Another U.S. triumph
Getlein, Frank
rationale is that reducing waste accumulation in other coun- helped to create. tries will reduc~ their interest in reprocessing, which can lead So far, only research fuel is being returned--the...
...OPEC is not an attack on America, it is an embodiment of America...
...The existence of OPEC is a triumph for United States foreign policy from Acheson to Kissinger...
...This lay-off of the food stamps for her children, however...
...One can but wish him luck, even while noting that nothing will feed the inflationary fires faster than such non-productive spending on ritual objects...
...some 200 tons...
...True, for that splinter group mentioned above, doubts linger: Could Germany and Japan have made it so handily, for instance, had we not insisted that they needed the military protection we insisted on providing at bargain rates...
...FRANK GETLEIN 29 February 1980:103...
...The seizure of the embassy staff ih Iran has been made the occasion for what seems to be a universal American consensus, led by the president, that we must spend even more for arms than he had already pledged to spend--in violation of his campaign pledge to reduce arms spending...
...The way the supply system works, though, does plutonium...
...To create OPEC-although we didn't know its name at the time--was precisely what Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, Dean Rusl~, Henry Kissinger and their associates as global thinkers all had in mind in their varied travels, alliances, top level conferences, treaties, wars, incursions, bombings, defoliations, Vietnamizations and other triumphs...
...Like the commander of the besieged city who pours from the parapet his last pitcher of water to convince the besiegers he will never surrender, so the president, I guess, proposes to impress the Russians by pouring his nonexistent money into the desert sands of arms spending...
...ARE some people you just among the Americans...
...In fact that kind of government spending is hardly regarded by such conservatives as government spending at all: it's really an investment in the future, because we won't have a future if we ANOTHER U.S...
...That's quite a performance, comparable in its way to a village money lender in Thailand getting made a top executive officer at Chase Manhattan in half a year just by taking thought...
...From that primitive grasp of economics, the Arab and non-Arab states of the Middle East have leapt over all the intervening stages of the development of capitalism--no spinning jenny, no power loom, no Watt's tea kettle, no Whitney's rifles or cotton gins, not even a Gutenberg Koran, let alone a Henry Ford assembly line, no period of cutthroat competition among the players--to land spang in the middle of monopoly/ trust-cartel capitalism with administered prices beating no relationship to the fluctuations of supply and demand, only to the bottom line desires of the adminis...
...to broaden American involvement in waste collection...
...U.S...
...tries to curtail shipments travel before reaching the Savannah River plant are waste accumulation abroad...
...tion on government spending...
...Our three triumphs may indeed destroy us economically but at least our idea will live in their triumphs...
...No, the inflation is the invention, the engine and the deadly gift to us of the OPEC...
...Since then, military spending has been aimed at making up to the Joint Chiefs and the merchants of death what we failed to spend on other arms while we were following their financial instructions in Indochina...
...By this spending to finance the Indochinese wars For doing this, OPEC has been de- term they mean all government spending undertaken in the bookkeeping style of nounced by the American president as that is not spent on weapons, troops, the the company comptroller who finances the chief if not the sole cause of the infla- subsidization of big agriculture and of his second career at the fifty-dollar wintion now spreading pain and misery big industry, especially the arms indus- dow by juggling the books...
...It is true that The American Century seems to have come to an end in the minds and hearts of the Americans themselves after a remarkably short run--less than 35 years--as centuries go...
...plutonium than research fuel, and currently the Indians hold repository or the suitability of any (storage) site...
...Reactor fuel contains far more permit complete confidence in the safety of any...
...Although the plan does have a amount brought back in 1978 yielded over 1,300 pounds of certain moral appeal, it seems to overlook the fact that a enriched uranium...
...repository could be enlarged far beyond its present scope...
...nuclear supply program would be a high price to pay in order to keep the "free" world was designed to give "friendly" nations the help they needed safe for nuclear power, but the Carter administration seems to develop atomic power...
...OPEC obviCommonweal: 102 ously hasn't helped, but the conditions for the inflationary rocket ride were established to begin with by the financial rathole of military spending for the war...
...This is what we wanted and this is what we got...
...In view of the simultaneously expressed determination on all sides not to _join the war in Afghanistan ourselves, it does seem that the proposed new arms spending is purely symbolic...
...tries will reduc~ their interest in reprocessing, which can lead So far, only research fuel is being returned--the total to nuclear weapons production...
...The matter at issue is most of his fellow-citizens...
...Instead the U.S...
...The knowledge and technology base av- amounts of spent reactor fuel that the Indians are believed to be affable today," the study concluded, "is not.., sufficient to diverting to military use...
...All of this, as plain as the jump in prices at your local supermarket, is ignored by one and all, starting at the top, as having any connection at all with the inflation...
...What more can we ask...
...The more fuel it exported, the morewaste it Washington...
