Habitually shunned by economists, the press, and the majority of Congress, shielded by a bureaucracy in the Department of Agriculture that long ago became its prisoner, the food industry is a domain ruled by a few giant corporations remote from public accountability. Decisions that can save or condemn to death vast numbers of people are dependent on an esoteric dated market mechanism geared to profit and oblivious to human need. And the most urgent problems facing die conscience and resourcefulness of American foreign policy for the next decade remain hostage to an economic system out of the nineteenth century. That is the argument.

Holy Thursday in Assisi. In front of the Church of Santa Chiara the buses from Vienna, Munich, Milano keep unloading droves of Holy Week pilgrims. Their cameras start clicking the moment they have stretched their legs. Inside Santa Chiara the nuns limpid Gregorian chant wafts around the miraculous cross that one day, long ago, conversed with Saint Francis. Flashbulbs are popping.

Saint Clara, Francis's saintly girl friend, lies entombed in the crypt below. From her grave a sexy little voice lisps: “Francays? Ingleesh? Doitsch?” Reassuringly it originates from behind the heavy veil hiding a nun whose task it is to show the relics: “Ecco Santa Chiara's embroidered slippers … voila la chemise she sewed with her own hands for Saint- Francois … In diesem Bokal sehen Sie∼it is a jar filled with platinum-blond curls—Sankt Clara's Haare. … Sie ivur sher shim… Elle etait tres belle … bellissima…”

Writing from the court of Gustavus Adolphus in 1620, Cromwell's puritanical ambassador to Sweden, Bubtrode Whitelocke, painted a dreary scene of what he could discern through the drizzly, leaden gloom of a five-hour Swedish November day … roads little more than rivers of mud, primitive strip farming, millions of acres of seemingly endless solemn pine forests, log shacks mortared with moss, a dismal diet of “boiled, roast or fried cow,” and nearly universal, perpetual intoxication.

If Ambassador Whitelocke had returned to Sweden at the dawn of the twentieth century he would have had little difficulty recognizing the place.

Although there are minor technical disagreements about the exact rate of economic growth in Brazil, few dispute that it has been very high, far above that of the years immediately before the 1964 coup and far above the average of other Latin American countries during the same period. The rate of growth, plus the political stability achieved by coercive and other means since 1969, has made Brazil something of a model for conservatives elsewhere. Before the September, 1973, coup I visited Chile twice and often heard the expression “the Brazilian miracle” or “the Brazilian model” used by the old Chilean elites dissatisfied with the equalitarian policies of Salvador Allende.

Brazil has always been an inward-looking country. The national consciousness is transfixed on the mystery of Amazonia, the nation's own dark heart. And it has been the abiding dream of generations to conquer the country, to open that heart. In the past the lust for adventure and sudden wealth, the lure of the wilderness, drew some over the water highways to the outposts of the gem seekers. But no great number of Brazilians ever penetrated the Amazon region. It was always too difficult, the forest too resistant.

The sun comes suddenly each day over the Amazon: It warms the gliding brown rivers, the veins of the living forest that feed the giant trees. It gives the jungle back its voice, muted by the night.

Bill Moyers: When Thomas Jefferson became Secretary of State in 1790 there were to be representatives of four foreign countries in Washington-Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Spain. Jefferson's chief problems were to negotiate commercial relations with each of the four countries, to gain from three of them control of territory surrounding the new nation, and to maintain neutrality in the war that raged between two of them.

Now there are 128 diplomatic missions in Washington, and while the chief problems continue to be commerce, war, and peace, the world is a far more complicated place. As we move toward the end of the twentieth century the problems we face are a crisscrossing web of issues, each of which is tangled with the next, so that today's solution may be tomorrow's headache or war.

Some three years ago a movement calling itself the Dalit Panthers began to be heard of outside the Untouchable communities of Bombay and the surrounding coastal village of Maharashtra where it originated. By the time the Dalit (“oppressed”) Panthers had come to .the attention of the national and foreign media, they had extended their base to include other areas and language groups and broadened their appeal to reach beyond Untouchables to aboriginal people and landless peasants, and even to small landowners and cultivators.

This newest revolutionary Indian group's rallying cry is “Untouchable Power.” Admittedly influenced by the Black Panthers from which they took their name, one leader declared: “The problems of black Americans are our own. Black Power gave birth to Untouchable Power.”

Since there were seventy-one sponsors, it was inevitable that the resolution would be adopted, But debate on the question was inevitably bitter and spilled over to the substance of the Palestinian issue. For many people the debate—and Arafat's subsequent address to the General Assembly—sharpened questions about the United Nations, its purpose, and its long-term value.

From its birth the United Nations has been an important weapon in the armory of nations in conflict. When one's national ends are advanced, the U.N. is seen as the expression of man's highest ideals. Victims, however, perceive attacks in the world forum as irresponsible distortions of the Charter. From either perspective the United Nations is an arena for combat.

To understand history we must first unlearn it. Or, more accurately, we must unlearn canonized history. That is certainly the case if we are to understand U.S. entry into World War II—the last “good war” the United States fought; perhaps the only war not yet subjected fully to the revision of opinion that has been the lot of other contemporary wars. Bruce Russett's No Clear and present Danger. A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry Into World War II takes us a long way in examining critically whether U.S. entry into that war was justified, yet it received much less attention than it deserved when it appeared in 1972.