bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Quebec's Politics of Vengeance
Authors: Murchland Bernard
Published: September 2018

The victory of the separatist Parti Quebecois (P.Q.) on November 15, 1976, set off the liveliest public debate in Canadian history. For the first time since Confederation the unity of the country is seriously threatened.

After the election the Toronto Globe and Mail made a cool analysis of the situation and concluded that the P.Q. victory “leaves us with no excuse for failure to recognize that this country is in great danger.” Donald Creighton, dean of Canadian historians, stated bluntly that the country now faces’ ‘division and possible ruin.''

No one doubts that the dangers are well founded. The P.Q. was rowned in 1967 for the express purpose of establishing political sovereignty in Quebec. Rene Levesque, the dynamic and tough-minded leader of the party, has declared on numerous occasions that independence is “an absolute necessity.” His government has already issued guidelines for a referendum and set the fall of 1979 for the first vote.
Toward an American Coalition for Human Rights
Authors: Rustin Bayard
Published: September 2018

Should we form an American coalition for human rights? If so's what would be its purpose, its structure, and its functions?

I would like to suggest a moral philosophy as a basis for such a coalition.

I believe we must oppose suppression of human rights anywhere, whatever the ideology of the oppressor. We must, in my view, oppose dictatorships of both the Right and the Left— unequivocally and without qualification.

In addition I would like to propose that such a coalition stress the importance of social and economic well-being for all peoples. We must, in my view, look to the development of human well-being that embodies the full range of human rights and aspirations. This means stretching the definition of human rights beyond civil and political to include all matters that affect human welfare.
Paul Celan, Poet of the Holocaust
Authors: Wundheiler Luitgard N.
Published: September 2018

The Jewish poet, Paul Celan, was born in Czernovitz, Rumania, in 1920 and committed suicide in Paris in 1970. His native tongue was German. He wrote eight volumes of poetry, all in German, although he spent almost half his life in France and was fluent in several languages. In a public address delivered in Bremen in 1958, on the occasion of being awarded a literary prize, he spoke of the German language as the one possession that had remained "reachable, close, and unlost in the midst of losses…although it had to pass through a thousand darknesses of deathdealing speech." German is the language of Holderlin, Biichner, and Rilke, all of whom Celan admired, but also the language in which the words Endlösung (final solution), Sonderbehandlung (special treatment), and judenrein (cleansed of Jews) were coined.
A Pride of Prophets on Our Technological Future
Authors: Goulet Denis
Published: September 2018

The most serious analyst of the danger of technical determinism is still Jacques Ellul. As far back as 1965 this French philosopher, lawyer, and social prophet argued that “The technical phenomenon has assumed an independent character quite apart from economic considerations, and that it develops according to its own intrinsic laws…, following its own intrinsic causal processes, independent of external forces or human aims.“

Frequent accusations to the contrary notwithstanding, Ellul replied that he “never intended to describe any inexorable process of inevitable doom.” In fact he insists “that if we can be sufficiently awakened to the real gravity of the situation, man has within himself the necessary resources to discover, by some means unforeseeable at present, the path to a new freedom.“
Jewish Footprints in India
Authors: Ungar Andre
Published: September 2018

Because it is there!” the rabbi coins a phrase when asked by baffled congregants why, of all places, he chose to go to the Indian subcontinent for his summer vacation. The truth, nothing but the truth…but not the whole truth. He also went to sniff exotic art, architecture, landscape, music, and theologies. Shocking to admit, he decided on India because that's just about as far away as you can get from the normal daily realities of his life: Jews, that is. A guy needs a change.

Easier said than done. Remember Jonah and Nineveh and the big fish. Evasion of responsibilities does not seem to work. You buzz off to forget (temporarily, therapeutically only, you chirp) your fellow Jews. So they come traipsing after you (physically, figuratively; who's counting anyway?). I was positively haunted. A small mercy though: at least I did not bump into the standard, Hilton-circuit, American Jew in his flowered bermudas and her sequinned sunglasses. If they were around, they must have been safely tucked away in their airconditioned buses or in their gaggles of guided gawkers at mandatory sites. No, it was a very different presence of Jews that kept stepping on my heels.
The Korean CIA in the USA
Authors: Ranard Donald L.
Published: September 2018

Korean intelligence agents operating in the United States have violated our laws with impunity. Such reprehensible actions merit serious scrutiny at any time. But in view of recent developments in Korea, it is even more urgent that our government be concerned about the intelligence activities of the South Korean Government in the United States.

The hearings held earlier this year before the appropriate subcommittee of the House are important for at least two reasons. First, they sought, at long last, to inquire publicly into serious allegations of illegal activity carried on in our country by agents or persons representing a foreign power. The fact that Korea has been a close ally of the United States is not in dispute; what is of concern is whether representatives of that government have violated American law and have attempted to deny the human rights of Koreans resident in this country.
The Fight Over Status: New Decision on Puerto Rico
Authors: Clemens Walter C.
Published: September 2018

Plitics is our national sport,'' a Puerto Rican lawyer warns, "but it sometimes gets too lively. That's why many bars post signs prohibiting discussions of politics or religion."

