On the Brink of Denialism: Why Peter Duesberg is Wrong and David Crowe is a Liar

Here is a real gem.

Onnie Mary Phuthe, an HIV+ woman from Botswana, wrote to South African AIDS Denialist Anthony Brink to ask about the organization Rethinking AIDS. The exchange is posted at AIDS Myth Exposed.

Brink’s response reminds me of a conversation I had with him while he was in Berlin attending an AIDS Dissident's Conference. I asked Brink about Peter Duesberg and he replied that Duesberg was washed up – old hat. The new ideas in AIDS dissidence were coming from contemporary scientists like Etienne de Harven. That seemed remarkable seeing as Peter Duesberg is 73 years old and de Harven is even older at age 81! Ah, the new ideas of AIDS Denialism.

Yet, I often wondered what Anthony Brink felt deep down about Rethinking AIDS and the people I had come to know as North America’s leading AIDS Deniers. Brink after all is responsible for feeding AIDS Denialism to the suspicious intellectual and former South African President Thabo Mbeki – ultimately bringing 300,000 of his fellow countrymen and 30,000 babies to their unnecessary deaths. Now Anthony Brink gives us some insight through his reply to Onnie. It
humoursly shows the infighting among AIDS Deniers, especially the Perth People and Duesbergians. This is worth a read. But be ready, Anthony Brink is not thrifty with words.



UPDATE: AIDS Myth Exposed has a thread to Defend David Crowe from Anthony The Brink of Disaster. Too funny. "If nothing else, it just makes it plain that Brink, and now Knoll are pushing to create a situation no matter what anyone thinks.I will say this though, I have corresponded with Dr. Bauer and he mentioned that Brink has no support from the Board to become RA President. I assume that goes no matter what happens to David. Brink will not ever be President of RA. Why on earth would he go out of his way to harm a terrific and effective dissident? Why would he brush aside the reasoned and caring pleas of a friend like Michael Geiger?

UPDATE: Is David Crowe a liar? Is he a fraud? Anthony Brink is not alone in making these claims against our favorite wannabe scientist AIDS Denialist. As posted at AIDS Myth Exposed...

"I am curious. Is this the same David Crowe who has been a long time executive in the Green Party of Alberta? If you go to the Facebook Group called Greens in Alberta you will find a great deal of information in some of the discussion groups that show how Crowe has operated in the past, and that Crowe and his friends fled the Green Party AGM and tried to hold a secret meeting in the parking lot (unbeknownst to hundreds inside the hall),. Now it is my understanding that he may be under investigation for extortion, fraud, forgery and submitting false documents."

UPDATE: David Crowe will not take Brink's abuse. What kind of denialist would not deny what an AIDS denier alleges! Not David Crowe. Read how David Crowe claims that it is Anthony Brink that is lying. The Snakes are getting rather vicious.

UPDATE: Anthony Brink (Junior Member at AIDS Myth Exposed) shares a string of emails that offer a glimpse into the snake pit. Thank Snout for this one.

From: Onnie Mary Phuthe
Sent: 22 July 2009 10:13 PM
To: arbrink@iafrica.com
Subject: Rethinking Aids

I came across the Rethinking Aids web.

I contacted Mr. David Crowe [David.Crowe@aras.ab.ca] since I wanted to attend he conference for 2009 Nov 4 but have no money.

I have huge interest in HIV and Aids; I have lived with HIV since 1994. I have seen for myself many things that truly support rethinking aids.

I really wish to be in contact with people who think in line with the rethink aids group since I am already living rethink aids. I really feel deceived by all the info being pushed by big pharma and crooked scientists, most of all I really feel pity for all the people who have believed what they heard with no question.

I am the kind of person who does not believe anything until I can also prove it myself. I don’t have a college education only form 4 but learn more at ke fodile, wena? (still under construction). The end of it will make me more enemies than friends about myself. Nevertheless, one thing I have personally witnessed is that most of the lies have come with 99% of the drug pushing diagnoses that are made on humans. It seems very important to treat people at the expense of their lives, health, and financial stability, and worst of all, a devastated mental state in the name of profit.

I truly thought I was in denial or crazy since I questioned everything and I did not believe all I heard. One thing I believe is that food, herbs, water, sunlight, unrefined sea salt, and others are the missing link between the human being of today and the past generations.

All disease that are identified come with a huge profit margin, and second they also comes with a huge cost for the humans involved. The question is animals are in the wild but manage well without vets. Whereas humans because they know and can buy are never fully treated, but rather are always lead to believe what is not true about their bodies.

Disappointing enough, but how can we trust scientists and their discoveries? I know what genuine research looks like.

It looks like this: all the board members, scientists, founders, directors and all others of Rethinking AIDS > Home ( DNN 4.3.5 ) and all their associates. I wish to learn with more clarity the puzzle that I am also putting together; I am missing some pieces here.

I really need to talk to other people who might think similar thoughts. When I talk to others in my country, I already see a threat of people fearing to tell the truth in favour of the funding they get from the spear-headers of the lies of the century.

I have made an ad at the link below. I do not want funding from the same people who got us in the mess, except those who want to deal with me will pay for themselves for the herbs I personally use. I get them fresh and prepare them raw. I am afraid to verbalize all that I know, because maybe I will be caught, I don’t know, but the thing is, does anyone else know what the truth is? If they know, why are we still being told the same lie over and over again, that is why I am afraid. There is something in it for those who choose to conceal the facts.

The challenge is that when it’s been almost thirty years of lies then it’s a challenge to make a statement to a brainwashed society (the world), plus the businesses would collapse if people knew and accepted the truth as it is.

Onnie Mary Phuthe
Botswana

Anthony Brink's reply

From: Anthony Brink [mailto:arbrink@iafrica.com]
Sent: 23 July 2009 03:33 PM
To: (Onnie)
Subject: RE: Rethinking Aids
Importance: High

Dear Onnie

Thanks for your email.

Very nice hearing from you.

We see things in much the same way.

As a fellow African, a pale African in my case, you need to know a few things about 'Rethinking AIDS', and you might want to share this information with your friends and family in Botswana so that they are not also misled about what this organization is.

'Rethinking AIDS' is basically a support group for Professor Peter Duesberg at the University of California, Berkeley, California in America, to promote and defend his scientific views on AIDS.

