbor
woman steps out of her home after
sunset she must come to grips with an
undeniable fact of city life: the
possibility that she may be raped.
That fear has an effect on every
female in the city. In the most extreme
cases, women have become virtual
prisoners in their homes ,after dark.
For others, it means giving up night
courses, avoiding housing in isolated
areas, asking men to accompany them
too their destinations. And for those
women who cherish their independen-
ce, it means living with nervous fear
each time footsteps approach from,
behind.
Remedies have been few and largely
inadequate. Self-defense courses and
increased awareness of the problem
have not helped pull back the curtain of
secrecy that surrounds the problem.
Because of long-standing stereotypes
and stigma associated with sexual
assault, the problem is acknowledged
but rarely addressed.
Thursday night, a group of people
began a new anti-rape campaign by
thrusting the problem under the com-
munity's nose.In a dramatic effort to
"take back the night," several hun-
dred women marched through the

city's high-rape district, including
Washington, Ingalls, Observatory,
Catherine and Huron streets, deman-
ding their right to walk the city's
streets without fear of sexual assault.
The protest is similar to others that
have been organized in various parts of
the country in an effort to inform
citizens. While they highlighted the
seriousness of rape, organizers also
pointed out the less commonly noticed
aspects of the crime. Organizers ex-
plained that rape is a crime of
domination rather than a crime of sex,
and that the commonplace use of sex to
sell products helps perpetuate that
desire to dominate.
But speakers reserved their greatest
anger for "the system that forces
violence out of its people and needs
violence to survive."
Because sexual assault is a societal
problem, it is up to the entire society to'
stop ignoring the problem and begin
attempting to solve it. In the short run
this means better street lighting and
protection so that women no longer
have to travel city streets in packs like
medieval wayfarers. In the long run,
that means re-education and re-
orientation to destroy the attitude that
makes women mere objects.


Letters to

The Daily

To the Daily:
The last decade hasn't exactly
been a sterling one for the U.S.
ruling class. We witness the
much touted "American Dream"
rapidly becoming a nightmare
for the American population, The
current mouthpiece for U.S. im-
perialism, Jimmy Carter bum-
bles onward as his "popularity
ratings" have sunk lower than
those of Richard Nixon prior to
his resignation.
Indeed it is not hard to under-
stand why the U.S. working class
has little faith in Jimmy Carter.
This is the man who's three years
in office have brought more grin-
ding inflation, another "oil
crisis", and an "economic slow-
down" which has meant the loss
of tens of thousands of jobs here
in the motor-city already. Car-
ter's "human rights" platform
has meant the demise of busing
and other of the token gains gran-
ted in the 60's as well as the
growth of the bourgeoisie's future
shock troops, the KKK and Nazi
scum. Jimmy Carter's anti-
Soviet "human rights" crusade is
harder and harder to shove down
the throats of the working class
as U.S. imperialism lives out its
death agony!
There should be little doubt in
the minds of the black working-
class about how much Jimmy
Carter cares about their plight.
Carter himself broke the

America is KKK crosses in
Plains, Georgia and Bakke. In
this city Coleman Young, one of
Carter's few remaining loyalists,
offers us a phony renaissance,
one-man garbage trucks and his
integrated police force to guard
the Nazi headquarters.
Despite the labor
bureaucracy's past support for
Carter, and their current
willingness to shove sellout con-
tracts down the throats of their
membership, many of the pro-
capitalist fakers are having a
hard time whipping up any en-
thusiasm for Jimmy Carter, the
man who brought out the Taft-
Hartley act two times in his three
year term and has used every
other trick in the capitalist book
to try to crush the labor
movement. But let no one be
taken in by these labor lieutenan-
ts of capital and their recent shift
to the Kennedy bandwagon. Ken-
nedy despite his somewhat more
liberal and competent image is
no less anti-labor than Carter. He
would simply be more effective,
more professional in leading the
Democratic party in its continued
assault on workers, blacks and
the poor in order to prop up the
sagging profit margins of the
capitalist class which he and his
party represent.
There is an alternative to
decaying capitalism. Inflation,
layoffs, fascist nightriders and

capitalist economic system. The
Spartacus League/Spartacus
Youth League as the American
section of the international
Spartacist tendency, has taken
up this fight. If you are interested
in examining a strategy for this
battle, a strategy to WIN state
power for the working class, then
come to our forum: HATE CAR-
TER - HATE CAPITALISM! to
be given by guest speaker Briab
Mendis, member of U.A.W. Local
140, on Tuesday, October 23, at
7:30 p.m. in Trotter House.
-Spartacus Youth Leaigue
To the Daily:
It is quest' for even-handed
reporting, the Daily has plum-
meted to new lows in H. Scott
Prosterman's article on the
Arab-Israeli dispute (10/4/79). In
his assessment of the current im-
passe in negotiations over the
Palestinian issue, Mr. Proster-
man finds it fitting to raise the
topic of Israeli violations of the
human rights of its Arab citizens
no less than five times.
Perhaps the concept of human
rights has been echoed a great
deal by all the recent press, but
surely the cowardly murder of
innocent children at Ma'alot or
Israeli athletes in Munich, as well

as countless other incidents upon
unarmed Israeli citizens, con-
stitute the most gross and unac-
ceptable violations of the human
rights of the Israeli people
imaginable.
Though one searches high and
low through Mr. Prosterman's
article, one finds not a single
mention of this reverse side of the
human rights issue that the
author raises. This shameful
ommission is an affrontery to the
memory of those who died in-
nocently, as well as to the con-
scious of any sensitive human
being. The allegation that the
PLO's recognition of Israel is
predicated upon Israel's greater
recognition of the human rights
of the-Palestinians is twisted and
distorted thinking. When the PLO
calls off its brutal and murderous
activities against citizens of the
world changes in Israeli policy
can be expected. But until that
time, do not expect the Israelis to
welcome the murderous PLO
with open arms! The human
rights issue is surely a complex
one, but the Daily and Mr.
Prosterman can be expected to
present a more educated
assessment of its role in the
Mideast, instead of the erroneous
fiction they pawn as truthful
news. -J. Kahn


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