THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
tragedy. But Charlie's problem is not unique. It affects more than thirty-five million Americans today who have their careers monitored and molded by private personnel investigators. Because of the...
...Among the things he has is an acute susceptibility to the conspiratorial Cold War claptrap that is the Subcommittee's standard stock in trade...
...Why, incidentally, does Mr...
...The arrival of computerized data banks and cheap long-distance communication networks are creating a private national intelligence system...
...So when the liberal left invents bogey men to castigate for mythical crimes against humanity, I become doubly distressed...
...They are refugees by their own choosing, and they remain refugees by their own choosing...
...he referred elsewhere in his testimony to one "Vito Marcantorrios," whom we have identified, «after much sleuthing, as the late New York Congressman, Vito Marcan-tonio...
...They need a country to which the Jews can go if the kind of persecution that occurred under the Nazis develops again...
...Trinidad wrote a report on the history of Communism and that he presented the report to the Internal Security Subcommittee...
...However, I do feel there must be some controls that can be applied, lest the horror of another Nazi-like rampage becomes all too frequent here, making even the generals in the Pentagon tremble in disbelief...
...Durkin repeatedly refer to Major Maldonado as "Mr...
...Villages are ravaged daily here, babies are killed, and the enemy dropped alive from helicopters...
...Also, my statement, "It is not separation from the BIA that most Indian communities most want but some control over it...
...Dur-kin's part...
...Durkin to unmask us as racists and chauvinists, we quoted these two paragraphs from a paper prepared by the Subcommittee's witness, Major Luis Maldonado Trinidad: "Federico Engels and Carl Mark, two young Germans (Jewish) persecuted by the German, French, and English authorities, due to their idea, conceived the idea of creating according to them, a corrupted society...
...I have begun a Butane Gas Fund for the Indians of Alcatraz...
...And today this emerging system is in the hands of corporations which operate without any significant state or Federal controls and with virtual immunity from judicial accountability...
...One GI told me a buddy of his was given nothing but a verbal reprimand from his commanding officer for killing a Vietnamese baby...
...Our purpose—and we thought we made it plain—was to illustrate the kind of simplistic rubbish that passes for "expert testimony" in the Subcommittee's interminable hearings...
...Jews and blacks are among the many ethnic groups who pay taxes—not as Jews and blacks, but as American citizens...
...Graham R. Hodges 123 S. Hamilton Street Watertown, New York Herman Kahn 'Misread' Dear Sirs: Whenever I see the radical right direct its malice at some helpless target of its paranoia I feel some satisfaction in knowing that I belong to the side of reason...
...I would like to ask readers of The Progressive to send checks to my office address below...
...Trinidad speaks English with some difficulty and mispronounces certain words and gives a Spanish inflection and pronunciation to other terms and names...
...And where did they come from...
...Tom Emrich Jay, Vermont Atrocities in Vietnam In our January issue we published "The Terrible Realities," made up of letters to his parents from a GI in Vietnam...
...It just goes to show, we suppose, how warped our mind is...
...He wrote that when black children from the ghetto are put into schools with upper income white children, "the whites invariably outstrip the blacks academical-ly...
...Would you like to know how the names of the authors are given in the Spanish translations...
...The money is for new roads to Smith-organized projects: a Christ of the Ozarks statue and a "Passion Play" of the type that stimulated anti-Semitic outbreaks in Europe...
...In many of the more active battle zones orders are given from the level of general on down that any "slant-eyed gook" is fair game...
...I contend that he has not even read Part 19— or he would have known what Major Trinidad was doing, instead of making his chauvinistic attack...
...Trinidad is from the transcript, it is true...
...But there are many of the black children in ghetto schools whose families are part of the "growth of a substantial black middle class" that Johnson finds so encouraging...
...Imagine how much of the world's hunger, disease, and poverty could be eliminated if this $173.4 billion were spent on constructive programs, say through the agencies of the United Nations...
...This corruption being caused mainly by their capitalist countrymen...
