LETTERS
LETTERS Spin-off letters That was indeed a horrifying lead sentence in your editorial opening the February issue of The Progressive: "The U.S. Government is preparing to wage nuclear war, and...
...In any case, the least antiwar people can do is demand that the pact be sent back for renegotiation to include a new protocol that will declare a moratorium on research, testing, development, manufacture, and deployment of any weapons system not yet deployed...
...While their current attitudes may betray a rather narrow perspective based largely on self-interest, one of the goals of an MX campaign would be to sensitize these people to the larger issues at hand...
...They are the targets at which registration laws are presumably aimed, yet they cannot be affected by such laws...
...The cancers on I? r»r\(T£*1ai-\ nr\A \]tr\r\r aro raql1 i\ta t |i I rtv» ixongviup uim \s n IV'IV ui w i vui, ii-iw liiu ij year litany of lies told to these people about their medical condition and the amounts of radiation on their islands are real...
...However, I do not feel that harboring an obvious war criminal is good policy either...
...Is this a sign of dependence...
...It occurs to me that other Progressive readers could also prepare "spin-off" letters utilizing the ammunition your editorials and articles provide — reaching a larger local audience than The Progressive could cover, especially in conservative areas...
...Consider that such unlikely groups as the Wilderness Society, Women Involved in Farm Economics (WIFE), Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, the Nebraska Wheatgrowers Association, and numerous city councils and mayors in possible deployment states have already voiced opposition to the MX...
...It appears to me that if you are to be consistent, you have the choice of supporting the workers' identification card law in Louisiana, or opposing a firearms owner identification card law...
...and the Soviet Union will have if there is no SALT II...
...It would be nice to think that after the defeat of SALT II the small gallant peace groups in America could accomplish more than the President of the United States and his Administration and a majority in the Senate were ever able to achieve...
...Martin Bronfenbrenner Brighton, Sussex, England Stop In your Comment "The Thermonuclear Society," in the February issue, you seem to have played editorial hide-and-seek — made a dash for base, but inadvertently missed...
...2) that the pact limits only launchers, and the Pentagon does not want or need any more — in fact it has retired 1,000 launchers in the last fifteen years...
...card was supposed to cut down on crime, but it apparently has not...
...At the end of the editorial you state: "The way to stop is to stop...
...Turan's apparent assumption that standards of any kind are nothing better than "just folks with their own quirky likes and dislikes" reflects a nihilistic state of mind that constitutes a time-bomb beneath civilization worse even than the threat of nuclear war...
...I think not...
...My God, is there no hope at all...
...The issues behind the MX fight go far beyond a single weapon...
...What brings this to mind is the item on Page 11 (with your anti-gun cartoon) in which you fume — justifiably — about a Louisiana ordinance requiring an I.D...
...But not a word does he mention about SALT III...
...As a pessimistic "tired liberal" fearful of Stalin's creeping reincarnation, I fear that the survival may be for the worse...
...So far, Kramer is right, but I wish that, on returning home, he might have applied his reflections in the opposite direction — namely, the limited attraction of Socialist models in the West...
...The nuclear drummer is tapping out a slow death for us all...
...In other words, just as the workers' I.D...
...One trap in Lens's thinking is that he is only comparing what both superpowers have now by way of strategic weapons with what they would have under SALT II...
...Kramer was impressed by the limited attraction of the Western "free world" for "captive nations behind the Iron Curtain...
...It apparently survives, for better or worse, in many of the less-developed countries of the so-called Third World...
...it will be deprived of nothing...
...For your information, none of the firearms laws which were supposed to reduce crime have had that effect...
...I use "My God" in the popular sense...
...If Alexander will examine the record of the conduct of America regarding Rongelap and Utrick I think he will conclude that the Rongelapese and Utrickese have not lost their sense of independence but just the opposite...
...We would be deceiving ourselves if we thought that there was any chance of Congress approving or encouraging more drastic and far-reaching arms limitation and disarmament agreements, after a rejection of the Treaty...
...The victims were released back to their jobs, and BRK Electronics went about its business...
...Lens also complains that SALT II will impose no limits on tactical nuclear weapons...
...Maybe we should get all the nuclear nations together for a big party and at the count of three: STOP...
...Your major concern with challenging a single weapon like the MX is that such a fight implies tacit approval of other parts of the nuclear arsenal...
...But if you would look at gun laws as you look at other types of laws, you might have a better understanding of why Congress has justifiably refused to pass additional gun laws...
...both sides will simply sit down and negotiate some more...
...They were feeling faint and nauseous and having difficulty in breathing...
...To forego this important opportunity to reach millions of Americans during the MX debate — to fail to educate people about the dangers of the MX in particular and thereby the more acute dangers of the arms race in general, would be a grave political error...
