The Politics of Conformity
COMMENT The Politics of Conformity President Ford's most significant contribution to the Bicentennial hoopla, judging from the way it was promoted by the public relations experts on the White...
...Such a society confers enormous power on demagogic politicians and manipulative mass media...
...In 1970-1971, King Hussein of Jordan devastated the PLO and effectively removed it from his soil...
...Lessons for Public Employes It has been a tough summer for municipal employes...
...By denying the need for this reciprocal relationship, American society forces citizens to place their faith in impersonal "public opinion" in which "the greater truth should go with the greater number...
...The matrix of poverty is virtually inescapable...
...The Georgia law, for instance, states that the death penalty may be used for offenses that are "outrageous or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman [involving] torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim...
...each has settled back into the swivel or Eames chair that belongs to him...
...If we do not respond to the displacement of the educated and unemployed post-1960s student, we may have to face new forms of social dissent at some point in the future...
...The League's recommendations support the expansion of private-sector investment in low-income areas, but recognize the indisputable reality that the private sector is both unwilling and unable to deal constructively with the problem...
...First Things First Scientists are worrying about how to make sure that no one accidentally stumbles into an underground nuclear waste vault hundreds or even thousands of years from now...
...As of the end of 1975, the United States had provided training for one million foreign police officers—many of whom sustain such repressive regimes as those of Chile, Iran, and Brazil...
...Oregonians for Nuclear Safeguards opened a main office in Portland last September and have since set up ten branch offices...
...Death Delayed Death, as a penalty for crime, is not, in itself, a cruel and unusual punishment...
...Not long ago, it evoked stirring calls to social action...
...Although the Court did nullify laws which provide for mandatory death penalties in first-degree murder convictions, it did not say whether capital punishment can be required for such specific crimes as air piracy or murder by someone already sentenced to life imprisonment...
...Poverty" is one of those words...
...Debate over the merits of "safe energy initiatives" reached its greatest intensity in California, where voters turned down Proposition 15 by a margin of 2 to 1 early in June...
...The lack of public or private transportation (only 30 per cent own cars), inflation, and costly neighborhood shopping forced two-thirds of low-income families to reduce spending on such basic necessities as food, home heating, clothing, and gasoline...
...Juries may decline to convict for a capital offense and, instead, convict for a lesser offense without evidentiary basis for clemency...
...The Nuclear Regulatory Commission—over the unprecedented protest of one of its members—has licensed the export of ten tons of enriched uranium to India, which in 1974 exploded its first nuclear device—made from plutonium reprocessed from "waste" in its reactors...
...The initiative measures themselves are generally similar, having two major sections that establish stringent conditions for nuclear safety...
...it is the procedure by which someone is sentenced to die that can cause unjustifiable suffering...
...Justice Powell determined that no damage to the states would be done by staying the executions until the full Court hears the NAACP's petition sometime in the fall...
...a Western cocktail party in Milan...
...In the case of municipal workers, it becomes ever more clear that even successful "bread and butter" unionism will require a broader social vision...
...the other two groups have dual objectives, including the retention of a base in Lebanon for PLO activities...
...The craft unions played into the hands of the Board of Supervisors by failing to advocate a more equitable tax system, leaving unchallenged the city's argument that higher craft wages would come out of the pockets of other city workers...
...Moreover, although terms of an agreement between the federal government and the strikers' unions require that a "unanimous report" from a three-judge inquiry be a "prerequisite to . . . the introduction of any bilingual air traffic service," the pilots' union has announced in advance that the airmen will not yield to bilingualism in instrument flying...
...Opponents of Oregon's Ballot Measure 3 may find it difficult to convince voters that nuclear safety restrictions will bring problems to the state...
...Still, it would be a mistake for the country to view this solely as an economic crisis...
...We would have supposed, for example, that a Chief Executive deeply committed to advancing the cause of individuality and discouraging conformity would have awarded Presidential medals—or at least Presidential amnesty—to those individuals who had the courage and moral integrity to resist the Vietnam war...
...Coloradans for Safe Power, a statewide coalition of groups and individuals supporting the Amendment, is now running a low-budget campaign, but hopes to raise money through rock concerts and individual contributions...
