Each heavy dusty brown brick of a blog entry

“Brick by brick”, she said, “stone by stone” she continued, “we build a house to call our home” – the strains of music written by Anna Wilson for Habitat for Humanity International, I wonder if that song is now for me.

I have been cast as an eccentric Howard Hughes with enough money and the madness to buy up the Great Wall of China and rebuild it at any other location that satisfies my whimsical fantasies.

The story continues at AkinBlog.nl see you there.

The metaphors are apt, after almost 7 years of blogs numbering about 1,500 and 2,750,000 hits; I have to move this blog elsewhere because my blog hosts are bored with this venture and will close on the 1^st of January 2012.

HIV as weapon

The case of the German singer Nadja Benaissa being prosecuted [1] for grievous bodily harm and attempted bodily harm in having unprotected sex with partners whilst knowing she was HIV positive makes interesting and controversial reading.

There are various camps pitched between considering her acts criminal to properly apportioning responsibility in relation to sexual liaisons between infected and uninfected partners.

For the case of the man who allegedly became infected through having sex with her, I am beginning to wonder if the onus of proof should not be extended to ascertain the particular strains of the virus because it does not appear to be conclusively proven that she infected him, rather the assumption has been made of her culpability without addressing the possible promiscuity of the partner.

Abdication of personal responsibility

My greater concern about these prosecutions comes from that of responsibility, each partner in a sexual liaison should be in charge of securing their personal protection when indulging in a sexual act.

I find it reprehensible that people would abdicate that responsibility and then seek to blame others for their personal irresponsibility when things go wrong.

In the passion of the moment or conversely in the moment of passion, if people can assume without verification that a partner is not infected with the virus and then engage in unsafe sex, the consequences are dire and the results can be life changing; it might be a consideration for a female to wear a femidom but surely anyone who likes wick-dipping should for all intents and purposes have condoms in their pockets.

Now, for a more clinical approach the partners can be as pragmatic as to obtain saliva test swabs from the local chemists and make a crude determination of status before copulation, but how many do have the presence of mind to do that?

The assumed invincibility of being active

There is a stigma attached to having the HIV virus and not everyone has reached the point where honesty about status is as forthcoming as the Karma Sutra positions they might persuade each other to take.

In another article I read earlier this week [2] with the graphic detail of homosexual sex, what was interesting was the inclination for the penetrative partner to assume that they are at lower risk of infection than the partner who receives the penetration.

The other matter of condom aversion with heterosexuals and homosexuals alike does not seem to be addressed too, this following on from the hubris of being the active partner and thence the almost invincible partner.

Another issue about sexually transmitted diseases is that the more common infections like chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes and syphilis makes the HIV negative partner more susceptible to infection but that chronology of events would normally not be forensically proven by the time the vindictiveness of prosecution and persecution takes hold.

Preventative measures of dispute

In another set of circumstances there is the matter of circumcision being preventative [3] of infection along with the recently announced microbicide gel [4] which is purported to prevent the transmission of the virus to women.

I have my concerns about the risks involved in conducting these tests in South Africa that sacrificed the health and safety of over 10% of the subjects to arrive at the conclusions and the effectiveness thereof is quite in the lower percentiles of success.

Obviously, the other question about this gel is whether when applied by an infected female partner it prevents the male partner from contracting the disease, they all do not constitute a panacea for risk.

None is so innocent or so wronged

In conclusion, I believe the responsibility must be shared; each person should take the responsibility for their sexual health and wellbeing seriously and personally without succumbing to the delirium of passion.

If a clear decision is made not to engage in unsafe sex as a matter of course and where that does not happen the question of trust is properly verified medically these atrocious persecutions should never happen.

Where one partner can play victim whilst visiting the full force on the law on the other when during the sexual event all common-sense had been thrown out of the window, this becomes unsafe from a justice and fairness perspective and though prosecution might exclude one person from the public sexual pool, I have my doubts that it serves as a deterrent to people from engaging in risky behaviour and it could well prevent people from seeking out the very truth about their status whilst engaging in promiscuously enjoyable behaviour.

In a more dispassionate application of the law, the wronged might well be excluded from the sexual pool by making it public knowledge that they also have become a public sexual risk just as much as the original culprit in the case. The foolishness on the part of the assumed victim should not be excused just as the prosecution for the alleged "crime" is being pursued with questionable vigour.

Sources

[1] 'HIV is no longer an epidemic. But the stigma is' - Health News, Health & Families - The Independent

[2] HIV/AIDS Resource Center for Gay Men: Subconscious Death-Wish of a Gifted, Young Black Man - The Body

[3] Nigerians Talk | What We Are Reading: What’s Good For The Goose…

[4] Microbicide gel: Reduced risk of HIV and herpes infections in women, study shows

Amsterdam SAIL 2010 is underway

What a fantastic day it was watching the tall ships sail in regatta style with guns, smoke, music, fanfare and much more.

The SAIL Amsterdam 2010 is underway. The day before, I walked around the neighbourhood and viewed the preparations much of which seemed to cater for the commercial aspect of things – kiosks for food and drink, recycling bins strategically placed and every little shop trying to cash in on the foot falls including estate agents.

