t Md gan 4aiy
Eighty-Six Years of Editorial Freedom
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Carc inoma in convenient aerosols
Tuesday, December 2, 1975
News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Thin out Navy's whitewash
IN AN AGE OF government secrecy,
it should come as no surprise
that the U.S. Navy has apparently
suppressed for two years a scientific
report which states that Project Sea-
farer might have harmful effects on
human life.
Seafarer is an extremely low fre-
quency (ELF) submarine communi-
cations system which the Navy has
proposed building in the western por-
tion of the state's Upper Peninsula
(UP).
The possible ill effects from Sea-
farer stem from the magnetic and
electrical fields which the system
would create. The report mentions
that preliminary findings reveal
humans showed increased levels of
triglycerides after exposure to ELF
waves. Triglycerides have been link-
ed with increased risk of heart dis-
ease.
Although the report compiled by
Editorial Staff
GORDON ATCHESON CHERYL PTTATE
Co-Editors-in-Chief
DAVID BLOMQUIST ............... Arts Editor
BARBARA CORNELL .. Sunday Magazine Editor
PAUL HASKTNS.... ...Editorial Director
DEBRA HURWITZ. Asst. Editorial Direeter
MARY LONG ........ Sunday Magazine Editor
JOSEPHINE MARCOTTY Sunday Magazine Editor.
SARA RIMER................ Executive Editor
SI'PHEN SELBST................City Editor
JEFF SORENSON..............Managing Editor
STAFF WRITERS: Tom Allen, Glen Allerhand,
Marc Basson, Dana Baumann, Michael Beck-
man, Ellen Breslow, Mitch Dunitz, Ted Ev-
anoff, Jim Finkelstein, Elaine Fletcher, David
Garfinkel, Tom Godell, Charlotte Heeg,
Stephen Hersh, Lois Josimovich, Tom Kett-
ler, Linda Kloote, Chris .Kochmanski, Doc
Kralik, Jay Levin,. Andy Lilly, Ann Marie
Lipinski, George Lobsenz, Pauline Lubens,
Teri Mageau, Angeliqiue Matney, Rob Mea-
chum, Robert Miller, Jim Nicoll, Maureen
Nolan, Ken Parsigian, Cathy Reutter, Jeff
Ristine, Annmarie Schiavi, Tim Schick, Kar-
en Schulkins, Rick Soble, Tom Stevens, Steve
Stojic, Cathi Suyak, Jim Tobin, Bill Turque,
Jim Valk, David Weinberg, Margaret Yao.
Sports Staff
BRIAN DEMING
Sports Editor
MARCIA MEAKER .... .. Executive Editor
LEBA HERTZ ..... ...Managing Editor
JEFF SCHILLER..............Associate Editor
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Al Hrapsky, Jeff
Liebster, Ray O'Hara, Michael Wilson
NIGHT EDITORS: Rick Bonino, Tom Cameron.
Tom Duranceau, Andy Glazer, Kathy Henne-
ghan, Ed Lange, Rich Lerner, Scott Lewis, Bill
Stieg
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: Enid Goldman,
Marcia Katz, John Niemeyer, Dave Wihak
DESK ASSISTANTS: Paul Campbell, Marybeth
Dillon, Larry Engle, Aaron Gerstman, Jerome
Gilbert, Andy Lebet, Rick Maddock, Bob Miller,
Joyce Moy, Patrick Rode, Arthur Wightman
Photography Staff
KEN FINK PAULINE LUBENS
Chief Photographer Picture Editor
E. SUSAN SHEINER ........ Staff Photographer
GORDON TUCKER.........Staff Photographer
TODAY'S STAFF:
the seven-member scientific panel
does not, state that the system wouldl
constitute a definite danger, it re-
commends further study. ,
flOWEVER, a task force appointed
by Governor Milliken earlier this
year was not given a copy of the re-
port because it was designated "for
official use only."
What constitutes "official use,"
however, is not made clear. If the
report is not made available to a
committee appointed to study the
Seafarer problem, then of what use
is the report? It seems apparent that
the Navy was attempting to keep
criticism of the project to a mini-
mum and to downplay the dangers
involved.
Although Dr. Andrew Marino, a
member of the scientific panel, said
the Seafarer project is "a public
health danger," a Navy spokesman
claimed it would cause no ill effects.
"We are satisfied so far from what
we have examined there are no ad-
verse effects," said Navy Capt. James
Naugle.
NAUGLE'S STATEMENT complete-
ly belies the results reached by
the scientific committee. "There's no
question that it's going to have an
environmental impact, that it is a
danger to the environment," said
Marino.
