Page 4
Friday, February 26, 1982
Daily Nebraskan
Editorial
Innocents doomed to ache under Reagan's touch
I had a friend during my undergraduate das at the
University of Missouri who carried 3 sign for six weeks be
fore Re3gan was elected. He printed his message neatly on
a large, heavy sheet of cardboard and glued the sheet to a
broom handle. The message read: Ronald Reagan. Rease
Don't Let Him Win.
I liked that message then and I think of it now as the
Reagan regime exterminates the institutions and programs
that I support. It comes back to me not so much for the
message itself, but for the tone of the message - a tone of
innocent doom. And that's what I feel now - innocent
doom. I feel like a little baseball player who has broken
his father's favorite pane of glass and Icnows that sooner
or hter his father will notice it. Innocent doom, punish
ment, hours of father hating, schemes of revenge.
But what can you do to Reagan? If you ask him a mov
ing question, he replies with a quip, unmoved. If you want
to show him what his programs are doing in Harlem, he
El Salvador events
spur march, rally
In response to the Re3gan administration's increasing
involvement on behalf of the ruling junta in El Salvador, a
new student group - University of Nebraska Latin
America Solidarity Committee - has called an emergency
march and rally for this Saturday. Feb. 27. at 1:30 p.m.,
beginning on the north side of Nebraska Union and cul
minating with speeches and a rally at 2 p.m. on the north
steps of the State Capitol building.
The demonstration will protest VS. support for a
regime that is guilty of countless human rights violations
Guest Opinion
ranging from the killings of Catholic nuns, lay workers
and the local .Archbishop to the slaughters of hundreds of
civilians in "search-and-destroy" missions.
Despite claims by Secretary of State Alexander Haig
and others in the administration that the cause of the civil
strife in El Slavador csn be traced to the Soviet Union
(through Cuba and Nicaragua), we see the basis of the civil
war in the intolerable conditions under which the vast
majority of Salvadorans have been forced to live. Accord
ing to United Nations statistics. El Salvador has the lowest
per capita calonc intake of any country in Latin .America.
Nearly "5 percent of Salvadoran children suffer from mal
nutrition. The illiteracy rate is 50 percent. In addition. Ei
Slavador has the highest unemployment rate on the con
tinent - 50 percent, and 90 percent of the people earn
less than SI 00 a year.
Meanwhile. 2 percent of the population owns 60 per
cent of the land. .Although the present junta has pub
licized ;:s agrarian reform program, the number of landless
peasants has doubled in the last uo years alone. It is such
social miser, thai has caused the oeosle of El Salvador to
was? 3 !:he-sip-i :4--,:-v r'? ;Mn'
:ede against
El Salvador's Democratic Revolutionary Front, which
leads the battle against the junta, is a broad coalition of
peoples opposed to military rule and repression. It
includes workers, peasants, business people, religious
groups, and others. The FDR has been recognized as
viable political faction by several countries, "including
France. Both the junta leaders and U.S. troops would be
needed to defeat the revolution - testament to the over
whelming support the FDR has among the people. Lately,
more stress has been given to the ultimate necessity of
VS. troops.
The U.S. people are expected to accept massive cuts in
necessary social services while $600 million is spent to
prop up the Salvadoran dictatorship. However." recent
Hams and A.vsvtf magazirte polls have shown the vast
majority of the VS. public to be in opposition to both
intervention in El Salvador and increasing military spend
ing at the expense of social programs.
We join the majority of people in this country and
groups and individuals around the world in demanding an
end to all LS. involvement in El Salvador. This Saturday's
action is just one step in forcing the Reagan administrat
ion to retreat on its military adventure in El Salvador be
fore this country becomes Involved in another Vietnam
style conflict.
Brian Lojek
Senior
Business
Craig Pnefert
Senior
Political Science
tells you he can't make it, he's on the way to his million
dollar ranch.
By the time Reagan and his lieutenants are voted out in
19S4. my career as a graduate student will be a dull pain
in my stomach, like hunger, reminding me that I don't
have money, I don't have power, and I don't have my
graduate degree. Punishment.
