buggery.org

When someone tells you you’re going to die, it’s normal to have a few questions. Depending on the context, these might include “how?” and “why?”, but most importantly, “when?”

On the day that I got my HIV diagnosis, Chris, my doctor never said I was going to die — but that’s what I heard. He said “This was a positive test.” It’s an odd choice of words, a bit clumsy and scientific, but of course medically precise. The diagnosis had to be confirmed with a second test, and backed up by a T-cell count. There was the possibility that the second test would show the first to be false, but he and I both knew that wasn’t really going to happen. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said.

The test was positive, and so was I.

In my head, “This was a positive test” became “You’re going to die.” I wanted to know what all people given this news want to know: when?

“How long have I got?” The words came out of my mouth like a line from a bad TV movie. Chris looked at me with sad eyes.

“We don’t know. Some people do better than others, but without treatment I think you would have between one and three years before you were very seriously ill. There is a treatment available — it’s called AZT — and with that you would probably double that, but better treatments are being worked on and new ones could come along in the future.

“You shouldn’t worry: you can expect to have another five to ten years with a bit of luck. And in that time, who knows — treatments might improve. Who knows? You could live for another 20 years.”

I knew he was trying to be upbeat, stretching the story as far as possible to make me feel better. But no-one lived that long with HIV, not in those days. I walked out of the surgery with a prescription for AZT and started taking it the same day.

That was twenty years ago, today. The 6th of August, 1991, when I was 27 years old and going to die.

I posted another story about the day of my diagnosis a few years ago: Hiroshima Day.

Pets can now be taken on country train services in Victoria, as long as they’re muzzled and on a lead. A victory for common sense after V/Line banned all pets, even those in pet carriers, in 2008.

When I was in Europe there were people with dogs and cats on trains and trams all over. I didn’t see any issues there so I don’t understand why we’re so against it in Australia. Australia is such a nanny state – it’s good to see an example going the other way, and from a Coalition government, too.

Now to get rid of that silly compulsory bike helmet law…

UPDATE, 3PM: Well, that didn’t last long.

Margaret Thatcher is not dead yet, but surely it can’t be long. While you wait, why not purchase one of these high quality commemorative garments from the Buggery Boutique on RedBubble?

Remember, 100% of the proceeds will be used to buy celebratory beers to mark the Iron Lady’s interment into her final rusting place.

Just click the links to buy.

Version 1 (‘Dead’):
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Version 2 (three for the price of one!):
  

XKCD’s massive timeline of “The future – according to Google search results” is the most wonderfulest thing I have seen in ages. Click the image to see the whole thing.

Watch this extraordinary “training video” which explains how hospital workers in Texas “encourage” patients to undergo routine HIV testing. I particularly like the part where they stress that written consent isn’t required, and there’s no need for pre-test counselling.

Yesterday I was on TV. Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall institute in Melbourne made a significant breakthrough on HIV, and the media needed someone to be the voice of positive people. In my PLWHA Victoria role, this duty falls to me.

It’s not often that the Australian news media take this much interest in HIV issues at all, and when they do it’s typically bad news, so it was refreshing to see this much interest in a ‘good news’ story. The fact that the news release had the words ‘HIV’ and ‘cure’ in it probably helped (the last time the commercial TV news became interested in HIV science, that news release had the ‘C’ word in it too, so I’m seeing a pattern; from now on all my news releases will have ‘HIV cure’ in the headline).

So I scrubbed up, borrowed a clean shirt (thanks Nathan), and choofed off to WEHI to do my bit for the cause. Here’s the resulting ABC TV News item. Read on over the page for the horrifying truth.

(The Channel 10 version is also available, on YouTube, if you’re really keen.)

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We live quite close to Malmsbury Reservoir, a large dam constructed in 1866 to supply water to Bendigo. For most of the time we’ve been here, the dam has been practically empty. Not any more.

A year ago, the dam was 6% full, now it’s overflowing. Here’s a photo I took in October, after the first round of flooding and heavy rain in what has turned out to be a very wet Spring and Summer, and another one I took today.

12 October 2010

14 January 2011

There are a lot more photos of the flooding around our area on Flickr.

Nathan got his nipples pierced yesterday. I documented the event for him on video. Enjoy!