...I have a copy of the report Potomacus quotes, so let me set the record straight on his racist attitude towards Major Trinidad...
...The United Church of Canada has been most helpful and has had a great deal to do with the liberal attitude of that nation toward these young men...
...The Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow is issuing the works of Marx and Engels in dozens of languages, including Spanish...
...This culminated in the actual Government of the political-military dictatorship, directed by a small group of men who have authority of life and death over millions and millions of slaved people...
...A Federal grant of $182,000 was quietly authorized by the Department of Commerce, matched by county funds for another $45,500 in Carroll County, Arkansas...
...Nasser said precisely that during the Six-Day War...
...He also has some difficulty reading...
...Kahn dragged the ogre out and made us look at him—and at all the dreadful implications that were thus revealed...
...He is either a liar or extremely naive...
...In my own reading he has come across as one whose concerns are not much different from those of a typical reader of The Progressive...
...In this area lies a rich spiritual encounter and probably the only way out of the mess into which our unbridled use of technology has gotten us...
...I would like to remind Mr...
...The indirect subsidy consists of the religious tax exemption status conferred on the Smith enterprises...
...suffered an editorial change into " . . . some control over their destiny under the umbrella of the BIA . . . , " which is something else...
...Marson either forgets or doesn't know that few if any nations, including the United States, would take the Jews when the Nazis allowed them to leave...
...Marson that the Jews are not using World War II as an excuse but as a reason for their actions...
...We have since remedied the oversight by browsing through the other eighteen parts, and there were times—ah, there, Mr...
...Jean Gregg Milgram Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Garbles in Brandon Dear Sirs: In my piece on Indians in the January issue of The Progressive, the meaning of a remark that reconstruction of Indian education might offer "a vestibule to reconstruction of education even in our mainstream world" was lost due to a garble in printing that left it reading "a vestibule to reconstruction of Indian education even in our mainstream world...
...The report is the transcript of three persons testifying to the Subcommittee about violence in Puerto Rico...
...I'm inclined to think the former...
...What a curious way of putting together fragments of quotes...
...Herman Kahn did not invent nuclear war...
...He should have said "black children from poor ghetto families," which I think is what he meant...
...As an authority on Spanish nomenclature, he surely knows better, and as a close reader of the Subcommittee's transcript he must have seen that the witness was repeatedly—and correctly-— referred to as Major Maldonado...
...Since then the GI has written his family again, this time on the issue of atrocities as developed in recent exposures...
...Justice for Alcindor Dear Sirs: Thanks for Peter Collier's fine article on Lew Alcindor in the December issue...
...Gifts will be distributed according to need...
...I see nothing wrong with calling Engels "Federico...
...Major Trinidad is one of these persons...
...It doesn't take an investigation to know what's going on here...
...Receipts will be sent promptly...
...These appropriations represent the direct form of subsidy...
...The human strife and destruction created by this war, here and abroad, is a sign of a world surely going insane...
...Although this was said with gentleness, I cannot think of any more damning words that might have been spoken to white-skinned Americans...
...We are hell-bent upon "saving" South Vietnam, even if it means destroying America and its fine young men, its economy, and its precious heritage of peace, freedom, and justice for all...
...This new letter appears below, with the identity of the GI concealed to protect him from reprisals...
...Are the nineteen parts together "full of chuckles...
...Charlie Green's real name isn't Charlie Green...
...The argument is no less valid for those who support the war and seek a so-called "honorable peace," because without winning the confidence of the South Vietnamese people we can win nothing...
...In district-wide testing, a ninety per cent black elementary school in the integrated middle-class Crenshaw area had topped the list in IQ for all the vast and predominantly white Los Angeles school system...
...It was an excellent article, one which should be widely read and pondered...
...Durkin hit home with his reproach to us for reading only Part 19 of the Subcommittee's hearings...
...Marson also finds it "childish" to say that Nasser wishes to wipe out Israel...
...I did not know that Potomacus was a racist, and surely you would not employ a racist, would you...
