letter from the editor
I
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Eighty-three years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Worm's eye world
view from outstate
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104
News Phone: 764-0552
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1973
Fuel crisis pulls out the plug
NIXON'S "Project Independence," the
Administration's answer to the Arab
oil embargo, is not likely to be the most
popular program of the decade.
It may, however, finally signal Ameri-
can awareness that energy-like every-
thing else-is exhaustible.
While we grumbled during last win-
ter's shortage of heating oil and griped
through the ever-spiraling rise of the
gasoline prices, we now face more ex-
treme shortages, including a shortage
on oil-based products ranging from nylon
stockings to phonograph records.
The energy issue has wider implica-
tions than conserving fuel for the win-
ter, or for the duration of the embargo.
Until such time as we have resources for
virtually unlimited solar or nuclear ener-
gy, we must depend on the finite re-
sources of the earth.
Americans-who greedily devour five
times their share of the world's energy
from the first ring of their electric alarm
clocks in the morning to the last strains
of the "Star-Spangled Banner" on their
color TVs at night - must learn to adopt
energy conserving measures on a perma-
nent basis.
It will not be enough merely to lower
our thermostats to 68 degrees come ev-
ery November or drive a bit slower on
the freeway. The crux of the problem lies
in electric toothbrushes, haircurlers,
knives, sauna facial mists, hot shaving
cream dispensers, and. the whole vast
raiige of energy consuming paraphanalia
produced by the U. S. consumer economy.
The greatest flaw of Nixon's proposal
is precisely that it depends on the volun-
tary support of the American people.
Nixon's requests for lowering the tem-
peratures of buildings has been ignored
Editorial Staff
CHRISTOPHER PARKS and EUGENE ROBINSON
Co-Editors in Chief
DIANE TEVICK...................... Arts Editor
MARTIN PORTER ..................... Sunday Editor
MARILYN RILEY..........Associate Managing Editor
ZACHARY SCILLER ............. Editorial Director
ERIC SCHOCH.I.. Editorial Director
TONY SCHWARTZ .................... Sunday Editor
CHARLES STEIN......................City Editor
TED STEINE... ..............Executive Editor
ROLFE TESsEM.......... ......... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS: Marnie Heyn, Chuck
Wilbur, David Yaowitz
STAFF WRITERS: Prakah Aswani, Gordon Atcheson,
Dan Biddle, Penny Blank. Dan Blugerman, Howard
Brick, Dave Burhenn, Bonnie Carnes, Charles Cole-
man, Mike Duweck, Ted Evanoff, Deborah Good,
William Heenan, Cindy Hill, Jack Krost, Jean Love-
Josephine Marcoty, Cheryl Pilate, Judy Ruskin,
Ann Rauma, Bob Seidenstein, Stephen Selbst, Jeff
Sorensen, Sue aitephenson, David Stoll, Rebecca
Warner
DAILY WEATHER BUREAU: William Marino and
Dennis Dismacnek (forecasters)
Photographv Staff
DAVID MARGOLIC
Chief Photographer
KEN FINK ........................Staff Photographer
THOMAS GOTTLIEB ..............Staff Photographer
STEVE KAGAN.................Staff Photographer
KAREN KASMAUSKI...........Staff Photographer
TERRY MCcARTHY.............Staff Photographer
JOHN UPTON.................Staff Photographer
NIGHT EDITORS: Jeff Chown, Brian Deming, Jim
Ecker, Marc Feldman, G e o r g e Hastings, Marcia
Merker, Roger Rossiter Theresa Swed
STAFF: Barry Argenbright, Bil Crane, Richard Fla-
herty, Cary Fotias, Andy Glazer, Leba Hertz, John
Kahler Mike Lisull, Jeffrey Milgrom, Tom Pyden,
Leslie Riester, Jeff Schiller, Bill Stieg, Fred Upton
even in Washington government edifices,
and New Jersey drivers who adhere to the
newly imposed 50 mn.p.h. speed limit have
been honked at, tailgated and generally
harassed into raising their speeds.
Unfortunately, the proposals Congress
has so far considered "extreme" are pro-
bably the only effective and immediate
way of curtailing energy usage.
Gas rationing is not an easy measure
to adopt, but it is certainly more equitable
than the five to 40 cent per gallon gaso-
line tax Congress is presently proposing.
