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Indictment of Glenn T. Seaborg for the Crime of Science Against the People
by The Editorial Collective
‘Science for the People’ Vol. 3, No. 1, February 1971, p. 12
We, scientific workers and students, here in Chicago at the annual meeting of the A.A.A.$., do hereby on this, the 30th of December, 1970, indict you, Glenn T. Seaborg, for the crime of SCIENCE AGAINST THE PEOPLE.’
SCIENCE AGAINST THE PEOPLE is a crime that in today’s world has reached a scale unprecedented in history. For never before has the confluence of technological capability and the need to dominate affected so many people in so many parts of the world. You are guilty, Glenn T. Seaborg. of a conscious, major, self-serving and ruthless role in establishing, organizing, maintaining and developing institutions of science and government for effective use by the ruling class.
WE INDICT YOU FOR THE CRIME OF SCIENCE AGAINST ALL PEOPLE. You have been instrumental in the maintenance and aggressive extension of the American empire at the cost of untold human lives.
WE INDICT YOU FOR THE CRIME OF SCIENCE AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. You have been instrumental in channeling their goals and resources into the huge bureaucracies of waste and war.
In the maintenance of world hegemony for the profit-making, people-exploiting American empire such men as Seaborg are essential to create and adapt the institutional structures, to coordinate the complex interlocking parts of monster of history, contemporary American imperialism. The mutually dependent Pentagon, Big Science, University System, and Federal Government plan and fund research and development of science against the people, for the use and profit of corporate America. In this, Glenn T. Seaborg has been instrumental as administrator, coordinator, and manager for the ruling class as a whole. He has performed this function, of coordinating and strengthening the dependence of science and universities on war and profit in a unique criminal history of holding key positions of responsibility in many of these institutions, for example:
Livermore Radiation Labs — where the U.S. nuclear strategy and hardware are developed.
University of California — where the minds of students are bent to the needs of the Empire.
Atomic Energy Commission — where megadeath development and radiation pollution development are directed.
Department of Defense — the primary institution for genocidal application of science against the people. National Aeronautics and Space Administration — where the most outrageous forms of waste for profit are perpetuated in dishonest appeals to the noblest traditions of science and used to divert attention from the obvious neglect of peoples’ needs.
The President’s Science Advisory Committee — where the budget is manipulated for the support of this structure.
Today, Glenn T. Seaborg, already culpable in wholesale application of SCIENCE AGAINST THE PEOPLE, continues his criminal history. The ruling class, concerned about the diminishing support of science and the rising protest against the misuse of science, moves its loyal coordinator into the presidency of America’s prime public relations agency of the Military, Industrial, Government, Big Science, University Complex — The American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAA$ serves this function well because its undemocratic structure immunizes it against criticism by its disenfranchised scientific-worker membership, yet it is in a position to influence the public.
With his new tool, Seaborg will try to further dupe the American people into believing that science policies that serve the implementation of war and profit are part of a “human enterprise”. Thus he also adds to his crimes the continuing development of collective schizophrenia among scientific workers who in five days of talk about “social responsibility” and participation in oblique discussion tacitly endorse the legitimacy of Seaborg, his nefarious role. and the whole criminal superstructure. For this last, we scientific workers are outraged. We indict you therefore, Glenn T. Seaborg, not only for the crime of SCIENCE AGAINST ALL THE PEOPLE and AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE , but also for your crimes against us, for your SCIENCE AGAINST THE SCIENTIST. Traitors have always been considered the most despised of criminals by the group they betray, and so it is with us, the scientific workers.
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