The annual HIV surveillance figures are out today and, as usual, there is lots of reporting of apparently bad figures. “Australians newly diagnosed with HIV totalled 1050 during 2009, the highest number in almost two decades,” according to this AAP story.

Indeed, there was a rise in HIV diagnoses last year, and we’ve crossed the seemingly symbolic 1000-cases barrier, and that is of course significant cause for concern. But HIV diagnoses have been up around the 1000 mark for several years now, and deaths from AIDS are at an all-time low – just nine people were reported to have died from AIDS-related causes in 2009, a piece of good news that the media has pretty much ignored. Because of this, the number of people living with HIV in Australia has risen every year, and so the number of new HIV diagnoses should be read in that context.

The chart below shows what happens when you do. The blue and green lines show the number of HIV diagnoses per year since 2000, and the consequent raw incidence rate per 100,000 population. The pink line shows the raw incidence rate per 100 people living with HIV, and shows a clear downward trend since 2005, as HIV infections have not risen in proportion to the number of positive people living in Australia. (Click the image to see a larger version).

To my mind, this is a significant piece of good news that the media has ignored. But that’s not surprising as NCHECR’s annual surveillance report doesn’t include this measure, making a ‘bad news’ interpretation of the data almost inevitable.

That falling pink line suggests that positive people are succeeding in preventing onward HIV transmission. With a larger HIV-positive population, you’d naturally expect more HIV transmission to occur, yet this isn’t happening.

If this falling incidence rate were acknowledged, we could begin to ask why it is so. What has changed since 2005 to reduce HIV incidence, and how can we extend that success? Reported rates of unprotected sex among gay men have risen during that period, so how do we explain this apparently contradictory effect? These are important, and potentially valuable, questions.

HIV incidence is falling, not rising, when you take into account the growing positive population. This is something we should be celebrating, and for which positive people should be congratulated, instead of focusing on raw numbers that give a skewed perception of the epidemiology of HIV in Australia.

There are several caveats to the data I used for the chart. Most of the data came from the published NCHECR surveillance reports, which can be found here and from ABS population data. The 2010 report isn’t up yet, so I have taken the figures for 2009 from today’s media reports. And as I say, I’m no statistician, so I will accept criticism of my methods with my usual sanguine humour.

I love this sassy (but NSFW – lots of F-bombs) promo for FCKH8, a fundraising initiative supporting the campaign against California’s Proposition 8 anti gay marriage bill.

More info about the campaign.

Myles Helfand, editor of TheBody.com, writing in the Huffington Post on HIV stigma:

Never mind that more than half of all people in the U.S. who get HIV/AIDS are heterosexual, and that most people who get it are not injection-drug users. Or that it whittles away the immune system in the same manner regardless of a person’s sex, gender, race, age, education level, wealth, geographic location or the manner in which they’re infected.

It’s the first impression that matters. And that first impression was that HIV/AIDS was something sinners got for doing things they shouldn’t: Having sex with men. Using drugs. Acts of which God does not approve, as has been made clear by luminaries such as Pope Benedict XVI and Delaware’s masturbation-averse Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell.

Read the full article.

Just to recap the news from the last couple of days:

• Tasmania’s parliament has voted to recognise same-sex marriages performed overseas;
• Fidel Castro has accepted responsibility for the persecution of gays following the Cuban revolution;
• A Treasury analysis has found an $11 billion hole in the Coalition’s costings of its election promises;
• First the Greens, then Andrew Wilkie, have announced they will support a Labor minority government;
• Fred Nile has been busted for viewing internet porn on his Parliament House computer;
• A bill to allow same-sex couples to adopt children has passed the NSW lower house.

CC-licensed image above: The Happiest Days of our Lives… in Kenosha, by Flickr user angiek47.

This has been doing the rounds, but it’s just too wonderful not to share. Taiwanese animated news report on the Australian election, complete with political assassination scene, precognitive crocodile and a messianic, refugee-slaughtering Tony Abbott.

Australia is headed for a hung parliament after the most appalling election campaign in history culminated in the most perverted election result in history.

A first-term government that has delivered low inflation, low unemployment and massive infrastructure investment while deftly managing the greatest economic crisis of recent years has been rejected at the polls, and an opposition composed of a ragged band of right-wing reactionaries, Christian fundamentalists and a peppering of downright loonies has come within a hair’s breadth of winning government. It takes a very special brand of stupid for a political party to squander opportunity the way the Labor Party have done over the last 12 months.

