The Anniston Star from Anniston, Alabama • Page 4

In our opinion is itie duty of a newspaper 10 become Uu- altoi uey for the most defenseless among its subscribers." Co! Hnny Avers, President (ind Publisher 1910 1964 BRANDT AVERS Kditur and I'ublishcr 1'. A SAVil INKTTI Prrsi dent -1TSAPIK Page 4 The Anniston Star, Friday, Nov. 17, 1989 OFIUE BERLIN WALL! Stye Umitetoti Ibtar Games at sea the moderate new government wT PROBABLY isn't, as one I II euphoric observer of recent IJLLe vents in Europe pro- in the house of freedom pounced, "the end of history," I (by which he seemed to see the larrival of mankind at the ul timate level of world peace), but it's a different world Presidents Bush and Gorbachev will con sider in the waters off Malta next month from that existing a few weeks ago when they decided it was time to talk. Poland. Hungary.

West Berlin. All thawed from the Cold War freeze by the sunshine of reform sweeping through the front yard I of the former communist empire I held in thrall so tightly by the Kremlin for 40-plus years. Even Bulgaria replaces its hard-line communist chief with a reformer; the Baltic states keep making noises about autonomy; and at home, right there in the Moskva River city of Mos cow, glasnost has freed up people enough to bring them into the streets, demanding more of the good life abroad they've seen on their television sets. THE TWO Bush-Gorbachev meetings on the calendar, the December pre-meeting off Malta and the previously scheduled major meeting next year, offer major opportunities. But the rosy pictures, such wonders as Lech Walesa being decorated at the White House, suddenly liberated East Ber-liners dancing on the crumbling wall that imprisoned them for almost three decades, are clouded by the imponderables.

The vision of 'democracy sweeping bloodlessly through the Warsaw Pact countries is almost too much to be believed: The ruling Communist Party stands quietly aside when the popular tide of Solidarity sweeps over Warsaw and installs a civilian, non-communist government. Hungary's Communist Party accepts, even leads, in turning away from the old way to the new, the democratic process. And then there is East Berlin, a phenomenon that the world's millions watched enthralled as the old man, Honnecker, was replaced, and as the wall cracked, then crumbled while Walesa By David S. Broder WASHINGTON In all that I had read and heard about Lech Walesa, I had somehow missed one important fact: He has an irrepressible sense of humor. As the leader of Solidarity toured Washington, he was followed by waves of cheers and of laughter.

In a closed-door session with mem bers of Congress who were fretting about the pay- raise vote they were facing the next day, Walesa offered consola tion. "If it doesn't go through," he Broder said, "come to Poland. It's one place you can afford to live." Later, at a public question-answer session, he finished off almost every response with a quip or story that made his point. On dealing with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, for example, he said, "There's no point in pulling the bear by his moustache. Better to tickle him." Many of his jokes were at his own expense.

At the end of a plea for American investment in Poland: "There is a huge business opportunity. So come. You will make money. And I will win the Nobel Prize for economics." On bis own decision to stay out of some much-needed sleep. But Rostenkowski was a man transformed.

A colleague in the House whispered to me, "Look at his face. I've never seen that expression." And, in truth, the usual calculating, appraising eyes glistened with tears. "Today," he said in a choked voice, "if you are Polish, your heart is filled with so much pride!" And then, this power-wielding pro spoke to a roomful of other politicians and guests as if he were unburdening himself to his closest friend. "For a long time in my political life," lie said quietly, "I really didn't want to admit I was a Polish-American. I wished I had some other name.

And today I feel ashamed of such feelings. Lech Walesa came to us and made a speech so simple, so direct, so honest and, God bless us, we responded. And today we are ten feet tall." It was almost as if Rostenkowski had forgotten the audience, had forgotten the television lights in his eyes, and was speaking to himself, making his own resolutions: "We have got to help these people," he said. "We have got to help these people for our own good. It is the right thing to do." AND THEN, as if recalling the setting and the audience, he said exactly the right words, the words that put Walesa's humor in perspective "Lech Walesa is no Polish joke.

He is freedom." Waaalaf lea Pmi ttriura Creao cepted the award on Lech Walesa's behalf. "For eight years, these empty chairs and the American people have waited. Today, the waiting is over. Lech Walesa, man of freedom, is at the White House. We think of it as the house of freedom.

And Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of the United States, I am proud to say to you, 'Take your place in this house of freedom; take your place in the empty What stirred the President to unusual eloquence was felt by almost everyone who was exposed to Walesa's direct, even blunt, but passionate advocacy of Poland's cause. It infused the chamber of the House of Representatives, when Walesa recounted the struggle which now "has opened up entirely new horizons," a crusade, like our civil rights movement, in which the victory of freedom was all the sweeter because "this struggle was conducted without resorting to violence of any kind." THE IMPACT can be measured in many ways, none more dramatic than Walesa's effect on Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (Dill the hard-bitten political veteran who has risen from the Chicago wards to the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rostenkowski was the last speaker at the dinner honoring Walesa in Statuary Hall of the Capitol, and by the time he was called forward, the guest of honor had departed to get and border guards stood by smil ing. Suddenly it is as if such petty little communist figures as Castro of Cuba and Ortega of Nicaragua are left isolated, no longer in touch with the re alities.

