COMMENT

...This year, the U.S...

...Those who are inclined to celebrate (once again) the achievement of a "workers' paradise" in the Soviet Union should remind themselves, first of all, that these are the Gorbachev reforms, imposed from the top rather than arrived at by democratic debate and decision-making...

...Some of the macroeconomic policies that aimed at restructuring production aggravated the plight of some vulnerable groups in the short run and did not help to alleviate the poverty of some groups in the longer run," the report noted...

...The Democrats are no better...

...also says the role played by coal in polluting the atmosphere is "still unknown...

...Bat the fault lies not so much with the skipper of the Vincennes, nor with the vaunted naval technology that can't distinguish between a fighter plane and...

...But for all the hand-wringing, the response has been astonishingly inadequate and short-sighted...

...Wrong again...

...The party has condemned his mistakes and crimes...

...A Many-Sided Figure' When the dubious honors of the Twentieth Century are announced, Pol Pot and Stalin will rank not far behind Hitler for atrocities committed...

...China has apparently agreed to grant asylum to Pol Pot, who led the sanguinary Khmer Rouge in a calamitous experiment in primitive communism...

...Comment the Progressive The Russian Revolution Twenty years ago this August, when Czech communist leaders caught up in the ferment of Prague Spring attempted to institute a reform program they called "socialism with a human face," Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks rumbled into Czechoslovakia to put a brutal end to that brief, hopeful venture in democracy...

...Now, while it is parchingly obvious, Americans are being told that we've tampered with our environment so much that even the climate is changing...

...territory in his 1980 "doctrine," the United States has been steaming toward disaster...

...He was neither a spy nor a murderer, he never committed any crimes...

...Homelessness is suddenly a severe problem in Portland, where the average cost of a family home has doubled in the last four years...

...Ever since Jimmy Carter grafted the Gulf onto U.S...

...But storms are heading for the coast...

...the first time, radical alternatives to the status quoin both political and economic institutions—are receiving serious attention...

...policy can help shore up the Soviet economy or sabotage it...

...This one act has killed 290 people...

...And some of those policymakers, it seems clear, can hardly wait to take advantage of Soviet discomfiture...

...Neither Dukakis nor Reagan has an adequate answer, for no legitimate reason exists—only the unrestrained reflex to extend U.S...

...economic policy, recently took an uncharacteristic look at the effect of its actions on poor people in Third World...

...In customary fashion, the U.S...

...Overburdened sewerage plants are inflicting severe damage on coastal fishing areas...

...But for the most part, the Government seems ready to live with a ravaged^ climate...

...Vincennes mistook an Iranian commercial airliner on a regularly scheduled civilian flight for a hostile F-14 and sent a guided missile to destroy the plane, killing 290 passengers, it was not "an understandable accident," as President Reagan would have us believe...

...The new look at recent history opens unlimited possibilities: It lays the groundwork for challenging all of the ossified assumptions of official Soviet doctrine...

...And unless the policy is changed, more bodies will be fished from the waters of the Gulf before we're through...

...There is mounting evidence that shipping in the Gulf is less safe now than before the U.S...

...Now, belatedly, spring has come to Moscow, and no hostile military force is poised on the Soviet borders to snuff out Mikhail Gorbachev's experiment in liberalization...

...Correct," Ivanov responded...

...By establishing community land trusts, public agencies could assist in providing low-cost housing, creating jobs, and preserving open spaces, scenic areas, and recreational sites...

...And then the commentators and editorialists will assure us, with their customary solemnity, that all this proves "the system works...

...Americans, like the people of the Soviet Union, have a keen interest in seeing the Soviet spring bloom...

...The reaction has already set in...

...Along the California shore, traffic congestion—as measured by the time motorists lose in traffic jams—has been increasing at a rate of 25 per cent a year...

...In a recent article on Portland, The New York Times reported, "It wasn't uncommon for doctors and lawyers, newcomers to the real estate business here, to quadruple their investments in six months...

...one member of the audience shouted, according to The New York Times...

...Still, the changes are sweeping and profound...

...By unsealing the past, Gorbachev has made his boldest—and riskiest—move...

...The Greater Scandal So far, 100 or so military contracts worth tens of billions of dollars have come under scrutiny...

...Neither transportation nor sewerage systems in coastal communities are equipped to accommodate the sudden influx of new residents...

...Nonetheless, Gorbachev's program faces formidable dangers from within and without—not the least of them from the Soviet Union's superpower rival...

