Comment
Believing the Worst When Vice President George Bush traveled to El Salvador last December to denounce the Death Squads, it was more than a little ironic for—as Allan Nairn reports in this issue—the...
...Twenty years from now, that remote corner may become the scene of institutionalized bloodshed...
...The issue of interventionism has, in fact, divided the leading hopefuls and enlivened their torpid debate...
...COMMENT The Gospel According to Ron And it came to pass in that year that there was a Presidential election in the land, and all watched the commotions, every one to his own interest...
...That advertising bromide comes to mind as the controversy over ethylene dibromide (EDB) spreads...
...We need to have a sensitive, mature, surefooted President who knows when and when not to use American power," Mon-dale says...
...Mondale whispered only belated disagreements with Reagan over the invasion of Grenada, a COMMENT conflict in which our soldiers were victorious...
...Studies have shown, for example, that the use of passive restraints—especially air bags-could reduce auto fatalities by 25 per cent...
...It is hardly surprising when a company disregards the welfare of consumers in the pursuit of profits...
...Pirn stresses that there are safe alternatives to both EDB and irradiation...
...Why, then, the sudden surge of newspaper headlines, editorial crusades, and television docudramas about drunken driving...
...Drunken drivers are a safe and easy target, a handy way of diverting attention from some other and perhaps more effective approaches to highway safety...
...That one of Reagan's aides was accused of patronage should come as no surprise...
...We've been trying to take that kind of look at the old problem of drunken driving...
...officials are possessed grants immunity to the most heinous of crimes...
...But now, in the case of El Salvador's Death Squads, there is substantial, solid proof of a direct, intimate link...
...And so it was, the idea having great favor among the people, that there should be delivered a constitutional amendment allowing prayer to be recited in the public schools...
...There was, abiding in the same city, an incumbent President, keeping watch as the day of his campaign drew near...
...But the auto manufacturers have resisted all attempts to require passive restraint systems or other new safety devices...
...Pirn's 1983 report on the issue, Gamma Irradiation as a Means of Food Preservation in Canada, can be ordered for $4.50 from Pollution Probe, 12 Madison Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2S1...
...troops from Honduras and demanding "restraint in our relations with the Third World," he was red-baited by Mon-dale, who asserted that Hart was trying "to ignore the excesses of the extreme Left...
...A Gideon's Army prevailed by a margin of a mere eleven votes...
...Unfortunately, irradiation is a recipe for more trouble...
...American officials at the highest levels of the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA sowed the seeds of terror many years ago—without public discussion, without public awareness, and in direct conflict with what the American people have been led to believe...
...For any American who is not yet convinced that our Government should refrain from further military involvement in El Salvador, Allan Nairn's article should remove all remaining doubt...
...News of his fiscal mismanagement blares from every radio, television set, and front page...
...Eventually," The Wall Street Journal reports, "irradiation may be cleared as a way to prolong the shelf life of an even wider range of foods...
...On one point, the candidates are true to their words: Each wants to sit in the Oval Office...
...And his mailbox ran over: "Keep up the good work," read one note signed, "Your pal, Satan...
...His position on draft registration, the building block of large-scale intervention, is similarly confusing...
...The offending plan resulted from a 1975 suit filed, paradoxically, by the Justice Department itself, which charged the city with maintaining a pervasive "pattern and practice" of illegal job discrimination against blacks and women...
...This champion of "the little guy" has been an enthusiastic advocate of decontrolling oil and gas prices...
...Drunken driving is certainly one aspect of the problem, just as it is a symptom of serious malfunction in our entire social order...
...Government lend its sponsorship to so nefarious an institution...
...He asserted that an alarming number of calculation errors were made in checking the ability of the plant's pipes to withstand an earthquake...
...Depth Charge in the Womb* "Your company, without warning to women, invaded their bodies by the millions and caused them injuries by the thousands," Federal District Judge Miles Lord recently told officials of the A.H...
...His "new ideas," then, are but imaginatively repackaged policies of the past...
...Thousands of murders and mutilations have been committed as a result of policies initiated in Washington...
...Senators departed from their customary haunts and went among their constituents (because they were of the house and lineage of number counters...
...The U.S...
...We cannot continue to abide the role of the United States in perpetuating the violence committed each day against the people of that tragically afflicted nation...
...And they hoped the glory of the amendment would shine round about them in the people's eyes...
...Lord's tough talk pleased the plaintiffs—who settled the case for about $4.6 million—and it should help women in some 3,000 actions still pending...
...The patronage system draws no bellows of protest from Congress, and no outraged editorials, until ax-grinders find occasion to make it an issue...
...For two weeks did clamor reign, and then the amendment was smitten...