Despite the Navy's attempt to
spuelch criticism of Seafarer, a UP
group is actively fighting the pro-
ject. People Against Sanguine-Sea-
farer (PASS) has charged the De-
fense Department with "fraud" and
the governor's task force with "in-
competence" in failing to uncover
the report. In addition, PASS has de-
manded that the governor ask the
Navy to leave the UP immediately.
Clearly, the Seafarer Project is not
popular with the residents of the
UP - for good reasons. And the de-
ceptive actions of the Navy have
certainly made these residents even
less responsive to the controversial
project.
Clearly, a more in-depth study of
the possible effects of the Seafaier
Project on both the environment and
human life is necessary.
THE GOVERNOR'S task force had
requested that a Navy team
evaluate the environmental imnact
of the project. However, we believe
that a more objective party must
study the situation. Keeping in mind
the Navy's suppression of the criti-
cal scientific report, it is hard to
believe that it would conduct an im-
partial investigation into Seafarer's
possible effects on the environment.
A new task force should be an-
nointed by Governor Milliken in the
hones that It will succeed where the
last task force failed. And if the
conclusions reached by the original
scientific panel are reaffirmed, the
Navy should abandon the Seafarer
Project.
By SCOTT THURBER
SAN FRANCISCO (PNS) - When you
pick up that can of spray deodorant
in your bathroom, do you get the un-
easy feeling that somebody's watching?
If you don't, perhaps you should.
Because aerosol-watching is very big
these days, and getting bigger. Its par-
ticipants include scientists, the govern-
ment, manufacturers, merchants, con-
servationists, consumer groups, advertis-
ing agencies, lawyers and, of course,
the media.
Underlying all the careful watching,
and the sometimes heated arguments
it evokes, is the most frightening six-
letter word in the language: cancer.
Continued heavy use of the major
fluorocarbon aerosol propellants will
bring about sharp increases worldwide
in the incidence of fatal and non-fatal
skin cancer, many scientists contend,
by seriously depleting the stratospheric
ozone layer that shields the earth from
the most damaging wavelengths of ultra-
violet radiation from the sun. These
scientists and their backers say manu-
facture and use of the offending pro-
pellants should be banned.
SPOKESMEN FOR THE aerosol in-
dustry not unexpectedly take a sharp-
ly different view. Citing other scien-
tific opinion, they contend the ozone-
depletion/skin cancer link is an un-
?roved hypothesis. They say it would
be a major injustice to cripple an
eight billion dollar industry on the basis
of flimsy evidence.
Whatever the validity of the ozone-
cancer thesis, the statistics cited by its
advocates are alarming: If use of the
aerosol-propelled products continues to
grow at the expected 10 per cent per
year, these scientists say, the resulting
depletion of the ozone and increase in
radiation could cause between 100,000
and 300,000 new cases of skin cancer
a year in the U.S. alone by the year
2000.
THE MOUNTING controversy, which
has its roots in studies of ozone deple-
tion by supersonic transport planes, has
been highlighted recently by these de-
velopments:
® The Space Agency in November
launched a scientific satellite equipped
with a special instrument to measure
the ozone layer in the troposphere and
stratosphere during the next year. They
say tests over that long a period are
necessary to determine accurately wheth-
er the shield is being depleted.
* Two scientific groups this summer
reported tests that they said confirmed
laboratory projections showing that fluor-
ocarbons, wafted inert to the strato-
sphere, are broken down there by ultra-
violet light - releasing chlorine atoms
that destroy ozone. One group, the Na-
tional Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) took measurements above its
facility at Palestine, Tex. The other, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
ministration (NOAA), used weather bal-
loons for tests at Laramie, Wyo.
"I THINK OUR RESULTS have dras-
tically narrowed room for doubt about
the validity of fluorocarbon-ozone de-
struction theories," said NCAR chief
John Gille.
" A study panel from 14 federal agen-
cies appointed to assess threats to the
>zone shield concluded in June that, if
present evidence holds up, aerosol sprays
using fluorocarbon propellants should be
banished by January 1978. But the study
group said final action should await
completion, sometime next year, of an
intensive study by the National Academy
of Sciences.
0 The Consumer Products Safety Com-
mission belatedly turned down a peti-
tion, seeking a ban, filed a year ago
by the Natural Resources Defense Coun-
cil (NRDC). Ruby I. Compton, an at-
torney in NRDC's Washington office, said
the action was "based on a finding that
insufficient evidence was available."
