Policy and Propaganda

...Writing from Washington, Brig...

...airline to employ a Negro stewardess...

...Tories & Tories American Tories who were cheered by the recent headline, "Tories Sweep Canadian Election," are poorly informed on politics across the border...

...tests four years ago...

...Military Minds at Work Cynics have long contended that there is nothing quite so demoralizing to the men in the Pentagon as the prospect that peace might break out one day...

...What makes this sort of thing hard to detect and expose is the fact that this measure, like so many other special interest tax bills, masqueraded as a "technical revision" of the revenue code too complex for people to understand...

...More than a year and a half ago, 18 airlines agreed with the New York State Commission not to practice discrimination, yet today there are 27 complaints against the airlines on the Commission's docket, 15 concerning stewardesses...

...The worst kind of demagoguery is developing on Algeria —the flag-waving kind, which brooks no interference with the line laid down by the military and the reactionaries...

...The likelihood of even this is slim, but the plaintiffs are determined to pursue every legal possibility in their effort to have their "day in court...

...A few more Rabbi Silvermans in the South and many more Jews might rise to the courage of their convictions...

...Snowballing Protest Public pressure aimed at stopping nuclear weapons testing has snowballed at home and abroad in recent weeks...

...If the Javits investigative proposal should catch on, it might show that Fascists fronts of the '50's are hazards to internal security much as Communists fronts were earlier...

...Publications are being suppressed, type smashed, and critics of French policy in Algeria harried in every way possible...

...A subscriber to The Progressive, a French scholar with exceptional opportunities to observe developments in his country, has written us that France today "reminds one of the darkest days of McCarthyism in America, so great is the terror generated by the frustrations of the war in Algeria...

...No public hearings were held on the bill, but the Justice Department opposed it on the grounds that it would weaken the enforcement of the anti-trust laws and the Treasury opposed it as giving undeserved "special tax relief...

...Orear reports that a chemical explosion of only one-thirtieth the size of the Nevada "baby" has been detected by seismograph at a distance of 240 miles: While theoretically nuclear explosions can be as small as firecrackers, it begins to look as if a scientifically sound detection system is not an impossibility at all, as Administration spokesmen have implied...

...The Federation of American Scientists, representing more than 2,000 scientists and engineers in all fields, has issued a strongly worded statement criticizing the AEC and scientists associated with the Administration (particularly Dr...

...It counter-proposed a Southern boycott of Jewish storekeepers because the Senator's speech was made at a B'nai B'rith meeting...

...The AEC said the information is classified for security purposes, but it has been learned that the Commission first planned to make the data public, and then changed its mind to avoid comparison with radioactivity released by the U.S...

...Good News The Internal Revenue Service is not a cheerful place for most citizens, but it came up with some good news recently...

...In hearings before the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, AEC Commissioner Dr...

...We are a sick people, divided, confused, embittered, and frustrated...

...religious leader Toyohiko Kagawa of Japan...

...It sheds a good deal of light—and hope—on one of the greatest clouds of uncertainty in the bomb test ban debate: can violations of a ban be effectively detected...

...Piercing the Racial Curtain The eagerness of the airlines to break the sound barrier in the quest for speed and more speed has been matched only by its reluctance to break the racial barrier among the personnel who man the planes aloft...

...Jay Orear of Columbia University's physics department has published (in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) the results of an objective, non-governmental study of the detec-tability of nuclear tests—probably the first attempt to discuss this problem publicly from a scientific viewpoint...

...But the evidence is mounting that underground explosions are as susceptible to detection as those above ground and that a system of monitoring a test ban could be devised that would be practically air-tight scientifically, and well within the realm of political possibility...

...Either conclusion would be distressing to me as one who believes in the democratic process, because it would mean that we are imitating authoritarian practices, which I abhor...

...Russell said he was "outraged...

...But the House Ways and Means Committee was not impressed...

...It was April 9—seven weeks afterward—before our State Department replied, and then all it could say after seven weeks was it had had some doubt as to "the precise interpretation to be placed on the Communist proposals...

