COMMENT
the Progressive COMMENTS Corporate Safety Net 'The savings-and-loan crisis might represent a recurring American problem: the badly managed investment that the Government has to spend billions to...
...If Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras continue to have problems, there's always Guatemala that can be counted on...
...To justify such a policy, the Administration claims it is supporting democracy...
...The $288 billion military spending bill, which restored $600 million that had been cut from the Star Wars budget, was approved by a 96-to-2 vote of the Democratic-controlled Senate...
...But that's not enough, the Bush Administration now says...
...Government shunned aid to Guatemala because of its appalling record of human-rights abuses...
...that it is appropriate...
...Now they have been joined by the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, which recently released a scientific report confirming all of the above...
...They have evidently discovered that unless the hype is high enough, the rhetoric strident enough, the alarms loud enough, no one will watch, no one will subscribe, no one will advertise...
...Fingerprints...
...Then, when he can do nothing about the problem, he merely drops it, the media cease coverage, and the Administration puts them on to another story...
...they are fungible...
...This is the new model for American business: Take the money and run, but if there's a problem, get the people to pay for it...
...But the media are also simply trying to do what any other business tries to: make a buck...
...and Soviet leaders are meeting more or less regularly to talk about steps toward arms control...
...The Democrats, or the liberals among them, cannot have very many more opportunities left to lose in assisting the democrtic struggle in Nicaragua," scolded an editorial in The Washington Post...
...Well, once again, maybe...
...Among the latest "miracles" is a technique for catching criminals by sampling their DNA—invading their genes, in other words...
...The company is suing, and it has every reason to feel betrayed...
...That sound you hear in late Twentieth Century America is Adam Smith revolving in his grave...
...But in the last year of the Reagan Administration, the U.S...
...How accurate will the tests be after every town in America has a DNA lab, when they're done by lab technicians turned out in droves by community colleges and pressured into doing not eighty a year but eighty a day...
...An "invisible hand" governed the marketplace, determining with majestic objectivity which venture would fail and which succeed...
...Both conditions suit the Government and the media just fine...
...The security forces are targeting particular sectors of the population, especially human-rights groups...
...There's the rub: The doctrine of deterrence—a code term for U.S...
...military personnel have trained Guatemalan troops to use attack planes and survive jungle warfare...
...after all, providing a Federal safety net for corporate crime, malfeasance, and sheer incompetence has long been established policy in the United States...
...Urine samples...
...This is much better than the Administration's original proposal," he said...
...And, law-enforcement aside, things are getting spooky...
...In Moscow, we can be sure, Mikhail Gorbachev contends with elements who insist "prudence dictates" that the Soviets maintain their defenses...
...An instructive example is President Bush's proposal on chemical warfare, delivered with much fanfare in September at the U.N...
...It's the same tired old rationale for an arms race without end, and it must be exposed and opposed by everyone who cares about peace...
...You won't hear about it on the nightly news or the Sunday morning talk shows, but grotesque human-rights violations are occurring there on a daily basis—and the U.S...
...Now it's our genes they want...
...This Central American country is now more than three years into its democratic experiment and is still at war against Cuban-supported insurgents," General Fred Woerner, commander of U.S...
...Bush momentarily looks strong...
...Compared to Washington's tender loving care for savings-and-loan buccaneers, for example, the treatment of the Rockwell brass is downright shabby...
...The laboratory needs only a tiny sample from a crime scene—a blood stain the size of a quarter, a drop of semen the size of a dime, a single hair—to make a positive match with a sample from the suspected perpetrator...
...Events are portrayed as a random series of catastrophic incidents over which the individual has no control...
...officials seem to admire the reliability—and sheer brutality—of Guatemala's security forces...
...We are victims...
...U.S...
...The specific crises in question do not mattter...
...When will Americans stop believing in technological miracles that will solve all our problems and not cause new ones...
...Clean Up the Farm Proponents of sustainable, environmentally responsible farming and other critics of corporate agribusiness have been saying it for years: (1) Extensive environmental damage is caused by conventional farming methods...
...But before the peace movement succumbs to terminal euphoria, there's a need to take a long, hard look at what's going on...
...Such coverage fuels pathological responses...
...Unfortunately, the most likely answer is "Never...
...At the moment, DNA typing is done at the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., by skilled scientists...
...In the last year, U.S...
...It comes from the likes of the Fertilizer Institute—whose spokesman called the report "an insult to American agriculture and to the American consumer"—and other groups with vested interests in increased sales of chemical "aids" to farmers...
...That is the underlying message...
...Friendly Death Squads Guatemala...
