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In one short spell, Tootsie is nominated for an Oscar for best picture and Julie Andrews is nominated for best actress for impersonating a man in Victor, Victoria; La Cage [...]

Focuses on black resistance to apartheid policies in South Africa. Optimism that results from direct confrontation with the oppressor; Resistance to emigration; Roles of white left-wing extremists in black trade-unions.

Discusses the emergence of the word slacker out of the movie `Slacker,' directed by Richard Linklater. Etymology; Definition of the word; Perception of powerlessness.

Presents the short story `The Night They Raided Stonewall,' by Martin Duberman about a police raid of StoneWall Inn in Greenwich Village New York City, New York.

Features actor/producer Richard Gere. Biographical information; Film credits; Relationship with the Dalai Lama; `American Gigolo'; Comments by Lauren Hutton and Susan Sarandon; Trip to Central America and involvement in the politics of protest; Wife Cindy Crawford.

The article focuses on the Italian Communist Party (PCI), a political party that controlled scores of city and regional councils, commanded the allegiance of millions of workers and represented the major parliamentary opposition to the ruling Christian Democrats. It is reported that now the party has changed its name and its program, its hold on local politics is loosening, the favor of many workers and voters has been lost and it constitutes a barely credible opposition. Last winter in a wrenching national convention, the PCI became the PDS, the Democratic Party of the Left. Meanwhile, the old PCI managers and party functionaries in their central Italian strongholds go about their political and economic businesses as if nothing very much has changed, except their spots.

The article focuses on the book "Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey," by Martin Duberman. Duberman was incurably attracted to his own sex in a time and place when the theology of heterosexuality offered the only hope of earthly salvation. Determined to find the happiness and stability, he embarked on a psychotherapeutic "odyssey" that he hoped would bring him back to a Penelope and the kids in his own heterosexual home. His stories are much scarier, and besides, he kept a meticulous journal that has allowed him to construct a moving chronicle of his transition from closet case to liberated gay man in an autobiography that is at once historically significant and personally instructive.

Bennett Cerf, co-founder and publisher of Random House, once remarked in the early 1960's, "Jason Epstein is my class editor and Robert Bernstein is my mass editor," partly by way of explaining that Random House was dedicated to accommodating both tendencies. Jason Epstein, the inventor of the quality paperback who was dubbed the Robespierre of the paperback revolution, went on publishing quality lit, but Robert Bernstein, who in those days brought in such best sellers as a Shirley Temple scrapbook, went on to become president of Random House.

The article presents socio-political updates from the world, as of June 5, 1989. Now comes a case involving an unauthorized and critical biography of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and the same U.S. Court of Appeals has pushed the doctrine of the inviolability of unpublished letters to its most ridiculous extreme. The book in that case, "Bare-Faced Messiah: The Story of L. Ron Hubbard," was a full-length biography of Hubbard, which contradicted many of the claims made by the Scientologists about his life and, in the court's words, "depicted him as a charlatan and poseur." At midnight, after the polls closed in Panama, the military stopped the count. The next day, when opposition supporters gathered to protest the fraud, the regime's goons opened fire on the crowd, killing one and wounding scores. Soon afterward, the election tribunal declared the official candidate the winner.

The article focuses on political and social issues of the U.S. It reports journalist Bill Kovach of periodicals "The Atlanta Constitution" and "Journal" quit on November 4 under pressure from his publishers and the local corporate community. Ten days later, Katherine Fanning, editor of "The Christian Science Monitor" and the first woman president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, resigned along with two of her top editors. On the surface, the two cases are quite different. But together they epitomize much that is most depressing about the decline of serious journalism. The article also reports that after years of demanding that the Soviet Union allow Jews and other citizens to emigrate, the U.S. may now be unable to let many of them in. Since 1985, Soviet emigration figures have risen significantly.

This article focuses on the U.S. Presidential election in 1988. Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson did not take over the U.S. Democratic party in 1988, although he had already changed politics in ways that few predicted at the start and that will be extremely difficult to reverse. Jackson's apparently coy but reportedly genuine bid for "serious consideration" as Michael Dukakis's running mate may have been partly a gambit to keep his campaign alive in the media during the dull days between California and Atlanta.

This article presents the author's views on U.S. politician and economist, Michael Dukakis's candidacy for U.S. President during the Presidential election in 1988. Dukakis does not lack for material for every possible rationalization of his shortcomings in the department of ideology and issues. He stands in the middle of the party between the military-racist faction on one side, and the Jacksonian progressives on the other. Most civilized U.S. Democratic voters will see that he is better, in some essentialist reading, than Vice President George Bush.

The article focuses on the book "The Year Left 2: Towards a Rainbow Socialism," edited by Mike Davis, Manning Marable, Fred Pfeil and Michael Sprinker. The New Left of the 1960s generated an extraordinarily rich and voluminous record of intellectual research, analytical experimentation and polemical activism, much of which has been lost or buried in the dim ages that followed. The book is organized around the theme "Toward a Rainbow Socialism" and explores race, ethnicity and gender. A concluding section takes Rainbowism somewhat far afield to Central America and the Caribbean, which was also a major topic of the 1985 series opener.

