Letters

...Even a perfect Peace Corps would find it difficult to overcome the evil being done with much of that money...

...When one understands the intimate dynamics of reporting the D'Aubuisson-Pickering story, one can support both the James LeMoyne version that D'Aubuisson was involved and the Hedrick Smith version that D'Aubuisson's involvement was "inconclusive...

...The whole madness of nuclear arms transportation seems to rest on trucks, but in bad weather or cases of emergency, when massive cargoes are involved, the military will fall back on the railroads...

...Ronald Meyers New York, New York The advertising brochure that induced me to enter a trial subscription to your magazine promised "the best political graphics published in America...

...As he pointed out in the article, "America and the Bomb have grown comfortable together, in large part because the U.S...

...Millman also erred in crediting LeMoyne and others with a "scoop" on the story...

...There is no satisfactory answer to the charge of "elitism" that Peligian raises...

...nothing is easier to sabotage than a railroad...

...Surely the Poles aren't really starving...

...Kay Irvine San Jose, California Correction Areview of Facing the Danger (Report Card, October issue) inadvertently misspelled the names of coauthor Martha Wescoat Tot-ten and of physicists Ted Taylor and Ernest Sternglass...

...Peggy Saunders Chicago, Illinois Fan Mail Not all of your readers are constantly on pot, alcohol, or some other kind of jag, nor are we all in the funny farm...

...Kathleen Callanan Martin Chelmsford, Massachusetts Israel at War The title of Micah Sifry's article, "Israel at War with Itself (August issue), suggested an intriguing analysis of the issues that face Israeli society today...

...Moreover, funding of the Peace Corps has eroded steadily during the Reagan years...

...In my community, all elementary schools are adorned with posters and huge replicas of Campbell's Soup cans...

...The Times does not publish "all the news that's fit to print" but only its share...

...Ron Ehrenreich Syracuse, New York H-Bombs on Our Highways was impressed, saddened, and supported by "H-Bombs on Our Highways," the lead article by Samuel H. Day Jr...

...I am totally opposed to any such sabotage, but if the opportunity is there, will somebody not seize it some day...

...The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...Both stories were circulating simultaneously among U.S...

...In Sierra Leone, where she served, the per capita income is $23 a month, and a Peace Corps volunteer receiving a subsistence allowance of $100 a month is by definition in an elite...

...On the other hand, if the lines haven't entirely disappeared, some must still exist...

...Instead, I found a muddy appraisal and gross distortions...

...For years...

...William M. Holden Fair Oaks, California Freeman Dyson's Weapons and Hope deserves a more thoughtful and sympathetic analysis than it received from your reviewer, Mark Reader (Books, November issue...

...Efforts to dissuade the PTA and school staff from continuing this travesty have met with no success...

...Since there is no qualification in the review, that indicates there is literally no merchandise to be had—no food, for instance...

...Some of us have even passed the age of sixteen...

...Hessy L. Taft Princeton, New Jersey The Solar Promise Roger Pollak's main point in "Solar Power: The Promise Fades" (September issue), that solar power is not the same as social revolution, is certainly true...

...It was her concluding example that really got to me, making a link between Sal-vadorans and Palestinians...

...One can only hope that the volunteers will do what they can to try to bridge the gap...

...The Times had, after all, reported that Helms's actions might have influenced the plotters...

...However, Pollak is simply wrong when he asserts that renewable energy systems are "ill-suited to producer cooperatives and worker-owned businesses" because they may "require capital-intensive production, complicated engineering, and specialized materials...

...Campbell's pushes a nationwide program of offering playground equipment to schools in exchange for labels from its products...

...Ambassador Thomas Pickering...

...Reporter Doyle Mc-Manus and I published a more detailed version of the D'Aubuisson-Pickering affair in The Los Angeles Times on the day The New York Times story ran...

...Cathy Flick Richmond, Indiana Concerning Erwin Knoll's Memo about the use of such words as "progressives," "socialists," and "the Left"—why not combine them where appropriate...

...Then surely the Poles are starving, unless apartment-dwellers are growing vegetables in window boxes and flower pots...

...Such combinations might take up a little more space, but they would convey the idea that all of these people have common interests...

...The relationship between decentralization, capitalist coopta-tion, and the radical transformation of our society is complex and deserves much more discussion than this brief article allowed...