To see this you only have to go to 'About RA': About RA

Apart from reading about him there, and even finding a link to his website, you'll also read there an account of how and why 'The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis' was originally formed and its past activities.

Nowhere in the 'About RA' page is there any mention of the generally recognized scientific leaders of the AIDS dissident movement: the Australian physicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos and her colleagues (the Perth Group), who even before the publication of Duesberg's critique of the HIV theory of AIDS in 1987, on the basis that 'retroviruses' are always harmless, were already onto the real, more basic reason why the theory is wrong: 'HIV' has never been proven to exist.

You ask in your email, 'how can we trust scientists and their discoveries? I know what genuine research looks like.'

What you need to do is satisfy yourself about this by reading into the matter yourself.

You mustn't take things on authority. Like one of the Rethinking AIDS board members, a very senior member of the board, who says more or less: 'Duesberg's clever and experienced so I just go with what he says.'

It may interest you to know that to the best of my knowledge nobody who has read Duesberg's and the Perth Group's respective papers, and particularly their debate on whether 'HIV' exists, has come away with the conclusion that Duesberg is right that 'HIV' has been proved to exist, and that the Perth Group is wrong to claim that in truth and in fact 'HIV' has never been proved to exist.

Everyone who has studied the scientific disagreement between them has concluded that Duesberg is wrong.

This includes former South African Presidents Mbeki and Motlanthe (the latter currently Deputy President under President Zuma).

All of us feel rather embarrassed about this.

But it's awkward to say something like: 'My father, you need to take a bath, you really do. Everyone around you is noticing and saying so.'

It's so much easier just to pinch our noses and say nothing.

By the early years of our new century, 'The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis' had disintegrated.

It was dead.

In 2006 a Canadian businessman called David Crowe decided to form a new organization under his control.

He collected around him a handful of AIDS dissidents that he knew wouldn't give him any problems, and he formed a 'board of directors', most of whom are either active Duesberg partisans or 'sleepers' in the sense that they don't actively conduct themselves as directors should and do not express any disagreement with Mr Crowe (when one tries, we'll read below, Mr Crowe fixes him.)

This makes it easy for Mr Crowe to run things pretty much on his own along American lines.

It's a bit like the Treatment Action Campaign here in South Africa, which although it has many formal office bearers, is completely dominated and controlled by Zackie Achmat. Everyone knows this.

Now Mr Crowe needs to keep things running on American lines, because as usual that's where the money is.

Isn't it always so, Onnie? Don't we feel it over here in Africa all the time?!

Rethinking AIDS is funded by the same rich person who funds Duesberg, and do you know this same person even sits on the board of Rethinking AIDS, meaning he has the clout to govern its scientific policy? Can you believe such a thing, Onnie?

When one of the Rethinking AIDS board members tries breaking ranks and privately challenges Mr Crowe recently in a small closed internet forum about the things he says and does, whether in his opinion they're right or wrong, true or false, do you know that Mr Crowe sends him a demand by email that he should shut his mouth and in future submit any communications to that forum for him for prior censorship, just to make sure that the disobedient board member doesn't challenge Mr Crowe ever again? Can you believe your ears, Onnie?!

All of this makes it possible for Mr Crowe to run his show the way he wants it unaccountably to the international AIDS dissident community, and to pretend to the outside world that the little organization he formed in 2006 speaks for us all.

Obviously Mr Crowe made his move to form Rethinking AIDS in 2006 behind the scenes without telling the rest of us.

He did not contact every dissident on the list of those who'd signed their support for our basic cause that the HIV-AIDS hypothesis should be re-examined (see About RA page) and announce, 'I reckon it's a good idea to form a new AIDS dissident organization, what do you think? Please nominate yourself if you like and/or some other dissidents for election to a provisional representative body to discuss purpose and direction, scientific policy and operating strategy.'

That's not the way Mr Crowe works!

Behind the scenes is the way he works!

He wanted to make sure that Rethinking AIDS doesn't do any rethinking about anything important, anything really important such as whether 'HIV', which is at the core of the 'HIV-AIDS' construct, even exists.

No, we can't have that, Onnie!

We must stay off that matter!

This is why Mr Crowe made a point of snubbing the Perth Group and rejecting their request for representation on the board when they got to hear what he was up to behind the scenes.

Appropriating the name of the Group's former bulletin, Mr Crowe called his new organization Rethinking AIDS.

From this name and to read 'About RA' on his website, you get the impression that Rethinking AIDS is much the same scientific initiative as the Group.

People who don't know the real history will be deceived by this, but that's the whole idea!

In fact Rethinking AIDS is in no sense a representative organization, and it doesn't speak for the vast majority of AIDS dissidents who reject Duesberg's claim it promotes that 'HIV' has been shown to exist as childish scientific nonsense.

These structural, organizational and legitimacy issues aside, the main problem with Mr Crowe's Rethinking AIDS organization is that it promotes the lie that 'HIV' exists, just as the drug-pushing AIDS doctors, activists, journalists and academics say, only Rethinking AIDS says it's harmless.

This is like telling a child terrified by a noise outside his or her bedroom at night:

'Don't worry, my child, it's only a tokoloshe, it's definitely a tokoloshe. Never mind what everyone believes and tells you, the tokoloshe lurking outside your window won't come in and harm you. Just go back to sleep.'

You say this to the child knowing it's a lie, but you tell the lie to the child anyway because you think it's best to tell lies, maybe because telling lies comes naturally to you in your daily life and in your business dealings and you have a habit of telling lies and responding to what people say with emotive and disingenuous half-truths, and so you're comfortable with lies and half-truths, and/or because you think the child can't cope with the simple truth that tokoloshes exist only in the human imagination.

So it's better to tell the child a lie. The lie that tokoloshes really do exist. Even though it's quite easy to show they haven’t ever been proven to exist by the generally accepted procedure for proving things like this. And if anyone else comes into the room who has heard the child's cries, and says, 'There's no need to worry, my child, there's no tokoloshe outside, there are no tokoloshes', you say: 'Get out! Be quiet! You mustn't say this. It's too complicated for children to be told things like this. It will only confuse them.'

That's the approach to the problem of 'HIV-AIDS' taken by Mr Crowe's Rethinking AIDS organization.

This is how Mr Crowe thinks the myth of HIV-AIDS will be resolved.