...Translation: The President should dispatch troops if the United States can win...
...His posture toward imperial ventures shifts with the political winds and, in the end, contains fundamental contradictions...
...1f Advocates of irradiation claim it can help fight global hunger...
...And so this President was seen on screens across the land, brow furrowed, preaching the redemption of the people...
...Meese, Ronald Reagan's counselor and nominee for Attorney General, is suspected of trading seven Federal jobs for almost a half million dollars in financial favors—$ 15,000 of which he failed to report on Government disclosure statements...
...The Administration has previously sided with white city employees in similar cases in Boston, New Orleans, Memphis, and Detroit, but Birmingham is the first instance in which the Justice Department has actually switched sides to attack a plan it helped fashion, and which it promised to uphold...
...In February 1983, Hart cosponsored the so-called build-down proposal, which, Congressional Quarterly noted at the time, "appears to be the freeze resolution's leading competitor in the Senate...
...Because in Washington, nothing— not even murder—is considered immoral when it comes to coping with leftist dissidents...
...Most show up at low levels, but some may be toxic, and many have not been identified...
...The Manichean world view of which U.S...
...Affirmative action is thus dismissed as an archaic and racist tactic...
...The American people have been sold a bill of goods about our Government's role in supporting one of the world's most brutal terror networks...
...Government has systematically deceived and dishonored its people...
...But since Samuel Clemens expired one year before the discovery of the electron, we are left with the inelegant but important words of Isa Yin and Zinovy Reytblatt...
...Under your direction," Lord told Robins's president, chief counsel, and director of research, "your company has in fact continued to allow women, tens of thousands of them, to wear this device, a deadly depth charge in their wombs, ready to explode at any time...
...The fervor with which such remedies are being pushed reflects wholly unrealistic expectations...
...The process does not make edibles radioactive, she tells us, but it may cause other problems: 1f Irradiation could lead to the formation of a group of chemicals in food called unique radiolytic products (URPs...
...And you wouldn't learn it from the mainstream press, which routinely regurgitates Government propaganda...
...Hot Potato "Accept no substitutes...
...Our Government has a history of supporting right-wing regimes that conduct campaigns of terror against their citizens: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Greece come readily to mind...
...But, behold, there came wise men to the President from his campaign staff, saying his Godly posturing was bound to help the vote count...
...We hope he's paid his dues...
...Mondale's offensive may have caused Jesse Jackson to soften his skepticism of military might...
...The atrocities are neither spontaneous outbursts of random violence nor manifestations of some pathological Salva-doran mentality...
...If the draft were to be reinstituted," says Hart's press secretary, "he would accept it only if it were mandatory national service...
...Consumer organizations counter that eaters have a right to know what has been done to their food...
...COMMENT Sorry, Wrong Number If Mark Twain had lived longer, he probably would have tacked on "atomic safety tests" to his quip, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics...
...Why are local police departments erecting roadblocks and state legislators introducing bills to increase penalties and raise the drinking age...
...The test is important because if an accident occurs, the amount of radioactivity that leaks out may be substantially larger than is stated in the licensing documents," he told reporters in February...
...Chances are that the American people will once again be assured by their elected officials that the U.S...
...Obviously, he does not grasp the meaning of "law," and is certainly not fit to be the nation's chief law-enforcement officer...
...officials have been saying...
...Plaintiffs in the lawsuits charged that IUDs manufactured by Robins caused infections and, eventually, sterility...
...The "leaner, meaner" Pentagon that Hart favors would be, by definition, an interventionist force...
...Dia-tomaceous earth, for example, is a nontoxic insecticide used for years by some grain farmers and millers...
...Just weeks before more than 200 servicemen were killed in the Beirut bombing, Hart cosponsored a Senate resolution to keep troops in Lebanon for six more months...
...Righteous accusations and indignant denials have become a steady diet for news junkies...
...Government and, in particular, of the Central Intelligence Agency, which Bush himself once headed...
...But it is one thing to acknowledge that the solutions we have devised are far from ideal and quite another to pretend that the problem does not exist...
...Believing the Worst When Vice President George Bush traveled to El Salvador last December to denounce the Death Squads, it was more than a little ironic for—as Allan Nairn reports in this issue—the Death Squads are a creature of the U.S...
...And so detached are the policymakers themselves that they don't see, much less care about, their victims...
...But there was among the Senators a Republican from Connecticut named Weicker...
...Your company, in the face of overwhelming evidence, denies its guilt and continues its monstrous mischief...
...You have taken the bottom line as your guiding beacon and the low road as your route...
