Word: blum
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...peculiarly virulent combination of pretty detail and outright tripe seemed to plague Jim Blum's so-called analysis of the Paris negotiations in The Crimson of January S. Does he really believes that Nixon's resumption of the saturation bombing of Hanoi and Haphong "was based on a "misunderstanding in regard to the definition of victory...
...told confusion of Blum's style deserves a letter in itself. What does he mean by scientists like the about or like "the necessary stimulus to activate the traditional process, by which the Vietnamese mediate dispute among themselves?" Does he think that the nations ought to call a tribal council? His inability to place the negotiations in a social and historical context--the imperialistic, thrust of American foreign policy over the past century or two--leads to a bizarre obsession with the trivia of press releases and statements of propaganda, as if the substance of the dispute were no more...
More disturbing, however, are the premises of Blum's article. Following the example of the rest of the American press, he fails to take a critical view of Nixon's consistent manipulation of the peace talks over the past few years, of which Kissinger's statement of Oct. 20 is the prime example. The Vietnamese have always negotiated "seriously" and have repeatedly stated their willingness to sign the nine-point treaty negotiated last fall. Blum fails to mention the simple fact that it was the U.S. government that suddenly imposed new conditions for settlement and resorted to tactics reminiscent...
...Blum stumbles across the real reason for the continued failure of negotiations when he recognizes the issue of "the United States' right to maintain a controlling interest in Saigon's political and military apparatus." This "misunderstanding" is of course what the war has been about since the beginning U.S. intervention in the early fifties. Nixon has apparently not given up the goal of American hegemony in Indochina. It is the intransigence of him and other members of the U.S. political elite that have scuttled the prospects for peace settlements from 1954 onwards...
Watson clearly would not be eligible. But even if he were, strenuous objections to Judge Rasin's reparations order have already been heard from an unexpected source: the victim's husband. The payments, Benjamin Blum said emotionally, would only serve to remind his sons of their mother's murder, and might even put them in physical danger from Watson or his friends. "It's society's duty to take care of the crime," contends Blum. "Why should society throw it back to me?" If the court does not change its ruling, Blum says...