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THE MONDAY REVIEW

A Free Weekly News Digest of Intellectual Affairs

June 15, 1998 - Issue #7

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TV has become our hearth, our home, our country and the very air we breathe. So what's at stake today is, simply, everything. -- Mark Crispin Miller

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Contents of This Issue:

1. On the Road to Doomsday 2. On Indonesia's Political Odyssey 3. Harvard University and the Destruction of the Russian Economy 4. A Charge of International Electronic Espionage 5. On the Control of American Television 6. On 20th Century French Intellectuals 7. Physicist Edward Teller on Science and Morality 8. A Commercial Venture to Sequence the Human Genome

Notices

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1. ON THE ROAD TO DOOMSDAY Future historians will no doubt emphasize that the 20th century brought to the human race the technological capacity to commit species suicide. For 40 years after the explosion of the first atomic bomb, this fact was part of the main text of intellectual discourse. Then the Cold War ended, and during the next decade the fact became a footnote. Now the footnote is apparently main text again, as an undercurrent of Armageddon anxiety appears to be reasserting itself. In a lead article (unsigned, as usual) the journal The Economist considers bombs, gas and microbes, and "the desperate efforts to block the roadway to doomsday". The writer makes the following points: 1) The idea that the threat of cataclysmic war has dissipated is a fallacy. More than 50 years after the explosion of the first atomic bomb, fears about the spread of weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them -- have, if anything, intensified. 2) Such fears are not irrational: the collapse of the Soviet Union has brought with it the danger that ex-Soviet weapons scientists might sell their skills abroad -- as some have. 3) Regional rivalries that in the past were contained by the US and the USSR are no longer contained, and the new India-Pakistan arms race is an example of the consequence of withdrawn restraints. Other potential flashpoints include the Korean peninsula and the Middle East. The writer concludes: "In the end, getting at the roots of regional disputes is the only sure way to reduce the danger of hideously lethal exchanges... It is the hard cases that will test the world's resolve to prevent the further spread of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. India and Pakistan are the latest of these. They will not be the last." (The Economist 6 Jun 98) (The Monday Review 15 Jun 98)

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Related Background: ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR WAR: A CONTEMPORARY ASSESSMENT Forrow et al (9 authors at 8 installations, US), in a special report in a prestigious medical journal, review the current probability for nuclear war. In the 1980s, many medical organizations identified the prevention of nuclear war as one of the medical professions's most important goals. For this report, the authors reviewed the recent literature on the status of nuclear arsenals and the risk of nuclear war, then estimated the likely medical effects of a scenario identified by leading experts as posing a serious danger: an accidental launch of nuclear weapons. The authors found that US and Russian nuclear weapons systems remain on high alert. This fact, combined with the aging of Russian technical systems, has recently increased the risk of an accidental nuclear attack. As a conservative estimate, an accidental intermediate-size launch of weapons from a single Russian submarine would result in the deaths of 6,838,000 persons from firestorms in 8 US cities. Millions of other people would probably be exposed to potentially lethal radiation from fallout. The authors propose that the risk of an accidental nuclear attack has increased in recent years, threatening a public health disaster of unprecedented scale, and they suggest that physicians and medical organizations should work actively to help build support for the policy changes that would prevent such a disaster. "The prevention of nuclear war should be one of the medical profession's most important goals." QY: Lachlan Forrow, Harvard Univ. Medical School 617-432-1550. (New England J. Med. 30 Apr 98) (The Monday Review 11 May 98)

2. ON INDONESIA'S POLITICAL ODYSSEY Jeffrey A. Winters (Northwestern University, US) considers the recent upheaval in Indonesia. 1) The rioting that broke out in Jakarta in July of 1996, the most explosive surge of anger the country had seen in more than two decades, foreshadowed the rage that swept across Indonesia after the sniper assassinations of six students at Trisakti University last month. The end had begun. 2) The US, which set its foreign policy toward Indonesia on autopilot back in the mid-sixties, managed to veer away from Suharto only in the last hours before he fell. And even then, the statements coming from Washington were muddled, contradictory and of little help to the Indonesian democracy movement. 3) None of the major opposition elites or groups that rose to prominence during the past three months of struggle, and certainly no figures linked to Suharto, can command a serious mass following. 4) The key political event that lies ahead is a national election. 5) Perhaps after the elections Suharto might have seconds thoughts about hanging around, since it is then that the trials will certainly commence to punish those in the New Order who stole from the country and people and committed atrocities along the way to make sure they could get away with it. QY: Jeffrey A. Winters, Northwestern University 847-491-3741. (The Nation 15/22 Jun 98) (The Monday Review 15 Jun 98)