BUT SHE ADDED: "New scientific
evidence, however, has become avail-
able since the CPSC ruling." She cited
the measurements by the NOAA and the
NCAR.,
* The Consumers Cooperative of
Berkeley, with 13 Bay Area grocery
stores and more than 7,000 members,
halted purchase of all fluorocarbon aero-
sols September 1 and will ban sales of
all such products December 30.
A spokesman said the Co-op action was
the first of its kind in the nation, and
said it woud be followed by an inten-
sive campaign "to encourage the use
of alternatives."
O Bills to ban the propellants were
introduced in Congress and in several
states this year, but nothing has got-
ten out of committee except in Oregon,
Doily Photo by PAULINE LUBENS
where the legislature approved a ban
on the propellants, effective in March
1977.
* Advertising in newspapers and on
television has begun to reflect the grow-
ing national concern over the possible
dangers of aerosol-caused ozone deple-
tion.
FOR INSTANCE, Du Pont, describ-
ing itself as "the world's leading sup-
plier of fluorocarbon propellants," took
almost-full-page ads in major newspapers
to denounce what it called the "ban now
-find out later" approach that it said
"is being thrust upon an eight billion
dollar segment of industry." There won't
be any answers "until some hard facts
are produced," the company said, and
those facts require extensive investiga-
tions.
Johnson's Wax took newspaper ads to
announce that it has "removed all flior-
ocarbon propellants" from its domestic
products and is "aggressively reformu-
lating our product ingredients worldwide
to achieve the same goal."
And there has been a significant in-
crease in ads, in print and on TV, by
makers of anti-perspirants and other
products that are not only non-aerosol
but "better than aerosol."
SIGNIFICANTLY, AEROSOL use has
dropped since the aerosol-ozone contro-
versay began. In 1972, according to in-
dustry figures, 2.77 billion units (bottles
or cans) of aerosol-propelled products
were produced in the U.S. In 1973 (the
latest year for which figures are avail-
able) there were 1.38 billion. Of that
total, the vast majority (1.24 billion)
were personal products, with hair care
products and anti-perspirants leading the
list.
But "even if the use of the propellants
were stopped today," warns Dr. Harold
S. Johnson, who first linked ozone deple-
tion to the SST, "in five to ten years
there would be a one per cent decrease
in the ozone layer," sufficient to in-
crease skin cancer by 8,000 cases a
years in the U.S. alone.
Scott Thurber is a freelance writer
who has previously worked for the San
Francisco Chronicle. Copyright Pacific
News Service, 1975.
ARAB POLICY
Toward more effective anti-Semitism
By JOSEPH HOSHEN
TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS af-
ter voting to establish a Jewish
State, the United Nations Gen-
eral Assembly has now endorsed
a resolution passed by its Third
Committee on 17 October de-
scribing Israel as "the racist
regime in occupied Palestine,"
and stigmatizing Zionism as "a
form of racialism and racial
discrimination." For good meas-
ure, the preamble of the resolu-
tion asserts that "Zionism is a
threat to world peace and se-
curity" and calls upon "all
countries to oppose this racist
and imperialist ideology."
Just prior to adopting this
resolution, the General Assem-
bly passed two other resolutions
which were also violently anti-
Israel in language and intent.
The first called for the partici-
pation of Arab terrorist groups,
known as the Palestine Libera-
tion Organization (the P.L.O.)
in the Geneva Conference for
Peace in the Middle East. The
second decided to establish a
committee, modelled on the U.N.
Committee Against Apartheid,
for "the exercise of the inalien-
able rights of the Palestinian
people." In fulfilling its man-
date, this committee is author-
ized "to receive and consider
suggestions and proposals from
any state and intergovernmental
region organization and the Pal-
estine Liberation Organization."
NOW WHO IS the United Na-
tions inviting to Geneva and
who is it requesting to submit
proposals on questions relating
to peace in the Middle East?
ist in its aims, and facist and
Nazi in its means. Israel is the
tool of the Zionist movement and
a human and geographical base
for world imperialism."
YASSER ARAFAT is even
more candid: "We shall never
stop until we can go back home
and Israel is destroyed ... The
goal of our struggle is the end
of Israel, and there can be no
compromises or mediations ..
We don't want peace, we want
victory. Peace for us means Is-
rael's destruction, and nothing
else." (Quoted in the New Re-
public, November 16, 1974).
