Comment
COMMENT What's a Life Worth? What value are we to assign to a single human life? Try pondering the question in the context of these recent developments in the Middle East: When Israeli commandos...
...The important thing, Senators made clear, was to go kill somebody somewhere, and the sooner the better, to show that this great country would not let itself be pushed around...
...Maureen Dowd, The New York Times...
...A terrorist organization is one that "eliminates" human beings to advance its own ends...
...To many on the Left, insurance reform may seem like dry, dull stuff...
...In the past, Israel has worked even more lopsided trades...
...But even to pose such questions is to begin the process of rationalization that will culminate in murder...
...And what risk has the President 'Perhaps when peace finally comes, all of us, Israelis and Palestinians, will have to build a monument to our stupidity and blindness...
...citizen as a criminal...
...Shiite Muslims, we are often told, are "religious fanatics" whose faith makes them indifferent to the value of human life...
...But for weeks this summer, the U.S...
...And when Bush goes out for Mexican food, the networks and the newspapers lavish coverage on the breaking story...
...H By a 99-to-0 vote, the U.S...
...Even Democrats concede that the President is a hard man to dislike...
...Convicted Without Trial No grand jury was convened...
...Not to be outdone, The New York Times Magazine devotes a two-page spread to 'B.B.' Style...
...Try pondering the question in the context of these recent developments in the Middle East: When Israeli commandos abducted Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a Shiite Muslim leader, from his home in southern Lebanon late in July, they also shot and killed a neighbor whose only offense was to look out his door to see what the commotion was about...
...air raid on Libya, which supposedly had the salutary effect of discouraging "state-sponsored terrorism" by the regime of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi...
...It all seemed like a scene from the Sally Fields and Paul Newman film, Absence of Malice, in which the media recklessly play along with a prosecutor's ploy...
...Failure of Management The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence labored and brought forth a stillborn mouse...
...Born in the United States, Randall became a Mexican citizen in 1967 and lived in Nicaragua and Cuba for a decade afterward...
...When Bush Comes to Puff The news media recently signed a contract with the White House to transmit only the gushiest stories about George Bush...
...it is about Barbara Bush: "Barbara Bush did not set out to be a fashion plate...
...Government officials r told them there was not sufficient evidence to charge Bloch...
...The execution of Colonel Higgins—if he was executed—was a barbarous deed, as is every seizure of hostages...
...But in no way should this be construed, the Senators said, as a concerted effort to stifle dissent against Government policy...
...This fatality was barely mentioned in most news accounts of the abduction, and was totally ignored in subsequent discussions of the incident by U.S...
...The only difference here was that the media knew it was a ploy all along...
...Some sources claim the total number of Palestinians killed is closer to 2,000...
...The catch is putting up with a sadistic paramilitary regimen of push-ups and physical "training," self-criticism sessions, and severe restrictions on activities, visits, and other privileges...
...Marine Corps, in retaliation for the abduction of Sheik Obeid, that became the dominant story from the Middle East in American news media, overshadowing all other Middle East coverage since the intifada began...
...Senate urged the Bush Administration to take retaliatory action against the hanging of Colonel Higgins, though who had hanged him wasn't known, or even whether he had actually been hanged...
...The media ran with the story, trampling all over the presumption of innocence that belongs to all Americans...
...They asked themselves, one must hope, what the United States would gain in exchange for the new hostages that would be taken, the additional lives that would be sacrificed...
...What I'm upset about is the immediate leaping to conclusions .. • that we somehow massively faked things.' —ABC News President Roone Arledge on the simulated spy story Score One Margaret Randall, the feminist writer and activist for a noninterventionary U.S...
...Will someone gun down his grandchildren in the streets...
...The citizen, Felix Bloch, formerly second in command at the U.S...
...Yet she has become a formidable symbol of American taste...
...Headline: 'We Are A Family': A Fourth of July Message By George Bush, President of the United States...
...For the last four years, Randall has faced the full force of the U.S...
...See Barbara's dog, Millie...
...But, at least for the moment, the U.S...
...How to abuse others is the usual lesson...
...Insuring Success On July 28, citizens' groups from twenty-one states met in Chicago to take on the insurance industry...
...Yet more...
...What, if anything, was her life worth...
...Bush's willingness to strike targets in Lebanon apparently reflected a decision to accept the risk of inflicting civilian casualties and other potential consequences, including losses among American forces involved, the creation of new hostages if pilots were forced down, and possible retaliation against the eight Americans already held by terrorists...
...citizenship and therefore could not be deported...
