Editorials

Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien

EDITORIALS A door swings shut, again Any day now someone will announce for the New Hampshire primary. Will it be Jesse Jackson or Newt Gingrich? Who? Before that fearsome prelude to the 1992...

...need sober and hard-headed counsel from Washington, reminding them that it is the resolution of their political problems not their theological ones that will insure their survival...
...Those who committed the most crimes began young, by age twelve...
...The Israelis-preoccupied with the formation of a new government and the question of "Who is a Jew...
...Can a clean needle actually stop AIDS from spreading...
...The most disheartening outcome of the election is the sense expressed by so many voters (especially the 50 percent who didn't show up at the ballot box) that for all the hoopla of a lengthy campaign the candidates failed to connect with their concerns...
...FUNAI's policy spells the devastation of the aboriginal peoples and the Amazon rain forest, and, as our correspondent says, "the conscious genocide of the Yanomami...
...to the high stakes involved at this juncture of Salvadoran history...
...and the sowing of weeds amidst the church's own wheat...
...What would be lost in the United States taking the declaration at face value as a positive statement upon which to begin exploring how far Mr...
...The fluctuations of the stock market, the continuing decline of the dollar, and Allen Greenspan's sharp warning about the budget deficit suggest that even Bush supporters have doubts about his willingness to face up to the exigencies of the national debt...
...Now a correspondent from the region writes that recent regulations implemented by FUNAI-the Brazilian equivalent of the U.S...
...ASK THE EXPERTS An alarming profile emerged from a recent report on property crime in the U.S.-a report that surveyed some 589 prison inmates (men and women) convicted of property crimes in Ohio...
...In so doing, they have again demonstrated an ability to discern essential issues...
...In fact, in reading it, one cannot but be struck by the preemptive maneuvers to win approval of its positions...
...The vote of the Palestine National Council (PNC) to accept UN Resolution 242 could be the first step in the long and so far elusive effort to bring peace to the Israelis and the Palestinians...
...The Draft Statement on Episcopal Conferences" noted a number of potential weaknesses in the present development of regional bishops' conferences...
...The post-election bonhomie of George Bush strikes a false note following a campaign full of sham and evasion...
...The report, "The Business of Crime: The Criminal Perspective," was sponsored by Figgie International, Inc., a diversified company that includes some forty products-from sporting goods to key card access systems...
...But better wasn't best...
...and regular interviews with the voters individually and in groups...
...It would be hard to miss the intended purpose: the disruption of the bonds that constitute the tribe's fragile social fabric...
...Though the Democrats have won even firmer control of the Congress-for which Mr...
...This explosive growth has turned policymakers to the question of how to stop the spread of AIDS especially among newborn infants, who contract it from their mothers...
...The Democrats need to reassess their loyalty to "cultural liberalism,'' parts of which might better go by their true name, "libertarianism...
...A WINDOW OPENS, BRIEFLY While the Bush adminstration divides up the appointment pie, it looks as if it may miss the delivery truck on its first for-eign policy opportunity, the Middle East...
...However, amid much publicity and protest, few addicts have applied...
...Pace the pundits, the electorate did not get the campaign it wanted or deserved...
...military doctrine of low-intensity warfare in that country, is a marked man...
...Despite a highly charged campaign, California voters rejected mandatory testing...
...The program is small-scale, restricted to 200 addicts on a waiting list for drug treatment programs and who turn in used needles to the city's health department headquarters in exchange for clean ones...
...Zamora's mission: let the rest of the world know of this plan...
...The State Department and the Bush transition team have said the wording does not meet U.S...
...Two PBS specials-Garry Wills's candidate profiles in late October and the election eve assessment with Roger Mudd and PBS staff-were genuinely helpful and informative...
...One attempt is New York City's needle-exchange program for drug addicts...
...This is an important step...
...and alert citizens of the U.S...
...Such a strategy may look like development to government functionaries in Brasilia, to land speculators, and to developers...
...Bush and the Republican party will pay dearly-the White House continues to elude them...
...the unsubtle tactic of conquering by dividing...
...Taking a leading role within the universal college of bishops, they called for the complete revision of the document...
...and to do so in a spirit rich and responsive to the needs of the church as a whole...
...Perhaps it was the candidate himself and a campaign slow to define the issues...
...The PLO has rarely offered an American president such an opportunity for fruitful intervention in its intractable conflict with Israel...
...New York's experiment will test whether a program can succeed here...
...Zamora came to the not only with facts about the political, social, economic, and military deterioration of his country, but with a sobering prognosis of what to expect from a predicted ARENA victory next spring...
