NOTES IN THE NEWS
NOTES in the NEWS Overkill Surely one of the supreme idiocies of the nuclear age is the military drive to produce more and more deadly weapons when both the United States and the Soviet Union...
...Addition to overkill is no gain...
...military has swallowed up more than half the nation's scientists and engineers...
...There seems to be no question in the mind of the U.S...
...Not only the increase in births but the lower death rates brought about by malaria control and other health measures have contributed to a radical expansion of populations in these areas...
...The worldwide increase in 1963 will approximate the total population of France...
...It also indicated a change from the government's passive position as of last December when the United States said, before the United Nations, that it would not advocate any birth control measures but would help other countries, on request, to find sources of information and assistance with their population problems...
...Even at that, Marquis Childs commented that the Melman proposal is "such a shocking and radical heresy it had all the violent impact of a feather falling on velvet...
...Were you aware that the nation is now an iron dictatorship, with William C. Foster, director of the Disarmament and Arms Control Agency, in complete command, subject to no person and no law...
...Would it disturb you to learn that Foster has given five nuclear, Polaris-equipped submarines to the United Nations...
...Common sense dictates that obliterating a nation once is quite sufficient...
...It is available from Lee Offset, Inc...
...The I.R.S...
...As long as the program exists, however, it will continue to have adverse effects on the already substandard conditions of American farm workers...
...The old argument was that we had to "plow more and more" into the military to "catch up" or "keep ahead" of the Soviets...
...There is a strong temptation to dismiss the dispensers of fantastic tales and irrational assertions as mere cranks...
...It was a picture of the Easter ban-the-bomb march passing the wall of Windsor Castle...
...If that rate of growth had prevailed from the time of Christ, there would now be 100 persons on each square foot of the earth's surface...
...Humphrey thinks there is a direct correlation between economic growth and military dominance...
...In countries enjoying rapid economic growth, like Germany and Japan, the corresponding military research figure is only fifteen per cent...
...We Don't Want to Interfere with The Legislative Branch of Government" Court in Washington, D.C., in an effort to force the issuance of the passport through a legal test of the law...
...The Academy warned: "It is an international problem from which no one can escape...
...But long before a century rolls by, as soon as a dozen years from now, our population experts warn us, the pressures of unchecked population will be felt in terms of increasing starvation and misery in many lands, in bitter upheavals and bloody suppressions within nations, and possibly in wars for food and lifegiving territory...
...Does the Internal Revenue Service intend to take a new look at the tax-exempt status of Catholic churches now that it realizes they are working for peace under the leadership of one of the greatest Popes in history...
...It is managed by the newspapers...
...About one million dollars of the new fund will go to Population Council, Inc., to assist in expanded research requested by Pakistan...
...reasons for its ruling was correct...
...Whatever "the" Communists are for, we are against...
...Four columns, top of Page 3 in The New York Times...
...But the practical American often responds to the rustle of a dollar when even the din of Armageddon fails to stir him...
...Four million came from government agencies and the rest from private organizations...
...Within days after the Academy released its report, as a policy statement which it said was intended to stimulate "thought and action," these events took place: II President Kennedy agreed at his press conference that the U. S. government "certainly could support" increased research in fertility and human reproduction and programs to make the results "more available to the world so that everyone can make their own judgment...
...Peace and Religion The ruling of the Internal Revenue Service revoking the tax-exempt status of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which we criticized sharply in this space last month ("The Judgment of Caesar"), has not yet, unfortunately, become a matter of concern to enough people...
...In the thousand-word dispatch which accompanied the photograph—from AP, Reuters, and The Times' own correspondent— there was no mention of Communists or Communism...
...Kuchel told his colleagues how he at first responded to the writers of "fright mail" by answering calmly that "they were victims of misinformation," and then providing the facts...
...The ruling, he insisted, "must not be allowed to stand as the stated policy of the U.S...
...an "overkill" capacity of tens or hundreds of times becomes an absurd redundancy...
...With more mouths to feed each day, neither improved agriculture nor U. S. assistance seem able to meet the increase in subsistence needs from year to year...
