Letters
LETTERS to the Editor Cuomo on the Contras Lest readers of The Progressive be misled as to my views regarding President Reagan's policies toward Nicaragua, a possibility which might have arisen...
...The Red Squad subscribed to many left-wing periodicals (not using its real name, of course), and that may be why you repeatedly sent subscription offers...
...We provide training for socially responsible careers that utilize energy efficiency first and then safe nuclear power—the sun, located ninety-three million miles away...
...Your Form 1040 or telephone tax is your draft card for today's war against Central America and tomorrow's nuclear holocaust...
...Disarmament is impossible in the context of the Cold War, and to call for unilateral disarmament is simply to evade the issue by taking a purer-than-thou position...
...One important contribution to keeping alive the memory of what happened under the Nazis—and to understanding how those oppressors succeeded beyond the grave in dividing their victims—is the recent reissue of the book The Men with the Pink Triangle by Alyson Publications in Boston...
...The press organizations should stand together on this one...
...They were true pioneers, and the rest of us cannot help but look up to them for their bravery...
...I favor, instead, our participation in the Conta-dora peace process...
...The issue that needs to be tackled is the Cold War-how to defuse it, how to educate the public to view the Soviet Union objectively, how to differentiate our own national security from anti-Soviet hysteria...
...Simply because any benefits that may be derived from space exploration and experimentation are not immediately obvious to your narrow minds does not mean they do not exist...
...John Zeh Columbus, Ohio Bookburners Sincerest congratulations on Erwin Knoll's "Book-burners" (Memo, December issue...
...we try to comfort with words, and the words just come out wrong...
...It harks back to a period when the peace movement was marginal and the political climate so poor that something shocking had to be said simply to get ourselves heard...
...There I learned that the Red Squad destroyed your file shortly before our lawsuit was filed (they had infiltrated our legal team), but retained a copy of your file's table of contents...
...They freed us," my parents said...
...It took the "international pariah" nation of Vietnam, more damaged by war than any nation in history, to go in and knock off that devil army that was eating up Cambodia...
...I myself have announced that I will bar the dispatch of New York State National Guardsmen to Honduras for exercises designed to destabilize the Sandinista government...
...In retrospect, this was, perhaps, a mistake...
...Apparently, your 1977 letter suggesting a subscription was not the first such offer received by the Red Squad...
...Jews and gypsies were international, rejecting arbitrary borders between states...
...P.J...
...Perhaps even the German peace movement prefers that such bases—if they must be here—be closely guarded...
...The file consisted of mailings from The Progressive offering subscriptions...
...If our days are already shortened, if our children look to us to win them a future, if we really want to save our world, can we—in any conscience—do less...
...I've started burying The Progressive beneath the piles of other magazines and papers cluttering my house, just so I won't have to try to explain the pictures to my curious six-year-old...
...if it were, we would successfully have done so...
...If each member of Congress heard from 1,000 constituent taxpayers that they were going to cease payment until the United States stops driving the arms race and leaves Central America in peace, I think we would see some votes change...
...She and the thousands of teachers she competed with for the honor of flying in the shuttle are not the dupes and fools you make them out to be...
...The Soviet Union acts in its own self-interest just as we do, and peace be damned...
...Katauskas Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Progressive Graphics Ihate The Progressive's artwork...
...Had they come just a few weeks earlier, my grandfather would not have been executed by the Nazis...
...Because of the current distortion of the meaning of the First Amendment, the citizens of Colorado Springs did the only thing they could to remove a hideous blight from the landscape...
...Should GIs and their families, often without cars, travel distances to see German films or to attend church services in a foreign language...
...I think it really turns people off who would otherwise appreciate the excellent quality of reporting in the magazine...
...We went to school on foot...
...Reducing our use of utility-produced electricity should be understood as a first step we all can take in seizing a nuclear-free future...
...were missing in "NATO Blues" (The Last Word, October issue), in which he rendered a disservice to GIs, West Germans, and the American and West German peace movements...
...The table of contents reveals that the Chicago Red Squad considered The Progressive an appropriate subject for a subversive file, specifically Number 922...
...But that does not make Christa McAuliffe's participation "quaint...
...Juda Sakrison Loy San Diego, California Fans of Norman Rockwell should buy themselves Hallmark calendars instead of criticizing an essential part of your hard-hitting format...
...Joel Taunton Citizens' Tax Moratorium P.O...
...I see and abhor what the military has done and is doing to the space program...
...I don't see how your magazine can justify its own name...
...who complain of 'liberal biases' whenever the media hint at realities that do not fit the conservative picture of the world...
...Edmund R. Hanauer Munich, West Germany In "NATO Blues," Samuel IH...
