igs fitirrigan Daily Eighty-three years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Financing the Vietnamese police state 420 MaynardSt., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104 News Phone: 764-0552 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1973 Kissinger lacks remedies THE FIRST major public statement of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, delivered before the United Nations General Assembly Monday, was singu- larly lacking in concrete alternatives for remedying the world's problems. Specifically, Kissinger proposed three actions: The induction of North and South Korea into the U. N., the installa- tion of Japan as a permanent member of the Security Council, and the convening of a world conference on food under U.N. auspices next year. There is hardly much substance to these three recommendations. The first two in particular pay little about the problems which Kissinger himself out- lined-energy shortage, pollution, trade, the continuing privation of most of the. world's population. Kissinger was most insistent that "a world community requires the curbing of conflict." "On a small planet, so bound together by technology and so interdependent eco- nomically," he said, "we can no longer affofd the constant eruption of conflict and the danger of its spread." TH E S E SEEMINGLY platitudinous statements are in fact quite debat- able. Can poorer nations,. for instance, think of eliminating conflict before they eliminate hunger and illiteracy? And are there not sometimes persons or groups which stand in the way of such progress? A study conducted last year by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Or- ganization (UNESCO) concluded that "in the education race, as in the march to economic progress," attempts to narrow the gap between industrized and develop- countries "have all failed." Three major studies of the Food and Agriculture Organization indicated last October that developing nations-even with foreign aid, expert help and modern technology-cannot grow enough food to meet their needs. And the World Bank reported a year ago that despite billions of dollars of foreign aid and "impressive" economi growth in the poor countries, "it.is prob- ably true that the world's burden of pov- erty is increasing rather than declining." KISSINGER noted in his U.N. speech that "a world community cannot re- main divided between the permanently rich and the permanently poor." He pro- Editorial Staff CHRISTOPHER PARKS and EUGENE ROBINSON Co-Editors in Chief ROBERT BARKIN....................Feature Editor DIANE LEVICK...........................Arts Editor MARTIN PORTER......................Sunday Editor MARILYN RILEY.........Associate Managing Editor ZACHARY SCHILLER ..............Editorial Director ERIC SCHOCH..................... Editorial Director TONY SCHWARTZ ...................Sunday Editor CHARLES STEIN........................City Editor TED STEIN......................... Executive Editor ROLFE TESSEM ................... Managing Editor vided little reassurance that new con- crete steps will be taken, however. A sincere effort to eliminate poverty would require more than charity or for- eign aid, as Foreign Minister Joseph Co- nombo of Upper Volta pointed out to last year's U.N. General Assembly. Industrialized countries, he said, "take back more through trade than they give through technical and financial assist- ance" and thus perpetuate the economic disparity between rich and poor nations. Kissinger's failure to address the im- portant question of trade was merely one deficiency in his Monday speech. HE WAS ALSO loath to part with the notion that world problems can be attacked apolitically, without what the new secretary of state calls "ideological confrontation." It seems to be a peculiarly American position to believe that there need not be disharmony or a clash of interests for the coexistence of great poverty and wealth side by side to be eliminated. Perhaps the highlight of Kissinger's speech-carried on TV news networks- was his statement that, "We have no desire for domination." It is a curious disclaimer, coming from the chief foreign minister of the most powerful nation in the world. But there is no point in dwelling on the veracity of the statement. Rather, we must see whether the Kissinger State Department matches the secretary's high-flown rhetoric in practice. Timber? PRESIDENT Nixon has apparently broadened the Ronald Reagan aphor- ism, "If you've seen one redwood, you've seen 'em all," to include all national forests. He concurred Monday with a Presi- dential panel in urging that the lumber industry be allowed to cut down "sub- stantial" portions of the national forests. If such a recommendation were fol- lowed, the result would probably be a great increase in the amount of clear- cutting, a lumbering practice in which whole areas are logged instead of cutting on a selective basis. The reaction of Brock Evans, director of the Sierra Club Washington office, to the panel's report was eminently justi- fied: "It is high time that the Administration start recognizing that the national for- ests do not exist just for the timber in- dustry." TODAY'S STAFF: News: Bill Heenan, Jack Krost, Charles Stein, Rolfe Tessem, Rebecca Warner Editorial Page: Paul Gallagher, Zachary Schiller, Eric Schoch Arts Page: Diane Levick, Jeff Sorensen Photo Technician: Terry McCarthy By MARNIE HEYN OR MOST Americans, the war is over. That is as it should be. But it