Comment

...We must recognize," he writes, "that civil disobedience in various forms...

...That concept still eludes many, including some of the most sincere defenders of civil disobedience...

...To retrieve their audience, the media search for the lurid and the sensational...

...The Administration and many companies in the private sector don't like the concept of parental leave, for it opens broad questions of unrecognized rights that either business or Government will one day have to address...

...Only a few days after that bleak summary appeared, it turned out to have been unduly optimistic...

...If you were a new parent living in Canada, you would be guaranteed up to forty-one weeks of leave, with job security and 60 per cent pay...

...Now a major study by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has been all but destroyed as well...

...The Presidential fluid was then tested for marijuana, PCP, cocaine, amphetamines, barbiturates, and heroin...

...Son of Truman, grandson of Monroe, the Reagan Doctrine once again assumes that the U.S...

...So, too, does the Reagan Administration, despite its sanctimonious pro-family rhetoric...

...After describing in vivid language the consequences of using the nuclear warheads housed in those silos, Judge Bright acknowledges that the defendants "seem to have sacrificed their own freedom in hopes of awakening the public to the grave danger of nuclear annihilation" through their "dramatic act of civil disobedience...

...It is, of course, easier to try to nab pushers in the Bronx and to bomb coca plantations in Bolivia than to try to address the reasons why Americans resort to drugs, for those reasons go to the heart of U.S...

...Forests must be burned, buildings washed down, and even the soil into which the water drains must be carted away for burial...

...nuclear industry is vulnerable to an even more devastating disaster...

...VDTs are suspected of causing stress, adversely affecting users' fertility, and harming pregnant women and their fetuses...

...The National Basketball Association, which was embarrassed by the cocaine-related death of Boston Celtic draft choice Len Bias, has gone so far as to consider hiring private detectives to investigate players...

...To combat the drug problem, Americans need to feel a more genuine sense of control over their lives...

...The American Chamber of Commerce, not surprisingly, opposes the bill...

...But for millions of Americans, even such incremental reforms would make life a little more pleasant—and a lot less insecure...

...As with the Truman Doctrine, much of the liberal press has rallied behind this latest Cold War policy...

...In our view, there really is a question about the logic of having one mandated approach on the part of the Federal Government for all companies," says Labor Secretary William Brock in a typical dodge...

...Reagan's Raiders,' a new monthly described by its publisher as 'the ultimate patriotic superhero book,' features the President, George Bush, Ed Meese, Caspar Weinberger, George Shultz, and Larry Speakes in mortal combat against the 'Worldwide Terrorist Organization' led by Soviet-built cyborgs who invade the United States to sabotage American nuclear-power plants...

...And if you were in West Germany, you'd enjoy eighteen weeks at full pay...

...To be sure, drug use in America is a problem...

...In a proposal more sweeping than any since the 1950s, the Justice Department is considering requiring drug tests for 1.5 million Federal employees—more than half of the civilian bureaucracy...

...True to form, the Reagan Administration has been more interested in catching criminals than in understanding and curing the disease...

...Drug pushers and users are "as dangerous to our national security as any terrorist or foreign dictatorship," Ronald Reagan announces...

...Establishing these rights would not fundamentally alter our system...

...Forget the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence...

...they say, in a masterpiece of understatement, that it's "too bad those questions can't be asked...

...troops, casualties, or guilt...

...The comparisons are enlightening, for they point up just how backward the United States is when it comes to social policy...

...Terminal Inaction Though millions of workers spend hours each day in front of video display terminals, the effects of the radiation emitted by the VDTs remain unknown...

...Any government with a different conception of how to run its country will face a guerrilla force, armed and financed by Washington...

...Why not throw in the towel, write off nuclear power as a costly blunder, and begin a vigorous pursuit of the alternatives—conservation and benign, renewable energy sources...

...Civil disobedience has been prevalent throughout this nation's history, from the Boston Tea Party and the signing of the Declaration of Independence, to the freeing of the slaves by operation of the underground railroad...

...But Myron Bright, the Eighth Circuit's senior judge, disagreed, and his dissenting opinion is a thoughtful examination of nonviolent protest...

...You could have an exciting new career with the CIA," reads an advertisement in the Journal of the American Bar Association...

...If you were in Italy, you'd receive five months off at 80 per cent pay...

...Louis recently upheld their convictions, saying it could "find no error" in the actions of the Federal district court that convicted them...

...Shortly before the accident, the Soviets boasted that "the odds of a meltdown are one in 10,000 years...

