TORTURE AGAIN
McCarthy, Abigail
The National Council of Catholic Laity called for the observance of human rights week this year (October 16-22) and the call was endorsed by the American bishops' committee on the laity. At...
...CI.AmE RAHN is an assistant professor of English at Fordham University...
...Amnesty has succeeded in freeing thousands from imprisonment and torture because it focuses its efforts, eschews the abstract, and does not weary...
...Reply to Director of Catholic Charities, 22S Elm Street, Youngsfown, Ohlo 44S03...
...19046...
...There was, and is now, evidently a consensus for moving ahead with pressure on South Africa...
...In both cases our international dilemma was once again underlined...
...The soft technologies, such as solar and organic conversion, wind-hydraulic systems, the recently developed fluidized-bed system for burning coal, as well as conservation and co-generation provide a diversified, diffused and more efficient answer to our energy future, according to Lovins...
...MOLLY RUSH Director, The Thomas Merton Center 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Abigail McCarthy ( e o n ' t ) to work in well-equipped torture chambers lined with modern acoustical tiles and spattered with blood, vomit, and urine...
...Amnesty International, so richly deserving of the Nobel Prize awarded it this year, has shown us the way...
...It is a matter of focus...
...Is it time to consider the alternative - - t h a t an uncompromisingly decent egalitarianism may be the foundation of a sound economy...
...Those with business ties make such selectivity on the part of the majority an excuse for withholding pressure on any offending government...
...It has brought members of the general public, university scientists and distinguished participants in the legal profession together, for education and action...
...For box numbe, add 60c per insertion...
...Catholic Conference in Washington...
...MAaaOmE MUm, m, Pittsburgh, Pa...
...Institutionalized racism, suggested the editorial, was one aspect of the abrogation of human rights which has become almost universally untenable...
...The hard technologies, including nuclear power, require vast expenditures of capital, enormous risks (not only environmental damage, nuclear proliferation, qentralization, etc., but they may not be economically feasible...
...The range of human rights cited from various of the bishops' statements over the years was, of course, staggering in view of their worldwide abrogation...
...Many people, especially those with blood and religious ties to other countries, see this as outright hypocrisy...
...60c, twelve times...
...This note cannot begin to do iustice to Mr...
...Others choose to beat the soles of the victim's feet until they are a bloody pulp...
...The only "knee-jerking" at the non-violent Seabrook demonstration came from the Governor of New Hampshire and the Manchester Union Leader and their followers, at enormous cost to the New Hampshire budget...
...We are left asking: "How can we possibly speak and act effectively in the face of such diverse and widespread injustice...
...They] venture forth each day (Continued on page 767) Commonweal: 743 regional, some with individual focus, all concerned about nuclear dangers, all working in high degree of cooperation...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 REVIEWERS WILLIAM B. HIXSON, JR., teaches recent American history at Michigan State University...
...Also must participate in regional, state and national meetings relevant to the Catholic Charities program...
...Others torture their victims with drugs or deprive them of sleep for as long as two weeks...
...That it has--if it finally has---is the result, it seems to me, of a steady drumbeat of many different forces concentrating on racism over many years...
...The time /or action," said the Council, "~ here...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...The Council of the Laity sought to solve the problem by designing a program which stressed the expressed concern of the bishops i n a broad spectrum of countries: in eastern Europe, Chile, Brazil, the Philippines, Africa, the Mid East and here in the UnRed States...
...Above all Amnesty keeps our eyes on the fate of prisoners of conscience...
...We can aid its efforts and concentrate our own...
...Amnesty, world-wide, and independent of any government, acts as a living reminder to all nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
...Some countries prefer pumping soapy water into the victim's stomach and forcing it out through his nostrils...
...WALTEn ARNOLO, former editorial director of Liveright, is a free-lance writer and editor...
...The Alliance (of which I am not a member) now intends to concentrate on antipollution education...
...Political rights, economic rights, social rights--minority rights, the rights of women and children-the right to religious liberty...
...The Clamshell Alliance, at which your editorial takes a special swipe, began with young people who were joined by hundreds of others, kids to graybeards, in an open, well announced demonstration against beginning construction of the Seabrook plant...
...Perhaps the worst thing about the worldwide use of torture, according to Jeri Laber, a member of the Committee for the Abolition of Torture, is that the techniques and implements used are so strikingly similar that they suggest an international exchange of experience and information...
...They may actually perceive themselves as practitioners of an ancient, established profession instead of the sadistic criminals they are...
...HENRY W~'~NER nOWDEN is an associate professor of Religion at Douglass-Rutgers University in New Jersey...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Steinfeis (Cont...
...New branches have sprung up across the country...
...Lovins's discussion of the "soft" technologies-"flexible, resilient, sustainable and benigu"--which match energy quality to end-use needs in a way that is impossible for the centralized, wasteful, capital intensive nuclear and other "hard" technologies...
