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OPINION
Page 4 Wednesday, November 10, 1982 The Michigan Daily
14
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Stewart
Vol. XCIII, No. 54
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, Ml 48109
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14
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
For books
N O MORE in-between meal snacks,
library officials told students last
week. If you don't wash your hands af-
ter you eat, you .don't deserve your
M&Ms. We're going to teach you
miserable slobs a lesson.
Yes, Mom and Pop University have
decided to lay down the law. It seems
that too many students have been slop-
ping Cokes on Milton's Paradise Lost
and leaving Baby Ruths smashed in-
side Plato's Republic. Beginning next
term, students won't be able to buy any
food in either the Graduate or the Un-
dergraduate Library. The vending
machines in both the library lounges
will be ripped out at the end of next
month.
In other words, the University is
willing to trust its students as much as
it would trust any six or seven-year-
old. Perhaps they toyed with the idea
of making bibs mandatory or perfor-
ming strip searches for illicit food in
the stacks. But removing the vending
machines was so much more con-
venient.
There's more, however, than the
mere right to junk food at stake here.
not people
The great accessibility of the libraries
here has always been stressed as one
of the strong points of the University.
And it's the nature of libraries to have
live people-sticky fingers and all-
handling the books. The no-food policy
seems to be a clear signal of the
University's current vision of a
library-a hermetically sealed archive
as quiet, spotless, and inviting to
students as a mausoleum.
No one really knows how much
damage will be prevented by banning
food from library lounges, but, in a
way, it really doesn't matter. The
change in policy shows a change in the
prime commitment of the libraries. No
longer is the goal convenience of
students; now the goal is convenience
for the libraries' janitors.
So you need some coffee to stay
awake while studying for exams? So
what. After all, according to ad-
ministrative logic, we're students, not
necessarily human beings. Or as the
University's new slogan for its
libraries might read: Libraries are for
books, not people.
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OW-Immo-W,
U. S. anti-Soviet war drive:
Driving force in Middle East
Hope in the Senate
T H MOTIVATIONS may be base,
and the program may be flawed,
but the public works bill being
developed by the Senate GOP leader-
ship is one of the most encouraging
signals to emerge from Capitol Hill
since the Republican takeover in 1981.
Early this week, Republicans in the
Senate let it be known that they had
been paying attention to the elections.
Now, suddenly, the Republicans in the
Senate are very anxious to keep unem-
ployment from becoming a
Democratic issue, and they are taking
steps to try to prove that to their con-
stituencies.
The Republican bill taking form
supposedly would create 200,000 jobs
by providing funds for hundreds of
projects designed to rebuild the
nation's crumbling infrastructure. The
bill would provide money to. start
repairs on hundreds of dams, bridges,
and sewage plants as well as hundreds
of miles of decaying highways.
As an attempt to maintain the
nation s capital investments, the
Republican proposal is a prudent effort
in an area which has been ignored by
Congress and presidents for too long.
As an unemployment package, the
bill has some problems. At best, it will
provide employment for 200,000
workers-of the 12 million now unem-
ployed. Unlike Democratic proposals+
the Republican plan would not be
aimed at specific areas where unem-
ployment is especially high. Instead, it
would create jobs wherever the repairs
are needed.
In addition, the plan would not
provide any money for job-training
programs, which are needed to help
those groups most severely affected by
the recession. The plan would be
creating temporary jobs-or
"throwing money at the problem" as
Republicans are usually fond of put-
ting it.:
Nevertheless, the mere fact that the
Republicans in the Senate are con-
sidering a public works bill of their
own is very encouraging. Such a bill is
almost certain to face opposition from
the president, as would any suggestion
that the Reagan economic program is
not working. That the Republican
senators are looking into a jobs bill
might just show that they are willing to
abandon some of the failed policies of
the past two years and put the
economy back on a sound foundation.
The senators may be acting out of
crass political opportunism, but their
actions could lead to a major-and
desperately needed-shift in policy.
By Mary Van Buren
In the rubble of West Beirut and the mass
graves of Shatila and Sabra are revealed the
murderous face of Zionism and the Teal
meaning of U.S. imperialism's "Pax
Americana.,
The U.S. Marines are patroling Beirut to
complete the job of disarming and terrorizing
the Palestinians. and Lebanon's Muslim
majority. Such imperialist "peacekeeping"
means more mass graves and a new diaspora
for the Palestinians.
THE TROTSKYIST Spartacist League and
Spartacus Youth League alone around the
country held demonstrations demanding:
Defend the Palestinians! Imperialist, Israeli
troops out of Lebanon!No U.S. troops or
bases in the Near East! Not one U.S. bullet or
plane to the Israeli butchers!
The Israelis sold their genocidal invasion of
Lebanon to Washington as the purging of PLO
and Syrian "Soviet surrogates." But in every
way it was the entry of the Marines into
Beirut to disarm the PLO that directly paved
the way for the slaughter.
The horrors committed at Shatila and
Sabra reminded the world of nothing so much
as the Nazi holocaust. The murders were
disciplined units directly controlled by the
U.S.-backed Israeli forces: Saad Haddad's
Lebanese Forces and the Phalange-derived.
Damuri Brigade.
HITLER USED Ukranian Einsatzkom-
mandos and Croatian Ustashi to do the jobs
even German SS regulars might not have
been able to stomach; similarly, Israel has
created its own contingents of local Lebanese
murderers for their most bloodthirsty jobs.
