Sex Wars: Attack of the Clone Zone

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the bunker we find ourselves on the bring of yet another Pink Pound war.

Following on from our recent article “Gay Dating Wars” we have stumbled upon an emerging row between two of the UK’s largest gay retailers.

The use of the word “Exclusive!” in the title of the story the Pink Paper (owned by the dark lord Prowler group) suggests they are relying on sources that may stem from gossip, rumour and pure speculation. The emphasis on this particular story is interesting as there is a clear motive behind it’s publication, and Clone Zone have quite fairly bashed back.

Decent Journalists and those who know some of the basics of media headline creation will see red when they read phrase “an anonymous member of the public” – tried and tested classic way of deceiving people into thinking the facts have been investigated and the anonymity is because what they are saying is true but want to protect their identity. Even so, it’s also a media excuse for making things up.

As it happens, the Pink Paper’s publishers Millivres Prowler Group are among the list of those owed significant amount of money which the Pink Paper estimate totals at least of £500,000 (according to an unnamed “insider”). Although most people in the same position as Millivres Prowler Group are right to be annoyed at not being paid but don’t be fooled into thinking this is news. The Pink Paper’s report on Clone Zone is nothing but a cleverly constructed case of commercial smear.

On the recently revamped Pink Paper website they recently introduced a commenting feature. Since it was launched it is rarely used, either few people are commenting on their articles or they are choosing to exercise some level of editorial control over public feedback so it is again surprising to see a flood of vicious comments making a range of plain nasty statements about the individuals involved.

The most obvious example of “self-trolling” in order to support the article is this one:

“use your pink pound elsewhere now – shop at prowler and any other decent trading company”

The weekly readers poll in the same issue, also run via the Pink Paper’s website apparently posted by “anonymous”  the day before the paper’s regular weekly publication date asks:

“Should directors whose firms go bust be allowed to run a business again?” – “If your bosses made your company go bust and made you redundant in the process, should they be allowed to side-step into another directorial role?”

You’d expect a “registered newspaper” to have more than 16 people voting in a poll nearly a week after it was created. This could be due to the fact that the relatively poor volume of traffic the site receives compared to it’s biggest rivals which are relatively small operations, many of them non-profit or social-enterprises run by one or two people from home.

In an unepected twist, those who have a clear interest in this particular fight have stepped into the ring and stood up for Clone Zone and have pledged to publish an official statement from the former directors. Manchester based charity the Lesbian and Gay Foundation who also publish a monthly regional gay health and lifestyle magazine “OutNorthWest” have today placed an article on their website under the headline “Clone Zone Bosses Upset at Pink Paper Headline“.

It should be noted that the LGF provide content to the Pink Paper but also rely on significant advertising revenue from Clone Zone. The LGF seem to be attempting to juggle a conflict of neutrality and may be attempting to balance the fuss or perhaps they are making a moral objection to Millivres Prowler’s bully-boy reporting around the situation of a business that has it’s roots in the same community they do.

Previous issues of OutNorthWest have seen several advert placements plugging the adult retailer over the years, the magazine’s editor claims they rely entirely on advertising revenue in order to produce the publication which has a readership of over 60,000. This month (February 2009) contains no advertising for Clone Zone. Although one advert for their more profitable arm “H20 Sauna” remains.

Gossip is an essential part of any community, it allows us to communicate and allows us to inquire about the status of our peers with our peers. The LGF may be quite right in giving so much space on it’s website to a story which airs the dirty laundry of two major players in the country’s gay business community despite this having implications on their own future.

Perhaps the LGF may now consider extending that same opportunity to the wider community, instead of giving so much airspace to rich sponsors even if they vanish tomorrow.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
– Mohandas Gandhi

GayMafiaWatch asks…

To the Editor of the Pink Paper:
Are you so naive to think the public won’t see right through this story you’ve obviously generated to serve the direct financial interests of your parent company? What do you say to Clone Zone’s response that your article about that is unfair and upsetting?

To the Directors of Clone Zone:
What do you think about your alleged creditors using one of their national gay publications as a way of attacking you? and will you continue to stock the (free) weekly Pink Paper as a result? do you feel the change in the formulation of poppers and their resulting unpopularity due to new legislation have contributed to Clone Zone’s problems?

To the Lesbian and Gay Foundation:
Will the new owners of Clone Zone honor existing advertising deals made with yourselves? they appear to have removed all their adverts in your latest issue of OutNorthWest so what impact will this have on the magazine’s future? oh and one last question, who’s your daddy?

You! – tell us what you think, post your comments below:

Seeing Red: Corrupt AIDS Charities

When it comes to the AIDS debate, battle lines were drawn long ago.

Arguments around the ethical behaviour of drug companies, governments and even non-for-profit AIDS charities have split the gay community down the middle.

Critics of lethal medications prescribed to fight a mystery virus that many are told will one day make them sick and die have been chased out of the very community organisations they founded in order to support their loved ones during the peak of the “AIDS crisis”.