...it is, he concludes after great lengths of sophistry, not only strategically necessary but "morally defensible...

...Government has a right to intervene at will in the affairs of sovereign states...

...Private companies have taken their cue from the Government, seizing the moment to intrude into the personal lives of their employees...

...Incredibly, The Times carries its deep devotion to the technology of death to the ultimate extreme, citing with approval the inevitable analogy between nuclear power and nuclear bombs: "Nuclear weapons, also, offer a great benefit against small risk of overwhelming disaster...

...This was the lead of an August 20 Associated Press dispatch from Santa Barbara: "Homeless people are satisfied with a City Council decision to let them sleep in roadside shrubbery, culverts, and stream beds, a spokesman said today...

...Lining us all up in front of urinals and toilet seats will not help us reach that goal...

...And for all the focus on cocaine abuse, alcoholics still outnumber cocaine users by more than two to one...

...In selecting the severest charges and handing down the stiffest penalties, the prosecutor and judge paid the Silo Pruning Hooks the high compliment of taking them seriously...

...lt is a great misfortune for the head of a nation to be the enemy of freedom, whose defender he should be.' —Jean Jacques Rousseau, 'Considerations on the Government of Poland,' 1772 With no real power, Americans retreat into the consumer culture: Happiness, we are told by thousands of advertisers a day, is a commodity to be purchased...

...Others are equally justified: the right to time off to care for an ailing child or parent, the right to subsidized care for children and elderly relatives, and the right to adequate health care, regardless of cost...

...Obviously, BellSouth persuaded the Reagan Administration to scale back the study and undermine its usefulness...

...If it appears that you're infringing on one's individual rights, as the players will argue and yell, I think the greater good dictates a strong position to help eradicate this cancer...

...Parental leave—the right to be with your newborn—is just one of these...

...Even The Times concedes that "more accidents are certain...

...at best, it would simply broaden the umbrella of the Welfare State...

...In the glare of nationwide publicity and under the threat of massive demonstrations by the homeless, Santa Barbara partially lifted its ban...

...It was bad enough when the Reagan Administration canceled the Environmental Protection Agency's research program ("Radiation Research Drops by the Wayside," Datelines, July issue...

...And if you're really miserable, just forget about it...

...If the Nicaraguans don't change their ways, Reagan said to the surprise of no one, the contras will have "no alternative" but "to have their way and take over...

...The system thrives on villains...

...The Reagan Doctrine serves conveniently to justify the U.S.-sponsored contra war against Nicaragua, whose aim Reagan finally acknowledged in August...

...Unlike other advanced industrial societies, the United States does not mandate leaves of absence for new parents...

...counterparts, now concede that what happened there could happen here or anywhere...

...The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St...

...Unfortunately, Reagan's handling of the drug craze is not all fun and games...

...All too often, working mothers—and fathers—are given a galling choice between risking employment and neglecting their child...

...Let's go round up our relatives...

...H The radioactivity reached as far north as Swedish Lapland, where it was absorbed by lichen, a principal food of browsing reindeer...

...This has long been the favorite ritual of repressive governments—rewarding children who denounce their parents for the higher purposes of the State...

...That "doctrine"—if it can be dignified by such a term—says that the U.S...

...turn on the television, the nation's anaesthetic, and relax...

...BellSouth has been a reluctant participant since the early planning stages about three years ago, but the study has the strong support of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents the workers...

...He submitted to the test to "set an example and lead the way," the President announced...

...It may not be any way to run a scientific investigation, but it's business as usual in America...

...Well, who wouldn't be...

...Who better knows how to break the law than a lawyer...

...We Americans have less and less control over our daily lives...

...There is something about being besieged and corrupted from within that whips the public into a lather...

...Some suggest, in fact, that the U.S...

...Amid the carnage, The Times drew a truly astonishing conclusion from the Chernobyl calamity: "For countries that depend on nuclear energy, Chernobyl is a lesson to improve safety, not throw in the towel...

...Whether or not their action did, in fact, harm the military capability of the United States, it was treated as though it had...

...Many possible accident sequences would release a plume of radioactivity which would not rise very far into the atmosphere...

...In the United States, bureaucrats' desires to control public understanding have often dovetailed with higher-level policy to bar the public, including scientists and other scholars, from critical knowledge about nuclear programs...

...Spending for prevention and treatment of drug abuse has decreased by 5 per cent in the last five years, and in the budget for this year's antidrug program, only 1 per cent of the funds are allocated to education, while 85 percent go to law enforcement...

