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CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY Vol. 5, NO. 2 SATISFYING BUT HOT FILLING SUmmOP 1983 STAFF EDITORIAL CONTENTS Co-Editors Lenny Dee Peggy Lindquist David Milholland Jim Blashfield Design and Production Jim Blashfield Production Assistant David Milholland Proofreader Stan Sitnick Camerawork Paul Diener Ad Production Peggy Lindquist Stacey Fletcher Ad Sales Linda Ballantine David Clifton Public Interest Marketing Typesetting Archetype Irish Setter Contributing Artists Lynda Barry Dana Hoyle Sa/ise Hughes Liza Jones Contributing Photographer Eric Edwards Thanks Lumiel Dodd Ike Horn John Keister Paul Loeb Doug Milholland A l Schwartz Charlotte Uris International Attache Pippo Lion! Advertisers please call 367-0460 322-8711 Fall Deadlines Copy Aug. 15 Advertising Aug. 23 Parraxtut. It’s a small village in Guatemala, only recently accessible by motor vehicle. Parraxtut (pronounced Pa-rah-shtoot) is situated on a ridge high up on the slopes of the Cuchumatanes Mountains in northern Quiche province. During the period 1968- 70 ,1worked in the neighboring community of Aguacat^n, and often found myself walking to or through Parraxtut, drawn there both by its beauty and its isolation. Like most Indian communities off the beaten track, the people were shy but friendly, often startled to see a “tall” Gringo striding by. The entire setting was so pastoral as to seem part of another century. People in Parraxtut grow subsistence crops, along with a bit o f onions and garlic for cash. The plots are small, and most families are forced by necessity, once or twice a year, to travel to Guatemala’s South Coast to work for a large coffee or cotton plantation. Labor conditions there are miserable, wages are sub-minimal and disease is rampant. But the money earned enables them to squeeze by from year to year. Often I would arrive to find only older women and children about, the rest of the villagers working away from home. This same cycle has occurred for generations. Then last year disaster struck Parraxtut. Four days before Christmas, with most families reunited at home, a group of Guatemalan army vehicles arrived in Parraxtut, undoubtedly prompted by reports of guerrilla activity in the area. Soldiers of “moderate" President Efrain Rios Montt ordered all residents into the village square. The army officers in charge then ordered the men from a nearby village, Chiul, who had been forceably marched to Parraxtut, to “prove their masculinity” by killing all the men from Parraxtut. They likely had little choice in the matter. After the killings, the army officers divided up the women, executing the older ones, sparing the younger to be raped before their deaths. Many of the children managed to escape, though some were wounded while trying and others died of exposure while in hiding. The men from Chiul, having committed the blood massacre, were finally allowed to return home, to the astonishment of their fellow villagers, who assumed they too were dead. This astonishing incident, uncovered by the human rights group of America Watch, and recently reported in The New York Review of Books, has never crossed the wires of AP or UPI. It's another instance of the silence we hear from the so-called Third World, unless a war has attained front-page status. And it ’s not the first case of hundreds of civilians being slain in Guatemala without a whisper being uttered. Compare this to the recent slaying of the “first American casualty” (somehow the nuns have been forgotten) in El Salvador. The wires dripped blood for several days, as i f the man had died to save us all from something. But hearing of such events matters little unless we realize our common humanity. For those in positions of power, be it in the Kremlin or the White House, the Par- raxtuts of this world are simply pawns in a much larger game. General Rios Montt, who suddenly came to power with our government’s blessing, has once again initiated the reign of terror that has defined Guatemalan life since the mid-Sixties. Our President, searching for anchors as Central America comes undone, continues to whitewash the Guatemalan situation, hoping to reopen the arms and aid floodgates despite the potential consequences. We urge you to let him and your elected representatives know how you stand on this issue. DM Cover Steve Winkenwerder Beyond the Cold War E.P. Thompson ........................ 4 Depo Provera Another Shot at Birth Control Mary D ea to n ................................ 8 First Japan Poem Harvey S t e in ............................ 10 Mal Waldron and Company Lynn D a r ro c h .......................... 14 The Apocrypha of C.T. Chew James G. F a r le y ...................... 19 A Scene from the Late Artozoic C.T. C h e w ................................ 20 Ashglow Lisa Kinoshita . . ........................ 22 Pain’s Passion Peter Watkins’ Icy Fire Penny Allen ................................31 What the Hell! Let’s Go to France Lynda Barry ............................ 38 The Clinton St. Quarterly is published by the Clinton St. Theatre, 2522 SE Clinton, Portland, OR 97202, (503) 222-6039. Unless otherwise noted, all contents copyright © 1983 Clinton St. Quarterly. The Clinton St. Quarterly’s Seattle office is at 1520 Western Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101. AWARDS AND APOLOGIES The Clinton St. Quarterly is proud and pained. We win some; we lose some. On a positive note, for the th ird straight year we emerged from the Society of Professional Journa lists ’ Oregon competition for non-daily publications with laurels in hand. Our winners include: Illustration: 1st Stephen Leflar “ Post Conservative America’ 2nd Mary Robbens Cover, Summer issue 3rd Mary Robbens “ The K illing o f Big Isaac” Art Reporting and Criticism: 1st Penny Allen “ Henk Pander” 2nd Lynn Darroch “ Bright Moments” 3rd Iphano Blair “ Bruno Loewenberg Personalities: 1st Penny Allen Environmental Reporting: 2nd Stephen Dodge, Jim Johnson & Stan Kahn “ Brice Lalonde” “ Garbage: The Burning Issue” FORK O O V E R ^ WE’LLTAKEYOU FORARIDE! Hop on for the CSQ subscription drive. We’re off to points unknown, a full year (4 issues) of guaranteed excitement, thrills and spills at very reasonable rates. Bring along a friend, as many friends as you like. Here’s how you join us. Just write down your nameand address (with zip) on a sheet of paper, and then add on all those friends you want along for the ride. Now grab your checkbook and tally it up K .. only $5 per person. Mail it off today to: N y CSQ W . J ( 1520WesternAvenue W . ] r \ Seattle, WA98101 On the f lip side, apologies are owed to Kent Dickson, who illus tra ted the “ Trojan Holiday” story (his name was misspelled); to Jamey Stallings, whose photos accompanied the artic le “ Nicaragua — Before and A f te r ” (his name was omitted); and fo r the fo llow ing m issing acknowledgement fo r use o f the poem “Sonnet” : Copyright © 1976 by Stanley Plumly. F irst pub lished by The Ecco Press in 1977. Reprinted by permission. A tip of the hat to one and all. ■ r P.S. We’ll send you two tickets to The Egyptian / /for each and every $5 subscription you send * our way. It’s our way of saying thank you and F z your way of saving mucho dinero. Clinton St. Quarterly 3
