Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.
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(Opens with 10:50 minutes of funk and R&B music)
Jones: –and refuse to answer any further questions. Stand by. (Pause, including several seconds of open mike with no voice)
The Western press has of late intensified its slander campaign in defense of human rights in the socialist countries. Its aim is to distort the principles of socialism and divert the attention to the working masses in capitalist countries from reactions onslaught on their rights from the struggle for freedom and democracy. But the relaxation of international tension has created more favorable conditions for telling the world the truth about socialism as it exists today, about the socialists’ way of life. Billions of people in the capitalist and developing countries are convinced that socialism as a system has been firmly established and has no need for any modernization. Genuine humanism and rejection of propaganda and violence, war, of the racist, fascist and other misanthropic ideas are inherent in socialist democracy. Thanks to the efforts primarily of the socialist states, United Nations has adopted documents on the economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights of individuals.
As Premier Leonid Brezhnev said at the twenty-fifth Congress of the great Communist Party of the Soviet Union, “For us, the democratic is that which serves the peoples’ interest, the interest of the building of socialism. We reject everything that runs counter to these interests, and no one can persuade us that this is the wrong approach. We know exactly where we are going as we improve our political system. We are fully convinced that the course we have chosen is the right one. Today we know, not only from theory, but also from long years of practice, that just as genuine democracy is impossible without socialism, socialism is impossible without a steady development of democracy. The kind of freedom and humanism which Marxism and Leninism recognizes serves the interests, not of ruling exploiter classes, but of all members of society, all working people equally.
“The chief bearer of the principles of socialist democracy, the guarantor of its successful advancement, is the Communist Party of the USSR, which by its inner structure is a model of good organization and democracy. The Common– Communist Party of the United Soviet Socialist Republics is a voluntary organization, uniting more than 16 million of the foremost representatives of the working class, the collective farm, peasantry and the intelligentsia. Its activity is based on the Leninist principles of collective guidance, personal responsibility for the task assigned, and all-around development of inter-party democracy. (Microphone clicks off and on) The Communist Party resolves on genuinely scientific basis the complex economic, political, social, ethical, and other problems related to the development of democracy. Guided by the general laws of social development, it ensures the stability of the working class alliance with the farmers and the intelligentsia, and the social and political unity of the entire Soviet society. (Microphone clicks off and on)
“The experience of USSR and other socialist countries allied with the true liberator of the world’s oppressed, the vanguard of Marxist-Leninism, testifies that only a working class party of such a type is capable of ensuring consistent implementation of the principles of socialist democracy, for it pursues a class policy, adheres to the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism, is consolidated and bound in unity with all of the working class people.
“While socialist democracy is advancing, the political system of capitalism entering into its senile stages of monopoly capitalism, is becoming increasingly unstable, and bourgeoisie democracy is in a state of crisis. Prolonged government crisises, conflicts between bourgeoisie reformist and conservative trends and reactionary trends in ruling circles, political scandals and corruption among government officials are common in all capitalist countries today. (Microphone clicks off and on) The major social problems today cannot be resolved within the framework of bourgeoisie society, and by means of bourgeoisie democracy. The radical social changes that have become a necessity go far beyond the bounds of the historically-obsolete bourgeoisie democracy. The transition from capitalism to socialism, which constitutes the main content of our era, also means transition from bourgeoisie democracy to a socialist democracy. As [Vladimir] Lenin said, all nations will arrive at socialism. This is inevitable. But all will do so in not exactly the same way. Each will co– contribute something of its own to some form of democracy to some variety of the dictatorship or the will of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformations in the different aspects of social life. (Microphone clicks off and on)
“Contemporary world developments have confirmed this. They have shown that, despite the differences in the conditions prevailing in different countries, despite the diversity of forms of transition to socialism, the basic laws of this historical process can neither be s– abrogated nor ignored. One of these laws stipulates that socialist transformations can be carried out, not only by government of the working class and its allies, a government capable of defending the revolutionary (unintelligible word) and fulfilling its constructive functions, encouraging and inspiring the peoples to work creatively and winning the active support of the mass of the working people, as has been done in the Soviet Union, and through its avant-garde leadership in liberation throughout all the lesser developed areas of the world. The Leninist doctrine of socialist democracy, first translated into reality by the Soviet people under the leadership of the working class and its vanguard, Lenin’s Communist Party, is of great international significance to all of us in the struggle for liberation of oppressed peoples throughout the world.”