This sport is mirrored in another Island passion: music. In the Miami Beach-type hotels along San Juan's Condado strip, for example, a faceless continental music regales not only North American tourists but dolce vita from the present economic and social system. Behind the Folies Bergeres night club acts flashes the subliminal message: Things are fine as they are.

A few miles inland, past a boulevard with high-rise, air-conditioned buildings in the commercial section of Hato Rey, past a Sears and several shopping malls, the rooftops get lower and the housing denser and a wild and exciting beat rises from a street corner opposite the headquarters of the Puerto Rican Independence Party.
In Search of New Heroes and My Misplaced America
Authors: Carlson Carl E.
Published: September 2018

My heroes are all either dead or dying, especially me. I am much older now than I was before. Somewhere within me are memories of past bravery inspired by my American flag marching in parade, flanked by a band's martial music; more important to me now is the fear I feel—despite my intelligence—of the noise of a roaring subway train through a lonely station at night.

In my past there were a few mornings—a very few and never close together—when, upon awakening, a nagging, inconsiderate conscience pestered me to consider if I truly knew anything at all about all the things I thought I knew. Now I have those kinds of mornings every day, all day, and late into the night.
Morality and U.S. Foreign Policy
Authors: Frankel Charles
Published: September 2018

The United States was never an isolationist country except in a Pickwickian sense of the term. It went through no period of excluding the outside world, as the Japanese did for two hundred years. On the contrary, the United States, in consequence of its openness to immigration, linked itself, between 1790 and 1920, ever more closely by ties of culture and blood to the various countries of Europe. It engaged in trade with them, allowed and invited their economic support in the task of settling and exploiting the American continent, and sent its upper-class children and its best writers, artists, and scientists on mandatory tours of Europe for the good of their souls. Culturally, ethnically, in its historical affinities, the United States has been perhaps the least isolated of nations.
For Another Transcendence
Authors: Cobb John B.
Published: September 2018

For any sizable group of theologians to agree on any statement is a sign of hope that we may be moving beyond the extreme fragmentation of the recent past. Further, the tone and intent of this agreement is clearly Christian and affirmative. Hence my initial reaction to “An Appeal for Theological Affirmation” was positive. Unfortunately, this initial reaction has been superseded by a more negative judgment, and my comments will reflect this phase of my reaction.

The chief weakness of “An Appeal for Theological Affirmation” is that it consists in a series of negations. The assumption is that if only positions that are opposed can be swept aside, powerful new affirmations will rise to take their place; but surely this is a dubious reading of our current situation.
Toeing the Line at the Cutting Edge
Authors: Neuhaus Richard John
Published: September 2018

One of the foremost analysts of contemporary religion recently gave vent to his exasperation with people who criticize ecumenical organizations such as the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches. "Why do you even waste time commenting on those groups? Don't you know that nobody cares about what those relics do? Certainly their pronouncements have nothing to do with what's really happening in the churches." This private expression, it should be noted, comes from one solidly located in the "liberal mainstream" of American Protestantism. Let the record show that he supports these ecumenical agencies wholeheartedly. It is just that he is totally indifferent to them. The simple truth, he says, is that they no longer matter very much.
Nuclear War in the Mideast — Part II Ethical Questions to the Pranger Scenario
Authors: Shinn Roger L.
Published: September 2018

Robert Pranger's scenario demonstrates how ethical choices usually take place in the midst of concrete decisions to act. Most of us do not know our real ethical commitments until the heat is on and we make hard decisions. Within the scenaTio it is not enough to talk vaguely aboiM peace and security; we must ask how we and others might act under specified pressures and threats.
Death and Transfiguration in the Third World
Authors: Horowitz Irving Louis
Published: September 2018

The Conference on International Economic Cooperation has all the appearances of a floating crap game: After the windup of this eighteenmonth Paris conference it moves over to UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. This points up the need for the U.N. to sponsor a permanent international clearinghouse on the exchange of data and the pricing of world goods and commodities. It would function as a sort of securities and commodities exchange commission that remains sensitive to the varieties of economic systems and mixtures, but is somehow able to establish guidelines on the relative values of goods, services, and commodities. Such an institutionbuilding process was a major recommendation of the Second International Conference on Environment and Society.
The U.S. and the USSR: Religious Liberty as a Human Right
Authors: Smylie Robert F.
Published: September 2018

Speaking before the United Nations, President Jimmy Carter declared that "The basic thrust of human affairs points toward a universal demand for fundamental human rights. The United States has a historic birthright to be associated with this process." He was reiterating his inaugural day commitment: "Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere."
The Feeling of Time
Authors: Cottle Thomas J.
Published: September 2018

