The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 19

THii BOSTON GLOBE TUESDAY. FEBRUARY 7. 1984 If ROBERT L. TURNER From City Hall to neighborhoods, it's war on arson RAYMOND L. FLYNN Mr.

Outside and Mr. Inside disseminate arson information and recycle abandoned buildings into affordable housing. To help investigate, prosecute and punish arsonists, they will draw on the resources of the Suffolk County district attorney and the state attorney general. We will send a strong message to those who would threaten our neighborhoods with arson: they will be prosecuted and jailed to the fullest extent possible. Federal aid also needed My appointment last week of Leo D.

Stapleton as Boston fire commissioner reflects my strong commitment to the fight against arson. Comr. Stapleton brings to his post more than 30 years experience in firefighting and a national reputation for innovative leadership. He shares my desire to combat arson by bringing neighborhood groups Into a close working relationship with the fire department and to coordinate the department's efforts with those of other city agencies. Under Comr.

Stapleton's leadership, the arson squad will get the resources it needs to be most effective. Boston, however, cannot combat arson in a vacuum. The city can provide some of the resources and provide a coordinated response, but it should also be supported in these efforts by the federal government and the private sector. That Is why I will urge the Insurance industry and foundations to take a greater role in supporting community-based antiarson programs. Our commitment to fighting arson is only part of a larger effort to protect and expand the supply of affordable housing, and to protect our neighborhoods against crime and violence.

These are ambitious goals. We will need the help of all of Boston's residents. Our campaign against arson will show that by working together, Boston's neighborhoods and their government can make our city a better place to live, work and bring up families. Raymond L. Flynn is mayor of Boston.

when owners use small arson fires to facilitate the removal of tenants so they can raise rents or convert apartments to condominiums. Finally, "redevelopment arson" takes place in areas targeted for major improvements. Buildings which do not fit Into these plans, but might otherwise be saved for affordable housing, are often burned to facilitate land clearance. Coordinated approach needed Fortunately, Boston neighborhoods have not simply been passive victims. People in the threatened communities have taken steps to combat arsonists.

They have established neighborhood-based "arson watches." traced patterns of ownership in fire-prone buildings, and worked with city agencies to board up abandoned buildings (since about half of all arson fires occur in such structures) and to improve housing Inspection programs. Various government departments have tried to play a part in the battle against arson. What has been missing, however, is a comprehensive, coordinated approach to arson prevention and prosecution. This requires the close cooperation of numerous public and private entities, including several city departments, county and state governments, neighborhood-based organizations and the Insurance industry. Rather than ignoring each other, or working at cross-purposes, they must work to dramatically reduce arson in our neighborhoods.

Beginning immediately, I intend to undertake a long-term comprehensive effort to combat arson in Boston's neighborhoods. Through the city's Arson Prevention Commission, we can develop a coordinated program involving the fire and police departments, In-spectional Services, the Real Property Department, the Assessing Department and the Neighborhood Development and Employment Agency. To prevent future arson, they will work closely with community groups to identify arson-prone buildings, develop "arson watch" programs, computerize and The tragic fire at St. Ambrose Church in Fields Corner is yet another reminder that no attempt to revitalize our neighborhoods will succeed unless the threat of arson Is stamped out. Although arson is a nationwide problem, Boston has often been termed the "arson capital" of the country.

Protecting our neighborhoods from this vicious and chronic crime will be a top priority of my administration. Arson not only kills people, it also kills neighborhoods. Last year Boston experienced at least 500 "incendiary" or "suspicious" fires. Their toll included at least 27 civilian deaths as well as 500 firefighter and 87 civilian injuries. In addition to the devastating loss of life and the havoc created In our neighborhoods, arson also strangles the efforts of city government to provide services at a time of fiscal constraints.

The Boston Fire Department estimates that property losses as a result of fire last year totaled about $25 million. A climate of fear It is the poor and those of modest means who suffer the most from arson. Together -with other types of criminal activity, arson can create a climate of fear and despair for the future of the community. The poor are typically the victims, not the cause, of arson. In recent years, neighborhoods such as the Fenway, Jamaica Plain, the Back Bay, East Boston and Highland Park in Roxbury have been plagued by arson.

