I went to see the movie "A Single Man" last night, a 2010 production. The title alone attracted my attention and the brief notes in its intro stated that it was the day in the life of a man, the year of 1962. I knew nothing more about it except from its trailer. Well that would be enough. I would at the very least see how it would compare to my story, "Culture Shock -- My trip to Switzerland". It was indeed incredibly similar in style and substance. More intense and dramatic, of course, the story was about a man who was frustrated that he could not relate his life in an open way. "Culture Shock" takes place in the year 1987 some twenty five years later. I learned later that evening in reading a review, that the arthur was Christopher Isherwood, one of my favorite writers. He wrote "I, the camera" on which "Cabaret" was based. I haven't thought of him in ages and wonder how much he has influenced my writing. By the way, I still have not received any comments from anyone here.
Let me tell you the story as seen from the other side of the Atlantic. From Belgium, Europe.
The second World War left our country in shambles.
(My father started career by showing his business talent at 17, by selling sigarettes to GI's, and connecting them with Antwerp women, earning the then phenomenal amount of 25 dollars a day.)
Children had to be educated, schools need to be build, and the government took on that task, society could not wait until some free enterprise started delivering education. This was probably the start of demise of our culture. The European governments would never relinquish control of education.
After an humble rebuilding of everything, we entered the golden sixties, in Germany they had the "Wirtschaftswunder", the German Economic Miracle. Taxes were low, government had not even realized that they could intervene. Society was largely capitalist, although, a roaring inflation must have been an indication that already then, they were printing money as hell.
Some people, simple enterpreneurs got rich quick in the sixties, everything was novel, and people had buying power. Then the catholic party dominated government decided all this luxury was unnecessary evil, and they raised the highest income tax bracket to 90%. Then they added VAT, a sales tax going as high as 33% on luxury goods. Also an obligatory social and medical insurance was levied on every wage. Almost immediately the economy went into a steep decline, except of course the government sector.
A few years later, unemployment went into the double digits, just as the government deficits. In the eighties and later, only a few percent of the population had credit cards, because most people simply did not have disposable income, even if you worked full time. The only people that could get loans were bureaucrats, because people that worked for the government could not lose their jobs, and everybody else was too great a risk for the bank.
The past 35 years we saw business cl
The silence is deafening. 1) Did anyone like it? 2) Did you read it? 3) Was it of any interest? 4) Did it hold your attention? 5) Was it too long? 6) Should I continue to write? 7) Please give me your comment. Here or at my E-mail. Thank you.
dbMurrieta@gmail.com
Onnie Mary Moyo Phuthe the efficacy and availability of the 2nd kind and current hubby, Onthusitse Edison Phute
"Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Hello Mr.
I ma very happy to hear from a fellow African like myself. Compliments for 2010 and beyond.
to get right to answering you.
In my second marriage there is availability and efficacy, support and love. Luckily Edison had the patience of not being driven by jeolousy of the exhusband over possesiveness. It has also paid me more that it has paid Edison to divorce. Now we are going to be one year married in June 2010 without the bossy exhusband ARV.
I can not ask for anything more or different, my experince with Mr ARV was not a pleasant one, this one for a change is both ways giving and taking by both parties not th on i wa in. It used to give and give, and Mr ARV just took and took and gave me nothing back.
I am replying in the context of this story in reference, so hope i have answered you.
i hope you are not in a relationship that i was in.
be well Mr.
Onnie
this is quite revealing, l am african myself from neighrburing zimbabwe and would want t know more about the efficacy and availability of the 2nd kind and current hubby, Onthusitse Edison Phute.
Yup. Perfectly phrased. No gold standards exist. Every "infection" is a singular battle. Heading into my twentieth meds free poz year - and still standing with plenty to spare.
And can we not all send one MILLION thanks to Farber for being such a tireless, TIRELESS warrior - from the beginning, through all nuances, battles, lost friendships (Maggiore), unfettered alliances (the prescient Duesberg) fierce in determination and spirit.and always providing a forum for the muffled voices of dissent.
Carl, thank you for writing such an eloquent and articulate summation of living thorough these last three decades of hell. Your words have clearly struck a tone with those of us who have had to walk through the midst of this travesty.
Thank you, Celia, for publishing this essay.
May all of us find our own voices, to be used as the only tools capable of bringing down the walls.
Carl,
I, much like yourself, watched friends waste away and die and those that carry on, a life without anti-HIV medicine. Perplexing is the human psychology perhaps, in that it's society's pressures of what a positive reaction on an HIV test actually means. How strong one's belief is western orthodoxy protocols are one thing, but in my opinion, that has less to do with it than what is laid out in one's psyche, i.e., that ever looming early demise and death from "HIV disease", not matter what one cares to believe.
Faced with a such a challenge, I would hope one can find the fortitude to focus on what one truly wants, but the really sad part is that life for most people with HIV, the focus instilled (or rather forced) into one's mind is quite the opposite. Difficult is it to undo the brain washing, but if one can succeed in doing so, the wisdom becomes profoundly apparent within the dissident camp, of which I am glad to be apart of. I'm eternally grateful you are too.
I really appreciate this article. I think it gets to the heart of something, denial versus acknowledgment, thinking versus dogma.
We search for meaning in death. If death doesn't have meaning, then, I suppose, nothing does. Death causes us to pause and think. If we don't, we are indeed in "denial."
I once heard a psychohistorical researcher present his results of a survey of witnesses to 9/11. He said that, when death is near and evident, what death means to people doesn't change. People confirm their world views and beliefs about death when they go into shock. So the neighbor standing on my rooftop that day, yelling about how he wanted to send troops to the Middle East right then, was doing the same thing that I was when I committed myself against violent ways of solving problems. We were both digging into positions. Which one of us was in "denial"? Both of us were in a deep "acknowledgment" of who we were, our childhood experiences, and what we believed: positionality. It follows that to deny someone's position is to be, to them, "in denial." But what possibilities does their position deny them?
What I've noticed around slow death is a person's struggle with deep positionality. Their most cherished positions are challenged, but they can't move. The person who believes in a certain drug will fight to the end to stay on that drug. The one who puts his faith in alternative medicine is lost in that dogma. He'll "cleanse" himself into oblivion. Faced with a B-12 deficiency and severe anemia, he'll even refuse to eat meat because vegetarianism is "right." Death is the terminal stage of positionality.
