Mbeki and AIDS
In my article in GLW #475 I wrote that some of the pseudo- scientists that South African President Thabo Mbeki has used to defend his AIDS denialism are members of the Klu Klux Klan. Brian Souter (Write On, GLW #476) writes that "presumably" I was referring to Peter Duesberg and asks what evidence there is for this "amazing allegation".
I was not referring to Duesberg. Duesberg is wrong but he is not a member of the Klu Klux Klan. I was referring to people like William Cooper, a well known Klan member and the leader of the Arizona Militia <197 a far-right movement preparing to repel extra-terrestrial invaders. Cooper is the author of a denialist book on AIDS, Behold a Pale Horse, that claims AIDS was developed by extra-terrestrials with the specific aim of targeting homosexuals, blacks and Hispanics.
In September 2000, Mbeki's health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, circulated copies of Cooper's book to key officials in the health department. This resulted in major international controversy and is a matter of public record.
I didn't mention the names of the Klan supporting denialists because they are not the issue. The issue is that more than five million HIV+ South Africans face avoidable suffering and death as a direct result of Mbeki's AIDS denialism and that a huge struggle is being fought, in the courts and on the streets, against Mbeki's denialism.
Richard Pithouse
Durban, South Africa
Science and industry
Brian Souter (Write On, GLW #476) raises vital questions regarding how socialists would deal with toxic waste or industrial science. And the answer is simple — by considering society, i.e., humanity, and the planet first and foremost. This approach is in stark contrast to any process or endeavour conducted today — where capitalist profit is considered first and last.
Souter's claim that "industrial science" is "fundamentally toxic" confuses two distinctly different things — science (accurate knowledge about natural and social laws) and modern industry (in which this knowledge is put at the service of the production of goods and services).
To suggest science is fundamentally evil ("toxic") is to throw the baby out with the bath water. We may as well say the same for the alphabet or number system as they too are products of humanity's attempts to understand the world we live in. It's up to us to use these ideas (i.e., science) to make the world we live in socially just and environmentally sustainable.
Souter quotes the following phrase from John Nebauer's review of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings in GLW #475, "production for social need would give rise to environmentally friendly production", and then adds: "So heavy industry doesn't cause pollution: CEOs do!" Nowhere in the review did Nebauer argue that heavy industry which was not subordinate to public ownership and democratic control did not cause pollution.
Does Souter believe "heavy industry" today is carried out to serve social need? Isn't it carried out to fatten the capitalist owners (and CEO's) bank accounts? ?
Souter asks if Nebauer has heard of Chernobyl. Has Souter heard of Stalinism, and its subordination of production to the privileges of a bureaucratic elite which simply copied capitalist methods of production?
Paul Glenning
Rockhampton
Racism and asylum seekers
We echo the sentiments of Dr Anthony Burke of Adelaide University (reported in GLW #476): we are two of many who are acutely uncomfortable about the way we as a nation appear to be heading, following on the Tampa crisis and the subsequent government reaction. Our conscience was again stirred when we viewed the simple but effective TV ad "Faces in the Crowd" shown recently on Channel 9.
Listening last night at a social function to the Catholic Archbishop of Perth, Barry Hickey, we were struck by one phrase he used: "We seem to be losing our common humanity." That's true and it's worrying. Australia has so often had the opportunity to be viewed by the world at the very least as a country where multiculturalism actually works. Now we are regarded as xenophobic and selfish.
Let's all pressure our federal government to come up with a long-term solution that makes it clear we do care about the plight of the world's masses — and to make it clear such a solution includes the resettlement of those unfortunates who, with a temporary visa, are currently dumped in the streets of Perth, separated from their families in their country of origin and with no future in our land of plenty.
Michael and Jenny Crouch
East Perth
World Court
The announcement by Britain's minister of defence that they will not hand Osama bin Laden over to the World Court of Justice if and when he is captured simply must be reversed.
Given that Pakistan's former prime minister has now revealed that plans to bomb Afghanistan were shown to him in July — long before September 11, and given that America's Caspian Sea Oil project was not going anywhere with the Talaban, there can be some doubt about the motives for the bombing of Afghanistan. It is against this backdrop, that the world needs to know.
If the September 11 acts were committed, say, by groups inspired by bin Laden's rhetoric, then that is not the same thing.
History has shown the World Court to be a fair one. It has an international panel of judges, and in the past, Britain and America have sometimes failed to get their way. That gives it the sort of integrity that no American court could have.
Given that a nation has been reduced to rubble on Bush's insistence that bin Laden is guilty, the result in an American court is guaranteed. In the current climate, American judges would not dare to produce the "wrong" result.
Bush and Blair have told us that there is more than sufficient evidence to convict. If that is true, then they not only have nothing to fear, but like most people, they should welcome the prospect of bin Laden being tried for mass murder in the World Court of Justice, as this would completely clear the air.
Stephen Braithwaite From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, January 23, 2002.
Crawley, West Sussex
England
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