page 8 - The Behrend College Collegian, Thursday, November 20, 1997
Options limited by
By Nicholas Cioldherg.(c) 1997,
Newsday
AMMAN, Jordan - As the United
States considers its options in the
deepening crisis with Iraq. a serious
obstacle is emerging: Allies around
the world- including members of the
original coalition that fought Iraq in
1991- are proving reluctant to go
along.
In Paris and Moscow, for example,
fierce battles are under way to keep
the United States from bombing Iraq.
In Cairo, officials are meeting
Monday with Iraqi envoy Tariq Aziz,
who is seeking to shore up the
opposition in the Arab world to any
American bombing.
As far away as China- and as
crucially close as Saudi Arabia,
where U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright appeared Sunday
on a lobbying swing through the
Persian Gulf- America's tough stance
against Saddam Hussein has been
met with answers ranging from
ambivalence to outright rejection.
"We're in an interim period, and the
ball is in the court of a bunch of other
countries," said Phebe Marr, a
professor at the National Defense
University in Washington. "While
there's a standoff between the United
States and Iraq. these other countries
are making their own decisions."
The problem facing the United
States right now is straightforward:
On one hand, the Clinton
administration believes it must take
strong action, both to maintain its
credibility and to pressure Iraq to
reverse its decision barring American
China
sends
By Dele 01ojede=(c) 1997,
Newsday
BEIJING- After spending the better
part of two decades in solitary
confinement in prison camps, with
most of his teeth lost and his health
failing, the former electrician who
became a symbol of defiance against
China's Communist regime was
driven straight to a waiting airliner
here Sunday, and into exile in the
United States.
Wei Jingsheng, 47, was released
by the authorities less than three
weeks after a White House summit
between President Clinton and
Chinese President Jiang Zemin,
during which Clinton bluntly
Judge rules proposition
187 unconstitutional
By Patrick J• McDonnell=(c)l997,
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - A federal judge
ruled Friday that California's
Proposition 187 violates both the
Constitution and last year's
sweeping Congressional overhaul of
welfare law, setting the stage for
appeals up to the Supreme Court
on the divisive 1994 ballot initiative
targeting illegal immigrants.
"Proposition 187, as drafted, is
not constitutional on its face,"
Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer declared
in a 32-page opinion on a measure
that focused national attention on
the issue of illegal immigration.
While observers had anticipated
this finding, much of the judge's
decision turned on a relatively new
law: last year's sweeping
congressional reform of the federal
welfare system, known as the
Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of
1996. Proposition 187 served as a
catalyst for much of that law's far
reaching restrictions on benefits for
immigrants, those here both legally
and illegally.
The 1996 welfare statute, the
judge ruled, "serves to reinforce"
her prior finding that Proposition
weapons inspectors from the country.
But the most obvious response
bombing Iraq- is extremely
unpopular with many of America's
allies in Europe and the Arab world.
and might bring with it the collapse
of the worldwide coalition that has
opposed Saddam Hussein for seven
years.
"The United States is in a box." said
one Jordanian analyst, who asked not
to be identified. "Whichever way it
turns, it loses."
In the Arab world, America's
policies toward Iraq are coming
under increasing fire. The way most
"The United States is in a box," said one
Jordanian analyst, who asked not to be
identified. "Whichever way it turns, it
loses."
Arabs see it, six years after the end
of the gulf war, the economic
sanctions that bar Iraq from exporting
its goods- except for a small amount
of oil to be converted to funds for
food- are driving the country to
starvation and poverty. Even those
countries like Syria, Egypt and Saudi
Arabia that joined the coalition to
drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait
in 1991 feel it is no longer right to
punish his people- particularly since
Iraq is no longer threatening its
neighbors and since the sanctions do
not seem to be weakening the regime
in any way. They don't want a strong,
power-hungry Saddam Hussein
frees
him
lectured his guest about human
rights and the issue of political
repression colored the Chinese
leader's reception by U.S.
audiences.
