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Show w ABDnint lit? WncewnDdDniiait What is your opinion of the MX missile system? Would you feel differently if the location were changed? Mary Van First of all, I don't believe in the need for the MX missile at all. But if it proved to be necessary, I feel that the Titan and Minute-man Minute-man missiles could be modernized, or sea-based missiles could be used. The missile sites should definitely not be on land. Page A2 Thursday, May 7, 1981 i V For Mother's Day and its ilk, buy off guilt with Hallmark Sunday is Mother's Day an emotional time of year that unites families all over the country with a special kind of feeling that is like no other. You know the feeling. Yes, friends, we're talking about guilt! Like most other celebrations, the tribute to Mom has deteriorated into another guilty trip in which you shamefacedly go along with the ritual that everyone else is following blindly. It doesn't matter that you left the nest years ago and are flying high. On Mother's Day, you're still expected to bring a few worms back home. Or at least a $50 bill which is where your own moral confusion starts: ; -'it's so crass to give money, but I never know what to buy :her. After you give a purse for 10 consecutive years, what's jrft? Yeah, money would be all right. As long as you're Signified about it, and you put it in a Hallmark card. :p"Hmm...now let's see, what kind of card would be "appropriate. Maybe a gentle wildlife scene. Here's a wild ij-out leaping gracefully out of a woodland stream. No! She .might cut herself on the little fish hook embedded in the :paper...And I know she won't like the funny fold-out cards where the beaver jumps out of his log cabin when you open it. It's a plot. They only invent holidays so Hallmark can sell their lousy cards-for-any-occasion. Look, there's one to send your cousin if he happens to burst his appendix on Lincoln's Birthday! ." "The florists are in on the plot, too. Just for that, I'll ideliver the bouquet myself so they don't get a delivery fee. Of course, with the gas crunch, maybe I shouldn't be driving cross-town. Mom is the last person who would want "me to be fuelish...I'd send her a candygram, but she says "that kind of thing isn't good for her anymore. I wonder if they send cabbagegrams? "Maybe I should get her the new washing machine this year. Hey! How about the rocker-recliner? "Nan. I'd only embarass her with reckless extravagance. And besides, I know she really had her heart set on that window scraper..." The more the guilty obligation is placed on us, the more we cravenly crawl away from it. And not just for Mother's Day, but all holidays. We hang our charity on the Christmas tree and we shoot off our patriotism in a rocket on the Fourth of July. And nowadays, we have even more euiltv obligations placed on us. Chinese History Day. National Secretaries Week. International Moose Month! Let me conclude by listing a few new holidays that really would make sense: National Bartender Week. Buy a long, cool one for your favorite barkeep. Watergate Day. A slightly nastier version of April Fools, which would take place every June 17.. Merry-makers would open their friends' mail, pick their locks, and spread innuendoes about their sex lives. Warren G. Harding's Birthday. Let's give credit to the mediocre. When you step out of the house this morning, two of the first five people you'll meet probably will be real duds. What better way to salute them? Fifth Estate Day. This is our favorite. Each year the common townsfolk in American villages gather to thank their local newspaper for the entertainment, enlightenment, enlighten-ment, and wise perceptions they provide daily or perhaps weekly. Gathering outside the news office doors at dusk, the townsfolk leave tokens of their affection baskets of food, designer jeans, vials of aftershave lotion and perfume, and an occasional cheerleader. Arbor Day, eat your sap out! RB : ' by Stanley Karnow Ideological differences have Europeans worried about Reagan Administration j Paris West Europeans generally greeted the prospect of Ronald Reagan's firm leadership as a welcome change from the confused vacillations of the Carter administration. But now, after three months in office, the Reagan team seems to be arousing doubts here. 'So, it seems to me, the Atlantic alliance could face serious stresses and strains in the period ahead unless its members are able to weld their diverse interests into a common strategy. This is not to give full endorsement to Western Europe's worries about Reagan. On the contrary, I often perceive per-ceive inconsistencies in the Europeans, who can switch from clamoring for a strong America to criticizing its aggressiveness. But their legitimate concerns ought to be understood. :A basic difference between the United States and Western Europe is ideological, and this is contributing to their growing controversy over defense policy. :In social terms, Western Europe is considerably to the left of the United States. Countries like West Germany, Britain, France and Italy are committed commit-ted to unemployment, medical and similar programs that even American liberals might regard as excessive. Thus their leaders currently are resisting U.S. pressures