Presents letters to the editor referencing articles and topics discussed in previous issues. Efforts to block the confirmation of judicial nominee Daniel Manion to the U.S. Court of Appeals; Refusal of the U.S. visa for speaking tours; Struggle to restore the reputation of the quagmire.

The article discusses the issue of apartheid with reference to South Africa in particular. The hope is that a victory against apartheid in South Africa can be shared by others similarly oppressed. There is a worldwide apartheid that expresses on a grand though less obvious scale the prejudices, the priorities and the restrictions of the diabolical model developed in Pretoria. A "White" minority controls the wealth, monopolizes the weapons and determines the crucial policies for a dark majority of the earth.

A year ago, on the first anniversary of the destruction of Korean Air Lines Flight no. 007 (KAL-007), a set of serious questions has been raised about what the U.S. government knew about the tragedy and when it knew it. Working from the public record, it has been concluded that either "the elaborate and complex system of intelligence, warnings and, security that the U.S. has built up over decades suffered an unprecedented and mind-boggling breakdown" or once again the American people were victims of a high-level government. Until some government body conducts a comprehensive public inquiry, using its critical power to uncover the truth, the tragedy of KAL-007 will continue to haunt Americans. INSET: SOLIDARITY AWARD..

The article presents an interview with Gore Vidal, the first well-known American writer to talk freely about his same-sex orientation. In response to query about his first book "The City and the Pillar," Vidal said that it was the first book, at in the U.S., that made the point that perfectly normal boys fall in love and have sex with each other-a subject on which he was an expert, having spent three years in the Army, in the Pacific and aboard a ship. This was the great secret of the male lodge. In response to another query about any kind of a cultural community that comes out of the oppression, he said that there's ghettoization, and people in a ghetto will camp around in the same way. It's like the Jews. The best humor in the U.S. for a long time was during the days when the Jews were despised and they made jokes about themselves.

The article focuses on various political and social issues in the United States. "I'm walking a tightrope," Donna Shalala said with more relish than regret, plumping down on the nubby beige sectional sofa in her vast Health and Human Services office, just a slingshot away from the Capitol. The family medical leave bill rushed through Congress by the Democratic leadership to demonstrate the end of U.S. President George W. Bush's era gridlock is also an illustration of timidity. Candidate Bill Clinton promised not to touch Social Security because, as he explained candidly, he had been warned that it was a political third rail.

This article presents information related to U.S. politics. Andrew Kopkind writes that the author's presidential campaign in New Hampshire was "bizarre," that it "had no serious political strategy and proved ultimately pointless." Kopkind has simply failed to do the kind of job worthy of this periodical and its readers. Never once did he bother to interview the author or try to find out what the "point" was of the author's campaign. An election strategy is a plan, a program to organize a constituency, a scheme to amass support. The goal is to win elections or, failing that, to accumulate enough electoral power to influence an election, to impose an agenda, to remake a party or realign parties.

The big freeze of the winter settled on the land the day of the Democratic candidates' debate in New Hampshire, but it was nothing compared with the glaciation that has paralyzed political discourse among the major players. Politician Tom Harkin, who is staking a claim to bear the progressive standard, won the debate by waiting until the tail end of the two-hour snooze to bash record of governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton. Lawyer Ralph Nader and U.S. novelist Charles Brown, in their distinctive and complementary ways, ably catalogue the corruptions of the corporate and political culture.

Presents several letters to the editor on the U.S. Presidential elections. Information on the coverage of the U.S. Presidential elections; Information on the Presidential election campaigning in the U.S.; Information on the coalition in the U.S. presidential elections.

Presents letters to the editor. Comments on the role of U.S. military forces in the Philippines to maintain the intolerable status quo; Discussion on 1984 Massachusetts Mature Industries Act; Comments on the Massachusetts Employment and Training Choices program for welfare recipients.

Discusses the efforts of the California Center for Community Development (CCCD) to get its U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) grant, which runs out in February 1967, refunded. Leverage of Democratic congressmen B. F. Sisk of Fresno and John McFall of Modesto, to pressure OEO Director Sargent Shriver to cancel the grant of CCCD; Activities undertaken by the CCCD which ran into political problems; Technical assistance provided by the CCCD.

Argues that the U.S. public has fallen back into its habit of choosing the safe, comfortable, well-groomed candidate in line with the results of the Congressional elections in the U.S. in November 1966. Reasons for the defeat of the House freshmen who lost after one term; Outcome of the candidacy of Yale University professor Robert Cook in New Haven, Connecticut; Influence of the war in Vietnam on the election results; Defeat of African-American candidates.