Having apparently agreed to exile
Clinton rolled out the red carpet for Jiang in
spite of severe criticism from Congress and
human-rights groups of his "engagement"
policy toward China.
as a condition of his release, Wei frequently denounces as a common
was freed and allowed to meet criminal had been released for
briefly with family members before humanitarian reasons.
being taken aboard a Northwest "Wei Jingsheng has been released
Airlines flight bound for Detroit. A on parole for medical treatment
187 is a "scheme" designed to
regulate immigration, an
exclusively federal domain. State
officials seeking to restrict
immigrant access to benefits must
live by the guidelines outlined in the
new federal law, she ruled.
"California is powerless to enact
its own legislative scheme to
regulate immigration," Pfaelzer
declared. "It is likewise powerless
to enact its own legislative scheme
to regulate alien access to public
Proposition 187 served
as a catalyst for much
of that law's far-
reaching restrictions on
benefits for immigrants,
those here both legally
and illegally.
benefits."
The judge cited as unlawful the
initiative's major sections those
barring illegal immigrants from
receiving publicly funded
education, social services and
health care along with
complementary provisions
mandating that local law
allies in Iraq crisis
wielding weapons of mass
destruction, hut they don't want Iraq
destroyed. either- the region is
unstable enough as it is.
Even Kuwait. on whose behalf the
gulf war was fought, announced
Sunday that it opposes the use of
force in the current conflict.
"1997 is not 1991," said Radwan
Abdullah, a political analyst in
Amman. "Iraq is extremely weak
now. Saddam Hussein is not in a
position to rebuild militarily. The
sanctions are hitting people very
hard- but they have become more or
less permanent."
The reluctance of Arab countries to
join the anti-Hussein bandwagon is
exacerbated by a longstanding sense
that Iraq is being held to a higher
standard by the West than Israel
which they believe is allowed to flout
U.N. resolutions without so much as
a word of criticism from the United
States.
"Syria is opposed to a military strike
because Iraq's violations are not a
drop in the ocean compared to Israel's
violations," Syrian Defense Minister
Mustafa Tlass said Sunday.
The second problem facing the
United States as it seeks support
around the world comes not from the
Arab world, but from several
dissident,
into exile in U.S.
U.S. diplomat accompanied him on
the flight. On arrival in Detroit, Wei
was admitted to the Henry Ford
Hospital for evaluation and
treatment.
The government said the man it
enforcement authorities, school,
administrators, social workeiSUNl4
health-care aides turn
"suspected" illegal inunigranta'
However, the judge did let 1444 . .
two less-controversial sections that
establish state criminal penalties 4 . 91 r
the manufacture and use of false
documents to "conco4 l o •
immigration status.
Lawyers on both sides of theft***
said the decision clearly ship* 04!
she soon will issue a permanent.:
injunction to replace the existing"
temporary ban. The flue Orger
could come by the end of the ysr,
attorneys said.
At that point, the battle:,
surrounding the disputed me aftire',,
will move to the 9th U.S. Ci rcuit
Court of Appeals, where Gov, Pete
Wilson and other Proposition
supporters are expected: to seek a
rebuke of Judge Pfaelzer's ruling.
Most expect the matter to end up ,
in the Supreme Court, possibly as
soon as next fall.
"This is the tombstone for
Proposition 187," said Mark
Rosenbaum of the American Civil
Liberties Union of Southern
California, co-counsel in the case
against the initiative.
World and Nation
powerful countries that sit on the
Security Council, including, most
notably, France and Russia.
These countries complain of
"sanctions fatigue" and worry, as do
the Arabs, that Iraq is being starved
to no avail. Both have made it clear
that while they believe Saddam
Hussein to be a dangerous dictator
who must not be allowed to build
weapons of mass destruction, they
are eager to see the sanctions lifted
as soon as Iraq can reasonably be
considered in compliance with
United Nations demands.
But however sincere they may be
in their concern for the people of Iraq,
these countries also have an ulterior
motive: Iraq has the second largest
proven oil reserves in the Persian
Gulf, with at least 100 billion barrels
waiting to be unearthed _ and Russia
and France, in particular, want a piece
of that business.