3. HARVARD UNIVERSITY AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY Janine R. Wedel (George Washington University, US) reviews the involvement of a Harvard University team of economic consultants in the ongoing economic debacle in Russia. The author makes the following points: 1) After seven years of economic "reform" financed by billions of US dollars and other Western aid, subsidized loans and rescheduled debt, the majority of Russian people find themselves worse off economically. The privatization drive that was supposed to reap the fruits of the free market instead helped create a system of tycoon capitalism run for the benefit of a corrupt political oligarchy that has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars of Western aid and plundered Russia's wealth. 2) The architect of privatization was former Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, a darling of US and Western financial establishments. According to *The New York Times*, Chubais "may be the most despised man in Russia." 3) Essential to the implementation of Chubais's policies was the enthusiastic support of the Clinton Administration and its key representative for economic assistance in Moscow, the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). Using the prestige of Harvard's name and connections to the US Administration, HIID officials acquired virtual carte blanche over the US economic aid program to Russia, with minimal oversight by the government agencies involved. With this access and their close alliance with Chubais and his circle, they allegedly profited on the side. Yet few Americans are aware of HIID's role in Russian privatization, and its suspected misuse of taxpayers' funds. Wedel concludes: "Any serious inquiry must go beyond individual corruption and examine how US policy, using tens of millions in taxpayer dollars, helped deform democracy and economic reform in Russia and helped create a fat-cat oligarchy run amok." QY: Janine R. Wedel, George Washington University 202-994-6000 (The Nation 1 Jun 98) (The Monday Review 15 Jun 98)

4. A CHARGE OF INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC ESPIONAGE As the dominant political force on the world scene, the US is the natural assumed villain in various international paranoid fantasies involving conspiracies, cabals, plots, and financial manipulations. But there are occasions when it is not easy to distinguish such fantasies from reality, and this is of consequence, since often the perception of American insidious activity by the populations of countries can become a significant element in international affairs. The "centrist" Italian newsmagazine Il Mondo recently published an apparent expose of a supposed nefarious alliance called UKUSA, whose members are the five English-speaking countries, US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the purpose of the alliance ostensibly to conduct electronic espionage through a network known as "Echelon", the network using "highly sophisticated spy satellites, interception bases on the ground, and super-computers capable of analyzing vast quantities of intercepted messages, phone conversations, faxes, and electronic mail messages." The author, Claudio Gatti, writes: "The target of this satellite-cum- electronic Big Brother is the entire world's telecommunications." Evidently, earlier this year, a department of the European Parliament's General Research Directorate released a report detailing these activities of UKUSA. According to this report, "the Echelon system is directed primarily against civilian objectives: governments, organizations, and companies from practically every country in the world." The UKUSA signal intelligence security agreement originated in 1948 in connection with the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and this current accusation is that this agreement is now being used as the basis for industrial espionage by the five English-speaking nations involved. Certainly, there is never much that is clear to outsiders concerning state espionage, but it is probably true that given that the five named countries have the technical capability to monitor most international electronic information traffic, it is probably also true that the burden of making any sensible use of the traffic monitored is overwhelming -- supercomputers or no supercomputers. Intelligence agencies know this; ordinary people confronted with conspiracy theories usually do not know it. Commenting on this supposed Anglo intelligence conspiracy that has now been widely reported in the European press, Louis-Marie Horeau of the French satirical weekly *Le Canard Enchaine* says: "Until a computer understands that the balance of the world can be threatened by the proximity of the words 'Bill', 'fly', and 'Paula', it should be possible to chat in peace for a while." (Il Mondo 20/27 Mar 98) (Le Canard Enchaine 22 Apr 98) (World Press Review July 1998) (The Monday Review 15 Jun 98)

