Comments
COMMENT The 'Arms ControP Snare Celebrating the recent victory of the MX missile in two key Congressional votes, President Reagan quite appropriately praised Congress for its "bipartisan unity,"...
...Military expenditures have been an important economic stabilizer for the last half century: Only the arms build-up during World War II lifted the U.S...
...the B-l supersonic bomber, the neutron bomb, and other once-controversial items are now accepted components of our nuclear arsenal...
...Business leaders apparently can't comprehend that workers are consumers, and therefore need money to buy the very goods they produce...
...Some of our most devastating nuclear weapons first appeared as bargaining chips at the arms-control negotiating table...
...Another, less pleasant but more precise, is complicity in mass murder...
...What got the missile back on track was a blue-ribbon commission which succeeded in restoring the weapon's bipartisan respectability...
...Military spending—irrespective of its impact on our fragile peace—does put dollars into the hands of consumers, since government weapons procurement creates jobs (though more jobs could be created, of course, by comparable spending in the civilian sector...
...First, they provoke an inevitable response in kind from the Soviet Union...
...Shall we continue to base our medical system on the price of cures rather than the need for prevention...
...Today, the average cost of treating a cancer patient exceeds $30,000...
...Just as national labor movements need to link arms to battle international capital and chart a way out of the world economic crisis, so environmentalists must unite in common struggle...
...The production of synthetic organic compounds increased tenfold between 1950 and 1975, and the long-term effects of many of these substances are still unknown...
...In the words of Drug and Cosmetic Industry magazine, "The [FDA's] accelerated handling of the regulation (it was issued as a final regulation rather than as a proposed one) was done at the request of both the Proprietary Association and the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association, which saw it as a way to preempt a flurry of local and proposed state ordinances such as that already passed in Cook County, Illinois, and by the city of Chicago...
...And the failure of traditional liberals to deliver either general prosperity or a social order in which the average worker can feel comfortable has increased the pressures for political and economic fundamentalism...
...Some are even backing higher taxes...
...The official rationale for aiding the counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua has been rendered inoperative, and the real motive is now out in the open for all to see...
...By offering to trade its initially proposed ten-warhead MX missiles for smaller, less vulnerable single-warhead missiles, the Pentagon got the new weapon it wanted while satisfying demands for limitations, then reductions, in warhead numbers...
...Federal regulation, they calculated, would remove each of those threats...
...Here's a typical example from a recent Pfizer Pharmaceuticals ad: "Some of the best informed scientists in the world say that we may see substantial control and cure of cancers before this century is over...
...Meanwhile, the day-to-day incremental advances of the nuclear arms program go all but unnoticed—the evolution of more versatile warheads, of more accurate delivery vehicles, of more dependable and survivable launchers, of more plausible doctrines for threatening and ultimately waging nuclear war...
...That purpose is served by raising expectations of an imminent breakthrough...
...Bipartisan compromises" is a pleasant way to put it...
...Opinions can be polled, bills can be passed, but until resistance rises in the form of protests, the public is confined to a spectator role...
...But the United States will gallop to the rescue, Reagan pledged...
...If only Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Frank Costello were still around to tell us how to cope with organized crime...
...President Reagan has named the MX "Peacekeeper...
...Against that background, talk of an impending cancer cure is just what the doctor ordered...
...Popular support of the government and the loyalty of the army are bound to be far greater than the CIA expects...
...There is a "Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan axis," the President alleged...
...They do not stop at frontiers to register with customs agents...
...And tax increases, like reductions in military spending, would reduce the purchasing power by consumers...
...And William Casey, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is only a shade less optimistic: He gives his troops—whom Ronald Reagan has dubbed "freedom fighters"—until the end of the year to topple the government of Nicaragua...
...Away from the boardrooms, among the general population, proposals for a balanced budget are also attractive but for different reasons...
...environmental organizations should take a cue from these initiatives...
...It would be a fatal misreading of the dynamic of the nuclear arms race to treat the triumph of the MX as a victory for Ronald Reagan and the Right...
...Pesticide Action Network is a coalition of environmental and consumer groups that combats the misuse of pesticides...
...A force of that size can cause serious trouble and already has begun to do so, blowing up bridges and engaging in skirmishes in the Nicaraguan countryside...
