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WORLD

CPUSA: Moving —
against Reaganism

By NAN McDONALD

CHICAGO — The 24th national con-
vention of the Communist Party of the
United States, convened here August
13-16, responded with thunderous
applause to General Secretary, Gus Hall,
when delivering the main report which
called for a ‘‘ United working class front,
all-people’s unity and most important,
unity in action .. .”’ to defeat Reaganism .
and extend democracy in the USA and in
the world.

Around 1,000 delegates, observers
and invited guests from 40 U.S. states,
including 18 fraternal delegations from
around the world, converged in the
McCormick hotel in Chicago, the city
recognized internationally as the birth-
place of May Day and the Haymarket
battle.

Charging the Reagan administration
with threatening humanity with nuclear
annihilation, Hall said, ‘‘Since World
War Two U.S. policy has been to dom-

—
usa

24th NATIONAL
CONVENTION

©

established in Soviet cities.

By FRED WEIR
Moscow Correspondent

MOSCOW — The disease AIDS —

which is rapidly assuming the pro-
portions of a global pandemic — has also
begun to turn up in the Soviet Union,

prompting widespread fear and many of

the same ethical disputes that have at-
tended its spread in western countries.
So far the number of Soviet cases re-
mains very small, and public health
authorities appear forewarned, well-
armed and confident of their ability to
stem its advance.

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 28, 1987

inate as much of the world as possible,
economically, militarily, ideologically,
politically and financially.’’ This, he
said, “‘is the perpetual dream of the
“American Century,’ the underlying
rationale for dropping the atom bomb on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki . . . Star Wars is
the nuclearization of U.S. policy of
world domination.”’

Drawing attention to the ABM treaty,
which definitely bans the testing and

placing of space weapons into near earth °

orbit, Hall blasted the Reagan admin-
istration for rejecting the Soviet proposal
even to negotiate what tests are allowed
under the signed USA/USSR treaty.

In opposition to Reagan’s treachery,
Hall pointed to the development of deep
new concerns, activity and organization
by the U.S. public against the nuclear
danger, which he said, ‘‘ provides a broad
mass base for the mobilization of the
majority in the struggle for world peace.
The people of the United States are part
of the world peace majority, deeply
concerned about the outbreak of nuclear
war. That is how they voted in the last
Congressional elections.”’

Moreover, he said, the deeper more
profound second thoughts tens of mil-
lions of Americans are having about
Iran-contragate, will begin to crest into
action just as the coming U.S. primaries
get under way. This will inevitably turn
the 1988 elections into a pitched battle
between the ultra-right and the all-
people’s front, and a referendum on the

An AIDS victim in a Moscow hospital ward. Some 200 anonymous clinics have been

A Soviet-designed and mass-produced
kit for testing blood for exposure to the
AIDS virus has become the major tool of
the mounting anti-aids effort. Doctors
say the first purpose of testing is to sc-
reen blood supplies. The second, they
say, is to monitor ‘‘high risk”’ groups.

Earlier this year, some 200 anonymous
clinics were established in Soviet cities,
where people who feared they might
have contracted AIDS could go and be
tested without giving their names. In
Mcscow alone over 1,000 people have
dropped in to the single such clinic on

Reagan conspiracy.

In welcoming the hearings on the
Iran-contragate exposé, Hall called for
the whole truth without limitations, and
for a full exposure of the roots of Water-
gate and Iran-contragate. What has be-
come clear, he said, are the outlines of a
unique U.S. pattern, a structure for fas-
cism, a creeping process of constructing
a government within a government, a
police state structure within a parlia’
mentary structure.

The anti-democratic nature of the il-
legal, covert actions, the lies and cover-
ups pursued by the Reagan administra-
tion has caused millions of Americans to
react. The hearings have laid the founda-
tion for anew mass movement based ona
new mass sentiment for the defence of
the U.S. Constitution and the democratic
structure.

Noting the constant growth in the
working class which numbers the 100
million mark, Hall said, that since
Reagan took office general living stan-
dards for the working class have been
eroded and 30 million are unemployed.
Of these, 14 million lost their jobs
through plant closures.