...Theophrastus Such The Frightened Did you know that the United Nations is training as guerrilla warriors 16,000 "pagan, ruthless, brutal, godless savages . . . complete with nose and ear rings"—some of them cannibals—in the swamps of Georgia...
...More leaflets in return, even wilder than the first batch . . . [letters] stating that they do not believe me . . . sometimes they darkly insinuate that treason has prompted the reply . . . Treason . . . not always scrawled illiterately on a scrap of paper bag, but often typed meticulously on embossed paper...
...The leafllets emanate from members of scores of the hate groups, such as the late Gerald L. K. Smith's followers...
...Furthermore, the U.S...
...This was the urgent theme emphasized during the past month by a number of qualified authorities...
...It seemed like a good question...
...But both sides have now acquired such an enormous overkill capacity that the military can increase its effective offensive no further...
...This affidavit requires me to do his work at my own expense...
...The story was circulated by a Theodore Jackman of Greenville, South Carolina—and thousands of people believed it...
...He said that the United States should, without delay, start a sort of Manhattan Project for the control of human fertility, as it once showed its ability to move quickly to develop the first atomic bomb during World War II...
...Rock's book, his bishop, Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston, disagreed that the Church is likely to accept an oral contraceptive...
...It read: "Young Communist League...
...I have never taken a test oath and I never will," said Mayer...
...Among the unanswered questions he had directed to the Commissioner, Nelson informed the Senate, was this one: "Exactly how did the Internal Revenue Service determine that world peace could be secured only through legislation, and could you give me an example of the legislation needed to bring this about...
...In commenting on Dr...
...Whatever they do (no matter who else does it) is wicked...
...The population explosion is greatest in the underdeveloped countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, where millions already go to bed hungry...
...Nevertheless, Mayer is determined to carry the case to the U. S. Supreme Court if necessary...
...In it he contends that an unhampered national medical research establishment is the practical approach to the settlement of religious doctrinal differences on family planning and world population growth...
...The press doesn't lie," said Heywood Broun, "it just throws half the truth in the waste-basket...
...Lest anyone conclude that this is a pacifist plot, it should be pointed out that Melman supports a military budget of the substantial sum of $34 billion, which is enough to maintain our already enormous overkill capacity...
...II The Ford Foundation announced grants of $2,856,200 for training and research programs in family planning and reproductive biology here and abroad, a substantial increase in its aid to this field...
...He made it clear that this is his private view, not an official Catholic position...
...Who Manages the News...
...The Internal Revenue Service had ruled that F.O.R...
...Melman's group cites no less an authority than Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to buttress its claims: "We calculate," said McNamara in January, "that our forces today could still destroy the Soviet Union without any help from the deployed tactical air units, or carrier task forces, or Thor or Jupiter intermediate range ballistic missiles...
...This year alone China's population will increase by fourteen million, India's by nine million, the United States' by Justus in The Minneapolis Star A New "Bomb...
...Senator Nelson has performed a great public service in dramatizing the issue...
...The refusal to issue me a new passport," Mayer told the State Department, "would constitute an extremely heavy punishment inasmuch as I am contractually obligated to three publishers and two church organizations to carry out assignments in Europe...
...An April 15, 1963, an AP wirephoto from England was published in a prominent position in the American press...
...As a result, the number of braceros contracted for has dropped sharply— thirty-eight per cent in one year— and the proportion of American farmers using them has shrunk to less than one per cent...
...Commissioner Mortimer M. Caplin on March 11, raising certain questions about the ruling, summing up the reasons given by the Service, and expressing "serious alarm...
...The effects of the law, originally intended as a temporary emergency measure to ease the wartime labor shortage, have been to deprive American farm workers of job opportunities and to depress wage levels...
...His fight for the basic principle involved is all the more noteworthy because, as he told the Senate, "There are probably many issues on which [the F.O.R.] and I would strongly disagree...
...government...
...Destructive capability," observed Melman, "having already gone far beyond the overkill mark, calls for no further improvement on military grounds...