The sponsors of these three
U.N. resolutions were the Arab
states, whose racist record is
almost without parallel. Since
gaining their independence ear-
lier this century, almost every
one of these states has worked
methodically, and often brutally,
against the non-Muslim and non-
Arab minorities in its midst:
* In the 1930's and 1940's, the
Iraquis put the Assyrian Christ-
ians to the sword;
" In the late 1950's, and
through the 1960's, the Blacks
in the Sudan suffered what
amounts to genocide;
* In the 1960's, the Kurds in
Syria were harshly repressed;
* Likewise, from the 1960's to
the spring of this year, the
Kurds in Iraq were systemati-,
cally massacred;
* And now it appears that the
fate of the Maronites in Lebanon
is to be similarly sealed.
It should be mentioned that
the United Nations has not seen
fit to concern itself with any
News: Gordon. Atcheson,
Fletcher, Cheryl Pilate, Sara
Tim Schick, Curt Smith_
Elaine
Rimer,
Editorial Page: Marc Basson, Debra
Hurwitz, Tom Kettler, Ted Lambert,
Tom Stevens
Arts Page: David Blomquist
Photo Technician: Pauline Lubens
officer in the army who has
fourght Israel." This stereotyp-
ing of the Jews is in the best
tradition of classical anti-Semit-
ism, and inevitably brings back
echoes of other, tragic canards
of the 1930's insinuating that
the Jews "dominated the econo-.
my."
SUCH LANGUAGE is most
disquieting when it comes from
the President of Egypt, so soon
after the signing of the Israel-
Egypt agreement.
Rallying behind the Arabs to
pass their resolutions were ev-
ery totalitarian and dictatorial
regime represented at the Unit-
ed Nations. A political satirist
in the London Times on October
22nd, pointedly attacked the
phony concern for human
rights implicit in theavotestof
"Mongolia, Cuba, Uganda, the
Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia, East
Germany, Albania, Sri Lanka,
China, Libya, Indonesia, Yemen,
Syria, Poland and scores of oth-
er places run by people who
have been engaged for anything
up to the lastahalf century or
so in the extermination of dig-
nity, integrity and their oppo-
nents, with enthusiasm, rubber
truncheons and a considerable
degree of success."
SIMILARLY, a columnist in
the Washington Post on October
29th aptly observed that the
Third Committee's anti-Zionist
vote was "a vote by numer-
ous regimes representing noth-
ing but themselves against a
single nation, Israel." He used
the term "regimes" advisedly,
because "given the nature of
the regimes of U.N. members,
there are very few nations,
meaning peoples, represented
there." With a good deal of rea-
son, he went on to remark that
many of these regimes "use
their energies to pound togeth-
er human elements that lack
cultural affinites. To such re-
gimes, Israel, a real nation,
is either unintelligible or a re-
proach. Regimes resting on
force are bound to find fault
with the rich legitimizing sourc-
es of Israel's nationhood."
Pitted against the totalitarian
regimes were the democracies
of the world, which rallied to
Israel's side because, in the
words of the United States Am-
bassador to the United Nations,
who spoke out on October 21st,
"it is an attack not on Zionism
but on Israel. As such, it is a
general assault by the majority
of nations on the principles of
liberal democracy, which now
are found only in a dwindling
number of nations."
INDEED, THROUGHOUT his-
tory, one of the acid tests of
a liberal society has been its
treatment of its Jewish minori-
tv which invariably has been
as a censure of the Arabs
moves at the United Nations
and as a dramatic endorsement
of Zionism by the countries
whose moral values and social
order far better qualify them
to pass judgment on matters
relating to human rights and
liberties.
There can be no mistaking
Arab intentions. As Israel's Am-
bassador to the United Nations,
Mr. Chaim Herzog, pointed out
in the Third Committee on Oc-
tober 16th, "the attempt now
being made by certain Arab
governments to strike at the
very roots of Israel, by trying
to denigrate Zionism, its ideo-
logical basis, is nothing but ruth-
less and cynical political war-
fare . namely, a renewed ef-
fort by the enemies of the Jew-
ish people to deprive it of its
homeland."
IN THE SAME WAY as the
Nazis sought to make the Jew
an "untermensch" (a subhu-
man), the Arabs are trying to
render Israel an "unterstaat"
(a sub- or pariah, state). As the
Lebanese representative at the
U.N.E.S.C.O. General Confer-
ence articulated it in Paris on
November 21, 1975, "Israel is
a state which belongs nowhere
because it comes from no-
where."