...2) Commodity-support programs that cost billions of dollars a year retard the development of environmentally sound agriculture...
...Department of Agriculture has reacted favorably...
...There is a testing mania going on, and it rests on a belief...
...the Progressive COMMENTS Corporate Safety Net 'The savings-and-loan crisis might represent a recurring American problem: the badly managed investment that the Government has to spend billions to correct The nuclear-weapons program, for example, has left contaminated waste that might cost the Government $200 billion to clean up.' —Louis Uchitelle in The New York Times If you need a working definition of chutzpah, try the Rockwell International Corporation, which for fourteen years of incredible sloth, fraud, and disregard of public health and safety has "managed" the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant in Colorado...
...Come on, you guys...
...Once those distinctions are understood, it becomes clear that arms control is not a step toward peace but away from it...
...Every issue is overheated and crammed down our throats...
...Oddly, The Post chastised Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, for not being more in line with Administration policy...
...It has been replaced by what the late Sidney Lens called "socialism for the rich"—a special kind of welfare state that ministers to the needs of the business elite and lets the rest of us pay for it...
...In classical free-enterprise doctrine, profit was justified as the reward the entrepreneur received for the risks he took...
...to facilitate more control of people at the bottom by people at the top.' —Philip Bereano, Washington State ACLU, in 'GeneWATCH' Meddling in Managua Washington just can't keep its grubby hands off of Nicaragua...
...The New York Times calls it "the most important breakthrough in forensic science since fingerprinting...
...Causes are obscured, especially if they involve U.S...
...These activists were never a lunatic fringe, even if the agricultural establishment tried to apply that label...
...The best-kept secret of American capitalism is that it no longer exists...
...Under the notorious Price-Anderson Act, which saddles the taxpayers with liability for the damage resulting from a catastrophic nuclear power-plant accident, the American Chernobyl that is bound to occur sooner or later will be underwritten by'all of us...
...Government is arming the killers...
...Solutions are simplified, preferably along the lines of some military intervention somewhere, anywhere...
...We've seen so many law-enforcement techniques invade our homes and workplaces in the past...
...3) Most farmers who resist the use of chemicals on their crops are just as productive as those who rely on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers...
...What has the U.S...
...Dodd, who also supports increased military aid for the right-wing government in El Salvador, claims to be a leading liberal dove...
...To top it off, George Bush has proposed an additional $9 million in "nonlethal" aid to the Guatemalan government...
...In most cases, the abuses have been carried out by police and military agents, uniformed or in plain clothes in the guise of so-called death squads...
...Bush said, "Absolutely not...
...Two days after the editorial ran, Dodd seemed eager to consider Bush's revised plan for meddling in Managua...
...If the Government were to display similar compassion for the homeless, there wouldn't be any...
...Woerner, who was the honored guest at "Army Day" in Guatemala City in June, went on to urge more lethaLaid for Guatemala...
...General Assembly...
...That's arms control...
...the U.S...
...aid to opponents of the Sandinistas...
...Since that report was issued, the situation in Guatemala has deteriorated...
...Prudence dictates," says Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, "that we maintain our defenses while we wait and see about Soviet developments...
...initiatives advanced so far in the revived dialogue with the Soviet government all fall within the rubric of arms control...
...The astonishing thing is not the effrontery displayed by Rockwell but the fact that just this once the Government didn't go along, choosing instead to terminate the Rockwell contract...
...Even outraged public opinion wasn't enough to keep President Bush, with the eager collaboration of the Democratic Congress, from bailing out the scandal-ridden savings-and-loan industry—a bit of Federal dole that will eventually cost the taxpayers upwards of $164 billion...
...And Congress—as well as the mainstream media—appears to be buying it...
...As soon as one is dropped, another one takes its place...
...How many ways can Democrats find to say no to a cause they profess to believe in...
...Why don't we make them leave us alone...
...he is a mere civilian figurehead...
...Developed over the last few years by British scientists, the procedure has been in use by the FBI since late last year...
...response been...
...The only real risk big business confronts today is that once in a rare while, as in the case of Rocky Flats, outraged public opinion will compel the Government to draw the line...
...But Cerezo serves at the behest of the military...
...Polygraph tests...
...Their conclusion: We ought to change our agricultural ways...
...As long as we are dependent for a deterrence based on nuclear weapons," the President said, "I would have difficulty eliminating all testing...
...The past eighteen months have seen a resurgence in abductions, 'disappearances,' and extrajudicial executions in the cities and countryside of Guatemala," Amnesty International reported in June...
...Arms control is the process of regulating and legitimizing the arms race so that it can be continued without incurring prohibitive political or economic costs...