He thinks the myth of HIV-AIDS will be resolved with lies.

But when you raise this matter with him, he says, 'But I have been questioning the existence of tokoloshes for many years.'

He doesn't say, 'I agree there are no tokoloshes in the real world.'

He says, 'I have been questioning the existence of tokoloshes for many years.'

Of course this is the kind of thing successful scheming politicians say, because it's evasive, self-serving, convenient and basically dishonest.

I mean successful in getting to be where they want to be for themselves.

I don't mean successful in serving the constituency they claim to represent.

Mr Crowe never says anything as directly truthful as 'There are no tokoloshes in the real world', because that would make it difficult for him as the self-appointed king of the tiny little country he's formed that's cut off from the rest of the world, which no one in the rest of the world recognizes, like Transkei and Bophuthatswana in apartheid South Africa, advised by a witchdoctor who says tokoloshes are very, very real, but are harmless.

What he worries about most is being king of his little country.

Like Ian Smith and his Rhodesian Front, claiming in 1965 to be the Prime Minister of all of Zimbabwe (then named Rhodesia after the businessman who stole the country). When actually he was representing only the tiniest minority of very foolish people.

We know all about people like this over here in Africa, don't we Onnie?

But Mr Crowe likes the feeling of being the king; it's almost as nice as the feeling one gets from being the president of a Rotary Club in a little town in the middle of nowhere that no one wants to go to.

Sorry, I should have said President, President with a capital P, because Mr Crowe always announces himself with a capital P.

He realizes that to deal with the underlying problems caused by his witchdoctor whose views about tokoloshes he promotes, even though deep inside he knows that they're lies, and the problems he causes us by the way he runs things in doing everything possible to prevent a proper ventilation of these lies, would mean the end of his reign as king with the crown he put on his own head, or asked a couple of his friends to put on his head. And he'd have to give up being the king, the king he likes being so much, either by abdicating in disgrace or being kicked out in disgrace with a hard boot up his arse for the tremendous harm he's caused our AIDS dissident movement, and remembered forever for the tremendous harm he's caused our AIDS dissident movement.

Particularly in the big case held by the elders in the shade of the big tree in the centre of the village concerning whether a certain man was causing the tokoloshe to come riding in on a hyena in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep to visit his neighbour and cause his cow to die and his mother to hurt her leg in a fall and his cousin to fail his exams.

In that case, the man accused had expert witnesses to explain to the court that he couldn't have done what he was being accused of having done because tokoloshes have never been proved to exist. And right in the middle of the case when it was going very well for the accused man and his expert witnesses, and everyone was noticing and commenting on how impressed the court was by the scientific evidence and arguments being presented, the President comes along, and behind the scenes he furtively tells the lawyer 'You're going to lose the case doing it this way, it's much better to tell the court that tokoloshes do exist, only they're harmless.' And not being a very bright lawyer, who also hasn't really had enough time to appreciate what's wrong with this kind of defence, and why the first and second defences are not complementary or alternative but must necessarily be mutually destructive, the lawyer thinks the President is right, why, he's the President of all the AIDS dissidents in the world, and he changes the defence strategy right in the middle of the case, when it was going very well as I said, and with that the case is on its way to hell, so that the unfortunate accused man ends up severely punished for calling out tokoloshes to visit and cause his neighbour's cow to die and his mother to hurt her leg in a fall and his cousin to fail his exams, and the historical opportunity is lost, the historical opportunity to show in court that despite what nearly everyone thinks and all the witchdoctors claim, actually tokoloshes have never been shown to exist.

And when it's all over the President doesn't even say I'm very sorry about the calamity I caused, I'm terribly sorry, I was only trying to help. I realize now that it's been pointed out to me that I made the most horrendous mistake. I feel sick to my stomach over what I have done.

No, he says, What are you complaining about? I did exactly the right thing going behind your backs and telling the lawyer to change his fundamental defence strategy right in the middle of the case and introduce a new defence that contradicts the original one.

He says, Go and jump in the lake, you and your complaints against me and what I did. You were going to lose the case anyway. I'd do it again!

So you see, Onnie, it would be better to avoid Rethinking AIDS for information about so-called HIV-AIDS.

It's always best to avoid taking advice from people who tell lies and behave in the way I've told you about.

You can get honest, reliable information about the basic trouble with the HIV theory of AIDS from the The Perth Group HIV-AIDS Debate Website.

My TIG Position Statement on 'HIV' will put you fully in the picture.

All the best

Anthony
Cape Town

Itinerary fo Summer 2009

While travelling to Montenegro and Serbia, taking new pictures, sketching and making my collection of Balkan treasures for this site bigger, I share some useful links with you dear reader, if you plan to travel the Balkans or just to get you inspired:

Destination City Guides By "In your pocket" (for free download)
A nicely made Serbia tourist and travel site (panacomp)
A walking guide to Serbia
My selfmade guide to NATO souvenirs in Belgrade
A list to print out before visiting Belgrade
Ideas for Balkan-Itineraries on Balkan-Crew (the travel-album in italian)

Modern buildings in Belgrade by architect Dusan Babic

Villa Protic, 1930-1931, Belgrade

It's very difficult to find informations about the modern architect Dusan Babic, even if he was one of the founders of »Grupe arhitekata modernog pravca« (Group of Architects of the Modern Movement (GAMM), founded in 1928. Together with Milan Zlokovic and Jan Dubovy, and Branislav Kojic.

Babic was born 1896 in Banja Luka (Republika Srpska) that on those times was part of the austro-hungarian empire. He studied at the "Technische Hochschule" in Vienna, started working in Sarajevo (1923) for the municipal cunstruction bureau and arrived in Belgrade in 1928 where he died probably in 1948.


Even if there is not much information left about his life, he left some every interesting traces in the city of Belgrade.

Plans of the Villa of Karl Reich, 1930-1931 in Belgrade

The villa of Maria and Karl Reich represents the finest example of Babic's particular understanding of modern form. The most striking feature of the villa Reich are colums of gigantic order on the garden side of the house, wich support the overhanging roof.

From the analysis of the prmary volumetric,it shows that the final form and balance of solid and void is a result of voluemtric substaction from the basic parallelepiped form. The intrecate rhythm of colums and pergolas and the unfolding of terraces as the house opens toward the garden are regulated by the lines of the immaginary primary form.

