JoSH@RED.RUTGERS.EDU (JoSH) (08/30/85)
Poli-Sci Digest Fri 29 Aug 85 Volume 5 Number 34
Contents: Test Freeze
Sex Politics
Nicaragua etc
TV cameras
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Date: Thu, 15 Aug 85 08:48:08 PDT
From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE.ARPA>
Subject: Nuclear Test Freeze
Gorbachev claims that he has started a 5 months freeze on nuclear tests, and
that he would extend it if the US did the same.
President Reagan says that is just propaganda. They have just completed their
recent test series and we have not.
A newspaper report stated that we have conducted approximately 8 test per year
for the past two years; that the soviets have conducted about 5 per year.
The President claims that their propaganda is designed to seperate us from
our allies.
I am sure that I don't know the reasons that Gorbachev has announced the test
freeze. It does seem that there is not much factual data to support the claim
that it is strictly a propaganda move. Thus it seems to me that if it is a
propaganda move our best bet would be to meet their challange and also declare
a moratorium on tests and perhaps to challange them to something more by
taking a stronger step in the same direction.
I believe that the way we are responding with words only is quit likely to
allow them to succeed in alienating some of our allies.
richard foy
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Date: Sun, 18 Aug 85 21:02:23 PDT
From: sun!oscar!wild@Berkeley (Will Doherty)
Subject: Politics of Gender and Sexuality course
I am proposing to teach a course entitled "Politics of Gender
and Sexuality" this fall at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, CA.
I am looking for suggestions of possible readings, films, and
speakers. If you have any ideas, please send them asap because
the term will start soon. Here is the preliminary course
description:
"Politics of Gender and Sexuality" outlines the history of cultural
definitions of gender and sexuality and provides the student with
a background for study of contemporary attitudes toward various
sexual practices and gender orientations.
Concentrating especially on gender and sexual identifications
stigmatized by societies of various eras, the course encourages
the student to develop a comprehensive analysis of formation
and evolution of morality regarding gender and sexual orientation.
Using a topical approach, we study individuals and groups of people
who demonstrate a variety of gender and sexual identifications in
order to understand the minority point of view on cultural definitions
that apply to them. We trace gender and sexual minority organization
within societal institutions, so that we can evaluate movements for
social change based on sexual variation, and reaction of the
mainstream culture.
Sexual and gender minorities highlighted for study will include:
bisexuals, lesbians, gays, transexuals, transvestites, fetishists,
prostitutes, and people engaged in interracial, intergenerational, and
S/M relationships.
The course requires a significant amount of reading and
writing, and presents a broad sample of speakers and films,
necessitating ample participation in class discussion.
Students expecting credit for the course must choose and
execute a project of considerable magnitude.
Send ideas to: Will Doherty
3651 Orinda St
Palo Alto, CA 94306
415-949-3328 or
415-960-7442
{decvax|ucbvax|???}sun!oscar!wild
[Sounds like a real fun course-- I don't suppose one can
register only for the lab...? --JoSH]
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Date: Mon, 19 Aug 85 08:14:15 PDT
From: upstill%ucbdegas@Berkeley (Steve Upstill)
Subject: Nicaragua, ctd.
Here is a partial reply to the book review JoSH posted. I may be
confused, though, JoSH. Perhaps you posted the original review as
commentary, rather than as a pointer to an important book. I will
respond soon to the substance of that review, but for now I would just
point out that the Kissinger Commission and the previous,
well-opinionated reviewer, spent a matter of hours (6?) in Nicaragua
on their "fact-finding" tour.
"A Contra's-eye View of Nicaragua", by Dan Bellm
San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, August 18, 1985.
reprinted without permission
-----
Nicaragua's Sandinista government, now six years old, is deeply mired in a
war waged on its borders by counterrevolutionaries, or Contras. The Contras'
dependence on U.S. dollars and CIA coordination, and the danger that the war
may escalate, make it urgent that we learn what has been happening in Nicaragua
and why. We could use a well-researched study of Nicaragua's past history and
its six-year revolution, a book motivated by a desire for truth rather than
political loyalty, either to the Sandinistas or to their armed opponents.
"Nicaragua: Revolutioon in the Family", by Shirley Christian, a foreign
affairs reporter for The New York Times, is not that book. Although the
jacket notes promise "an insider's experience" and "an objective reporter's
analysis," Christian's bias emerges soon. The central characters in her
Nicaragua are landowners and urban business leaders, a privileged minority
who hoped the overthrow of the dictator Somoza in 1979 would involve little
more than a change of leaders. Since several of these people -- Adolfo Calero,
Alfonso Robelo and Arturo Cruz -- now lead the Contras, Christian's book reads
like a publicity drive on their behalf.
This campaign involves considerable rewriting of history. Since the
Contras include many of Somoza's former National Guardsmen -- a bothersome
"image question", Christian admits -- she is careful to downplay the brutality
of the Guard and of the Somoza family itself. This is her summary of the
record: "The government bureaucracy and National Guard interfered little in
the lives of most Nicaraguans. As authoritarian regimes go, this one ceded to
its political enemies and critics a relatively large amount of space to act in
public life." Elsewhere: "What mattered most to Anastasio Somoza Garcia was
amassing and enjoying wealth, and Nicaraguans generally allowed him to do
that." Was there a choice?
What's wrong with this picture of Nicaragua is that most of the people are
missing: the rural landless poor who had everything to gain from a sweeping
change and almost nothing to lose. Decades of Somoza rule left Nicaraguan
peasants hungry, underemployed, illiterate and prone to early death from
disease, yet their voices -- what they hope for or fear, what they now think
of the country's changes -- are entirely absent here. (Christian encourages the
view that Nicaragua was ruled merely by an annoying autocrat, that nothing was
wrong fundamentally with its distribution of political power, land and food.
