Why Lying About HIV Transmission in Africa is a Form of Extremism

The simple answer: because it is dehumanizing. It dehumanizes Africans to say that HIV is endemic in some countries 'because of the people's sexual behavior'. And dehumanizing people is an advanced step in many kinds of excess, such as discrimination, persecution, racial, sexual and gender based hatred, impoverishment, violence, terrorism, and many others.

As a result of the dehumanization of Africans over the thirty years of recognized HIV transmission, many extremist suggestions have been made about 'containing' the epidemic: mass forced sterilization, castration and isolation, to name a few. Some suggestions have been put into practice: mass testing, 'pledges' to avoid sex, 'payments' to avoid sex, use of Africans as research guinea-pigs, unethical research on humans, mass forced treatment, stigmatization of sufferers and mass circumcision.

As a result of the dehumanization of Africans, there is talk of putting even more people on drugs, whether they are HIV positive or not, even whether they choose to accept treatment or not. These strategies include pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP, for more of which, see my other blog), treatment as prevention, microbicides and even vaccines, if such vaccines are ever developed.

African people are not treated like non-Africans: if someone here is diagnosed as being HIV positive, they are told they were infected by 'unsafe' sex. This is not generally how people diagnosed with HIV in non-African countries are treated. Especially if the patient denies having any kind of 'unsafe' sex.

When infants are found to be HIV positive in non-African countries, the mother is tested. It is not assumed that the mother is positive. If the mother is found to be negative, the issue of how the infant was infected is investigated in non-African countries. In African countries, it is implied, even stated, that infant rape can not be ruled out.

When you diagnose a disease in animals, you put them on treatment. You observe their behavior and make conclusions about what steps need to be taken to ensure that such behavior does not continue. But you don't need to take this approach when you are dealing with humans. So why is that they way Africans are treated by the HIV industry, WHO, UNAIDS and various 'academic' institutions?

We have gone a long way down the road of dehumanizing Africans when a mainstream media outlet can publish a story about Swazis 'eating cow dung' because they are starving and need food to take along with their antiretroviral drugs. We have gone a long way down the road when hundreds and thousands of others link to and spread that story throughout the World Wide Web, much like a virus, you could say.

I thought carefully about mentioning Nazis in relation to the story about Swazis. But Nazis really did attribute such things as eating feces to Jews, it was just one instance of the many stigmatizing things they would attribute to those they hated. Hitler really did believe that propaganda need not consist of true things about its target, that a mixture was quite sufficient.

If we are not yet aware that while HIV CAN be transmitted sexually, it CAN ALSO be transmitted non-sexually, we have been deceived by those who purport to be educating us about the virus. We should know that HIV is difficult to transmit through heterosexual sex among healthy people, but that it is much more easily transmitted through anal sex, through intravenous drug use and even through heterosexual sex among people who are suffering from serious health problems, including certain sexually transmitted infections.

Those living in non-African countries should be aware that most of the people who have HIV in their countries were not infected through heterosexual intercourse. This is a reflection of the sort of virus HIV is. It doesn't mean that HIV infects 'bad' people, despite the tone of much media content on the subject.

But if HIV is almost always spread through means other than heterosexual intercourse in non-African countries, why would 80% (or even 90%) of HIV be spread through heterosexual intercourse in African countries, as claimed by the HIV orthodoxy? The fact that a HIV positive person has had sex, even 'unsafe' sex, does not mean they were infected sexually.

We know, we have known since the 1980s, that HIV can be spread through unsafe healthcare such as blood transfusions and unsterilized equipment, especially  injecting equipment. And we have known there are other risks, such as cosmetic treatment with unsterilized equipment, tattooing, especially in prisons, traditional medical and other skin piercing practices, home deliveries, etc.

In addition, we know that healthcare facility conditions are appalling in many developing countries, especially high HIV prevalence African countries. Even UNAIDS advises UN employees to avoid health facilities in Africa. We know that many blood transfusions are administered without adequate precautions taken to avoid infecting the patient with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases, that skin piercing equipment is frequently reused without sterilization.

