Comment

...Hidalgo was convicted after a brief trial...

...The Chamber of Commerce warned of grave damage that would be done to the city's image...

...Not when you consider who prepared the ABA paper: a former special assistant for intelligence in the Justice Department...

...a former counsel to the White House Intelligence Oversight Board...

...As the constituency that favors legalized murder grows (a record 84 per cent of Americans today approve of capital punishment), the Court is displaying increasing enmity toward condemned prisoners...

...His "crime" was to violate a section of the Cuban Penal Code that punishes anyone "who (a) incites against the social order, international solidarity, or the socialist State by means of oral or written propaganda, or any other form...

...For the Court, a search for curlers and sunglasses in order to enforce the school dress code is apparently just as important as the search for evidence of heroin addiction or violent gang activity," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissent...

...citizens of their rights seems to be of little concern to the Government...

...In this vein, the League urges development of "enterprise zones" and calls for abolition of income taxes for those below the poverty line...

...By a 6-to-3 vote, the Court ruled that public school officials and teachers may search a student when there are "reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school...

...In the meantime, nations heavily dependent on U.S...

...In the last couple of decades, we have had more than one Strangelovian Secretary of State or National Security Adviser, spouting rhetoric that could have been drawn straight from the sinister role played in the film by Peter Sellers...

...Their colleagues, buckling under to the popular notion that due process interferes with law enforcement, also authorized warrantless searches of packages suspected of containing illegal drugs...

...Almost two years ago, the Reagan Administration relaxed the standards governing Federal "domestic security" investigations...

...It deployed two gun-ships, breaking an agreement between the Administration and Congress that only one would be used until a study of the aircraft's impact on civilian populations was completed...

...Tragically, some black and Hispanic leaders lined up against the referendum on the erroneous assumption that its approval would allow gays and lesbians to compete with other minorities for affirmative action slots...

...First of all, it explains the veil of secrecy recently imposed on the manned space-flight program, and the official threats uttered apinst news media which might dare to try penetrating that veil...

...some of our problems only we can deal with...

...Reagan would like nothing better than to plunge Nicaragua into full-scale war...

...One of the revisions unleashed the FBI to spy on political organizations that advocate unlawful activity—urging civil disobedience, for example, against the arms race...

...Only active resistance can save Central America and the United States from disaster...

...Adoption of that sort of mainstream ideology based on blind faith in the workings of "the market" may endow black political organizations with a measure of influence for a limited time...

...The State Department broke off negotiations with Nicaragua, charging that the Sandinistas would not engage in "serious" discussions...

...Medical luminaries were trotted out to prophesy that a deadly plague would visit Houston if the anti-discrimination law were passed...

...The Justices knew that when they reached their decisions...

...somehow, Kubrick managed to create a film that not only imitated life but anticipated it...

...That has been the inescapable mad momentum of the arms race since the 1940s...

...The seven-member majority not only increased the likelihood of death sentences, it also hastened the execution of some prisoners sitting on death row—for the jury-selection issue "has been one of the few remaining avenues for getting a death sentence overturned," noted The New York Times...

...The arrests of sixteen activists in Tucson, Arizona, followed a ten-month Federal investigation in which undercover agents infiltrated church meetings and recorded the proceedings with hidden microphones...

...Guardians of public morality conjured up the usual visions of child-molesting deviants laying siege to the upright citizenry...

...Small businesses may provide opportunities for initiative and creativity on the part of their owners, but in a competitive economy they are rarely in a position to provide ample benefits—or even an adequate livelihood—to their employees...

...He is also a Cuban prisoner, serving a sentence of one to eight years under execrable conditions...

...There is a brief and routine reference to arms limitations—the Air Force, Gabriel says in an obligatory aside, "will continue to study arms-control options"— but the manual's real message is summed up this way: "The medium of space provides an unlimited potential and opportunity for military operations on which the Air Force must capitalize...

...surely no one in Washington would suggest forcibly returning Poles to Poland or Russians to the Soviet Union...

...But the immediate victims—suspects, students, and prisoners-are so unpopular and powerless that few protests are likely to be registered with the Court...

...Second, the new aerospace doctrine, with its renewed emphasis on U.S...

...military "superiority" rather than mere parity, accounts for the Administration's intense interest in "Star Wars" and for the $3.7 billion allocated to space weaponry research in the President's latest military budget—a 300 per cent increase...

...In other words, the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure can be thrown out the school window if the adult has a hunch that the youngster did wrong...

...Ironically, at the same time that it accused Nicaragua of shunning serious discussion, the United States officially withdrew from the World Court, lamely asserting that the Court had no jurisdiction over such violations of international law as the mining of a sovereign nation's harbors...

...The K.u Klux Klan, at least, was direct, chanting "Death to Homosexuals" as its members marched through downtown Houston...

