Grav-13-4

A Renaissance man in search of beauty 10 May 2000

Xenophobia can be retroactive

The new industrial revolution: technology meets slavery GO TO p. 5

GO TO p. 7

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The Graduate

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READ THE WHOLE DOCUMENT: GO TO p. 3

U NIVE R SIT Y

OF

MA SSA C H USE T T S,

A M H ERS T

Protests in Washington

VOLUME 13 No. 4, 10 May 2000

NEW, PROGRESSIVE FUNDING SCHEME PROPOSED FOR SLSO

Together we stand

by the GSS Executive Officers

A trip to the capital of capitalism; World Bank and New World Order

Geraldine Vatan

by Anders Jonsson WASHINGTON—I arrived in Washington with some friends on Sunday afternoon, not as well prepared as I could have been, but ready to do some protesting. Since we were new to the city, we wandered the streets in search of someone who would inform us of the exact location of the protests. Even though there were few people out, you could sense that the atmosphere was charged with excitement. Most people we met spoke to us in an unusually frank manner, and the policemen guarding selected sections of streets and parks seemed nervous. Some protesters had volunteered to serve as bike-riding messengers, and one of them told us where to find the protest headquarters. On Saturday, the protesters had been driven out from their previous dwelling by police under the questionable pretext of a hazardous propane tank. The new headquarters were located in an old church well to the north of downtown Washington. We decided to take the subway there to see what was being planned for Monday. On our way to the nearest station we saw that some fraternity brothers at George Washington University had stated their very own opinion of the protest in block letters on the wall of their house: “We are American capitalists and damn proud of it!” We entered the church just as a group of around 50 demonstrants was planning action against Monday morning’s IMF meeting. The participants presented their ideas by raising their hands and asking to speak. People seemed tired after a long day; it took the group a long time to reach a decision, which was taken by voting. The issue was whether to concentrate the action on blocking the entrance to the hotels where the IMF delegates were staying, holding the guests hostage, or blocking intersections so that the delegates could not be transported to the IMF building. After many arguments back and forth, the majority decided to go with the intersections. This was clearly not a popular decision with everyone. The group was to meet at 4 A.M. at Dupont Circle—just north of the city center—and plan further action from there. I asked myself how this group of people would stand any chance against a force of trained and disciplined police officers. Even though the protesters had been trained in acts of civil disobedience, the lack of organization was apparent. During the evening, we had heard many other rumors of where and when people would gather, and I’m sure that some poor souls made it early in the morning just to find that nobody else had traveled to the same location as they. A seasoned protester from Illinois actually welcomed this source of disinformation and the lack of organized leadership, since it made it harder for police to predict what the demonstrators would do. Intrigued by the prospect of being close to the fire, we decided to stay up all night and join the demonstrants at Dupont Circle. As we were approaching the circle, a police car

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“…some of us were physically attacked by U.S. Marshals: we were hurled against walls, pepper-sprayed directly in the face, or thrown on the floor and beaten. At least two minors were forced against a wall by their necks in strangulation holds and threatened with further violence. The U.S. Marshals told us that we would be going to D.C. Jail, where we would be raped, beaten, and given AIDS or murdered by ‘faggots’ and ‘niggers’.” —From a public statement by jailed IMF/World Bank protesters

VOICE GRADUATE STUDENT SENATE

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Zeppelins will rule the skies

Injustice rains Lousy weather and the chicanery of Washington police soaked bodies and strove to weaken spirits. We all know that it takes far more than that.

AMHERST—The Student Legal Services Office (SLSO) receives its funding from two sources: the Graduate Student Senate and the Student Government Association. To date the SGA/GSS funding split has been 75–25%, respectively, of the total SLSO budget. This policy came from the Legal Services Advisory Board some years back and was written into the SLSO by-laws. In this advisory board, the SGA and the GSS, along with Legal Services director Charles DiMare, decide what they think the SLSO’s budget should be. It is in the context of this decision that the 75-25 funding split occurred. For the past few years the advisory board has not been a functional part of the decision-making process. As a result, the director and staff of SLSO have formulated the budget, and the governing bodies then decide how much to allocate during their annual budget hearings For the last five years the GSS has not been able to provide its share of the SLSO budget. This is because the 25% of SLSO’s budget that the GSS is supposed to provide corresponds to 30% of its own budget. On the other hand, the 75% that the SGA has been contributing makes up only 12% of their total budget. The SGA has an annual budget of $1.6 million whereas the GSS has an annual budget of $275,000. This is because the SGA has a larger constituency and therefore brings in more money. Having to spend almost onethird of its total budget on the SLSO has put a disproportionate burden on the GSS. It is in the context of this disproportionate strain that the GSS has proposed a new funding framework for the SLSO. Instead of funding a percentage of the SLSO budget, we propose Go to GSS on p. 2

