COMMENT
Comment NATO Stands for War 'Let Europe and other regions look to themselves for regional security— with help, if needed, from the United Nations. And let America get back to the work of democracy...
...Starting with Gorbachev, Russian leaders had pledged not to be the first country to use nuclear weapons...
...No sooner had NATO granted admission to Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic than the other shoe fell: the Russian shoe...
...On May 13, Turkey sent as many as 50,000 troops, along with tanks and fighter jets, into northern Iraq to attack Kurds, who are fighting for independence from both Iraq and Turkey...
...The Crime of Youth Policymakers, take note: Children can unlearn violent habits...
...But now these bloated Cold War arsenals will remain...
...He allowed NATO to put troops in the former East Germany on one condition: that NATO not move any farther eastward...
...And it would try as adults all kids fourteen or older who commit violent crimes or drug flfenses, and even some thirteen-year-olds...
...The legislators rarely cite statistics showing that violent crimes committed by juveniles under the age of fifteen fell sharply in 1996, along with crime overall...
...If we are driven into a corner and are left with no other option, we will resort to nuclear weapons," said Boris Berzovsky, deputy head of Russia's security council...
...media did its best to get out the shovels and bury this story...
...Imagine if Saddam Hussein's Iraq sent 50,000 troops into neighboring Turkey to bomb some Kurds...
...Let's clarify: It's not OK for Saddam Hussein to fly any planes into northern Iraq because the United States says it is worried he'll attack the Kurds...
...Now Congress has given up on rehabilitating kids...
...Prepare tte death chamber for kids...
...But it is OK for Turkey to fly U.S...
...But if the invader is some "rogue" state, it's front-page news...
...Maybe that's the problem...
...But the announcement came a bit late...
...acting assistant secretary of state who was in Ankara at the time of the invasion, said the United States "understood Turkey's right of self-defense...
...reaction was when the hypothetical became reality, with one modification: Irap didn't attack Turkey...
...A recent article in The Journal of the American Medical Association should chasten our legislators who are so eager to punish kids...
...We are squandering desperately needed funds that should go to meeting the basic needs of all our citizens...
...government...
...The goal is to reform juvenile justice by encouraging states to put consequences back into the system," said Bill McColIum, the Republican Representative from Florida who sponsored the legislation...
...Confused...
...And for what...
...We've now broken our word...
...They found that students enrolled in the course exhibited about thirty fewer acts of aggressive behavior daily than children who did not take it...
...The only ones that benefit from NATO are the military contractors, who now have more clients...
...The Times resorted to wire dispatches, including this fifty-one-word box: "Turkish troops pressed a cross-border offensive against Kurdish guerrillas in the mountains of northern Iraq today, using tanks and American-made fighter jets in the fifth day of a major operation...
...That is ominous given the demographic realities we face...
...While Yeltsin is wrong to adopt such a policy, it was a logical and foreseeable consequence of the reckless NATO expansion...
...The U.S...
...The alliance is supposed to make us safer...
...Though Basic's winter/spring 1997 catalogue showed a turn toward the pulpy direction of HarperCollins, it was still publishing books like Disarmed and Dangerous: The Radical Lives and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan...
...Those jets were made in America: The Pentagon had shipped them to Ankara...
...These are transcripts from Sally Jessy Raphael...
...the new "super-predators" are on their way...
...But now we're supposed to shell out more than $50 billion a year to protect Europe from Russia...
...The United States has 8,100 today...
...ally like Turkey, Washington and the media turn a blind eye...
...Turkish military officials said 998 rebels had been killed and 141 captured in the fighting, Turkey's state-run Anatolian News Agency reported...
...The financial cost of NATO, especially at a time of ruthless budget-cutting, is astronomical...
...Turkey Deluxe Meanwhile, one NATO member, Turkey, has been busy with a little aggression all its own...
...And they were bombing Kurds under the protection of the U.S.-imposed no-fly zone...
...In the first two weeks of the invasion, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal ran no front-page stories and no editorials about the invasion...
...Nor are they apt to suggest that there is any way to control crime other than throwing kids behind bars...
...The President is the assignment editor on the foreign desk...
...We are approaching the day when we once again are kept on nuclear tenterhooks, thanks to Clinton's diplomatic disaster, which he wrapped in celebratory paper...
...If the invader is a U.S...
...Take a look at HarperCollins's catalogue for that same winter/spring period, and you'll get the idea: One-Pot Chicken Dinners...
...NATO drains our Treasury of about $50 billion a year, according to the Center for Defense Information...
...David Welch, U.S...
...Yet already in 1997 the United States has allocated $300 million in loans and grants to help Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic acquire weapons, the Center for Defense Information says...
...The Confidence Course: Seven Steps to Self-Fulfillment...
...These aren't books...
...Rupert Murdoch...