From the book entitled BEYOND THE COLD WAR by Edward Thompson Copyright ® 1982 by Merlin Press New Preface Copyright ® 1982 by E.P. Thompson Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, A Division of Random House, Inc. °ns'Q^,
British social historian E.P. Thompson is the leader of the European nuclear disarmament movement and has inherited the role Bertrand Russell played _ gk f l during the 1950s. — BY E.PTH°M Wthink that we may now be living, f this year and for several years ahead, through episodes as significant as any known in the human record. I will not dwell on the perils. We are well aware of these. Human ingenuity has somehow created these immense destructive powers, which now appear to hang above us, alienated from all human control. They are now talking of siting laser weapons on the moon — weapons which, in a literal sense, will be lunatic. We are aware, all of us, of the overplus of this nuclear weaponry, much of it crammed into our own continent: land-mines, artillery, torpedoes, depth-charges, missiles launched from the ground, from submarines, from the air. We may differ as to the exact “ balance” of weaponry held by the adversary parties. But we are also aware that, when the overkill capacity of weaponry is such as to enable the destruction of civilized conditions for life on our continent thirty times over, calculations of “ balance” are becoming irrelevant. We may also, after two years of mounting anxiety, begin to feel slight twinges of hope. The superpowers have at last been brought to the negotiating table. Something might even be done to halt or to reduce the weaponry in Europe. Our stay here, in the spaces of geological time, has been brief. No one can tell us our business. But I think it is something more than to consume as much as we can and then blow the place up. This is good. But what an effort it has taken to get the politicians there! And what a discrepancy there is between the procedures of war and those of peace! The decisions to develop new weapons — to deploy the SS-20, to put the neutron bomb into production, to go ahead with cruise missiles — are taken by a few score people — at the most by a few hundred — secretively, behind closed doors, on both sides. But to check, or to reverse, any one of those decisions, nothing will do except the voluntary efforts of hundreds of thousands — late into the night and through weekends, month after month — addressing envelopes, collating information, raising money, meeting in churches or in school halls, debating in conferences, lobbying parliaments, marching through the streets of Europe’s capital cities. In the past 18 months I have visited fellow workers for peace in the United States, in Czechoslovakia, in Finland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Germany and France. The story is always the same. People are determined. They are encouraged by growing support. But they are running out of puff. How long can they goon? And if they relax, then in two or three years the weapons — accompanied by new weapons of equal barbarity, nerve-gas, bacteriological warfare — will begin to come back. We are running the wrong way down an escalator: if we stop running we will be carried up to the top. To check the missiles is something. But the political launch-pad for all these missiles is the adversary posture of the two great rival alliances, grouped around the USA and USSR: that is, the Cold War. If this adversary posture were to be modified — if it were to be undermined by new ideas and movements on both sides — then, not only the weapons, but the launch-pad for them would be taken away. And many of the difficulties attending disarmament, whether nuclear or conventional, would fall also. I do not intend to rehearse the history of the Cold War, nor to examine, once again, why it started. I will enquire into its real content today. What is the Cold War now about? Is it necessary? And, if it is, whose is the need? A Fractured Continent Let us go back, first, not to the origin of the Cold War, but to a moment just before it broke out. My own generation is the last which witnessed that moment as adults. Our perception of “ Europe” remains, to this day, a little different from that of younger generations. Europe for us, included Warsaw, Prague and Budapest and, more distantly, Leningrad and Moscow. But for many young Westerners, “ Europe” now means, first of all, the EEC. The young have grown up within a fractured continent. The Cold War has been a received condition, which has set the first premises of politics and ideology from before the time of their birth. It is now a settled and unquestioned premise: a habit. Most people assume that the condition will persist — far into the 21st century, for the full length of their own lifetimes — if war does not supervene. It has always been there. But it has not always been there. I do not suggest that Europe, before the Cold War, was in any way, politically or culturally, united. It was the seat of rival imperialisms which extended over the globe. It was the seat and source of two devastating world wars. It was a battlefield for opposing ideologies. Yet the savage divisions among Europeans did not exist as a fracture splitting the continent in half. They ran. deeply within the political and cultural life of each nation-state. European states went to war; yet Europeans remained within a common political discourse. This was true, most of all, in the climactic years of the second world war. From 1941 to 1944 Nazi Germany and its allies occupied an area and commanded resources very much greater than the EEC. Yet, paradoxically, there grew up within occupied Europe a new internationalism of common resistance. From Norway to Montenegro, from the coast of Kent to the suburbs of Stalingrad — and it is necessary to recall, with an effort, that Britain and Russia then were allies and that it was the prodigious sacrifice of Soviet life which turned the tide of that war Clinton St. Quarterly 5