...He died sometime back...
...Such secular faith is currently in eclipse in "advanced" countries, both capitalist and Socialist...
...Norman E. Hunt Executive Director The Arms Reversal Program Arlington, Virginia Sidney Lens replies: It is a flimsy argument to say that if SALT II is rejected the two superpowers will escalate the arms race even more than at present...
...I wonder if old Bob LaFollette would have subscribed to your blackout of hope...
...If we let him stay, then we will be showing the world that we condone the actions of Loan and others (who were less visible...
...The second most popular proposal is that all firearms owners be licensed, and that they be given an identification card, complete with photograph and fingerprints, after having satisfactorily convinced the police that they have a justifiable reason for possessing a firearm...
...If the two superpowers can ever come to an agreement to negotiate tactical arms, that would be, in my opinion, a blessing...
...A curious incident occurred at BRK Electronics one fine day in August 1977: The local fire department's paramedics responded to an emergency call from the plant and discovered about three dozen employes in various stages of illness...
...Is Alexander aware that in 1977 the people of Utrick demanded that the ERDA doctor be changed because they could no longer trust him and that ERDA withdrew all medical care and refused to return to the island until the Utrickese met the terms of ERDA and allowed themselves to be treated by whoever ERDA chose to send...
...But it is unreasonable to blame strategic talks for not being tactical talks...
...Apparently he didn't know what the film is about so he assumed it isn't about anything...
...and remained "better," despite their geographical positions...
...Fall-guy "Finding a Fall-guy" in Nguyen Ngoc Loan (January "Comment"), the former chief of police of Saigon's war machine, for his part in the Vietnam war, is truly a poor reaction on the part of our Government, but only because we had welcomed him as a friend in 1975...
...It almost makes one think the Pentagon had a moral conscience, a genuine concern for mankind...
...card law hasn't worked, neither have gun laws...
...And this reluctance may go far in explaining the timorous weakness of Western revolutionary fervor, a weakness so often lamented in our left-wing press...
...I was thinking of saying "Good luck," but...
...Everyone raise a glass to stopping...
...Still no cause could be found...
...It wanted first to overthrow the existing order...
...Then, at a conference where a great deal of discussion on this topic took place, an objection was raised which made me think again — and again...
...But then let's not turn around and pretend they're not that strong when it comes to choosing between half a loaf — even a quarter of a loaf of SALT — and none at all...
...I have never seen such a bleak and hopeless array of doomsday hawkers in my life...
...anywhere...
...Really now...
...v. Haynes, held that fear of self-incrimination was a justifiable defense for not registering a firearm...
...I believe that we have to make a choice about people like Loan...
...SALT II will add 50 per cent to the American stockpile (if you include cruise missiles) and 100 per cent to the Soviet stockpile...
...This sentence implies that the only way to stop it is from within, since nothing outside to date can do the job...
...More examinations, more analyses — same conclusion: cause unknown...
...One more thing: Your article notes that the Louisiana workers' I.D...
...For years I felt I would rather go to jail than register, since I see even forced registration as a gross and intolerable violation of everyone's rights...
...If he had, he would have learned that requests by the people that the United States stop using them as guinea pigs, that they be given proper medical care, that the children of the exposed be examined for radiation-related diseases, and that the United States fulfill its promises to look after their health, are not signs of dependence but only requests for what they rightly deserve...
...Charles C. Codding ton Aurora, Illinois Gun control On Page 11 of your February 1979 issue there is an editorial cartoon showing the "gun lobby" holding "Congress" in its hand...
...Statements like "the only way to stop is to stop" are the kind of thing up with which we should not put...
...Quest in your February issue: I also "...have never read a movie review of Kenneth Turan's that had any useful insight or any value whatever...
...Marion Wylie Oakland, California Regarding the letter from M.A...
...Is Alexander aware that the peoples of Rongelap and Utrick asked the United States to allow doctors from other countries to examine them (doctors from Hiroshima had agreed to come) in a letter to ERDA in 1977, but that this request was denied...
...Bob Bakery What Cheer, Iowa LETTERS Doomsday hawkers Have you taken a good look at your table of contents for the February number...
...The fear for their lives and the lives of their children is real...
...The incidents were forgotten...
...If that is true — and I don't believe it is — we will have to fight that escalation when the time comes...
...People gain a broader awareness through the course of acting on narrower issues...
...They did not meet these terms out of a feeling of dependence but out of fear...
...You state the problem at the onset: Nuclear armaments are multiplying and "there is no power in sight that can stop it...
...What is clear, however, is that BRK Electronics (a subsidiary of Pitway, Inc...
...The Lens article does accomplish one good thing...
