NOTES IN THE NEWS
Rushing toward Armageddon When South Vietnam's Premier Ky proposed an American invasion of North Vietnam, it was generally expected that the Administration would promptly disavow any idea of...
...A Congressional committee which surveyed the decade 1951-1961 found 3,404 mergers and acquisitions by the top 500 corporations—an average of seven each...
...The Ford Foundation sees no conflict with COMSAT, as its plan is domestic while COMSAT is international, and points out that the loss of commerical television revenue to the common carriers would be "less than one per cent of a business which grows by more than that in every season of the year...
...Time and again Saigon has launched programs for the social and economic betterment of the villages—always with enthusiastic American support...
...After ten days of the barrage, Secretary Rusk held a press conference at which he discussed the invasion possibility...
...Senator Long cited other examples of staggering price variations between drugs sold under generic names and the same drugs sold under brand names...
...He warned that an invasion could lead "us to incur tens of thousands of additional United States casualties to help General Ky realize his ambitions...
...Unless it is arrested soon, it may be too late to avoid what Patman sees as a threat to our democratic system...
...These 500 constitute only one-fourth of one per cent of all industrial companies but they account for sixty per cent of sales and seventy-two per cent of profits...
...Monopoly Marches On Fortune magazine's latest survey of the 500 largest industrial corporations in the United States makes clear that the relentless trend toward giantism and monopoly is, if anything, accelerating...
...If the suspect asks for a lawyer, the FBI agents cease their questioning immediately...
...Unquestionably one important factor is the widely-publicized controversy within the Catholic Church on the subject, and the consequent realization that Catholics, including their hierarchy, constitute anything but a monolithic power bloc on population control...
...The American Communist organization, a Lilliputian organization having only a fraction of the membership, for example, of the Birch Society, and soggy with infusions of Hoover agents and informers, resembles a wet match rather than a torch...
...If concerned citizens have learned to be distrustful of the Johnson Administration on the Vietnam issue, it is because the White House and State Department have taught us so many bitter lessons about duplicity in high places...
...You surrender [sic] tomorrow because if you do not do that you are going to have to consume more and more of your resources in a war which is a fruitless one from your point of view and therefore there is nothing in it for you...
...Church: Not a Freudian slip...
...Communist Party was a tiger, he said the New Left and the Vietnam protest movements, as well as civil rights groups, were targets for Communist infiltration...
...What's in a name...
...Let us be spared any more maudlin sophistry, as the President stumps the country, commanding those who have questioned his prudence to cease, desist, and salute his judgment in the name of the marines "wading through the rice paddies up to their belts...
...He praised Negroes for resisting the wiles of the Communists, said that the Red resurgence had been made possible by Supreme Court decisions invalidating parts of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and forecast that the Communists would enter "nonpartisan" and "independent" candidates (for which, read "peace candidates") in the November election...
...Takashi Oka New York Times Magazine July 31, 1966...
...Todd carefully disarmed potential critics by including the safeguards that no programs may be undertaken without the explicit request of the governments involved, and that all such programs must be entirely voluntary...
...An Administration that has repeatedly issued orders which have escalated the war can surely issue orders—from the highest military level down to field commanders—to keep any and all American troops out of North Vietnam...
...The total assets of the 500 run to $251 billion, but only forty-one companies own fully half this sum...
...With this point the Senator demolished the drug industry's propaganda that brand names assure quality drugs and, by inference, generic names do not...
...A Vietcong official of regional or provincial status could not survive at all unless he did just that...
...I mean stop aggression tomorrow...
...Patients who insist that their doctors use generic names in prescriptions not only will pay a fraction of the brand-name cost...
...It may be the last chance to revive this potentially great educational and cultural force before it is left hopelessly behind in the accelerating communications race...
...He estimated that this cost might have been cut in half if prescriptions had been written under generic rather than under brand names...
...News if World Report, that soon made ominous headlines around the world...
...A cadre who takes pride in the dedication and austerity of his comrades must also accept responsibility for the assassinations, the selective terrorism, the exactions, the deliberate lies practiced and told by his leaders...
...Even more chilling was his incredible remark that whether our forces will cross the fateful parallel into North Vietnam will depend "on the turn of the events...
...An example, said Browne, is "the continual harping on the North Vietnamese aggression...
...Senator Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader of the Senate, immediately called for repudiation of Ky's war plan...
