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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Noel de Leon who wrote (50279)	10/8/2002 4:58:03 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

Properly used these monies could easily(in our life time) solve their poverty problems in ways which would make them self-supporting(also in the USA). Certainly it could... It's a real shame that there are so many truly insidious tyrants out there bent upon conquest that democracies are forced to spend money on defending their right to live in freedom. And I don't "blame" the Europeans for trying to protect their small farms.. Because their farmers are even more activist than are US farmers... But what's an even greater shame are the billions that have been granted or extended by way of internation loans, which never found it way into the hands of those who need it most, the disenfranchised and poverty stricken.. Because the mechanism just don't exist to create the accountability necessary for this money to be deployed in this manner. We extend loans to governments (many despotic and corrupt) or to central banks, where the money is diverted into secret bank accounts and/or mansions on the Riviera, and any attempt to hold such regimes accountable for the money they have already received, the US is called imperialistic and domineering, resisting any effort to accomdate US "meddling" in their affairs.. And when they aren't extended those loans (or the loans not forgiven), they generate media and activist pressure trying to make appear that US is trying to exploit their self-inflicted misery.. There is more than enough blame to go around on all sides... Dysfunctional lending mechanisms that possess little or no accountability.. Corruption by the borrower and lenders alike... and threats and intimidation on both sides (with the borrower extorting even more money to prevent a default that must eventually occur). Take a look at what happened when the media and activist clamored for the drug companies to make cut-rate priced AIDS drugs available to Africa recently: ca.news.yahoo.com AIDS drugs intended for Africa illegally sold on European market By ANTHONY DEUTSCH AMSTERDAM (AP) - Health authorities scrambled to recover illegally imported AIDS medication Thursday after uncovering a smuggling operation that sold the drugs on the European market rather than the poor African countries at discounted prices. Around 36,000 boxes of Combivir and Epivir, intended for sale at sharply reduced prices in Africa, ended up on pharmacy shelves in the Netherlands and Germany, General Health Inspection Service spokesman Raymond Salet said. Nearly 80 per cent of the pills, in Europe worth the equivalent of about $22.7 million Cdn, has already been used by AIDS patients because it was sold to wholesalers several months ago, Salet said. Several multinational pharmaceutical companies have begun selling low-price medication for the HIV virus in AIDS-ravaged Africa after criticism that they were making windfall profits at the expense of the poor. Dutch officials, acting on a tip from Belgian customs agents two weeks ago, discovered that thousands of boxes had been shipped from Africa back to Europe, where the medicine had been manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. It was then sold in Europe at four times the intended retail price. A box of 60 Combivir tablets that costs the equivalent of $140 Cdn in Africa can be sold in Europe for $625. Prosecutors said they are investigating a Dutch company, which they declined to identify, for allegedly shipping the medication to the Netherlands. But they were unsure what charges they would file.