Letters
LETTERS Cheating the Poor As a supporter of your magazine and the ideals it stands for, I have been disappointed in your lack of interest in the Administration's attempt at dismantling the Office...
...The particular branch of economics to draw Dugger's ire is industrial economics, which deals most immediately with problems of "Power versus Economic Law...
...But all Jews will be painted with the same brush if this evil succeeds without a belated purchase of the land that belonged to the refugees...
...Her anti-Semitism is only slightly veiled and she is very unfair toward the Israeli people...
...The present plan is to store these wastes in above-ground containers with appropriate safeguards to guard against any release of the contents...
...He didn't start it all...
...A good many journalists are, I am afraid, a lazy and boozy lot...
...This question could haunt liberals in coming years...
...Nicholas Johnson Washington, D.C...
...Congressman McCormack has failed to point out even one error in our article: 1. The AEC has not offered the public published estimates of the accident potential besides the 1957 report...
...The fact is that it is assumed that transportation accidents will occur and appropriate limitations are therefore placed on the contents of the individual packages as well as strict regulations on the design of the containers to withstand the worst conceivable accident...
...taxpayers are paying...
...To do so in American liberal circles is to invite comparisons with the likes of Gerald L. K. Smith...
...The Supreme Court repeatedly ordered the government to restore their holdings, but successive administrations have defied the orders with techniques which make Nixon look like an A.C.L.U...
...Senator Fulbright, whose remarks served as your initial reaction to the latest round in the "twenty-five-year-war," has long been one of those very rare American leaders who have dared voice the heresy that both sides in the Middle East are right and both sides are wrong—that if a just settlement demands Arab recognition of Israel's existence as a state (a fact signalled by the acceptance by most of the Arab states involved of the 1967 U.N...
...Sylvia Fine Falls Church, Virginia This is the first time in the many years during which I have been reading The Progressive, that I feel compelled to voice my disappointment and disapproval in regard to the article by Georgie Anne Geyer in the December issue...
...therefore, a number of studies are going on to develop a feasible method for permanent storage of these wastes...
...A,B>C...
...I refer to the failure of liberals to make it clear that while they seek to better the lot of minorities in this country, they strongly condemn the acts of violence committed by certain members of these minority groups...
...There comes a point, however, at which the President's inability to govern must be acknowledged in planning one's personal life...
...electorate...
...Now must we witness liberal adherence to policies which an unholy alliance of Pentagon and Zionist spokesmen have long envisioned as a joint U.S.-Israeli seizure of the oilfields, policies hotly debated recently in the nonconformist sector of the Israeli press (again no ripples in U.S...
...volunteer lawyer...
...The cause of the villagers is led by their archbishop, Joseph Raya, whose long residence in the United States made him a convinced discipie of Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez...
...In addition, there is no discussion of the fact that reactors are designed and operated in a way which takes into account the areas of uncertainty...
...Although my FCC term was scheduled to expire July 1 of last year, and my office was cleared out at that time, I have stayed on from month to month with the hope that a qualified successor might be nominated and confirmed...
...Any loudmouth can say that sixty families do (or do not) rule America, and locate half a dozen cases of rich men and big companies defying the public interest...
...I also have another, which I shall not expose here...
...There are no technical difficulties in doing this...
...Economic Opportunity and at Congress' inability or unwillingness to seriously consider extending the life of the agency...
...The Arab way of life did not cause adrenalin to flow in the United Nations...
...Although I am resigning my Presidential appointment, my commitment to public service and broadcast reform remains as firm as ever...
...Israel built a military machine that may have cost a billion...
...It followed that the examinations used to license personnel were discriminatory and had to be enjoined...
...Dugger...
...Forget Watergate I do not agree at all with your persecution of Nixon—he is not that bad inside...
...U.S...
...resolution, and again emphasized by Egyptian eagerness for direct talks between the parties at this time), so does it demand an Israeli recognition of Palestinian Arabs as humans whose homes and lands are not merely real estate subject to expropriation, at will or by war, for present or future settlement by Jewish emigrants...
...My challenge to you asks whether at least your voice, in the proud if battered tradition of U.S...
...followers of the official Israeli line should remember that such groups in power are just as likely to sell Jewish lives for oil as they have been willing in the past to pretend the irrelevance of Palestinian rights in order to cement expedient relationships with Israeli militaristic elements...
...If you write the piece yourself, editors are just as bad if not worse...