was hiding behind a large apartment building, which indicated that police had heard of the early morning activities. This came as no big surprise, given that we had obtained the same information relatively easily. The Washington police had learned from Seattle: they were determined not to let the situation get out of hand. To make things worse for the demonstrants, at 3:45 the skies opened and rain started to pour down. Scattered groups of protesters slowly started to gather around the circle. As they were organizing, the circle was filling with police vehicles, appearing as if out of nowhere. Two legal observers gave us a telephone number to call in case we got arrested; we wrote it on our arms with a black marker pen. I estimate that not more than 100 protesters had arrived by 4:30. In the light of the bustling police activity around the circle, the demonstrants decided to move. An alternative rendez-vous point was selected on my friends’ map. During the discussion, a bus carrying delegates under police escort calmly passed by, right in front of our eyes; nobody had any chance to stop it. The protesters once again divided into smaller groups with the purpose of confusing the police while relocating. Arriving at the new Go to Jonsson on p. 2

Changes must start at home

China yes! Marketization no! by Heinrich Huber, GEO Grievance Coördinator AMHERST—For the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) at the University of Massachusetts, the world is an increasingly smaller place. GEO is a union that represents a diverse group of graduate students, including many international students at our workplace. Many of our members are from China. We have been a proud union shop affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) since 1991. We stand together to support organizing drives of graduate student workers around the country. To succeed in an increasingly multiethnic environment our local union has seen the need to focus on worker solidarity across cultures and nationalities. We have done so by using a more inclusive rhetoric. Our UAW International union should follow this example and strive to deliver a message that is more inclusive to all people regardless of nationality. The agreements to which our country subscribes should support the rights of workers everywhere instead of providing incentives for exploitation. The agenda of global capital is

undemocratic and unaccountable. It must be slowed and stopped by whatever means necessary, including stopping the U.S. Congress from extending the normalization of permanent trade relations with China. The U.S. cannot stop the increasing marketization of China or its admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO), but Congress should at least retain some leverage over the situation in China. For better or worse, we pay a price for what happens around the world. The autonomy of our nation states is being eroded by the current global-trading régime. Transnational American corporations operate—and treat their workers—in other countries in a way that directly affects jobs and living standards in the U.S. Global inequality continues to grow, forcing governments to compete against each other in a race to the bottom; transnational corporations are given free rein to exploit workers and communities outside Go to Huber on p. 2

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Jonsson continued from p. 1 meeting point, we joined another group of demonstrants. People seemed undecided and were discussing whether to take any direct action or to get some rest and wait for the demonstration march later in the morning. The number of intersections to cover simply seemed too huge for the small number of people who were there. One alternative that the group discussed was to throw themselves on the street as soon as they saw a vehicle carrying delegates approaching and try to delay it. Some members of the group decided to continue with the operation as originally planned. My friends and I were soaking wet and getting very tired after having stayed up all night. We reasoned that there was no prospect of stopping the delegates from reaching the IMF building; so we decided to leave the group, get a couple of hours of sleep, and join the demonstration again later in the afternoon. We later learned that some groups actually did set up blockades of intersections and were eventually arrested by the police. I was honestly surprised that no more people showed up in the morning. It struck

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me how motivated you have to be on a personal level in order to take action against authorities. Maybe the effects of globalization will have to reach far greater dimensions before enough people realize what is going on and become involved. Issues like globalization are much easier to talk about than to protest against. In addition, the immensity and longterm nature of this issue makes it hard to conceptualize without focusing on more immediate, down-to-earth problems. For example, you may have an uncle in Guatemala that was mistreated by his foreman or get truly annoyed by the fact that the socks you just bought are labeled “assembled in the Dominican Republic of U.S. components.” Indeed, the demonstrants in Washington were made up mainly of grass-roots organizations fighting for women’s rights, the freedom of Tibet, and similar issues. What was so interesting about the protest in Washington was that it brought all of these smaller groups together. People are just starting to realize that in order to make changes you need the support and awareness of many. In this respect, the Washington protest did not fail. On Sunday, the protesters had locked themselves to strategic intersections in the area