...Answer: the Pentagon crowd "simply does not like to believe such reductions have been made [because] it destroys the argument for large American armed forces...

...Such an expose of organized racism by the Internal Security Subcommittee is highly unlikely, however...

...More recently, Senator Hubert Humphrey, Minnesota Democrat, has charged the AEC with suppressing alarming facts about radioactivity resulting from the latest Russian bomb test series for propaganda reasons— to play down the danger of fallout...

...The AEC position, and that of the Administration's principal spokesman in this field, Dr...

...The analysis centers on the AEC's handling of information concerning radioactive strontium 90 and the genetic effects of fallout...

...Quoting directly from AEC reports, it demonstrates that the Commission has consistently minimized-—or even ignored, at least publicly—fallout hazards...

...The FAS cites a convincingly documented analysis of the AEC's "optimistic interpretation" of fallout data released by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy...

...The utilities, of course, are furious...

...The scientists state flatly that "the information given to the public by the AEC regarding the hazards of radioactive fallout has on some occasions been incomplete and, by omission or emphasis, misleading...

...On the record, the AEC has been grossly derelict in fulfilling its responsibility of accurately informing the American people so that they may exercise their right to determine the appropriate solutions to the gigantic problems of health and peace posed by the nuclear age...

...Maurice B. Visscher, head of the University of Minnesota medical school's physiology department and a member of the Minnesota Governor's Committee on Atomic Energy, stated the case against AEC policy clearly and concisely as a scienttist and a citizen: "Right now the most extensive data on strontium 90 in milk in the United States are in the hands of the U.S...

...it voted approval of the bill...

...Because it was buried, it produced no light, no fallout, and no measurable sound waves...

...The AEC Gets Caught Much of the deceptiveness—mainly by omission of information—of the AEC's reports on fallout is beyond the understanding of laymen because of their highly technical nature, but the most unscientific mind could appreciate the glaring omission of fact in the Commission's March 6 report on the detection of the underground Nevada test of September 1957...

...The suit, moreover, could conceivably serve another purpose...

...Orear concludes that 25 or so monitoring stations within the U.S.S.R., plus a similar density of stations in other bomb testing areas, could detect any explosion, in the air or under the ground...

...The AEC and the Law The AEC was under international attack on another front last month when sixteen citizens of the United States and a half dozen other countries filed suit in the federal district court in Washington asking for an injunction requiring a halt to the explosion of nuclear bombs producing fallout...

...They were mistaken...

...nations that had fought in Korea proposing that both sides now withdraw their military forces from Korea and that there be elections in that unhappy country supervised by a commission of "neutral" nations...

...Senator Estes Kefauver, Tennessee Democrat, had complained that the millions of dollars the utilities were pouring into propaganda advertisements were charged off as "business expenses," which means that they were entitled to a 52 per cent deduction...

...The Senate Subcommittee might start, for instance, with the Citizens Councils of Alabama, whose literature also carries the imprimatur of the National Renaissance Party, an avowedly Fascist organization...

...You can develop a system which is good enough...

...The Atomic Energy Commission is required by law to safeguard the public from radiation that might result from nuclear energy activities...

...Ret...

...Orear's data was based in part on the AEC report limiting detection of the Nevada test to 250 miles...

...Nuclear explosions can be detected by delicate instruments at great distances by sound waves, light, radioactive particles carried by the atmosphere (fallout), and seismic waves traveling through the earth...

...Edward Teller, has been that a test ban would be useless, as tests could be continued by the Russians in secret by exploding bombs underground...

...The original AEC report, by omission of the truth, tended to bolster this view...

...Rabbi Silverman practices what he preaches...

...Rabbi Silverman emphasized that when the rabble-rousing segregationist, John Kasper, arrived in Nashville, anti-Semitic literature and threats became "so inflammatory and so dangerous that we were compelled to keep guards on the premises of our temple at night because of the possibility that this House of God might be dynamited...

...In view of Little Rock and similar developments, Javits thought they might...

...To withhold them from the public means one of two things, either that our Washington administrators do not trust our intelligence, or that they hope to control opinion by monopolizing information...

