Comment
COMMENT Hot Cargo People beset, as all of us are, by the possibility of nuclear holocaust, the reality of environmental devastation, and the menace of man-made assaults on human health and safety,...
...President Reagan COMMENT ¦ has been careful to play to the youth constituency...
...When the 4,210-ton Mont Louis collided with a ferry boat and sank off Os-tend, Belgium, the French Ministry of the Sea decided to make no immediate announcement because—as Jean-Claude Hennequin, an official of the Ministry, explained—"it would only have frightened people...
...They clapped in rhythm...
...As a candidate, Ronald Reagan has every right to campaign on the promise of establishing a theocracy...
...Although migrant farm laborers in California and other states have won better wages and working conditions, their counterparts in the Middle West are still denied basic rights...
...Whatever the precise nature of its cargo, the Mont Louis offered a taste of the dangers that loom ahead as the commerce in nuclear materials continues to evolve and expand...
...The exigencies of getting elected set the Democrats' tune...
...Campbell's Other Kids Millions of Americans found at least one surprise while watching the Democratic convention on television: During the Reverend Jesse Jackson's address, delegates unfurled a huge banner urging viewers to "Boycott Campbell's...
...Without such a reorientation, neither the "free market" nor "family planning"—no matter how technologically sophisticated—holds out any promise of significant relief...
...Perhaps the deaths of Parker and Courtney will drive home the foolhardy and destructive role the United States is playing in Nicaragua and bring a halt to intervention...
...1 Parker and Courtney were flying a U.S.-made Huey helicopter...
...According to Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan's pollster, most voters under the age of twenty-four prefer the Republicans...
...But those movements are aimed at the political decisions of the Government, not at the Government's stance toward religion...
...The Justice Department's entire case against DeLorean rested on an undercover sting operation, the law-enforcement tactic of choice since Abscam ensnared legislators in Washington and Greylord boobytrapped judges in Chicago...
...Some of that spent fuel is scheduled to return to Japan soon in the form of 417 pounds of plutonium—enough COMMENT to manufacture about thirty nuclear bombs...
...If not, they will simply be two senseless casualties of a senseless foreign policy...
...As Kirkpatrick talked about keeping America strong, "a sustained Olympic chant of 'USA...
...And if Ronald Reagan or any other candidate wants to wrap himself in sanctimony, it is our prerogative to lift the robes and see what's underneath...
...Paul's Frozen Fish...
...The media lapped it all up, asking the vital questions: Would John Z. De-Lorean recoup his financial losses...
...Supporters of the nuclear industry in other countries, including the United States, were quick to echo these soothing remarks...
...Would his beautiful wife resurrect her modeling career...
...These activists bested the so-called moderates, turned back protests from the White House, and swayed the conventioneers...
...The owners initially described the shipment as thirty cylinders of uranium hexafluoride, intended for enrichment so that it could fuel nuclear power reactors...
...There's no exploration of romantic impulses...
...It actually happened this summer when Coors, apparently trying to overcome the effects of a union boycott, ran a series of ads saluting workers and celebrating Labor Day...
...Though on the right track in its analysis, the Reagan Administration derails when it comes to prescription...
...They won't get away with it...
...This view assaulted the conventional wisdom—embraced by previous U.S...
...With sting operations, the Government is putting itself in a position not merely to apprehend those who have broken the law but to inspire criminal conduct on the part of some who may never have harbored a larcenous thought...
...The CIA has been funding and training the contras for the past three years...
...When the Democrats waved little American flags in San Francisco, a Republican strategist fumed, "They tried to co-opt our issue...
...H Unlike many nuclear shipments, this cargo presented no significant security threat and apparently emitted relatively little radiation...
...Once the foam was knocked off, there was nothing left but bitter aftertaste...
...We support hi-tech, not high taxes...
...The threat is illustrated by a nuclear shipment that made its way from Japan to France not long ago and now is being readied for return to Japan...
...Would they live happily ever after in their opulent California mansion...
...Under current law, defendants are to be found innocent by reason of entrapment if they were not "willing" participants...
...Sleepers without Dreams How beautiful is youth...
...The right of free speech is not limited to secular issues...
...Once again the Reagan Administration was on the attack, abusing liberals and scoring points in the process...
...There is good reason to find the religious rhetoric obnoxious, but it is not, as some have claimed, unconstitutional...
...Like a sinister experimenter in abnormal psychology, the Government tries to ascertain what kind of people are likely to commit a crime and then offer the incentives that will lead them astray...
