Washington Report: Return of the Notice

...No doubt a feeling that the worst is over with the prices explosion lay behind this apparently orthodox result: but it is also possible that the result reflects a general disgust with the antics of political hooligans, especially when they leave a trail of debris in the streets...

...To spend too much time talking about the Front's odious bigotry is bound to give it more publicity: and publicity is what above all the Front seeks at the present time...

...Serious foreign policy commentators have for years pointed out the deep resentment throughout Latin America at our exploitive role in Panama, and they have spelled out in detail the likelihood and consequences of serious disorders in Panama if the new treaties are not confirmed by the Senate...

...Our bedrock theory hasbeen that the Russians are out to conquer the world by force of arms...

...senator was quoted as saying about the Panama Canal, "We stole it fair and square...

...In reality, the proposed treaties enhance U.S...

...Was the anti-extradition clause put into the constitution out of consideration for Nazi criminals then at large...

...It was instructive, however, to learn that one elderly female 'shopper' felled-and photographed--in the street, thus gaining much public sympathy, turns out to have been a National Front member herself...

...Better still, there was plenty of justification for a total ban...

...Have they really...

...The authorities not only knew his whereabouts but moved into position as unofficial spokesmen...

...But the upshot seems to me clear in one respect at least: there is no easy solution to the problems raised...

...At their behest...

...The killer was somehow carried into West Germany as soon as he was out of the clink...

...Now they have become, we are assured, powerful believers in, mighty defenders of, democracy, human fights, all those good things...

...Carter in the national interest, and their words should carry some weight with moderates...

...Above all, however, the case for the new Canal arrangement rests on the immorality of trying to cling to the colonial status quo...

...The conduct of the German nation from 1933 to 1945 was precisely such conduct...

...FRANK GBTLEIN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FROM BRITAIN VIOLENCE IN THE STREETS I am writing this article on the morning after the result of the Ladywoocl by-election, here in my adopted city of Birmingham...

...When the Germans try it again--and the Kappler case is disquieting as evidence of the long-range intention there---we should remember all this, plan accordingly and have some hope that that time the end will be the end...

...Certainly to indulge in provocatively violent opposition to the Front in the streets, with the TV cameras all set-up in expectation of a brawl, is simply to play into the hands of the Front itself...

...Money, brains and personnel7 From the instantaneous way that government knew of its returned prodigal and the smoothly carried out little program of statements, the whole thing couldn't have come as the shock to the German government that it did to the Italian and to newspaper readers everywhere...

...The list of nations seized by Russian arms or thethreat of Russian arms begins with a piece of Finland, continues down the Baltic coast, includes Poland, Czechoslovakia, "their" Germany, the Balkans with the notable exceptions of Communist Yugoslavia, Communist Albania...

...Are all the criminals getting paid their wages as contracted for by the Third Reich...

...Not only was the two-party system practically endorsed by an electorate which is more than forty percent-immigrant, but the swing against the government was far lower than in other recent by-elections...

...That course would have spared us Speer as best-selling author: "How I Made Millions in the Nazi Slave Trade, Repented and Made Millions More as a Contrite Sinner...

...The election result, then, would tend to suggest that not too much attention should be paid to the activity of the National Front, even though it came third (above the Liberal party, which once held the seat...

...Money7 Money and brains...

...It would have spared us Kappler as a German hero...

...Thus, while it is hard to see how the Ladywood meeting could have been properly stopped, the Lewisham march was quite another matter...

...We and the Russians fought the Nazis, ultimately effectively...

...His wife, in another act of compassion by the authorities, was allowed to visit him in Rome, left the hospital lugging a large suitcase, inside of which the mass murderer lay curled up like the corpse of one of his victims...

...Moreover, Kappler, as an SS officer, was also a good Nazi and he employed the archetypical Nazi combina, tion of whining for pity and using the pity granted to outwit, discomfort and defeat the persons granting the pity...

...The West Germans did not...

...As for Catholics who may be in doubt on the issue, we hope they will accept the reasoning of the American bishops when they state that the basic question involved in a new treaty is the acknowledgment in principle and in fact of Panamanian sovereignty over its own territory...

...People going about their ordinary business could not help being assaulted verbally and subjected to cruel and provoking scorn...

...That about sums up the U.S...

