Sorry comrade, but you are mistaken. The arc of total antiretroviral costs in sub-saharan africa from 1996-2002 (i.e., from costing more than they even cost to guaged insurers in the US, to costing almost exactly total production cost) was part of an entire dynamic in which multiple factors expanded the space available to each other--- eruption of anger over the issue in a key Gore 99 constituency; emergence of Indian, Thai and Brazilian generic industries which their governments at first evaded, then gradually came to embrace as part of a domestic IT development strategy; combatting horrible neglect by Mbeki and his neoliberal wing of ANC of 25% of SA population; antiglobalization pressure forcing Zellick to drop pressure against Brazilian generic AIDS manufacturers during FTAA debate; mushrooming of global health attention to global AIDS from French MSF, UN agencies, private billionaire charities; an ongoing technical working battle over 'TRIPS-plus' in WTO millenial language; and much more.
SA only acheived the political space in the international markets to make even tepid early steps towards treatment when Gore was pressured into dropping his acts of obstruction to SA's new Medicins law. Brazilian generics are only solvent and producing today because multinational grassroots pressure forced the US to cease attack on their manufacture of patented drugs for international poor-country markets. CIPLA made their revolutionary announcement of total yearly antiretroviral cocktail at cost at the moment of maximum upheaval in global patent politics and anger over the african aids holocaust; they did so only to acheive an Indian foothold in generic mass production for an eventual profit motive, and were explicit they would not be able to do so without the assault on all fronts to AIDS patent laws, and would be forced by business concerns to withdraw their pricing offers if the movements energy collapsed. The collapsed price of the drugs themselves would also be next to worthless without vastly increased funding for production and distribution (lack of public health infrastructure due to structural adjustment in sub-saharan africa, lack of a 'cold-chain' to get drugs from Indian producer to Congolese consumer, inefficacy of antiretroviral treatment without a simple mosquito net to prevent malarial infection, etc etc). The billions in public funding would also be of marginal effect without the successful campaigns to force private sector employers in sub-saharan africa to take full responsibility for treating their workers and their families, which worked against Coca-cola, TNC mining concerns, SA manufacturers, etc.
All taken together, the different actors constituted an ongoing global war from all fronts against an indefensible profiteering from holocaust by big pharma through patnet law. Indian and Brazilian generic manufacturers have often been quite frank about owing their existence itself to grassroots politics on patents in a few countries, including US, France, and South Africa. Health ministers of places like Swaziland, Botswana and Uganda have been extremely straightforward in meetings with ACT UP the degree to which the survival of their people has depended on domestic political pressure on patents and global AIDS not letting up in the US.
To magnanimously offer to conceed something like 'act up did try to help poor people' is patronizing and offensive. ACT UP and TAC -are- the HIV+ poor, in Philadelphia and Joburg respectively. A regular monthly meeting of fifty activists from poor black HIV+ community, combined with an ability to mobilize between 500 and 5000 from that community to actions in DC or NYC or Delaware, does not constitute theatrical identity politics, Yoshie. It constitutes the height of individual groups ability to wield mass power in a radical context in the US. And to assert that this struggle, or as you put it a combination of Democratic party politics, identity politics and theatre makes noise and only marginal gains, is of malevolent priviledged disdain to millions alive in the global south because of these victories, and I take of personal offense to friends and comrades of mine in South Africa and Philadelphia who did not live to see the benefits of. What is wrong with you? Why say things like this when you are wrong? Is the sound of your own figers hitting the keys that melodious to you?
The problem is, Yoshie, is that you are incorrect about this. So why persist in advancing your ignorance, just to make a statement about, whatever it was, cuba or something? Your eagerness to entangle yourself further and further into inaccuracy on an issue you do not know anything about, only undercuts your credibility on the many issues you do know something about. When I am in an organizing conversation with a vegas nurse, I know that if I ever begin to talk wrongly about a nursing issue they know more about than I just to hear the sound of my own voice, then for the rest of the conversation I will be under grave suspiscion every time I open my mouth. You're on notice--- I recognize now your wide-ranging adventures in a plethora of topics has more to do with google-scholarship and desire to opine for its own sake than desire to bring real experience and knowledge into a meaningful dialogue. Maybe you're legit about Persian culture and politics and ancient texts, I don't know, because -I don't claim to have informed opinions on thos subjects!-
I don't know about Noam Chomsky, but -this- is what I find useless about 'intellectuals'. And what I find so useful about learning from struggle, work, and poor people in the streets.
An an aside- Woj wonderred if the campaign on Gore was cutting ones nose to spite ones face. While it may displease Chuck, I can assure you Woj that ACT UP actually executed in textbook popular front practice--- that is, wedging Gore with global AIDS in the primaries to completely win concessions in his power to make before the general election season; then working to make global AIDS an issue itself for the gay and HIV+ vote in the general election (and thus helping Gore against Bush in some swing states, as he had a much superior position on the issue by then), doing a hell of a lot more Dem GOTV work on election day in the swing state of PA than our lefto friends busy canvassing for Nader or wistfully reading Trotsky's history of the russian revolution; and finally, on maintaining the pressure on Bush after he won, to the extent where now, arguably, global AIDS is the single issue on which even Bush (!) has a more humanitarian record than his Democratic predecessors and rivals. In fact I wager if we could assert a similar arc of strategic and bipartisan pressure on an issue like single payer hc, I could go to the dentist today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20070213/f1b8ee6c/attachment.htm>