PRESIDENT BUSH will want to talk to President Gorbachev about those two as well as other, more important matters. Gorbachev, fighting a battle for survival at home (a battle visiting Moscow editor Vitaly Korotich said here recently he believes the Soviet president will win), desperately wants help in modernizing his country's economy. His wish list leans toward international in vestment and tutorial help with management training as well as infusions of food and consumer goods to meet his people's enhanced expectations. Bush and the West will listen but with the restraining knowledge that such fledgling de mocracies as Poland and Hunga ry are also counting on help. But it is the political and military future of Europe that is the complex question for the two presidents: Can the military presence of NATO and Warsaw Pact troops be reduced or eliminated? Will not the two Germanies, East and West, in evitably be united again? If so, what is the meaning for the other European nations as well as Russia and the United States? The specter of a reunited Ger many, empowered by tremen dous industrial and economic might, still sends a few chills through its neighbors.

ASSUMING allied unity will continue, the possibilities are fascinating: The West has; the East wants and is moving at dizzying and disarming (so to speak) ways to invite accommodation. George Bush ought to be able to do a lot of listening and thinking when he sits down with Gorbachev, always remem bering the advice of Mr. Dooley Trust everybody but cut the cards. nuclear plant, continues to resent being the storage facility for most -of the Eastern United State's low-level nuclear waste much of which comes from Alabama's nuclear power facilities on the Tennessee River. Now, we're even shipping stray animals across state lines.

When residents of Rockdale County, got fed up with a saintly woman who'd taken in some 600 cats and 1,500 dogs abandoned by the good people of Georgia, they invited her to leave. So, she and her cats and dogs moved to South Alabama. The trouble is, cats and dogs have an uncanny knack of finding their way back to their old haunts. Georgia residents shouldn't be surprised to wake one morning to discover their strays have come home to roost. Nor should we.

MOST OF US wish our waste disposal problems would just go away. More and more, they do. But they don't get very far only across state lines where somebody else's legislature has to deal with them. Unfortunately, the state legislatures don't seem to appreciate the hypocrisy and absurdity of dumping on each other. It's time all of us began dealing with our waste problems more responsibly.

Out of state is out of mind. But it's not a solution to our problems of hazardous waste disposal, which are getting out of hand. Speak out. On Waste: over the line the Solidarity-led Polish government and remain with the union: "When I was offered the job of prime minister, I liked the idea. Everywhere I went, they would play the National Anthem.

But I said no." To an exceptionally earnest man, asking his views on freedom of choice and the abortion issue: "I have eight children. Why don't you follow my example?" Walesa is no clown, but you could see how the humor under-girding his stubborn faith in freedom could help him gain a following and sustain him and his movement through the years of repression. AS PRESIDENT BUSH reminded listeners in a moving speech at the White House ceremony where he awarded Walesa the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Walesa's seventh child was born while the Gdansk shipyard electrician was under arrest for his union-organizing activities. There was an empty chair at her baptism. Bush said, as there were empty chairs on the platforms of many U.S.

colleges which awarded Walesa honorary degrees that spring of 1982. "We saw empty chairs In Maine, in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Illinois," Bush said. "At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in cheering tribute to the empty chair and to the man who wasn't there. At Holy Cross, (AFL-CIO President) Lane Kirkland ac favorite teams, can we afford to turn deaf ears to cries for quality education when the game ends? No, Coach Archer, "Books need not do the Tigers in." Such a conclusion is unfair to many talented athletes who are also good students. John A.

Vanderford, Ed.D. Jacksonville Arming Marxists A WHY HASN'T the U.S. media picked up on the revealing story concerning "Arming the Enemy" that appeared in the New York Times on Oct. 15. The story opens: "United Nations, Oct.

13 The rightist Nicaraguan rebels encamped in Honduras are selling their American supplied arms and ammunition to leftist rebels in El Salvador, diplomats say." These are Reagan's freedom fighters he once referred to as "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers." The El Salvador guerrillas are the same leftists the United States has been spending passing. ker who witnessed how a tornado in the South tore up power lines that "started snapping just like a circus performer would snap his whip. NO BOND of love can stand in the way of crack." Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman, testifying before a U.S. Senate committee probing the effects of the nation 's drug problem on the elderly. WE HAVE HEARD many beautiful words of encouragement, but, being a worker and a man of concrete work, I must tell you that the supply of words on the world market is plentiful, but the athletics will not be satisfied with a 7.7 percent cost of living increase.