...We will not assert that it is impossible for the AEC to come up with a "permanent" solution for keeping the extremely dangerous wastes out of the environment for the next quarter million years, but only point out that such a solution should be well in hand before, not after, producing the wastes which necessitate the storage...
...Now some five months later—with the President's attempt to nominate a lifetime broadcaster, and the Senate's commendable refusal even to schedule hearings—I have regretfully concluded that neither is likely to happen soon...
...I daresay Mr...
...Selling corruption is not easy, and it is doubtful if the people will be satisfied with anything other than the truth in this instance...
...are at the "fire" end, writing in newspapers and elementary textbooks, testifying before Congressional committees, talking to people like Mr...
...Palestinians did not go away...
...My reason is the most unfortunate anti-Israel tone which The Progressive has assumed in recent issues...
...The foregoing represent only a few of the major areas in which the facts have been misrepresented by this article...
...L,M,N, . . . pass the bucket on via applications and extensions...
...His war tactics did not work, but he fooled enough people to make his course of action salable to a majority of the voters in 1972...
...They didn't go away, they multiplied...
...How can the liberal, given his own horrible Western history of anti-Semitism, turn to Israel and protest an anti-Semitism no less vicious because the Semites happen to be Arab...
...Walter S. Kelley Jupiter, Florida Save Our Periodicals The U.S...
...In short, liberals must understand that while they seek to better the lot of those less fortunate, they cannot absolve the latter from the responsibilities of citizenship or from the attainment of minimum standards of competence...
...It is of the utmost importance that the citizens of these United States be aware of what is going on in the world and particularly in the United States...
...Louis, who has studied developments in Israel first hand on a number of occasions...
...liberalism, will be heard, prophetically, if unpopularly, in the coming critical period of direct negotiations...
...If the Federal Government needs more money, why not write equitable tax laws...
...These folk have for more than twenty years pursued the recovery of their seized lands within the Israeli courts...
...That is the thrust of the totality of Judaism...
...I must doubt the real liberalism of any publication or group which takes this kind of stance in defiance of the realities which prevail in the Middle East...
...I wish to imply, or even assert categorically, that he is mistaken...
...When one does this there always seem to be innumerable points to write letters about...
...Many subsidies could be avoided, such as the oil depletion allowance or the Boeing bailout, to mention just two of many horrendously unfair subsidies that the U.S...
...However, the article implies that each such accident has the potential for severe consequences...
...Now, as much as ever, the Indians suffer injustice while white liberals aid and abet the injustice to the Indians by caring about other things...
...They drop in on you with neither any background or any experience in digging for themselves...
...For heaven's sake, forget Watergate—it is just an oversize repetition of scandals like Teapot Dome and Tammany Hall—and let the United States act like a grown-up nation aiming for world peace...
...but with the support they have given him, perhaps he had to sign the Alaska pipe line law, for example...
...Despite the importance within Israel of this struggle during 1972-73, little coverage in the American (in contrast to the European) liberal media has been seen...
...4. The discussion of accidents in the transportation of radioactive wastes is also distorted...
...Years of public relations to create a good image for the United States went up in smoke...
...Another matter of which Mr...
...A bilateral U.S.-Israeli treaty, as suggested by Fulbright, would guarantee Israel's borders, but not her conquests...
...For one thing, the search for uranium was halted several years ago when it was realized that deposits that had been found already would last for decades...
...Dugger's preferences for ESP, the entrails of birds, or the conventional wisdom of radical chic and the Beautiful People (if not the conventional wisdom of university economists...
...Was the land worth more...
...2. Perhaps as primary justification for the breeder, the AEC has been asserting that we shall run out of economically competitive uranium in thirty to sixty years...
...I shall not attempt in this letter to discuss all the distortions and half-truths with which the article is filled, but shall point out a few of the more blatant errors: 1. The discussion of accident risks in connection with nuclear power plants is completely misleading...
...If a problem has not been resolved, appropriate features are incorporated in the reactor to compensate for this...
...Ambassador John Scali vetoed this resolution...
...Dugger seems unaware is the difference betweeen an indictment and a conviction...
...My field is not American history, but if I revealed in public that I thought Grant had won the battle of Gettysburg, people would find this funny...
...however, I hope that I am not the only one who objects to this article...
...James B. Nolan Helena, Montana Middle East Pros and Cons Georgie Anne Geyer's "Enemies" in your December issue was a masterpiece of thoughtful and balanced judgment of the tragic forces at work in the Middle East, symbolically presented to us in the equally tragic lives and deaths of a sensitive and peace-loving Jew and a poetic but wounded Arab...
