Stephen: gladly. And perhaps, quid pro quo? Following the stuff I post
here to show you what I mean, I'll return if I may to a point you've made
several times and very loudly, but my question regarding which goes
unanswered by you.

You ask:

"Keston as well meaning as you are. You have lost me. Explain the
connection for me regarding the deaths of millions of people and
intellectual property laws?"

Please do read through this:


Today [9/4/99] Ralph Nader and James Love of the Consumer Project on
Technology (CPT) asked Vice President Gore to reverse US
government policy on South African policies regarding access to
drugs for HIV/AIDS and other essential medicines. According to
Nader and Love, Vice President Gore has "engaged in an
astonishing array of bullying tactics to prevent South Africa
from implementing policies, legal under the rules of the World
Trade Organization, that are designed to expand access to
HIV/AIDS drugs."

In dispute are South African attempts to implement legislation to
permit parallel imports of pharmaceutical drugs, which enable
South Africa to buy drugs on the global market at the best world
price, and compulsory licensing of medical patents.

Nader and Love cited a 10 page February 5, 1999 Department of
State report which detailed the role of the Vice President and US
trade agencies in seeking the repeal of provisions in the South
African Medicines Act which permit parallel importing and
compulsory licensing.

"The United States Surgeon General has likened the HIV/AIDS
epidemic in Africa to the plague which decimated Europe in the
14th century, Public health officials estimate that one in five
pregnant women in South Africa are HIV positive, and that more
than 45 percent of the South African military personnel are
infected."

According to Nader and Love, US government trade officials have
trumped up spurious charges against the South African program,
and made untrue assertions that South African polices violate
World Trade Organization rules. However, trade experts including
those that work for the WTO itself have been very clear that
parallel importing and compulsory licensing of essential
medicines are specifically permitted under the WTO "TRIPS"
agreement on intellectual property.
          
"This [Department of State] report provides chapter and verse of
a two year campaign to use the weight of US power, short of
military warfare, on South Africa to prevent that country from
implementing policies to obtain cheaper sources of essential
medicines"

"[T]he United States government ... is literally asking South
Africa to abandon the lives of millions of infected citizens in
order to receive reductions in US barriers to trade or economic
aid."

A copy of the Nader/Love Letter and the February 5, 1999
Department of State Report on are the web at:

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa



This is the situation I was referring to. As you can see, the protection
of intellectual property laws in the interest of US commerce, under the
ideological aspect of globalized free trade, is resulting in massive
death.

Stephen, perhaps now you could answer my repeated question:

What 'theory' is it which appears so pervasively to determine poetry
written in Cambridge?

As for your question about people living in Harlem, please remember that I
did say in my post that parts of the city are of course impoverished, but
that this doesn't alter the fact that NY is the great financial and
leisure centre (neck and neck perhaps with LA, on this latter point).

Best, k




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