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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
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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