...Specialized abilities are necessary at each point on the line—"division of labor," you know...
...LETTERS Cheating the Poor As a supporter of your magazine and the ideals it stands for, I have been disappointed in your lack of interest in the Administration's attempt at dismantling the Office of...
...Nye's field of learning is not English syntax, but Milton's use of allegory, or the symbolic meaning of Moby Dick, or whatever...
...Infer' and Imply' I have been away for six months, and my copies of The Progressive were not forwarded, so I had to catch up with my reading when I got back...
...My regret is tempered by empathy for your obvious dilemma...
...Recently, a Federal judge invalidated the system of licensing supervisory personnel in the New York city school system, because the percentage of minority group supervisors was too low...
...All these magazines are just the ones that Congress will kill through failure to heed the law of diminishing returns...
...Some reference was made in a 1972 report, and these probabilities are in basic agreement with those cited in 1957...
...Perhaps such an arrangement might even make up for our past contributions—napalm, jets, and bombs—to Middle East "security," at least in part...
...It is obvious that new sources of uranium will be found by means of intensified exploration...
...And Mr...
...The vignettes by Georgie Anne Geyer are only the most recent example of a sometimes subtle but always quite apparent bias against Israel...
...We all have certain grammatical problems that dog us— this one has bothered me since ninth grade...
...and they cannot in their desire to help the disadvantaged overlook the rights of others...
...Michael S. Davis Jamaica, New York...
...Charles Wrong Department of History University of South Florida Tampa, Florida Of course, Mr...
...OEO will continue as a "paper agency" until July 1, 1975, but unless Congress considers, and considers quickly, authorizing appropriations for OEO, the nation's poor will once again have been cheated...
...Not all Jews are responsible...
...I have heard several derogatory comments from some of my friends who believe that peace is weighted in favor of the Arab—and therefore the Arab cause...
...2. The statement is made that we will run out of economically useable uranium in thirty to sixty years, leaving the impression that nothing can be done to alleviate this situation...
...publications) ? American liberalism can go to our self-polluted well of national credibility only once too often—the victor from past and present insensitivity on our part will be the forces of reaction...
...Nixon...
...Mike McCormack Member of Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy Washington, D.C...
...Martin Bronfenbrenner Professor of Economics Duke University Durham, North Carolina Nicholas Johnson Farewell For the past ten years I have been serving as a Presidential appointee in Washington, first as Maritime Administrator and subsequently as a Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission...
...We must accept the chastisement of both historians and our fellow citizens for our acquiescence in the early critical years of Vietnam...
...Senator Fulbright's remarks on your pages no doubt will draw you a generous share of the vitriol he has received over the years from super-Zionists...
...The deaths of Avida Chur and Kemal Nasser happened because of a lack of compassion, something Jews comprehend as well, or better, than any ethnic group...
...They ate food given by the United Nations (essentially a U.S...
...Even though the agency has been given a reprieve by the Federal courts, it will be a hollow victory after July 1, 1974, for the agency's funding authorization expires on that date...
...However, in this effort he is lacking his erstwhile most potent weapon—patriotic fervor...
...The judge's ruling overlooked the absence of any racial or ethnic barriers to prospective candidates for these examinations, and that the questions on these tests were within the purview of any college graduate and experienced teacher...
...I do wish he had not felt it necessary to support the oil companies, the labor unions, and many of the other big capitalists...
...Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn Boston, Massachusetts As a dedicated subscriber to The Progressive since my high school days, I have long regretted your editorial stance in only one areai the Middle East...
...In addition, the introduction of the breeder reactor will increase the energy availability from known resources by a factor of about a hundred...
...But when these trucks, planes, boats, and trains are going to have ninety serious accidents a year by the turn of the century, according to the AEC, the likelihood of a severe release of radioactive material is not negligible...
...C. Ogilvie Albuquerque, New Mexico Defends Fission Power I am writing in reference to the article in your November issue, "Power from Fission: Potential for Catastrophe," by Richard Sandler and Peter Gruenstein...
...and I felt I really had to do something about this: ". . . this does not deter the American press from . . . inferring that it is quoting Canadian 'authorities.'" This appeared in the article "Those Draft Resisters Again," by Russel B. Nye in the June 1973 issue, Page 45...
...We are in a mess, but were in it deep before Nixon came along...