They were magnanimus in giving the military a small increase. A small increase is slated for both the federal retiree and Social Security retirees. This will not be the 7.7 percent they will get, but in their manner of thinking this should suffice. Congressmen go out and give speeches when they are supposed to be on government business. The amount of money they get should be turned back to the taxpayers.

We could then sanction them to make speeches, and recover some of the salary that they get paid. C'mon citizens, get wise to these money-hungry characters we have in Congress. Nathan Sadowsky Anniston How to 'Speak out LETTERS SHOULD BE kept to no more than 200 words. Letters will be edited in the interest of space and good taste when it can be done without changing the meanJnv or they will will be returned. college tens of millions of dollars each year to defeat with the aid of the incompetent Salvadoran military.

The Corrtras are presently in camps in Hondurus and are supposed to turn over their U.S. supplied weapons to the United Nations while awaiting resettlement not sell them to Communist rebels. It should be borne in mind that one of the rationales of the Reagan administration for trying to overthrow the Sandinistas was that the Nicaraguan government was providing arms to the Salvadoran guerrilas. Now the guys who were supposed to stop it apparently are making a buck from it. Is it any wonder that the U.S.

media was scooped by a small newspaper in Beirut, Lebanon, that revealed the Iran-Contra scandal? Robert S. Dillon Birmingham Raising Congress a THE POSSIBILITY of VV a pay raise for the mem-bers of Congress continues to raise its ugly head. They demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now." Lech Walesa. IT'S LIKE, taking six to ten city blocks and putting them in a blender and putting it on liquefy." Madison County rescue worker Bob Caraway, on tornado damage in Huntsville.

HEY, if Barney Frank can come out of the closet. I can come out of the suitcase." Former House speaker Tip O'Neill, on his many commercial endorsements, including one in which he pops out of a piece of luggage. aA WHILRWIND is gaining momentum in education. AA Baily Thompson observed its force in his column, "Desperate coaches may lead calls for education." Reference to LSU football Coach Mike Archer's observation was classic: "Books are about to do in the. Tigers." (I mistakenly thought the Crimson Tide did It.) The cartoon that accompanied the editorial was even better.

Cartoonist Powell noted that it's time for the NCAA to lead college sports to obedience school. His graphic reminder is timely for all who are competing for headlines in prescribing remedies for sick schools. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) may be headed for the right apothecary. The SREB looks to the year 2,000 and challenges us to take the medicine needed to get well. Board members worry that poorly educated young people will be mismatched for the South's future.

The board concludes that employers will be looking for people who can think and adapt to change. In celebrating victories of our Heard in I THINK we will have enough time. But we have to work a lot. We have to show a very tired society that there is hope, that the solutions though they are expensive, will lead the country out of trouble." Lech Walesa, discussing U.S. steps to help finance Polish reforms.

ALL OF THESE heavy arcing, flashing lines that were just popping and snapping qver the top of us. It was as if you were looking into an arc-welder, they were so bright." Ike Carroll, a real estate bro HAT WOULD any of us do if we didn't have 49 other states to dump The shipment of wastes across state lines seems to have become the disposal method of choice. The Environmental Protection Agency has informed the State of Alabama to expect another 18,000 tons of PCB-contaminated dirt, which will be stored indefinitely in the hazardous waste landfill in Emelle. The EPA franklv acknowl edged that incineration of those wastes at their site of origin in Bloomfield. Indiana, would not be politically expedient.

There was simply too much public opposition in the home state of Vice President Dan Quayle. So the wastes are being ad dressed to Emelle in Sumter County, Alabama, whose favor ite sons haven't yet made the White House payroll and whose public opposition can't make headlines even in the hometown paper. ALABAMIANS ought to be indignant. Perhaps the reason we're not more so is that we, too, tend to favor the interstate mode of waste disposal. Alabamians self-righteously banned several states from dumping their hazardous wastes at Emelle.

We can only hope other states don't put Alabama in the same bind. South Carolina, for example, home to the Savannah River The Daily Sjot tflnfrf. Anniston's first newspaper, established In 1683. It was merged with The Evening Star in 1912 to form Consolidated Publishing publishers of. Alabama largest home owned newspaper RALPH W.

CALLAHAN, Director and Consultant JOHN CHILDS Business Manager CODY HALL Editor in Chief CHRIS WADDI Editor Editorial Page HERSHEL VICTORY Retail Adv Manager DEAN YOUNGBLOOD Classified Ad Manager SAM OGLE. JR Circulation Director ALMUSJ THORNTON Secretary Treasurer ALBERT HEARD Production Manager and General Foreman SUBSCRIPTION RATE ONE MONTH (7 00 MAIL RATE ON REQUEST THE CONSOLIDATED PUBLISHING CO Props Publishing every afternoon Monday through Friday aod Saturday and Sunday morn-ngs at west 10th street Second Class postage paid at Anniston Ala 34201.