Page 4-The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, September 11, 1990 EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN F 420 Maynard Street Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 WgLCMETO THE 3ot1AN 'J To YOUR LEFT' Y'QI WICLSEE . IAT SAND!' HEY -"ieYOUR REAR TMeRE 15 a- sAND--AND 13uU-E§! Rt&HcT HER~E W~ GOT ALL -~p S~cw'AND)YOL'U Lt) £.VER WVANT... ANI NCor ~~ELSE/. SLo SQ~HRDE T5 SIRt wITh (ovK UNz S You NiPPE N To FEAN ~AENGAN. 44tC4t-)Ct*A NOAH FINKEL Editor in Chief DAVID SCHWARTZ Opinion Editor 4' Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily. Budget priorities? Students shouldn't have paid for PSC delegation THOUGH MUCH OF STUDENTS' TU- when most students are away from ition money is squandered through campus, smacks of hypocricy. bureaucratic mishaps or short-sighted Jennifer Van Valey, the MSA presi- funding allocations, budget abuse by ;dent, criticized the University's Board an elected student government is par- of Regents for using a similar tactic - ticularly unfortunate. The Michigan approving a private police force while Student Assembly and the Rackham students were on summer break. This Student Government erred this summer shows that MSA, like the administra- when they chose to fund a Palestine tion, is willing to do without the input Solidarity Committee-sponsored trip to of students in making their decisions. the Middle East. Student groups, including the PSC, Though the cause which the PSC should receive student money to pursue supports - self-determination for their interests through activities on Palestinians - is laudable, students' campus. Allocating money to these money can be better spent by furthering groups is among the responsibilities of programs or events in the campus area. student governments; but in this case, Allocating $2,000 ($1,000 from each both RSG and MSA acted against the of the two student governments) to best interest of the students whom they send two people, one of whom is not represent. even a student, to the other side of the Students should pay attention to the world will have little or no benefit to decision to fund a trip of two people to students at large. Israel and the Occupied Territories. The MSA's summer budget was proposed delegation was meant to $10,000, so, the $1,000 allocation serve three goals: constituted 10 percent of the assem- 1. Establish stronger ties with bly's spending limit. One would think Birzeit University; more pressing endeavors - perhaps 2. Meet with anti-occupation and improving lighting on and off campus human rights activists; or opposing the University police force 2. Return to campus and report to - would have warranted the outlay. students. For an assembly that is still battling Students should attend at least one financial woes accumulated from past of the presentations by the delegates to administrations, it is especially ironic hear what they have to say, and then that money would be so easily doled judge for themselves how wisely their out to programs which offer negligible money has been spent. For example, benefits to students. there will be a presentation Thursday at Even more shameful is the way in 8 pm at Rackham. which the money was approved. Further, students who believe their Though nearly 50 students serve on money has been misused by either MSA, the vote in favor of funding the MSA or RSG should report their dis- PSC trip was only 6-1. And though the satisfaction to their elected 'student assembly doesn't dictate when funding representatives. requests will be brought before it, Only by speaking out can budget knowingly approving such a contro- abuse, both by students and versial project during the summer, administrators be curtailed. C h I e Anniversary of coup reminds of U.S. actions SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO THIS seventeen years ago than for the stark week, a CIA-sponsored coup over- parallels one can draw between U.S. threw Chilean President Salvador Al- policy in Chile and throughout Latin lende's democratically-elected Socialist America up until this day. If one government. Allende himself was mur- changes the names and faces, what dered because he refused to vacate the happened in Chile in 1973 closely re- Presidential Palace. During General sembles what the United States did in Augusto Pinochet's ensuing military Guatemala in 1954, the Dominican Re- dictatorship, thousands of teachers, public . in 1965, and Nicaragua workers, priests and students who had throughout the 1980s. In all of these supported the Alle~nde government countries and many more, the United were rounded up, tortured, and killed. Statesflouted the self-determination for The United States engineered this which it claimed to stand in the name of coup with very specific objectives that the business interests it desired to pro- had nothing to do with its proclaimed tect. commitment to democracy, liberty and self-determination. It supported the As long as it places such interests coup for two reasons. First, because before the Latin American peoples large U.S. corporations in Chile such those interests exploit, Washington is as Kennecott, ITT, and Anaconda were condemned to repeat policies that cost directly threatened by the Allende gov- millions of dollars, take thousands of ernment's proposals to appropriate a lives, and flout numerous principles for larger share of their profits for the ben- which this country claims to stand. efit of the Chilean people. Secondly, Scenarios like Chile do not go away; because the tremendous success of they simply rise again in a different many of Allende's redistributive poli- place and form, for the very simple cies served as an inspiration for pro- reason that people will always rebel gressive movements throughout Latin against conditions and governments America who had also experienced di- like those Washington all too fre- rectly the unequal distribution, unfair quently supports. As Allende said in prices, and exploitation accompanying his last radio message, broadcast while U.S. multinationals and their rhetoric the coup was already in progress, of "progress" and "development." "social processes cannot be stopped But today's anniversary is signifi- with crime and force. History is ours cant less for what actually happened and the people make it." i 8 6-M r i' .:, tt ' I W J- B .:.:. PSC delegates answer critics By David Levin and Luis Vazquez The two of us recently returned from a delegation to the West Bank and Gaza Strip which was funded by the Rackham Student Government, the Michigan Stu- dent Assembly, and the Palestine Solidar- ity Committee. The purpose of the delegation was three-fold: 1) to meet with student, fac- ulty, and administrative leaders at Birzeit University and strengthen sister-University ties previously established by MSA; 2) to conduct meetings with Palestinian and Is- raeli individuals and groups who are active in the struggle against the Israeli occupa- tion; and, 3) to educate the University community on these subjects through pre- sentations on campus, articles in campus publications, and presentations in class- rooms, dorms, and other available forums. We are confident that we have already ful- filled the first two objectives of the delega- tion. Birzeit University has been closed by Israeli military order since January, 1988. Our sister-University relationship was es- tablished as an act of solidarity with stu- dents who are denied their right to educa- tion. We are proud that MSA and RSG remain committed to fighting for academic freedom and equal rights for Palestinian students and academics. They understand that a threat to academic freedom anywhere is a threat to academic freedom every- where, including the University of Michi- gan. David Levin is an LSA senior, a member of the Daily Opinion staff, and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee. Luis Vazquez recently received his Mas- ter's degree from the University and is a former MSA representative. Our critics do not share our enthusi- asm, however. Their condemnations, in addition to being quite dubious in content, are extremely premature. We are surprised that some of our critics have already seen fitto prejudge the delegation as a waste of money before we have had the opportunity to complete our task by conducting educa- tional presentations on campus. Those who argue that large amounts of student government funds have been ill- spent seem to lack a sense of proportion. It is not unusual for MSA or RSG to they are just groping for any conceivable criticism to levy in order to discredit the delegation and its efforts to educate people about the oppression of the Palestinian people. MSA's allocation amounts to approx- imately 1.5 cents per student per delegate or .6 cents for each of our September presentations. In comparison, students who are U.S. taxpayers each send over $15 a year to Israel, an expenditure whose benefit to members of the University community is dubious at best. We are surprised that some of our critics have already seen fit to prejudge the delegation as a waste of money before we have had the opportunity to complete our task by conducting educational presentations on campus. spend more than $1,000 to bring a speaker to campus for one presentation. The two of us will be giving five presentations on campus in September alone. It is through the quality of these presentations, in addi- tion to what we were able to accomplish in our meetings at Birzeit, by which the worthiness of MSA and RSG's expendi- tures should be judged. Israel's brutal response to the Pales- tinian uprising has indisputably revealed the oppressive nature of the occupation. As a result, it has become increasingly dif- ficult to publicly attack those who support the Palestinian people. Opponents of equal rights for the Palestinians are thus forced to resort to disingenuous arguments to. pursue their objectives. Given this state of affairs, we must question if our critics are really