In the past year, a wave of more than 50 fires has scarred the Fields Corner neighborhood. These patterns provide clues which help us understand the motives, solve the crime and prevent further widespread arson. "Escape arson" occurs when building owners become over-extended and turn to arson to get out of bad investments. "Insurance-profit arson" involves absentee owners of buildings in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Through frequent sales, they increase the insurance value of a building before burning it to collect the benefits.

"Gentrlfication arson" occurs Markey and Shannon. Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside. The labels are remarkably apt.

i Reps. Edward J. Markey of Maiden and James M. Shannon of Lawrence, representing neighboring districts, have developed these contrasting reputations as strongly as just about any members of Congress, and they have done it in just seven terms four for Markey and three for Shannon. While the descriptions are a bit oversimplified, they are accepted by the congressmen themselves.

"I have been trying to use the process to change policy, internally," Shannon said yesterday And Markey said. "I've been rolling hand grenades for a long time." But while the labels may hold, the Mr. OutsideMr. Inside analogy is falling apart this year i for one big reason: unlike Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis of Army football fame, Markey and Shannon last week stopped being on the same team. Both are running for the US Senate seat being vacated by Paul Tsongas.

The Markey-Shannon confrontation will be only one facet of this fascinating race; each of i them also competes in specific ways with each of the other candidates In the race, Lt. Gov. John F. Kerry, Secretary of State Michael J. Connolly, former House Speaker David M.

Bart-ley and William Hebert. former Massachusetts Teachers Assn. executive director. But it is one of the most intriguing confrontations. Until, last week, Markey and Shannon seemed clearly on the same team.

Both are young, articulate, from blue-collar cities in Middlesex County, and both have very liberal DAVID B. WILSON i voting records that differ on only a few issues. But the difference is clearest in the relation ships the two have had with their legislative leaders. Too much fuss over EDB? Shannon, who was only 26 when first elect- ed to Congress in 1978, quickly won the respect and affection of House Speaker Thomas Bettv Crocker. Robin Hood, Duncan Hines and the Pillsbury Doughboy were O'Neill who helped him get an assignment on the influential Ways and Means Committee and who made it clear 1 0 days ago that he views Shannon as the best candidate for the Senate.

O'Neill has expressed no particular antipa- i thy toward Markey, but when Markey was a state representative (also first elected at age 2b) he soon ran up against Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas V. McGee, and found himself evicted from office space altogether. Markey's I experience sitting at a desk in a State House hallway may not have contributed much to leg islative success here, but it helped Markey a lot in his campaign for Congress. Markey still recalls the battles with McGee. and calls himself an equal opportunity outsia er." Markey.

in fact, sees the insideroutsider per spective as "the way the race is going to shape up. He describes himself as someone "who ART OUCIIWALD brings in outside agitators. I'm an activist, an organizer. Markey does not hesitate to go puD- The billion-dollar show lie with an issue, the most familiar examples being the nuclear freeze issue, of which he is the leading congressional advocate, and nuclear power he was one of the first and sharpest questioners of the accident at the Three Mile Is land nuclear plant. Shannon is not so eager to accept the in The bartender poured out our drinks and said.

"That will be 10 bucks." "Put it on my deficit," the lobbyist said. "And who's going to eventually pay for it?" the bartender wanted to know. gas for home heating and cooking, and then becomes hysterical over EDB, is in a lot of trouble. These observations are offered in the certain expectation that they will infuri ate those who have convinced themselve that they are being harmed. Indeed, Uv intensity of feeling in the matter ts Its-most discouraging aspect.

Those who fear shadows and flee where none pursue are unlikely to enjoy a diagnosis of the source of their adrenal se cretions as technobabble inflamed by media hype. But, really. In normal times, almost five million African children die each year of malnutrition and starvation. Twenty-four drought-stricken African nations from Cape Verde to Somaliland, face star vation in 1984, according to the Unitec Nations Food and Agriculture Organiza tion. Number-mongering curses discussions of this horror, but the United States has contributed $50 million in emergency aid with more in the pipeline, part of a tota of $550 million this year in food and agri cultural assistance to Africa.