...Richard Gutman Chicago, Illinois Inventing Reality In his review, "Do We Want to Know...
...Her wit is needed in an atmosphere charged with negativity...
...C. May Overton Prescott, Arizona The artwork is diverse, sound, interesting, unusual, often great...
...They live in our country, but apart from us...
...Most Germans rarely have opportunities to talk, with American soldiers...
...we wonder why...
...Your put-downs of Dan Rather, Chuck Yeager, Ronald Reagan, and George Will were also ill-considered...
...Few of them know our language...
...Michael Parenti Brooklyn, New York Nuclear Bluegrass As dedicated solar educators, we were inspired by the Breedens' commitment to a peaceful future ("Nuclear Bluegrass," The Last Word, April issue)—especially their hoedown with the utility company...
...Andrew Shachat Somerville, New Jersey You might have more money to spend on the good aspects of The Progressive if you omitted those horrible black smudges you call illustrations...
...Nixon's "Vietnamization" was not a strategy but a public-relations ploy...
...I do not see how the militarists can have anything but contempt for such a half-hearted opposition...
...In his essay, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," from which we get that term, Henry Thoreau mentions only one form of non-cooperation with illegitimate government activity: refusal to pay taxes...
...I invite criticism and improvement of these ideas, and I pray you will not remain silent...
...One doesn't have to engage in Soviet-bashing to acknowledge that the fear has some foundation...
...As for myself, I consider pornography a blasphemous insult to the human spirit...
...Books, April issue), Arthur S. Miller devotes a couple of brief paragraphs to my new book, Inventing Reality: Politics of the Mass Media, in which I argue that the media are not an absolutely compliant instrument of the ruling class...
...forces...
...Legally, they are neither foreigners nor guests...
...The fate of gay people under Nazi rule, he says, has particularly been "the object of deliberate suppression...
...The American Forces Network broadcasts short language lessons, and the GIs learn to say Danke schon or Guten Tag...
...The U.S...
...they could not have gotten justice for workers without the power of the strike...
...In fact, we already have a better, and much more agreeable form of "censorship" within each of us: Don't buy the stuff that offends and don't view it either...
...H. Bernstein Brooklyn, New York Your publication continues to provide the highest-quality black-and-white illustrations of any monthly magazine going—not to mention some masterful covers...
...He managed to sum up in one page what I've been fighting for all my professional life—as a newspaperman, college professor, and public relations director for an international labor union...
...Day wrote that U.S...
...He concluded that "the Germans"—with reason—"hate us...
...The Khmer Rouge deliberately killed off a substantial number of the people under their control...
...Some GI families send their children to German schools...
...But Rothschild's alternative, unilateral disarmament, is twenty-five years out of date...
...Herbert Meredith Orrell Albuquerque, New Mexico People who are willing to take it upon themselves to censor or bum books of "prurient interest" are the same people who will censor or burn serious books once their talent is perfected...
...And gays questioned the division between sexes and threatened male supremacy...
...The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, P. O. Box 2236, East Patchogue, NY 11772, can provide literature and counseling information...
...For those who wish to organize military tax refusal in their Congressional districts and wonder how to begin, I offer my address as facilitator between districts...
...In order to fulfill their class-control functions for the few, the news media must maintain some trust and legitimacy among the many...
...I've been a fan of hers since her days on The Texas Observer...
...It's up to us...
...Governor Mario M. Cuomo Albany, New York Unilateral Disarmament Matthew Rothschild is right: The public has been alerted to the dangers of the arms race, and the so-called Great Peace March was five years out of date ("One Step Backward," Reflections, March issue...
...Chris Hines Miami, Florida Under Surveillance After reading Erwin Knoll's "Under Surveillance" (Memo from the Editor, January issue) in which he speculated concerning The Progressive's Chicago Police Department Red Squad file, I went to the Red Squad file room to obtain what I could...
...troops in West Germany constitute a "permanent occupation" force and live in a "ghetto" complete with their own schools and churches, surrounded by "dogs and razor wire...
...That isn't much vocabulary for a two-year stay...
...Harry D. Frick Jr...
...Even so moderate and sensible a proposal as that recently offered by Mikhail Gorbachev cannot be supported in the United States because of its Kremlin origin...
...By the way, we at the Colorado Mountain College retrofit program aren't totally against nuclear power...
...But, damnit, don't say the stuff can't be published or televised...
...The Progressive's artists are not expressing their own private nightmares but the nightmares of generations who have grown up with media images of Hiroshima, World War II, police brutality, Watergate, Vietnam, South Africa...
...Birgit Leonhardt Nuremberg, West Germany The Case of the Unlikely Spy Nat HentofFs analysis of the Samuel L. Morison prosecution and its implications for the press was compelling ("The Case of the Unlikely Spy," February issue...