...The Hilton name appeared nowhere in the bill, but its sole purpose is to exempt the nation's largest hotel chain from capital gains taxes on profits from the sale of several hotels the government forced the corporation to sell through a civil anti-trust action...

...integration since the Supreme Court decisions...

...The clamor has been fed by deepening alarm over a sharp increase in radioactive fallout attributed to the recently concluded Russian series of tests, the Russian offer to cease testing if the United States and England follow suit, the approaching U.S...

...Jews in the South Most Jews in the South have been something less than heroic in the role they have played in the struggle over segregation vs...

...Willard F. Libby, testifying before the Joint Committee, admitted, "On the technical matter of whether you could develop a system to enforce a test ban, I think you could do this...

...During every one of those precious days Soviet propaganda was beamed around the world telling people everywhere the Russians were seeking peace while the United States was silent...

...France Against Herself The endless war against the Algerian rebels is taking a frightful toll in France, not only in military casualties and economic waste, but in social and spiritual values as well...

...Instead, it has arrogantly pursued its own bias by concealing facts, confusing scientific evidence, and screening information to bolster its own policy decisions...

...A two-way lack of confidence of this kind can prove lethal to the democratic process...

...Now is such a time...

...Thomas R. Phillips, U.S.A...

...Few if any of our Republicans, even those who like to think of themselves as "modern Republicans," would tolerate for a moment the program on which Diefenbaker and his associates swept to office...

...But why the dismay...

...If we are to be true to our heritage of prophetic Judaism, then not only we in Nashville, but every congregation must stand and be counted . . . There is a time when silence is cowardly...

...The suit is based on a variety of charges: that the AEC is exceeding its authority, that Congress exceeded its authority in delegating power without limits to the AEC, that nuclear bomb explosion violates the "general welfare" provision of the Constitution, and that the Atomic Energy Act is unconstitutional...

...In the words of Congress Weekly, a Jewish publication, "a number of Jews, despite their sympathy with desegregation, have thought it prudent to maintain silence about the issue and not risk the possible loss of social and economic status...

...A while ago he invited a Negro to occupy his pulpit and followed this with an invitation to the entire Negro community of Nashville to join in prayer with members of his congregation...

...Legal observers pretty much agree that the lawsuit hasn't a chance of success in a strictly legal sense, but the rather bizarre approach has provided the kind of dramatic action necessary to crystallize the growing but generally unorganized anti-bomb sentiment...

...But there's been little other reaction since then, although a slight flurry of embarrassment was recorded on Capitol Hill in January...

...Kathleen Lonsdale, England, and Andre Trocme, France...

...Peace is in the minds of all the protesters, but their immediate concerns lie mainly in two controversial areas: the threat to health and heredity from radioactive fallout, and the feasibility of detecting violations of a nuclear bomb test ban agreement...

...In the United States, the legal action is directed against the commissioners of the AEC and the Secretary of Defense...

...From now on, Russell V. Harrington, commissioner of internal revenue, has ruled, the power trust will have to pay for its own propaganda advertisements which blast public power developments like the TVA, instead of charging 52 per cent of the cost to the taxpayers...

...It would seem that a public agency that lacks confidence in the people who created it can hardly expect to enjoy theirs...

...The Progressive Conservatives, for example, are committed to continuing nationalization of the railroads, shipping, and radio, and they advocated extension of government intervention in agriculture, water power development, and fisheries...

...The facts in question have no conceivable military significance...

...It was Dec...

...The smile of an airline hostess is often a foreign visitor's first impression of America...

...It should be noted that Dr...

...Nor has TWA been the only offender...

...The nation is bitterly divided, its government all but paralyzed, and its spirit at the lowest ebb since capitulation to the Nazis more than a decade and a half ago...

...The Nevada underground bomb was a "baby"—only one-tenth the size of the Hiroshima blast, and only about one ten-thousandth the power of an H-bomb...

...military analyst for the St...

...In fact, we get the impression from reading the Progressive Conservative program that many Democrats at home would find the Canadian Tories' program far too radical for them...