Now the Environmental Protection Agency reports under scare headlines that half of the 7 billion bushels of cereal grains the US has in storage have been treated with EDB, presumably rendering them hazardous to the health of anybody in range, including African children who are literally starving to death. The severest contamination of a processed food product that Bailus Walker, Massachusetts public health commissioner, had been able to document statistically at the time of this writing was a spice cake mix containing 169 parts per billion. That Is one part in 5,917,159.8, a grain of sand on a rather large beach. Since the introduction of EDB almost 40 years ago. deaths from cancers of the digestive system, presumably the part of the human creature most intimately in contact with EDB-treated cereals, have declined dramatically in all age groups, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

It is possible to argue, of course, that this improvement might have been even more dramatic in the absence of EDB. But it is difficult, indeed, to argue that any harmful effect can be documented. The public health and cancer Industries and the allied medical profession and Environmental Protection Agency risk their credibility and. In the long run, their Influence with this kind of scare-mongering. David B.

Wtlson Is a Globe columnist. sideroutsider way of looking at the race, but said yesterday, "It's as valid as any other way. I hunkered down last week under an unprecedented barrage of environmentalist terrorism. In the black earth farmland of Iowa and Illinois, on the Nebraska-Dakota prairie and the high plains of Colorado and western Kansas, in the corporate boardrooms of Minneapolis and Wall Street, the glorious abundance of America was officially pronounced hazardous to your health. Death, it was reported, lurked in those amber waves of grain.

The United States, the Saudi Arabia of cereal, breadbasket of the world, fell under a dark, carcinogenic cloud. Crews of fearless electronic journalists rushed into supermarket aisles to interview the witless among the menacing mixes as they recoiled from what once was referred to as the staff of life. Why are otherwise sensible people so anxious to believe this rot? EDB, isn't it? Not DDT or PCB, not cranberries or frozen swordfish, not this time; not chlorinated drinking water or Agent Orange but EDB. which stands for ethylene dibro-mide. Despite paranoid hypochondria and dietary piety, US life expectancy persistently increases to a point at which it poses disturbing social and economic questions.

Despite accelerated production and consumption of industrial and agricultural chemicals, cancer death rates continue to fall with the exception of those cancers which can be attributed to smoking. Yet people choose to believe that a fu-migant pesticide in common use since World War II threatens their well-being. Prepare yourself, after the snow melts, for pictures on the evening news of hard-hatted, white-suited government agents, bearing vacuum cleaners and exotic laboratory paraphernalia, snuffling around silos and elevators from Texas to the Canadian border. Prepare yourself for the public conversions of grain speculators and mercenary millers, lackeys and running dogs of colonialist multinational agribusiness, to a wholesome, redeeming faith in organic gardening. The spectacle would be merely comic if it did not so eloquently argue that the world's best educated, most prosperous, supposedly most enlightened nation has gone wacko.

People who wish to believe they are being poisoned are In a lot of trouble. A nation which annually tolerates 50,000 traffic deaths, accepts the deep mining of coal and uses explosive guess. Shannon said he believes it is valid to view "My kids will." the guy said, breaking himself up, "and if they don't my grand "the Congress or the Senate as a platform to children will. speak to the country, out my view oi is as a place of actual power beyond shaping public The man on the next stool was staring opinion. Shannon's work on tax policy in 1981 and silently Into his drink.

"Hev fellow," my drinking pal said Social Security benefits in 1982 are examples of "Didn't you Just hear the news? We al his work within the House. most got a trillion dollar budget. "I hate deficits," the man said. But both congressmen also point to efforts each has made in the opposite sphere. "What are you, some kind of fiscal Markey, for instance, talks of the importance directing outside agitation toward a reaiiz WASHINGTON You should have been here last week.

The whole town was celebrating the President's 1985 budget. I dropped into a pub near the Capitol the other evening for a quiet drink and found the place jammed with people. "Why the crowd?" 1 asked the bartender. "The 1985 budget is going to be announced on television in a few minutes." The bar quieted and we all looked up nervously at the screen. Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, in a black tuxedo, came on the stage, told few jokes, and then said, "And now -heerree's Ronnie's Budget! May I have the envelope please?" David Stockman, the head of the Office of Management and Budget came out and handed the envelope to Regan.

Regan read from the card. "The budget for fiscal 1985 is an all-time high of 925 billion. 500 million dollars!" Almost everyone in the bar cheered, and waved pompoms. Regan continued reading. "The deficit will be 180 billion.

400 million dollars, but could reach an even 200. If both parties work at it." Again we all cheered and raised our glasses. "It's the best election-year budget a President has ever come up with," a guy who had White House lobbyist written all over him shouted In my ear. "It's a beaut," he yelled. "I'll buy you a drink." nut?" "I happen to be a Democratic able goal.