Of course, there is nothing to stop
the United States from acting
unilaterally, commencing a bombing
campaign without the support of the
neighboring Arab states or the
Security Council. But politically and
militarily, such a move is far more
difficult. The United States might not
be allowed, for instance, to stage its
attacks from its air bases in Saudi
Arabia. Arab countries might grow
even more resentful and angry at the
United States and might be less
inclined to make concessions in the
Arab-Israeli peace process. France
and Russia might begin vetoing
American-supported resolutions in
the Security Council.
Distributed by the Los Angeles
Times-Washington Post News Service
because of his illness by Chinese
judicial departments," the official
Xinhua News Agency said in a brief
bulletin. "Wei has gone abroad for
medical treatment."
The announcement was a
contradiction of the government's
insistence in recent weeks that Wei
was in good health, despite repeated
assertions by family members and
human-rights organizations that he
was suffering from multiple
ailments, including a heart
condition, severe arthritis and back
pain. He also reportedly had been
tortured and subjected to frequent
beatings by other prisoners,
allegedly instigated by prison
officials.
Along with fellow dissident Wang
Dan, Wei was nominated this year
for the Nobel Peace Prize, which
eventually went to anti-land mine
campaigners, though not before the
mere prospect of the award sent the
authorities here into a renewed
paroxysm of condemnation.
A zealous believer in Chairman
Mao as a youth, Wei became
disillusioned with the rampant
"dictatorship of the proletariat" after
China's decade-long national
convulsion known as the Cultural
Revolution, a period of destruction
ordered by Mao. In 1978 Wei
published a now-famous tract
demanding democracy.
He was arrested the following
year and, except for seven months
starting in September 1993, he had
been in jail for 18 years.
The sudden freeing of Wei
appeared to be a thank you gesture
to Clinton, coming as it did on the
heels of the leaders' Oct. 29 summit,
which the Chinese side sees as
international acceptance of China's
emergence as a world power.
Clinton rolled out the red carpet for
Jiang in spite of severe criticism
from Congress and human-rights
groups of his "engagement" policy
toward China.
White House Chief of Staff
Erskine Bowles said Clinton was
pleased Wei hdd come to the United
States for medical treatment. After
Wei gets that treatment, "the
president looks forward to meeting
with him," Bowles said on CBS'
"Face the Nation."
Alliance of companies
works against Microsoft
By Elizabeth Corcoran=(c) 1997,
The Washington Post
Microsoft Corp. is facing an
unusual alliance of five powerful
companies that are working together
on new technology that could topple
the software giant from its peich atop
the high-tech world.
The five competitors- International
Business Machines Corp., Netscape
Communications Corp., Novell
Corp., Oracle Corp., and Sun
Microsystems Corp.- have been
driven together by two forces: scold
fear of Microsoft's continued
hegemony and a shared vision of a
new Internet-based "platform" that
would be open to all. To plan
strategy, executives of the five
companies said they and their
colleagues have been meeting,
sometimes as often as weekly, to
share ideas and technology.
The collaboration has gone on
quietly for months but is surfacing
now, at a time when Microsoft's
business practices are coming under
attack from both the Department of
Justice and longtime consumer
advocate Ralph Nader. The
government last month charged that
Microsoft is using the dominance of
its Windows software to boost its
share of the market for Internet
browsing software. And this past
week, Nader led a two-day
conference in which competitors and
critics railed about Microsoft's
business practices.
The unusual alliance of five
companies, working together to
combat what they view as a
dominant rival, might once have
raised antitrust issues of its own,
according to lawyers familiar with
the industry.
"Every time you get competitors
together in a room, it makes antitrust
lawyers very, very nervous," said
Mark A. Lemley, a professor at the
University of Texas School of Law
iri Auitin.,l3ut, he . said, "there's an
'reeoghitibn in antintst
scholarship and law that sometimes
cooperative arrangements among
competitors is a goqd thing,"
particularly if the companies let
others use the standards they jointly
develop.
The vision shared by Microsoft's
challengers is simple: The new
cornerstone of the information age
should be the Internet, which is
essentially a collection of standards
owned by no single company. The
old stand-alone PC, with its
Microsoft software and Intel chips,
should gradually give way to newer,
cheaper alternatives connected to the
Net.