...But Lens does not tell us how that will be politically possible...
...There is of course a third category and that is what the U.S...
...SALT I doubled the number of strategic weapons deployed by both sides...
...The hawks will have demonstrated that even as modest an effort as ratification of SALT II cannot be achieved in America today...
...Here we are, struggling for our lives against an elitist government of overdefended fools who are going to get us all killed in a nuclear war that nobody in his right mind would countenance, and you continue to run his comments...
...The Supreme Court, In U.S...
...Perhaps you might consider one item in each issue that holds out a faint hope that our species might prevail after all...
...Logically, the best means of reaching new constituencies is with arguments of a more limited nature than a blanket condemnation of nuclear weapons...
...His reviews of movies completely lack content of any social value...
...The beat goes on in Aurora (and all across America...
...Turan's comment on Woody Allen's Interiors is so far off the mark that it sets a record for ludicrous irrelevance...
...C.K...
...But — if you are to be consistent — you cannot have it both ways...
...card, which you actively promote...
...This so-called "accidental radiation exposure" is not something that should be glossed over...
...What Turan's statement amounts to is an expression of the shallow belief that "everything is merely a matter of opinion," with no one qualified to judge that one opinion is better than any other...
...Obviously you cannot understand why Congress fails to enact prohibitive gun laws...
...A narrower focus, such as trying to keep someone's land from being taken for a new missile silo, is necessary...
...card for workers, with fingerprints cleared through the sheriffs office, by the F.B.I...
...Ben W. Fuson Louisa, Kentucky Draft In response to your Comment on "Reviving the Draft" (February 1979) I must say this: I am a seventeen-year-old who has struggled with the possibility of a return of the draft and how I would react to such an occurrence...
...Quest is particularly concerned about lack of political awareness, I about lack of aesthetic awareness...
...Perhaps more important, the atmosphere of the body politic in America will have changed...
...Davis Oldham New London, Connecticut Eastern Europe Having also visited several Eastern European cities as a tourist and "airport economist," I should like to comment and extend Lawrence Kramer's analysis ("Eastern Europe's Paradox," The Progressive, December 1978...
...This is an academic argument that does not conform to the realities of political organizing...
...Michael Mawby Disarmament Coordinator, SANE Washington, D.C...
...All of the victims were rushed to the hospital and given an allegedly thorough examination...
...Neal Knox National Rifle Association Washington, D.C...
...Since the memory of Legionnaires' Disease was still fresh, air samples from the building were collected and analyzed...
...To be sure, the draft is a terrible, cruel thing — but what about those who right now, in the "all-volunteer" army, are the victims of economic conscription...
...And if it is rejected because of pressure from the peace forces the result may be a pact that actually halts the arms race...
...Earl Nightingale Fort Lauderdale, Florida Nuclear disaster It may be "No Comment" when speaking of the legal peccadilloes of BRK Electronics of Aurora, Illinois, in the January issue...
...Conner Reed Seattle, Washington May I second the remarks of Moral A. Quest in your February letters concerning Kenneth Turan...
...T shot off copies of my letter to newspapers in Huntington, West Virginia, and Ashland, Kentucky, closest to our small town — and they were promptly printed...
...New York, London, and Tokyo seem no more interested in approaching Moscow, Peking, or Havana — or Warsaw, Prague, or Budapest — than are these Eastern European capitals in "Westernizing...
...How nice...
...This doomsday prophecy disturbed me so much (especially as supported by other major articles in the same issue) that I sat right down and wrote a "letter to the editor" condensing some of the points that had been advanced so convincingly...
...Yet you see no similarity between the worker's I.D...
...Stedman New Denver, British Columbia...
...To endorse such a pact because it is "better" than a 150 per cent increase, or because it will lead to negotiations for SALT III (heaven help us if it is like SALT I and II), is like savin° it is better to die twice than three times...
...1 class him along with blooper Samuel Day ("The Nicest People Make the Bomb," in the October 1978 issue) who has let us know about his being born yesterday, and I no longer even look at his comments...
...But after years of socialization and indoctrination, the majority of Americans, while abhorring nuclear weapons, cannot overcome their fears of the "red threat" simply on the basis of humanitarianism...
...But, if the whole story were made public, plenty of comment would be elicited...
...Am I right in escaping the draft, and fighting its reinstatement, if it means that I, as a white, middle-class, privileged citizen, will escape, while my poor and oppressed brothers and sisters are forced into the military no matter what...
...Turan's criticism Critic Kenneth Turan, in his February comment on the movie Grease, states that "criticism is essentially a personal art____ Critics are basically just folks with their own quirky likes and dislikes, and...no matter what some lofty practitioners may want to believe, no one has a direct line to eternal standards of quality...