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around the IMF and the World Bank and managed to delay the arrival of a few delegates. A fair amount of media attention was dedicated to the demonstrations; vans from several TV and radio stations were present in Dupont Circle. On Monday afternoon we joined a protest march that crisscrossed the streets of downtown Washington. The demonstrants had made puppets and protest signs and were shouting slogans such as “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “Spank the Bank!” At around 9 A.M. on Monday morning, around 5,000 people assembled south of the White House and marched triumphantly towards the IMF building. John, a music major from UMass, was one of the people that took part in the march. He traveled to Washington because he had heard about the Seattle protest and had read the A16 website. At 20th and Pennsylvania, police fenced in the demonstrants and blocked off intersecting roads, effectively trapping the entire parade. The officers wore no badges and left only a single-file exit for people who agreed to leave the march voluntarily. John was with a group of people that entered the fenced-in area as one of the barricades broke up. Police put up six lines of troops against the protesters and

The demonstrants had made puppets and protest signs and were shouting slogans: “Whose streets? Our streets!” “Spank the Bank!”

GSS continued from p. 1 that each governing body contribute an equal percentage of its own budget in order to fund Legal Services. If the SGA and the GSS each give 16% of their total budget, the SLSO will be fully funded. The Graduate Student Senate plans to allocate 16% of its budget to the Legal Services Office, and has asked the SGA to do the same. This proposal is completely fair because each governing body will allocate an equal percentage of its total budget to fund SLSO. Some have argued that graduate students make up 25% of the student population, or that graduate students use 25% of the services anyway, and thus should fund 25% of the total SLSO budget. As mentioned above, the GSS simply cannot afford to use 30% of its budget to fund SLSO. In addition, the SLSO is a public institution and outwardly states that it upholds indigent law; for that reason, the current consumer model is an

unethical funding and operating framework. A “you get what you pay for” model of legal services, in which each organization pays a rate proportional to the size of the student body it represents, or the amount of services it uses, is unfair because it replicates a consumer fee-for-service model that we need to abandon. Since the very purpose of SLSO is to offer free legal services to any student who cannot afford them, it is the responsibility of the entire student community to lend Legal Services its full and fair support. In the eyes of the law, the SGA and the GSS are considered individuals with annual incomes. In terms of funding a public institution, each individual should give an equal percentage of his or her income. This creates a fair system for everyone, because both groups will contribute equal portions of their budgets to the SLSO. To say that the GSS should pay 30% of its budget and the SGA should pay only 12% is completely unfair. To propose that graduate students pay fees if the GSS

cannot afford to pay 30% of its budget goes against the mission of the SLSO, indigent law, and public legal service. It is only in terms of a “you get what you pay for” model that the GSS can be framed as “slacking” for not being able to provide its share of the SLSO budget. How can this be when the GSS has been paying between 25 and 34% of its budget whereas the SGA has been allocating between only between 12 and 14% of theirs? There is no way that SLSO can back such a consumer fee-for-service model without going against indigent law and the American Bar Association’s juridical ethics for a public institution of law. The Graduate Student Senate is committed to working with the SLSO in finding other funding sources to hire a fourth attorney, further their litigation rights, and maintain pay increases for the workers. The Graduate Student Senate extremely values SLSO but is unable to keep up with the current 75/25 funding proposal. Therefore GSS is moving

10 May 2000

both sides started putting on gas masks or other protection as the tension rose. To avoid direct conflict, a deal was struck between the protesters and the police: if the protesters backed off and approached the police lines row by row, the police would withdraw three of the lines and let them proceed with their march to the IMF. However, as the protesters approached the remaining police lines, they were arrested one by one, handcuffed and sent away to city prisons [see article on next page]. Ironically, they were charged with “crossing police lines.” John was among the people that got arrested. He was astounded by the way the police handled the situation and by the fact that they were able to arrest non-violent demonstrants for no apparent reason. In preparation, John had left his ID and wallet in the church where he had spent the night and remained anonymous during the arrest. In prison, he was not at all frightened by his fellow inmates; on the other hand, he was amazed by the offensive treatment he got from the U.S. Marshals. On Friday evening, after spending five days in jail, and long after the departure of his fellow demonstrants, John was finally released and allowed to travel back to Amherst.