Those with first hand experience of the heavy handed, self-righteous behaviour of their once-loved HIV/AIDS support groups have been fighting back against a propaganda war of smear, misinformation, censorship, and commercial and charitable fraud on an international scale.

During the the late 1980’s and early 1990’s a vast number of HIV charities were set up around the UK by the families and friends of AIDS sufferers in order to provide better services for those suffering from the condition. But in recent times these organisations have been infiltrated by a small and impenetrable clique of NHS bully-boys and faceless men in suits – the representatives pharmaceutical giants who now sponsor these mammoth exercises in public charity fraud.

Around three years ago an anonymous blogger who goes by the name of “plusman” has been consistently exposing in precision detail just how this has happened to one such charity in Manchester, England named “Body Positive”.

Now it appears these big boys of the drug making world are so in bed with the likes of Body Positive they are sponsoring their everyday operations. In October 2008 the charity announced via Body Positive’s website and newsletter it was proud to be launching a “photographic competition” to celebrate GlaxoSmithKline’s 21^st anniversary of providing HIV treatment. Treatments which have included the controversial AZT amongst many others which activists argue are even more toxic than the HIV virus itself. The prize for the winner of this competition?

The eventual winner was awarded £5,000 cash – although the winner must then donate the money to an “HIV charity of their choice” courtesy of GlaxoSmithKline. The lucky charity turned out to be GMFA (gay men fighting AIDS). Along with over a dozen other major drug manufacturers who all supply HIV medications to the NHS at the highest price paid by any country in the western world most of these companies also provide significant funds to the majority of the charities. So you can understand why staff are reluctant to stamp out the slightest utterance of criticism leveled at the hand which feeds them.

Despite all the lawsuits against GlaxoSmithKline and the predecessor companies it eventually swallowed up in relation to the ongoing scandal that is AZT, decades of evidence continue to mount up– and “AIDS Charities” which include Gay Men Fighting AIDS and Body Positive plus dozens of others continue to censor public discussion on the issue even from their own service users, the same people they have blindly convinced taking AZT (and still are) could save their lives which in turn leads to their death as a result of it’s deadly side affects.

Today, most HIV-positive people receiving treatment on the NHS are prescribed combination therapy of anti-retroviral drugs.

The most common mixture consists of three medications one of which is AZT and the other drugs are close relatives with similar properties. People are STILL taking these drugs despite the warning issued to doctors in 1999 by GlaxoSmithKline and which is still included in very small print on the warning leaflet which reads:

“PROLONGED USE OF RETROVIR (AZT) HAS ALSO BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH SYMPTOMATIC MYOPATHY (AIDS) SIMILAR TO THAT PRODUCED BY HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS.”

Although they may have been modified to have slower, slightly less toxic affects over the years when compared to the original formulation of AZT, these drugs themselves can and do cause AIDS. Drug companies urge the public to report any side effects as a matter of priority (via the AIDS charities) so in effect what we are seeing is the evolution of the same type of mass human guinea pig experiment that continues to be unleashed on the public, particularly on gay men. The relatives of those who die even though their loved ones had been taking HIV medications and felt perfectly healthy are told the death is AIDS related, not as a result of “advanced HIV infection”. Any attribution of blame to the possible side-effects (as the warning above describes) is dismissed.

Service users held a protest outside
Body Positive North West in Manchester
on 16th Jan 2009 in anger at the way
the charity is currently being run.
Two weeks earlier the charity began offering
a controversial instant HIV testing service.

Unfortunately the plot thickens even 15 years after AZT was introduced. Body Positive recently began offering free “one minute instant HIV testing” at a number of bars in Manchester’s Gay Village, primarily targeting gay men.

Only six months earlier over the pond in New York City half of those who took an almost identical “rapid mouth swab test” received false-positive results. Needless to say, those who manufactured and sold these instant tests for public use pocketed the money and continue to market similar “instant HIV tests” under new branding.

So why are groups like Body Positive so keen to guilt-trip the public into getting an HIV test in this dubious manner?

• When adequate counseling is not provided to help people deal with the consequences of having an HIV test.
• When those they target are likely to be intoxicated at the time.
• Despite many “instant” testing procedures are riddled with failures still requires a visit in person to a fully equipped clinic in order to confirm and then reconfirm the result anyway.

“By offering instant tests and counseling, this odious bunch can instantly capture new service users, when they’re at their most vulnerable, and thereby secure additional funding.” One former service user offers a valid explanation over on Plusman’s blog (Beware! Think twice before having an HIV test at Body Positive North West).

If having the infamous red AIDS ribbon an integral part of it’s corporate branding wasn’t enough for them, as an further insult to those who challenge the current HIV dogma they perpetuate and the memory of those who have died as a direct result from the toxic side effects of HIV medications, Body Positive have adopted the “Green Ribbon” (also the symbol of Rethinking AIDS Day on April 23^rd) as their symbol for this new fraudulent testing service.