— there was a common movement of resistance. Polish and Czech units served alongside British forces; British liaison groups — among them Churchill’s son, Randolph, and the Conservative MP, Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean — served with the Yugoslav partisans. It is the fashion to be cynical about all that now, and for good reasons. The expectations and hopes of that moment were naive. The alliance of anti-fascist resistance — the alliances of liberals, Communists, agrarians, social-democrats, Conservatives — were later dishonoured, and on both sides. But we mig.ht also recall that they were honoured for a while, and honoured with sacrifice of life. The aspiration for a democratic Europe —- extending the good faith of those alliances forward into the peace — was authentic. Some of these expectations were to be betrayed. But they remain there, in the record. I have said that others now seem to us as naive. Here is a young British officer — aged twenty- two — writing in a private letter from the Middle-East in 1943: "How wonderful it would be to call Europe one’s fatherland, and think of Krakow, Munich, Rome, Arles, Madrid as one’s own cities. I am not yet educated to a broader nationalism, but fora United States of Europe I could feel a patriotism far transcending my love for England.” This Union he saw as “ the only alternative to disaster." And later in the same year he wrote: “ There is a spirit abroad in Europe which is finer and braver than anything that tired continent has known for centuries, and which cannot be withstood. You can, if you like, think of it in terms of politics, but it is broader and more generous than any dogma. It is the confident will of whole peoples, who have known the utmost humiliation and suffering and have triumphed over it, to, buiWtheirown lives once and for a l l . .. There is a marvelous opportunity before us — and all that is required from Britain, America and the USSR is imagination, help and sympathy. . . ” What sad reading this makes today! Some will find it Euro-centric, others will find it sentimental or innocent in its view of the motives of politicians and states, all will know that the hopes were to be defeated, within two or three years, by events. But the expectations were commitments, to the extent of life itself, and they were shared by many thousands across the continent. In January 1944 this officer wrote to his brother: “ My eyes fill very quickly with tears when I think what a splendid Europe we shall build (I say Europe because that’s the only continent I really know quite well) when all the vitality and talent of Its indomitable peoples can be set free for co-operation and creation.” Ten days later he parachuted onto a high plateau in East Serbia — in the region of Tsrna Trava — where he was to serve as liaison officer with a contingent of Bulgarian partisans. They were overwhelmed; most of them were massacred; and the British officer, my brother, was executed. He was subsequently proclaimed a National Hero of Bulgaria, and despite some nasty twists and turns in Bulgarian politics, he remains that to this day. My point is this. My brother’s aspirations for the future were not unusual, although his fate exemplified the cause of this common resistance in an unusual way. Throughout Europe men and women looked forward to the fruits of victory: a continent both democratic and at peace. There would be different social systems, of course. But it was supposed that these systems would be chosen by each nation, with popular consent. The differences need not be occasions of war. These expectations were becoming casualties when British forces confronted Greek partisans in Athens in December 1944. None survived the shock of the onset of the Cold War. The polarization was absolute. I am not concerned, now, to examine why this happened. But happened it certainly did. Communists were expelled from the political life of the West: in France, in Italy, and to the prison islands of Greece. Liberals, socialdemocrats, agrarians, and, then, Communists who had proved to be too sympathetic to the alliance with The first atomic detonation over Hiroshima sent panic-waves across the Communist world which contributed much to the onset of Cold War. For over twenty years the West had an overwhelming superiority in destructive nuclear power. democracy or too critical of Stalin: all these were purged from the political life of the East. Some were subjected to monstrous faked trials, were executed or imprisoned. The Cold War era, of two hostile Europes, commenced. Freedom vs. Peace /will make only one, over-simplified, comment on that moment. The cause of freedom and the cause of peace seemed to break apart. The “West” claimed freedom; the “ East” claimed the cause of peace. One might talk for hour upon hour in qualification of both claims. Each is made up of one part of truth and another part of hypocrisy. “ The West,” whether directly through NATO or indirectly through the arrangements of the United States military, co-existed and co-exists easily enough with regimes notorious for their abuse of freedom and of human rights: with Salazar’s Portugal, Franco’s Spain, the Greece of the Colonels, or with the military tyranny in Turkey today. And this is before we look to Latin America, Asia or Africa. The Soviet Union’s dedication to “ peace” co-existed with the military repression of unacceptable motions towards democracy or autonomy within its client states: notoriously in Hungary, 1956, and Czechoslovakia, 1968. And this is before we look towards the military support given to Third World regimes within the Soviet sphere of influence, or towards Afghanistan. But, in the time open to me, I can only note both claims, which have long underpinned the ideological contestations of the Cold War. And I must add that, when every allowance is made for hypocrisy, both claims have a little color. It is not that “ the Free West” has been an exemplar of democratic practice. But it is in the West that certain important democratic practices have persisted, whereas in “ the East” — after gulag and faked trial, the repression of the Hungarian insurrection and of the Prague Spring, the psychiatric confinement of dissidents, and the monotonous State-licensed idiocy of Communist intellectual orthodoxy — the very term “ People’s Democracy” became sick. That is familiar, and a source of much self-congratulation to Westerners. What is less familiar — for the young are not taught this carefully in our schools — is that the West was perceived by the East — and perceived for good reasons — as the most threatening and irresponsible military power. The first atomic detonation over Hiroshima, by the United States (but with the assent of our own government [Great Britain]) sent panic-waves across the Communist world which contributed much to the onset of Cold War. From that moment, and for over twenty years, there was no question of “ balance” in the nuclear arsenals of the two parties: the West had an overwhelming superiority in destructive nuclear power. We have been reminded of this recently by two independent voices of authority, each of them dissenting voices from the opposed superpowers. George Kennan, the former American ambassador to Moscow whose famous despatch (by “ Mr. X” in Foreign Affairs, July 1947) contributed to the post-war policies of United States “ containment” of the Soviet Union, has reminded Americans that “ it has been we . . . who, at almost every step of the,road, have taken the lead in the development of this sort of weaponry.” (This is not, by the way, as the BBC Reith Lecturer for 1981 has alleged in his know-all way, “ at best a half truth” : it is a plain, and easily verifiable, fact). And Roy Medvedev, the Soviet supporter of free intellectual enquiry and civil rights, has commented that, with the brief exception of the Soviet advance in satellite technology in 1957-8, the United States has always led in weapons