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4 • The Red and Black • Thursday, April 5, 1990
OPINIONS
The Red & Black
Eitabluhed 1893—Incorporated 1980
An independent ttudent neutpaper not affiliated with the University of Georgia
Charlene Smith/Editor-in-Chief
Amy Bellew/Managing Editor
Hogai Nassery/Opinions Editor
■ EDITORIALS
Fence it in
It’s a shame that art students have to leave the
South Thomas Street Art Complex wondering whether
their work will still be there when they return. It’s a
shame that to protect student sculpture, their outdoor
studio must be turned into a fortress.
But installing a fence seems to be the only way to
stop people from walking away from the area behind
the complex with the results of months of student work.
Students often have to work in the courtyard
because their cramped studios are too small to use for
large projects. For marble statues, of course they have
to work near the marble pit near the outdoor area.
Some students are working on heavy marble or granite
sculptures — 100 pounds or so —that can’t possibly be
taken in at night.
However, one thief was successful in carting off a
I marble sculpture as far as the railroad tracks, but left
it there, damaged beyond repair. Other pieces haven’t
been found. Most of the thefts are occurring between
midnight and 7 a.m., allowing several hours under the
cover of darkness for thieves to load the wheelbarrow.
The obstacle of a fence would be a great deterrent.
Foot traffic from the North commuter parking lot is
heavy near the complex, but before construction
started on another lot, the courtyard was partially
screened by trees. Now those trees are gone and the
art, heavy as it may be, is there for the taking. Some
people obviously can’t pass up the chance to take it
home.
University police have agreed to increase patrols to
the area at night. That’s good, but patrols can’t be there
every minute.
The plan for improving the complex calls for a fence
to be built. If that can’t be done right away, an interim
barrier should be installed to prevent the loss of any
more art. The Physical Plant is working on an
estimated cost for the fence. The money will be well
spent to save irreplaceable student work.
While the student creations may not be
masterpieces yet, the works are valuable to the artists
as personal reference points on which to build future
ideas. The thefts seriously threaten the young artists’
learning experience.
It’s sad that on the campus of an institution of
higher learning, the value of art and education are
denigrated by the avarice of others.
Atlanta’s on show
Atlanta is on show this week as 10 International
Olympic Committee members conduct a second
inspection of our fair capital as a frontrunner in the
race to host the 1996 games.
It’s up to the Atlanta Organizing Committee to
make a first-rate impression on the IOC. If Atlanta gets
the games, many events will be scheduled in
surrounding cities, including Athens. Impressing the
IOC over the next few days could mean at least $4
billion to the state, a sum that makes hosting the
Democratic National Convention seem paltry.
The IOC is interested in evaluating Atlanta’s
ability to handle large crowds, congested trafffic and
parking, and possible security problems. With MARTA
and convention centers like the Omni and the World
Congress Center, Atlanta can handle the crowds and
provide adequate transportation.
The final decision will be made this September,
giving the winning city six years to complete
construction for the event. That’s six years of jobs for
Georgians and Atlanta’s economy will skyrocket. The
games will leave behind facilities that can be used for
years to come.
Athens will gain a big part of that economic boon, so
cross your fingers for the Olympics to come to Georgia.
STAFF
NEWS: 543-1809
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■ QUOTABLE
"If we don't do something, the price of water will be higher than
the price of whiskey.” —Athens City Council member. Calvin
Bridges, advocating the proposed 3% tax increase on mixed
drinks.
Global unity is idealistic but possible
Global unity can be achieved only through
planned positive action applied to the vision of
harmony and brotherhood between nations and
people. A world society encompassing every na
tion, with peace and justice as its goal, is a vi
sionary and idealistic conception. It is also
possible.
America’s 50 individual states, all with dif
ferent demographics and political systems,
united together as one vast yet single nation of
different races and cultures, exemplifies the
spirit of the global society. Even with our inter
nal and political problems, we still function as a
highly diverse nation that remains united de
spite the hundreds of religions, the many ethni
cities and the different political ideals
represented. A nation like ours seemed simi
larly idealistic and unachievable before its real
ization.