The study of time in personal perceptions and social lives is hardly a new enterprise. A rather large body of literature on these subjects exists, and much of the material is utterly fascinating. People have examined orientations to the past, present, and future, the tempi of living, cycles, biological and social rhythms, the meaning of expectation, and of course memory. One of the more popular areas of research involves categorizing people as past, present, or futureoriented. These so-called temporal orientations are associated with various personality traits, as for example the heightened past orientations of anxious people, or the characteristic future orientations of highly achieving people. It has also been common practice to label according to various social classes within a society: the poor, present-oriented; the middle class, futureoriented; and the affluent, past- or, more precisely, tradition-oriented.
Older Germans, Younger Krauts
Authors: Hux Samuel
Published: September 2018

You may remember the event. In October, 1977, German commandos rescuing hijacked hostages in Mogadishu. I watched the televised reports of the venture in somewhat idyllic circumstances: in the local tavern of a small Spanish village whose name means, in the regional dialect, "a forgotten nook away from the world," an atmosphere so innocent that one has to remind oneself, sometimes, that some of the most serious matters are really serious.
Report From Ashdod: Falashas in Israel
Authors: Gibel Inge Lederer
Published: September 2018

If you spend enough time in Israel and talk with enough people from enough different communities, you becdme aware that each "new immigrant" group feels it is being discriminated against in favor of another. Oriental Jews complain about bias in favor of Western Jews, and both groups complain that much more is being done for the universally disliked Georgians. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the smallest and most controversial group of new immigrants— the Falashas, the Ethiopian Jews who now number about 28,000, of whom 300 are in Israel—is their lack of complaint, indeed their joy of having finally arrived in Zion.
Banned in South Africa: A Personal Account
Authors: Russell Diana E.H.
Published: September 2018

October 19, 1977, was described by one of South Africa's best-known newspapers, the Rnnd Daily Mail, as "the bleakest day in South Africa's history." On that day the government banned the country's only black newspaper, The World, eighteen organizations (including most groups in the Black Consciousness Movement that had come to be associated with the name of Steve Biko), and seven individuals. Forty-two black leaders were imprisoned without trial, nineteen homes and offices were raided. "What it has done," wrote the editor of the Mail, "is to leave the Black people who reject separate development with no outlet, no organization, no mouthpiece even, through which to express themselves." And so it remains today.
First Among Watergate Accomplices
Authors: Early Tracy
Published: September 2018

Like Nixon, Kissinger uses the slippery phrase to sell the shoddy. "I believed in the moral significance of my adopted country," he writes, defending his zeal for Nixon's Vietnam policy. Do not all nations, all things human, possess "moral significance"? But Kissinger means to slip by another idea, a moral valuation of American power. "America, alone of the free countries," he continues, "was strong enough to assure global security against the forces of tyranny. Only America had both the power and the decency to inspire other peoples who struggled for identity, for progress and dignity." My!.
Progress for a Small Planet
Authors: Sen Sudhir
Published: September 2018

Because of Barbara Ward's unflinching effort to uphold the highest values of Western civilization she has, in the eyes of many, become a conscience-keeper of the West. Her anxious call over three decades about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer has echoed widely. Although the call has fallen mostly on deaf ears in key policymaking circles, that detracts neither from its nobility nor from its validity.
Fever Chart of the U.N.
Authors: Sills Joe Byrns
Published: September 2018

Recent events in the United Nations have called into question American support for the world organization—particularly resolutions of the Twenty-Ninth General Assembly (1974) giving observer status to the Palestine Liberation Organization, resolutions of the Thirtieth Assembly (1975) equating Zionism with racism, and recent actions of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Labor Organization. What I plan here, using polling data primarily, is an analysis of the current state of American public opinion about the U.N., and I want to place the current attitude in historical perspective.

In the early years of the organization—roughly from the signing of the Charter in 1945 through the Korean armistice in 1953—the American public tended to have great expectations of the United Nations.
Indonesia's Political Prisoners
Authors: Rosenbaum Lorrin P. , Kossy Judith
Published: September 2018

The truth about one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century has long been embargoed. Ten years ago General Suharto's accession to power in Indonesia brought the massacre of nearly a million people and the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more. Yet continuing allegations about the murders and sweeping arrests that followed receive scant attention. Scattered articles mention conditions in Indonesia, but there is little comprehensive coverage of the ongoing repression by the present regime or of United States complicity. It was only recently that the House Sub-Committee on International Organizations, chaired by Representative Donald Fraser (D.-Minn.), began a series of hearings on the treatment of political prisoners in Indonesia. The hearings will evaluate the legality of security assistance to Indonesia under Amendment 502B of the Foreign Relations Act, an act prohibiting U.S. military assistance where there are gross violations of human rights.
Worldly Souls
Authors: Johnston William E.
Published: September 2018

