# Opening Shots (Sept. 1981) **URL:** **By** Bill Birmingham **Published:** September 1, 1981 --- “For somebody that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the Israelis have an awful lot to say about nuclear proliferation.” “For somebody that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the Israelis are certainly eager to assist in enforcement!” “Indigent parents are not automatically entitled to have a lawyer appointed to represent them at court proceedings where government authorities are trying to take away their children, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.” (_San Francisco Chronicle_, June 2, 1981) Not a word, of course, from Jerry Falwell, Jesse Helms, or the rest of the “pro-family” fakers. Political power grows out of the barrel of a pastry gun in Oakland, California, where _La Viennoise Pastry_ caters to the special needs of those cursed with proletarian sympathies and a bourgeois belly. For just $18 they will sell you a delicious El Salvador torte, decorated with a dove, a rifle, and the slogan “U.S. Hands Off El Salvador.” Two-thirds of the purchase price goes to the Salvadoran cause, so the buyer can help dig the grave of Yankee Imperialism with his dessert fork. The mouth waters at the prospect of future experiments in radical sweet: Palestine popovers, Kampuchea eclairs, East Berliners, Smash-the-Klan oreos.... When he was running for President Ronald Reagan was all in favor of tuition tax credits, which would allow parents of students attending private schools to deduct a part of the tuition from their income tax. But he doesn’t seem to want them just yet. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John E. Chapoton recently asked the Senate to hold off on such legislation. “It would be difficult to work it in this year, given the budgetary restraints,” he said, but tuition tax credits “will be at the top of our agenda at the appropriate time.” Famous last words. The “budget-busting” bill now pending in the Senate Finance Committee would let a parent deduct up to $250—raised to $500 in 1983—per student. (In 1980 Libertarian candidate Ed Clark proposed a tax credit of up to $1200.) Want to blow up a nuclear reactor? Why not ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for advice? Israel did . . . and got it. Last October 9th—the same month the Israeli cabinet decided to bomb the Iraqi reactor at Tawaitha—Israeli scientists met with NRC specialists “to discuss the dynamic response of reactor subsystems to explosions within the reactor containment building.” Specifically, they wanted to know about the effects of “a 1000 kilogram charge that penetrates concrete barriers and detonates after penetration.” By a strange coincidence, that’s just what the Israelis used at Tawaitha. When _The Washington Post_ (June 19, 1981) broke the story, NRC officials swore up and down that “We had no inkling in advance of any offensive proposition \[sic\].” But according to an internal NRC memo obtained by the _Post_: “Because of any lack of real interest in underground siting as a protective measure against sabotage, it was unclear whether the Israelis were interested in defending their own plants or in destroying someone else’s. . . .” U.S. officials “have insisted that they had no advance knowledge of the Israeli raid,” said the _Post_, “raising the question of whether NRC scientists’ suspicions about Israel’s intentions disappeared in the federal bureaucracy.” Whether you find that comforting, we suppose, depends on whether you’d rather be ruled by competent knaves or incompetent fools. We can just imagine what Senator Proxmire will say when he learns that the U.S. Army is studying the anaerobic formation of adenosine triphosphate. Which is too bad; for this research, far from meriting a Golden Fleece Award, could someday save lives on the battlefield. The cells of the human body run on adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which they form by metabolizing sugars. Most of the chemical reactions that form ATP require oxygen from the blood, but about 5 percent of the body’s ATP comes from anaerobic (non-oxygen using) reactions. According to Dr. Paul R. Sohmer of Letterman Army Institute in San Francisco, this opens the possibility of someday producing a drug that would stimulate more anaerobic reactions. Such a drug might allow a person to survive the loss of his last drop of blood, which of course would be of inestimable value to the military. To say nothing of the Internal Revenue Service. In 1980 Ms. Judith E. Miller, of Saginaw County, Michigan, shot and killed her boyfriend — and now she must pay the price. For the next five years she can neither get married nor live with a man without a court’s permission. “This court takes a great chance in