As it stands, the ABC election computer suggests that Labor have won 70 seats, the Coalition 72 seats, and the Greens 1 seat in the new parliament. There are four independents – including Andrew Wilkie, a former whistleblower who previously stood for election in Bennelong (2004) and for the Tasmania Senate (2007) as a Green. That leaves three seats in doubt – Brisbane (Coalition ahead), Corangamite (ALP), and Lindsay (ALP). Many seats have be won with very slim margins, which means they could slip from one column to the other over the next week, but the upshot is that no party is going to have the numbers to govern in its own right.

How could this happen? Twelve months ago, Labor was riding high – they’d dodged the global financial crisis, apologised to the Stolen Generations, and were gradually rolling out positive policy reforms in health, education, welfare and a whole lot more. They had a leader in Kevin Rudd who was enjoying near-stratospheric approval ratings, and an opposition that was tearing itself apart over climate change and mired in scandal following the Godwin Grech affair. When Tony Abbott became leader on 1 December last year, the event was dismissed by most people as the latest in a long series of missteps by a futile and disunited opposition. That was just eight and a half months ago.

The decision to depose Kevin Rudd in a party-room coup, engineered (or so the media narrative tells us) by “faceless faction leaders” using an ambitious woman – Julia Gillard – as their puppet, will go down as one of the ALP’s greatest tactical errors, but it also shows how deeply lost the ALP has become. A party made up of career politicians and factional warlords, where only the grittiest and most ambitious can rise to the leadership, where policies and ideals take a second place behind a cynical pitch for votes that has only one aim: keeping yourself in power at any cost. Yes, it’s true of both parties and both leaders, as I wrote yesterday, but in Labor this form of cynical antipolitics has reached its apotheosis.

There is an old saying that oppositions don’t win elections; governments lose them. This is an election that the government emphatically lost, but the opposition did not win. The only winners are the Greens, who have attracted droves of disaffected Labor voters and who have run a principled campaign backed by a comprehensive policy platform. As well as winning a lower-house seat for the first time in a general election, the Greens will likely have nine senators from 1 July next year, and I expect will have a close working relationship with Wilkie. That’s a huge win for the Greens and an impressive vote for change.

Of course, it’s easy to have a great policy platform when you don’t have the nuisance of having to implement it. Now the Greens will hold real political power for the first time, possibly in support of a minority Labor government, and certainly holding the balance of power in the Senate (but not until 1 July). The way they exercise that power will be keenly watched, and will test the party. The downfall of the Australian Democrats was ultimately in how they exercised power when they had it, and the Greens will need to find a balance between idealism and pragmatism if they are to succeed.

As for the Labor Party, the recriminations over today’s failure are already starting. The Greens will be blamed, for taking votes and seats away from Labor, even though most of those votes were returned through the preference system, and the two seats lost due to Greens influence, Melbourne and Denison, will back Labor ahead of the Coalition in parliament. The media will be blamed, and rightly so, for its failure to look beyond the intra-party squabbles and personalty issues and its abysmal failure of policy analysis. Kevin Rudd will be blamed, for his (assumed) rearguard spoiler action against Gillard. Mark Latham will be blamed. Queensland and NSW state Labor will be blamed.

But will anyone take the blame within the Labor Party machine that orchestrated this catastrophe? I doubt it.

You have to blame someone, and you can’t blame yourself – that would require a level of humility and introspection that is beyond the ALP.

UPDATE, 1PM: Karl Bitar and Bill Shorten have both been on TV this morning arguing that it was the cabinet leaks in the early days of the campaign that led to the loss. Not their decision to dump Kevin Rudd, not their decision to go to an election too early with no narrative and no coherent message, not the appalling way they conducted the campaign. No, it’s somebody else’s fault.

With ‘strategists’ like Bitar and Shorten, the ALP is doomed.

It’s polling day today. This great ritual of democracy ought to inspire and excite us, but like a lot of Australians, this time round I’m more depressed than inspired, and more angry than excited.

Over the last five weeks we have lived through the most negative, cynical and dispiriting election campaign in memory. Virtually devoid of policy debate, unrelentingly negative from the get-go, a squalid race for the bottom that reflects the parlous state of politics in Australia. If, as they say, you get the politicians you deserve, then we must have done something very bad to deserve this lot.