...Instead, Mondaie parrots the Hoover-Reagan economic line: Diminish budget deficits, reduce interest rates, and unemployment will take care of itself...
...Their fervor was matched only by their obtuseness...
...Parker and Courtney had just finished attacking a military training school in Nicaragua, killing four children, when the chopper was hit...
...Even that dramatic warning has long since lost much of its impact, and it may take a tragic accident of catastrophic proportions to jolt us back to full awareness of the danger...
...how bright it gleams With its illusions, aspirations, dreams...
...At the World Population Conference, the Administration took the position that population increase and poverty are the twin products of faulty economic planning...
...Only a new pattern of development, geared toward self-sufficiency and greater ecological awareness, can begin to address the problem of overpopulation...
...It's All Suds Try swallowing this: a tribute to American workers sponsored by the Joseph Coors Company, the champion union-busting brewery...
...At some point, the young Republicans may perceive that their allies in conservatism have an agenda that threatens individual liberty as well as prosperity...
...The delegates assembled in Dallas—described by The Washington Post as "richer, whiter, better educated, and more conservative than the country as a whole"— ratified a program that will further militarize the society, defile the land, and tyrannize the poor...
...the constitutional wall properly separates inx / henrik drescher church and state, but it does not separate politics and religion...
...And we didn't set a weather vane on top of the Golden Gate Bridge before we started talking about the American family...
...Would his gull-winged sports car finally take off...
...Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Aspirations are "in," dreams are "out," and illusions are rampant...
...The breeder, utilizing Plutonium, is the only procedure now available to extend uranium supplies beyond the next few decades...
...They stomped...
...In refusing to advocate a jobs program, he has elevated political cowardice and economic ineptitude to new heights...
...Initiated in 1979 by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), the boycott is an attempt to pressure Campbell's, a major buyer of produce, to come to the bargaining table...
...What was missing from these glib assurances was any acknowledgment of the fact that the sinking of the Mont Louis would have been far from harmless and routine had it not been for several lucky breaks: H The ship was rammed from the stern, permitting the full length of the vessel to cushion the impact on the uranium containers, which were stored far forward and remained unscathed...
...So the Republican Party seeded its convention with colorful banners, and they waved to the strains of Wayne Newton, Ray Charles, and "Hail to the Chief...
...The Reagan Administration, as it happened, struck closer to the heart of the issue...
...This is nothing more than the old trickle-down theory, and it makes for bad economics...
...It believes the solution lies in greater reliance on the "free market...
...If Jerry Falwell claims that God Almighty is a Republican, we can dispute him but not censor him...
...Unfortunately, our attempts to ease the pressures of grim reality often go too far...
...Ronald Reagan knows this: "We didn't discover our values in a poll taken a week before the convention," he said in his nomination acceptance speech...
...The chairman of the Republican Party, Senator Paul Laxalt, calls this showing "the single most heartening thing that we find in the numbers...
...U The base from which the helicopter COMMENT took off was the U.S.-improved and controlled air field in Jamastran, Honduras...
...They may even come to understand that nuclear war is bad for career advancement...
...The shipment of 225 tons of uranium products from Le Havre to Riga in the Soviet Union was an everyday affair, Hennequin insisted...
...In addition to its soups, the Campbell's corporation owns more than a dozen subsidiaries also affected by the action, including Vlasic Pickles, V-8 Juice, Swanson Frozen Dinners, Pepperidge Farms, Franco-American, and Mrs...
...For years, soldiers of the Right have been waging a war of ideas, promoting their atavistic vision from bases in Congress and conservative think-tanks, churches, and publications...
...and William Courtney...
...Even Ronald Reagan has come to appreciate this insight, but Mondaie stumbles blindly on, trying out any issue his nearest pollster says may be convenient...
...Indifference sets in, followed by equanimity...
...They proudly built their various planks and platitudes on an ideological foundation...
...The crowds cheered...
...At the recent Republican national pageant, the Far Right consolidated the leadership role it had asserted in 1980...
...Holy Smoke Screen The Presidential campaign has been drowning in pietistic proclamations...
...Such wasteful patterns of growth make it impossible to meet the needs of the world's population...
...The remedy cannot be found in sturdier ships, stricter transportation rules, or more secure containers...
...They're really just young adults trying to impress older adults...
...Because they regard ideology as a rogue elephant, they are paralyzed in their efforts to fashion a program...
