Comment
Comment Go Tell It on the Mountain Weeks before the scheduled Geneva encounter between President Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, the summit dominates the news. A major earthquake...
...This ritual rain dance obscures some fundamental facts about our society's heedless exploitation of water supplies...
...it also raised a serious question: If the Soviets are so far ahead, why should they wait patiently for the United States to catch up...
...The rest goes to residential and commercial purposes-dishwashers, air conditioners, washer-driers, industrial coolants...
...This barbarity may not have been the work of the Honduran army alone...
...There it is in plain English: We get to kick around our half of the world, the Soviets can kick around the other half, and those who get kicked have no grounds for complaint...
...Let us Prey Why don't we pray that the Lord will give aid to those people who are struggling against communist rule...
...In fact, however, most of the money is going directly into the pockets of the contms, according to the October issue of Sojourners...
...But when the President put the pressure on, she caved in as gracefully as the circumstances would allow...
...In the atmosphere of wishful thinking that usually precedes a big-power conference, it is useful to remind ourselves that most often, the aftermath is disappointment...
...The pioneer of Star Wars has introduced the highest...
...Offensive Talk President Reagan has found another of those folksy comparisons that turn complex issues into simple foolishness...
...All thirty of the books examined had systematically omitted a thorough discussion of evolution...
...Unfortunately, our natural bent is in the opposite direction...
...Chicken Anyone...
...Of the history books that mention the Holocaust, for example, three-quarters do not list the subject in the index...
...In sixteen years as a Republican Representative from Massachusetts, Heckler distinguished herself more as a deft practitioner of politics than as an advocate of significant policies...
...It's a born in America campaign, and Canada is in North America," A.C...
...Is Gorbachev more "flexible" than his predecessors...
...Sanchez, viewing Nicaragua as part of the global U.S.Soviet confrontation, pins his hopes on the crusty notion that the world is divided into neat spheres of influence...
...Jane Fonda says pornography must be censored because 'otherwise, we'll see the collapse of this nation.' Burn, Barbarella, burn...
...In this country no less than in the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, the hopes of suffering humanity ride on the possibility of Soviet-American accommodation—not friendship, necessarily, and certainly not mutual admiration, but a joint recognition that the nuclear arms race is a lunatic experiment that has gotten wholly out of hand and must be brought to a halt...
...Even if we discount such statements for their obvious propaganda intent, recent Soviet arms proposals signify eagerness to break out of the spiral of mutual escalation...
...Proud Papa When Ronald Reagan unveiled his Star Wars program two-and-a-half years ago, hardly anyone in the Reagan Administration knew what he was talking about...
...There they will say their set pieces and go home...
...That doesn't quite add up—unless, of course, we are drinking undiluted, supersaturated Nutrasweet, in which case neither we nor Diet Slice will be around much longer...
...Americans have traditionally viewed water as a free and limitless bounty, to be consumed and befouled with impunity and gusto...
...These military men, who were sent into the radioactive rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who worked on the development of subsequent nuclear weapons, who squatted in the desert, close to Ground Zero, during atomic tests, sued the Government and its nuclear contractors, citing radiation exposure as the cause of the diseases—including cancer and blood disorders—that now afflict them...
...It is not to the Soviet Union...
...Have we become so inured to U.S.-sponsored atrocities that we cannot summon the outrage to protest or muster the indignation to curse...
...Since the beginning of nuclear rivalry between the superpowers, testing has been the key to escalation...
...military presence in Honduras...
...Among the forbidden actions, according to Amnesty International, was a planned silent protest in behalf of prisoners of conscience and a march to the Soviet embassy by Resistance International, an anticom-munist human-rights group...
...Government accuses of harboring Salvadoran guerrillas...
...Says Joe Cronin, an account supervisor at N.W...
...Neither leader will acquire new insights by looking deep into the other's eyes, nor will any position be changed by what is said...
...We'll survive and "our democratic institutions and ideals will survive with us...
...In anticipation of the summit, we tend to hope for the best, to give the leaders the benefit of the doubt, to sit back and wait for announcements of great breakthroughs...
...Government can't be sued for injuries sustained in the line of duty...
