Comment
Comment Apartheid and Apologia Ronald Reagan's recent apologia for apartheid in South Africa represents the single most repellent utterance on race issues by an elected American official since...
...News reports say economists find the size of the black-white disparity "striking," and are "at a loss to fully explain it...
...Rather, it merely carries on in the tradition of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford...
...But John Ferch is one such elusive shorebird...
...Seems he was not sufficiently gung-ho on conducting the war against Nicaragua...
...As Seymour Hersh reported recently in The New York Times, U.S...
...Ambassador's Awakening Apolitical appointee who won't play ball is never a common species in Washington, and in the Reagan Administration it's about as rare as an Eskimo curlew...
...The logic of it all means that the next stage is an expanded military operation...
...For this, he was suspended...
...A Little Dabll Do You Workers and the public beware: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has proposed a relaxing of restrictions on radiation exposure from nuclear plants...
...20555...
...South Africa is not Haiti, and it is not the Philippines...
...He does not recognize the institutionalized terror of South Africa's system...
...But does this mean that R.J...
...But economic justice...
...His chief concern is not for the rights of the oppressed but for the maintenance of power by South Africa's white regime...
...This is necessary, the NRC says, "to permit the licensee to have the assured labor resources when they are needed...
...national-security agencies since the 1960s routinely swapped intelligence information with South Africa...
...This is the standard liberal line, trotted out whenever a foreign country is in turmoil, be it South Africa, the Philippines, Chile, or El Salvador...
...Reynolds wield immense power, including the power to expound their views to the public by buying great quantities of print space and broadcast time...
...The Reagan Administration has had no such qualms...
...South Africa's rulers have spewed forth much the same nonsense for years...
...it's not likely to go down without a terrible fight...
...Twenty years ago, the richest 0.5 per cent controlled only 25 per cent of the wealth...
...The United States should impose full and total sanctions against South Africa: no trade, no investments, no bank loans, no diplomatic relations...
...diplomacy...
...But we ought to be clear on our reasons for advocating this policy...
...I've known about it for a long time, that we target the ANC," said an intelligence officer...
...Will the liberals in Congress, seeing such a turn, quickly reverse course and rally to support the whites...
...criminal activity does have interesting applications, however: A sortie over Zurich might curb tax evasion by wealthy U.S...
...it has eagerly provided South Africa with intelligence about the African National Congress...
...For the first time, South Africa's rulers began to feel some heat from Washington...
...Proponents of sanctions also claim that such a policy would help forestall an eventual communist takeover...
...For Reagan, the choice between an existing white racist government and the possibility of a black communist government is an easy one...
...The real issue here is what kind of political community we will have—one where a Government agency determines the range of views we may hold and express, or one where the broadest exchange of views is seen as a positive virtue in its own right and as a safeguard against the imposition of a hasty and unjustified consensus...
...But Carter's change in policy was sabotaged by the Pentagon...
...Congress, responding to widespread outrage among the American public, has taken the lead on the South Africa issue, pressing for economic sanctions...
...like rolling seven sevens in a row at Las Vegas or something like that.' We must break off all ties with South Africa, not because doing so will end apartheid, and not because it will nip communism in the bud, but simply because it's the right thing to do...
...Evidently, free speech is not one of those shared values...
...no wonder they cheered when they heard Reagan's speech...
...But the answer is not to be found in an arbitrary Government decision to curtail the freedom of speech of these corporate giants...
...It just may be that after decades of oppression by the Western-supported government in Pretoria, blacks will opt for a communist or socialist government...
...Proponents of sanctions typically argue that such a policy would help bring down apartheid...
...they don't want a voice...
...Whether it be in the bedroom, the police station, or the assembly hall, the rights of individuals are subservient to the needs of the State...
...That is economic concentration on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, and much greater than any seen in the more recent past...
...Such advertisements may, in fact, serve a commercial end, inducing a few more individuals to consider smoking...
...But an end to apartheid does not necessarily mean an end to the social, economic, and physical security of the white people in this country they love and have sacrificed so much to build.' —Ronald Reagan, July 22, 1986 Biased against blacks, predisposed in favor of any anticommunist regime, Reagan blinks at the whips and shackles of apartheid...