...when consumers alone seek protection, as in the case of automobile air safety bags, for instance, the delays are interminable...
...There is strength in numbers, and there is even greater strength if pressure is brought to bear on corporations and governments from within and without...
...It worked...
...The consumer is better protected today than before the Tylenol killer struck...
...Many citizens who were exposed to the cloud developed severe health problems, but Italy has yet to approve a law dealing with dioxin in products...
...efforts to prevent leftist rebels from overthrowing the Salva-doran government are not morally justified, are not vital to the national defense, and will not end in victory in any case...
...Like Hydra, one weapon beheaded creates two in its stead...
...Certainly the captains of industry have not experienced a sudden pang of conscience and realized that the arms race threatens us all...
...It has also enriched the packaging suppliers...
...Perhaps in a perverse and unintended way this monstrous new device will deserve the name if its recent triumph in Congress serves to disabuse enough angry, frightened, and frustrated Americans of the notion that the arms race can be ended by half-measures...
...He suggested that faulty statistics exaggerate joblessness...
...INX/ RANDY JONES The MX victory also illustrates the futility of basing resistance to the arms race on mechanical formulations...
...We are referring, of course, to the brilliant proposal advanced by Senator Thomas Eagleton, Missouri Democrat, that our three living ex-Presidents head a new commission "to make an urgent, in-depth review of our military programs and processes for making defense decisions...
...But there are surprisingly few regulations aimed at controlling the contaminant...
...On the evening news, Americans can watch their Government engage in unpopular and illegal activities...
...Still, we can't help but notice that this surge of optimism has come to the fore at a time of rising cancer rates—the disease will afflict three out of every ten Americans and will claim 400,000 lives this year—and of heightened public awareness that large-scale industrial pollution may contribute significantly to the incidence of the dread disease...
...Capitol Punishment A newspaper we read one morning in mid-May featured three related articles on the same page: From the first: "A Roman Catholic church leader said 364 people were killed in El Salvador during the past week—making it one of the bloodiest weeks during the three-and-a-half-year-old civil war...
...Home by Christmas...
...But the mood on Capitol Hill has changed...
...nuclear weapons delivery systems in Britain and Western Europe will rest on the outcome of a political debate now focusing almost exclusively on the delivery systems themselves instead of on the insanity of the entire arms race...
...Trade publications feature ads for tamper-evident, tamper-resistant, and tamper-proof seals, bands, wrappers, and caps with such names as Foil Mate, Tamper-Guard, Pilfer-Proof, Roll-On, Capseal, and Skintight...
...Capsules and tablets are being sold in the kind of hermetically sealed cans that used to contain only tennis balls or reconstituted potato chips...
...No matter that the attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government violates U.S...
...And more often than not, a neighboring government is anxious to please powerful corporate interests—as the recent fiasco at the U.S...
...Shall we continue to place a higher premium on corporate profits than on the health of workers and consumers...
...By the Administration's own estimates, CIA-supported troops in Central America now number 7,000...
...In May, the Administration ordered a 90 per cent cut in the amount of sugar Nicaragua may sell to the United States as of October 1. These steps echo Henry Kissinger's famous order to "make the economy scream" in Salvador Allende's Chile...
...utilities but hurts Canada most...
...Part of the answer can be found in the murky phrase "noninflationary growth," which in plain English means holding down wages...
...At the very least, our own Gang of Four would be worth a ten-minute turn on Saturday Night Live...
...But emphasis on prevention may be our most useful response to what some have called a developing cancer epidemic...
...Thus, opponents who zeroed in on the MX, claiming it was not needed as a "deterrent," all too often found themselves unwitting warriors for the B-l bomber and the Trident submarine...
...This trend poses a challenge to environmentalists around the world: They must begin to form international coalitions...
...Confrontational tensions have eased...
...But the policymakers pursue their course with total indifference to public sentiment...
...And under Eagleton's plan, the ex-Presidents would be able to draw on still more distinguished expertise—that of former Defense Secretaries and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...Insurgents, armed and directed by a far-away power, seek to impose a philosophy that is alien to everything in which we believe and goes against our birthright...
...In this regard, some encouraging signs are coming from Penang, Malaysia, headquarters of the International Organization of Consumers Unions...
...What matters is the opportunity to mount a holy crusade against atheistic communism...