In embarking on this program,
the Arabs have torn a page from
the manual of Nazism. The de-
struction of European Jewry be-
gan in the same sinister way
which the Arabs have now chos-
en. First, the Jews were labelled
a pernicious race, then they
has happened is that the dis-
criminatory principle has been
transferred from the realm of
individual rights to the domain
of collective identity."
The resolutions that have now
been adopted by the General
Assembly are the culmhiation of
a series of political moves by
the Arabs which led in Novem-
ber 1974 to .the appearance at
the General Assembly of Yas-
ser Arafat, the leader of the
Arab terrorist groups.
Since then, a chain of events
has been set in motion in vari-
ous international forums. After
using the Arabs built-in majori-
ty to secure resolutions discrim-
inating against Israel at U.N.E.
S.C.O. (the United Nations Edu-
cational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization), the Egyptian
Foreign Minister proclaimed on
March 24, 1975, "It is inevita-
ble that we escablate the cam-
paign of isolating and rejecting
Israel from the international
community and from the United
Nations."
THE NEXT MAJOR move
was made in a somewhat un-
expected quarter - the Inter-
national Women's Year World
Conference, held in Mexico in
July under United Nations aus-
pices. Againusing their auto-
matic majority, the Arabs had
"Zionism" written into the Con-
ference's final declaration as
one of the ideologies (along
with colonialism, neo-colonial-
ism, foreign occupation, apart-
heid, and racial discrimination)
which must be eliminated.
WORDS CEASE TO have any
"4
"Yasser Arafat: 'We shall never stop until we
can go back home and Israel is destroyed. The
goal of our struggle is the end of Israel . . . We
don't want peace, we want victory'."
.... ".'..: ...VS.V.V..'S.. .}:.:s ' :4i:"?.:.......s:" {} ; {: .":: S :4:ti. S ,'. '.
*..... ......
"Chaim Herzog: 'The attempt now being
made by certain Arab governments to strike at
the very roots of Israel by trying to denigrate
Zionism is nothing but ruthless and cynical
political warfare ."
...... ...... . .... ...... .{ : : ? "r :> Sl a
The Palestine Liberation Or-
ganization is that loose federa-
tion of Arab terror groups pur-
porting to represent the Pales-
tinians which through its ac-
tions and use of indiscriminate
terror has violated every prin-
ciple of the United Nations Char-
ter and every canon of interna-
tional law.
Its declared aim is to elimin-
ate the State of Israel. This is
unequivocably laid down in its
Constitution, the document
known as the Palestinian Na-
tional Covenant.
Article 9 states: "Armed
struggle is the only way to lib-
erate Palestine, and is, there-
fore, a strategy and not a tac-
tic."
Article 15 states: "The libera-
tion of Palestine ... is to purge
the Zionist nresence from Pal-
of these Arab atrocities against
ethnic or religious minorities,
including the Maronites of Leb-
anon.
GIVEN THEIR uncompromis-
ing hatred for Israel, the prom-
inence of Syria, Iraq, and Lib-
ya in moving these resolutions
was perhaps predictable. But
Egypt, too, was in the forefront
of this onslaught, playing an
instrumental role in moving
these resolutions through their
various stages in the United
Nations.
Equally lamentable and dis-
turbing, and perhaps just as re-
vealing, were some remarks
made by President Sadat dur-
ing his recent visit to the Unit-
ed States with reference to these
resolutions. Justifying his coun-
try's part in this campaign, be-
fore the National Press Club in
were divested of their political
privileges, then of their econom-
ic assets, then of their legal
rights, then of their dignity.
And, once all that was accom-
plished, they were dispatched
for the "final solution." This.
process has already been ap-
plied by the Arabs since 1948
to the Jews who used to live
in their midst, and who were
spared the same fate as their
European brethren only because
they had Israel to flee to.
In endorsing the Arabs' reso-
lution, the United Nations has
bestowed its official sanction to
anti-Semitism on a global scale.
Under the euphemism of anti-
Zionism, to those who may still
question whether anti - Zionism
and anti - Semitism are in fact
identical, an answer has been
meaning. Zionism is the world's
oldest movement for national
liberation embracing four thou-
sand years of constant struggle
for national expression and dig-
nity. It is an aberration for any-
one to attach the false label of
racism to a people and a cause
whose history for thousands of
years has been a record of sub-
jection to persecution and racial
discrimination. It is the saddest
of commentaries that this should
have been done to a people
whose history is an unbroken
record of contribution to human
dignity and liberty.
Zionism will continue to sur-
vive and flourish long after the
United Nations resolutions have
sunken into oblivion. The real
victim of these attacks will be
the United Nations organization
I