...The Administration's war drums didn't miss a beat in the changing of the White House guard...

...military should disregard any distinction that may have existed in the past between its operations in the Earth's atmosphere and its new battleground in outer space...

...It's a good plane," said General Adolfo Bland?n, Salvadoran Army chief of staff...

...What the Air Force intends to do, Gabriel explains, is "maintain U.S...

...Our Government's relentless quest for a weapons breakthrough that will guarantee U.S...

...b) makes, distributes, or possesses propaganda of the character mentioned in the preceding clause...

...The report also states, "We cannot place all our hopes on Government...

...Enterprise zones, designed to preserve or revive neighborhoods suffering structural decay, merely intensify capital flight and depress workers' standard of living...

...Both activities were suspended in the election season to ease the voters' fears of war...

...never mind that gay men are not the sole carriers of AIDS...

...technological superiority in the aerospace and ensure a prolonged war-fighting capability by developing the potential for combat operations in the space medium...

...Never mind that available evidence indicates the disease can be spread only by intimate contact...

...Army will recommence military exercises in Honduras...

...Most important, General Gabriel's vision of an unchallengeable American military presence in space gives the lie to President Reagan's repeated assurances that Star Wars points the way to "genuine arms reductions...

...Though the report chides the Administration for engaging in divisive rhetoric, its main thrust is an attempt to persuade the President to advance programs that he can regard as consistent with his own philosophy but that nonetheless serve the needs of at least some blacks...

...A program that fails to address real concerns buys short-run success at the price of long-term impotence...

...In the past, the Court had limited "stop and frisk" actions to situations where the police believed a crime was in progress or about to occur...

...Nimitz will resume its "show-the-flag" missions off the coast of Nicaragua, and the U.S...

...In the absence of widespread information about AIDS, such absurdities found a receptive audience...

...Foes of the measure, swimming in corporate and private contributions, mounted a fierce campaign that effectively drowned out the voices of the less-organized supporters...

...Each of the January rulings increases the power of the State and lessens that of the individual...

...However, the most important lesson of the crackdown may be this: The Administration has shown it will do anything it can to suppress domestic opposition to Ronald Reagan's foreign policy...

...But it wasn't until January 1985 that the ABA weighed in with its own opinion, recommending some refinements in the regulations...

...Blacks will prosper, the League seems to be saying, if they get a piece of the entrepreneurial action...

...Instead of uniting to combat the disease and bigotry itself, Houston found it easier to sweep the offenders back into the closet...

...But if the Urban League has not come up with a program around which blacks and progressives of all races can rally, it has nonetheless posed an important question: How can we supplant the worn out nostrums of the welfare state with programs that encourage genuine self-reliance...

...All such reports are drafted with an eye to media coverage, of course, but they also reveal a great deal about an organization's political orientation and the strategic objectives it would like to achieve...

...This year—with the U.S...

...Each plane is equipped with three machine guns and night-vision gadgetry capable of detecting heat sources on the ground—though the infra-red radar can't distinguish among guerrillas, campesinos, or cattle...

...This theme of self-reliance, which also figured prominently in Jackson's campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, is an important concern for those who have come to understand the political and practical limitations of welfare-state liberalism...

...Voters there buried a referendum that would have prohibited discrimination in city hiring on the basis of sexual orientation...

...On January 8, the Justices unanimously ruled that law enforcement officers may stop and briefly detain persons whom the police suspect of being wanted by authorities in another city...

...policy...

...They recently declared, "Consistent with our stand in support of struggles for freedom and self-determination throughout the world, we ask the Cuban government to release Ariel Hidalgo and any other person whose rights have been similarly denied...

...Deterrence doctrine, the General adds, "requires a credible warfighting capability across the spectrum of conflict...

...The battle in Houston was as ugly as it was one-sided...

...Apparently, that good news has not reached the Air Force, which is preparing for combat operations, not peace festivals, in space...

...Obviously, no such model of self-reliance is on the mainstream political agenda today...

...The decision was "a matter of common sense" to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, but it should be a matter of concern to those familiar with the history of abuse and mistaken identity in law enforcement...

...Though Congress has already agreed to almost every penny of his military aid program—$128 million in fiscal 1985—the President is asking for an additional $72 million...

...Presidential election safely behind it—the Administration brushed off protests from human rights organizations, promising that use of the weapons would be limited and tightly controlled...

...That is not a reason to ignore the challenge and settle for easy and unproductive answers of the sort to be found in the Urban League's report...

...But we need more and better ones...

...From the battlefield to the highest orbit, airpower will provide that capability...

...largesse—Honduras, El Salvador, and Israel—are apparently making up for the cut-off of direct assistance, perhaps in violation of the Congressional ban...

...Stone, and Paul M. Sweezy...