The proposed tax will only further bur-
den the middle and lower classes, who
will be seeing enough hardships this win-
ter, and insure that the rich get more
than their share of gasoline.
Moreover, the already astronomical
price of gasoline will be seeing increases
anyway since foreign supplies are kick-
ing up their prices a healthy 20 to 57 per
cent in view of the embargo.
The initial effect of the energy crisis
was to throttle independent gas stations,
who were cut off from their supplies by
major companies in favor of company-
owned stations. Whatever else the admin-
istration does, it should not allow the oil
shortage, with its unfortunate effects, to
be turned to the advantage of the big oil
companies in the form of higher profits.
Some persons have advocated, for in-
stance, that price limitations on heating
oil be removed to spur higher domestic
production. Instead of following this
course, which allows major oil companies
to capitalize on the shortage, it would be
more equitable to enforce mandatory
production of the greatest amount of
heating oil possible.
The most "extreme" measure Congress
will consider is not gasoline rationing,
but giving the President the power to "re-
lax environmental regulations" on a case
by case basis.
Nixon's proposals were only estimated
to conserve 2.35 million barrels of oil a
day. Estimates in the past several days
of how great the shortage will be have
more than doubled, placing the oil short-
age as high as six million barrels a day.
Thus, it now seems fairly clear that the
current fuel crisis will lead to the whole-
sale slaughter of environmental regula-
tions covering such areas as the burn-
ing of "dirty" fuel. It has already brought
the overwhelming approval of the Alaska
pipeline in the House, and proposed-re-
strictions on strip mining of coal will al-
most undoubtedly now be axed.
It is ironic that the same short-sighted
planning that played a large part in cre-
ating the fuel shortage will now ravage
the environment to protect this nation's
destructively high level of energy con-
sumption.
TODAY'S STAFF:
News: Charlie Coleman, Chris Parks, Ted
Stein, Becky Warner
Editorial Page: Terry Gallagher, Z a c h
Schiller, Chuck Wilbur
Arts Page: Jeff Sorensen
Photo Technician: Terry McCarthy
By CHRISTOPHER PARKS
ABOUT 20 MILES out of town you exit
left off U.S. 23, loop around, land on
1-96 Westbound, squeeze the accelerator,
and shoot out into the Heartland, turning
your back on Ann Arbor.
Suddenly, you're in a different world:
Far away from the University, the Motor
City and it's sprawling suburbs. As far as
the horizon on either side stretches end-
less undulating farm land.
People out there are pretty set in their
ways of thinking. For the most part, they
are born, live, and die in small towns.
Many of them have never spent more than
a few days of their lives anyplace else.
Even those who have seemed to have for-
gotten about it - almost deliberately.
Anyway, they aren't much interested in
the world outside their own communities. If
they think at all about places like Ann
Arbor and Detroit it is with a profound
sense of threat - a threat to their rigid
morals and conservative outlook.
EVEN THOUGH THEY probably con-
stitute less than half the population of the
state, these people have immense power
in the state government.
For the most part, they elect conserva-
tive, small-minded provincial men to repre-
sent them in Lansing. These men are in-
vested with great seniority (and hence
power (because they keep getting elected
again and again.
These powerful men spend a consider-
able portion of their time and effort im-
posing their worm's eye world view on a
portion of the state they neither sympa-
thize with nor understand.
Ghile: SO
(Editor's Note: The following ar- We haye
tice, written by a refugee from Chile, Vietnam
is reprinted from the Daily World.
Those interested in working for the invaluabl
Chile Support Coalition may call we ask
764-8696.) active,
By FERNANDA NAVARRO darity is
I app
. WANT YOU TO know how sup- pose fas
porting it is to me, arriving fying is
from a country in which prison, ences, t
torture, blood and anguish rule, ences ir
to find an atmosphere of solidarity interests
- to be among people who have who, ba
their minds and hearts open to the titudes,
vast human cry. To find that you the Chil
and you and you and the peoples must ta
of Latin America - all of us to- not wor
gether - constitute the fraternal common
sub-soil of pure America. and a1
You and I must organize our ments, 1
rage, our indignation, our pain, our solidarit
anger, in an articulate way and would
channel it effectively. We mustn't game.