technology — “ obliging the USSR to try to catch up from a position of inferiority. This permanent dynamic has structured Russian responses deeply, creating a pervasive inferiority complex that has probably prevailed over rational calculations in the 70s.” It is a dramatic instance of the trajectory of our times that these two distinguished men, starting from such different presuppositions and passing through such differing experiences, should have now come to a common point of commitment in support for the active peace movement. From August 1945 onwards there were voices enough to argue that “ the West” should put its advantage in nuclear weapons technology to use. These voices went on for many years — calling for a “ preventative war” or for the “ liberation” of Berlin or of East Europe. Some voices were influential enough — John Foster Dulles, James Forrestal (the paranoid United States Secretary for the Navy who went mad in office) — to induce a legitimate “ paranoia” on the other side. The United States has rattled its nuclear weapons in their scabbard, as a matter of state policy, on at least 19 occasions. By the end of the 1940s it had surrounded the Soviet Union with a ring of forward strategic air-bases, all — with the exception of Alaska — outside United States’ territory. The only attempt by the Soviet Union to establish a comparable forward base was repelled by the direct ultimatum of nuclear attack: the Cuban missile crisis. The humiliation suffered then by the Soviet rulers powered the upward build-up of Soviet missiles in the 1960s. I am not endorsing either claim without qualification. I mean only to repeat that both claims had color: the West to “ freedom” and the East to “ peace.” And this placed the political culture of Europe in a permanent double-bind. Those who worked for freedom in the East were suspected or exposed as agents of Western imperialism. Those who worked for peace in the West were suspected or exposed as pro-Soviet “ fellow travelers” or dupes of the Kremlin. In this way the rival ideologies of the Cold War disarmed those, on both sides, who might have put Europe back together. Any transcontinental movement for peace and freedom became impossible. Such a movement glowed for a moment in 1956 and, again, in 1968. Each time it was, ironically, the “ peace-loving” Soviet forces which ground out the sparks under an armored heel. The Lessons of History Let us move back to our own time. For I am addressing the question — not what caused the Cold War, but what is it about today? And it is no good trying to answer this by standing at its source and stirring it about with a stick. For a river gathers up many tributaries on its way, and turns into unexpected courses. Nor is it any good asking me to deliver to you some homilies called “ the lessons of history.” History teaches no simple lessons, because it never repeats itself, even if certain large themes recur. In fact, received notions of the “ lessons” of recent history are often actively unhelpful in dealing with the present, since these establish stereotypes which interfere with contemporary vision. This is very much the case with today’s Cold War. Because it was widely believed in the 1930s that World War I was “ caused” by an arms race and by inflexible structures of alliances, essential measures of collective security were not taken to halt Hitler and to prevent World War II. Today the “ lesson” of World War II has stuck in the public mind while the “ lesson” of World War I has been forgotten. Because it is widely believed that military weakness and appeasement “ caused” World War II, many people now condone new forms of militarisation which will, if unchecked, give us World War III. At the same time there is, in both West and East, a simple transference of remembered images to the present. The 1930s burned in memory the image of a major militarist and expansionist power (Nazi Germany) whose appetite was only fed by each new scrap of appeasement; which had an insatiable drive to conquer all Europe, if not the world. Politicians and ideologists, Wdst and East, have renamed this insatiable potential aggressor as (respectively) Russia or America. It is a compelling identification. Yet it rests on the assent of memory rather than upon analysis or evidence. It appears plausible simply because it looks so familiar. But to understand the present we must first resist the great suggestive- power of memory. This is, surprisingly, where the historical discipline may be helpful, may teach “ lessons” of a different kind. For historians deal always with long-term eventuations — social, political, economic process —which continually defeat or contradict the expectations of the leading historical actors themselves. History never happens as the actors plan or expect. It is the record of unintended consequences. Revolutions are made, manifestos are issued, battles are won: but the outcome, twenty or thirty years on, is always something that no-one willed and no-one expected. Boris Pasternak, the great Russian poet, reflected in Dr. Zhivago on the “ indirect results” of the October Revolution, which “ have begun to make themselves felt — the fruits of fruits, the consequences of consequences.” I like this phrase, “ the consequences of consequences,” and wish we could see the Cold War in this way and not in terms of the intentions of the actors in 1947. We might see it, then, more clearly, as an abnormal political condition. It was the product of particular contingencies at the end of World War II which struck the flowing rivers of political culture into glaciated stasis, and struck intellectual culture with an ideological permafrost. The Cold War frontiers were fixed, in some part, precisely by “ deterrence” — by the unprecedented destructive power of the nuclear weaponry which, by coincidence, was invented at this historical moment. It is an odd and very dangerous condition. A line has been drawn across the whole continent, like some gigantic geological fault, with one great capital city catapulted across the fault and divided internally by a wall. On each side of this line there are not only vast accumulations of weaponry directed against 6 Clinton St. Quarterly