As long as we continue to point the finger at HIV positive Africans, implying, or even stating that they were infected sexually, we are allowing the virus to be spread. As long as we continue to pretend that we know how people are becoming infected with a virus that should never have reached endemic levels, we are allowing people to become infected. We have not yet investigated non-sexual risks in African countries. Why do UNAIDS studiously avoid doing this?

We dehumanize Africans by assuming things about their sexual behavior when no adequate investigations have been made about other, non-sexual HIV risks and this is just a part of an extreme racist phenomenon of allowing an epidemic that should never have occurred to continue to infect people, kill people and destroy their families and communities. The orthodox account of how HIV is transmitted in African countries is inherently racist. It is also a lie, the propagation of which has profound consequences.

BBC Trying to Fill a Niche Vacated By News of the World?

One of the issues that crops up a lot on this blog is the kind of things that non-Africans would believe about Africans. There was a lot of media coverage (or 'wallowing', even) around albinos being targeted by witch doctors or traditional medicine practitioners in Tanzania.

The problem is not that the media covered these terrible events; the problem is that just because such events were uncovered, this doesn't mean they are just a part of Tanzanian or African life.

So a few months ago I came across an article that was specific about the gory details but silent about anything that would allow the veracity of the story to be examined. The article, run by Reuters and echoed by hundreds, perhaps thousands of others, claimed that three albino brothers were murdered, buried and exhumed so their body parts could be used for something or other.

At the time, I was working with albinos in Northern Tanzania, where this event was said to have occurred. I asked colleagues and friends, including albinos. No one had heard of this story and they had no way of knowing how to check if it were true. I even asked some Tanzania Albino Society (TAS) leaders, one of them being the chairman of TAS, said to have been interviewed for the story. No one knew anything.

I contacted Reuters, posted a message on the article and emailed the author. I received nothing except advice to contact the author. The article is still on Reuters' site. And hundreds of copies and echoes of the article are also scattered around the web for posterity.

In a similar vein, I saw a story during the week on the BBC website claiming that some Swazis taking antiretroviral drugs are so hungry that they eat cow dung to ensure that the drugs 'work'. The drugs are supposed to be taken with food.

The question isn't really about whether the story is true. Someone may have eaten cow dung, somewhere, at some time, or someone may have just claimed that they did. The question is about whether this is a story? If so, is it about Swazis, HIV, food shortages, poverty or prejudice? If you read the sort of things that Nazis said about Jews, it included references to feces, living in feces, being covered in feces, eating feces.

When you 'report' that people are eating feces, for whatever reason, are you trying to raise sympathy, or are you simply playing on the anti-African prejudices that many media outlets have been so happy to hone over the years?

The question is of vital importance. Since HIV has been pinned on Africa, African sexual behavior, African morality, and whatever else suits a story angle and media trends, many seem to have lost sight of the fact that HIV is a virus, one that makes people very sick and eventually die.

Articles appear to be more concerned with slavering over the details about genitalia, tribal practices, non-use of contraception and just about anything else except the fact that HIV is a virus, a sickness, one of many that infect Africans in grotesquely disproportionate numbers.

With rare exceptions, the media doesn't ask questions that they don't already have what they consider to be the answer. So they ask why some African countries have massive HIV epidemics, but not why any country should have massive rates of viral transmission when it is a very difficult virus to transmit, sexually, at least.

Because it is sexual transmission the media is interested in, make no mistake about that. And they have their answer: it's African sexuality, morality, behavior, etc. The men have sex with anyone they wish to have sex with, the women will do anything to have children or to get money for their families, it's all led by sexual desire, rampant brutality, inhuman behavior.

When babies and young children are found to be HIV positive even though their mothers are negative, it's attributed to the fact that they are raped by their father or by a family member. When old, no longer sexually active people get HIV they say 'even old people are at risk'. Pregnant mothers appear to get infected during or just after giving birth, and even when their sexual partner is not infected it is suggested that they simply must have had sex with someone who was infected.