...Washington would bomb Baghdad within forty-eight hours...
...That's a handy fig leaf for invasion...
...crimes among juveniles have risen sharply during the past ten years...
...Turkey attacked Iraq...
...But the NATO expansion prompted Yeltsin to rescind that pledge...
...Now NATO has simply moved that line eastward...
...Triangles: What You Need to Know About Affairs...
...The expansion of NATO will cost several billion dollars more in upgrading the roads and airfields of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and in training and equipping troops there...
...Evidently, there are good Kurds and bad Kurds, good bombings and bad bombings...
...Basic Books was publishing leftwing titles now and again, and the corporate owners over at HarperCollins don't care for that...
...Farewell, Basic Books Say a prayer for another publishing house, gobbled by oligopoly, swallowed by greed...
...the Russians, 6,700...
...All this at a time when Congress and Clinton ate slashing domestic spending...
...And let America get back to the work of democracy at home...
...That's the epitaph of Basic Books, a once-proud and independent publisher, now devoured whole by HarperCollins...
...We don't have our priorities straight here...
...planes into Iraq and bomb Kurds...
...If the primary threat to our security in the United States is nuclear war, why in the world are we doing something that makes nuclear war more likely...
...and Super Sexual Orgasm: A Woman's Guide to Ultimate Pleasure...
...But look at what the U.S...
...He announced that the Russians would most likely not ratify the Start II treaty, which would have reduced nuclear warheads to roughly 3,000 on each side...
...Researchers led by David Grossman at the University of Washington studied 790 second- and third-graders at twelve schools in Washington state...
...Guess who owns HarperCollins...
...What would be the reaction of the U.S...
...For forty years, it threatened global conflagration: If the Soviet Union put a toe into West Germany, NATO promised to wage nuclear war against Moscow...
...It was still publishing books like The Way We Really Are: Ending the War over America's Changing Families, by a leading feminist scholar, Stephanie Coontz...
...The Clinton Administration says the costs of NATO expansion are only $150 million to $200 million a year...
...As a society, we used to pay at least lip-service to the idea of rehabilitating adult criminals...
...The American people don't benefit...
...Basic continued to publish books of redeeming social and political value...
...It's time for NATO to go.' —Sam Day Who was the genius who thought up expanding NATO...
...It does not...
...The Washington Post editorial Brahmins scolded Yeltsin, saying his first-use policy was a "foray into what to him is the relatively novel field of nuclear doctrine...
...Once behind bars, these kids will only coarsen...
...If they don't see they are going to get a punishment for doing something wrong, they are much more likely to evolve into violent youth criminals...
...As Second Step and other child-rehabilitation programs have demonstrated, this is a terrible mistake...
...To increase the threat of nuclear war...
...We're giving up on people at an earlier and earlier age...
...It imperils our survival and bankrupts us in the process...
...Yeltsin, under pressure from the ultranationalists in his country, understandably felt threatened by the move...
...In 1971, it published The American Left: Radical Political Thought in the Twentieth Century...
...They could not agree to spend $5 billion to improve our schools...
...The 3-Day Energy Fast: Cleanse Your Body, Clear Your Mind, and Claim Your Spirit...
...At that time, Gorbachev was negotiating the removal of his troops from Central and Eastern Europe...
...Although violence remains a leading cause of death for young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four in the United States, a program called Second Step is making a difference in more than 10,000 schools...
...Second Step, which a Seattle teacher developed in 1986, gives students from preschool through ninth grade weekly lessons in anger management, empathy, and problem-solving...
...Equally alarming, Yeltsin has now adopted a "first-use" policy for nuclear weapons...
...He'd rather sell the junk...
...Actually, HarperCollins (which used to be Harper and Row) bought Basic Books almost thirty years ago, but it allowed the imprint to maintain a semblance of editorial identity and integrity...
...they could not agree to up the cigarette tax and give health care to five million poor kids...
...Tough-on-crime legislators cite these "demographic realities" again and again: Our country will soon have a boom in teenagers...
...NATO depends on a doctrine of nuclear war...
...This is a direct violation of the pledge the Bush Administration made to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, as Christopher Hitchens has pointed out...
...If Moscow puts a toe into Hungary, Poland, or the Czech Republic, our missiles will fly...
...We know we've got about six years to turn this juvenile-crime thing around or our country is going to be living with chaos.' —bill Clinton, proposing his own tough-on-juveni/e-crirne legislation...
...Bouncing Back, by Joan Rivers...
...In 1991, it published Juliet Schor's The Overworked American, a classic about corporations that are forcing people to work longer hours to avoid paying benefits to new employees...
...Just two weeks before the University of Washington released its study, the House passed a Republican-sponsored Ml that would institute rigid mandatory punishments for every delinquent act beginning with a juvenile's first misbehavior...
Vol. 61 • July 1997 • No. 7
