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...Unemployment runs about 10 per cent...

...Put less delicately, the Government is claiming that its authority, based on the Northwest Regional Power Act, pre-empts the states' authority on decisions affecting the regional power network...

...But while FDA Commissioner Hayes learned of the studies at least as early as December, the FDA did not begin examining them until February, Grigg says...

...This conference, however, was called by the Rockefeller Foundation's Study Commission on U.S...

...Schweiker's decision to tell parents and doctors of aspirin's dangers pleases Dr...

...Years overdue and millions over budget, Herzog's film was finally completed...

...The other will be stored elsewhere and added to the shell at the battle site...

...By this time the Indians had also contacted such groups as Cultural Survival, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was quick to denounce Herzog's "ethnocentrism, self-righteousness, arrogance, and myopia...

...The Aguaruna, like most Indians of the Peruvian Amazon, are extremely sensitive about land rights, since the government (with the assistance of U.S...

...Nevertheless, the director's single-minded concern with his project made him all too ready to bully the Indians whose cause he ostensibly hoped to advance through the film...

...But his fiasco seems modest next to Daniel Ludwig's mammoth Jari project, an experiment in wood pulp production and agribusiness in northern Brazil...

...Over the years, the South African Council of Churches has been in the forefront of what the South African government sees as a conspiracy of the Soviet Union, the World Council of Churches, Western liberals, and the Third World...

...Opponents of the legislation argued that it would effectively destroy local control over energy planning and generation...

...In the 1920s, Henry Ford embarked on the disastrous Fordlandia project in Brazil, an attempt to use temperate-zone farming methods to grow rubber trees...

...They are being sensitized to check with industry" before taking any action, he says...

...Their support says something about the perilous state of the economy, even in the Sunbelt...

...Last November, the CDC convened an expert panel to review the studies so that action could be taken before the winter flu season...

...Policy Toward Southern Africa, which last year published the much-touted report, South Africa: Time Running Out...

...Art Merrick, SeaFirst's vice president for corporate communications, says the banks "had to carry out an unpopular duty, which is to protect the bondholders of the WPPSS plants, who may have invested their life savings...

...The 15,000-acre Army facility where the gas will be made is mostly wooded...

...Jeffrey Good (Jeffrey Good is the editor of Public Citizen magazine...

...The Act passed Congress two years ago after a long and bitter struggle...

...He is co-author with his wife, Marjorie Hope (Young), of "The South African Churches in a Revolutionary Situation...

...Early in June, Don't Bankrupt Washington joined with other ratepayer groups throughout the Northwest in the Northwest Ratepayers' Reform Coalition, which will coordinate election campaigns in November against public utility district commissioners, city officials, and legislators who played the key roles in precipitating the power struggle...

...But recent Government-sponsored studies suggest that the practice can lead to the severe vomiting and fever and then the convulsions and coma of Reye's Syndrome...

...Anthony Robbins, a member of the staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee...

...The Government estimates that 600 to 1,200 cases are reported in a typical year, with death occurring in a fourth of them...

...They are, in fact, all too accurate metaphors for the nature of development in Amazonia...

...It's an important part of our work," he says...

...When Herzog's crew began to construct an entire village on Aguaruna land, the Indians became understandably nervous...

...Nor are spendthrift governments the only ones to lose their grip on reality in Amazonia...

...In the nearly seven months between the November recommendations of the CDC panel and Schweiker's June 5 announcement, at least fourteen children died of Reye's Syndrome...

...It sets up the Bonneville Power Administration as the central power planning authority for the region...

...In an interview with the Peruvian magazine Marka, Herzog responded to this accusation by remarking that as a director his concern is with "collective dreams, the nightmares of a people," rather than with their everyday needs and aspirations...

...It will bring few new jobs and has already brought infamy to Pine Bluff...

...But Merrick, noting that the bank has $10 billion in assets, calls the total withdrawals "a drop in the bucket...

...We have at least discussed doing additional studies but we don't have the money," says Dr...

...While Pine Bluff's business community embraces the assignment, major chemical companies have turned down solicitations to provide the raw materials for it— apparently for public relations reasons...

...But a barrage of drug industry protest led CDC officials to delay the warning until they had met with members of the $50-million-a-year children's aspirin industry and consulted with the FDA...