to persuade them to boost military outlays by reducing welfare expenditures. In particular, par-ticular, West Germany has annoyed Washington by cutting future weapons production. The vVest Europeans contend that their economies, which have been hit hard by the energy crisis, cannot afford to bear a bigger defense burden. As evidence, they point to rising inflation and jobless rates. But there also is an important domestic political element in the picture. In contrast to the United Si nips, where both major partic: !' the capitalist system, nations like France and Italy have large opposition movements seeking to impose some form of socialism. These movements are taking advantage of the recession to gain popularity. French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, for example, is locked at the moment in a difficult election fight against his Socialist rival, Francois Mitterrand. Even West German Chancellor Chan-cellor Helmut Schmidt, who seemed to be solidly in power after his re-election last year, is being assailed by the left wing of his Social Democratic party. Exacerbating this political opposition, op-position, meanwhile, is a revival of anti-nuclear sentiment in Western Europe, and it is adding as well to tensions ten-sions with the Reagan administration. In the Netherlands, which belongs to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the influential Dutch Reformed Church is waging a crusade to bar cruise missiles from the country and to remove the short-range nuclear weapons already there. The Dutch government appears to be buckling under un-der the campaign. A number of senior West European defense officials also are alarmed by U.S. plans to deploy the neutron bomb in Europe. In their view, the weapon would inflict losses on friend and foe alike because of the radiation it spreads. Indeed, much of the tough talk coming out of Washington these days is r.attling West Europeans, who fear that they could become the victims of a confrontation con-frontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Their apprehension apprehen-sion is summed up succinctly: "Whoever wins, we lose." This anxiety is heightened by what is seen here as the Reagan administration's ad-ministration's negative approach to arms The administration has ye' '' ; KunK'ans that its willingness to negotiate with the Russians is more than window dressing to camouflage its real hope of fortifying Europe. Reagan's apparently doctrinaire hostility toward Moscow troubles West Europeans in another respect. They are involved in trade deals with the Soviet Union, and, in their estimation, those transactions depend on a continuation of detente. Lately, for instance, they have resented resent-ed U.S. criticism of a proposed pipeline that would funnel natural gas from the Soviet Union to Western Europe. Under the arrangement, West European nations would furnish the Russians with technology in exchange. With all this, there has been a good deal of irritated reaction here to attempts attem-pts by Reagan aides to compel Western Europe to "Get on the team . " Reagan administration officials like Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, both of whom have been in Western Europe recently, seem to have made little headway in persuading the allies to toe the Washington line. Their efforts have tended to ignore the fact that the West Europeans are no longer clients of the United States, as they were during the decade after World War II. The allies have attained political and economic independence, and they want to be treated as partners. I doubt that their present leaders entertain en-tertain neutralist notions. But too much American pressure could drive them toward accommodations with the Soviet Union, and, in the process, fray their ties with the United States. That is a possibility to be avoided and it can be through diplomatic consultations based on the concept that the relationship between the United States and its European allies is a two-way street. (Released by The Register and Tribune Syndicate, 1981) Mary Vonne There is no need at all for the MX missile. It has been stated that the U.S. has the power to kill 17 times the population of Russia already. al-ready. I wish they could find a better way to support the economy than destroying our deserts in the name of defense. r '", J . r it ii w J Vr- M h: 0 tl. liii.-.ne Ray Ingandella I think the race track method of deployment of the MX is ludicrous. ludi-crous. However, I do like the idea of an increased defense posture. I suppose if it has to be put somewhere, Utah is as likely as anywhere, any-where, primarily because if there is a nuclear war, I'd like to be the first to go. Who would want to be around after that? v Bob Thompson I feel the MX is okay. It's needed and it has to be somewhere, so it might as well be here. MX on a sub would be a good place, too. At i, ' ( mmm. Bill Dickson I think the MX is another useless piece of military hardware which only serves to put more money in the pockets of defense contractors. TlHr 3t71 by Jack Anderson fCICU&Jijy 9 plUm M & Joe Spear State experts skeptical about Cuban oil strike Washington State Department analysts are frantically trying to verify startling reports that Cuba might become an