'If The Daily Tar HeelMonday, August 26, 19911 1 1AH Gorbachev deserves support Those who chided Gorbachev for being too soft when selecting people for top posts are naive. They fail to understand thatGorbachev's craftsmanship and courage are not even nearly matched in this country. Navigat ing for so many years through his unpredictable top aides the very top of them plotted the coup has been a difficult job. Look at what Gorbachev has helped accomplish: glasnost and perestroika, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, warming up of the Cold War and his returning to the Kremlin! Gorbachev deserves as much credit for his survival of the coup as Yeltsin. Without what Gorbachev has done, Yeltsin could not have accomplished what he has. People love heroes and there is no denying that Yeltsin is a hero now. The bad news is: we too often kiss conspicu ous protesters and hiss at those who keep the chiming of the liberty bell by working with outright conservatives. Yeltsin got a big round of applause when he quit the system and plunged into a safe enclave. He continues his fight, not in the forefront, but in the safety of millions of his supporters. Gorbachev did not quit, though he only has his personal guards and his family to support him. Even Yeltsin opposed him, vehemently and boorishly. Yeltsin is an asset in the forces to liberate Russia. So is Gorbachev. The International AIDS conference provides few AIDS has become one of the most serious public health problems of our time. Last month, nearly 10,000 AIDS researchers, activists and journalists gathered in Florence, Italy, to focus world attention on the human immunodeficiency virus and its effects on our society. Many ep;e may have followed the events of the meeting as they occurred. I was in Florence caring for our two small children while my wife, an infectious disease physician, attended the meeting. This report is a "behind-the-scenes" view of what hap pens when what someone called the "Super Bowl" of science meets up with a major tourist destination. Arriving at Milan's Malpensa Air port, one is instantly reminded that Italy is very different from North Carolina. Airplanes are kept at a distance from terminal buildings, and police armed with automatic weapons abound. The signs are multilingual, and car rental and the agencies are multinational, so we are soon on our way down the autostrada to Florence. Our little Fiat moves along in the titttlUle' lane at about 130 kilometers per hour, passed by a series of large, exeHSIve, extremely fast sports cars and luxury sedans. The road, while excellent, is also extremely expensive. The three-hour drive to Flo rence costs about $24 in tolls. Despite our planning for a few days to acclimate to the time change after flying, our children, Daniel, 3, and Amanda, 6 weeks, do not like car travel. We do our major driving during nap J.B.Hu Guest Columnist conservatives are a harsh reality in the Kremlin. They will not quit. Someone has to handle them, effectively and dip lomatically, until the time comes for them to go. If Gorbachev followed suit behind Yeltsin and quit, we know who would be hosting in the Kremlin. We hardly want to see that. Americans are impatient. In a system where Pizza Huts and congressmen are eager to cater to every whim of their clientele and constituency, things are relatively easy. Communism is stub born, and it rusts the system that is built upon it. In the machine of Soviet com munism, millions of its parts are rusty. Manyh communists are in powerful po sitions. The deposed coup plotters are but a few of them. It is easy to rope the neck of the statue of the founding father of the KGB and pull it down. But it won't remove the living statues running the government. In free America, we are quickly for getting how to compromise. Our sys tem grants all our caprices. Even a killer feels licensed to pursue murder as a hobby. One recent mass murderer was not caught until he murdered some SO time. Our son goes to sleep at I a.m. our second night, after which the baby cries for two hours. During times like this I am extremely thankful for my wife's presence this is all her fault. All four of us are relieved when we check into the Villa Belvedere, a small hotel in the hills above Florence. There are flower gardens ("I planted all these flowers last night," Daniel announces), a view of the city, and even a small swimming pool. Afternaps and a swim, we drive down to town to register for the meeting. It is Saturday, and the conference starts Sunday evening. My wife, a "conference delegate," gets in line with her BRING THIS CARD TO THE MEETING WITH YOU card behind 20 other people. The line moves quickly, and she emerges from the registration area 10 minutes later, complete with the program and other handouts. As at previous AIDS meetings, participants receive a free bag to carry these books and papers in and to help you recognize which half of the people in your hotel, restaurant or museum are also from the meeting. "The bag" must be picked up across the street in another building. Before we do that, and somewhat anxious over the legiti macy of my credentials, I go to register as "Press." Six staff people sit behind Ion Klein Guest Columnistl innocent souls. He left the court