"Quality of life" is an elusive concept, and since most, if not all of
such ratings are corporate driven, they are questionable. What is the
criteria used? Whether a home has a television set, and if so, how many?
A telephone? A computer? Access to a MacDonald's or a shopping mall?
Does a more highly evolved technology translate into a higher quality of
life? Does someone with the latest megabyte PC enjoy a higher quality of
life than someone who is able to buy a peach in a neighborhood market
that actually tastes like it did before it became just another
commodity? Does someone with four bathrooms in their home enjoy a better
quality of life than the parents who knows their young child can play on
the street without the fear of their being kidnapped, molested or
murdered by some psychopath. Or that their children can go to school
without the fear that they will be gunned down by one of their
classmates, or that the killer won't be their own child, who
communicates on his own PC with others of a similar mindset, and drives
his very own BMW or Chevy to school?
Has the quality of our own lives in the US really improved with the
technological advances that have taken place in our life time? As I
asked once before, does living longer mean living better? Has the
medical care provided for the majority of people, both in America and
worldwide, shown improvements that corresponds to the development of new
profit-making drugs? Do those growing old have less to fear and more to
appreciate than did their counterparts three decades ago? Has technology
made us a more or less sociable society? Would someone 40 years ago have
understood the meaning of "road rage" or "gridlock"? What does it say
about the quality of life in a society where tens of thousands of people
spend a minimum of 3 hours a day driving to and from work, part of which
is to pay for that very transportation?
In evaluating "quality of life," these are the kind of questions that
need to be considered.
Jeff Blankfort
William Mandel wrote:
> Paula: Regrettably, it's true. the U.S. ranks near the top,
> fourth in the world, in quality of life. Canada is first. Canada,
> too, is a land of corporations, but there is a degree of control
> and a larger degree of concern for public welfare -- single-payer
> health and now something approaching that in child-care -- that
> makes for a more human life. But both there and here it actually
> is corporations and, specifically, the competition among them,
> that has brought technological change to the society as a whole,
> even when that change -- the PC -- was invented by a bunch of 60s
> kids with the ideal of putting information in the hands of the
> people at large.
> The countries that abolished corporations -- the
> Communist-governed ones -- replaced them with government
> monopolies. Monopolies public or private feel no pressure to
> introduce technological change.
> Neither PCs, televisions or refrigerators can be produced at
> affordable prices except by what are corporations, no manner what
> name you give them. The point is that affordable prices are the
> result of economies of scale: mass production.
> Bill Mandel
>
> PNFPNF@aol.com wrote:
> >
> > Well maybe David would like to think about some of those benefits of
> > turn-of-the-centurycorporate colonialism that, as Adam Hochschild's recent
> > book points out so well, the remaining third or half or so of sub-Saharan
> > Africans "enjoyed." What an upper lifestyle-wise.
> > Generally, is technological change now being credited to corporations?
> > Sounds like the "Wow we live in the US where it's better--we have
> > refrigerators and television!" of '50s grade school recitations....
> > Paula
>
> - --
> To be removed from list, e-mail "Opt Out."
> You may find of interest website www.BillMandel.net
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 18:22:46 -0700
> From: Jerry West <record@island.net>
> Subject: [sixties-l] War Policy
>
> I thought that the following column by Col. David Hackworth might be of
> interest. Hackworth, a highly decorated soldier who was in line for
> promotion to the upper levels of the US Army, tossed his 25+ year career
> in the toilet when he publicly spoke out against the Vietnam War in the
> 1970's. Since, he has written books critical of the war and of US
> foreign policy from a soldier's perspective.
>
> "WILL THE COWBOY FROM HOPE GET THE POKEY?"
> BY DAVID H. HACKWORTH
>
> In 1992, American warriors were sent to Somalia to feed the poor. A few
> months later, "Wild Bill" Clinton took charge and changed the rules of
> the game from feeding to fighting. By 1993, American policy had become
> "shoot first, ask questions later."
>
> Folks around the globe are wondering: Has the United States returned to
> its Wild West past where trouble was too often resolved from the mean
> end of a gun or a rope?
>
> The world has plenty of reasons to ask. Since our aborted Somalian
> misadventure, U.S. bombs were dropped in Bosnia and Croatia and continue
> nonstop over what's become our permanent bombing range, Iraq.
