LETTERS

...Why no names...

...Steve D. Schweitzberger Denver, Colorado Thank you for the article on transportation...

...That was the mood at the NUKEWATCH conference held in Madison in mid-July by The Progressive, now embattled in a historic court test of nuclear secrecy, and the Madison Press Connection, an alternative daily newspaper...

...The citizen of a civilized society has the duty to remain civilized or he forfeits his right to live in it...

...The magazine's appeal of a six-month-old injunction against publication of the article will be argued in Federal court in Chicago on September 10...

...But the result is no different...

...Jerry Wiggins Garland, Texas Howard Rosenberg replies: There was certainly no intention on my part to allow the decision makers in this drama to remain safely cloaked in anonymity...

...but these days more and more of us (it seems) won't be going at all...

...And of course there is always the Pentagon — "a spokesman for," said this or that...

...Unfortunately, there is no sign that any Government agency is willing to put limits on the American traveler's God-given right to mobility — that is, the right to circle airports in fog, to sit in traffic jams on the way to O'Hare, to endure a day and a half in the suffocating atmosphere of an aging Pullman, or to wait all day in line at the gas pumps...

...Reverend John Helt Milwaukee, Wisconsin Off the track As a former member of the board of directors of the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) and a founder and former officer of its Illinois affiliate, I read Deborah Baldwin's "Off the Track," in the July issue, with great interest...

...I urge you in the name of peace to change your position on this vital matter...

...Speaker after speaker pointed to secrecy as the common enemy in the nation's emerging struggles for a world free of the twin menaces of nuclear power and nuclear weapons...

...By opposing SALT II The Progressive joins the ranks of the far Right who also call for its defeat for more militaristic and jingoistic reasons than do you...

...Since electricity is, as yet, not stored easily, let each home have two water tanks, an upper and a lower, the upper to be pumped into by solar and wind power, and the lower for receiving the water through the home hydroelectric generator, usable, of course, for building up car batteries...

...I was a bit taken aback by the analogy you draw between the HumRRO scientists and "Nazi incineration engineers...

...It is made by those intent upon bequeathing a healthful, nonviolent world to the generations of the future, if there be a future...

...authors Sidney Lens and Donna Warnock...

...I am sure that this is not an original thought — there must be good reasons why you and Rosenberg do not mention names...

...Also, nations don't build H-bombs because H-bombs are extraordinarily expensive...

...Is there, in fact, any knowledge which the Government might legitimately protect with prior restraint or subsequent prosecution...

...After about five years of NARP-related lobbying, I have come reluctantly to the conclusion that rail passenger groups have made a major error in lobbying intensively on behalf of such long-haul disasters as the Chicago-Miami Floridian, and that it would be a point of realism to recognize that the future of intercity rail passenger service lies elsewhere...

...It seems the world is divided not by nationality or race, but by those who are death-oriented versus those who respect life...

...What makes your reporter Deborah Baldwin think "we still have an opportunity [for] action...

...And Carter appears to be the leading adversary from the perspective of both anti- and pro-nuke camps...

...Enclosed is my contribution toward your publishing efforts...

...I was surprised to learn that Jimmy Carter is to the pro-nuke folks as the Big Bad Wolf is to the Three Little Pigs...

...David C. McDonald St...

...However, it is admirable that, though the great New York Times shilly-shallied for a bit, a smaller New York paper showed them up and laid it on the line in just one illuminating sentence: "Perhaps someone should inform the Government that the 'secret' is already out...

...My grandfather used to say, "If you can't go there first class, don't go...

...Who are these people...

...Not every bureaucrat or soldier could be mentioned without interfering with the flow of the story or requiring more space than that which was allotted...

...The comparison is woefully inadequate and I never even conceived of such an equation...

...Remember, the scientists who conducted psychological stress tests on soldiers at Camp Desert Rock were apparently ignorant of the true health effects of radiation, and in fact were exposed to the blasts themselves...

...However, just because the issue tests the Government's preoccupation with secrecy so well, it tests the First Amendment very poorly...

...One of the danger signs to keep watching, the speakers said, is the Government's continuing suppression of The Progressive''?, article about secrecy in the hydrogen bomb program...

...Deborah Baldwin — thanks for the optimistic attitude, but don't hold your breath...

...Howard Morland...

...It seems to me that the prospects of organizing at the grass-roots level to initiate any meaningful action are remote and unrealistic...

...Deborah Baldwin cogently expressed many thoughts I've had for years about the highway system and its destructive effect on the quality of life in this country...

...But in reading this article I was struck with the thought that all of the offenders against even the loosest concept of morality, ethics, and humanity are anonymous...

...Louise Franklin-Ramirez Arlington, Virginia Arizona Mobilization for Survival congratulates The Progressive for its fight to resist Government oppression through censorship...

...What DOT should be pushing is the intensive development of high-speed daytime service over specific population corridors — in other words, a revival of Senator Pell's concept of a decentralized rather than a transcontinental system...

...It is understandable that The Progressive should have been especially disappointed with the Los Angeles Times...