...Enthusiasts have already been on the talk shows imagining how easy it will be to solve all sorts of identification problems and minor mysteries—not just serious, violent crimes—when the wondrous day arrives (soon, they hope) that will see all of us required to give One Big Computer samples of our genetic material so it will be on file when they need it...
...In a similar vein, Bush rejected out of hand the renewed Soviet proposal for a total moratorium on nuclear testing—an indispensable step toward nuclear disarmament...
...Government has demanded for years...
...embassy official told Lee Hockstader of The Washington Post...
...Bush proposed that the superpowers rid themselves of significant portions of their chemical-warfare stockpiles, while keeping enough toxic weapons to provide "a certain sense of deterrence...
...The few U.S...
...In mid-September, Rockwell executives demanded that the Government grant them immunity from criminal and civil prosecution under laws governing waste disposal...
...Let's get the bums off welfare...
...Army Corps of Engineers has blasted roads for the Guatemalan army...
...And keep on calling it "free enterprise...
...we are being taken advantage of...
...Cerezo does provide a suitable cover for U.S...
...Partly, the media are just carrying the Government's water...
...For years, the U.S...
...Just as Peter Jennings has his insipid "Person of the Week," the media anoint a crisis of the week or of the month: AIDS, drugs, Noriega, Qaddafi, China, Nicaragua, the hostages in the Middle East...
...Police like the idea because such evidence gets left behind at the scene more often than fingerprints...
...Better raise the volume...
...So have many academic agronomists...
...Government sent $13.8 million of armaments to Guatemala—a quantum leap in lethal sales...
...Police also say investigations will go much more quickly and they will be more certain they are accusing the right person...
...A Diet of Crises The media feed us a diet of crises...
...George Bush wants to appear tough on Manuel Noriega or the hostage-takers, so the Administration issues (or leaks) statements that highlight the threat from whatever foreign corner...
...The elections must be "free"— at a cost of $9 million in U.S...
...The Soviets responded immediately with an offer to eliminate all chemical weapons forthwith...
...More guns to Guatemala...
...The Bush Administration is continuing to cozy up to Guatemala...
...In February, Nicaragua will hold national elections, which the U.S...
...Ample evidence indicates that security force personnel operate in 'death squads' with the knowledge of— or indeed on the orders of—their superiors...
...That's disarmament...
...nuclear blackmail, as Daniel Ellsberg pointed out in the September issue of The Progressive—continues to guide American foreign and military policy...
...Government still refuses to let the Nicaraguans alone...
...But the most outrageous raids on the public treasury are still to come...
...we must strike back...
...aid, however...
...National Guard units from at least five states have gone on exercises with the Guatemalan army, and U.S...
...There is still dissent, of course...
...After ten years of financing and training a guerrilla army to overthrow the government in Managua (an activity that even Maureen Reagan has now denounced), the U.S...
...On one September day alone, fifteen people were assassinated by the military...
...Things appear to be getting worse," says Rona Weitz, deputy director of the Washington office of Amnesty International...
...But for once, agribusiness has lost the upper hand, and it seems at least possible to imagine an agriculture that won't kill us as it feeds us...
...Well, maybe...
...What purpose does such crisis coverage serve...
...The military runs the show...
...we are being invaded...
...In eighty cases so far, DNA profiles have tied fifty suspects to crimes and cleared twenty others, mostly in cases of murder or rape or both...
...Leave Us Alone, Already...
...But that species has been extinct for some time now...
...In 1986, Vinicio Cerezo was elected president of Guatemala, succeeding a series of military juntas...
...It's more important than ever to bear in mind the crucial distinction between disarmament and arms control: Disarmament is the process of ridding the planet of the weapons that threaten human survival, and of rejecting force and the threat of force as a way of settling disputes among nations...
...All that matters is that they are crises...
...forces in Latin America, told Congress this summer...
...Government policies...
...Before We Cheer After all the Cold War bombast and runaway military spending of the Reagan years, there's an understandable tendency, in this country and abroad, to heave a great sigh of relief because U.S...
...personnel have flown helicopters for the army in combat areas...
...The U.S...
...George Bush's orginal proposal to funnel $3 million through the National Endowment for Democracy met Congressional resistance, so he redrafted and tripled the request...
...Fed such a diet, a casual consumer of the news is induced either into a state of deadened cynicism or panicked paranoia...
...The Exxon oil spill in Alaska has already prompted legislation that will make consumers and taxpayers—not corporations-responsible for the clean-up costs of environmental disasters caused by corporate greed and ineptitude...
...I think we'd be making a mistake not to help them out," one U.S...
Vol. 53 • November 1989 • No. 11
