May 1982 RAIN Page 7 National Peace Academy Campaign 110 Maryland Avenue, N.E. Washington, DC 20002 202/546-9500 In November of 1978, President Carter approved legislation creating the Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution. To go about its work. Congress gave the commission $500,000—roughly equivalent to two minutes of the Defense Department budget. Yet the trickle was well spent. Legislation to establish the National Peace Academy has been introduced in both the Senate (S. 1889) and the House (HR 5088). Both bills are now in committee and should reach the floor of Congress in the next month or two. It may finally be recognized that disputes can be resolved without resorting to violence, and conflict resolution legitimated as a course of study. According to Milton Mapes, a key organizer of the campaign, "For an annual budget of less than one-fifth of one day's Pentagon budget, the Peace Academy could turn out experts who would help hold down the costs of everything from military defense to criminal justice." You get back what you put out. When nations prepare for war, they get war. Presently we are paying for four military academies and five war colleges. If you think the Peace Academy sounds like a more appropriate use of your tax dollars, contact the Peace Academy campaign and your Congresspeo- ple and let them know. —Mark Roseland "Fate of the Earth," by Jonathan Schell, The New Yorker, Feb. 1,8, and 15,1982, $1.25/each from: The New Yorker 25 West 43 St. New York, NY 10036 For The New Yorker to dispel, in so clear and complete a fashion, the myths of survivability and "win-ability" of a nuclear war, is pretty significant. I heard someone on the radio the other day remark that the real threat to world peace is Ronald Reagan and his cowboy mentality. It's a case where too much destructive power is concentrated in the hands of a very unwise leader; a case where the notion of democratic action by an informed electorate had better have an effect if we're to stop this excitable man and his crew. It's still too easy for us to ignore the implications of the D.C. swagger of Al Haig and Ronnie. A little background on devastation—stories from Hiroshima for example— helps to clarify the issue. And what of the consequences of withdrawal and deterrents? No one says it'll be easy to back down from the brink, but Schell explores several options. As bright a hope as the new National Peace Academy for nonviolent conflict resolution may be (see Access), the responsibility is still with all of us. Read this series. You may decide to try to save your life. —Carlotta Collette Killing Our Own: The Disaster ofAmerica's Experience with Atomic Radiation, by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, 400 pp., 1982, $11.95 from: Delacorte/Delta 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, NY 10017 When Albert Einstein, in 1947, compared the discovery of nuclear fission to the discovery of fire, he did not note how long it took primitive society to learn to keep that fire from destroying it, or what kinds of conscious changes were required of the species. Nor did-he calculate how long it would take, or what changes in consciousness would be necessary for modern society to survive the splitting of the atom. He clearly suspected the time allowed for this second job would be short, and that the human race was at stake. But he also believed that given an informed populace, it could be done. Keep in mind Einstein's optimism when reading Killing Our Own. The rage, pain, Cont. on next page © 1982 by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon Representational map: symbols do not denote precise locations or quantities
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