The world society is as radically conceived as
our nation was, and it is equally possible to re
alize. A world of one supreme democratic gov
ernment, by and for the people, formulated
with human rights as its foundation is more
than just an ideal of dreamers. Like the
building of our nation, it will take super-human
effort demonstated by a determined mass of
people with a positive vision of realistic goals to
make it a reality.
All countries must start formulating an
Steven
Sacco
agenda which will promote unity within its own
population. These ideas and people can ultima
tely be incorporated into a world system
founded on equality, a just economic system
and freedom of expression and thought. Na
tions must first take care of their ow r n; sec
ondly, they must begin accepting the fact that
the world is becoming increasingly smaller due
to technology and economics. Thirdly, nations
must prepare themselves for the day the
boundaries of individual nations come crum
bling down like the Berlin wall.
The time is ripe for a conference by all na
tions to begin the process of drafting a world
constitution. The U.S. Constitution’s Bill of
Rights should serve as a model for a similar list
of rights to be granted to all people of any race,
religion or gender. Within this conference, the
world’s religious leaders should begin a dia
logue which will ultimately mesh together the
common sprituality of all human beings into n
belief system of tolerance and brotherhood. A
world education curriculum should be agreed
upon by representatives from the major institu
tions of the East and West. These two philoso
phies are mutually exclusive presently; each
teaches its own. Both sides are robbed of centu
ries of human thought, and each remains in
grained in one-sided education. Each school of
thought is equally valid; both traditions should
be addressed by all. In this world conference all
nations must be represented by an equal
number of each gender, by the rich as well as
the poor, old and voung and so on. It must be a
true reflection of humanity in all its forms.
In events like the Olympic games we must
start finding better ways to express the ideal of
unity. All Olympians might wear the same uni
form, or perhaps they might elect to have the
Olympic flag raised rather than their own
during the medal celebration. An international
event of this magnitude is an excellent place to
promote unity in every possible way.
Action affects change. We must act decisively
to create a unified world where war and hatred
are obsolete.
Steven Sacco is a senior criminal justice major.
Gorbachev on his way to the guillotine
The Soviet civil war began its second year
today, with the Russian army pushing back
Muslim forces in what used to be the southern
frontier of the Soviet Union. Rioting continues
in the republic of Georgia, where local leaders
repeated their demand to follow Lithuania to
self-determination. Mikhail Gorbachev still has
not appeared in public since last month’s Party
Congress in Moscow, with rumours proclaiming
his assasination by Russian nationalists
wishing to return the czars to power.
Is this the outline of Tom Clancy’s next best
seller? Surely it couldn’t happen in the post
cold-war era. Note, however, that the Soviet
Union of the 1980s bears an eerie resemblance
to France in the 1780s. Any student of history is
aware of the French Revolution of 1789 and the
Terror that followed. Bearing in mind the
maxim that those ignorant of history are
doomed to repeat its mistakes, let’s examine
the parallels between today’s Soviet Union and
the France of Louis XVI.
Just as the Soviet Union and the United
States have been engaged in an interminable
cold war which has oflen heated up in places
such as Berlin, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua, so
too were France and England bitter rivals in
the 1780s. The two superpowers of their day
had most recently clasned in America, where
the French navy and Lafayette helped Wash
ington to humiliate the British. This victory did
not come cheaply; the cost so depleted the
French treasury that when Holland became the
next global hot spot in 1787, France could only
watch as a pro-British faction came to power.
Gorbachev is in the same situation. He did
not let go of his clients in Eastern Europe out of
some belief in capitalism and democracy; he
simply could not afford to continue to prop
them up. After years of struggling to keep up
with NATO, subsidizing Cuba, and adven
turism in Afghanistan, the Kremlin can no
longer dictate world events. It must react to
them.
Superpowers don’t ei\jov being relegated to
the sidelines of the global arena, and neither
France nor the Soviet Union resolved to go qui
etly. Rather, each embarked on a program to
restore their former stature.
