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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (July 21, 1982)
Mrs Frances Sehoen-Hewspaper University cf Oraron Library R coa t- u g jn s , O regon 97403 Simple summer cooking Observer Achievement Awards Food Section Council opposes Khomeini Resale: Clothes fo r less Page 7 Page 2 PageS LU LU PORTWND OBSERNER July 21, 1982 Volume XII, Number 41 250 Per Copy Two Sections USES 959 .-.xo -85'. Dellums warns of nuclear, social explosions by C. Eddie Edmondson Envision two men in an airtight room filled with gasoline. One of the men has ten matches and the other has seven. One o f the men says to the other: *7 won't nego tiate with you until I have 15 matches. " Imagine that those two men are Ronald Reagan and Brezhnev. Whether we agree with each other in this room or not, this planet unifies us all. —Congressman Ron Dellums Friday, July 16, 1982 Portland, Oregon Ronald Reagan cut $48.5 b illio n in social service and related p ro grams from (he nation’s budget, not to reduce the size and cost o f gov ernm ent, but to help offset a 53.3 per cent increase in the m ilitary side o f the budget, Congressm an Ron D ellum s, ( D -C a lif.) to ld over 525 persons attending the Portland Ob server's firs t Achievem ent A w ard Banquet F rid a y , Ju ly 16th, at the H ilto n H o te l In dow n to w n Portland. The awards banquet was to honor Portlanders identified by the com m unity newspaper fo r their contri- buttions to Portland through their work and community activities. (Sec related story in this issue.) A l M cG ilbcrry, managing editor, said the banquet, w hich w ill be an an nual event, would include a feature speaker o f n a tio n a l prom inence. Ron Dellums is an eleven-year veter an o f the House o f Representatives. “ Ronald Reagan is not about re ducing governm ent expense, but only w ith reducing governm ent in certain areas,” Dellums told the au dience. In the short span o f ten years, the m ilitary budget w ill qua d ru p le i f Ronald Reagan has his way, Dellums said. " I n 1971 the m ilitary budget was $91 billion. Ten years later it's $223 billion. And for 1983 Reagan is pro posing a $258 b illio n m ilita ry bud get. And by the end o f this decade we are talking about h a lf a trillio n d o lla r m ilita ry b u d g e t," Dellums said. " I t ’ s o b sce n e ," D ellum s p ro claimed. By cutting social service and other n o n -m ilita ry parts o f the n a tio n ’ s budget, such as the regulatory agen cies, Dellums said, the adm inistra tion hoped to offset the dramatic in creases in the m ilita ry side o f the budget. " W ith no policy debate this ad m in is tra tio n is re -w ritin g spend in g ," he said. “ The in fra structure o f governm ent is being reduced in an arbitrary and capricious w ay." When the chairman o f the House Armed Services Com m ittee replied blandly to his request that the com mittee “ expand the parameters o f the debate " on the proposed m ili tary budget before it this year, Del lums said he raised private funds to finance the operations o f an ad hoc committee hearing to look at the fu ll implications o f the m ilitary budget. During the six days o f hearings in M arch, D ellum s said his subcom m ittee exam ined " th e m o ra l, the economic and political im plications o f the m ilitary budget.” " W e ’ re k illin g o u r c h ild re n ,” D ellum s said was one con clu sio n learned in the hearings. A study showed that a higher num ber o f children have less fa ith in their fu ture because, Dellums said, the chil dren believe they have been handed over to a possible m ilita r y h o lo caust. Another point brought out in the hearings, he said, is the unnecessary o ve r-p ro d u ctio n in nuclear arms " I f the United States and the Rus sians used only 10 per cent o f their nuclear weaponry, it would destroy enough o f the ozone layers (w hich cover the earth atmosphere) to cause everyone to die o f cancer,” Dellums said. “ I maintain we are in the incredi ble human misery that we are in be cause Am ericans d id n ’ t debate in 1980. We cannot a ffo r d to make that mistake in 1982,” he told his audience to loud applause. Dellums said the results o f the ad hoc com m ittee hearings w ill hope fu lly a llo w debate on the House flo o r when the A rm ed Services Committee sends out a 1983 m ilitary appropriation bill for consideration. “ The more we spend on the m ili tary budget, the fewer jobs are de veloped— in fa c t, we take jo b