the other, but also hostile ideologies, security operations, and political structures. Both sides are preparing, and over-preparing, for a war in which both would share in mutual ruin. Yet both parties deny any intention of attacking the other: both mutter on about “ deterrence” or “ defense” . If we ask, the partisans of either side what the Cold War Is now about, they regard us with the glazed eyes of addicts. It is there because it is there. It is there (they might say) because of the irreconcilable antagonism between two political and social systems: totalitarianism versus democracy — or Communism versus capitalism or Western imperialism. Each must be motivated, of its own inherent nature, by the desire to vanquish the other. Only the mutual fear of “ deterrence” can stave off a total confrontation. The trouble with these answers is that they are phrased in terms of the ideological justifications for the Cold War at the moment of its origin. They remain fixed, in the perma-frost of that icy moment. Godless Marxism # 1 brief survey will show us that < ■ the notion of two monolithic adversary systems conforms uneasily with the evidence of the past decades. To take the Communist block first: if it is aiming to vanquish Europe and then the world, it is making a bad job of it. It has lost Yugoslavia. It has lost Albania. The Soviet Union and China have split bitterly apart. From the time of the post-war settlement, which established a protective belt of client Communist states around Russia’s western frontiers, there has been no further expansion into European territory. Twenty-five years ago Soviet and NATO forces were withdrawn from Austria, and the peace treaty which guaranteed Austria’s neutrality has been honoured by both sides. There has also been a major recession in pro-Soviet Communist movements in the West. The Cominform, established in 1947, was seen by Western ideologists as a Trojan horse within Western societies: or a whole set of Trojan horses, the largest being in Italy and France. The Cominform has long been broken up. Disgusted by the events of 1956, by the Soviet repression of the “ Prague Spring” in 1968, most Western parties have turned in a “ Eurocommunist” direction: they are sharply critical of the Soviet denial of civil rights, oppose Soviet military policies (including the intervention in Afghanistan), and in general have supported Polish Solidarity. This is true of the huge Italian Communist Party (which endorses a critical commitment to NATO), of the influential Spanish party, and of the small British party. The French Communist Party, which has been ambiguous on questions of civil rights, has steadily lost support in the French electorate. Or take the question of Marxism. In Cold War fiction Soviet Communism is supposed to be motivated by a philosophy, “ Godless Marxism,” with universal claims. The strange development here is, not only that religion appears to be reviving in most parts of the Communist world, but that the intellectural universe of Marxism is now in chaos. In the Warsaw Pact countries there is something called Marxism-Leninism, learned by role, which is a necessary rhetoric for those who wish to advance within the career structures of the state. It provokes, in the public generally, nothing but a yawn. I can think of no Soviet intellectual who, as a Marxist, commands any intellectual authority outside the Soviet Union. Yet, in an odd sideways movement, Marxism as an intellectual system has migrated to the West and to the Third World, just as certain liberal beliefs have been migrating to dissident circles in the Communist world. Marxism in the West has fragmented into a hundred argumentative schools. And most of these schools are profoundly critical of the Soviet Union and of Communist practice. Marxism is certainly a vigorous intellectual influence in the West and in the Third World — an influence at work in many universities, journals, and works of scholarship. But whatever this Marxism may be — and it is becoming d ifficu lt to say what it is — it has nothing whatsoever to do with Soviet expansionism. Look where we will, the evidence is at odds with the Cold War fictions. Poland is only one of several East European nations which are now In one sense the present crisis in Western Europe can be read in this way. The United States is seeking to use the muscle of its nuclear weaponry to compensate for its loss of real influence. deeply indebted to Western banks. What are we to make of a “ people’s democracy” in hock to the capitalists? The Soviet Union depends for grain upon the prairies of the Mid-West of America and the farmers of the MidWest depend, in turn, upon these annual sales. West Germany has recently completed an agreement which will bring natural gas from Siberia, to the extent of close on 10 per cent of the country’s energy needs. The French government is at present negotiating a similar agreement for natural gas which would make France depend on Soviet gas for 26 per cent of its requirements in 1990. Long-standing trade agreements traverse both blocs and there is even that phenomenon, which one observer has described as “ vodkacola,” by which Western multinationals have invested in Soviet and East European enterprises, taking advantage of the low labor costs and the absence of industrial conflict in the Communist world. Even the Soviet ICBMs may incorporate components of United States design or manufacture. Of course the American military receive the top-flight computers and technology for their own use. I do not know whether the American public should draw comfort from the fact that the ICBMs directed at them may be guided by second- rate components of their own design. I am not saying that the social and political systems of East and West are identical or even comparable. I am saying that the first Cold War premise — of irreconcilable adversary posture between the blocs across the whole board has become a fiction. Once again, if we assume that the aim of Soviet Communism is to overrun all Europe, then it is not doing very well. It can’t even hold what it has. Their missies summon forward our missies which summon forward their missies in turn. NATO's hawks feed the hawks of the Warsaw bloc. The Flip Side /f we turn the picture around, and look at the West, we discover other contradictions. At the moment of the Cold War’s origin — when the permafrost set in — the United States had emerged from the Second World War, alone of all the advanced economies, with a huge unimpaired productive capacity. The “ American Century” was, exactly, when economic and military strength were overwhelming, and diplomatic and cultural influence ensued. NATO, perforce, was an alliance expressive of United States hegemony, and, in its military structure, under direct American command. But the American Century was not to last for a hundred years. In past decades the American economy has entered into a long secular decline in relation to its competitors: Japan, the EEC powers (notably West Germany and France). The cultural influence and the diplomatic authority of the United States has entered a similar decline. And the United States conventional military forces also suffered a catastrophic defeat in Vietnam. Only the overwhelming nuclear strength has been maintained — has grown year after year — has been protracted beyond the moment of its origin. United States militarism seeks to extend forward indefinitely — to cast its shadow across Europe — a supremacy of economic and political force which existed thirty years ago but which has long ceased to exist. In one sense the present crisis in Western Europe can be read in this way. The United States is seeking to use the muscle of its nuclear weaponry to compensate for its loss of real influence. The crisis has been reflected first, and most sharply, within Western European Social-Democratic and Labour movements. When the Cold War first struck, there was a fierce contest