...But the Baath Party, today ruled by Hafez Assad, has had three wings: a Nasserite force, a leftist group headed by Salah Jedid (who was ousted by Assad in a coup), and Assad's moderates...
...While many English Canadians increasingly display their bias against national bilingualism and French Quebec, a growing Separatist movement in Quebec remains steadfast in the view that bilingualism is inimical to their interests and to the survival of French culture in Canada...
...Fully 49 per cent of those surveyed cited the high cost of goods and services, the inaccessibility of shops and supermarkets, and the unavailability of decent housing that they could afford...
...One would suppose the primary justification for capital punishment should be its usefulness in promoting law and order...
...Thus, the Supreme Court's claim that the "jury's discretion is channeled" ignores several procedures which cannot be easily "circumscribed...
...Kissinger, I am told by highly reliable Middle Eastern sources, has conceived a deal with Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia under which a powerless Palestinian state would be established on the West Bank and federated to Syria and Jordan...
...Members of the immediate family of an authorized exchange patron who are not otherwise authorized access are authorized admission to AAFES-Eur facilities in the company of the authorized patron except for those members of the immediate family who reside in the country where the AAFES-Eur facilities are located...
...But we cannot save a generation without legislative commitments and shifts of public policy...
...This was the verdict reached by the Supreme Court in July when it upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment...
...HOWARD WOLF (Howard Wolf is an associate professor of English at SUNY (Buffalo...
...Modern social science thrives on models, paradigms, and statistics, often neglecting the people it presumes to study...
...they cannot make all decisions themselves or solve all problems alone...
...If safety requirements are not satisfied, construction of new nuclear plants would be prohibited, and some measures would require a cutback in output from existing plants...
...The AM A Journal reports that by the time the average American teenager finishes high school, he or she has seen 18,000 murders committed on television...
...The New Haven teachers also won community support because they emphasized demands which went beyond traditional questions of wages and hours...
...Those who could be most expected to envisage an alternative to global disorder by the turn of the century have become the hostages of a past we made and choose to forget...
...He is the co-author of "The Voice Within " and has recently completed a book about the 1960s, "Gathering Evidence...
...To cut the PLO down to size is the problem...
...Both asserted that the moral principles of a civilized society should not allow for state-authorized killing, just as modern societies should not condone torture or similar barbaric practices...
...Excerpt from an Air Force Department regulation...
...But the story has varied from city to city, and as one surveys the scene some instructive conclusions become apparent...
...Initiative backers assert that "if the nuclear industry's claims of safety are true, they should be able to prove it to a state legislature...
...However, virtually all studies predicting the consequences of a severe nuclear accident put damages in the billions of dollars...
...It began with the resistance of fishermen at Sidon to Chamoun's attempted creation of a fishing monopoly, was exacerbated by the cold-blooded murder of twenty-seven Moslems by Phalangist militia in April 1975, and soon escalated into a war in which the decimation and elimination of the PLO was a prime objective...
...Last December it was announced that the guerrillas had been wiped out, but in May a Teheran newspaper reported that PFLO forces had attacked Iranians in the mountains of Dhofar with mortars and missiles...
...In San Francisco, the craft workers had failed to support demands by clerks, janitors, and hospital workers for more adequate pay— though these workers generally receive less than half of the wages of craft workers...
...SPIRIT OF '76...
...But the record also shows some brighter spots...
...The group is collecting individual contributions, sponsoring bike-a-thons, and holding coffees in homes to help finance what Media Coordinator Betsy Maclnnes describes as a "grassroots, person-to-person campaign...
...It is a national tragedy that our political leaders—from the President who preaches individuality to the challenger who promises to "depend very heavily on business leaders"—are unable, or unwilling, to fathom its meaning...
...Other problems receiving prominent mention include: crime and insufficient police protection, inadequate child and health care, inferior schools, unresponsive social agencies, ineffective local government...
...It is noteworthy that Kissinger, who expressed boundless indignation over the presence of 15,000 Cubans in Angola, has not been troubled by the presence of 15,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon...
...These concerns, obviously, are not what the President had in mind when he conferred his Bicentennial blessings on individuality...
...A native of Quebec, he returns there regularly for visits and study...