...One Less for the Road When an old problem suddenly and for no apparent reason swerves to center stage, receiving a degree of new attention that verges on the hysterical, it's a good idea to have a close look at what's going on...
...policy have long suspected Washington's involvement in these acts of political violence, the hard evidence has been scarce...
...Government condemns the terror committed by its ally...
...Suddenly there was with the President a great host praising God (for the Senators were sore afraid: which of them would vote against the Lord...
...Hart's contradictions extend to domestic issues as well...
...Safety has always been on the food industry's back burner and profits on the front, an arrangement the Government challenges only when it can no longer ignore the public's demand for action—as in the case of EDB...
...It explains his Johnny-come-lately opposition to that tragedy— "the worst mistake of my career was to remain silent so long"—and it explains why he waited until U.S...
...This is no partisan issue...
...However, centralized and expensive nuclear technology may not be appropriate for Third World nations, and it could divert attention from political and economic solutions...
...He has also been implicated in the 1980 theft of Jimmy Carter's campaign briefing papers...
...This is American hubris in its most virulent form...
...But to focus attention on that aspect while ignoring the others is to send Americans on a costly one-way trip down a dead-end street...
...You will be well advised not to believe those assurances...
...In Chicago, Reytblatt, a veteran nuclear engineer, warned that the industry has long used the wrong mathematical formula to determine "leak rates," the amount of air that escapes from reactor containment buildings...
...Now he attacks Reagan's policy there...
...it's much more likely to be true...
...That the problem is real there is no doubt...
...Linda Pirn, a science writer who has long followed the issue, warns that uncertain risks accompany the proven benefits of food irradiation...
...Believe the worst...
...Walter Mondale's position is clear enough...
...Recently, Hart settled on opposition to meddling in the Persian Gulf, a strange conviction for a man who applied for a Navy commission "because I was concerned, as others were in the 1970s, about the very likely possibility that this nation would become involved in a military action in the Persian Gulf...
...And, lo, the agents of the New Right came unto him, urging the need for active favor of their cause...
...Now is the time to move forward with this promising technique," declared Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler...
...Why would the U.S...
...role in Central America—and, more broadly, in all of the Third World-is finally being addressed by the Democratic Presidential candidates...
...The remedial affirmative action program was approved by the Reagan Justice Department in May 1981...
...Such vigilance can be expected to vanish after Meese is properly skewered...
...This is the lesson Mondale learned from the Vietnam war...
...Smaller aircraft carriers, faster submarines, lighter jets—his proposed arsenal smacks of the Carter/Mondale Administration's Rapid Deployment Force...
...A highway transportation system that claims the lives of more than 40,000 Americans every year and seriously injures another 300,000 ought to be an issue of public—and political—-concern...
...11 Irradiation causes minor though important nutrient losses...
...The former Vice President suggests he would initiate U.S...
...Several studies have shown that crackdowns on drunks produce results at first, but gradually diminish in effectiveness as limited police resources are devoted to other concerns—and as drivers realize how slim the chances are that they will be caught...
...Though critics of U.S...
...But the political hay being made of Meese's deeds contains at least a shred of hypocrisy...
...troops, responded, "It would depend on where our national interests were threatened...
...The Government's plan, up for public comment until mid-April, would also boost the maximum radiation dosage for the treatment of spices (which were first approved for such processing last year...
...Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently proposed another alternative: permitting companies to irradiate fruits, vegetables, and grains to kill insects...
...Rather, these murders and disappearances are the calculated consequences of U.S...
...Making the Most of Meese Like ants drawn to a picnic, the media have attached themselves to the Ed Meese affair...
...Robins Company, the defendant in seven lawsuits involving the intrauterine .birth-control device called the Dalkon Shield...
...In this numbers game, we all pay...
...Yin, an NRC inspector, was referring to one reactor of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California...
...Fresh Insult, Ancient Injury "We always side with those people who claim they have suffered discrimination on account of race," says William Bradford Reynolds, the Assistant Attorney General for civil rights...
...Wordings of many sorts were brought forth, and the Senators debated them on the floor of the chamber...
...These efforts on behalf of white employees reflect the Administration's contention that blacks and other minorities are no longer subject to discrimination...
...It never occurred to me" that such actions might be improper, Meese says...
...This is corporate irresponsibility at its meanest," he declared...
...The hands of Democratic policymakers are just as bloody as those of their Republican counterparts—or bloodier...
...Unit 1 should not be permitted to go critical," Yin told shocked members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March...
...Civil rights gains since the 1960s, the Government maintains, have made our country a true meritocracy, in which success is purely a function of individual skill and determination...
...Though Hart makes much of his position on Central America, the candidate's peaceful-sounding rhetoric is tripped up by his own military policy...
