Dear Senator: Do You Really Want Cancer Drugs To Be Super-Expensive?

Dear Senator: Do You Really Want Cancer Drugs To Be Super-Expensive?

Public health organizations are asking GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch why he seems so protective of pharmaceutical profits in Colombia.

5/19/2016 06:20 pm ET

Zach Carter 
Senior Political Economy Reporter, The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — In late April, a Colombian diplomat sent two letters to leaders in Bogotá warning that efforts to lower the price of a major leukemia treatment could undermine a peace plan designed to end a half-century of conflict with Marxist rebels. After talks with both Obama administration trade officials and a key aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Andrés Flórez of the Colombian embassy became convinced that the U.S. government was willing to cut off $450 million in peace funding to retaliate if Colombia curbed profits on Gleevec, a breakthrough cancer drug.

Neither Hatch nor the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative have denied pressuring Colombia over the medication or invoking the peace program in private talks. The Flórez letters were first published by the nonprofit group Knowledge Ecology International more than a week ago.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis currently charges nearly double Colombia’s per-capita income to provide a single patient with a one-year supply of Gleevec, also marketed as Glivec. By issuing a so-called compulsory license, the Colombian government could allow a generic competitor to provide a copy of the drug at a dramatically lower price.

On Thursday, Knowledge Ecology International and three other public health organizations wrote a letter to Hatch asking him to explain his position. Hatch chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees U.S. trade policy for Congress.

“If these letters sent by the Embassy of Colombia are accurate, this is a highly inappropriate and wholly objectionable attempt to interfere with the right of the Colombian government to proceed with this compulsory license through threats and distortions,” the letter reads. “In our view it is particularly unconscionable that this be tied in any way to funding ... to support the peace process.”

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/colombia-drugs-orrin-hatch_us_573e2b96e4b00e09e89e86aa

Colombia: the Displaced & Invisible Nation

Colombia: the Displaced & Invisible Nation
May 20, 2016


by Dan Kovalik

The latest thematic report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concerning Colombia makes for shocking though quite important reading. [1] In short, it details human rights abuses on a massive scale, and lays the blame for these abuses chiefly upon the right-wing paramilitaries aligned with the Colombian State. Citing Colombia’s Center for Historical Memory, the IACHR concludes that Colombia, with its over 6 million internally displaced persons, is indeed “a displaced nation.”


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Exhibit at Center for Historical Memory, Showing Personal Effects of “False Positive” Victim
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As the IACHR explains, the paramilitaries were responsible for 72% of the attacks recorded in the first half of 2015. Incredibly, the Colombian State, along with its U.S. sponsor, insist that the paramilitaries (also known as Autodefensas) no longer exist as a result of a demobilization (largely faked) back in 2003-2006. And, it is this very denial, the IACHR points out, which allows the paramilitaries to carry out their reign of terror with near complete impunity. After all, the State will not dismantle or prosecute what it claims does not even exist.

As explained in the report, “during 2015 the IACHR has continued receiving information about actions of the illegal armed groups that emerged after the demobilization and which are identified as being related or having among their members, persons that belonged to paramilitary groups who, in many cases allegedly continue acting under the protection of State agents.”

The misdeeds the paramilitaries are carrying out under State protection include disappearances, of which there were an incredible 3,400 during the first 7 months of 2015 alone. In all, the IACHR reports that there have been a total of between 45,000 and 61,918 forced disappearances in Colombia in the past 30 years. Thus, there have potentially been more than three times the disappearances in Colombia than in Argentina during all of the Dirty War years. And, of course, with such disappearances come mass graves, of which Colombia has many – 4,519 of them to be exact, with 5,817 bodies exhumed from them so far.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/20/colombia-the-displaced-invisible-nation/

Noam Chomsky: Why Obama Suddenly Decided to Cozy up With Cuba—It Wasn't Warm and Fuzzy Feelings

Noam Chomsky: Why Obama Suddenly Decided to Cozy up With Cuba—It Wasn't Warm and Fuzzy Feelings

A major victory for the Cuban people.

By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now!

May 18, 2016

Amy Goodman: I wanted to ask you about the passing of Michael Ratner, Michael Ratner, the former head of the—or the late head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the trailblazing human rights attorney, who died last week at the age of 72. I had interviewed Michael last year in Washington, D.C., at the reopening of the Cuban Embassy, after it was closed for more than five decades. And I asked Michael to talk about the significance of this historic day. This is an excerpt of what he said.

