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CAPTIVE READER RENDERS VERDICT
From a Letter to the Editor
July 1977
I am an inmate in Statesville prison. I have been incarcerated for five years on a seven- to 12-year sentence for an armed robbery of the largest retail bookstore in Chicago on Christmas Eve. All I could carry was $43,000 of their money.
I first got Mother Jones a few weeks ago from a brother who had gotten it from the library cart. He thought I would like to read your magazine because I am always saying that 90 per cent of books are written to make money (capitalism) and not to inform anyone.
However, I find Mother Jones to be relevant to surviving life in the mainstream of American life. Y'all doing all right.
Nonetheless, y'all still a bunch of white boys trying to clean up y'all's daddies' shit!
JEAN DE SAVIEU
Joliet, Illinois
PUMPED UP
From "Will Coal Sink Manhattan?"
August 1977
According to some of his own top advisers, President Carter's energy plan could have disastrous consequences for the environment. If carried out, the Carter energy plan could easily change the climate of the world in the next 30 years by more than it has changed in the last 100,000.
That heart-warming piece of advice comes from William Nordhaus, one of the President's top economic advisers, [who] told a meeting of scientists that dependence on coal in the Carter plan will lead to a rapid rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which will in turn lead to a rapid worldwide warming trend.
And Now, the Exploding Gas Pump.
By Richard Parker
Table of Contents, June 1979
When gas averages $1 a gallon, the oil companies will blame it all on OPEC, Iran and anything else they can think of. But they'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
From "Detroit Grabs for the Globe"
By Richard Parker
May 1979
As Ford, GM and Chrysler turn their attention elsewhere, labor unions worry that jobs in Detroit, already being lost to nonunionized plants in the South, will—like electronics and textiles—slip overseas, exacerbating Detroit's already serious urban problems.
From "The First Post-Oil Society?"
By Richard Parker
February/March 1979
The People's Republic of China is on the verge of breaking into industrial statehood in a big way [which] holds out the possibility for what a friend of mine calls "the world's first post-petroleum culture."… China…has 100,000 autos for over 900 million people—a ratio…that would yield less than a thousand cars in all Los Angeles county…. The likelihood that Shanghai will become the Detroit of the Far East seems, at this point, remote.
From a Letter to the Editor
January 1977
Just received my first copy of your magazine and am quite pleased. Specially happy about the article written by Mr. R. Parker on Mobil and Rhodesia ("And the Oil Goes Round…," September/October 1976). How nice of him to dwell on that unconfessed and uncomfortable issue.
Perhaps you have noticed the logo on this letter. I have been working as a researcher and copy editor in Mobil's public relations department; as of tomorrow, I will not. Out of curiosity, have you any need to employ a freelance researcher and writer? Attached is my résumé.
DALE LEDER
New York, New York
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
From "The Next Six Vietnams"
By Roger Rapoport
November 1976
One thing about America's next war is certain: it will not be another Vietnam. It cost the U.S. military a dozen years and nearly 60,000 lives to learn one important tactical lesson: don't get involved in a long, protracted ground war.
From an Editor's Note
March/April 1991
Bush's determination to seek a military rather than a diplomatic solution has been especially perplexing for the absence of any convincing argument about how the underlying causes of the crisis might be assuaged by war…flattening Iraq may simply lay the groundwork for a grand jihad against Israel and the United States.
But if the Bush administration can be faulted for failing to think through postwar issues, its strategy to win hearts and minds at home has been simple: Squash any meaningful role for the press.
RETHINKING REVOLUTION
From "The Iranian Hundred Years' War"
By Eqbal Ahmad
April 1979
What kind of state might result if Khomeini or his followers take power? As someone who has talked with him at length, I believe that, when Khomeini speaks of an Islamic state for Iran, it is a Shi'ite scholar's way of saying that he wants a good state in Iran. His concept of a good state includes democratic reforms, freedom for political prisoners, an end to the astronomical waste of huge arms purchases, and a constitutionalist government.
From an Editor's Note
April 1980
The Left is always better at seeing what leads to revolutions than at seeing what may follow them. A case in point: Mother Jones on Iran.
A year ago this month we published a piece that, despite a good analysis of the shah's overthrow, now seems embarrassingly nearsighted about his successors…. Why was our perception skewed?
As we look at it now, it seems that we momentarily donned an all-too-familiar set of blinders. Since World War II, much of the Left's work in the United States has gone—quite rightly—toward opposing U.S. support of various corrupt dictators: the shah, Thieu, Somoza and so on. But too often we automatically assume that any movement that vigorously opposes one of these tyrants is going to turn out pretty well. And, having been politically nurtured in the universities ourselves, we tend to be immediately sympathetic to militant-sounding student activists overseas. Victory to the Heroic People of ___ in their Liberation Struggle!
From a Letter to the Editor
December 1979
Your recent article on Apocalypse Now is somewhat erroneous. Since I wrote the original screenplay, perhaps I can shed some light on the subject.
The central incident, which you refer to as a "fabricated act of Vietnamese terror," is indeed true. But rather than argue with you about its veracity, I would rather point out how interesting it is that you think this act could not have occurred.
What always disgusts me about impassioned activists is their prevailing blindness to the immorality of their own cause. It is blindness that makes them less than human—automatons for a dogma—spilling forth the party prattle in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
JOHN MILIUS
A-Team Productions
Burbank, California