While the total floor area of the villa is quiet modest, the extend of the outline points of form explicates the villa's actual and psychological domain.
In plan there is aclear distinction between representative, public spaces in teh ground floor, private quarters on the first floor, and service rooms in the ground and the basement levels.

The formal accents, such as the elaboration of the main entrance and corner loggia on the main street facade and the arrangemet of grand terraces toward the garden, follow the funtional logic of the house.

The external surface treatment refelcts the design intent to play un the relation between weight and leightness: rustication in regualr horizontal profiling is a pplied to the supporting elements, the foundation of the hosue and the squaresection columns, while the supported elements are plain and smooth. (from L.Blagojevic)

Villa of Dragutin Smejkal, 1934 in Belgrade

Babic took grate care in the elaboration of modern decoration in his projects, even if those for houses in less prestigious locations, for less demanding clients, such as the Plevan and the Smejkal Villas. These modest houses are made representative in his perspective drawings. (from L.Blagojevic)

Villa of Jelena Plevan, 1933 in Belgrade

Lektres building, 1931 in Belgrade

Another meaningful building is the "lektres" building at 21, Marsala Birjuzova. Also here he used modernist decoration elements, where he combines two different periods of architecture style in the way to lessen the power of the modern movement language and to adapt it to the older surroundings. (translated from Slobodan Maldini)

Lektres building, 1931 in Belgrade

Shooting a Moon at AIDS Denialism

Twenty-eight years after identifying the first cases of AIDS and 13 years since highly effective combinations of antiretroviral medications made HIV infection manageable, there are AIDS Deniers who actually believe HIV is a myth.

And 40 years since Neil Armstrong took man’s first step on the moon, there are people who still believe it was a hoax. AIDS Denial is just one of many types of denialism, all of which are bound together by mistrust and paranoia. Denialists universally expose cover ups and conspiracies in their effort to rewrite history. So here you go AIDS Denialists, meet your cousins the Lunar Landing Hoaxers.

Vocal Minority Insists It Was All Smoke and Mirrors
By JOHN SCHWARTZ, New York Times, July 13, 2009

They walk among us, seemingly little different from you or me. Most of the time, you would never know of their true nature — except that occasionally, they feel compelled to speak up.



Take an example from Lens, this newspaper’s photography blog. A recent feature, “Dateline: Space,” displayed stunning NASA photographs, including the iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin standing on the lunar surface

The second comment on the feature stated flatly, “Man never got to the moon.”

The author of the post, Nicolas Marino, went on to say, “I think media should stop publicizing something that was a complete sham once and for all and start documenting how they lied blatantly to the whole world.”

Forty years after men first touched the lifeless dirt of the Moon — and they did. Really. Honest. — polling consistently suggests that some 6 percent of Americans believe the landings were faked and could not have happened. The series of landings, one of the greatest gambles of the human race, was an elaborate hoax developed to raise national pride, many among them insist.

They examine photos from the missions for signs of studio fakery, and claim to be able to tell that the American flag was waving in what was supposed to be the vacuum of space. They overstate the health risks of traveling through the radiation belts that girdle our planet; they understate the technological prowess of the American space program; and they cry murder behind every death in the program, linking them to an overall conspiracy.

And while there is no credible evidence to support such views, and the sheer unlikelihood of being able to pull off such an immense plot and keep it secret for four decades staggers the imagination, the deniers continue to amass accusations to this day. They are bolstered by films like a documentary shown on Fox television in 2001 and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon” by Bart Sibrel, a filmmaker in Nashville.

“There are smart, normal people who buy into these conspiracy theories,” said Philip Plait, an astronomer and author who counters the conspiracy theorists point by point and at excruciating length at his “Bad Astronomy” Web site. He is one of many people who have joined the fight to affirm that It Happened. A group effort, at www.clavius.org, debunks with gusto; its main author, Jay Windley, named the site for the Moon base in Arthur C. Clarke’s classic science fiction novel, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Even though the so-called evidence from the conspiracists can clearly be proved wrong, Mr. Plait said, understanding the proof can require a working knowledge of history and photography and of science and its methodology. “You’ve got to do the work; you’ve got to put the elbow grease to it,” he said, “and most people don’t do the work. So these things get traction.”

Mr. Marino, the author of the post on the Lens blog, is a 31-year-old architect born in Argentina. In an e-mail interview, he said that the political corruption during the years of dictatorship in his country shaped his thinking: “I started to realize how political corruption operates and how it is the interests of a few in power that really governs our world.”

As he traveled the world — he now lives and works in China — he picked up books contending that the landings were faked and saw documentaries including Mr. Sibrel’s, he said, which paints a dark portrait of political manipulation during the Nixon administration and somehow ties in the Vietnam War, the Titanic and the Tower of Babel before even getting to the supposed photographic evidence of lunar deception.

Mr. Sibrel, who sells his films online, has hounded Apollo astronauts with a Bible, insisting that they swear on camera they had walked on the Moon. He so annoyed Buzz Aldrin in 2002 — ambushing him with his Bible and calling him “a coward, and a liar, and a thief” — that Mr. Aldrin punched Mr. Sibrel in the face. Law enforcement officials refused to file charges against Mr. Aldrin, the second man on the Moon.

In an interview, Mr. Sibrel said that his efforts to prove that men never walked on the Moon has cost him dearly. “I have suffered only persecution and financial loss,” he said. “I’ve lost visitation with my son. I’ve been expelled from churches. All because I believe the Moon landings are fraudulent.”

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has studied conspiracy theorists, said “there’s a similar kind of logic behind all of these groups, I think.” For the most part, he explained, “They don’t undertake to prove that their view is true” so much as to “find flaws in what the other side is saying.” And so, he said, argument is a matter of accumulation instead of persuasion. “They feel if they’ve got more facts than the other side, that proves they’re right.”

Mark Fenster, a professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law who has written extensively on conspiracy theories, said he sees similarities between people who argue that the Moon landings never happened and those who insist that the 9/11 attacks were planned by the government and that President Obama’s birth certificate is fake: at the core, he said, is a polarization so profound that people end up with an unshakable belief that those in power “simply can’t be trusted.”

The emergence of the Internet as a communications medium, he noted, makes it possible for once-scattered believers to find one another. “It allows the theory to continue to exist, to continue to be available — it’s not just some old dusty books on the half-price shelf.”