claim ing that he had slain 1 5 more than the 37 of whom he was convicted of killing. The sensation of control was, he so berly announced, the sole motivation. He wanted control over, not compro mise or cooperation with, the soc iety he still calmly hates. In many ways we are like him. In a communist framework, this hate based sense of control generates Hitler like dictators and power-hungry mini despots. To combat them requires one of two qualities: a higher sense of con trol energized by hate or an extraordi nary courage and expertise to democra tize through compromise. Marshal Jo seph Stalin possessed the first. Presi dent Mikhail Gorbachev has been try ing to cultivate the second. The president of the United States works under far less psychological pres sure than his U.S.S.R. counterpart. The man who vacations at his Kennebunkport beach does not worry about his vice president planning acoup. Dan (not Rather) is too servile and in competent for that mission. The presi dent of the U.S.S.R. is in triple jeop ardy. He wishes to side with the people but cannot put a rope around the neck of his hard-line colleagues. By choosing the only way he has, which is to push the reform forward as much as it cannot be pulled back by the powerful hard-lin- tables, and only one other person is being registered in tbe room. Not only do I get big smiles and my pack of handouts, I also get "the bag," complete with a special media guide to the AIDS meeting, explaining the services and resources available for my comfort. The only thing the press does not get is the two-volume set of books contain ing the abstracts of 1,300 scientific pa pers being presented over the next five days. However, the meeting press sec retariat issues twice-daily press releases and frequent press conferences. They go to great lengths to make sure we know what they have determined will be the "important" studies. A special building is reserved for press. Two hundred personal comput ers complete with software are avail able free. Special international phone lines are in place, and lounges with closed circuit coverage of the meeting are scattered about. Daniel plays with a computer while I pile my press releases on Amanda'sstroller. Although the del egates' area is a mob scene, there is no line at the press snack bar or at the bank window. The meeting staff will arrange interviews on request. There is a Per sons With AIDS (PWA) media liaison, and Act Up and other groups provide almost as many press releases as the meeting organizers and scientists do. There is much talk regarding the re cent U.S. immigration decision to bar HIV-positive people from the country. The eighth meeting, scheduled for Bos ton in 1 992, may be canceled. If not, the Sanctions Now that South Africa, partly in response to international sanc tions, has begun its long trek to ward democracy. President George Bush has rescinded the sanctions that Congress imposed on that country in 1986. Although South Africa has ful filled all the conditions laid down by the sanctions law, President Bush has been criticized for acting prematurely. Full democracy has not yet come to South Africa, it is said. Until there is one person, one vote, or at least until one person, one vote has become more im minent, critics want the sanctions to stay in place. If Bush had heeded this advice, he might have harmed, rather than promoted, the interests of South Africa. Those bulwarks of the apartheid state that were considered particularly ob jectionable racist laws, states of emergency, detention without trial no longer exist. What remains is minor ity rule. But it has not been U.S. policy to cut off normal economic relations with a country merely because a major ity of the people have no voice in the government. Most of the black African states would fall afoul of this standard, as would most Arab nations. Take Iraq, for example. The prin ciples of majority rule are doubly, or even triply, violated in that country. The minority Sunni community con trols the government minority Shiites and minority Kurds have no significant role. But, unlike the case in South Af rica, the government is not even demo cratically responsible to the dominant Sunni minority. The reigns of power are held by the Tikrit mafia from Saddam's home town and Saddam rules supreme over them all. Yet.noone called for economic sanctions against Iraq until after it invaded Kuwait. China is certainly not founded on the principle of majority rule. It is most certainly not engaged in discussion with dissident representatives over the most effective means to make the transition to democracy. It has not released its political prisoners or legalized opposi tion parties. But what sort of sanctions against China are the Democrats call ing for? They want to revoke that country's most-favored-nation trade status. They are not calling for a ban on trade or investment. ers, Gorbachev suddenly finds himself disfavored by all. Hard-liners tolerate Gorbachev be fore the intolerable comes. It came, then the coup. The liberals quit him, led by Yeltsin, followed by the honorable for eign minister. People are unhappy, too. Incited by impatient liberals such as activists suggest, they will shut it down themselves. I considered asking to in terview the