Michael Ratner: Well, Amy, let’s just say, other than the birth of my children, this is perhaps one of the most exciting days of my life. I mean, I’ve been working on Cuba since the early ’70s, if not before. I worked on the Venceremos Brigade. I went on brigades. I did construction. And to see that this can actually happen in a country that decided early on that, unlike most countries in the world, it was going to level the playing field for everyone—no more rich, no more poor, everyone the same, education for everyone, schooling for everyone, housing if they could—and to see the relentless United States go against it, from the Bay of Pigs to utter subversion on and on, and to see Cuba emerge victorious—and when I say that, this is not a defeated country. This is a country—if you heard the foreign minister today, what he spoke of was the history of U.S. imperialism against Cuba, from the intervention in the Spanish-American War to the Platt Amendment, which made U.S. a permanent part of the Cuban government, to the taking of Guantánamo, to the failure to recognize it in 1959, to the cutting off of relations in 1961. This is a major, major victory for the Cuban people, and that should be understood. We are standing at a moment that I never expected to see in our history.

AG: That was Michael Ratner. It was July (20th). It was that historic day in Washington, D.C., when the Cuban Embassy was opened after almost half a century. If you could talk both about the significance of Michael Ratner, from his work around Guantánamo, ultimately challenging the habeas corpus rights of Guantánamo prisoners, that they should have their day in court, and winning this case in the Supreme Court, to all of his work, also talk about Cuba, Noam, something that you certainly take on in your new book, Who Rules the World?

Noam Chomsky: Well, Michael Ratner has an absolutely fabulous record. His achievements have been enormous. A tremendous courage, intelligence, dedication. A lot of achievement against huge odds. The center, which he largely—it was a major—he ran and was a major actor in, has done wonderful work all over the place—Cuba and lots of other things. So I can’t be excessive in my praise for what he achieved in his life and the inspiration that it should leave us with.

With regard to Cuba-U.S. relations, I think what he just said is essentially accurate. In fact, it’s even worse than that. We tend to forget that after the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy administration was practically in a state of hysteria and seeking to somehow avenge themselves against this upstart who was carrying out what the government called successful defiance of U.S. policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine. How can we tolerate that? Kennedy authorized a major terrorist war against Cuba. The goal was to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba. That’s the phrase of his associate Arthur Schlesinger, historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his biography of Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy was given the responsibility to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba. And it was—he in fact described it as one of the prime goals of government, is to ensure that we terrorize Cuba. And it was pretty serious. Thousands of people were killed, petrochemical plants, other industrial installations blown up. Russian ships in the Havana Harbor were attacked. You can imagine what would happen if American ships were attacked. It was probably connected with poisoning of crops and livestock, can’t be certain. It went on into the 1990s, though not at that—not at the extreme level of the Kennedy years, but pretty bad. The late ’70s, there was an upsurge, blowing up of a Cubana airliner, 73 people killed. The culprits are living happily in Miami. One of them died. The other, Luis Posada, major terrorist, is cheerfully living there.

The taking over of southeastern Cuba back—at the time of the Platt Amendment, the U.S. had absolutely no claim to this territory, none whatsoever. We’re holding onto it just in order—it’s a major U.S. military base—it was. But we’re holding onto it simply to impede the development of Cuba, a major port, and to have a dumping place where we can send—illegally send Haitian refugees, claiming that they’re economic refugees, when they’re fleeing from the terror of the Haitian junta that we supported—Clinton, incidentally, in this case—or just as a torture chamber. Now, there’s a lot of talk about human rights violations in Cuba. Yeah, there are human rights violations in Cuba. By far the worst of them, overwhelmingly, are in the part of Cuba that we illegally hold—you know, technically, legally. We took it at the force of a gun, so it’s—point of a gun, so it’s legal. I mean, in comparison with this, whatever you think of Putin’s annexation of Crimea is minor in comparison with this.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/world/noam-chomsky-why-obama-suddenly-decided-cozy-cuba-it-wasnt-warm-and-fuzzy-feelings

Brazil's Guarani Indians killing themselves over loss of ancestral land

Brazil's Guarani Indians killing themselves over loss of ancestral land

Arson attacks and eviction at gunpoint for plantations driving many to despair and take their own lives

John Vidal
Wednesday 18 May 2016 12.18 EDT

The small Apy Ka’y community of around 150 Guarani Indians has lived in squalor by the side of Highway BR 463 in southern Brazil since 2009. Since then, they have been forced out three times by unknown gunmen, had their makeshift camp burned down twice by arsonists and three young people from the group have killed themselves.

Each time they were intimidated they returned and reoccupied their last patch of land but last month a Brazilian judge ordered the Apy Ka’y community to permanently move off the land that was theirs for hundreds of years but was seized without compensation by wealthy plantation owners in the 1970s.