within these movements. This was (I must simplify) seen as a contest between pro-American and pro-Communist tendencies. A small and honourable tendency argued for a “ third way” or “ third force” between both tendencies: it lost all influence when the Two Camps finally took up their adversary stance. As a general rule, the pro-American, or Atlanticist tendency won, and the pro-Communist tendency was expelled or reduced to a grumbling opposition. But victorious Atlanticism placed Social-Democracy in an odd position. It entailed the submission of Social Democratic and of Labour parties to the hegemony of the most vigorous capitalist power in world military, diplomatic, and even in some economic, political and cultural affairs. This did not extinguish the humanitarian impulse in -the programmes of those parties. So long as the economies continued to grow, it was possible, despite this overarching hegemony, to re-distribute some wealth within the native economy, and to assert some priorities in the fields of welfare, health or education. It was possible to keep electorates — and party activists — satisfied. This is no longer possible. The reasons are self-evident. Some are directly economic: recession no longer affords space for humanitarian programmes, while it also stimulates direct competition between United States and EEC economies. Others are ideological: there has been a resurgence of the uninhibited reproductive drives of capital, from its United States strongholds, taking directly imperialist forms in its pursuit of oil, uranium, scarce resources and markets in the Second and Third Worlds, and propping up client military tyrannies. These reasons alone might have brought Atlanticism to the point of crisis. But the crisis, today, is above all political and military. It no longer makes any sense for American hegemony to be extended over Western Europe through the institutions of NATO when, in the intervening thirty-five years since the Cold War set in, the balance of real forces has tipped back perceptibly towards this side of the Atlantic. It makes no sense at all for decisions as to the siting of missiles — and as to the ownership and operation of American missiles on European soil — to be taken in the Pentagon, when these decisions affect the very survival of Europe. Hawks Feeding Hawks hat, then, is the Cold War, as we enter the 1980s, about? The answer to this question can give us no comfort at all. If we look at the military scene, then nothing is receding. On the contrary, the m ilitary establishments of both superpowers continue to grow each year. The Cold War, in this sense, has broken free from the occasions at its origin, and has acquired an independent inertial thrust of its own. What is the Cold War now about? It is about itself. We face here, in the grimmest sense, the “ consequences of consequences” . The Cold War may be seen as a show which was put, by two rival entrepreneurs, upon the road in 1946 or 1947. The show has grown bigger and bigger; the entrepreneurs have lost control of it, as it has thrown up its own managers, administrators, producers and a huge supporting cast; these have a direct interest in its continuance, in its enlargement. Whatever happens, the show must go on. The Cold War has become a habit, an addiction. But it is a habit supported by very powerful material interests in each bloc: the militaryindustrial and research establishments of both sides, the security services and intelligence operations, and the political servants of these interests. These interests command a large (and growing) allocation of the skills and resources of each society; they influence the direction of each society’s economic and social development; and it is in the interest of these interests to increase that allocation and to influence this direction even more. I don’t mean to argue for an identity of process in the United States and the Soviet Union, nor for a perfect symmetry of forms. There are major divergencies, not only in political forms and controls, but also as between the steady expansionism of bureaucracy and the avarice of private capital. I mean to stress, rather, the reciprocal and inter-active character of the process. It is in the very nature of this Cold War show that there must be two adversaries: and each move by one must be matched by the other. This is the inner dynamic of the Cold War which determines that its military and security establishments are selfreproducing. Their missiles summon forward our missiles which summon forward their missiles in turn. NATO’s hawks feed the hawks of the Warsaw bloc. For the ideology of the Cold War is self-reproducing also. That is, the military and the security services and their political servants need the Cold Continued on Page 32 Clinton St. Quarterly 7
Depo Another Shot By Mary Deaton Drawings^y Salise Hughes n 1973 Port Angeles, on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula, had three doctors, all in the same clinic. Nardi Townsend went to one for pre-natal care. She trusted him. He looked like Abraham Lincoln. At her first examination the doctor asked Nardi what she would do for birth control after the baby came. Nobody had ever talked to her about birth control. That was why she was pregnant when she got married at age 17. The doctor suggested she use a new drug, a shot. She would get an injection every three months. Her periods would stop and it would increase her breast milk. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not yet declared “ the shot" safe but, Nardi was assured, by the time her baby was born that would be taken care of. Every time she went to see the doctor he mentioned the shot. Nardi delivered a healthy baby boy in April, 1974. At her six week checkup she remembers the doctor saying, Great, now its time for the birth control shot. He left the room. In came the nurse. Nardi lowered her pants and the nurse stuck the needle in her rear. The Upjohn Company first introduced Depo Provera (medroxyprogesterone acetate) in 1959. They said it would prevent miscarriages and control irregular menstrual patterns. It was also a great contraceptive for dogs. Based on Upjohn’s initial research, the FDA approved Depo for these uses. In 1960 it said the drug was also safe for easing discomfort in patients with inoperable cases of cancer of the endometrium (uterine lining). Depo is a synthetic formulation which mimics the chemical properties of progesterone, a hormone produced In countries where medical help is often miles and miles away, the convenience of “the shot was a major factor in its acceptance and use. by a woman's body as part of the hormonal pattern which controls fertility. While scientists are not exactly sure how Depo works, they do know it effects the ability of the ovaries to release eggs and changes the character of the uterine lining. In 1966 Upjohn voluntarily withdrew Depo from the veterinary market after it was discovered that dogs using Depo had developed abnormalities of the uterus. In 1974 the FDA said Depo should no longer be used to treat threatened