At times I think it's a deliberate system of oppression,
as if Reagan and his puppets, when planning policy, start
with the question, "What can we do to keep those miser
able, soft-hearted, socialistic Democrats from ever again
achieving power?"
Well. You can see the effects everywhere - in the eyes
of a bewildered young man signing a forced contract at his
local post office: in the cries of an underpaid and sexually
harassed secretary; in a letter of resignation from a cen
sured university professor.
But it's still 1982. The regime has nearly three more
years to startle the already cowering powerless - the
"trickle down" people. Imagine an immediate future . . .
A man in Kentucky is denied food stamps. His four-year-old
daughter dies - malnutrition. He kills the rest of
his family three children, his wife - then kills him
self... An 18-year-old in Idaho refuses to register for selective
service. His father is angered to the point of violence. He
beats his son to death . . .
A Wisconsin mother, while delivering a speech
denouncing the United States' involvement in El Salvador,
suffers a heart attack and dies before her hushed audi
ence . . .
A graduate student in a Midwestern college mysterious
ly disappears after writing a newspaper editorial that
decries the horrors of the Republican administration and
ends with the quote, "Exterminate all the brutes."
Rob Wilborn
!T;S ASr VCO To QAV, nIAMCV,"
BJT if YOU f4AP ro ear UP vPY VAY AnP
TPG-rENlP To ?AP ALL VCOE ReHM6
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Federal land acts unpleasant
"I never use the words 'Republicans' and 'Democrats'
- it s 'liberals' and 'Americans' . . . you can understand
why 1 get in trouble. "
-James Watt in the Boston Globe
I've been looking for something pleasant and uplifting
to write about for a while, and earlier this week I thought
I might have found it. There was Secretary of the Interior
James Watt announcing the' United States wasn't going to
drill oil wells in wilderness areas after all. Except in a nat-
Matthew Millea
iona! emergence, of course. This was apparently what I'd
been looking for. Granted, it W3S more a case of not carry
ing through on a threat than anything truly positive, but
what do you expect from the Reagan administration?
James Watt backing down is about the best they can man
age. Well. I tried to be cheerful this week, but Watt's manu
evers don't justify it. He's not backing down: he's throw
ing up a smoke screen. The Wilderness Act he proposed
Sunday would indeed prohibit development leasing of
'"ederal wilderness areas, the problem is that after the year
2000 it would be up to Congress to determine what to do
with these areas.
Additionally, no new areas could be officially declared
wildnemess areas by the Bureau of Land Management in
the meantime. Gee thinks Jim. y ou're a helluva nice guy.
The bitter battle between Watt and the environmental
ists has been characterized by a continual misunderstand
ing. The most important fact about federal land manage
ment js that 85 percent of federal lands are already avail
able for oil and gas exploration. Of the leases purchased
by energy concerns, "5 percent are never even utilized.
But still, he says. "I will err on the side of public use vs.
preservation." And he has been true to his word. A study
of Watt's record thus far by the National Wildlife Federat
ion found no Instance in which Secretary Watt has chosen
conservation in the face of a proposed alternative
economic use of the resource.
If the energy companies don't need his help, why is he
giving it to them? Part of Watt's motivation is the usual
conservative lust for "free" enterprise. On a trip to
Houston last November. Watt threatened that the govern
ment might be forced to take over the energy industry if
his plans weren't supported. Nice try, Mr. Watt, hut it
seems like there's more danger of it being the other way
around.
To VuAy understand James Watt you must understand
his funra-enulist Christian beliefs." When iucshoiHil in
Congressional hearings about his belief that it is useless to
conserve resources with Armageddon just around the cor
ner, he responded that he thought that kind of "religious
bigotry" was behind us. The Reagan administration has
often been accused of lacking concern for the future, but
why worry about a future you don't believe will come to
pass?
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1982 Daily Nebraskan but do not necessarily reflect the
iews of the University of Nebraska, its employees or the
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