...In his remarkably candid interview with Time magazine last September, Gorbachev went further than any previous Soviet leader in admitting the severe economic problems confronting his nation and recognizing the need to satisfy long-deferred aspirations of the Soviet people...
...Since "shelters will give us complete protection against fallout," we should be able to "replace this great industrial complex in five years...
...Unless all the diplomatic usages of the past have been abandoned, Reagan and Gorbachev will arrive in Geneva with fully scripted roles to play...
...Has Reagan moved permanently into his bomb shelter...
...both, he says, are defense systems rather than weapons, so they threaten no one...
...This throwback to the Bracero program of the 1950s reduces free enterprise to its most elemental ingredient—exploitation of cheap labor...
...In World War III, a cocky leader-American or Soviet—might try to use space weapons to ensure the "success" of a first strike...
...The Western Hemisphere is vital to the United States...
...Superfluities conquer, essentials are vanquished...
...The contras are the very forces that are creating new refugees daily, kidnapping, torturing, and sometimes killing those for whom the so-called aid is intended...
...There is no reason to lose...
...Donald Regan and other members of the White House staff suspected her of actually being in favor of health and human services, so they persuaded Reagan to ship her off to Dublin...
...We can afford to go eyeball to eyeball, knowing they will blink," he says...
...So even as the demand for drinking water shrinks, the consumption of water bloats: The average New Yorker uses more than 200 gallons of water per day, compared with 134 gallons a day twenty years ago...
...Today, for instance, only about 1 per cent of New York City's water is used for drinking...
...The American taxpayer forks over $4,000 in advertising for each Army recruit, the Los Angeles Times reports...
...Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, who was traveling in Europe the week of the speech, had to be told by phone that something big was up...
...In public appearances and Comment interviews, the President has taken to drawing a parallel between Star Wars and gas masks...
...And the key to addressing those needs, he stressed, is "an end to the arms race" and the reallocation of "every ruble that today goes for defense...
...Driving conditions vary since a lack of moisture is leaving some areas of soft sand....' Then there's Diet Slice, which carries an even more perplexing label: NEW 10% Juice, 100% Nutrasweet...
...For better or worse, Reagan and Gorbachev possess the means to decide whether many millions of us will live or die, and perhaps even whether the planet will continue to harbor life of any kind...
...The message both Reagan and Gorbachev should be taking to Geneva is this: We know how hard it is to reach an agreement to end the nuclear threat to humankind...
...Over the years, water's primary function—to provide humans with vital liquid—has all but evaporated...
...Secretary of State George P. Shultz was perplexed," Robert Scheer reported recently in the Los Angeles Times...
...That was enough to do her in...
...We ought to be doing just the opposite—marching and demonstrating and rallying now, so that the governments of both superpowers will clearly understand that people want no more temporizing or delay...
...A week earlier, the U.S...
...Heckler herself had dismissed it a few days earlier as a nice post—for someone else...
...And on the crucial issue of Star Wars, the President has, in effect, declared his program to be non-negotiable...
...What ever happened to that wonderful old American institution, the resignation in anger...
...Who, then, persuaded him to propel the arms race into outer space...
...Ayer, ad agency for the Army, 'They have a product they're trying to sell—a life in the Army—and we're trying to sell that like we sell any other product, Coca-Cola or whatever.' Judging from his pre-summit comments, Gorbachev is bringing to Geneva an acute sensitivity to the dangers confronting his nation and the world...
...Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network and other reactionary religious groups are ostensibly raising money for refugee aid in Nicaragua...
...Volatile subjects are ignored or kept discreetly out of sight...
...Though the President stood beside her, nodding and grinning, nobody believed her—and there was no reason why anyone should...
...asked Pat Robertson last spring...
...On the one hand, Reagan Administration officials from the President down have professed to be encouraged by "advances" in the Soviet position...
...Here are some of his on-the-record musings, as compiled by Professor Bruce Stewart of Southern Oregon State College: Hydrogen bombs are "nothing more than packaging high explosives," and a nuclear war "will consist of short and sharp local engagements, not involving masses that are being slaughtered...
...The CIA and the State Department recently ganged up on a Senate bill that would have made it illegal for foreign agents in this country to eavesdrop electronically on American citizens...