...Many reasonable men, as individuals, on Arab, Israeli, and "neutral" fronts, have long, if lone-somely, held there is room in Israel-Palestine for Jew, Muslim, and Christian—but none at all for either Arab revanchism or Zionist expansionism...
...Precautions are taken so as to make it unlikely that any given crash of a carrier will result in the few tons of radioactive poison being strewn around the countryside...
...Said Rabbi Grollman: "I don't think that dedication or our love of Israel means that we dare never to be critical of Israel...
...When, however, I saw that Mr...
...As a vital point concerned with the national interest of these United States, save our periodicals...
...I hope some elected Jew will denounce that takeover, that he will introduce a bill in Congress making it illegal for the United States to ever support any future expropriation...
...Now he is under pressure to get out from under the Watergate guns...
...Nye regards "infer" and "imply" as synonymous...
...Jews did not buy that land...
...The method provides adequate safety for protection of the public health as well as the environment and could conceivably be used indefinitely...
...Insofar as economists do fear and distrust journalists and journalism, there are reasons for this attitude over and above concern for grants and consultantships...
...Security Council fourteen to one...
...Is it too much to ask American liberalism to seize what might be our generation's last chance to condemn, strongly, credibly, and in the same breath, both extremes: "Israel into the sea" and "Israel uber alles...
...4. Each transportation accident does have the "potential for severe consequences...
...Such a pledge should satisfy a government primarily concerned with security (particularly if vital zones are neutralized), but not political elements that see the 1967 conquests not as buffers, but as acreage to be quickly filled with Jewish settlers—such groups as the Dayan faction within the Labor party, which only a few weeks before this latest war forced party adherence to an expansionist platform for the pending Knesset elections...
...Magazines, both large and small, are absolutely vital to an enlightened U.S...
...So far, so bad...
...but I told myself that the issues I would have raised were no longer topical...
...Dugger's effort is that university economists refuse to talk or write in language he can understand without a certain modicum of effort, for fear of losing consulting fees and research grants...
...I infer from this that Mr...
...Almon W. Bushnell Ashland, New Hampshire Nixon Selling Corruption President Nixon is now using the same ploy to cover up Watergate that he used to make himself look good in "ending" the Vietnam war...
...But Arabs owned the land, if possession has meaning...
...Unless there is a noticeable change along this line, I shall not only refuse to give the magazine any more as a gift but shall reluctantly drop my own subscription when it expires...
...While not myself an industrial economist, I know that the public dissemination of factual knowledge or analytical advances in that field like any other operates on the principle of the old-time bucket brigade...
...X,Y,Z...
...that was before they found out that their first choice of burying wastes in salt mines would not work...
...do the basic research at the "pump" end of the line...
...On the writing of the English language, however, I acknowledge no statute of limitations...
...The Watergate scandal has done much to discredit conservatism, but I sense the people are reluctant to embrace the programs for social change that had their beginnings in the Kennedy-Johnson era of the Sixties...
...K. L. Shisler St...
...mail system is out to throttle much that is absolutely required in these United States if we are to have an intelligent, enlightened electorate...
...When members of the Congress smugly tack a 127 per cent increase on the mailing rates of most periodicals (this increase is as high as 700 per cent in some cases), then it is high time for the public to rise up and scream...
...Nye was professor of English at Michigan State University, I sat for a while thinking long, hard thoughts about Michigan State University and its English Department...
...There are great wrongs in our system, but the system will not be purified by upsetting the United States Government or impeaching the man who happens to be at the top...
...However, it does have the disadvantage of requiring constant human surveillance...
...Were the Jews unable to pay for the land...
...The hard work is the weighing of the evidence, and the extending of the record over time...
...My plans are to return to my native Iowa to live and work with and for my fellow Iowans while maintaining an office here in Washington...
...It is true that there have been and will continue to be accidents in transportation since these shipments are made in conventional transportation equipment...
...It hurts...
...liberals should know about the courageous, mostly Jewish, spokesmen within Israel for this position—such as the thousands defying Golda Meir in recent months by marching, writing, and speaking (and even besieging her residence) on behalf of Israeli-citizen Arabs from the villages of Iqrit and Kafr Bir'im...
...That's where "graphs and parameters" enter the picture, despite Mr...
...Such information cannot come from daily newspapers or television or radio—it can be acquired only through reading periodicals such as The New Republic, Commonweal, The Progressive, and some labor and religious magazines...
...3. Above ground engineered storage is a waste control measure that was previously termed unacceptable by the AEC and by the National Academy of Sciences...