not sentencing you to prison,” admitted Judge Gary McDonald at the sentencing. “I am depending on you. You have slipped in the past....” Do you think Charlie Manson would promise not to listen to “Helter Skelter” again, if we let him out? Never mind your chromosomes; marijuana can seriously impair one’s ability to play pro football. Dr. Graham Reedy saw the effects of the killer weed as team physician for the Oakland Raiders: “Even those who only used small amounts and not on game day just couldn’t keep up the peak performance required of professional football players. Regular users were usually gone by the end of one year.” Kiss decriminalization goodbye. According to the Department of Energy, the government-owned gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, has released at least 11,270 pounds of uranium since it was opened in 1945. The radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas escaped in 121 accidents; some of it was recovered “but we can’t say most of it was.” Some of the rest escaped into the atmosphere, some may have “slipped into cracks in the building,” but take heart: officials doubt that any was stolen. The DOE, by the way, only counted those accidents in which at least a kilogram of uranium escaped. The loss of less than 2.2 pounds of uranium, it seems, is too trivial to mention. Last month yr hmbl srvnt reported that the administration was sidling up to the thuggish rulers of Guatemala, and even contemplating giving them military assistance. The assistance has now begun. On June 5 the Commerce Department quietly approved the sale of $3.1 million worth of jeeps and military trucks to Guatemala, an act which ordinarily would have necessitated a review of Guatemala’s record on human rights. That very same day, however, the administration thoughtfully removed such vehicles from the list of items which can’t be sold to regimes “engaged in consistent patterns of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”—thereby saving a small fortune in whitewash. And a fortune is what it would take; the president of Guatemala, General Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, is the sort of man who could—and did—call Reagan’s predecessor “Jimmy Castro.” But we aren’t likely to hear any more of that, not as long as the aid keeps coming. Not everyone approves of cozying up to Guatemala. After news of the jeep and truck deal finally seeped out, 54 House Democrats sent a letter of protest to Secretary of State Alexander Haig, claiming the move “appears to reflect a conscious effort by the State Department to undermine the human rights provisions of our arms export control laws.” (Wonder what gave them that idea?) The group’s leader, Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA), had earlier called it “appalling . . . I don’t know of many governments that routinely murder people.” For our part, we don’t know of very many governments that don’t. ## Great Moments in Government Frugality: On June 29, 1981, the Pentagon authorized full production of the Navy’s controversial F-18 fighter, opening the door for the eventual purchase of 1366 of the planes. The F-18, which was designed as a lighter, cheaper companion to the $23 million F-14 fighter, is now estimated to cost $30 million apiece. To the great distress of chairman David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger was not reelected to the Council on Foreign Relations’ board of directors. He was one of nine candidates for eight seats on the board, and when the ballots were counted, Kissinger was odd man out. “Officials at the council,” _The Washington Post_ reported, “said it would be a mistake to read great significance in the outcome.” Maybe, but somehow we doubt that Super-K will ever again make the cover of _Time_ magazine — and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. It’s like having Blind Pew tip you the black spot. “Like everyone else,” says Rosemary Wells of Northeastern University’s School of Dentistry, “the Tooth Fairy is feeling the bite of inflation.” A recent survey by Ms. Wells found that she must now pay an average of 66¢ per lost tooth, compared with 30¢ 15 years ago and 19¢ in 1956. Other modern woes afflict the Tooth Fairy as well: In San Francisco she must now operate under the name of the Tooth Gay. Arms what? “Eugene V. Rostow, President Reagan’s nominee to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said yesterday that the Reagan administration would probably not be able to begin negotiations to limit strategic weapons with the Soviet Union until March 1982. ‘It may be that a brilliant light will strike our officials . . . but I don’t know anyone who knows what it is yet that we want to negotiate about.’” (_The New York Times_, June 23, 1981) Think, Gene, think!