...The attempt was then made to credit the Pilgrims and their way of life with the standard of living that we have achieved in the Twentieth Century...
...When man first walked on the moon (vicariously via the crew of Apollo 11), Mike Royko devoted his Chicago Daily News column to other walks that need walking, walks here on the soil of earth that we have far too long neglected to take...
...And, as a result, "integration" becomes "transition...
...Most of all," Westin went on, "this problem will soon become far more critical than it has ever been...
...The Arabs left...
...Major Trinidad's occasionally hesitant English and pronunciation accounted for the grammatical errors and the erroneous spelling (in English, that is) of the names of Marx and Engels...
...In the brief item that prompted Mr...
...The measure, if it is kept intact and passed by the House of Representatives, will help correct the kinds of abuses that have plagued Charlie Green by giving all the thirty-five million plus Charlie the right to correct erroneous information in their credit files...
...Could this be racism or chauvinism on Mr...
...What is not well known is that a primary American fascist movement is being subsidized directly and indirectly by taxpayers' money...
...This is the movement led by Gerald L. K. Smith, preaching hatred against Jews and blacks...
...Once more the old inaccurate allegations from an emotional review of Herman Kahn's book, On Thermonuclear War, which appeared in Scientific American in the early '60s, are dragged out to prove that ignorance of the text is no bar to criticism...
...This makes me wonder what kind of a life this advertiser would have us live today...
...Carlos Marx and Federico Engels...
...We sincerely hope not...
...Henry P. Durkin New York, New York Reply from Potomacus Dear Sirs: We suggested, in the December "Word from Washington," that the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee's series on the "Communist threat" in the Caribbean "might make an excellent Christmas gift for the man who has everything...
...I don't think this was either wicked or irrational, although some liberals will persist in thinking so...
...Richard Chinn Casa de Paz 2510 S. Sawyer Chicago, Illinois 60623 Gerald Smith's Subsidies Dear Sirs: It is common knowledge that fascist movements in the United States have some financial "angels" as did the Hitler movement in Germany...
...To those unfortunate subscribers who do not know Royko, I would simply say that he is the greatest Chicago journalist of the era, a modern Upton Sinclair out to battle the forces of evil and advance the good of humanity...
...The quotation that Potomacus cites from Mr...
...A friend and I went over with a cargo of propane gas...
...I just want to underscore the hope he finds in these two groups...
...This covers contributors on one hand and the Smith leadership on the other...
...Recently a bill entitled the Fair Credit Reporting Act was passed by the Senate...
...I ask this question because Potomacus made fun of Major Trinidad...
...Roger Meyer Milwaukee, Wisconsin Integration at Work Dear Sirs: I would like to take mild exception to one statement in Haynes Johnson's outstanding article in the December issue on trends in today's racial scene...
...He prepared a series of notes to aid him in his testimony and read from them to answer certain questions...
...Rather, he showed us what it might look like, expressed the obviously sincere wish that we would avoid it, suggested, if worst comes to worst, some means for survival, and indicated that there might still be some hope for the continuation of the race...
...Clair Avenue East, Toronto, Canada...
...It also gives them the right to be told the reason for credit or insurance rejection, to have access to all information in their credit file, to know to whom the information has been given, to file a statement giving the individual's side of the story, to have all information kept confidential and used only for legitimate business purposes, and to have negative information removed after seven years (or fourteen years in bankruptcy cases...
...Kahn's book represented a watershed in America's thinking about nuclear war— which may be why some people are still recovering from it...
...Defense Secretary Laird's pronouncement of shock over this atrocity simply means one of two things...
...Because of the time and cost factors involved, errors do crop up in these reports, yet the basic procedures of these companies inhibit individuals from learning that they have been unfairly judged and sharply impede efforts to correct such errors when they are detected...
...Paul N. Nadashkevich San Antonio, Texas World 'Going Insane' Dear Sirs: The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recently reported that the world's military expenditures of some $173.4 billion annually now actually exceeds the total amount of all goods and services produced in 1900...
