4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, February 21, 2003 OP/ED u 9 h4w ttilg 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 letters@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 LOUIE MEIZLISH Editor in Chief AUBREY HENRETTY ZAC PESKOWITZ Editorial Page Editors 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. NOTABLE QUOTABLE (The term 'celebrity' makes my skin crawl." -Actress Janeane Garofalo when asked on Wednesday by the BBC whether she prefers the title actor or celebrity in an interview about her anti-war stance. SAM BUTLER CLASSIC SOAPEoX . . T "oo~wYl ),5oahc 1 .. Does this shirt match my fear? HUSSAIN RAHIM NARCOLEPTIIC INSOMNIA *1 I'm gone. I have been gone long before Spring Break even started. In fact, I don't think I've ever gotten back from the Winter Break or maybe even sophomore year. But for once my physical will catch up with my mental as I start my pillage of the West Coast sometime today. The temperature should reach around the mid-70s, decent weather for our strategically placed spring break. I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do over this week. I'm leaning toward organizing a strong anti-Kobe Bryant rally/parade at the Staples Center. It depends on which permit I can get. Perhaps I will be able to schmooze in a Los Angeles coffee shop with waiters/actors and reach new levels of preten- sion often dreamt of but rarely achieved in Ann Arbor. Or maybe I'll even invade a gated com- munity in Beverly Hills or crash a Hollywood premiere. However I definitely know what I won't be doing. I won't be following politics or engaging in anything resembling intellectual discourse. I'm a little tired of caring about the world when the people who actually control it don't know what the hell they are doing. All week through- out The New York Times (and other news out- lets I guess) opined ad nauseam about Iraq, Korea, homeland security and every other prob- lem in the world. Well the purpose of the news is to build awareness and inform, correct? Right I know this but now it s just annoying. I feel as mentally retarded listening to the speeches by the Senate majority leader and the secretary of homeland defense as I do if I were to watch "Joe Millionaire" or "Are You Hot?" For those a little behind on the brilliance behind our country, Bill Frist, Senate majority leader, recently said that "Americans should not be obsessing about emergency supplies." Or "The real cause for concern is if you are by a major risk site." Meanwhile, almost every major facil- ity was put on terrorist notice and no one is giv- ing up the locations of targeted sites. Instead we should, "Exercise regularly, eat well and get a good night's rest." Apparently we get free med- ical advice came with GOP rule. It should be fun managing my health while I add the gov- ernment's new toll-free (800) BE-READY number to my cell phone. I promise that's a real number, although I am not really sure what it gets me ready for. Essentially the government doesn't know what going on. Because now Tom Ridge says to, "Stash away the duct tape. Don't use it. Stash it away." Of course a chorus of pressroom laughter was the gift for this comment. One can't help to laugh because sometimes laughter can defuse the tension and confusion. Terrorism isn't an easy thing to gauge or predict. Terrorism doesn't involve visible planning but covert hostility and clandestine (not Palestine) operations. While I do not expect the government, especially this one, to know the exact times and solutions to these prob- lems, I also don't want their confusion. Leaders are supposed to lead, not disseminate chaos through color charts. The current method being used leads to the exact opposite direction of where our attention should be. At this rate, in true boy-who-cried-bomb fashion, the country will begin to ignore these warnings over time, or even worse, assuming the government issues these warnings intentionally to create fear and support for bringing down anyone connected to this ubiquitous feeling of terrorism and fear. This cynicism is already beginning to pervade through the nation's consciousness already. Seemingly every generation faces inane pro- cedures for safety. Ducking under desks for safety from Commie nukes in the 50s and 60s will save my life as well as sealing myself in a masking tape sanctuary will from Sarin and anthrax today. The responsibility of poison gas staying far away from my skin falls squarely on the shoulders of the government. I can't be any more ready than I am. I'll deal with Ann Arbor all over again and the rest of the world in March if my mind makes it back with me. But for now join me in a week of decadence, hedonism, egoism and disinterest. If you find yourself still in need of current events, rent "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb" and you'll be up to date. If anyone wants me, I'll be color coordinating my duct tape with the color-coded security alert system. Is it yel- low or orange tonight? Ifyou know how to match metallic gray with citrus orange or anything else that interesting, Rahim can be reached at hrahim@umich. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Bush should implement innovative national energy policy, fuel cells not enough TO THE DAILY: I'd like to thank the Daily, Fuel cell energy proves clean alternative to oil (02/18/03), for making fuel cells a front page issue. I look forward to the day when our transportation and energy systems are free from pollution and fuel cells offer a great step in the right direction. However, the hydrogen used to power fuel cells should not be considered a fuel. Despite the abundance of hydrogen in the environment, it can only be used for ener- gy storage, not generation. As Prof. Yohan Schwank pointed out, hydrogen must be generated using electricity. This is the only process that can be scaled up to the level of production needed for a nation- al hydrogen supply. The problem lies in the fact that electricity must be used, and the process is not 100 percent efficient. The elec- trical power must come from power-plants, so now the source of