...Southern Africa and South Africa are repository of many of the vital minerals—vanadium, manganese, chromium, platinum—for which the West has no other secure source of supply...
...The Court's decision to curb free speech in the schools demonstrates how bald and brazen the approach has become...
...To Reagan, blacks are barbaric, whites are civilized, and so he instinctively sides with the white law-and-order government in Pretoria...
...A little pressure from Washington will not bring the government to its knees...
...The rule changes would allow the public to be exposed to twenty times the radiation level that the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe...
...households hold 35 per cent of the nation's net wealth...
...Headline from the New York City Tribune, June 30: 'Contra Aid Vote Refutes Leftist Theory that U.S...
...Americans and South Africans have never been enemies, and we understand the apprehension and fear and concern of all of your people...
...In its last session, the nine woolly mammoths set out to deny basic rights to entire groups of individuals, most notably gays, students, and those who are accused of committing crimes...
...The Court worked itself into a homophobic lather in the sodomy case, but behind the prejudice lurks a gnarled judicial yardstick...
...Ferch's naivete is almost touching, but at least he's had the uncommon sense to speak out once he opened his eyes...
...And South Africa's rulers may become more intransigent than ever...
...The Court, with Chief Justice Warren Burger (whose retirement was universally unlamented) writing the decision, assaulted the entire concept of free speech for students...
...I am screwed but happy...
...But the proper Government response is to marshal and propagate the most effective response in opposition to the tobacco industry's arguments— not to ban publication of those arguments...
...Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, uses the issue to launch his Presidential campaign...
...Reynolds ad banned by the FTC...
...Such requirements as warning labels on hazardous substances (including cigarettes) or accurate ingredient information give consumers the data they need to make safe, rational choices in the marketplace...
...I always thought we meant what we said," Ferch told Roy Gutman of Newsday...
...The FTC's approach is more likely to undermine the credibility of scientific research and of government than of the tobacco companies...
...If anyone was able to stomach Reagan's speech to the end, the underlying justifications were easily detectable: "Strategically, this is one of the most vital regions of the world," the President said...
...In a report based on data from the Federal Reserve Board and the Internal Revenue Service, the Committee noted that one half of one per cent of U.S...
...whites now have incomes almost twice as large as blacks...
...It's a military goal...
...The FTC's attempts to suppress the R.J...
...South Africa is too far gone in the teeth...
...Reynolds, the tobacco company, be allowed to place advertisements in major newspapers challenging the scientific validity of studies that have implicated cigarette smoking in a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease...
...But the economic argument is not paramount, for the United States has other sources and shipping routes for oil and strategic minerals...
...Is Driven by Defense Industry.' As Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, puts it, the figures are "proof that the rich get richer...
...citizens, and an incursion into London could halt currency violations by several major American banks...
...For years, the use of Compound 1080 was banned because its indiscriminate use against coyotes in the West caused the deaths of other animals...
...There is life after diplomacy...
...In the eyes of the Reagan Administration, morality takes a back seat to markets...
...It might, but it might not...
...Them That's Got If anyone doubted that America's rich are different from you and me—they don't just have more money, they have almost all of it—the Congressional Joint Economic Committee recently served up the facts...
...Only a few days before the Congressional study was released, the Census Bureau published its own report on the national wealth, its first to take a comprehensive look at people's total assets—not just income, but ownership of real estate, savings accounts, automobiles, stocks, and businesses, minus debts...
...He adds that "if wealth is power, then most Americans have less power today than in the early 1960s...
...NRC, Washington, D.C...
...Nearly a third of black households have no assets at all...
...The Soviet Union is not unaware of the stakes," the President intoned, warning that if the conflict in southern Africa intensifies, "the Soviet Union will be the main beneficiary...
...Even though he calls for the release of Nelson Mandela, imprisoned leader of the African National Congress, he tells the South African government that it need not negotiate with the ANC...
...Is "commercial speech" to be stripped of First Amendment protection even when the speech at issue addresses fundamental questions of public policy—as did the R.J...
...This survey found that the median net worth of white U.S...
...Certainly the FTC is right when it insists that some special constraints must be imposed on certain forms of commercial speech...