...The Melman report develops many more aspects of our overkill military policy—including its effects on foreign aid, development in the underdeveloped countries, and the "gold-flow" problem—and makes a series of concrete proposals to divert its recommended $22 billion defense budget cut into constructive and productive sectors of the economy...
...Fortunately, Milton Mayer was looking on this occasion, and his challenge should have the support of every American concerned with freedom...
...Public Law 78 is now scheduled to expire at the end of 1963...
...One of the key figures in development of the first effective birth control pill, Dr...
...Rock's "many cogent arguments for the formation of a public policy on birth control," and for having "rightly criticized the excesses to which some Catholics have gone in this matter...
...The multiplication of overkill capability, although without military meaning, can be understood as one aspect of a technological race that is run for its own sake in the spirit of an international sporting event...
...The Senator then quoted the I.R.S...
...In a series of papers published under the title, "A Strategy for American Security: An Alternative to the 1964 Military Budget," the professors point out that even by the most conservative estimates, "For the 140 major cities of the Soviet Union, the U.S...
...The Academy called for the development of new methods of fertility regulation and "implementing programs of voluntary planning widely and rapidly throughout the world...
...For all our expensive exploration of space, the earth is still the only planet which homo sapiens can call his own...
...But one of those deeply concerned from the outset is Wisconsin's freshman Democratic Senator, Gaylord Nelson, who recently raised the issue for the first time on the floor of the U.S...
...Senator Kuchel is convinced, too, that his "fright mail" betrays an emotional illness...
...ruling against F.O.R., said Senator Nelson, "obviously was written by someone who knew nothing about religion and also knew nothing about peace...
...By other estimates, the United States could wipe out Russian cities as many as 1,250 times...
...Describing the F.O.R...
...John Rock of Harvard, a world-renowned authority on human fertility, said that population growth is an immediate menace, calling for U.S...
...And that, my children, is how the news is managed...
...He praised the book, however, for Dr...
...It declared that the United States should join actively in fostering international cooperation in "studies concerned with voluntary fertility regulation and family planning," through the United Nations when possible...
...The tall tale about the cannibals in Georgia is just one of scores of grotesque fantasies that have duped tens of thousands of seemingly rational citizens...
...Neither we nor you are likely to be shocked by these revelations because there is no danger of our swallowing such hysterical humbug...
...I would guess every Senator would want to be a co-sponsor...
...It wasn't...
...At the time of his speech (May 13) he had received no answer from the Commissioner, only confirmation from a subordinate that the Senator's summary of I.R.S...
...Man's Only Planet The worldwide population explosion is running out of control...
...the Senator asked...
...That nation intends to spend $6.5 million on family planning by 1965 and to open 3,000 birth control clinics...
...They are being prepared to take over the United States...
...And, while other banners and placards were discernible among the marchers, the only one which was legible in any degree, and this one was brilliantly legible, was the one "in front...
...Tax-exempt status presently is accorded to many militant Right-wing organizations...
...Or did you know that there are tens of thousands of Communist Chinese soldiers poised on the Mexican border, preparing to attack California...
...Appeals to reason and morality have not noticeably succeeded in slowing the arms race...
...ruling, which leveled this "charge" at the F.O.R.: "We believe it is clear that your principal purpose is the prevention of war and the abolition of armaments, particularly nuclear weapons...
...government that such organizations are truly religious...
...four million...
...for removing its tax exemption, which had stood unchallenged since 1926, "are absolute nonsense" that pose "a serious threat to religious organizations in America" and "undermine the entire philosophy of this nation's quest for peace...
...What is required at this critical stage is a massive attack on Public Law 78 that will give Congress—particularly the House Agriculture Committee—the impetus to let the law expire at long last...
...Mayer, who now does much of his good works abroad and for whom a passport is one of the necessities of life, was unable to persuade the State Department to renew his passport, which expired in March, without signing the required oath...
...three columns, top of Page 9, in The San Francisco Chronicle...
...What was the result...
...Nearly all of this pitifully small amount, which would be considered a modest figure for a rocket research contract for improvement of a single type of missile, came from United States sources...
...Senator Hubert Humphrey asked, "What is happening to our civilian economy as we plow more and more of our scientific personnel, our brains, into the military and into space and into atomic energy for military purposes...