...The BPA has already underwritten the banks' legal costs, which will be billed to all ratepayers in the Northwest...

...The lesson lies less in the film itself than in the story behind its production...

...The gently rolling countryside of south-central Arkansas seems an incongruous home for one of the most savage weapons in the American arsenal...

...Not all business ventures in the Amazon have been so unprofitable, however...

...And budget cuts are squeezing efforts by CDC scientists to conduct the extensive Reye's Syndrome studies that drug firms, among others, say are needed...

...Some of them had lived in Southern Africa...

...about a penny for every $1,000 we had on deposit...

...For Fitzcarrald, no means were too barbarous to realize his dream of civilization...

...To which the Commissioners replied: "We have already talked to black South Africans...

...Such concerns led Senator David Pryor of Arkansas, usually a tentative and cautious politician, to become an early leader of the Senate effort to kill renewed nerve gas spending...

...Andean people have long believed in the existence of ghouls called pistacos, which look like Europeans...

...The other two banks, Continental Illinois Trust and Morgan Guaranty Trust, were out of reach, with headquarters in Chicago and New York, respectively...

...To complete the project Herzog had to commit some of the same transgressions as the film's protagonist...

...One uninvited black South African did gain entry: Peter Molotsi, one of the founders of the Pan Africanist Congress...

...It requires voter approval before bonds can be sold to finance large energy projects...

...The natural beauty is interrupted by about 800 Army structures and some old dump sites, thirty-one of them hazardous...

...Foremost among them were his dealings with the Aguaruna Indians, the native group that was to provide the extras and construction crews for the film...

...The drug industry's chummy relationship with key Federal health officials apparently paid off last winter, when the Government dallied for months before warning the public that aspirin may cause Reye's Syndrome, a rare but often deadly disease of childhood...

...Nevertheless, when the CDC warning appeared the next day, the FDA's stamp was not on it...

...The next time people want to know about South Africa, they ought to listen to the blacks and the churches...

...Proponents say these weapons are safer than existing ones, many of which are stored in insulated igloos at the Pine Bluff Arsenal...

...When children come down with influenza or chicken pox, parents often given them aspirin to bring down the fever and ease the aches...

...He calls 1-394 "a change in the ground rules in the middle of the fourth inning...

...All of them wanted dialogue and exchange of ideas...

...Although it may prove to be an artistic success, one cannot help but suspect that Herzog failed to come to terms with the Amazon itself, which he called "vile and base, full of obscenity...

...Just six miles upwind from the Arsenal stands Arkansas Power and Light Company's largest coal-fired generating plant, emitting sulphur and sulphur dioxide...

...A recent Rand McNally study of the quality of life in 277 cities rated Pine Bluff 275th...

...This makes BPA, rather than WPPSS, the real guarantor of the bonds...

...Pine Bluff is an impoverished community: 30 per cent of the county population is below national poverty standards, according to a 1977 study...

...Statistics belie the boast...

...Critics charge that the Government's handling of the Reye's Syndrome question represents undue industry influence in Federal public health decisions, and is yet another example of the growing politicization of supposedly non-political agencies...

...FDA officials defend the delay, claiming that hasty action could have alarmed the public and damaged the agency's credibility...

...The Study Commission's purpose, apparently, was to educate academics and journalists interested in South Africa, so that they, in turn, could educate others to the importance of South Africa for U.S...

...Whoops began as an ambitious plan to power the region with cheap electricity from five nuclear reactors, but has ended up as a $24 billion fiasco, threatening not only to bankrupt Washington taxpayers but to disrupt the nation's bond market...

...The new nerve gas assignment will expose the area to still more environmental dangers...

...Fortune magazine reported recently that only five small companies showed interest in the job...

...he wanted to bring civilization to the Amazon in the form of an opera house elegant enough to attract Caruso...

...Indeed, only one white South African was present—Leonard Thompson, the distinguished historian who edited The Oxford History of South Africa...

...Nonetheless, the environmental report notes that even "emissions of sulphur dioxide and sulphur from coal stockpiles could react with QL to form toxic chemical agents...