...is ingrained in our society and the moral correctness of political protesters' views has on occasion served to change and better our society...

...Noorte Had, an Estonian-language paper of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League), reported in an unusual series of articles that Estonian reservists rebelled when they were forcibly conscripted to risk their health and safety in the Chernobyl disaster zone...

...High Climes and Misdemeanors Five Catholic peace activists, sentenced last year to prison terms ranging from eight to eighteen years for damaging missile silos in Missouri, are all still doing time in various Federal penitentiaries...

...Woodson, who has seven children and is serving eighteen years, did not even appeal her conviction, choosing instead to leave the matter to the conscience of her trial judge...

...American nuclear experts, who insisted at first that the Soviet plant was inherently inferior to its U.S...

...Seven Middle Western states-Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio— that have formed a regional compact to deal with nuclear materials are offering a $2 million-a-year 'incentive package' to any community that volunteers a disposal site for low-level radioactive wastes...

...The result has been a selective use of both secrecy and coverups about killed prisoners of war, radiation and fallout, weapons systems, and nuclear power plants.' —Barton J. Bernstein, professor of history, Stanford University, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 11 Besides the thirty-one who have already died from immediate exposure, and others among those hospitalized who may yet die, Russian experts expect that the radiation will eventually cause an extra 6,500 cancer deaths...

...The company complained that the study "will not achieve NIOSH's principal goal, which is to allay public and employee concern over the possible effects of VDTs...

...Comment Company Lawyers Lawyers...

...To the Urinals...

...It will reduce the credibility of the study and the ability to draw conclusions...

...Satisfaction Guaranteed For a few days last summer, news stories (and the 'Doonesbury' comic strip) focused on affluent Santa Barbara, California, and its ban on sleeping in public places...

...The Reagan Doctrine is a strategic response of the United States to the needs of a containment policy and to a change in the correlation of forces in the world in the 1970s," writes the execrable Charles Krauthammer in The New Republic of September 8. Krauthammer, whose sail has billowed in the winds of Reaganism, applauds the Doctrine...

...That seems largely to be the case because industry and the Federal Government do not want to know...

...Management can now oversee the work force beyond the wildest dreams of Taylorism, and many employees are powerless to defend themselves...

...We have come to look for the quick fix...

...Because to The Times and the interests for which it speaks, the technological imperative is as irreversible as the quest for perpetual growth and profit-maximization...

...The reindeer are expected to become too radioactive to eat and will be fed to mink instead...

...they are manufactured to enforce conformity and justify repression...

...Assassins may be a dime a dozen, but it takes a trained tongue to quiet an irked Congressional oversight committee or to threaten reporters when the Justice Department wimps won't...

...But the protesters—Carl and Paul Kabat, Lawrence Cloud-Morgan, Helen Woodson, and Martin Holladay (who call themselves the Silo Pruning Hooks)—did not ask to have their sentences reduced...

...if you're dissatisfied with your life, change deodorants, get a permanent, buy a car, switch soft drinks...

...It was one hell of a breakthrough for poor people in America—and don't think it wasn't appreciated...

...This massacre represents the Reagan Doctrine in action...

...is not as inspiring a slogan as To the Barricades!, but it will have to do...

...Yesterday's communist is today's drug dealer, and the current loyalty oaths are signed not in ink but in urine...

...The CIA supplies Jonas Savimbi and his National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) with between $ 15 and $25 million in military aid...

...Why else does Newsweek splash cocaine on its cover every other week...

...Because of the nuclear shadow, American and Russian troops have never met in combat...

...society...

...With typical Arnerican hubris, it asserts that all Third World nations should mold themselves after the United States...

...If the owners, operators, sponsors, and apologists of nuclear power have their way, we'll all be Estonian conscripts at Chernobyl...

...International nuclear experts who assembled in Vienna at the end of August to discuss the Chernobyl catastrophe estimated that some 24,000 Soviet citizens would eventually die of cancer because of radiation released in the accident...

...The author of the articles, Tonis Avikson, wrote that in ordinary circumstances a worker subjected to brutal conditions can resist or quit, but "at Chernobyl he has nowhere to go and can only choose to swallow his bitter fate...

...Here is how these "freedom fighters" are spending it: "They came, several hundred strong, in the early morning hours to this old Portugese-built farming town in the rolling hills of north-central Angola and caught the sleeping villagers by surprise," reports David B. Ottaway of The Washington Post from the Angolan farming town of Ca-mabatela...