Photography by Geraldine Vatan

towards a more fair and equitable funding framework. While funding priorities of the two student populations vary considerably, it is our position that the SGA, the GSS, and the SLSO must engage in a productive dialogue and work towards finding solutions through which the SLSO can generate funds additional to our financial contributions. However, these discussions need to be based in juridical ethics while embracing public indigent law. Until the SGA reformulates its funding proposal to the mission of SLSO and public legal ethics, there will continue to be an ideological and political rift between the two governing bodies. The consumer model presently used by the SGA is the antithesis of public law and the mission of the Student Legal Services Office. Let us maintain access to legal services for all regardless of the amount of services “paid for,” while simultaneously embracing a fair and ethical funding framework that maintains indigence along with the mission of a public institution of law.

P O L I T I C S 10 May 2000

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Huber continued from p. 1 and to move jobs and production away from the U.S. The campaign carried out by our International union and the AFL-CIO regarding China has, however, fallen short of our aspirations. It has shied away from taking on global capital, the real perpetrator of the charges leveled against China, and instead has focused on the exploitation and human-rights issues that unrestrained capital has created. It has also taken advantage of the long history of anti-Chinese racism and anti-communism in the U.S. As unionists, we should strive to exclude ourselves from such a reactionary and racist campaign. The labor movement is attempting to halt the extension of permanent normal trade relations to China because globalization has led to a decline in living standards worldwide and has been a disaster for American workers. Globalization has also been a disaster for developing nations. Instead of resulting in a wide distribution of wealth, rapid globalizers have witnessed a growing gap between rich and poor, rising corruption and higher levels of environmental pollution. Unfortunately. and hypocritically, the campaign to exclude China has argued to do so on the grounds that the Chinese government does not have adequate labor standards and that it uses prison and child labor, violates human rights and does not allow workers a democratic right to organize independent labor unions. Countries like Korea, Indonesia, Guatemala, and Saudi Arabia are also guilty of these same violations, but that has not deterred the U.S. government from trading with them. What is even more distressing is that these charges can not only be leveled against many of the U.S.’s trading partners but also against the U.S. itself, whose human-rights record is questionable. Just to name one example: an increasing number of U.S. prisoners are now working in the prison-industrial complex, many of them receiving between 23 cents and $1.15 per day. The biggest threat to North American living standards today is not high prices but the undermining of our wages and benefits. U.S. workers cannot compete against the wages that transnational corporations get away with paying in other countries. Globalization creates soaring inequality between workers and the wealthy, both within and among countries. The result of all this has been the trampling of workers’ rights everywhere and a lowering of wage standards around the globe to maximize corporate profits. Worst of all, the savings in labor costs gained from moving production to China go straight into corporate pockets. In return, multinational companies subject their workers to unsafe and unhealthy workplaces. Our union should not encourage American workers to see exploited workers in China as the enemy. This ColdWar type of campaign only serves to divert attention away from the real problem: American transnational corporations are being allowed to exploit workers. Language that excludes serves no one except the boss. Workers will continue to be the real losers if they remain divided.