...Today, a few charming old homes remain—like the girlhood mansion of Martha Mitchell—but the city is dominated by a hideous sprawl of gas stations, fast-food joints, and shopping centers that spill helter-skelter onto the rural landscape...

...Opponents of the binary program say there is no need to lavish funds on new, untested gas weapons when the present stockpile is adequate and renewed manufacturing—after a thirteen-year hiatus—will only alienate our allies and fuel a chemical arms race with the Soviets...

...To get the money for the venture, he hit upon the idea of transporting an iron ship to a river hitherto inaccessible to commercial transport...

...None of them had ever made gas before...

...In the long run, the real battle for Don't Bankrupt Washington and other ratepayer groups is against the Federal Bonneville Power Administration...

...Whatever the outcome of the lawsuits against the initiative, the Whoops War has just begun...

...These leaders resented the director's unauthorized intrusion into their territory and mobilized support against him...

...The binary chemical munitions are composed of two separate, sealed containers of chemicals that do not mix to form the deadly nerve agent until the munition has been fired...

...Finkel says the FDA had decided not to endorse the warning before meeting With the aspirin makers...

...Only a few months ago, the U.S...

...Herzog's inability to understand Amazonia is not unusual...

...Now, for the sake of a few construction jobs, the city is rallying to become the nerve gas manufacturing center of the Western world...

...Nevertheless, Don't Bankrupt Washington, the group that spearheaded the drive to pass the initiative, swung into angry opposition...

...FDA spokesman William Grigg defends those contacts...

...Meanwhile, the FDA was thinking hard about endorsing the CDC warning...

...Make War, Not Love PINE BLUFF, ARKANSAS In an isolated corner of a large military base on the Arkansas River, a factory is being readied to produce American nerve gas for the first time since 1969...

...Now there is a new reason for Washing-tonians to withdraw their savings from SeaFirst: the bank's participation in a lawsuit intended to overturn Initiative 394...

...The Study Commission was too abashed to keep him out...

...Big Brother Knows Best NEW YORK CITY In June, some fifteen predominantly Ivy League academics and foundation executives got together with thirty invitees in New York to discuss the future of South Africans—84 per cent of whom happen to be black...

...Not a single black South African was among the speakers...

...The article finally appeared near the end of the flu season, on February 12, 1982, after the CDC had rejected aspirin industry arguments...

...Some 712 depositers had withdrawn $2.1 million at last accounting...

...But three days before the notice was scheduled to appear, the CDC sent a copy to three drug firms: Sterling, Schering-Plough, and Monsanto...

...From the time they first suspected aspirin, officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) were continually in touch with aspirin makers while analyzing data and deciding what to do about the problem...

...James Young (James Young teaches sociology at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio...

...But interviews with scientists in both health agencies and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Public Citizen's Health Research Group indicate that drug industry pressure may have led to an unjustifiable delay in publicizing aspirin's possible danger...

...But for SeaFirst, Don't Bankrupt Washington announced that April 1 would be "Draw Day," when citizens would begin withdrawing their money to protest the suit...

...development agencies) has encouraged landless peasants to colonize Indian-' occupied "virgin" lands in the jungle...

...The panel concluded that aspirin-was suspect and "should be avoided" by most children, according to a December 4 letter from CDC Director Dr...

...More important, BPA has also filed suit against 1-394...

...Ford's plantations were devastated by a plant disease that is almost impossible to control in large clear-cuts...

...Independent biologists and social scientists on the scene, however, reported that the site was already home to Indians and other settlers, and its fragile resources were, if anything, over-exploited...

...Phillip Johnson (Phillip Johnson is a free-lance writer in Eugene, Oregon...

...At a February 11 meeting with FDA officials, representatives of Sterling and Schering-Plough turned up little information that Federal officials had not already discounted...

...William H. Foege to FDA Commissioner Arthur H. Hayes Jr...

...If that didn't give Pine Bluff leaders pause, an environmental, impact statement reported that one of the components to be used in manufacture, QL, reacts with sulphur and sulphur dioxide to form a toxic agent...

...Yet as the week progressed, it became increasingly clear that most of those being educated knew far more about South Africa than their lecturers realized...

...It was not until June that FDA officials advised their boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Richard S. Schweiker, to launch a full-scale warning campaign...