A war is ended ingloriously, the promised honor is missing; a President, overwhelmingly elected, resigns, and the law seems both vindicated and confused; our economy of life appears out of control; and democracy is increasingly out of favor in the world. We are troubled with good reason. We sense our difficulties and doubt we can relieve them safely. Perhaps the beginning of wisdom in dark times is to search for the foundations of propriety and purpose; the alternative is to grasp at straws.
Cambodia—an Outlaw Nation
Authors: Anderson Jack
Published: September 2018

The following are excerpts from Jack Anderson's extraordinary report on the ABC Television Network's morning news show, “Good Morning America” in early March. David Hartman is host of the show.

For two and a half years I have been haunted by a story that I pieced together from scattered reports. The story was disputed and denied when I first published it in 1975. But I now have overwhelming evidence from the secret files of the State Department, Justice Department, and Central Intelligence Agency. This is the most important human rights story of the decade. It is a stark, cruel story of mass slaughter in Cambodia under the Communist dictator Pol Pot.

I want you to remember that name, Pol Pot. It belongs in the hall of infamy alongside the names of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. The Communists took over Cambodia in April of 1975. Pol Pot wanted to build a new Communist society.
The Fascist Century
Authors: Joes Anthony James
Published: September 2018

Writing about fascism can get one in trouble. "Fascist" is used to describe every nasty person—from Mussolini and his henchmen to ill-tempered policemen and professors who expect their students to complete assignments. No wonder that anyone using the term to analyze politics in the Third World is immediately suspected of being in the pay of the Israelis—or worse. (The present author can state categorically that he is in the pay of no government, Alas!) Nevertheless, many political scientists have concluded that fascism models are useful for coming to grips with the tumultuous politics of the underdeveloped world. This article explores some of the reasons for and implications of that conclusion
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro
Authors: Grant Frances R.
Published: September 2018

we are are here to pay tribute to Pedro Joaquin Chamorro—a colleague and friend. A great editor and a champion of truth, he was, above all, a great Liberator who has fallen in battle in the still unfinished War of Independence of Nicaragua. For truly, in all but three of the countries of Latin America, the unfinished Wars of Independence cruelly continue against military oppressors who are despoiling their peoples.
Yousef el Sebai
Authors: Kipper Judith
Published: September 2018

Yousef el Sebai, editor of Egypt's daily newspaper, Al-Ahram, and a confidant and supporter of Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat, was gunned down by radical Palestinian terrorists in the lobby of the Nicosia Hilton Hotel on February 18. The gunmen claimed Sebai was killed because “he published good things about Israel.” Their self-proclaimed mission was to murder Sebai “for the liberation of Palestine.”
The Shah's Imperial Dream
Authors: Manning Robert A.
Published: September 2018

It was hardly more than a year ago that his grandiose dreams were scoffed at as the ranting of a petty tyrant and megalomaniac. In the aftermath of the “energy crisis” and quadrupling of oil prices, however, the world is beginning to think twice about Iran's monarch, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, or Shahansha (King of Kings), to give him his formal title.

Though he came to the throne in 1941, the present Shah of Iran did not really hold the reins of power until the overthrow in 1953 of the militant nationalist premier, Mohammed Mossadegh, in a CIA-sponsored coup.
The Hitler Cult
Authors: Cecil Robert
Published: September 2018

Adolf Hitler and those of his fanatical . henchmen who shared his last days shared also a belief that from their ashes a cult would arise. As early as 1942, when his Russian plans had gone awry. Hitler spoke to his entourage of the satisfactions of dying on “a magnificent funeral pyre.” In his last testament three years later he wrote of his oneness in sacrifice with his soldiers, which would be “the seed of a radiant rebirth of the National-Socialist movement….” Martin Bormann hinted at a Wagnerian myth when he wrote in his last letter to his wife of perishing “in King Attila's hall, like the Nibelungs of old.” Joseph Goebbels, dramatic to the end, de claimed at his last press conference about “the fine color film describing the terrible days we are living through,” which future audiences would see.
Issues and Challenges of Asian Development
Authors: Okita Saburo
Published: September 2018

The economy of Southeast Asia has been in relatively good shape in spite of the instability of the world monetary system, trade deficits, and the worldwide oil crisis. There are promising factors for economic growth, opportunities for employment, and possibilities of rising income. But Asian development presents short-and long-term problems of a very complicated nature. One of the most serious problems is inflation and its impact on the social and political programs of individual countries. At the same time, there are severe shortages of basic commodities, such as oil and food. My own country, Japan, is among those affected.
Mideast Peace: The Best of Chances
Authors: Bruzonsky Mark , Sisco Joseph
Published: September 2018

When you served in the State Department, did you ever envision that within a few years we would have either Menachem Begin as the Israeli prime minister or an Anwar Sadat recognizing Israel in a dramatic visit to Jerusalem?