We die of being "right," rather than accurate. Accuracy is not "right" but "right now."
What is needed is flexibility. Long-term HIV-positive survivors off the drugs are not immortal. Their situation is, as the article here states, complex and very different from other cases. The "reductionist" boiling-down to one or two factors is just not realit
I just wanted to say how much I appreciated this article, and it's author. Although I've never met Mr. Carl Stryg in person, he is the very first person I ever had contact with and spoke with on the phone after we discovered the massive amount of questions surrounding the HIV theory.
I was taking these very toxic medications for 11 yrs, all the while being told by my doctor that the "side effects" I was experiencing were due to my "having AIDS". Never once did he inform me that these drugs could possibly be causing my slow decline in health. Overall, I believe I was "tolerating" the drugs fairly well, considering I'd been on AZT the whole time.
Anyway, as my husband and I began to read and research the controversy surrounding the theory, we started trying to reach some of the people involved, to help answer the many questions we had.
Carl was the first person I actually was able to reach and speak with by phone. I remember the day clearly, almost 3 yrs ago. He was patient with my questions, reassuring, and listened to everything I was feeling regarding being deceived on such a massive scale.
Never once did he encourage me to stop my drugs.
What he did encourage me to do was ask questions, demand answers, seek evidence, read, research......and then make my decisions being fully informed.
So, thank you Mr. Carl Stryg for your availability, the time you took with me that day, and this wonderful synopsis on how I'm sure most of us are feeling in regards to 25 yrs of HIV "science".
Sincerely,
Karri
Onnie Mary Moyo Phutheimagine if the pilot spinned fear - we would all never travel
I have always asked myself - so many reseaches are done, none of them ever gets published as long as it does not stir fear in us. the result has to wear a scarely face, a halloween constume.
The only time you find a published research it one that has a smilly face. Money is a very wicked in science, it can find out the truth, heal people, keep the truth concealed, and create dealy meds. after all if you are a scientist the govt will help you do both the good and the bad.
there are tin openers, the aids hoax is an ey opener for human race to show what can be don in teh name of profit.
Can you imagine if the pilot of a plane always spoke fear to his/her passengers, airlines would not make a dime.
he always says what is in a manner that does not spin fear.
He wants to be trusted, he defends the plane and his/her passengers with his/her/life. scientists and doctors have a a humanity code of conduct that expects them to add value to life and save life. speak the truth with our fear or favour- that is the bottom line. instead those who do, they are censored or sidelined, and degraded.
Here's a passage from Italy for the Gourmet Traveler by Fred Plotkin, in his glowing tribute to Trieste in the Friuli:
"You will notice that bananas in Italy taste better than those sold in the United States. The reason is that bananas sold in Italy are not picked green and then gassed to ripen. Instead, bananas in Italy usually arrive from Africa full of the flavor that only older Americans remember. "
Q.E.D., Jeremy
R. A. Davis
I agree with Dr. Miklos that the Newsweek article focuses on the persona of Dr. Duesberg rather than on the scientific debate over the link of HIV/AIDS. I disagree with his selection of an vaccine against HIV as an example to disprove this link.
The HIV vaccine has proven elusive for various reasons, not all of them understood. It is therefore a poor tool to disprove the link of HIV/AIDS, as one cannot account for the unknown reasons of its failure.
In my opinion, Dr. Miklos argument would have been a lot stronger if he had succeeded in disproving the link by using anti-retrovirals as an example. I'd like to postulate that it might be impossible to do so, at least not with the same reasoning he used for the vaccine.
Let me quote his argument, replacing the word 'vaccine' with 'ARV' (anti-retroviral):
'...[i]The predictions are that
(i) shutting down the virus with ARVs would prevent all 30 conditions,
(ii) an effective ARVS would lower the viral load in infected individuals,
(iii) the reduced count of CD4+ lymphocytes would return to a normal level when the virus is shut down.[/i]....'
Numerous studies and clinical practice back up this argument. Isn't this sufficient as an indirect proof of the causal link between HIV/AIDS?
HIV/AIDS, in proper historical context, oh, if we could only see it in 100 years...
I saw an old movie week before last, Arrowsmith (1931), and was a bit floored by it.
The whole idea of the necessity of proper controls has been known for a very long time. The ONLY people abandoning proper controls benefits are the shareholders of big pharma, and so-called "scientists" that pretend they've actually achieved something significant.
In the future, people will look back at this time, and we will be judged, pitied, and looked upon with no small measure of disgust - how could we have been so stupid, so greedy, so short-sighted ?
In his website, Dr. Duesberg wrote "The hypothesis promises improvements in cancer prevention by eliminating substances that cause aneuploidy from food and drugs".
Celia, I'm from Brazil, and I've always loved the way you write. I've even started to read all your AIDS articles without being much interested on the subject. Now I stumbled across this review which - given the subject - is something I would never expect from you. I've watched this movie some weeks ago and it's really touching and great. Thanks for giving us great articles over the years.
Celia, I wouldn't like to have to sort your mail inbox!
Science today seems to be in a really sad state, when propaganda methods trump empirical evidence.
Has your facebook account been deleted?
R. A. DavisTHE FIRST THING I TELL PEOPLE ABOUT CANCER...
...is that cancer generates more revenue annually than any other industry except petrochemicals.
What happens to the clinics, the NPO's, the purveyors of chemo and radiation, the makers of all the attendant instrumentation, the pharmas, etc., within, say, nine months after a definitive cure is announced?
The medical blindness is not exclusive to HIV and cancer. US healthcare is the third leading cause of death in the country (JAMA, July, 2000). People aren't getting any better, are not being cured of a whole legion of diseases; they're only getting by, mostly on medications that treat symptoms not underlying causes. It's a greed factor: if you relieve symptoms but don't fix the cause, then the patients are stuck with taking your prescription drugs indefinitely. The drug companies make orders of magnitude more money that way. If they actually produce a cure for something, it's a short-term or once-and-done Rx.
Sad to say, healing biz is sick with a cancer called greed. And since every profession has its whores, it's easy to hire hacks and "medical experts" to shoot down the truth-seekers who dare to publish.