...Oil pollution is now so common on Texas beaches, Ronnie Dugger reports in The Texas Observer, that local papers include it in their condition reports...
...There's nothing like a little Christian charity...
...In World War I, armies attacking with gas donned masks to protect themselves against shifts in the wind or retaliation in kind...
...Army illegally lent the Honduran military a jeep and a driver to haul off an American priest, the Reverend John Donald, to a detention center where he was kept blindfolded and handcuffed for the better part of two days...
...Why, none other than the ineffable "father of the hydrogen bomb," Edward Teller...
...assault on Nicaragua...
...As an inducement to the United States to forgo development of Star Wars, the Russians have offered a 50 per cent reduction in long-range and intermediate missiles...
...The Atomic Veterans obeyed the unholy order to serve their country, and their country has abandoned them...
...Educators around the country are encountering similar problems with texts in such subjects as biology, history, and literature...
...Like frightened children looking for a sign of reconciliation from their quarreling parents, grown men and women search the news for hints of superpower detente...
...True, of course, but will they buy that in Windsor, Ontario, where the Voyager is actually made...
...Flag for Sunset On August 29, between eighty and 200 Hon-duran troops entered the Colomoncagua refugee camp run by the United Nations and started shooting...
...the system would block any retaliation by the enemy...
...But we can't go home without one...
...Sweet Hospitality In preparation for the three-day visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, French authorities banned all street demonstrations...
...In baldness there is beauty, we suppose...
...Donald had spoken out against the growing U.S...
...But a Federal judge in San Francisco tossed out the lawsuits, upholding a 1984 Congressional ban against suing Federal nuclear weapons contractors and noting that the U.S...
...At Reagan's Star Wars briefing for top Government officials, one participant told Scheer, Teller "was just beaming...
...With Washington's complicity and support, the Honduran military is murdering infants and brutalizing priests...
...Liebler, Plymouth's general marketing manager, explained to The Wall Street Journal...
...Slice of Life Only in America can a company make a showing by hawking a product for being one-tenth natural...
...Water in the city's reservoirs dropped drastically...
...All have been turned into mush to avoid controversy...
...Before it's too late, could someone give the man some birth-control advice...
...This, for example, appeared in the South Jetty...
...In the Soviet bloc nations and especially in the West, every effort should be made by the forces of peace to keep intense pressure on the superpower leaders...
...Against these significant, and significantly conciliatory, moves, the United States has confined itself to rhetoric—and some of the rhetoric is misleading if not downright deceptive...
...In fact, "two years after the attack we should be well on the road to recovery...
...After a nuclear war, "we can dig out of the ruins and recover from catastrophe...
...A major earthquake or hurricane, a race riot in Britain or a raid in the Middle East, may still find a spot on the front page and the evening news, but the big story, clearly, is the meeting of the superpower chiefs...
...It takes no brilliant insight to figure this one out: The CIA is using foreign agents in the United States to spy on American citizens...
...The Administration continues to advance the Big Lie of Soviet arms superiority—including, even, a claim that the Russians have a ten-year "head start" on Star Wars...
...As Moscow and Washington lay down their barrages and counterbarrages of preparatory propaganda, each nuance is subjected to the closest and most anxious scrutiny...
...Birth Pangs Only one little snag was apparent when the Chrysler Corporation launched its glossy "Born in America" advertising campaign for the latest line of Plymouths: Some Plymouths are "born" elsewhere...
...This is his baby...
...Robertson, host of evangelical television's The 700 Club, must have been afraid the Lord wouldn't hear his prayers, for he and his brethren on the religious Right have taken the future into their own hands...
...That bizarre assertion, made in mid-September, not only left some of the President's ardent Congressional supporters gasping in embarrassment...
...What can be done to convert the forthcoming summit meeting from a foredoomed ritual into a positive step toward relaxation of worldwide tensions...
...Shameful Harvest When Big Agriculture needs labor, it usually turns south, and so it did again this year...
...Does the latest casual remark by the new Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, or by Secretary of State George Shultz, betoken at long last a willingness to end the era of Mutually Assured Destruction...
...You scratch my dissident, I'll scratch yours...