...I don't believe Kahn ever implied any such thing, no matter how he may have been misread...
...A case in point is Harry Fleischman's essay on Norman Thomas in your November issue...
...As we have seen, marxism laid the stones to build the communist party...
...Recently The Los Angeles Times, in some astonishment, ran a banner headline proclaiming "Black School Highest in IQ...
...Arthur Burton San Rafael, California Refugees by Choice Dear Sirs: In his letter in the People's Forum in the December issue, John Marson of Albuquerque wrote: "Yet, the Jewish people can't use World War II for an excuse for all their actions...
...Persons wanting to send parcels as well as cash may obtain mailing directions from the writer...
...The Editors Dear Family: In your last letter you asked what I thought about Lieutenant Calley and the My Lai incident...
...The sun, moon, and stars still shine, and Lake Michigan, polluted as it may be, still enchants us with its unending variety of color and texture...
...Donald Garside Warden Holly Royde College University of Manchester Manchester, England...
...Potomacus Washington, D.C...
...I have reprints of that column which I will gladly send free to any reader of The Progressive who will send a stamped envelope...
...Kay Boyle San Francisco State College Creative Writing Department 1600 Holloway Avenue San Francisco, California 94132 Royko on the Moon Dear Sirs: I need not introduce Mike Royko to many Progressive readers who have known and loved him for years...
...The Indians are feeding close to two hundred people there three times a day...
...Like Mr...
...Emmet Ranson Wyandotte, Michigan Draft Exiles in Canada Dear Sirs: Persons wanting to help young draft exiles in Canada who went there in preference to having their bodies shipped to Vietnam may do so by sending cash, money order, or check (on any U.S...
...Joseph A. Prachar Lombard, Illinois Useful Influence Dear Sirs: I have been receiving The Progressive for three years and I would like you to know how valuable it has been...
...Specifically I refer to his remarks regarding the testimony of Major Luis Maldonado Trinidad before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee...
...In keeping with most other Progressive articles, it ranks as a public service, doing rare justice to a man not generally appreciated off the basketball court/ Dave McLallen Mountain Brook, Alabama Indians on The Rock Dear Sirs: I spent Christmas day with the native Americans on Alcatraz...
...As for the homeless refugees, the Jews, during their first war of independence, told the Arabs that they should stay, but the Grand Mufti told the Arabs to get out of Palestine so that his army could wipe out the Jews unencumbered by Arab civilians...
...The Indians are in need of butane and propane gas for their cooking in that grim place...
...Durkin, we see nothing wrong with calling Engels "Federico," though we must confess that "Carl Mark" gave us pause...
...The white families with children still in this school, and the white families who ate and will be moving in, come mostly from the young generation free of old racial stereotypes, who also encourage Haynes Johnson...
...I guess he's the kind of person who holds his belly with laughter at reading about Communist sabotage activities, Communist brutalities against prisoners, Communist infiltration of Latin America, and Communist use of native American dupes via front organizations such as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee...
...Fleischman writes, "Kahn had indicated that 'between ten and sixty million' American deaths might be 'an acceptable price' to pay 'for punishing the Soviets' in the event of nuclear aggression...
...Our peace-loving nation spent $79.6 billion, while Russia, another peace-loving nation, spent $39.8 billion during 1968...
...To be blunt about it, Major Maldonado seems to have trouble with names...
...But it is time that we rediscover a third area of religious significance, that of man-to-environment...
...These contributions are tax deductible, since the Indian Center here is sponsoring the legal occupation by Indians of Alcatraz...
...bank) to Dr...
...Yet fascist sympathizers in Federal and county government are using taxpayers' money on behalf of organized, defamatory hatred to single out Jews and blacks as targets...
...Many are utterly without funds, disowned by family, and possess only the clothing on their backs in the chill Canadian winter...
...Unlike Borland, we are city dwellers, and yet here too we see the landscape of trees, grass, and flowers change with the rhythms of the seasons...
