Letters
LETTERS to the Editor First Victims The Progressive is to be commended for its courageous stand on the space-shuttle disaster ("First Victims," Comment, March issue). The flag-waving hysteria...
...It is certainly noteworthy that the craven, servile American media rarely mention these rightist atrocities when they launch into their broadsides against international terrorism and lawlessness...
...If an information source is riot destroyed by being labeled "radical," it will finally meet the great dismissal, "but that's just their opinion...
...However, as noble as the anti-apartheid movement is, it constitutes the safest of protests, without serious personal cost or fear of ostracism...
...The notion that political questions are too complex for the average person is a powerful force in impeding social change...
...Miller refers to The Progressive and The Nation as "magazines of opinion...
...When one stacks Muam-mar Qaddafi's real and alleged terrorist acts against the 100,000 killed, 200,000 wounded, and tens of thousands "missing" as a result of the Guatemalan regime's counterinsurgency tactics, the North African leader comes across as a mere piker in the mayhem business...
...Think about it: Is the film different from our own infrastructure, much of which no longer works or simply crumbles about us...
...Ken Been Salt Lake City, Utah <BraziP Is Here and Now Michael H. Seitz's review of Brazil ("The Stuff of Nightmares," Film, April issue) is the first review I've seen in which the film is presented as a world that "isn't all that different from the one we actually inhabit," rather than some far-off totalitarian fantasy...
...The inconsistency is jarring...
...As Allan Nairn made clear in "The Guatemala Connection" (May issue), the United States is itself one of the biggest purveyors of terrorism on the planet...
...Is it a scam as well...
...A more appropriate question, I believe, is, "What do we want to know...
...David L. Barlett Milwaukee, Wisconsin The Politics of Punk Punk is not a fashion, punk is not something that can be "in," and punk is in no way a commodity ("The Young and the Restless," by John Stevenson, May issue...
...I wonder if our Government might pay more attention to this vital goal if the Soviet embassy in Washington were suddenly deluged with letters from American citizens expressing their desires for nuclear disarmament...
...In his review of two books about the mass media (Books, April issue), Arthur S. Miller asks, "Do Americans want to know...
...In those nations, frivolous lawsuits are discouraged by the practice of compelling losing plaintiffs to pay winning defendants' legal fees and court costs...
...Griffin Denville, New Jersey The author replies: Bernard Bear Kamoroff refers to a legal principle called "joint and several liability...
...The exorbitant cost of legal assistance has roots deeper than the so-called American rule...
...They must accordingly be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution...
...Punk is a rebellious alternative life style for youth...
...Richard Sharvy Eugene, Oregon As I sat here in my prison cell on Easter Eve, I heard that our President has flatly refused even to attempt reasonable progress toward nuclear disarmament...
...Amid all of his misrepresentations about events in Central America, we can at least give him credit for the accuracy of his characterization of the brutish contras as "freedom fighters...
...Michael Sean McDonough Madison, Wisconsin South Africa and Central America Much has been published recently about the apparent rebirth of social and political awareness on the American campus as symbolized by the dedicated campaign for complete divestLETTERS to the Editor ment in corporations doing business with the apartheid regime of South Africa...
...Bernard Bear Kamorqff Laytonville, California The insurance industry solution to the insurance crisis is admittedly self-serving, but that doesn't justify the trial lawyers' profligate exploitation of society at large...
...Thad Metz Des Moines, Iowa Human-Rights Violators Wayne Iverson's "No Way to San Jose for Third World Cops" (Datelines, April issue) said Amnesty International has named El Salvador and Guatemala "among the world's worst violators of human rights...
...C.W...
...The result is occasionally unfair to one or another defendant, but from the victim's perspective it makes sense, since it increases the chances that compensation will be paid...
...Supreme Court shamefully upheld internment of citizens of Japanese ancestry ("Vindication, Forty-four Years Later," Datelines, April issue...
...Reagan might try to cheat the lie-detector by zonking himself out on tranquilizers before appearing on television, and that brings me to drug testing...
...The history of opposition movements in this country shows that Americans can and do become involved in passionate political debate...
...Having just returned from dinner at a restaurant where the decor was a tangle of giant ceiling ducts, finding that the two elevators in our building don't work at all or stop at nonexistent floors, and having been told at least three times in one week that "the computers are down," my only defense is to whistle "Brazil" and plod gamely ahead with life...