s away,” Dellums said. " W h e th e r we agree w ith each other in this room or n ot,” Dellums pointed out, “ this planet unifies us a ll. T his planet is in d a n g e r," he said. Dellums said that despite the ad m in is tra tio n ’ s co n te n tio n that we can solve our problems w ith the as sistance o f p rivate in d u s try , " th e collective w ill o f people is expressed itir o u & k o lir governm ent and not through som^eprporate board.” “ We are building a monument to nuclear madness. We are w ithdraw ing o u r c o m m itm e n t to save people.” He called on his listeners to participate in the 1982 elections. CONGRESSMAN RON DELLUMS (Photo: Richard Brown) South African wrestlers boost apartheid by Ed Ferguson Rogar Colas and Jans Titus In William Shaksspaars's A Midsum- mar Night's Draam .” Tha play Is producsd by the Portland Actors Ensambla for tha 13th Annual Shaksspsars-ln-the-Parks. (Please sea page 8) Secrecy surrounded the arrival o f the South A frican Springbok wrest ling team in P o rtla n d , Oregon, on June 18th. Seeking to avoid local o p p o s itio n and a repeat o f the S pringbo k rugby fiasco o f last Septem ber, the organizers o f the tour had to avoid advance publicity o f the premier U.S. tour which in cluded the firs t blacks to wrestle outside South A fric a . The 33-man delegation was qu ie tly taken some 300 miles to rural Oregon where the Springboks w ould spend h a lf their four-week to u r. The rem ainder o f their visit w ould be to C a lifo rn ia , Oklahoma, and New York. Oregon has a history o f sporting ties with South A frica . The Spring bok to u r is the latest episode in a long series o f w restling exchanges that date back to 1968. The ex changes were in itia te d by Dale Thomas, wrestling coach at Oregon State University (OSU) fo r 29 years. Suspended by the Amateur Athletic U n io n (A A U ) in 1973 fo r his ties w ith South A fr ic a , Thom as has been described as “ America’ s No. 1 p ro m o te r o f sports contacts w ith South A f r ic a " by R ichard Lap- chick, N ational Chairperson o f the American C oordinating Committee for Equality in Sports and Society. Thom as’ ties went unchallenged locally u n til 1980 when the A frican S tudents’ A sso cia tio n (A S A ) at OSU protested. By the summer o f 1981 they successfully prevented Thomas fro m taking a team o f 12 OSU wrestlers on a five-week tour o f South A frica . The ASA has con tinued to educate people lo c a lly about a p a rth e id South A fric a . Speakers brought to the OSU cam pus include Fred Dube o f the A f r i can National Congress. Ellen Musi- alela o f SW APO, Dumsani Kumalo o f the American Committee on A f rica, and Richard Lapchick. The S pringbok visit was organ ized by tw o central Oregon high school coaches after Dale Thomas “ persuaded them to take on the pro je c t." Coaches jo in e d high school and college age wrestlers to compete w ith the Springboks. Such competi tio n is illegal under the statutes o f the In te rn a tio n a l A m ateur W rest lin g Federation ( F IL A ) w hich ex pelled South A frica from that body in 1970 because o f its racist policies o f apartheid. The A A U , which im plements F IL A statutes in the U.S., is now processing the case. Those Americans found to have engaged in c o m p e titio n w ith South A fric a n s w ill be banned fro m in te rn a tio n a l competition for life. Six o f the wres tlers who competed w ith the Spring boks are members o f Thomas’ OSU wrestling squad. The 33-member S pringbok dele gation was composed o f 14 wrestlers (10 white and 4 black), 18 coaches, and a journalist. A fte r their arrival they were active in public relations w ork. Johan du Plessis. President o f the South A fric a n A m a te u r W restling Federation, rem arked, " w e ’ re not interested in w in n in g matches, we’ re interested in winning people.” The image presented by du Plessis was one o f “ blacks in South A fr ic a w ho have m ore c o m fo rts than in the whole o f A fric a togeth e r . " The S pringbo k jo u rn a lis t in fo rm e d the lo ca l press th a t " a couple o f weeks ago non-w hites were given representation in the par liament, driving one o f the last nails in apartheid's c o ffin .” The images conflicted w ith front-page news o f state b rutality against striking m in ers in South A frica. The four black Springboks, all o f whom w ork fo r the South A fric a n police, conveyed a sim ilar image o f South A fr ic a . 