Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
3, 2003
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
4, 2003
Bush's Surreal AIDS
Appointment
Millions
Die, But Big Biz Still Rules
By JIM LOBE
The appointment of a former top executive of a
major U.S. pharmaceutical company and major Republican contributor
as President George W. Bush's global AIDS co-ordinator has stunned
and outraged AIDS experts and activists. Bush's choice of former
Eli Lilly & Co. boss Randall Tobias was announced at the
White House on July 1, just a few days before Bush's first trip
as president to Africa. The U.S. Senate must confirm the nomination.
Tobias, who retired from Lilly in 1998
and more recently has served as vice chairman of AT&T, where
he also worked before going to Lilly in the early 1990s, is supposed
to receive the rank of ambassador and report to Secretary of
State Colin Powell, a major force behind a five-year, 15-billion-dollar
anti-AIDS initiative--called the "Emergency Program"--first
proposed by Bush last January and approved by Congress in a somewhat
amended form in May.
Implementation of that initiative, which
is targeted at 12 sub-Saharan African and two Caribbean countries,
will be Tobias' first responsibility, according to Bush. "Randy
Tobias has a mandate directly from me to get our AIDS initiative
up and running as soon as possible," he said.
Surreal Appointment
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia
University's Earth Institute and a special adviser to UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan on the AIDS crisis, called the appointment
"surreal" and continued that "This is an emergency
that requires someone who's worked in the field and knows it
thoroughly. We don't need someone who raises all sorts of questions
about commitment and agenda."
Advocacy groups called for senators to
closely scrutinize Tobias' credentials and philosophy and determine
whether, given his past ties to the industry, he will be able
to fight on behalf of the millions of poor HIV/AIDS victims in
desperate need of cheap anti-retroviral drugs in the face of
opposition from the major western pharmaceutical companies, often
referred to as Big Pharma. "This decision is another deeply
disturbing sign that the President may not be prepared to fulfill
his pledge to take emergency action on AIDS," noted Paul
Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance. "It
raises serious questions of conflict of interest and the priorities
of the White House."
"Both the people of Africa and the
people of the United States will lose if the president's AIDS
initiative fails to use the lowest-cost, generic medications,"
Zeitz said, noting that the pharmaceutical companies have successfully
pressed the Bush administration to go back on an earlier pledge
to carve out an exception in international patent laws that would
enable needy countries to import generic anti-AIDS drugs.
Others were openly scornful about the
appointment. "We know he has little experience with AIDS,
but lots as a major Republican donor," said Salih Booker,
director of Africa Action, a Washington-based fusion of several
long-standing anti-apartheid groups. "This is where U.S.
policy on AIDS is; it's with Big Pharma."
A corporate executive throughout his
career, Tobias has no background in public health and little
or no experience with working in poor countries. In short remarks
at the White House Tuesday, he described the statistics of the
AIDS toll taken in Africa--where almost 20 million people have
been killed by the disease--as "really nearly incomprehensible."
At the same time, Tobias is known as
a no-nonsense businessman who is particularly close to the recently
departed director of the administration's Office of Management
and Budget (OMB), a bureaucracy that could play a key role in
securing the money to actually fund Bush's $15-billion program.
"This is clearly a person with tremendous
stature and management acumen," said Sandra Thurman, who
served as former President Clinton's global AIDS director and
now heads the International AIDS Trust.
Three Questions
The key test for many activists, however,
will lie in how Tobias responds to three major questions regarding
the Bush administration's global AIDS policies, of which Emergency
Program is the central feature.
The first concern involves the availability
of generic anti-AIDS and other life-saving drugs to poor countries
under the Program. While major pharmaceutical companies have
sharply cut prices on their brand-name anti-viral medicines for
AIDS victims in poor African countries, similar generic drugs
produced in India, Thailand, and Brazil, for example, still cost
significantly less--as little as under $300 per person per year
for triple combinations of anti-retroviral drugs.
While the administration has suggested
it will use generics in the Emergency Program, it has not been
made a formal decision. "Tobias will have tough questions
to answer about whether the Bush AIDS Plan will make efficient
use of funds by maximizing purchases of affordable generic medicines,"
noted Eustacia Smith of Health Global Access Project (Health
GAP).
A related question is whether Tobias
will push the administration to follow through on its promise
at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in
Doha in November 2001 to permit poor countries that face public-health
emergencies to import generic anti-AIDS and other life-saving
drugs.
Under pressure from Big Pharma, the administration
has since reversed its position by pressing its bilateral trade
partners in Africa to sign agreements committing them to respect
international patent laws that, from a practical viewpoint, would
make importing generics much more problematic.
"It's very difficult to believe
that a man coming from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry would
be willing to respond to the calls from impoverished countries
to expedite access to life-saving mechanisms," said Zeitz.
"Purchase of lowest-cost medicines, including generics,
is a must," according to Asia Russell of Health GAP. "The
pharmaceutical industry calls that piracy. Which side will Tobias
be on?"
Finally, activists are particularly worried
about the fate of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria,
a two-year-old multilateral mechanism to expedite the funding
of anti-AIDS work around the world. Although Congress has authorized
an annual contribution of up to $1 billion for the Fund--which
is already fast running out of money--the administration has
said it intends to provide only $200 million a year.
Big Pharma has been cited as a major
culprit behind the administration's niggardliness towards the
Fund because of its support for making generic anti-AIDS drugs
accessible to all needy countries.
"Whether Tobias will push within
the administration for the funding the Global Fund really needs
to even begin to catch up with the need will be critical test
of whether he's independent," said Booker.
Jim Lobe
is a political analyst with Foreign
Policy in Focus. He also writes regularly for Inter Press
Service. He can be reached at: jlobe@starpower.net
Weekend Edition
Features
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|