NOTES IN THE NEWS
Notes in the News A Dangerous Course Two ominous words—"no sanctuary" —can fly the American people at supersonic speed right over the brink into a war with China and possibly World War III. That...
...This display of bravado was a ludicrous finish to the last gasp attempt of the reactionary coalition of ruralist, racist, and special privilege groups to get Congress to hold back the flood tide of reapportionment...
...They were not detained...
...A number of Senators are pressing for a strong bill including these features...
...Buick asked dealers last December to recall certain 1964 models for a possibly "troublesome" brake condition...
...Barry Gold water's tirade against the most prominent dissenter, Senator J. W. Fulbright, was one of the few exceptions to the prevailing rule of tolerance and free speech...
...Johnson rightly termed "the blush of shame...
...The attitude of Alexander and his police department toward white terrorism in Indianola is starkly revealed by this incident which occurred on May 1, 1965, and which was described by the two Congressmen: "At 2:49 a.m...
...Chevrolet told dealers last July to recall 16,000 cars because of a faulty front door latch...
...General Motors, the producer of more than half the country's annual output of cars, told its dealers to recall 1,500,000 Chevelles and Chevrolets because the throttle could stick, interfering with stopping...
...Not Legree actually, of course, but Bryce Alexander, a local police chief who as an oppressor of Negroes brings to mind the cruel overseer of Harriet Beecher Stowe's pre-Civil War novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin...
...And it was the CIA that helped persuade the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations to ride out the Vietnamese storm with Diem—probably for too long...
...As long as the war continues, whatever our material resources, the harsh and egotistical America will prevail over the generous and humane America...
...Bennett, whose father was Pennsylvania Dutch and his mother Oneida Indian, is a thirty-three-year career man with the Indian bureau and the first Indian in ninety-seven years to head the Indian agency...
...But Senator J. W. Fulbright urgently warned that pursuit of enemy planes into China would be "a very dangerous course...
...The United States has poured more than two billion dollars into Iran in the past dozen years...
...I give you my pledge that if you fulfill this charge, you will have the full power of the Presidency behind your efforts...
...Senator J. W. Fulbright Brien McMahon Lecture University of Connecticut March 22, 1966 in the Senate, seven votes short of the necessary two-thirds...
...Wars breed war fever...
...Early in May, Chrysler said it had ordered inspection and possible repairs on the suspension system of 182,000 Plymouths and Dodges after a check on twenty of the 1966 cars disclosed two loose nuts on the control arm strut of the front suspension...
...Last February the OEO, which adThe CIA in Action In 1960, CIA agents in Laos, disguised as "military advisers," stuffed ballot boxes and engineered local uprisings to help a handpicked strongman, General Phoumi Nosavan, set up a "pro-American" government that was desired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles...
...If we then respond with further bombing, "Will China confine herself to air fighting," Kennedy asked, "or will she send her troops to engage ours on the ground in South Vietnam...
...Secretary General U Thant's urgent reminder that three vital steps must be taken if the, antagonists are ever to begin negotiating peace...
...new approaches are needed...
...Johnson 62.2 per cent of its two-party popular vote compared to the nation's 61.4 per cent...
...Admirable Gift The Shah of Iran made news recently when he contributed $700,000 to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization to be used in UNESCO's world war against illiteracy...
...Citing the fact that in the first half of the 1960s, ". . . the open society . . . has demonstrably expanded its recognition and protection of those individual rights and liberties which are the essence of its Openness'," the ACLU went on to caution that ". . . severe change in the world . . . has foreshadowed the development of enormous tensions likely to produce the fears and anxieties that lead to contraction [of freedom...
...They have disappeared in the face of deepening involvement in an Asian war, and although it may be contended that the United States has the material resources to rebuild its society at home while waging war abroad, it is already being demonstrated that we do not have the mental and spiritual resources for such a double effort...
...They were segregated on reservations and treated as pariahs in their own native land...
...The path to peace would be difficult enough even if U Thant's proposed steps were taken...
...Buick found that 15,000 of its 1963 Specials had fenders that could cut the tires, but made no effort to recall them for repair...
...Ky added, "Of course, it doesn't matter what you Americans choose to do...
...planes across the Chinese border into a war with the most populous nation on earth...
