As a result of nuclear proliferation, new weapons systems, and new strategic doctrines, the danger of nuclear war is increasing. The very modest "arms control" agreements negotiated or in prospect under SALT are totally inadequate to contain this danger. According to Herbert Scoville, "Arms control negotiations have become a mechanism for promoting the arms race rather than controlling it." Even by a less skeptical evaluation the negotiations can at best slow Soviet and American acquisition of new weapons systems. Disarmament in the realm of strategic nuclear arms is nowhere in sight. Other countries, which have long demanded some degree of Soviet-American nuclear disarmament as the price of an effective nonproliferation agreement, can plainly see that their price will not be met.

The question mark over the American political system is this: whether those women and men who best understand the crises of the times and the directions that are needed in American and world policy could even remotely hope to be elected President, Congresspersons, mayors, or to any other public office. This question has several layers. First, we have seen that popular elective offices have become so captive to the financial power of great corporations that critical and independent thinkers are almost automatically excluded. We come almost full circle in democracy to preferring those with inherited wealth and leadership tradition as the least corruptible, since at least they and their “interests” coincide. The efforts to create reforms that would publicly finance political campaigns produce such contradictions that we have the spectacle of Eugene McCarthy and James Buckley teaming up against them on the grounds that they would underwrite only the incumbents.

Seventy-three years ago the U.S. connived in the secession of the Republic of Panama from Colombia in return for the privilege of building a canal across the Panamanian Isthmus "on a strip of land leased in perpetuity." Within this 533-square-mile zone the U.S. was to exercise, forever, all those rights that it "would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the territory..." Today the significance of that "if" is much debated.

Although Ronald Reagan's campaign position—that the Panama Canal Zone is as much a part of the U.S. as is Alaska—has been deplored by the Ford Administration, it maintains strong support in the Senate.

An old Irish legend tells of a boat race where the prize was the kingdom of Ulster and the victor was the first to "touch the shore." O'Neill, seeing his boat slip behind, cut off his hand, flung it ashore, and won the kingdom. Ulster, but for three counties, is now Northern Ireland. O'Neill's bloody hand has been preserved through the ages as the Red Hand of Ulster, seen on flags, postage stamps, pendants, and paramilitary banners. The passions that led O'Neill to bleed for Ulster have survived as well.

When I arrived in Belfast in late June, the Red Hand was waving from Protestant doorways to herald the impending Orange Parades.

In the intense debates about the energy needs of the United States and how those needs can best be met, Americans for Energy Independence has taken a number of strong positions. Given both your truly formidable background in energy development and your own heavy schedule, why, Mr. Shaw, did you decide to serve on the Advisory Panel of AEI? What do you expect or hope it will accomplish?

SHAW: What first attracted me was AEI's objective of acting openly—as a public interest group—to stimulate policies and actions for moving the U.S. rapidly toward reasonable energy self-sufficiency. This means in fuel resources and energy supplies.

I have the opportunity to travel a great deal throughout the country and speak to a cross section of Americans—young and old, black and white, rich and poor. This has afforded me some understanding of what the mood of the country is right now. That mood distresses me because I see there is more frustration and despair than there is happiness and hope. There is more anxiety toward, instead of anticipation of, the future. A recent national survey indicated that for the first time the majority of Americans are not optimistic about the future of this country. They believe that the economic situation is going to worsen, that the crime rate will continue to go up, that more and more citizens will become disaffected.

To what degree was the U.S. responsible for the tragic end of Chilean democracy in the September, 1973, coup? Congressional investigations, press leaks, and the publication of the secret Chile files of ITT have continued to provide new evidence for those on all sides of the question. Now, through the investigations of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, we have important new information about U.S. policy toward Chile.

The Committee has released an interim report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, which includes a detailed study of the U.S. relation to the kidnapping-murder of General René Schneider, Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army, in October, 1970.

In a dark prison cell where he is probably awaiting a death sentence Kim Chi Ha, a noted Korean Catholic poet, has written a twelve thousand-word memorandum he calls “Declaration of Conscience.” The “Declaration” was smuggled out of the prison and the country, and recorded in the U.S. Congressional Record on October 22, 1975, through the efforts of Congressmen Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota and Frederick W. Richmond of New York. Since the smuggling incident of the “Declaration” took place, Kim Chi Ha has been confined in a cell surrounded by several empty cells in order to avoid any outside contact. It has also been reported that ten prison guards have been dismissed, that Kim is watched twenty-four hours a day through TV camera, and that no one is allowed to see him except assigned guards.