...Clearly we have the right to defend our forces against imminent threats," said Michael Dukakis, the presumed Democratic nominee...

...Before it's over, some members of Congress or their aides may also be implicated...

...Techniques that give the states genuine economic clout—the use of public-employee pension funds and state bonding authority, for example—hold out more promise...

...Reagan stepped up the risk in early 1987 by acceding to Kuwait's request for shipping protection as a way of reasserting U.S...

...policymakers...

...Weighing mass murder and public works on the same scale may stand as a benchmark of moral reasoning, circa 1988...

...And yet, even today, they have their defenders...

...And Stalin, despite Mikhail Gorbachev's bold efforts, retains the loyalties of many Soviet hard-liners...

...Most of the newly created service-sector jobs offer few employee benefits, and even those that pay best are failing to keep pace with the rapidly rising cost of living in the coastal boom towns...

...Solar and other renewable sources of power, reforestation, and conservation are the only reasonable means of combating the destruction of the ecosystem...

...No one can know how far the Soviet transformation will go, but to proceed, Gorbachev (and his successors) will need to be relieved of the enormous burdens of the nuclear arms race, the tensions of the Cold War, and the pressures of superpower rivalry...

...Of all the exciting new turns in Soviet life, none is more important than the effort to reopen the books on the past...

...And apparently, the shooting down of the airliner occurred over what appears to have been an unprovoked attack against our forces...

...So would the reallocation of military expenditures to social purposes...

...firepower to every hot spot on the globe...

...Greenhouse Blues l^onfronted with this summer's record drought, '\tt Government officials are suddenly rediscovering "the greenhouse effect...

...With the possible exception of Jesse Jackson, who previously supported the U.S...

...that is why it is prepared to retreat from previous positions in so many parts of the world...

...Even as the Communist Party convened to hear his proposals for restructuring, American network crews roaming the Moscow streets found it easy to conduct sidewalk interviews with citizens deeply disturbed by the "breakdown of discipline" and other departures from the authoritarian past...

...credibility after the Iran-contra debacle...

...It takes its toll not just in public funds but in human misery...

...In that sort of climate, 'individuals borrow heavily to get in on the speculative action, and out-of-state interests buy up large tracts of land in the hope of selling them later to the next wave of speculators...

...Seasonal businesses along the New England coast are scrambling for summer help...

...And the entrenched bureaucrats whose power and perquisites are under attack can be expected to mount a vigorous counterattack...

...The fault lies with the U.S...

...In due course there will undoubtedly be indictments and trials in the Pentagon procurement scandal...

...But as long as industry and government stick to their myopic ways, there won't be much of a planet left to conserve...

...It was a shameful consequence of a shameful policy...

...His works should be available...

...Two aspects of Reaganomics account for the exponential growth of coastal economies—large tax cuts for the wealthy, who have gone on a vacation-home building binge, and massive military expenditures, which have meant rapid expansion for the high-tech industries centered in California and New England...

...Oh, it's a scandal all right—the bribery and corruption, the shameless squandering of the taxpayers' money, the collusion and conspiracy among individuals who piously intone their faith in free enterprise and their deep concern about "national security...

...But it's not the greatest scandal...

...at living in a more peaceful, just, and prosperous world...

...But Stalin killed millions of people...

...The Pentagon procurement scandal 'is a perfect example of how the system is working, because when that information comes in, that information is combined from the various investigative entities and aggressive action is taken.' —June Gibbs Brown, Defense Department Inspector General...

...There will probably be some convictions, a few individuals will go to prison, and new "safeguards" will be instituted to reform the system by which our Government purchases its instruments of death...

...Inevitably, the social costs of irrational and irregular economic development are borne disproportionately by the working class land the poor...

...That scandal involves not tens of billions but trillions of dollars...

...There is civil rehabilitation, and Trotsky deserves it...

...But their solution would merely add radioactive soil and water to the problems confronting a planet plagued by rising oceans, drought, and an asphyxiating atmosphere...

...Even Gorbachev's relations with his own military, with his colleagues and rivals, and with the Soviet people will be shaped, in large part, by the decisions of U.S...

...Coastal Boom and Bust Coastal communities in both the Eastern and Western United States have been among the prime beneficiaries of the Reagan Administration's economic "boom...

...presence in the Persian Gulf...

...It's easy to make too much or too little of the Gorbachev reforms...

...Anatoly Ivanov, a conservative Soviet editor, was assailed for his defense of Stalin at an open meeting in Moscow recently...