Adam Savage, the co-star of the television show “MythBusters,” spent an episode last year taking apart Moon hoax theories bit by bit, entertainingly and convincingly. The theorists, he noted, never give up. “They’ll say you have to keep an open mind,” he said, “but they reject every single piece of evidence that doesn’t adhere to their thesis.”

For those who actually went — and have I mentioned that we did land astronauts on the Moon? Six times? — the conspiracy theories are simply galling.

Harrison Schmitt, the pilot of the lunar lander during the last Apollo mission and later a United States senator, said in an interview that the poor state of the nation’s schools has had predictable results. “If people decide they’re going to deny the facts of history and the facts of science and technology, there’s not much you can do with them,” he said.

“For most of them, I just feel sorry that we failed in their education.”

Vidovdan 2009 in Gracanica Monastery

I made a post about Gracanica Monastery a while ago, emphasing on the archtiecture and history. But here there is even something more to say about the Gracanica Moanstery.
Every year on Vidovdan (St. Vitus day, June 28th) in the beautiful and spiritual surroundings of the monastery the celebration for this serbian religious and national holiday takes place. Here the pictures that my friend Johanna sent me from this year's celebration. The text is from [ B92, Beta, Tanjug ]

GRAČANICA - The celebration of Vidovdan started in Kosovo this morning with the Holy Liturgy served in the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Gračanica.

Serbs mark Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day) as a religious and national holiday.

The province is calm and there are no incidents reported this Sunday, as Kosovo police, KPS, and KFOR members have visibly increased their presence near the Serb enclave of Gračanica, and also near Kosovska Mitrovica and Gazimestan.

This year's Vidovdan celebrations have gathered the largest crowd seen since 1999, with several thousand people in Gazimestan, near Priština, attending a commemoration of the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo.

On this day 620 years ago, the Serb army, led by Lazar Hrebeljanović, confronted the invading Ottoman Turks.

Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) Patriarch Pavle's emissary Metropolitan Amfilohije and bishops Artemije, Filaret and Teodosije served a religious ceremony dedicated to the souls of the fallen soldiers of the medieval Serbian empire - commonly referred to as the Kosovo heroes.

After the ceremony, Bishop Artemije told the crowd that "the Kosovo heroes have given their lives so that we can live in Kosovo and Metohija today."

The Serbs have gathered in Gazimestan, the bishop continued, to pray to the Lord and tell themselves and others that this is the holy Serb land, soaked with blood and tears of our ancestors.

"Kosovo was and will be the heart of Serbia, just as it was 620 years ago," he said.

The participants in the ceremonies today arrived in some 60 buses and several hundred private vehicles from all over Serbia, but also from Montenegro and the Republic of Srpska. KPS members and Czech KFOR soldiers secured the area close to the Gazimestan monument.

Unlike in previous years, this time a stage was set up, while the monument was draped with a huge Serbian national flag and a canvass with the fresco image of Holy Tsar Lazar.

Both the Gazimestan commemoration, and the one earlier in the day in the monastery of Gračanica were attended by government ministers Bogoljub Šijaković, Goran Bogdanović and Nebojša Bradić, and Crown Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević and his wife Katarina.

Johanna and her husband Nenad making the church greeting


Some even better information about Vidovdan 2009 here at de[construct].net

Vito Mbeki?: AIDS denialism at the Italian Ministry of Health

A policy analysis raises the specter of AIDS Denialism in the Italian Health Ministry. The study examined official records and found numerous cases where an AIDS diagnosis is discussed independent of HIV infection.

The authors initially investigated epidemiological evidence regarding HIV infection and AIDS in Italy using only official data published by the Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) and by the Italian Ministry of Health (Ministero del Lavoro, della Salute e delle Politiche Sociali). The authors concluded that the Italian Ministry of Health appears to be convinced that HIV is not the [sole] cause of AIDS. The authors describe the serendipity of their findings:

“In the wake of the recent Nobel awards for Medicine, we wished to prepare an essay concerning the numbers of the AIDS epidemic in Italy and the efficacy of the Italian Ministry of Health’s policies to contain and fight the disease. We also wondered whether the Nobel awards could put an end to the polemics concerning the viral origin of AIDS with particular reference to the theses (often referred to as ‘AIDS denialism’) put forward by Prof. Duesberg et al. and Bauer. AIDS denialism refers to the views of a loosely connected group of individuals and organizations who deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS. To this end, a young student (MPG) preparing his bachelor’s thesis began to search the official documents of the Italian Ministry of Health (http://www.ministerosalute.it) and, after a thorough search, we came to a rather paradoxical conclusion: policies, guidelines, definitions and data provided for by the Italian Ministry of Health are indeed consistent with the hypothesis that AIDS could be independent of HIV infection.”
The authors go on to state: “according to the Ministry, AIDS can be diagnosed in the absence of signs of HIV infection; there is legal prohibition to communicate new HIV infections to referring physicians and Health Authorities as if HIV spread were not a threat to public health… no national registry of HIV infection is implemented; and AIDS is not classified among relevant infective diseases nor among infective diseases that are susceptible of control interventions; one fourth of pediatric AIDS cases is not imputable to mother–son transmission.”


The study was conducted by Ruggiero et al. from the University of Firenze and published in the journal Medical Hypotheses. The authors examine their observations regarding what appear to be AIDS Denialist policies. They express considerable surprise, stating that “At the end of what we thought would have been a routine essay, we were left with more questions and doubts than we expected: if the data and the definitions provided for by the Italian Ministry of Health are accurate and consistent, and assuming that the Ministry always uses the acronym ‘AIDS’ to indicate the same pathologic entity (in this life/death matter, sloppiness and/or confusion would not be tolerable), then we are forced to conclude that the Ministry is convinced that HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS in Italy. This hypothesis of ours is easily refutable by the Ministry by implementing the following points:


1. Clearly state in an official document with legal value, that no diagnosis of AIDS can be made without confirmed HIV infection, and withdraw the definitions listed in the circular No. 9 of 29th April, 1994

2. Enforce obligation of notification of new HIV infections to referring physicians and Health Authorities.

3. Establish a coherent national registry of new HIV infection.

4. Classify AIDS among relevant infective diseases that are susceptible of control interventions.

5. Give an explanation for those pediatric AIDS cases not imputable to mother–son transmission.

Until these measures are not implemented, logics force us to include the Italian Ministry of Health within the AIDS denialist community.”

