BOOKS

...The revolutionary impulses that stir the authors derive from the popular church in Latin America, but like newly inspired guerrillas they tend to move faster than the rest of their pack...

...Mencken, Eric Hoffer, and Orestes A. Brownson...

...Some come to find work, others flee political persecution...

...Since then, FRETILIN and Ramos-Horta have been largely friendless...

...Then they confront the U.S...

...This is a book that has some sensible and occasionally insightful things to say about the current problems and infirmities in American news reporting, but these useful nuggets are set in a framework that is nonsensical and unreal...

...Today, more than 200 churches and synagogues have declared themselves sanctuaries for Central American refugees...

...This movement has grown alongside and because of U.S...

...Scott Sanders, who teaches literature at Indiana University, was born in the backwoods of Tennessee and grew up on a military base in Ohio...

...With no chambers or staff of its own, no fixed routine, and no clear institutional identity, the U.S...

...9.95 paperback...

...The Five Ws READING THE NEWS edited by Robert Karl Manoff and Michael Schudson Pantheon Books...

...It is for these refugees that some religious Americans have made sacrifices, indeed received prison sentences...

...For ten years, Jose Ramos-Horta has been perhaps the loneliest and most futile figure haunting the corridors of the United Nations...

...In Funu, Tetan or East Timorese for liberation war, Ramos-Horta gives a remarkably lucid account of his frustrating mission...

...they must, instead, rely on the Chief Justice and his clerks to pre-screen the pool of controversies that the nation's court will resolve...

...And at times an ignorance of contemporary newsrooms permits such nonsense as "the American journalist can pretty much cover what he wishes...

...In other essays, Sanders, reminiscent of Wendell Berry, discusses themes of being from the country and staying close to nature...

...O'Brien, former research associate in the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice, gained direct access to the private papers of fifty-five former and present Justices as well as the papers of six Presidents...

...FRETILIN'S resistance continues in the hills of East Timor but almost nobody expects it will make any difference...

...Some of what the contributors describe as obsolescent inheritance is true enough, though grossly overstated...

...It establishes an artificial and trivial framework that almost begs for insubstantial content...

...In the process, they miss the realities not announced by The Knowns...

...It proceeds to analyze weaknesses of reportage because of inappropriate concentration on "tense...

...Ramos-Horta says he hopes a more enlightened Washington and less timid U.N...

...FRETILIN won, and Ramos-Horta was a minister at twenty-five...

...14.95...

...The practices are nurtured by the economic and social structure of the modern newspaper...

...However, with Rehnquist and Scalia, Reagan is likely to be especially successful in seeing his reactionary policies win approval on the bench...

...the second, the "dead list," contains those destined for rejection...

...Sanctuary, like Abolitionism, its political ancestor, sprang up to fill a moral and political vacuum in American politics...

...It consists of hundreds of thoughts on peace, and again as many illustrations, some in full color...

...In his preface to Louis Filler's informative and useful book, conservative writer Russell Kirk suggests, perhaps plausibly, that liberals and radicals will find the work valuable...

...churches to the refugees of Central American war...

...The five Ws are floating in every newsroom still, but they are no longer the first commandment...

...A general transformation of style is in full swing...

...Sanctuary is an inspirational book, just as it is pedagogical...

...Nonbeliever activists will learn a great deal, though, about their partners in the anti-imperialist and anti-interventionist coalitions that have informally worked to stop the covert war in Nicaragua and change U.S...

...Golden and McConnell push the sanctuarians so that the refugees and their protectors become "creators of a new world, makers of history...

...by Saul Landau Each day thousands of dark-skinned Central Americans cross a forbidden threshold as they sneak into the United States from Mexico...

...29.95...

...Published shortly before the Rehnquist nomination, University of Virginia political science professor David O'Brien's Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics provides the analytical framework needed to assess the impact that the Rehnquist court will likely have on American jurisprudence and society at large...

