COMMENT

...If Gorbachev had simply given Reagan Star Wars, the United States and the Soviet Union could have signed an agreement that would have shaken the nuclear establishments of both countries...

...The American people are always told—except in irredeemably laughable instances, such as the selection of Dan Quayle to be Vice President—that the country is in the very best of hands...

...In no policy area is there more urgent need for a clean break with the past than in the Middle East...

...A year and a half later, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, after the massacre of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, it was evident that Reagan's proposal had not been a new beginning but merely a fluke— a Presidential chat that had no substance and no follow-up...

...those who have power want to keep it, and the rest of us need not bother our pretty little heads...

...Department of Education, recommended against funding for a model program of Holocaust studies in the public schools...

...Workers'-compensation laws in nineteen states don't cover farm labor at all...

...pitch be followed by a cocaine kingpin leering "Just Say Yes...

...The immediate aim of the Reagan executive order was to rescue two major nuclear plants—the one at Seabrook, New Hampshire, which has been blocked by Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis's refusal to approve an evacuation plan, and the one at Shoreham, Long Island, which has been similarly stymied by New York Governor Mario Cuomo...

...The only real change since Three Mile Island is that now, thanks to Reagan's executive order, crucial questions of safety are to be entrusted to FEMA, an agency with a track record that includes idiotic "civil defense" plans and sinister assaults on civil liberties...

...What is most striking about this one-two punch aimed at Palestinian national aspirations—and at peace—is the blatant dishonesty of the accompanying rhetoric emanating from Washington...

...The program," she objected, "gives no evidence of balance or objectivity...

...session in Geneva to hear Arafat, made the United States and Israel, as one Arab diplomat observed, the odd couple of the international community...

...Terrorism simply won't do as an excuse for barring someone from addressing the United Nations...

...Several times since his election to the Presidency, George Bush has gone out of his way to say he will not automatically be bound by the policies of the previous Administration...

...By choosing to ignore and, in fact, rebuff the new policy declaration issued at the November meeting of the Palestinian National Council in Algiers, and then by denying Yasir Arafat's request for a visa that would have permitted him to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the U.S...

...Reagan Farewell As Ronald Reagan hops his last helicopter off the White House lawn, we can reflect on how lucky we are to be alive...

...Like the government of Israel, the Government of the United States was content to settle for indefinite perpetuation of a cruel and bloody status quo...

...Even as the Israeli gov-ernmment flounders through its latest political and constitutional crisis, Israeli citizens in growing numbers indicate that they, too, realize they will have to come to terms with the idea of a Palestinian state...

...The big growers and the executives of agribusiness conglomerates may be crass capitalists, and their lobbyists may be adroit at bending the ears of legislators...

...The Palestinian leadership's Algiers declaration was an earnest attempt to move toward a solution...

...Whether that goal can be realized remains to be seen...

...The 151-to-2 vote by which the General Assembly rebuked the U.S...

...And dozens of United Nations seats are occupied by governments—including the government of Israel—headed by present or former terrorists...

...Plus ga Change...

...Reagan and Gorbachev had discussed setting a ten-year timetable for abolishing all nuclear weapons, but Reagan insisted on keeping Star Wars, so the historic deal fell through...

...Reagan could have placed his royal crony on the Big Bench instead of Sandra Day O'Connor...

...Denial of a visa to Arafat was not only ari affront to the world organization but an exercise in contemptible double-talk...

...With a little luck, neither the bomber nor the executive order will fly...

...Now, at the end of its eight-year tenure, the Reagan Administration has taken another step—a long step backward...

...Has the Reagan Administration insisted that all drug-education programs must present the point of view of the Medellin drug cartel...

...action, and the decision to convene a special U.N...

...it was a possibility...

...that was before Meese became synonymous with crooked...

...You're in Good Hands' There is nothing so inane as the praise the media and mainstream politicians heap on Establishment figures who receive appointments in a new Administration...

...Twenty-seven states allow children to work at a younger age, for longer hours, if the job is farm work...

...So it was that when George Bush chose James Baker to be Secretary of State and Brent Scowcroft to be National Security Adviser, headlines declared them to be ideally fit to run the nation's foreign policy...