Thus ends commentary on the news. The Ethiopian and Somali crisis has been somewhat abated, though Ethiopia has stated that any further invasion into the Ogaden will now cause a response of the Ethiopian peoples’ forces to fight and settle the matter on Somalian territory.
The Anglo and British peace plan for troubled Zimbabwe, or what is commonly known as Rhodesia – study your geographical maps in the pavilion – has not been yet accepted for discussion by the Ian Smith regime. Those brave leaders of the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe have offered to meet with Ian Smith and his interim illegal government. However, at this point in the morning news this Monday, Ian Smith regime has refused to meet with the British Foreign Minister [Lord David Owen] and the English– I mean the USA Secretary of State [Cyrus Vance] in an attempt to bring about a settlement that would coincide to US interests. Stand by. (Pause of several moments)
There have been considerable layoffs throughout US auto industry and related industries. Fireston– the (unintelligible word) Firestone subdivision is to shut Akron plant. The Firestone Tire Company announced that it would shut down its last remaining tire production plant in Akron, Ohio, throwing over one thousand workers out of their jobs this week. The shutdown is the latest in a series reducing tire jobs in Akron to half their 1950 level. Some 51,000 workers in Akron were employed in tire production in 1950, as compared to less than 27,000 today. Firestone’s Akron plants were all unionized by the United Rubber Workers. Now three of its 12 large US production plants, all built over the last 25 years in the South, are non-union, which seems to be the pacesetter today, as unions are becoming less recognized and more scabra– uh, labor have been introduced, and the greatest union effort in United Mine Workers went down to resounding defeat because of the reactionary leadership of the boss of the AFL-CIO’s refusal to give any of his contingency funds, emergency funds uh, which are plush to assist these brave miners who wish– went into a 115-day strike against the M– Miner and Bituminous Coal Owners. Nonetheless, little of their demands were met, as President [Jimmy] Carter threatened them with the Army and (Pause) employed against them and the will of the people, the dread Taft-Hartley law.
Trade union movement in the United States is in a serious state of disarray, and there’s a great deal of union busting, as I mentioned earlier in the news, going on, even in the so-called progressive media field, quote unquote, liberal media field. It is time for working class solidarity in the United States. Three ingredients necessary to a successful revolution, and also necessary to stopping the rise of fascism: a strong communist party, strong socialist movements, and a strong, free independent trade union movement. Certainly of the latter two, we know from our own experience, they are not present at this time in US society. We must continue to give our loyal support in writing to our friends back there, in our churches, who are carrying on the struggle in their way, until such a time when we can be of direct assistance and successful assistance to the forces representing change in US society. (Pause)
Little hope is given that opponents can kill the dreaded police state bill, Senate Bill 1 revised as Senate Bill 1437, and known as House Bill 6869. Strong forces of the moderate and the right in both the Democrat and the Republican Party are forming strategy meetings, lobbying to get this successor of the notorious, fascist Senate 1 bill through the House of Representatives.
Prospects for national health insurance are fading. Is national health insurance about to go the way of welfare reform, full employment, and cuts in Pentagon spending? Recently-initiated negotiations between the White House and backers of a somewhat comprehensive health insurance bill indicate that compromises are brewing which would essentially negate the goal of relatively inexpensive health coverage for all Americans. The White House confirmed this fact on the fourteenth of April. (Pause)
The report in New York Times said that Senator Edward Kennedy and leaders of the United Auto Workers and AFL-CIO had been meeting with Carter Administration aides in effort to devise new health insurance legislation, but it had come off unsuccessfully.
