COMMENT
COMMENT The Menace of War The images on TV and the accounts in the newspapers are horrible: a woman hanging from a tree limb, thousands of refugees streaming away from their captured "safe...
...Christian Coalition Chits Abortion rights are being wiped out bit by bit in Congress...
...And he's campaigned hard on two other race-coded issues: welfare and crime...
...Today, Lopez sits in jail awaiting trial on charges that he is responsible for a massacre in which hooded gunmen opened fire at a street party in Apartado...
...Just because our sympathies lie with the Muslims does not mean we should throw out the Constitution and bow to the imperial Presidency...
...power abroad, and the interest of the military and political players, who stand to gain from war...
...His grandstanding at the University of California board of regents meeting was a new low...
...Here are some of the latest proposals for hacking social spending from the hatchetmen in the House...
...Today is payback time," said Bob Livingston, Republican of Louisiana, who offered the amendment ending the family-planning program...
...There is no end to this cycle...
...Warmakers are mythmakers, and the most popular myth in the mainstream media is that America is the nation on the white horse, and it needs to get up in the saddle again and ride...
...Wilson's way of dealing with it is to promote it...
...He won reelection as governor last year by parlaying anti-immigrant sentiment into votes...
...This gets to the nub of the question, "What should we do about Bosnia...
...Instead, Wilson's pollster urges Republicans to play on the "anger points" within the electorate, and seize on "right and wrong, black and white issues" like crime and welfare...
...Fortunately for Lopez, abuses by the Colombian military and judicial system have caused an outcry from human-rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights...
...All wars have invariably produced fatal surprises," writes Gabriel Kolko in Century of War...
...It is the combustible unpredictability of war that should give anyone pause...
...Bombing the Bosnian Serbs, or introducing massive numbers of U.N...
...Republicans objected to the program because some of the funds went to organizations that discussed abortion as an option...
...The Department of Agriculture, for instance, won a 30 percent increase for overseas-marketing promotion...
...It would be a huge mistake," he said, for Republicans to reach out to African Americans...
...Head Start: dice it by $200 million...
...government has spent more than $36 million over the last five years to keep the program going, despite objections that it is a political tool and deprives defendants of due process...
...That person must be getting time and a half because the Republicans keep chopping away, day and night, at any social program and any regulatory function in sight...
...He needed an issue to ride, and he's found one in affirmative action...
...The United States will intervene militarily in Bosnia when it suits the interests of those who call the shots...
...troops on the side of the Muslims, will certainly bring more killing and horror...
...So it is with Jose Antonio Lopez, the mayor of a small town in the banana-producing region of Colombia, who visited The Progressive's offices a couple of years ago...
...the guy hadn't been to a meeting in years but chose to show up for this one so he could get headlines as the man who put down affirmative action...
...The identities of judges, prosecutors, and witnesses are withheld from defendants and their attorneys...
...other times it's to enhance the military's image at home, as in Somalia...
...But the United States didn't intervene in Vietnam for Western honor...
...the National Labor Relations Board by 30 percent...
...no amount of U.S...
...You become a mayor, then a governor, and then you decide to take a shot at the big prize...
...woman may seek their own payback time...
...The atmosphere of war brutalizes everyone involved, begets a fanaticism in which the original moral factor...
...They want to gut consumer-protection laws in the banking industry, and wipe out fair-lending laws, even as new reports document that banks discriminate in their lending policies...
...The United States helped establish the system of "faceless justice" in Colombia to deal with drug-traffickers and terrorists...
...Before their arms tired out in a two-day festival of ax-throwing this July, the Republicans in the House The EPA is the 'Gestapo of government.' —Tom OeLoy, Republican of Texas and GOP whip also managed to clear-cut the regulatory field...
...There has to be a better way...
...Total spending for Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services: chop, chop, chop by a total of $60 billion...
...Bring the warring parties to the negotiating table...
...Inciting anger, especially on racial issues, may give Wilson a bump in the polls, but it's a reprehensible tactic—and a disaster for the nation...
...These three agencies are among the biggest watchdogs of industry...
...The U.S...
...The House of Representatives voted in July to prohibit federal employee health insurance programs from paying for abortions unless the woman's life is in danger...
...Has Bill Clinton accurately judged the consequences of his decision to approve massive air strikes against the Serbs...
...Republicans voted to chop the program into two state bloc grants, but recipients of the bloc grants will not be required to spend the money on family-planning services...