fall prey to impotence and dismay. ialismt
These are feelings we all have ex- neutralih
perienced. But they are bad com-
pany, and a result of the cultural AS M
heritage in our capitalist society, delegati
where individualism is endemic. If lawyers
we learned to use the word "we" turned f
more than the word "I"; if we Chile. F
would reject the egoistic "I" for Chile th
the more humble collective "we," led to t
then we would accumulate the "We se
strength which could not easily be the wor
defeated. seen in
We will find brotherhood in the gravea
common cause, in the common .B
struggle which knows no borders, Let r
no frontiers, no geography. Chile it
tory of
IT IS TO YOU THAT I appeal to has acq
strengthen solidarity. We know ness an
and continue to learn of new mani- combine
festations of solidarity with our cratic t
struggle from all parts of the from th
world. But we are aware of the 1904 wi
special role you in North America workers
must play in our common struggle. forerun
Progress
them and
posts of a
BUT IN LANSING they still reign. And
they are determined to use this last strong-
hold to propagate and justify an increas-
ingly obsolete way of life.
The growing battle in the Legislature over
a bill to permit physicians to offer con-
traceptive services for minors epitomizes
the struggle between those who would see
the state come to terms with the prob-
lems of the 1970s and those who seek to
use its authority to buttress their con-
tention that these problems don't exist.
More accurately, they say these problems
are the creation of a small degenerate
minority who should be slapped down, not
coddled.
At the forefront of this battle for the
past is State Senator Gary Byker - a
bedrock Republican from the small west-
state community of Hudsonville.
BYKER'S POSITION is fairly simple
(and fairly simple minded): To loosen re-
strictions on birth control information is
tacit admission by the state that the rigid
prescription against pre-marital sex is not
relevant to a growing segment of the pop-
ulation.
In a recent interview, Byker told Jim
Neubacher of the Detroit Free Press he be-
lieves "that it is wrong for the government
to enact laws which make it easier for
people to avoid the consequences of their
sinful activities."
Apparently, Byker sees the state govern-
ment as a sort of surrogate for his aveng-
has swept past them, leaving
their people like stranded out-
steadily retreating army.
ing God, tossing thunder-bolts at the hap-
less violators of his 19th :enturv moral
code. And back in Hudsonville, and hun-
dreds of other places just like it, they're
eating it up.
IT IS INCREDIBLE enough' that Byker
seriously believes is using the power of
the state to punish those who offend Hud-
sonville's sensibilities. That he is so blind
that he conceives of babies as a means of
punshment is almost beyond comprehen-
sion.
What you have to understand is that when
Byker is thinking about these sinners and
their children he is not thinking about peo-
ple in the same sense that the folks in
Hudsonville are people.
For many out-staters it is an abiding be-
lief, heavily laced with racism, that the
people who live in the state's urban areas
are a venal and inferior breed.
"I imagine," Byker told Neubacher, "that
in the areas where they're having the
biological anarchy - like Detroit, they
wouldn't pay any attention to it (birth
control information) at all. These are areas
of the state where restraint is no longer
used as a way of life."
OUT IN HUDSONVILLE (and Holland,
and Big Rapids, Cedar Springs, G r a n d
Haven, Howell, Alpena, Manistee, Lake
Odessa, Grayling . . .) where restraint pre-
sumably still is a way of life, they don't
want women to even know about things like
birth control, of course, they are properly
married in the Eyes of God.
What they don't know can't hurt them,
and knowledge is somehow evil as progress
most asuredly it. If you don't tell them
about sex, they won't think about it and
even if they do you can always use babies
as a threat to keep them in Jne.
It is sad that these people cling to these
quaint notions and impose them on their
children. Adolescence is incredibly compli-
cated and painful enough without the added
mental torture inflicted by these rigid at-
titudes and judgments.
THE REAL tragedy, however, is that
these people and their representatives find
themselves in a position to impose their
moral code by force on a portion .of the
society for which is has no relevance.
The sad results of the restriction of birth
control information are painfully evident.
In the last few years, this part pf the state
has witnessed an alarming rise in the rate
of "illegitimate" births.
For the educated and sophisticated few
in places like Ann Arbor, the sexual revolu-
tion has brought with it a common under-
standing of the technology of prevention.
But for the younger and less knowledgable
- mostly high school age and working
class- this vital knowledge has been kept
hidden with tragic results.
For them, Sen. Byker urges restraint and
adherence to his personal morality.
