COMMENT
Comment Empire Claptrap When a bomb exploded in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in late June, killing nineteen American servicemen and wounding some 300 more, the Administration and much of the media tried...
...The FDA said last year that it could not force manufacturers to label their products as emergency contraception—even though they are marketed that way abroad...
...Tierney neglects to acknowledge that the timber companies actually get much of their wood from the national forests that all of us own...
...We've been here before...
...Williams and three others were wrongly convicted of murder...
...According to Amnesty International, the regime tortures prisoners, it denies defendants facing the death penalty the right to formal representation, it coerces confessions and allows those confessions as evidence, and it beheads those found guilty of capital crimes...
...now more than ever...
...Upon returning to Saudi Arabia, many of these mujaheddin turned their sights on the monarchy—and on the United States...
...Customs doesn't crack down on travelers with Irish accents every time an IRA bomb goes off...
...The Persian Gulf war, the World Trade Center bombing, and now the Saudi bombing all create an atmosphere of paranoia fueling blatant discrimination...
...In fact, if the timber companies would only get out of our national forests, maybe we could enjoy them for what they are, not what they can be made into...
...policy continues to back the monarchy to the hilt...
...Whether that change comes about through a revolution led by Islamic fundamentalists or an evolution toward democracy will depend in significant part on whether U.S...
...which itself was fought for oil...
...Depleting our resources is also no problem, he says...
...Tierney and his sources sing a hymn to the free market...
...he writes, citing a study by a chemist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia...
...U.S...
...They didn't care if we were guilty or innocent...
...oil companies that profit from it, we've stationed 5.000 troops in Saudi Arabia since the Persian Gulf war...
...Planned Parenthood has announced it is expanding emergency-contraception services at its clinics...
...Powerful national opinion-shapers, from Bill Clinton and the national press on down, publicly associate Islam with violence, irrationality, and fanaticism...
...It's the first time that an industry has conducted a mass-media campaign informing customers that its own product is a menace to society...
...Since 1990...
...To him, the problem is nonexistent...
...The New Republic has not yet retracted its statements...
...But the issues this event raises go far beyond the actions of a few individuals...
...Katha Pollitt in The Nation points out the arrogance of this argument: "At $60 to $80 a pop, plus nausea, emergency contraception doesn't sound like something you'd want to make a regular part of your weekend...
...While the modern world brings to all of us many new opportunities," he said, 'it also leaves us more open to the forces of intolerance and destruction, and especially to terrorism...
...It was one of the most unbalanced stories in recent years, but it must have been comforting for The New York Times, which by the author's own admission, cuts down 75,000 trees each week for its mammoth Sunday edition...
...The United States sold the Saudis more than $28 billion in arms in the 1980s...
...the United States has signed agreements with Saudi Arabia worth $33 billion in weapons, training, and military support...
...They questioned Lilia Tawasil about her faith and about the number of Muslims in her hometown...
...In other industrialized countries, "morning-after" emergency contraception is advertised and commonly used...
...When consumers follow their preferences, thev are guided by the simplest, and often the best, measure of a product's environmental impact: its price...
...Comment Empire Claptrap When a bomb exploded in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in late June, killing nineteen American servicemen and wounding some 300 more, the Administration and much of the media tried to cast the event in the usual manner: The United States, trying to do good, was once again victim to irrational, inexplicable acts of terror...
...According to Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the questioning of Muslim travelers is "almost a daily occurrence...
...But crime prevention lacks pizzazz, and it does not go with the crime show that politicians are putting on to scare up votes...
...A certain reluctance to relinquish an opportunity to lecture and embarrass...
...In articles discussing the relationship of Israel to the Arab nations of the Middle East, U.S...
...But the advisory panel's decision should add pressure to the campaign to make the FDA accurately inform American consumers...
...The amendment will also allow victims to speak at parole hearings...
...The Washington Post editorialists chimed in about the "risks and burdens of world leadership" that Americans must bear, no matter the costs...
...I am disappointed that the Supreme Court concluded that prisoners . . . can continue to file habeas petitions," said Hatch...
...John Tierney, a Times staffer, sucks up to his bosses by saying "newspaper and magazine publishers, whose products are a major component of municipal landfills, nobly led the crusade against trash...
...a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, wrote in the April 199b issue of The Progressive...
...Fearing controversy and potential lawsuits, American gynecologists, birth-control manufacturers, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have kept quiet about post-coital use of the pill...
...The Saudi government has an abvsmal human-rights record...
...At least since Richard Nixon, every Administration has claimed Saudi Arabia as a vital U.S...
...military presence...
...You would have to use the mug 1,000 times before its energy-consumption-pcr-use is equal to the cup...
...The resources that other countries possess are not ours to own or control...
...To defend that gluttony, and to defend the U.S...
...No one voted us leader of the world, and we're not in Saudi Arabia to protect the Saudi people, much less to uphold peace and freedom...