...War itself multiplies the violence, multiplies the cruelty...
...While he was mayor, he and the local bishop managed to arrange a cease-fire between the military and the guerrillas in the area...
...Wilson's own pollster doesn't deny the charge...
...Playing the race card is nothing new for Wilson...
...They are what stand between the people and corporate abuse...
...still others, to burnish the image of the Commander-in-Chief, as in Panama, Grenada, Libya, and Iraq...
...We doubt it...
...Public attention and political pressure from the United States could still make a difference in his case...
...Aid to low-income students: slice it by $1.2 billion...
...And on what constitutional grounds has Clinton made this commitment...
...That was the dilemma facing Pete Wilson when he decided to run...
...air attacks, against them...
...No matter that he used to support affirmative action when he was mayor of San Diego...
...It is one of the biggest rollbacks of abortion rights yet devised by the frenzied Republicans...
...But they didn't stop there...
...The New York Times Week in Review for Sunday, July 16, led off with a piece entitled, "Honor, Too, Is Put to Flight in Bosnia...
...every Zhirinovsky would be up on his soap box...
...The "we" is the U.S...
...But it's never—not even in World War II—for honor, much less for humanity...
...OSHA, too, would be slashed...
...The program provides grants to such truly needy folks as McDonald's, Pills-bury, Campbell Soup, Tyson's Foods, and Gallo Wines...
...Wilsonian Demagoguery Say you always wanted to be President of the United States...
...While there are certainly vicious enemies of liberty and human rights in the world, war itself is the most vicious of enemies," Howard Zinn wrote in You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train...
...Even in Vietnam," Cohen wrote, "the honor of fighting to extend the reach of freedom stood at the core of the beliefs of those who backed the war...
...they saw gold in the symbolism of Wilson standing up to Jackson...
...There's a real resentment that has festered to the surface," Wilson told The Wall Street Journal, "and it is time, not to pretend that it doesn't exist, but to deal with it...
...Those who have led the world's key war-making nations and governments in this century have repeatedly and calamitously misjudged the ultimate consequences of their command decisions...
...Gleeful as the Republicans were at these victories, they ought to beware: most voters in this country, especially women, are pro-choice...
...To the people who know him, including the residents and local officials in Wisconsin who met him through the sister-county program, the charges are unthinkable...
...This is the far right in action, the Christian Coalition calling in its chits...
...military...
...The alternatives are too ghastly...
...Lopez came here on a sister-county mission to talk about the human costs of the military aid the United States supplies to Colombia—more than to any other nation in the Western Hemisphere...
...There are other unintended consequences that could be catastrophic...
...This bill would effectively curtail the right of abortion for the two million women who receive federal health insurance...
...We must stand for peace...
...Was the United States the dean of historical seriousness in Vietnam...
...The Republicans are also coming down hard on banking regulations...
...Yes, the Bosnian Muslims have been at a disadvantage militarily because of the embargo, but more arms will bring more death and more destruction to innocent people on all sides...
...You want jobs programs, forget it: 163 of them got the ax, including one that would have employed 620,000 young people for a summer...
...The very next day, the House Appropriations Committee voted to dismantle a twenty-six-year-old program for family-planning advice to poor and low-income women...
...government and the U.S...
...Nor are we for an end to the arms embargo, which Bob Dole so sanctimoniously has championed...
...There are more important things than consistency and principle: there's getting elected...
...The only up side is the Republicans seem to be overreaching...
...The bill would not allow women who were the victims of rape or incest to have coverage for abortions, even though such coverage is available to Medicaid recipients...
...But there's only one problem: you're way behind in the polls...
...But not all agencies were hit...
...There have been 3,000 murders of members of the Patriotic Union, horrible massacres, and there does not exist one single detainee, and not a single witness.' —A defense attorney in Colombia Injustice in Colombia It is heartbreaking getting to know and admire the liberation theologists, unionists, and political leaders in Colombia, a veteran reporter in Bogota once said, because you know that they are very likely to be gone soon...
...He's running like George Wallace," said the campaign manager for one of his rivals, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania...
...The writer, Roger Cohen, said, "America still personifies the confidence necessary to draw a distinction between right and wrong and then fight for it...
...A Western attack on the Bosnian Serbs is likely to put enormous pressure on Serbia to join directly with the Bosnian Serbs in the war against the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats...
...So let's not kid ourselves with talk about what "we" should do...