>
> Then there was the futile "peaceful" invasion of Haiti, followed by the
> 1994, near-nuclear high-noon in Korea. I was at ground zero there at the
> time and almost witnessed my first atomic fireball. No wonder the two
> Korean presidents are as much into unification as squirrels are into
> acorns -- togetherness beats glowing for 250,000 years.
>
> And, of course, there's the aspirin factory in Sudan that missiles
> disappeared by mistake. And the Afghan camp built to train CIA-sponsored
> Freedom Fighters that went up in smoke -- from missiles that missed
> their intended terrorist target, Osama bin Laden.
>
> For a former peacenik, "Wild Bill" has slapped a powerful lot of leather
> during the past eight years. Apparently, there's nothing more dangerous
> than a former flower child with his hand on the trigger of the world's
> most awesome military arsenal.
>
> His record also proves that "Wild Bill" and his ABC gang -- war-hawk
> sidekicks Albright, Berger and Cohen -- share a much different opinion
> about the military solution than they did 30 years ago, when they were
> young, idealistic and oh-so anti-war.
>
> Now, Amnesty International wants to sock Clinton, Tony Blair, Gerhard
> Schroeder and the rest of NATO's leaders into the slammer for war crimes
> committed during last year's 78-day NATO bombing campaign of Serbia.
>
> Amnesty wants to do unto "Wild Bill" and fellow gunslingers like
> Nuremberg did unto Hitler's shooters. They rightly say that churches,
> hospitals, bridges and roads packed with civilians, and TV stations, are
> not military targets. And that using CBUs -- baseball-sized bomblets
> that have a high dud rate and cause horrible casualties to civilians,
> especially children who pick them up thinking they're a toy --
> constitutes a war crime.
>
> For sure, a trial would tell present and future world leaders that the
> military solution used recklessly isn't morally OK even if they see
> themselves as good folks with the purest of intentions. A Nuremberg-type
> trial for the world to witness would also send the lesson to world
> leaders -- present and future -- that the military solution no longer
> works. Not only does the military hammer seldom resolve conflict
> anymore, it's gotten too destructive.
>
> Once long ago, circa year 1000, wars were mainly fought on sunny hills
> and open plains, between the principal combatants. Warriors slashed and
> hacked away until one side won. But then gunpowder and industry came
> along, causing war to move from intermittent, contained mayhem to more
> frequent, and bigger, worldwide violence.
>
> But a thousand years after the Magyars raided Constantinople, huge
> cities such as London, Berlin and Tokyo -- filled with civilians -- had
> become the battlefield. During World War II, whole countries were being
> reduced to rubble.
>
> Following that global holocaust, conflict between the Soviets and the
> West morphed into MAD -- Mutually Assured destruction. MAD was as mad as
> it gets -- total insanity. At the end of the day, it wasn't supposed to
> matter that nobody less the cockroaches would be around to watch the
> victory parade.
>
> Today, with silos bristling with enough weapons to destroy this planet a
> hundred times over, highly educated and supposedly civilized scientists
> and engineers are busy making even more apocalyptic weapons. Smart
> horror devices to lase, spray, fire or release destruction capable of
> zapping more human beings in an hour than have been killed in all the
> world's wars put together.
>
> Even though war has proven very profitable for big business and just
> peachy keen for certain American politicians, we need another way to
> resolve conflict. Because these days after a fight, there are no longer
> any winners.
>
> So let the trial begin. It might just keep planet Earth around for
> another hundred years.
>
> ***
> http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page.
> Sign in for the free weekly Defending America column at his Web site.
>
> Send mail to P.O. Box 5210, Greenwich, CT 06831.
>
> 2000 David H. Hackworth Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc.
> - --
>
> Jerry West
> Editor/publisher/janitor
> - ----------------------------------------------------
> THE RECORD
> On line news from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast
> An independent, progressive regional publication
> http://www.island.net/~record/
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 00:26:24 +0100
> From: Jeffrey Blankfort <jab@tucradio.org>
> Subject: [sixties-l] The Covert War Against Rock
>
> While it makes good copy (and sells books) to blame the deaths of
> popular musicians on some government conspiracy, anyone close to the
> music scene of the 60s and early 70s would be aware of the overabundance
> of drugs and the overindulgence in those drugs as well as alcohol that
> permeated that culture. It was a culture and a period in which the
> adulation of fans, combined with the ability of the more successful
> musicians to buy whatever they wanted, and do whatever they wanted to
> do, and the more outrageous the better, that totally distorted their
> perception of reality. And it was not only musicians who died from over
> indulgence, thousands of folks, following Tim Leary's injunction, tuned
> out permanently.
