NEWS

The Michigan Daily - Monday, October 25, 2004 - 3A

ON CAMPUS
Professionals to
speak on careers
for women in
media
Women from Michigan Pub-
lic Media - Michigan Radio and
Michigan Television - will speak
about opportunities for females in
broadcast media. They will speak
from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Center for
Education of Women, 330 East Lib-
erty St..
Orchestras to
play Tchaikovsky
at Hill
The University Symphony Orches-
tra and University Philharmonia
Orchestra will perform tonight
at 8 p.m. at the Hill Auditorium.
Conductors Kenneth Kiesler and
Andrew George will lead the orches-
tras in playing Tchaivovsky's Sym-
phony No. 5, among other songs. For
information, contact the School of
Music or call Rachel Francisco at
764-0594.
Award ceremony
to honor faculty,
GSI teaching
Ceremonies will take place tomorrow
to present the D'Arms Faculty Awards
for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring
in the Humanities and the Outstanding
Graduate Student Instructor Awards.
The awards are given to these teachers
for exemplaray mentoring and teaching
in the humanities.
The ceremony, which will take
place in Rackham Amphitheater
from 3:30 to 5 p.m. tomorrow, will
include presentations to the award
winners, a guest speaker and a recep-
tion. For more information contact
Lynne Dumas at ledumas@umich.
edu or 647-2644.
CRIME
NOTES
No suspects in
backpack theft
A backpack and an iPod were sto-
len at about 1 p.m. Friday from the
Chemistry Building, the Depart-
ment of Public Safety reports. There
are currently no suspects.
Reported gun
actually replica
A caller reported man with a gun at
1203 Oakland St. at 3:25 p.m. Saturday.
Police responded to find people making a
video that included a replica weapon.
Student arrested
for drug possession

A student was arrested at the
Mary Markley Residence Hall. The
student was in possession of mari-
juana and alcohol.
No injuries in crash
Two vehicles crashed at 1170 West
Medical Center at 3:43 p.m. on Saturday,
causing property damage but no injuries.

Socialist party
calls for U.S.
to leave Iraq

By Alex Garivaltis
Daily Staff Reporter

Ralph Nader made it on the ballot in
34 states this year. But that's an envi-
able figure compared with the Social-
ist Equality Party, whose presidential
ticket is eligible in just five states.
The SEP presidential and vice pres-
idential candidates, Bill Van Auken
and Jim Lawrence, are running on
a simple platform: withdrawal from
Iraq, declining emphasis on private
property and free and universal health
care. Yesterday, top members of the
party, including Lawrence, addressed
students and area residents in the
Michigan League.
Lawrence, 65, has worked at Gener-
al Motors plants in Ohio for more than
30 years. As a member of the United
Auto Workers, he opposed policy he
considered exceedingly pro-corporate
and protested the labor union's ties
with the Democratic party.
Lawrence discussed the trials of
striking auto workers at GM factories
in the United States and Europe. "For
the people from Michigan - I don't
have to paint
you a picture of "The SEP i
the jobs we've
lost," he said. on internal
He urged the .
audience to rally unity of th
against the glob-
al production working Cl
system, argu- Become a
ing democracy
and capitalism of this to fi
cannot co-exist.,
"The SEP is for your fr
based on inter-
national unity and your fi
of the working
class," he said._
"Become a part
of this fight Soci
for your free- for
dom and your
future," he urged.
David North, chairman of the edi-
torial board of SEP's World Socialist
Web Site, blasted what he referred to
as the "so-called liberation of Iraq,"
labeling President Bush as "a man of
no culture" in the process. North, who
was referred to as "Comrade North"
several times during the presentation,
said the Iraq war was "illegal."
"If we imparted upon the Bush
administration standards of interna-
tional law that were applied to the key

officials of Nazi Germany, they would
hang," he said. He emphasized the
need to bring the troops home imme-
diately.
"But it's backward to think that
John Kerry represents a serious alter-
native," North said. He rebuked the
Democratic presidential nominee for
his unwillingness to discuss Iraq in
the first six months of the campaign.
"The 'anyone but Bush' approach is
terrible," he said.
North argued that today's two-
party political system fails to repre-
sent working people. "The Republican
and Democratic parties are merely
divisions within the ruling class," he
declared. North said the 400 richest
Americans collectively own $1 tril-
lion of wealth, and that John Kerry is
one of them.
North said the SEP is a completely
independent third party that does not
exist solely to pull Democrats further
left. He described the socialist party
as an international grass-roots move-
ment of the working class to replace
the institution of private property, a
"social contradiction" he maintains