26-year-old E lias M n is i, called “ big b o y ” by the white Springboks, met the press fre q u e n tly to reveal " I am sa tisfied w ith my life ." Mnisi said “ as far as sports are concerned, you can forget about apartheid. It ju st is n 't there anym ore.” Blacks are responsible fo r the slow pace o f change in South A fric a according to M nisi. It is his o p in io n th a t " th e re has to be a sound re la tio n s h ip between the white man and the black man, and the black man has not accepted it yet. So many times 1 see a white man (Please turn to page 9 column I) A Third World perspective on the peace movement by Philip Ochieng Pacific News Service (Editor * note: Mr. Ochieng, a p rom in en t A frican Journalist, h at written for tha Nairobi Daily Nation, tha Uganda Sunday Times and tha Dar Ea Salaam Daily N ew s, and la co -a u th o r of The Kenyatta Succession.) A question I o fte n ask m yself a b out the peace m ovem ent now sweeping across the United Slates is: What is there in it for me as a mem ber o f the Third World? And the answer I keep arriving at — perplexing though it may sound to most Am ericans— is: N othing. I could even say that the movement runs afoul o f my best interests. The central demand o f the move ment is general disarm am ent o r, more specifically, a nuclear freeze. It is a demand, however, based on assum ptions w hich are fu n d a mentally false; indeed, they can only impair the real cause o f peace in the long run. One false assum ption is that a freeze or arms accord can provide a long-term answer to the intense r i valry between the United Stales and the Soviet Union. A second false assumption is that the conflict is a purely Soviet-Amer ican a ffa ir , a phenomenon exclu sively for the Northern Hemisphere. It is probably from this assumption that the peace movement behaves as though the problem can be solved w ithout any reference to the Third W orld. Every seminar I have attended de voted to “ the Soviet p ro b le m " has restricted itse lf to the po litica l and m ilita ry m aneuvers by the tw o w orld powers as they struggle fo r advantage in given situations. Every seminar has confined its discussion to questions purely o f tactics and strategy. None has asked the more fundam ental question: What is the spoil? W hat is to be gained by all this political and m ilitary struggle? To ask such questions is to begin to understand that the p o litic a l r i valry and the arms race are not ends in themselves, t o ask such questions is to realize that, in the last instance, politics and war are means to ends which are sometimes—as now—sel dom mentioned by the belligerents. Even when they do refer to ends, it is o n ly in extrem ely subjective terms, phrases which are so hack neyed that they only help to mystify the real objective o f the present r i valry. Such is the case when the U.S. and its allies claim that their only aim in the world is to foster and de fend “ freedom " and “ dem ocracy" or, to put it another way, to counter the " t h r e a t " o f Soviet " c o m m u nism " and “ totalitarianism .” Such is the case, to o . when the Soviet U n io n alleges that its only mission in the world is to “ liberate” m ankind by helping us defeat U.S.- led im perialism and b u ild in g “ so cialism .” But neither assertion prevents the United States from siding with some o f the most totalitarian and tyranni cal regimes in the w orld—as long as those regimes tend fo r the tim e being to serve the long-term in te r ests o f the U.S. and N A T O . L ik e wise, such terms as "socialism ” and "lib e ra tio n " have not prevented the Soviet U nion from going out o f its way, wherever it has a foothold, to channel most re volutiona ry fervor to the Soviet mold so as to prevent it from taking a more popular dimen sion. To talk o f Soviet and Am erican riva lry in the T hird W orld is to be gin to answer the question posed at the outset: The T hird W orld is the spoil, the aim, the target o f the in tense riv a lry between the U n ite d States and the Soviet Union. This should be clear enough. The Soviet Union is not interested in anv territorial par, o f the United States; nor is the United States interested in any te r r ito r ia l par, o f the Soviet U nion. They w ould no, go to war, much less arm themselves so frig h t fully, in the claim o f such territory. What is there in the T hird W orld to warrant such an unprecedented race, then, such a frightening m ili tary array on both sides? The ans- (Please turn to page 8 column I)
