LETTERS
LETTERS Aid for Vietnam Children A letter in the December issue captioned "Friends of Vietnam Orphans" brought attention to Bill HR5159, introduced by Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii, which...
...Your views about that war were in direct contradiction to your own analysis...
...Time seeks to convict before the evidence has been presented to demonstrate existence of a basis for impeachment...
...A sloppy job all around...
...Listening to them will not tell us why but only what their rationalizations are...
...But inasmuch as our orphanages and adoption agencies, both public and parochial, are already overcrowded with children waiting to be adopted, the Vietnam children would increase the number, and worsen the situation...
...The moral is clear: Big powers can do what they want, but little powers are at the mercy of the wishes of the big powers...
...It was another ten years before that insight was widely accepted, and you were the first I knew to enunciate it...
...Russia invaded Hun-gar)' and nothing was done to prevent it...
...Mayer—I always address him as "Mister" —is his sexism...
...Bernard Attinson New York, New York Creeping Computerese As a subscriber I am delighted to discover through your September "Memo" that The Progressive has been able to use computers to make its mailing process more efficient...
...If an informed and committed public can defeat the development of this industry, it will be a milestone in American politics...
...But perhaps I do you an injustice...
...Howard K. Smith and the War The following is an open letter to Howard K. Smith which may be of interest to readers of The Progressive: Dear Mr...
...This Administration's stance that, with the return of the prisoners of war, the Nixon-Kissinger team successfully negotiated a settlement of hostilities and concluded our infamous involvement in Vietnam is just another farce fabricated for the gullible...
...Where is their fairness when it comes to international agreements on treatment of prisoners...
...Meanwhile, I will support efforts to help repair some of the damage at home, by contributions to the National Committee for an Effective Congress, to SANE, to The Progressive, to the ACLU, to the Ellsberg Defense Fund, and to any other organization whose purpose is to see that other Vietnams are made less likely and that the damage to this country by the Watergate mentality is repaired...
...This could be paid either in cash or in stamps redeemable in fuel...
...Arthur Steig Lakewood, New Jersey...
...Computers are great for doing work...
...Derian is one of the most dedicated advocates of reform on the Democratic National Committee.—The Editors The Nuclear Priesthood Richard Sandler and Peter Gruenstein's article, "Potential for Catastrophe," in the November issue of The Progressive is an excellent portrait of the threat of disaster created by the commercial development of nuclear fission...
...How can the public be fooled by either Fulbright or the United Nations...
...I would then be able to sleep at night with the certainty that at least some good is being performed in those buildings...
...If it had not been for men like you, there would have been no victims...
...Jonathan A. Rowe Washington, D.C...
...and I urge Progressive readers to write their Congressmen to vote for its passage...
...if we "gag" them...
...Demands End to Secrecy The article, "Vietnam: The Aftermath," by Fred Branfman in the November issue, is an example of reporting this country desperately needs if public knowledge is ever to be a criteria in shaping foreign policies...
...While there is no question but that pay scales should be sufficient to attract honest men to office, as matters now stand the higher the job pays the higher the costs of achieving election...
...But no more...
...Congress should strip Nixon of his economic powers and restore a market economy...
...For example, Harlem blacks, if asked why they are anti-Semitic, will answer that they have been mistreated by Jewish merchants...
...Blacks are anti-Semitic for the same "reasons" that white "Christians" are...
...Will articles, in the future, don the tag "information delivery components...
...I feel the way he uses "Baby" in the article is quite offensive and demeaning to her and to women...
...If you have come after all these years to understand the Vietnam war as the least justifiable and the most disgraceful war in U.S...
...I think that the U.S...
...Our Government is indeed responsible for these victims of our involvement in Vietnam, and we should build orphanages there to accommodate them and staff the orphanages with American personnel...
...Will the magazine itself shuck The Progressive label and become "forward movement stimulation vehicle...
...Ponte asks: "How then shall we know why they feel thus...
...The Atomic Energy Commission has maneuvered to gain control over all new non-nuclear energy research funds...
...The most likely consequence of this is an - unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of those who control the nuclear industry, the "nuclear priesthood" described by Sandler and Gruenstein...
...Do you feel an urge to let every damned fool express himself...