miscarriages. Upjohn’s own studies showed the drug was no more effective in preventing spontaneous abortion than a placebo. It was also suspected of causing birth defects. That same year, however, Upjohn asked the FDA to approve Depo for use as a human contraceptive. In 1968 the company began tests on beagle dogs and rhesus monkeys, tests required by the FDA to determine if a proposed contraceptive might cause cancer. Clinical trials of Depo were also being conducted on women in the United States. The largest began in 1967 at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA. In Seattle, Dr. Nora Davis of Children's Orthopedic Hospital used it in trials on her mentally retarded patients. Dr. Raymond Clark, a Seattle doctor with a private practice on Broadway, would, along with his partner, use it on some’ 7,000 Seattle women over a period of 18 years. When the FDA studies Upjohn’s test results on beagle dogs in 1974, it decided it was not ready to allow Upjohn to advertise Depo as a human contraceptive. The refusal, said the FDA, was based on research results showing “ an increased incidence of mammary carcinomas” (breast tumors) in the beagle dogs. Lack of FDA approval did not mean the drug was banned in the U.S. It could still be sold for its approved uses and doctors still prescribe it for whatever use they felt indicated. Depo was no longer an experimental drug, however, and it could not be exported from the United States until the FDA declared it “ safe.” In 1975 several million women in Third World countries had already been given Depo through programs funded by the U.S. government, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and other population control organizations. The man who then headed the IPPF, Malcolm Potts, had enthusiastically encouraged use of Depo in Thailand, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Botswana, Tanzania, Zaire and Jamaica. In Thailand Ed McDanial of McCormick Hospital, Chiang Mai Province, was equally thrilled with the results he was getting using Depo on several thousand Thai women a year. He preferred it to the pill or IUD because, he felt, it had fewer negative side effects. It also did not require the women using it to follow a daily regime or remember to insert a barrier before intercourse. In countries where medical help is often miles and miles away, the convenience of “ the shot” was a major factor in its acceptance and use. The IPPF, the World Health Organization and other users of Depo had gotten their supplies from Upjohn plants in the U.S. The FDA’s refusal to approve the drug forced the company to move Depo’s manufacture Clinton St. Quarterly
Provera at Birth Control to subsidiaries in Belgium and Canada. And Upjohn earned the doubtful distinction of being included among Mother Jones magazine’s list of perpetrators in “ the worst corporate crime of the century,” dumping unsafe products in Third World countries. The Mother Jones article accused population control programs of administering the drug without proper medical examinations or follow-ups. It also suggested that women were coerced into taking the shots with bribes of food, free medical care or threats to withhold the same. By now, women’s groups and organizations opposed to wholesale population control in less developed countries were beginning to mount a campaign to end the use of Depo. It was June, 1974, when Nardi returned to her job as a sales clerk in the Port Angeles Peoples store. Never a large girl, only 5 foot 1 inch, 105 pounds, she was now losing weight. She also seemed to be catching every cold that walked by her. Her period started. One week, two weeks, for six weeks she bled. Then it stopped, for awhile. Two weeks later it began again. Hadn’t the doctor told her the shot would stop her periods? The cycle continued. She lost more weight. The happy, energetic woman was becoming lethargic, withdrawn and depressed. Nardi tried to care for her baby but it became harder and harder. Every three months she went back to the doctor’s nurse for her shot. She never saw the doctor; his schedule was full and she and her baby saw a second doctor in the clinic. When the bleeding wouldn't stop Nardi told this to the new doctor. He checked her chart. Why are you taking this shot, he asked. For birth control, Nardi said. He never mentioned it again. He sent her to the hospital for tests. She was extremely anemic. i i i i i i In 1978 Upjohn again asked the FDA to approve Depo Provera as a human contraceptive. Studies of women in other countries revealed no alarming risks from the drug. The FDA still refused. The FDA’s second denial created an uproar in the medical and population control communities. Special legislation was introduced in Congress to allow the export of Depo overseas, even if the government wouldn’t approve its safety. Congressional committee hearings were held to determine if any risks associated with Depo outweighed the obvious benefit of a cheap, almost 100 percent effective, easily administered contraceptive for women in poor, highly populated countries. Some population control experts ranted about “ the tyranny of the beagle dog.” Dr. Davis asked at least for limited approval for use of Depo in “ special” cases, such as the mentally retarded women she worked with. Undaunted, Upjohn asked the FDA for a Board of Inquiry. Such a board, here made up of one member selected by Upjohn, one by the FDA and one “ neutral” member selected by doctors and scientists, is a last ditch effort to overturn an FDA decision. Before the Board could convene however, Upjohn’s ten-year study on rhesus monkey’s was completed. Upjohn asked for a delay. The test results were not good. More and more often Nardi was home, lying in bed, withdrawing from the world. Her husband took care of the baby. They stopped having sex. Nardi snapped at him over nothing. She wouldn’t let her friends in the house. She wouldn’t even let her mother in. Nardi weighed only 74 pounds. She thought about dying. In April, 1975, Nardi noticed she was passing huge blood clots in her menses. She was scared. She called the doctor who had prescribed the shots and the doctor who had said she was anemic. They weren’t in. She called the clinic’s only other doctor. He checked her chart. This drug is too new, he said. We don’t know what’s normal. Nardi was sick and upset. Am I being used as a guinea pig? The doctor wouldn't answer. Talk to your physician, he said. Nardi never went back to that clinic. She stopped getting “ the shot." The rhesus monkey studies done by Upjohn were routine. The FDA requires animal tests on at least two species when investigating a contraceptive for safety. A decision is made based on the worst test outcomes. Upjohn’s monkeys were divided into four groups: 16 received 50 times the normal human dose, 16 received 10 times the human dose, four monkeys received the same dose as humans and four received no drugs at all. Two of the monkeys receiving 50 times the normal human dose had cancerous lesions of the endometrium when they were killed at the end of the study. In one of these, the disease