...It has a serious responsibility in making available complete scientific data on which matters of such broad public policy as stopping bomb tests can be intelligently based...

...The truth has now come to light: the test has been recorded at many stations throughout the country, and even in Alaska, 2,320 miles away...

...Brock Chisholm, Canada, former head of the World Health Organization...

...It is a more difficult job than some people have indicated . . ." But it has never been either a scientific or an American tradition to back away from a job because it is difficult...

...The only hope, writes the French professor, is a negotiated settlement with the Algerians, but "the prospect for such an agreement is so bleak now that few entertain such thoughts any longer...

...Edward Teller) for concealing and distorting information on both counts—fallout and test detection—to attract public support for the AEC's "bias in favor of continuing nuclear weapons tests...

...Only under the pressure of outside scrutiny, attack, and contrary scientific testimony has the AEC reluctantly released vital information, acknowledged widely accepted scientific evidence, and backed down step by step from its position that fallout presented no genetic threat, and strontium 90 (a major element of fallout) no danger to health...

...But whatever the specific legal charges, the overall aim of the suit is concerned with—and restricted to—preventing any more radioactive fallout...

...The significance of the information goes far beyond its scientific interest...

...The Seaboard White Citizens Council was found to be mailing literature about "the Jewish-Communist conspiracy behind racial integration," using envelopes franked by Senator Richard B. Russell, Georgia Democrat, which he had supplied to the Committee for Constitutional Government...

...Evasion Jack Steele of the Scripps-Howard newspapers deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his superb series of articles exposing the multiplicity of means by which Americans evade taxes...

...Willard F. Libby attributed the "oversight" to an "inadvertent" error, but he failed to convince many newsmen who have been exposed first-hand to the AEC's slippery publicity methods...

...the Soviets have a chronic habit of making unsubstantiated claims...

...The AEC stated then that the explosion was detected by seismograph within a radius of 250 miles—implying that this was as far as the shock waves could be recorded...

...Ninety of the 250 ministers who attended were Negroes...

...Subsequently Rabbi Silverman arranged for the sisterhood of his synagogue to conduct a non-segregated Passover institute for the Christian clergy...

...Our hunch is that the plaintiffs would consider the legal action a great success if it succeeded in flushing the AEC from behind its barricade of secrecy, and forced the Commission to disclose the facts about fallout...

...Harrington ordered a study made, as a result of which he has now ruled "Not to allow deductions of expenditures where the facts indicate they were incurred primarily for lobbying purposes, for promotion or defeat of legislation, for a political purpose, or for propaganda...

...Conditions are deteriorating daily, our French friend writes, "and if I dare not predict an outright military-fascist adventure, which of course would be followed by either a civil war or a Communist-led regime, it is simply because there is too much chaos and confusion to permit an accurate forecast...

...The State Department took 32 days to draft the President's reply...

...Furthermore, even Dr...

...10, 1957, that the then Premier Bulganin first wrote President Eisenhower calling for a summit conference...

...Fascist Stirrings Senator Jacob K. Javits, New York Republican, has aroused scarcely a flicker of Congressional interest in his proposal—advanced in a speech last October—that the Senate Judiciary Internal Security Subcommittee investigate racist Citizens Councils to see if they harbor any "elements or activities" which could be identified as "totalitarian, Fascist, Communist, or subversive...

...But a small break came recently when little Mohawk airlines, which operates in the northeastern part of the country, became the first U.S...

...he did not have available the correction lengthening the detection range ten-fold...

...Similar suits are planned in the other two nuclear nations, the Soviet Union and Great Britain...

...Something resembling a bit of confirmation turned up recently...

...This evaluation was criticized at the time by geneticists, the subject aired by the National Academy of Sciences, and testimony refuting the AEC position presented at the Joint Atomic Energy Committee hearings in June 1957...

...John Diefenbaker's victorious party, whose unprecedented landslide triumph won 209 of the 265 seats in Commons, is called the Progressive Conservative Party, but the emphasis is largely on Progressive...

