World Harvard conference debates | impact of anti-communism By CHEDDI JAGAN Special to the Tribune Beyond the wildest dreams of a snail — that could well be the descrip- tion of the outcome of the recent Har- vard University conference on the theme: “Anti-communism and _ the USA: History and Consequences.” The sponsors, the Institute of Media Analysis, had planned for about 400 persons. Of 1,200 students, scholars and activists who applied, only 800 could be registered; for the rest, there was standing room only. Harvard Professor Emeritus and one-time ambassador to India, econo- mist John Galbraith was to open the meeting, but because of an emergency, his message from hospital was read by Abby Rockefeller, daughter of tycoon David Rockefeller, who headed a team to promote investment in Jamaica and also recently a Trilateral team to Mos- cow. Participants came from all of the U.S. They included noted Harvard zoology professor, Stephen Jay Gould; former Georgia state senator and NAACP director, Julian Bond; Leo- nard Boudin and Victor Rabinowitz, attorneys specializing in civil liberties legislation and international labour law; Daniel Ellsburg of Pentagon Pap- ers fame; novelist Howard Fast; Angela Davis, Professor of Philosophy, Aes- thetics and Women’s Studies and exec- utive member of the Communist Party USA; president of the National Lawy- - ers Guild, Debra Everson; interna- tional law professor, Richard Falk; author Jessica Mitford; director of international affairs of the National Rainbow Coalition, Jack O’Dell; Dr. Bernard Lown, founder of Interna- tional Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War; novelist William Styron, and scores of other important personal- ities. From overseas came, among others: Desselina Williams, former Grenadian ambassador to the Organization of American States; Teboho Mafole, chief representative of the African National Congress to the UN; and Guillermo Ungo, of the Revolutionary Front of El Salvador. - Together with me, they fired the opening shot on the theme: “Anti- Communism and the Third World”. Another session in which I took part was: “The World Costs of anti- Communism.” : A session under moderator William W. Schapp of the Institute of Media Analysis on “Choosing the News — Who Sets the Agenda?” included well- known journalists representing the Boston Globe, the Nation, the Wall Street Journal, L’Unita (Rome), New York Times, Washington Post and the Amsterdam News. The total of 37 panels dealt with issues such as: “Anti-communism and American intellectual life;” ‘“‘Are there new opportunities for independent politics?” “The social, economic and political costs of anti-communism;” “The cold war and culture;” ““Unions and anti-communism;” “Anti-comm- unism and the evolution of the women’s movement;” “‘Media and dis- information;” “Godlessness: religion and anti-communism.” Conference organizers held that anti- communism is variously “‘a pathology ... the civic religion of the U.S. ...a justification for the scapegoating of radicals, progressives, leftists and, now, liberals.” Julian Bond said anti-communism 8 « Pacific Tribune, April 24, 1989 was “today’s big lie that has been used to mask the evils perpetrated in the name of patriotism.” Bill Schapp said that “anti-comm- unism was a set of fears that has been used as a subterfuge to block debate on real issues.” Guillermo Ungo said that for El Sal- vador, “‘anti-communism has meant a rationale for state terror.” Communist Party USA chair Gus Hall said that “as long as the false spec- tre of anti-communism can frighten people, it will be used in the struggle against democracy.” He noted that U.S. Communists are often accused of favouring the violent overthrow of the government. “We advocate a peaceful electoral path to socialism,” he ex- plained, “but historically, it is the ruling class that blocks efforts for peaceful change, using military force to block the will of the majority.” This was precisely what happened in Guyana, I said. As the first speaker to address the conference, my opening shot was “Three decades separate the landing of troops in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1953 and in Grenada in 1983. In the former, the troops were British, in the latter American. But common to both events and many oth- ers was anti-communism.” I pointed out that with a decisive shift in the world balance of forces at . the end of World War II against world capitalism, Britain’s Winston Churchill and U.S. president Harry Truman broke up the anti-Hitler coali- tion and started the cold war. The Truman doctrine of “contain- ment” -of communism, socialism and national liberation equated democracy and freedom with the American free enterprise system and proclaimed that “the American system would survive in America only if it became a world sys- tem.” Victims were not only Communists and Marxist-socialists like Chile’s Sal- vador Allende and me, I explained, but anti-communists like Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran and non-commu- - nists like Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, Jao Goulart of Brazil, Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic and Jamaica’s Michael Manley. The cold war anti-communist hyste- CHEDDI JAGAN ... U.S. anti-communism distorted world development, victimized people at home and abroad. ria, I continued, has victims as well inside the U.S. For instance, CPUSA leader Gus Hall was jailed for eight years and former CPUSA chair Henry Winston went blind during imprison- ment for lack of treatment. Another conference participant, Ring Lardner Jr., novelist, screenwriter, winner of two Academy Awards and a blacklisted