directoi of the Harvard AIDS Institute, but, holding the two children, I decided it would be easier just to listen to him at the press conference. Overall, there are few truly "new" events at the meeting. In fact, there really is little news here. Many of the scientific studies that make their way into the press releases and into the daily newspapers are not really new. Some of the immunization studies provide a faint glimmer of hope, but, as summed up by the Indian Minister of Health, the treat ment of AIDSHIV and even distribu tion of condoms, much less pharmaceu ticals, is well beyond the ability of de veloping countries that have been hard est hit by the epidemic. In some ways, the meeting is a three ring circus, or really a four-ring circus, paralleling the four different tracks es tablished for the sc ient i fic content. There is the basic science group, several hun dred scientists enthusiastically discuss ing membrane potentials.cell biochem istry and something that sounds like electromorphicflim-flam.Then there is the social science and public health track, consisting of folks who do health promotion and prevention in developed and developing countries. The third track, clinical treatment issues, is about treating the various opportunistic infec tions and cancers that afflict people with AIDSHIV infection. And the fourth track is activism. In other ways, this is also a very tense against South Africa Eric Longley The Noise of Folly A case could be made for giving China and Iraq more slack than was given to South Africa. Before August 1990, Iraq was an important regional power, whose destabilizationmight have encouraged the spread of Iranian funda mentalism. And China is a superpower that you simply can't kick around like you can kick around a bunch of Afrikaaners. The black African nations have fragile economies that sanctions might devastate, the Arabs have oil and shouldn't be alienated, etc. But when you get right down to it, the differential treatment of South Africa can be traced to good old-fashioned hypocrisy. A white oligarchy tyranniz ing over a black majority is considered to be worse than a non-white oligarchy orasimple dictatorship. Racial politics, in the case of South Africa, did what bare considerations of justice would not have done. Please don't get the impression that I am against hypocrisy. I think hypocrisy is a good thing, in moderation. God save us from a foreign policy that is exclusively dominated by damn-the-consequences moralists, or by good-relations-with-scumbuckets pragma tists. Hypocrisy or, to put it more gently, the accommodation of compet ing political, moral, economic and so cial imperatives is the oil that keeps the gears of government in more or less harmonious operation. It is unrealistic to ask that our relations with every country on earth be measured by so called "objective" standards that make no provision for the needs of allies and the requirements of domestic politics. Hypocrisy is indeed "the tribute that vice pays to virtue" and that occasion ally makes people and nations behave -morally but inconsistently, rather than be consistently amoral. It was morally right to impose sanctions against South Africa, and the failure to treat other countries in the same way does not detract from this. Having said all this, we must recog nize that South Africa is not the only Yeltsin, the Russians rise against Gorbachev. He has done so much for them; he cannot even please them. Be ing sandwiched is bad enough. Gorbachev is triwiched. The winds of liberty must, we hope. keep blowing in Russia. We can help them by patting Gorbachev on his shoul meeting. Many delegates are from the United States and from Western Eu rope. Despite subsidized registration, many researchers and public health of ficials from developing countries can not attend. Many U.S. government pub lic health staff people were also unable to attend, as part of a backlash against "unnecessary" travel, and there is anger that CDC and NIH staff travel to this meeting is equated with John Sununu's junkets to campaign events or stamp auctions. There is also anger from pa tient activist groups, both U.S. and oth ers, about the lack of significant progress in treating HIV disease. Despite this lack of therapeutic break throughs, the clinical treatment track is as busy as the nearby street market. In the commercial exhibits, the pharma ceutical manufacturers have impressive displays. Many of them are also spon soring special institutional "clinical updates." Held in nearby luxury hotels, these include dinners or breakfasts and state-of-the-art talks by leading re searchers who just happen to study one or more of the manufacturer's products. Many of the pharmaceutical firms also host nightly hospitality suites with free flowing liquor. One company has of fered to pay air fare and hotel bills for certain researchers willing to attend their clinical updates. The irony, my wife states, is that most of the invitees would attend this session anyway; and she goes, despite passing on the financial support. Imagine what it might cost this company to bring the 200 physicians at country in the world in which condi tions are not ideal. Unless we are on principle opposed to trading with anon democratic country, we