I don't hate anyone. I try to stop sociopathic personalities from hurting others.
You mean like Democratic Presidential nominee nominee Al Gore?
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JULY 03, 2013
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The Democrats' Nefarious Legacy in Africa
Obama’s Hypocrisy and CNN’s Blind Spot Over AIDS
by GREGORY R. GRANT
CNN reported on Monday that “The U.S. government’s response to the epidemic in South Africa began in 2003”. That is actually not true. According to the Guardian August 9th, 1999, a heated controversy started in 1997 between South Africa and the U.S. over “an act which the South African parliament passed in 1997, allowing local companies to produce cheap generic forms of the expensive drug-cocktails used to keep Aids under control.” At the time, the U.S. monopoly prices on AIDS antivirals ran around $1000 per month, which was making it inaccessible to over 6 million infected individuals in South Africa alone. Al Gore took it upon himself to make sure the South African plans to make cheap generics did not happen, by threatening them with severe trade sanctions if they dare try. As reported in the Baltimore Sun on June 22nd, 1999, The State Department issued a report saying the country is “making use of the full panoply of leverage in our arsenal.” A few days earlier on June 19th, The Washington Post reported:
One senior Gore adviser acknowledged the vice president is in a delicate position, balancing the magnitude of the AIDS crisis in South Africa and the needs of U.S. companies. “Obviously the vice president’s got to stick up for the commercial interests of U.S. companies,” the adviser said. But, he said, Gore realizes the disease “is a major threat to the welfare and even the future stability” of South Africa.
And so it was that Gore, with Clinton backing him all the way, fought tooth and nail against South Africa’s attempts to save millions of lives. If we calculate the effects of this roadblock extended to the entire African continent, the number of people who were adversely affected by Gore’s efforts is staggering. He may actually be responsible for more deaths than Hitler himself. But Gore did it for money. And the extent to which AIDS has continued to spread across Africa would certainly be considerably lower had the generic versions of the drugs been allowed to be produced. The ultimate human toll of Gore’s efforts is therefore incalculable.
So it should come as no surprise that the Clinton-Gore presidential campaigns, Gore’s “Leadership 98? PAC, and other Clinton-Gore fundraising efforts, raised over $1 million dollars from Squibb, Glaxo-Wellcome, Pfizer, Genentech and the PhRMA throughout the 1990s. This is of course business as usual.
It wasn’t until 2001 that the Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla started producing generic versions of antiretroviral drugs for a dollar a day. So by stopping the South African efforts, Gore had won Glaxo four more years to rake in obscene profits. GSK financial reports claim sales of over $4 billion. Incidentally, they were fined by the IRS in 2006 a record $3.4 billion for underpaying their taxes by $6 billion dollars. The $6 billion was more than the total amount spent by the U.S. for
HIV prevention over the previous 10 years. Fortunately, the AZT patent expired in 2005. But the fight was far from over. The Guardian reports as recently as June 10th, 2010 “Rich nations step up assault on generic Aids drugs – Moves by the US, the EU and Japan to strengthen intellectual property laws could limit the production of generic drugs that account for 80% of treatment worldwide.”
Unfortunately, the level of hypocrisy necessary for President Obama to talk about AIDS eradication in Africa, without acknowledging the U.S. imposed roadblocks, much of which took place under the control of his own party no less, is now monotonously familiar. And for CNN to pat the U.S. on the back and bury this inconvenient truth down the memory hole is also par for the course for the lapdog corporate media.
This information has been remarkably well hidden from the public. Republicans, after all, cannot protest Gore’s machinations, because putting U.S. corporate interests ahead of human rights is part of their rhetoric. Meanwhile the Democratic voters cannot assimilate into their world view that the Democrats would do something so awful. People know there are good people in the world, so it doesn’t compute to most people that both the Republicans and Democrats could be so profoundly evil.
Therefore, it is quite plausible that had George Bush been the culprit behind these actions, that many more, if not all, Democrat voters would be keenly aware of it, if not up in arms. It would be a natural item to add to their long list of Bush’s evil deeds. This, in my opinion, is why the Democrats are even more dangerous than the Republicans. The Democrats’ rhetoric is more palatable to those of us on the left, but their ultimate effect on society may be worse in that Obama has taken so many of the worst policies of Bush and made them popular or invisible. Obama got the good people of this country to talk about the “good wars” and the “good corporate bailouts” and the “good surveillance.” Obama promised us transparency. Well, to have a wolf in wolves clothing, as we did under Bush, was arguably more transparency than we have now with a wolf in sheep’s clothing holding the reins of power.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to break through this roadblock. Things will probably have to get a lot worse before they can get better. But straightening out the record of the Democrats role in Africa regarding the AIDS epidemic cannot hurt. So tell your neighbors, if you get the chance.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/03/obamas-hypocrisy-and-cnns-blind-spot-over-aids/ |