If Ruggiero et al. are correct it would mean that Italy joins South Africa (1999-2008) and Gambia in the family of nations that have sponsored AIDS Denialism.

There are serious implications should the Italian Health Ministry not refute Ruggiero et al.’s hypothesis. AIDS Deniers could easily exploit the Italian Government’s missteps just as they did in South Africa. Watch for an emergence of pseudoscience, natural remedies, Vitamin cures, and other classic denialist escapades. AIDS Deniers could use the confusion to sue pharmaceutical companies, challenge HIV testing, and launch legal defenses for people who knowingly infect others with HIV. Hopefully Italy’s Health Ministry will openly reject AIDS Denial and clarify its position.

UPDATE 7/12/2009
AIDS Denialists are getting excited about the Ruggiero article. They smell the sausage simmering. Henry Bauer has taken time away from looking for Nessie and ranting about Joe Newton to post the Italian analysis. [By the way, I am nominating Henry Bauer to serve as a case example for the new psychiatric condition under consideration post-traumatic embitterment disorder where“People who feel they have been wronged by someone and are so bitter they can barely function other than to ruminate about their circumstances". Sorry Henry, but you have to just let it go!]

Henry Bauer states that a “remarkable coup has just transpired in publishing serious questions about HIV/AIDS in a mainstream journal.”


Now hold your water old fella.
Bauer is referring to Medical Hypotheses as a mainstream journal. For someone who has edited the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Mad Magazine would be considered mainstream science. Medical Hypotheses has been the home to articles by Peter Duesberg and the Perth Group. They also published the papers “Ejaculation as a treatment for nasal congestion in men is inconvenient, unreliable and potentially hazardous” and my personal favorite “The nature of navel fluff” by Georg Steinhauser [Thanks Nathan, again!]. I just have to share that abstract…

“Hard facts on a soft matter! In their popular scientific book (Leyner M, Goldberg B. Why do men have nipples – hundreds of questions you’d only ask a doctor after your third martini. New York: Three Rivers Press; 2005), Leyner and Goldberg raised the question why “some belly buttons collect so much lint”. They were, however, not able to come up with a satisfactory answer. The hypothesis presented herein says that abdominal hair is mainly responsible for the accumulation of navel lint, which, therefore, this is a typically male phenomenon. The abdominal hair collects fibers from cotton shirts and directs them into the navel where they are compacted to a felt-like matter. The most abundant individual mass of a piece of lint was found to be between 1.20 and 1.29 mg (n = 503). However, due to several much larger pieces, the average mass was 1.82 mg in this three year study. When the abdominal hair is shaved, no more lint is collected. Old T-shirts or dress shirts produce less navel fuzz than brand new T-shirts. Using elemental analysis, it could be shown that cotton lint contains a certain amount of foreign material, supposedly cutaneous scales, fat or proteins. Incidentally, lint might thus fulfill a cleaning function for the navel.”

Medical Hypotheses is regularly featured in Ben Goldacre's Bad Science as a crap journal. Henry Bauer holds the journal in high esteem, that says it all.

So let’s keep this in perspective. As a commenter has already said elsewhere, this was not exactly published in JAMA or The Lancet.

For the full article see Ruggiero M et al. Aids denialism at the ministry of health. Med Hypotheses (2009), doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.06.002
To request a copy of the article you may contact the corresponding author Stephania Pacini stefania.pacini@unifi.it

PTT Museum by Momir Korunovic in Belgrade

There are some buildings in Belgrade that fascinate with their eye-catching shapes, colors, and decorations. One of this, is a building right next to the former main telephone exchange building (my post here), it's the PTT museum by Momir Korunovic (1883-1969) from 1929.

On this building you can find elements of expressionism, european romanticism, viennese secessionism and elements from the serbian middle-age architecture, this combination is also known as Serbian national style architecture.

Serbian-national style in architecture (here a link in serbian)
Style carachteristics are elements of the serbian-byzantine style that were created first for church architecture. The church architecture was always a symbol also for national identity. With the serbian-national style this byzantine elements found its place also in profane architecture.


Momir Korunovic used this style for several wellknown buildings (Sokolski Dom, Post Building near the Main Station) and this one, when built was one of the biggest buildings at its time in Serbia. The facade shows a rich decoration with middle-age signs and a lot of masonic symbols. There are also statues with church style composition made by Stamenko Djurevic.
(color pictures by Rascian at skyscrapercity) PTT Museum, Palmotićeva 2 in Belgrade

"Mihailo Petrović Alas" House in Belgrade

In Belgrade guides I often saw the pictures of this interesting window with checker-board rondelle above, and I always kept in mind, that I wanted to know more about it.

Mihailo Petrovic House in Kosancicev Venac

The window belongs to the House of Mihailo Petrovic (Mihailo Alas) and is located in the Kosancicev Venac neighbourhood of Belgrade.
This was the neighborhood where Mihailo Petrovic lived his whole life. He was a famous Serbian mathematician, one of the pioneers of cybernetics whose work significantly contributed to the construction of the calculator.
Modest in his private life, Petrovic who was also a professor, was well known and respected in Belgrade.
As an enthusiastic angler he was nicknamed Mika Alas. His home (Kosancicev Venac street 22) was designed by architect Petar Bajalovic in a spirit of symbiosis blending secessionist floral motifs with elements of Serbo-Byzantine style. The only condition Petrovic set for the architect was for his room to have a balcony with a view of the Sava river.
This is the story behind this peculiar balcony!

pictures from inocha

Petar Bajalovic who designed this house in 1910, was a violinist and photographer by avocation; as an architect he remained loyal to the principles of Eclectic-Renaissance-Secession architecture.

He built the Serbian pavilion for the International Exhibition of Liberal Arts in Rome in 1912 and designed also some other wellknown buildings:


The Kolarac Foundation (Kolarceva zaduzbina)

The building on Studentski trg 5 in Belgrade, was erected by the great Belgrade philanthropist Ilija Milosavljevic Kolarac (here the website of the foundation). Here Bajalovic experimented with Academic style. A large concert hall with excellent acoustics is located in there, and also an art gallery.

