EM09 4 4 -The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, October 29, 2003 OP/ED Ule £td gmi Daf 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 CtIwillbe quitting smoking within six months. I'll just move to eatin' brownies." - Antwan Patton, aka Big Boi, of the hip-hop group OutKast, on his intention to stop smoking marijuana, as reported by Rolling Stone. SAM BUTLER HIE SOAPBOX e Suburban heroes ARI PAUL I HT TiHE LAW 0 have a confession to make. I have a soft spot for the fire-start- ing anarchists in the Earth Liberation Front. Shock- ing how a beef-eating, leather-coat-sporting chap like myself can giggle approvingly at ELF antics, but hey, revolution makes for strange bedfellows. Some raise their fists in support, some cry on about ecoterrorism and some need an explanation. The ELF is a loose network of militant environmentalists that has been known to set fire to under-construction high- income houses and vandalize and incinerate SUVs whose gas consumption is rapidly destroying our environment as well as fund- ing the Saudi terrorist regime, a loyal ally of the Bush-Cheney junta. Most recently, the ELF claimed responsi- bility for incendiaries found at the Ice Moun- tain bottled water plant in Mecosta County. The Ice Mountain Plant has come under con- troversy from environmentalists because of its alleged illegal and detrimental ecological practices. Now I can't argue that members of the ELF didn't break the law, and if caught, shouldn't be jailed. But are the actions of the ELF an appropriate reaction to what is sys- tematically being done to our nation's land- scape by the marriage of our civil authority and mega-corporations? Right now, pollution from SUVs is killing us faster than al-Qaida. In the summer months, orange alerts for toxic smog are more prevalent than orange alerts for terror- ism, and the impact of pollution is mounting daily. Acclaimed journalist Ted Rall reported that in neighboring Ohio, "2002 was the most toxic summer on record in 14 years." It's coming to the point that we all have to climb up to the smoking section of Ren- dezvous Cafe just to get a breath of fresh air. And it's not just tree huggers who want clean air. Rall also reported that a "Los Angeles Times survey found that, even among conservative Republicans, two out of three people believe that the environment is more important than property rights, corpo- rate profits or even creating jobs." Mainstream environmentalism doesn't work. Greenpeace and the Public Interest Research Group do a great job asking folks for spare change, but industrial polluters still get their way, with the government turning a blind eye to the devastating affects. The big auto companies will go on to pro- duce the gas guzzlers because that's what people think they need to become better peo- ple. And people will encourage sprawl for the same reasons. All this goes on with the government's blessings, through subsidies on suburban development and the failure of the state to put some kind of regulation on these automotive killers. What I hope the ELF can do is make SUV drivers feel as if they have been vilified, as if their precious Ford Explorer is in itself a criminal waiting to be executed by the vigi- lante squad because of its lethal effect on the rest of us. Ditto for the developers; their actions not only kill the landscape, but their conformist dreams are killing our nation's middle class. Perhaps it's unfair that SUV owners would have to live in fear of the ELF. Well, when I owned a car, I had to live in fear because I was constantly flanked by these tanks that could kill me with one soft colli- sion, because I couldn't afford an SUV's high cost. SUV drivers don't like the taste of fear? Neither do I. It's near impossible to reverse the killing of our earth through legal means when the polluters monopolize the system. For example, Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje's Greenbelt proposal to preserve a modest stretch of land from the wolves of suburban development is being slammed by the patently biased Ann Arbor News, leaving out half the story and leading vot- ers to incorrectly believe that Hieftje's environmentalism is somehow illegal. Liberal media my foot. Environmentalists don't have a voice in the media and the government couldn't care less about what these environmental terrorists - by that I mean industrialists who terrorize the environment - are doing to this country. Throughout history, when the side of justice is marginalized, it takes an extremist to get the point across. So to all you kids with your fists full of daddy's dollars and the SUV he bestowed upon you, you have a choice to do the moral thing and give up that monster truck in order to make a better world for the rest of us. The burden is on you, the upper-middle class. But if you choose not to and find your prized possession ablaze you'd have every right to charge the ELF culprits, but your inaction to do your part for the rest of us would be an enormous disservice to your fel- low man. Paul can be reached at aspaul@umich.edu. I6 Edwards' style can't hide lack of substance JASON PESICK ONE SMALIL VOICE DETROIT - f Sunday night's Democratic presiden- tial candidate debate is any indication, George W. Bush is going to be a two-term president. Instead of offering any- thing of substance to vot- ers, the candidates typically responded to the questions by attacking the president. