Newspapers / The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, … / Jan. 5, 1988, edition 1 / Page 7
Part of The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
Thursday, January 5. 1988 - THE CHARLOTTE POST - FageTA What Killed Max Robinson? Max Robinson, macho and very heterosexual (married three times), was best known to the country as the first black net work anchor. To the black com munity, however, he was best understood as being extremely sensitive to racism. Like many, many blacks, he lost his battle. Although racism cut him down. AIDS took his life. On his deathbed. Max wanted the public to know that he died of complications (possibly Pneumocystis carlnll pneumo nia) caused by an immune sys tem that could no longer defend the body against viral attack. He wanted the black public. In par ticular, to be "educated" to the causes and sensitized to a hu mane caring for the victims of AIDS. However, what digging Into the AIDS file may reveal may be more than many of us are prepared to face. Eklucatlon on AIDS, so far, has consisted of a theory by Ameri ca's leading AIDS researcher. Dr. Robert Gallo, that has con vinced the media and world opinion that the plague began when a virus Jumped from an Af rican green monkey Into a hu man being In Africa. Through sexual contact, the Africans then gave it to white homosexu als who are now passing It on to the rest of us. This media-promoted myth holds two of the most despised groups In the world responsible for an AIDS pandemic. The government agency re sponsible for AIDS education, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Is the target of Rep. Bar bara Boxer's (D-CA) Investiga tion for falling to do Its job, In spite of an Increase In budget from $17 million to $210 million, CDC has even refused to send a representative on my TV pro grams to discuss AIDS. Dr. Robert Strecker, a Los An geles physician ~ an Internist, Gastroenterologist and trained Pathologist - who also holds a Ph.D. In Pharmacology, after ex tensive library research has de cided that the AIDS virus Is bio logical warfare, made In a laboratory and Injected Into the African population, perhaps ac cidentally, as a routine smallpox vaccine, and into American ho mosexuals as a Hepatitis B vac cine. If you want the details of his research, call Dr. Robert Streck- er's foundation at 1-800-548- 3198 or 213-977-0901. To get you started, there Is a video cas sette by Dr. Strecker and a book ("AIDS and the Doctors of Death" by Dr. Alan Cantwell — Arles Rising Press In Los Angeles). The AIDS virus, he says. Is so Tony Brcwn's Commentaries different In structure from any known virus, that It Is impossi ble for It to have been formed by "mother nature." AIDS Is what Is known as a retrovirus and they are all present In animals — or, at least, they used to be. Among this handful of retrovi ruses In the bovine virus (a deadly cattle leukemia virus) that creates the same symp toms In cattle that AIDS causes In humans — Including pneumo- cystis pneumonia — which may have ended Max Robinson's life. In addition to having similari ties to bovine virus, the AIDS vi rus, Dr. Strecker says, has char acteristics of a virus In sheep called visna virus: the AIDS vi rus was probably man-made — created by splicing together vis na and bovine viruses. They rec ombine (which Is why. Dr. Strecker believes, no vaccine cure will ever be found) In hu mans and we get AIDS — a "new" disease. But the deadly results of AIDS — Kaposi's sarcoma and pneu- mocystls carlnll pneumonia — are "old" forms of cancer. Is AIDS really a contagious form of cancer created In a laboratory by scientists who are creating new viruses with no vaccines to cure the "new" diseases? Dr. Strecker sent his research to 50 state governors, all Cabi net members, the CIA, FBI, President Reagan and Vice President Bush. Only three gov ernors acknowledged the report. His information Included a copy of one of the world's most respected newspapers. The Lon don Times, which ran a front page headline: "Smallpox Vac cine Triggered AIDS Virus." It re ferred to the vaccination pro gram during the early '70s sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Brazil, Haiti and Central Mrlca, where 100 million Africans were inocu lated. The American media to this day have consciously avoided this story. Furthermore, certain blo-warfare weapons have been speciflcally designed to target and kill certain ethnic and ra cial groups — much like the crude murder of blacks with sy philis by the Public Health Ser vice In Tuskegee, Alabama, In the '30s. In November. 