...Now, however, the agency is forging ahead with it, having bowed to pressure from Peruvian officials and a Reagan Administration anxious to improve relations with Peru in the wake of the Falklands war...

...Religious leaders are constantly quoted in the South African papers on political issues...

...so do the district's Congressional representatives, the local newspaper, and the city government...

...And while a number of American blacks were involved, for the most part their credentials seemed to qualify them for positions with establishment foundations and corporations, not for conferences on apartheid...

...As the atmosphere grew tense, Zulu playwright Wellcome Msome rose to ask, "I don't question the credibility of the Study Commission, but why did you not invite a black South African to tell the people what life is like for black South Africans...

...The Pine Bluff Arsenal began producing incendiary grenades in 1942...

...Fitzcarrald, like Herzog, was obsessed by art...

...It was then that CDC's warning drew front-page media attention to the aspirin risk...

...An Aguaruna man I spoke to after the attack on Herzog's movie set said many Indians believed Herzog's crew intended to trick them into simulating a battle scene, during which they would be killed for the benefit of the film...

...In retrospect, some of the accusations leveled at Herzog seem a trifle overwrought...

...Such multinationals as Goodyear, Volkswagen, and Armour are making money on Brazilian cattle ranches, at least for now...

...The Commission's study was excellent as far as it went, but the insistence of the conference conveners that Big Brother knows best seems to blind it to South African reality...

...The omission might have made sense if the privy council of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker, or the American Enterprise Institute, had called the session...

...The scheme, which ultimately proved fruitless, required the labor of almost a thousand workers and cost several hundred Indians their lives...

...When he attacked the first proposal for renewed nerve gas spending in 1980, the Chamber of Commerce fired off a telegram warning him about the risks of being a softy on issues of international warfare...

...In December 1979, a large group of Aguaruna men burned the set to the ground, taking care not to injure anyone or damage valuable equipment...

...The Federal power planners—through their mouthpieces at the Department of Justice—claim the initiative raises "questions involving the ability of the U.S...

...Now, with the law in effect, 1-394 has raised the threat of local intervention once again...

...The free world has already had its Neville Chamberlain approach to barbaric aggression," the Chamber wrote...

...That is a substantial number of people tampering with their personal savings, especially since many had already withdrawn their money for earlier causes...

...Yet the local Chamber of Commerce stands full-force behind the project...

...At Pine Bluff, only one of the components will be installed in the munition...

...But none of this was on the conference agenda...

...There was a lot of questions that couldn't be resolved until somebody looked at the data," he says...

...The cost of cleanup will run to tens of millions of dollars...

...Now the Pentagon has chosen it to build a new, supposedly safer, binary nerve gas munition, and $53 million has been requested to finish outfitting the factory in 1983...

...To make the best of the town, the Chamber of Commerce made up bumper stickers a few years ago boasting that "Pine Bluff Loves People...

...Even more arresting, though, are the continuing attempts to reorder this vast and unforgiving region...

...Given the damage that has already been inflicted on Amazonian Indians in the name of progress, it is hard to dismiss these beliefs as mere superstition...

...Pine Bluff was a cotton and railroad center that grew too fast...

...Diane Rowley from CDC's headquarters in Atlanta...

...The ravages of sun, wind, and rain on the newly created rangelands could soon render the soil useless...

...Government to enter into contracts with state agencies," as a BPA public affairs officer says...

...The CDC decided to publish this recommendation in a December 1981 issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report...

...To make the film, Herzog had to overcome Indian attack, defection of the principal actors, and the reluctance of a 320-ton steamship to ascend a forty-degree slope in the heart of the jungle...

...To make things worse, Herzog apparently insisted on negotiating with residents of the Aguaruna village immediately affected, and not with the leaders of the reHO*™ HI MS l MAUMfN COSUNC Extras and the 320-ton ship from Herzog's all-consuming 'Fitzcarraldo.' cently organized tribal council...

...Take Two Aspirin, Call Next Spring WASHINGTON, D.C...

...Thomas K. Hamburger (Thomas K. Hamburger is a reporter in the Washington bureau of the Arkansas Gazette...

...It is surely no accident that belief in these gringo vampires has begun to penetrate the Amazon as development projects have intensified there...