...Thus the time was ripe for a breakthrough on the delicate issue of birth control...
...under its generic name the druggist can buy that quantity for ninety-eight cents...
...The Court is, in effect, requiring that the FBI's regard for the rights of the accused be duplicated by other law officials around the country...
...possible to sitting down and talking...
...What we say to them is, "You surrender [sic] tomorrow because at the end of the road you are not going to win this war militarily or politically...
...Rushing toward Armageddon When South Vietnam's Premier Ky proposed an American invasion of North Vietnam, it was generally expected that the Administration would promptly disavow any idea of embarking upon such a lunatic course...
...Laughter...
...This accounts for the public's growing disbelief in what President Johnson, Dean Rusk, or others in the Administration say about our course in Vietnam...
...Industrial oligarchy," said Patman, "is incompatible with political and social democracy...
...Representative Wright Patman, the Texas Democrat who is chairman of the House Banking Committee, pointed out recently that anti-trust laws must be enforced more vigorously if this country is to escape "oligarchical control," that is, dominance by a few monopolies...
...Senator Mansfield's denunciation of Ky's proposal and his call for Administration disavowal were promptly supported by other Senators, including four Republicans—George D. Aiken of Vermont, Jacob K. Javits of New York, Thomas H. Kuchel of California, and Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts...
...Sales for 1965 were up 11.8 per cent over the previous year, but profits rose 16.1 per cent, obviously contributing substantially to rising prices...
...Millions of dollars of profits for the drug companies, and the sufferings of thousands of patients who cannot afford to pay the extortionate prices demanded by the so-called "ethical drug" companies for their brand-name products...
...Since its inception, the infant industry has been an orphan with no regular or dependable means of support...
...The real motive for brand names is profit, Senator Long stated...
...He cited the example of Peritrate, the brand name of a vasodilator used by heart patients...
...The 2,000 Per Cent Markup If a doctor prescribes a drug by its generic or common name—mebpro-mate, for example—a given quantity will cost the patient $20.80...
...Patients not included in these programs may hear enough about the new Federal law to learn to ask for generic prescriptions rather than brand-name prescriptions...
...Some of Fortune's figures are truly staggering...
...All of this would add up to nothing if it were not that a major purpose of Hoover's ludicrous report may have been to cast clouds of suspicion over the peace candidates, rather than to hammer the feeble Communist Party for the umpteenth time...
...The Administration apparently wanted to keep the door open for an invasion of North Vietnam—a step which most qualified observers feel would surely bring China into the war...
...By July, the bombing was under way—to celebrate two months hailed by the President as a period of steady military progress...
...They conceded that with more North Vietnam troops entering the struggle, it is less of a civil war than it was originally...
...Mr...
...No less an authority than Chief Justice Earl Warren has stated that the FBI "has compiled an exemplary record" in this respect...
...Such shallow argument comes close to contending perversely that their suffering proves his wisdom...
...The manufacturer sells 1,000 ten-milligram Peritrate tablets to the druggist for twenty dollars...
...A second major factor is that after a generation of giving away surplus food overseas the United States is running out of surpluses while world population and the demand for food constantly rise...
...Charles Mohr, New York Times correspondent...
...Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing June 30 as presented in 1. F. Stone's Weekly...
...Browne said that Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, was "one of the great practitioners" of the "art" of news management...
...The pharmaceutical industry, incidentally, shows, according to Fortune magazine figures for 1965, the highest profit per dollar of invested capital of any industry grouping—eighteen per cent net return after taxes...
...As recently as two years ago, as Senator Ernest Gruening points out in his article in this issue, the whole subject of birth control was taboo in Congress...
...I think it is better to face them right now than in five or ten years," he said in a Saigon interview, first published by U.S...
...Ball: We are not thinking of this in terms of punishment...
...Sen...
...The system is not interconnected electronically, and is known as "the bicycle network" because programs are exchanged on film or tape by mail and express...
...He pointed out that the FBI, before questioning suspects or arrested persons, informs them that they are not required to answer or make a statement...
...When the druggist adds his cost and a profit, the gap between the price of Peritrate and the price of its generic equivalent grows even wider...
...The real reason we are involved, said Browne, "the basic cause of the war," is "a clash between American and Chinese spheres of influence...
...In the past, when the Administration has discounted reports of plans to widen the war, it has frequently followed up its denials by sending in more troops and stepping up its bombing raids...