must be willing to accept something less than absolute perfection in a nation with which we do business. We should take into account the astonishing progress South Africa has made since 1986 and that it prom ises to continue making. And we should ask whether the political objectives we seek outweigh the harsh economic con sequences of continued sanctions. Mark Mathabane, for one, thinks it is time for the United State to reinvest in South Africa. The black South African expatriate and author, who lives in Kernersville, N.C., argues that South Africa needs economic development. He is aware that political and economic progress go hand-in-hand and that the former is useless without the latter. If the West keeps sanctions until a black majority government comes into power, then that government could well inherit a devastated economy with record unemployment. Such a situation would promote political instability, which would make the economy take a turn for the worse, and so on. South Africa might then follow the path that has led too many black African states into economic ruin and dictatorship. The proper course would be to en courage Western businesses to return to South Africa, so that, by the time a black-majority government comes into power, foreign investment will have provided a base for prosperity and sta bility. There are still obstacles that hinder American businesses from doing this. Columnists needed , The Daily Tar Heel is currently accepting applications for weekly , columnists. A sample column must be turned in to the editor or the editorial page editor by Aug. 30. Openings are presently available in the positions of humor coluirn nist and conservative columnist. However, the DTH is also open td suggestions for columns covering other areas. The DTH is notj seeking columnists who write on general topics. Columns should1 cover a specific angle such as feminism or minority affairs. 'i Please include a cover sheet with a description of your column's angle, your name, telephone number and address. der and giving him a "go ahead," in his" unique way. He once said he knew Russia better than any one else in that land. He should not have to say this to convince the people of the United Stales, J.B.Hu is a graduate student in jour nalism. "i surprises that dinner to Florence for six days each. And this for one drug to treat one-' opportunistic infection. The othermajor irony of this meeting is the relationship between the Interna-;, tional AIDS Society (the primary sport soring agency) and the press. The press do not pay registration fees. During thfe'' opening reception I was in line for food? in front of two reporters from the Cablfe , News Network (CNN). The CNN folks were excited when they saw the fairly lavish buffet table. "Wow!" said one,! "You'd never get food and wine like'' this back home for free.""Well," I said, "You know, it's not really free," and the reporter acknowledged, "Oh, yes, that's right, 'they' are paying for this." You see, the press has developed the same parasitic relationship with the meeting organizers that some research-!; ers have developed with pharmaceutist cal manufacturers. If research money is , in drug trials, even if there is little en- couragement in a new drug, we can" study different doses, different formu lation, different combinations and s' on. In the same way, the press has been : lulled into reporting what the meeting. , organizers think is important. The meet-, ing becomes news because the organiz-' ers and press say it is. The political'; barriers to effective education and efi fective prevention remain, and forthose infected, the news is still not very good,-. Jon Klein is a Chapel Hill resident who attended the 7th International AIDS ' Meeting . need end L'i In addition to the uncertain situation in, South Africa itself, there are the sane-' tions laws in effect in many states, mu nicipalities and colleges. Some municK"' pal pension funds will not invest in, companies that do business in South, Africa. Some laws and city ordinances, provide that companies that do business' in South Africa cannot get government contracts. This is sure to be a deterrent' to many companies. Local sanctions laws raise issues that! go beyond South Africa. They pose the; question who runs the foreign policy, of the United States? Are the president and Congress exclusively responsible, for foreign policy, or can cities, states and universities take a hand in it, too? If they can, then I don't see why they can't' set up their own individual state depart-; ments and appoint their own ambassa-, dors to other countries. And othercoun tries would be well-advised to have, ambassadors in every state capital, city' hall and university administration build-' ing in the country. ": In my view, foreign policy is theK responsibility of the federal govern" ment. The evaluation of the situation ifh South Africa is a job for Washington, ! not for Pierre, South Dakota or the City ! of New York. Now that the federal government has declared that sanctions ! should be lifted, local governments! should follow suit. If they do not, the Bush administration should follow! through on its threat to force them to dp ; so. ' ; . Eric Longley is a international relet- j tions major from Durham. v