Watching the World
Constitution Not a “Suicide Pact”
◆ Crime has created a “reign of terror in American cities,” declared Chief Justice Warren Burger of the U.S. Supreme Court. Speaking to a recent American Bar Association convention, he asked: “Why do we show such indignation and alarm over alien terrorists and such passive tolerance for the domestic variety? Must we be hostages within the borders of our own self-styled enlightened, civilized country?”
Burger indicated that American justice seems to have been “twisted into an endless quest for technical errors, unrelated to guilt or innocence.” “Is a society redeemed,” he asked, “if it provides massive safeguards for accused persons and yet fails to provide elementary protection for its law-abiding citizens?” Then he reminded the lawyers of what a late Supreme Court Associate Justice had said—that the “Constitution was not to be construed as a suicide pact.”
“Psychic” Weapons?
◆ According to the science magazine Discover, the United States military is spending some $6 million this year “to investigate military applications of psychic phenomena and develop defenses against ‘psychotronic’ weapons” supposedly being developed by the Soviet Union. “Those in the Pentagon who have authorized the money are motivated by fear: fear that the Soviet Union will develop psychic weapons first and use them to dominate the world,” asserts Discover. Illustrating the military’s seriousness about these seemingly absurd ideas is a feature article titled “The New Mental Battlefield” in the U.S. Army’s professional journal Military Review. It claims that “there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated.”
Cemetery or “Garbage Disposal”?
◆ According to Japanese tax authorities, a Buddhist priest’s animal cemetery should be “classified as a garbage disposal business and taxed accordingly,” reports Tokyo’s Mainichi Daily News. Presented with a tax bill for 36 million yen ($165,000, U.S.), the outraged priest declared: “These people don’t know the Buddhist laws; humans are in the center of a circle of life that includes dogs, cats, horses and all other kinds of animals. In our past, present or future we may appear in this world in some form other than human. We must respect the souls of departed creatures, even if it’s only a cockroach or a mosquito, because they have a soul. . . . Garbage disposal! Pah! They don’t know what they’re talking about. Even the floor, the tatami [mats], the tables have lives of their own. This is the teaching of the Lord Buddha.”
“Freedom” or Bondage?
◆ Britain’s respected medical journal The Lancet recently published an article titled “Biological Effects of Sexual Freedom.” It notes: “There are something of the order of 250 million new cases of gonorrhoea and 50 million new cases of syphilis annually. Other sexually communicable conditions may be even more common.” The article laments the fact that “control of the sexually transmitted diseases [STD] seemed at one time to be within our grasp but has eluded us in recent years.” Why in recent years? “Premarital sexual experience is now accepted in Western society,” explains The Lancet. “Television programmes and theatre shows have become more explicit; people now watch films that formerly would have been regarded as pornographic. As a result people have tended to become more daring sexually. . . . The adverse biological effects of sexual freedom on women and their babies are a disappointing development in the second half of the 20th century.”
“Neutrality” Gone
◆ After a Roman Catholic bishop directly mediated between Polish labor unions and the government during the recent crisis there, Lisbon’s daily Diário de Notícias published a generally favorable editorial titled “Intervention and Neutrality.” Yet the Portuguese editor observed: “Temporal power and spiritual power, Church and politics—the borderline between one another appears to be more tenuous all the time, more and more undefined . . . Whatever happens, in the short or long term, the echo of this intervention by the Church makes it clear the word ‘neutrality’ has disappeared from the vocabulary of the Vatican.”
A Correction
◆ The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently had published an article on “Fatalities From Blood Transfusion,” based on cases reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (See Awake! 2/8/81, p. 29.) Apparently the reporting was inadequate. Now, in a letter to JAMA, Jerry Kolins, M.D., of California’s Palomar Memorial Hospital, writes: “According to the data reported to the FDA, approximately one in 1 million transfusions results in a hemolytic reaction and death. This death rate seriously underestimates the true frequency of fatal transfusion reactions. . . . Studies from the Mayo Clinic show a hemolytic reaction for every 6,232 units transfused and one fatality for every 33,500 units transfused. These deaths do not include fatalities secondary to posttransfusion hepatitis. Blood transfusion carries a serious risk to the patient, and these hazards must be carefully considered before each transfusion is done.”
“High” Society
◆ Marijuana use has become so common in even the upper strata of American society that a new book on etiquette offers suggestions on how the correct entertainer should deal with the problem. The Emily Post Institute’s Complete Book of Entertaining suggests that if the telltale odor of the drug should appear at a gathering, the hostess can say that “she’s sorry if she’s being a spoilsport.” Then insist that the cigarette be put out, and distract them with some lively games.
