LETTERS
LETTERS Wild life Ted Howard's "Patenting Life" article in the September issue prompts some merrily macabre speculation regarding the future of corporate-controlled genetic engineering. The...
...The capability exists now to induce common intestinal bacteria to produce wild alterations in the growth rate of human beings and all other higher animals, it appears...
...The reference is to Project Censored, an effort launched by Professor Jensen three years ago to identify "stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not...
...A Chance to Speak for Survival," our editorial on the U.N...
...Goats and other exotic predators have caused devastation of these islands' native plants and animals...
...Robert A. Baumler Amherst, New York The August issue of The Progressive contained a sensitive analysis of the dilemmas faced by Jews who identify proudly with their heritage, support the existence and flourishing of the state of Israel, and yet differ substantially on the means of expressing their support...
...Both somatostatin (which retards growth) and somatotropin (which promotes it) could be churned out by ordinary E. coli as modified through already demonstrated recombinant DNA techniques...
...Most importantly, it has broken the statehood compact...
...Foreign Agents in Our Midst," by John Hanrahan (November 1977), and "The Junk in Outer Space," by Michael Harris (November 1978...
...If SALT II is not ratified...
...The other equation, relevant to a grassroots effort, is that the whole arsenal of each power's weaponry is the intimidating and cowardly one of using it as a murderous force to negate any declared, open, and democratic movement for radical domestic social change, as an alternative to a paralysis of inexpressible, latent terror...
...Its financial base was a few large East Coast donors...
...A labor party based on the power of the unions would be an effective weapon not only to defend and advance the interests of workers, but of blacks, women, Chicanos, and others...
...Thank you for printing it...
...New York-based witch-hunt to destroy Breira by intimidating a few big names and big donors, and driving a wedge between rabbis and liberals...
...The founders of Breira set it up both financially and structurally as a New York-based, top-down organization...
...More information can be obtained from the Alaska Coalition, 620 C Street SE, Washington, DC 20003...
...We would have the most fundamental realignment of forces since World War II...
...These things already exist in organized labor...
...Any communications may be sent to Organizing Committee, 72C Phelps Avenue, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901...
...But disarmament negotiations must take place in an atmosphere of at least reasonably good relations, and we will not have good relations with Moscow if SALT II is not ratified...
...Rather, it would be attributed to hardliners such as Senator Henry Jackson...
...It would be up to Cetus, Genentech, and the other microbe meddling companies to come to the rescue by peddling the appropriate antidote to 4.3 billion potential customers...
...Indeed, the economic prospects are so dazzling that the gene-splicing commercialists might secretly recruit Dr...
...In this atmosphere, failure of the Senate to ratify SALT II would create a new cold war...
...Not so...
...A bibliography on Total Energy (co-generation) was published by me in 1970 with the aid of the late Saul Sherman and is available to anyone who sends me fifty cents together with a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Leon Hurvitz Vancouver, British Columbia SALT II I have read your position on SALT II, and I agree that what we actually need is multilateral disarmament...
...With that kind of potential market, there should be no difficulty in stimulating the firms' humanitarian impulses...
...Most of the areas I have hunted for years are now closed to me...
...If we have to renegotiate SALT II, we might have to do so in the midst of a power struggle within the Kremlin, as Brezhnev is not in the best of health...
...But there were basic flaws in the conception and organization of Breira that made it disastrously vulnerable to witch-hunting and intimidation...
...Harry L. Osias New York, NY No comment The "No Comment" column in the August issue includes an item on Lawrence Keller, a graduate of the University of Chicago who was to have graduated with a straight A average if not for a "Beginning Bowling" course which lowered his average to 4.999...
...Frank N. Stein himself, to get the show on the road...
...Claus-M...
...Furthermore, as former ambassador Averill Harriman has pointed out, our failure to ratify SALT II could cause a "hard-line" faction to win such a struggle...
...The Federal Government has spun an impenetrable web around the citizens of this state...
...The only point of hashing over old mistakes is to avoid repeating them...
...For any new party to get off the drawing board and keep moving it needs a solid and massive organizational and financial base — the core of the "committed movement" of which Lens speaks...
...Frank N. Stein unleashes a viable bug which threatens to turn us all into hyper-giants or hypo-midgets...
...Therefore, a 4.999 grade point average would be quite extraordinary...
...The Navy has commendably moved to try to prevent further extinctions on San Clemente Island...