...It sounds like a legitimate complaint to me...
...It is not AI policy to make any such rating, but only to report what it can establish about human-rights violations in each country, recognizing that there may be more serious violations elsewhere that cannot be proved...
...Because of the contingent-fee system, they can lose two-thirds of their cases and still become millionaires...
...And we must choose not to squander our limited resources on a "Crusade-into-Space" fantasy...
...Julian R. Harrison Durham, North Carolina Reagan's Raiders Ronald Reagan justified his recent bombing of Libya with a lot of pious talk about "fighting terrorism...
...We must choose to solve the multitude of life-threatening problems confronting us...
...Under this doctrine, all wrongdoers are responsible for compensating the victim...
...Perhaps it is time for the American people to take more direct action in behalf of world peace...
...There are punks throughout North America, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe who are desperately trying to combat the feelings of alienation and dominance produced by today's social institutions...
...But Hentoff failed to mention a current invasion of privacy and civil liberties: the HTLV-III test...
...Part of the answer can be found in Miller's review...
...Rudy Simons Oak Park, Michigan Dissenting Opinion Sue Davidson was certainly correct when she reported that in 1944 the U.S...
...The implication, whether he intends it or not, is that Time and Newsweek are magazines of fact...
...Yes, we need to be vigilant against any potential invasions of personal civil rights through blood testing, etc., but we need also to be aware of the discriminatory testing already under way...
...The United States is flooded with frivolous personal-injury lawsuits because of the so-called American rule, which distinguishes our country from England, Canada, and other Western democracies...
...We can be fairly sure that any corporation doing blood tests as part of entrance physicals is doing HTLV-III antibody testing, too...
...Though the tests can do no more than this, they are already being widely used to presume the "guilt" of having AIDS and the "guilt" of being gay...
...Ten Salvadoran soldiers died in the same battle...
...Amid the Hollywood output of Rambo trash, this is one of the few motion pictures with ideas, and it presents a frightening image of just who we really are...
...citizens—have a divine destiny to "conquer" space...
...The impression was given that the corpses in these photos were executed by military Death Squads when, in fact, they were leftist guerrillas who were killed when they attacked Las Guaras Bridge on the road to Suchitoto...
...Together with its Israeli client, the United States has provided the Guatemalan regime with all the deadly force it needs to maintain a clique of feudal landowners in power...
...HTLV-III is the virus widely believed to be a key factor in Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS...
...Solidarity was a counterrevolutionary political formation dominated by right-wing clerics, declasse intellectuals, and chauvinistic technical and managerial personnel—hardly a wholesome social composition for a progressive political movement...
...When will the marching and mass demonstrations begin to bring this madness to an end...
...For another, the rule might cause an increase in litigation...
...I strongly recommend that all your readers see it...
...Anarcho/punks despise the division of labor that gives rise to a powerful bureaucratic, managerial elite...
...What we truly desire is a society where it is forbidden to forbid...
...Here, however, the American rule turns judicial winners into financial losers and makes this nation a paradise for shysters...
...Robert P. Strempel Carla C. Schmakel Chicago, Illinois Discriminatory Testing Nat Hentoff s "Presumption of Guilt" (Who's on First?, May issue) was a useful presentation of the preparations being made by government and industry leaders to test the various body fluids of employees...
...The politics of punk can be linked to the situationalist phrase, "the personal as political...
...Justice Frank Murphy characterized the majority's decision as the "legalization of racism...
...Because of our great respect for individual autonomy, there is no organization, authority, ideology, or party involved in the punk movement...
...Maybe violent movies do induce certain weak-minded people to commit aggressive acts, so let's have some tough laws prohibiting the President, members of his Cabinet, and members of Congress from seeing films starring Sylvester Stallone or Nick Nolte...
...AI's 1985 report described human rights violations in El Salvador and Guatemala as "massive," a word that may seem to imply comparison, and supported this finding with the grim details that are becoming all too familiar...
...Leon Lukaszewski Walnut Creek, California Allan Nairn's report on the Salvadoran Death Squads ("Confessions of a Death Squad Officer," March issue) was excellent, but the two photos that accompanied the article were totally misleading...
...Lest we become too cynical, however, it is worth remembering that three Justices dissented...