oil-producing nation. Mexican technicians drilling off the coast of the island nation reportedly have discovered valuable new deposits of underwater crude. The U.S. embassy in Mexico City has informed the State Department: "There is speculation that Cuban oil strata are part of a major oil-bearing geological structure stretching from the Gulf of Mexico through the Caribbean Carib-bean to Venezuela." The ramifications of such a discovery, of course, are enormous. If Fidel Castro has his own petroleum, it could salvage his battered economy and make him economically independent indepen-dent of the Soviet Union. - - That's why the American embassy in Mexico City is trying desperately to confirm the reports of an oil strike off Cuba. The U.S. diplomats cabled Washington that the Mexicans claim to have "succeeded in finding commercial deposits of crude oil in offshore waters 20 kilometers north of (Havana's) beaches." The embassy also relayed unconfirmed unconfir-med reports that Mexican technicians capped the oil deposit after drilling down 3,000 meters. These same accounts accoun-ts say that efforts to determine how much oil is there have so far been unsuccessful. un-successful. So far, State Department experts remain skeptical. One source in Foggy Bottom said they "have no evidence that there have been drilling rigs 20 kilometers north of Havana. They have not undertaken any new seismic studies that we are aware of. It's just based on an optimistic new reading of old studies." If the reports of Cuban oil prove to be correct, however, the find could have important effects on the balance of power in Latin America. Castro is currently accepting almost $10 million a day from the, Kremlin, but he still resents being called a Soviet stooge. Most of Castro's oil also comes from the Soviet Union. Last year, we are told, the Russians sent Cuba less oil than Castro had asked for. As a result, Cuba's industrial growth was seriously affected That is one of the reasons Castro entered into an oil exploration deal with the Mexicans. The actual discovery of oil in Cuban waters if true would not give Fidel Castro immediate economic beneifits. But in the long run, it would enable him to achieve a degree of independence from the Kremlin that he hasn't had since the early days of his 1959 revolution. Salt or No Salt? Should the United States sit down with the Russians for another round of arms control talks? This is the subject of a heated, behind-the-scenes debate in intelligence circles. cir-cles. A top-secret Central Intelligence Agency analysis spells out what is at stake in the decision. The report offers these possibilities: The most optimistic of the CIA's predictions is that the Soviets will stick to the SALT II restraints on nuclear missiles. If they do, perhaps only 4,116 warheads would be added to the Soviet missile arsenal. The second possibility also assumes that the Russians will stick to the SALT II restrictions. But the Soviets could replace two of their exisiting missile systems with a new one that would put 10 nuclear warheads on a single missle. This would mean a maximum of 6,456 warheads. The troulbe is, of course, that SALT II has never been ratified by Congress. The treaty, therefore, is dead. And that leads to the CIA's third possibility: It MAY SOON BE A "SALT-free world." This would be a bleak prospect. The Soviets might decide to ignore all limitations. By 1989, estimates the CIA, they could produce an additional 23,106 warheads. Suffice it to say there would be no place to hide. Watch on Waste Every day, diners at the posh House of Representativs dining room can order from a freshly printed menu which features the daily specials. Few of Washington's most expensive ex-pensive restaurants go to the expense of printing daily menus. But the capitol dining room which features taxpayer-subsidized taxpayer-subsidized meals spent more than $100,000 for menus last year. In the final days of President Carter's Car-ter's rule, 132 top executives at the Department of Education quietly gave themselves more than $126,000 in bonuses for superior job performance. The cash is actually supposed to go to devoted bureaucrats. Headlines and Footnotes Top White House aides say that Secretary of State Alexander Haig has not been forgiven for his "I'm-in-control" outburst the day the president was shot. Our sources say President Reagan plans to call Haig in for a heart-to-heart talk as soon as he's feeling up to it The president has chosen a lumberjack to guard the public forests. The new assistant seretary of agriculture who will watch over the national forests is John Crowell, a former top official of Louisiana Pacific the nation's largest purchaser of public timber.. ..Which House budget experts estimate that federal bureaucrats took 16 million trips on official business in 1979. These travels cost the treasury nearly $3 billion. 1981, United Feature Syndicate, Inc. The Subscription Rates. $6 a year in Summit County, $12 a year outside Summit County Published by Ink, Inc. I'SPS 378-7:10 Publisher . Jan Wilking K,lil"' Bettina Moench Advertising Sales all wilking. Kill Dickson General Manager Terrv ,,ogail Business Manager Rick i,anman Graphics Becky Widenhouse. 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