AND TONIGHT as yet another unwanted
child is being brought into the world in
some inner city hospital, the Gary Bykers
of this state will be sleeping comfortable
between clean white sheets, secure in the
knowledge that His will is being done.
lidarity grows after the coup
e seen what it meant for
, where you constituted an
ble support movement. And
the same for Chile. Your
continuous, sustained soli-
vital to us.
eal to all of you who op-
cism to make Chile a uni-
sue, free of partisan differ-
o overcome internal differ-
n the United States in the
of unity in action. Those
sed on their own critical at-
would sit in judgment of
lean revolutionary process
ke care that that judgment
k in the interests of our
enemy. There is a time
place for analytical judg-
but definitely not in public
y assemblies. Those who
do so play the enemy's
Nothing better aids imper-
than an opposition which
zes itself.
ANY OF YOU may know a
on of internationally famed
from Europe has just re-
from a fact-finding visit to
Fascism is so barbaric in
hat one of the jurists was
ell The New. York Times:
nd 30 or 40 missions around
d yearly and we have not
recent years a situation so
as that in Chile, not even
r Greece."
ne say a few words about
self. Chile has a long his-
organized struggle and
uired a political conscious-
nd political maturity that,
ed with Chile's long demo-
traditions, distinguishes it
e rest of Latin America. In
ith Recabarren, the first
' party was founded, the
ner of the Communist Party
formed in 1920. Chile's working peo-
ple had acquired a discipline and
a consciousness that can come
only from long committed strug-
gle, freely undertaken.
Since 1970, with the election vic-
tory of Popular Unitey, Chile stood
out above the landscape like the
Andes, embodying the promise and
the hope, gathering in the voice of
our oppressed that cry este grito-
destined to grow and grow and fin-
ally burst forth. With such a heri-
tage, with such deep consciousness
forged in years of struggle, nothing
and no one, however brutal, can
smash the Chilean working people
and their organizations. As Neruda
has said, "This is a deep wound,
but not a defeat."
LET ME STRESS one thing, and
make it perfectly clear, as some
North Americans are fond of say-
ing. Even with fascist barbarism,
even with the carnage and torture,
never before have our people been
so unified. The parties and or-
ganizations of the Popular Unity
continue to work - adopting new
tactics and strategies to meet new
conditions - with the firm deter-
mination to struggle together. The
Popular Unity has more unity than
ever before!
How could it be otherwise? It
would be suicidal. It is only to the
interests of the junta to spread
versions of division and elimina-
tion of Popular Unity so that the
people outside of Chile who are
willing to give support become con-
fused and feel impotent. Do not in
any way accept those who, posing
as "informed sources," would have
you believe such nonsense. Popular
Unity is alive and will prove vic-
torious!
From the hundreds of thousands
of Communist and Socialist mili-
AP Photo
tants to those of the MIR and the
two non-Marxist parties that form-
ed the Popular Unity, all are work-
ing together, organizing resistance
and fighting. Even the junta has
publicly acknowledged that Chile
is not under control, that guerril-
las have been formed, that a state
state of war.
AS PRESIDENT SALVADOR Al-
lende said on September 11, mo-
ments before the fascists assassi-
nated him: "This is how 'we write
the first page of this history. My
people and America will write the
of siege has begun to move to a rest."
American school trains police terrorists
By MIKE KLARE and
NANCY STEIN
A YEAR AGO, "State of Siege," the most
recent film of noted movie director
Costa-Gavras, leveled a series of startling
charges at the American government.
At one point in the film, a Uruguayan
police officer was shown receiving training
in the manufacture and use of explosive
devices at a secret police bomb school
in the southwestern United States. Later,
the same officer was linked to a right-
wing Uruguayan "Death Squad" implicat-
ed in the murders (some performed with
explosives) of prominent Uruguayan radi-
cals.
For most American viewers and movie
critics, these scenes appeared as mere.
cinemagraphic flourishes in a controver-
sial film. Now State Department doctments
unearthed by Senator James Abourezk
(D-S.D.) show beyond doubt that the film
was unerringly accurate in its picture of
U.S. "counterinsurgency" programs in Lat-
in America.
The documents reveal that the U.S. gov-
ernment is, in fact, training foreign police-
men in bomb-making at a :emote desert
camp in Texas. In response to Senator
Abourezk's inquiries, the Agency for In-
ternational Deveolpment (AID) ha: now
acknowledged that its Office of P u b l i c
Safey (OPS) is providing su-h instruc-
tion.