...Blacks in the South who were mistreated by Baptist or Methodist merchants, or whose kin were lynched by Baptists or Methodists, didn't become anti-Baptist or anti-Methodist or anti-Christian...
...This is a matter vested in Congress and not in the news media, which, too often, do more editorializing than reporting of the facts...
...We respectfully suggest that The Progressive is too prone to attack President Nixon before all of the evidence has been presented...
...Even though you quoted me correctly, you took the quote out of its proper context and twisted it to suggest exactly the opposite of the statement I made...
...Too often The Progressive and other media overzealously or prematurely impute wrongdoing to persons based upon speculation and unfounded inferences from conflicting statements, reports, documents, conversations, and representations...
...It was maddening to encounter the sexist attitudes of Mr...
...I recall your syndicated columns defending the Johnson and, later, the Nixon positions...
...But let's keep the computer mentality out of our speech...
...LETTERS Aid for Vietnam Children A letter in the December issue captioned "Friends of Vietnam Orphans" brought attention to Bill HR5159, introduced by Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii, which would bring the "half-American" children, fathered by our GIs while in Vietnam, to the United States for adoption...
...Sally H. Nelson Lakeside, California Baby Mayer Replies One of the things I like best about Mr...
...I am tired of our nation kow-towing to the Arabs, primarily for the sake of the oil lobby...
...I am not going to renew my subscription to The Progressive because of the above...
...We must also see it as the base of what promises to become the most powerful economic interest in the country...
...It is attempting to strip the Interior Department and other government agencies of every energy research program not already under its control...
...This can only increase the danger of serious accidents...
...Smith: I have received your letter in the name of the World Rehabilitation Fund and its appeal for contributions to the Limb and Brace Center in Saigon...
...Pavis, were these: "A United Nations guarantee could be supplemented by an identical bilateral treaty between Israel and the United States—not an executive agreement but a treaty consented to by the Senate—under which the United States would guarantee the territory and independence of Israel within its adjusted borders...
...Industries and households that use or waste large amounts of fuel would suffer more than those more frugal...
...Against this specific and publicly proclaimed position of Senator Fulbright, to call him anti-Jewish and anti-Israel suggests that words have lost their meaning...
...His exact words, as expressed in the Pacem in Terris conference in Washington, and published by The Progressive in the editorial mentioned by Ms...
...The price of oil and other fuels would rise sharply...
...He is little, weak, and ugly but you ought to see him pick himself up off the floor when I knock him down...
...I write this as a one-time pro-Arab and pro-United Nations...
...Adele Schmitz New York, New York Fulbright 'Biased' The latest veil behind which Senator Fulbright hides his anti-Jewishnes^ is the United Nations...
...However, we apologize for any difficulty that we have caused her inadvertently, and are indeed happy to learn (as we have since our editorial was published) that Ms...
...Unfortunately, the press reports from which we took her quote (and which misspelled her name) gave no indication of her real position or the intent of her words...
...What Fulbright and the United Nations do not condemn, do not say, is as vivid a communication on their position as what they do say in their biased statements...
...I met The Progressive just last year and have become a firm admirer...
...Rhona Lee Pavis Potomac, Maryland Ms...
...D. Wachstock New York, New York Presumes President Innocent This old subscriber, who started to read The Progressive when Robert LaFollette, Sr...
...Since the poor would be badly hurt by a price increase, they ought to receive a temporary subsidy to enable them to heat their homes this winter...
...This arrangement would obligate the United States to use force if necessary in accordance with its constitutional processes, to assist Israel against any violations of its borders which it could not repel itself, but the agreement would also obligate Israel, firmly and unequivocably, never to violate these borders herself...
...Also, he has sought to avoid prejudicing the rights of those under investigation...
...Baby ("My Name is Jane") Mayer (Mrs...
...Not only have you credited me with opinions exactly opposite from those I hold, you have misspelled my name...
...how did it happen...
...The "priesthood" includes not only the Atomic Energy Commission and the utility companies, as mentioned in the article, but the major manufacturers of nuclear equipment, led by General Electric and Westinghouse, and the major oil companies that are attempting to diversify into, and control, the nuclear field as they already do with coal...
...Of course Fulbright chooses now to support the United Nations when the United Nations has made perfectly clear its anti-Israel, anti-Jewish position...
...The sinister implications of this have already begun to be realized...