the problem has been moved from the roads (in the case of fuel-cell powered cars) to the power-plants. President Bush has failed to adequately address elec- tricity generation issues. The current national energy policy (www.energy.gov) already shows we are entering a electrical energy shortage, so trying to support a national hydrogen infrastructure from the current power-plants will not work. Now we hit the bigger problem, we need to build a new electrical infrastructure focus- ing on nuclear fission. There have been pro- found advances in nuclear power-plant design over the past two decades. Newer technologies, such as pebble-bed reactors, are inherently safe, cannot melt-down, can- not release radiation, produce very little waste, and are cheap to build. Other waste- management technologies can reduce the 38,000 metric tons of nuclear waste we have stockpiling in the United States while elimi- nating the risk of the proliferation of weapons material and generating electricity. Unfortunately, although Bush recog- nizes the advances in nuclear technology, the national energy policy is directed to building over 1,000 new coal and natural gas power plants over the next two decades while leaving nuclear options to hang in the wind. If fuel cells are really to be the environmentally friendly panacea we want it to be, we need to build a sensible source of energy. I would like to see the Daily fol- low up on national energy policy as it relates to these issues. JAMES GLETTLER Engineering senior Paul's column right to address education reform, but wrong to think reform will stop war To THE DAILY: I'm writing this letter regarding Ari Paul's column in Weekend Magazine, Be all that we'll let you be (02/20/03). First let me start by saying that I agree that education must be reformed, and soon, I might add. However his statement at the end of the article, "Education reform will stop war," is the most asinine thing I have almost ever seen written. Can Paul really believe this? If we finally do achieve education reform in this country, will this stop all the Islamic terrorists from hating us? Will this stop North Korea from wanting to turn every city of the U.S. mainland into rubble? Will they see our improved test scores and realize, hey, they ain't so bad after all? The answer is no, education reform will not stop war. The truth is that there is nothing that will ever put a stop to war. As long as people of different colors, different lan- guages and different beliefs on the planet, peo- ple will be willing to kill each other to prove theirs is the best. Sometimes the world isn't as idealistic as some believe a single solution to a single small problem will stop all war forever. CHRIS JOSEPH Engineering junior VIEWPOINT Innocent until proven guilty BY FADI KIBLAWI "Dr. Sami, as I call him, is a friend of mine, and I have absolutely no shame in calling him a friend." The oft-racist Michigan Student Zion- ists, in a cheap attempt to exploit yesterday's arrest of Sami Al-Arian on terrorist-related charges, quoted me in a press release yesterday as saying this months ago, ostensibly in their repeated efforts to associate me, a 21-year-old student, with terrorism. There is racism endemic in our government today with its origins buried deep in the archi- tects of our post-Sept.I11 unconstitutional, and wholly un-American, policies. The neoconserv- atives, who have exploited this nation's greatest tragedy to stir fear in our society, are now recre- ating the internment of Japanese-Americans dur- ing World War II. This time, the victims are the Arabs, who by the thousands have been detained and arrested for minor immigration violations or more often than not, for no reason at all. Where does Al-Arian fall in this? According to Attorney General John Ashcroft. a man not investigation in 1996 by William Reece Smith, former head of the American Bar Association) and an immigration judge. In fact, after his citi- zenship application was halted in,1995 by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who cited secret evidence, a concept that in itself continues the redundant trend of un-American ideals staining our, judicial process. Al-Arian filed a Freedom of Information Act to deter- mine what this evidence was. Two years later, the evidence was revealed as news clippings from The Tampa Tribune. The author of these articles was a previously unknown reporter named Michael Fechter, ewho built his career out of weaving fantastic tales against Al-Arian and the Muslim community in general: Mentored by Steve Emerson, a phony thoroughly discredited and exposed for fabricat- ing numerous stories in attempts to cast the American Muslim community as a threat to national security, Fechter's evidence was cir- cumstantial, with guilt by association being his preferred weapon of choice. Other Fechter shock stories included attempts to tie the Okla- homa City bombings to Muslim extremists. reports surfaced last week of a "Patriot Act II," which would further clip our civil liberties and constitutional rights, but whose passage would benefit greatly from yesterday's arrests. The reality is countless lives have been ruined as political agendas have exploited the media's pandering to anti-Arab hysteria and a society drowning in fear. A clear example of this is seen even on this campus, as the Michi- gan Student Zionists relentlessly continue their campaign to stifle intellectual discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict through charging the pro- justice students and organizations with a dubi- ous guilt by association. A clear example of this has been seen numerous times on Capitol Hill, with a continuing war on Arabs .domestically and abroad, in Palestine and Iraq. Taking all of this into consideration, we must closely monitor the government's case against Al-Arian. The attorney general's charges are both serious and damning, so it is imperative that we ensure a fair and open trial. Over the past 17 months, this constitutional right has been disregarded with countless Arab detainees. With the high profile nature of this THE BOONDOCKS V~Ir .A, .AR~PO N G~l, D r