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SATURDAY, MAY 16, 1970
NIGHT EDITOR: ROB BIER
Murders at Jackson State:
Part of an, old, story
THE MURDER early yesterday of two
black students at Jackson State Col-
lege in Mississippi adds one more crime
to the list of crimes perpetrated against
the black community of America
Acting on complaints from passing
motorists that objects had been thrown
at them, state troopers and local police
moved on to campus and confronted a
group of about 75 black men who had
congregated peacefully in front of a wo-
men's dormitory.
Suddenly, hearing what they s a y
sounded like a shot - students say it was
a bottle breaking on the other side of the
street ,- the police opened up with every
gun they had in a 25-second barrage of
death. When the smoke cleared, two were
dead and nine injured.
Mr. Laird deeid es
GOOD FOR Melvin Laird. Your favorite
Secretary of Defense revealed Thurs-
day that when he first heard of the pos-
sibility of expanding the war into Cam-
bodia he was against it. His concern was
that too many Americans would be killed
in such a move.
However, he says he was assured that
the. Viet Cong and N o r t h Vietnamese
troops were already moving out of the
border area ; and making their attacks
deeper in Cambodia, against Cambodians.
You could almost see the gears turning
under his bald dome, "It's only s o m e
gooks, so I guess it's O.K."
We should all be thankful for Melvin
Laird's showing of deep concern for
(American) life.
-ROB BIER
Coming only two weeks after the slay-
ing of four Kent State University stu-
dents by Ohio National Guard, the tragic
events at Jackson State have a familiar
toll.
BUT THE ANTECEDENTS of the Jack-
son, slayings go far beyond the vio-
lence at Kent; it is a blind mistake to
suggest that this new round of deaths is
simply the result of the recent increase
in activity on the nation's campuses.
The shooting of white middle class stu-
dents at Kent State was a new phenome-
non - only recently in this country have
the fires of hatred against white radicals
been fanned so vigorously to make this
possible.
The hatred of blacks by white America
is an old story, and it is no news that
hundreds of blacks have died at the
hands of racist "law enforcement" offi-
cers in North and South alike.
In Vietnam and Cambodia, U.S. and
South Vietnamese troops kill and destroy
wantonly in communist-held "free-fire
zones, a strategy for which the My Lai
massacre is only one result. Yesterday's
tragic events at Jackson State are only
one more reminder of the free-fire zone
that continues to exist in the black com-
munities of America as well.
They are also a reminder that the reign
of police violence is being extended to all
U.S. campuses, and that, more than ever,
the goals of the student left are and must
continue to be one with the struggles of
the black community at home and the
oppressed peoples of the world.
By GEORGE McGOVERN
Dispatch News Service
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The author is a
senator from South Dakota, an d a
member of the Democratic party.)
FOR ALL OF OUR deep nation-
al longing, the end of the war
in Vietnam will not be an unmix-
ed blessing.
For many Americans it can
mean economic disaster. For all
of us it may be at best the termi-
nation of a national tragedy,
coupled with the waste of an op-
portunity to find new, more hope-
ful national directions.
The d o m i n a n t expectation
about the war's end is probably
twofold. The killing and mutila-
tion of American youth w ill be
stopped, and some $20 to $30 bil-
lion annually will be freed to meet
accumulated needs at home. At
long last we will have the where-
withal to improve our schools, to
tackle such enormously complex
problems as transportation a n d
housing and such costly ones as
hunger and poverty, to cope with
the crime and violence which de-
spoilation - and perhaps begin
the reclamation - of our environ-
ment.
But there is another side.
AN EARLY CONSEQUENCE of
peace will be a reduction of some
800,000. and possibly m o r e, in
military manpower, bringing the
total down at least to prewar lev-
els. They, along (,with thousands
of civilians working for defense
agencies on assignments related
to Vietnam, will have to be ab-
sorbed by the rest of the economy.
The elimination of jobs is expect-
ed to occur on a scale approach-
ing 2 million, including shrinkage
in the private job market as a re-
sult of reductions in Vietnam or-
ders.
- The least skilled and the most
recently hired, probably many
among racial minorities, will be
the first to go and the last to find
new jobs. The gloomiest outlook
is suggested by a poverty pro-
gram official in Connecticut who
says that "if the layoff is n o t
properly handled by federal and
state agencies - and right now
nothing is being done, at any lev-
el - then you are going to see
blood flowing in the streets."
But there will be trauma among
highly skilled technicians and
scientists as well. The cancella-
tion of the $3 billion Manned Or-
biting Laboratory last June found
top flight technicians leaving Mc-
Donnell-Douglas' plant in Hunt-
ington Beach, California. with no
place to go and with little pros-
pect for comparable work in their
areas of specialty. Vietnam em-
ploys thousands like them.