would be a mistake to think that the war is over for the Vietnamese, for there are more subtle ways to win the hearts and minds and resources and markets of Indochina than with bombs and American GI's. The 1973 Paris Peace Agree- ment included a provision for re- construction of southern Vietnam. Those who read the document that far breathed a sigh of relief, guil- ty or otherwise, and assumed that the powers that be would send the money to rebuild hospitals, homes, and industry. But, given the belligerent na- ture of peace in Vietnam, it is necessary for us to evaluate what -and who-our reconstruction dol- lars and sentiment are buying for the Thieu regime. The ' obvious purchase is the same thing the U. S. has been pay- ing for during the past two dec- ades: legitimacy for a government friendly to whoever pays the piper, and a foot in the Indochinese door for American corporate interests. BUT DISCUSSING that issue is like beating the proverbial dead horse: when big business controls the American government, it is hard to convince that same gov- ernment to operate counter to the interests of the corporations that control it. And talk about "inter- est" and "control" is as hard to understand as a sure-win betting system. It's hard to maintain your attention span when you just know you're going to lose. There are, however, real-life hor- ror stories' to be told about people who live under the U. S.-financed Saigon regime. And to ignore what is happening to these people would be to sanction an Orwellian night- mare unfolding in the name of the American people. The unfortunate reality behind all that budgetese about recon- struction is that in excess of 90 per cent of this year's $2 billion aid allocation will be spent on outfit- ting and paying special military and secret police units, and design- ing and producing tiger cages and torture apparatus. And any relief about the war being over disap- pears. IN THE PAST six months, such eminent individuals as Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), Fred Branfman of the Indochina Resource Center, and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D- Mass.) have relayed data to Con- gress that amply demonstrate that images of storm troopers and thought control are not flights of metaphor. One stipulation of the Peace Agreement is that political priso- ners held by Saigon are to be re- leased to Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) - held territory if they are PRG-affiliated, and to their homes if they are not so af- filiated, 'if they are part of the so- called Third Force. Such releases would be humane and sensible, and in addition would make reconstruc- tion money available for, well, re- construction. But, to avoid compliance with the Paris Agreement, the Thieu regime has reclassified more than 195,000 prisoners f r o m "political de- tainees" to "common-law crimi- nals," in proceedings that seem very like the mass baptism/drown- ings of' medieval Portugal.' Why the Saigon government felt it necessary to do so is a complex question that must be examined with some scant illumination from the U. S. government policy of Vietnamization. Vietnamization WHEN RICHARD NIXON was elected in 1968, Vietnamization was a very popular concept. The Amer- ican public was weary of, news photos of GI's being blown away in a war that seemed senseless, if not insane. The fact that the war would go on was almost irrele- vant. But the events of the past five years have shown that the only change Vietnamization made was in the color of the corpses. And U. S. corporations had to find a way to maintain a stranglehold on the Vietnamese populace. Their various methods have had differ- ent names, but the reality still spells police state. That is why political prisoners in southern Vietnam represent what Bella Abzug called "the most compelling human tragedy of our time." Not all the prisoners are home, and some have little hope of ever returning. to life outside of cages. And the farce of pretending that U. S. aid is for humanitarian users compounds the obscenity of continued support for the Thieu re- gime. Who are the political prisoners? THEY ARE NEARLY all from the Third Force: non-communist opponents of the Thieu machine. From Nixon to Thieu, money for incarceration PRG supporters have generally been released, when they are still alive, because the PRO has politi- cal and military clout, while the Third Force is largely unarmed, urban, and underorganized. They are students, writers, sold- iers, teachers, monks, civil ser- vants, accountants, and lawyers, but mostly they are peasants who were caught in monthly sweeps of the countryside so that ARVN units could fill their quotas for the Phoenix ,roject, a U. S., army- initiated program of terror, arrest, and assassination. A heavy proportion have been, arrested in midnight raids since the Paris Agreement was signed. Fred Branfman was subjected to one such raid, and later learned that this is a common experience for visiting journalists, and for others who have shown interest in the prisoners. All Vietnamese over the age of 15 are required to carry an ID card which are linked to centralized computers containing dossiers on every citizen. Any movement out- side the home makes continuous presentation of these cards neces- sary. A standard form of harass- ment is to confiscate ID from someone who opposes Thieu, and then arrest that person later for not having the card. Conditions of trial and detention THERE