Jacques Necker, Louis XVI’s Minister of Fi
nance, felt that the British citizen’s representa
tion in Parliament gave him more trust in his
government, which allowed England to succes-
fully absorb the cost of its foreign policy. In En
gland, the debt was a national debt; in France,
it was the king’s debt. This, together with the
influence of Enlightenment philosophy,
prompted the French aristocracy to renounce
its privileges, beginning at the National As
sembly of 1789. These thinkers did not wish to
abolish royalty completely; they wished to save
it by emulating England^ constitutional mon
archy.
Similary, Gorbachev introduced perestroika
and glasnost in an attempt to save communism
from the ‘stagnation’ of the Brezhnev era.
Whatever Karl Marx’s dreams of a classless so
ciety, the Soviet Union had come to resemble
the exact opposite - an aristocracy - with the
general secretary of the Communist Party as
king. Party members lived like royalty, with
private dachas and Western goods, while the
peasantry suffered as always. Gorbachev felt a
small dose of free speech and free enterprise
would enable communism to survive in the long
run. And he has made a virtue of necessity,
with each *retreat’ from Marxism increasing his
stature in the West.
The increasing strife within the Soviet Union
shows why Gorbachev’s policy of half-measures
and compromises will lead to violent revolution
as surely as it did in France. For, as Alexis de
Tocqueville wrote, ‘The most dangerous mo
ment for a bad government is when it starts to
reform itself.”
While the elite in Paris were willing to give
up their privileges for the good of the patrie,
poorer nobles in the provinces clung to their ti
tles, which were all that separated them from
the peasantry. French peasants cared less
about the rights of man than the price of bread,
which reforms had raised to an all-time high.
Gorbachev is trapped between conservative
Politburo members aghast at the changes he
has wrought in Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy,
and radical reformers such as Boris Yeltsin,
who want to take limited changes to their log
ical extreme. Party apparatchiks are loath to
give up the perks of power, while Lithuanians,
Poles, and East Germans rush for total renun
ciation of communism. And while glasnost has
allowed newspapers to write about the lack of
food on Soviet tables, it has not addressed the
more fundamental problem of putting said food
on the table.
The current problems in the Soviet Union are
only the beginning of the end. There have been
rumblings of ultra-right wing Russian nation
alist sentiment lately, with a strong undercur
rent of anti-Semitism. The once-proud Red
Army cannot enjoy marching backwards as
Germany reunites - the some Germany that
was knocking on the door of Stalingrad forty-
five years ago.
There is one striking difference between the
Soviet Union of today and France two hundred
years ago. Louis XVI was a leader so dull and
uninspired as to make George Bush resemble a
visionary statesman. He stood and watched his
world collapse around him. Gorbachev is far
more intelligent, and he is working tirelessly to
try and contain the forces he has set in motion.
But it is too little, too late. Nothing he does can
put the genie back in the bottle. We can only
stand, and watch, and pray that the death-
throes of a nuclear superpower do not engulf
the rest of the world.
John Hunter is a sophomore English major.
Radiation leaks at the SRP
Stephanie-Lea Smith incorrectly
stated that the Savannah River
Plant was a paper mill in her ar
ticle about The Ancient Forest
Rescue Expedition. The Savannah
River Plant is a series of nuclear
reactors where plutonium and tri
tium for nuclear weapons are pro
duced. Mitch Freedman did not
mention the SRP as a threat to our
forests specifically but as a threat
to the south eastern environment.
Several known leaks of radioactive
water and discrepancies between
the actual structure and its
blueprints have led to a great deal
of controversy. Freedman’s point in
citing the SRP as an environ
mental threat was to inform the
public that they could affect local
problems by co-operating on a na
tional scale. Both situations are
controllable by our Congressional
representatives, therefore if we
help each other by writing Con
gress we are also helping our
selves.
Tony Abbott
Junior, goography/blochemlttry
■ FORUM
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Boggs goes hippie
Many thanks to Richard Stenger
for pointing out the utter incompa
tibility of corporate captaliBm and
environmentalism. Not that its
much of a question, but, obviously,
I’m throwing over Donald Trump
in favor of Mother Nature.
With Stenger’s insight, a stylish
loincloth, and some sharpened
rocks, I’m just looking for a nice,
comfortable cave surrounded by
tropical fruit trees, berry bushes,
and a babbling brook.
Luka Boggs
senior, history