“It will be a death sentence,” says anthropologist and community leader Tonico Benites Guarani who estimates that 1,000, mostly young, Guarani, have killed themselves in the last 10 years throughout Brazil – hundreds of times more than the average Brazilian suicide rate, and unequalled among all other indigenous peoples in Latin America.

But such is depth of despair and hopelessness in the tribe which has lost nearly 95% of its ancestral land to industrial scale biofuels, sugar cane and soya plantations that the true number of suicides could be many more, says Tonico .

“So many young Guarani people commit suicide. It’s around one a week. The time comes when you have had enough of waiting (for change). You work yourself up with hope, then the courts dash your hopes. Your family suffers with hunger and malnutrition, the despair increases, there is no security, no hope, you are not sure of life improving. It is very sad,” he says.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/18/brazils-guarani-indians-killing-themselves-over-loss-of-ancestral-land

Colombia’s ‘last war’ a massive pillow fight?

Colombia’s ‘last war’ a massive pillow fight?

written by Adriaan Alsema May 17, 2016

Former Colombia presidential candidate Antanas Mockus, known for his irreverent and unconventional approach to politics, is organizing a massive pillow fight to symbolically fight Colombia’s “Last War.”

The proposal to massively attack each other with pillows comes at a time that peace talks with the FARC, Colombia’s largest rebel group, have reached their final phase and talks with the ELN, the country’s second largest rebel group, set to begin.

To support efforts to bring peace to Colombia after more than half a century of war, Mockus announced that on Thursday, 4PM he has scheduled to fight “Colombia’s last war, the pillow war.”

. . .

Mockus, a mathematician and philosopher, has maintained a reconciliatory tone and distance from both Uribe and Santos, both likely to face war crime charges once a post-conflict transitional justice system is put in place.

The quirky former Bogota mayor ran against Santos in 2010, but lost. He has since been a staunch supporter of the peace talks and even offered to help the FARC form a political party if they decide to renounce violence as a means to obtain political goals.

http://colombiareports.com/colombias-last-war-massive-pillow-fight/

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NGOs condemn US senator for allegedly pressuring Colombia over cancer drug

Source: Colombia Reports

NGOs condemn US senator for allegedly pressuring Colombia over cancer drug

written by Lyra Bartell May 20, 2016

Several US non-profits have written a letter to Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the chairman of the US Senate Finance Committee, condemning his office’s alleged pressure on Colombia not to challenge the price of a life-saving cancer drug.

The letter comes in response to leaked Colombian cables from Washington to Bogota which warned that if Colombia challenged the price of the drug Gleevec, also known as Imatinib, the US might withhold its promised $450 million to assist in the peace talks through the new plan “Peace Colombia.”

The organizations KEI, Public Citizen, Oxfam America, and Healthgap signed the letter, all objecting to the reported threats stemming from the Senate Finance Committee, revealed by leaks memos from the Colombian embassy in Washington to Bogota.

“If these letters sent by the Embassy of Colombia are accurate, this is a highly inappropriate and wholly objectionable attempt to interfere with the right of the Colombian government to proceed with this compulsory license through threats and distortions. In our view it is particularly unconscionable that this be tied in any way to funding for Paz Colombia to support the peace process.”

Argentine lawyer Alberto Nisman 'may have been forced to kill himself'

Source: Associated Press

Argentine lawyer Alberto Nisman 'may have been forced to kill himself'

The mysterious death of the man who investigated Argentina’s worst terrorist attack could been induced suicide, says former prosecutor

Associated Press
Thursday 19 May 2016 22.26 EDT

Alberto Nisman, who investigated Argentina’s worst terrorist attack before he was found dead in his home last year, may have been forced to kill himself, a prosecutor who was formerly in charge of his case has said.

Viviana Fein, who in December was removed from the investigation into Nisman’s mysterious death, had said before that it was likely suicide. But in an interview with local radio station La Red, she acknowledged for the first time that it was possible he was “induced” to kill himself.

Fein said that Nisman had several back-and-forth calls with “six or seven people”, including the country’s former spy chief, Antonio Stiuso, and then-army chief Cesar Milani on 18 January 2015. The body of Nisman, who led the probe of the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, was discovered on that day in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head.

“I find it suggestive and noteworthy that personalities of this calibre were on the same day of his death talking uninterruptedly,” Fein said.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/20/argentine-lawyer-alberto-nisman-was-forced-to-kill-himself

Venezuela: Mobs attack police as protests against Maduro turn nasty

Venezuela: Mobs attack police as protests against Maduro turn nasty

May Friday 20th 2016

posted by James Tweedie in World


VENEZUELAN right-wing protests degenerated into violence on Wednesday with paramilitary veterans of 2014’s deadly Guarimba riots leading the charge.