I never assumed that the situation would develop in such a way that the Likud party would supplant the Labor party in the leadership of Israel. But I think a more interesting response to your question is that Menachem Begin himself never expected to be prime minister. I spoke with him shortly after he became prime minister and we focused, very briefly, on the matter. He had been in opposition twenty-nine years and now found himself in this very critical position at a very important time.
The Future of a Limited World
Authors: Reischauer Edwin O.
Published: September 2018

At any international gathering these days the dominant theme is likely to be the obvious interdependence of all nations in a global environment that is now perceived to be sharply limited. There is, of course, nothing new in the twin concepts that the world is one and that it is not infinite. For some years prophets, statesmen, scholars, and humble citizens have been blowing on these two horns with increasing vigor. But it took the oil shock of the autumn of 1973 to transform these ideas from the realm of provocative theory to chilling reality. An interdependent, limited world was until quite recently an interesting, slightly worrisome concept, but hardly more immediately threatening than the theory of an ever expanding universe. Suddenly it seems more like the hypnotic eye of a striking cobra, inducing a mixture of terror and immobility.
Food Enough for All
Authors: Harmon David P. , Chou Marylin
Published: September 2018

Through constant repetition over the past siderable credence has been given to a very pessimistic outlook for world agriculture. The pessimists argue that recurrent and ever more serious food shortages will occur as a result of increasing population growth, rising affluence, and decreasing availability of cultivatable land. Based largely on world consumption of food and feed grains ranging between 1.1 and 1.2 billion tons per year, with a yearly growth in volume of some 25 million tons needed to meet increased demand, it has been asserted that the world has twenty-seven days worth of food reserves left and is living on a razor's edge with respect to famine. This assertion does not bear up under close examination.
An Italian Communist Encyclical
Authors: Schall James V.
Published: September 2018

The fate of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) is instructive beyond the borders of Italy. Its relation to democracy and religion may yet provide a pattern for a number of other countries.

As a result of the June regional and administrative elections in Italy the Communist Party vote rose 5.5 percent since the 1972 General Elections. In fact, this was a greater increase in party strength than during all the previous two decades. This puts the Italian Communist Party practically on a par with the Christian Democrats (D.C.), while it gives the PCI control of most of the major cities and regions in Italy.
A Commitment Sustained
Authors: Derian Patricia
Published: September 2018

Enhancing respect for human rights and human dignity is a fundamental objective of U.S. foreign policy. It is an objective based on our laws, our international obligations, and on the strong personal commitment of President Carter. The human rights policy, after a year, already has changed the way this country is seen by others, placing us more and more frequently, as President Carter has said, “with the tortured and the unjustifiably imprisoned, and with those that have been silenced.”

We have done that, and more. No government today doubts that this nation stands for the same ideals and values abroad that we assert at home. We freely acknowledge our own internal flaws and readily admit that there is much to do to assure full equality with economic opportunity for all our citizens.
The Catholic Church and the Arms Race
Authors: Hehir J. Bryan
Published: September 2018

No question of foreign affairs surpasses the arms race in terms of moral complexity and moral content. Along with the correlative issue of world poverty, the arms race forms the heart of the moral agenda of foreign policy. The Roman Catholic bishops of our country attach overriding significance to the arms race and its threat to the sacredness of life.

The massive technical complexity of the arms race in its political and strategic dimensions is something that people in our government grapple with daily. We respect that technical complexity and have tried to assimilate it in this testimony. At the same time, for the church the arms race is principally a problem defined in religious and moral categories. The specter of war, in any form, raises for Christian ethics the central question of the taking of human life.
The Scourge of Modern Militarism
Authors: Klare Michael T.
Published: September 2018

Militarism. The word has a faintly anachronistic ring. It conjures up images of Prussia in Bismarck's day, or perhaps Hitler's Third Reich. It suggests a static, rigid society in which a traditional officer caste dominates an authoritarian and hierarchical state system. But while this image is still valid for many societies today, it fails to convey the particular virulence and dynamism of modern militarism—a scourge that threatens to obliterate all the gains made in the areas of human rights, democratic government, and economic progress throughout the world since the end of World War II. If not checked soon, this scourge will almost certainly trigger a global conflagration that could destroy the human species.

Consider: World military spending in 1977 reached the record level of $400 billion—more than the combined gross national product of the world's hundred poorest nations. Most of these funds, of course, were expended by the two superpowers, which now have sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy each other several times over.
Argentina: Left Signal, Right Turn
Authors: Bono Agostino
Published: September 2018

A politically ambitious young man approaches a fork in the road. Standing there are Hitler, Lenin and Juan Domingo Peron.

“Which is the way to political power?” asks the young man.