Beyond the bland facade- of China's great open cities and the green abundance of its showplace communes lies a vast country in obscuro —a China through the looking glass. In this, some say imaginary, country, people do not converse in People's Daily platitudes, but use a distractingly earthy language, enriched with sly puns and ancient proverbs; young men sing melancholy songs and brood over lovers and lost illusions; sons and daughters esteem their families above the Party; there are thieves, pickpockets, and prostitutes; vilage cadres keep “one eye open and one eye shut” to sideline business activities; women quarrel hysterically over their woks in communal kitchens; speculators slip in and out of towns buying and selling ration coupons; underground factories operate; farmers lavish care on their private plots while neglecting the collective lands; and massive numbers of the Chinese peasantry, immemorially patient and industrious, labor daily under hardship and deprivation for three meals of rice gruel and sweet potatoes a day.

The real crunch for Israel will probably come during 1977 if Ford is elected—it will be delayed by only a few months if a Democratic candidate wins.” So writes Wolf Blitzer, editor of the “Jewish lobby's” Washington publication Near East Report, in a recent issue of the Jerusalem Post.

With the same sense of urgency Abba Eban insists that “Time is of the essence, and unhappily for us, time is running out. We ought to grasp the central issues now and involve the United States in resolving them.” He and a growing number of his colleagues fear that should Israel not choose to “cooperate” with the U.S., the Americans might run right over Israel on the road to Geneva and some form of imposed settlement.

That person should be the next President who is wilting to make a major issue of who owns what in our economic system. I am not saying that a candidate who is interested in explicitly and candidly analyzing our economic system stands a good chance of being nominated, let alone being elected President. I am simply saying that for me one of the major problems confronting this nation is the enormous disparity between the rich and the upper middle class on the one hand and, on the other, the working people and the poor, who make up the overwhelming majority of our people. I value this country's political institutions; they are not to be dismissed lightly. They are imperfect and have recently been subjected to severe stress. But they offer each of us a precious degree of freedom.

Jerry Rubin's "Yippie Manifesto" is hardly a watershed document. Most "of the young whom it celebrated seven years ago would now find its callow enthusiasms embarrassing and its view of the relations among the time categories in which we live worthy only of those seven-year-olds who, the Manifesto confidently predicted, would settle "the war between THEM and US." Nevertheless, it is still useful as a display piece, in which one can see in exaggerated definition the enduring popular conviction that the past, being "back there," is separable from the present and that therefore Utopia ("HEAVEN NOW") is a real possibility.

Recent events in the United Nations have called into question American support for the world organization—particularly resolutions of the Twenty-Ninth General Assembly (1974) giving observer status to the Palestine Liberation Organization, resolutions of the Thirtieth Assembly (1975) equating Zionism with racism, and recent actions of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Labor Organization. What I plan here, using polling data primarily, is an analysis of the current state of American public opinion about the U.N., and I want to place the current attitude in historical perspective.

In the early years of the organization—roughly from the signing of the Charter in 1945 through the Korean armistice in 1953—the American public tended to have great expectations of the United Nations.

Iam a dove Zionist who believes strongly that American Jewry and Israeli Jewry must live in a state of “interdependent independence.”

As a Zionist, I know the psychological and theological space Israel occupies in my self-definition. Israel's right to be is a sine qua non of my Jewish self. As I worked for the fulfillment of the Zionist ideal, the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own, so do I remain unalterably committed to that state's survival, its security, and its flourishing in peace. Thus, I stand in a symbiotic relationship with Israel. We are interdependently related. So far the description is “standard.”

The word “independent” is the one that raises eyebrows and suspicions among some of my “main line” Zionist friends.

Détente is one of those concepts that perhaps only a theologian is qualified to discuss, because it is a general, abstract concept that can mean anything to anybody. Indeed, the main attraction of the concept lies in this generality and abstractness. Obviously, you cannot come out against detente and in favor of bigger and better tensions. No more than you can come out against peace and in favor of war. Or in favor of hatred and against the brotherhood of man. Thus we are dealing with a concept that in itself is perfectly meaningless. It means nothing to say that there is détente between the United States and the Soviet Union without going down the list of points of tension and asking yourself what has happened with those tensions because of a so-called détente.