...Give us a break...
...In general, we don't believe war solves anything...
...Box 1505, Madison, WI53701...
...If Vietnam taught anything, it should have been that fighting for Western honor was not all that it was cracked up to be...
...These entities bomb not for principle but for interest—the interest of the leading economic forces in our country, which benefit from every projection of U.S...
...Since 1986, when the party was formed, members of the Patriotic Union have been accused of being subversives by the military, and have been killed by the thousands...
...Lopez was running a popular campaign for Congress, which was derailed when he was arrested five weeks before the election at 5:00 A.M...
...bombing (except nuclear annihilation), no amount of NATO troops (short of a million) will reconquer all the lost territory...
...Lopez himself went into the mountains to talk the guerrillas into laying down their arms...
...Then the high-minded rationales will be wheeled out, the talk of "honor" will resume, and the killing will go on...
...The New Republic, which supported the war against Saddam Hussein and the contra war against Nicaragua, says, "The United States seems to be taking a sabbatical from historical seriousness...
...The Republicans were unabashed about their debt to Pat Robertson's flock...
...But we do not believe that is the proper course to take...
...Instead of trying war, let's try peace...
...In Chile...
...COMMENT The Menace of War The images on TV and the accounts in the newspapers are horrible: a woman hanging from a tree limb, thousands of refugees streaming away from their captured "safe havens," and thousands of Muslims being led off to unknown fates...
...Their act should get the ax...
...He was taken to an army installation for questioning, denied access to counsel, and transported to Bogota, where he has been imprisoned ever since...
...military will be called upon endlessly to intervene in disputes in which the two sides are fighting each other with weapons that say Made in the U.S.A...
...As long as the United States continues to arm the world, the U.S...
...Wilson fully appreciates that he's appealing to racism when he comes out against affirmative action...
...Lopez's arrest, along with his successor in the Apartado mayor's office, and eighty other people from the Uraba region of Colombia, follows a pattern of repression of Colombia's leftwing Patriotic Union party...
...Settle for peace, even an unfair peace...
...He spoke eloquently about the need to end the violence in his war-torn region of Uraba—violence that claimed his brother's life and the lives of many other people close to him...
...The party needs to accept that some people and groups may never be convinced" of the party's views...
...What's more, the regulatory power of all three would be deeply curtailed...
...the "we" is not good, humanitarian-minded individuals...
...To get involved, contact the Colombia Support Network, P.O...
...Give Them the Ax The busiest person in Washington these days is the one who sharpens the ax the Republicans are wielding...
...There's been no Congressional approval, no declaration of war...
...Sometimes the United States goes to war in spasms of ideological drunkenness, as in Korea and Vietnam...
...The EPA's entire budget would be slashed by one third...
...In the Senate they failed to pass a bill that would have gummed up the entire regulatory process...
...The defense attorneys have not had access to state's evidence, and have no knowledge of witnesses and no way of responding to their testimony...
...Energy assistance to the poor: wipe it out...
...He knew that Bob Dole was up around 50 percent among Republican voters, with everyone else in single digits...
...Is the United States, is NATO, prepared to deal with the havoc this would cause...
...Because of Colombia's system of "faceless justice," Lopez and others have not been able to adequately respond to the charges against them...
...And it's extremely unlikely that the Bosnian Serbs will give up...
...In Guatemala...
...bombing will only make them dig in deeper and behave more ruthlessly...
...The obvious greed of the Republicans—their headlong drive to reward their corporate cronies and sponsors—may finally be catching up with them...
...His advisers were ecstatic that Jesse Jackson showed up to protest...
...Now the Republicans want to starve these watchdogs, and lock them in a pen...
...It will also fuel the hyper-nationalists in an already unstable Russia to meddle dangerously in the conflict...
...For the "we" is not the left...
...is buried at the bottom of a heap of atrocities committed by all sides.' —Howard Zinn "We must look for negotiated solutions," Zinn wrote, "even at the expense of national pride, must consider human life more important than boundary lines, must buy time for the achievement of justice without war...
...The Bosnian Serbs have committed unspeakable horrors, including mass rapes, and the impulse is to join in the cry for war, or at least for U.S...
...Secret witnesses can be paid for their testimony, and the evidence is sealed...
...In East Timor...
...Expect more hostage-taking, more summary executions...
...Admit that the Bosnian Muslims have lost the civil war...
Vol. 59 • September 1995 • No. 9