Thus ends the reading of the news. Some inspiration from Lenin, the Soviet Union, and of commentary. Let us have a good production day to show our appreciation for the privilege of working in Guyana, and being able to extend more readily our medical care– our free medical care to our neighbors. If we produce more, then we can liberate more who need to be at a place of peace, where they can im– build and implement their socialist philosophy in this lovely agricultural project. Appreciate the beauty of the morning that surrounds you. Just look at the glorious opportunity of living in such a marvelous paradise of nature. Let’s be appreciative and show that appreciation in our production schedules. Then we will be awarded by socialist consciousness and other kinds of special merit awards in the Peoples Town Forum Rally, which will probably meet this evening. The Town Forum meeting will be held Monday evening at 7:30. All must be looking forward to Town Forum meeting, Peoples Rally, 7:30, Monday evening. (Pause) Good morning, comrades, and all of my love.
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(Side 2)
Jones: We have been fortunate, comrades, in having Comrade [Aleksandro] Voropaev and his companion with us, the correspondent from Tass. He’ll be leaving the area in a few minutes. We have been overjoyed by their visit, and we give them our pledge of solidarity in the international struggle for Marxist-Leninist principles and for liberation of all peoples throughout the world.
News of the morning. (Pause) Apparently, The New York Post is getting ready to try to bust its unions, as The Washington Post has already succeeded in doing. As an April sixteenth contract deadline approaches, the New York afternoon daily last week said that in the event of a strike, it would continue publication with scab labor. To prove its point, the management produced an experimental edition, using supervisorial personnel and non-union workers imported from another newspaper in the Post chain. New York Post is owned by the rightwing and certainly racist Rupert Murdoch, who has more and more made an appearance as a newspaper mongol [mogul] in the US scene. He was the principal inspiration of the first news attack upon Peoples Temple because of its socialist commitment, in conjunction, as you remember, with the Hearst newspaper chain.
The Post contracts with four unions expire at the same time as those of two other New York City dailies, The New York Times and The Daily News. At the Times and the News, management is also adopting a union-busting posture, although neither paper has imported scabs in anticipation of a strike. Some ten unions, including the Newspaper Guild, mailers and press operators, are negotiating with the three newspapers. The contracts are the first to be negotiated at the papers since the 1975 strike at The Washington Post, when the newspaper, considered one of the liberal bastions of printed media in US, ousted the militant press operators’ union after a bitter yearlong strike. The Washington Post, like The New York Post, under reactionary Australian owner Rupert Murdoch, trained scab personnel in anticipation of a strike, and when the press operators walked out, the Post replaced them permanently. Stand by. (Pause)
On Sunday last, the Guyana Peace Council sponsored a birthday commera– commemoration of the great black American singer, Paul Robeson, who as you know, I had the pleasure of working with closely in the early fifties. Paul Robeson is known to the whole world for his great voice, which resounded through concert halls, worker camps, revolutionary meetings, and even on the battlefields during the Spanish Civil war. The function took place at Freedom House, where tributes were made and recordings of his voice were heard by all of those who remember his great contribution to the working class struggle. (Microphone clicks off and on)
Bert Lance, President Jimmy Carter’s buddy and link to the business world, has been, according to The Manchester Guardian, han– hand– hanky-pankying with the banks again, or rather, he’s been caught at it again. He never did stop, it turns out, not even while he was budget director and the most powerful man in Carter’s cabinet. Not even though he swore he would cut all personal business connections when he took office. It is the feeling of great segments of the European press that Mr. Carter will be in great difficulty, because he continues to support his former cabinet aide and (unintelligible word) Bert Lance, and Bert Lance still is carrying a diplomatic passport. Instead of stopping his activities, he branched out, according to The Guardian, the questionable banking deals and million-dollar personal borrowings that forced his resi– resignation from the administration last September were expanded to recent months into an illegal intercontinental operation. Meanwhile, his friend, the present– president, thoughtfully expedited Lance in his intercontinental business travels by allowing him to hold on to his special diplomatic passport that had been his as a cabinet officer. On at least one trip this month, early part of the month, Lance even billed himself as Special Envoy of President Carter. This was too much, and the authorities evidently decided that they had to do something. As a result, Lance has been asked to turn in his special passport.