...Martin Luther King Jr...
...Box 83489 Los Angeles, California 90083 The Shuttle's First Victims My reaction to your Comment on the Challenger explosion ("First Victims," March issue) was outrage...
...In short, it is not always easy to produce news that is both pleasing to press moguls and right-wingers and believable to the public...
...Michelle Swarmer Minneapolis, Minnesota Please, please can't we have Molly Ivins every month...
...Any linguistic resemblance is due solely to accident, malice, or stupidity (of which even the heroic Vietnamese have occasionally been guilty) of the translator...
...Will they be here forever...
...What an easy target...
...others do not, for logistical, financial, and educational reasons...
...LETTERS to the Editor Cuomo on the Contras Lest readers of The Progressive be misled as to my views regarding President Reagan's policies toward Nicaragua, a possibility which might have arisen from the excerpt you published ("Don't Ask Me," Comment, February issue) from an interview I gave to The Village Voice, I oppose Reagan's support of the contras...
...I urge all readers to renew their acquaintance with that essay and ask themselves whether it does not exactly describe the imperative of our times...
...Socialists and communists sought to abolish class privilege...
...As Knoll said, the Nazis attempted it some forty-five years ago...
...Those seven astronauts were, in a very important way, us—you and me and every American and every Russian and everyone else in the world...
...After I am through laughing, though, I have to sit back and wonder how people can be so naive, pessimistic, and childish at the same time...
...John V. Metzger Black River Falls, Wisconsin 'Cambodianized' by Vietnam In your March issue Comment section, you quote a Vietnamese officer discussing a planned "Cambodianiza-tion" of the war against the Khmer Rouge and end with the quip, "Richard Nixon must be laughing himself sick...
...Alan Wexelblat Austin, Texas Ialways get a good laugh out of The Progressive...
...Who are these half a million then, and what are they still doing here...
...Knoll said in a most eloquent way what is wrong with any form of censorship...
...More often than not, they have good feelings toward Americans, including GIs, and toward American culture-high, middle, and low...
...Only a few homosexual voices have been heard since the end of the war...
...In Washington, nothing talks louder than cold cash...
...We react to our shock and grief with awkwardness...
...In contradistinction to the Vietnamese "heroic act of fraternal solidarity," as they might put it, and the evident improvement in the internal Cambodian situation in the last few years, our involvement in Vietnam was based on imperialist notions of our "national interests...
...I could list thousands of such benefits...
...According to the Department of Energy, only 6 per cent of our nation's electricity is produced by nuclear reactors...
...She did not agree to risk her life for "crass public-relations purposes...
...Bob Reis Lake Oswego, Oregon Sam Day's NATO Blues The insights usually displayed by Samuel H. Day Jr...
...Oh, they'll balk at the idea, but well-orchestrated public pressure will win out when the target is a nuclear power plant...
...Day Jr...
...There is absolutely no comparison possible between the efforts of Vietnam in Kampuchea and ours of a decade and more ago in Vietnam...
...Marty Jezer Montreal, Quebec Tax Resistance It does not take majorities to move governments...
...It does not help most children to be thrown into schools with different languages every few years, nor do many German schools care to be inundated with foreign children...
...Army personnel...
...If ever a case justified a "foot-in-the-door" fear, it is this one—and it's the press's door and the Government's big foot...
...Thomas Plichta Hesperia, California Ivins Fans Congratulations on landing Molly Ivins...
...I can see no easy way to address this issue, but it must be addressed...
...Your Comment on the space shuttle really disturbed me...
...Women could not have achieved voting rights without some pioneers going to jail...
...it takes committed minorities...
...Sadly, our fellow victims have not done much to help tear down the curtain of ignorance and silence surrounding the demise of tens of thousands of people assigned the pink triangle...
...If one million Americans refuse their taxes, that will be the end of the arms race...
...C. Baldwin Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Thanks, Molly Ivins, for a much needed spring thaw...
...Dennis Tohey Somerville, Massachusetts At a time when the entire planet is faced with extinction and when government policies threaten freedom and individuality, artists have no choice but to respond with a sense of urgency and warning...
...It must have been like being forced to live next to an abandoned strip mine...
...To think that saving our world from nuclear annihilation is going to require less of us is ostrich-like foolishness...
...Keep up the good work...
...I was born in Nuremberg almost thirty years ago, and was taught to feel sympathy toward the American troops who were all over our part of the country...
...Welcome to The Progressive, and please keep your Small Favors coming...
...I remember their big Cadillacs cruising among our tiny Volkswagen beetles, and I always admired the school buses carrying the children of U.S...
...Venice, Florida The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Through her, I obtained American paperback books from the post exchange we are not allowed to enter...