“No doubt about it. Go right,” answers Hitler.

“No. No. No. The only way is left,” retorts Lenin.

“Don't listen to those two,” advises Peron. “The best way is to signal left and then turn right.”

The joke making the rounds of South America is greeted with a stony silence in much of Argentina as leftists are becoming aware that they have been had by an old warrior more interested in a political comeback than a social revolution. The feelings of betrayal and disillusionment are bitterly sinking in. Where does the Peronist Left go now that Peron has turned right?
Political Authority and Revolution
Authors: Weber Theodore R.
Published: September 2018

Political authority is the right to exercise the power of the polis, the political community, over and on behalf of the members of the community. It implies the obligation of the members to obey those who exercise power by right when they act within the limits set by the criteria of authorization. Every political society this side of the eschaton must embody viable relationships of authority and obedience. If not, the society must either be sustained by tyranny, which is arbitrary force and not authoritative power, or else dissolve into anarchy, which surely then will lead to tyranny.
Speaking of God After Auschwitz
Authors: Sherman Franklin
Published: September 2018

The fact that Christians and Jews are together able to take up a topic such as “speaking of God after Auschwitz” indicates that a certain stage of maturity has been reached in our conversations. Especially on theological and biblical topics there was so definite a body of conviction on both sides, worked out through centuries and even millennia of discussion, that the spokesmen for the two faith communities could do little more than serve as reporters of the received doctrine on the matter. But with a topic such as the present one we confront a question to which there are no readymade answers.
The Holocaust As a Question
Authors: Glanz David
Published: September 2018

Any large public event in New York City is bound to attract some unstable types. But almost no other subject would be as likely to do so as a public forum on the Holocaust. And on June 3 through 6 a symposium entitled “Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era” was held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. There were moments when one felt the symposium had become a public Rorschach Test: fundamentalist Christians, crackpots of all flavors, Jews for Jesus, slightly manic civil libertarians struggling to get their message across, sweet little old English ladies quoting the Prophets, and, of course, survivors of the campsall turned up. Members of the radical National Committee of Labor Caucuses disrupted Elie Wiesel's lecture and seized the microphone on several other occasions. In part the turnout may have been due to an incredible ad run in the Village Voice, telling people:

Take a vacation, call in sick or quit—but show up at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine as over 40 brilliant people from around the world, authors of almost 100 books wrestle with Auschwitz, the act-that showed man has no limits. Explore the mind and guts of mankind. … Take 4 days and gain a lifetime education.
A Survey of Freedom
Authors: Gastil Raymond D.
Published: September 2018

Americans are no longer so sure as they once were about what is meant by “the free world.” As Alexander Solzhenitsyn reminded us when he came in out of the cold, however, the distinction between free and unfree is not entirely obscured. Though he does not like everything he sees in the democratic nations, he immediately experienced the differences in the quality of freedom. There are discernible differences that make it possible to speak of “free,” “partially free,” and “not free” nations. Every nation is’ in fact marked by a “mix” of civil and political liberties granted, threatened, or withheld from its citizens. The obvious pitfall for the serious analyst of freedom is to weave complex criteria into a simplistic scheme by which one country is pronounced “free” and another “not free.” The determination of who is and who is not free is more complicated than that. A serious survey of freedom is a matter of weighing each nation against the scales of freedom in other nations. When it comes to human freedom] no nation has finally “arrived.” “Comparative” is the key word.
Memory of Autumn
Authors: Van Dinh Tran
Published: September 2018

In the fall of 1939, in my native city in Vietnam, the now sadly famous imperial capital of Hue, a young poet, Luu Trong Lu, published his “Tieng Thu” (“The Sounds of Autumn”). Overnight he became our idol. He wrote of the “murmurs of autumn leaves,” of a “startled golden deer walking on dry yellow leaves,” of a “front-line soldier's silhouette in the heart of his lonely wife.”

I was then in the last year of high school. My classmates and I were all enchanted by his verses. We copied them in our notebooks to read during our mathematics classes. We had enjoyed a relatively peaceful year and a bountiful harvest, although some among us sensed that the war in Europe might soon affect us. But we did not care. We loved our poet all the same.
Scenarios of Disaster and Hope for Northern Ireland
Authors: FitzGerald Garret
Published: September 2018

Nine months ago the way ahead in Northern Ireland seemed clear. Perhaps for the first time in many years. Representatives of parries elected six months earlier to the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding between them a clear overall majority of the seats in that body, had agreed with the Irish Government and the United Kingdom Government at the Sunningdale Conference on a common program for the future government of the Province. And for its future relations with the rest of Ireland.
The Scandal of Foreign Medical Doctors in the U.S.
Authors: Silver George A.
Published: September 2018