...Having spent days and sleepless nights listening to the deliberations of the U.N...
...No resolutions were passed...
...This tends to downgrade the office of our President, aside from the mistakes Richard Nixon and his supporters may have made or...
...Russia has consistently thumbed its nose at the United Nations, and the United Nations has kept silent...
...It appalls me that such an intelligent man as Milton Mayer could write such an insensitive article with so many derogatory remarks about the females in his story, especially his wife...
...I will continue to read Mayer's articles, no doubt, but never with the respect I once felt...
...I further think that all individuals who supported that war have an extra obligation to rebuild Vietnam—you, Gerald Ford, Hugh Scott and his gung-ho colleagues in the Senate, the editors of newspapers who supported the war policy, and all private citizens who went along, unprotesting, to give support to what the United States was doing in Vietnam...
...Security Council, I have come to the sad conclusion that the best use of the United Nations is to convert its magnificent buildings into a center for the culturally disadvantaged or perhaps into a hospital...
...Milton' Mayer) Santa Barbara, California Sloppy Job In your September editorial, "The 'Stifled' Democrats," you have cast me with the Southern, anti-McGovem, anti-reform, (old line Democrats by inferring that I oppose the discussion of issues at the 1974 [party] conference...
...Is Fulbright unaware of how Egyptians and Syrians treat Israeli prisoners of war or does he, under a "gentlemen's" agreement with other Jew haters, close his eyes to atrocities against Jewish people...
...Then came the Vietnam war, and I was shocked to see your unfaltering support of the U.S...
...history, I should like to know...
...In the light of the current oil crisis, this threat has taken on a new significance, and may soon emerge as the prime topic of national debate...
...Mildred Wocet San Diego, California Gives Up on United Nations I laugh (if that is the correct word) every time I see a letter in The Progressive like the one by Professor William Fisher in November taking Israel to task for not obeying the United Nations...
...What good is a low price if the product isn't there...
...Patricia M. Derian Democratic National Committeewoman Jackson, Mississippi As Ms...
...However, it was his duty to protect the President against demands for violation of confidentiality of his office...
...It is not naive to say that even the President and White House employes and officials of the Committee to Reelect the President are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty...
...Russia has not paid its share of the cost of peacekeeping operations and the world has kept silent...
...Quite aside from its potential for catastrophe, we must understand the nuclear reactor as the constant source of low-level radioactive pollution and waste...
...We cannot expect more oil or lower prices...
...A higher price would do far more to save fuel than preaching and compulsion will...
...Government, which without cause brought devastation to Vietnam, has an obligation to rebuild it...
...Indeed, Senator Fulbright has supported the United Nations on many major aspects of the continuing confrontation in the Middle East, but he has gone much farther, proposing an air-tight guarantee by the United States to protect Israel from aggression...
...Nonetheless, I find it curious that you should be writing such a letter...
...I don't have the figure at hand but it has been reported as large...
...Nixon's policy of price control will no more help the poor heat their houses this winter than it helped them put meat on the table last summer...
...But the creeping computerese that seems to have accompanied the move is another matter...
...As an American, I am tired of feeling shame for my Government's covert actions in foreign affairs, and I am likewise incensed when this Government wantonly disperses our tax dollars to dictatorial corrupt governments such as that of Vietnam's President Thieu...
...Another thing I like about him is his lifelong fight for job and wage and alimony and military equality for women...
...wrongful acts they may have committed...
...As both Senators Erwin and Baker said on "Meet The Press," we all should continue to keep our minds open and hope our President will ultimately be exonerated when all of the facts are established...
...If the whole ridiculous apparatus of price controls and allocations were swept away, the economy could sooner and more easily adjust to the reduced oil supply...
...Derian writes, she was quoted correctly...
...The safety questions which Sandler and Gruenstein discuss are in danger of being forgotten in the mounting energy panic...
...From this policy we can expect more bureaucrats, more special favors like the milk price deal, more misallocation like that of pulp-wood, more waste like' that of livestock last summer, more small business failures like those of the independent service stations, and higher prices in the end...
...We have only recently seen a Vice President taking graft while still in office...
...I think this a noble cause and I respect it...
...We have also read your November issue referring to the demand of Time magazine for impeachment of the President...
...The answer is that we shall not know by listening to them...
...I don't...
