South African leaders campaign for reforms
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —Presi
dent F.W. dc Klerk, slaking the country’s fu
ture on a historic referendum Tuesday, urged
whiles to abandon decades of apartheid or risk
plunging the country into chaos.
On Monday, the eve of the whitcs-only
referendum on sharing power with the black
majority, the country’s leaders made final ef
forts to sway voters.
If reform is rejected, “there is no doubt
where that must lead us — to a dead end of
division and destruction,” said dc Klerk in a
newspaper message to voters.
The referendum is favored to carry. If it
fails, dc Klerk has promised to resign and call
a whitcs-only election.
Political analysts warned the government’s
lead had slipped in recent days as campaign
frenzy reached a peak and violence in black
townships soared.
Army and police in long columns of ar
mored vehicles poured into black townships
around Johannesburg lo try to halt factional
violence after at least 15 people died Monday
and overnight. Township violence has claimed
some 280 lives in the three weeks since the
referendum was announced.
Some black groups say the violence has
been orchestrated to persuade whiles to reject
reform and side with the pro-apartheid Conser
vative Party. However, they have not provided
any evidence.
The pro-govcmmcnl Citizen newspaper said
Monday the outcome was unpredictable, while
other newspapers forecast a close win for the
government. Votes will be counted Wednes
day.
Full-page ads were splashed across newspa
pers Monday, lawmakers handed out leaflets to
commuters, and both sides held last-minute
rallies.
Only^jvhitcs may vote Tuesday. The 3.27
million eligible voters will be asked to vote yes
or no for the continuation of talks on a new
constitution to give blacks the vote.
House bank always troubled
WASHINGTON (AP)—The year
was 1832 when a House leader first
publicly chastised his colleagues for
deliberately overdrawing their House
bank accounts.
Nothing much happened.
A half-century later, a cashier
skipped the country with his mistress
and S71 ,(XX) in House money. And in
the 1940s, a bank official was sent to
jail after skimming from accounts for
20 years.
Three times, when the bank was
caught short of funds, the House voted
to make up the difference with lax
dollars.
But the scandal that finally shut
tered the House bank last year docs
not involve taxpayer money. The bank
was brought down by the 160-year
old custom of members writing checks
on money that wasn’t yet in their
accounts.
As Phil Kuntz wrote in a recent
issue of Congressional Quarterly, the
hank “operated for more than 150
years outside the system of checks
and balances. Too often, there were
plenty of checks but not enough bal
ances.”
Although it was almost always
called the House bank, it never was a
bank in traditional terms, starting with
the fact it made no profit. It served an
exclusive group of clients — the
members of the House of Representa
tives.
Framed photographs of all 435
covered the wall the tellers faced,
rank on rank of the famous and ob
scure. The currency those tellers slid
across the counters was invariably
crisp and new.
And when a member wrote a bad
check, he did so with no charge and
little fuss. Essentially, members were
free to write themselves short-term,
interest-free loans.
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Continued from Page 1
posted.
But the alt groups never have edi
tors, Kenyon said. Anyone can start
an alt group, and anyone can add to
one.
Kenyon said he thought the alt
groups were taken out of UNLINFO
because some of them were porno
graphic in nature, such as
“all.sex.bondage” and
“alt.scx .bestiality.” Others dealt with
trivial subjects, such as
“all.tv. simpsons.”
But other all groups arc worth
while, he said.
“I’ll guarantee you that out of 400
(all groups), there arc 200 that arc as
legitimate as the rest of USENET,”
Kenyon said.
Douglas Gale, director of comput
ing at UNL, said he was tired of
hearing students complain about the
removal of the all groups from UN
LINFO.
“They haven’t been denied any
thing,” he said.
People still can gain access to the
all groups by logging into systems
elsewhere. Gale said. A list of alter
native sites was posted on UNLINFO,
he said.
Many students do not understand
why those groups could no longer be
stored on UNLINFO, Gale said.
Make sure your road trip proceeds without a hitch.
Sometimes road trips can be a little more adventurous than you
expect them to be. Which is why you should always pack your AT&T Calling Card. □
wc rc acaimg very muen wun a
resource issue,” he said.
The amount of memory on UN
LI NFO was doubling every four
months, he said, and the increase of
data was making UN LI NFO run more
slowly.
Gale said he got the impression
that some students would limit access
to valuable educational resources, such
as library catalogs and news wire
services, just to look at
“all.lv.simpsons.”
The content of the USENET groups
also makes a difference, Gale said,
when taxpayers’ money is involved.
‘‘Some of that stuff (in the alt groups)
is pretty sick,” he said. ‘‘There’s stufl
that would not be in the adult book
store downtown.”
CRC decided to stop storing the all
groups after a Feb. 27 meeting of the
UNL Academic Senate Computational
Services and Facilities Committee.
Leo Chouinard, the Academic
Senate representative on the Compu
tational Committee, said the commit
tee discussed several considerations
before making a decision about the
all groups, including possible viola
tions of state pornography laws and
concerns about computer resources
being used for non-cducational pur
poses.
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