...Let us think for a moment about what will really happen if the Treaty is rejected by the Senate...
...The most popular form of "gun control" is firearms registration, but the greatest hazard to registration lies in self-incrimination...
...and some had actually lost consciousness...
...Is it not better that we all share in the burden until it no longer exists...
...No pathological agent could be detected...
...It demonstrates dramatically how powerful the ultra-militaristic hawks are in America today...
...I can still picture vividly the murder of the Viet Cong suspect just as it came on the television screen...
...Joe Baxter New Orleans, Louisiana Stopping NX As someone actively involved in the battle to stop the MX missile, I feel compelled to reply to your editorial in the January issue opposing single-weapon campaigns...
...For the belief is really a denial of a value of reason in human relations, hence a denial that truth and relative values can ever be found...
...The military is more and more made up of black and poor people — those who have little or no choice in their fight against unemployment...
...An MX campaign offers the chance for the peace movement to reach out to new constituencies...
...Norman Hunt, who chides me for forgetting some "facts," forgets a few himself: (1) that Paul Warnke has conceded in a speech some months ago that under the new agreement the Pentagon will be able to deploy all the weapons it feels are necessary...
...Yet if everything really is merely a matter of opinion, then, as the late Robert M. Hutchins used to say, "force becomes the only means of settling differences of opinion...
...The new Left of the 1960s was more optimistic (like its parallels in Warsaw and Budapest in 1956 or in Prague in 1968...
...If we let him go we must blame ourselves for letting such a situation happen and resolve not to let it happen again...
...There seems to be real rivalry among these countries, as to the extent each has avoided becoming a carbon copy of the U.S.S.R...
...Without question, the absence of controls will bring us closer to nuclear war...
...You suggest that whoever drew up that ordinance "must have been reading Hitler's Mein Kampf...
...Paul L. Domler Jamestown, New York Paradise William Alexander, in his article "The Destruction of Paradise," in the February 1979 issue, mentioned only in passing the exposure of the peoples of Rongelap and Utrick Atolls...
...First, an immediate, all-out expansion — an explosion really — of the arms race will take place on both sides, with increasing likelihood that future weapons systems will destroy the stability of deterrence and put a premium on a first strike...
...I lived on Rongelap as a Peace Corps Volunteer for three years, including the time Alexander spent in the Marshalls, although he spent no time on Rongelap to study this dependence...
...For the very simple reason, I would suppose, that the SALT talks by definition focus on strategic arms...
...3) that the real focus of the arms race today is on quality and accuracy, but there are few restrictions in SALT II on this score, and (4) that even though President Carter assumes SALT II will be ratified he includes in his budget a vast increase for the MX and cruise missiles...
...Government is preparing to wage nuclear war, and there is no power in sight that can stop it...
...Whether or not there was a cover-up to prevent public panic or outrage is unclear...
...Obviously, that will be a great deal more than at present, and because neither side could be sure how much the other would be developing, the tendency would be to accelerate much faster than if there were controls...
...How else are we to get to SALT III than via SALT II...
...Alexander says the people of Rongelap lost their sense of independence and became dependent on the United States...
...manufactures the well-advertised "First Alert" smoke detectors and that these devices are of the ionization type — containing radioactive americium 241 — McKinley C. Olson warned us about in the August 1977 issue ("Caution: Smoke Detectors May Be Hazardous to Your Health...
...But we must not use the possibility of a bigger escalation as an excuse for agreeing to a slightly smaller one...
...card ordinance, which you despise, and a firearms owner I.D...
...Under Federal and state laws, criminals, persons with less than honorable discharges, narcotics addicts, mental incompetents, and the like, are prohibited from possessing firearms...
...A week later, a similar incident occurred, although fewer employes were involved this time...
...Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague seemed interested in modeling themselves no more on New York, London, or Tokyo than on Moscow, Leningrad, or Kiev — or, I might add, upon each other...
...If SALT II is rejected nothing dire will happen...
...it had a secular faith that something better would reveal itself "in the course of the struggle...
...What is also clear is that fainting, nausea, and difficulty in breathing are the first symptoms of massive radiation poisoning...
...Naturally there is a limited constituency (basically the peace movement) which is receptive to the argument that all nuclear weapons are inhumane and must be abolished either multi- or unilaterally...
...It also seems to me that it would be fairer of Lens to concede that SALT II does provide the framework for SALT III negotiations and commits the two sides to proceed with them...
...My hometown is another small link in the increasingly longer chain of nuclear disaster in America...
...SALT Sidney Lens in "The SALT Trap" (December 1978) does a disservice by overlooking some important facts...
Vol. 43 • April 1979 • No. 4