5. ON THE CONTROL OF AMERICAN TELEVISION For several decades after its advent as a major medium, the magnitude of the influences of television were debated by social scientists and journalists. These days, there is agreement that the influences are enormous, even if these influences are not always clearly delineated. There is more interest now in "control" -- who controls television as a medium. But if control of television broadcasting and content is widely distributed, that may be of some interest to a small number of social scientists, but it is of little interest to anyone else, and especially of little interest to magazine editors, who after all need features that command attention. The result, of course, is that we are more likely to be informed of the control of television (or of anything else) in the hands of a few rather than in the hands of many. That is the nature of competitive media. In a recent issue, the journal The Nation devotes some 20 pages to a group of articles by various authors on the theme of control by a few interests of American television broadcasting and content. One of the authors, Mark Crispin Miller (New York University, US), makes the following points: 1) Seven media giants control the diversity of television: Tele-Communications Inc., Time-Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, General Electric, Viacom, and CBS. 2) Whereas 20 years ago TV production was the work of many non-affiliated entities, today approximately 90 per cent of what is seen on the 6 networks during prime time belongs to General Electric, Time-Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Viacom, CBS, Sony, and Universal. 3) Miller predicts that in the future "our entertainment will become at once more violent and more boring, with all the hits of yesteryear, or yesterday, recycled, only now with desperate crudity: lots of skin and rape and torture -- anything to keep the audience from moving on or passing out." Miller proposes "radical reform: to free the media through new antitrust laws, a stringent public service code, and ample public funding (based on corporate revenues) of a national and local broadcast system that would really serve the people." Miller does not address the question of who will decide what will "really serve the people", or the larger question of whether any such decision can ever be made without the wielding of dangerous political power by a self- consecrated elite. QY: Mark Crispin Miller, New York University 212-998-4500 (The Nation 8 Jun 98) (The Monday Review 15 Jun 98)

(continued in Part 2)

-------------- Enclosure number 2 ----------------

THE MONDAY REVIEW - 2/2

June 15, 1998

6. ON 20TH CENTURY FRENCH INTELLECTUALS It is certainly true that in Paris, if one stands facing the Eiffel Tower, the so-called Left Bank of the Seine is on the left and the Right Bank on the right of the river. But that is where the matter ends: the idea that the Parisian Left Bank has been historically aligned with the French political Left is dubious, since the Left Bank, in the 1930s and 1940s, at least, spawned almost as many fascists as socialists and communists, including a number of notorious fascist literary people. What is character- istic of the Left Bank of Paris, at least that part of it near the center of the city, is that in it has always housed the main university quarters of Paris, especially the student quarters, a score of small and important publishing houses, the residences (both shabby and lavish) of many artists and writers, and a dozen or so popular cafes and restaurants that served as meeting grounds for the French "intellectual" class. But the idea of the "committed" French intellectual is rather new, and one can argue that it began with the Dreyfus case (see background material below). Patrick McCarthy, in a review of a monograph on the history of 20th century French intellectuals, makes the following points: 1) What, in France, is an "intellectual"? In its everyday sense, the term denotes writers, philosophers, some journalists, and some academics (who are rarely scientists). But the term has been used in various ways. For example, civil servants and graduates of important French training schools for civil servants have also been called "intellectuals" by the French media. 2) The notion that French "high culture" reflects the preoccupation of only a small segment of the French population is false. 3) Also false is the simplistic idea that French intellectuals directly shape or reflect historical trends in France. 4) Economic problems are not the stuff of intellectual debate until they reach a crisis. This was the case with the Depression of the inter-war period, which provoked a wave of commitment both on the Left and the Right. 5) During the Occupation (1940-1945) a certain solidarity among French intellectuals coexisted with the life and death struggle between the Resistance and the collaborators. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893-1945), a well-known novelist and an important figure associated with the influential intellectual journal Nouvelle Revue Francaise, was a virulent fascist who intervened with the German authorities to obtain the release of Jean Paulhan, a leading Resistance writer. Paulhan returned to the office of Nouvelle Revue Francaise and helped Drieu run the Occupation version of the magazine. 6) During the "age of Sartre", the readers of Sartre did not follow him in his stubborn pursuit of an illusory proletarian revolution. 7) The Algerian War highlighted the best and worst traits of the left- wing intellectuals, presenting great issues in simple forms. But the misjudgment of de Gaulle by French intellectuals "reinforces the common Anglo-Saxon view that they [the French intellectuals] lived in a world of their own." (The Times Literary Supplement 5 Jun 98) (The Monday Review 15 Jun 98)