This is something that the great leviathan called ObamaCare will not remedy.
I have been HIV positive for 23 years. I've been on the HIV combination therapies for the past 11 years. I have taken many different combinations of HIV drugs and have experienced a very wide variety of extreme side effects. I have no doubt that these HIV drugs have toxic effects on the body. One of my doctors recently told me that these "medicines" can cause organ failure. When I asked which organs they told me...the liver, the kidneys and the pancreas. I have stopped taking the AIDS drugs for the past four months and am taking a variety of herbs, vitamins, and amino acids. I am also using a zapper which sends an electrical current through my skin into my bloodstream. I am feeling well.
I do believe that AIDS exists. It is a real virus. The AIDS drugs however are much too toxic and are too expensive. Big pharma is getting rich off of people's suffering. There are alternative therapies which work better and are much, much cheaper, and, they are non-toxic when used properly.
Off to a rocky start, having posted the original draft,instead of the finished story yesterday,this is my 1st attempt to write a short story. It has been a long arduous process to completion, 6 months! I never would have believed that writing was so difficult. I want to thank Celia for all her help and encouragement. I hope you like the finished product. The picture of the Swiss coo coo clock, selected by Celia, came as a complete surprise. She apparently saw the underlying theme of the piece, one of which I wasn't even aware, to be the element of "Time".
Baby PongFDR was fully aware that Pearl Harbor was coming
Re John Strausbaugh's words above about FDR, Robert Stinnett's book Day of Deceit provided much documentation that FDR not only knew in advance that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and allowed it to happen so public outrage would enable him to go to war, but also had earlier instituted a provocation program against Japan to induce them to attack the US. (He also blamed a scapegoat, some admiral or something whose name I can't recall, for not preventing the attack, when in fact FDR's men had systematically misled the dude and withheld information from him)
There is much evidence for this, not only government documents but the recollections of a daughter of someone who had firsthand knowledge that FDR had foreknowledge. (I'm lazy, I could google this and get the dame's name, but who has the time for this sort of thing?)
This stuff is all very well documented, but that doesn't stop the media from ignoring the evidence and continuing the myth that it was a surprise attack. John can be forgiven for not knowing about this )
Dear Celia
I sincerely wish that we could have such brave people in South Africa. As the founder of the AIDS NUTRITION CLINIC in Cape Town,and recently read Janine Roberts' book - FEAR OF THE INVINCIBLE, you have all my support and to fight this lawsuit successfully. I also hope for your sake that the lawsuit is not hindered through media censorship but that the lies and genocide ends after 25 years.
In South Africa ARV are distributed like sweets, simply because organizations, like the TAC [Zackie Achmat] insists the government rolls out millions of rands on ARV in rural communities, etc., but obviusly also due to Mr. Achmat's pure ignorance and arrogance as to what HIV and AIDS is.
Best of luck.
Mark Zuhrbrigghen
AIDS NUTRITION CLINIC CAPE TOWN
The problem is that his work was NOT done! He was right when he kept saying "You haven't seen nothing yet!", he knew he had other things to fulfill. His come-back would have been greater than everything he had done. I don't think God wanted him so soon. It's the devils behind it who sent him there sooner. This thought might make us feel more comfortable with the TRAGEDY, but deep don't we all know that his work was left unfinished. "They", who deliberately killed him, probably thought he's worthing much more in death than in life. But God doesn't sleep...
Jeremy, you make this old coot pause and reflect on his friends and loved ones--and when I do, death does indeed seem a small thing.
Thank you so much, and may we have more from you soon?
R. A. Davis
Allow me, however, to say that there are anvil heads and fundos not only in America. I came across a rather rabid group of anvil head doctors here just this summer. Wife tested pos for HIV ... Talk about anvil-headed "expert consensus"! Either one does what they say or you lose your new-born child in nothing flat ... Am looking forward to "House of Numbers" appearing on dvd!
Oh, speaking of thinking for oneself: The Theory of Evolution should be critically evaluated, too. It has some very serious flaws. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I have the impression that Mr. Strausbaugh rather uncritically accepts that.
Actually, this can probably be more simply expressed. We're confusing opinion with that peculiarly modern conception, "attitude". The opinions expressed are not actually opinions, as in the product of reasoned (or even unreasoned) thought on a subject, but merely what they think or hope expresses the "attitude" they want to manifest - perhaps the attitude of the group they wish membership of, or someone they want to emulate, or an attitude that will impress girls, or just annoy people they don't like. Signs of membership then, tokens if you will, but never opinions.
"...On the other hand, one of the key elements of the biochemical chain of events that comprise an immune response (co-triggered as suggested by MAVS) is interferon. Interferon has the ability to inhibit mitochondrial DNA expression and therefore function. Furthermore there has been some mitochondrial involvement indicated in autoimmune diseases..." What is needed therefore to assist a human existance in society is a politial, social, econonomic interfeeron. A study by CDC suggested years ago that black peoples had a significant amoount of interferon in their bodies than other peoples. Is that why so many deaths (thousands weekly) take place in Africa. Farming perhaps?
I think you miss the point. This is about modes of persuasion.
Left/Liberals cling to the illusion that reasoned argument can change minds, but most people don't adopt positions for reasonable reasons. They do it to be a certain kind of person, to get girls, to get rich by emulating the careless, unfeeling attitudes they think typify wealth and privilege, to be 'hard', modern, to piss off liberals, environmentalists, whatever.
None of these positions are amenable to reason, but to adopt other modes of persuasion to overcome this is itself a defeat of reason.
"Desperate alpha males"? As opposed to what, desperate delta males? You, R.A. Davis, fail to recognize greatness when it pukes on your shoes. Our Dear Leader is defending not only our free way of life against the Nazi Space Menace, he is defending the sacred repository of G-D's Chosen against their most determined and implacable enemy. DEATH to Base 88! DEATH to the Black Sun!
SEE ALSO: "The Big Space Fuck," a 5-page gem by Vonnegut in Again Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison. You can Google it, without annoying Google with the Anglo-Saxon. TBSF puts this whole moon trip into proper perspective, especially since the NASA mission had to have been arranged by desperate alpha males.
