Editor's Notes

– REPRINTS GALORE. Material from REASON continues to be reprinted in diverse places. Rep. Ron Paul's already much-publicized article "SALT-Free Defense" (Mar. 1980) is being included in the 1980-81 college debate packets being sent out by the Foundation for Economic Education. In a similarly educational vein, the Washington-based Council for Competitive Economy has reprinted several REASON articles. The CCE's Perspectives on Public Policy series now includes "Regulation's Fatal Flaw," by E.C. Pasour, Jr. (Oct. 1978) and "The Reconstruction Finance Corporation Rides Again," by Walter Grinder and Alan Fairgate (July 1975). The Council's monthly newsletter, Competition, has reprinted Joe Cobb's review of Democracy in Deficit and Dom Armentano's review of The Competitive Economy.

Another reprint has proved to be quite popular. The October 2, 1980, issue of the David L. Babson & Co. investment letter carried Alan Reynolds's "Trimming Your Hedges" from our June 1980 Financial Issue. As soon as the Babson letter appeared, financial editors began requesting permission to reprint it. Long excerpts subsequently appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Diego Tribune, and the Journal of Commerce, among other places.

– NEW JOURNALS. Two journals written from a European liberal (i.e., free-market) point of view have recently come to our attention. One is brand new; called the Journal of Economic Affairs, it is published by England's leading free-market think tank, the now-famous Institute of Economic Affairs. Contributors to the first issue (Oct. 1980) include F.A. Hayek, E.G. West, B.S. Yamey, and many others. According to editor Arthur Seldon, JEA is aimed at allowing economists and others to analyze events more promptly and crisply than they could do in the scholarly literature. Subscription information is available from Basil Blackwell Publisher, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, England.

From Sweden comes an interesting perspective on foreign affairs in International Background, edited by Arvid Fredborg. Notes REASON's Tibor Machan, IB possesses "one quality unmatched in other foreign affairs publications: epistemological integrity. There is in almost all its articles an awareness of the limitations and extent of what can be said about various matters of importance" in this field. Americans may order a one- year (10-issue) airmail subscription for $55 from P.O. Box 7063, S-103 86, Stockholm, Sweden.

– ECONOMIC LITERACY. Does it bother you that news media personnel frequently appear to be ignorant of the most basic concepts in economics? It worries The Media Institute, too, and they've set out to do something about it. From now on, when an event with important economic implications takes place, reporters will be able to call on the Institute's new Economic Communications Center for a competent economic analysis. Providing it will be one of about two dozen economists'"among them C. Lowell Harriss (Columbia), Arthur Laffer (USC), Roger Meiners (Texas A&M), Elizabeth Whelan (American Council on Science & Health), and Walter Williams (George Mason University). The Institute can be reached at 3017 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007.

– NEW HEBRIDES UPDATE. Amnesty International has sounded the alarm about mistreatment of the defeated rebels on Espiritu Santo and other islands in the New Hebrides (see REASON's Sept. 1980 cover story for background). On October 23 AI sent out an "Urgent Action" bulletin reporting on widespread arrests of French-speaking Melanesians on at least four of the islands'"all supporters of captured rebel leader Jimmy Stevens. Some 1,000 people have been arrested, detained without charges, and in some cases beaten and tortured. (All this, mind you, is being done by the socialist government of Father Walter Lini, financed for many years by the World Council of Churches.)

AI is asking people to protest directly to government officials: Prime Minister Walter Lini or Home Affairs Minister Fred Timakata, Port Vila, Efate, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides). An airmail letter costs just 31¢. It wouldn't hurt to send copies to your congressman and the State Department, as well. (Incidentally, president-elect Ronald Reagan was fully briefed on the New Hebrides situation last summer by a libertarian staff member who has visited the islands and met Jimmy Stevens.)