◆ SpookStack

See ity. Instead of holding a series of world confer- ences in which the dangers of nuclear energy could be fully canvased, not alone by physicists but by thinkers in every threatened field, our official agencies deliberately played down these dangers and used every available mode of cen- sorship to restrict the circulation of the knowledge needed for such an appraisal. In this obstinate desire to exploit nuclear power solely for our national advantage, our government relied upon insistent publicity and indoctrination to build up a false sense of security. Instead of regaining our moral position by ceasing the reckless ex- periments who.e mounting pollution justified a world-wide apprehension, we flatly denied the need for any such cessation and allowed Russia, after it had come abreast of us, to take the moral lead here. Even at a recent United Nations conference, which clearly demonstrated the dan- gers, our own representatives helped vote down the Russian preamble to the conclusions of the conference, which called for a cessation of all further nuclear testing. To explain this obstinate commitment to the infamous policy of mass extermination one must understand that its side reactions have proved . as demoralizing as its central purpose. Within a bare decade, the United States has built up a huge vested interest in mass extermination — in the weapons themselves and in the highly profit- able manufacture of electronic equipment, planes, and missiles designed to carry them to their destination. There are tens of thousands of in- dividual scientists and technicians engaged in nuclear, bacteriological, and chemical research to increase the range and effectiveness of thesc lethal agents, though we boast we already have a stockpile of nuclear weapons capable of wiping out the entire planet. There are also corporate bodies — the air force, the Atomic Energy Com- mission, great industrial corporations, and ex- travagantly endowed centers of research — whose powers and presumptions have been constantly _ widened along with their profit and prestige. While the show lasts, their careers depend on our accepting the fallacious assumptions to which they have committed us. All these agents now operate in secret totali- tarian enclaves, perfecting their secret totalitarian weapons, functioning outside the processes of democratic government, immune to public chal-