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A16 prisoners speak out The following statement was written by 70 of the male protesters arrested during the IMF protests and incarcerated for over a week. The writers consolidated ideas, suggestions, and editorial comments for the letter by passing suggestions between bars, from cell to cell. WASHINGTON—We, the male prisoners arrested in Washington during the week of the A16 demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank, wish to express our solidarity with our fellow inmates, as well as with prisoners around the world who die and are tortured daily, often simply because they ask to be treated fairly, equally, and justly. Second, we wish to express our sincere thanks to the many supporters who stayed outside the jail in solidarity with us, and to those who sent email, wrote letters, and made phone calls on our behalf. Also, we would like to thank the elected officials and members of Congress that supported us. We wish to express our deepest thanks to the noble and tireless efforts of the volunteers with the Midnight Special Law Collective and the National Lawyers Guild. Most of all, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to our sisters in the adjacent cell block, whose powerful spirits and attitudes kept us strong during the past week. Collectively, this supportive response stands as testament to a growing worldwide community of resistance to unjust economic globalization and to the increasing corporate control over our daily lives. Over the past five days we have been shuttled through the D.C./Federal judicial system. Despite the relatively trivial charges that most of us received (“crossing a police line,” “parading without a permit,” or “incommoding”) and our shared decision to remain silent when asked to identify ourselves, we were subjected to a series of “divide and conquer” tactics, both psychological and physical. We were denied contact with our lawyers for consecutive periods of more than 30 hours at a time, left handcuffed and shackled for up to eight hours, moved up to ten times from holding cell to holding cell; many of us were denied food for more than 30 hours and denied water for up to ten hours at a time. Though many of us were soaking wet after Monday’s protest, we were refused dry clothing, and left shackled and shivering on very cold floors. For no apparent reason, some of us were physically attacked by U.S. Marshals: we were hurled against walls, pepper-sprayed directly in the face, or thrown on the floor and beaten. At least two minors were forced against a wall by their necks in strangulation holds and threatened with further violence. The U.S. Marshals told us that we would be going to D.C. Jail, where we would be raped, beaten, and given AIDS or murdered by “faggots” and “niggers.” Chief Judge Eugene Hamilton, in a shocking violation of legal ethics, appointed public attorneys for each member of our group and ordered them to post our bonds while we were still in the D.C. Jail, expressly against our wishes and best interests. In fact, though we asked repeatedly for our own lawyers, we were assigned public defenders that consistently acted in the interests of the prosecution.

(All of this came after the excessive violence used against peaceful demonstrators in the streets of Washington. Violence perpetrated by police included running people over with motorcycles, clubbing, beating, pepper-spraying, tear-gassing, trampling with horses, and fabricating scenarios to legitimize police action in the eyes of the public.) After our arrests last week, many of us chose to remain anonymous to protest these abuses. We chose to show solidarity with our fellow protesters who were unjustly charged with felonies and misdemeanors in the act of non-violent civil disobedience against the IMF and the World Bank. It is clear to us that the District of Columbia and the Federal Government, by trumping up charges, by arresting frivolously, and by keeping us in jail for a week, had much less of a problem with our alleged infractions than with the fact that we spoke our minds and faced up to their brutality and threats. Simply put, our jail time was not about our trivial charges, but instead about our peaceful, nonviolent, and successful exercise of our constitutionally protected rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Despite efforts by prison officials to alienate us from the resident inmate population, we continue to feel a great sense of community and solidarity with them. Unlike the “brutal monsters” that the racist, homophobic U.S. Marshals described to us in offensive and threatening detail, we found our fellow inmates to be intelligent, caring, and passionately concerned about injustice inflicted on all members of our society by governments, as well as injustice perpetrated around the globe by U.S.-based corporations. Many were informed about the severe injustices caused by IMF/World Bank programs which have forced hardships on the majority of the world’s people. Together we discussed how life in a D.C. prison resembles the lives of residents in the third world. In the same way that corporate investors profit from the sustained poverty of poorer countries (poverty sustained in part through the loans and policies of IMF/ World Bank), so too do many investors profit from the sustained incarceration of U.S. citizens as prisons in the U.S. become privatized.

The increasing privatization of prisons creates perverse incentives for prisons to incarcerate citizens in a system that benefits from what can only be called “slave labor.” We believe that the increasing injustices of the prison system and of the IMF/World Bank are fueled by the same naked greed. Racism, homophobia, sexism, global and local environmental devastation, the ongoing campaign to criminalize basic labor-organizing tools, and many other forms of oppression are merely symptoms of a system that places profits above all other values. We believe that love, compassion, liberty, and basic human and environmental rights should be the driving forces in our society. We are determined to help create a world in which these values are stronger than selfishness. Our movement is a small part of a worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood joining in solidarity with all the impoverished, oppressed, and progressive people on Earth. For us, breaking the law is not a frivolous gesture, but rather a last-resort means of exposing the immense powers that we all face when we attempt to create real, ethical change. We continue to draw inspiration from the civilrights, anti-nuclear, anti-war, environmental, labor-rights, and anti-oppression movements. Who are we? We are your sons and daughters, your sisters and brothers, your fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers. We are your co-workers, your healers, your teachers, and your students. We will continue to risk arrest, and if necessary resist with our very lives, until we expose this world as one in which profits come before people, so that a more just, humane, and free global society may take its place.