...Environmental Protection Agency demonstrated...
...By all accounts, drug manufacturers are complying with the law—and then some...
...That condition is this nation's vast and growing nuclear weapons complex—in government, industry, and academia...
...By the same token, the Pentagon's MX victory again demonstrates how easily "arms control"—mutually agreed upon regulation of nuclear weapons levels—can be subverted as a technique for dealing with the global atomic threat...
...And new, bipartisan compromises are being forged that impose some limits [on aid to the Sal-vadoran regime] but give the Administration much of what it wants...
...Second, they divert our attention from the pathological condition of which these weapons and their innumerable mutants are mere symptoms...
...As the potential risks become more widely understood, government and industry come under intense pressure: There is an increasing volume of carcinogenic substances, fewer and fewer places to dump them, and virtually no neighborhood willing to store the stuff in its backyard...
...According to Chemical Week magazine, "Worldwide concern over the potential health effects of dioxin continues to grow...
...The Presidential panel, headed by retired Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, included such prominent Democrats as former Defense Secretary Harold Brown and former Energy Secretary James Schlesinger...
...Or, if the executives grasp this basic economic concept, perhaps they are betting that the money saved on labor costs will exceed the money that could be made by increasing consumer purchasing power...
...An industry has grown around the new rule, in the same way other industries have been spawned by regulations concerning, say, pollution control or restaurant sanitation...
...The airwaves are awash with white-coated actors extolling the security of various consumer products...
...intervention shows once again how little say Americans have in these matters...
...COMMENT The 'Arms ControP Snare Celebrating the recent victory of the MX missile in two key Congressional votes, President Reagan quite appropriately praised Congress for its "bipartisan unity," pointing out that responsibility for this momentous new step in the nuclear arms race must be widely shared...
...In the morning paper, Americans can read the details of the latest outrages...
...Health Action International serves as a watchdog to the pharmaceutical industry...
...Some of Reagan's Congressional critics have muted their voices...
...Similar reports have appeared in The Washington Post and other media...
...It is a philosophy that holds truth and liberty in contempt and is a self-declared enemy of the worship of God...
...But now, backed by heavy majorities in both House and Senate, the MX appears to have a green light...
...Tragedy has been turned into just another marketing device...
...The fateful emplacement of a new generation of U.S...
...Dioxin, for example, is produced during the manufacture of herbicides by companies in Australia, New Zealand, Austria, and Germany (a Swiss corporation was responsible for the Seveso disaster...
...The result is that a major new weapon system calculated to advance the nuclear arms race has once again survived the rising skepticism of a restive American public...
...Today, a new colonialism threatens the Americas...
...U.S...
...The health of every global citizen is riding on the development of international ties...
...When business seeks Federal protection, as in the Tylenol case, Government bureaucracies shift into high gear...
...What is instructive is the process itself—the speed with which the Government issued regulations requested by industry...
...Highly visible nuclear weapon innovations like the MX serve in two ways to intensify the nuclear arms race and speed our journey to atomic disaster...
...Even if such a narrow campaign succeeds in defeating one or another odious weapons system, it will not block other, equally noxious vehicles of destruction...
...The political triumph of the MX underscores the futility of protesting the nuclear arms race on a weapon-by-weapon basis...
...Well, not news exactly, but vaguely promising pronouncements...
...Drug company executives hit the ground running because they feared three things: a loss of consumer confidence, diverse local regulations, and the possibility that some manufacturers would be able to avoid the expense of repackaging while others would be forced to spend millions...
...The U.S...
...On May 13, The Wall Street Journal included this astonishing paragraph in its front-page Washington column: "REAGAN RAMBLES...
...Within one month of the first death, the Proprietary Association, the over-the-counter trade group, prevailed on the Food and Drug Administration to adopt the industry's proposal for eleven antitampering devices...
...After raising their voices in praise of Reaganomics two years ago, they have changed their tune in favor of "moderating" the increases in military spending and eliminating the third phase of the Administration's tax cut...
...In a speech to Cuban expatriates in Miami on May 20, Reagan laid down a line that even John Foster Dulles might have rejected as provocative...
...As an alternative, economic planning—in whatever form—conflicts with such nostalgia for a simpler time and conjures up the old bugaboos of socialism and a regimented existence...