...The New York Times April 26, 1966 ministers the war on poverty, apparently then satisfied there were no racists on the board of the Sunflower County poverty agency, granted it $27,700...
...Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore said it would be "an act of war...
...The New McCarthyism To those of us old enough to remember the fear-ridden, repressive days of the early 1950's—the era of the McCarran Internal Security Act, the rise of McCarthyism, the dread of the House Un-American Activities Committee—the relatively free and open climate of today provides a delightfully refreshing contrast indeed...
...In this fall's legislative elections the vote of the city and suburban resident will—in many states for the first time—be equal in value to the ballot cast by the rural voter...
...Get ? Horse For years the American public not only was kept in the dark about the unsafe design of many automobile models, but even worse, the motorist driving a defective new car rarely was informed when Detroit discovered production mistakes that placed him and his family in serious hazard...
...Harris and others close to and concerned with Indian problems feel fresh hope that Robert Bennett will provide the necessary new approaches...
...Pauline Frederick, U.N...
...It was the CIA that built up Ngo Dinh Diem as the pro-American head of South Vietnam after the French, through Emperor Bao Dai, had found him in a monastery cell in Belgium and brought him back to Saigon as Premier...
...The unemployment rate is forty-five per cent, more than ten times the national average...
...Police later arrested civil rights workers who attempted to rescue records and belongings from the burning building...
...With a degree of partisan harmony that would have seemed inconceivable a few years ago the Congress in 1965 adopted sweeping legislation to expand education, to provide health care to the aged, to combat urban and rural poverty on a large scale, to renew our cities and purify our streams, and to meet many other long-neglected problems...
...Pontiac brought back 80,000 Tempests of 1961 vintage which were considered too low-slung to clear some road obstacles...
...censorship restrictions have been all but abolished...
...This issue will not die," proclaimed Dirksen, "and unlike old soldiers it will not fade away...
...Taft never got a chance to demonstrate there was such a sleeper vote...
...Last year the Vietcong fought on about thirty tons of supplies a day compared to our 24,000 tons shipped in daily by sea alone...
...We are reminded anew that it is time to pay the price once again...
...In 1965, the Illinois Republican again tried to begin the undoing of the Supreme Court's decisions against malapportionment by seeking Senate adoption of a proposed Constitutional amendment to permit one house of a state legislature to be elected on factors other than population...
...According to an eyewitness a policeman was on duty twenty-five feet from the freedom house and saw two men running from the building shortly before the explosion...
...Pro-Communist Laotians, however, were never again driven from the border of North Vietnam, and it is through that region that the Vietcong in South Vietnam have been supplied and replenished in their war to destroy still another CIA-aided project, the non-Communist government in Saigon...
...in Wisconsin he received 37.8 per cent of the total two-party vote...
...These are the cessation of U.S...
...A Federal mandate over safety features must be part of the proposed new law, along with provisions for warnings from Washington to the public of automobile defects that constitute a danger on the highways...
...Thus it is clear that Goldwater made a strong showing only among his own kind—conservative, hard-core Republicans—and did poorly in every other category...
...Obviously there was no army of "true conservatives" sufficient to bring Goldwater victory...
...Every day that we continue the bombing of North Vietnam increases the risk of aerial clashes which now, under the "no sanctuary" lunacy, can result in "hot pursuit" by U.S...
...Those who supported Senator Robert Taft for the GOP Presidential nomination in 1952 promoted the notion that only a "true conservative" could rally stay-at-home Republicans, and their numbers would provide the margin of victory...
...when a nation is involved in a bitter foreign conflict, hopes give way to fears and creative and generous attitudes give way to a false and strident patriotism...
...The Senator pressed his third campaign against equality of voting this spring, but in spite of some modification of his "rotten borough" amendment and a lavish public relations program on its behalf, it was defeated fifty-five to thirty-eight ? Kind of Madness' A year ago, in domestic affairs, we vigorously reasserted our "preference for life and peace...
...Vigorously executed and adequately funded, the legislation adopted in 1965 can open the way to an era of abundance and opportunity for all Americans, but, for the present at least, the inspiration and commitment of a year ago have disappeared...
...Freeing the States Next winter should bring into session an array of the most truly representative legislatures in the history of the country...