...It's a welcome personal triumph for Randall...
...Government appears to have lost this case of blatant political persecution...
...others—like Sheik Obeid's neighbor—just happened to be in the way when the bullets started flying...
...In what sense was Colonel Higgins's life more precious than the life of any of those Palestinian children who have died on the West Bank or in Gaza...
...No, step back again...
...To deflect the wretched rhetoric, Parade publishes selections from the First Family album: See George...
...No, this is not about the legendary blues guitarist...
...Responses ranging from "surgical strikes" against Lebanese targets to massive bombing of Teheran were given serious consideration...
...What does anyone learn from abuse...
...In relative terms, more than all the claptrap that passes for pride, politics, and patriotism in the Middle East and everywhere else...
...Unhitched to profit, they would spend less for administration, advertising, sales, and commissions...
...the operating assumption is that one Israeli life is worth hundreds of Arab lives...
...Instead, there are dots, hundreds of dots of conciliation and courtliness, of good-hearted gestures and tight-lipped restraint, of fractured English and noblesse oblige...
...In the Middle East, with its bloody past and its potentially incendiary future, each act that threatens to perpetuate the cycle of strike and retaliation, terror and counterterror, must be condemned...
...The activists who met in Chicago recognize that simply passing referenda, as in California, will not be enough to curb insurance abuses...
...Bush travels to Europe on a meaningless, news-less visit, and the networks interrupt their programs to feed live broadcasts of the President in Gdansk, the President in Paris, the President smiling crookedly as a translator refries the beans of inanity that dribble from Bush's mouth...
...Each assault on human safety, human dignity, human life, must be denounced...
...Their decision to red-line certain areas of our inner cities, for instance, has contributed heavily to urban decay...
...But that's harder now, because the prisons are not just overcrowded...
...Israel offered a swap to the Shiite guerrilla organizations in Lebanon: It would exchange Sheik Obeid and several hundred Shiite militiamen held prisoner in Israel for three Israeli soldiers and about a dozen Western hostages, including eight Americans...
...Who are the victims...
...State-run insurance companies could provide insurance more reliably and at lower cost than private companies...
...policy in Central America...
...To be sure, the FBI's targets were law-abiding citizens who engaged in "domestic political activities that should not have come under governmental scrutiny...
...Randall's ordeal may not yet be over, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service can appeal the decision and the Attorney General can overrule it...
...But ABC's blunder did not differ in kind from the treatment by the other networks and newspapers...
...See Barbara in pajamas...
...Many of the Palestinian casualties were children who threw stones at Israeli soldiers...
...Presumably, President Bush and his advisers engaged in careful deliberations before they arrived at their "decision to accept the risk...
...The media have a new calling: White House painters in residence...
...See Barbara wave...
...In such circumstances, who are the terrorists...
...And let us hope that on the day peace comes, all of us, Jews and Arabs, will not have to wipe the spit of the dead from our faces.' —Israeli novelist Amos Oz Comment accepted...
...When Bush announces his foolish Mars plan, The New York Times runs a photo of him holding two small American flags and being kissed by the wife of a former astronaut...
...What's a human life worth...
...It's Shocking, All Right Everyone wants to get tough on crime these days, which means, of course, getting tough on criminals...
...H According to The New York Times of August 4, "Mr...
...It fails to manage even a minimal show of concern about the democratic rights of Americans and the police-state apparatus that threatens them...
...In July, a Justice Department appeals board ruled in Randall's favor...
...embassy in Vienna, was accused by anonymous Government officials of spying for the Soviet Union...
...When a Shiite Muslim group calling itself the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth announced that it had executed an American hostage, Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins of the U.S...
...All accepted Bloch's guilt, hardly raising a doubt about the Government's claims...
...And just as importantly, a public insurance company could ensure that the large reservoirs of capital that consumers provide would be put toward socially and economically responsible investments...
...See Barbara sit...
...ABC News won the prize for poorest judgment and worst excess by running a simulation of an alleged meeting between Bloch and a Soviet agent...
...For profound interpretation, here's Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, writing in the paper's "Week in Review" section: "To see why George Bush is doing so well right now, you must step back from the political canvas...
...A few days before Sheik Obeid was carried off to Israel, Ariel Sharon, a member of the Israeli Cabinet who enjoys his own powerful political following, declared that Israel must "eliminate the heads of the terrorist organizations, first of all [Yassir] Arafat...
...See George in pajamas...
...See grandchildren in bed with George and Barbara...
...Will he be seized and held for ransom...