Like most people in Australia, this election is not about me. Whether you’re an inner-city progressive, a Toorak Tory, a socially regressive cow cocky or a middle-aged queer tree-changer like me, neither of the big parties give a damn about you. This election is only about a handful of ignorant bigots in a few marginal seats in western Sydney and south-east Queensland. The rest of us don’t matter.

The result is a political auction to see who can be toughest on the most vulnerable and helpless people in society. The resulting campaign has degenerated into a five-week harangue attacking refugees, immigrants, welfare recipients, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the economically aspirational but socially insular template of the so-called ‘Howard battlers’ who now virtually run the country. Then there’s the rivers of middle-class welfare, the pandering to special interests, the bare-faced lies, and the sheer, mind-numbing, putrid, soul destroying emptiness of it all.

What should be a debate about the country’s future is instead presented as a choice between two individuals, one a self-flagellating Christian fundamentalist and the other an ambitious and calculating woman. Tony or Julia, who are you going to vote for? But both these stories are false: Abbott and Gillard are both career politicians, equally ambitious and both motivated by one thing only — gaining and holding power at any cost. Whatever it takes, as Richo said.

In our hearts we want our politicians to be motivated by a desire to build a better world, to protect and strengthen us, and build a united, resilient society. We want them to make us better people. Instead the political process has become a contest of personal ambition, played out by a small group of pathologically self-interested career politicians and perverted by the media into a presidential-style contest where the he-said, she-said narrative trumps any discussion or analysis of policy. Instead of debate, we get arguments about debates, breathlessly reported by a press pack who have unwittingly become players in the game.

The opinion polls published over the last few days have both major parties neck and neck, locked in at roughly 50% each of the two-party preferred vote, as if the electorate can’t make up its mind who it hates the most. A pox on both their houses.

I sincerely hope that Tony Abbott does not become our 28th prime minister today. I know that would be a disaster for Australia, or at least for the Australia I believe in. But I cannot say I feel any affection for Julia Gillard either. Like just about everyone I know, I’ll be voting for the Greens, who look likely to substantially increase their numbers in the senate, and maybe score a seat in the lower house for the first time at a general election.

But the Greens will not be the government — either Labor or the Coalition will, and neither deserves to be.

My friend Craig has a new blog, ‘Bedknobs and Backrooms’, through which he promises to progressively reveal a memoir of his life. Craig spent 16 years in Sydney as a dance party promoter, leather identity, and lad-about-town, so I expect there’ll be some juicy revelations coming.

Craig and I were fellow travellers through the Sydney inner-city queer scene through the 1980s and 1990s, a time when a community that was being savaged by AIDS rebelled and celebrated life through dance parties, art events and community organising. That period represents a significant part of our shared history and it’s not one that has been well recorded. Craig’s role as a participant and player in the scene should give him a unique insight. I know he has a powerful personal story to tell too.

Just one post so far but it’s evocatively and written and bodes well. Check it out.

• Bedknobs and Backrooms (NSFW)

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the passage of the Marriage Amendment Bill 2004, the legislation that enshrined in Australian law the definition of marriage as being between “one man and one woman.” Australia’s DOMA.

The anniversary will be marked by rallies in all the capital cities and a number of regional centres (details), and it’s heartening to see support for equal marriage rights growing in Australia day by day.

Six years ago, when the Howard government introduced, and the Latham opposition immediately supported, this legislation, Brent and I were planning our own wedding, which took place in Canada later that year. I wrote a cranky blog post and very cranky letter to the editor at the time.

Brent and I were the first gay couple we knew to tie the knot. In those days, gay marriage was legal in The Netherlands, Belgium, and a handful of Canadian Provinces. Since then Argentina, the rest of Canada, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and five US States have all legalised same-sex marriage. Finland, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Nepal are all committed to legalisation in the near future, and the subject is being energetically debated in many other countries. Same-sex marriage is a global phenomenon, and an unstoppable force.

I’ve been impressed by the degree to which this has become a political issue during the current election campaign. Julia Gillard has been asked repeatedly to explain her party’s position on same-sex marriage, and she has squibbed it every time. The ALP’s position on same-sex marriage (they’re against it, but for state-based “relationship registries”, as long as there’s no ceremony and no-one uses the ‘m’ word) is unsustainable within a party that claims to be progressive, and the party should adopt a more open-minded position. Unfortunately the ALP is scared witless of the political muscle of the Catholic Church and a few other religious minorities. That’s a disgraceful position for a party that claims to be socially progressive, and it partly explains the haemorrhaging of support to the Greens.

