OCR Text |
Show v t f rmTrt t "T "' t' Sunday Morning, October T"rrT-r'T,Trtr- rr"r" y vr v 4V ry -- " 1" r Trrr - Common Carrier Letters Tribune Editorials 17, 1982 r Latest Polish Violence Tests Churchs Hands-Of- f Poland, the Catholic Church In is uniquely united with the nation. Hut Archbishop Jozef Glemp emphasizes that the nation is not the state. It follows, therefore, that the church is not an arm of the government. It has gone to great lengths to retain its independence. Some say it has gone too far. When polioe fired tear gas into crowd of mourners placing candles and a floral cross at a church in Krakow last week they greatly increased the risk of a confrontation and all the new dangers this would unleash. The candles were being old Bodgan lighted for Wlosik, the first person killed in riots protesting outlawing of the workers Solidarity Union by Po- church-stat- e 20-ye- ar Policy orating the second anniversary of the then outlawed Solidarity Union, Poles constructed elaborate crosses of flowers, the most provocative one being laid out in huge Victory Square in Warsaw. The government lost little time fencing off and tearing up the square. Since then flower crosses have been built on church property traditionally out of government reach. The tear gassing of Krakow mourners lighting candles at a flower cross on church ground therefore constitutes a potentially serious incitement in a country where some 90 percent of the people are Catholics. The church sees Polands present turmoil as a social, economic and moral crisis. As a religious organization it has sought to deal mainly with the moral aspects which, according to Archbiship Glemp, is the result of the other factors. Parliament. Thus far, the church has managed to keep a respectable distance between itself, the military government of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Solidarity and various Although the church heirarchy underground groups. But there has has attempted to steer a nonnever been any doubt that its modera- lands rubber-stam- p sympathies lie with the Polish d people and not their government. Meeting with a group of American editorial writers in Warsaw recently, Archibishop Glemp warned that the outlawing of Solidarity and the passing of a new union law would touch off worker protests but he stopped short of condemning such action at that time. After the riots in late August and early September, commem- hard-presse- political course, urging tion both upon its members and the government, incidents such as the tear gassing at Krakow raise doubts as to how long its restraining influence can be maintained. Even with the church as a force for moderation, violence contnues to flare. If the staying hand is' eventually provoked into openly taking sides, Poland's troubles to date might well be remembered as only the probing jabs in a showdown that produced yet another Polish national tragedy. Low Interest, Higher Hope Falling interest rates are credited with fueling the spectacular stock market rally of recent days. .And, under ususal assumptions, the decline in interest can be counted upon to also revive the hard-presse- d housing and au- tomobile industries with all the beneficial spinoffs such an occurence would produce. Are the usual assumptions reliable anymore? If one thing has distinguished this recession so far it is that traditional rules of cause and effect have not been operative. For example, inflation and recession moved in tandum instead of the latter eliminating the former as simple economic theory holds. True, inflation belatedly declined as unemployment and other negative factors took hold, but even with a 10 percent unemployment rate, the cost of living continues to climb at an annual rate in the neighborhood of 7 percent. When the government announced Tuesday that it was paring the interest rate ceiling on federally-backe- d loans for singlefamily homes from 13.5 percent to 12.5 percent, the Department of Housing and Urban Development was quick to disclose that this would make 1.2 million families elgible for VA and FHA home loans. The assumption seemed to be that all those potential home buyers would rush to the nearest loan officer and begin arranging financing for the home they previously could not afford. We would love to see it work out that way because the resulting buying spree would give a timely shot in the arm not only to the construction industry but related enterprises as well. But we are not convinced the new lower rates are going to have such dramatic effects. Even a family which can now afford to buy may be uncertain of employment prospects as layoffs in many industries continue. Home buying is a major investment even in normal times. In todays mixed up economy it approaches the traumatic. And those prepared to make the move could very well hold back in expectation that interest rates will go even lower in the near future. This pessimistic assessment to the contrary, the downward trend in interest rates is the most engaging animal to come out of the economic jungle in months. Once usual assumptions again, if hold, the lower interest costs should eventually bring about a corresponding drop in those destatisbilitating unemployment tics. too. Random Shots Referendum Makes Sense The Arms Race Must Stop Now By Hans Bethe Special to the Los Angeles Times The nuclear freeze which will be the subject of a referendum in California on Nov. 2 is meant to be a signal to the U S. government that the American people want the arms race to stop was one of the scientists at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory which developed the atomic bomb during World War II. We thought at the time that the United States