...FDA scientists had to review the original studies more carefully than did the CDC scientists, says Grigg, because the FDA issues regulations while the CDC simply produces advisories...

...A Sterling representative immediately called Dr...

...Herzog's film chronicles the life of Carlos Fitzcarrald (originally Fitzgerald), a Nineteenth Century Peruvian rubber baron of Irish descent...

...Despite ecoi-ogists' warnings about the fragility of tropical soils—their tendency to transform themselves to lateritic brick when tilled by temperate zone agricultural methods— some international agency is always ready to fund projects that seek to turn Colombian, Ecuadorian, or Peruvian forests into Kansas wheatfieids...

...The response could be characterized with equal fairness as a popular explosion or a blip on SeaFirst's corporate horizon...

...District Court as trustees for the bondholders in the three WPPSS plants that have not been scrapped...

...In recent years, SeaFirst has been the target of campaigns against its financial ties to South Africa, its alleged redlining practices in the inner city, and its furious efforts to prevent certification of a union for its employees...

...The regime sees the Council's secretary-general, Bishop Desmond Tutu, as a formidable enemy, since his is the black voice most widely heard in South Africa.In addition, Roman Catholics have recently taken a stand against the South African Defense Force in the Nami-bian civil war, and the White Dutch Reformed Church, for years the prime apologist for apartheid, has been divided...

...These beings lie in wait for unwary Indian travelers, and after killing them, extract their body fat to grease the factories of North America...

...But his opposition only earned him the wrath of the Pine Bluff business boosters...

...Wildlife abounds: Deer are plentiful and peregrine falcon, bald eagle, cougar, and other endangered species have been spotted nearby...

...Things started off cordially enough, but as the work progressed resentment toward the filmmakers grew...

...The results of this type thinking, as you are well aware, resulted in the loss of millions of lives...

...Its murder rate was fourth among the cities studied, and its rape rate was first...

...The law would apply to all future bond sales by cities and other public utilities in the energy business, but the immediate target was the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, known as "Whoops...

...Herzog, meanwhile, sought protection from the local militia, thus setting the stage for violent confrontation...

...SeaFirst and two other banks have filed suit in U.S...

...Power Struggle SEATTLE Seattle First National Bank, the largest in the state of Washington, draws protesters like a magnet...

...The leaders of Amazonian nations and their sponsors in the developed world have historically been possessed by a desire to impose order on the apparent chaos of the region...

...USAID first responded to these reports by ordering a reassessment of the project...

...Some were activists...

...Michael F. Brown (Michael F. Brown, who lived with the Aguaruna for two years while doing anthropologicalfield work, is an assistant professor of anthropology at Williams College...

...Marion J. Finkel at the FDA, urging her to reconsider the endorsement and claiming to have evidence that the studies linking Reye's Syndrome with aspirin were erroneous...

...Passed by a 59 per cent majority last November, 1-394 was designed to bring utilities under tighter public control...

...We don't turn away anybody with data...

...Agency for International Development was preparing to support a program to establish large agricultural colonies in what it called Peruvian "wilderness...

...Fitzcarraldo or death," the director was quoted as saying during the course of the production, and by all accounts it was a close contest...

...Yet he sees in the FDA's handling of the Reye's problem more of the "growing evidence that the FDA has become more politicized" under President Reagan...

...It also says something about the character of Pine Bluff, a city of 58,000 that sits about eight miles down the road from the Arsenal...

...The BPA is ultimately answerable for the three remaining plants through its practice of "guaranteed purchase...

...policy...

...The agency has already contracted to purchase the theoretical output of the plants, even if the power is never actually delivered...

...Werner Herzog, the German director whose newest film, Fitzcar-raldo, earned him the Best Director award at Cannes, has provided the most recent lesson in the dangers of Western ambition in Amazonia...

...In June, 123 Dutch Reformed pastors signed a letter stating that apartheid "cannot be justified scripturally...

...Army officials say there is no way the fumes from the plant could make the carefully contained QL into a nerve agent...

...The project lost so much money that Ludwig was recently forced to sell it to a Brazilian consortium...

...Also omitted from the conference agenda was any mention of the power of the church in resistance to the state...