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Related Background: THE DREYFUS AFFAIR REVISITED Robert Tombs (Cambridge University, UK) presents an illuminating review of the Dreyfus Affair, which occurred exactly 100 years ago -- a review of reactions to the affair in France and abroad at the time the affair occurred. In particular, Tombs considers the question of why the world's press and its readers responded to this particular story. Never before, Tombs says, but also never since, were such emotions aroused by the judicial fate of an obscure individual. Why was it Dreyfus who came to occupy this niche in history? Any attempt to answer these questions honestly immediately forces an immersion into the politics and culture of the time. The Dreyfus Affair mobilized conservatives as well as radicals, but in different ways in different places. In contrast to the reaction within France, sympathy for Dreyfus was strong among conservatives in Britain, Germany, the US, Italy, and even Russia. The British royal family, the German Kaiser, and the King of Greece were pro-Dreyfus. In France, and in her Latin and Catholic neighbors, the Dreyfusards (i.e., pro-Dreyfus individuals) were left-wing, anti-clerical, anti-military; while anti-Dreyfusards in France, Latin, and Catholic countries shared the French Right's obsession with Jews, Freemasons, and Protestants. Outside France and its sphere, the anti-Dreyfusards were usually extreme nationalists and/or Catholics and/or anti- Semitic. The affair split the French intellectual world of the time: Cezanne, Degas, and Renoir were anti-Dreyfus, as was the filmmaker Melies; senior faculty at colleges and universities in France were pro-Dreyfus, while junior faculty were anti-Dreyfus. Pro-Dreyfus Emile Zola electrified both sides with his famous "J'Accuse" letter of protest to the President of the French Republic published in the newspaper L'Aurore on January 13, 1898. Dreyfus himself was not really much of a Dreyfusard. The pro-Dreyfus socialist Charles Peguy said: "We were willing to die for Dreyfus. But Dreyfus was not willing to die for Dreyfus." Tombs concludes with the suggestion that one significant element of the Dreyfus Affair was that it posed an important question for the French: Who is French? And 100 years after the Dreyfus Affair, in a France that has now incorporated a significant and religious Muslim minority, the question is perhaps again of great import for the French people. (The Times Literary Supplement 1 May 98) (The Monday Review 18 May 98)

7. PHYSICIST EDWARD TELLER ON SCIENCE AND MORALITY Edward Teller (Stanford University, US), one of the major contributors to the physical theory and current explanation of solar energy, is also well-known in the political arena as the major proponent of the initial development of the hydrogen bomb by the US. Teller was born in Hungary, became a physicist in Germany, left Germany in 1933, and eventually became a partici- pant in the US Manhattan Project 1941-1946 to develop the atomic bomb. In a recent essay reviewing the political aspects of his scientific career, Teller (who is now 90 years of age) makes the following points: 1) Concerning the questions, What is true? What is right? What is beautiful?: science considers what is true, politics considers what is right, and art considers what is beautiful. Truth, morality, and beauty thus produce activities in science, politics, and art, but these activities diverge greatly, and Teller proposes they can be pursued initially without regard to each other, or without reconciling the possible conflicts that may arise. 2) Teller says that in 1945, when the work on the hydrogen bomb was discontinued, in addition to his disappointment in having to stop a project on which he had been working, he was disappointed for two other reasons: The first reason was his belief that the pursuit of knowledge and the expansion of human capabilities are intrinsically worthwhile; and the second reason was his worry of what might result if the Soviets got too far ahead of the US in military technology. 3) Of his long-standing criticism of communism, Teller says that "by age 11 I had a non- too-sweet taste of communism in Hungary." 4) Teller says that when he met the physicist Lev Landau in 1930, Landau said he could not imagine anything more ridiculous than a capitalist government. Some years later, Teller learned that Landau had been arrested by the Soviets as a capitalist spy, and Teller says this event was for him (Teller) more defining than the Hitler-Stalin pact, and that by 1940 he (Teller) had every reason to dislike and distrust the Soviets. 5) Finally, concerning the question of his role in producing the hydrogen bomb, Teller writes as follows: "I am still asked on occasion whether I am not sorry for having invented such a terrible thing as the hydrogen bomb. The answer is, I am not." QY: Edward Teller, Stanford University 415-723-2300. (Science 22 May 98 280:1200) (Science-Week 12 Jun 98) (The Monday Review 15 Jun 98)