Body Positive aren’t alone in this dubious practice. The Lesbian and Gay Foundation regularly visit gay saunas in the North West of England offering HIV and Sexual Health testing and their London-based counterparts the Terrance Higgins Trust also offer a similar “outreach service”. Their argument is that if gay and bisexual men don’t access their services in these types of settings such as saunas and bars where men are known to meet for sex then they never will.

If you’ve had yourself a cheeky sniff of Poppers or a few Ecstasy pills and a maybe few pints earlier that evening then chances are your immune system has already taken a battering, and your mental state may also be a little wobbly to say the least. Are these really the most ethical and responsible (let alone hygienic!) places to be literally begging vulnerable people to take an HIV test?

Labour MP Harriet Harman poses for a photo opportunity at Body Positive, the
target of protests by angry service users.
Similar protests against corrupt AIDS
charities and their stance on
pushing toxic treatments and ineffective testing
practices continue around the world.

Here at GayMafiaWatch, we recently exposed how the Lesbian and Gay Foundation along with their friends at the George House Trust have been colluding with the manufacturers of “Poppers” and the producers of “Bareback” porn that glorifies unsafe sex. Down at your local sauna where (somewhere between the sling, the glory hole and the sewage strewn steam room) once a month you may find the occasional “LGF Sexual Health Outreach Clinic”.

Even though their efforts are failing considering the “dramatic rise in gay men diagnosed with HIV” – often in the same areas they concentrate their work, these organisations are swamping the gay community with similar guilt inducing “testing is not a choice” propaganda yet they all fail to take into account the consequences and situational context which can have a drastic affect on the emotional well-being of the participant and even the outcome of the actual test itself.

Public health professionals and poorly-informed, under-trained volunteers are behaving like zombies, urging HIV positive people to “commence treatment as soon as possible” even if they aren’t sick despite the indisputable possibility that HIV treatments are part responsible for unnecessary-like deaths. This helps to increase the funds they receive from the Drug Companies and in turn their profit margins. Having such a powerful influence on our community is having an effect, you can see it everywhere. AIDS-related profiteering scandals, cover-ups and censorship are at the heart of the corruption that is ravaging the entire gay community, just like AIDS there’s no cure in sight, just yet.

Even if you don’t really care about asking critical questions yourself and you’re not yet convinced by the arguments you’ve read here today, it’s hard to deny that there is an active assault on the intelligence and dignity of those of us who do. People who question the current AIDS doctrine are branded as dangerous extremists, assumed to be HIV positive in denial and even threatened with the prospect of dying a painful threatened with the prospect of dying a painful death.

One vicious anti-dissident blog even appeals to members of the public for information so that it can smear those who write articles such as this one which reads:

“If you know any outstanding warrants or actual criminal reports about our infamous AIDS dissidents, please post it here! Please post the URL where you discovered the “dirt”.” (posted as AIDS Dissidents are Convicted Criminals – even though they haven’t yet any evidence explain why).

The impartiality of this particular blogger becomes shakier when you notice how the site is littered in adverts for various dating sites such as HivDate.com, commercial enterprises that profit from HIV directly by offering to connect positive people with other positive people. Similarly, various blogs attempting to deny the link between the use of Poppers proceed to explain their argument shortly whilst at the same time providing advertising space for the products. For the record, you won’t see any such advertising here on GayMafiaWatch.

Remember, the truth always comes out. Those concerned with finding out the truth about AIDS (rather than spending masses amounts of money and time smearing and silencing them) are convinced more research and unbiased education will ensure it does sooner rather than later.

“We do not ‘err’ because truth is difficult to see.
It is visible at a glance. – We ‘err’ because this is more comfortable.”
–Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Recommended Reading
‘AIDS; The HIV myth’ – Jad Adams, Macmillan London UK, St. Martin’s Press New York USA (1989)
‘Positively False; Exposing the myths around HIV and AIDS’ – Joan Shenton, I.B. Tauris, London (1998)
‘The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory’ – Dr. Henry Bauer (2007)
‘Ten Lies about AIDS’ – Etienne De Harven, M.D, Trafford Publishing 2008

Useful Websites
ReThinking AIDS
The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis
AidsMyth
Exploring Myths about the HIV Virus
Alt Heal
Global views of current criticism of International AIDS policy
Heal London
For those questioning the orthodox version of HIV/AIDS

Related articles by GayMafiaWatch
Elton John: Libel Queen
Plenty of other gay men are dropping dead, but unfortunately this talentless piano strummer known as Elton John is still standing right next to his “AIDS Foundation”. After the charity was recently critisised by a national newspaper we explore how Elton mounted and then failed miserable in his attempt to silence the truth about what’s really going on at his little enterprise set up to profit from the AIDS scam.
Stonewalled?
Inventing Homophobia, Manipulating the Media and Masonic Connections
Series of ongoing articles about the UK-based gay rights group “Stonewall”.
Blood Money
what exactly is one of Britain’s biggest, most well funded biggest gay health charities decided to throw in some free advertising for gay escort websites that promote bareback porn worshiping unsafe sex acts via their monthly magazine. – You just couldn’t make it up if you tried!