...From the third: "Three weeks ago, President Reagan faced the possibility of an embarrassing defeat in Congress over his Central America policies...
...So long as bipartisan consensus continues, such rescues are bound to be undertaken again—perhaps as early as next fall, when the cruise and Pershing II missiles are scheduled for deployment...
...Coupled with this military thrust is a U.S...
...If spending on guns and tanks has—in the short run, at least—spurred the economy, why does big business want to slow down the rate of military spending...
...It was a victory for those whose resistance to the nuclear arms race is rooted in control—rather than elimination—of nuclear weapons...
...The other part of the answer is the unwillingness of American business to embrace any sort of economic planning that goes beyond ad hoc subsidies...
...Such rescues have been pulled off before...
...Unfortunately, such inaction is typical of the global response to the dioxin threat...
...Anyone who doubts Reagan's readiness to join this select company need only consider the recurring reports from various authoritative sources that the President is increasingly given to incoherent babble...
...Send in the Clowns Just when the outlook seems gloomiest, when the mad rush toward the nuclear abyss appears all but irreversible, when the most adamantly hopeful among us find it difficult to sustain a semblance of morale, along comes a suggestion so fraught with positive potential that the spirit soars and the most morbidly pessimistic can't help but take heart...
...The Scowcroft Commission also helped sanitize the weapon system by deftly fitting it into an "arms control" package...
...The health of any one nation becomes ever more dependent on the policies of another...
...The Great Seal off the United States The deadline has passed: Over-the-counter drugs made in the United States must now be packaged in accordance with the Government's "Antitampering Closure" regulation, issued last fall in the wake of the Tylenol deaths in Chicago...
...The incident, following a rambling interview on foreign policy, raises GOP concern about Reagan's grip on major issues...
...With an economy more out of control and less comprehensible than ever, many Americans long for a return to basics...
...offensive on the economic front, cutting off aid to Nicaragua and preventing multilateral lending institutions from picking up the slack...
...Small World After All Poisons do not recognize national borders...
...Without such an alternative, Americans will be left with the Hobson's choice of balanced budgets or business planning, and the economy will continue to hobble from crisis to crisis...
...Acid rain, another traveling poison, is caused by U.S...
...roads...
...Occasional flare-ups over spectacular, big-ticket weapons like the MX, the B-l, the cruise missile, and Pershing II are usually squelched in time, sometimes after minor adjustments in the guise of "compromise...
...We'll be in Managua in five months," boasts a spokesman for the CIA's anti-Sandinista forces...
...That's why forty-one drums of dioxin-contaminated waste from northern Italy recently turned up in an abandoned slaughterhouse in northern France...
...Their presence served as a telling reminder of the bipartisan origins of the MX, which was conceived and nurtured in Democratic as well as Republican Administrations...
...More than 50,000 people die each year in traffic accidents on U.S...
...It would be the blue-ribbon panel to end all blue-ribbon panels...
...We're in no position, of course, to challenge the integrity of the cancer researchers issuing these bright predictions, and we certainly hope they'll turn out to be accurate...
...The Left urgently needs to counter economic atavism by demonstrating the need for planning—not just any planning, but planning that would serve popular interests rather than those of the business community, planning that would empower citizens rather than control them...
...Who could possibly be better qualified than Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter to offer a rational, dispassionate appraisal of the nuclear arms race...
...economy out of the Great Depression, and only the Cold War and Korean War armament programs forestalled a depression in the 1950s and 1960s...
...That means unqualified opposition not just to the nuclear devices that come with the MX or some other "offensive" or "first strike" or "destabilizing" weapon, but to the entire arms race and the doctrines that sustain it...
...capitalists, still more enamored of "competition" than any other business class, cannot understand that their own interests might be better served by wage and price controls, planning by sector, and public works programs—which have stimulated moderate short-term growth abroad...
...The result of this regulatory process is not at issue...
...seven died in the Tylenol incidents...
...From the second: "In a nationwide survey of 1,395 people conducted by telephone last week, the [Los Angeles Times] poll found that the largest group of Americans continues to believe that U.S...
...Some leading cancer research centers have always maintained close ties to corporate polluters, and have done their best to divert attention from industrial and workplace sources of carcinogens...
...But Nicaragua is not Chile...