...Robert Schwartz Chicago, Illinois Memo "You should be particularly pleased," writes Professor Carl Jensen of Sonoma State University in California, "that The Progressive had seven stories in the top twenty-five...
...It deserves praise for this farsighted step, not ridicule, and the California Native Plant Society, with whose rare plant work I have been associated for some six years, is happy to bestow that praise...
...by Maurice Zeitlin, our June 1978 cover story, which showed there has been no significant change in the distribution of American wealth for more than a century...
...Although the university requires one full year of physical education, those courses do not go on the student's academic record...
...The Soviet Union might try to seek a separate peace with Western Europe, but the latter seems to be experiencing a "rightward drift" in political thinking, as evidenced by Maggie Thatcher's election in Great Britain...
...In fact, no grade is now given for physical education courses...
...Bill Hersh Urbana, Illinois...
...Such a failure would not be attributed to opponents such as Senator George McGovern who want to move directly to disarmament...
...When Alaska entered the Union in 1959, it was to select some 130,000,000 acres from the vacant, unappropriated public domain...
...Rabbi Gerald Serotta New Brunswick, New Jersey I was a member of Breira, and deeply regret its demolition...
...Robert Treat El Cajon, California May I add a conventional though often neglected observation to your probing editorial Comment "The Irrelevant SALT Debate" in the August issue...
...As a student at the University of Chicago I am aware that the university operates on a four-point, not a five-point, scale...
...and three out of the top ten...
...In the meantime, the incessant withdrawals have deprived us of a good portion of that state selection...
...Naske Fairbanks, Alaska Your comment, "Victory in the Wild-lands," gives the impression that the effort to protect Alaskan wilderness and wildlife has succeeded...
...I seriously doubt Keller suffered the humiliation you mention...
...It is, of course, a cheap vote...
...Matt Stagner Newton, Kansas Editor's Note: The Progressive Owes an nology to reader Stagner and the University of Chicago: Lawrence Keller earned ; lis 4.999 grade average at the Chicago Circle campus of the University of Illinois...
...The Soviets are using the Palestinians as a tool in their effort to gain control of the Middle East...
...The bill backed by conservationists and the Administration did pass the House by a large margin, but the Senate has yet to act, and it was in the latter body that similar legislation died last year...
...There could hardly be a more difficult subject to write about — or a more important one — and yet she has done so with remarkable compassion, fairness, understanding, and sanity...
...No Jew — indeed, no human being worthy of the name — can be indifferent to what may happen collectively to the Jews, but no Jew has the right to trample on Palestinians...
...Nutrition is an area that every progressive person should have an active interest in...
...In agreeing that "the attempt of two declining superpowers to maintain their hold on a world that is slipping out of their con-tol" by the very fact of their intensity in stepping up the arms race via the "flimflam of [institutionalization] of strategic arms limitation talks," the task comes to a grass-roots need to "thwart that [superpower] effort while there is still time...
...One must be holistic in crusades against the Establishment...
...Wallace Elton Middlebury, Vermont Total energy Readers of your Comment in the August issue, "Toward Energy Efficiency," about cogeneration may have been at a loss where to find additional information...
...L. Douglas DeNike Los Angeles, California Third parties As a member of the Peace and Freedom Party in California, I was intrigued by Sidney Lens's Comment in the August issue regarding the proposed Citizens Party...
...LETTERS Jews and the PLO Carolyn Toll's article, "American Jews and the Middle East Dilemma," in the August issue, expressed more eloquently than I would have thought possible the feelings that many of us share with her...
...Implicit in that task must be an awareness that superpower "nuclear chicken" about touching off a war or losing control in the madness of a preemptive first strike (if that were possible), is mainly the equation of their imperial struggle against one another...
...Since Alaska has only a population of about 410,000 souls, the protests of these citizens need not be listened to, as they are politically insignificant...
...by Jeanne Schinto, which detailed the mounting evidence that proper nutrition could help some of the 6.4 million Americans now under mental care (May 1978), and "Who Owns America...
...Carolyn Toll's description of the process is accurate as far as it goes...
...1 applaud your 'dealing with this subject, as the same people who give us nuclear plants and other 'technological blunders also give us adulterated food that undermines our health...
...This false degradation of one of the nation's finest academic institutions causes me to pause before I accept other statements made by your magazine...
...Henry S. Smith Cotton, California Sid Lens's Comment on the Citizens Party correctly criticizes this effort as "the intellectual product of a small group rather than the evolutionary product of a committed movement...