...Full employment should be the centerpiece of the Democrats' economic program, but Mondale's great fear is that Ronald Reagan (or someone) will call him "liberal" for proposing a plan to create jobs...
...Religion and politics have mixed elsewhere, of course: in the antiwar protests of the Berrigan brothers, for example, or the church campaigns against poverty...
...The Republican package fits the product...
...State Department spokesman John Hughes...
...H The collision occurred in forty feet of water only twelve miles from shore, making salvage much easier than it would otherwise have been...
...The campaign didn't go down easy: Coors, after all, is the company that likes to question its employees about their sexual preferences, life styles, and union activities...
...Later, the environmental organization Greenpeace produced a manifest listing twelve cylinders of uranium hexafluoride, eighteen cylinders of "slightly impoverished uranium," and twenty-two supply cylinders...
...Though a multimillion dollar advertising campaign touted the adorable Campbell's Kids singing, "Mmm, mmm, good," migrant children—some under the age of ten—work in the company's tomato and cucumber fields...
...This time, however, the setting was Mexico City and the issue was population control...
...The Campbell's boycott grew out of a bitter struggle between migrant farm workers and agribusiness companies...
...Refusing to buy Campbell's products will help brighten the future for thousands of Campbell's kids— not the cute ones who sing jingles on television, but the real ones who toil in the fields...
...For all its faults—and they are legion—the New Right has offered Americans what Goldwater promised in 1964: "A choice, not an echo...
...Listen to one reporter's account of a speech by United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick to a group of high school and college students: "They cheered...
...he used the word "future" twelve times in his acceptance speech, and he has adopted Gary Hart's enthusiasm for advanced technology...
...The mission of the Special Forces, as the Army defines it, is to "plan and conduct unconventional war operations" and to support U.S.-backed "indigenous forces" in the Third World...
...Abbie Hoffman, former leader of the Yip-pies, now says, "I don't trust anyone under thirty...
...They even let loose a few screams of the kind associated with Beatlemania...
...He recently told a reporter, "I feel sorry for them because they have given up a part of their youth...
...As columnist Nat Hentoff has pointed out, this amounts to "shake-and-bake" law enforcement...
...Peace didn't have a chance...
...Reagan's awe for "the magic of the marketplace" can only exacerbate the population problem...
...The Democrats, by comparison, merely echo that bankrupt choice...
...That was the message conveyed by the disturbingly large contingent of young people who attended the Republican National Convention...
...Instead of swallowing the self-serving assurances of the nuclear industry and its governmental stooges, instead of thanking our lucky stars that the sinking of the Mont Louis was not the disaster it might easily have been, instead of reverting to our casual indifference, we should be paying close heed to this fortuitous warning of the perils just over the horizon...
...The boycott is backed by Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers of America, together with more than 800 church, labor, and political organizations...
...The drives for mandatory school prayer and for public aid to parochial schools violate the doctrine of church and state because they call for Government establishment of religion...
...H The two men were participating in a contra operation, as rebel leaders acknowledge...
...Western-style economic development is detrimental to the great majority of people in the Third World...
...Army's elite Special Forces unit of the Alabama National Guard...
...The resulting document was "kook-Right," as Walter Mondale noted, but it testified to the patience and skill of its authors...
...Police agencies should not be permitted to generate crime...
...Mondale's Morass For a candidate who claims to be the friend of the worker, the buddy of the unemployed, the ally of those who suffer economic discrimination, Walter Mondaie has been putting in a paltry performance...
...The platform had been nailed together by a scrappy bunch of zealots, the misnamed "populists" of the New Right...
...A relatively harmless and routine shipment," said U.S...
...We could not function if we were constantly preoccupied with the dangers that surround us...
...COMMENT Hot Cargo People beset, as all of us are, by the possibility of nuclear holocaust, the reality of environmental devastation, and the menace of man-made assaults on human health and safety, tend to push these ever-present perils toward the back of consciousness...
...Here, the Administration is dead wrong...
...Many migrants who harvest crops used in Campbell's products live in one-room shacks, have no toilet or water facilities in the field, are exposed to dangerous pesticides, and work ten to twelve hours a day, often at subminimum wages...
...High-technology agribusiness and export-led industrial growth drive small farmers from their land and into the fetid slums of such great urban poverty centers inx / henrik drescher as Mexico City, Manila, and Lagos...
...The difficulty in protecting a shipment of that sort from theft or sabotage has raised so much consternation that the shipment may yet be canceled or delayed...