...It is much easier, however, to offer that critique than to devise an economic program embodying a greater degree of "self-reliance...

...The fear of AIDS is pervasive," said one Houston gay leader...

...Air Force general who schemes to "knock out the Russkies" with a devastating first strike even as the world rushes headlong toward doomsday...

...Comes now the current Air Force chief of staff, General Charles A. Gabriel, who can replicate Scott's most lunatic lines with straight-faced solemnity...

...In the manual, General Gabriel calls for "gaining and maintaining space superiority," and asserts that the U.S...

...The manual contends that weapons based in space "could contribute to deterrence in peacetime and to more rapid conflict termination or increased survivability in war...

...What the State Department meant was that the Nicaraguans declined to let Washington dictate their domestic policies, and refused to confess to the unsubstantiated charge that they are the lifeline of the Salvadoran revolution...

...Much of the fighting in El Salvador occurs in or near populated areas, so the risk of slaughter is great, especially in light of the Salvadoran Air Force's reputation for bombing defenseless villages...

...The "inevitable result," protested Justice William Brennan, is "not a a neutral jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community but a jury biased against the defendant, at least with respect to the penalty, and a jury from which an identifiable segment of the community has been excluded...

...Recently, it demonstrated that it has barely a bark...

...A minister proclaimed that gays were purposely contaminating the nation's blood supply with the disease...

...superiority makes a mockery of the arms control talks about to get under way between the United States and the Soviet Union...

...The Air Force reportedly owns six DC-3s that could be converted into gun-ships...

...Even in Havana Ariel Hidalgo is a Cuban leftist writer, historian, and educator...

...Bringing back "Puff the Magic Dragon," undermining peace talks, circumventing the wishes of Congress—those who say the Administration is dragging the nation into another Vietnam are, tragically, on target...

...To many Americans, self-reliance is simply a synonym for "free enterprise," and the Urban League's embrace of "enterprise zones" suggests that it, too, draws that dubious connection...

...Tall Tales in Texas If there were any doubts that the AIDS epidemic is not only a personal but also a political disaster for the gay community, the residents of Houston, Texas, laid them to rest last January...

...In textbook "blame the victim" style, our society has deemed that homosexuals are somehow responsible for the tragedy of AIDS...

...The Castro government's treatment of Hidalgo has been protested by a distinguished group of Americans who have an unblemished record of opposition to U.S...

...The Court did not, for example, specify whether a "wanted" poster used years before can serve to justify a detention...

...He does so in the Air Force's basic combat manual, newly issued in a revised edition that constitutes the official statement of "aerospace doctrine...

...On January 15, the Justices trained their sights on the rights of students...

...Stevens was not so farsighted six days later, however, when the Court pronounced that trial judges may exclude jurors who express personal reservations about capital punishment...

...It is becoming increasingly clear that last fall's electoral "mandate" made the Administration cocky and ever more dangerous...

...New efforts are under way, the report noted, to strengthen black families and support educational institutions, and the 1984 Presidential candidacy of Jesse Jackson infused blacks with revived confidence in the potential of the political system...

...the Vietnamese called it "the moaning death...

...Days later, as the inaugural platform was being dismantled, the Court conveyed more tidings that must have warmed Reagan's heart: Police will henceforth command wider powers, the Justices announced, and executioners will have more work...

...Civil libertarians and other concerned citizens swiftly condemned the Reagan guidelines in 1983...

...According to recent public opinion polls, Americans who were deeply troubled last year about heightened tensions between the two superpowers are now expressing relief that arms reduction talks will soon begin...

...But now individuals can be detained on the basis of second-hand accounts of possible past activities...

...The Moaning Death Returns Ronald Reagan says he wants to spend the next four years "creating a new America," and he means a new Central America, too...

...No mention was made at the trial of the unpublished manuscript that had been seized by the police—a manuscript in which Hidalgo called for opposition to the "new class" that he said had come to power in Cuba...

...The weapons, officially known as "airborne fire support platforms," can hover over a target area for hours at a time, putting bullets in every square foot of the soil below...

...intervention in Central America and elsewhere, including Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbara Garson, Paul Robeson Jr., Clancy Sigal, I.F...

...the shortening of the work week, and the perfection of systems that give workers more control over their jobs...

...Attorney General William French Smith called the ABA report an "endorsement of the guidelines," adding that the ABA's suggestions "reflect issues of policy and style rather than fundamental disagreements on matters of law...

...But if the Government did not learn the lessons of that era, the American people cannot forget them: Only mass opposition in the streets can force the President to mind his own business...

...Surprising...

...the reform of educational institutions so that schooling is less bureaucratic and more responsive to the individual and the community...

...Such pandering to public opinion compelled Justices Brennan and Thurgood Marshall to dissent twice on January 21...

...What Price Self-Reliance...