...More than 1,500 short articles on the men and ideas, the books and events that produced the conservative movement are assembled by Filler, who has a valuable gift of expository compression...

...BOOKS BRIEFLY Our Local Gods THE PARADISE OF BOMBS by Scott R. Sanders University of Georgia Press...

...Indonesia is a large, oil-rich Moslem power, and few Third World governments want to offend it...

...or stentorian pronouncements ("Tragedy stalks Sunnyvale today...

...imperialism in Central America and lay down a vigorous indictment of Reagan's foreign and immigration policy...

...they concentrate on what he calls The Knowns, the authority figures...

...He and his colleagues held office for about a month...

...It is a strange way to organize a book curiously subtitled a "Guide to American Popular Culture...

...This large, beautifully produced book is a fine addition to the peace activist's coffee-table collection...

...18.95...

...Unusual leads, feature leads, and cryptic leads are rampant, the spreading advice of writing coaches...

...The elder, more conservative ones sought power under the banner of the Democratic Union of Timor (UDT...

...bureaucrats...

...Each day, he has trudged through the lounges, quietly pleading his cause: self-determination for the 700,000 or so Malays and Melanesians who live on the eastern half of the island of Timor under brutal Indonesian rule...

...They tell their own stories, in gory, detailed, first-person narrative...

...Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), la migra as Spanish-speakers call it, sees foreigners as threats to U.S...

...The Court's Role STORM CENTER: The Supreme Court in American Politics by David M. O'Brien W.W...

...I wish the editors and contributors could have begun all over with a straightforward, less cute (and, at times, less silly) approach to the subject...

...Refugee testimony opens each chapter of Sanctuary...

...He doesn't answer the question, but his dance around it is well worth taking in...

...Hayek's Road to Serfdom...

...9.95 paperback...

...Today's Abolitionists want to destroy an evil empire: not the Soviet Union, but the U.S...

...A good volume to have around when one is not sure who Joseph Story (1779-1845) was, or forgets the thesis of F.A...

...Rehnquist's written opinions suggest he believes that the primary responsibility of the Court is to protect the states against remedial actions of the Federal Government and the claims of rights by individuals...

...American popular culture outside newspaper newsrooms gets short shrift...

...In the United States, a religious movement has arisen, calling itself Sanctuary, to protect the political refugees...

...Ronald Reagan is no exception...

...The people who appear together or separately at Congressional offices petitioning, at rallies demonstrating, at the churches, union halls, and classrooms of the unconvinced, lecturing and preaching, form a powerful movement...

...They compare the refugees' experiences to "festering sores through which, if we are courageous and honest enough, we can get back to the causes of their wounds, and not content ourselves with bandages...

...Unfortunately, the forecast for minorities, women, working people, and civil liberties in general calls for gale-force winds with little chance of clearing until well into the next century...

...In the late 1980s, as U.S...

...Refugees arrive via the new underground railroad that helps Guatemalans and Salvadorans travel through Mexico— a dangerous passage, like that through the old border states—and arrive in Arizona...

...Starvation, resettlement, detention, torture, rape, and other standard colonial instruments have been employed...

...radicals searched for an entry point into the political arena, the new religious activists simply moved— or were moved by a theology that preached liberation, that demanded, in Archbishop Oscar Romero's words, a "voice for the voiceless...

...The most serious weakness in the book is its description of American journalistic practices as though they were the isolated work of a sequestered tribe known as reporters and performed as mindless rituals in a vacuum...

...It is still too early to predict just how the Rehnquist Court will alter American life, but the judicial thought of the new Chief Justice is as easy to comprehend as it is impossible to accept...

...policy in Central America...

...When the Court initially convened in 1790, only Chief Justice John Jay and two other Justices bothered to show up at the Exchange Building in New York City, where they were to meet...

...the younger people, like Ramos-Horta, joined FRETILIN, the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor...

...The most immediate impact of the Rehnquist Court will no doubt come in determining what cases the Court agrees to review...

