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Exporting Capitalism
Aids relief in exchange for opening African markets by Carl Gauss There's always something fishy going on behind any aid: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=3707 Look at how the US plans on giving Aid to Africa. by Sophia Barkat re: Carl's post Yes. I always thought Foreign Aid programs were one way of creating a market for and sometimes keeping competition away from the US pharmaceutical companies. Why else do you think it's free? You can see this being done by the Media Industry much more openly. CNN-International and BBC are all free in Bangladesh. You can subscribe to MTV and VH-1 too but you have to pay your cable or Satellite provider. But CNN and BBC really helped the big media break into the international market. Now I believe people back home can subscribe to over sixty channels. It's a big market -- the world. The way US and WORLD BANK have been pushing medical aid has been this kind of program -- you must use products made by the US. Sometimes the FDA will ban a chemical and it will be sent off as foreign aid. Recall how DDT has been banned here, but it was part of the Aid package to Bangladesh. The birth-control market is another huge one --- though I hear that the BUSH policy is anti-birth control. In the past the US AID packages included NORPLANT - a very controversial birth-control method in the US and Western countries. It was shown to have adverse effects on women and also slowly rejected in many countries like Bangladesh. It was free and distributed by health and family planning organizations supported by foreign aid. It must also be noted that by using safer forms of birth-control also provided as foreign aid the populations of many countries like Bangladesh has fallen significantly -- the education of women and fathers has also helped in turning the average number of offsprings to 2 from 8 since 1970. Not surprising is that pharmaceutical corporations are pro-Republican if you look at http://www.opensecrets.org statistics for Election 2002. But whoever comes to power, one can imagine that the pharmaceutical industry -- a powerful industry -- will have a fair share of people in the Administration doing their bidding. It's part of the foreign policy. Thanks for sharing the article. I have been hearing so much about AIDS in Africa and how Nelson Mandela has been favoring it -- and Bill Gates and Jimmy Carter have been marketing it by their visits -- and how many African states have rejected it. I think a closer look at exactly what kind of drugs are being pushed should be noted. The Medical system in the US is so corrupt -- doctors on insurance company payrolls pushing certain kinds of drugs -- we should not be surprised that they have been exporting the same kind of products worldwide. I wonder if anyone is going to regulate this. The World Health Organization may be a panel, but then, it's nothing but a mouthpiece for global corporations when it comes to drugs. In fact, a couple of years ago, Christiana Amanpour of 60 Minutes did a special show on how one of the top-level people at WHO was running a business with American Drug Companies based out of NJ and how they were selling sugar pills to Africa. When patients were not surviving after taking the pills, doctors started testing the chemicals themselves, and found them to be sugar pills. They had been sent by the WHO. by Cherrie Lynn Lipsett Re: Carl's post A good and accurate article. Bush is governing like he did in Texas. Good cop-bad cop. He makes all these wonderful "compassionate" programs and then depends on the Republicans in Congress to not fund them. Of course, the fact that they are not funded never makes it into the press. He has never funded the "Leave No Child Behind" education program. I say he has not as the Republicans in Congress especially in the House are in lock step with Bush. If the programs are not funded they are not funded at Bush's request. The Republicans are a majority in Congress and can get anything Bush passes funded if Bush wants it funded. Yes, the AIDS Bill is a giveaway to the drug industry. The other industrialized nations will not go along with the Bush program. I am not sure how many African nations will go for the money. They do not want genetically altered food and I don't blame them. The rest of the industrialized nations are getting together and coming up with their own AIDS relief plan which is using cheap generic drugs produced else where and of course African countries will not have to accept genetically altered food. However, this priority is not a major one of the industrialized nations and I don't know how much work is actually being done on the program. Bush Administration's AIDS/HIV promise to Africa By Sophia Barkat As Bush touts his $15 billion funding for AIDS and HIV-stricken Africa and the New York Times headline runs: "Market ideology causes Ethiopian Famine", while the Globe and Mail nails it on the head with, "130 years running and imperialists still mix with bad weather to kill millions," one wonder what this AIDS package is all about. The Bush Administration is not known for its benevolence, after all. Spending $4 billion/day with one hand to occupy Iraq so that it may control Iraqi Oil, while slashing 1/3 of funding to health organizations providing basic immunization to developing countries: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=3869 Bush Jr.'s government wants us to believe they are about to do something good. Well, let's look at the offer to AFRICA. It's a 15 billion-dollar donation over 5 years. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030129-1.html The legislation: a) The drugs are patented in the US and Bush is trying to enforce patent protection when people need the medicine more to survive, according to Russell Mokhiber and and Robert Weissman's article in ZNet: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=14&ItemID=3897 (Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org, and co-director of Essential Action, a corporate accountability group.) b) It's not cheap. And it's US Taxpayer money to pump money into the Pharmaceuticals companies. So why not relax the patent? "The price of advanced anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, which can effectively suppress the AIDS virus in infected people, has fallen from more than $12,000 to under $300 per year," claims the White House news release. "In addition, ARV treatment regimens have been greatly simplified by decreased dosing and monitoring requirements and decreased toxicity," it says to explain the improved version. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030129-1.html "...this initiative will focus a significant amount of these resources on the most afflicted countries in Africa and the Caribbean: Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. These 14 countries, which are also the focus of the President's previously announced Mother-and-Child HIV Prevention Initiative, have among the highest prevalence of HIV infection and account for nearly 20 million HIV-infected men, women and children--almost 70 percent of the total in all of Africa and the Caribbean," -- it says to show you who's getting the ARV package. c) Bush won't reduce International Debt that African countries owe the US -- even for countries where AIDS will kill 30-40% of the people. The newly freed nation of South Africa looses $12 billion in debt repayments to donors. And the Southern African region suffers from the highest rates of HIV infection in the world. "National adult HIV prevalence has risen higher than thought possible, exceeding 30 percent" in much of the region, notes UNAIDS. HIV prevalence rates are 38.8 percent in Botswana, 31 percent in Lesotho, and 33.4 percent in Swaziland. South Africa has the world's largest population of people with HIV/AIDS. d) The bad track record on promises. Bush has cut immunization for children in these countries. He is yet to deliver on past pledges for HIV patients. 29 million Africans have AIDS or are HIV-positive. With only about 12 percent of the world's population, the continent has 90 percent (11 million) of the world's AIDS orphans. And about 1.5 million Africans die each year from tuberculosis and malaria. One year ago the Administration promised $500 million for prevention of HIV transmission from mothers to newborn children, but no money has yet been appropriated. The Bush Administration has budgeted only $200 million for next year, less than 6 percent of our share, and $150 million less than the current year to the organization called "Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria." e) Bush is asking for military bases and access to oil: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=3896 "Today the US relies on Africa for 15% of its oil imports. The estimates are that by 2005 this will rise to between 20% and 25% of US oil imports. To this we should add the high quality of some of the African oil and the better transport distance from the Atlantic coast compared to the Middle East. Finally, if the US can also set up military bases and station troops to make sure everything is quiet, even if not peaceful, then we have a nice military- economic linkage," says Saskia Sassen, professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and the author of "Guests and Aliens". f) It's going to be run by the US State Department: This is what the US Government does when it wants to cover up things. "To ensure accountability for results, the President will create a new, high-level Special Coordinator for International HIV/AIDS Assistance at the Department of State. " http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030129-1.html Will there be any Congressional Committee? g) What has the US done to fight AIDS at home? Here's some statistics on AIDS in the US including funding for treatment of AIDS/HIV: http://www.whitehouse.gov/onap/facts.html This report by the White House claims AIDS and HIV patients in the US on average get $10,800/year for treatment. I wonder how much of that actually gets to patients and how much goes to drug companies for research and such. I stopped by Yahoo Chat's AIDS/HIV room to see what people had to say about Bush Jr.s package to Africa and what they were getting. The resounding words were "We don't like Bush." "We are getting nothing." In any case, I invited them here to share their thoughts if they wanted. Hope they drop by. h) What do the doctors think about this plan? Doctors certainly have reacted to Bush Jr.'s package. They think it's making money off dying people. "Offering a simple solution to these problems, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres, Oxfam, Africa Action, Health GAP, Consumer Project on Technology, Global AIDS Alliance, ACT-UP Paris and Essential Action have called on the administration to exclude intellectual property from the U.S.-SACU negotiations. " Where is the "Compassion" in this plan, Mr. Bush? |
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