Professional and lay articles now appearing on immigrant physicians in the U.S. leave the impression that this is a quite new problem. In fact the earliest doctors in America were foreign medical graduates (FMGs), and for a couple of hundred years after that they were the most sought after practitioners in the Colonies. American medical school graduates date only from the 1760's, and until the beginning of this century the native-trained products of proprietary medical schools were viewed with considerable distrust. Respectable doctors had at least some European training.
Walking on Thorns
Authors: Finn James
Published: September 2018

A world without war, a world at peace, has long haunted the thoughts of man. High among those who have brought the concept to the level of a conscious dream are leaders of the world's religions. Within the last decade there has developed around the globe, slowly and arduously, a network of religious leaders Whose declared purpose is to bring reality closer to that dream. The World Conference on Religion and Peace, the formal name of this network, has now held two world conferences, the first in Kyoto in 1970, the second in August of this year in Louvain, Belgium.
Jews and Christians—Beyond Brotherhood Week
Authors: Siegman Henry
Published: September 2018

Two major events that bracket the past decade like a set of bookends are the Vatican Declaration on the Jews (Nostra Aetate No. 4) in 1965 and “Guidelines for the Implementation of Nostra Aetate No. 4,” issued in January, 1975.

There are two striking aspects to these events that immediately invite comment. First, they are both Catholic developments; there seem to have been no comparable developments of similar import for Christian-Jewish relations during this entire decade in Protestant and Orthodox Christianity—certainly none that come to mind as strikingly as do the two Catholic documents. Second, it took a full decade’ for the Catholic Church to issue instructions to its faithful to guide and encourage the implementation of Nostra Aetate.
The Night Train to Benares
Authors: O'Hanlon Daniel J.
Published: September 2018

Signs in the trains and in the stations quote Gandhi on the merits of traveling light. No one pays attention to this sensible advice. On the platform at Siliguri, waiting for the night train to Benares, I noted there was as much space taken up by bulky bedrolls and piles of household gear as by the crowds of people jockeying for position. Finally, to the accompaniment of much shoving and some angry shouting, the train puffed and clanked to a halt alongside the platform.

The third-class cars we were all waiting for were even more jampacked than the platform. Friends had come to the station to see me off and had engaged one of the red-turbaned porters to help. Now they hurried up and down the platform looking for an opening chink through which to get me aboard.
Venezuela and Its World Role
Authors: Treverton Gregory F.
Published: September 2018

In March the Venezuelan government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez celebrated its second anniversary. I was in Caracas that month, posing questions about Venezuela's role in hemispheric and world affairs to a variety of Venezuelans—government officials, opposition politicians, journalists, and people from the private sector. At the end of my stay I spoke with President Pérez—often referred to in the Venezuelan press by his initials, CAP—and asked similar questions of him. I have grouped my questions and his responses around several major themes.
Embattled Embassies
Authors: Wolf John B.
Published: September 2018

In June, 1976, U.S. Ambassador Francis Meloy and his economic counselor were assassinated in Beirut by Palestinian sympathizers. In August, 1980, as U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean was driving to his residence in a suburb of Lebanon's capital, his bullet-proof car was riddled with machine-gun fire—this attempt on his life later claimed by the "Front for the Liberation of Lebanon From Foreigners," a right-wing and pro-Christian group that accused the U.S. of aiding the Palestinians. Between 1978 and 1982 factions tied to Palestinian guerrillas fired rockets at the U.S. embassy on four separate occasions. In April, 1983, the bombing of the embassy, took a toll of sixty-three lives; the first group to claim "credit" was a littleknown pro-Iranian faction
Different Case for Puerto Rican Independence
Authors: Wesson Robert
Published: September 2018

The independence movement in Puerto Rico has been formed in reaction to the cultural and economic dominance of the mainland, and thus it has been anti-Yanqui and anticapitalist. Radicals and nonfriends of the United States, from Castro through many Latin American and Third World leaders, have taken up the cause of Puerto Rican independence as one of the easiest ways, after Vietnam, of discrediting America. Puerto Rican advocates of independence express -themselves with bombs. But causes should not suffer guilt by association, and nonradical Americans might well reconsider the issue. It has been remarkably little examined in the American press except from a usually emotional leftist viewpoint, but there is a good case for amicable separation or divorce on grounds of incompatibility.
What Revolution Is—and Is Not
Authors: Weir Robert F.
Published: September 2018

Revolution” belongs to that expanding list of English words whose multiple meanings make any precise usage elusive, if not impossible. The misuse and abuse of the term “revolution” in ordinary communication is enough of a problem, but the flexibility of the term in scholarly writings makes reasonable discourse across disciplinary lines a monumental task.