...Successive U.N...

...Pacification, according to Ramos-Horta, has been achieved by killing at least 100,000 Timorese...

...Included is Ambrose Bierce, who defined a conservative as "a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others...

...He enjoys what may be the unique distinction of having been betrayed by all political forces, East and West, North and South, and, inevitably, U.N...

...Volatile subjects on which the Court has been bitterly divided—such as abortion rights, school prayer, and the exclusionary rule—come immediately to mind, but the possibilities over the long haul are endless...

...His fellow East Timorese, after all, have had little success on the ground...

...29.95 hardcover...

...There are other essays by Robert Karl Manoff, Michael Schudson, Carlin Romano, and Daniel Hallin...

...With the addition of Scalia and the rightward drift of Justice Byron White, conservatives now have a solid block of four votes to grant review of practically any case they choose...

...Norton...

...266 pp...

...But his highly readable book makes perfectly clear why no one should expect this to happen...

...More important are the economic and social imperatives of the modern newspaper, the existence of local monopoly (and therefore the need for appearance of neutrality), of mass advertising aimed at the affluent (and therefore reinforcement of the need for an appearance of neutrality to maintain advertising efficiency), and other powerful priorities whose origins lie outside quaint journalistic traditions...

...More than 70,000 people have pledged themselves to the movement...

...The real reason was Djakarta's fear that an independent East Timor would provide an enticing example to separatists on other islands in the archipelago and serve as a haven for Indonesia's shattered communists...

...Although some appointments, such as Eisenhower's nomination of Earl Warren, have backfired from the Presidential standpoint, both Rehnquist and Scalia are known quantities with well-established judicial philosophies...

...A former newspaperman, Ramos-Horta is far too realistic to expect anything else...

...It was like the muttering of local gods, a reminder who ruled our neighborhood...

...It will teach all of its readers about the movement and about themselves...

...155 pp...

...they are a handful of badly armed guerrillas against Indonesia's modern army...

...It has organized a new underground railroad and offered sanctuary in U.S...

...national security...

...Authors Renny Golden and Michael McConnell criticize some of the host congregations for paternalist, racist, and sexist attitudes, while the newly arrived are portrayed as examples of innocence...

...Dili, East Timor's capital, was quickly captured...

...Before its weekly conferences, the meetings in which the Justices decide what cases to review, the Chief Justice circulates two lists of cases for discussion...

...Reporters lose sight of the fact that most of the time they are not reporting reality but someone else's portrayal of reality...

...Of the 5,000 petitions for review filed annually, only about 170 are granted oral argument and resolved by formal written opinions...

...The engine for this historic effort lies in a new and politicized morality, one that made its formal debut in the late 1960s...

...256 pp...

...The Soviet Union, nominally a friend of self-determination, appreciates Indonesia's anti-China stance and makes no waves...

...Ramos-Horta says Indonesia would never have invaded without a green light from Washington...

...The U.S...

...The rigidity of current reporting style-facts without context, overwhelming quotation of authorities to the exclusion of others—cannot be explained by a simple tyranny of style...

...The cause of all the weaknesses—false objectivity, lack of context, indiscriminate reporting of the trivial and the important, excessive dependence on government, indifference toward unofficial reality—is ascribed to the short-sightedness and inflexible traditionalism of reporters...

...But the survival of shallow practices did not occur in a vacuum...

...Ironically, U.S...

...It is almost inevitable, therefore, that the selection process will be sharply skewed in favor of cases with the greatest potential for advancing conservative programs and social values...

...The strengths of the book, however, far outweigh the tendency towards revolutionary romanticism...

...Ramos-Horta is enough of a historian to concede that this division, and the bloody civil war it provoked, were inspired madness...

...Doing the work of the conquerer, UNICEF actually helps teach an alien Indonesian dialect to the East Timorese...

...East Timor was high on their agenda...

...Bernard D. Nossiter (Bernard Nossiter, a veteran reporter, formerly was United Nations correspondent for The New York Times...