...Jumblatt's main concern is internal—to break the back of the Lebanese capitalist class (overwhelmingly Christian), which has made life miserable for the lower classes in recent years...
...The burden of proving that capital punishment is useful as a deterrent should be on those who favor killing people...
...The ten tons of enriched uranium will ultimately give India the means to make hundreds, if not thousands of nuclear bombs, but NRC Chairman Marcus A. Rowden says the sale was necessary to "avoid . . . undue adverse impact on U.S...
...We have to be willing to put ourselves on the line and to help in every way we can...
...Are we punishing them for the upheavals of the 1960s through an almost Malthu-sian denial of opportunity...
...The trouble is—and has been—that Yasir Arafat, and particularly the left wing of his Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), are pressing for creation of a state with muscle, not a satellite...
...Passage of an initiative would prohibit new nuclear plants and in some cases curtail existing ones unless liability limits are removed by Congress or waived by utilities...
...a war within the Arab world between two factions which have differing views on how to "solve the Palestinian problem," and a war between the two superpowers for predominance in the Middle East...
...It has corroborated the Separatists' judgment that the French language and culture can be preserved only through independence...
...They pushed for better educational quality and a more equitable tax system to support public services...
...President Ford's Bicentennial remarks were, in a sense, appropriate, for the tension between individuality and conformity has pervaded this nation's history...
...the students of the 1970s are beginning to struggle for survival and have reacquired an imagination for economics...
...indeed, this is the argument adopted by most proponents of the death penalty...
...Oregon has only one constructed nuclear plant and two more in the planning stage...
...The Western Bloc idea grew out of Critical Mass 1974, a nationwide conference called by Ralph Nader to strengthen the anti-nuclear movement...
...24 per cent earned less than $4,000, and 48 per cent had incomes between $4,000 and $9,200...
...But teachers are not speaking up...
...The Act exempts nuclear manufacturers from liability and places a $560 million limit on damages that could be collected from the Government and utilities in the event of a nuclear accident...
...a red, white, and blue dinner ball in Tunisia, with entertainment provided by the Sixth Fleet...
...PERSPECTIVES On the triple war in Lebanon . . . struggle in Oman . . . training police thugs The Lebanese civil war, which has claimed the lives of one out of every 200 citizens in that unhappy land, is difficult to understand because it is part of a triple war: It is a class war with religious overtones within the beleaguered country...
...It has confirmed the impression of French Quebecois that they are second-class citizens in their native land...
...They also fear an initiative victory will spur nuclear opposition elsewhere and prompt more stringent Federal regulations of nuclear power...
...The Democratic nominee, whom some call a "peanut populist," lunched privately at the "21" Club in New York a few weeks ago with fifty-two top business leaders, and went out of his way to assure them that big business would have nothing to fear from a Carter Administration...
...Three weeks after the original decision was handed down, Justice Lewis Powell—who had voted with the majority in upholding the constitutionality of the death penalty—delayed the imposition of the death sentence in Georgia, Florida, and Texas, even though these states' laws had been found constitutional...
...Litigation concerning capital punishment will probably continue for years...
...Nationally, the initiative effort is coordinated and stimulated by the Western Bloc, an arm of the California-based Peoples Lobby...
...And while the decision stated that capital punishment was suitable only for "the most extreme of crimes," it did not rule out the possibility that non-homicidal offenses, such as rape, robbery, or kidnaping, may be punished by death...
...Yet the Court, while admitting that it has not established this usefulness, has nevertheless authorized state-induced murder...
...He "spoke as a former businessman," The New York Times reported, "rather than in the populist tones that rang through his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention," and he "came out strongly in favor of multinational corporations...
...The city of Detroit laid off more than 1,000 policemen, and around the country thousands of city workers have been fired or forced to accept substantial cuts in pay...
...The Washington Urban League has not forgotten the faces behind the numbers, and neither should we...
...Students across the country are affected by tuition increases, poverty-level stipends for graduate students, and massive state budget cutbacks...
...The state has no campaign spending limitations and corporations opposing the Amendment are certain to spend heavily...
...Yet the legislative guidelines—supposedly designed to delineate the specific instances in which capital punishment may be imposed—are vague and arbitrary...