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Snapshot: The sweat of your brow

Volume 13 No. 4, 10 May 2000 919 Lincoln Campus Center University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 (413) 545-2899 Editor: Juan Pablo Fernández [email protected]

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The Graduate Voice is a publication of the Graduate Student Senate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Mike Tjivikua, President [email protected]

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The Graduate Voice is committed to progressive political agendas. It is against racism and sexism, and despises the law of the jungle; it is pro-choice, pro-Union, and proAffirmative Action. It firmly believes that everybody should have access to affordable, high-quality education, decent housing, reasonable child care, and fair wages. The Graduate Voice is 100% Micro$oft free.

Who pays the bill? Mathematics may not be that rational after all… by Oliver Axel Ruebenacker, Department of Physics Imagine this critical situation: A man and a woman have dinner at a restaurant. The man’s meal is worth $11.50, the woman’s $10.25. Including tips and taxes, we arrive at something like—let’s say for simplicity—$25. Now we face a most serious question: Who is going to pay the bill? In order not to leave the dear reader alone with this tricky one, we decided to give an overview of how different cultures and people deal with this delicate problem. Conservative: There is no question that the man pays the bill. Gentleman: The gentleman goes to the bathroom and secretly passes by the counter and pays the bill. When the woman later wonders about the check, the gentleman will tell her it’s already paid. Indonesian: If the woman is from Java, she believes in equal rights and wants to

pay $12.50. German: If the two are Germans, the man pays $13.22 and the woman pays $11.79. Smith College: If the woman is a Smithie, she feels sorry for the man—after all, he’s just a man—and pays the bill. Graduate Student Senate: If the man is Jon Zibbell, he wants to let each of them pay the same fraction of their respective income. Since he is only a poor graduate student, while the woman is a privileged white middle-class woman, he pays $5. Student Goverment Association: If the woman is Amy Pellegrino, she will discover that the man hasn’t brought enough money with him. Therefore, she first eats her own meal, then eats the meal that the man ordered, and finally pays the whole bill. Physical Plant: If both man and woman are from Physical Plant, they are very hungry,

but find that it is not the right time to (h)eat. Therefore, they don’t order anything and starve. United Nations: If the two are Kofi Annan and Madeleine Albright, Madeleine Albright will promise to pay the bill, but the U.S. Congress will not allow her to allocate the money. UMass Republican: If the two are from the UMass Republican Club, they won’t worry too much about paying, because the SGA will pay the bill. Chancellor: If the man is Chancellor Scott, he won’t be able to pay the bill, because he spends most of his money striving for excellence. In order to feel safe, he will install cameras all over the restaurant and employ students to check everyone who enters. TV or not to be: If the two have watched too much TV, they won’t understand the check .

THE WORLD 10 May 2000

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In 1996, the United States imported $36.39 billion worth of clothing from 75 countries. The map on the left displays the number of years that one average garment worker on each country would have had to work—24 hours a day, 366 days a (leap) year—to produce her country’s share of the total on her own. For each country, the number was calculated by dividing the total amount of its apparel exports to the U.S. (in dollars) by the average hourly salary (in dollars) earned by its garment workers. A major variable missing here is the number of people employed by the clothing industry in each country. In the case of the U.S., the shading corresponds to the number of years that an average garment employee would have to work to produce the total. An apparel worker in China would have to work over 1.5 million years to produce China’s share; at the other end of the spectrum, an apparel worker in Algeria would produce her country’s share in only 23 days. This reflects the fact that the U.S. imported only $631 in clothes from Algeria that year, and is not the result of high wages—although, at $1.14 an hour, they are almost ten times larger than the 13 cents that garment workers get paid on average in Myanmar. Hong Kong (still independent in 1996), China, and Mexico were the largest exporters; the three of them combined produced one-third of the U.S.’s imports. They respectively paid their workers $4.51, 28 cents, and $1.08, just like one would think. The map shows other wellknown trends: “black” countries, notably in Asia, tend to be major exporters and exploiters, while the “light” countries tend to be in Europe. In closing, we should note that Gap CEO Millard Drexler earned $24,000 an hour in 1998, more than 1000 times the hourly salary ($20.78) earned by garment workers in Denmark.

More than 100,000 years Between 10,000 and 100,000 years Between 1000 and 10,000 years

SOURCES: American Apparel Manufacturers Association, Major Shippers Report, 1997; Werner International, Inc., Hourly Labor Costs in the Apparel Industry, 1997; Global Exchange.