To make this happen, the
executives are throwing their efforts
into three new areas of technology
a computer language known as Java,
which was developed by Sun for
writing software that can be
transmitted easily on networks and
run on any computing device; a low
cost kind of computer known as an
"NC," or network computer, being
pushed by Oracle and other
companies; and a programming
technique known as "Corba" for
building Lego-like blocks of
software.
This cooperation in building a
common platform "is a lot more like
a single company's efforts," said Jon
Kannegaard, a vice president at
Java Soft, a division of Sun. "We put
someone in charge and define pretty
carefully what we're going to do." In
some cases, engineers from different
companies are meeting on a weekly
basis to hash out technical issues.
"There's a very strong incentive for
us to push as hard and as fast as
possible toward a world where
operating systems are commoditized,
chips are commoditized, and the Net
becomes the platform," said Marc
Andreessen, chief technology officer
at Netscape Communications in
Mountain View, Calif. "We all see
an opportunity to make a tremendous
amount of money as that world
unfolds- as opposed to world where
everything is Microsoft and Intel
Corp. That's the big issue for all of
these companies."
Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates
said that by working together, his
competitors "end up creating a fairly
powerful message that we have to be
aware of." "That's an intense
competition at a level beyond what
we've seen in the past," he said at his
company's annual shareholder
meeting on Friday.
The alternative technologies are a
few years old. What's unusual is that
the five headstrong corporations are
cooperating so intensely. "It's rare
that there's an opportunity where
there's an alignment of interests that
lasts for more than a minute and a
half," said Andreessen.
But this time, they are working so
closely together that "I could give a
speech at any of the companies
(involved) and pass myself off as a
member of their executive
committee," said Eric Schmidt, chief
executive of Novell.
"We see IBM playing with folks
we've competed with down to the
mat," said Patricia Sueltz, vice
president of Internet software at
IBM. "We've all realized that part of
our lifeblood is making sure that we
. .. have standards."
The battle between Microsoft and
its five adversaries essentially
focuses on who should set those
standards, and how open they should
be.
In the current, Microsoft
dominated world of desktop
computers, the underlying operating
system translates commands into a
language that the machine can
understand. Companies that want to
build applications- say, spreadsheets
or games- have to make their
programs fit tightly with the
operating system, like pieces of a
puzzle.
The alternative vision is of a world
where the Internet, with its open
standards, can function easily with
any type of operating system or
hardware. In this open environment,
new programs will work
everywhere. Much as different
brands of telephones work when
plugged into the telephone network,
"we've' l gdt'tki be able to connect
eve'lkr&,"'Sueltz said. -
IBM, she said, profited
handsomely in the past by pushing
its own, proprietary systems. "But
like a reformed smoker . . . we've
become evangelical" about setting
common standards, she said.
Executives at the five companies
say that their engineers are working
together on specific projects in way
that has never occurred before. The
issues are "extremely specific and
are supported by an emotional and
technical agreement at the executive
level," Schmidt said.
Even so, there's no guarantee that
such an unusual partnership will
succeed. For starters, past efforts to
build an open platform have failed
to capture the market. An open
operating system called "UNIX,"
While common in large, powerful
workstations, splintered into many
different versions and thus lacked
Microsoft's market power.
The five companies in the
partnership must also contend with
Microsoft's own plans for the future.
Microsoft has pumped tremendous
energy- $2 billion and hundreds of
thousands of programmers' hours
into making its Windows family of
operating systems the very best
platforms for building applications.
They are selling an orderly,
predictable world. Programs work.
People know whom to call when
something breaks.
Microsoft wants to extend that
dominance into the 21st century, with
new Windows products that embrace
new technologies: a planned
Windows9B version for the PC will
offer a seamless electronic desktop
that combines the operating system
with an Internet browser; Windows
CE, which will drive smaller
computers such as WebTV and hand
held devices; and Windows NT for
servers and other large computers.
The rival companies say they're
eager for all comers to use their new,
Internet-based platform- even
Microsoft.
"We've invited Microsoft to
participate in everything we've done
but by and large they've declined,"
Kannegaard said. "They don't share
the vision. What can I tell you? We're
not ganging up on Microsoft- they've
chosen not to come to the party."