...After protests by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the U.S...
...The net effect will be to inject heightened emotion into the courtroom...
...The people of Saudi Arabia will eventually demand some say in how their government is run...
...They don't understand that we're there to protect them...
...U.S...
...Thanks to the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, the pill's other use finally hit U.S...
...Side effects can include nausea and vomiting, but emergency contraception is generally less traumatic and invasive than surgical abortion, and offers immediate relief for women who are afraid they are pregnant because of a failure in their regular method of birth control, or because they have been raped...
...But in a fundamental way, how well the U.S...
...The question is whether the United States has a right to play that game at all...
...And it seems unlikely that we'll be selling those forests to condominium developers any time soon...
...John Kifner of The .New York 'It is not inconceivable that the killers who attacked the Dhahran air base had earlier worked in concert with the Central Intelligence Agency.' —Elaine Saolmo in The New York Times 'we have to be careful that the constitution is not treated like a rough draft.' —Mark j. Kappelhoff, the American Civil Liberties Union Times reported...
...Do I sense a certain disbelief in women's common sense percolating here...
...It was very disgusting and humiliating for my daughter, who is a young adult and single, and for me, who is a grandmother of three, to have to go through this kind of treatment," she said...
...government supported the Shah of Iran, largely in the interests of oil...
...Neither can the House of Saud...
...But the Clinton amendment is designed to play up the hysteria about crime for crass political reasons...
...William D. Hartung...
...But the Shah could not hang on forever...
...Zee Tawasil, who are Muslims...
...military contractors...
...It doesn't matter that we've hooked up with a corrupt, brutal, and absolute monarchy...
...But that's too generous for Hatch, Utah Republican, who in addition to jailing youngsters, wants to make sure prisoners don't get a chance to appeal...
...Rather than curb our appetite, and become less dependent on Saudi oil, we've increased our consumption...
...interest...
...It does not...
...Blowback" could be the tag on U.S...
...First, Republicans in both houses drafted legislation to end a 150-year practice of separating juvenile from adult offenders...
...The increase in public knowledge about emergency contraception has increased women's power to decide their own fate...
...What a Waste: Recycling squanders money and good will, and doesn't do much for the environment, either...
...As long as politicians and the press continue to de-monize Arabs, weekend sensitivity trainings for Customs officials will do little to curb the overwhelming hostility faced by Muslims in America...
...The men who bombed the World Trade Center in New York came from these ranks, as did four Saudis who set off a car bomb that killed live Americans in Riyadh last November...
...Studies in several states have shown that juveniles incarcerated with adults have higher rates of recidivism than do teens housed in juvenile facilities...
...policy has been counterproductive in many ways...
...The monarchy's commitment to democracv is non-existent, as il bans political parties and trade unions, restricts the press, discriminates against women, and arrests people for the peaceful expression of their political or religious beliefs...
...Women Win Birth-Control Battle Finally, the secret is out...
...Crime Show Within a week in late June we saw politicians perform a dizzying array of stunts to show how tough they are on crime...
...Medical professionals have raised concerns that if women know they can prevent pregnancy after intercourse, they might get careless about using birth control before the fact...
...Because of the limits on appeals, people like Dennis Williams, who spent eighteen years in prison on false charges, most of it on death row, are less likely to ever find themselves released...
...The police just picked up the first young black men they could and that was it," said Williams...
...Other countries are not our pawns to be moved around the board as we see fit...
...It's not a menace after all...
...But Tierney can't see the forest for the trees...
...It's 6,748 miles from Washington, D.C...
...The Center has been waging a public campaign to push for women's access to emergency contraception...
...News later apologized for the remark, admitting that no such doctrine exists and that it was the other party who broke the 628 treaty...
...This is the rusty claptrap of American empire...
...The CIA also trained hundreds, perhaps thousands of Saudi mujaheddin to fight a not-so-secret war against the Soviet client Afghanistan during the 1980s...
...Anti-abortion activists are protesting the use of emergency contraception because, they say, life begins at conception...
...Indeed, the author...
...In large doses, the pill encourages the early onset of menstrual bleeding, flushing out a fertilized egg before it can implant in the uterus...
...Forget any hope that kids who commit crimes might be redeemed...
...But even he notes that recycling does save energy in the long run, since manufacturing recycled paper consumes fewer resources than chopping down trees to make fresh paper...
...But, by gosh, we are in a different age...
...Young people who end up in cell blocks with adults are often abused, which is why legislators created protections against housing minors with adult prisoners in the first place...
...foreign policy for the last fifty years...
...There's a strawman to beat all strawmen...
...Bob Simon of CBS News said the Saudis don't seem to grasp that were it not for the U.S...
...Customs Service apologized for the discriminatory treatment and required the officials involved in the incident to attend a course on "respecting cultural diversity...
