ECHOES AND UPDATES

I was mistaken in writing that Johannes Stark was the only internationally known German physicist to turn Nazi [AtE Sep 90]. Marshall Brucer, M.D., and Dr. George Hacken both pointed out the other one, 1905 Nobel prize winner Philipp Lenard. Dr. Hacken writes:

"Lenard ingratiated himself with the Nazis as the author of the book Deutsche Physik. If not an outright heckler or rabble-rouser of the SS variety, Lenard was at least a vocal adversary of Einstein at seminars and gatherings. . .

"I learned of Lenard's Deutsche Physik via a language exam (for the PhD in physics) administered by Professor Jack Steinberger, whom I understand to be an orphaned Holocaust survivor. (Jack is a 1988 Nobel laureate.)

"The preface of Lenard's Deutsche Physik, which we were asked to translate, referred to Judenphysik [Jew physics], and contained the phrase (approximately quoted): Von Negerphysik gibt es nichs. [There is no Negro physics.] (I would be happy to translate this for Louis Farrakhan, so that he could deepen his understanding of his heroes', i.e. the Nazis', Rassenkunde [race-ology].) . . .

"P.S. At the risk of boring you, an event personally important to me occurred when I consulted Werner Heisenberg's paper (Zeit-schrift fur Physik, circa 1942 I believe) on the S(cattering) Matrix, a concept that he originated. I could not believe my eyes when I saw in print Heisenberg's requirement that the S Matrix be relativisti-cally invariant [conform to Einstein's theory, P.B.]. This casual invocation of Judenphysik supports both Heisenberg's integrity and the notion that the Nazi intellect was (and is) indeed abysmal."

The salmon catch in Prince William Sound has topped the 1987 record by 38% after the Exxon Valdez spill. Kowtowing to the Greens, Exxon is nevertheless continuing to spend beyond its $2 billion for the clean-up, even though by now it will only aggravate any environmental damage [see W. Brookes, "Stop scrubbing Alaska's coast," Boston Herald, 8/28 (available in Fort Freedom)]. While I rejoice in the bad publicity the Princes of Exxon are getting (it serves them right for the protection money paid to the Greens long before the spill), the oil companies are innocent of "price gouging" with gasoline. This is not only evident from the protests by the smaller independent companies that they cannot compete with the unrealistically low prices of big oil, but if the increase had been artificial, any company could simply have made a big profit by selling gasoline at a lower price. Not to mention the absurdity of these socially responsible, environmentally conscious, minority-sensitive wimps having the guts to do anything of their own will.

Warren Hern, M.D., Ph.D., regards mankind as a cancer on earth, and though he seeks redress by running an abortion clinic in Boulder, Colo., he is not consistent enough to commit suicide.

Similar sentiments are voiced in "Green Rage", a piece of hard ecoporn remarkable only in that Little, Brown & Co was not ashamed to publish it. I was going to review it, but refer readers to B. Frohnen's' review in the National Review (9/17/90), which ends with "[The author's] book, for which so many of our tree friends gave their all, is uncommonly shallow, adolescent and dishonest. He is thus assured of a bright future in the American academy. "

Will America, home of such books and native country of the Earth First! Eco-Klux-Klan, retain its world leadership in eco-insanity? Perhaps not; reader F.W. of Helsinki, Finland, writes:

"Finland's best known ecofascist, Pentti Linkola, praises Sad-dam Hussein as a great statesman: 'It's really a great thing if many people now die in the Middle East. I hope there will be significant killing. . . ' Linkola 'approves of all wars and other possible population-reducing measures . . . In any case, even minor events that upset Western culture are very favorable. And the arrival of armies in the Middle East means that those people are not produc-ing.' Linkola also holds that a reasonable population for Finland, now 5 million, would be a few hundred thousand people . . ., [but] it would still be better to leave Finland empty and concentrate mankind near the Mediterranean."

Where are they now, the pillars of virtue who wailed and shrieked when Israel, in the first and only successful act of interna-tional non-proliferation, took out Iraq's Osirac research reactor? And where are the apologists who ridiculed the idea that the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax disaster was an accident in the Soviet biological warfare program (as Liternaturnaya gazeta revealed a few weeks ago)? And how about The Progressive, which in 1970 brought Ehrlich's article on 60 million US deaths by overpopulation and starvation by 1990? The wonders in the once monolithic Socialist block never cease: The Progressive, though in general as shameless as ever, scathingly reviewed Paul Lysenko Ehrlich's recent book [AtE Jun 90] under the title "The [population] bomb is a dud. "