...There were glowing references to the U.S...
...They called for rate rollbacks for auto insurance, popular election of state insurance commissioners, and an end to discriminatory practices by insurance companies...
...The past year has seen an explosion of consumer anger over the bloated insurance industry and its skyrocketing rates," the activists declared...
...Government, which has tried to deport her...
...One might guess that this state of affairs would lead to some creative alternatives to long prison terms, and it has—most of them bad...
...The larger victory, however, remains to be won: wiping McCarran-Walter off the books...
...In absolute terms, everything...
...Government—with the overheated exertions of the media—treated a U.S...
...Unless the companies reform themselves—not a probable occurrence—the citizens' groups vow to "explore more structural reforms, including the creation of publicly controlled nonprofit alternatives" to private insurance companies...
...Consumers need serious insurance reform...
...an Israeli soldier's life and that of a Shiite militiaman...
...What is the point...
...And the punitive action contemplated by the Government of the United States—it had not yet happened as we went to press—could only serve to prolong the agony in the Middle East and place new obstacles in the way of peace...
...A government that engages in assassination and abduction, on the other hand, is practicing self-defense and counterterrorism...
...Sheik Obeid's life and that of his late neighbor...
...But Jews and Christians care...
...Israel's seizure of Sheik Obeid—Israeli officials rejected the word "kidnapping" in favor of "abduction," as if it mattered— was a reckless provocation that can only exacerbate tensions and impede the difficult process of making peace...
...Photo caption of particular depth: "Being First Lady calls for clothes, like this suit, that look stylish and work well...
...We must regard each life as an unfathomable absolute—Colonel Higgins's life and that of a Palestinian child...
...It decided she had never voluntarily renounced her U.S...
...they are filled to bursting, and the builders and taxpayers can't keep up with the deniand for more cells...
...What does the President's "decision to accept the risk" tell us—and the world—about the value placed on human life by the Government of the United States...
...President Bush and his national-security advisers huddled with members of Congress in emergency sessions...
...and Israeli officials and the news media...
...No conviction was handed down...
...There are no bold brush strokes of inspiration, no colorful splashes of vision...
...After many months of investigation into the FBI's harassment of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the Senators issued a 150-page report that is too watered-down to be called a whitewash and too threadbare to qualify as a cover-up...
...No trial occurred...
...The example currently making the headlines is New York State's "shock incarceration...
...But as the activists in Chicago pointed out, it need not be...
...No indictment was issued...
...Qaddafi's young adopted daughter was a victim of that raid...
...Rather, the CISPES investigation was, they decided, an "aberration" that "constrasts sharply with the overall record of respect for and protection of First Amendment rights that have characterized the FBI's counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs____" The Senate report is a failure of management in its own right...
...That is the way to go...
...See George push grandchildren on swing...
...The insurance revolt, which began with the passage of Proposition 13 in California last November, holds out the promise not only for consumer relief but for structural change in this powerful industry...
...Once the Government admitted that it did not have a strong enough case to bring an indictment, it had no right—and neither did the media—to proceed with the trial...
...By the most conservative count, fewer than forty Israelis and well over 500 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the territories occupied by Israel...
...Cribbing from his eighth-grade graduation speech, Bush proclaims: "Real leadership comes from the people and manifests itself in a responsible process called governance...
...If we choose not to be parties to that crime, we must reject every attempt to assign a comparable value to life...
...In 1984, she returned to the United States, taking up residence in Albuquerque and continuing to criticize U.S...
...Parade magazine sprays a pin-striped President, American flag in background, across its July 2 issue...
...foreign policy, has finally won a victory...
...Insurance companies control large pools of money that have a major bearing on the nature of economic development in America...
...At its six-month anniversary, the Bush Presidency is like a Georges Seurat painting...
...What is the appropriate kill ratio, civilian to military, that constitutes an effective response to an act of terrorism...
...A prisoner jailed for a drug- or alcohol-related offense can trade a sentence of up to three years for this program and be out in six months...
...The FBI vendetta, which grew from a single case in the Dallas field office to encompass 178 "spinoff' investigations involving fifty-nine FBI offices compiling dossiers on 2,375 individuals and 1,330 groups, constituted nothing more than "a serious failure in FBI management," the committee concluded...
...where they invest consumers' capital can affect the economic health of entire regions...
...The Reagan Administration responded with its usual finesse and began deportation proceedings, citing the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, which permits the Government to deport noncitizens who support "world communism...
...See George with grandchildren...
Vol. 53 • September 1989 • No. 9