BECAUSE DEFENSE FIRMS
tend to be concentrated in a few
states and localities, the economic
impact w iI11 be concentrated as
well. Some 37.4 per cent of Cali-
fornia's manufacturing workers
are employed in defense-related
industries. That state can expect
about 80,000 returning servicemen
to be added to its job market at
the same time. Connecticut, the
nation's largest per capita defense
supplier with highly vulnerable
industries involved in production
of ammunition, helicopters a n d
aircraft parts, will probably lose
50,000 jobs-20,000 in the Bridge-
port-Stratford area alone, where
defense contracts doubled between
1964 and 1968.
Concentration in military work
is also visible in other states. More
than half of all the military in-
dustry employment in the United
States is in California, Texas,
Washington, Massachusetts, Con-
necticut, and New York. There is
also concentration by industry.
The aerospace industry, electron-
ics industry, ordance industry, and
shipbuilding industry, are h i g h
points of military work. There is
also unevenness of military work
by occupation. More than half of
the research-and-development en-
gineers of the nation are working
on behalf of the Pentagon, direct-
ly or indirectly. Some of the larg-
est universities - like the Mass-
achusetts Institute of Technology
Johns Hopkins University, Stan-
ford University, the California In-
stitute of 'Technology, and t h e
University of Michigan - a r e
concentration points of Pentagon
work in the universities. Indeed.
two of these - MIT and Johns
Hopkins - are listed among the
100 largest military industrial
contractors by the Department of
Defense.
The Arms Control and Disarm-
ament Agency has documented
the ripple effects these cutbacks
are likely to have. Its study of a
layoff of 6800 Martin Company
workers in Denver in 1963 dis-
closed that the economic expan-
sion of the entire state was slowed
and the expansion in Denver vir-
tually came to a halt.rThe recov-
ery took two full years.
WE CAN BE QUITE SURE.
then, that there will be a painful
adjustment for many Americans.
Its breadth and depth depend up-
on a variable which continues to
elude a consensus among fore-
casters - the state of the total
economy a n d the dynamism of
nonmilitary sectors. In a 1 e v e I
economy the drop in military de-
mands could easily stimulate a
recession. If it were to coincide
with a general slowdown, which
many economists a r e predicting
will occur in 1970, t h e results
could be serious indeed.
Apart from these less welcome
concommitants of peace, we must
recognize that the manpower, the
technology, and even the money
involved in the war effort will not
be turned quickly to peaceful pri-
orities. The unemployed strateg-
ists from the Pentagon will cer-
tainly require some redirection be-
fore they can make meaningful
contributions in other capacities.
Unless some serious effort is made
to locate appropriate uses, facili-
ties which have been built up as
needed by the war may be idled
when they could be made useful
in important domestic tasks. The
Congress could doubtless find
ways to dispose of $30 billion, but
without careful preparation and
assessment of alternative uses
m u c h of it would doubtless be
wasted or use d less effectively
than it should. Hence, peace can
mean lost opportunities as well as
economic difficulty.
IN THE FACE OF these pros-
pects, defense contractors, at
least at the beginning of 1969, ap-
peared to be little concerned.
Their operating assumption seems
to be that an end to the war will
bring a successful rush by t h e
Pentagon to claim the great bulk
of the "peace dividend" to flesh
out military wishg lists developed
during the Vietnam years. Their
prognosis is that new cold war or-
ders will come quickly to replace
declining hot war demands.
The events of 1969 may have
given them pause, depending up-
on their judgments as the prob-
able longevity of Congressional
demands for more careful scrut-
iny of military spending and for
more persuasive justifications for
new weapons systems. Certainly
they must take into account the
fact that after reducing military
money requests an average of on-
ly 0.4 per cent per year in the
previous t e n years, Congress
squeezed 7.5 per cent - or $5.0
billion - out of t h e Pentagon
budget for fiscal 1970, much of It
through the effort of traditional
allies of the Armed Services. ,
But the contractors have other
reasons to resist the n e e d for
conversion ifs they can. Those
whose sole or major customer is
the Pentagon would. in terms of
their sales capabilities, be most
attuned to seeking new govern-
ment business in the civilian sec-
tor rather than in private mar-
kets. They know, particularly af-
ter recent closings of privately-
run Job Corps camps, that con-
tracts in the social a r e a carry
greater risk and that budgets are
more closely scrutinized. F i r m s
specializing in problem solving
know that civilian problems tend
to be infinitely more complex than
such questions as whether it will
take four or five bombs to achieve
a desired target kill probability.