had spread to the lungs. All the monkeys in the two high dose groups suffered chronic inflammation of the uterus. Rhesus monkeys are used to test a drug for potential carcinogenic effect (ability to cause cancer) because studies have shown the species rarely develops “ spontaneous malignant tumors.” Between 1947 and 1973 no uterine cancers were reported in any experiments on rhesus monkeys. Not only were the test results bad, but Upjohn was alse being accused of withholding research findings. Stephen Minkin, a former Chief of the UNICEF Nutrition Program in Bangladesh and now employed as a Health Policy Analyst for the National Women’s Health Network, reported that Upjohn’s test findings also included a cancerous lesion in a monkey in the seventh year of the study. Upjohn had previously said no tumors or lesions were found before the monkeys were killed at the end of the tenth year. Minkin also charged that Upjohn withheld evidence of other side effects in Depo test animals. Among these he listed growth abnormalities in monkeys in all three groups that received Depo, changes in the liver and uterus of the high dose monkeys, and a high incidence of death during the first 85 weeks of the study. Only 28 of the original 52 monkeys survived the whole 10 years. Minkin also said that the four control animals which received no Depo were “ sacrificed” for no reason. In the beagle dog studies, Minkin charged that Upjohn failed to report that, in addition to breast tumors, some of the dogs developed endometrial disease. Three of the dogs died of “ drug induced diabetes,” the adrenal glands of many dogs had atrophied, liver tumors, gallstones and gall bladder cysts were found in low dose dogs, and that by the midpoint of the seven year dog study all the high dose dogs and half of the low dose dogs had died “ from action of the drugs on the uterus.” Minkin said his information came from “ trade secret documents” not usually available to the public or the medical community. He did not say where he got them. Upjohn’s announcement that they found cancer in the test monkeys also moved Malcolm Potts, now Director of the International Fertility Research Program in Chapel Hill, N.C., to contact his friend, Ed McDanial, in Thailand. Together, Potts and McDanial designed research they hoped would show the monkey studies were irrelevant and there was no relationship between Depo and endometrial cancer in humans. They would concentrate on women who had been admitted to McCormick Hospital with confirmed cases of endometrial cancer. Enter Minkin. In an article published in the November, 1981, issue of Mother Jones, Minkin charges that Potts and McDanial used highly questionable research methods. Since none of the nine women they eventually studied had used Depo Provera, they concluded Depo did not cause endometrial cancer. Potts and McDanial did not track down or examine any of the 100,000 women who had been given Depo at McCormick Hospital to see how many of them developed cancer. Too weak to care for herself or her child, Nardi was taken to her parent's home in Port Orchard, near Her period started. One week, two weeks, for six weeks she bled. Then it stopped, for awhile. Two weeks later it began again. Hadn’t the doctor told her the shot would stop her periods? Bremerton. She didn’t know what to do, who to see, so she started calling obstetrician-gynocologists (ob-gyns) in the Bremerton phone book. I would like to see the doctor, she said. She explained about the bleeding, the illnesses, the depression and the shot. I ’m sorry, the doctor isn’t taking new patients, she was told. No one would see her. She called the FDA. They needed to know the name of the drug before they could help her. Nardi didn’t know the name. Nardi’s husband, still in Port Angeles, went to the home of the doctor who first prescribed the shot. What is this stuff, he asked. Depo, Depo Provera, the doctor told him. Nardi called the FDA again. We’ll send you some information, she was told. She was also told the drug was not approved for use as a contraceptive. Nardi contacted the local American Medical Association grievance board. They sent her to an ob-gyn. He said he was a personal friend of the doctor in Port Angeles. After tests this doctor told Nardi she was going through menopause. Had her doctor gotten her written consent to give her Depo? No, Nardi never signed anything. Well, he continued, you might ovulate in a couple years, or you may never ovulate again. I can give you some fertility pills, $7 each, and you can come in five times a month for hormone shots, but I can't guarantee anything. Nardi walked out. On A.ugust 15, 1975, Nardi Townsend called an attorney. In the patient insert supplied by Upjohn when it sells Depo the following potential adverse reactions are listed: breast tenderness, nervousness, insomnia, fatigue, dizziness, thrombophlebitis, pulmonary embolism, breakthrough bleeding, spotting, changes in menstrual flow, loss of periods, edema (fluid retention) weight changes, cervical erosion and changes in cervical secretions, and mental depression. Doctors are advised to closely observe patients with a history of diabetes or psychic depression. The insert also cautions doctors to closely monitor women with conditions that might be influenced by fluid retention, epilepsy, migraines, asthma, and cardiac and kidney functions. An estimated 1750 Seattle women are currently receiving the shot. About 250 of them, including Janice Murray, get it from Dr. Raymond Clark. She’s been getting it for two years. “ For me it really works well,” Janice said. Before getting the shot her period came about every three months. She never has periods, now. “ I’ve forgotten what it ’s like.” She remembers Dr. Clark telling her Depo was not yet approved by the FDA. She was told about the beagle dog studies and he asked her if she was diabetic or had thyroid problems. “ Everytime I go in he asks me if I smoke, but I say no, so I don’t know why he asks.” She was also warned about possible fetal damage if the shot were administered while she was pregnant. Janice isn’t worried about that, though. She plans to have her fallopian tubes cut and never wants children. “ I've had doubts. I’ve wondered,” Janice admits. “ I just figure the chance I’ ll get cancer is about the same as if I took the pill. It’s probably the less of a whole lot of evils.” (ed. note: recent research studies indicate the pill inhibits the development of cervical cancer, although it is still associated with a variety of other side effects, including blood clotting.) Janice hasn’t kept up on the pub- licty around Depo. The only thing that might get Janice Murray to stop using Depo is “ if any of my blood tests or pap smears came out weird,” or if her friends who use it had problems. Janice Murray’s doctor is not doing any systematic study of side effects in his patients. Clark reports having patients who have used Depo for 12 years with no III effects. In addition to giving Depo for birth control, Clark Clinton St. Quarterly 9
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