The beautiful interiors of the foundation

The faculty of law building of the university of Belgrade

Also this building was made in academic style with classic elements (built in 1941).

"Speaking in Tongues": An Essay on AIDS Denial by John Boucher

I stood in the doorway waiting for ten minutes before I went back to see who he was talking to. I listened in the hall at the door to his office. I could hear him saying the names of his four brothers and one sister. I could hear him asking about snow and the vegetable garden. I heard him say, “Mama, I’ve got cancer.” I waited for Rex on our couch. We had picked it out as our third anniversary present to each other.

When Rex got off the phone he found me waiting for him on our couch. The couch we picked out / the couch we made love on / the couch we watched TV on / the couch we read to each other on / the couch we fought on / the couch we had our weekly check in with each other on / the couch we almost broke-up on / the couch I would wait on with my parents, to go to his funeral. The couch I finally had to throw out.



When Rex found me sitting on our couch, he sat beside me and my arms gently went around him. I hugged him; his hot skin and tears touched my cheek. It had been six years since he had spoken to his mother or anyone in his family, all his choice. Rex was stubborn. There had been a mix-up about who was going to drive to St. Louis to pick him up on his last scheduled visit. His sister Ruth was supposed to, but plans changed, and Rex’s brother was going instead. For reasons never fully explained, Rex exploded at this. He called off the trip and tore up all photographs of his family. He never went back home and he never spoke to them again. If they called, he hung up. If they wrote, he threw the unopened letters into the trash. A couple of years into the standoff, his mother sent him a birthday card with no return address. He opened it by mistake. It was a religious card. Rex exploded in anger:

“Stupid fucking bitch! I told her not to contact me; she’s dead to me. Now she sends me a Jesus birthday wish. Fuck You, Ma. She wants to make up—I’ll show her. “

Rex went to a gay card-shop and found a card with two naked muscle men in leather arm bands and combat boots, one twisting the other’s nipple with a pair of pliers, while the other jerked-off and came. He sent it to her with a brief note:

Dear Mother,
This card is as inappropriate for you, as your birthday wish was for me.
If you don’t know who I am by now—Fuck Off Bitch!
Rexxx

I told him not to send it.

“Don’t get into it. It’s none of your business John.”

He sent the card. That was the end of any contact from Springfield, Missouri. But on his Birthday around noon, after six years of silence, Mrs. Phyllis Nelson called her son Rex. He answered the phone and spoke with her for forty-five minutes. Rex told her the truth about what was happening to his body. He told her about the lymphoma, the chemo, the weight loss, and his still insistent belief that the HIV virus was harmless and played no part in his illness.

As I held my crying Rex on our couch, I was struck by a series of wonderings. What if his doctor’s appointment had not been rescheduled for later that afternoon? What if we had left for his Birthday lunch five minutes earlier? Phyllis, Mrs. Poindexter, Mrs. Nelson, MeeMaw, Ma, the fucking bitch—would she have left a message? Probably. Would Rex have returned the call? No. No, he would not have. It was hearing her voice, at that moment in time, when he needed her, that did it. It was the beginning of coincidences, always bittersweet.

Two months later Rex’s mother and sister Ruth came to Los Angeles. They stayed five days. On their last night they took me out for dinner to a gay restaurant in West Hollywood. We sat outside on the patio; it was unusually balmy for mid-January. I spoke only to his mother while Ruth sipped her two beers and studied her map of the movie stars’ homes. I sat directly across from Rex’s mom. The distance was two feet but in reality we were two thousand miles and fifty years apart. I stared directly into her eyes as I spoke; I knew this would be my only chance. I never said her name and she never said mine. I didn’t know what to call her and she could not acknowledge me. I couldn’t call her Mrs. Poindexter. She hadn’t been that name in decades. Mrs. Nelson seemed so formal, yet Phyllis seemed to presume, and she didn’t look like a Phyllis anyway.

A woman in her mid 70’s with tightly permed hair dyed a nondescript color, somewhere between blond, brown and red. She wore polyester stretch pants, orthopedic shoes, glasses, and no makeup, not even lipstick. This was her first trip out of Missouri, to watch her son die of AIDS, in Hollywood.

The whole time they were in Los Angeles they only referred to it as Hollywood. I think it took the edge off. After all they had not seen nor spoken to Rex in six years. Now it was too late. The things he always wanted from them were impossible now.

Rex was bed bound at this point and eighty-nine pounds, fed and hydrated intravenously. He ate nothing those last two months. I tried to get him to drink Gatorade mixed fifty-fifty with water. He raved about it to the nurses, “John had this great idea”, but the taste was too strong. Chemo had done that. Even though Rex told the nurses how wonderful his Gatorade cocktail was, and how I’d thought it up, he only took a sip.

The tubes fed and watered him, like some exotic talking beige-plant, which kept shedding its’ hospital gown like fall leaves. He always wanted to be naked. He would get so hot. Even the flimsy cotton gown was too much—he would claw at the ties and tear it off. The Nurses kept his door shut and also pulled the curtain, so visitors, volunteers, and the hospital workers, who came by hourly, would not see him in his birthday suit. That small space of linoleum between the hospital door and the curtain gave Rex time to throw a blanket over his penis and become presentable.

Ruth and their mom sat in the two chairs and talked with Rex about recipes for zucchini bread, and growing vegetables from seeds they had stolen when Rex and Ruth were children. They would steam open the seed packets they sold door to door, to earn a little extra money. They would remove some of the seeds, then close the envelopes back up, and sell them. They were too poor to buy the seeds.

I listened to this sitting on the windowsill. My back was against the cold winter glass, tinted a brownish green and filtering the gray sky. As I sat on the ledge, my back to the glass, I watched Rex, his mother and sister try to connect their lives that had unraveled. Food–which Rex no longer ate—was their only common ground. Food was all they had now.

At dinner at the French Market I sat with his mother and sister Ruth. Ruth ate her chicken stir-fry and drank her beers. She paid for dinner and tipped the waiter one dollar for all three of us, a big tip by rural Missouri standards. We sat under the striped patio awning, alone. I ate almost nothing at dinner, a few grapes. Ruth drank her beers and looked at the map of the movie stars’ homes in the Hollywood Hills. She said in her twang, “We’re going drivin’ in the mountains in the mornin’––before we visit Rex”. “What mountains?” I asked. She gestured toward the Hollywood Hills. “They’re mountains to us Honey. Missouri’s flat.”