...BARBt~A MUTICOSrO is an assistant professor of English at Bergen College in New Jersey...
...Carter has assumed that an uncompromisingly sound economy was the foundation of a decent egalitarianism...
...Classified payable with order...
...Box 121, JenHntown, Pa...
...Viewpoint Historical viewpoint worth reading, Roe vs...
...It's a subject a lot of people close their eyes to," writes Ginetta Sagan, a former victim of Nazi torture in an Amnesty appeal...
...To the Editors: Your editorialist on "The Senate and Energy" cannot have read the Foreign Agairs article of a year ago, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken" by Amory B. Lovins...
...Wade, The Legal Principles of the Founding Fathers and and the Supreme Court by Edward J, Melvin, C.M.--$1 to Pro Life Coalition of Pennsylvania, P.O...
...Commonweal: 767...
...That piece, and his subsequent book, Soft Energy Paths, have changed the terms of the nuclear vs...
...This seems especially true in the area of the United Nations...
...The truth is that there is much greater outcry and more organized indignation over the abrogation of human rights in some countries than in others...
...Lovins's brilliant analysis of all the major points in the hard vs...
...The most sophisticated, the New England Coalition Against Nuclear Pollution, has made large achievements in few years...
...John DEEDY is Managing Editor of Commonweal...
...And yet this list is mildly stated in comparison to the detailed accounts in the documentation available to any concerned person...
...THOMAS E. QUIOLEY is on the staff of the Division of Latin America, U.S...
...The effect on the torturers themselves is bizarre, but horribly indicative of the depravity of which man is capable...
...Director of Social S e r v i c e s The Diocese of Catholic Charities of Youngstown Ohio is seeking a Director of Socla Services wlth experience in social work and admlnistration and an M.S.W, or equivalent degree Respons bi ties include supervls ng funding, monitoring, evaluating and giving technical assistance to the seven regional social service agencies within the six-county diocese...
...k~c, three times: 63c, six times...
...I'd hate to accuse Commonweal of being "kneejerk nuke...
...Recent revelations have made it clear that our own international police schools and intelligence agencies may have been party to this dissemination --perhaps to the extent of actually training torturers, euphemistically called "interrogators...
...TORTURE AGAIN ABIGAIL MeCARTHY A more practical approach was suggested in an editorial in the New York Times which ~addressed our government's dilemma over South Africa...
...Torture is too disturbing to read about . . . . " But the letter is explicit: In Communist countries, in Western countries, in Third World countries, innocent victims who never used or advocated violence suffer unspeakable physical and mental agonies inflicted upon them by government police...
...soft technology debate...
...The writer admitted the hypocritical attitude of many member nations of the UN but pointed out that in the international world of dealing among nations one moved ahead with what was possible...
...The Nuclear Regulatory Agency had given permission for ocean waters to be sucked in, heated and dumped back, on behalf of cooling towers...
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...He begged to be freed from 'this nightmare in which we are all prisoners...
...The tendency is to fall back on exhortations to government and church authorities, and the multinational corporations...
...On shoestring contributions it has become a consultation and educational resource for more than this locality...
...They are sure to produce, as Lovins predicts, "a world of subsidies, $100-billion bailouts, oligopolies, regulations, nationalization, eminent domain, corporate statism...
...anti-nuclear debate...
...Laber tells of an Uruguayan army officer who smuggled out photographs of victims in whose torture he had participated...
...If torturers are dehumanized as they learn to deny any impulse to pity, sympathy, or compassion, must we not agree that we are equally dehumanized by knowing that torture exists and failing to act...
...10016...
...C I a s s i f i e iI RATES: 70c a word, one time...
...Your discussion of "quaint" alternatives "geared to life in another century" has no relevance to Mr...
...Should it not be equally possible for us to focus and organize our efforts and that of our worldwide community of action so that the most widespread, the most evil, the most foul abrogations of human rights-that of the sadistic, officially-countenanced torture of human beings--be equally the target of international consensus...
...At almost the same time a series of repressive acts on the part of the government of South Africa provoked debate a s tO action in this country and at the United Nations...
...Salary is negotiable...
...stuck to the Democratic platform and Carter's campaign promises, the private government would have been far more likely to come to terms...
...Still others place dissenters in mental institutions...
...It reminds us that that declaration was born out of the ashes of World War II, "out of the memory of millions tortured, gassed, burned, brutally maimed," and that it is one of the most important documents in world history...
...Allow Four to Six Weeks for Change of Address and Enclose Label...
...I only ask that you present arguments that refute his careful, forceful logic, before you dismiss the Clamshell Alliance and other nuclear opponents as "knee-jerk...
...Twelve words minimum...
Vol. 104 • November 1977 • No. 24