‘Blockade Vatican’?
◆ Columnist I. F. Stone, writing in the Los Angeles Times, reveals how some in government may view the political dabbling of religious organizations. He said that the government faces, “not just an ideological conflict over El Salvador but also a theological one . . . with what the State Department may regard as a reckless and irresponsible godliness.” Stone asserted that two blockades are needed in the Caribbean, one against arms and the other, “a more difficult task, to shut off the flow of subversive moral encouragement from the Vatican. . . . The new Administration is upset at what it regards as the church’s ‘activist’ role in Latin America. Some of the church’s most ardent critics within the Administration are themselves ‘reborn’ graduates of divinity schools.”
Happy Beaus
◆ “Young men looking for brides in Nigeria’s Imo State have been given good reason to smile,” reports the All Africa Press Service. It seems that the state government has slashed traditional bride prices to a fraction of what many parents were demanding for their daughters. Observes newswriter Mola Olaniyan: “The bride price has left many a poor man heartbroken—stopped from marrying the girl he loves because of a tradition which dictates he pay a large sum to the girl’s parents for the privilege” of marrying their daughter. One result of very high bride prices was “a high rate of immorality and many single girls gave birth to illegitimate babies.”
Used Jet, Anyone?
◆ Early this year there were four times as many used passenger jets on the market—at least 200—as there were a year ago, according to Business Week magazine. “Many are simply being parked in used-plane lots in barren desert areas,” it notes. Why the glut? Fuel price jumps have made the old jets very costly to operate and new government restrictions on noise have made them obsolete, even though they have years of useful life remaining. “The iron is piling up,” said one Arizona used-plane lot operator, “and we’ll have a lot more before it’s all over.”
Packing the Inn
◆ Travelers stopping in Osaka, Japan, now have an economical alternative to the traditional hotel for an overnight stay. This hotel stacks its guests two high in sleeping “capsules” about five feet (1.5 m) high by five feet wide and six and a half feet (2 m) long. The capsules “appear at first to be washers or dryers,” observes The Wall Street Journal. But they are filled almost every night with people less concerned about aesthetics than saving half or more on the usual hotel bills. Other capsule establishments reportedly have opened in Nagoya and Tokyo.
Is Snuff Safer?
◆ As recently as last July some doctors in Britain and in the United States had urged “dipping snuff” as a healthier substitute for cigarettes. Now a federal study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that the average snuff user has four times the risk of contracting mouth cancer as a nonuser, and longtime users have 50 times the risk. Dipping snuff involves putting finely cut tobacco inside one’s mouth under the lip or between the cheek and gum. It is especially popular among women in the rural south of the United States. Production of tobacco used for snuff has tripled from 1971 to 1980.
‘Robbing Peter . . .’
◆ There is a growing chain of thefts against Catholic churches in Peru, according to Lima’s El Comercio newspaper. And one Catholic official in Arequipa complained that “it has become a practice on a world-wide scale.” The fact that many churches contain Spanish colonial works of art and jewels for the “saints” and images makes them attractive targets. Thieves broke into the church in the town of Huancavelica in central Peru and cut off the feet of one of the saints. El Comercio noted that it had on a nice pair of “silver shoes.”
Giant Arab Airport
◆ An airport almost twice the size of New York’s Manhattan Island, 40.5 square miles (105 km2), was inaugurated recently by King Khaled of Saudi Arabia. Jidda’s new international airport is said to have cost about $4.5 billion (U.S.). Its 10-story-high main terminal alone reportedly covers one square mile (2.6 km2). The airport also has a desalination plant to purify water from the sea, an irrigation system for 72,000 trees, a hospital and 210 fiberglass tents for housing Moslem pilgrims to Mecca.
Acupuncture Accepted
◆ Though many questions still remain for study about acupuncture, says the Journal of the American Medical Association, “the evidence now available, however, is sufficient to place this age-old Chinese healing art, modernized to US standards, on a solid scientific base.” The Journal concludes a feature on the subject: “In the hands of competent physicians, acupuncture is a method free from discomfort or side effects that can, in many cases, bring some relief from the suffering of chronic pain. When patients ask about acupuncture, the answer can now be, with good justification: ‘It may well be worth a try.”’—February 20, 1981, p. 769.
Costly Speeding
◆ When caught, South African speeders are cited as guilty of the even worse crime of “squandering gasoline.” The citations read: “The accused did wrongfully or illegally use fuel to exceed the speed limit.” Fines for such waste reportedly range from $120 to as high as $2,400 (U.S.).