I sat across from Rex’s mom, never saying her name, and told her the story of his illness staring straight into her eyes. I told her everything except the conversation Rex and I had, in the hospital, in late November 2003, after his birthday but before Thanksgiving. The day Rex told me we’d made a mistake. A mistake, which would cost him his life. I was wearing my hospital visitor, preppy, gay housewife drag. A green button down shirt from Eddie Bauer, Rex had bought it for me because it matched all the shades of green in my eyes. He’d picked it out when we were buying clothes for him to go to Nashville, to sell his songs, to give us a future. “I’m doing all this for us honey. If I can just get one hit we’re set for life. Look at Alan O’Day. He and Yuka live on “Undercover Angel”.

I thought of the song and sang the lyrics in my head. “Undercover Angel, midnight fantasy. I’ve never had a dream that made sweet love to me.” Alan and his Japanese wife live in a nice house in West LA. They have a good life—and all on “Undercover Angel.”

But Rex came back from Nashville not with a future, but the promise of one. Three months later he got sick. Three months after that and we were in room 4812 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, having “the talk”.

Rex was bed-bound and although he no longer ate, the doctors could not stop his diarrhea. A constant flow of green bile flowed from him into a clear plastic bag that hung from the chrome rails of his hospital bed. A tube was anally inserted into Rex, the other end into the bag. Every hour a nurse capped the tube, emptied the bag, measured and recorded its contents, and flushed Rex’s bile down the hospital toilet. The doctors were monitoring his fluid loss. They were trying to see if they could control the flow. They never could.

I stared into Rex’s eyes, the color of cornflowers. I didn’t look at the rest of him, just his eyes that burned into you. He was intense, one hundred percent full tilt all the time. I perched on my ledge, the November glass against my back, my penny-loafers en-pointe. My fingers clutched the granite lip of the sill. I liked the cold, hard, unyielding stone, and my fantasy that the glass against my back would break, and I’d plunge to the hospital garden below. I wanted an earthquake to open the earth and swallow Cedars. I didn’t want to have this conversation.

“Sit down Honey.”

I stared at the peach pink linoleum trying to decide what color to call it. Apricot? To yellow. Peach? To orange. Some fruit, some dense sticky-sweet, exotic fruit must be this color. Mango? Still to orange.

Rex spoke:
“John, I think we made a mistake. I think the HIV dissident movement is wrong.”

Anger flooded my face; I felt it burn. My mind raced:

Now you change your mind? Now when it’s too late. Now you want to leave the HIV Dissident Movement. You dragged me into this. You almost left me over it. Now, with a tube up your ass, you want to change course!

I stared at the human plant before me. I couldn’t say this to him. I wrote the word asshole on the roof of my mouth with my tongue. I stared down at the pink fruit linoleum and at my cordovan penny-loafers. I looked up at Rex’s blue eyes. The blood drained from my face. He was so sick. I’d never seen anyone this sick. I thought of all the people I watched die from AIDS when I worked at the Hospice. I never saw anyone like this. I couldn’t be angry. I looked instead at the peach fruit floor under my feet. I wanted the glass to break; I wanted to die before Rex finished this conversation.

Rex continued:
“I’m going to start the drugs. I think it’s too late for me. I want you to start too. Have you been taking them––secretly?”

“No!”

My face was red hot with anger. I wrote the word asshole on the roof of my mouth again. I thought about Christine Maggiore the leader of the HIV dissident movement and her filmmaker husband Robin. Rex always said Christine was his heroine; she called him in the hospital urging him to stay the dissident course and not take the drugs. I even told Rex to call her, when the doctors were pushing him so hard, and he didn’t know what to do. Now reality was staring us in the face and he was willing to look at it, to change his mind, to say he was wrong. I didn’t want to look; I didn’t want to change my mind. I wanted to pretend Christine was right, and HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. I wanted to pretend Rex would live. I wanted the glass to break behind my back. I wanted to die first.

Rex continued:
“Go home and go on the web, and print out a list of all the HIV drugs, and their side effects, and bring it back to me after dinner. I want to discuss my options, with my doctors in the morning. “

I felt nothing as I left my perch. I saw myself as if from above walking the peach floor toward the beige talking-plant and kissing it goodbye.

As I left, Rex was dialing his little golden cell phone. He had it on speakerphone and I heard it ringing. He covered the mouthpiece and mock whispered: “I’m calling Robin Scovill. He can’t keep that tag line he has for me in his movie, The Other Side of AIDS — ‘Rex continues to live in health drug free.’ –– he’ll have to change that”

Rex chuckled ironically; then covered the mouthpiece again when he heard someone say “Hello” on the other end. “Print those things out for me, OK Honey? Bye.”

I left the room staring at the peach waxed linoleum.

I left this part of the story of Rex’s illness out, the night I had dinner with his mom, and talked to her over two thousand miles of café table. I told her everything else that had happened in the six months of his illness. I wanted her to know I cared, that I loved her son. I wanted her to know I tried. When I had finished my story, this Pentecostal mother of seven, looked up and spoke to me, for the first and only time:

“The church I go to, they speak in tongues, handle snakes. They say they talk to God, but I think they just make it up. My new husband, he likes to go. I go along. I keep my mouth shut.”

She never said my name and I never said hers.

A month after Rex died I sat on our couch and called Ruth. I told her I was going through Rex’s things. I said to tell their mom she could have anything she wanted. I’d send it on to her in Springfield. A week later Ruth left a message:

“Hey John, Ruth. I spoke to my mom and she said…she said, what she’d really like is a picture¬––a you both. You and Rex. She said, when you spoke to her at that restaurant; it was just like talkin’ to married people. So if you can find a nice picture, send it to me, I’ll see she gets it.”

I went through Rex’s camera and the last picture stored there was of us. Taken at my dad’s birthday party, two weeks before Rex got sick. It was our last picture together. I sent it on to Springfield, Missouri.
NOTE: “Speaking in Tongues” was published in Washburn University’s Inscape Literary Journal and won the Best Nonfiction Award. The essay is reprinted here with permission from John Boucher. Rex Poindexter tested positive in 1996 and was featured in Robin Scovill’s AIDS denialist film “The Other Side of AIDS”