"This proposal strikes me as lunacy. There's no way that the cost
of such a thing could have been hidden in the US budget in the
1960s. We can't even afford a proper base in low earth orbit today."
REALLY? The US gummint, or elements of our quasi-gummint, have been importing tons of narcotics for decades, and using the off-the-books $$ to fund black ops. We're in Afghanistan for the poppies, DUH. Plus, you don't think they'd tell us what sorta hi-tech stuff they have, do you? My rule of thumb is, what's published is at least 20 years behind the cutting edge.
OKAY, the reason NASA did this is 'cause an earlier mission discovered a morphed strain of green cheese--moldy mozzarella, actually--whose spores can survive a vacuum and drift to earth, and when inhaled turn us into Gahan Wilson cartoon characters.
That wouldn't be bad if it were selective. But we can't choose who gets morphed and who doesn't. So they totaled the blob of cheese, using explosives and a nose cone full of H1N1 vaccine, which will kill anything, including us.
Regarding this:
"Anyone with two brain cells to rub together had to wonder what was up with NASA bombing the moon last week. They were looking for water? Really? The entire surface of the moon is pitted with craters. They had to gouge out two more to look for water?"
Careful attention to NASA's explanation of the purpose of this mission would have answered the question. The moon is airless and has low gravity. Water vapor escapes from the surface very easily. The point of a target crater in the polar region is that it is only in such a place that the lunar surface is in permanent shadow and thus cold. There might be water frozen in surface rocks in such a place, but certainly nowhere else. The many craters over the rest of the lunar surface mentioned by JS are illuminated by sunlight for about half of each moon orbit of the earth, so they are warmer than the shadowed crater interiors at the moon's poles, and certainly thoroughly dessicated.
I hope that this piece was intended to be a joke.
This proposal strikes me as lunacy. There's no way that the cost
of such a thing could have been hidden in the US budget in the
1960s. We can't even afford a proper base in low earth orbit today.
I must be too thick to be unable to determine whether this is intended
as farce or as a serious proposal. If the former, I advise that stronger hints
be put into future jokes to help thick persons such as myself.
I ran into this piece at the Counterpunch site and it shook me up. I don't
think that this piece does Progressives any credit.
Arf, arf, arf.
Selenites? I don't think we're that adaptable...I think a local gravity is necessary for us to keep ourselves the magnificent, anxious, psychologically malleable, pill-popping, teen-anorexic to mid-30's obese shape that our beautifutzed species is in.
You can follow the failure of this current Moon-eyed project to produce a big explosion, though, through the work of the "Plasma Cosmologists" - those few and many who believe (because they observe) that the universe is formed of electrified plasma currents. NASA's impact of a small space probe into an asteroid a few years ago famously produced a massive electrical discharge. This one, with the moon, was, in their words, a 'dud.'
The plasma cosmologists explain this as a measure of electrical difference, between the homeostatic moon (accustomed to the local electrical charges, and not at odds with them), and the large asteroid, coming from deep space, not at level with the local electrical environment, having accrued a massive charge, and then, with the entry of an intruder, releasing it all at once in a lightning flash.
You can see and read about all of that hither:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/predictions.htm#cdi
Oh, that we ever stopped going there? I don't know. I think they'd have figured out a way to make money off it at this point, were it so. Canada sent its first 'space tourist' into above Earth orbit, for the nice price of 35 million dollars, as I read it.
I think if the moonbases were a reality, we'd have a 'Six Flags' low-gravity amusement park, for the zuper-riche, of course, wiht a virtual Paris Hilton as your guide...
Or, maybe you're right and NASA/US Military has been making trips for years. I'm not sure...sort of doubting it. I can tell you, however, that NASA has been peddling other fictions for decades - the Big Bang theory, Black Holes, Dark Matter - all inventions to make a failing cosmology stick together (enough for zuper-krappie PBS specials, that is).
Never mind Battle
... because stuff like this then becomes the "new PC" (new Political Correctness) and people latch on because they THINK it sounds like the most "open minded" and "mature" perspective when in reality, it couldn't be. Open mindedness does not mean your brains fall out and mature doesn't mean senile. Absolutely nothing open minded or mature exists about calling truth "bias" and calling bias "default" and calling lies "truth". It's just convoluted excuse-making, when everyone KNOWS the wingnutters constitute the literal "trolls" of the real world (acting just like internet trolls but in real life).
Sorry but this would just be more of that bullshit wingnutter spin going around trying to take the heat off their ignoramus attitudes by proclaiming that everyone else does what they do and holds the attitudes they hold, only from a different perspective. Faux News capitalized on this when they invented their "fair and balanced" and "we report you decide" lines -- both of which reflect this mentality. Namely, that "everyone has a bias" just maybe not the same one you usually think of as a bias. *Wrong!*
I couldn't agree more with you. The only thing I'd like better than this post is if you'd write another with real practical ideas about HOW we can avoid becoming fundamentalists.
Totally agree. I was a Christian mentalfundalist; although not from the States, the culture is pervasive in western society.
There is nothing wrong with belief if it is based on experiential relationship, as mine is with Papa God, but spouting a belief because someone else in an assumed authority says it's so, is just stupid sheep bleating. That's why Jesus refered to us as sheep; he knew how we were inclined.
The danger of course is to swing the other way...ALL FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE WRONG!!!! That's a self refuting statement.
Latest Comments
I went to see the movie "A Single Man" last night, a 2010 production. The title alone attracted my attention and the brief notes in its intro stated that it was the day in the life of a man, the year of 1962. I knew nothing more about it except from its trailer. Well that would be enough. I would at the very least see how it would compare to my story, "Culture Shock -- My trip to Switzerland". It was indeed incredibly similar in style and substance. More intense and dramatic, of course, the story was about a man who was frustrated that he could not relate his life in an open way. "Culture Shock" takes place in the year 1987 some twenty five years later. I learned later that evening in reading a review, that the arthur was Christopher Isherwood, one of my favorite writers. He wrote "I, the camera" on which "Cabaret" was based. I haven't thought of him in ages and wonder how much he has influenced my writing. By the way, I still have not received any comments from anyone here.