...is an "action organization" subject to tax and contributions to it are not tax-deductible...
...The United States spends ten per cent of its gross national product for military purposes—more than twice the amount paid out by our allies in the Common Market...
...If the tide of births is not checked, the three billion world population of today will have grown to twenty-five billions a century from now...
...The logical conclusion drawn from these undisputed facts is that it is time—past time—to call a halt to senselessly building our nuclear stockpiles still higher...
...An even more important factor in the drive to get rid of the bracero program is the stricter enforcement of minimum wage provisions by the U. S. Department of Labor...
...One reason, unhappily, is that the condition of the American farm worker has deteriorated alarmingly and shows little hope of improving...
...If we can spend billions on a flight to the moon, which may never be habitable, we should be able to spend the $20 millions a year proposed by the National Academy for the birth control research needed for any plan to keep this earth habitable...
...Either the birth rate of the world must come down or the death rate must go back up...
...With Senator Kuchel, we believe the best antidote is not to shrug a shoulder but to counterattack with constant and extensive exposure of their preposterous tales and demands...
...Senator Thomas H. Kuchel, California Republican, revealed his growing concern in a recent Senate speech that The Washington Post said "lit up the sky...
...In contrast, the Common Market invests twice the U.S...
...Nor will logic alone bring the program to an end...
...This position contrasted sharply with President Eisenhower's declaration in 1959 that he could not imagine "anything more emphatically" not the business of government than birth control...
...An educators' study group led by Seymour Melman, professor of industrial and management engineering at Columbia University, has launched an attack on this absurdity...
...Kuchel, representing the most populous state in the union, and one which harbors an exceptionally large proportion of people who are as far out as the state is far west, receives 60,000 letters a month...
...As an alternative to continuing this gruesome and irrational "sporting event," Melman's team recommends slashing the military budget $22 billion...
...Thus, ruled I.R.S., the F.O.R...
...The full report is brief, clear, concise—and recommended...
...Yet there is a gradually growing suspicion that much of our huge defense budget is not only militarily unnecessary, but is a serious drag on our domestic economy and on our competitive position in the world...
...Mayer's fight, on behalf of all of us, may exact a painful personal toll...
...But it is sobering to learn that not only a few wild-eyed crackpots believe this stuff, but tens of thousands of American citizens from all walks of life have implicit faith in such nonsense...
...He then filed suit in the Federal District Herblock in The Washington Post "We're in Complete Accord with the President...
...The Senator continued with devastating simplicity: "I received no answer...
...mobilization of world science to control it...
...It is a historic instrument of tyranny for the reduction of free men to servility...
...Specifically, he urged the establishment of at least ten Federally-financed research centers to study human reproduction...
...The price is fifty cents a copy...
...Dr...
...the dinosaur economic and political organizations, among them the National Economic Council, the John Birch Society, and the U. S. Flag Committee...
...Mayer Fights for Freedom The irrepressible Milton Mayer, whose controversial essays have livened the pages of The Progressive for a generation and whose running battles with the Federal income tax collector on the war issue have stretched over a decade, has now challenged the constitutionality of the non-Communist affidavit which the State Department requires for the issuance or renewal of a passport...
...It constitutes one more chapter in the struggle to preserve our civil liberties that has marked the postwar years...
...Rock believes that oral contraceptives can be considered, scientifically, a natural rather than purely artificial contraceptive method...
...Liberty," he observed, "goes down the drain, little by little, while nobody is looking...
...proportion in productive machinery and equipment...
...On the global problem of population control, second in urgency only to the threat of nuclear war, all the nations of the world and all private sources combined, managed to scratch up six million dollars for research in 1962...
...Army maneuvers to which 124 foreign military observers were invited, all representing close allies...
...I want to be a co-sponsor...
...Research in India in reproductive biology also will be aided by Ford grants...
...This particular fiction grew out of a series of U.S...
...But the strength of the attacks on the United Nations, on foreign aid, and on the Supreme Court reveals what a grave problem these paranoic crackpots are...
