The War on Aids... 29 years and counting

"Let me remind you that over the last year, the same leaders had absolutely no problem finding the money on a moment's notice to bail out their corporate friends and the greedy Wall Street bankers, yet when it comes to global health, the purse is always empty.

"A full 110 billion euros [142 billion dollars] appeared from nowhere when the Greek economy faltered earlier this year. But when it comes to universal access, the G8 chose to ignore their commitments before the crisis, and they are poised to continue to do so today."-- Julio Montaner, president of the International AIDS Society and organiser of the 18th International AIDS Conference which opened this weekend in Vienna

Greece & Thailand and Where Else?

COUNTERLIGHT

Let's remember that so many of the proposed financial aid plans for countries like Thailand and Greece are about rescuing investors who lost their bets. They certainly aren't about helping the people who actually live there. Some line is trotted out about their governments being irresponsible and corrupt, and that's probably true (true for the increasingly plutocratic USA and Europe), but why punish the people, who had to live under those governments, with austerity measures in the middle of the worst global depression since the 1930s?[...]

I raise my old socialist question again, whose economy is it?