Culture Shock
Let me tell you the story as seen from the other side of the Atlantic. From Belgium, Europe. The second World War left our country in shambles. (My father started career by showing his business talent at 17, by selling sigarettes to GI's, and connecting them with Antwerp women, earning the then phenomenal amount of 25 dollars a day.) Children had to be educated, schools need to be build, and the government took on that task, society could not wait until some free enterprise started delivering education. This was probably the start of demise of our culture. The European governments would never relinquish control of education. After an humble rebuilding of everything, we entered the golden sixties, in Germany they had the "Wirtschaftswunder", the German Economic Miracle. Taxes were low, government had not even realized that they could intervene. Society was largely capitalist, although, a roaring inflation must have been an indication that already then, they were printing money as hell. Some people, simple enterpreneurs got rich quick in the sixties, everything was novel, and people had buying power. Then the catholic party dominated government decided all this luxury was unnecessary evil, and they raised the highest income tax bracket to 90%. Then they added VAT, a sales tax going as high as 33% on luxury goods. Also an obligatory social and medical insurance was levied on every wage. Almost immediately the economy went into a steep decline, except of course the government sector. A few years later, unemployment went into the double digits, just as the government deficits. In the eighties and later, only a few percent of the population had credit cards, because most people simply did not have disposable income, even if you worked full time. The only people that could get loans were bureaucrats, because people that worked for the government could not lose their jobs, and everybody else was too great a risk for the bank. The past 35 years we saw business cl
Father Knew Best
The silence is deafening. 1) Did anyone like it? 2) Did you read it? 3) Was it of any interest? 4) Did it hold your attention? 5) Was it too long? 6) Should I continue to write? 7) Please give me your comment. Here or at my E-mail. Thank you. dbMurrieta@gmail.com
Culture Shock
"Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children." Oliver Wendell Holmes Hello Mr. I ma very happy to hear from a fellow African like myself. Compliments for 2010 and beyond. to get right to answering you. In my second marriage there is availability and efficacy, support and love. Luckily Edison had the patience of not being driven by jeolousy of the exhusband over possesiveness. It has also paid me more that it has paid Edison to divorce. Now we are going to be one year married in June 2010 without the bossy exhusband ARV. I can not ask for anything more or different, my experince with Mr ARV was not a pleasant one, this one for a change is both ways giving and taking by both parties not th on i wa in. It used to give and give, and Mr ARV just took and took and gave me nothing back. I am replying in the context of this story in reference, so hope i have answered you. i hope you are not in a relationship that i was in. be well Mr. Onnie
Divorcing "The Man in the Bottle"
this is quite revealing, l am african myself from neighrburing zimbabwe and would want t know more about the efficacy and availability of the 2nd kind and current hubby, Onthusitse Edison Phute.
Divorcing "The Man in the Bottle"
Yup. Perfectly phrased. No gold standards exist. Every "infection" is a singular battle. Heading into my twentieth meds free poz year - and still standing with plenty to spare. And can we not all send one MILLION thanks to Farber for being such a tireless, TIRELESS warrior - from the beginning, through all nuances, battles, lost friendships (Maggiore), unfettered alliances (the prescient Duesberg) fierce in determination and spirit.and always providing a forum for the muffled voices of dissent.
I really, really, don’t care what causes AIDS
Carl, thank you for writing such an eloquent and articulate summation of living thorough these last three decades of hell. Your words have clearly struck a tone with those of us who have had to walk through the midst of this travesty. Thank you, Celia, for publishing this essay. May all of us find our own voices, to be used as the only tools capable of bringing down the walls.
I really, really, don’t care what causes AIDS
Carl, I, much like yourself, watched friends waste away and die and those that carry on, a life without anti-HIV medicine. Perplexing is the human psychology perhaps, in that it's society's pressures of what a positive reaction on an HIV test actually means. How strong one's belief is western orthodoxy protocols are one thing, but in my opinion, that has less to do with it than what is laid out in one's psyche, i.e., that ever looming early demise and death from "HIV disease", not matter what one cares to believe. Faced with a such a challenge, I would hope one can find the fortitude to focus on what one truly wants, but the really sad part is that life for most people with HIV, the focus instilled (or rather forced) into one's mind is quite the opposite. Difficult is it to undo the brain washing, but if one can succeed in doing so, the wisdom becomes profoundly apparent within the dissident camp, of which I am glad to be apart of. I'm eternally grateful you are too.
I really, really, don’t care what causes AIDS
I really appreciate this article. I think it gets to the heart of something, denial versus acknowledgment, thinking versus dogma. We search for meaning in death. If death doesn't have meaning, then, I suppose, nothing does. Death causes us to pause and think. If we don't, we are indeed in "denial." I once heard a psychohistorical researcher present his results of a survey of witnesses to 9/11. He said that, when death is near and evident, what death means to people doesn't change. People confirm their world views and beliefs about death when they go into shock. So the neighbor standing on my rooftop that day, yelling about how he wanted to send troops to the Middle East right then, was doing the same thing that I was when I committed myself against violent ways of solving problems. We were both digging into positions. Which one of us was in "denial"? Both of us were in a deep "acknowledgment" of who we were, our childhood experiences, and what we believed: positionality. It follows that to deny someone's position is to be, to them, "in denial." But what possibilities does their position deny them? What I've noticed around slow death is a person's struggle with deep positionality. Their most cherished positions are challenged, but they can't move. The person who believes in a certain drug will fight to the end to stay on that drug. The one who puts his faith in alternative medicine is lost in that dogma. He'll "cleanse" himself into oblivion. Faced with a B-12 deficiency and severe anemia, he'll even refuse to eat meat because vegetarianism is "right." Death is the terminal stage of positionality. We die of being "right," rather than accurate. Accuracy is not "right" but "right now." What is needed is flexibility. Long-term HIV-positive survivors off the drugs are not immortal. Their situation is, as the article here states, complex and very different from other cases. The "reductionist" boiling-down to one or two factors is just not realit
I really, really, don’t care what causes AIDS
I just wanted to say how much I appreciated this article, and it's author. Although I've never met Mr. Carl Stryg in person, he is the very first person I ever had contact with and spoke with on the phone after we discovered the massive amount of questions surrounding the HIV theory. I was taking these very toxic medications for 11 yrs, all the while being told by my doctor that the "side effects" I was experiencing were due to my "having AIDS". Never once did he inform me that these drugs could possibly be causing my slow decline in health. Overall, I believe I was "tolerating" the drugs fairly well, considering I'd been on AZT the whole time. Anyway, as my husband and I began to read and research the controversy surrounding the theory, we started trying to reach some of the people involved, to help answer the many questions we had. Carl was the first person I actually was able to reach and speak with by phone. I remember the day clearly, almost 3 yrs ago. He was patient with my questions, reassuring, and listened to everything I was feeling regarding being deceived on such a massive scale. Never once did he encourage me to stop my drugs. What he did encourage me to do was ask questions, demand answers, seek evidence, read, research......and then make my decisions being fully informed. So, thank you Mr. Carl Stryg for your availability, the time you took with me that day, and this wonderful synopsis on how I'm sure most of us are feeling in regards to 25 yrs of HIV "science". Sincerely, Karri
I really, really, don’t care what causes AIDS
Brilliant essay Carl. I feel as if you've given words to what I'm feeling.