AT THIS POINT the public is
faced with a choice. If the reli-
ance of military industry on ex-
panded. defense orders is well
placed, then the war is unlikely
to free vast sums f o r domestio
problems after all. We will sim-
ply shift from one kind of de-
fense spending to another. If their
reliance is misplaced t h e n the
damage done by an end to the
Vietnam war will be compounded
by slackened overall defense out-
lays.
It is against this background
that 35 of us in the Senate and
some 50 members of the House
have offered the Economic Con-
version Act. In the conviction that
no government agency can or
should accumulate enough know-
ledge about each of the thousands
of military contractors to formu-
late specific conversion plans, we
provide that the contractors them-
selves should develop alternative
occupations for their facilities
and manpower. The bill would re-
quire conversion planning as a
condition of contract fulfillment
In addition. it would establish
a National Economic Conversion
Commission made up of agency
heads and of public members, to
define further Federal contribu-
tions to the conversion effort and
to make specific recommendations
to the President and the Congress.
It should work extensively with
arms manufacturers and defense
personnel to help determine, un-
der its estimates of future publie
spending patterns, the non-mili-
tary areas to which specific re-
sources m i g h t be most readily
transferrable.
OUR PROPOSAL AIMS to ease
the transition from war to peace.
I readily confess to another mo-
tive. I think we should go as far
as we can toward freeing the vast
constituency of the Pentagon from
its economic dependence upon
a r m s spending, because in the
process we can diminish pork bar-
rell pressures and elevate rational
assessments of need in the debate
over defense spending.
The importance of the Act ex-
tends, therefore, to both practical
operation and national priorities.
It can minimize the harm and
maximize the advantages of mili-
tary cutbacks. At the same time
it can help make possible the cuts
that should be made, and it can
serve as convincing evidence that
wise business planners are those
who exert their enterprise toward
making our own society a better
place to live.
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44
cinema
What d you say...
By DONALD KUBIT
-MARTIN HIRSCHMAN
Editor
Letters to the Editor
Antiwar legislation:
Assaulti1ng, frustrations
LEGISLATION, NOW being debated in
the Senate, to limit the President's
power to involve the United States in war
has two objectives. One is to reassert the
right of Congress to act as a check on the
Executive department, especially in, the
area of making war. The other is more
nebulous, but boils down to letting the
President know his performance is on
trial each day of each year - not just
every fourth November.
The issue of keeping a fair balance
between the President's power to act ef-
fectively and Congress's power to influ-
ence or control his actions is important.
Like most presidents of this century,
Nixon approaches his perogatives in re-
grad to military deployment as a loose
constructionist of the constitution. In the
best tradition of Roosevelt, Wilson, Roose-
velt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and
Johnson, all of whom moved U.S. troops
into action or across national frontiers,
with only the faintest indication of Con-
gressional approval, Nixon secretly order-'
ed troops in Cambodia.
THERE WAS A time, just after the in-
vention of the atom bomb and the
intercontinental ballistic missile, w h e n
Congress realized that with these devices
in the hands of hostile powers it was en-
tirely possible for the United States to
be attacked and even destroyed before
WhRat kids
THINGS WERE back to normal yester-
day at Oakdale Elementary School
after a crisis over recess.
It was a crisis to the fourth, fifth and
sixth graders, anyway, who staged a sit-
in Tuesday when their recess period was
suspended for what one teacher described
as "rude, noisy and discourteous behav-
for" on the playground Monday.
"No recess, no school,'" chanted the
kids.
School officials reinstated recess yes-
Congress could vote, much less debate, a
declaration of war. For this reason, Con-
gress accorded the Chief Executive great
freedom to'°act quickly and secretly with
regard to military deployment.
There are many people now, however,
who r e g a r d the wide-ranging military
power of the President as unnecessary
and unwise. One reason is that the situa-
tions in which this power has been used
in recent years do not compare in any
way with the urgency of a nuclear attack.
Another reason is that, due to massive
nuclear stockpiles and second-strike cap-
abilities by both the Soviet Union and the
United States, a n u c 1 e a r attack on.
America, which would lead to world-wide
devastation, is a very remote possibility.
Therefore, in an effort to curb the Chief
Executive's autonomy in the use of U.S.
military forces, several pieces of legisla-
tion have been introduced into Congress,
the most notable being amendments to a
$20 million military sales bill.