...Of the six-year output of cars, 18.5 per cent "have been defective in some respects...
...Wisconsin has been traditionally Republican in Presidential elections...
...The eyewitness stated that he saw the two men and could recognize them...
...The prophecies of Senator Fulbright and the ACLU, and their almost immediate fulfillment by Senator Eastland, bring to mind Thomas Jefferson's warning, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty...
...Of U Thant's three points—which The Progressive has long advocated— the one most critically needed at the moment is the moratorium on bombing...
...Dodge called back 17,500 cars for a throttle change, not saying safety was at stake...
...It will prevail not only in Vietnam but, to one degree or another, depending upon the length and size of the war, in relations with the Communist world, with the neutrals, with our allies, and in relations with each other here at home...
...One month after the grant the board took the outrageous step of putting Alexander in charge...
...As long as he remains in office he constitutes a serious obstacle to any realistic solution of the Vietnam problem through peace negotiations...
...All in all, Senator Abraham A. Rib-icoff revealed on the basis of figures from the auto industry that more than eight million cars have been recalled to check for possible defects in the past six years...
...Thirty-eight states have re-districted their legislatures, and at least ten others are expected to do so this year...
...U.S...
...In 1964, Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader, sought enactment of a two-year moratorium in court-ordered reapportionment of state legislatures, but a handful of Senate liberals led a successful fight against his proposal...
...If Haiphong were bombed into ruins the tiny trickle of supplies that is all the Vietcong requires to keep on fighting could come overland from China—just as some of it is transported now...
...Furthermore, Senator Eastland's Internal Security Subcommittee will hold hearings on new, comprehensive, "anti-subversive" legislation designed to replace and update the 1950 act, now shot through with nullifications by the Supreme Court...
...three private homes housing civil rights workers, and one freedom house were blown up and destroyed by fire...
...In their analysis, published in the spring issue of Political Science Quarterly, Epstein and Ranney note that Goldwater did better among college-educated Republicans in Wisconsin, better among persons over sixty, and ran strongly among those GOP voters "for whom fighting Communisn is salient and among those voters for whom the Republican Party's position on Negro civil rights" is preferred to the Democrats' position...
...It is easy to be complacent, to bask in an aura of optimism...
...HUAC, while still functioning as a national nuisance, is not nearly so terrifying as it once was...
...Senator Robert Kennedy told the Senate that if we invaded Chinese airspace, Peking could send planes against our airbases in South Vietnam and Thailand...
...The contrast throws into sharp relief the world-wide reluctance to spend more than a pittance for creative and constructive purposes, while eagerly lavishing almost limitless amounts on weapons of destruction...
...Perhaps most important is President Johnson's pledge of full support of Bennett's efforts...
...The lives of thousands could depend on their success in passing a bill with such teeth in it...
...He will direct 22,000 Federal employes—one for every seventeen Indians on reservations...
...Past experience provides little basis for confidence that reason can prevail in an atmosphere of mounting war fever...
...The Rocky Mountain AAA club in Denver issued warnings to 1966 Olds-mobile owners about the possibility of engine compartment explosions and fires...
...Ford informed 30,000 owners of 1965 cars that a change in rear suspension could improve the ride but failed to tell them their cars could go out of control if a suspension arm broke...
...it gave Dwight D. Eisenhower heavy majorities twice, and Richard M. Nixon a 64,000-vote edge over Kennedy in 1960...
...bombing of North Vietnam, de-escalation of military activities in South Vietnam by both sides, and a commitment by Washington and Saigon that they will negotiate with the Vietcong and not just with Hanoi...
...It demonstrates how muscle-bound is the thinking of the advocates of more bombing, including the bombing of Haiphong harbor to stop the flow of supplies to the Vietcong...
...Senator Eastland cannot stand the thought that "the door now stands wide open for travel by U.S...
...The American Civil Liberties Union echoed Senator Fulbright's warning in its recently-published annual report entitled "Tension, Change, and Liberty...
...The hope in some quarters is that the President will not permit U.S...
...The state gave Mr...
...Their conviction has now been documented in an interesting study of 1964 voting patterns by two political scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Professor Leon D. Epstein, now dean of its College of Letters and Science, and Professor Austin Ranney...