...Henry A. Watson Vallejo, California Who...

...Even with the latest information relating diesel exhaust emissions to cancer of the lung, residents of Denver, Colorado, can't hear the truth because of "media politics," and our once clean high-altitude city has become known as one of the dirtiest air cities in the nation...

...Similarly, a people's tribunal is being planned to try Governor Robert Graham of Florida and others for crimes including murder because of their invoking the death penalty...

...LETTERS SALT The shallow and myopic editorial entitled "The Irrelevant SALT Debate" (August 1979) clearly shows that The Progressive has lost its grip On reality...

...In addition to dramatizing this would help raise the public consciousness and sensitivity to this important issue...

...The absolutism you preach leaves us only with the status quo — namely with no treaty at all — and that means a new round of arms escalation, increased international tensions, and the very real possibility of a new Cold War...

...3. Thus, when the passenger gets on, he first drives his electric auto right onto the adjoining auto carrier, where its battery gets built up by the train's power, en route to destination...

...My own view is that in the long term the advantages of press freedom (even in only part of the world) far outweigh the damage that will be done to humanity by the publication of any particular truth...

...The Guinea Pigs of Camp Desert Rock," by Howard Rosenberg in your June issue, is, I suppose, no more horrifying than many other examples of the total insen-sitivity of the Pentagon, the Veterans Administration, corporate defense producers (such as Dow Chemical), and many others...

...The conference heard Pete Seeger, the folk singer...

...John Trudell of the American Indian Movement, and John Henry Faulk, who was blacklisted as a radio commentator in the 1950s, among others...

...If this was really the resurgence of a national movement toward peace and freedom, George Wald, who has been there before, had a note of warning: "Remember, it's forever...

...I was delighted to learn that anti-nuclear demonstrating and eroding public support are effectively building the ultimate atomic "bomb...

...The agency denied that claim...

...Your commitment and ours has the potential to collectively steady the keel of this nation as it steers a course into the climactic turbulence of the close of the Twentieth Century...

...So it was with the tests at Camp Desert Rock...

...Anthony Haswell, NARP's founder, points out that if traffic and gasoline shortages justify it, summer-only service might still be considered over some popular long distance tourist routes in the West...

...Keep up the public pressure...

...In fact, if you read the article a bit more carefully, you may note that several of the participants are indeed identified...

...Please address all inquiries to Professor Thomas W. Simon or Bonnie Flassig, Department of Philosophy, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611...

...Now it would be useful to publish an article about an even less sane "transportation system," the mobile-based MX missile project...

...Because of the present state of affairs the task of total nuclear disarmament is not the work of a moment...

...publisher Dave Dellinger...

...For this future, I place my vote with The Progressive...

...If the writer of that editorial had a daughter who had been tortured, raped and dismembered, I think he (or she) would have a different outlook on capital punishment...

...Not only that, but so too should those persons who wrote to call The Progressive "a traitor to our country...

...Who ordered the 82 nd Airborne Division into the area...

...After an over-indulgent dinner, elbow to elbow with industry bigwigs who think antichrist is Jane Fonda, I heard a speech from a Commonwealth Edison public relations officer...

...William Tobin Madison, Wisconsin I have just reread Nat HentofFs article "The Cowardly Lions of the Press," in the June issue...

...Thank you for existing — you bring some hope to those of us who sometimes feel very alienated from those who send men to the gas chamber, to war, to lingering death from atomic radiation...

...Thomas W. Simon Bonnie Flassig Gainesville, Florida Memo George Wald, the Harvard Nobel laureate and peace activist, said it all: "My God, the movement is starting again...

...I offer it in the belief that we can survive this impending turmoil without a nuclear war, and can free ourselves from the threat that this as yet uncivilized civilization would be abruptly ended before achieving its potential flowering in world peace and good will...

...But if you're looking for villains to hang the blame on, you'll have to start with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, include literally hundreds of soldiers, Government scientists, officials, and lowly clerks and work your way through history to the current purveyors of national policy...

...Louis, Missouri After reading the article on mass transportation, it is my opinion if all the individuals who are advocating we get out of our cars and start riding mass transportation would do that themselves, the forty or fifty million new riders would so increase the income of mass transit that it would not need a subsidy to continue to operate...

...Why can't you identify that person...

...Presidential fence-straddling has made whatever position he really stands for irrelevant: Since we assume he's for them, and they assume he's for us, he gets canceled out altogether...

...Yet come election time the "grass-roots" are unable or unwilling to commit to any new form of leadership which might restore some order out of the chaos...

...We encourage concerned citizens and groups throughout the country to support The Progressive...

...The Times ought to learn a thing or two from its neighbor...

...You have to keep marching____ When you stop marching, you're through...

...It is incomprehensible that so much of the press should have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the Government's "secrecy" argument when they should have been the very group to rise to The Progressive's defense...

...My solution, which the oil boys would, of course, fight, is: 1. Convert from large, gas-guzzling autos to compact, electric-powered ones...