...Clearly, the threat of space warfare, as embodied in Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, deeply troubles the Kremlin—partly because it shows that the United States persists in its quest for nuclear superiority, partly because it foreshadows a new and catastrophic round of military expenditures...
...Unfortunately, the summit meeting is unlikely to produce such a dramatic and constructive result...
...Senate approved legislation in September that would allow agribusiness companies to bring in 350,000 foreign farm workers, largely from Mexico, to harvest American fruit and vegetables...
...People tend to assume that reasonable men—if these are reasonable men-can reach such an elemental understanding...
...According to Reagan, "the United States is still well behind the Soviet Union in literally every kind of offensive weapon, both conventional and in the strategic weapons...
...The media, with their usual shallow-as-an-ashtray analysis, blamed Mother Nature...
...once the crops were picked, the workers would be sent packing...
...In her now truncated tenure as Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, she managed to salvage at least a few of her huge Department's programs from the Reagan wrecking crew...
...It's one struggle that we can win...
...Senator David Durenberger, the Minnesota Republican who heads the Select Committee on Intelligence, said the bill could lead to disclosing "sensitive intelligence sources...
...With help from the CIA and the State Department, he persuaded his colleagues to kill the legislation...
...The soldiers shot and wounded thirteen others and beat twenty-five more...
...At least two refugees were killed, including a two-month-old girl whom soldiers kicked to death...
...The inventor of gas warfare, Fritz Haber, called it "a higher form of killing" in 1919...
...The Voyager minivan, for instance, is built in Canada...
...What is critically important, then, is not what Reagan and Gorbachev take with them from Geneva, but what they bring to the summit in the first place...
...Parched Lifestyle New York City suffered through its worst drought in more than twenty years last summer...
...Kicked Downstairs Margaret Heckler swallowed her pride, shelved her dignity, gritted her teeth, and said she welcomed her new appointment as ambassador to Ireland...
...soldiers joined in the raid on the camp, which the U.S...
...It won't do to dismiss that offer as mere propaganda...
...Like many another proud parent, Teller tends to be blind to his offsprings' character defects...
...On the other, they have been careful to avoid offering any concessions of their own that might facilitate the process of accommodation...
...Unjust Compensation The Atomic Veterans are today's unknown soldiers, hidden victims of the nuclear age...
...Those dangers are not confined to the catastrophic risks of nuclear war...
...Star Wars and gas masks can, indeed, serve defensive functions—but they can also play an integral role in nuclear and chemical offensives...
...Even more important, though largely ignored in this country, is the Soviet announcement of a moratorium on atomic testing...
...A Textbook Case When members of California's Board of Education recently reviewed the biology textbooks prepared by major publishers for seventh-and eighth-grade students, they were appalled by what they found...
...Has Reagan backed away from his crude "evil empire" formulations...
...You can have very vicious criminals at age sixteen,' he says...
...Time was when curious kids could just look such matters up, but now that's history...
...Chrysler did its best to smooth out the wrinkles, though...
...So says Nestor D. Sanchez, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Inter-American Affairs, about the U.S...
...But in the age of junk food, we're grateful for small favors—or so it seems to Pepsico, which is pushing its soft drink Slice with the fetching claim that it contains "10 per cent real juices...
...Attorney General Edwin Meese III sees no reason why the states shouldn't impose capital punishment on minors...
...Against that background, the first face-to-face confrontation between these men is bound to be of enormous interest...
...By now Teller is presumably concocting equally soothing scenarios for the latest monster to spring from his loins, Star Wars...
...The President's press secretary could hardly suppress his laughter when he called her a new job promotion...
...And understandably so...
...According to the Hon-duran Catholic hierarchy, two U.S...
...The beach is fairly free of debris but tar balls dot the water's edge...
...When he arrived in Paris, Gorbachev must have felt right at home...
...Even their final communique will have been drafted in advance...
...Under the guise of an immigration reform bill, the U.S...
...Spooksville, U.S.A...
...The Soviet cessation is, as Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the first unilateral step in more than twenty years—since President Kennedy halted atmospheric tests—toward easing the arms race...
...In an illuminating three-part series on Star Wars, Scheer went on to note that Reagan neither sought nor received advice from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, or the Department of Defense...
Vol. 49 • November 1985 • No. 11