"I believe you've got to bring people in the streets and get them involved inside." he The stuffed-shirt Democratic congress v. said. man said. "Haven't you people ever heard Shannon talks of the organizing he did of fiscal responsibility? The bartender said to the congress among various groups last year to win support legislation bjocking cutbacks in support for man sternly, "Watch your language, fel- '-the disabled. low.

This Is a respectable place. My pal and I had several more drinks In the end, the outsideinside question may not be one of eitheror. In Edward M. Kennedy. Tsongas and Edward Brooke before him.

Massachusetts voters have consistently elected and then with our arms around each oth senators who have both a flair for public rela er's shoulders, we staggered out into the street singing, "Two hundred billion dollars parlez-vousTwo hundred billion dollars parlez-vousWe'll hug the rich and shaft the poorUntil the deficit climbs Hons and a reputation for effectiveness Inside Congress. Voters, more demanding than football fans, will likely be looking for a candidate who can go some moreInky dinky parlez-vous. Art Buchwald is a syndicated colum nlst. outside and inside at once, ij Robert L. Turner is a Globe columnist.

The best defense against nuclear fears i ELLEN GOODMAN The high-tech peace wouldn't mean a nickel less for the Pentagon budget. A high-tech protection, after all. Is so much more expensive than a low-tech conference. The arms race could go on without fear of resolution until we were utterly bankrupt. There is something fundamentally perverse about pinning our hopes for the future on hardware.

It prevents us from resolving conflicts, discourages us from thinking about the real reasons for this arms race. Last month. Thomas Powers wrote in the Atlantic Monthly about his attempt to discover what the arms competition between the Soviet Union and the United States is finally, actually, about. Our political differences don't explain the risk of annihilation. There Is no victory or conquest In nuclear war.

So he asked more than a hundred people a deceptively simple question "What is it about?" and rarely received more than a blank stare from Americans or So viets engaged in thinking about the arms race. "It was questions about hardware that interested them Powers finally came to the conclusion that "lt" was about fear, fear of each other's power. "We fear each other. We wish each other 111," he wrote. "All the rest Is detail." Is there a technological solution to fear? Of course not.

Even if we could make nuclear bombs bounce off our national chest, a wildly dubious our mutual ill will could take the form of chemical warfare or "conventional" warfare. The notion that we will be safe that we can forget about the Soviets, that we can have our war games and security at the same time is a dangerous delusion. The reality Is that we are stuck here on Earth with the most human of problems: how to save ourselves. Our only weapon is that familiar and flawed software called the human mind. Ellen Goodman tj? a Globe columnist.

"We're working on weapons of life," said one of these young men who is convinced that he is in this research to end nuclear war. "Why not find technical solutions to a technical problem?" I understand the psychology behind his question. Scientists generally have more faith in technocracy than in bureaucracy to solve world problems. Physics is purer than politics. Science promises the concrete answers that eludd the students of human and foreign relations.

It engages scientists in seductively interesting intellectual pursuits: the Manhattan Project, the Star Wars Project. I am sure there Is something pleasing to the military as well in the idea of a "Star Wars" peace. It suggests that we don't really have to negotiate with the Russians. It promises that we can become invulnerable without giving up a single advantage. At the time.

I found some video-game humor In the Idea, but also some comfort. Why not spend some money on defense, Instead of offense, for a change. Maybe it would work. Surely it's harmless. But I'm not comforted anymore.

Nor am I convinced that this fantasy, which "has become defense policy. Is so harmless. It seems to me now that the whole "Star Wars" project maintains the truly central fantasy about war: that it is the business of technicians, a question of the right hardware. Harold Brown, Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Defense, once said, "Our technology Is what will save us." Last week, the New York Times ran a long story about the young Star Wars technicians at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who believe they'll be our saviors. They were nothing If not believers.

If there is a favorite fantasy for those of us who share the four-o'clock-ln-the-morn-ing fears of nuclear war, I suppose it Is the fantasy of some ultimate safety, some impenetrable self-defense. It must be the same fantasy that fueled the imagination of those who once built castles, moats, city walls, even the Great Wall of China. To calm the jitters of our own nuclear generation, our fantasy would have to include a shield for our whole country, our whole continent. And indeed, it has. It's been almost a year now since Reagan's "Star Wars" speech.

He had a vision that day of a "future which offers hope," a program of self-defense. He led us to believe that we could create a protective guardian way out there in space to shoot enemy sites out of the sky..