>
> Take for example the mystery surrounding the death of Jim Morrison, a
> brilliant poet who was unable to handle the reality he created. He was
> not murdered. The only person who knows how he died is an old friend of
> mine and Jim's who was with him when he died and whose name is mentioned
> in Morrison's first biographies as being exactly that.
>
> I have never asked my friend what happened and he has never told me.
> What none of these theorists seem to have learned is that my friend was
> French, and through him, Jim had made some good friends in the French
> film industry. Thanks to that, he is one of the few foreigners buried in
> France's most famous cemetery, Pere La Chaise.
>
> And "the 70s did not give us the Doors." Morrison and the Doors made
> their Fillmore debut in 1968, and the group and Morrison became an
> instant success. So much for the knowledge of that writer.
>
> Jeff Blankfort
>
> > Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 12:06:07 -0700
> > From: radman <resist@best.com>
> > Subject: [sixties-l] The Covert War Against Rock (book review)
> >
> > The Covert War Against Rock Alex Constantine
> > Fe ral House 2554 Lincoln Blvd. #1059 Venice, CA 90291
> > 200 pages - $14.95
> >
> SNIP
> > Its hard to put a finger on when it all went astray and became evident that
> > something very wrong was going on. Maybe it was the plane crash that claimed
> > the lives of the Big Bopper, Buddy Holly and Richie Valens. Maybe it was the
> > 1966 death of Bobby Fuller, apparently from ingesting gasoline. Its hard to
> > say if these deaths were the beginning of something very evil or just
> > accidents or suicide. And while Constantine does not investigate the distant
> > past, he does show that this phenomenon of suspicious death in the music
> > industry has not stopped or slowed since the 1960s; in fact it has
> > increased.
> >
> > Rock musicians are famous for singing about the type of things that make the
> > powers that be nervous. From the blatant lyrics about sex of the 40s and 50s
> > R & B bands to Elvis gyrating hips, to the Stones drug use (and abuse) in
> > the 60s. The 70s gave us the Doors, more Stones, and John Lennon before punk
> > took it over the top. The 80s saw the birth of gangsta rap and grunge and
> > the movements continue to this day. And while some may say that all the
> > lyrics, political statements and political movements are all about image and
> > posturing, someone obviously thinks otherwise.
> >
> > This book takes a look at the someone else involved in the deaths of many of
> > yesterdays and todays musicians. Instead of just jumping in with conspiracy
> > theory, Constantine gives a good amount of well-footnoted background
> > information and history before the death toll begins to mount. History is
> > given on the Mafia and government involvement in the music industry. The
> > author then takes great pains to show how the government was involved in the
> > supply and use of LSD as a mind weakening and personality molding drug and
> > not the alleged mind expander it was being hyped as. Constantine also points
> > out how many of the underground heroes and their cronies had government
> > ties.
> >
> > And then the killings start and the truth gets stretched in the mainstream
> > press. Mama Cass chokes on a ham sandwich. Brian Jones drowns in his pool.
> > Hendrix chokes on his vomit. Jim Morrison remains alive. An obsessed fan
> > killed John Lennon. Bob Marley dies of cancer. Peter Tosh dies by gunshot.
> > Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were gang hits and most recently Michael
> > Hutchence was a victim of autoerotic hanging. That is what "they" want you
> > to believe, but Constantine has made it his job to show you the places where
> > these stories and reality don't agree. Constantine writes of the nervousness
> > inspired by Cass's political aspirations. How the murderer of Brian Jones
> > confessed on his deathbed. How the development of the 'Jim Morrison lives'
> > theory was put into place to throw people of the scent of a possible murder.
> > How Bob Marley suspiciously developed cancer and his more suspicious
> > "treatment. Why Peter Tosh's killers went uninvestigated. SNIP
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 03:50:19 -0700
> From: radman <resist@best.com>
> Subject: [sixties-l] Fwd: Calif: Reflections on SLATE and Lessons Learned
>
> >Opinionated Ruminations Prompted by the SLATE Reunion.
