Brazil's Only English-Language Daily

RIO DE JANEIRO AND SAO PAULO, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1979

Planetary Passport move toward world unity

RIO DE JANEIRO (BH) - "Someday, hopefully, we'll all have passports of this kind," the distinguished, gray-haired gentleman said as he handed a sky-blue document to the immigration official at Rio's International Airport last Sunday.

Unfortunately the official did not speak English or French, and neither recognized nor stamped the "Planetary Passport" in front of him.

So Dr. Charles E. Jacobson, Jr. turned over his blue-green U.S. passport with a smile.

"I always hand over my Planetary Passport first when I enter a country," Dr. Jacobson said. "Sometimes it arouses a great deal of interest."

But it has very few immigration stamps for a passport of someone as widely traveled as Jacobson - only Iceland and Luxembourg.

On the other hand, it frequently opens the doors of conversation for what are obviously favorite topics of the famous, semi-retired urologist: human unity, world federation and the futility of war.

DR. JACOBSON

Since going into semi-retirement five years ago, Dr. Jacobson says he has been busy writing letters and lobbying Congress to take action to review and restructure the United Nations to make it an effective, strong organization, with voting weighted according to member countries' population, GNP and other factors. He has also promoted the United World Federalists, in which he has been active since the late 1940s, and its off-shoot the World Association of World Parliamentarians, which issues the Planetary Passport from its Ottawa headquarters, or through Planetary Citizens at 777 United Nations Plaza, New York 10017. Some 10,000 leading citizens of the world carry the passport, Jacobson says, and there are more than 25,000 World Federalist members in the U.S. alone. There are also passport holders and Federalists in almost every country of the world, except the Soviet Union, he says.

Basically, they agree that "wars have never settled anything from time immemorial, and the time has come to elevate our thinking to a global level to save the human race from self-destruction.

"It is becoming more and more obvious that all countries are interdependent," Jacobson says - advocating a limited world government with an international police force stronger than any world power can maintain today.

Each country would keep its own internal security forces, language, culture, he says, but "all would be loyal to the higher sovereignty of planetary citizenship, and there would be no declaration of war permitted. All differences would be submitted for arbitration to the International Court of Justice at The Haig."

Dr. and Mrs. Jacobson came from their home in Hartford, Conn., to spend Carnival in Rio as houseguests of their long-time friends, Dr. and Mrs. Ruy Goyanna.

The two urologists each spent five years as fellows at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., in the early 1940s, and have maintained contact since, frequently at meetings of the American Urology Association to which they both belong.

This is Dr. Jacobson's third trip to Brazil. On previous visits he stopped over returning from Chile, where he was a frequent visiting professor of urology at the University of Santiago over a period of 10 years.

Tuesday evening the Jacobson's met old friends and made new ones at a reception in their honor given by the Goyannas at their home in Jardim Botanico attended by members of the medical profession, television personalities, and colleagues of Dr. Goyanna's from the Instituta Brasil-Estados Unidos board.

Among them were Professor Nova Monteiro, Clementio Fraga Filho, Drs. Ugo Pinho Guimaráes, Brun Negreiros, Pitanguy, Luiz Felipe Matoso and Murillo Belchior.

Before leaving Brazil in March the Jacobson's will have also visited Iguaçu Falls and Brasilia. Returning to Connecticut, they will start preparing for a trip in May with a group of doctors, nurses and social workers invited by the Chinese government to visit China.

Where Dr. Jacobson will no doubt again present his Planetary Passport, and continue his crusade for world unity.