At the U.S. Border Patrol Academy in
Los Fresnos, Texas, foreign noticemen are
the Technical Investigations Courst first at-
tend a four-week preliminary session at the
International Police Academy (IPA) in
Washington, D.C. There they are treated
to lectures on such subjects as: Basic Elec-
tricity ("Problems involving electricity as
applied to explosives"), Introduction to
Bombs and Explosives, Incendiaries ("A
lecture/demonstration of incendiary de-
vices"), and Assassination Weapons.
After completion of the preliminary
course, the "trainees" are flown to the Los
Fresnos camp for four weeks "field ses-
sions." All lectures at Los Fresnos are
delivered at an outdoor "laboratory" pre-
sided over by CIA instructors. The action
lectures deal with such topics as: Charac-
teristics of Explosives, Electric Priming,
Electric Firing Devices, Explosive Charg-
es, Homemade Devices, Fabrication and
Functioning Devices, and Incendiaries. Ac-
cording to AID, these sessions include
"practical exercises" with "different types
of explosive devices and 'booby-traps.'''
In a memorandum to Sen. Abourezk, AID
official Matthew Harvey argued that the
Technical Investigations Course was set
up to help foreign policement develop
"countermeasures" against terrorist at-
tacks on banks, corporations, and embas-
sies.
In order to develop countermeasures, he
claimed, the trainee must first study "home
laboratory techniques" used "in the man-
ufacture of explosives and incendiaries."
Only then, according to the AID argument,
-11a ha ha "intal .--anti noin
is no stopping him from using them ef-
fensively against criminal enterprises or,
as in State of Siege, against opponents of
a ruling oligarchy.
Such a possibility becomes more r e a 1
when one examines a list of countries re-
presented at the Texas bomb school. Al-
most every country in Latin America, such
conservative Middle Eastern states as Jor-
dan and Saudi Arabia, and a number of
Asian nations are on the list.
These Third World policemen (particular-
ly in Latin America) are themselves en-
gaged in terrorist activities. Some of them
are utilizing their U.S.-supplied training,
in vigilante assassination teams like La
Mano Blanca (White Hand) and Ojo por
Ojo (Eye for an Eye) in Guatemala, La
Banda (The Band) in the Dominician Re-
public, and the "Death Squads" of Brazil
and Uruguay.
It is generally acknowledged that these
secretive death squads are made up of
"off duty policemen and representatives of
the civil and military inteligence services.
("The members of the death squad are
policemen," a top Brazilian judge affirm-
ed in 1970, "and everyone knows it.") These
groups engage in kidnapping, torture, as-
sassination and bombings. Their victims
range from petty criminals to students,
academicians, and political activists.
Week after week, Latin American papers
announce the discovery of yet another body.
Some estimates of the number of opposi-
tion figures executed by the death squads
i R1P..g.-a .lc.,-,. - 1 tV1 T1zMinnentl
up of powerful and ruthless police forces
throughout the continent.
U.S. involvement in the organization,
training and equipping of Uruguay's death
squad, for instance, has been abundantly
described in the testimony of Nelson Bar-
desio. A police photographer and d e a t h
squad member, Bardesio was kidnapped
and interrogated by Tupamaro guerrillas
in 1972. In his testimony (recorded in the
presence of the President of Uruguay's
Chamber of Deputies), Bardesio affirmed
that the Department of Information and
Intelligence (DII, a government agency
which provided an official ";over" for the
death squad) was set up with' the advice
and financial assistance of USAID Public
Safety Adviser William Cantrell.
Bardesio also testified that Cantrell (who
he sometimes served as a chauffeur) made
trips between the DII, Montevideo police
headquarters and the U.S. Embassy to
insure the steady transfer of intelligence
data and coordination of all extra-legal
activities.
The ties between U.S. government agen-
cies and local police terrorism have long
been common knowledge in Latin America.
Now, due to the prying of Senator Abourezk,
it is likely to become an issue in the
U.S. as well. Already these have been
attempts in Congress to dry up the funds
for AID's Public Safety Program.
As noted by Senator Abourezk, "Maybe
the American people don't have to know
about troop movements or the location of
- -es -
11V "