...as "an old, established peace group," the Senator charged that the reasons cited by the I.R.S...
...Confucius say—remember, he was a mainland Chinese—that one picture tells more than a thousand words...
...The Soviet Union, for its part, "could deliver about 2.9 megatons per 100,000 [U.S.] city people—an overkill factor of 145 times...
...and from some respectable sounding groups, such as the United Societies of Methodist Laymen, which seem pathologically convinced that treason is rampant and the nation is about to fall to Communism...
...Senator Nelson quoted from the I.R.S...
...Other than the search for lasting peace, no other problem is more urgent...
...the Melman group concurs, and provides a wealth of economic evidence to support this proposition...
...The photograph appeared to be the vanguard of the march...
...Ten per cent of these, the Senator estimated—and other Senators have the same experience—are what he terms "fright mail" — letters, frequently with printed leaflets enclosed, imploring him to put an end to threatening fantasies, to pull the United States out of the United Nations, to stop all foreign aid, to clean the "traitors" out of the Administration, Congress, the courts, and the armed services— and repeal the income tax...
...Senator Nelson called his colleagues' attention to the fact that many groups are still tax-exempt— "groups whose principal activity is to campaign for more militant and aggressive actions by the United States in foreign affairs...
...to be prepared to do it twice might conceivably be justified militarily as insurance...
...was not eligible for the tax-exempt status of a religious or charitable organization because its purposes—anti-militarism, peace, and international reconciliation—are not religious or charitable purposes, and because peace is a goal which can be reached only through legislation...
...NOTES in the NEWS Overkill Surely one of the supreme idiocies of the nuclear age is the military drive to produce more and more deadly weapons when both the United States and the Soviet Union already have enough to kill each other off tens or even hundreds of times over...
...This year, however, for the first time, there seem to be grounds for genuine hope that it will be allowed to die...
...overkill capacity is seventy-eight times, even allowing for a fifty per cent attrition of carriers...
...In his suit Mayer contends that the oath requirement violates his right to freedom of assembly, of the press, and of religion, and that the State Department "does not know, or have reason to believe, that I am a member of any [subversive] organization . . ." Furthermore, Mayer added wryly, "I pay J. Edgar Hoover a salary to determine whether or not I am a Communist...
...verdict: "We do not conclude that your purposes are religious...
...Dept...
...Hope for Farm Workers Ever since the end of the Korean war, members of Congress and citizens concerned with the worsening plight of the American farm worker have sought the repeal of Public Law 78, under which Mexican workers— braceros—are imported for farm labor...
...Whatever they support, they control...
...Said the Senator: "What a shocking contrast this bureaucratic dialogue makes with the great new peace encyclical of Pope John XXIII—a document which reaffirms for all the world the essentially religious nature of mankind's everlasting quest for peace...
...Senate...
...In its recently released "Report To The People," the country's most distinguished scientific body, the National Academy of Sciences, pointed out that this growth, "out of proportion to present and prospective rates" of economic growth, "imposes a heavy burden on all efforts to improve human welfare...
...If the Internal Revenue Service has a bill which can be passed that will legislate world peace, I want to see it...
...For the third straight year, employment of seasonal workers and average annual earnings have declined...
...Between now and the year 2,000, world population will soar from the present three billion to six billion...
...Senator Humphrey pointed out recently that in slow-growth nations like the United States and England, more than sixty per cent of all research and development is government-sponsored —most of it military- or space-related...
...The global growth of population is accelerating more rapidly than the production of food or other resources needed to sustain human life...
...But he heatedly blamed, also, "the unadulterated venom spewed by out-and-out crackpots for paranoia and profit...
...Senator Nelson informed the Senate that he had written I.R.S...
...Mayer's suit is the first legal challenge of the oath, which the State Department incorporated in its passport application form a year ago...
...Yet each time the program has been scheduled to end, it has been extended in response to pressures from the powerful commercial farm lobby...
...ST), 48 East 21st Street, New York 10, New York...
...Rock is the author of a remarkable book, The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor's Proposals to End the Battle Over Birth Control...
Vol. 27 • June 1963 • No. 6