...The Wall Street Journal gloomily observed that the Diefenbaker regime "gives every indication of extending markedly the intervention of government into Canada's private enterprise...

...One of the most notable is Rabbi William B. Silverman of Nashville who pointed out recently that "some Jews in Nashville deluded themselves into thinking that if we were ideologically neutral and morally quiescent, we would escape the vilification of the hatemongers...

...The brightness of the announcement was only slightly dulled by the fact that it came on the eve of a public hearing scheduled by the New York State Commission Against Discrimination on charges that the prospective stewardess had been refused employment because of her color...

...Louis Post-Dispatch, reported that the recent Soviet announcement of a new reduction-of 300,000 men in its armed forces was received in the Pentagon "by some with doubt, and by others with dismay...

...More and more rabbis, however, are challenging this contemptible passivity on the part of Southern Jews...

...yet it was recorded 2,320 miles away by seismograph...

...And like so many others, Steele warns, it may drive a loophole in the tax laws through which many companies that violate the anti-trust laws can escape along with millions of dollars in taxes...

...Now a large hole has been punched through the racial curtain by giant Trans World Airlines with the announcement that within a few weeks a Negro stewardess will be hired, and that "a gradual system of racial integration" will be followed in the future in TWA's employment policies...

...They are important only as background information for policy decisions...

...Some months ago, Representative Noah M. Mason, an impeccably reactionary Republican from Illinois, brought to the House Ways and Means Committee a bill with the tongue-twisting title, "Extension of Involuntary Conversion Tax Treatment to Certain Dispositions under the Anti-Trust Laws...

...The Shadow of Doubt The smokescreen of secrecy thrown out by the AEC is now casting a lengthening shadow of doubt on the integrity of what is probably the most powerful public body in our country...

...Atomic Energy Commission...

...They favored broadening social security— they have already increased old age pensions from $46 to $55 per month —and they emphasized in their campaigning a determination to embark on what in the United States would be the equivalent of a $10 billion public works program to combat the recession...

...The doubts are understandable...

...Seismic waves show promise of being the most dependable method of detecting underground explosions in the "low yield," or "baby" bomb, range of nuclear explosion...

...The end of the decline is not yet in sight...

...test series in the South Pacific, and mounting evidence that the Atomic Energy Commission has been something less than truthful in reporting scientific evidence on which the people of the United States can base an intelligent and well-informed nuclear policy...

...On March 6 I was shown these data, which are marked 'For Official Use,' and I am therefore now not privileged to disclose the facts...

...In January 1953, the Commission assured the world that "fallout radioactivity is far below the level which would cause a detectable increase in mutations, or inheritable variations...

...In October, the AEC report indicated a radical change of attitude: "The ultimate world-wide increase of defective children (from fallout of tests already completed) is 2,500 to 13,000 per year...

...TWA's leadership in breaking the airlines' racial barrier is of special significance, for its flying employees serve the needs of thousands of people from every country in the world on extensive international air routes...

...Senator Kefauver and Harrington deserve a vote of thanks for teaming up to keep the overburdened taxpayer from financing so large a part of out-and-out utility propaganda...

...To criticize official policy in Algeria is to risk being called a traitor...

...A dramatic example of AEC backtracking is the comparison between a statement in its 1953 report and one in its 1957 report...

...There was immediate response from such segregationist organs as the Time-format Virginian...

...Our own State Department has a way of helping at times, especially when it permits the Russians to occupy the world stage without challenge for weeks at a time...

...Plaintiffs in the three suits include Norman Thomas, Clarence Pickett, scientists Linus Pauling and Karl Link, all of the United States...

...It was late in February that Chinese Communist Premier Chou En-lai wrote the 16 U.N...

...There is a time when our faith must commit us to moral action...

...The Citizens Councils have no more ardent fellow-traveler than Subcommittee Chairman James O. Eastland, Mississippi Democrat...

...Rabbi Silverman has challenged the "silence policy" as inconsistent with Judaism...

...One of the most effective methods is to get a special law passed giving you an exclusive deduction, but you have to be big and powerful and influential —like the Hilton Hotel chain, for example...