Reagan’s legacy has brought 30-40 mil- -

lion workers down to below the official
poverty level and real wages for workers
between 20-24 years have plunged by 30
per cent. For Afro-Americans the drop is
closer to 50 per cent and the new jobs
Reagan boasts about pay below poverty
levels. New. millions, he said, are strug-
gling to survive on the minimum wage of
$3.35 per hour which in itself is below the
poverty level. >
Delegates went into workshops that
concentrated on building the peace and
labour movements, the struggle against
racism, for international solidarity and
building the Communist Party. These
were followed with 18 commissions that
focussed on the fightback of racially and

Soviet

Sokolinaya Gora Street.

Last month, however, the Supreme
Soviet passed stern new legislation
which empowers doctors to give man-
datory tests to those in risk groups, and
provides stiff penalties — up to eight
years in prison — to anyone who know-
ingly passes on the disease.

‘**Mandatory AIDS testing for those in
high-risk groups will make it possible to
detect the disease and begin treatment at
an earlier stage,’’ says Dr. Vladimir Ser-
giyev, chief of the Soviet central aids
prevention laboratory.

‘‘Early diagnosis is also important be-
cause the AIDS virus is perfidious, and
doesn’t make itself felt for a long time,”’
he says. “‘Carriers are, in the meantime,
potentially dangerous for those around
them ... People are not ideal, many are

far from thinking about their responsibil- ~

ity to others. This is why the issue has
been raised of compulsory measures and
of criminal liability to those who, with
full awareness, expose others to the risk
of contracting AIDS”’.

These measures do not seem to be con-
troversial in the USSR, where the fear of
AIDS is still greatly out of proportion to
its actual incidence. Public health
specialists insist that the legal pre-
cautions are based upon common sense

_ and are fully in line with global practices

for dealing with many different conta-
gious diseases.

)
Fen

24th NATIONAL
CONVENTION

nationally oppressed communities, the
mass movements of farmers, women, the
unemployed and homeless, including
American youth and seniors.

An inspiring rally for a ‘‘Peoples New
Agenda’”’ was attended by 2,000 from the
various movements in Chicago where
the founding convention of the Com-
munist Party was held in 1919. Gus Hall,
Angela Davis, local politicians and
community leaders addressed the cheer-
ing audience and the call for all-out sup-
port for the striking South African miners
by Angela Davis.

Hall spoke of the ‘‘unprecedented’’
threat to democracy in the USA: ‘‘The
Iran-contragate hearings have exposed
high treason in high places ... a secret
junta organized to circumvent the Con-
gress, the Constitution and the American
people,”’ he charged.

Other convention highlights were the
presentation of a ‘‘Unique Achieve-
ments Award’’ to veteran communists
and the adoption of reports calling for
‘‘All-peoples electorial unity’’ to elect a
pro-peace, pro-labour president and
Congress in 1988. The incoming Central
Committee was instructed to set up a
CPUSA Campaign Committee, for its
1988 presidential ticket.

Nan McDonald, Women’ s Director of the
Communist Party, was CPC delegate to the
24th CPUSA convention.

ealing with AIDS in
Union

‘‘Our position, on the one hand, en-
hances the carrier’s liability and, on the
other, rejects extremes, giving these
people the possibility to conintue their
normal working lives,’ says Valentin
Pokrovsky, President of the USSR
Academy of Medical Sciences.

Soviet doctors in general agree that the
question of patients’ rights versus the
right of society to be protected is a deli-
cate one. They also sometimes hint at the
danger of panic, or of public reaction
based upon prejudice or misinformation:
The purpose of gaining information
about a patient, says Pokrovsky, is to
protect that patient and others. ‘‘Doctors
observe strict confidentiality, data is
kept absolutely secret,’’ he says.

So far more than a million people have
been tested and just over 100 of these

-have turned up positive for exposure to

the AIDS virus. Almost 80 per cent of
those testing positive are foreign resi-
dents of the USSR, not Soviet citizens.
Only seven people are actually sick.
These facts have led public health
authorities to conclude that the virus has
not yet established itself in the Soviet
population and that with swift and deci-
sive action they can build a ‘‘firebreak
which will be effective against it.

A major thrust of the anti-AIDS cam-
paign has been to educate the public