...They also offer a primer on liberation theology and a participant's account of the Sanctuary process itself...

...Its mission is to secure for the meek, the wretched of the Earth, a proper place in history, as well as the daily human rights which both natural and divine law have declared to be rightfully theirs...

...They have founded no political party but have organized a social movement around their Saul Landau is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C...

...By consulting it, Kirk says, they may better understand "their conservative adversaries and not contend against phantoms...

...The three are also the youngest members of the Court and, barring the unexpected, they should remain on the bench for years to come...

...immigration authorities and a second ordeal begins for them...

...Tracking Conservatives DICTIONARY OF CONSERVATISM by Louis Filler Philosophical Library...

...This collection of essays should appeal to the sensibilities of many Progressive readers, for it addresses issues of war and peace in a quiet, personal, and moving way...

...Then, in what amounted to a classic death wish, the small population's leaders divided...

...I want to know also about the refugee who uses the church's allowance to speculate, who buys ten blenders at the Goodwill store and then sells them at a profit to less enterprising compadres, who manipulates victim status to obtain sexual favors...

...The entries are admirably concise, such as those on Albert Jay Nocks, H.L...

...These, too, are experiences of the sanctuarians, and they would flesh out the story with realism...

...207 pp...

...The civil war and the Marxists drawn to FRETILIN were the excuse...

...Statements from the various new groups of professionals for peace, ongoing campaigns, and formerly pronuclear scientists—representing all parts of the world—effectively demonstrate that the peace movement is gathering strength...

...The same is true of the other Reagan appointee on the Court, Sandra Day O'Connor...

...are so ritualistic that even in such serious papers as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, they cause one to cry out, "All right, already, tell me what you want to tell me...

...Leon Sigel has interesting things to say about some unhappy conventions...

...The title essay recalls his early life at the Ohio Arsenal, when bombs would be detonated at dinner time: "The concussion rattled the milkglass and wil-loware in the corner cupboard, rattled the forks against our plates, the cups against our teeth...

...In large papers and small, stories begin with cryptic teasers ("Who is Her-mione Moskowitz...

...If the collection has one shortcoming, it is that too much emphasis is placed on nuclear over conventional warfare and other kinds of institutionalized violence...

...There is no such liberal configuration among the five remaining members...

...In Rehnquist's hands, the power to prepare the "discuss list" will combine with what O'Brien calls the "rule of four," the convention by which cases are selected for full consideration on the vote of any four Justices...

...While such clashes as those which pitted Andrew Jackson against the legendary John Marshall and Franklin D. Roosevelt against "the nine old men" who blocked implementation of the early New Deal are well chronicled, O'Brien reminds us that the usual manner in which Presidents exert judicial leverage is through the appointment power...

...384 pp...

...Sanders asks...

...Today, with the elevation of William Rehnquist to the position of Chief Justice and the appointment of Antonin Scalia, the Court could well be the most dangerous branch...

...Most newspaper editors today desire, after elementary technical proficiency, reporters who can "write," which usually translates into "feature leads," or openings and organizations closer to literary narratives...

...Deciding what to decide is the first, and in many respects the most important, step in the Court's work...

...Sanctuary arose as a humanitarian response, but developed strong anti-interventionist politics as its members became aware of the causes of war and suffering in Central America...

...He also wrestles with issues of sexism, and he digs at the roots of male violence: "So where does the desire come from, this boy's compulsion to play at killing, this man's compulsion to kill for real...

...secretaries general have ignored resolutions to intervene, knowing sentiment lies elsewhere...

...Unhappily, Reading the News starts out badly with an obsolete assumption that gives the impression that too many of the writers have read too many books about the media without looking too carefully at the phenomenon itself...

...cause...

...The editors organized Reading the News on that inappropriate principle, with each chapter by each writer devoted to one of the five Ws...