...All four correspondents agreed on this point—a critical issue that is hotly disputed by the Administration...
...The failure of the Administration to deny that American GIs might be sent into North Vietnam loosed a bombardment of press queries at the State Department...
...You Be the Judge Under Secretary of State Ball: What we have said, and it may be that the unconditional surrender [sic] formulation is subject to some misunderstanding, but what that is intended to do is to represent the most flexible approach by the U.S...
...Ball: Not in the least...
...That is a different thing from punishment...
...Most observers agree that Oanh's essential point—that the Vietcong live closer to the hamlet-dwellers of South Vietnam than do the representatives of Saigon—remains distressingly true...
...This will remain an academic question as long as McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, along with Sylvester and President Johnson, continue their efforts to keep the truth about Vietnam, and some other aspects of our Asia policy, from 190 million Americans...
...Dean Brelis of the National Broadcasting Company...
...Sen...
...Mohr said that information officers in Saigon were "more interested in policy than facts...
...Yet this revolutionary measure breezed through the House Agriculture Committee and the full House with scarcely a ripple of controversy...
...they will be in eminent company...
...The FBI also tells suspects that any statement they give may be used in court against them, and that they may secure a lawyer...
...the commander will have to do those things necessary to protect the security of his troops...
...In addition to the rapid growth of the population and the economy, an important factor in the trend toward giantism is the large number of mergers and acquisitions—principally the big gobbling up the small...
...A quantity of tetracycline—the generic name for an antibiotic—that sells for $2.75 brings $14.95 when merchandised under the brand name Achromycin...
...But with the failure of Rusk or the President to repudiate the Ky madness, the American public had more cause than ever to fear that the United States was rushing toward the onset of a massive land war in Asia and possibly toward World War III...
...If so, only a massive national protest led by top Congressional leaders can possibly stop President Johnson from leading us into a terrible war in Asia...
...Yet the trend toward monopoly continues...
...The plan has the support of the commercial networks, the National Education Association, and the National Association of Manufacturers...
...Besides reporting to the Senate Internal Security subcommittee that the U.S...
...To any citizen, there was not much "very clear" about the strategic process by which such progress transformed needless folly into military necessity...
...He has offered a measure to prevent priceFreudian Slips...
...Ball: I am just advised I used the words "unconditional surrender" instead of "unconditional discussions...
...Vietcong vs...
...Ford to the Rescue The Ford Foundation, which has a commendable record of backing fresh ideas and imaginative projects, has come forward with a proposal for a domestic communications satellite system which would rejuvenate the ailing educational television system across the country...
...Why does Secretary Rusk speak as if the President were powerless to issue such orders and see that they are obeyed...
...Mohr added: "They want to make it a sanitary war...
...it will depend on "events" along the border, he said...
...Later Secretary Dean Rusk twice refused the opportunity, at a press conference, to rule out the possibility of sending our ground troops across the Seventeenth Parallel...
...But as the industrial corporations increasingly dominate our technological society, and as fewer and fewer of them command an ever-growing share of the wealth and productive power, the threat to the nation becomes more grave...
...In 1964, according to Long, more than $100 million in Federal funds were spent for drugs provided under welfare programs...
...It is an outcome that would dismay the profiteering drug companies, and that could save lives...
...The new Food for Peace measure—if approved by the Senate— will provide not only food for those who are hungry now, but, thanks to the Todd amendment, a source of funds which can be used to reduce population growth and thus prevent more people from starving in the future...
...Furthermore, Fortune states, "The 500 are themselves dominated by the fifty largest corporations, which in turn owe much of their bulk to General Motors"—the biggest of them all...
...Instead, the State Department first avoided direct comment on Ky's new outbreak of bellicosity...
...Plaudits for the FBI Unaccustomed as we are to praising J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI, we feel obliged to commend both for their regard for the constitutional rights of arrested persons and suspects...
...soldiers "in the dead of night...
...Without this provision, Long told the Senate, "There is no safeguard against outrageously high pricing practices...
...Mr...
...National Education Television assigned Paul Niven to discuss news handling of the war with Malcolm Browne, a former Associated Press reporter and a Pulitzer' prize-winner doing free-lance work in Vietnam...
...As Senator Long pointed out, at Walter Reed General Hospital and the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson have been treated, drugs are prescribed under generic names...
...gouging on drugs used by the seventeen million elderly persons now covered by Medicare and some thirty-five million Americans of all ages who come under welfare programs involving Federal aid...