...He promised to move with the utmost care on tax reform, and—just in case anyone failed to get the message—he announced, "I'll depend very heavily on business leaders to help me in government...
...10nly 16 per cent of the families had annual incomes of $9,200 or more—the Federal Government's "poverty line" for an urban family of four...
...It is a sophisticated concept that would probably elude both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter: Americans, de Tocqueville suggested, are taught to be self-reliant—to pursue their own advantage without regard for their neighbors, friends, relations, or community...
...EYEWITNESS...
...Entitled SOS 76—Speak Out for Survival, the study is based on interviews with more than 900 randomly selected heads of household in the poorest census tracts of the District of Columbia...
...Not Jimmy Carter...
...FRONTIERS OF FREE ENTERPRISE...
...In a decision supported by seven of the nine Justices, the Court ruled that the death penalty may be imposed if the judge and the jury have been given adequate information regarding the character of the defendant and the circumstances of the crime...
...Such individualism would give all of us a real role in our community and our nation—and would, therefore, shield us from the pressures toward mindless conformity...
...The students of the 1960s fought for political and social morality while wildly misgauging the "surplus" potential of the society...
...It is vital that we save a generation and bring together the talented young people who have been educated with the millions who need education...
...Attempts by the craft workers to broaden their work stoppage into a city-wide general strike failed...
...A well publicized strike by 2,000 city craft workers—plumbers, carpenters, machinists, electricians—ended with the rejection of union demands and the creation of a fact-finding commission expected to back the city government...
...Sacrifice is a bloody business...
...But more importantly, the strike contributed to mounting public hostility toward the craft workers...
...Still, the suspicion lingers that when the President uses these terms, he means one thing and we mean quite another...
...The three wars have coagulated into one as a result of a "peace" plan conceived by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger— a plan which would consolidate the whole area as a Western zone of influence...
...They are more likely to receive such support when they do not perceive themselves as a labor aristocracy, but rather join with other workers struggling for decent and secure jobs, adequate public services, and equitable taxes...
...Even when social services exist, residents are unaware of them or don't know how to use them...
...and it is quite likely that unionization and strikes will become a steady feature of university life over the next decade...
...The class and religious conflict that began in January 1975 offered Chamoun, Lebanon President Suleiman Franjieh, and the late Richard Welch (the CIA's chief in Greece, whose area included Lebanon) a new opportunity...
...The threat of a general strike, more than any other factor, compelled the New Haven Board of Education to bargain in good faith...
...The death penalty hypothetically fulfills two social functions: retribution and deterrence of other capital crimes...
...A petition by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund is asking the Court to review its judgment on the capital punishment laws...
...In a memo to editors of Sunday supplements, the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency suggests several feature story ideas on "how other countries are celebrating our country's 200th birthday": American barbecues in Istanbul, featuring Virginia foods...
...Colorado, where a "Nuclear Safeguards Amendment" to the state constitution qualified this year, has a long history of problems with the Rocky Flats plutonium plant...
...School of the Americas in Panama last year...
...Does individualism merely mean the relentless pursuit of private power and wealth in an acquisitive society...
...Such individualism would afford us an opportunity to take a meaningful part in the decisions that shape our lives...
...Four years ago, statutes which had called for this ultimate sanction were outlawed by the Court because of the "arbitrary and freakish" way in which some defendants were sentenced to die while others were allowed to live...
...55 per cent of the unemployed believe they need job training, and many of those with jobs do not receive wages high enough to lift them out of poverty...
...A CHOICE, NOT AN ECHO...
...A prosecutor has the discretion to charge a capital offense and ask for capital punishment...
...Yet people are inevitably dependent on society...
...RONALD E. SANTONI (Ronald E. Santoni, professor of philosophy at Denison University, is co-editor of' 'Social and Political Philosophy, " among other works...
...The Fight for Nuclear Safety A growing concern about the safety of nuclear power plants has prompted long court battles and legislative struggles over the past several years...
...Cesar Chavez's nominating speech for Governor Jerry Brown at the Democratic National Convention was followed (on the CBS network) by a commercial for Gallo wines...
...Speaking Out for Survival When words are overused, they lose the ability to impress, to motivate...