...bishops, in their detailed response, recognize the validity of a number of these important points...
...Whatever course Mr...
...Not much, relative to the gains in deterring the Israelis and the Palestinians from the suicidal path they have been following at the bidding of their extremists...
...California voters did pass an initiative requiring that suspects in certain sex crimes and in assaults on emergency workers and police be tested for AIDS, a measure dictated by common sense as well as justice...
...EXPERIMENT WORTH TRYING Doctors have predicted that by 1991, some 10,000 to 20,000 children under the age of thirteen will have AIDS, or will have died from it...
...Does it really renounce terrorism...
...four-way debates between designated spokespersons for the candidates (knowledgeable congressional leaders plus experts, for example, on drug control, the environment, arms control) helped focus the real framework within which future legislative action is likely...
...But it is bad news for those who support the government's attempt to provide a stopgap and one ounce of prevention in the face of a rapidly escalating, fatal disease...
...Possibly the addict's own life may be spared, although it is estimated that half of New York City's 200,000 intravenous drug users already test HIV-positive...
...By swapping new sterile needles for used ones the city hopes to reduce the spread of infection...
...The program is based on a solid premise: that saving lives is possible, even if an addict continues to use intravenous drugs...
...State Department, and many political commentators have been quick-too quick-to note the evasive wording of Yasir Arafat and the PNC declaration: Does it really recognize Israel...
...The series was initiated over ten years ago when a friend of the corporation's chairman, Harry E. Figgie, Jr., was mugged and left permanently brain damaged...
...The electorate has good reason to feel cheated by the handlers and media advisers, speech teachers and political consultants-packagers aided and abetted by TV network sophistry...
...Bush it is-with the nation's prayers for his continuing good health...
...Now, as he told Gene Palumbo in a Commonweal interview (December 18, 1987), he has returned to Salvador to campaign openly for the Democratic Convergence, the left-of-center political coalition that plans to run candidates in the March election...
...Dukakis did better than Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Walter Mondale in 1984, including among Catholic voters...
...smugly insist that they were only reporting the news, but regular watchers of PBS know better-and they know more...
...THE YANOMAMI A visitor to Commonweal's office last spring alerted us to the struggle between the Yanomami Indians, the Brazilian army, and miners and prospectors in the Calha Norte, Brazil's northwestern frontier (May 20, 1988...
...Last month voters in California rejected, two to one, a proposal that would have required doctors to report to state health agencies anyone testing HIV-positive, and would have required carriers to provide the names of their sexual partners so that they might be traced and informed...
...But Mr...
...but in the long run it will undercut the ground over which they greedily charge...
...to clarify and further discussion...
...The U.S...
...draw the Salvadoran left into the electoral process in order to establish a genuine political opening in Salvador...
...The draft document had sought to drive a wedge between individual bishops, bishops' conferences, and the universal college of bishops teaching in union with the pope...
...for the Israelis the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, for the Palestinians the destruction of the state of Israel...
...more likely, the fault lines within the Democratic party and among its constituent groups, including the old liberals and the new (see, David Carlin page 646), still prevent the emergence and nomination of a winnable presidential slate...
...This is the sixth in a series of public-interest reports on crime...
...Bush would be foolish to miss this opportunity for intervention as a good friend and an honest broker...
...That may be good news for those distressed that the city appears to be encouraging drug abuse...
...At the same time, early starters overestimated the probable return on crimes...
...The bishops of the United States, seeing the importance of this issue not only for themselves but for clergy and laity as well, have offered a substantial assessment and sound advice...
...To succeed, the program must supplant what is common practice among addicts: sharing used, unsterilized needles...
...bishops reviewed the Vatican draft statement and found it deficient on historical, juridical, experiential, and thematic grounds...
...Dukakis's defense of a woman's absolute right to choose an abortion, especially in view of his principled with coalition partners who will push for annexation and perhaps expulsion of the Arabs from the occupied territories...
...The document thus came forth with a life and power of its own, one that Avery Dulles noted had to be taken quite seriously: "Everything depends on who will control the final version" (America, March 19...
...Women and blacks and those with shorter records showed the mdst susceptibility to deterrence and rehabilitative measures...
...Before that fearsome prelude to the 1992 campaign is upon us, one last shot at Campaign '88...
...Other states are trying to deal through the ballot box with the AIDS epidemic...