1978, a Hepatitis B vaccine trial, largely support ed by grants from CDC and Na- tloni Institutes of Health (NIH), among others, began on 1,083 white homosexual men (average age 29) in New York. In January of 1979, two months later, the first case of AIDS appeared In a homosexual In New York. In March, 1980, an additional 1,402 gay men were vaccinated In five more cities; Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver and St. Louis, seven months later, gay men were struck with AIDS In Los Angeles and San Francisco. Within 10 years, most of the men In the experiment were dead or dying. Women who are sexual part ners of rv drug abusers and bi sexual men and all intravenous drug abusers are critical groups facilitating the AIDS crossover to the heterosexual population. The growth will be exponential: "Even without sexual Inter course the Infected will reinfect each other and the uninfected will become Infected, leading to an explosion of Infection and disease," Dr. Strecker says. The population of Africa will be dead within 13 years and the world population within 32 years, he predicts. There may never be a vaccine cure. But there Is one option — a very slim one: An electronic means to destroy these new vi ruses. Details are In "The Cancer Cure That Worked!" — (Marcus Books, Box 327, Queensvllle, Ontario, LOG IRO, Canada 416- 478-2201). Mysteriously, people who are questioning "the green monkey" theory are dying. Dr. Strecker's brother allegedly committed suicide and a Chicago congress man who wanted these theories Investigated suspiciously died of an alleged drug overdose. How did Max Robinson get AIDS? He said he didn't know. There Is no evidence that he was gay or bisexual. And If he used drugs, he didn't need to share a needle. Chances of heterosexual transmission from a woman to a man are statistically slim. If what Dr. Strecker and many others are saying Is true, we will only be safe If others know what's going on/ Then, perhaps, we can find out what killed Max Robinson. TONY BROWN'S JOURNAL TV series can be seen on public television Sunday on Channel 42 at 5 p.m. It can also be seen on Channel 58, Saturday, 1:30 p.m. Please consult listings. Let's Keep The Classics On The Shelves What would happen to you and me If we tried to change the list of books In the Bible? What If we tried to get rid of some of Its books and put some new ones In? 'The Bible doesn't really need Luke, because It Is so much like Matthew," we could say. 'Too much duplication. And let's get rid of Son of Solomon and Reve lations since they are based on outdated themes that nobody understands anymore. We can replace them with the works of modem Christians like C.S. Le wis and Billy Graham. We can understand them." Don't worry. Just kidding. If we really started talking like that, we would probably get kicked Out of our churches. And kicked some place else, too. ■ At Stanford University In Cali fornia there Is a real ruckus ^bout a list of books. Not from the Bible, but you would think they were trying to change It, too. If you listened to the pro tests that are coming In from all over the country. The faculty out there has de cided to change the list of "Great Books"" that their students are expected to read and under stand. You know the old list— the Important works of Western Civilization. Plato, Homer, Cice ro, Vergil, Augustine, Dante, Ma- chlavelli, Martin Luther, D.G. Martin One-On-One Shakespeare, Cervantes, De scartes, Locke, Rousseau, Vol- talr, Marx, Freud, and so on— and, of course, the Bible Itself. These are the books that Stanford and many other good colleges and universities be lieved should be read and un derstood by all educated people. At Stanford, all of them are off the list, except Augustine. Ma- chlavelll, Marx, Plato, and Rous seau. And, of course, the Bible remains. But Shakespeare and the other traditional greats are gone. So what? Why the turmoil? Did anybody ever read all those books anyway? Maybe what disturbs people is not so much what got taken off Stanford's list—as what took their places. I have never heard of the new books. But they are described as "modern, anti- colonialist, feminist, and revolu tionary." The new list Is seen by some, including the Wall Street Jour nal to be riding "the main hob by-horse of today's political left." That Is why people are so up set. They don't mind the loss of the old books as much as they do their replacement with "modem, left-wing" ideas. That Is not what bothers me. I mourn the passing of the old list of Great Books because It was a rock. Such lists helped us define what we needed to know to be gin to understand our civiliza tion—and our own times. The old list was a shared, common ground on which people could build their own Ideas and have them understood by other edu cated people. Most of us never read all of the Great Books. But we knew that they were there. We knew their themes, even though we could not always say which themes came from which books. The Great Books are an edu cated person's Bible--solid, shared in common, and ready to help when needed. That's why we are angry with the folks at Stanford. They are. after all, monkeying with our "Bible." Racial Intimidation Best Met With Jail Guest Editorial By Dennis Schatzman incidences of racial and ethnic Intimidation and hazing are on the rise In North Carolina. We feel that the escalation of these acts of harassment warrant strong language in the crimes codes making racial and ethnic Intimidation a misdemeanor of fense with minimum and maxi mum fines and jail sentences. Four highly charged Incidents In 1988 dramatize the need for such specific offenses In the crimes code: 1) In February, a Lenoir, NC, black civil rights leader and the local president of the NAACP found a note stuck to a Jesse Jackson campaign poster say ing. 