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe tried to spin the debate as well as he could to reporters after it ended, but under his watch, the party's future looks bleaker and bleaker the more its candidates speak. It's still possi- ble that one of the candidates will hit his stride, but next Nov. 3 could be an ugly day for Democrats. The candidacy that best exemplifies these faults is that of Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. He is an attractive, charismatic, moderate Southern Democrat in his first term. In many ways, he represents the future of the party. The problem is that his candida- cy is tanking. When he first announced he was going to run for president, polls showed Edwards at the front of the pack. Now he is in the single digits, running behind former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun in a recent Newsweek poll. What happened? A number of factors have contributed to Edwards's downward slide. The conventional wisdom is that during such a serious time in the country's history, voters will not look favorably upon an inexperienced candidate such as Edwards. It's just not the right time for him to be running. This may have some truth to it, but more likely, the Edwards cam- paign is not clicking with voters for other reasons. For one, he is trying to run his campaign right out of the Bill Clinton playbook. He talks-about feeling people's pain and making a personal connection with voters. The prob- lem is that John Edwards acts like Bill Clin- ton without any substance. Bill Clinton had style, but he also presented voters with a uni- fied set of ideas and proposals. Edwards has policy booklets that you can download on his website, such as the 64-page "Real Solutions for America" and his "Cities Rising" initia- tive. I looked at the section of "Real Solu- tions for America" that deals with job creation. It looked to me like something a college-age political volunteer wrote between classes. Then, during the debate in Detroit, volunteers passed around a sheet of paper explaining that "Edwards has always opposed (the North American Free Trade Agreement)." That doesn't sound like Bill Clinton to me. It takes only a quick glance at Edwards's website to realize that his eco- nomic program is a nonsensical mess. Edwards also begins every statement he makes by saying that his father was a mill worker and his mother worked for the U.S. Postal Service. He talks about working his way through college and how that makes him a better candidate than old money types like Howard Dean and John Kerry. There may be some truth to this, but Edwards is a multimillionaire being funded by large campaign donations, not the $75 contributions going to Dean. According to Edwards' logic, his own children would not make good presidential candidates because they grew up wealthy. Besides, the president who helped out the average man more than any other was Franklin Roo- sevelt, no man of the people. There's an inconsistency on the Act as well. When asked by questioner Huel Perkins during the debate if it is inconsistent for him to be such a vocal opponent of the Patriot Act when he not only voted for it but helped to write it, Edwards responded, "The attorney general of the United States (John Ashcroft) came before us and told us that he would not abuse his discretion. He has abused his dis- cretion." I hope if he were elected president he would be a little more skeptical. His Iraq policy makes even less sense. Edwards voted in favor of the Iraqi war resolution, but then voted against the $87 billion to fund it. After railing against the president for trying to enrich his cronies during the reconstruction process, Edwards supported loans, not grants for Iraq. He demanded to be paid back by the Iraqis after criticizing the president for trying to make money off the war. Some may say voters don't focus on these types of inconsistencies, but Edwards's declining poll numbers show that, at the very least, pandering is not working, neither for him nor his party. 0 Pesick can be reached at jzpesick@umich.edu. LETTER TO THE EDITOR Divesment from Israel justified, 'the logical course of action' TO THE DAILY: Is there the least bit of irony in Sol Adelsky's reference to Avraham Burg's reprimand of Israel as "proof of Israel's democracy" (Divestment from Israel not a hrflrtvoctrhtay n ce oroin the Middle South African apartheid. If they wanted to discuss the conflict, they would compre- hensively analyze the overwhelmingly complex and deep-rooted problem in South Africa instead of conjuring up a simplistic solution based on false or misleading facts. Do they support peace or do they support divestment - which would effectively strip the South African military of the abil- ity to defend itself against countless terror- ist attacks by the African National Congress and cause more South Africans to lose their inh not to mention a niethora attests to such a campaign's potential effectiveness. The moral equivalence of Israel's rule over the Palestinians to South African apartheid is not in question, as those South Africans that lived under that structure have repeatedly noted the struc- tural similarity. Moreover, under the Unit- ed Nations 1973 convention, Israel's occupation of the Palestinians legally fits the label of apartheid. Thus, divestment would seem to be the logical course of action to take. 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