...The Chief Justice's praise was expressed in the "confession decision" that has been so hotly debated in recent weeks...
...Gore: What troubles me is the notion of this Administration that punishment is persuasive...
...He said that "there is no policy desire to move into North Vietnam or the demilitarized zone" between the two Vietnams at the Seventeenth Parallel...
...And there are no principles of patriotism that compel troubled Americans to worry about the behavior of other nations nearly so much as the behavior of their own...
...The Montana Democrat declared that the United States should guard against being maneuvered into a position not only of protecting the government dominated by Ky, who was born in what is now North Vietnam, but of carrying the Premier "back home to North Vietnam on the shoulders of our marines and infantry...
...Where Truth Comes Last How the Administration manages the news was revealed once again in an interview from Saigon recently carried on educational television stations in the United States...
...General Motors' profits soared 22.5 per cent, to more than two billion dollars, an all time world record...
...The Administration was reluctant to have correspondents write about napalm or anti-personnel bombs...
...Punishment would mean we would say to North Vietnam, "You either surrender [sic] tomorrow or you are all going to be killed, your cities are going to be decimated, your country is going to be turned into a desert...
...These are compelling reasons for early passage of the proposed legislation...
...A Saigon functionary who gets out consistently to the riceroots is such a rarity that he is hailed as a phenomenon...
...When no rebuke was forthcoming and the only offering from State Department spokesman Robert J. Mc-Closkey was the battered old chestnut that we are "not seeking any wider war," the forty-seven Congressmen issued their statement...
...This trend toward monopoly is nothing new...
...In May, the Secretary of the Air Force deplored any notion of bombing the Hanoi-Haiphong area on the basis of the "very clear . . . decision of the Commander-in-Chief that such action would avail little and risk much...
...The bill requires that for Federal benefits to be paid toward the cost of drugs, the drugs must be prescribed for under the generic name and not under private brand names...
...Time and again these programs have bogged down because of political or factional rivalries, bureaucratic sloth, timid, corrupt, or uninspired civil and military officials...
...I did not intend it that way...
...The Administration, and particularly Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, "have deliberately misled American public opinion...
...Lack of money is by far the largest factor stunting its growth...
...There are a number of reasons for the sudden change in climate which now permits open discussion in Congress of that old bogey, birth control...
...By inserting this commendation for the FBI in the Court's decision he was making a powerful argument that the law can be properly enforced and the suspect's rights protected at the same time...
...Senator Russell B. Long, Louisiana Democrat, Assistant Majority Leader of the Senate and a long-time crusader against the price-gouging and price-rigging practices of the drug industry, has introduced a bill to reduce the industry's huge profits in at least one segment of the domestic market...
...It is opposed by American Telephone and Telegraph and other commercial communications carriers, and by the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), chartered by Congress in 1962 to establish an international communications satellite system...
...Fortune found "that there are only fourteen companies on the 1965 list that did not participate in at least one merger or make at least one acquisition in the 1955-65 period...
...It was a mere slip of the tongue...
...Under the Foundation's novel scheme a series of satellites would act as relay stations for the three major commercial television networks—American Broadcasting Company, Columbia Broadcasting System, and National Broadcasting Company—at standard commercial rates, and the proceeds—• estimated at $30 million the first year —would be used to help finance educational television programming...
...Birth Control Breakthrough One of the larger astonishments of the current Congress is the provision in the House-approved Food for Peace Bill which explicitly authorizes the use of counterpart funds abroad for programs involving family planning...
...Sixty-nine cents worth— generically—of reserpine sells for $39.50 when marketed as Serpasil...
...The Ford Foundation plan is under consideration by the Federal Commun-nications Commission, which has requested that interested parties file their comments before October 1. We hope the FCC is swamped with comments favoring the proposal...
...We do not say that...
...Saigon What Oanh [a defector from the Vietcong] told me was, of course, only one side of the Vietcong story...
...But the fact that he twice refused to say that the United States ruled out ground action in North Vietnam inspired deep foreboding...
...Attacking a Fossil When the Communist Party of the United States recently held its first national convention since 1959, or "surfaced" as the press put it, J. Edgar Hoover was not long in attacking it as a "unified, hard-hitting, well-organized conspiracy" to promote a class revolution in our fair land...
...A first term Representative rarely sponsors significant legislation, and much less often is it enacted into law...