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Related Background: SOVIET POLITICAL PERSECUTION OF THE PHYSICIST LEV LANDAU Most young physicists sooner or later encounter the work of Lev Landau in the library or in a course, and a common first response is "Who is this guy?" For Lev Landau had his fingers, so to speak, in nearly all sectors of the pie of theoretical physics: density matrix theory, electron gases, astrophysics, phase transitions, superfluidity, quarks, ferromagnetism, Fermi liquids, quantum electrodynamics, and so on. Landau, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962, was certainly one of the most influential physicists of this century, and in the August 1997 issue of Scientific American there is an article by science historian Gennady Gorelik that gives one a glimpse of what it was like to produce first-rate theoretical physics in an environment controlled by a fanatic totalitarian regime. Working from Soviet archives, Gorelik reveals riveting new details of Lev Landau's anti-Soviet political life, a political life (including imprisonment by the KGB) that ran in parallel with his life as a theoretical physicist. This a fascinating article that should be read by anyone interested in the history of physics. (Scientific American August 1997) (Science-Week 18 July 97)

8. A COMMERCIAL VENTURE TO SEQUENCE THE HUMAN GENOME This much seems clear: the next century will see the Genomics Revolution, and major players in that era will be international corporate entities focused on the making of profit from detailed knowledge of the human genome, the various aspects of the genetic basis of human diversity, the genetic basis of human health risk, and of course from the entire array of non- human genomics applications to microbial biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, animal husbandry, agriculture, and so on. All of these are essentially trivial predictions that follow immediately from the central idea that we will soon know enough of the human genome and the genomes of other life forms to completely understand and control genetic programming. This will be a serious watershed, but it is part of the intellectual evolution of the human species, there is no way to avoid it, and by itself it will certainly not provoke the end of civilization. One hundred and fifty years ago, there were analysts who declared the Industrial Revolution would make a great deal of money for a few people, make many more people miserable, but better the life of the multitude in incalculable ways. And so it was; and so, hopefully, it will be for the Genomics Revolution. But it will not be easy. Watersheds in the application of science and technology to human existence cannot be expected to be easy to negotiate. There will be problems, many problems, and the legislative and managerial people will need to solve these problems as best they can to minimize the harm to the multitude. It took a century to achieve in the West a modicum of social control of the Industrial Revolution. It may take as long as that to achieve similar control of the Genomics Revolution. Recently, the scientific community learned that molecular biologist J. Craig Venter (The Institute for Genomic Research, US) and the Perkin-Elmer Corporation (US) (the world's largest manufacturer of automated sequencing machines) will form a new company to complete the sequence of the entire human genome in 3 years. If successful, this for-profit venture could preempt the work of the US$3 billion Human Genome Project, a government- financed coalition of nearly a dozen academic and contract centers, and apparently do it for a fraction of the cost, as little as US$300 million. This commercial plan has evidently split the genome community, and many researchers are concerned that the new company will not release sequence data as quickly as the Human Genome Project. In fact, Venter and Perkin-Elmer have announced that partly to safeguard its proprietary claims, the new company plans to release raw DNA data quarterly, rather than on a daily basis as is done now by many federally-funded genome centers. Delays in releasing genome data are apparently a sensitive issue in the genome community, and heated debates on the issue are expected in the near future. Venter and Perkin- Elmer have also announced they expect to put together from the work a proprietary set of approximately 100,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms, and a whole-genome database that will be marketed to academic researchers and companies on a subscription basis. [A genetic polymorphism is a naturally occurring variation in the normal nucleotide sequence of the genome within individuals in a population.] (Science 15 May 98 280:994) (Science-Week 5 Jun 98) (The Monday Review 15 Jun 98)

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