...You've got to fight dirty to rid yourself of this horrendous problem," one club official said...

...Hard drugs represent the apotheosis of the conComment sumer culture...

...The CIA, which already has guns and money, finally decided to send for lawyers: "As an Operations Officer with the Clandestine Service you will be given ample opportunity and scope for action in putting to practical use all your existing skills and more...

...But as contra and UNITA atrocities mount, liberal support for the Reagan Doctrine takes on a peculiarly fetid odor...

...And he calls for "national mobilization" in the new war on drugs...

...But like most U.S...

...But if you're in the United States, you don't get beans...

...Ratings fall off, subscriptions lapse, advertising revenue shrinks...

...Time for Baby Raising an infant in America is dangerous: You can lose your job for taking time to do it...

...An additional thirteen succumbed later to bullet, machete, and knife wounds...

...they are the ultimate quick fix, the easy escape...

...The "and more" is what worries us most...

...so much hysteria has been pumped up that it will excuse the crudest violations of individual rights...

...Consumption of cocaine has leaped in the last decade, from eighteen tons in 1976 to almost 100 tons in 1986...

...Government should attempt to overthrow communist governments in the Third World...

...Whenever you hear the term "greater good," you know your rights are being trampled...

...NIOSH scientists are disappointed...

...H There is barely enough concrete in the Ukraine to entomb the stricken reactor...

...It involves 2,000 female VDT operators employed by BellSouth Corporation and a control group of 2,000 other female AT&T workers whose work does not involve VDTs...

...Cost-Benefit Paralysis In an August 25 editorial, The New York Times summed up some of the known consequences of the nuclear disaster that occurred last April at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Ukraine: H Over a radius of eighteen miles, contaminated topsoil must now be scraped up and interred...

...Decisions that affect us are made by a handful of corporate executives who are accountable to no one or by politicians who are so remote as to be unrecognizable...

...Their acceptance of the punishment is rooted in the principle that those who engage in civil disobedience should not be shielded from the consequences of their acts...

...In fact, no one has any firm basis for calculating the full extent of the damage...

...The measure has been approved by the House Labor Committee, but its fate is uncertain...

...To prevent diversion to human consumption, the reindeer will be injected before slaughter with a dye that turns their meat a distinctive blue...

...Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writes in the August/ September issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "In at least one respect, U.S...

...interventions these days, this one is being carried out by proxy—without U.S...

...What is it, then, that compels us to remain chained to an inherently destructive technology...

...People living near the Chernobyl plant are fortunate that the plume rose to a high altitude...

...A bill in Congress is attempting to establish a national policy that would grant workers eighteen weeks of unpaid parental leave along with job security...

...But the Federal Government's approach to the problem has been singularly unenlightened...

...commercial reactors could suffer a substantially worse accident than the Chernobyl disaster...

...BellSouth outlined its objections in a letter to the OMB...

...Under the influence of BellSouth, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) first canceled the study and then gave it a grudging go-ahead in late July—on the condition that NIOSH study only VDT effects on pregnant women and forget seventy to eighty questions dealing with fertility, stress, and muscular and skeletal pain...

...Belly-up liberalism is old stuff, and The New Republic seems to specialize in it these days...

...To work to ease the burden of their punishment is to dilute the impact of their message...

...A better way to show sympathy and understanding is to go out and repeat their crime...

...Improve safety...

...Some observers, noting the need to let heat escape, doubt if the complex task is even feasible...

...This would spread a large amount of radioactive material in the reactor vicinity, potentially causing a large number of acute injuries and fatalities...

...Liberals and the Reagan Doctrine The Reagan Administration, with the support of Congress, is waging a deadly war against the government and people of Angola...

...When news is slow, the media tend to panic...

...In these circumstances, the courts in assessing punishment for violation of laws have ordinarily acted with a degree of restraint as to the severity of the punishment, recognizing that, although legally wrong, the offender may carry some moral justification...

...By the time the guerrillas left four hours later, 107 villagers lay dead, including the Methodist pastor, Diogo Pascoal Antonio, and four of his children...

...In keeping with the climate, thirteen-year-old Deanna Young turned her parents in for drug possession, and First Lady Nancy Reagan showered the teenager with hosannahs...

...To show his willingness to enlist, Reagan has glorified his office by pissing in public...

...Perhaps some wit will survive to write those words in the radioactive rubble of Washington or Moscow...

...Judge Bright, clearly appalled at the sentences, says "the Government overreacted...