More important than that slap on the wrist were the late March charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission – SEC – that Lance and nine associates, the SEC charged, were guilty of unlawful conspiracy secretly to acquire control of a two point two billion bank holding company, the Financial General Bank Shares, Incorporated, of Washington, DC. Lance had expressed interest in a leadership role at this banking institution.
In this venture, Bert Lance went abroad for backing, reaching out for oil money. His new partners included the head of the Saudi Arabian CIA and the head of the rapidly-expanding new London Bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the BCCI. Before Lance took office in Carter’s administration, he was offered a chance to buy control of FG. He was already known to the owners and officers, because it was from FG that he had bought control of the National Bank of Georgia. That deal did not go through. But in spring 1977, according to Guardian, when Lance was a member of the Cabinet, he met at a Washington club with representatives of PG (pause) owners and management to discuss the FG again. By that time, of course, Lance had sworn to the Senate that he would cut all old business ties. Sometime later, Lance and a stockbroker friend from Little Rock, Arkansas [Jackson Thomas Stephens], suggested a pru– purchase of FG shares to a Pakistanian banker who founded BCCI in London in 1972, by the name of Ara [Agha] Hasan Abedi. Lance has worked for BCCI as an investment adviser. Abedi was involved in raising cash for hard-pressed Lance through the sale of Carter-Lance holdings in the National Bank of Georgia at a profit to Lance. Without attempting to unravel all the intricacies, the SEC charged that the Lance group had acquired 28 percent of FG without notifying the SEC– (Pause) Stand by– (Microphone clicks off and on) or the FG stockholders, as required by law.
The members of the conspiracy, according to the SEC, were the BCCI, Abedi, the banker from Pakistan, the Little Rock stockbroker, a Washington lawyer, FG stockholder, the president of FG, who happens to be an ex-Secretary of the Uyun– United States Navy, a Kuwait associate of Abedi, the banker from Pakistan, the Saudi Arabian intelligence man, and two members of the Abu Dhabi royal household, and Lance also, who had bought a small amount of stock in his wife LaBelle’s name. None of the accused, including Lance, denied the charges. Instead, on the day after the SEC announcement, they quietly agreed to a court settlement.
This indeed happens when people are not too controversial in political lifestyle. However, Congressman [Charles] Diggs, black congressman from Michigan, founder of the Black Caucus, and chairperson of the Congress Subcommittee on African Affairs, was not granted the opportunity to agree to a court settlement. He, as you know, faces 175 years in the penitentiary, based on charges of fraudulent misuse of his own funds. Interestingly enough, no such charge has ever been leveled at any white congressman while in office or chairing a committee or subcommittee. As you remember, the prominent and successful activist black woman leader in Pennsylvania [C. Delores Tucker], probably the next most prestigious black leader in the black caucus, Secretary of State of Pennsylvania, was also indicted and removed from office. We see a constant stream of harassment of racial minorities and (unintelligible word) brought to the attention of the public, they’re given little press attention in a book that was compiled by Lieutenant Governor [Mervyn] Dymally, who plans to visit our project in July and sent his warm regards again late Sunday evening. Also, Lieutenant Governor Dymally did this book on the smear and the dilemma of persecutions of black and Indian politicians, along with the Lieutenant Governor [George] Brown of Colorado.