...The deacons of population control have long asserted that poverty could be ameliorated by technological means—more effective family planning programs...
...USA!' rocked the hall...
...The People Problem There was nothing unusual about the tone...
...But the cargo's French owners were so secretive that even as this issue of The Progressive went to press two weeks after the Mont Louis sank, an aura of mystery surrounded the vessel's contents...
...Five years ago, it took a near meltdown of the Three Mile Island atomic power plant in Pennsylvania to remind most of us that nuclear materials are inherently dangerous...
...Triumph of Their Will It took more than two decades, but Barry Goldwater and his right-wing crusade have won the heart and soul of the Republican Party...
...As West German Socialist Rudolf Bahro has recently suggested, it would take ten times the current level of energy and mineral production to provide everyone on Earth with the standard of living enjoyed in Western Europe and the United States...
...Progressive, working-class, and minority supporters of Mondaie should be upset...
...Population growth does increase the pressures on an economy—witness India—but it is more a symptom than a cause of poverty...
...As President, however, he may not implement a religious edict—no matter what he has promised the Reverend Jerry Falwell...
...This nightmarish transportation problem will only get worse unless nuclear power development is drastically curtailed around the world...
...Once they had obtained some assurance of a decent wage, parents no longer needed to raise more laborers...
...Where have the dreams gone...
...Amid all the hoopla and hullabaloo, the most important question was this: Why has the Government gone into the business of manufacturing crime...
...Government...
...The handling of the incident should serve as a forceful reminder of the continuing risks— and of the determination of officials here and abroad to hide those risks and lull us into a false sense of security...
...The recent sinking in the North Sea of the French freighter Mont Louis had the makings of just such a tragedy, despite the instant flurry of official assurances that its radioactive cargo was a "routine" shipment posing no serious hazard...
...Economics is, indeed, vitally linked to the population problem...
...This style of development is woefully inefficient, requiring as much as 500 gallons of petroleum per acre of production...
...And the Republicans are not about to let go of a good thing...
...For such maneuvers, the Government hires undercover operatives to lure unsuspecting individuals into felonious conduct...
...Keynes was right: Budget deficits don't mean much...
...if it had not been for the alarms raised by environmentalists and maritime union leaders, "nobody would have paid any attention to this accident...
...Perhaps the nation has come full circle...
...The volume of such traffic is increasing steadily...
...The Democrats' own pollster, Pat Cadell, constantly reminds them that voters invariably choose a genuine conservative over an ersatz one...
...In Western Europe, for instance, Malthus's scourge abated only after economic development and social democracy improved the living conditions of much of the working class...
...These Americans died early in September, when the helicopter they were flying was shot down by Nicaraguan troops...
...The material was shipped from Japan as spent fuel from nuclear reactors—so intensely radioactive that it would have contaminated the ocean for tens of thousands of years if it had sunk where salvaging was impossible...
...In 1981, the average annual income of a migrant family in Ohio was $3,381...
...If the Great Communicator can spot an unprincipled party, so can the American people...
...Uncandid Camera The verdict came down...
...Campbell's current assertion that "Soup is Good Food" rings hollow beside the fact that malnutrition among migrant children stands at ten times the national average...
...Unless entrapment is outlawed, any of us may find ourselves on Candid Camera...
...He is betraying their most basic hope—of a humane economic policy that would guarantee jobs for all...
...These things are being carted around on the sea lanes all the time," said Denzil Stuart, an insurance underwriter for Lloyd's of London...
...The ads, we presume, fizzled...
...This strains credibility: H Both were members of the U.S...
...America's soup, believe it or not, had managed to arouse the ire of the Democratic Party...
...What really matters is how Federal spending is allocated...
...It lies only in abandoning our reckless reliance on an energy source that can never be rendered safe...
...The State Department and the CIA deny that Parker and Courtney had any connection with the U.S...
...The agents, who often have criminal records of their own, try to draw their victims into range of hidden cameras, Allen Funt style, so the transactions can be videotaped for later presentation in court...
...But where is the line to be drawn between volition and coercion...
...Administrations—that unchecked birth rates are the cause of world poverty...
...Paid informers have a tremendous personal stake in encouraging commission of a crime, and they can levy a wide variety of threats long before the cameras roll...
...Two Down, 57,690 to Go The first two names on the Nicaragua war memorial in Washington will be those of Dana H. Parker Jr...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 10