...One is that Ed Meese does not sit on the Supreme Court...

...Farmworkers in the East Coast migrant stream are poor Southern blacks and Haitian boat people...

...On the other, nuclear technology remains inherently unsafe as well as economically unsound...

...And it was released late on a Friday afternoon—the time least likely to result in prominent news coverage...

...In more than half the states, the minimum-wage laws don't apply to farm laborers...

...A Second Opinion Christina Price, a grant evaluator for the U.S...

...Does fairness demand that Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No...

...Members of his Administration were itching to invade more than once, but the invasion never came off, largely because the peace and anti-intervention movements, as well as the churches, organized opposition at the grass roots...

...More than a fourth of the standards provide narrower coverage for agricultural workers than other workers, and almost a third do not cover farm employment at all...

...But that's history now, and so—mercifully and at long last—is the Reagan Restoration...

...As one Arab spokesman countered, Arafat was allowed to address the General Assembly in New York in 1974 "when he was labeled a terrorist...

...For the first time in many years, it was possible to entertain the hope that the United States might play a constructive role in restoring peace and a measure of justice to that terribly troubled part of the world...

...Farmworkers also fall through the cracks of civil-rights laws and collective-bargaining provisions...

...Both are costly and potentially dangerous...

...If anyone's security were put in jeopardy by an Arafat visit to New York, it would probably be Arafat's...

...But that's true as well of those at the top of every other major American industry...

...Consider some specifics...

...The stealth bomber, so named because of its alleged ability to evade enemy radar, promises to be enormously expensive, technologically flawed, and obsolete even before it takes to the air—just like its ignominious predecessor, the B-l, just like all manned bombers in the missile age...

...If the new Administration uses its influence to bring about a just and equitable settlement in the Middle East, it will be able to claim credit for resolving one of the world's most durable and dangerous crises...

...All of the permanent members of the Security Council, including especially the two superpowers, are nuclear terrorists whose arsenals hold the entire world in thrall...

...They will have to decide whether to abide by an obnoxious executive order stealthily issued by an Administration that once pledged to get government off the people's backs...

...This was Mik-hael Gorbachev's failure to call Reagan's bluff at the Reykjavik summit in October 1986...

...national-security interests" because Arafat "knows of, condones, and lends support" to terrorist acts against Americans...

...Yes, we have heard it all before...

...Fifty years after The Grapes of Wrath, almost thirty after Harvest of Shame, we've heard it all before...

...The ultimate decision will rest in the hands of localities and states threatened by nearby nuclear facilities...

...It's all being taken care of...

...For years, American policymakers have insisted that they would brook no official contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization and back no role for the PLO in peace negotiations until the Palestinians renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist...

...Exploitation of farmworkers is an old story...

...For a while, when Reagan was issuing his Evil Empire rantings, it seemed likely that the nuclear nightmare was about to begin...

...Government dealt a devastating blow to the prospects of a breakthrough in the Middle East...

...All of the world—except for the governments of Israel and the United States-recognizes that there has been a profound change in the Middle East...

...The funding was denied...

...Comment The Challenge to Bush in the Middle East DAVID SUTER lot many weeks into his first term as President, I Ronald Reagan outlined a proposal for a possible peace settlement in the Middle East...

...There are two other nonevents to be grateful for during these waning days of the Reagan years...

...No surprise...

...The answer is racism...

...Now The Texas Observer reports on an exhaustive study of state, Federal, and Puerto Rican laws and regulations governing labor standards...

...How can there be a question now that he wants to go as a peacemaker...

...On the one hand, concerns about the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels has revived interest in nuclear power in some quarters...

...Why does nothing ever change in the fields...

...This rush to reassurance invites apathy and curries elitism...

...Nuclear Sneak Attack The Air Force's new pet bomber isn't the only stealth weapon unwrapped by the Reagan Administration during its last days in office...

...The plants are economic disasters, quite apart from the health and safety hazards they pose, and initial reaction to the Reagan order indicated that it came too late to rescue them...

...Disarmament might just have become fashionable, a secure peace might just have been possible...

