UK MSM have indeed become COMPLACENT around safe sex, but it is a complacency complacency born of, and instilled by, a WOEFULLY INEFFICIENT HIV sector paralysed by indifference; leads by its own APPALLING example; and goes out of its way to DEPRIVE MSM of the knowledge they need to STAY HEALTHY.
"IN A WORLD of universal deceit, telling the truth
is revolutionary!"
~ George Orwell
"Over 25 years, the gay community has slowly been colonised by the AIDS industry. With the brave vision of our queer pioneers commodified by this oligarchy, is it any wonder so many of us have lost any sense of gay pride and seek refuge in drugs like crystal meth? Under the rubric of 'safe sex education', this elite has influence in every sector of queerdom and beyond, from [local] government to the club scene, community groups and gay media. That a body with such an obvious agenda of self-interest is funded to educate on public health issues should be of concern to all."
~ G. H. Armstrong [SX, Sydney]
Press and public relations officers – "spin doctors" – are
tasked with shaping and influencing public opinion, typically via a neurolinguistic technique that manipulates and distorts words into simplistic, easily understood "soundbites" to serve a pre-planned and set agenda (i.e. propaganda). Where the bureaucratic paranoia of AID$ Inc. is concerned, it is the press officer's role to promote the sector as the naturally selected arbiter of sexual health and guardian of the moral high ground, in the process masking its negligence, failures and malpractices by fabricating/spinning cosy illusions however patently inappropriate, absurd, surreal and detached they are from reality.
"If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth."
~ Joseph Goebbels
The modern world's demand for fast, disposable news means that journalists on tight deadlines and diminishing budgets rarely venture below the cracks to deconstruct the highly-processed, neatly-packaged soundbites disseminated by these masters of deception to get to the truth. When the UK national press cover HIV, it turns to their one-stop spin shop, THT's press office, and whichever spin doctor/"Head of Health Promotion" is in residence will proceed to manipulate whatever PC-filtered words are necessary to present AID$ Inc. UK in the most favourable light possible.
"We are accountable to our communities, donors and funders. We work with integrity, transparency and efficiency. We communicate clearly and responsibly… We are an independent charity…"
~ Terrence Higgins Trust [which counts "honesty" as one of its core values in its Mission Statement]
In November 2006, the UK's Independent newspaper ran two HIV stories (HIV Rise Blamed on Complacency and So Why Has This Suicidal Shift happened?), reporting as fact THT dogma that, while theoretically and statistically implausible, MSM simultaneously ditched condoms in a united pact of recklessness ("condom fatigue"), instead of what really happened: namely, that UK MSM have become complacent around safe sex; a complacency born of, and instilled by, a woefully indifferent and negligent HIV sector paralysed by political correctness and which has demonstrated, time and again, that it will go out of its way to deprive MSM of the knowledge they need to maintain themselves in optimum health.
"It has only been the smaller, compassion-led community groups who hit early and hard, instead of wasting time and lives. There are two diseases being fought here, on all three continents – complacency and addiction. I know how to fight the latter, but head-in-the-sand recalcitrants, I confess, really do baffle me."
~ Shayne Chester [CAAMA]
In the latter article, THT's resident rent-a-quote Will Nutland bemoaned the fact that government anti-AIDS campaigns have been redirected away from young gay men who are most at risk towards straight teenagers who are statistically unlikely to contract HIV. "The result is that money is being wasted targeting low-risk straight holidaymakers, and high-risk people are not getting the protection they need," he moaned, neglecting to justify why THT won't donate even a fraction of its £20+ million annual cash haul to working with worthwhile causes like gay under 21s website Puffta to emphasise the dire need for safe sex practices among the young.
"Prevention and support is needed, and it needs to be directed at gay youth… I don't remember the scary adverts, and maybe something like that is needed as a wake-up call to young gay men so they get the message."
~ Simon Johnston [Puffta founder]
"Their lives are ending before they begin. It's like an AIDS mafia has hijacked gay men's health in this country and is doing all it can to prevent young men accessing the advice and information they need to protect themselves."
~ A central London STI clinician
"When I open a copy of Boyz or QX I am constantly presented with [ads] of sleazy guys either 'fucking safe' or sleazy guys that are dealing with the consequences of not 'fucking safe'. Quite frankly, how the youth [are supposed to] identify with those messages when they are presented in a way that is alien to their lifestyle just goes to show how out of tune [these campaigns] are."
~ FT [Disco Damaged]
In March 2008, BBC's Newsnight reported on the craze for bareback porn and interviewed several youngsters who contracted HIV during filming, one of whom, in the following exchange, symbolises the ignorance of a generation of UK youngsters weaned on ineffective HIV campaigns that have failed to distinguish the virus from curable STDs:
John Gadsby, 20: "The way I see it is I've got [HIV] now so I've already got it."
Newsnight presenter: "But you know if you get a superinfection, the point behind that is you could then have a strain of the virus that's resistant to drugs."
JG: "Yeah, I suppose, but I'm quite happy with the risks that I'm taking. I knew the risks from the start and I was happy with that and everything with the testing system… More than happy to carry on because I enjoy what I do."
NP: "Some people listening will see your attitude as complacent bordering on irresponsible, both towards yourself and to other people and ultimately to taxpayers who will end up having to pay for your treatment."