Julia Gillard could articulate a more open position on this issue, without unduly scaring the horses. She could acknowledge that it is an issue, for a start, instead of robotically chanting that ‘one man, one woman’ shibboleth. She could affirm that there will be no change in the short term, but espouse a personal belief that change will come when the nation – and the party – is ready. She could suggest we have a national debate on the issue over the coming term, and to develop a legislative response based on that. She could end the hateful and mean-spirited policy that prevents the issuing of ‘certificates of non-impediment to marry’ for same-sex couples intending marriage overseas. Or she could grow a pair and just say what we all know she, and Penny Wong, and probably most of the ALP party room, believes.

In the meantime the voices for same-sex marriage grow stronger and the arguments against it become ever more ineffective. We will win this – we have justice on our side; and a day will come when my Canadian marriage certificate will be recognised in my own country. In the meantime, my love and admiration goes out to all the hard-working queers who are keeping this issue on the agenda, organising the rallies, writing the petitions, fighting the good fight for equality and human rights.

See you at the rally.

I had a nice email from Morgan Tepsic, who says he’s 20 years old and his dream is to jump naked around the world.

Here’s his moderately NSFW video.

Morgan Tepsic’s Naked Stop-Motion Extravaganza! from Morgan Tepsic on Vimeo.

If you support Morgan’s dream you can give him some money to help achieve it. Or you can read his interview in Butt Magazine. Or just watch the video and smile.

Julia Gillard, last night on the 7 PM Project:

The night before on Q&A:

At a press conference on 2 August:

At least she’s consistent – consistently useless. Interesting to see how similar the answers were on the last two nights: she’s well drilled.

Gillard’s repeated argument that “there are a variety of community views on this topic” doesn’t hold water – the fact that some troglodytes in the Labor Party aren’t in favour of gay marriage does not justify perpetuating discrimination and unequal treatment. The ALP should discover some conviction about this issue and at least open the issue up for debate instead of constantly closing it down with this unsustainable, empty, unimaginative nonsense.

Until Gillard finds a way of answering this question in a more inclusive and open way, she will continue to fall in respect within the LGBT community.

I made an attack ad.

This election campaign has been breaking record for both dullity and awfulitude, but finally in week three we have been blessed with the wisdom of the ages as a swag of superannuated and mostly geriatric ex-leaders have been sounding forth on the big issues, to help us make up our minds about who we dislike the least. It’s a non-stop nostalgia fest for political tragics.

Bob Hawke: characteristically quick out of the blocks, the Silver Bodgie has been doing the rounds since early in the campaign, promoting his miniseries, promoting his wife’s book, creeping us out, sparring with Paul Keating and occasionally campaigning for the ALP. He’s “still got it”, according to the media. although what “it” is or was is mercifully left unexplained – perhaps it’s his lifetime gold travel pass. Bob says the Liberals have a stupid asylum seeker policy and a leader who’s as ‘mad as a cut snake’. Couldn’t agree more.

Kevin Rudd: emerged from his hospital bed yesterday and is ready to rescue the ALP campaign. Julia Gillard says he’s allowed to campaign for the ALP, which is kind, and Kevin’s playing the nice guy card, insisting he has no ill will for Julia. If he keeps that charade up until the election, she will have to make him Foreign Minister, Governor-General and Secretary-General of the UN.

John Howard: he’s back, and it’s gloves off, say the hacks at the Australian, who are unsurprisingly a little bit moist to have the short man back in the limelight. Hilariously, Howard staged his return at a fundraiser for Chinese immigrants. Howard says we should vote for Tony Abbott – shock! In other news, Howard lost his own seat in 2007 and has gone on to not become the vice-president of the ICC.

Malcolm Fraser: he’s back too! On ABC radio this morning he said the coalition is “not ready for government“. Who will he vote for then? The Sex Party? The Greens?

Malcolm Turnbull: has come out in support of gay marriage, and is known to be for carbon trading renewable energy, onshore processing of refugees and, for all I know, legal heroin. He should just join the Greens and be done with it.