...On the average base he would have found security much lower—even lax—or, in the case of housing areas, nonexistent...
...Frank Ritzinger Akron, Ohio Erwin Knoll raises the tiresome argument that people who would do away with "adult" bookstores and pornographic movies are trying to impose their prejudices on others...
...I, too, am especially concerned about the growing efforts to wipe away the horrors of Nazi Germany with new hateful propaganda...
...Most Germans do not consider themselves "occupied" by U.S...
...bases, GIs often behave rudely, but none are expelled...
...The statement is ridiculous on the face of it...
...Many who yearn for peace and understand the reality of nuclear war support the Reaganite argument that a strong and aggressive military is the way to prevent war...
...Don't you think your parallel is a bit off base...
...If the First Amendment Bookstore and Modern Books were selling filth, then they deserved to be torched...
...If one million Americans write letters, vote, or march tomorrow, that can and will be ignored...
...We wonder why American civilians here don't need the residency and work permits required of other foreigners...
...Were they to follow the conservative or ultra-rightist line on all matters, the media would cast doubt on their own "independence" and "objectivity" and would then be a less credible and less effective instrument of class control...
...That may be true of some people but not of all...
...Steve McCarney Ken Olson Johnny Weiss Glenwood Springs, Colorado The Pink Triangle Iam grateful to you for noting the danger posed by the recent "historical revisionists" (Editor's Memo, April issue...
...If Day had bothered to talk to GIs and Germans and Americans familiar with the issue, he would have learned that many GIs make a strong effort to learn about Germany and that most Germans do not "hate" GIs who tend to stick to the bases...
...And to think that we can protest effectively while continuing to pay the Government whose policies we know are so viciously destructive is a tragic and costly self-deception...
...I'm not naive enough to think the space program is all benefits and roses...
...To this point Miller adds a puzzling comment: "Although Parenti does not say so, this is what annoys the Far Right zealots" who regularly attack the press "for being too 'liberal.'" Far from not saying so, I repeatedly make this point about the Right throughout my book...
...Drug and alcohol abuse are widespread at the U.S...
...public won't buy unilateral disarmament because it perceives the Soviet Union as a threat...
...speculated on the reasons why Germans hate the Americans stationed in their midst...
...Should Mormons, Baptists, and Jews have to attend German Catholic and Lutheran churches...
...Germans, including peace-movement people, do not hate or even dislike Americans as people, despite the objections of many Germans to U.S...
...Fernbach's analysis shows that Nazism was possibly the greatest historical example of a desperate attempt to restore certain social relations...
...Unions were once illegal and persecuted...
...could not have won civil rights legislation without a bus boycott and lunch counter sit-ins...
...Look at the benefits we have gained from the space program—weather satellites to warn us of storms, resource-mapping satellites, new plastics, new alloys, new drugs...
...Translator David Fern-bach, in an introduction, carefully tells how gypsies, socialists, communists, and homosexuals have had a far harder time keeping alive the story of their suffering than have Jews...
...They were only exhibiting the American inability to react properly to tragedy...
...But I most strongly object to your reference to "the folly of squandering billions of dollars in space when we have pressing problems to handle here on Earth...
...Perhaps, though, in keeping with the times, a warning label should be placed on each issue: "This magazine contains artwork which may be upsetting and detrimental to a positive mental attitude...
...Gandhi could not have liberated India without a Salt March and textile boycott...
...I declined in the Voice piece to discuss my thoughts on Central America because my understanding was that that particular interview was to be just on New York State issues...
...The question is obvious: If we, as a predominantly antinuclear nation, were able to sustain a 6 per cent reduction in energy use, could we persuade the utilities to shut down their nukes...
...The war there would be over but for the joint U.S.-China support of the guerrillas...
...We cannot ignore that argument, and we would do well to admit that it isn't easy to confront...
...Such a blemish cannot be ignored...
...As a child, I had no direct contacts with Americans...
...Let me say again that I have long regarded Reagan's policies toward the Sandinistas as destructive and capable of leading to a wider war...
...As I note in my book, "This 'relative autonomy' is what irritates and sometimes infuriates the more conservative elements of the ruling class...
...To achieve this, they must address themselves in some way to actualities and social experiences which conservatives would prefer to leave unmentioned...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...The table of contents does not give any indication that the police suspected The Progressive of any criminal activity...
...Day visited high-security LETTERS to the Editor bases housing Pershing II missiles, where he found barbed wire and police dogs...
...Since then, I've had a little more contact with the American military community...
...My sister was crazy about funk and soul music, so she went to discotheques frequented by GIs...
...The file was begun on April 6, 1962, and the last entry is dated June 28, 1967...
Vol. 50 • May 1986 • No. 5