might deploy a few dozen nuclear weapons. Not in our worst nightmares did we imagine that someday there would be about 10,000 strategic nuclear weapons in the United States and a similar number in the Soviet Union These large numbers make no sense, even if we wished to destroy all weapons and industrial targets in the Soviet Union At this level of armament, as Henry Kissinger said already many years ago. it is meaningless to ask who is ahead and who is behind. President Reagan recognized that these large numbers of weapons make no sense, and give no security to either country, when he asked for large reductions in the strategic nuclear force by both sides, and authorized negotiations in Geneva. Yet, at the same time, the United States is engaged in a massive buildup of nuclear armaments. The supporters of this arms buildup claim that the freeze would put us into a position of permanent inferiority. However, when asked whether they would like to trade weapons with the Soviet Union, responsible American military leaders have said that 1 they would not. Wnat is the purpose of strategic nuclear forces? There is really only one: to deter a nuclear attack by a potential enemy. For this purpose you need to be able to retain the capacity to inflict unbearable damage on the enemy even after he has inflicted such damage on you. To accomplish this we Riikvr Health The law of contradiction is as constant and immutable as the law of gravity or the law of averages. Just ask any Republican these days. No sooner does the GOP i partisan contend his party's leadership has helped, finally, knock national inflation down to tolerable size than a needling Democrat points out conditions are still scandalous because countrywide unemployment has risen to frightful proportions. Or consider a recent development in Salt Lake County government. Terry Sadler, director of Environmental Health, claims the county health department should begin closer supervision of commercial health spas because some such operations are so poorly managed they don't maintain adequate hygiene It means people frequenting such places to improve or preserxe their r physical endanger jogging in hazards. are. in fact, liable to their health. Something like a busy street' seeking health has r Matched When I tali Sens. Jake Gain and Orrin Hatch protested to the Farmer's Home Administration a preliminary decision by that agency to delete ski resorts front its federally gauranteed business loans, there might have been some temptation to wonder what farming and skiing have in common. The senators properly explained that as long as the resort loans are in the program, they should remain, considering that skiing is a half billion dollar business in I'tali. Or as others have observed, both farming and skiing are annually at the mercy of the weather f low-cos- t, d d land-base- land-base- 1 territory. If we now engaged in another arms buildup, it will again cause a Russian countermove. Therefore, at least it is futile, but more likely we shall be worse off. Arms control treaties have been verified without inspection, using expecially intelligent satellites. They are our eyes, which can distinguish objects as small as an our ability to automobile. The Russians have a similar would not incapacitate capacity to see what goes on in the United retaliate. We u'ould retain the majoi'part of The intelligence satellites are the States. submarines. the our deterrent force, tsileiit communication syrfems between Mo'reoVer. if ICBMs are soon becoming countries. Because of them, each country s v ulnerable. then the Soviets, having can monitor ICBM implacements, subof their weapons in ICBMs will be marines in docks, troop movements, any more vulnerable than the United States. kind of unusual activity that might be a of the nuclear Only about warning. Without them we are blind, and warheads of the Soviet Union are on fear and distrust increase. submarines. Moreover, the fraction of the It is essential that we preserve them, it is Russian submarines that are actually-deployeat sea is considerably smaller therefore deplorable that the U.S. Air Force than ours, partly for geographic reasons is beginning tests of weapons and partly because the Soviets submarines that are to go into service in 1986. Assuming need more frequent repairs. that the Russians will follow our example, In any case, our submarine force is as they always have done, we are setting sufficient to deter any massive nuclear the stage for blinding ourselves deliberately. There should be a treaty prohibiting the attack by the Soviets on the United States. and deployment of testing The administration complains that in the weapons. 1970s the Russians built up their nuclear We must give a signal to the administrawhile America arsenal relentlessly stood still." In fact, the number of tion and to Congress that we want the arms w arheads in our strategic forces increased race to stop The freeze referendum is such from about 4.000 in 1970 to 10,000 in 1990 a signal Mn$ ftefne is a Nooei Manhattan Protect 'aureate wfto cn the on-sit- e . three-quarter- one-quart- anti-satelli- f Tylenol a New National Symbol By Ratnck Malone Knight-Ridde- r Newspapers Every morning in the breakfast table headlines, every ev ening on the television news, we are coni routed with the symbol: Tylenol Like any symbol, it has come to stand for much more than it really is. Tylenol is the bogeyman in the meJuine cabinet, the target for all our irrational fears. Soon now, our fears will be vanquished. Within a few months, though not in time for the November elections, we will have tamper-resistabottles for all drugs Shoppers will see row upon row of visible proof that their federal gov ernment is competent and humane. We will thereby have recreated a national myth. It is the myth that says we place an infinite value on human life, that says life's risks can be eliminated one by one, that says the quick fix of technology will make us safe. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not believe that it is a trivial issue that people have died of cyanide poisoning by swallowing what the innocently thought was a pain reliever. I do not doubt that it i. probably a good idea to charge consumers Editor s Note Patrick Maione. a former Miami Herald medical vriter, is a student at Yale Law School. He wrote this article for the Herald g A dtnrullv land-base- while the Soviet Union's increased from about .800 to 6.000 by 1980 and 8,000 by 1982. The Soviet buildup followed ours by about five years. In the best way to stop further buildup is a freeze followed by negotiated, substantial arms reductions. The arms race must stop. At every step, w e have taken the lead. We were the first to deploy ICBMs by the hundreds. We invented MIRV, the multiple independently vehicles by which one targeted missile can send many, in some cases 10, warheads to different places in enemy Mlli Kcrrealrtl a few well-bein- have placed more than half of our nuclear warheads on submarines, which are virtually undetectable in the ocean. Therefore, missiles and .submarines are essentially invulnerable. It is true that the Soviets have more and ICBMs. How could it be bigger dilterent? Overall the two countries have approximate parity in nuclear weapons. We have put our emphasis on submarine-launchemissiles, so obviously we have d missiles. Some strategic fewer analysts have expressed fear that with their large ICBMs. whose accuracy is increasing. the Soviets might be able to intercontinental destroy our ballistic missiles by targeting their own missiles against our missile silos. But this cents more per bottle to prevent such horrible deaths am suggesting is this. When the press proclaims crisis and the politicians declare war on a social issue, it is a fairly safe rule that an early casualty of the conflict will be any sense of proportion Both the consumer panic and the political response to Tylenol are evidence that we have a deep and irrational need to avoid confronting a few basic truths about modern living What I We fear unknown risks much more than known risks, even if the chance of dying is much greater irom known risk3. To remain in control, we need to preserve some areas of lile. at least in appearance, as entirely risk-freWe could save many people the agony of slow death by lung cancer or heart disease by banning tobacco sales, but freedom ol choice, we have decided, is more important. (Little known from cirrhosis of the liver due to alcoholism fact: plummeted during Prohibition,' and the lives saved greatly outnumbered those lust in gangland shoutouts. But. you say, these are all drastic measures. Let us be reasonable reply: Air bags would cost $190 per car if made standard equipment now Does it seem odd ihHt the same administration iX-at- 1 embarked on a crash program to protect us from madmen decided last year that the financial health of the automobile industry was more important than the lives that would be saved b'- mandating air bags in new cars? Does this mean that we put a price on human life by our pdtical decisions that spend money here but not there Yes. it does We do it in every budget decision and in countless other ways. When we support a volunteer Army instead of a draft, we say that the lives of those w ho volunteer" even if desperate economic straits brought them to enlist are less important to be jeopardized in war than the lives of those w ho can afford to remain civilian. Tylenol helps keep in place a national mythology. Tylenol says: Look at these new, improved bottle caps; we spare no expense to protect the public, and we value all lives equally. We have a number of such symbols, and by pointing to them from time to time, we distract ourselves from our inevitable shortcomings. Kidney dialysis is a good symbol Congress decided in 1973 that no person should die because his kidneys have failed and because there are not enough dials sis machines to go around. We now spend $1.4 billion a year, $24,000 per palient, so that we do no! have to choose which kidney patients live and which must die. would point out that the money we Only the spend on this disease is that much money that we do not have to spend on some other problem. (Example: Nutrition for poor pregnant women to prevent birth defects and infant deaths; the Reagan administration has made this an area for budget cuts.) But it is not just members of the news media who do this. On victims do not exist. They are a more fundamental level, air-bastatistical probabilities. When they die, we can attribute their to fate, or to their own weakness. It was the drunken driver in the other car. It was a rainy night. It was not the lack of the air bug When the emphysema ict ini dies, we can say, he should have stopped smoking. It was not that w e let the tobacco companies make freedom of choice a buzz word. It is easier to blame the victim. Deciding what caused someones death is not always a matter of science, as we like to think. It is a matter of moral r hoice. Out of all the events in the victim's lile, out of all the social and political decisions that molded his life, we truck out one or two tilings and decide that they mattered the most. Tylenol is easy. That is why it makes such a good symbol The deaths were the work of a madman. The decision is simple; we must find him stop him, picvcut such things from ever happening again g v opy right r i v t |