Letters
LETTERS to the Editor The Power of the Fed Tie Power of the Fed," by Mark Breibart and Gerald Epstein (April issue), was informative and useful. The authors are to be congratulated for throwing...
...Elizabeth J. Rosenthal Camden, New Jersey Gratuitous Potshot True enough, some American drug companies have an ugly practice of selling in the Third World harmful products that are illegal here...
...Can it be that no one at The Progressive has heard of this...
...These farmworkers have been on strike since 1978 against horrendous working conditions in the tomato fields, inhumane living conditions, and submini-mum pay (less than $2 an hour...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...The authors are to be congratulated for throwing some light on an area that most people find murky and confusing...
...state laws cannot do the job if adjacent states lack such controls...
...The evidence is plentiful and Flaherty ought to look at it...
...James Storrow New York, New York Francis J. Flaherty makes two curious arguments against banning handguns...
...A similar preface might be written for the Soviet Union, which chose to retreat from the West into its own strategy for industrialization after the 1917 Revolution...
...It certainly would not go unappreciated if you brought attention to the error...
...Fourth, the only purpose of cheap handguns is to kill people, and in most of the cases on record it is the owner of the gun or a family member who gets killed...
...I do disagree profoundly with what Francis J. Flaherty, in "Justice by the Numbers," had to say about gun control (The Last Word, April issue...
...China followed the same course in 1948...
...It seems not to have occurred to Doenges that we might, nevertheless, consider it useful for people to gain a first-hand acquaintance with views quite opposed to our own...
...Eleanor B. Webb Baltimore, Maryland Virginia Dares Ann Spanel's "When Mining Giants Walk the Land" (May issue) was a great article, but a bit incomplete concerning Virginia...
...He is right on other issues but dead wrong on this one...
...They vow to continue the strike and the boycott until Campbell's and Libby's agree to negotiate...
...Joe Pelmet Winston-Salem, North Carolina The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Priscilla Hayner Richmond, Indiana Many of us have moments when we feel we can't go on living day to day with the nuclear arms insanity...
...Second, he draws no distinction between handguns and long guns...
...The principal aim of the manual is to bring to the attention of concerned citizens information about nonviolent alternatives to a national security policy based on armaments...
...Thank you for telling us about him...
...William L. Fisch Teaneck, New Jersey Even if all the reforms of the Federal Reserve mentioned by Mark Breibart and Gerald Epstein were to be adopted, that would amount to mere fine-tuning of the rules by which the "financial capitalists," as the authors call them, manipulate the creation and use of money in our society...
...China's experience in the Nineteenth Century surely convinced the Japanese elites that modernization—copying the West—was the only way to resist Western colonialization...
...Bob Irwin Cambridge, Massachusetts TheJapanese Model John Junkerman's "The Japanese Model" (May issue) is excellent, but might have been prefaced with a note reminding the reader why Japan entered the race to industrialize...
...The problem is far too serious for an incidental potshot...
...Further, is he advocating that all of the fearful poor carry their handguns with them wherever they go—from the laundromats to the grocery stores to the workplaces...
...First, Flaherty is misreading the Second Amendment, which clearly limits the right to bear arms to an organized militia...
...the difference is basic, and nobody is urging the banning of rifles or shotguns but only of concealable weapons...
...Third, what is being proposed is no outright ban, as he seems to think, but simply careful control of sales under a Federal law...
...We all need each other's support...
...as suggested in "The Biggest Lie" (Comment, May issue...
...Referring to our inclusion of readings from the Committee on the Present Danger, Judy Doenges writes: "The authors seem to hope for a marriage, through creative thinking, between those who seek to arm the United States to the teeth and those who want to ban the bomb...
...support of the attacks on Nicaragua, but I hope she has the integrity and sense not to go along with that, too...
...We want to do something stunning, something magical and earthshaking that will bring the whole world to its senses instantly...
...Every time a suspicious character makes a move, will the poorer neighborhoods witness a shoot-out endangering all bystanders...
...A packet of Supplementary Readings is $23 postpaid...
...In castigating modern Japan, he is only telling us more about the kind of model we created for ourselves...
...Box 1542, Arvada, CO 80001...
...But the question should be, "Whom are you trying to kid...
...First, he implies a constitutional equal protection issue in the alleged overinclusiveness of taking away everybody's handguns for the transgressions of a brutal few...
...Jay Dillon Hancock, Maine The publication of the Center on Law and Pacifism, listed in your "Tax Resistance Guide" (April issue), is Center Peace, not as you have it, Centerpiece...
...William Thomas, as described in Arthur Jones's "Lunch at the White House," made the break, and he's doing what many of us have thought of doing but can't or won't...