...It was equally a vici COMMENT tory for the Congressional "bipartisan majority" on nuclear weapons policy and for the Democratic liberals who are a part of that consensus...
...One hesitates to tamper with a scheme of such immaculate ingenuity, but perhaps Senator Eagleton would permit a modest amendment to his proposal: If President Reagan could be persuaded to become ex-President Reagan in the not too distant future, he would be eligible to enlist alongside Carter, Ford, and Nixon in their assessment of military policy...
...When judged in terms of their own interests, such talk seems irrational...
...The talk of breakthroughs helps obscure some serious political questions about the kind of health system—and the kind of society— we want to have...
...And neither do some of the people who transport toxic substances...
...Every death is a tragedy, but it appears the Government's priorities are determined by private interests, not by the public interest...
...And so are the drug makers, who responded with the diligence they customarily display when their profits are threatened...
...Even the ultimate breakthrough to a cancer cure—if it ever comes—will have to be accompanied by much greater emphasis on prevention...
...The Environmental Protection Agency is currently investigating more than 14,000 hazardous-waste disposal sites, which could cost some $40 billion to clean up...
...The nuclear weapons "freeze" campaign has helped the peace movement by raising public consciousness about the danger of nuclear war...
...Protecting the environment within the confines of a single nation is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible...
...Old Dogs, New Tricks The leaders of big business, from Citicorp's Walter Wriston to Exxon's Clifford Garvin, are clamoring for changes in the Reagan economic program, and one can't help but wonder what's gotten into them...
...And, for good measure, it helped merchandise this most egregious of military buildups as a nuclear warhead "reduction" proposal...
...What further proof could anyone want of Reagan's fitness to serve with Nixon, Ford, and Carter...
...Almost thirty years ago, a drug company executive exulted that "a cancer cure will be worth a fortune...
...Forget about "interdicting supplies" to Salvadoran guerrillas...
...At a White House dinner this week for GOP Senators facing reelection next year, the President surprised his guests with a disjointed discourse on unemployment...
...Only six months ago, refusal of the House of Representatives to pay for further development and flight testing of the MX had threatened the future of this multi-billion-dollar intercontinental mobile missile system, the centerpiece of the Pentagon's current military buildup...
...In this instance, a fixation on numerical limits by "freeze" advocates and other arms controllers played into the hands of Pentagon strategists...
...But many "freeze" proponents in Congress were coopted by the Scowcroft Commission's sleight-of-hand linkage of MX deployment to a net "reduction" in nuclear warheads...
...The country will never be secure, nor will the Earth itself, until we are embarked unequivocally on a course of nuclear disarmament...
...No recovery can occur without a boost in consumer spending, and the measures sought by the business elite could well thwart a resurgence of consumer confidence...
...People would, simply, have less money to spend on goods...
...So why do business leaders want to depress demand for their goods...
...Reagan's plea for the MX as a "bargaining chip" for use in arms control negotiations was a ploy to disable the opposition...
...The containers were filled with material poisoned in the disastrous 1976 chemical plant explosion at Seveso, Italy, where a deadly dioxin cloud was released over about 5,000 residents...
...A close observer of the White House scene told us not long ago, "He's like your crazy Uncle Louie who lives up in the attic but comes downstairs once in a while to embarrass you in front of the neighbors...
...law and is opposed by the overwhelming majority of the American people...
...The IOCU boasts representatives in about fifty nations, and during the past two years it has been instrumental in setting up three international networks to combat environmental and health hazards: Consumer Interpol is a system by which member unions alert others to the export of hazardous products and waste...
...Beware of Breakthroughs The spring air was filled this year with cheery news about dramatic breakthroughs in cancer treatment, and perhaps even progress toward the elusive goal of a cancer cure...
...Public Health Service has estimated, from limited data, that workplace exposure to such products could account for 20 to 40 per cent of current and future cancer deaths...
...Sharing information—and therefore extending power— is an important first step...
...But the selling of the MX went well beyond its mere rescue from the shoals of political partisanship onto which Reagan's heavyhanded rhetoric had unintentionally steered it...
...We will not permit the Soviets and their henchmen in Havana to deprive others of their freedom...
...Regardless of the outcome, however, this latest U.S...
Vol. 47 • July 1977 • No. 7