'Watch out, the Klan is watching you." 2) In April, three men wearing white Ku Klux Klan-llke hoods chased four black youths, '^fhey were on their way to school In Winston-Salem. 3) From February through July, the state office and the Greensboro Branch Ofllce of the NAACP received hundreds of ra cist and vulgar telephone calls, mostly between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. each day. On some days, there were as many as 25 calls, some times less than one minute apart. When the phone company was contacted, they traced the calls to a service station in Pleasant Grove, N.C. The Greensboro Po lice Investigated the situation and charged a part-time service station attendant and a white Baptist minister with harass ment by communication. He lat er pleaded guilty and. as a first- time offender, was sentenced to perform 100 hours of public ser vice work. 4) On Easter day, two black students and their dates were parked outside Garrett Hall at East Carolina University. They were having car trouble and the men were under the hood when several white male students, led by a freshman from Wilson, be gan yelling racial slurs at them. According to witnesses, the white students were drinking al coholic beverages and calling the black students "monkeys", "niggers", and "bitches", telling them to "go back to Africa" and finally Inviting them to come up to the room and fight. The black male students did, witnesses say, and went to the room and fought the white stu dents. Two white students were sent to the hospital. Later, a student judicial board found the one black student guilty of assault and suspended him from ECU for two years. The ruling was upheld by the school's chancellor. The student was also charged with assault before the Pitt County Judiciary and Is up for trial on those charges. Evidence, however. Indicates that most of the evidence point ing to the culpability of the white students was either delib erately or accidentally omitted from all university and Pitt County hearings In the matter. The result Is that a black stu dent, obviously under verbal at tack by white students, has been suspended from ECU and the white attackers escaped prose- cuUotv for acts they Initiated. We believe that racial and eth nic Intimidation are acts so counter productive to maintain ing a productive and peaceable society that they warrant spe cial notation In the crimes code. Conventional wisdom would confirm that such acts will esca late In the coming years largely because of deliberate attempts by white leaders and public opinion setters to promote un warranted racial fears for per sonal reasons. For example, George Bush's top campaign advisors, Lee At water and Roger Alles predicted, boasted of and eventually ran television spots portraying a convicted black Massachusetts murderer and rapist as a na tional problem that would In crease If whites voted for Mi chael Dukakis for President. These spots Increased racial fears, as predicted last July by Washington Post reporter Thomas B. Eldsall. In North Carolina, Republican candidate for Lt. Governor Jim Gardner actively campaigned on the premise that If whites would vote for Democrats they would be voting for more politi cal clout for "Jesse Jackson" and "the NAACP." Evidence has shown up through newspaper clips that the North Carolina NAACP receives weekty. The points we are making, again. Is that incidents of racl^ and ethnic Intimidations are on the rise In North Carolina and that the actions of many of our top white leaders and opinion setters will do nothing to rectify the situation. The North Carolina NAACP recommends that the North Carolina General Assembly en act legislation making racial and ethnic InUmldaUon a mis demeanor punishable by a max imum fine of$l, 000 ana/or a Jail sentence of a maximum of one year. We feel that a special designa tion In the crimes codes publicly acclaims that such acts should not be hidden under nebulous titles as "harassment by com munications" or "harassment" but should stand outright as crimes against race or ethnicity. Buyouts The Result Of Easy Tax Breaks Guest Editorial By Cong. Aiigustus Hawkins Since 1984, there has been a fast paced growth In Wall Street deals as "leveraged buyouts," which may have an end result of hurting the employees of these companies especially If a reces sion occurs. A leveraged buyout (LBO), Is when a public compa ny (such as Kraft), Is purchased by an Investor group (from with in the company by their top managers and/or a Wall Street buyout specialist) and Is divest ed (or taken away) from the par ent company. The risky nature of this transaction Is that most of the purchase price (about 90 percent) Is borrowed money. That means that the new owners of the company get to control the business In return for put ting up just 10 percent or less of the price. Where does the borrowed money come from? About 50-70 percent comes from secured bank loans from borrowing against the company's assets and 20-40 percent from bonds sold to Insurance companies, pension funds and others. To make up this tremendous debt, the newiy taken over company is faced with two choices: improve operating profits by trimming costs or sell off parts of the cor poration. By cutting