...This potential harvest of progress was made possible by the U.S...
...The old methods of dealing with Indian problems have failed, in Harris' view...
...Possibly the OEO can effect Alexander's removal, and possibly not, because the price of getting Dixie votes in Congress for passage of war on poverty legislation was to give—for all practical purposes—veto power over local poverty programs to state and local authorities...
...However, no arrests were made...
...That, I believe, is what is happening in America today, and there can be no cure for it except an end to the war in Asia...
...The longer the Vietnamese war goes on without prospect of victory or negotiated peace," the Senator concluded, "the war fever will rise, hopes will give way to fears, and tolerance and freedom of discussion will give way to a false and strident patriotism...
...that he realizes China, which entered the Korean War contrary to predictions of our military experts, is likely to intervene in Vietnam if we violate her borders...
...We cannot bomb North Vietnam (and even less the Vietcong) to the peace table...
...Should American planes again be attacked in their raids on North Vietnam our jets will chase any enemy craft fleeing into China right across the border—if President Johnson gives the word...
...This wholly admirable gift was made especially newsworthy when the amount was identified as the equivalent of one day's military budget for that poor and backward nation—only one-fourth of one per cent of its annual arms expenditures...
...When the white man first invaded the new world there were probably close to a million Indians in what is now the United States...
...The U.S...
...The detailed study of who voted for whom in Wisconsin disclosed that "Goldwater, the very model of the 'real Republican' demanded by conservative theorists, did not bring out the stay-at-home Republican identifiers as he was supposed to do...
...When the Kennedy Administration set out to reverse the policy of the Eisenhower Administration, it found the CIA deeply committed to Phoumi Nosavan and needed two years of negotiations and threats to restore the neutralist regime of Prince Souvanna Phouma...
...For years Goldwater and his zealots insisted there was such a vote...
...officials in Saigon...
...I want you to tell me," the President told Bennett, "what needs to be done, not only by your bureau, but by every department and agency in the Federal government...
...That was the appalling risk that emerged in recent weeks as the war in Vietnam escalated and the voices and echoes of the military and the State Department parroted Secretary of State Dean Rusk's statement of last July that "the idea of sanctuary is dead...
...In Detroit parlance what happens is "wheel fold-under," not a possibly fatal accident...
...The Poverty Director Down in Sunflower County, Mississippi, the board in charge of the poverty program has appointed Simon Legree as director...
...aircraft to cross the Chinese border...
...The ACLU, for example, feels that while there is not now "a clear pattern of repression" of protests against our nation's war and foreign policies, such repression has "occurred too frequently to be classed as sporadic or isolated...
...The voters of the cities and suburbs—where seven out of every ten Americans now live—stand indebted in almost the same degree to Democratic Senators William Proxmire of Wisconsin and Joseph Tydings of Maryland who organized the resistance of thirty-five Democrats and three Republicans to the "rotten borough amendment...
...Average family income is $1,500 a year...
...The country owes much to Senator Paul Douglas, Illinois Democrat, for his successful leadership of the fight against the efforts of the Dirksen alliance to restore minority domination to state legislatures...
...it seemed that the United States might be about to undergo something of a social revolution...
...Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren has invalidated much of the nation's anti-subversion machinery...
...With "no sanctuary" as their battle cry, the masterminds of the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom, and some in Congress, are willing to gamble an untold number of lives on their guesswork regarding China's reaction to an American invasion of its airspace...
...No more significant victory for representative democracy was won in the Eighty-ninth Congress than this vote that leaves the way open for the urgently needed revitalization of state legislatures and state governments...
...Senator Fred Harris, Oklahoma Democrat, whose wife and three children are members of the Comanche tribe, describes typical Indians as caught in "needless but surely predictable unemployment and idleness, delinquency and crime, alcoholism and despair, welfare and dependency, withdrawal and escapism, and . . . lives lived out without much feeling of belonging, of dignity, of worth...
...Two Democratic Congressmen who protested to the Office of Economic Opportunity against his appointment gave this summary of his two-and-a-half year tenure as police chief at Indianola, the county seat: "During this period, Negro citizens of that town have endured a continuing experience of terrorism, beatings, harassment, bombings, and interference with their civil rights...
...residents to Red China, or Cuba, or North Vietnam, or anywhere else...