...Therefore I am shocked at Potomacus' column, "The Word from Washington," in the December issue...
...A reading of his testimony will show that Mr...
...William Brandon San Marino, California Potomacus 'Chauvinistic' Dear Sirs: I am a new subscriber to your magazine, and I commend you for having the slogan that the truth will make you free...
...We can't help but wonder how many Puerto Ricans have innocently run afoul of Major Maldonado's Criminal Investigation Corps because he permitted himself a slight slip of the tongue or pen...
...Durkin obviously is that man...
...Any GI who has served in a line unit can tell you...
...Trinidad...
...They began to fight for the resolution of the working class...
...When they do, white parents, fearing that the schools will lower their standards to accommodate black children whose lower academic ability is indeed considered "invariable" by most whites, flee the schools and often the neighborhood...
...Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, the three of them Russian, applied it to the social, religious, economical, political and familiar life, with the organization of the Soviet Republic in Russia...
...You said in your last letter that it is war that is evil and to keep score of atrocities is rather beside the point...
...They must live like the rest of us...
...Durkin—when we held our belly with laughter...
...A GI in Vietnam Borland 'Inspiring' Dear Sirs: Hal Borland's article in the January issue of The Progressive is an inspiring testimony that modern man can still have a meaningful relationship with his natural environment...
...Enjoyed champagne at the embassy perhaps...
...The bill also provides for criminal penalties for those who obtain reports under false pretenses...
...But let me refresh Warner & Swasey's knowledge of American history: Without this glorious lack of outside help, less than half of the Pilgrims survived the first year...
...These two peace-loving nations spend a combined total of seventy per cent of the world's military expenditures to maintain peace on our planet...
...Visitors to Canada, like myself, have been impressed by these so-called "draft dodgers" who prefer our northern neighbor to Vietnam, court martial, or five years in prison...
...The neighborhood the school serves is more than fifty per cent white, yet white parents were sending their children elsewhere, all unaware they were running from the smartest children in town...
...It makes me wonder what Secretary Laird did on his trip here...
...The deprivations might seem to us overwhelming, but several of these men and women said that conditions are better there "than on the reservation...
...The good humor, the dignity, and the energy of these Indians on The Rock are deeply moving...
...Borland disclaims religious belief as it THE PEOPLE'S 1 FORUM |» is traditionally defined in terms of God-to-man and man-to-man relationships...
...Charles Forsyth, United Church of Canada, 85 St...
...They are logical products of the American teaching that one should follow conscience, and for taking this adage seriously we make felons out of them, meanwhile boasting of our great-grandfathers who left Germany for the same reason...
...Potomacus admits he has not read the other eighteen parts of the series...
...Charlie doesn't want to give his real name anymore...
...But Potomacus gives the impression that Mr...
...Space does not permit me to take apart every single statement made in the advertisement...
...Your contributors and the atmosphere of the magazine are a useful and corrective influence for much of the prevailing feeling about the United States...
...The advertisement implies that with some help, especially government help, the Pilgrims would not have achieved much, that such things as Social Security and Federal housing would have corrupted them, made them prone to rioting and other troubles...
...Advertising versus History Dear Sirs: The Warner & Swasey Company published an advertisement in a number of magazines recently with the headline: It's a Good Thing There Wasn't Anybody Around to Help the Pilgrims...
...Their families, seeking to escape the ghetto, often move into good white neighborhoods...
...Oriental religions teach the affinity of man to nature, and Christianity did, too, up to the Renaissance...
...Only in Potomacus' warped mind...
...They are getting together in the integrated neighborhoods, and in school their children are doing great...
...A $200 check has been given me to start off the fund...
...It is for this reason, I think, that many hate him, especially those who refused the confrontation in the first place...
...But in the interim, before the bill is finally passed by the House and becomes law—if it is passed by the House—the Charlie Greens wait within their own peculiar form of Twentieth Century debtor's prison, never knowing why they have been sentenced...
Vol. 34 • February 1970 • No. 2