...And each will mold himself into whatever it takes to do so...
...God made me for a purpose, and I will run for His pleasure...
...But is irradiation really "promising...
...And the Reagan Administration backs the manufacturers all the way...
...A Washington Post story last December, for example, carried this cheery headline: U.S...
...to Help Salvadorans Curb Death Squads...
...Affirmative action is, at best, an imperfect tool for dealing with the problem of persistent and deeply ingrained racism...
...And he went forth quoting from the movie Chariots of Fire...
...This critic of corporate abuses sponsored an industry-backed plan to protect asbestos manufacturers besieged by lawsuits from cancer and asbestiosis victims...
...Reytblatt added that his undergraduate students at the Illinois Institute of Technology are able to spot the error in the American Nuclear Society's equation for measuring leakage...
...Right now, without our knowledge or consent, our Government may be establishing new Death Squads and breeding new assassins in some remote corner of the globe, just as it did in El Salvador in the early 1960s...
...Vitamins A, C, E, and some of the B vitamins are sensitive to radiation destruction...
...Hart later repudiated the build-down, a plan that would do nothing to stop the testing and production of atomic weapons, and waited almost a year to endorse the freeze...
...Caution: Men at Play The U.S...
...Judge Lord's remarks deserve notice—and thanks...
...Children, he said, are free to pray in school "when they get up to bat, during lunch hour, or before a math exam...
...A sinful blight had descended upon the nation, he said to evangelical leaders in Columbus, Ohio, but in the time since he had ascended the White House throne, "I do believe that He has begun to heal our blessed land...
...The Justice Department, in choosing the latter course, is adding fresh insult to ancient injury...
...Perhaps, he ventured, God is too personal for politics...
...The company withdrew its product in 1974 but failed to notify women who might still be wearing the shield...
...A while back, Meese said the American Civil Liberties Union is the criminals' lobby...
...Restrictions on the use of EDB, a carcinogenic chemical, have sent food growers and processors scrambling to find replacement pesticides...
...A 1980 FDA report stated that irradiated foods may contain enough URPs "to warrant toxicological evaluation...
...During a televised debate before the New York primary, Jackson, asked where he would commit U.S...
...Gary Hart is not so easily definable as a Cold War liberal...
...all Presidents regularly appoint cronies—usually underqualified ones—to fill Federal posts...
...It Several studies have concluded that laboratory animals suffer no apparent ill effects from ingesting irradiated food, but a few experiments did reveal a risk of genetic mutations...
...When Hart did take a principled and intelligible stand, calling for withdrawal of U.S...
...At times, affirmative action can inflict pain on the unwitting beneficiaries of a racist system...
...Do products of nuclear technology belong in the kitchen...
...H The process carries obvious risks in terms of worker safety and the transport of radioactive material...
...policy...
...military action if the flow of Persian Gulf oil were threatened, and he favors a continuing armed presence in El Salvador and Honduras...
...Why has a Presidential commission proposed withholding Federal highway funds from any state that fails to raise the drinking age to at least nineteen...
...Some of the candidates, such as methyl bromide and aluminum phosphide, are believed to present as many dangers as EDB...
...Thousands of lives are lost each year in accidents involving drunken drivers, many more injuries are inflicted, and much property is damaged or destroyed...
...This environmentalist worked doubletime to promote water projects over the objections of environmentalists in his home state, Colorado...
...Reynolds, the Reagan Administration's civil rights white knight, charged into the Deep South recently to do battle against a gross racial injustice: an affirmative action plan that allegedly discriminates against white police officers and firefighters in Birmingham, Alabama...
...Marines started dying in Beirut to criticize President Reagan's disastrous Lebanon course...
...And on the urgent issue of nuclear suicide, Hart's platform is also shaky...
...But for a Federal judge to issue a ringing denunciation of that process is by no means routine...
...But you wouldn't learn this by listening to what Bush and other U.S...
...Once again, the U.S...
...But all that did not begin yesterday, nor has there been a leap in the number of intoxicated drivers or in the toll they exact...
...The Death Squad apparatus was established, after all, not under Ronald Reagan, not under Richard Nixon, but under that Democratic paragon, John F. Kennedy...
...II The Government has no plans to require irradiation labeling on retail goods, apparently on the assumption that irradiation is not an additive...
...The voters have been left with a wax museum effigy of John Kennedy, a reasonable facsimile of Hubert Humphrey (advised by "the Carter team,", as The New York Times described Mondale's inner circle), and a sloganeering preacher who dismantled his budding "rainbow coalition" with one stupid remark...
Vol. 48 • May 1984 • No. 5