...Unfortunately, it was too risky a step for Gorbachev politically and for the Soviet Union militarily...

...And it's time to admit it and put an end to it...

...The other blessing is that Managua still exists...

...Will future studies of the Moscow purge trials require thoughtful consideration of Stalin's point of view...

...Motivation, Education, and Training, Inc., a nonprofit group that operates job-training programs for farmworkers in Texas and Louisiana, spent two years looking at employment standards broadly applicable to American workers...

...The Algiers declaration decisively met those requirements—and was spurned as "nothing new...

...The Nazi point of view, however unpopular, is still a point of view and is not represented, nor is that of the Ku Klux Klan...

...Its only function is to foster the illusion of strategic "superiority" for the United States—an illusion that may encourage our Government to blunder into catastrophic military adventures...

...It was a promising beginning—the first and, as it turned out, the last Reagan foreign-policy initiative we felt obliged to praise in these pages...

...Farmworkers in the West, the Southwest, the Middle West, the Northeast, are mostly Mexican or Puerto Rican...

...And all of America's allies have communicated their dismay at Washington's failure to deal with the new realities...

...Though Reagan's plan fell far short of meeting the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people, it recognized, at least, that those needs were real and that they were legitimate...

...Most states impose on employers a general duty to protect the health and safety of workers at the workplace, but only seven extend the obligation to farm employers on the same terms that apply to non-farm establishments...

...Palestinians had every right to ask, in anger and frustration, "What do the Americans want from us...

...The executive order on nuclear-plant safety can be called stealthy because of its dishonest timing...

...More than forty states don't compel any but the largest farm operations to provide unemployment insurance...

...Or is it just that the Nazi and Klan viewpoints strike a more responsive chord among some of our Government's experts...

...Looking back over the past eight years, one great missed opportunity also stands out...

...We yield to no one in our absolute commitment to freedom of expression for all points of view, especially those we abhor...

...Fortunately, there is reason to hope that neither Seabrook nor Shoreham will ever become operational...

...It was, the State Department explained, a matter of U.S...

...But Reagan's order, empowering the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to override local and state concerns, wasn't issued until after election day because, an Administration official told The New York Times, it might have become a campaign issue for the Democrats...

...It didn't happen...

...If Al Haig had skipped his morning portion of raw meat one day, he might have "gone ballistic," as they say around the Pentagon...

...The Israelis, the Palestinians, the other countries in the region all acknowledge the crucial role of the United States, which is Israel's principal and indispensable source of political, military, and economic support...

...But the executive order has a subtler and even more ominous aim: "to return the nuclear power industry," as The Times reported, "to the robust health that it has not enjoyed since 1979, when the Three Mile Island disaster halted, almost in its tracks, most planning of new nuclear power-generating stations...

...Both governors had ample reason to be concerned: All nuclear facilities are dangerous, but these, placed in close proximity to congested population centers, represent risks that should never even have been contemplated...

...Reagan's principal obsession for eight years has been to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua...

...Even more hypocritical than the cavalier dismissal of the Algiers declaration was the rationale advanced in Washington for barring Arafat from the United States...

...The answer, of course, is that no other major industry employs, almost exclusively, workers who are not white Americans...

...The intifadah—\ht Palestinian uprising in the territories occupied by Israel—is undiminished in energy and commitment after more than a year, making it amply clear that the status quo cannot be indefinitely maintained...

...There's also the President's stealthy executive order on evacuation of civilian nuclear-power plants in the event of a major accident...

...editorials burnished their resumes, and Democrats cheered the splendid choices...

...The Left rarely has reason to rejoice, but this is one victory we can claim...

...It had been in the works for years—ever since the nuclear industry and its allies in the Federal Government started searching frantically for ways to circumvent the justifiable concerns of state and local officials about evacuation routes for densely populated areas endangered by reactors...

...Farmworkers in the Southern canefields are local blacks and blacks temporarily imported from the Caribbean...

...If it does not, it may have to bear the burden of responsibility for a bloodbath...

...Substantially less than half," writes MET research director Brian Craddock, "treat farmworkers like any other segment of the labor force...

...Don't laugh...

...Still, the standard applied in this case seems rather strange...