...Cecile Meyer DeKalb, Illinois Reagan's Reporters Joel Millman may be applying too much interpretation and too little journalism in "Reagan's Reporters: How the Press Distorts the News from Central America" (October issue...

...Paul Krehbiel Denver, Colorado The best way to avoid a dictatorship of the linguistic is to keep shifting terms, to remind readers and writers that words are, at best, slippery symbols for reality and not reality itself...

...John Reeder Arlington, Virginia CampbelFs Other Kids Regarding your editorial "Campbell's Other Kids" (Comment, October issue), there's an even greater irony in this corporation's use of kids to exploit other kids...

...According to your reviewer, the book's author contends that the lines he saw at stores in 1980 and 1981 had "almost disappeared" in 1982 because "there is simply nothing in the stores...

...But I also believe the Peace Corps has made positive contributions to Third World people and to the American people's understanding of the Third World...

...This is rank stupidity...

...Reader interprets Dyson's perceptive discussion of military attitudes toward legitimate concerns about self-defense as "irritating admiration of the professional soldier," thus revealing a blinkered refusal to accept as ethical or honorable any of the participants in mankind's tragic wars...

...In this increasingly pictorialized world, sensible folk laugh at labels...

...All the quotations of people outside the government were critical of the Likud Party...

...I guess home is home wherever you're from, especially if you can't go back there without putting your life in danger...

...It was with reference to Jesse Helms that Smith may have been most cynically exploited...

...Such myopia is a grave flaw in anyone who wishes to persuade rather than accuse...

...Recent articles by Steven Weisman in The Times and Mark Hertsgaard in the Village Voice refer to White House reliance on a "line of the day" to confront the press, and it was this line that was fed to Hedrick Smith...

...American worker cooperatives have not generally approached this level of production, lacking the financial and management support infrastructures of the Mondragon system and often lacking the inclination to use high tech...

...Children are urged to collect labels, and contests are held to determine which class has accumulated the most...

...The book proposes sensible approaches to achieving real peace and security...

...Fine contributions ate being made by Julia Preston of The Boston Globe, Sam Dillon of The Miami Herald, and Bob Ri-vard of Newsweek, among others...

...embassy in San Salvador...

...More than a month later, on August 1, The Times'% Joel Brinkley reported that a former aide to the Senator had charged Helms with misleading Smith about the contents of those cables...

...The establishment press is the Administration's most effective tool...

...Pete Seeger Beacon, New York The Margins off War Examples of good journalism are rare these days, so it was good to see Mary Jo McConahay's "On the Margins of War" in your September issue...

...If the stores were empty of food, Poland would be in the throes of a national disaster and charitable organizations everywhere would be mobilizing for an international rescue...

...Good cartoons with a sharp political edge can be just as telling as abstract (or whatever it is) art...

...Craig Pyes Washington, D.C...

...In the Israeli election last July, Likud won forty-one seats in the Knesset to Labor's forty-four, indicating that about half of the Israeli voters felt their interests were best served by Likud...

...In any event, the lure of "free" playground equipment appears to be too great to pass up...

...The Peace Corps is saddled with an excessive number of political appointees, with a high staff-turnover rate, and with politically determined placement of volunteers...

...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...

...I was wrong: Your illustrations aren't just the best, they're the only decent new political art I get to see...

...David Group Geneseo, New York Dictatorship of the Linguistic In "Call It Stickball" I (Memo, October issue), Editor Erwin Knoll points out that words do matter, specifically noting that The Progressive finds "military spending" more accurate than "defense spending...

...Heartfelt writing which posits new ideas is a risky business at best, but that's one of the reasons I read your magazine...

...What would have been the result had terrorists rather than peace activists entered the base...

...The selection of quotations from Palestinians also presented a distorted view of Palestinian realities...

...I haven't heard anything about that...

...David Jones Okemos, Michigan You rendered a great service by publishing Sam Day's "H-Bombs on Our Highways...

...Not only do they picture cute Campbell's kids to sell products harvested by exploited farm laborers, including some under the age of ten, they also use school children in elementary schools all over the country to get their parents to buy Campbell's products...

...But Pollak should not promote the myth that these protosocialist forms of work organizations somehow have "natural" low-technology limits...