...I wish you the best in the ongoing battle for First' Amendment rights...
...Rachelle Marshall Stanford, California I enjoyed Carolyn Toll's article on the plight of the Palestinian Arabs, but wonder how people sympathetic to the Arabs can be called anti-Semitic when the Arabs are Semites...
...In making fun of the Navy ("No Comment," August 1979) for saying that "national defense" requires killing 4,000 wild goats on San Clemente Island, you selectively omitted the primary reason for the program, which also was set before the judge: to eliminate introduced animals whose grazing has brought to extinction and near-extinction many forms of native plant and animal life unique to the island...
...Alice Q. Howard Oakland, California Alaska I strongly disagree with your editorial in the July issue entitled "Victory in the Wildlands...
...Suppose that the well-known Dr...
...I trust that in the future you will be more careful in your reporting...
...The new cold war would find the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and China in one camp, and the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba, and Vietnam in the other camp...
...Through the years I remember (1910 to date) in politics there have been frequent mentions of the possibility of creating "Third Parties" when others of a similar nature already existed...
...We are particularly pleased — and proud...
...Each year The Progressive has been prominently represented on the list of "Ten Best Censored Stories" selected by a panel of distinguished journalists...
...As in the case of isolated islands throughout the world, specialized forms of life have evolved on California's Channel Islands that are ill-equipped to withstand predation by animals introduced into the ecosystem by man, animals with which these life forms have not co-evolved...
...Marian Neudel Chicago, Illinois It is no secret that Arafat and the PLO are backed by the Soviet Union...
...Our experience in the hinterlands during the demise of Breira suggests that Jewish communities west of the Hudson may have a greater tolerance for diversity, and perhaps a keener awareness of the political realities within which the Jewish community operates, than many of their East Coast colleagues...
...If Sid Lens, Don Rose, Barry Commoner, and company desire a truly effective alternative to the political agents of corporate America, they ought to join in the call for a labor parly...
...The top ten for 1978 include: "Curbing the Chemical Fix," by Daniel Zwerdling, our December cover story, which described successful ventures in organic farming...
...Is Our Diet Driving Us Crazy...
...I love Alaska, and I have hunted and fished over much of it...
...Disarmament Conference (June 1978...
...Other articles from The Progressive in Project Censored's top twenty-five were: "Smoke Detector Dangers," an editorial follow-up in the May 1978 issue to McKinley Olson's article on radioactive smoke detectors in August 1977...
...Put most of Alaska into national monuments, wildlife refuges, wild and scenic rivers, and what not...
...As a result, it was deplorably easy for a rather small...
...Charles L. Smith 61 San Mateo Road Berkeley, California 94707 Food in the past several months, I notice The {Progressive has run several articles on {various aspects of food...
...I question this...
...Protection of the environment is fashionable, and where can that be done as cheaply as in Alaska...
...Readers may send nominations for the 1979 list to Professor Jensen at Project Censored, Department of Sociology, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California 94928...
...The article makes reference to a new forum for reviving pr gressive Jewish activity, the Organize Committee for a New Jewish Agenda...
...Helena B. Sanford Los Angeles, California Thank you for saying so eloquently what I myself have long wished to say but did not quite know how...
...The problem is that the architects and proponents of this measure do not live in Alaska...
...We would warmly welcome inquiries and suggestions, particularly from those who are seeking ways to harmonize Jewish identity with progressive political thought and action...
...its power base a few prestigious East Coast intellectuals and organizers presiding over an awkwardly constructed coalition of Hillel rabbis and Old Leftists...
...Readers wanting to help complete the task should ask their Senators to support S.222 introduced by Senator Durkin...
...I am pleased to report to the readers o The Progressive that the Organizing Conv mittee is proceeding with plans to hold a national conference in late 1980 to construct a progressive Jewish agenda for the 1980s, and has already published the first issue of a national newsletter, Agenda...
...The lack of knowledge on the part of so many liberals and radicals concerning what is going on about them is frightening...
...I have lived here most of my life...
...Moscow could very well decide that there can be no future in Soviet-American cooperation...
...This land base was to make Alaska a viable state...
...You refer to the Udall-An-derson Alaska lands bill as a great victory, a case in which Congress and the Carter Administration "have taken steps to protect an immense area of the Alaskan wilderness from the ravages of human development projects...
Vol. 43 • October 1979 • No. 10
