Jeg vedlegger dette, historien om AIDS-forskeren John Spritzler
ved Harvard School of Public Health.
Mannen har mot til, som deltaker på en akademisk AIDS-konferanse, å dele ut
antikapitalistiske løpesedler mot konferansens inviterte hovedtaler, Bill
Gates.
Bare det å dele ut en (grøss) LØPESEDDEL på en akademisk konferanse
er jo i seg sjøl ytterst uhørt....
Det er ganske fornøyelig å lese om etterspillet ved hans fakultet på
Harvard. De "upolitiske" akademiske maktpersoner blir plutselig tvunget til
å gjøre seg opp en mening om Harvard som universitet skal ha en holdning til
"kapitalismen": For, mot eller "nøytral".
Jeg skulle gjerne sett en lignende diskusjon her ved NTNU.
Trond Andresen
*****************************************'
Several months ago I reported here that John Spritzler, a biostatistician in
AIDS research at Harvard School of Public Health, was ejected from the AIDS
conference in Seattle for leafletting against the role of the keynote
speaker, Bill Gates, in promoting capitalist domination of society. A large
group of doctors and medical researchers came to John's defense and his
credentials were restored to him the next day.
Upon his return to Harvard, however, John was informed by his boss that his
activities were out of line and that in future he would not be reimbursed for
travel to professional meetings where he distributed literature that went
against Harvard policies.
Yesterday John and seven colleagues met with John's boss and the Dean of HSPH
to clarify John's situation. As you will see from his report below, John and
his colleagues managed to turn the discussion into an examination of
Harvard's relation to capitalism. (I've also included a flyer that John gave
to his colleagues and the Dean and that became a focal point of discussion in
the meeting; the flyer shows why it is impossible to challenge AIDS in Africa
without challenging capitalism.)
While this issue is of course broader than education, it is closely related.
The same individuals (such as Bill Gates) and the same corporate forces are
involved in education reform as are under discussion in John's case, and I
think too that John's way of dealing with the situation is a wonderful and
inspiring example of how a combination of courage, political clarity, and
plain old chutzpah--qualities that we all need to deal with education reform
issues--can prevail in even the most unlikely situations. The huge apparent
power of capitalism and its institutions is not nearly so great as it seems.
Dave Stratman
Editor, New Democracy
5 Burr Street
Boston, MA 02130
617-524-4073
******
Subj: [ndworld] Employees put capitalism on the defensive at Harvard
Date: 6/13/2002 12:01:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: spritz@directvinternet.com (John Spritzler)
Sender: owner-ndworld@list1.channel1.com
To: ndworld@list1.channel1.com (NDWORLD)
There was a very positive development today where I work at the Harvard
School of Public Health. As you may recall, my colleagues at the February
AIDS conference in Seattle rallied behind me to force the conference
organizers to re-admit me to the event after they kicked me out for
leafletting against the keynote speaker -- Bill Gates. At work, my boss told
me that my leafletting was in violation of Harvard policy and if I did it
again I would not be reimbursed for expenses incurred in attending a
professional meeting, even though we attend these meetings as part of our
work and are normally reimbursed for them. I, and three of my colleagues,
asked for a meeting with Human Resources to clarify this policy. I pointed
out that I was acting professionally at the conference in criticizing
capitalism (which Gates represented) since capitalism caused the conditions
that enabled AIDS to spread and that prevented people from being able to
afford treatments. I said that I wanted to get a clarification of Harvard's
policy regarding capitalism and our right to criticize it, and that I
intended to let the entire Harard faculty know what Harvard's policy was. In
response, Human Resources said the Dean of Academic Affairs would have to
attend the meeting and speak for the University.
The meeting took place today. I asked all eight of my colleagues to attend
and seven did. The other person apologized for having to go to her daughter's
day care meeting at the same time. One of the seven people had to reschedule
a friend's wedding event in order to attend! Also a junior faculty member
from a different unit attended in support of me. The meeting lasted a full
hour. The dean said that if Harvard paid our way, then we could not say
things that went against Harvard's policy. One of my colleages then said,
"OK, well what IS Harvard policy on being for or against capitalism?" During
this discussion I argued that the mission of our AIDS group at Harvard was to
relieve the suffering from AIDS around the world, and that capitalism impeded
this mission. I pointed out, for example, that while the standard story is
that "Africa is too poor" to afford the effective AIDS "cocktail" of drugs,
the fact is that capitalism is what makes it poor. I illustrated this by
citing the Anglo-American Corporation (a big mining company). Anglo American
paid its shareholders $547 million in dividends in 2001 by extracting gold
and diamonds from South Africa. This is enough to pay every one of its
HIV-infected employees in the entire continent of Africa $22,000 -- more than
the cost of buying the best AIDS drug regimen in the world at top dollar
prices! But instead, Anglo-American pays its miners (who have a 1 in 2
chance of being permanently disabled by injury) only $160/month, and Anglo
American recently cancelled a study to simply determine if it was feasible to
provide AIDS drugs to its employees. Based on this, I said Harvard's policy
should be to officially oppose capitalism.Nobody disagreed (though it did not
come to a vote.)