> >Mike Miller. May, 2000
> >
> >In Fall, 1957, at the University of California at Berkeley, five students
> >ran on a common platform for student government office. They called
> >themselves "a slate of candidates" and they wanted an "end to sand-box
> >politics" in the Associated Students of the University of California. The
> >slate doubled the electorate, and its best known candidate almost won. In
> >Winter of that year, the candidates and activists who supported them gathered
> >to form a permanent student organization which took the form of a campus
> >political party. Because "the slate" had become so well known, they called
> >the organization "SLATE," but it wasn't an acronym. The next year, when
> >Chancellor Clark Kerr threw the organization off campus (it was subsequently
> >reinstated), a humorous acronym emerged: "Student League Accused of Trying
> >to Exist." SLATE indeed did exist--until 1965. It was the first clear break
> >from the silent generation and the impact of McCarthyism on college campuses.
> >Its action precipitated the formation of similar organizations on campuses
> >across the country. SLATE held a reunion in 1984, and a recent reunion in
> >May, 2000. Mike Miller organized the first slate of candidates and was the
> >organization's founding chairman.
> >
> >What We Did.
> >
> > These are some thoughts about what I think we did right in the period
> >1957 - 1964, and what ultimately went wrong, beginning in late 1964/early
> >1965, punctuated by the 1968 and 1972 elections of Richard Nixon and
> >culminating in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. I'll leave the telling of
> >what we did wrong for another time.
> >
> > Though there were deep moral commitments underlying everything we
> > did, we
> >were not simply about moral witness. We were political. We cared about
> >effectiveness, about how to get from where we were to where we wanted to be.
> >We measured the consequences of our actions, and made calculations
> >accordingly. We understood that freedom, equality and justice without power
> >didn't have much of a chance.
> >
> > We developed a broadly-based agenda which was expressed in the phrase
> >"lowest significant common denominator." While we argued about issues, we
> >sought to maintain a fragile unity that encompassed traditional liberals,
> >students just awakening to the connection between morality and politics and
> >people from various strands of the left. We had both an "issues orientation"
> >and a core set of democratic values.
> >
> > We believed that fundamental to our task was making a break from "the
> >silent generation" that preceded us. We wanted to make politics legitimate.
> >
> > We resisted efforts to de-legitimize the politics we were
> > pursuing. Such
> >efforts were undertaken by the University Administration -- and every time
> >they tried to weaken us they ended up making us stronger. Similar efforts
> >were made by cold-war liberals, specifically in the formation of the campus
> >Americans for Democratic Action -- and they were defeated there when Bob Bell
> >was elected its president. Those on the left who wanted to impose
> >anti-Communist litmus tests for participation in "legitimate" politics were
> >rebuffed as well.
> >
> >Among the things we did right.
> >
> > We sought to win the support of majorities on the campus which was our
> >base. We wed intimate knowledge of student government and the day-to-day
> >concerns of students with expressions of commitment on the great issues of
> >the day. We ran candidates for student government office, vastly increased
> >the electorate, challenged the political hegemony of our "ruling class"--the
> >fraternity/sorority crowd--and won elections.
> >
> > We were multi-issue in character. We could appeal to different
> >constituencies because our platform reflected the priority concerns of
> >different segments of the student body. We built a base among independents,
> >commuters, graduate students, the coops, university dorms, the campus
> >religious foundations (the "Y's," Hillel, Newman, Westminister, Wesley,
> >Plymouth and others), and even in some fraternities and sororities.
> >
> > We were the incubator for numerous single-issue groups and campaigns.
> >SLATE trained people who provided leadership in other groups and,
> >reciprocally, these single issue groups served to bring students into the
> >wider politics of the student movement. It was largely through these groups
> >that SLATE people made forays off campus into farm labor, capital punishment,
> >war and peace, civil rights, civil liberties and other issues.
> >
> > Our action stimulated action by larger social groupings who had also
> > been
> >silenced by the cold-war consensus and remnants of the McCarthy era. While
> >we were not as successful in this regard as we may have hoped, we made a
> >difference in this area.
