[Dean's World] Celia Farber: Genocide Charge Against TAC Hits SA Media

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Posted by Celia Farber:
Genocide Charge Against TAC Hits SA Media
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1168823144.shtml


   Ten days ago Anthony Brink and the Treatment Information Group of
   South Africa filed a draft indictment against Zackie Achmat and the
   Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) on charges of genocide for their
   promotion of AZT and other so-called antiretrovirals with the
   International Criminal Court at The Hague.

   I have read the complaint carefully, twice. Despite my 20 year
   immersion in the mind-reeling odyssey of the HIV Drugging Wars, I was
   disoriented, shocked, and wounded from this.

   It is so psychologically, politically, morally, and bio-chemically
   bizarre that one feels crazy from it.

   Coincidentally, the night I first read it, I had a visitor from
   Holland--a gay man who came into my kitchen with tales of drug
   toxicities, maimings, deaths, and pained admissions that the anti-HIV
   pharaceutical utopia of the past 20 years has turned into a hell of
   good intentions and poisoned bodies. He told, laconically, of friends
   who had recently and not so recently died on the drugs, from the
   usual--heart attacks, renal failure, lymphomas, strokes. One friend
   had had his circulation destroyed by AZT and had both legs amputated.
   Now he'd also suffered a stroke on cocktail therapy. Then he told me
   of one HIV positive friend who'd gone 20 years without the medications
   and remained healthy. "How did he make that decision?" I asked, given
   that the man had just told me that the Dutch media had permitted
   virtually no unorthodox AIDS reportage. He answered quietly: "He was
   an HIV counselor. He saw it."

   I turned off the stove and sat down motionless, as that sunk in.

   Then I returned to the cooking. And this is what makes life so
   peculiar. Everything seems so unreal and we grasp next to nothing.
   Except in flashes; It was his quiet delivery that made it sink in, at
   last.

   There is nothing quiet about Mr. Brink's 59-page polemical indictment
   and documentation of what he views as Achmat's crime of genocide
   against the majority black population of South Africa. It builds
   calmly at first, then turns increasingly merciless, like the sealing
   bricks at the end of Poe's The Cask of Amontillado. One gasps--and
   wonders about mercy. About tone. Restraint. Decorum. It ends on a note
   of wild rage--a revenge fantasy Mr. Brink permitted himself, perhaps
   wisely, perhaps foolishly, but either way, with full intent and eyes
   wide open.

   The first shock waves have already begun to wash over South Africa and
   are reported [1]here today.

   The Chinese saying goes: "Every man has his reasons."

   To understand Mr. Brink's reasons, you must read all 59 pages. I'd be
   most eager to hear what you think.

References

   1. http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/12/south_africa_re.html