Less than 1000 years

How would you feel? Reflections on terrorism, guilt, and justice by Kevin Costa, Department of Political Science FALL RIVER—Is it possible to find it in one’s interest to plead guilty when one is innocent? How about when you are given a citation for speeding in a community far from home, but you decide not to contest the ticket—even though you are innocent—because the hearing is at a great distance and a day lost at work costs more than the ticket itself. Now, how would you feel if 20 years later, the ticket paid and the whole affair forgotten, a new law is passed that makes a conviction for speeding a one-hundred-thousand-dollar violation that is twenty years retroactively effective? How would you feel if this new law were not only retroactive, but also to be administered by a bureaucracy that is not to be held accountable to our courts? How would you feel if you had no right to an attorney’s representation and no right to appeal? How would you feel?

Given that juries are unpredictable and district attorneys throw the book at anyone who demands a jury trial, the vast majority of convictions in our legal system derive from plea bargains. If someone is not fully confident that she is able to prove her innocence to what are at times fickle juries, such innocence is besides the point: the defendant faces the choice of either accepting a plea bargain of guilty to lesser charges that would allow her freedom or demanding a jury trial and facing the very real possibility of jail time. (The horrors of such jail time cannot be described in their stark truth without offending readers’ sensibilities.) Now, how does this person feel if 20 years after being given a one-year suspended sentence—which means that not a day of jail time is meant to be served—and assuming the matter to have been cleared up, a new law is

passed that deports a non-citizen convicted of a crime in which the sentence is at least one year, even if the sentence is suspended, and the law is made retroactive? How does she feel to find out that this new law is not only retroactive, but also to be administered by an Immigration and Naturalization Service that is not to be held accountable to our courts? To be deported from the only land and the only people she loves, the only land and the only people she could love because they are the only land and the only people she has ever truly known— how would she feel? How would you feel? In the battle against evil the greatest danger is that of using the evil of one’s enemy as a rationalization for abolishing one’s own scruples and taking on the means of the evil one faces. The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was passed in 1996 as a

reaction against the Oklahoma City bombing. The bomber Timothy McVeigh is now listed as an honored prisoner of war on NeoNazi and KKK websites that are only a couple of clicks away from the mainstream. Xenophobic Timothy McVeigh would find much to approve of in this Anti-Terrorism Act—a more accurate designation would be Terrorism Victory Act—that resulted from the unthinking reaction to his action. Those who are just understand that justice is, of necessity, of one piece, and that to deny justice to someone else is ultimately to deny justice to oneself. Those who are just, after reflection, understand that the threat to due process that this “Terrorism Victory Act” represents can only serve the interests of tyranny. I ask those who are just to be vigilant and to raise their voices in protest against this threat to the liberties we hold in common.

CLASSICS

a s tor y o by f 20 Ru 00 dy A. D ar d K . ipl ing

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10 May 2000

With the Night Mail (extracts from the magazine in which it appeared)

L E I S U R E G R A D U A T E

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by Konstantinos Katsikopoulos, Ph.D. Although not as popular as among chess players, quizzes have entertained and intrigued backgammon aficionados as well. Debates about the right move are always vigorous and heated, and this is not surprising: as Lewis Deyong, a 1970s backgammon figure, noted—as a result of personal experience, no doubt—there are plenty of inflated egos throughout the world of backgammon. Good luck with the two classics that follow.

Quiz: What do you think is the move proposed by IBM’s computer program?

123 13 14 123 15 16123 17 18 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123

123 19 20 123 21 22123 23 24 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123

12 11 10

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 9

8

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 7

6

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 5

4

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 3

2

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 1

2) Barclay Cooke was an interesting contender in the backgammon scene of the late 1970s. A Renaissance man with an English literature degree from Yale University, Cooke did manual labor in the Southern United States, traveled extensively while gambling, and finally settled down in Englewood, New Jersey. He was devoted to classical music, but much more to his three Bs: baseball, backgammon and bridge. While today many players regard his play as hopelessly old-fashioned, it appears that Cooke was esteemed among his peers some 25 years ago. His style of writing may be pretentious, but it is very elegant. The Cruelest Game, a book he coauthored with John Bradshaw, was a success. In 1978, Cooke published Paradoxes and Probabilities, a book with 168 (!) backgammon quizzes. Quiz #120 is featured in the front cover; Cooke claimed that no player in the world, under time pressure, would ever make the right move. A blurb by Hunter Goodrich hyped #120 further: “it is, alone, worth the price of the book.” Here it is then, the muchdiscussed #120. Quiz: How do you think White should play 1 – 1?