...To direct and coordinate this buildup of an intervention force, the Pentagon will establish a new command in Washington, headed by a three-star general or admiral...
...foreign policy: As soon as the Soviet bugaboo can be conjured up, all other considerations—morality, racial equality, the principle of one-person one-vote—fly out the window...
...his personal numbness toward blacks doesn't make policy...
...Army into the cocaine jungles of Bolivia establishes new records for extraterritorial reach...
...Comment Apartheid and Apologia Ronald Reagan's recent apologia for apartheid in South Africa represents the single most repellent utterance on race issues by an elected American official since John Caldwell Calhoun bent language and logic in defense of slavery 140 years ago...
...He now recognizes that the Reagan Administration is set upon a dangerous course...
...In defending their society and people," Reagan said, "the South African government has a right and responsibility to maintain order in the face of terrorists...
...Our goal is something different...
...He had made the silly mistake of taking the Reagan Administration at its word...
...The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ruled that such ads should be banned because they mislead and defraud consumers...
...Surely it is a highly appropriate function of public-school education to prohibit the use of vulgar and offensive terms in public discourse," Burger wrote...
...they could turn inward and build an economy independent of the West...
...Oil lanes and mineral supplies are just a fancy way of saying what Donald Regan said so crudely in his contemptuous remarks about American women and their appetite for diamonds...
...The most sympathy Reagan could muster for the black freedom struggle was this vacuous statement: "That the black people of South Africa should have a voice in their own governance is an idea whose time has come...
...Such vast multinational conglomerates as R.J...
...Guess again...
...It's a tradition of rabid anticommunism which always serves as an excuse not to do what is right...
...May the Government insist that its scientific findings are the last word—beyond challenge or contradiction...
...Instead, we should mount a serious effort to limit their economic power and to provide wider media access to the rest of us...
...Reynolds has no right to contest the scientific consensus on which the smoking warning is based...
...The Court's ruling in the Georgia sodomy case not only grants states the power to proscribe individual sexual activity among consenting adults, it also intrudes upon basic privacy rights enshrined in the Fourth Amendment...
...The Yanks Are Coming If Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger has his way—and he usually does with the spineless wonders who serve in the U.S...
...Schools must teach by example the shared values of a civilized social order...
...We've always considered them to be the bad guys, to be Soviet pawns, stalking horses for the Soviets...
...But the preemption argument plays into the hands of Reagan and the Right...
...The manufacturer or vendor who mislabels products by concealing or misrepresenting ingredients can pose an immediate danger to the public...
...But the Reagan Administration didn't need to leave the lower forty-eight to attack the nation's drug problem...
...Workers spread nearly 50,000 pellets of Compound 1080 on the twenty-two-mile-long island...
...Comment Reign of the Woolly Mammoths The principle that rights inhere to individuals and not to the State is under assault in the Reagan age, and nowhere more ominously than on the Supreme Court...
...The $ 100 million in aid to the contras that Congress recently approved will just be a down payment, warns Ferch...
...Reagan's policy is not an aberration in the history of postwar U.S...
...Public comment on the NRC's "updating" of the standards is open until September 12 and should be sent to: Docketing and Service Branch, Secretary, U.S...
...It's just what the world needs: a quick, expertly staffed convenience store for destruction and death...
...They might start with racism and proceed from there to examine America's continuing patterns of educational and residential segregation and economic exploitation of minorities...
...The Fish and Wildlife Service wants all the arctic foxes off Alaska's Kiska Island so it can re-establish a nesting colony of rare Aleutian Canada geese...
...firms trafficking with Pretoria...
...Because the ANC includes communists...
...And nuclear companies would be allowed to expose employees to twice the previous annual radiation limit...
...even Richard Lugar, Republican Senator from Indiana, has enough sense to get on board for at least some limited measures...
...One group that most of us might expect to be better off today than in the early 1960s is black Americans...
...I'm beginning to think I accepted something that wasn't true...
...he reserves the word "terror" to describe the actions only of blacks—those in the African National Congress, South Africa's leading black liberation group, and those in the townships and "homelands" who have attacked black collaborators...