...Though his rhetoric was characteristically murky (and, therefore, suitable to the occasion), there can be little doubt that his vision of individuality consists of Nineteenth Century Horatio Alger mythology as transmogrified into that model of Twentieth Century individuality, the multinational corporation...
...But there are grounds for thinking that the "safety first" argument is disingenuous and only a cover-up for anti-French sentiment on the part of a disturbing number of English Canadians...
...America, the President declared, needs "more encouragement and protection for individuality...
...The Wall Street Journal July 26, 1976 Canada's Threatened Unity The recent nine-day strike by the Canadian Airline Pilots Association and the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association against bilingualism in air traffic controls at major Quebec airports has provoked one of the most severe threats to Canadian unity since French Canadian opposition to conscription during World War II...
...If the onrush and crest of the wave has a literary and generational shape, the undertow and current are based in actual and nameable social and economic priorities...
...PERFECTLY CLEAR...
...Perhaps the most somber aspect of the Court's verdict was that it failed to establish the value of capital punishment as an effective penological instrument...
...Syrian entry was surprising, since Syria has generally been considered a Soviet and Palestinian ally...
...The next generation, the one we always hear about in commencement addresses, is making its natural claim for cultural continuity and is being denied...
...but despite "stagflation," the State University of New York at Buffalo, for example, has not raised its stipend for teaching assistants ($2,950) in a decade...
...More than most other workers, those in the public sector need the support of other labor unions and the broader community merely to maintain hard-fought gains...
...These issues are real enough so that graduate students at Wisconsin and Michigan—who shoulder 20 to 40 per cent of the undergraduate teaching load— already have formed unions...
...Nothing less is at stake than the meaningful survival of a generation...
...Betsy Maclnnes hopes Oregonians for Nuclear Safeguards can raise about $50,000 and fears reports that Portland General Electric and other utilities have already set aside several hundred thousand dollars to defeat the measure...
...Failure to achieve the required vote would result in a prohibition on new nuclear plant construction...
...Most of all, we would expect to find such a President laboring heroically to curb the power of those huge economic concentrations which, more than any other institutions, impose conformity and regimentation on our lives...
...From a sermon delivered in the football stadium at Notre Dame University by the Reverend Larry Christenson of San Pedro, California, as reported in Commonweal...
...Groups in Washington, Montana, and Arizona have apparently also turned in enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, although the measures have yet to be officially certified...
...The reinstatement of capital punishment would denote a serious setback to penal reform, civil liberties, and human dignity...
...An artificial "safety first" is hardly the rallying cry for national harmony...
...In short, it has posed a crisis to confederation...
...It has struck at the heart of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's program for a bilingual Canada...
...There seems to be nothing but trouble ahead for Trudeau and bilingualism...
...Among the findings: ^Although 29 per cent of ghetto residents are unemployed, only 3 per cent receive unemployment compensation and only 13 per cent are on welfare...
...The Kingdom of Heaven is like a football squad, which is assembled under a coach who formed it into a team that moved with such order and precision, in startling innovation, that it subdued all its opponents...
...Each teacher can make his own list of displaced graduate students who have been forced to parody the wandering scholars of the Middle Ages...
...Such standards are clearly subjective...
...Frank Carrano, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, remarked, "The old chestnut, 'Are we professionals or not?,' is finished off—we are unionists and proud to be part of the movement...
...The Court, however, glossed over this consideration...
...Robert J. Kelleher of Billings, Montana, who thinks the United States should adopt a parliamentary system, has notified the Federal Election Commission that he is running for prime minister...
...By displacing a generation, we are creating a new class of lettered welfare recipients and foodstamp cognoscenti...
...Such individualism would give us the confidence and power to resist those impersonal forces that would run our lives for us...
...The Israelis could do it, of course, but that would only unite the whole world against Israel— and the United States...
...The group describes itself as a "partnership of independent and local community organizations throughout nineteen states who are dedicated to bring safe power to their local communities, the nation, and future generations...
...A California company called Exidy has marketed "Death Race," a computerized game that allows players to pretend they are running down pedestrians with an automobile...
...Who among us, after all, is in favor of conformity or opposed to individuality...