I really, really, don’t care what causes AIDS
I have always asked myself - so many reseaches are done, none of them ever gets published as long as it does not stir fear in us. the result has to wear a scarely face, a halloween constume. The only time you find a published research it one that has a smilly face. Money is a very wicked in science, it can find out the truth, heal people, keep the truth concealed, and create dealy meds. after all if you are a scientist the govt will help you do both the good and the bad. there are tin openers, the aids hoax is an ey opener for human race to show what can be don in teh name of profit. Can you imagine if the pilot of a plane always spoke fear to his/her passengers, airlines would not make a dime. he always says what is in a manner that does not spin fear. He wants to be trusted, he defends the plane and his/her passengers with his/her/life. scientists and doctors have a a humanity code of conduct that expects them to add value to life and save life. speak the truth with our fear or favour- that is the bottom line. instead those who do, they are censored or sidelined, and degraded.
I really, really, don’t care what causes AIDS
Here's a passage from Italy for the Gourmet Traveler by Fred Plotkin, in his glowing tribute to Trieste in the Friuli: "You will notice that bananas in Italy taste better than those sold in the United States. The reason is that bananas sold in Italy are not picked green and then gassed to ripen. Instead, bananas in Italy usually arrive from Africa full of the flavor that only older Americans remember. " Q.E.D., Jeremy
If Things Could Be
I agree with Dr. Miklos that the Newsweek article focuses on the persona of Dr. Duesberg rather than on the scientific debate over the link of HIV/AIDS. I disagree with his selection of an vaccine against HIV as an example to disprove this link. The HIV vaccine has proven elusive for various reasons, not all of them understood. It is therefore a poor tool to disprove the link of HIV/AIDS, as one cannot account for the unknown reasons of its failure. In my opinion, Dr. Miklos argument would have been a lot stronger if he had succeeded in disproving the link by using anti-retrovirals as an example. I'd like to postulate that it might be impossible to do so, at least not with the same reasoning he used for the vaccine. Let me quote his argument, replacing the word 'vaccine' with 'ARV' (anti-retroviral): '...[i]The predictions are that (i) shutting down the virus with ARVs would prevent all 30 conditions, (ii) an effective ARVS would lower the viral load in infected individuals, (iii) the reduced count of CD4+ lymphocytes would return to a normal level when the virus is shut down.[/i]....' Numerous studies and clinical practice back up this argument. Isn't this sufficient as an indirect proof of the causal link between HIV/AIDS?
Standards of Excellence
Standards of Excellence, yes. AIDS could be eradicated by Nutrition, Not Vaccines, Not Chemotherapy, Not Condoms, and No Profit. Thanks Celia.
Standards of Excellence
HIV/AIDS, in proper historical context, oh, if we could only see it in 100 years... I saw an old movie week before last, Arrowsmith (1931), and was a bit floored by it. The whole idea of the necessity of proper controls has been known for a very long time. The ONLY people abandoning proper controls benefits are the shareholders of big pharma, and so-called "scientists" that pretend they've actually achieved something significant. In the future, people will look back at this time, and we will be judged, pitied, and looked upon with no small measure of disgust - how could we have been so stupid, so greedy, so short-sighted ?
Standards of Excellence
In his website, Dr. Duesberg wrote "The hypothesis promises improvements in cancer prevention by eliminating substances that cause aneuploidy from food and drugs".
Standards of Excellence
Celia, I'm from Brazil, and I've always loved the way you write. I've even started to read all your AIDS articles without being much interested on the subject. Now I stumbled across this review which - given the subject - is something I would never expect from you. I've watched this movie some weeks ago and it's really touching and great. Thanks for giving us great articles over the years.
Anvil! a Story of Love
Celia, I wouldn't like to have to sort your mail inbox! Science today seems to be in a really sad state, when propaganda methods trump empirical evidence. Has your facebook account been deleted?
Standards of Excellence
...is that cancer generates more revenue annually than any other industry except petrochemicals. What happens to the clinics, the NPO's, the purveyors of chemo and radiation, the makers of all the attendant instrumentation, the pharmas, etc., within, say, nine months after a definitive cure is announced? The medical blindness is not exclusive to HIV and cancer. US healthcare is the third leading cause of death in the country (JAMA, July, 2000). People aren't getting any better, are not being cured of a whole legion of diseases; they're only getting by, mostly on medications that treat symptoms not underlying causes. It's a greed factor: if you relieve symptoms but don't fix the cause, then the patients are stuck with taking your prescription drugs indefinitely. The drug companies make orders of magnitude more money that way. If they actually produce a cure for something, it's a short-term or once-and-done Rx. Sad to say, healing biz is sick with a cancer called greed. And since every profession has its whores, it's easy to hire hacks and "medical experts" to shoot down the truth-seekers who dare to publish. This is something that the great leviathan called ObamaCare will not remedy.
