The Week ending 2 July 2000
CONSUMER POWER?
Consumer activist Ralph Nader and Green Party candidate for the American Presidential election, threatens to upset the two-party apple cart. Fears are that Nader's seven per cent showing in the opinion polls could cost a jaded Democratic Party the presidency. The decision of the Teamsters Union to back Nader's candidacy is all the more surprising given Nader's backing for the deregulation of trucking, airline, communication and other industries that led to union de-recognition, as well as his own union-busting role as employer at the Multinational Monitor. In 1984 Nader sacked journalist Tim Shorrock for running a story on Bechtel's alleged bribery of South Korean officials to get construction contracts. When staff applied for union recognition with the National Labour Relations Board, Nader had them locked out.
Nader's consumer activism is addressed to the middle classes. His legal activism is dedicated to curbing corporate power in the name of the free market, arguing that 'the two pillars of the American legal system are the Law of Torts and the Law of Contracts'. In fact the precipitate growth of compensation claims in the United States represents an attempt to regulate markets at the expense of innovation.
For a consumer activist, Nader despises the mass consumption associated with the American working class, which he parodies in the following terms:
'They fill the boys toykits with military toys of mass destruction. The cosmetic companies go at the girls at age seven. Kindercare raises the kids, McDonalds feeds them, Time/Warner entertains them, when they become early teenagers the addictive industries claw at them in such subtle and nonsubtle ways--tobacco, alcohol, drugs.'
The barely concealed subtext is hatred of the mass consumer, more than mass consumption. Nader deplores the success of US agriculture at feeding the masses, preferring the more refined, small-scale production characteristic of middle class consumption: 'instead of highly chemical- intensive agriculture, burning the earth, contaminating farmers', he says, we need to go backwards to 'organic agriculture, all kinds of crop rotation' - which would lead to massive food shortages.
Nader's emergence as the latest 'third party' is a consequence of the demotivation of the mass electorate and the monopoly that a shrunken pool of middle class voters exercise over US elections. In 1994 60 per cent of Americans with family incomes over $50,000 voted, while just 27 per cent of those with incomes under $15,000 did. With such skewed electorate, Nader should do well.
HAIN LOSER IN ZIMBABWE POLL
'I think the outcome is a complete vindication of the strong position that both I and Robin Cook took', said British Foreign Office minister Peter Hain. Hardly - the Zimbabwean people returned ZANU-PF to power in the biggest turnout since ever in Zimbabwe's history, despite the British Foreign Office's crass attempts to demonise President Mugabe and his supporters, whilst openly backing supporting Morgan Tsvangari (who failed to get elected). On the eve of the election Foreign Minister Robin Cook charged that Mugabe was set to ignore the election result. In the event it was the British Foreign Office that ignored the will of the Zimbabwean people, making it clear that their campaign to oust Mugabe in favour of Tsvangari would continue.
Former colonial rulers the British have made three charges against Mugabe: that he is anti-gay, that he sanctioned massacres of Matabele in the eighties, and that he ordered the occupation of white farms. But none of them are the real reason for the destabilisation attempt. First, Mugabe's sexual conservatism is hardly surprising. Did Britain imagine that his Jesuit education would enlighten him, or perhaps his later Maoist ideological training? For a man of his generation and background Mugabe's views, while illiberal, are not news. Second, Britain was well aware of the repressive policy in Matabeleland and supported it while Mugabe was seen as a trustworthy ally. Third, Britain imposed a protected status for white farmers who have monopolised African land in the Lancaster House agreement - an agreement which Mugabe supported. The drive for land reform today is one that the President has held off as long as he could.
The real reason for Britain's campaign against Zimbabwe is Mugabe's intervention in the Congo War. Britain and America backed the overthrow of President Mobutu by US agent and now Rwandan president Paul Kagame. Kagame's mainly Tutsi army occupied the Congo, put a Congolese stooge, Laurent Kabila in power, and set about slaughtering Hutus taking refuge there. But Kabila turned on his Rwandan backers and sought help to rid the Congo of the Rwandan occupation. Mugabe's contribution of MiG fighters and troops tipped the balance of power. Kabila's Congolese forces, with Zimbabwean backing rounded on the Rwandan troops in the Congo valley, who were rescued at the last minute by US helicopters.
Mugabe's Congolese adventure was a useful distraction from difficulties at home. But Britain was never going to forgive Mugabe for his disruption of the new order that Washington and London were constructing in the Horn of Africa. Attempts to overthrow Mugabe will continue.
MBEKI GETS AIDS
More than five thousand scientists signed a statement condemning South African president Thabo Mbeki for hosting a conference on AIDS, where the dissident views of Peter Duesberg on the disease were discussed. Duesberg, and a small minority of researchers question the presumption that Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is caused solely by the HIV virus.
Duesberg's scepticism flies in the face of the medical evidence. But unfortunately the politicisation of AIDS by health-care professionals in North America and Europe has created room for doubt. In an attempt to secure funds for care and research activists systematically overstated the projected rate of infection. Such campaigns played on people's most irrational fears as well as promoting sexual conservatism. They also increased scepticism about public health campaigns on AIDS, as the predicted epidemic failed to materialise in the heterosexual population.
Africa has a special reason to be sceptical about Western health campaigns over AIDS. For the last decade the World Bank and the United Nations has prioritised AIDS-related work in Africa at the expense of all other kinds of health care. To secure funding, African governments and their health workers are encouraged to report ever-greater numbers of AIDS cases. Unlike diagnoses in Europe and America, these are often on the basis of symptoms, without the back-up of expensive HIV tests (an ironic endorsement of Duesberg's thesis). Critics doubt whether all of the cases reported are AIDS, but may include many other diseases. The Western preoccupation with the AIDS crisis in Africa carries deep psychological anxieties about African fecundity and sexuality. Africans are rightly sceptical about Western health-care workers whose singular ambition is to stop Africans from having sex.
Duesberg is almost certainly wrong, but he has a right to pursue his research - a right that the closed shop of heavily-politicised health professionals in America and Europe have refused to recognise. It is to Mbeki's credit that he is prepared to allow free enquiry in medical science that Europeans will not. The scientists who have signed the appeal might reflect on Einstein's response on hearing that a book had just been published with fifty articles disproving the theory of relativity. 'Fifty? It should only take one.' -- James Heartfield
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