...That strategy was the master plan of the master race from the eruption of Hitler as a beer hall orator to the final catastrophe his worshipful countrymen brought upon themselves...

...For of the ten candidates, all but two lost their deposits, and the Labor candidate won by a very comfortable margin (as expected...

...Nonetheless, President Carter is not without supporters on this issue...

...That reaction was, no reaction...

...Another thing it makes you wonder about is what we are doing maintaining all those troops in West Germany to help support the people who support the Nazis...

...has the right to intervene even after that date in order to defend the Canal's neutrality...

...A clause in the West German constitution expressly forbids the extradition of West German citizens to foreign countries and Kappler is regarded as a citizen of the Federal Republic although his last oath of loyalty was to the Third Reich and its leadermand although, captured in Northern Italy as a fugitive from justice, he had never set foot in the republic until he was illegally brought out of Italy the other day...

...On their orders...

...Is it conceivable that the Russian takeover of the German conquest of Eastern Europe and the Balkans was not necessarily the first phase of a military conquest of the world b a program badly bogged down for the last quarter century if it existed--but the most obvious way of getting lots of controllable space between Russia and the continuing threat of German invasion...

...The terms of the 1903 Treaty acknowledge the principle of Panamanian sovereigmy, but prevent its exercise in any form in the Canal Zone...

...Much ink has already been spilled, and many words spoken about the Lewisham and Ladywood incidents...

...COMING: Gary MacEoin discusses U.S...

...For one thing, it makes you wonder exactly how deeply the WestGerman government was involved in the escape plot...

...These groups are particularly disturbed by the fact that U.S...

...In Ladywood, the violence occurred outside a National Front meeting held in a school hall during an election campaign...

...In Kappler's case the enemy was that ancient foe of his country, justice...

...They would not reveal where the desperado was in hiding, the government announced, because some crazy fools might try to recapture him and return him to Italy and justice, the enemy...

...Kappler, had placed themselves outside the law...

...When the take was taken, howevex, all of those countries except Czechoslovakia were willing or unwilling parts of the Nazi war machine doing its damnedest to destroy the Soviet Union...

...That wonder in turn produces one wonder more, this one about the whole Middle European basis of the Cold War...

...16 September 1977:$82...

...In short, the proposed pacts are strongly advantageous to the United States mso much so, in fact, that leftists and nationalist groups in Panama are planning to campaign against them on the ground that too many concessions have been made to Washington...

...The Home Secretary should have decided on such a course, and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner should have had the sense to recommend it...

...The National Front is not a banned organization: its candidate had every legal right to stand...

...Here we agree with the American Catholic bishops who in 1976 collectively said that "a moral imperative exists to fashion a new treaty which respects the territorial integrity, sovereignty and economy of Panama, and dissolves the vestiges of a relationship which more closely resembles the colonial politics of the nineteenth century than the realities of an interdependent world of sovereign and equal states...

...As soon as the Nazi began complaining about his health, extra guards should have been assigned...

...The most notorious fact about this election has been the riot caused during the campaign by the presence of opposed factions, most notably the National Front (which campaigned on a racist and antiimmigrant ticket) and the Socialist Workers' Party...

...Germans, to be sure, have always considered Italians not quite human: they're always singing and dancing, painting pictures, eating well, having a good time instead of killing people...

...security interests, and at relatively small cost, because the operation of the Canal at this point is more threatened by possible Panamanian disorders or even guerrilla warfare than by external threats, which in any case the U.S...

...historic role in this matter, whatever our contributions since that time, and it also sums up the general outlook of too many of the objectors to the new treaty...

...is allowed to counter by the terms of these treaties...

...By whining about his health, Kappler got himself transferred to the Celio hospital in Rome and used his whined-for act of mercy as the lever against those who had shown him mercy...

...16 September 1977:580 All of that was no surprise, was right on form...

...He was so completely made a citizen of the supposedly new and reformed German republic that, i n connection with his escape, we learned a couple of other things: the West Germany government had paid Kappler the pay and allowances due him as an officer of the German army, for instance, and, utterly inexplicable, has on numerous occasions in the past 30 years made representations to the Italian government for the release of Kappler on---of all things--"humanitarian" grounds...

...The possibility is at least worth thinking about...

...It does make you wonder...