The marches, including one of thousands to the National Electoral Council (CNE) in the capital Caracas, were organised by the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) coalition of opposition parties.

Protesters demanded that the CNE’s validation of signatures for the recall referendum process against United Socialist Party President Nicolas Maduro be fast-tracked.

They breached a police cordon around the CNE offices in Venezuela Square, attacking officers with poles, stones and fists.

Telesur TV captured the mob surrounding and assaulting a female civil servant until someone intervened and calmed the attackers.

Meanwhile, female police officer Dubraska Alvarez was struck with sticks and metal pipes by demonstrators on Libertador Avenue in the capital.

In the city’s Chacao suburb, seven protesters were arrested, including Jheremy Bastardo and other known participants in the 2014 street violence that left 43 people dead.

His accomplice Romer Moreno admitted under interrogation that a group of youths had received funding from a right-wing MP’s chief of security “to participate in violent acts,” said Justice and Peace Minister Gustavo Gonzalez.

More:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4aa2-Venezuela-Mobs-attack-police-as-protests-against-Maduro-turn-nasty#.Vz6Tv-Qo6bw

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Brazil’s Neighbors Warn of President’s ‘Dangerous’ Ouster–but US Press Isn’t Listening

Brazil’s Neighbors Warn of President’s ‘Dangerous’ Ouster–but US Press Isn’t Listening

By Jim Naureckas

May

18

2016

The effort to oust twice-elected Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been big news in the United States. Since December 2015, when Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies began an impeachment process over Rousseff’s budget maneuvers, the New York Times has had 74 pieces that mention “Rousseff” and “impeachment,” according to the Nexis news database; the Washington Post has had 138 such stories.

But something that hasn’t been big news in US corporate media has been the reaction from Brazil’s neighbors to Rousseff’s suspension pending a Senate trial. While some Latin American governments were supportive—notably, newly right-governed Argentina said it “respects the institutional process” in Brazil, while close US ally Colombia “trusts in the preservation of democratic institutionality and stability”—several others were harshly critical. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called Rousseff’s removal an “anti-democratic process that has cast a shadow on the reliability and strength of institutions.” Bolivia’s Foreign ministry said Rousseff’s opponents were trying to “destabilize democratic processes and ignore the will of the people expressed in the popular vote.”

Three Latin American countries—Venezuela and El Salvador on May 14, and Ecuador today, May 18—announced they were recalling their ambassadors from Brazil, one of the strongest expressions of disapproval a nation can take. Salvadoran President Sanchez Ceren said he would not recognize the government formed by Vice President Michel Temer after Rousseff’s removal. “We respect democracy and the people’s will,” Ceren said. “In Brazil an act was done that was once done through military coups.”

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro labeled Rousseff’s ouster a “coup,” calling it “a grave and dangerous sign for the future stability and peace of all the continent.”

The region’s major multilateral organizations have also been critical of Brazil’s process. Secretary General Ernesto Samper of the Union of South American Nations, representing the continent’s 12 nations, called Rousseff the “legitimate leader” of Brazil. Samper, the former president of Colombia, said the attempt to remove her was “compromising the democratic governability of the region in a dangerous way.”

More:
http://fair.org/home/brazils-neighbors-warn-of-presidents-dangerous-ouster-but-us-press-isnt-listening/

US Government's Own Report Shows Toxic TPP "Not Worth Passing"

Thursday, May 19, 2016

US Government's Own Report Shows Toxic TPP "Not Worth Passing"

'This report indicates the TPP will produce almost no benefits, but inflict real harm on so many workers.'

Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

The government's own assessment of the toxic Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) shows that the controversial trade deal will produce negligible economic benefits while damaging most Americans' jobs and wages.

The U.S. International Trade Commission's (ITC) report (pdf), issued Wednesday, shows that the TPP "would likely have only a small positive effect on U.S. growth," Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, the ITC estimates a worsening balance of trade for 16 out of 25 U.S. agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors that cover vehicles, wheat, corn, auto parts, titanium products, chemicals, seafood, textiles and apparel, rice, and even financial service. Indeed, output in the manufacturing sector would be $11.2 billion lower with TPP than without it in 2032, the ITC found, with employment down 0.2 percent. And while vehicle production would gain, auto parts, textiles, and chemicals would see reductions, the trade panel said.

The analysis also estimates the proposed 12-nation trade deal—a centerpiece of President Barack Obama's economic agenda—will increase the U.S. global trade deficit by $21.7 billion by 2032.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/19/us-governments-own-report-shows-toxic-tpp-not-worth-passing