IS NO due process as guaranteed by the Vietnamese con- stitution. Those who are arrested or accused are sentenced by a military tribunal or governmental review board in absentia. There is no lawyer, no jury, no evidence, no right to speak, and no appeal. Prisoners are often convicted in lots, and sentenced to "two years, renewable." And, short of Ameri- can intervention, there is no way out of .jail. Once someone is arrested, the world becomes a twilight of hung- er, thirst, disease, chains, tiger cages, and sophisticated routine .torture. And even here U. S. cor- porations turn a handy profit: the tiger cages are brand new steel ones manufactured by the Ameri- can company RMK-BRJ, and pur- chased with American reconstruc- tion aid. Not surprisingly, m a n y priso- ners die as a direct result of this treatment, and those who survive at all survive as vegetables. They are generally blind, deaf, and par- alyzed from torture, malnourished, and tubercular. Any help will come too late for most of them. WHAT IS MOST frightening is that it could well be too late for thousands not yet arrested, and not in Vietnam alone. If the Amer- ican government is allowed to con- tinue financing and building re- pression in Indochina, the pattern could well be set for the liquida- tionrof political opposition any- where. Thieu will not even be criticized for saying on one hand that any- one can visit Saigon jails anytime, and subsequently preventing the Red Cross, various religious lead- ers, and members of the U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Refugees from making such visits. It is clearly within the power of Congress to end the war crimes now being perpetrated in the name of the American people. Debate is scheduled to begin on the floor of the Senate this coming week on the topic of next year's "recon- struction aid." CONGRESS at the least should: Immediately send a delegation to visit Saigon prisons, and refuse to be turned away; cut all military and police support, and divert those funds into humanitarian programs to be supervised by Congress; make future aid to the Saigon government provisional on the re- lease of all political prisoners and dismantling the machinery of ar- rest and torture, and on the restor- ation of civil rights and constitu- tional freedoms. Many Vietnamese feel that this program is minimal, and that all assistance to Thieu's regime should be stopped at once; since such sup- port constitutes meddling in the internal affairs of their country. Hopes that Congress will do that are small, however, and spoken of in future tense. BUT ONE DECISION that Con- gress must make is at present im- perative. If the government, of southern Vietnam cannot be chang- ed politically, it will be changed militarily. And none of 'us can say with certainty what the Amer- ican government would do if the NLF remobilized, That the whole cycle of advisors, troops, mater- iel, and money pouring onto the heads of the Vietnamese might be- gin again is unthinkable,' and yet within the realm of probability. As long as there are prisoners in Saigon's jails, a political resolu- tion to the conflict is impossible. And the simple fact that they are prisoners is scandalous and a blight on humanity. In the words of some Vietnamese prisoner, "Forty years ago did not great western writers, religious leaders, and jurists raise their voices to denounce Franco's treatment of Republican prisoners? Were not voices raised more re- cently to plead the cause of priso- ners held by the authoritarian re- gime of Greece and $razil? "When will a voice like that of Dom Helder Camarra risetup in the name of the students, peas- ants, monks, trade unionists, peace activists, journalists, professors and workers, indiscriminately im- prisoned throughout South Viet- nam?" Marnie Heyn is a Daily staff writer. Letters to The Daily should be mailed to the Editorial Di- rector or delivered to Mary Rafferty in the Student Pub- lications business office in the Michigan Daily building. Letters should be typed, double-spaced and normally should not exceed 250 words. The Editorial Direc- tors reserve the right to edit all letters submitted. Letters toTheI rent commission cedent to To The Daily: during t LAST SUNDAY's (September 16) during t article concerning the Citizen's irst goa Rent Control Commission contain- large ga ed several inaccuracies and mis- aeeded placed emphases. Our purpose in housing writing this letter is hopefully to Ly, sub- correct mistaken impressions yources which may have been generated by accompl the column.-Commis Some background relating to the Coms Commission may serveas a use- Now t ful starting point. Two basic goals It seems were included in the Council reso- or of the lution creating the Rent Control the HRP Commission: Totdetermine, first, and its whether the rental housing stock spokespe within the city is adequate in var- landlord iety and quantity and is well-main- mission tamned and reasonably priced and, This viem second, whether rent control is a However feasible and appropriate policy tool article w to ameliorate possible problems un- ture and covered in the achievement of the sion, an former goal. At the very first meet- over-emp ing of the Commission, a clear view is majority of members agreed that viws the first goal was a logical pre- Finally A votef By ERIC SCHOCH AMERICA, as the saying goes, gets the best politicians money can buy. This state of affairs has existed for a long time, of course, perhaps