...However, the possibility of a serious accident in the near future may be small enough so that we will find the road to nuclear economy an apparently smooth and untroubled one if we can ignore the growing stockpile of radioactive wastes...
...Cameron Sherwood Walla Walla, Washington Pay Scales and Venality While I am in total agreement with Mark Barbash in his conclusions in the November "Comment" with respect to salary levels for Congress, I am amazed at his apparent naivete in his belief that there is a relationship between the amount of pay a public servant receives and his venality...
...position in that war...
...It has a unique mission and voice...
...The United Nations debates while the big powers decide...
...And I was especially offended by his use of the insulting word "chiclet" to describe the waitress...
...But the thing I like best about him is that he is a very funny man who writes very funny pieces for the magazines...
...Failure to offer a Democratic program and alternatives would be a disaster...
...Sidney A. Saunders Baton Rouge, Louisiana Ponte 'Nauseating' Re "Ponte Replies" in the "Letters" section of a recent issue: To consider anti-Semites as mere "social nonconformists" is an outrage...
...I was so encouraged to read Michelle Wasserman's excellent article on rape crisis centers...
...Circulation fulfillment system" and "subscriber fulfillment services" would do credit to a veteran Pentagon obfuscator...
...If this is to be a country of law and not men, the Nixon Administration has provided us with the impetus to demand an end to secrecy and corruption in government...
...During this time I don't remember reading anything in your magazine that angered me as much as Milton Mayer's article, "Jackpot," in the November issue...
...Let there be good compensation for honest men...
...We, like many others, are much concerned with the so-called Watergate revelations, rumors, hearsay, and contradictory statements of both witnesses and politicians— and the media...
...You are wrong...
...And let's leave the syllabic overruns to the pros...
...But that doesn't tell us anything...
...The other bill mentioned in the letter, HR2029 (now part of S2325), introduced by Senator Harrison of New Jersey and providing for aid for children in Vietnam, is the more sensible one...
...The Editors Mayer 'Sexist' I have been supporting, reading, and enjoying The Progressive for eight years...
...So here you are, a consistent supporter of the war, appealing for funds for the victims...
...Howard A. Burton Riverside, California Free Market in Oil The Nixon Administration, with the eager support of Congress, is responding to the reduction of the oil supply with the same policy of price control and bureaucratic allocation which has already thrown the whole economy into confusion...
...How tragic that some people mistake his pro-United Nations stance as cleverly related in "idealistic" overtones at the Pacem in Terris meeting in Washington...
...Nixon may have exercised poor judgment in delaying presentation of the tapes to Judge Sirica...
...and I recall your final column, one in which you wrote that you felt out of step since so many of your colleagues did not share your view of the war...
...It is a bottomless pit to which we contribute, not only by stated pay schedules but in the hundred subterfuges built into the patronage and committee systems...
...Even persons charged with serious crimes such as murder and treason are entitled to the presumption of innocence...
...Public institutions could also receive subsidies for heating fuel...
...It should continue...
...Furthermore, as we debate this issue, Kissinger and Brezhnev are engaging in back room negotiations that will settle the Israel-Arab conflict...
...Charles Bering Environmental Action Washington, D.C...
...was a member of the Senate, has read and reread your August issue...
...I wouldn't want him to be married to somebody who had all the right ideas except the right idea about what's funny and what isn't...
...I find Ponte just as nauseating as Nixon or Goldwater would be in your pages...
...I said some people fear the word "policy" because they do, and they fear television exposure...
...For a long time I admired your reporting of the news...
...Nixon's accomplishments in the field of foreign policy alone justify giving him the benefit of all doubts until we have certain proof of his complicity in the Watergate break-in or cover-up...
...To press for their "access to the airwaves" is idiocy...
...Mayer in the same issue...
...I remember shortly after World War II your pointing out that the most significant development on the international scene was the struggle of the smaller, former colonial nations to achieve equality in the world community...
...But first we must place controls on the election processes so that the salaries are not hypothecated long before taking office...
...We should all recall the recent abortive attempt to impeach unjustifiably Justice William O. Douglas for political reasons rather than on hard evidence of some high crime or dismeanor...
...Pavis does not tell—or perhaps may not know—the full extent of Senator Ful-bright's position on Israel...
Vol. 38 • January 1974 • No. 1
