OPINION Thursday, November 16, 1989 Salvadoran rebel offensive shows popular support: Page 4 The Michigan Daily I Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan 420 Maynard St, fol. C, No. 52 Ann Arbor, MI 481 9 109 Our war, their war By Philip Cohen V ,- . I. V. - Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily. Fh ht a nti-emitism LAST WEEK an act of anti-Semitic vandalism took place outside the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity house. Two cars parked outside the fraternity, which is publicly known as an organization with '4-majority of Jewish members, were covered with spray-painted swastikas. 'This act of violence is not isolated, but rather another incident to add to a long list of anti-Semitic incidents which are taking place in Ann Arbor and across the country. Last month three Jewish students at Brooklyn College were beaten by 15 white man wielding broken bottles and yelling anti-Semitic insults. Last year a placard constructed by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee was spray-painted with swastikas; several years ago a swastika was emblazoned on the side of the East Engineering building; the SAM house has been similarly attacked; Neo-Nazis have marched and rallied at the Federal Building on Liberty street; and "JAP" baiting - attributing derogatory char- acteristics in reference to Jewish women - is a common occurrence. Anti-Semitism has also been imple- mented as policy in many institutions - both overtly and covertly. The onginal charters of many fraternity house read "for white Anglo-Saxon Christians" only. Several institutions of higher education have had in the past "ceilings" on the number of Jewish students admitted, much like today's "unofficial" ceilings levied against Asian and Asian-American students. Such discrimination and harassment is becoming all too acceptable to the mainstream public opinion, as evi- denced by the success of Klansman David Duke in the Republican Party, as well as the appointment of William Rehnquist to the Supreme Court de- spite the fact that a stipulation in the contract on his house says he will not sell to Blacks or Jews. Proponents of anti-Semitism today continue to embrace the symbols and rhetoric espoused by Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in the 1930s and 40s. They consciously choose to reintroduce signs from the past in an effort to reju- venate the hatred and emotions associ- ated with the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust. Incidents such as that of last week and institutions which discriminate against groups of people must not go unnoticed and must not be forgotten. They must be challenged and repudi- ated, and the struggle against anti- Semitism must continue. The events of the recent offensive by rebel guerillas in El Salvador are unfolding rapidly and unpredictably; accurate infor- mation on the situation is hard to come by. But the scope of the offensive already, and the severity of the retaliation by the government's military forces, have some immediate consequences which bear analy- sis. First of all are the conflicting reports on the amount of support the rebels have. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which has been engaged in a military struggle throughout the 1980s, claims now and has always claimed to have the support of the majority of El Salvador's population. And there are facts to support this claim. In recent years the guerillas have operated more or less freely in about one-third of the country - areas which they have termed "liberated zones." Here, with the support of the rural popula- tion, the FMLN has established coopera- tive farms, regional governments, literacy and health campaigns. During the last few years, the FMLN has reached out to, and gained the open support of, such ostensibly moderate groups as trade unions and human rights groups. And in this week's recent offensive it- self there is substantial evidence for wide- spread support for the rebels. The offen- sive was months in the planning, weapons and supplies were transported secretly into the capital city of San Salvador; guerillas took up residence throughout the city, concealed among numerous supporters in the shanty-town areas which sprawl throughout the city's suburbs. When the offensive began, the FMLN was fully mobilized within the city. And as the battle has raged within the capital (and other cities, though the U.S media has been largely confined to San Salvador), the rebels have been able to dig in to friendly neighborhoods, preparing to HIV: A By Mike Sobel This is the second of a four-part series In the first part of the series, I proposed that evidence supports a claim that the rise of the AIDS virus roughly corresponds with the advent of recombinant DNA technology. In this part, I shall propose that the AIDS virus has no apparent ances- tor and that elements of the virus itself generate doubt as to whether it is, in fact, a natural virus. I shall use a fairly techni- calsbut essential analysis of the virus itself to support this claim. The AIDS virus is a diabolically effec- tive parasite. Once the virus enters the human bloodstream, it primarily targets the T4 lymphocytes of the immune sys- tem. It is believed that its surface protein (GP 120) binds with CD4, the phenotypic marker of the T4 cell. The CD4 molecule which, as a surface receptor, identifies and draws in other molecules required for cell wage a drawn-out battle. In addition, pre- viously non-military groups are reportedly announcing they will take up arms to join the insurrection - among them are CO- MADRES, the committee of mothers and relatives of the victims of government death-squad violence, whose office was targeted in a government bombing last month. In spite of facts and testimony to the contrary, the U.S. government, and most of the media, have continued to maintain the position that the offensive, by func- tion of its scale and apparent "desperation," represents the rebels' last- ditch attempt to spark an insurrection from a population in which they have little support, with little chance of success. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the U.S. establishment must main- tain that the revolution has no popular base if it is to continue to assert that the rebels are puppets and creations of "communist" countries: the Soviet Union, Cuba, Nicaragua. Further, the claim that the FMLN is weak and lacks support - while it might seem to make the justification for more di- rect U.S. intervention in the war more dif- ficult - actually helps support such a move by perpetuating the myth that the role of the U.S. in El Salvador is to insure the survival of a stable, popular democracy in a struggle against outside aggression. The question of U.S. intervention in the war has an ironic tone to begin with, be- cause of the massive military and eco- nomic support the United States govern- ment has supplied to the Salvadoran gov- ernment for the last 10 years. Meanwhile the media has announced that the right- wing ARENA government, headed by death-squad leader Alfredo Christiani, has "not asked for U.S. assistance" in the fighting. The current offensive has been compared to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the escalation of attacks by the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in 1978 - the last year before their victory. In both cases rebel groups suffered heavy losses, but iron-fisted, des-. perate retaliation by controlling military regimes resulted in an increased level of mobilization among the population. In Nicaragua the Somoza regime struck back with carpet-bombings of neighborhoods in Managua, as it now appears the govern- ment of El Salvador is prepared to re- spond. The declaration of 24-hour curfews in areas controlled by the FMLN, though civilian residents remain in their homes, essentially represents the government's admission that the war pits the military against the majority of the people. In rec- ognizing the same principle, The FMLN seems prepared to accept civilian casualties by the government in exchange for in- creased polarization and mobilization, and the government appears poised to deliver. The U.S. media is now unable to avoid reporting the death and destruction inflicted by U.S.-supplied planes and weaponry in the poor neighborhoods of San Salvador, where FMLN support is highest. Unmen- tioned as yet in the major media is the military assault and bombing at the Uni- versity of El Salvador, and the capture of student organizers there. The Bush Administration has been care- ful not to rule out the possibility of direct U.S. military intervention, though it con- tinues to stress the supposed "control over the situation" held by the Salvadoran regime. If the situation does indeed worsen for the government, making that position impossible to hold, U.S. citizens - espe- cially students - should be prepared to re- spond to more massacres by the Salvado- ran military, and an increased level of par- ticipation by the United States. Philip Cohen is a Daily Opinion Asso0 ciate Editor, and a member of the Latin American Solidarity Committee. One of the cars painted with swastikas last Friday. The Wonderful World of Disney: Making people happy W HEREVER HE IS, Walt Disney must be smiling; the Magic Kingdom is growing in ways that would warm his heart. In Florida, it includes The Epcot Center - a glimpse of a future where the trains run on time - and the new Disney-MGM movie studio-theme park that will produce more of the full-length cartoons Walt Disney pi- oneered and so loved. There is now a Disney World in Tokyo; it outgrosses its U.S. counterparts by nearly two-to- one. EuroDisney, in a Paris suburb, will open just in time to take advan- tage of the unification of European markets in 1992. Worldwide, Disney has tripled its profits in the last five years. B ut what exactly is Disney? Or, to put the question the way Disney man- agement does in their training sessions for new workers, "What does Disney make?" A few films, some Mickey Mouse ears - Disney produces entertain- ment, not goods. According to the usual definition, Disney is a service industry. In fact, other service com- panies have come to regard Disney as a model: Lisney's executive seminars on how to train employees are the field's hottest, in a very hot field: from flying planes to flipping burgers, 75 percent of the U.S. labor force now has service-sector jobs. Fifteen years ago, it was only 40 percent (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics). The seminars, called "The Disney with their peers. "Don't take yourself seriously," goes one Disney slogan, "take your job seriously.". A variety of tools helps managers' efforts - company songs (like the ones sung at the weekly pep rallies at Domino Farms), uniforms, profit- sharing schemes, whatever will make a worker forget his or her concerns about wages, working conditions, and job security. The means may be be- nign - many, like profit sharing, are borrowed from socialism - but the end is worker disempowerment. All decisions come from above. In most cases, service industry workers will only buy the company's line for so long. McDonald's keeps its revolving door of employment spin- ning so fast that it budgets as much for hiring and training as it does for wages. Similar turnover rates charac- terize service companies. Through its seminars, Disney is try- ing to change that. It shows companies how to better select and train workers who will stay, and stay docile. Hun- dreds of corporations, from Chase Manhattan Bank to Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, have sent their hiring staffs to