...We try to reinvent society by ourselves, not by installing leaders to do it for us...
...The popular religion seems to maintain that humans—especially those who are U.S...
...When more than one party is responsible for an injury, the defendant with the most liability coverage or the most money—the one with "deep pockets"—must often pay the full award, though that defendant may bear only a small part of the responsibility...
...We resent the oppressive, competitive, and boring tasks that workers and students are compelled to perform...
...He further wrote, "All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land...
...They are, indeed, freedom fighters just as physicians are disease fighters and police are crime fighters...
...Justice Murphy's words remain a magnificent star for the nation—and the Court-to steer by...
...Various blood tests can identify the presence of antibodies to the virus, which suggests, in turn, that the individual has been exposed to the virus at some time, at some level...
...Keenen Peck Madison, Wisconsin What Do We Want to Know...
...Miller also plays into the hands of the press and the ruling classes when he asks whether Americans (meaning lower- and middle-class Americans) are capable of grasping "immensely complicated public-policy problems...
...We feel that hierarchical and patriarchal organizations, including governments, corporations, the church, school, and family, must all be radically changed...
...Walter E. Greene Boston, Massachusetts Insurance Scam Keenen Peck's "The Great Insurance Scam" (April issue) did not mention one major problem insurance companies often bring up when they sing the blues— the "deep-pockets" laws...
...Insurance companies are fighting to gain access to antibodies test results so they can weed out potential AIDS victims...
...Susan Fair Ypsilanti, Michigan Let's hear it for the President...
...Furthermore, the principle allows an injured person to sue one wrongdoer who, in turn, can recover damages due from other guilty parties...
...The flag-waving hysteria that followed in the immediate wake of the shuttle explosion was profoundly disturbing...
...The most infuriating aspect of the mass media is their superb performance in the role of "objective observers...
...Such language is the chief weapon of the mass media...
...C.W...
...The U.S...
...Furthermore, Solidarity received significant funding from the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as substantial financial and political backing from the AFL-CIO's notorious International Affairs Department...
...If one guilty party cannot pay its share of the damages, the other defendants must come up with the full amount...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...they'll be less inclined to settle out of court if they're persuaded they'll pay zero legal fees if they win in court...
...Moreover, Solidarity was, to my knowledge, the only "trade union" ever to be supported by such rightist political luminaries as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan...
...For one thing, not all losing lawsuits are frivolous...
...This mystic belief supports a system for siphoning enormous amounts from our national budget...
...Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States...
...military is testing recruits and has suggested testing all personnel for the HTLV-III antibodies...
...Mel London New York, New York The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Keara M. O'Dempsey Miami, Florida Solidarity for Never Your call for the American Left to emulate the Polish Solidarity movement ("Within Limits," Comment, April issue) is inane and counterproductive...
...I favor punishing those who file frivolous lawsuits—or interpose frivolous defenses—but I don't believe the European "bridge rule" is the mechanism to do that...
...We recognize capitalism and the Government as evils to be fought against, so we are anti-status (socialists) and anti-state (anarchists...
...The same students willing to demonstrate against the transgressions of a foreign government 10,000 miles from the United States stand virtually mute when it comes to the terrorist activities of their own Government in its dealings with Central America...
...If this country had social insurance that guaranteed compensation to victims, we could scrap joint and several liability...
...Richard Posner, the conservative Federal judge in Chicago, points out that people who sue are optimistic about the outcome...
...Why, then, is today's establishment press faced with so little competition...
...Insurance agents all over California cite "deep-pockets" judgments as a reason for premium increases...
...Frank W. Goheen Camas, Washington Ihave always strongly opposed censorship, compulsory lie-detector tests, drug testing, and other violations of privacy and civil liberties...
...But after listening to President Reagan's plea for support of his scheme to send $100 million to the contras, I've completely changed my mind...
...America funds murderers and debates the overthrow of a sovereign government, and the people are silent...
...Since the President claims that atrocities attributed to the contras were really perpetrated by Sandinistas in disguise, let's have him wired to a lie-detector during every television appearance and display the wiggly lines across the bottom of the screen while he talks, so that we can all judge for ourselves...
...Griffin apparently didn't read all the way through my article, for I concluded that the tort system is not right...
Vol. 50 • June 1986 • No. 6