One amendment introduced into the
Senate by Senators Frank Church (D-
Idaho) and John Cooper (R-Ky.), would
end appropriations for all ground troops
in Cambodia after July 1 of this year. The
other amendment sponsored by Senators
G e o r g e McGovern (D-S.D.) and Mark
Hatfield (R-Ore.) would end all money
for the war in Southeast Asia by the end
of this year and all funds for troop with-
drawals by July 1, 1971.
HOWEVER, EVEN if these bills were
passed, there is no way to enforce
them, short of impeachment. Therefore,
the President would still be free to pursue
his military policies as he wished. But, if
such is the case, what is the purpose of
these amendments?
Their fundamental p u r p o s e is to
acknowledge that Congress is responsive
to the wishes of the people in this coun-
try. If passed, these amendments would
indicate that Congress can see and inter-
pret the message of half a million people
when they march in the streets of our
capital.
To pass these amendments is to indi-
Promises, promises
To the Editor:
THE PRESIDENT proposes to
establish a Commission or Com-
mittee on private schools. Will he
use private or public funds and
resources to do this?
The President orders major re-
visions in draft deferments f o r
whites. Blacks or none of these or
is this an attempt to relieve his
administration of this undesired
public image and rather pass the
buck to local controlled h a n d
picked draft boards?
Wasn't it a young girl in Ohio
who held up a sign to the Presi-
dent's train asking that he bring
us together? The President brings
us together, with Burger, with
Thurmond's Haynsworth, Mrs.
Mitchell, Carswell, the ABM, cut-
ting HEW's appropriations, ex-
panding the war in southeast As-
ia, removing troops from Vietnam
and deploying them instead in
close proximity thereto, denounc-
ing repression in Czechoslovakia
while supporting it in South Af-
rica, Brazil, etc. Is it soa ine of
these, all of these, or tricky trick-
ing again?
The President has the best side-
kick of all times, saying "the U, of
M is lowering the standards if it
admits more blacks," the Feds
should control the media (like in
Russia, etc.), poor people (espec-
ially blacks) haven't g o t sense
enough to deal with their own
problems and if I become Vice
President I propose that we look
to the progressionals, "Is that fat
Jap asleep again," No, my daugh-,
ter didn't march in the Morator-
ium, I wouldn't let her; Yes, she
was upset but she'll get over it,
parents don't know how to put
their feet down anymore. Is he
smart,, talking for tricky again,
drunk, feels his supremacist stat-
us threatened, or is it all of these?
The President gives his major
speeches in the East Room, Key
Biscayne, Florida, San Clemente,
foreign soils, military installations
and sends Ag-who. Is he afraid
of the people he governs? Secur-
ity risk? Where will he campaign
for "defeat" in 1972? Joe Lewis
once told a fighter "you can run
but you can't hide because the
ring is only so big."
Do you think that the f o u r
deaths on Kent State (Ohio)
campus is the result of the Vice
President's campus speeches and
that this is the manner in which
they (silent majority) will bring
us together? Political education is
so necessary that it Is about time
that someone began to build this
country's case against this admin-
istration and publicly for no mat-
ter what McCracken says about
the economy, Laird about the war,
Shultz about labor or the DAR
about morality (they don't know
what it means). Nixon and Agnew
are the two.
I sure hope no one trips over
one of those ABMs. I mean IBM.
I mean Just don't commit suicide
and take the rest of us with you.
-Ezra L. Rowry
Ann Arbor
May 9
Letters to the Editor should
be mailed to the Editorial Di-
rector or delivered to Mary
Rafferty in the Student Pub-
lications business office in the
Michigan Daily building. Let-
ters should be typed, double-
spaced and normally should not
exceed 250 words. The Editorial
Directors reserve the right to
edit all letters submitted.I
If you were waiting for an elevator and when it arrived a naked
woman stepped out, how would you react? If you were riding down a
country road and saw a woman stranded in her birthday suit, would
you drive by or offer assistance? How people react in these situations
is the basic premise of What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, now show-
ing at the Fifth Forum.
Conceived and directed by Allen Funt, the movie uses the format
of the popular television program Candid Camera - catching people
at the peak of their honesty, totally unaware that they are being
filmed. Often such' circumstances can prove to be nothing short o{
hilarious, but in this film the boredom created by the material stifles
the audience to little more than an occasional guffaw.
Funt, who in his time has used possibly every trick imaginable to
record human reactions, knew that there were certain topics of dis-
cussion that could never pass the television censors and therefore tried
another medium for his brand of humor.
His chief concern is nudity and how humans respond to the naked
body. The results are disastrous, exactly as one would suspect, some
get embarrassed, some are offended, and some could care less. It seems
that with the recent mass exposure, the nude has lost its potential as
a humorous subject.