...I did not "accept" James LeMoyne's anonymous sources while rejecting Smith's, but merely tried to show how the Administration, by presenting a mirror-image of the facts in Washington, can undermine the reporting from the field and distort the public's perception of events...

...If the majority of Palestinians agreed with those your writer interviewed, the prospects of peace in the region would be considerably enhanced...

...Please keep them coming...

...Valuable school time is spent on this project...

...You could refer to "leftists and other progressives" or "a broad coalition including progressives and socialists...

...Joel Millman New York, New York Reviewers Reviewed Iwas reading Eva Wiosna's review of The Passion of Poland (Books, October issue) with moderate interest until I came to the paragraph about Poland's "light-hearted absurdities...

...in the November issue...

...officials—the same anonymous sources whose word Millman apparently accepts when they are quoted by LeMoyne but doubts when they are quoted by Smith...

...I thought that would probably turn out to be so much hype...

...The contradictory assertions that lines have "almost disappeared" and that "there is simply nothing in the stores" remind me of the one-liner, "Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it's too crowded...

...W. Patrick Hinely Lexington, Virginia Volunteer for Privilege Iagree with Susan Peligian's contention that the Peace Corps and some of its volunteers have serious shortcomings ("Volunteer for Privilege," Last Word, October issue...

...Despite the banner unfurled at the Democratic National Convention, most people seem unaware of the Campbell's boycott...

...Helms, the only named source who contended there was nothing to the rumors about D'Aubuisson's role in the assassination attempt, claimed to be referring to secret cables sent to Washington by the U.S...

...John L. Vicoli Roanoke, Virginia am distressed by the increasing ugliness of The Progressive, and hope the magazine will soon return to its no-nonsense format and scrap the hideous illustrations...

...I fail to understand why Millman questions Smith's decision to obtain reaction from Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina...

...But why are people lining up at empty stores...

...The author replies: Iappreciate Craig Pyes's comments and agree with more than a few of them, but I cannot share his assessment of The New York Times's treatment of the D'Aubuisson-Pickering affair...

...The Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque territory in Spain have just such production in their manufacture of refrigeration equipment and electronics products and other appliances...

...Dyson's ideas merit serious attention, not glib dismissal...

...Our story said U.S...

...officials had concluded from the evidence that the plot was directed by D'Aubuisson, but others wrote that D'Aubuisson's role was implied but not proven...

...A few references in print to War Secretary Caspar Weinberger might help bring home the reality...

...But your writer did not see fit to interview Likud supporters...

...Similar production goes on in Yugoslavia in worker-managed, socially-owned firms...

...Such distortion always works in the Administration's favor...

...Government has shielded the American people from the tangible, palpable existence of the arms race...

...In a further step toward accuracy, let's all return (unofficially, at least) to the original designation of the War Department...

...He realized too late, as he himself told me, that it did not reflect the internal debate within the Reagan Administration over just how conclusive the evidence of D'Aubuisson's involvement was...

...None at all...

...I'm sure it hasn't been easy, but I know you have the fortitude to keep doing a job that desperately needs to be done...

...The Peace Corps, with a budget of $110 million, accounts for about 0.7 per cent of the $14.8 billion the United States allocates to military and economic foreign aid...

...I believe there is a more practical explanation than Millman's conspiratorial theory for The New York Times's coverage of Roberto D'Aubuisson's alleged role in the assassination attempt against U.S...

...Criticism of Central America press coverage seems to have degenerated into gossip about the comings and goings of New York Times reporters...

...Bravo for something well done...

...We haven't LETTERS to the Editor read that in the newspapers, nor have we seen emaciated Poles on television...

...The Progressive has been all but alone in its efforts to penetrate that shield...

...Thus did Cezanne use a whole palette of colors to depict one simple red apple...

...What makes Weapons and Hope so valuable is its brilliant clarification of the relative advantages of various defense strategies...

...Nuclear arms should not be moved by truck or train or airplane or missile...

...Your article on the Plowshares Rebellion (Datelines, November issue) made it appear that the protesters had surreptitiously entered the Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York...

...Let's see more good square stuff...

...However, it is widely understood in this area that the protesters walked right into the base through the front gate, that they encountered no military personnel or obstacles as they entered the hangars, and that they remained there for a full hour before going in search of the authorities so that they could make their actions known...