> >
> > We were an ally of newly emerging social movements, union organizing,
> >community organizing and issue politics. The Berkeley student movement was
> >an early supporter of: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, farm
> >worker union organizing efforts by the AFL-CIO, Packinghouse Workers and
> >Cesar Chavez' National Farm Workers Association, community organizing in San
> >Francisco, Oakland and Richmond, the campaign against capital punishment, vari
> >ous manifestations of the peace movement including opposition to American
> >ventures in Cuba and Chile, and more.
> >
> > While rejecting Cold War politics and the anti-Stalinist Stalinism of
> >some of our cohorts, we spoke up for justice and democracy wherever struggles
> >were undertaken in their behalf--Po Prusto in Poland and the Hungarian
> >Revolution being examples -- and we opposed A- and H-bomb testing by both
> >blocs in the Cold War. When issues like the World Youth Festival threatened
> >to divide us we found a way to keep principles intact and ourselves together.
> >
> > We made imaginative use of tactics, but didn't fall into the trap of
> >guerrilla theater which measures its success by whether or not it makes the
> >evening TV news or by how much it disrupts buisness as usual, whatever the
> >policy results or the effect on public opinion.
> >
> > We built a sense of community among us, bonds attested to by our
> > interest
> >in being together 40 years later, and by the friendships among us.
> >
> >Synergy.
> >
> > It should be noted that the two major strands of the student movement,
> >expressed in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as "direct
> >action" and " community organizing," also made their appearance at Berkeley.
> >Beginning in 1960, if not even before, the student movement included some
> >who wanted to speak truth to power and others who thought truth needed to be
> >combined with power to seak to power. Until late 1964/early 1965, these
> >activities were synergistic; they strengthened one another. Mel's sit-ins
> >contributed to the defeat of Harold Dobbs, owner of Mel's and Republican candi
> >date for Mayor of San Francisco. The Sheraton-Palace sit-ins brought the
> >(African American) Baptist Ministers Union and Longshore/Warehouse Union into
> >support of militant direct action. Mississippi Summer Project volunteers
> >became core leaders of the Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio among them.
> >Action supporting farm workers exposed the university's agriculture
> >department as a servant of agribusiness. Black and white sociology, city
> >planning and political science students from UC were deeply involved in
> >efforts to stop urban renewal in San Francisco and their experience led them
> >to raise questions about how these subjects were taught. Blocking that gates
> >at San Quentin to protest the Caryl Chessman execution recruited volunteers
> >who sought to build majority support in the state to eliminate capital
> >punishment. Students would drop out for a year-or-so of "off campus"
> >activity, then return to UC. We related these issues to what we thought the
> >university ought to be, a center for independent and moral thinking, and
> >counterposed that to Clark Kerr's vision of the un iversity as handmaiden
> >of corporate capitalism.
> >
> >What Happened?
> >
> > We were unable to prevent or undo five things:
> > first, the cold-war liberal foreign policy consensus;
> > second, the social democrat welfare state with its attendant paternalism
> >and categorical division of social problems so they fit distantly determined
> >and bureaucratically designed social programs;
> > third, the limitation of domestic reform to whatever was acceptable to
> >corporate capitalism,
> > fourth, a misunderstanding of democracy that emphasized the dangers of
> >popular participation and the importance of elites, and;
> > fifth, the selection of movement leaders by media and foundations
> >resulting in media stars, niche organizations and fragmented action rather
> >than accountabillity to democratically constituted, multi-issue,
> >broadly-based orgnaizations.
> >
> > In foreign policy, these failures were demonstrated by our inability to
> >stop, among other things, CIA sponsored coups, intervention in Cuba,
> >destabilization of governments that didn't fit cold war policy aims and the
> >continuing build-up of the War in Vietnam.
> >
> > Domestically, urban renewal, red-lining of inner cities, destruction of
> >urban mass transit systems and their replacement with highways and
> >automobiles, defeat of the Freedom Democratic Party's challenge to unseat the
> >racist Democrats from Mississippi, failure of the McGovern campaign in 1972,
> >job training programs for jobs that didn't exist, the fate of full employment
> >legislation--passed by Congress, signed by the President and never enforced,
> >seduction of many student movement veterans by various government sponsored
> >citizen participation and community control programs (as if power could be
> >given rather than asserted and claimed), and we could name more.