...it is an organized, entrenched society with millions of privileged white rulers...
...he'll side with the white racists every time...
...By invoking it, liberals implicitly agree that the goal of U.S...
...Air Force Lieutenant General James A. Abrahamson, trying to explain how the 'layered-defense' concept behind Star Wars will confound Soviet military planners: 'What you are trying to present him with is one of those probabilities problems...
...But the FTC's position raises questions that should trouble even those who believe—as we do—that tobacco producers and distributors are merchants of death...
...The Reagan Administration may be right when it argues that other Western powers would replace U.S...
...Boardinghouse Reach The raid by the U.S...
...Sanctions are a moral imperative...
...The fundamental reason for Reagan policy is good old-fashioned anticommunism...
...It is not a dictatorship...
...Only for a brief moment during the Carter Administration did human rights take precedence, in rhetoric and to some extent in practice...
...Maintaining relations with such an evil regime stains the soul and haunts the conscience...
...It smacks of the Stalinist suppression of all genetic science that did not conform to the exotic theories of Trofim Lysenko...
...After twenty-seven years in the Foreign Service, Ferch's disillusionment has revitalized him...
...ambassador to Honduras for the past year until he was sent packing in July...
...When Carter came to office, he ordered a halt to the secret liaison...
...Beginning with the 1988 fiscal year, Weinberger recently advised Congress, the military plans to spend $7.6 billion a year on a five-year program to beef up commando and special-forces units capable of mounting instantaneous strikes against America's enemies, real or imagined...
...But the Navy really went bonkers on this and it wasn't stopped," a former Carter official told Hersh...
...Louis and Milwaukee...
...We wanted pressure so we could negotiate...
...The South African government is under no obligation to negotiate the future of the country with any organization that proclaims a goal of creating a communist state—and uses terrorist tactics to achieve it," the President declared...
...when he discovered the real policy, he was leery of implementing it...
...It's an old tenet of U.S...
...A voice...
...And which, incidentally, are crucial to the Pentagon's warmaking capability...
...policy should be preventing communists from gaining power...
...The principle of sending the Army to a foreign country to stem U.S...
...They want self-rule...
...Reagan cozies up to South Africa's rulers not merely because he harbors bigotry...
...Senate and the House of Representatives—the Pentagon will soon be better equipped than ever before to send its flying squads of military meddlers on missions of intervention all over the world...
...Matthew Fraser, a high-school student in Spokane, Washington, had delivered a speech full of sexual innuendo to tout the candidacy of one of his friends...
...They can—and do—inflict grave injury on immense numbers of consumers...
...Studies comparing the income levels of blacks and whites over the years show the gap is widening, not narrowing...
...Reynolds ad relies on the notion that "commercial speech" is not entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment...
...Reagan has no interest in black majority rule in South Africa...
...In South Africa, that could, indeed, mean opposing Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress, and black liberation...
...No one can deny that the civil-rights movement has resulted in a greater, but not yet adequate, measure of social justice...
...Blacks are the overwhelming majority...
...It would have been cheaper and easier to send a strike force into the tobacco fields of North Carolina or the breweries of St...
...Government-sanctioned science is and ought to be alien to the American experience...
...Around the Cape of Good Hope passes the oil of the Persian Gulf—which is indispensable to the industrial economies of Western Europe...
...Ferch served as U.S...
...All of this presumably will delight such legislators as Representative Dan Daniel, a Virginia Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who has expressed a keen interest in "one-stop shopping for low-intensity warfare...
...The next 9.5 per cent of the households at the top of the heap absorb another 37 per cent of assets, meaning that 10 per cent of the people own 72 per cent of the pie...
...Smoke Signals, Too, Are a Form of Speech Should R.J...
...I really don't think I want to have anything to do with the Foreign Service any more," he told Gutman...
...households is more than eleven times that of black households and almost eight times that of Hispanic households...
...That sum "is going to go so fast, it's really just the first step...
...Until we manage to construct a bona-fide democracy—specifically including economic democracy—we can hardly deny the blues-man his song: "Them that's got is them that gets, and I ain't got nothin' yet...
...What makes policy is economics and ideology...
Vol. 50 • September 1986 • No. 9