...My own view is that there is a kind of madness in the facile assumption that we can raise the many billions of dollars necessary to rebuild our schools and cities and public transport and eliminate the pollution of air and water while also spending tens of billions to finance an "open-ended" war in Asia, but even if the material resources can somehow be drawn from an expanding economy I do not think that the spiritual resources will long be forthcoming from an angry and disappointed people...
...I am perfectly willing one day to stand alone before Ho Chi Minh and tell him 'I'll never give in to you'—even if I then have nothing left to do but go and shoot myself...
...On Election Day, 1964, the returns proved that such a concept was in a class with belief in griffins and unicorns...
...The President also is said to be deeply concerned about a memorandum from one of his top officials predicting that China will enter the Vietnam war within six to nine months...
...If Bennett does meet the formidable challenge facing him, and if the President follows through on his pledge, there is cause for renewed hope that at last a program for Indians will be launched that will remove from the nation what Mr...
...All the more reason, then, to heed the warning of Senator Fulbright—sounded before Goldwater's McCarthy-style har-rangue—that "It is by no means certain that the relatively healthy atmosphere . . . will not give way to a new era of McCarthyism...
...Our Boy in Saigon Nguyen Cao Ky may be toppled before the proposed elections in South Vietnam, and in any event he is not expected to remain Premier thereafter unless propped up by force of American arms...
...There would seem to be no shortage of manpower if Bennett can come up with the right solutions...
...If the nuts should fall off and the brakes were "applied severely," a Chrysler spokesman said, "wheel fold-under" could result...
...Three Vital Steps The Administration's professions of a desire for peace have been drowned out by escalation of the war in the air and on the ground...
...Alexander has up-to-date credentials for the Legree role...
...In April alone it was revealed that over the last several years: Lincoln told dealers to recall 40,000 Continentals to repair a braking defect...
...The voting pattern in Wisconsin was studied as reasonably representative of the national picture in 1964...
...It is ironic, too, that such a creative gift should come from the head of a nation that is a repressive police state, in which the Shah has curtailed the expansion of education to prevent the rise of an educated class (which might overthrow him...
...The chief also gives the details of one of his deputies beating a Negro woman at a voter registration meeting and her subsequent arrest 'for assault and battery on a police officer.' " Alexander provided this information in his deposition taken for a House committee looking into contested Congressional elections in Mississippi...
...Can you envision any future possibility," Hughes asked, "of any negotiation with Hanoi...
...This amendment proposal, requiring a two-thirds vote, was defeated fifty-seven to thirty-nine...
...The police department has not only been ineffective in combating these crimes, but has even participated in some of them...
...correspondent for NBC, on a recent telecast said that a Soviet informant had told her Hanoi would be willing to begin peace negotiations with the United States "if all bombing of North Vietnam is ended...
...military flights into China could advance the date to tomorrow or today...
...This operation succeeded—so much so that it stimulated Soviet intervention on the side of leftist Laotians, who counterattacked the Phoumi government...
...All the bars are down now," he complained to the Senate...
...Today, there are more than a half million Indians, three-fourths of them still on reservations, and still victims of a heritage of poverty and ignorance and the other social ills that flow from a crippled culture...
...By 1870, brutal warfare, white men's diseases, and shrinking hunting lands had reduced their numbers to only 25,000...
...The proceedings of these bodies could hopefully produce long-delayed programs of vast benefit to the people of the states...
...Are there, then, absolutely no conceivable circumstances under which you would find any such negotiation tolerable...
...In Colorado and the Midwest there were reports of carburetors on Oldsmo-biles and Toronados catching fire...
...Childish" might be a better word, in view of his responses to Hughes...
...Occupied with pressing the war harder, the Administration seems to have given-little thought to U.N...
...But the prospects for negotiation are made a thousand times dimmer by our refusal to halt bombing indefinitely, to stop the military buildup and move toward de-escalation, and by the failure of the President himself to declare, once and for all, that the Vietcong should be included in negotiations...
...freedom to travel has been greatly broadened...
...Supreme Court's "one man, one vote" decisions, and by the success of a band of Senators in Washington who have finally killed the Dirksen amendment that could have blighted the good seed sown by the Court...
...Ky replied: "Absolutely not...