member of the “Hollywood Ten,” was jailed by the House Un- American Activities Committee in 1950. Actor-singer Paul Robeson and black scholar Dr. W.E.B. Dubois had their passports seized. By what law, I asked, had the United States the right to impose on the Guya- nese people “an opportunist racist and demagogue intent only on personal power.” That was how former Prime Minister L.F.S. Burnham was des- cribed by the British, according to his- torian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in his book, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. Such imposition, along with imposed “development strategies,” coupled with lack of democracy (through continuous rigged elections), racial and political discrimination, extravagance and cor- ruption, led to what Jamaican scholar Orlando Patterson called “a calamity” — economic collapse, social crisis and flight of capital and human resources. Instead of being an asset, Guyana is a liability to its to its Caribbean Com- munity (Caricom) partners. It is not playing its role in world trade and development. Since 1973, imports from the industrialized countries have been severely curtailed. Containment and domination in the end does not pay. How does it profit the West to install people like Burn- ham, Duvalier, Somoza, Pinochet, Marcos and Diem and prop up client states like El Salvador and Guyana in the Third World? A new policy is needed, I argued. Anti-communism must give way to detente, peaceful coexistence, genuine interdependence and live-and-let-live. Cheddi Jagan, chair of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) of Guyana, is leader of the Official Opposition in his country’s parliament. In 1953, the PPP was elected by a large majority only to be unseated by British troops 133 days later. ‘ stave off mounting criticism at home and abroad over i “ environmental destruction in the Amazon by declaring — World News Environmentalists put pressure on Brazil Brazilian President Jose Sarney last week sought to” that Brazil is the target of ‘‘a nasty campaign” and urging national unity “to repel what we can : calumny against our country.” The issue is the Brazilian and worldwide alarm Over ~ the environmental destruction of the vast Amazon River basin and its rain forest, often called “the green lungs of Earth.” The forest is being cut down at the rate of 100 acres every minute. In Sarney’s nationwide radio- TV broadcast April 6 he claimed that only five per cent of the Amazon region has been { deforested. But Brazilian and foreign critics charge the real figure is 12 per cent, an area larger than Great Britain. Since th forest is one of the chief world areas where the trees ta in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, the cutting adds t the “greenhouse effect” of global atmospheric warm= SARNEY ing. “3 Sarney unveiled a program called, “Our Natural — Resources,” which he said would prohibit export of logs — form the Amazon ban the use of mercury by gold” miners and authorize the use of the Brazilian Army to prevent deforestation. The program is to cost a mere $178 million in its first year. el Among the latest critics of Brazil’s ecological situa- _ tion were 30 leading Latin American writers who have launched an international campaign to save the Amazon. Their statement, drawn up by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mex- ican poet Homero Aridjis, called for an for an interna- tional tribunal to pass judgement on the Brazilian environmental destruction and the massacre of Indian peoples. “We believe the historic responsibility for the des- _ truction of the Amazon forest is too heavy and future — generations of Latin Americans will not forgive you for not having done everything possible to avoid it,” the writers said in a letter to Sarney. The letter, delivered to the Brazilian Embassy in Mexico City, was returned, unopened. Brazil is the world’s biggest debtor country and owes $113 billion on which it pays $12 billion in interest annually. The destruction and pillage of the country’s — resources is elosely tied to the debt. The World Bank © and other financial institutions are heavily involved in “developing” resources in the Amazon region. The Brazilian Communist Party has urged all its members to join in the nationwide effort to save the Amazon and has been severely critical of Sarney. Apartheid troops monitoring UNTAG As South African troops stood by with armoured cars and their helicopters flew overhead, United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) soldi- ers set up so-called “UN-monitored assembly points” in northern Namibia, inviting SWAPO fighters to sur- render their arms. Not surprisingly, SWAPO fighters have declined the offer, which clearly means being handed over to South African troops and certain death. Media reports indicate the little confidence Namibi- ans had in UNTAG’s ability to control the situation is quickly vanishing as South African forces and their trained police continue to hunt SWAPO units. “The UN isn’t monitoring South Africa”, one Namibian said. “South Africa is monitoring the UN.” Black life expectancy drops Overall Black American life expectancy — now at nearly 75 years — continues to rise, but life expectancy for Afro-Americans dropped from 69.5 years to 69.4 years between 1985 and 1986, the annual Public Health Service report showed March 15. Between 1985 and 1986, the overall infant mortality rate declined two per cent, reaching 10.4 deaths per 1,000 live births for the lowest rate since 1965. But the rate for Afro-American infants, 18 deaths per 1,000 live births, remained twice as high as the rate for white infants, 8.9 deaths per 1,000.