Nobody said anything good about capitalism. Not a single word. And in answer
to my colleague's question about what Harvard's policy was on capitalism, the
dean said that, actually, it had none, and therefore at the present time my
speaking out against capitalism did not violate Harvard policy. The dean then
told my boss to take steps to involve all the employees (not just us 8 Ph.D.
types, but the whole 70 or so people who work in the AIDS group) in a
discussion that would lead to a formal policy for our group on capitalism
(pro, con or neutra) and the appropriateness (yes or no) of opposing it at
professional meetings where it is relevant to AIDS. After the meeting,
several of my colleagues and I discussed how we would give our boss some time
to initiate this discussion, but if it doesn't happen we would, together,
request that he start the process.
I am quite sure that the people who control Harvard University at the very
top are completely pro-capitalist. The new president, Larry Summers, is
outrageously pro-capitalist. But this experience where I work demonstrates
that most people at the level of run-of-the mill Ph.D.s and below find a
clear anti-capitalist argument very convincing and even just commonsense, and
when the contradiction between Harvard's purported goals (like helping people
with AIDS) and capitalism's goals are brought out into the open for
collective discussion, what happens is that even the dean is forced to
back-peddle on on whatever pro-capitalist views he may have or else look
foolish or worse in the eyes of the employees. Usually, people don't say
"capitalism is the problem" in this kind of situation, because they feel that
they would seem crazy or, worse, would be fired. But I am saying it and my
colleagues don't think I'm crazy (they express various levels of ageement,
and they support me in ways like coming to this meeting) and the dean (whose
personal convictions I can only guess) thinks it's more prudent to praise me
(at the meeting he said he loved that I was raising these issues) than to
confront me antagonistically. Interesting. We may soon be having
adminstration-sponsored meetings at work to discuss whether we are for or
against capitalism. When that happens, I think it will deserve to make the
front page of the Wall Street Journal. :)
--John
***********
CAN WE TACKLE AIDS WITHOUT CHALLENGING CAPITALISM?
by John Spritzler
1) POVERTY => AIDS
"AIDS experts emphasize a variety of economic and social factors in
explaining Africa's AIDS epidemic, placing primary blame on the region's
poverty. Poverty has deprived Africa, for example, of effective systems of
health information, health education, and health care. Thus, Africans suffer
from a high rate of untreated sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) other
than AIDS, and these are believed to open the way to infection by HIV.
African health care systems are typically unable to provide AIDS counseling,
which could help slow the spread of the disease, and even HIV testing is
difficult for many Africans to obtain. AIDS treatment is generally available
only to the elite. Poverty forces large numbers of African men to migrate
long distances in search of work, and while away from home they may have
multiple sex partners, increasing their risk of infection. Some of these
partners may be women who have become commercial sex workers because of
poverty, and they too are highly vulnerable to infection." [From the National
Council for Science and the Environment (a branch of the Library of Congress
providing nonpartisan research reports to members of the House and Senate.),
May 14, 2001, Raymond W. Copson,
http://cnie.org/NLE/CRSreports/international/inter-34.cfm ]
2) CAPITALISM => POVERTY
Anglo American Corporation paid its shareholders $547 million in dividends
in 2001 by extracting gold and diamonds from ‘poor' South Africa. That
comes
to $22,000 per year for each of its estimated 25,000 HIV infected workers in
all of Africa – far more than the $10,000 to $15,000 cost in the U.S. of the
most effective AIDS ‘cocktail' drug regimen. Yet on April 17, 2001 the Wall
Street Journal announced that Anglo American had decided not to start a pilot
study to examine even the feasibility of providing AIDS drugs to its African
work force. The poverty of South African mineworkers that prevents them from
buying AIDS drugs is a result of the fact that their country's wealth goes
into the pockets of foreign capitalists. A South African mineworker who
spends 20 years underground faces a one-in-thirty chance of being killed and
a one-in-two chance of being permanently disabled, all for the princely sum
of a $160/month wage. [Based on
http://www.angloamerican.co.uk/res2002/AR13%20March%2002.PDF,
http://www.newint.org/issue265/gold.htm and
http://www.hivnet.ch:8000/global/media-aids/viewR?98]
"Colonial governance was for colonial benefit. What about the
post-independence governance? The facts are clear and well documented, it is
the question of responsibility that raises problems and a debate. The facts
are that the common people of Africa have not benefitted from
post-independence governance. If anything, they are materially and physically
worse off than before. The facts are that famine and civil strife are daily