...The most important point, however, is that just as we turned West Germany and Japan into bastions of the free world and throbbing economic engines quite capable of overwhelming their creators, so we have done the same with the OPEC members of the Middle East division...
...Uniquely qualified...
...Suppose they had had to pay for that themselves,worse, to pay us...
...Again, no one wasted time explaining how such spending might have prevented the Soviet attack or what such new spending might accomplish that could not be accomplished by the enormous arms stockpile we already have...
...can't please no matter what you do blame for inflation on OPEC is thus that's government spending and that's and I'm sorry to say that right now evenly bipartisan and perhaps for that what has caused the i~lation...
...unaware of what the cargoes contain and are ill-equipped to If current plans are followed, the U.S...
...It's almost enough to shake your faith in the worthiness of the captains of corporate capitalism for those huge salaries, stock options, bonuses and perks they are said to "earn" by being so uniquely qualified to make so much profit for their corporations...
...on weapons development, the United States until recently has With suitable post-Harrisburg gravity, officials stress the never threatened to cancel its fuel arrangement for fear the safety precautions taken during shipping...
...But that should not obscure the triumphs of that bi-partisan foreign policy and of those triumphs OPEC is one of the finest, deserving to rank with the two previous and continuing stellar performances, those of West Germany and Japan...
...Yet from the time it went into the willing to pay it...
...That When it began in 1954, the U.S...
...This response is distressing not merely because it ignores the true cause of inflation and thus helps insure its flourishing continuance, but still more because it ignores the brilliant victory for American policy that OPEC and its steady tightening of the screws really represents...
...TRIUMPH don't spend ourselves silly on arms in the OR, I LOVE YOU A BARREL AND OPEC present, and the future will hardly be worth having unless most of it belongs to Big Ag and Big Biz...
...NegotiRecently that conclusion was drawn in a report by the White ations are now under way with India to persuade that country to House's own Office of Science and Technology that chal- abide by safeguard provisions of the Nuclear Nonlenged the feasibility of the government's entire waste man- Proliferation Treaty...
...Similarly, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan brought another soldiers' chorus demanding even higher arms spending...
...Of several minds: Frank Getlein try...
...But the administration appears determined reliable method of storing the material has yet to be found...
...Also being discussed is the return of large agement program...
...WILLIAM V. THOMAS uranium sales business, the United States has been painting (William V. Thomas writes for Congressional Quarterly in itself into a corner...
...group, a much less heard group and a OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum The exceptions are, in general, two...
...More fundamental, it was what Henry R. Luce had in mind--again, somewhat vaguely,when he invented and copyrighted The American Century...
...When it comes to giving an unemployed single mother T IHERv...
...No one has e~plained very closely exactly which arms it is that would have prevented such a seizure or, following it, have forced the would-be extortioners to let our people go unharmed...
...trators...
...9 And, on balance, or balance sheet, do better at it than such uniquely qualified wizards as the present Henry Ford and his former captaingeneral, Lee Iacocca...
...We have Americanized the Arab and Persian oil producers and Americanization was our goal...
...the American people seem to be out- reason has been accepted pretty much by The other exception is a much smaller standing examples...
...Under present agreements with Canada, Sweden, Japan, Certainly, the present limited buy-back operation has one Belgium, and South Africa, spent nuclear research fuel is worthy goal--to discourage the production of weapons-grade returned to the United States for storage and reprocessing into uranium...
...It is astonishing to me that neither Henry Kissinger nor Richard Nixon took credit for this in their respective accounts of how terrific they were in office...
...Perhaps even ahead of both for the simple reason that the elements of Americanization were already present in pre-free Germany and Japan, whereas for the Middle Eastern members of OPEC at least, the idea of an economy centered on either following the sheep and goats in their annual migrations, making glorious rugs on hand looms, and taking money from fbreign oil companies to give an air of legitimacy to whatever it was the foreign oil companies were doing with their funny towers unfit even to call a prayer from...
...Monthly shipments arrive in Norfolk, Baltimore nothing to prevent the stockpiling of necessary ingredients by and other eastern ports by commercial vessels and are trans- any government interested in building a nuclear arsenal...
...ported to the federal nuclear establishment at Savannah River, In spite of India's longstanding refusal to accept sanctions S.C...
...role as a waste handle an emergency should one occur...
...group, as it happens, that includes myExporting Countries which spends most The first and most noticeable is that self...
...We believe the inflation was caused of its organizational time jacking up its group of conservative Republicans and in the first instance indeed by governpetroleum prices one more notch in the Democrats who prefer to blame the infla- ment spending, but it was government rack...
...How come a crowd of erstwhile rug merchants and goat chasers can pick up the qualifications overnight...
...The thought is unworthy...
...However, despite Indians, who tested their first atomic bomb in 1974, will do such assurances, many of the localities through which the their shopping elsewhere...
Vol. 107 • February 1980 • No. 4