...Hughes persisted...
...This was spelled out vividly when Newsweek columnist Emmet John Hughes recently interviewed Premier Ky...
...After Lyndon Johnson was elected President in his own right by the largest popular plurality in history, experts who studied the returns were convinced that the so-called "sleeper vote" of conservatives was a myth...
...The industry's wretched safety performance record and its long blackout of information on faulty production and design will not be remedied by the feeble legislation Detroit favors—based on promises to do better and the assignment of regulation to the states rather than to Federal authority...
...The Unicorn Vote Nominate Barry Gold water in 1964, said many a Republican ultra-conservative, and when he blows his campaign trumpet millions of conservative Republicans who sat out earlier elections will march to the polls and vote the Arizonan ("a voice, not an echo") into the White House...
...and the black clouds of official smear and innuendo that characterized McCarthyism have receded over the horizon...
...No, sir," responded Ky, "I'm an anti-Communist and I'll stay that way even if I'm the only one left in Vietnam...
...President Johnson won the support of eighty-seven per cent of the "strong Democrats" and—most significantly—seventy-eight per cent of "ordinary Democrats" and twenty-two per cent of "ordinary Republicans...
...bombers have weakened North Vietnam with heavy raids but have not materially reduced the military capacity of the Vietcong in the field...
...With the manufacturers under fire from a number of Senators, and from Ralph Nader, the auto safety crusader, admissions of car defects are pouring out of Detroit...
...The proclaimed intent is to go after Communists, in the main, but such a bill would be bound to rub off on student and civil rights groups, the movement seeking peace in Vietnam, and the forces battling for a more effective war on poverty since Eastland presumes these are all "infiltrated" by Communists...
...Representatives August F. Hawkins of Chicago and Joseph Y. Resnick of New York further charged: ". . . by the police chief's own admissions under oath, he and his men broke up [Negro] voter registration meetings on private property and arrested participants in Indianola...
...Blush of Shame The recent appointment of Robert LaFollette Bennett as director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs has once more focused attention on the most disgraceful of all our minority problems...
...If Alexander should feel threatened by the protest of the two Northern Congressmen, he can always seek the protection of Sunflower County's most prominent citizen—Senator James O. Eastland, a man not noted for coddling Negroes or the poor...
...As if to provide instant proof that Senator Fulbright and the ACLU are correct in their analysis, Senator James Eastland, Mississippi Democrat and fellow-traveler of McCarthy and McCarran, introduced legislation that would give the Secretary of State broad power to place restrictions on American travel overseas...
...Together these two arbitrary views constitute a perfect formula for prolonging the war that takes more American and Vietnamese lives every day...
...The U.S...
...In concrete terms, the President simply cannot think about implementing the Great Society at home while he is supervising bombing missions over North Vietnam...
...Chrysler instructed its dealers, in November, 1964, to do a welding job on a steering bracket of some Chryslers, Plym-ouths, and Dodges...
...The Premier, at thirty-five, is frequently described as "boyish," a trait that seems to have endeared him to some U.S...
...His all-out opposition to any negotiation with Hanoi can block one avenue to peace...
...These accomplishments reflect brilliant legislative leadership, for which President Johnson is justly famed, and they also are an expression of the humane and idealistic side of the American character...
...He drew seventy-eight per cent of those who considered themselves "strong Republicans," only fifty per cent of "ordinary Republicans," and a scattering of independents and Democrats...
...Air Force brass are cocksure that such "hot pursuit" into China will not provoke Peking to direct military intervention in Vietnam...
...It may be consoling to some American taxpayers that at least a small part of this money is now being diverted to help someone learn to read and write rather than to keep the Shah's finger on the trigger...
...The nation is involved in a horrible mess in Vietnam, but countless dissenters are speaking out without fear of being accused of treason...
...troop total of 255,000 in South Vietnam was expected to soar to 400,000 by the end of the year—an average monthly increase of Americans that would run three to four times the estimated monthly infiltration rate of enemy forces from the North...
...This eighty-to-one ratio of supplies in our favor has tilted even more to our side in recent months...
...Washington's official refusal to deal with the National Liberation Front— although it is willing to negotiate with Hanoi—blocks another...
Vol. 36 • June 1966 • No. 6