...and Jack Foisie, correspondent for The 'Spare Us Maudlin Sophistry' Let us be spared any more strategic reviews of the war so authoritatively proclaimed one month only to be rudely reversed the next...
...The FBI has demonstrated its regard for the rights of the accused and still managed, said the Chief Justice, to produce "an admirable record of law enforcement...
...Hoover, viewing it through his Red-colored glasses, saw it otherwise...
...Peace is the professed word, but ever wider war is the deed...
...The Ford proposal intends to help solve this problem by giving educational television a solid economic base...
...Educational television, which once held such glowing hope, has failed by a wide margin to achieve its goals, One measure of that failure is revealed in the fact that only 104 of the 242 channels reserved for educational television in 1952 have been activated, and many of these offer only severely limited programming...
...These FBI safeguards for the accused are, therefore, not only commendable in themselves but are valuable in support of the Supreme Court's latest landmark decision in the field of civil liberties...
...That represents a "mere" 2,000 per cent markup on a life-saving drug, Senator Long said...
...The FBI, said Chief Justice Warren, also informs those being questioned of their right to free counsel if they cannot pay for a lawyer's services...
...Nor is the level of national thought raised when he denounces his critics for their failure to deplore Vietcong attacks upon U.S...
...Although the four reporters differed on some matters, they agreed on these two basic points: H News management is diligently practiced...
...Ball: I said a moment ago, I used the phrase "surrender tomorrow...
...Forty-four Democrats and three Republicans in the House waited three days for the Administration to pin Ky's ears back, at least in diplomatic language...
...There are no articles of war that command fighting men to strike only at high noon...
...food but which remain in the buyer's country may be used to finance programs emphasizing maternal welfare, child health and nutrition, and "activities related to the problems of population growth...
...American foreign policy, he said, "is made from the top" and the American people "are asking for it" because "they've done nothing to change it...
...The Todd amendment specifically provides that the foreign currencies which purchase U.S...
...Emmet John Hughes Newsweek August 8, 1966 Los Angeles Times...
...It said in part: "Extension of the conflict may embroil the major powers of the world in a destructive and brutal confrontation that would shatter all hopes of world peace...
...The satellite system would also relay the educational stations' programs, greatly increasing their availability from coast to coast...
...Those who had read the reports of the Communist session in New York with yawning disinterest, found they had a few yawns left over for the FBI Director's warning that the Communists were going to set the country aflame...
...U The war in Vietnam is primarily a civil war...
...Many people, including many members of Congress, have come to feel that the widening gap between the world's population and its food supplies presents a mounting threat to mankind almost as grave as the menace of the nuclear bomb...
...If Senators Long and Paul H. Douglas of Illinois are successful in their efforts to secure passage of a Federal law requiring the use of generic drugs in Federally-aided programs, millions of ailing Americans will benefit because lower-priced drugs will then be within their reach...
...Maybe it is because Premier Ky's call for an invasion has the secret support of the Administration...
...Would the people try to change foreign policy if they were given the truth...
...The spiral of escalation now being advocated by General Ky must be opposed and new initiatives attempted for negotiated settlement...
...Browne, who has spent five years in Vietnam, criticized editorial staffs for "pre-conceived notions" that are "distorting what's happening here...
...There are notable local exceptions to the general assessment of failure, but as a whole educational television has never approached its goal of reaching a truly mass audience at every age level...
...In spite of the fears voiced by many police officials, district attorneys, politicians, and editors that the Supreme Court's confession decision will protect criminals' rights at the price of increased lawlessness, the FBI experience demonstrates that this need not be so...
...Observers at the Communist convention found it dull, not notably radical, and the party clearly was only the fossilized remains of what it was in the Thirties and Forties...
...Furthermore, the family planning provision was introduced by a freshman Congressman, Paul H. Todd, Jr., Michigan Democrat, who is not even a member of the committee which started the measure on its course through Congress...
...Mr...
...Should he prescribe it under the name Equanil, the brand name given it by one of the manufacturers, the patient will pay $62.50 for the same quantity of the same drug...
...At the same time, the satellite relay system would lift it out of the bicycle age into the electronic age of instant communication...
...But part of the tragedy of South Vietnam is that no one's hands— least of all those of successive Saigon governments—have been clean in any of these matters...
...Premier Ky had made no bones about the risk of fighting the Chinese...
Vol. 30 • September 1966 • No. 9