...The Saudis are the world's largest oil producers, and our economy thrives on oil...
...Doctors everywhere have known this fact for twenty years...
...The Supreme Court will hear only a few, rare appeals, in "exceptional circumstances," the Justices decided on June 28...
...To this, he counters: "Saving a tree is a mixed blessing...
...News and World Report and The New Republic recently even fabricated unsavory Islamic teachings...
...Instead the issue is racially loaded politics...
...Taking a large dose of certain birth-control pills within seventy-two hours after intercourse is a safe, effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancy...
...But in the United States, religious conservatives hold women's health care hostage...
...Although many hospitals, family-planning clinics, and rape-crisis centers can and do prescribe off-label use of the pill for emergency contraception in this country, the majority of women are still in the dark...
...They are a public good, not mere materials of production...
...What matters is the crude...
...He also leans on industry sources like the Waste Policy Center and the Solid Waste Association of North America...
...All this aid hasn't made the country any more secure, just more corrupt and less solvent...
...And women can call the emergency-contraception hotline to find out details about emergency contraception and the names and phone numbers of providers in their area: 1 -800-584-9911...
...In 1995, the Saudi government executed 192 people, most for drug-related offenses...
...Go ahead, consume away...
...We had better get over them soon...
...If there is a continuation of the problems that led Congress to revise the habeas laws, we will need to revisit this area...
...It is called 'blowback' in the intelligence community...
...We've got to quit coddling these violent kids like nothing is going on...
...government plays the game of empire is beside the point...
...When there's less demand for virgin wood pulp, timber companies are likely to sell some of their tree farms—maybe to condominium developers...
...Garbage In On the cover of The New York Times Sunday Magazine not long ago was a story entitled...
...The United States is in Saudi Arabia for one reason—oil...
...Both magazines suggested that the Prophet Muhammad advocated breaking treaties when convenient, and The New Republic wrote that he set a precedent for doing that by violating the Treaty of Hudaybiah in 628...
...The United States has plenty of space for all our garbage...
...According to David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, current law intentionally attempts to "reduce the emotionalism of a trial and rely on evidence...
...President Clinton trumpeted "America's mission of peace and freedom" in Saudi Arabia, and made the deaths out to be the wages of modernity...
...Meanwhile, the assault on habeas corpus, the constitutional protection against illegal imprisonment, continues apace...
...Not to worry, fellas, says Tierney...
...To support his theory, he quotes heavily from libertarian organs like the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute...
...The bombing fueled prejudices about those crazy Arab fundamentalists, and it reinforced a late twentieth-century American whine: that our good deeds abroad are underappreciated by those ingrate foreigners...
...For twenty-five years, the U.S...
...Fortunately, the gatekeepers are already losing control...
...These are the delusions of empire...
...Clinton is proposing a constitutional amendment that will require courts to inform victims when proceedings will occur, permit the victims to attend, and allow them to address the jury on issues of bail, plea bargaining, and sentencing...
...to Riyadh, but the United States acts like Saudi Arabia belongs to us...
...Up Against the Wall On June 26, the day after the Saudi Arabian bombing, customs officials at San Francisco International Airport stopped Lilia Tawasil and her daughter...
...this is part of a new assault by big business to oppose recycling the garbage that is produced by the grow-or-die economy.' —Murray B>ookchm on John Tierney's article in The New York Times Magazine...
...Then they made her put her hands on a wall and forced her to submit to a search...
...What Hatch calls a new age of criminal justice means housing kids with adults who will see them for what they are—vulnerable...
...Saddam Hussein would be sitting in Saudi Arabia right now...
...Throwing garbage into landfills does not matter, he says...
...It did...
...however, fill up the coffers of the U.S...
...The oil scare of the 1970s was temporary, just like all previous scares about resource shortages...
...The FDA responded by setting up an advisory panel, which unanimously approved the use of six different brands of birth-control pills for emergency contraception at the end of June...
...In the midst of the crackdown, hardly anyone seemed to take note of a recent study—this one by the Rand Corporation—demonstrating that crime prevention is far more effective than long-term incarceration...
...Tierney, however, does not address the problem of disposing of polystyrene cups...
...What's more, landfills are not dangerous anyway, he adds, citing unnamed studies that suggest that even Love Canal is safe...
...His main point is that it costs less to collect unsorted garbage than it does to collect garbage sorted for recycling...
...Unfortunately, that philosophy is out of date," said Orrin Hatch, the sponsor of the Senate bill...
...President Clinton jumped on the tough-guy bandwagon recently with another proposal designed to appeal to popular sentiment...
...We'd all like to rehabilitate these kids...
...He uses this point of faith to argue that disposable polystyrene cups are better for the environment than ceramic mugs...
...But the problem is not simply fear of terrorism— U.S...
...newspapers this year...
Vol. 60 • August 1996 • No. 8