...Overall, 33 percent of the inmates surveyed cited drugs and alcohol as their primary motive for crime...
...The measure also would have allowed employers to administer AIDS tests to prospective employees...
...This in turn underscored and reinvigorated the ancient custom of regional episcopal bodies...
...Early starters appear to be more difficult to deter-by alarm devices, dogs, lighting, locks and window bars, stiff sentencing, etc.-because they consistently ranked these "deterrents" as less effective than did other inmates...
...It is as political and economic liberals that Democrats once made their mark and their contribution...
...The working paper dealt not only with the question bf col-legiality and the teaching authority of national conferences of bishops, but proposed to define just how these were to be understood as well as delineating the scope of their functions...
...The anchors and their teams at CBS, NBC, and ABC (retire David Brinkley...
...One of the most noteworthy achievements of Vatican II was the palpable experience of collegiality and the coresponsibility exercised by the bishops gathered in council...
...Someone in Washington, perhaps George Shultz, perhaps Ronald Reagan, needs to signal a more positive reaction to what is a breakthrough, perhaps short-lived, in PLO thinking...
...They also rated rehabilitation programs as less effective in crime prevention than did the other offenders, suggesting they are less amenable to rehabilitation...
...Arafat is willing to go...
...Over half (55 percent) of the crimes were committed by a mere 9 percent (mostly male) of the prisoners...
...requirements for direct talks with the PLO...
...Rene Emilio Ponce as Salvadoran chief-of-staff...
...That is a staggering increase over the sixty-four cases diagnosed five years ago and the 1,188 cases reported by October of this year...
...European needle-swap programs attest to some success...
...The Israelis, the U.S...
...At their recent meeting in Washington, the U.S...
...The MacNeil/ Lehrer Newshour rejected the sound bites and the spin doctors, balancing its coverage with generous chunks of the candidates' stump speeches...
...In a previous editorial ["Testing for AIDS," July 17, 1987] we argued that such testing was counterproductive and called for ' 'precisely targeted campaign(s) for voluntary testing among high-risk groups...
...It was evident that the Vatican officials who wrote the draft meant it to serve their own rather transparent purposes...
...But just at the moment when the moderates seem to have won the vote in PLO councils, the Likud flirts REFUSING THE DRAFT When the Vatican Congregation for Bishops issued its "Draft Statement on Episcopal Conferences" this past spring (Origins, April 7), it was clear that the document was about power...
...Bureau of Indian Affairs-have stripped the nine thousand Yanomami of three-quarters of their ancestral land and parceled out its remaining 2.3 million acres into nineteen distinct and unconnected areas...
...Women were arrested for less serious crimes, committed fewer crimes, reported lower legal incomes, and were driven to crime more often by the need for money than by substance abuse, the leading motive for men...
...ET CETERA ANOTHER CAMPAIGN El Salvador will be holding its elections on March 19, 1989...
...Zamora, a leading critic of both the ARENA and Christian Democratic parties, as well as of the U.S...
...But in their own thorough background paper, they systematically point out the more serious failures of the Vatican working paper...
...Bush sets out to achieve in the next four years will be shadowed by his distortion and misrepresentation of Michael Dukakis's record, a tactic that allowed him to veil his own agenda, avoid the hard questions, and box- himself into a corner on new taxes...
...They ought to prepare themselves to do so again, after four years of George Bush...
...Today, in over a hundred regions, bishops' conferences meet in relative concert to assist local bishops in their work and service...
...Ruben Zamora, secretary-general of El Salvador's Popular Social Christian party, recently visited New York to speak about the fateful possibilities that lay before his politically torn country...
...For example, they consistently thought there was more money to be gained from burglaries and robberies than actual statistical averages show...
...opposition to capital punishment, points to part of the problem, certainly for Catholics swayed, by a consistent ethic of life...
...Job training and drug and alcohol education were mentioned as the most effective prevention, along with increased chances of conviction, imprisonment, and longer sentences...
...More probably, the lives of the addicts' spouses, lovers, and children could be spared...
...There is no way to assure that the clean needles will not be shared, but since they are used in place of unsterilized needles, statistically, at least, they reduce the chances of exposure...
...Some members of the military and ARENA are already talking about a ' 'Guatemala solution" for Salvador: one in which the Pentagon-inspired policy of low-intensity warfare would be superseded for a period by an all-out bloodbath of up to a hundred thousand Salvadoran guerrillas and those suspected of harboring sympathy for them-a prediction that gains credibility by the recent appointment of Col...
...The sense of organic communion fostered in these bodies has been one of the most apparent, elating, and unanticipated effects of Vatican II...
...For years he was forced to live abroad because of threats on his life...

Vol. 115 • December 1988 • No. 21


 
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