...Governors and the President have the power to commute death sentences without accounting for their actions...
...We can only hope that the moral imperative will prevail, and thereby rid our society of the barbarous practice of official homicide...
...The next generation is being asked to pay for the sins of the fathers—the immense cost of the war in Vietnam, the OPEC-inspired inflationary spiral, the expensive blight of the cities, and the military budget...
...This would seem to be the solution to the dual phenomenon of over-and-under education that this society generates...
...Most advocates of "safe energy initiatives" remain optimistic despite the loss of Proposition 15 in California...
...In New Haven, Connecticut, seventy-eight striking teachers were jailed late last fall, but they did not knuckle under to this denial of the most basic of union rights...
...If it is true that there is a mythic or covertly ideological element in the denial of the post-1960s generation, it is equally true that myths and ideologies ride on the back of economics and Congressional decisions...
...It has brought heated charges and countercharges of discrimination...
...It is as if the many faculty members who supported militant students in the 1960s are atoning for past enthusiasms and have turned their backs on this generation's right to survive and contribute...
...If people get a kick out of running down pedestrians, you have to let them do it," says Paul Jacobs, director of marketing...
...foreign policy"—and,.we can be sure, on General Electric's and Westinghouse's reactor sales...
...Is it possible that we are asking this generation of students to pay back a debt...
...WIN THIS ONE FOR THE GIPPER...
...That is the kind of individualism that Ford and Carter and their ilk admire...
...The Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO) has been fighting for many years against the forces of reactionary Sultan Qabus in that small Persian Gulf sheikhdom...
...The Court now claims that Georgia, Florida, and Texas—the states whose dealth penalty laws were ratified by the decision—have rationalized the sentencing process...
...Challenging the rightists was a coalition of Nasserites, the PLO, and the Socialist Party of Kamal Jumblatt...
...The two political parties of the right in Lebanon, the semi-fascist Phalangists (Kateeb in Arabic) and Camille Chamoun's reactionary National Liberal Party, have also been trying to deliver the coup de grace to the PLO since 1969, but without success so far...
...COMMENT The Politics of Conformity President Ford's most significant contribution to the Bicentennial hoopla, judging from the way it was promoted by the public relations experts on the White House staff, was his solemn warning against "the growing danger to this country in conformity of thought and taste and behavior...
...The group derived its name from a "bloc" of states, mostly in the West, which have constitutional provisions for citizen initiatives...
...In Arizona, the Arizona Public Service Corporation plans to challenge the validity of signatures for the initiative...
...Former Governor Jimmy Carter, a subscriber wrote to us recently, "alone stands in the way of four more years of Republican-big business control of the Presidency...
...Opponents of the initiative—utilities, reactor manufacturers, and some labor elements—funneled money into a front called Citizens for Jobs and Energy, while an umbrella group known as Californians for Nuclear Safeguards coordinated pro-initiative efforts...
...One section of the initiatives would remove the limits of liability for nuclear accidents set by Congress in the recently extended Price-Anderson Act...
...Opponents of the initiatives, including utility executives, reactor manufacturers, and a number of government officials, charge that "safe power" measures are really designed to destroy the future of nuclear power with conditions the industry cannot meet...
...So long as Canadian airline pilots and their English-speaking supporters persist in their opposition to bilingualism, Trudeau and his supporters are—as he is quick to admit— without even a self-persuasive response to the Parti Quebecois and other Separatist groups...
...The need for that kind of quantified study is, itself, an indication of the callousness of our social policy...
...That kind of individualism is the stuff of which genuine politics is made...
...SIDNEY LENS NO COMMENT EQUAL TIME...
...Thus, what appears on the surface as a simple "religious" war in one country is actually a complicated conflict involving a half dozen national and international participants, each with its own interests at stake...
...In our judgment, America needs to rediscover an altogether different kind of individualism: one that takes into account our ability to contribute, individually and collectively, to common solutions for the problems we all face—problems that involve our mental, emotional, and physical well-being, our happiness, our very survival...
...Steven Loy of Portland General Electric Company vows his company' 'will spend whatever it takes,'' while predicting "the Yes forces will spend whatever they can get...