...an airbus...

...For the first time since the earliest years of the Soviet regime, officials and the media are facing up to many of the system's grave shortcomings and failures, For the first time, some of the differences within the top leadership are aired in public...

...It subverts not the rules of competitive bidding but the norms of civilization...

...Even its own bureaucratic language could not disguise what its critics have charged all along: that the IMF systematically punishes the impoverished...

...naval buildup," a report from the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently concluded...

...It's being called the greatest scandal in Pentagon history...

...That is why the Soviet government has withdrawn from its foolish intervention in Afghanistan and has offered the United States extraordinary concessions in disarmament...

...Wrong...

...They view" atomic energy as an easy answer to the now all-too-obvious after-effects of burning fossil fuels...

...Government refuses to admit flaws in the policy even after the debacle...

...Government did take one long-overdue step in response to the global warming trend: It signed a pact to limit the output of chlorofluorocarbons...

...Investigators are focusing on two dozen present or former officials of the Defense Department, more than fifty private consultants, and almost twenty major contractors...

...Almost the entire Northeast coast is awash in frenzied land speculation...

...It also warned, presciently, that the "chances for mishaps are high...

...this is also our history.' —Soviet economist Otto R. Latsis, writing in Komsomolskaya Pravda 'You could in a sense, of course, characterize ail combat operations as an accident waiting to happen.' —Admiral William J. Crowe Jr., Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Steaming Toward Disaster Wh en the U.S.S...

...In the absence of a rational approach to economic development, the distinction between boom and bust is likely to become meaningless—as it already has on the coasts...

...The Communist Party bureaucracy retains its monopoly on power, there is no such thing as a free trade-union movement in the Soviet Union, the police continue to abuse citizens' rights, and the "norms of socialist legality" are still violated every day by brutal reprisals against dissidents...

...The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, is planning dams and storm drains to deal with the rising oceans, and predicts it will cost billions of dollars to replace coastal property washed away as the polar ice cap melts...

...in this, as in many other ways, the superpowers seem to read from the same book...

...At the same time, I think that this man was not just a onesided figure, as people write so often these days...

...Only a few years ago, it seemed all but unthinkable that we would see and hear, in our lifetime, a candid appraisal of Stalin's crimes in official Soviet media, or witness the rehabilitation of such martyred Bolshevik revolutionaries as Bu-kharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and perhaps even Trotsky...

...presence hasn't done anyone any good...

...But the U.S...

...While major industrial cities and the agricultural heartland are buffeted by deindus-trialization and other forms of economic distress, many areas along the Pacific and Atlantic shorelines are thriving, either as high-tech centers or as resorts...

...If it fails, the future may prove to be evert more troubled than the past...

...But why were our forces there in the first place...

...In an attempt to curb the speculative mania and, perhaps, provide more affordable housing, some environmental groups have proposed state speculation taxes and land-transfer fees, but such devices, like more conventional zoning restrictions, seem less than adequate to meet the problem...

...The official response resembled almost to the line the reaction of the Soviet Union after it downed the Korean airliner in September 1983...

...Joseph Mullan, senior vice president for environmental issues at the National Coal Association, points out, by way of exonerating the coal industry, that some scientists predict a coming ice age, which will cancel out the greenhouse effect anyway...

...If Gorbachev's experiment is allowed to succeed and proceed, we will all have a better chance...

...But for Americans who know nothing of the IMF or cling to the notion that it is somehow helping the Third World, the confession ought to startle and enrage...

...they require national solutions...

...Washington has it in its power to enhance the process of constructive change in the Soviet Union, or to undermine it...

...Plant-closing legislation, a minimal step, would help...

...But we don't praise Stalin for killing millions of people...

...presence in the Gulf but seems to be having second thoughts, the "opposition party" gives no opposition...

...By far the greater scandal is the "legitimate" business the Pentagon conducts day in and day out: the use of military force—the threat and the reality— to impose America's will on people all over the world...

...Ultimately, however, the problems of uneven economic development cannot be adequately addressed in local or state terms...

...Jobs in these areas are so plentiful that in Portland, Maine's largest city, McDonald's franchises are compelled to offer more than $5 an hour for counter workers...

...Fund for the Rich The International Monetary Fund, the global enforcer of U.S...

...they suffer the imposed hardships on a daily basis...

...To the urban and rural poor in the Third World, this comes as no surprise...

...Most troubling of all, though, is how the drought has led many politicians and editorialists to clamor for more and better nuclear power...