123 123 13 14123 15 16 17 18 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123

123 19 20 123 21 22 123 23 24 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 BAR

1) Even among experts, there are only a few positions for which the right move is agreed upon. In general, there is agreement on how to play the first roll of dice. Until about 1995, it was thought utterly naïve of the White player in the figure below not to play a roll of 4 – 1 as 13 – 9, 6 – 5 (i.e., moving one man from point 13 to point 9 and one man from point 6 to point 5). The intuition behind this move is that it prepares the ground for White to make the point 5 in her next roll and that this may seriously constrain Black’s men in White’s home board (points 1 – 6). Additionally, even if the man in point 5 is hit by Black—an event that can be shown to have a probability of only around 35%!— there is still plenty of time for White to make up the lost ground. John Longacre, author of Backgammon of Today—a book worth buying just for the pretty ink drawings, originally published in 1930 and reprinted by Vogue magazine in 1973—might have been the first person that proposed this move. The human experts might have agreed on how to play the opening 4 – 1, but a computer program designed in upstate New York by IBM had a mind of its own. Professor Richard Dreyffus of the University of California at Berkeley, having long been a proponent of the view that there are things that humans can and will always do better than computers, would have been pleased with the initial, unanimously negative reactions to the move proposed by the computer. But—alas—he would not have liked what came later. Since 1995, agreement between human experts and the computer program has been restored, and guess which party conformed.

BAR

The right move: “Vogue” magazine, an IBM program, and Cooke’s #120

Backgammon

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Answer: The unexpected: 13 – 9, 24 – 23! The rationale for the 13 – 9 part of the move remains the same. To see why 24 – 23 is a good idea, notice that the risk of bringing a man to point 5 is eliminated, while the probability of White making point 20 (Black’s point 5) in her next roll has now greatly increased. Thus, White decreases her own probability of getting stuck in Black’s home board and also hinders Black’s entrance to her home board. The downside of this move is that White’s probability of making her 5 point in her next roll is decreased by quite a bit. It seems that humans cannot easily compute which move will be superior in the long run, but the computer can! Does that prove Professor Dreyffus wrong? To help yourself decide, see also the answer to the second quiz.

T H E

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123

12 11 10

9

8

12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 7

6

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 5

4

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 3

2

123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 1

Answer: Cooke begins by arguing that three out of the four aces should be used to move a man from White’s point 4 to her point 1. Then, Cooke continues, there are three options for the remaining ace: (i) move the man to point 23 (Black’s point 2), (ii) move a man to White’s point 5, and (iii) move a man to White’s point 6. The first option is silly, since it can be shown that this move actually decreases the probability of this man’s escaping from Black’s home board (points 19 – 24). Apparently, Cooke likes this quiz because a good backgammon student would go for the second option: time and again, experts say that one should diversify; that is, one should attempt to distribute men equally across points. However, this is a question for A+ students. Cooke goes on a roll and develops a number of quite involved analytic arguments, invoking probability theory, to demonstrate that the third option is the superior one. Perhaps the most important of these arguments runs as follows: if White rolls sixes, 6 – 1, or 6 – 2, the second option is worse than the third. Why? Because then White is forced to move the man in her point 7 to her point 1 and will not have the chance to use him later to make point 2 and keep Black in the bar for some more time. It would be curious to see what the IBM computer would think of this.

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Ivana Kurian

10 May 2000

presents an installation with electronic still images:

“INTIMACY” MAY 8–12 AUGUSTA SAVAGE GALLERY 101 New Africa House, UMass Free admission

Theater and film The Department of Theater presented two major productions this Spring: Wole Soyinka’s version of Euripides’s “The Bacchae” (above) and Heiner Müller’s “Hamlet Machine” (left). Both plays are brave and gleeful attacks on timeless classics that may well become classics themselves; both casts, in their turn, bravely and gleefully attacked the texts. The Distinguished Visitors Program brought us Kevin Smith (below, to the left of buddy Quentin Tarantino), director of “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy.”

SOMETIMES WHILE I SHAVE I LOOK AT THE MIRROR AND SAY TO MYSELF: “YOU’RE EVIL.” AND YES, I’M EVIL; BUT I’M A NECESSARY EVIL.