With the US space program in limbo, and the European pro-gram overbooked and in some technical trouble, there is nobody to launch any commercial spacecraft, such as Hughes Aircraft's com-munication satellites. Well, almost nobody. The friendly helping hands in the Soviet Politbureau have offered to launch Western payloads for a consideration in hard currency, and Hughes' parent company, General Motors, has applied to the State Department to accept the offer. The White House has just (11/11/87) decided to delay a test of the Navy's Trident II missile so as not to, God forbid, ir-ritate the Soviets; so watch for Neville Shultz crawling on all fours from Moscow airport to the Kremlin to deliver GM's application.
Science scribbler Eliot Marshal writes, with his wont accuracy, that GM is trying to amend the rules while Toshiba is being punish-ed for breaking them. But the equipment for Soviet subs was sold by one of Toshiba's 37 independently managed subsidiaries without knowledge of Toshiba itself, whose president and chairman never-theless resigned, and their successors took some very drastic measures to prevent any more such lapses. In contrast, GM is unabashedly claiming its birthright to sell rope to the hangman.
Ever since the Karen Silkwood case established that obeying the law is no reason to escape punishment, this new principle of American justice has been deftly used against other corporate ex-ploiters. The longest jury trial in US history, begun in 1984, ended on 10/22/87 in Belleville, Ill., with a verdict of $16,300,000 in punitive damages against Monsanto Corp. It had spilled 22,000 gallons of chemicals from a rail car, of which one thimbleful was dioxin, a substance that has never been shown to harm humans (see below). The legal precedent appears to be that plaintiffs (as their lawyer confirmed) had failed to prove that any of them had been injured, and indeed, the jury awarded them only $1 each in compensatory damages. So what were the punitive damages for? Same as in Agent Orange and a hundred other cases: they are not awarded in accordance with the evidence, but by the depth of the defendant's pocket.
¾The groundless hysteria about dioxin is currently being fanned in Connecticut and other places, and has been beautifully answered in a letter to the Conn. Dpt. of Envir. Protection by Prof. Bruce Ames, the world-renowned author of the Ames Test (about which you may have read in Carcinogens and American Food, recommended in the Oct. issue). Prof. Ames' letter is available to subscribers from him for a SASE at Dpt. of Biochemistry, U. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720--and ask him also to include a copy of his outstanding 1987 graduation speech (total postage 56›).Let me include the following in "Business as usual." When Judge Bork states his belief that laws should not be written by the judiciary, but by Congress, the Senate rejects him. His legal work is denigrated by the Hon. Biden, who was incapable of plagiarizing well enough to move up from near the bottom of his class in law school. The shrillest crusaders for the right to privacy then jeer the next candidate into retreat for acts committed in private. The anti-racists (when they are not killing chinks and gooks in Hymietown) rant against South Africa for granting human rights only to whites, but advocate friendship with those who grant them to no race what-ever; and the TV preachers of love and forgiveness shred Jim Bak-ker for one afternoon of hanky-panky. Next thing you know the environmentalists will turn against nuclear power.
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Vol. 15, No. 4
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 15, No. 4 Date: December 01, 2004 09:03 AM Title: Why France?
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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