to Increase profits the consequences may the following: laying off employ ees and cutting spending on re search, new plants and equip ment. One of the reasons leveraged buyouts are popular Is that the firms pay bondholders and oth er creditors. This cuts corporate tax bills to near zero, and in some cases even creates a re fund. That Is one reason that LBOs are becoming a growing business transaction. Who prof its from these buyouts? Without question the buyout fund man agers, lawyers. Investment bankers and other deal makers make millions of dollars during the transaction. In the short- run these LBOs make a lot of money for a small number of people. However, It seems to me that when everything is for sale as In the case of these leveraged buyouts, something Is lost. As Harold S. Geneen, the retired chairman of a major corpora tion, said In a recent Interview with Forbes magazine: 'The thing that's being over looked In all this is the value of having an organization that has a long-term feeling and objec fives. This Is important because you get something out of the em ployees that you're not going to get out of a leveraged buyout group. People can contribute a lot to a business If they're so minded, or they can just go through the motions." If a recession rolls around,'* these debt heavy companies may be forced to layoff their rank and file employees. Un doubtedly, minorities and those on the lowest economic rung In the company will be among the first to get their pink slip. The poor, as consumers, also suffer more than others when the price of these companies' products rises. Congress will review the tax Incentives that have encour aged the rise of corporate buy outs, and scrutinize much closer the LBO process In general. At a time when funds for critical so cial programs are becoming In creasingly scarce. It is even more Important that the tax rev enue that may be lost through leveraged buyouts be closely watched. Ronald Reagan's Legacy To Blacks: Poor Health Care, Shorter Life Ebcpectancy The National Center for Health Statistics in Washington, D.C.. has just released a shocking re port. For the first time In the 20th century the life ejqrectancy of African Americans In the United States has decreased In two successive years while the life expectancy for Anglo Ameri cans has continued to Increase. I have received many letters during the last eight years ques tioning our criticism of Reagan administration social policies. Now a report a fedei^ agen cy conflr^ that there Is, in fact, a serious decUne In the overall state of health of the African American communlfy. This phe nomenon Is directly related to the Reagan administration's budget cuts in social and health care programs. Of course, African Americans have not been the only racial and ethnic group affected by these policies during the last eight years. Latino Americans, Native Americans and others also have been severely Impact ed. Yet, the report from the Na tional Center for Health Statis tics verifies that the"' life expectancy of African Ameri cans dropped from 69.7 years In 1984, to 69.5 In 1985 to 69.4 In 1986. During this same period, the life expectancy of whites In- Civil Rights Journal By Benjamin Chavis creased from 75.3 to 75.4 years. Now all of this may appear to most people to be only a slight difference In statistics. Yet, life expectancy Is not just a random number. It tells you how long the average person can expect to live from birth. Never before, at least In the last 100 years In the United States, has the life ex pectancy of one race declined for two successive years while the life expectancy of whites In creased. According to The Washington Post, "Some officials attributed part of the problem to economic policies of the Reagan adminis tration, which they said have In creased homelessness, cut aid and health care to the poor and otherwise hurt blacks dispro portionately." The infant mortal ity rate Among African Ameri cans Is more than double that among white Americans. During the last eight years there has been a disproportionate In crease In the cancer rate of Afri can Americans. Tuberculosis, drug-related deaths, AIDS, pneumonia and other infectious diseases have all Increased dis proportionately among African Americans. Dr. Arthur H. Hoyte, former D.G. commissioner of public health, stated, "It Is really some thing that might be reflective of the policies (Reagan) Instituted." Ed Pitt, director of health for the National Urban League, said. 'There's a crisis in health care for black America. TTiere are a number of conditions that have gone unchecked In the black community that are causing an Increase In the death rate." Like racism, the genocide of a people can also be Institution alized. All Americans should be alarmed at this serious health crisis In the African American community. President-elect George Bush must not continue his predecessor's devastating policies. All human beings de serve the right to live long and healthy lives. We must not allow racism and exploitation to deny this fundamental right to any one.
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Jan. 5, 1988, edition 1
7
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75