[Buddha-l] Good resource site shut down

[Joy Vriens]

Hi Chris,

One can't compare lack of medical material with lack of cultural 
material, but yet I dare to make that comparison. If one sees how hard 
it has been to lower the prices of AIDS drugs in third world countries 
and the pressure that was put on those countries to pay the full whack, 
there is little hope for cultural material. Finally it was accepted that 
the poorest countries had cheaper access to medecin, but those just 
above the arbitrariliy decided poverty level had to continue the full 
price. And here we are talking about medecin and AIDS, an illness that 
doesn't care about fronteers and GNP level. Culture is a luxury good, 
one doesn't need it to live, and certainly not to survive. There are 
currently cuts in its budgets and it's not an issue anymore in any 
election. I expect Chanel, Guerlain etc. will soon buy over publishers 
and commercialize books as luxury commodities.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/a-trade-barrier-to-defeating-aids/

Joy

"Where I live almost no one has a credit card, there is no library with 
books like that available, and even if they could be ordered many of 
those books would cost someone about an average months salary here."