Humanists, social scientists, and natural scientists have contributed in various ways to the ambiguity of the word. Invite three theologians, let's say, to discuss “revolution in the modern world” and witness the use of the same grammatical substantive to describe ecclesiastical reform, or any given number of societal changes, or the violent overthrow of an established political regime. Under such circumstances communication is as difficult as it is for a trio of recent immigrants engaged in a conversation that includes the English word “rose,” each having reached the separate conclusion that the speaker is referring to a flower, or a color, or an action just performed.
A "Lady Monk" in Bulgaria
Authors: Belden Sharon E.
Published: September 2018

A woman traveling alone all the way from Holland to Bulgaria! And sleeping in a monastery! Villagers, visitors, and monks marveled, for although the small mountain cloister had held its doors open for decades, most lodgers were native families.

The Orthodox monastery near the village of Bachkovo, Bulgaria, founded by Georgian monks in 1083, had been plundered in the name of Allah, liberated in the name of the czar and was now very much in order under the Soviet state, both as monastery and hostelry.

Sacred and secular mingled within the same walls that had secluded seventeenth-century monks from worldly things. Four long, white stucco buildings with wooden galleries and grated windows enclosed the courtyard with chapel and fountains. Over the broken cobblestones chickens, geese, lambs, and pigs wandered about among the tourists, monks, and priests.
The Not So New Anti-Catholicism
Authors: Hitchcock James
Published: September 2018

In the midst of the Democratic national convention in July, 1976, Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph L.Bernardin of Cincinnati spoke out publicly against the party's recently adopted platform plank favoring legal abortions. The plank, he said, was offensive to many Catholics.

Stuart Eizenstat, a key aide to Governor Jimmy Carter, who was about to become the party's presidential nominee, told the press that the archbishop's statement “was not from the hierarchy.” “My understanding is that many in the hierarchy were extremely upset and in effect told him to cool it. No one has come to his support. I think that fellow went out on a limb.“

Archbishop Bernardin was in fact the elected president of the American bishops and was speaking in their name. After numerous telegrams from bishops protesting Eizenstat's remark, he apologized, explaining that he had not known who Archbishop Bernardin was.
U.S.-Soviet Relations: The Arms Race and Coexistence
Authors: Zagoria Donald S.
Published: September 2018

As we move further into the 1980s there are a number of alarming trends in Soviet-American relations and in the nuclear arms race: the development of so-called “counterforce” or “first-strike” weapons; NATO's new Pershing XR II missiles, which drastically reduce the warning time of an American missile attack on the USSR, just as the Soviet SS-20s threaten Western Europe; a U.S. command system that, under conditions of intense crisis, says one expert, “is subject to strains powerful enough to trigger an unintended war”: increasingly sophisticated technology, such as that which has produced the cruise missile, complicating the verification process of future arms control agreements; a new and growing arms race in space; nuclear proliferation; the discussion of “limited” nuclear war and other strategic nuclear concepts; the failure of the U.S. to ratify SALT II…and the list goes on.
Africa's Economic Squeeze: Poverty, Hunger, and Refugees
Authors: Marcus Harold G.
Published: September 2018

In the Horn of Africa the stubborn politics of military regimes have caused as many as 750,000 people to seek sanctuary across international frontiers. They will remain in refugee camps until the various antagonists decide to compromise what they term “unnegotiable” national interests, the centerpiece of the tale is Ethiopia, which, until the revolution of 1974, worked to create a nation out of an empire by transforming its many peoples into a typical Christian peasantry, thereby alienating the Muslims and pastoralists of the south, east, and north. Under Haile Selassie it also brought great wealth to a tiny oligarchy while impoverishing the masses, a process spurred during the ’50s and ’60s as the country was being integrated in the world economy.
Southeast Asia: ASEAN and Its Communist Neighbors
Authors: Hyman Gerald Franklin
Published: September 2018

Seven years after the fall of Saigori and three and a half after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia/Kampuchea, Southeast Asia is an area in search of equilibrium. That search provides the key to understanding the relations between and among the various states in the region.

Vietnam's foreign policy objectives have been fairly clear and in a sense straightforward, at least since 1979. It wants de jure recognition of the status quo; that is, of a unitary Vietnamese state (now widely granted) and of both the Heng Samrin government in Cambodia and the Kaysone government in Laos (far less widely granted). Vietnam says it is seeking a normalization of relations with ASEAN and China for itself and on behalf of the other two Indochinese governments.
Credo of a Dove Zionist
Authors: Brickner Balfour
Published: September 2018

Iam a dove Zionist who believes strongly that American Jewry and Israeli Jewry must live in a state of “interdependent independence.”

As a Zionist, I know the psychological and theological space Israel occupies in my self-definition. Israel's right to be is a sine qua non of my Jewish self. As I worked for the fulfillment of the Zionist ideal, the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own, so do I remain unalterably committed to that state's survival, its security, and its flourishing in peace. Thus, I stand in a symbiotic relationship with Israel. We are interdependently related. So far the description is “standard.”

The word “independent” is the one that raises eyebrows and suspicions among some of my “main line” Zionist friends.