...But the Salvadoran Air Force was in no mood for restraint...

...In its well-publicized report on "The State of Black America," the National Urban League sounded a surprisingly upbeat note...

...The police-state tactics of the 1960s and 1970s are still with us...

...The ABA watches over the Constitution the way the fox guards the chicken coop...

...Neither blacks nor the Left need any more of that...

...He wants Congress to renew aid to the contras, who were labeled one of the Latin America's "worst human rights violators" in a recent report by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs...

...Despite the regressive policies pursued by the Reagan Administration, the League found a surge of hope and optimism among blacks...

...co mm est Justice that Panders While Ronald Reagan was preparing for his inauguration to a second term, the Supreme Court sent a message to the White House: We agree with you, the Justices said, that young people and criminal suspects should have fewer rights...

...The prosecution's case consisted of testimony by a local neighborhood defense committee, which accused him of "talking too much...

...Depriving political refugees of their lives seems to be of even less...

...The Urban League, always among the more "moderate" civil rights groups, has apparently read the election returns and concluded that accommodation is preferable to confrontation...

...These are the same aircraft that indiscriminately rained hot metal on peasants during the Vietnam war...

...the development of renewable and community-based energy systems...

...Reagan enthusiastically supports the idea of increasing the Salvadoran government's firepower...

...Depriving U.S...

...The winter indictments of sanctuary leaders, Coffin added, highlight the Government's double standard of compassion...

...It was one of several roles that turned out to be remarkably prophetic...

...But their hopes are bound to be dashed unless a revived peace movement can bring so much pressure to bear that President Reagan, General Gabriel, and all others who indulge themselves in Strangelovian fantasies are compelled to abandon their dreams of hegemony and address the menacing realities of this world...

...a former assistant to the Justice Department's counsel for intelligence policy, and a former special assistant to the director of the FBI...

...Late, but Not Better As a watchdog of the law, the American Bar Association has traditionally had a toothless bite...

...Nowhere did the majority describe what kinds of offenses can trigger such an intrusion...

...The President's cheery forecast, trotted out more than once for those who believe in the tooth fairy, is that when an impregnable space defense has been established, the United States will share it with the Soviets and we will all live happily ever after...

...Strange-love, Stanley Kubrick's 1963 film satire on nuclear deterrence, is sure to recall George C. Scott's brilliant portrayal of a demented U.S...

...The revival of the big stick has been accompanied by diplomatic sabotage...

...But it offers no solution to the admitted inadequacy of the welfare state approach or to the political powerlessness and economic distress experienced by most blacks...

...But what do such arrests and the deportation of innocent Guatemalans and Salvadorans say about the callousness of Congress and the willingness of the American people to tolerate activities so un-American...

...But the most repugnant tactic employed by opponents was to invoke the specter of AIDS...

...In 1983, they had sanctioned "canine sniffs" of luggage because those were "much less intrusive than a typical search...

...Apparently, a typical search is no longer intrusive...

...Conservative activists inveighed against the "creation" of another minority...

...His agenda also includes plans for tightening the screws on the Sandinista government in Nicaragua...

...COM Ml:AT Double Standard of Compassion "The arrests of church leaders will only strengthen a sanctuary movement whose Head lies beyond the reach of the Immigration and Naturalization Service," the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, senior minister of New York's Riverside Church, recently observed...

...There is every reason to believe that after protesting this latest round in escalation, the Russians will follow America's lead by launching a Star Wars program of their own...

...Space is the outer reaches of the aerospace operational medium," the manual states in the best Pentagon jargon...

...The League, along with at least some others on the Left, recognizes that the traditional welfare approach has reduced many of the working poor to the pathetic state of bureaucratic clientele while failing to solve the major economic problems of modern industrial capitalism...

...There is no easy answer to that question, but such European socialists as Rudolf Bahro and Andre Gorz have suggested some points of departure: the redesign of urban and rural transportation to meet human needs...

...The signers of the protest letter, some of whom have been strong defenders of the Castro government, share a crucially important understanding: Assaults on freedom must be denounced and resisted, whether they occur in Soweto or in Warsaw, in San Salvador or in Havana...

...It is understandable, even admirable, that people everywhere hold high hopes for those talks...

...In January, Washington escalated the killing in El Salvador by equipping that nation's Air Force with two deadly gun-ships...

...The aircraft carrier U.S.S...

...American GIs dubbed the machine "Puff the Magic Dragon...

...In pursuit of its "unlimited potential" in space, the Air Force must begin by withholding information so that it can effectively silence its critics...

...In 1984, the Pentagon declined to send gunships south "because of our concern over atrocities," one official said...

...Gabriel's Strangelovian tract helps illuminate some of the more shadowy aspects of current U.S...

...The Progressive called them "the machinery of repression...