We were also sent the warm regards of solidarity that we’ve had for years last evening from Angela Davis and Enola Maxwell. As we were corresponding over the amateur radio all night to attempt to show the humanitarian spirit of this socialist project, many amateur operators come on with great inquisitiveness throughout the United States, seeking to know more about this cooperative project and particularly its free medical care and its communal lifestyle. We are not allowed on amateur radio to get into the exact and precise discussion of our Marxist-Leninist views or socialist consciousness, but the esprit de couer of the project is picked up readily, and people stand in line (pause) for the last five hours, in fact, till six o’clock this morning, just to QSL, just to have a conversation with us here in Guyana. Many of those in the amateur frequency band are upper class professional people, and certainly none would represent anything less than the middle class, but they lead a life of boredom. The materialistic life in United States, its emphasis on property, putting property rights above human rights, the emptiness of its value system, leave these people who are even a part of the establishment of US society bored and lonely, to such a degree that many will stand in line for weeks – and have told us so – just waiting to have a conversation with us and to exchange an amateur card. Last evening was of course a very interesting evening to those that would be listening, because we received salutations from some of the greatest activist socialist and communist leaders in United States. As you know, Enola Maxwell, commissioner of human rights representative, has been under rather severe attack herself, but representing a more modest support than we had – as onl– she only has a few dozen in her neighborhood housing association – she is not seen by her own statements to be a threat to the existing order. Angela Davis of course undergoes constant harassment, as she has been receiving, according to her own report in her teaching experience in one little post that she’s been given in the Bay Area. Anyway, she sent her warmest regards to us, and we’re very appreciative of our eternal bond of friendship with Angela Davis and others of the activist consciousness that we just mentioned to you. Stand by. (Pause)
US farmland is reported to be the single most attractive item for foreign investors, according to a recent study by the European Investment Research Center, a private consulting firm based in Brussels. The consulting firm noted that Western European, Latin American and Japanese capitalist[s] invested over a billion dollars in US farm acreage in just the last part of last year, and according to the Commerce Department of USA, that figure accounts for one-third of all foreign direct investment in 1977. What we are witnessing, explained Agriculture Department economist Kenneth Crouse [phonetic], is the biggest continuing wave of investment in USA farmland since the turn of the century. However farm values have slipped in recent months, analysts observe that foreign land speculators are attracted to US farmland investment based on the long-term record of rising prices. Other factors include the falling dollar and the political instability of Europe and USA in general. According to Chicago’s Northern Trust Company, US farmland makes a good buy, especially for West European investors. The price tag on a prize acre of US farmland runs to about half of the three thousand value of that acre in France or West Germany. (Pause)
Landlord (Pause) allegedly protecting his property, and his property is a sacred cow of the United States society, in New York City, large tenement, slum tenement lando– uh, lord owner, Paul Monaco, shot first after it was too late for questions. The threat to Monaco’s extensive slum tenement properties was none other than an 11-year-old Ciprian Septimo, four foot nine inches, only 80 pounds. The Hispanic youth, possibly with a companion, innocently wandered into one of Monaco’s vacant slum apartments. The landlord later told police that he surprised the youngster – the frail youngster of only four foot nine inches and 80 pounds – he surprised him in the empty apartment, yelled for him to halt, and getting no response, as he ran away, pumped a .30-.30 Winchester rifle bullet into the intruder. The bullet pierced little Septimo’s left eye, is– exited through the back of his head, and knocked him off the window ledge to his death on the parking lot, three stories below. Septimo never had a chance against the landlord, because he could not hear the calls to halt, because he was a deaf-mute. The youngster also had a chronic heart condition.
The young victim’s neighbor and family last week expressed outrage at the murder. When you see this, do you shoot to kill in the head, demanded former light heavyweight boxing champ Jose Torres after the incident. Ciprian Septimo was playing with a seven-year-old son of mine. The Hispanic youth, considered underdeveloped, as many in that area of New York City are, often played in his immediate neighborhood with children only half his age because of his handicap. What kind of trouble could he get in, raged the dead boy’s father, also named Ciprian, a Dominican Republic native. He only played with five- and six-year-olds. Meanwhile, police– (tape cuts off)
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