The story about Swazis eating cow dung with their HIV drugs appears to be a symptom of how the media can write whatever they want, with the understanding that they are just pulling strings that people are well conditioned to respond to. The victims of anti-African prejudice are now guinea-pigs in Western drug trials and even charades that claim to relate to health, but are really just mass eugenics exercises.

I'm sure the BBC didn't give this article about Swazis eating cow dung a great deal of thought, and many of their articles look similarly thoughtless, media memes that have as little impact as some of the interstitials that appear on other news sites. But the fact that people can write and even read such an article and not protest means that the corporation has a rotten streak, whether through carelessness or design. Are they trying to fill a niche left vacant by recent changes in the media world?

It's OK, Apparently Journalists Are Supposed to Lie

In an article about the Polish journalist and writer, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Neal Ascherson claims that "there is no floodlit wire frontier between literature and reporting". This is interesting because he feels that being a "great story teller" does not make someone a liar. Which is true, except when they are supposed to be writing an article that people assume is 'reportage'.

I don't know about Kapuscinski but if there is no frontier between literature and reporting then why would anyone bother to read the daily tripe? Journalists churn out a lot of rubbish concerning things they know precious little about, but people read papers and listen to radios and TVs every day to find out what is happening in the world. When they read some jumped up hack going on about how there couldn't be global warming because it's very cold today, they think that the whole issue about climate change has been trumped up.

So when it comes to genetically modified organisms (GMO), consumers of journalistic bullshit (the majority of mainstream reporting) think of Frankenstein foods, or whatever crap the 'profession' has dreamed up to ensure that the last thing people do is think or become informed in any way. Neal Ascherson may write for The Guardian, a 'moderate' paper, but lying and reporting are not the same thing and if a journalist lies, he or she is a liar.

What I'm saying about GMOs will probably be of no interest to journalists because I am not opposed to them just because they may be dangerous to humans, animals, plants, water supplies, in general, the whole global ecosystem. Although, I admit it, the fact that no one knows exactly what effect long term consumption of GMOs has on those who consume them (because no credible research has been done), does seem like a glaring omission. I am opposed to the fact that a few multinationals want to control the whole of humanity's ability to provide enough food for itself. Not only do they want this but they already control a massive proportion of global food production. To cap it all, many of the most powerful idiots in the world are in favour of this, with the support of...big media owners.

Ok, I've skipped past the journalists because they are just doing a job and they are paid for by some revolting Murdoch-like character who is trying to do for global media what Monsanto is trying to do for food production. But Ascherson makes a good point, don't bother reading what journalists have to say, unless you like a good read. As for science reporting in the mainstream media, forget it.

Domination of global food production by a few multinationals should be bad enough but approval of GM potatoes or any other GMO in Europe (or anywhere else) will also be a disaster because such crops will contaminate other crops around them. We know that they will because the evidence is clear from every field trial of GMOs. We know that there are other dangerous drawbacks to GM crops and also that none of the promised advantages of these crops have materialised. So what they hell are we growing them for?

I wouldn't wish to blame lying journalists for doing any more than following orders, or whatever it is they do, but if they want to brown-nose the bosses of companies like Monsanto, the least they could do is declare their interest. Because every time they throw in a straw man argument like 'Frankenstein foods', they are scoring a goal for the GMO industry. Monsanto can just claim to be using the crops for animal feed or biofuels. But then the problem doesn't go away. Once GMOs are used, the damage is done.

There are enough arguments against the use of GMOs, aside from the dangers to human health. But these arguments are much more difficult to answer. So rather than get the biotech industry to answer them, they are presented with arguments that they have a ready prepared response to. A response that has been well sold by journalists. And have you noticed the way articles often point out how widespread GMO contamination already is, as if to say it's only a matter of time before there is no longer any point in protesting? That's how they got GM cotton into India. Thanks journalists.