JG: "Yeah, I know…sorry. Nowt I can do now…"
AID$ Inc.'s mostly cynically engineered press releases are unhesitantly reprinted word for word along with its ill-conceived ad campaigns by a docile, dumbed-down gay press run largely by cowardly editors. Instead of asking the important questions – why are HIV infection rates really soaring? – they collude with AID$ Inc. to perpetuate the notion that the HIV sector serves the gay community's best interests and stamp out all dissenting voices, leaving enlightened observers and whistle blowers to shout to be heard on their letters pages or internet discussion boards that are invariably hijacked by bullying HIV sector disinformation "shills" whose age-old tactic is to harass, repress and smear those who speak the truth.
"I was seduced by magazines like Boyz and QX, who made sex in public places look so carefree and uncomplicated… If we as gay men have been led astray by HIV agencies and the gay press in a false sense of security, it is the HIV agencies and gay press who should explain to the British taxpayer exactly what their role has been while presiding over record HIV rates, clinical care costs and an ever-increasing drugs bill for what is an easily avoidable disease."
~ Michael Cottrell [UK AIDS activist]
Fact: THT raises millions of pounds from the UK government and hundreds of thousands more via their many fundraising initiatives, spin-offs, pharmaceutical industry donations, celebrity auctions and gala dinners – a portion of which one might reasonably expect to see channelled back into appropriate health awareness campaigns and initiatives.
"The proceeds of the late Freddie Mercury's hit single Bohemian Rhapsody, totalling £1 million, have been donated to THT. Its Chief Executive, Nick Partridge, says that the money will be spent on a new headquarters. Who really benefits from that?"
~ Ron Aitken [Free Life, January 1993]
THT's history of financial impropriety is well-
documented, but can anything be more financially irregular than a "charity" that raises £20+ million a year, spends around 60p in every pound of that amount on "staff costs" – including private sector-size salaries, extravagant perks and gold-plated pension schemes – millions more on lavish new Central London premises and then states, matter-of-factly, that it needs yet more taxpayers' cash to fund HIV campaigns or to warn MSM about the most dangerous health threat to hit the UK gay community since AIDS?
"What I find alarming about THT is their decision to answer criticisms not in a constructive way but in a way which personally deflects responsibility away from their executives. Everything they do does not have the health of gay men at its heart but is done to protect their own careers."
~ Jimmy Y [UK.Gay.Com discussion board]
AID$ Inc. UK's complacency around crystal meth hit home in March 2005 at an HIV prevention conference in Bristol, when Perry Halkitis, a respected psychologist at New York University, warned that its addictiveness can make occasional use rapidly escalate to regular use, as occurred in New York in the late 1990s. He pointed out that as recently as 1998 crystal was mainly a west coast phenomenon in the US with around 7% of New York MSM using, leaping by 50% a year later following the arrival of Viagra. "The discussion on crystal in the UK feels a lot like it did in New York in 1998," Halkitis told the conference. "The time to start taking effective public health measures to make sure it doesn't take over the UK scene is now." A warning that AID$ Inc. UK curtly dismissed and continues to ignore.
“Crystal is increasingly, and simplistically, being linked in the eyes of the mainstream (and parts of the gay) press, to unsafe sexual behaviour amongst gay men. Just as with the net last year, a bunch of couldn’t-care-less bug chasers the year before and bathhouses in the 1980s, crystal has become the casual explanation for HIV infections amongst gay men.”
~ Will Nutland [Aidsmap, June 2005]
"If we want to avoid a renewed crisis, we have to do something that is very difficult for gay people: we have to restigmatise bareback sex and make crystal meth socially unacceptable on the gay scene. The alternative is another mass culling of the gay population."
~ Johann Hari [The Independent, November 2005]
GMFA is little better when it comes to avoiding harsh realities in favour of pushing titilating bondage, sauna cruising courses and "arse classes", PEP, frivolous HIV campaigns and dumbed-down health information. This conversation took place between a member of the public and an unnamed GMFA representative in May 2006 and perfectly illustrates its appalling complacency:
Caller: Hello, I wonder if you can help me. A 20-year-
old friend of mine has started using crystal meth and he seroconverted while using at a sex party where everyone was smoking from a meth pipe.
GMFA: Ok.
Caller: What do you advise? Do you have any information available?
GMFA: Yes, get your friend to contact THT and they will outline the services they offer to people with HIV.
Caller: No, I mean with regard to cystal meth. You must know that a lot of men on the scene are using these days? What information are you providing about its dangers?
GMFA: We don't provide information about crystal.
Caller: What?!
GMFA: The results of the last Gay Men's Sex Survey show that only 3% of gay men in the UK have ever tried crystal.
Caller: Why are you not providing reliable information about this dangerous drug for those who do come into contact with it? Isn't GMFA supposed to be protecting the health of gay men?
GMFA: Well, er…
Caller: Your attitude is appalling! Crystal meth has destroyed thousands of lives across America and in Australia, and you have no plans to prevent the possibility of a similar catastrophe occurring here?
GMFA: I must advise you that I am about to terminate this call. Good bye.
"The organisations that are in place and have been in place for 20 years have not ended this crisis. It ain't working!"
~ Harvey Fierstein [Celebrity AIDS activist]