Standards of Excellence
I have been HIV positive for 23 years. I've been on the HIV combination therapies for the past 11 years. I have taken many different combinations of HIV drugs and have experienced a very wide variety of extreme side effects. I have no doubt that these HIV drugs have toxic effects on the body. One of my doctors recently told me that these "medicines" can cause organ failure. When I asked which organs they told me...the liver, the kidneys and the pancreas. I have stopped taking the AIDS drugs for the past four months and am taking a variety of herbs, vitamins, and amino acids. I am also using a zapper which sends an electrical current through my skin into my bloodstream. I am feeling well. I do believe that AIDS exists. It is a real virus. The AIDS drugs however are much too toxic and are too expensive. Big pharma is getting rich off of people's suffering. There are alternative therapies which work better and are much, much cheaper, and, they are non-toxic when used properly.
What Do We Mean "Toxic HIV Drugs"?
Thanks, Sheree, for the correction.
Remembering McCourt
Off to a rocky start, having posted the original draft,instead of the finished story yesterday,this is my 1st attempt to write a short story. It has been a long arduous process to completion, 6 months! I never would have believed that writing was so difficult. I want to thank Celia for all her help and encouragement. I hope you like the finished product. The picture of the Swiss coo coo clock, selected by Celia, came as a complete surprise. She apparently saw the underlying theme of the piece, one of which I wasn't even aware, to be the element of "Time".
Culture Shock
Just to let you know. Frank is older than Malachi
Remembering McCourt
Re John Strausbaugh's words above about FDR, Robert Stinnett's book Day of Deceit provided much documentation that FDR not only knew in advance that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and allowed it to happen so public outrage would enable him to go to war, but also had earlier instituted a provocation program against Japan to induce them to attack the US. (He also blamed a scapegoat, some admiral or something whose name I can't recall, for not preventing the attack, when in fact FDR's men had systematically misled the dude and withheld information from him) There is much evidence for this, not only government documents but the recollections of a daughter of someone who had firsthand knowledge that FDR had foreknowledge. (I'm lazy, I could google this and get the dame's name, but who has the time for this sort of thing?) This stuff is all very well documented, but that doesn't stop the media from ignoring the evidence and continuing the myth that it was a surprise attack. John can be forgiven for not knowing about this
Failing Together
I have divorced parents, and I understand exactly what you mean. My dad is having a relationship and I can't stand him.
Are we there yet?
Dear Celia I sincerely wish that we could have such brave people in South Africa. As the founder of the AIDS NUTRITION CLINIC in Cape Town,and recently read Janine Roberts' book - FEAR OF THE INVINCIBLE, you have all my support and to fight this lawsuit successfully. I also hope for your sake that the lawsuit is not hindered through media censorship but that the lies and genocide ends after 25 years. In South Africa ARV are distributed like sweets, simply because organizations, like the TAC [Zackie Achmat] insists the government rolls out millions of rands on ARV in rural communities, etc., but obviusly also due to Mr. Achmat's pure ignorance and arrogance as to what HIV and AIDS is. Best of luck. Mark Zuhrbrigghen AIDS NUTRITION CLINIC CAPE TOWN
Writer Hits Back at AIDS Rants
The problem is that his work was NOT done! He was right when he kept saying "You haven't seen nothing yet!", he knew he had other things to fulfill. His come-back would have been greater than everything he had done. I don't think God wanted him so soon. It's the devils behind it who sent him there sooner. This thought might make us feel more comfortable with the TRAGEDY, but deep don't we all know that his work was left unfinished. "They", who deliberately killed him, probably thought he's worthing much more in death than in life. But God doesn't sleep...
The Crucible: Michael Jackson and The Media
Jeremy, you make this old coot pause and reflect on his friends and loved ones--and when I do, death does indeed seem a small thing. Thank you so much, and may we have more from you soon? R. A. Davis
Bridging the Spiritual Chasm
Allow me, however, to say that there are anvil heads and fundos not only in America. I came across a rather rabid group of anvil head doctors here just this summer. Wife tested pos for HIV ... Talk about anvil-headed "expert consensus"! Either one does what they say or you lose your new-born child in nothing flat ... Am looking forward to "House of Numbers" appearing on dvd! Oh, speaking of thinking for oneself: The Theory of Evolution should be critically evaluated, too. It has some very serious flaws. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I have the impression that Mr. Strausbaugh rather uncritically accepts that.
Anvil Heads & Fundos
Where did the multi-billion-dollar budget come from for this little adventure?
Fortress Moon
Actually, this can probably be more simply expressed. We're confusing opinion with that peculiarly modern conception, "attitude". The opinions expressed are not actually opinions, as in the product of reasoned (or even unreasoned) thought on a subject, but merely what they think or hope expresses the "attitude" they want to manifest - perhaps the attitude of the group they wish membership of, or someone they want to emulate, or an attitude that will impress girls, or just annoy people they don't like. Signs of membership then, tokens if you will, but never opinions.
Anvil Heads & Fundos
"...On the other hand, one of the key elements of the biochemical chain of events that comprise an immune response (co-triggered as suggested by MAVS) is interferon. Interferon has the ability to inhibit mitochondrial DNA expression and therefore function. Furthermore there has been some mitochondrial involvement indicated in autoimmune diseases..." What is needed therefore to assist a human existance in society is a politial, social, econonomic interfeeron. A study by CDC suggested years ago that black peoples had a significant amoount of interferon in their bodies than other peoples. Is that why so many deaths (thousands weekly) take place in Africa. Farming perhaps?
On the Beauty and Power of Mitochondria
I think you miss the point. This is about modes of persuasion. Left/Liberals cling to the illusion that reasoned argument can change minds, but most people don't adopt positions for reasonable reasons. They do it to be a certain kind of person, to get girls, to get rich by emulating the careless, unfeeling attitudes they think typify wealth and privilege, to be 'hard', modern, to piss off liberals, environmentalists, whatever. None of these positions are amenable to reason, but to adopt other modes of persuasion to overcome this is itself a defeat of reason.
Anvil Heads & Fundos
Can I have some of whatever you people are smoking? I need to lose touch with reality for awhile.
Fortress Moon
The lunar conspiracy theory was reminiscent of Paul Krassner's finest work.
Fortress Moon
"Desperate alpha males"? As opposed to what, desperate delta males? You, R.A. Davis, fail to recognize greatness when it pukes on your shoes. Our Dear Leader is defending not only our free way of life against the Nazi Space Menace, he is defending the sacred repository of G-D's Chosen against their most determined and implacable enemy. DEATH to Base 88! DEATH to the Black Sun!