as 'ong as this country has existed. It has been an open secret, as well, but the average person on the street - as well as those in govern- ment - have generally assessed the situa- tion with a shrug of the shoulders and a fatalistic "that's politics." More recent investigations of the rela- tionships between money and politics, be- ginning with that vast array of political revelations loosely tied together by the term "Watergate," have hopefully suggest- ed to the American public that shoulder shrugging will no longer suffice. Instead, Americans should take a long loot at the possibility of political campaigns being financed by government. As it is now, most major contributions to political candidates are, well, bribes to put it bluntly, designed to buy future political favors from political candidates. And in those terms, the system works pretty well. THE CURRENT SCANDAL in Maryland is a case in point. The flight to the suburbs around Baltimore has resulted in a tre- mendous land boom in the surrounding areas as it has in many areas of the coun- o the second, but that both ery important. However, he months of data collec- tanalysis in pursuit of the l, it became evident that ps.exist in the information to characterize the rental market or, more correct- markets. Existing data are simply inadequate to ish the full goals of the sion. o more specific problems. unfortunate that the ten- article was dominated by P view of the Commission proceedings. The HRP erson's description of the rparticipation on the Coi- was particularly biased. m may make "good copy". r, if the purpose of the was to determine the na- d activities of the Commis- d we assume that it was, phasis on the HRP point of misleading and unfair. y, of course it is true that Soaily Commission members represent various interests - that is why they were chosen to sit oni the Commission as that is what the Commission process is ail about. It is equally true, however, that this may not be the best form or method of procedure, especially given the complex nature of the subject to be studied, namely, the rental housing situation in Ann Arbor. In addition, it is clear to us that a Commission composed of persons with full-time work and school responsibilities is not the optimal vehicle for, comprehensire and effective handling of this com- plicated subject. But, nerbaps ths was the intent of Council in creat- ing the Commission - a re ,olution of political expediency rather than of positive commitment. -Pierre St. Amour, Jane Heller, David Kiefer, Sandra Rauch, Elizabeth Roistacher, Gordon Scott, members, Rent Control Study Commission Sept. 23 5r public campaign financing The Times also notes that the figures in- volved in negotiating the lease for Wein- stein (who was not the lowest bidder) and for the GSA' had all been closely associated with Scott for years. .F. (ONog' 71 _ _ l. ---i-e tracts are not awarded on the basis of bids, but through a process of negotiation. Very important in these negotiations, the fed- eral investigation shows, are the amounts of campaign contributions given in the past and pledged for the future. Give a politic- ian a considerable amount of money now, and you may very well reap considerably more in the future. WELL, SOME MAY answer, that's easy enough. Just change the contract awarding process to one of bidding, the lowest bid- der getting the contract. Unfortunately, that is probably not good enough, as a new scandal involving the construction of a federal office building in Philadelphia de- monstrates. In February of 1971 the federal General Services Administration (GSA), the agency responsible for government office space and property, awarded a multi-million dol- lar contract to a Philadelphia developer to lease a city building for Federal office space. Several months later, one of the unsuc- cessful bidders for the contract filed suit against the GSA, charging that, among oth- er things, various documents in the suc- cessful bid by Matthew Weinstein were falsified. Monday's New York Times reported that SO THAT'S POLITICS in America. No wonder Robert Vesco apparently tried to ease his difficulties with the government with a large secret contribution to the Nix- on campaign. It is hardly surprising that International Telephone and Telegraph al- legedly tried to influence Justice D e p t . action 'on its proposed merger with a major insurance company by pledging massive funds to defray the costs of the 1972 Re- publican National Convention. And it is no wonder that the idea of government financing of political cam- paigns, with no individual contributions al- lowed, is being considered more seriously as time goes by; and as the Maryland scandal moves into Washington and knocks on the door of the Office of the Vice President of the United States. Government financing is probably not an idea whose time has yet come. It is no doubt considered "un-American" by some, a violation of the right of every American to "contribute to the candidate of her or his choice." Those who profit in money and/or power from the present system won't like it either. POW - r'I )? k _~ Sen. Hugh Scott ly encouraging the GSA to award the con- tract to Weinstein. Now why, one might ask, was Sen. Scott so interested? Well, it seems that Scott and Weinstein have been good friends for 25 years, and Weinstein has been a cotri- butor to Scott's campaigns. According to the Times, Sen. Scott greets such revelations "with utter contempt any *I Lti xwtt.: