A 4A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, January 31, 2002 OP/ED Zbe £ irbiguu i1i 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily. letters@umich.edu, NOTABLE QUOTABLE EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER Editorial Page Editors " We will execute him within 24 hours unless America fulfills our demands." Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. - I ( 7 ZJ ,.A\ X 6 -- A statement from the group that has kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, as quoted by Reuters. The group demands release of Pakistani prisoners captured in Afghanistan. V)FI' r~4. -- :: Our wedding gift to/corporatism JOSH WICKERHAMTisP l WORLD "Fascism should more appropriately be called cor- poratism because it is a merger of state and corpo- rate power." -Benito Mussolini Because we have a president who doesn't read history books (or any books, for that matter), I've been thinking about a few things we should keep in mind during our ascent into the New World Order. Wait, I'm sorry. I guess they're calling it "America's New Role" now. So let's roll. Like a rolling stone. For this war to work, the economy has to be steaming and belching at full capacity. Our pres- ident said it himself. (My suggestion: Tune in, turn on, drop out.) Displaced Enron workers can work for defense contractors. According to Dubya, there is also apparently a moment we must seize. Now we're being asked to swallow a new historic period. In this, the decisive decade for our way of life, we, the right, the proud, the just, have found a new answer to our woes. Forget about the abortion clinic bombers Attorney General Ashcroft won't capture in his terrorism dragnet. Forget about Columbine and the Enron scandal. Forget about our own sorry state of life and the fat slobbery of prosperity. We have a new dis- traction. We're going to war! Sit down and watch the tube. That's because there are no alternatives to Horatio Algerism. We are right. Capitalism is the most efficient way to innovate. Our corpo- rate leaders, who obviously got to the top with the tools of honesty, self-reliance and invest- ment in the future, expect others to do the same. They expect growth. And they expect new mar- kets. They expect results. Our will is strong, there's no doubt about that. We're simply lying to ourselves if we think our will is strong enough to take on the rest of the world. Yet we expect to win. We will have a tri- umph of the will, even if it kills us. (Which it probably will.) We expect no less. I'm relatively pessimistic about our short- and long-term prospects. How can I feel any dif- ferent when I know we have an unquenchable culture of bloodlust, more guns than citizens, media that lies to us and a government in the final exhausting heat of a race for empire? We're taking big strides, people and though its inevitable we'll fail in our fight with the rest of the world, Rome acquired the most territory in its history during its last gasps. Hey, so did Ger- many. But then again, we're fighting for market share, so it doesn't matter if we abandon our roots. As long as we don't admit we're wrong, we'll die honorable deaths. And in the mean- time, we'll have what we've been referring to as prosperity. Although ultimatums usually get me into trouble, I have only one criterion for my contin- ued citizenship in this war machine. I will not be subject to an integrated national identification system, for this spells the triumph of the infrastructure over the people. There is no trust when power is involved. All we can expect is abuse. Link this with a system which matches faces to credentials as one passes before a cam- era hooked to new face-recognition technology and soon the political dissident becomes the desaparecido, whisked to the private prison- industrial complex's answer to the gulag. Or like Enron accountants who are supposed to testify before public hearings, we'll all commit suicide. Merging database software, identification equipment and economic records with the newly integrated CIA atd FBI databases will be. a great boost for the lagging tech sector. And what better way to celebrate the marriage of business and government than with the surren- der of personal autonomy? Our wedding presents to GovCorp will be our previous identities. And we'll get something in return - the choice between rolling with the tidal wave or rolling under a rock. At least we can cross our fingers about campaign finance reform, but big whoop. We'll get something that goes only half way unless we're articulate in making our demands to get soft money out of the campaign system. Alas, rolling on in silence is my fate, as this is my final column. And for the record, I do love my country - I just don't confuse it with my government. Thanks for reading and good luck to you all. I suggest you buy guns. Cheers to the fucking Coca-Cola war! Josh Wickerham wants to thankyou for being patriotic and not talking backHe can be reached via e-mail atjwickerh@umich.edu. 6 6 V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Daily editorial on campus policing had many inaccuracies To THE DAILY: The Daily editorial concerning campus police jurisdiction ("Policing out of bounds," 1/30/02) contained numerous inaccuracies. The Hope College police have jurisdiction off of the Hope College campus not because of an appeals court decision but because officers of the Hope College Public Safety Department have been deputized by the Ottawa County Sheriff. They therefore legally have jurisdiction throughout all of Ottawa County. The court decision only upheld authority that already existed. The University of Michigan Department of Public Safety in contrast derives its police pow- ers from Public Act 120 of 1990 passed by the Michigan Legislature. That act gives the gov- erning boards of all public four year higher edu- cation institutions the power to deputize their own