Brendan Nelson: Australia’s ambassador to the EU has been pleasantly silent.

Paul Keating: gave a speech about privacy laws the other day. Suggested a snappy new campaign slogan for the ALP: “I would campaign simply to the point that it is not believable that Mr Abbott could facilitate the transition of the Australian economy from where it is to where it needs to be … The constant flip-flop he has made on policy, the lack of an over-arching schematic.” Brilliant!

John Hewson: has been popping up all over the place, presumably because he is an expert on losing the unloseable election, a feat which the ALP seems determined to emulate. On Gruen Nation this week, Hewson insisted that his party allegiance shouldn’t be taken for granted. Another Greens voter?

Gough Whitlam: has been having a nap.

UPDATE, 9 AUGUST: Now Mark Latham has entered the fray, using the campaign to prosecute a few long-held grudges against, well, everybody. And Andrew Peacock has been beating up on disabled people! Will the fun never end?

Julia had a press conference today. Julia said she’d decided it was time for us to see the “real” Julia, instead of the fake Julia the campaign managers have been forcing her to be. Julia wants us to see the differences between her and Tony Abbott. A journalist asked Julia her views on same-sex marriage. Julia – the “real” Julia, the Julia that wants us to know she’s different to Tony Abbott – said she has exactly the same point of view and the same party policy as Tony Abbott.

The International AIDS Conference is drawing to a close and with it, so is my long overseas journey. Tomorrow I’m off to London, then Singapore, then Melbourne and home. I’m ready.

The conference has been amazing – there is much good work being done out there and I’ve found plenty to be inspired by, challenged by, and occasionally angered by. I’ve met some fantastic people, including this guy, this guy, this guy and lots of others who aren’t so easily linked to. Plus I’ve renewed a lot of friendships built up over previous conferences and events.

The two “big deals” out of this meeting for me are the microbicides breakthrough (of course) and the focus on criminalisation of HIV transmission/exposure, and the complex legal, ethical and public health challenges associated with that. I’ll be writing about those two for an upcoming issue of Positive Living.

As the meeting winds up, it would be easy to be dismissive of the prospects for anything to really change in the course of the HIV epidemic – to judge the event as long on talk and short on action – but I’ll suppress my usual cynicism and say that I do think these events make a difference, if only to remind those of us working in the field of how much remains to be done and how comprehensively the leaders of the world have failed to take decisive and meaningful action to save people’s lives.

We are making progress. We have new prevention technologies coming on line – the successful CAPRISA microbicide trial will be a milestone in the history of the HIV epidemic, and there is every reason to expect that research into pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and treatment-as-prevention will give us new prevention tools and the hope of a prevention paradigm that goes beyond the “just use condoms” message that I have argued is unsustainable in the long term.

Unfortunately, not a lot of this is getting through to the people who have the power to make decisions, and so often we see public policy driven by prejudice, fear and moralisation rather than evidence of what works. As Gill Greer, Director-General of IPPF, said in a session the other day, “when morality gets in the way of policy, the result is too often morbidity and mortality.”

One of the perennial set-piece events for the International AIDS Conference is the big, colourful march through the centre of the host city demanding universal access/equal rights/new drugs/whatever the focus is on this time round. Last night’s event, marching through Vienna to Heroes’ Square, was no disappointment.

Many thousands of activists, advocates and people living with HIV made a loud, brash and joyous sight as they moved through the city. For me it’s the one moment of jubilation in a long week of scientific data and depressing news about the march of HIV in the developing world. This year we had extra cause to celebrate – the fantastic news this week about the success of a vaginal microbicide trial – and we made the most of that while working to highlight human rights issues. Will (above) decided he’d stand up for the human rights of African men’s foreskins.

Lots more photos on Flickr.

If you sit in the media centre at the International AIDS Conference, you are subjected to an unrelenting stream of people coming by and placing a press release or media advisory in front of you, while timidly whispering, “Press conference at 1pm on bal bla bla.” It happens on average avery 5–10 minutes and consequently most of the journos ignore them.

The MOSOTOS people have a better approach.

A noisy, colourful protest today at the International AIDS Conference by sex worker activists highlighting the impacts of US government policies and those of the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief on sex workers in Africa.