Fortress Moon
SEE ALSO: "The Big Space Fuck," a 5-page gem by Vonnegut in Again Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison. You can Google it, without annoying Google with the Anglo-Saxon. TBSF puts this whole moon trip into proper perspective, especially since the NASA mission had to have been arranged by desperate alpha males.
Fortress Moon
"This proposal strikes me as lunacy. There's no way that the cost of such a thing could have been hidden in the US budget in the 1960s. We can't even afford a proper base in low earth orbit today." REALLY? The US gummint, or elements of our quasi-gummint, have been importing tons of narcotics for decades, and using the off-the-books $$ to fund black ops. We're in Afghanistan for the poppies, DUH. Plus, you don't think they'd tell us what sorta hi-tech stuff they have, do you? My rule of thumb is, what's published is at least 20 years behind the cutting edge. OKAY, the reason NASA did this is 'cause an earlier mission discovered a morphed strain of green cheese--moldy mozzarella, actually--whose spores can survive a vacuum and drift to earth, and when inhaled turn us into Gahan Wilson cartoon characters. That wouldn't be bad if it were selective. But we can't choose who gets morphed and who doesn't. So they totaled the blob of cheese, using explosives and a nose cone full of H1N1 vaccine, which will kill anything, including us.
Fortress Moon
Regarding this: "Anyone with two brain cells to rub together had to wonder what was up with NASA bombing the moon last week. They were looking for water? Really? The entire surface of the moon is pitted with craters. They had to gouge out two more to look for water?" Careful attention to NASA's explanation of the purpose of this mission would have answered the question. The moon is airless and has low gravity. Water vapor escapes from the surface very easily. The point of a target crater in the polar region is that it is only in such a place that the lunar surface is in permanent shadow and thus cold. There might be water frozen in surface rocks in such a place, but certainly nowhere else. The many craters over the rest of the lunar surface mentioned by JS are illuminated by sunlight for about half of each moon orbit of the earth, so they are warmer than the shadowed crater interiors at the moon's poles, and certainly thoroughly dessicated. I hope that this piece was intended to be a joke.
Fortress Moon
This proposal strikes me as lunacy. There's no way that the cost of such a thing could have been hidden in the US budget in the 1960s. We can't even afford a proper base in low earth orbit today. I must be too thick to be unable to determine whether this is intended as farce or as a serious proposal. If the former, I advise that stronger hints be put into future jokes to help thick persons such as myself. I ran into this piece at the Counterpunch site and it shook me up. I don't think that this piece does Progressives any credit.
Fortress Moon
Arf, arf, arf. Selenites? I don't think we're that adaptable...I think a local gravity is necessary for us to keep ourselves the magnificent, anxious, psychologically malleable, pill-popping, teen-anorexic to mid-30's obese shape that our beautifutzed species is in. You can follow the failure of this current Moon-eyed project to produce a big explosion, though, through the work of the "Plasma Cosmologists" - those few and many who believe (because they observe) that the universe is formed of electrified plasma currents. NASA's impact of a small space probe into an asteroid a few years ago famously produced a massive electrical discharge. This one, with the moon, was, in their words, a 'dud.' The plasma cosmologists explain this as a measure of electrical difference, between the homeostatic moon (accustomed to the local electrical charges, and not at odds with them), and the large asteroid, coming from deep space, not at level with the local electrical environment, having accrued a massive charge, and then, with the entry of an intruder, releasing it all at once in a lightning flash. You can see and read about all of that hither: http://www.thunderbolts.info/predictions.htm#cdi Oh, that we ever stopped going there? I don't know. I think they'd have figured out a way to make money off it at this point, were it so. Canada sent its first 'space tourist' into above Earth orbit, for the nice price of 35 million dollars, as I read it. I think if the moonbases were a reality, we'd have a 'Six Flags' low-gravity amusement park, for the zuper-riche, of course, wiht a virtual Paris Hilton as your guide... Or, maybe you're right and NASA/US Military has been making trips for years. I'm not sure...sort of doubting it. I can tell you, however, that NASA has been peddling other fictions for decades - the Big Bang theory, Black Holes, Dark Matter - all inventions to make a failing cosmology stick together (enough for zuper-krappie PBS specials, that is). Never mind Battle
Fortress Moon
Hilarious! Good one! Made me chuckle.
Fortress Moon
I don't think we went to the moon with the technology that the public was aware of in '69. Yes, we've probably never stopped going there.
Fortress Moon
Fundamentalism is everywhere these days, it's not just for the religious crowd anymore.
Anvil Heads & Fundos
"Strausbaugh"? That's a German name, isn't it?
Fortress Moon
... because stuff like this then becomes the "new PC" (new Political Correctness) and people latch on because they THINK it sounds like the most "open minded" and "mature" perspective when in reality, it couldn't be. Open mindedness does not mean your brains fall out and mature doesn't mean senile. Absolutely nothing open minded or mature exists about calling truth "bias" and calling bias "default" and calling lies "truth". It's just convoluted excuse-making, when everyone KNOWS the wingnutters constitute the literal "trolls" of the real world (acting just like internet trolls but in real life).
Anvil Heads & Fundos
Sorry but this would just be more of that bullshit wingnutter spin going around trying to take the heat off their ignoramus attitudes by proclaiming that everyone else does what they do and holds the attitudes they hold, only from a different perspective. Faux News capitalized on this when they invented their "fair and balanced" and "we report you decide" lines -- both of which reflect this mentality. Namely, that "everyone has a bias" just maybe not the same one you usually think of as a bias. *Wrong!*
Anvil Heads & Fundos
I couldn't agree more with you. The only thing I'd like better than this post is if you'd write another with real practical ideas about HOW we can avoid becoming fundamentalists.
Anvil Heads & Fundos
Totally agree. I was a Christian mentalfundalist; although not from the States, the culture is pervasive in western society. There is nothing wrong with belief if it is based on experiential relationship, as mine is with Papa God, but spouting a belief because someone else in an assumed authority says it's so, is just stupid sheep bleating. That's why Jesus refered to us as sheep; he knew how we were inclined. The danger of course is to swing the other way...ALL FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE WRONG!!!! That's a self refuting statement.
Anvil Heads & Fundos