PETER SCHOTTENFELS/Daily
Tofik Zulfugarov, Azerbaijani ambassador to the United States, speaks before an assembly of diplomats during a con-
ference on foreign policy challenges in the southern Caucusus, held at the University's Alumni Center on Saturday.
Experts discuss prospects for
peacnforamervx Soviet republics

By Leah Gutman
Daily Staff Reporter

s based
tional
e
lass...
part
ight
eedom
uture.
Jim Lawrence
alist candidate
Vice President
his candidacy,

caused the recent
"breakdown of
democracy."
This election
cycle, the party has
fielded candidates
for legislatures in
several states. Tom
Mackaman, a 28-
year-old graduate
student at the Uni-
versity of Illinois,
detailed the pro-
cess by which he
made the ballot for
the Illinois 103rd
Congressional
district. He said
the state's Demo-
cratic authorities,
intent on denying
tried to strike down a

Too often, myths perpetuated
about foreign conflict mediation have
actually delayed swift resolutions,
Wesleyan University government
professor Arman Grigorian said.
More than 35 professors and dip-
lomats of the United States and other
nations attended the four-day, Uni-
versity-hosted International Arme-
nian Conference over the weekend.
They examined the political history
of the Southern Caucasus, as well
as the current state of strife there, to
discuss new approaches for peace in
the area.
The Southern Caucasus - a part
of the former Soviet Union north of
the Middle East - consists of Arme-
nia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
On the conference's third day, dur-
ing a panel on conflict resolution in
the Southern Caucasus, Grigorian
warned against resolutions to dilem-
mas that require many intermediary
parties.
An issue of much contention,
Grigorian pointed toward American
involvement in the Nagorno-Kara-
bakh conflict in Armenia as an exam-
ple of third-party mediation that has
been largely unsuccessful.
The Nagorno-Karabakh con-
flict began in 1988 in a clash over
Soviet territory between Armenians

More than 35 professors and diplomats of
the United States and other nations attended
the four-day, University-hosted International
Armenian Conference over the weekend.

and Azerbaijanis. By the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991, full-blown war
had erupted in the region. Bloodshed
eventually ceased in 1994, yet ana-
lysts say its consequences are strong-
ly felt between the two parties today
and political settlements have yet to
be reached.
Some, like Grigorian, feel that
U.S. mediation efforts in conflicts in
the Caucasus have only made matters
worse. He said the United States and
Russia, two countries with different
interests, have competed in the Cau-
casus instead of trying to help the
region.
"It's easy to see me as favoring Rus-
sian mediation - perhaps because I'm
Armenian and Armenians tend to be
pro-Russia - but I don't care which
party (is given the upper hand) as long
as they're seriously interested in find-
ing a solution," Grigorian said.
LSA senior Steve Jebinak, who
attended the conference on Satur-
day and is researching the region,
expressed his interest in Arme-

nian foreign and state relations.
"I'm investigating how regions that
have broken away (from their origi-
nal country) do function as states,
though they're not recognized dip-
lomatically." Armenia declared its
independence from the collapsing
Soviet Union in 1991.
Tom de Waal, Caucasus editor
and project coordinator of the Insti-
tute for War and Peace Reporting,
closed the panel by suggesting that
the weight of discontent among the
people of the Southern Caucasus lies
not so much in the conflict itself, but
in the way the conflict is perceived.
"What's in the mind is often the
biggest obstacle to the resolution of
these conflicts," Waal said. "The
differences are not that great; it's
the perceptions of conflicts which
extenuates those differences."
Waal said he hopes that in the
coming years, Armenians, Azerbai-
janis and Georgians will come to
regard their shared past as a source
of unity.

majority of the 2000 signatures he col-
lected. "They attempted to disqualify
my own signature," he said.
Daniel Green, an LSA sophomore
who was in attendance, received the
presentation warmly. Although he
doesn't plan to join the party, he said
he agreed with the SEP ideologically.
"We need to build a movement of reg-
ular people, working people, common
people, and that's exactly what the
SEP is doing."


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BEATBUSH

THIS DAY
In Daily History
Protesters rally for
student stripped
of custody rights
Oct. 25, 1994 - About 50 students
and Ann Arbor residents crowded out-
sjde the Hatcher Graduate Library on
this day to protest a Macomb County
circuit court judge's decision to give
custody of the child of LSA sophomore
Jennifer Ireland to the child's father.
Ireland made national headlines
for the court decision, which was pro-
tested mainly by the National Wom-
en's Rights Organizing Coalition.

for more Information call 734/998-6251
The University of Michigan College of Literature, Science,
and the Arts presents a public lecture and reception

A

E

0

E YI

On Election Day,
Send Bush back to Crawford -
and put $40 in your pocket.

Omar M. Yaghi
Robert W. Parry Collegiate Professor of Chemistry