...In Oregon, where the "safe energy" vote will come in November, pro-initiative forces are already hard at work...
...If that optimism proves well grounded and nuclear skeptics succeed in passing several "safe energy initiatives," the tide of public pressure might well put out the lights of the already financially and technically troubled nuclear industry...
...Many of the Canadian airplane pilots who object so vehemently to the use of French in the traffic control of planes flying by instrument flight rules in Quebec, fly routinely into bilingual airports such as Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, and Athens...
...Initiatives in Oregon and Colorado qualified months ago, and organizers in Washington, Montana, and Arizona turned in the required number of signatures by early July...
...It would be comforting to suggest, as we approach a Presidential election, that Ford's designated challenger offers a brave alternative vision...
...But Kistiakowsky responds that during the thousands of years required for radioactive waste to decay, "the English language probably will disappear" and an ice age "would smash all monuments...
...The Portland office is staffed by full-time volunteers and is paid for by pledges solicited from local families...
...George B. Kistiakowsky, professor emeritus of chemistry at Harvard University, says that because governments and societies change, "one must assume as a certainty that a couple of hundred years from now people living in North America will have no information on where this radioactive material is stored...
...today it prompts solemn advice that we must become accustomed to "lowered expectations...
...They are "circumscribed by the legislative guidelines" of these states' new capital punishment statutes...
...Secretary Kissinger has condemned torture in Chile, but 346 Chilean police thugs were trained at the U.S...
...Likewise, the report provides persuasive evidence that those who are urging "lowered expectations" on us are either naive or obscenely smug...
...The Trojan plant has been in sporadic operation only since December and would be exempt from the proposed regulations...
...The Supreme Court's decision, however, is not yet final...
...Juries must consider the "particularized nature of the crime and the particularized characteristics of the defendant...
...It is difficult to take issue with such admirable sentiments...
...He completed his deal with Kissinger, it is reported, early this year...
...We would have expected such a President to display, by word and deed, the most profound revulsion against disclosures that Government agencies had mounted a criminal offensive against citizens holding dissenting views...
...Little League is one thing, big business another...
...of low-income families who have rarely if ever been heard from so clearly, comprehensively, and quantifiably before...
...Still, the problem most frequently mentioned by area residents was not unemployment or low income...
...Equally disturbing was the Court's failure to judge capital punishment on moral or social grounds...
...The Court acknowledged that there is no evidence that the threat of capital punishment significantly, or even marginally, reduces the likelihood of murder being committed...
...This threat was credible and effective because a solid foundation for it had been laid by teachers who frankly acknowledged that they were members of the working class...
...The teachers ended up winning most of their demands because they gained the support of other unions against the no-strike law and the jailing of rank-and-file teachers...
...Before the strike began, they had won support from custodial workers by cooperating with their efforts to win decent wages...
...The record of his Administration makes plain that the individuals he seeks to encourage and protect are those who sit in corporate suites...
...Carl Kuhlman, the Energy Research and Development Administration's top nuclear-waste official, suggests that monuments, perhaps even pyramids, could be placed atop waste sites to warn off intruders...
...In the process, the study explodes some of the more cherished myths of urban politics...
...Making a Generation Pay For the first time since the spring of 1970 (Cambodia and Kent State), undergraduate and graduate students face authentic issues that may evoke a shared generational identity and commitment...
...See "Ph.D.— The New Migrant," by Daniel C. Spitzer, Page 25...
...American-style Sunday brunches in Berlin, and the Bicentennial drink-of-the-month in Amsterdam...
...Now, the focus of effort is shifting to "safe energy initiatives," similar to California's Proposition 15, which went down in defeat on June 8. Five states may ultimately qualify initiatives on nuclear safety for the November ballot, and citizen groups in other areas are targeting their efforts toward the 1978 elections...
...Perhaps the most dramatic defeat for labor occurred in a "labor town," San Francisco...
...For all our alleged sympathy and concern for youth—Disneyland, Sesame Street, the "wonder years," PG ratings, and the cult of the child literature (Pearl, Huck, and Holden)—we are not protective when the squeeze comes...
...With the blessings of the United States and the grudging approval of Israel, the heartland of the Middle East, from Damascus to Cairo to Amman to Riyadh, would be solidly confirmed as part of Washington's "free world...
