Word: dissenters
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in favor of the snail darter's right to life. Wrote Chief Justice Warren Burger: "The plain intent of Congress was to halt and reverse the trend toward extinction." In dissent, Justice Lewis Powell noted dryly that this meant vital federal projects would have to be canceled if they "threaten some endangered cockroach." Indeed, the decision could affect at least eleven other projects, including the proposed $690 million Dickey-Lincoln Dam in Maine, which would endanger the Furbish lousewort, a rare plant that resembles the snapdragon...
Some of Carter's bluntest phrases were directed at Moscow's repressive treatment of internal dissent. Clearly referring to the seven-year sentence recently imposed on Helsinki Human Rights Monitor Yuri Orlov, Carter declared that the Soviets' abuse of such rights had earned them "the condemnation of people everywhere who love freedom." "By their actions," Carter added, "they have demonstrated that the Soviet system cannot tolerate freely expressed ideas, notions of loyal opposition and the free movement of peoples. The Soviet Union attempts to export a totalitarian and repressive form of government, resulting in a closed society...
...When telephoned by such senior aides as Hamilton Jordan, Press Secretary Jody Powell or Congressional Liaison Chief Frank Moore, Cabinet members were to respond as if the President himself were calling. Full debate was fine before a policy was set, Carter said, but once a decision was made, public dissent or anonymous leaking would be viewed as disloyalty...
...Though dissent is not welcome within the pages of L'Humanité, the party paper, critics have had little difficulty finding other forums. Six party intellectuals, writing collectively in Le Monde, charged that the central committee's "no responsibility" position was contrary to the "need for broad and profound reflection on what has happened." Jacques Frémontier, editor of the party magazine Action, penned an open letter of resignation to Marchais: "We made a mistake−on the Socialist Party, on power, on the Common Program, on the union of the left, on tactics...
Would all this dissent have much effect on the party leadership? Not immediately. Commenting on Marchais's speech, L 'Humanité insisted that the address proved that "serious, interesting and positive discussion is unfolding within our party." Marchais himself, when he first heard the rumblings within his ranks, magnanimously announced that "no heads would roll" because of it. That seems a safe bet in his own case, since no one expects any changes in the rigid party leadership any time soon. But if the party continues to learn nothing and forget nothing about the changing shape of France...