...Captured, their fate should have been simply to be shot on sight, granted dental, fingerprint identification, whatever...

...The softness, not to say the tender loving care, of the West German government toward Kappler suggests, symbolically and perhaps substantially, that if Russians do nurture such fears, they are not entirely irrational in doing so...

...They were the Nazis...

...What did come as a surprise, indeed a shock, was the reaction of the West German government to all this...

...warships will have a permanent right to transit the Canal expeditiously and without conditions--although in fact the military significance of the Canal has become largely nil...

...Is there a government program to rescue convicted Nazi criminals from the consequences of their crimes on foreign territory against foreign nationals...

...This being so, it is impossible to deny the right of the Front and its candidate to hold an election meeting during the campaign...

...options in Latin America...

...At the very least, it should have been re-routed through relatively unimportant streets, where most people would have had the sense to ignore it, or better gone to the simultaneous service for racial harmony held nearby by all the local churches...

...Although the Spot chosen was a sensitive one, there was no obligation on anyone to attend it, and nobody could say he had been wantonly insulted or offended by what he saw or heard: he need not have seen or heard anything...

...Without rehearsing the history or terms of the treaty, we simply would affirm that the moral, legal and political realities of international life today render the 1903 Treaty an anachronism...

...There is something to be said, after all, for the concept of outlawry...

...The Ladywood riot was undoubtedly given extra prominence and importance by the fact that two days earlier, there had been a street demonstration by the National Front in Lewisham (a district of South-East London heavily populated by black immigrants) which resulted in a good deal of violence and many casualties, including police casualties...

...The Soviet Union was made possible by a German invasion of Russia...

...In this matter, former President Ford and Henry Kissinger are backing Mr...

...In contrast to this view, one conservative U.S...

...troops can remain in Panama for the balance of the century and that the U.S...

...Who's in charge over there...

...There is human conduct so depraved, of such enormity, on such a scale and so universally known, that trials become Commonweal: $81 meaningless, frivolous really...

...civilians in government jobs in the Canal are guaranteed their jobs until retirement...

...An anachronism indeed, and the sooner we are rid of it, the better...

...First of all, it is necessary to distinguish sharply between the two cases themselves...

...Has our reconstitution of West Germany as a military power in fact confirmed the Soviets in their fear of the Germans, hardened their determination to hang on to whatever buffer states they can, hence led to all those armed invasions of their own allies...

...In World War II, the Germans tried again, would doubtless have succeeded without the American arsenal against them, made no secret of their plans for European Russia as a group of tributary states...

...It is probable that history will record these pieces of violence (as indeed the media have already) in much greater detail than it will remember the more prosaic fact that the by-election result itself tends to suggest the underlying stability of British politics...

...Further, all U.S...

...WASHINGTON REPORT RETURN OF THE NATIVE It wasn't really a shock that the man described as a "former" SS lieutenant colonel, Herbert Kappler, had escaped from the Rome military hospital where he was serving a life sentence given him in a post-World War II trial for murdering 335 Italian civilians in 1944...

...And that brings up a final wonder, wonder at our own naivet~ in setting up the Nuremberg trials of the captured criminals, encouraging trials elsewhere of others, such as Kappler in Italy...

...Socialism certainly needs to be protected from the thuggish simplifications of the Socialist Workers' Party...

...A substantial take...

...At Lewisham, on the other hand, a street demonstration was organized deliberately to pass through crowded shopping streets full of Asian and West Indian citizens...

...How about the human rights, how about humanitarian considerations for the 335 Italian civilians slaughtered by Kappler...

...Finally, as the killer and his moll went into government-protected hiding, Frau Kappler's doorstep was heaped with messages of congratulations, wishes for continuing good luck and bouquets of flowers, all spontaneous expressions from today's reformed, democratic West Germans welcoming back to their midst one whom been away too long...

...In the first place, Kappler was a good soldier, as Germans understand that term: escaping when captured by the enemy is part of a good soldier's duty...

...In Kappler's case, he had been safely contained for 30 years in a military prison on Gaeta, an island halfway between Naples and Rome, a formidable place to escape from...

...After all...

...The leaders of the German government in that period and such lesser criminals as Col...

...Since such German invasions seem to happen with some regularity, would the Russians be entirely fanciful to assume another one somewhere down the line...