police officers. The Daily stated that DPS officers can enforce laws off campus. The act, however, limits the jurisdiction of DPS officers to University owned or leased property and "any public right of way travers- ing or immediately contiguous to the property." The University Board of Regents would only have the power to extend the jurisdiction off campus if another state law passed by the legis- lature allowed them to do so first. DPS officers were briefly deputized by Washtenaw County Sheriff in 1990 and 1991 but only as a temporary measure until Public Act 120 was put into full effect. I am not writ- ing this letter to either defend or criticize the deputization of campus police. Rather I am writing this to point out the shoddy journalistic practices of the Daily editorial board. A sound editorial writer would have done a minimal amount of research of the basic facts. The real question that the Daily should be asking the regents concerning the University police is why the public safety department oversight committee created under Public Act 120 of 1990 has never been allowed to do any real work. BRIAN S. KIGHT Alumnus Bathrooms are barrier to equality form social roles. Those social roles often have bnothing to do with toilet etiquette but they have been passed down through our Victorian-soci- ety just as have gender-specific bathrooms. Elias Kass' letter ("Transgendered bath- rooms protect 'freedom to urinate"' 01/28/02) touched the root of the problem: A perception of not belonging. When we perceive certain classes of individuals as not belonging in one arena, we carry those perceptions to other are- nas. Thus, women not belonging in men's bath- rooms carries over to women not belonging in men's places of work (and vice-versa, men are thereby perceived not to belong in the home, raising children). I am not arguing that gender-specific bath- rooms are a cause of other types of gender dis- crimination. Rather, they are a barrier to eliminating gender discrimination. DAVID H. KAPLAN Law Student Painting Sparty shows 'lack of class' To THE DAILY: To the Michigan fans who thought defacing public property was a good display of school spirit: As I was walking to class this morning I was greeted by the sight of Michigan State's beloved Sparty statue covered from head to toe in maize and blue paint. Understanding that the rival basketball game was last night at the Bres- lin Center, I know why it happened, I just don't agree with the reasoning. Shouldn't being a true fan consist of boost- ing your team to victory? I believe the words of your very own Athletic Director Bill Martin fit nicely for this situation, "When you cheer for the maize and blue, direct your efforts to the support of the team ..." The statement was made about the atmosphere in Yost Arena, but I believe they apply to all of your sports pro- grams both home and away. When you stop to think about it, what does defacing school prop- erty say about your team and yourselves, other than a lack of class? Having said that, I know what's coming next, "What about when Michigan State fans did it to our school?" The fact of the matter is that it wasn't right when the tables were turned and the color of the paint was green. Someone has to be the bigger person here, step up and put a stop to it. Instead of acting childishly, let's get some class and encourage our teams instead of destroying property that has nothing to do with the game. ERIN BIDINGER Michigan State University student term "bleeding-heart liberals." To begin with, the writer is under the impressionthat he was calling someone a name, which is never a good way to convince them of your position. Secondly, I would like to take issue with the idea that this is a negative label. The term bleeding-heart has two possible meanings here; the first being a plant of the genus Dicentra commonly found in flower gar- dens, the second being one who displays exces- sive concern or pity for others. I will assume that the second definition is. How it has become that to have concern for one's fellow humanity can be used as a disparagement baffles my mind. One would think that an excessive con- cern would be preferable to the other extreme. I care about others and I'm actually quite proud of that fact. As for liberal, I am once again bewildered at how this word became one of disparagement. This word means to be in favor of reform, sup- portive of individual freedom, free from preju- dice, tolerant and generous. We should all be so. In modernpolitical discourse, it is common to use liberal as if it were a bad word. I am proud to be a liberal; to denigrate me because of my political views is intolerant and inappropriate. The nature of liberalism is to seek progress, personally and societilly. Liber- alism is an expression of my desire to make the world a better place, and will not be taken as some sort of aspersion. Liberal isn't a bad word. MAT TRANDAL LSA junior India does not see Kashmir as 'last bastion' of secularity To THE DAILY: I commend Waj Syed for his three series article about Pakistan ("Home of the Pure," 1/28/02, 1/29/02, 1/30/02. While I admire his objectivity and in depth reporting in the first two parts of the series, I am disappointed that when he discusses India-Pakistan relations he predictably slips into the India-bashing mode as soon as he mentions "Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India." Perhaps Syed is blissfully unaware that India has the second largest population of Muslims next only to Indonesia and definitely more than Pakistan. India has always been vehemently secular (it says so in the constitu- tion), in marked contrast to Pakistan, which defines itself as an Islamic Republic. We do not sene Kashmir as the "last bastion" of our 4 fir.: h::. ,: ,.t::::. . ...... Y.:::: . ; :::.:.:::.:::::: . <... . v. ;:....:::;; >:: >: f::::;::;: ;:: ..._. ... . .n ................. ,:.. ;:;:>