...Your position does not offer a single viable alternative...

...All such autos to be built short enough to stand crosswise on the carrier instead of lengthwise...

...Funds, suggestions, volunteers, prominent spokespersons from both sides, and general support are needed to make this event a reality...

...I can't help but wonder if some of this sort of stupidity would not come to a halt if those who give the orders were identified by name...

...Again, there are the "HumRRO psychologists" (who seem to make the Nazi incineration engineers look humane) trying to induce responses to indicate that participants in the exercise at Camp Desert Rock believed that they had no reason to feel apprehensive about aftereffects of radiation...

...Louis, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis-Louisville), the San Diego-Los Angeles and Portland-Seattle corridors on the West Coast, and two or three other carefully selected experimental runs, preceded by a serious upgrading of track...

...if The Progressive were to publish detailed blueprints for an H-bomb I doubt any nation deciding to construct a bomb would build one more than a few months sooner...

...Betty Daland Milton, Wisconsin Nuclear power Your recent issues and the June Mother Jones have indicated that the nuclear industry may be in the midst of a meltdown, which might include a significant chunk of corporate America...

...Yet I know that I would find that small comfort if I were some unfortunate being the more effectively oppressed owing to a tyrant's perusal of the newsstand...

...Be of good cheer...

...A victory by this small but courageous magazine is a victory for the rights of us all...

...Just how obtuse can some people be...

...The industry, now running scared in the wake of Three Mile Island and ignoring Carter's decidedly pro-nuclear speech intended for the first of April, believes the Chief Executive has all but destroyed the American nuclear future...

...It is strange that the killing of innocent people in a war (by the thousands) or by a deliberately negligent industry or government agency never raises the outcry that comes from the killing of a person found undoubtedly guilty of a heinous crime...

...anti-nuclear activists Ada Sanchez and Harvey Wasserman...

...SALT II deserves the support of The Progressive and of all progressives worthy of the title...

...Surely some person signed a letter — some person with human appearance and ability to speak a language gave the order to deny the claim...

...Ron Kent Madison, Wisconsin First Amendment The Progressive's right to publish and the people's right to know represent a commitment to constructive and discerning change...

...Mary T. Reed Seattle, Washington It is very hard to justify capital punishment when not even "God," the creator of life, was willing to take life — the mark of Cain, and not the destruction of Cain, indicates that man is not to be either the creator of life or its destroyer...

...This would provide an opportunity for both proponents and opponents of the death penalty to make their cases in a public simulated trial...

...Many of us would be pleased if we could do it in decent second-class style...

...Alfred O. Wupperman Austin, Texas After reading your July issue and the article in it about the "GM Connection" involving the shift from electrified to diesel transit systems, I had to laugh...

...Where are they now...

...Or, you can wait until next spring to read a comprehensive listing when my book, Atomic Soldiers, will be published by Beacon Press...

...P. Setzer San Francisco, California During the Vietnam war, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others instituted a war commissions trial, publicly prosecuting the United States Government for genocide in Southeast Asia...

...The DOT plan is, however, a patent attempt to begin the demolition of all rail passenger service outside the Northeast Corridor...

...About a month ago this suggestion was confirmed for me: I found myself praying over the meal of a sectional meeting of the American Nuclear Society (an organization founded twenty-five years ago to promote nuclear development, and now increasingly a much-needed source of support among beleaguered colleagues...

...It is, unfortunately, the very nature of bureaucracy that many decisions are made in camera as the result of committee action...

...2. For every passenger coach on trains, have an accompanying "auto" car for carrying these small electric autos...

...A roar went up from the thousands who had gathered in the University of Wisconsin stock pavilion to vent their feelings about the growing threat posed by nuclear secrecy in America...

...We can agree that the treaty leaves much to be desired, but it is a beginning in that it does call for controls, and it does set a ceiling, and it does start a reversal process...

...Some of us would agree to the sacrifice of unprofitable overnight routes if only Secretary Adams and his minions would try to shore up Amtrak where it can make a difference...

...Lawrence Poston Oak Park, Illinois I appreciate the well-researched July article on Amtrak by Deborah Baldwin...

...Chris Shuey Phoenix, Arizona The case of The United States vs The Progressive tests issues of unnecessary government secrecy very well because, it seems, there is nothing especially novel or revealing in the article the Government is attempting to suppress...

...Baldwin very competently illustrates...

...Unfortunately, the latest Department of Transportation plan for Amtrak is to be faulted less for its route reductions than its utter failure to address the underlying causes of Amtrak's malaise, several of which Ms...

...Such corridors would include not only the Boston-Washington run (for which members of Congress with a penchant for fast Metroliners are perfectly willing to continue to vote appropriations), but three or four key midwestern corridors emanating from Chicago (to Detroit, St...

...We are aiming to hold the event around November 15 in either Tallahassee or Gainesville with extensive media coverage...

...For example, after hairy cell leukemia was diagnosed in the Coe case, Coe told his doctors about having been present at atomic tests in the 1950s and filed a claim for service-connected benefits...