Disney U. They learn how to sift out potential unionizers, and how to hold onto workers at Disney-level wages - currently no more than seven dollars an hour. But even Disney and its mammoth doses of pixie dust can't keep workers down forever. In 1987, Forida Disney World employees struck for union : n orphai Tat seems to be the primary transactiva- tor of HIV expression. As Gallo states in his 1987 article published in the Int Arch Allergy Applied Immunol, tat might also control expression of the trs gene product which "apparently governs the splicing of mRNA for envelope andcore structural proteins, a regulatory mechanism which may be novel in molecular biology." The trs gene upregulates HIV synthesis by transacting an anti-repression mecha- nism. The 3' orf gene seems to promote downregulation of virus expression. Fi- nally, the R gene codes for an immuno- genic protein, the function of which is unknown. Because, as mentioned in part 1, HIV-1 has been classed as a lentivius, some have tried to uncover the mysteries surrounding its origin and pathogenesis by studying it in the context of animal lentiviruses such as the visna-maedi virus of sheep and the equine infectious anemia virus of horses (EIAV). These viruses seem to target the macrophage/monocyte cells of the im- mune system and cause progressive, fatal disease in their hosts. The visna virus also has two open reading frames analogous to the sor and tat genes on the HIV-1 genome. Some have suggested that HIV-1 and these animal lentiviruses may have evolved from a common ancestor. In his 1987 article published in Proc Natl Aced Sci USA, McClure constructed a phylogenic tree indicating that 1) HIV, visna and EIAV evolved from a common progenitor and 2) HIV diverged from this ancestor before the other two. Yet, visna was isolated from European sheep in the 1930s, fifty years before HIV-1 was iso- lated. As Gallo pointed out, "the analogy to these viruses of ruminants should not be overdrawn because there are important differences such as the lack of immune suppression and T4 trophism by the len- tiviruses and their capacity to be casually transmitted. Thus, it seems unlikely that HIV-1 evolved from any known animal lentivirus. Much attention has also been focused on other known 'primate' retroviruses in order to uncover the mystery of HIV-1. These include simian T-cell lymphotrophic virus type III (STLV-III) and human T-cell lym- photrophic virus type IV (HTLV-IV). While there are some ostensibly signifi- cant similarities, I maintain that HIV-1 is All of these viruses seem to have an affinity for CD4 bearing T4 lymphocytes. STLV-III causes immunodeficiency i macaques, hence the variant name simi immunodeficiency virus (SIV), but it i non-pathogenic in mangabeys and african green monkeys (its natural host). HTLV- IV was recently isolated from healthy Sengalese and has a possible variant. LAV-2 (HIV-2), isolated from West Africans with AIDS-like illness. Yet, in his 1987 article, published in Contrib Microbiol Immunol, Folks points out that the pathogenesis of HIV-2 is still under debate. Bcause AIDS seems to have originated in Africa and a seemingly related virus was isolated from indigenous monkeys, Guinta proposed in a 1987 letter published in Na- ture that HIV-1 "descended from a mon- key virus , probably via the passage to man of STLV-III." STLV-III shares over- all 45 percent sequence homology with HIV-1 and 95 percent sequence homology with HTLV-IV. As Arya mentions in hisO 1987 article phblished in Nature, "Korfield et al. have noted that HTLV-IV and STLV-III may not be independent virus isolates but result from transmission of the same virus to different cell cultures in the laboratory." So, as Chakrabarti points out in his 1987 article published in Nature, "Even if it is supposed that mon- keys could be an accessory resevoir for HIV-2, available sequence data are incon- sistent with the idea that AIDS emerged from recent transmission of SIV to hu- mans, followed by rapid viral evolution towards HIV-1." AIDS did not come from monkeys. Because, again, the pathogenesis of HIV-2 is still in question and HIV-2 is yet to be firmly classified as a lentivirus, I maintain that until further research and se- quencing be done on HIV-2, HIV-1 is the only known human lenti retrovirus to date. HIV-1 is unusually unstable even for a lentivirus and it possesses an almost apoc- alyptic self-defense mechanism: the ability to mutate or possibly recombine so that there exist a number of antigenic variants within a single host. Some have suggested that because it is so unstable and has been in the human population for a relatively significant amount of time, more efficient means of transmission may already exist. virus metabolism, sees the virus as innocuous and draws it into the cell. Once inside the cell, reverse transcrip- tion takes place. The virus sheds its its coat and its genomic RNA is transcribed into DNA by reverse transcriptase. This integrated, or proviral, DNA becomes a permanent part of the host chromosomal DNA. After integration of the provirus, infection may assume a latent period until the cell is activated. Upon activation, the proviral DNA then translates into viral genomic RNA and messenger RNA (mRNA). Viral assembly occurs with bud- ding of the mature virion from the cell surface. Once budding occurs, it is possi- ble that a massive increase in the perme- ability of the cell membrane causes cell death. Exactly how the virus is able to suddenly kill enough T4 cells, which are critical for immune function, is still under some debate. Another aspect of the virus that is still in question involves the make-up and mechanism of the proviral genome itself. HIV-1 has several more genes then other known retroviruses. Eight genes have been identified, the exact function of many of ,thnnh ran .nlrnn,. n i