However, one must not forget the maritime heritage of the Netherlands and most especially Amsterdam from the arrival of Stad Amsterdam with sails unfurled to the marines and navy – the submarine (Dolfijn, of the Walrus class), the battleship (Tromp ) and sail training ship.

In some ways, I was not inconspicuous, I had many pictures taken of me too, wonder what the interest or attraction was.

The night entertainment at the main podium had the Dutch navy as the band and they were good at everything. Just at the time of the fireworks one boat played out Eine Kliene nachtmusik (Mozart) from its horns – amazing stuff that cannot be captured on still images.

In any event, I took loads of pictures and they appear on my Flickr slideshow all to be annotated soon.

The dogs of war

Whilst his books are a riveting read, I cannot say that Frederick Forsyth [1] is a likeable person by any stretch of the imagination.

However, that is beside the point, by happenstance during one of his researching escapades for material he was in Guinea-Bissau in 2009 [2] just when a violent coup d’etat was being played out.

For most of what has appeared in his many books, Mr. Forsyth is a fundamental security risk to many governments and institution that it was too difficult to consider his presence in Guinea-Bissau at that particular time to have been a mere coincidence.

Mr. Forsyth has been known to dabble in attempted forced regime change in Africa before, his repentance was suspect.

The veteran

For a man meticulous in detail to a fault in his plots and intrigues, it was interesting to learn that he was still quite “old-school” when it comes to technology that he neither uses a mobile phone nor computer.

Upon his “learning” of the events in Guinea-Bissau, he had to borrow a phone and dictate 1,000 words of copy, though it is not clear if this was to his wife or to the Daily Express, a newspaper in the UK that he writes for.

Except if he were speaking in Shibboleths and codes, it is possible that his conversation might have been eavesdropped on by interested parties and used for their own ends.

One would thing a person of his stature would have moved with the times and probably had a computer and a mobile phone both with encryption and some sort of scrambling device.

The day of the jackal

In a Hardtalk interview [3] with the BBC, Mr. Forsyth accuses US spies of attacking his wife’s computer just around that time though he has no forensic evidence to provide of that claim apart from presumably informed sources he calls ‘friends in low places’.

It brings to mind the recently screened episodes of Sherlock [4] on the BBC which carried the deductive and investigative acumen and partnership Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson into contemporary times from the late Victorian times with finesse.

Many would agree that ideas need to evolve with the times to find new applications with newer tools rather than be fossilised in period settings good for nostalgia and historical analysis, it would appear that Mr. Forsyth from the reading of the articles has forgotten that the day of the jackal is over and he should be dealing with a new protocol of modern times.

Sources

[1] Frederick Forsyth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] BBC NEWS | Africa | Author stumbles on G-Bissau drama

[3] BBC News - Hardtalk - Frederick Forsyth: 'US spies attacked my wife's laptop'

[4] BBC - BBC One Programmes - Sherlock

Shutting eye shutting down

Sometimes, I wonder about my sleeplessness in bed but sleepfulness in anything that moves, cars, trains, buses, planes, boats; I seem to find the spirit of slumber overtaking my wakefulness quite easily.

For all the canal trips that I have been on in Amsterdam either as a tourist or a host I have hardly ever kept awake long enough to survive the hour.

The gentle rocking motion that does wonders to quieten upset babies in their perambulators appears not to have deserted me at all.

Don’t steal my sleep

However, in all that slumber is some awareness I cannot account for but am grateful to have as experienced years ago when I noticed a bag theft on a train at Amsterdam Sloterdijk and like an zombie made for the thief, grabbed his jumper and as the train doors were closing, he dropped the bag and made off.

In fact, there were 2 in that game, in the cloud of the eerie haze of sleep, I saw one man get on the coach and drop some money, as the passenger leant down to help pick up the coins the other man walked by picking up his bag of legal documents and made for the exit – it all looked so strange and hence my reaction.

Meanwhile the passenger was none the wiser about it until I returned the bag to him; I was offered a police job in Bahrain – thank you very much, but no thanks.

Drop anchor on bags

One lesson I had learnt from that episode was to put my bags on the inside where the window seat is not occupied on a train and I take the aisle seat.

If the seats have arm rests, I twist the bag strap around the arm rest as an additional protective measure; we are usually warned about pickpockets at stations but the pickpockets are usually bag snatchers.

However, I have never heard an announcement like that around the Antwerp Central Station, so you can imagine as my journey from Brussels stopped at Antwerp I was in the stupor of sleep when I suddenly woke up to see my bag levitating with the aid of strange hand.

What to lose?

Even I was surprised by my reaction because all I did in almost deadpan Englishness was ask him, “What are you doing?” He mumbled something about looking for his ticket as my bag was allowed to yield to the force of gravity to land where it once was.

As I stood up, the man made for the exit, quite a close encounter that was, in one of those instances where my bag was not as tethered to moorings of the seat as one is wont to doing. It was a different kind of train and seating arrangement compared to the usual service.

Maybe I need to find that part of my brain that triggers sleep while in motion and have it lobotomised before I come to grief, though I do know that I have never witnessed any car accidents I have been in, sleep spared me the shock of those events and denied interested parties useful commentary from an eye witness because my invariably were closed at the time.

Thankfully, I did not suffer any loss apart from the loss of sleep at the point that I believe I was dreaming.