> >
> > In communities across the country, broadly-based organizing efforts were
> >weakened and undone by so-called "community based nonprofits." Worthy of
> >much more discussion, I'll limit myself here to noting that most "NGOs" on
> >the international scene and domestic "community-based organizations" share
> >the following characteristics: self-perpetuating boards of directors,
> >dependency on foundation, government and/or corporate money, the narrowest of
> >agendas and generally no membership that can democratically affect the policy
> >or program of the organization.
> >
> > Suspicion of participatory democracy or the active engagement of
> > citizens
> >in politics led many sociologists and pundits to conclude that declining
> >voter participation was a sign of political health rather than social
> >alienation. The argument was that in stable times when people are satisfied
> >they don't become politically engaged . The high degree of politicization
> >that preceded Nazi power in Germany was used to demonstrate the point.
> >
> > Self-anointed "leaders" learned to use media-attracting tactics to
> > create
> >the smoke and mirrors illusion that they represented somebody. And the
> >media, especially TV, sought the most outrageous 30 second sound-bite to
> >dramatize stories for the evening news. Organizations that really
> >represented somebody were relegagted to public interest announcements and
> >letters to the editor.
> >
> > In each of these we ultimatedly manifested our weakness rather than
> >strength. We, along with our allies, were never able to build serious
> >institutional power that could negotiate with and transform dominant power.
> >
> > Contrary to Chairman Mao, we were dealing with no mere paper
> > tiger. That
> >we were unable to undo the most powerful corporate and state apparatus ever
> >to be seen in history is not something for which we should blame ourselves.
> >Perhaps there was nothing that could have been done to change the course of
> >events. But we should examine and seek to understand what the student
> >movement, and those activities into which we went from the student movement,
> >might have done differently.
> >
> >The Opportunity That Was There.
> >
> > It should be noted that a great deal of off campus activity was bubbling
> >beneath the surface of the cold-war liberal, welfare state, democracy-as-the-c
> >ompetition of elites, corporate capitalism consensus.
> > There were liberal Democrats who took exception to this consensus, built
> >a grass-roots movement and won local, state and Congressional elections.
> >They, along with the portion of the student movement that took an electoral
> >turn, were later the core of the 1972 McGovern nomination.
> > While the Washington DC-based Civil Rights Leadership Conference was
> >generally in the pocket of Kennedy-Johnson-Humphrey Democrats, there were
> >four voices on it that were regularly in dissent: the Student Nonviolent
> >coordinating Committee (SNCC) was most vigorous among them, but it was often
> >joined by the Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) , Dr. Martin Luther King and
> >the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the National Council
> >of Churches (NCC). Across the country in African-American and Latino
> >communities, grass roots organizations, as well as NAACP branches, worked
> >outside the Leadership Conference's Washington beltway civil rights framework.
> >
> > While George Meany and Lane Kirkland presided over the American
> >Federation of Labor/Congress on Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), there were
> >industrial unions within it, independents on the outside, state and local
> >labor councils and hundreds if not thousands of locals across the country
> >that were deep critics of the consensus.
> > Community organizing against corporate sponsored reform popped up
> >wherever local communities were being destroyed by something called
> >"progress," which generally took the form of urban renewal, public
> >underwriting of downtown convention centers and sports arenas, highway
> >construction, and other activities which undermined central cities and
> >created metropolitan sprawl. Reflecting on the impoverishment and
> >destruction of urban neighborhoods and cities, as well as their recognition
> >of racism as a central social problem, Catholic and Mainline Protestant
> >churches, at local, judicatory and denominational levels, became substantial
> >financial sponsors of the work of Saul Alinsky and other community organizers.
> >
> > By many accounts, beginning in 1973 the real income of most Americans
> >began to decline. Hidden by two and three jobs in a single household, the
> >reality was even worse than the income data suggested. Growing disparity in
> >income and wealth made the U.S. one of the most economically inequitable
> >societies of the world.
> >
> > During this period distrust of major American institutions grew to
> >extraordinary proportions. Electoral participation rates continued to
> >decline. Trust in American political and economic elites plummeted. Of our
> >politicians, it was widely believed that they were in it for their own
> >aggrandizement. Of our corporate executives, it was widely believed that the
> >only thing guiding their decisions was the desire to make a buck. Public
> >opinion polls indicated that close to a majority of Americans supported
> >worker ownership. The end of the Cold War, defeat in Vietnam and increasing
> >exposure of the CIA led more and more Americans to question our foreign policy
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of sixties-l-digest V1 #243
> *******************************
p
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