concerned about the issues that they've raised or if Additionally, in the course of each minute that we spend debating the merits of this allocation, the United States gov- ernment sends over $7,500 to Israel to help fund its occupation of Palestinian land. From this perspective, the $2,000 in student government funds is worth approximately 16 seconds of our time. If delegation critics are sincerely con- cerned about wasted money than their en- ergy is surely poorly directed. Before any more of it is channeled into uniformed, sweeping condemnations of the delegation and the student organizations which funded it, critics would be well served by attend- ing one of our numerous presentations. Our Thursday night presentation entitled "Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising" at Rackham at 8:00 p.m. represents such an opportunity. k ' '41 Y' C , 0- Iraq and Vietnam: By Col. Charles D. Tackett Let us go down memory lane from 1955, Dwight D. Eisenhower to 1990, President George Bush. In 1955, General and President Eisenhower decided, after some international stress and internal pres- sures, to send troops into Vietnam. Under the same principles in 1990 our present government did the same in Iraq. It is not strange to me that in 1955 as well as 1990 the United Nations Article 52 was imple- mented to legitimize the adventure. Let me move you on to what article 52 of the UN does and does not do for the American people. Article 52 does not make us a soldier but as a police officer. The forces going there should be volunteer at least. It does not legalize us in our own nation because it does not declare war. When we declare a war here all the Veter- ans rights and benefits known as the G.I. Bill are automatically in place. Article 52. of the UN does not put anything in place. No G.I. Bill, and, as each problem occurs, it has to be voted on by resolution of need by Congress. To safeguard our now and returning men and women, A Declaration of War has to be put in place. At the onset of a peace action or conflict, our War Powers Act of the U.S. Constitution has no amendments to protect the Veterans. Our leadership from Eisenhower to Bush has had around 35 years to take care of these matters of state and I wonder why they have not. I feel that they have had enough exnerience to learn hv Vietnam. that nation had materialistically. Article 52 versus the War Powers Act does not take humane care of our returning soldiers. There is actually no way to, even if the soldiers needed it a law binding govern- ment to make sure of rehabilitation back to civilian life. I feel that it is O.K. to serve your country only if your country could treat you in a humane and just way. Considering the 57,000 who died in Viet- nam and the over 200,000 suicides later, I feel that article 52 is not so humane after all. Article 52 is a police action, not a war intervention. If we as a nation had paid at- tention to our own laws, such as our War Powers Act instead of someone else's, that would have a better humane end. Let us take a look at our current eco- nomic structure and how it ties into Iraq. When Gramm-Rudman-Hollings said we would be out of debt by 1991, they were only blowing smoke. I guess these men had to inflate their own importance. Their deception created some of this monster that has fallen upon us. Look at what we owe catering to greedy special interest government and corporate structure. I would like to add capitalistic ways did this national damage and not our democratic ways under a democracy. I guess when a depressed or recessed nation has money problems war is the answer and our glut- tonous greed is easily forgotten along with the truth. From 1955 to 1990, about 35 years, we have had presidents, senators, and Sreview some. All were represented and not the chosen few rich, poor, nationalities, knowns, and unknowns. They felt that one did not have any more virtue, wisdom, in- sight than another. I am deathly afraid that our elder Thomas Jefferson's fear of mind manipulation over each other has finally arrived. I feel like him. "I also have sworn on the alter of God." Eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. We do not need a war in Iraq. We simply need to get together in harmony as a united people. Also, instead of our arro- gance and greedy ways, share this nation for the humane interest of all. We badly need to review the old to protect and secure the new. Our generations ahead of us, if there is a future, do not need the debt and greed in which we will leave them. 1 love and respect all my American friends and neighbors. Why does everyone seem to think that is so hard to do? Daily 'irresponsible' on substance abuse To the Daily: I was very disappointed with the degree to which The Daily promoted drug and al- cohol use in last week's New Student Edi- tion. In light of the fact that the abuise of these substances claims thousands of lives each year, some within our own commu- nity. I felt the flipnant tone of the articles Os