...Betrayed by All FUNU: The Unfinished Saga of East Timor by Jose Ramos-Horta Red Sea Press (566 Bellview, Trenton, NJ 08618...

...policy throughout the region...

...leaders will somehow press Indonesia to let his people go...

...Ben H. Bagdikian (Ben H.Bagdikian, a former editor and reporter, is dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley...

...Bill Blum (Bill Blum is a Los Angeles attorney and writer...

...The first, the "discuss list," contains those cases deemed worthy of conference time...

...The authors write from deep conviction and with admirable passion...

...It literally demands action from those who agree with its logic, and more action from those already active...

...The Court was, true to Alexander Hamilton's words, the "least dangerous branch" of government...

...As Chief Justice, Rehnquist will also exercise the prerogative of deciding which Justices will write the Court's opinions whenever he finds himself in the majority...

...19.95 hardcover...

...Thus, there is a chapter on the "When" in which the problems and practices of American journalism are described on the basis of the supposed journalistic obsession with definitions of time...

...East Timor is about the size of El Salvador and lies a few hundred miles northwest of Australia...

...Sanctuary's characterization of the refugees is too perfect...

...As O'Brien explains, the Chief Justice is ideally positioned to influence the composition of the Court's docket and thereby shape its overall development...

...He also succeeded in obtaining permission to interview several current members of the Court while preparing his book...

...While seasoned peace workers may find some of the older material all too familiar, movement newcomers can benefit from the crash history course...

...With few exceptions, they love their families and their homeland, and are victims of brutality...

...In the editors' opening, they repeat the old chestnut that the five Ws-Who, What, When, Where, Why—have "become not only the first commandment but second nature of American journalism...

...There are also suggestions for individual and community actions to channel the inspiration provoked in readers...

...18.95...

...It was ruled by the Portuguese for almost 500 years, until Lisbon's flower revolution of 1974...

...policy...

...The day before the assault, President Gerald Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Indonesian President Suharto met at Djakarta...

...The anecdotal leads ("Farmer McDonald sat dejectedly at his formica-topped kitchen table and stared disconsolately into his black coffee with two sugars...

...With the Court's workload steadily increasing, Justices have less and less time to plough through the dead list for important cases...

...Many others have examined the political importance of the Court's rulings and the internal procedures that govern its deliberations, but O'Brien's highly readable account opens the tribunal to public view as never before...

...Crash Course in Peace PEACE: A Dream Unfolding edited by Penney Rome and Patrick Crean Sierra Club Books...

...All Presidents, from Washington to the present, have tried to stack the high court with individuals sharing their ideological perspectives...

...hold on Central America...

...As O'Brien emphasizes, one of the recurrent themes of American history has been the attempt of Presidents to control the Court's political direction...

...Such a philosophy will no doubt continue to cast the Supreme Court as a storm center of controversy...

...James Carey presents a thoughtful picture of other weaknesses: fragmentation of events without coherence and context to give them meaning, the low priority given to interpretation of scattered facts, the reflex acceptance at face value of self-serving explanations of events from authority figures, the superficial coverage of most foreign countries...

...As many as can be caught are rounded up and deported to their native countries, no matter what fate may await them there...

...Then Indonesia invaded...

...The authors attack the material and moral basis of U.S...

...Those not already informed and decided are unlikely to be converted by the writers' didactic prose...

...Supreme Court was a feckless and forlorn creature in the first decade of its existence...

...In Rehnquist's view, the Bill of Rights, as applied to the states, prevents them from encroaching on individual rights only to the extent that state action is entirely "irrational...

...moreover, it defines these wayfarers as victims—of local oligarchies and of U.S...

...middle-class church-going North Americans outraged over Ronald Reagan's secret war and support for Salvadoran military forces started the first important grass-roots movement inside this country since the Vietnam war...

...Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad tells the movement's story in language as passionate as that used in the old anti-slavery tracts...

...380 pp...

...moves in Central America have provoked more than the revolutionaries in the region...