Examines the espionage case of convicted felon Morton Sobell in light of a request for a new hearing filed by his lawyers before New York City District Court Judge Edward Weinfeld on 1966. Journalists whose work shed another perspective on the Rosenberg-Sobell case; Allegations of Max Elitcher against Sobell; Conclusion that there is no testimony on the true nature of Sobell's espionage work; Assumptions that had been established by the Rosenberg-Sobell espionage case.

Presents an outlook for the Republican Party in the 1968 U.S. elections. Factors which reinforced the claim of the right wing to take control of the party; Stance of Republican moderates on the 1966 campaigns; Republican politicians who may win in the elections.

Discusses the campaign to save the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), a combination Head Start preschool system and community action program, from politics, parsimony, racism and bureaucracy. Concern shown by the Office of Economic Opportunity regarding the efforts of CDGM to involve the poor; State politicians who want to control the rate of speed at which African Americans attain political power through CDGM; Governmental investigation of the accounts and operations of CDGM; Problems encountered by CDGM regarding grants and funding.

Deals with the controversy in the decision of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan to fire his law clerk Michael E. Tigar. Reputation of Brennan as one of the justices of the Supreme Court; Highlights on the opinions of Justice Brennan in several cases involving the concept of freedom in democratic society; Background of Tigar.

Details the Civil Rights Conference held in the U.S. in 1966. Importance of the congress to the welfare of the racially discriminated group in the republic; Efforts of the administration of President Lyndon Johnson to promote integration between local citizens and minorities in the country; Response of African American politicians to the proposals of the administration.

Comments on the changes implemented by the administration of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to several civil rights agencies and activities in 1966. Abolition of the Council on Equal Opportunity; Turnover of the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity to a division of the Labor Department; Reaction of civil rights leaders to the changes; Impact of the competition among governmental agencies on civil rights enforcement in the country.

Comments on the trial of three obscenity cases by the United States Supreme Court. Attempts to whittle down the remaining laws of censorship under First Amendment guarantee; Cases against publishers Ralph Ginzburg and Edward Mishkin; Issue of redeeming social importance (RSI) in erotic publications; Question mulled by the Chief Justice as to who bears the burden of determining the social value of published works.

Comments on the planning efforts and sessions of the U.S. administration for issues involving civil rights in the U.S. Skepticism on the will of the administration to act on civil rights issues involving the African Americans; Appointment of Morris Abram, president of the American Jewish Committee and delegate to the U.N. Human rights Commission, and African American lawyer William T. Coleman Jr. as co-chairmen of the committee formed by the administration for the conferees planning; Discussion on the stand and opposition of several conferences on various civil rights issues and legislation proposals.

Reports on the return of African American trumpet musician Louis Armstrong, popularly called Satchmo, in New Orleans, Louisiana in November 1965. Decision of the local government of New Orleans to integrate audiences for public concerts, under the 1964 Civil rights Act, which allowed Satchmo to have a concert at Loyola University; Claims of African Americans residing in the city that Armstrong is their symbol of success, cultural hero, and racial cop-out; Discussion on the warm reception, gifts, citations, parade, and support given to Armstrong by the people of New Orleans.

Comments on the Senate filibuster on the repeal of Section 14(b) of the U.S. Taft-Hartley Act, which affirms state right-to-work laws and labor unions, held on October 4, 1965. Position of Senate liberals on the state option on right-to-work; Criticism of labor leaders against the state option on right-to-work.

Presents information on voting rights of the African Americans. View that the voting rights bill is a fair attempt to let Southern African Americans participate in the democratic process; Opinion that the existence of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) is unsettling to conservative civil rights groups; Role of MFDP in encouraging rural Mississippians to participate in the civil rights movement.

Reports on the National Teach-In on the U.S. policy in Vietnam held at Sheraton Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. as of May 1965. Audience reaction to Hans Morgenthau's condemnation of the U.S. presence in the Vietnam War; Comment on Isaac Deutscher's analysis of the Vietnam problem; Issues discussed by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; Assertion of George McT. Kahin, professor at Cornell University, that the U.S. failed to appreciate the importance of Asian nationalism in its dealings with Vietnam.

Deals with a freedom march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Description of the scenes at the site; Goal of the young Dallas County Negroes who walk singing freedom songs; Event showing that the long fight for the right to march was after all the real victory.

Discusses the Presidential Prayer Breakfast held in Washington in February 1965. Criticisms against the attitude of politicians toward piety; Activities during the event; Background on the International Christian Leadership organization that sponsored the prayer breakfast.

Comments on changes in immigration policy in the U.S. from 1924 to 1965. Details of the end of free immigration in the country in 1924; Views on the Immigration Act of 1924; Establishment of quotas for immigration; Refusal of the national origins formula of immigration; Major changes in immigration law since 1952; Overview of the booklet "A Nation of Immigrants," produced by Senator John F. Kennedy during his campaign for presidency in 1961; Factor that affects private bills which seek exceptions to immigration restrictions; Decision of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to make immigration reform a high priority item on his legislative list in 1965.