"Nicaragua" develops the thesis that during the late 1970s, when a broad
opposition movement favored Somoza's overthrow, a vacillating Carter
administration failed to produce a moderate replacement and allowed a small,
nearly irrelevant clique of Leninists -- the Sandinista Front -- to seize
control. Since 1979, the argument runs, the Sandinistas have built the
totalitarian state they envisioned from the start, without regard for political
or economic pluralism, religious freedom or other human rights.
Christian gathers useful information on the Sandinistas' mistakes, and
there have been plenty -- notably their censorship of the opposition newspaper
La Prensa and their relations with the Miskito Indians -- but one needn't be a
Sandinista to notice an imbalance. Christian failed to interview any
Sandinista supporters in order to gather their views of the 1978-79
insurrection or of developments since then. She nearly ignores the social
reforms that have led most Nicaraaguans to favor the revolution: the 1980
Literacy Crusade that taught over a million people to read, the proliferation
of health centers and schools in even the remotest rural areas, the elimination
of polio.
Christian's book is weakest on current developments. Her sympathy for the
Contras forces her to whitewash their awful record of destroying what are
primarily civilian targets, well-documented by Americas Watch and other
international human rights observers. Most critically, Christian sidesteps the
question of whether the U.S. has an obligation, or even a right, to intervene
in another country's political disputes -- especially after Nicaragua's
November, 1984 election, which she is unable to discredit. Nor does she
consider seriously the Contadora process, a major diplomatic effort by Mexico,
Colombia, Venezuela and Panama to end the war.
"Nicaragua, Revolution in the Family" may be a useful reference on the
motivations of the Contra leadership, but its distortions make it otherwise
unreliable.
[Don't be confused, Steve; you had explicitly asked for comments
on your pro-Sandinista position. --JoSH]
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Date: Mon, 19 Aug 85 16:46:48 PDT
From: mcgeer%ucbkim@Berkeley (Rick McGeer (on an aaa-60-s))
Subject: who we dislike....
>Date: Mon, 12 Aug 85 11:34:51 edt
>From: Liudvikas Bukys <bukys@rochester.arpa>
>Subject: re: Nicaragua
>
>I have a theory which, I believe, explains the behaviour of our
>government toward various other governments. It is simply this:
>
> We are hostile toward governments which we perceive to be expansionist.
> (Cuba, Nicaragua, USSR)
>
> We are generally accommodating with those that don't seem expansionist,
> whatever their policies on various other fronts.
> (China, El Salvador, India, South Africa)
>
>This was the only thing I could think of that would explain all the
>sweet nothings muttered during Reagan's last visit to China, arguably
>one of the most tyrannical regimes around.
>
>So, Sandinista-lovers, take note. Tell your pals down south that if
>they want to be left alone, they should lay off on the "revolution
>without borders" stuff for a few years. Of course, it's probably going
>to sound rather unconvincing after all this time, but it couldn't
>hurt. Maybe if it was accompanied by the abolition of mandatory
>attendance at "rallies", political use of rationing, and neighborhood
>surveillance by cadre-types, somebody would believe it.
>
>Liudvikas Bukys
>bukys@rochester.arpa
>rochester!bukys (uucp) via allegra, decvax, seismo
Bingo. This is actually our stated policy, and has been for 20
years, or thereabouts: it's called the Fulbright Doctrine, after the former
senior Senator from Arkansas, William Fulbright. Fulbright was a liberal
foe of both Johnson and Nixon, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee during their administrations and was an early advocate of
withdrawal from Vietnam. His position was that the American people have no
quarrel with any nation, whatever its ideology, so long as it doesn't try
to export that ideology. If you want to go further back, John Adams said
that Americans were friends of liberty everywhere, but the keeper only of
their own.
As far as Nicaragua goes, there is probably a geopolitical
component, as well; I imagine that the prospect of a Soviet base in Central
America during wartime drives our planners nuts, and brings smiles in the
Soviet equivalent of the Pentagon.
Rick.
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From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@Berkeley
Date: 21 Aug 85 16:12:35 CDT (Wed)
Subject: democracy vs. freedom
> In the policial domain there is a range from total democracy where everyone
> votes on everything to total dictatorship where one person has absolute
> control.
>
> ... We tend to work against countries that ecomomically towards
> communism evan if they are better than average in political freedoms.
As a sidelight on this, it is worth noting that "freedom" and "democracy"
are neither synonymous nor inseparable, although there is some correlation.
(I'm not even convinced that "political freedom" and "democracy" are quite
the same thing, although the match is much closer there.) If one's concern
is with "human rights", neither the nature of a nation's politics *nor* the
nature of its economic system is a foolproof indication of whether it is
decent towards its people.
"If you are caught in the gears, the color of the machine is irrelevant."
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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Date: 29 Aug 1985 22:28-EDT
Subject: Picky point about television cameras not stopping bank robberies
From: RSHU@BBNG.ARPA
While I generally agree with the arguments that a camera on every
block would be both ineffective and not a good idea if effective,
I have to take issue with the comment that bank cameras have not stopped
bank robberies. It seems that successful bank robberies have declined
drastically. Nowadays, most bank robbers are caught. This is not due
only to the cameras but several other anti-robbery techniques as
well. Alarms, bait money and low amounts of cash in teller drawers
are just some of them. Most "smart" criminals realize that the odds of
success are too low. Most bank robbers tend to be poor, uneducated
criminals and/or drug addicts. This info is based on a newspaper
article I read a while back (sorry, can't remember which paper. Probably
the NY Times or W.S. Journal). Of course, you can't believe everything
you read but this seems credible to me.
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End of POLI-SCI Digest
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