...Joseph Bongiovanni Marshfield, Vermont Lunch at the White House Arthur Jones's "Lunch at the White House" (O Washington, April issue) was great but for one thing: He should stop eating that Campbell's soup...
...Or would he...
...Second, he accuses those of us who advocate the banning of handguns of suffering from a class-ist myopia by not considering the fear that the poor experience every day in their crime-ridden neighborhoods...
...The authors should have devoted some of their space to a short reminder that manipulating the supply of money cannot deal with the phenomenon of stagflation...
...Virginia Action is a statewide progressive organization that directly lobbied and organized the research and activity around this issue, and that succeeded in holding Union Carbide and Marline Oil at bay...
...But I was dumbfounded to see the article condemning Depo-Provera (Comment, March issue) drag in a totally gratuitous paragraph deriding the problem of exploding world population...
...Thus, every "innocent" handgun owner possesses the crucial trait that justifies the universal banning of handguns: the potential of being the victim of violence...
...As a law student, I cannot accept Flaherty's first argument...
...Ann Morrissett Davidon Haverford, Pennsylvania The New Resistance Sam Day's excellent article, "The New Resistance" (April issue), neglected to mention that a new civil disobedience campaign is seeking 1,000 participants for an action at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility in Golden, Colorado...
...Wendell W. Norris Del Mar, California ARNOLD ROTH A Reviewer's Dismay While I don't regret my favorable review of Geor-gie Anne Geyer's Buying the Night Flight (Books, May issue), I do want to express my strong dismay at the public support she has been giving to the continued training of soldiers and running of guns and other lethal equipment to the thugs in the El Salvador government...
...I haven't seen any pronouncements Geyer may have made about U.S...
...Unfortunately, parts of the review are misleading...
...Flaherty's second argument cannot stand, either, if one takes the above refutation into account...
...Karen L. Kiss linger Pittsfieldf Massachusetts Nonviolent Alternatives Tianks for the review of the study guide, U.S...
...We thought we had made our own views amply clear...
...Not only did we get the uranium mining moratorium extended through 1984, but we also obtained provisions stating that no permits would be considered until countywide public hearings were held in conjuntion with a positive set of environmental impact studies...
...Innocent" handgun owners may not fall within the class of wrongdoers whose violence we wish to curtail, but if we leave the issue at that, we ignore the byproducts of handgun ownership among the "innocent": the theft by criminals of the handguns of the law-abiding, "heat of passion" homicides by the usually law-abiding, and the accidental deaths of children finding and playing with their parents' handguns and of adults cleaning or tripping over their handguns...
...Demetrios Lathouris Virginia Action Norfolk, Virginia For Whom the Bell Tolls Iagree that it is sensible to ask President Reagan, "Who are you trying to kid...
...Please note that orders for the study guide (from ISTNA, Box 515, Waltham,MA 02254) are $7.50 postpaid (not $5.50...
...Thomas H. Johnson Stevens Point, Wisconsin Justice by the Numbers It is such a rare occurrence when I disagree with anything important in The Progressive that when it occurs it's worth noting...
...Arthur Jones must have eaten that Campbell's soup lunch purely out of ignorance...
...Then we go on with our daily routines...
...I can imagine that Junkerman would have written an equally scathing article on Japan if it had followed the route of mainland China...
...If The Progressive belittles the results of rapid population growth, as portrayed for example in The Global 2000 Report, it should explain its position...
...But he is also saying that the old fears are hard to revive among younger Japanese, and quite possibly the same things can be said for the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China...
...In all three of the countries cited above, nationalism—an inward-looking, defensive stance—is understandable only in light of expansionism typical of the Western industrial nations in the past century...
...A nationwide boycott of all Campbell and Libby products, organized by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Ohio, has been in effect since 1979...
...I suggest we get down to basics: repeal the Federal Reserve Act and replace it with an honest, publicly controlled monetary system...
...Still, I came away feeling that the article put too much stress on money-supply manipulation as a cure for the long-term ills of our economy...
...Under these circumstances, Flaherty must admit that the road to a more humane society begins with the shedding of these instruments of destruction...
...It may not be very good word play, but it is theirs...
...Yet, as many sensitive Japanese writers have said, in doing so Japan was in danger of losing its soul to its own imperialist ambitions...
...Defense Policy: Mainstream Views and Nonviolent Alternatives (Report Card, March issue...
...Copies of the Resolution to Resist at Rocky Flats may be obtained from Resolution to Resist, P.O...
...He may be, as the Secret Service agent was quoted as saying in your article, "the only sane one here...
Vol. 47 • May 1983 • No. 6