The reactions cannot be categorized by age groups. Although there
is a greater willingness to accept nudity by the younger members of
the human race, there are plenty of grandmothers who agree with this
attitude and see the exposure of skin as a way of modern life. One would
like to say that the middle-age group is the stuffiest-as Punt sug-
gests-but it is unfair to banish them to a state of foginess, because
there are simply too many exceptions to the rule.
Besides nudity, Punt makes a play for a number of other "touchy"
subjects including mixed racial relationships, pornography, personal
sexual habits, and explaining the facts of life. In each of these cases,
the display of ignorance is equal to the degree of permissiveness.
In the end the film tries to capture thebeauty of childhood in-
nocence, by showing two tots playing in a field with one of them nude,
but even this is a sorry exhibit of adding an ounce of compassion to a
pound of doldrum.
Throughout the movie there is an audience discussion that is
suppose to give some account of how a normal audience would react to
the film. Some of the comments are interesting, but on the whole they
are as dull as the rest of the film.
The key problem is that Punt, while taking a poke at everything,
has failed to grasp anything. It is one thing to say humans have de-
finite hang-ups, but it is another to discover how these discriminations
develop and more important to question why they persist.
Had Funt been able to limit his material and the length of his
movie to half an hour, putting in only the best comments and the
funniest responses, this film could be considered tolerable. But as it is,
What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? is as entertaining as a ten year
old copy of Playboy magazine, and in that time a naked 'body can get
pretty worn and yellowed.
Now that he has done what television would never allow him-
and failed in the process-he should go back to talking mailboxes and
dancing policemen. The sketches make a stronger impression and the
end product is about twenty times funnier.
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Pollution control industry: More profit
4
By MARTIN GELLEN
Ramparts Magazine
(EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is reprinted with
the permission of Ramparts Magazine.)
T HE POLLUTION CONTROL Industry
is really an extension of both the tech-
nological capabilities and the marketing
patterns of the capital goods sector of the
economy. Most of the companies involved
in pollution control are not only polluters
themselves but are the same firms which
supply the chemicals, machines, plant
fuels and parts for even bigger polluters,
such as General Motors, U.S. Steel, Boeing,
Standard Oil, Philco-Ford, American Can
Co. and Consolidated Edison. For many of
these firms, pollution control is merely one
aspect of a program of "environmental
diversification," which is generally accom-
panied by heavy investment and aggressive
acquisition programs ....
IT IS THE CHEMICAL industry, how-
ment, including measuring instruments,
specialty treatment chemicals, and a spe-
cial biological filter medium called SURF-
PAC. The company designs, engineers,
builds and services waste water treatment
plants and is currently supervising munici-
pal sewage plants in Cleveland and work-
ing on waste disposal problems for lumber
companies in Pensacola, Florida, and West
Nyack, New York. All of these projects are
funded by the Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration (FWPCA).
Thus, the chemical industry - which
ranks second in production of polluted
waste water and generates close to 50 per
cent of the biological oxygen demand in in-
dustrial water before treatment-has, at
the same time, established a dominant
position in the water pollution control
business.
A SECOND CONSEQUENCE of placing
the "control" of pollution in the hands of
which will clean up the solids but leave the
phosphates, nitrogen compounds and a host
of other poisonous substances which sec-
ondary treatment can't possibly catch.
Of course, it is precisely the profit in-
centives as the criterion of what shall and
shall not be produced that makes it im-
possible to stop the proliferation and pro-
fusion of poisons in even the most obvious
places. Thus, the chemical industry has
polluted the housewife's food package not
only through the unintended absorption
of pesticide residues, but also through in-
numerable colorings, additives-like the
cyclamates--and preservatives designed to
increase food purchases and consumption.
in order to buoy up sagging sales curves.
The package itself, which is a sales boost-
ing device par excellence, can be both the
most polluting and dangerous feature of
all. As a piece de resistance the chemical
industry produces the non-biodegradable
nlas t.onta.nr -which cmein all se
pected to rise by seven per cent this year
alone.
ANOTHER CONSEQUENCE of business
control of cleaning up the environment is
cost to the public. Most municipal water
treatment plants in large urban areas are
currently constructed to handle an excess
capacity frequently 100 per cent greater
than the volume of waste actually pro-
duced by their resident populations. Much
of this surplus capacity is used by bit
business (especially the chemical industry)
to dispose of its wastes. Although industries
are charged for this use, it is the con-
sumers and taxpayers, through federal
grants and state bonds, who bear the cost
of construction and maintenance of the
treatment facilities. Thus the public pays
the polluters to construct the treatmeat
facilities necessitated by the polluters in
the first place.
'Mic llttin nn arn (iVP-n dAs
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