The Israeli "Labor" Party, not a workers'
party but the main party of the Zionist
bourgeois establishment, is no alternative to
Begin's Likud. "Labor" Zionism was bap-
tized in the blood of the Palestinian people.
A "Labor" government occupied the West
Band and Gaza, instituting a regime of police
terror over the conquered Arab masses.
It was a "Labor" government which
covered up the 1953 massacre of Palestinians
in Kibya, led by Ariel Sharon's special terror
units! The Peace Now movement, closely
linked to "Labor," tapped a spontaneous ex-
pression of moral outrage among Israelis
over the massacres. But the program of
"Labor"-led Peace Now is Reagan's "fresh
start" proposal for a Palestinian bantusan on
the West Bank.
YASSER ARAFAT, after years of tying the
Palestinians to reactionary Arab regimes,
today supports a U.S. -brokered mini-state.
PLO nationalism laid the basis for the
slaughter of the Palestinians. It was Arafat
who invited the Marines into Beirut! Now he
embraces Hussein, the butcher of Black Sep-
tember.
In the Near East, the only solution for
Hebrew workers and Arab militants is to
break from the murderous nationalism of
their bourgeoisies and construct an inter-
nationalist vanguard party that fights for the
right to self-determination for both
Palestinian and Hebrew nations through a
socialist federation of the Near East.
Behind the U.S. Plahs for "strategic con-
sensus" in the Near East are real war plans
aimed against the Soviet Union. Despite its
current bureaucratic leadership, the Soviet
Union still embodies crucial gains from the
1917 October Revolution for the working class
and must be defended. Despite all
protestations by apologists for Zionist terror,
analogies between the Third Reich, Begin,
and Reagan have a particular applicability.
Begin, Reagan, and Hitler: For all pf them,
the end of their class rule is co-equal with the
end of the universe. And that makes them ex
ceedingly dangerous.
ON NOVEMBER 10 ahd 11 a collection of
some of the most dangerous men in the world
are meeting on the University campus,
headlined by the meglomaniacial General
Haig. Not only are Haig, Brzezinski, et. al.
responsible for mass murders-in Vietnam,
Chile, El Salvador-they are meeting here to
make plans for World War III.
Such war criminal should be run off cam-
pus!
But liberals led by the Progressive Student
Network simply wish to use this occasion to
protest military research on campus. Those
who follow the PSN and their illusions in the
reformability of the capitalist state will be
r
disarmed before the capitalist class' anti-
communist onslaught. While recognizing that
universities are not "neutral" institutions,
the SYL opposes their use as instruments of
class rule and discrimination.
WE STRUGGLE to drive and keep ROTC
off campus; we organize against all military
and spy recruitment; we oppose the new law
tying federal financial aid to draft
registration.
Meanwhile, the nuclear freeze crowd is
holding a convocation this week. This
"movement," led by pro-war Democrats, dif-
fers with Reagan only on how to prosecute
war with Russia. Jt defense the imperialist
status quo and accepts the concept of U.S.
defense aganst the "Red Menace." Far from
any step toward peace, the nuclear freeze is
only another plan for war.
The SYL says the main enemy is at home!
Not a man, not a penny for the imperialist
army !
REAGAN'S MAD WAR drive has become a
nightmare at home. With twelve million
unemployed, the working class and blacks
are being ground to bits. Emboldened by of-
ficial anti-communism and racism emanating
from the White House, the Nazis and Ku Klux
Klan are on a recruitmentdrive of cross-
burnings and terror. For the first time in
decades they are making their move into the
largely black, working-class northern cities.
Last march 20 the SL/SYL mobilized hun-
dreds to drive the Nazis out of Ann Arbor, and I
had the largest contingent October 16 when
the Klan was driven off the streets of Boston.
The SL/SYL stands for labor/black
mobilizations to smash racist terror.
U.S. workers, must break from the,
Democrats and build and integrated, black-
centered workers party to fight for a workers
government: Otherwise the future quite:
literally rests with the likes of Haig and his
Democratic Party cohort, Brzezinski.
The SYL is committed to winning students
and youth to the party that will sweep the.
Reagans and Begins into the dustbin of
history for good.
Van Buren is a Spartacus Youth League
supporter and a master's degree candidate
in English at the University.
"Mr. Congressman, I Realize This Was Only Supposed
To Be A Cushion For My Retirement Years ....
LOIs~i~
{{ 71- V '
ti
LETTERS TO THE DAILY:
Daily
's
market analysis 'simplistic'
To the Daily:
Just when one thinks that the
Daily could not get any worse, it
somehow manages to fuck up
again. I refer, of course, to the
editorial "Wall Street Reacts"
(Daily, Nov. 5).
these factors: (1) speculation
that the Federal Reserve Board
would shorly ease up; (2) relief
that no Senate and only 26 House
seats switched from the
Republican to the Democratic
party. Neither of these were even
any time following the stock
market. Remember what hap-
pened to the market when
someone started the false rumor
that Reagan had a heart attack?
Should the Daily decide to do
another editorial on the stock
rather than decreased-that
the Fed need not lower the
discount rate in the near future,
and the profit-taking.
Perhaps the Daily should stick
to those topics it can effectively
and responsibly handle, i.e.
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