...I know that mine is only one voice...
...In the 1940s Arabs had failed to improve Palestine...
...But I put my stress on obtaining justice and amnesty for the Indians, rather than on continuing the vendetta against Mr...
...Richard H. Sandler and Peter Gruenstein Washington, D.C...
...John Thomas Cummings Suffolk University Boston, Massachusetts In regard to Georgie Anne Geyer's article "Enemies" in the December Progressive, more than balm is needed to end the hatred which embroils the Mideast...
...The facts are quite different...
...we must pursue what is right and condemn what is wrong regardless...
...I turned back to your April 1973 issue and reread the remarks of Rabbi Jerome Grollman, spiritual leader of the United Hebrew Temple of St...
...Kathe Beutler Kensington, California Your records will indicate that I have been an enthusiastic subscriber of The Progressive for many years and that for a number of years now I have given gift Chanukah subscriptions to the magazine to a number of my associates...
...My activities will continue to include broadcast reform efforts in Washington, practicing law in Iowa, lecturing around the country, serving on a number of boards of directors, and such other projects as time permits...
...Yes, all right...
...It is time, as Rabbi Grollman emphasized, for Jews to evaluate Israeli affairs more analytically and to treat "honest criticism of Zion" as something other than betrayal...
...As for the breeder, this ill conceived device might have a "breeding ratio" so low as to make it economically useless (as well as extremely dangerous...
...I am not giving such gifts this year...
...After taking office in 1969 he knew he had to give the impression of an early withdrawal from that country, because of public demand...
...Instead of revealing relevant facts, under oath, to the Senate investigating committee or the grand jury, he is again going public, hoping to accomplish another snow job similar to the one pulled off on Vietnam...
...Another source of irritation with the liberal philosophy is that its adherents will often seek to elevate members of minority groups to positions of responsibility to fulfill the requirements of a quota...
...Paul H. Adriance Moses Lake, Washington Economist Talks Back I may not qualify as "Gentleman and Scholar," but Ronnie Dugger's attack on my more distinguished colleagues in your January 1974 issue prompts a reply...
...Whatever you tell them may appear in partial and distorted form—space limitations, you know—and you come out looking like an even worse ass than you are...
...3. The discussion of radioactive waste could easily leave the reader with the impression that this problem is unmanageable and that there is no solution...
...The compound evil of holding so-called occupied territory was denounced by the U.N...
...Paul, Minnesota Ahead of Impeachment Your "Bill of Impeachment" means that you want us to pressure the House of Representatives to impeach Richard Nixon— when we all should be defending and securing the rights of the Indians who face, if convicted, long prison terms for nothing more than the occupation, last February 27 to May 8, of Wounded Knee...
...and where will we find an honest politician to take his place...
...This is misleading on several counts...
...It is not enough to point to "a number of studies" where the future habitability of the planet is concerned...
...But he wanted a military victory and thought it could be brought about by a combination of troop withdrawals (to pacify the public) and stepped-up bombing...
...One should be willing to undergo some personal inconvenience in order to provide a smooth transition for a successor and maintain the FCC at its full complement of seven Commissioners, and I have been willing to pay that price...
...The burden of Mr...
...Its success is reflected in Nixon's heavy handed and illegal move to terminate it before Congress and the American people were aware of his attempt...
...Wrong is right, and we refrain from inferring or implying anything from or by that statement...
...Not the articles and comments you have published, which rank among the best as regards their balance and basic humanity—but rather, the notable scarcity of attention paid to what now again confronts us as the sorest open wound in geopolitics...
...OEO has been one of the few Federal endeavors to seriously try to help the poor...
...Such a treaty, apparently similar to the Kissinger proposals, also safeguards the borders of Israel's neighbors against any expansionist thrust...
...handout...
...I am as fussy as Nero Wolfe about the writing of English, but I have learned to expect that certain of Fowler's "sturdy indefensibles" crop up all the time, and "infer" for "imply" is one of the commonest...
...They lived in wretched squatter shacks on the Israeli border...
...Not only does it quote inaccurate figures in assessing the likelihood of an accident at a nuclear power plant, but it further clouds the issue by referring to a 1957 report which, as the authors must know, was never intended to represent a realistic estimate of accident potential...
...I have, therefore, regretfully concluded that I must finally leave the FCC...
...Wrong might even have one too...
...Russel Nye Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan Liberals and Minorities Traditional American liberalism seems to be on the defensive these days...
Vol. 38 • February 1974 • No. 2