...Former Justice William O. Douglas, in the 1972 decision which struck down capital punishment statutes as then written, best summarized the social effects of the death penalty: "We know that the discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty enables the penalty to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, poor and lacking political clout, or if he is a member of a suspect or unpopular minority, and saving those who by social position may be in a more protected position...
...Americans seem to ignore popular struggles until they reach Dominican or Vietnamese (or Lebanese) proportions...
...For the pilots and controllers who walked off their jobs on June 20, the declared issue was "safety in the air," not bilingualism...
...Only Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, in dissent, addressed the morality of the death penalty...
...the central issue is not equality but survival...
...Indeed, many Democrats are doing their level best to convince themselves and each other that this is the case...
...THOMAS GALAZEN (Thomas Galazen is a free-lance writer who has specialized in environmental problems...
...Assad formed a new coalition by absorbing some of the Nasserites, as well as the Syrian Communist Party, into his movement...
...Perhaps—but who stands in the way of four years of Democratic-big business control of the Presidency...
...No longer, the Court believes, will convicted criminals be randomly selected for death...
...John Jacob, director of the Washington Urban League, commented, "Behind the statistics in this report are the pain and misery, the ambiguities and fallibilities, the hopefulness and determination...
...Thus, the possibility that the Court may reconsider its position and ban capital punishment still exists...
...They argued that the proposed use of French as well as English in air traffic control at Quebec's two largest airports would be a source of confusion to unilingual (i.e., English-speaking) pilots...
...In contrast, backers of the proposition report spending about $1.1 million, raised primarily from individual contributions and rock concerts...
...But the reality of poverty remains...
...And even if the criteria were made more precise, other factors in the judicial process allow for haphazard application of the death penalty...
...Citizens there successfully used the initiative process in 1974 to end underground testing of nuclear weapons...
...Almost 150 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the great students of our society, advanced the paradox that the atomistic individualism of Americans creates inordinate pressures toward conformity...
...it is the kind, as de Tocqueville understood, that produces the most destructive conformity...
...This summer it released a comprehensive survey of ghetto residents' lifestyles and attitudes that goes a long way toward removing the veil that conceals the "marginal elements" in American society...
...Michael Harrington's judgment that the social programs of the 1960s were "oversold and underfinanced" is confirmed by the Urban League report...
...The Other America still exists, though our society manages quite effectively to keep it out of sight...
...Assisting the Sultan is a sizable force of Iranian troops and British mercenaries who train and command the local army of 15,000 troops (up from 4,000 in 1971...
...Is it only circumstantial that the graduate students who most need support entered college within a year or two of the high point of student rebellion (1968-1970...
...The San Francisco Board of Supervisors succeeded in blaming the city's deficit, which could run as high as $70 million this year, on the big wage gains won by craft workers in past years...
...The other major provision calls for the state legislature, after receiving recommendations from an advisory group, to confirm the effectiveness of nuclear safety systems and waste disposal methods by a two-thirds or simple majority vote, depending upon the state...
...The executive board of New Haven's Central Labor Council voted unanimously to stage a one-day general strike against all public and private employers if the teachers were not released from jail...
...The Syrian government intervened in April 1976, when it became apparent that the rightists alone were incapable of driving the PLO from their territory...
...Yet it maintained that capital punishment is "an expression of society's moral outrage" and is therefore "essential in an ordered society...
...Senator James Abourezk, South Dakota Democrat, decries the practice, on the grounds that it purchases "security" at the expense of the "inhuman atrocities and the repressive and barbaric tactics" of various governments...
...For years, therefore, Washington has encouraged the Arabs themselves to demolish the PLO...
...It is easy for press and media to misread these struggles as forms of nostalgia for a vanishing counter-culture, or as a return to Yippie-apocalypse...
...Although final spending reports are not yet filed, Dwight Cocke, Northern Director of Californians for Nuclear Safeguards, estimates initiative opponents will have spent "about $4 million or more when all is accounted for," contributed primarily by corporations and utilities nationwide...
...The Washington Urban League is not interested in maintaining the charade...
Vol. 40 • September 1976 • No. 9