taking a massive toll of African lives, especially of children and their
mothers. The facts are that the external debt of sub-Saharan Africa is
roughly equal to their entire combined national incomes, and that, together,
they use up 40% of the total value of their exports just to service these
debts. The facts are that 90% of these debts should not be paid in any case,
for many of them are either fraudulent (in the technical, legal, sense of the
term) or are accumulated interest. The facts are that the commodity prices of
Africa's exports have tumbled over the decades, and African peasants are
working three to four times harder today than two decades ago just to receive
the same quantum of value, of which then 40% goes to service the debts. The
facts are that when the World Bank's total lending to sub-Saharan Africa had
reached the US$ 2 billion mark in 1988, Africa's hard currency debt had
already risen to US$ 200 billion. The facts are that Africa's commodities are
undervalued, African peasants over-exploited, and African governments are
trapped in a vicious circle out of which, as individual members of
government, they can escape only through graft and kickbacks from
transnationals [multinational corporations] who win tenders for projects
which do not benefit the masses of the people. And finally, and not the
least, the facts are that the [International Monetary Fund's] Structural
Adjustment Programs (SAPs) that have been going on in most of Africa over the
last decade or more have worsened, not bettered, the condition of the common
people of Africa in terms of health, access to education, and access to basic
means of survival.
One can go on documenting these hard realities of post-independence Africa.
But it is not necessary, for we have the answer to the question, "whose
governance?" It certainly is not governance on behalf of the common people.
It is governance on behalf of a couple of hundred industrial and banking
transnationals who are draining Africa's natural resources at enormous profit
for themselves (see their annual reports to their shareholders), a couple of
thousand African billionaires who have tucked away their ill-gotten gains in
Western banks, a couple of million white settlers who still own farmlands,
mines and tourist resorts in Africa, and a couple of million black
intermediaries who are acting on behalf of their foreign companies. That's
the rough arithmetic of those who benefit from the rich resources of Africa.
Excluding the transnationals, they constitute barely 0.5% of Africa's
population. " [From: Reclaiming Africa's Agenda: Good Governance and the Role
of NGOs in the African Context, paper presented at the Conference "Good
Governance for Africa: Whose Governance?" organized by the University of
Limburg and ECDPM Maastricht, 23-24 November 1995, Yash Tandon,Harare,
http://www.ecdpm.org/pubs/govtan.htm ]
3) U.S. GOV. => CAPITALISM
" [W]e have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population....In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and
resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of
relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
disparity....To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and
day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on
our immediate national objectives....We should cease to talk about vague
and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living
standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to
have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by
idealistic slogans, the better. " [From Policy Planning Study 23, written by
George Kennan for the State Department planning staff in 1948]
"For declassified U.S. government documents explaining the role of Third
World countries, see for example, N.S.C. [National Security Council
Memorandum] 144/1, "United States Objectives and Courses of Action With
Respect to Latin America," March 18, 1953, Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1952-1954, Vol. IV ("The American Republics"), Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1983. The Memorandum begins (pp. 6-7, 9):
"There is a trend in Latin America toward nationalistic regimes maintained in
large part by appeals to the masses of the population. Concurrently, there is
an increasing popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living
standards of the masses, with the result that most Latin American governments
are under intense domestic political pressures to increase production and to
diversify their economies."
Aiming to avoid this "drift in the area toward radical and nationalistic
regimes" -- which is "facilitated by historic anti-U.S. prejudices and
exploited by Communists" -- the Memorandum then lists the objectives and
proposed courses of action for the United States, which include "Adequate
production in Latin America of, and access by the United States to, raw
materials essential to U.S. security. " [From Understanding Power, by Noam
Chomsky, Chapter 2, footnote 52]
Note: old documents are cited here because newer ones are generally still
classified. Despite grandstanding trips to Africa by U.S. Treasury Secretary
Paul O'Neill (and Bono), there is no evidence of fundamental change in actual
U.S. foreign policy.
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