From Research for Sex Work, Issue 10 (July 2008):

US funding restrictions applied to anti-trafficking and HIV- prevention monies have cowed many service providers and implementing agencies. Furthermore, the requirement that one-third of US HIV-prevention funding be spent on abstinence programming has directed funding toward faith- based organisations (FBOs), most of which have little if any experience with HIV-prevention, and away from evidence- based, proven-effective HIV-prevention. Sex workers are hard hit by these restrictions, and the effects hurt not just sex workers but everyone in their communities. Sex workers had mixed feelings about the reauthorization of PEPFAR because of these restrictions. While PEPFAR offers life-saving medicines to many who would not otherwise receive it, the PEPFAR reauthorization bill included, at time of going to press, restrictions that prevent sex workers from receiving services. These restrictions promote discrimination against sex workers.

I love the way these guys stand up for themselves.

For more information about the organisers of this action and the issues behind it, visit the Global Network of Sex Work Projects.

The best conference handout in a long time is the faux “Conference Newsletter” produced by TB activists under the name MOSOTOS (More Of the Same Old Talk, Opinions and Speeches). Clever use of humour and satire to highlight an important issue. Below, and over the fold, are some samples. A PDF version of the whole magazine is available – check it out.

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Bill Gates, in a speech this afternoon to the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, speaking about the slow roll-out of HIV prevention and treatment efforts:

Two decades ago, the skeptics said: “We can’t make drugs to treat a virus.” But you persisted – and now they can. Then the skeptics said: “We can make the drugs, but we can’t make them cheap enough.” But you kept pushing – and now they do. Then the skeptics said: “We can make the drugs cheaply, but we don’t know whether people will stick to the regimen.” But you insisted – and now they know.

Gates gave a presser immediately after the speech, in which he was asked a question about the Robin Hood Tax, a tiny 0.05% tax on currency transactions that would raise at least $700 billion a year to help fund HIV treatments and prevention.

I don’t think that would work – I’ve heard a number of experts from the financial sector say they don’t think that would work. So no, I’m not in favour of the Robin Hood Tax. [1]

Aren’t those the same arguments he just criticised a few minutes before? Is he blind, hypocritical or just dumb?

Note 1. Not a direct quote, but an accurate representation of what Gates said. Sorry I didn’t get it down verbatim.

Photo above: Bill Gates © Paul Kidd 2010 – CC-BY-NC-SA license.

Having spent the last six weeks gallivanting around Europe and the Middle East, you’d think I’d have become used to culture shock by now. Arriving in strange countries where you don’t speak the language and have no local currency, crossing international borders in the middle of the night – yes that’s all part of the rich tapestry of travel. But on Saturday morning I found myself in the first (pre-conference) session of the International AIDS Conference – after six weeks of holidays that was quite a culture shock in itself.

“Oh yes, AIDS,” I thought to myself. “Where were we?”

It hasn’t taken long for the old instincts to kick back in and I’m working my arse off getting to sessions, meeting people and talking, thinking, living, sleeping, eating and drinking nothing but HIV for the whole week. Vienna is nice enough although it wouldn’t have been on my list of cities to visit had it not been for this conference.

I have a nice apartment in Kuttenbrückegasse which, to my surprise, is conveniently located directly across the road from Vienna’s most popular gay sex club. Naturally I have not ventured in there, being the paragon of moral rectitude I am, but the front entrance is visible from my apartment window and I have set up an infra-red video monitoring system so I can blackmail all the AIDS Conference delegates that I catch going in and out. Please have your chequebooks ready when I call as I have a big holiday to pay off.

Things are moving swiftly here and it looks like there could be some exciting news on microbicides tomorrow. I really enjoy these events and get really energised about my work, but they run from dawn to dusk every day and there is little let-up, so they are exhausting. There are some photos in this Flickr set and that will be added to over the week. Plus I’m doing some posts for napwa.org.au if you want the serious take on what’s happening.

So, the Prime Minister has been to Yarralumla and we are all going to the polls on 21 August. About time we brought these shenanigans to a climax. The next five week are likely to be unpleasant enough, with Labor and Liberal trying to outbid each other in a naked grab for the hearts and minds of the lowest common denominator.

I could go on about the relative merits of the parties, but if you want meaningful action on climate change, genuine equality for gay and lesbian Australians, a compassionate response to asylum seekers, fair workplaces and investment in public services and public transport, there’s no real option. Reject the major parties race to the bottom and vote for the Greens.