Ariel David | Associated Press Writer

ROME (AP) - Italian gay rights groups said Saturday they would hold public “kiss-ins” near the Colosseum next week to protest the detention of two men for expressing affection in front of the famous monument.

The men have said they were only kissing, but police maintain they committed “lewd acts.” Gay rights groups have accused the police of discrimination and some lawmakers promised to raise the incident in parliament.

The Carabinieri paramilitary police confirmed the two men were held for about 40 minutes early Friday and released after being accused of committing lewd acts in public - a crime that can carry a sentence of up to 2 years in jail. (more…)

Angela Azzaro | Liberazione

In Italia la censura non è un fatto nuovo. Ma nell’ultimo periodo, soprattutto dopo il successo del Pride del 16 giugno, si è scatenata contro qualsiasi opera abbia a che fare con l’omosessualità o esprima posizioni diverse o critiche da quelle della Chiesa cattolica. La differenza con il passato è vistosa. Aiuta a capire quello che sta accadendo.

Quando Salò o le centoventi giornate di Sodoma fu proiettato a Parigi il 22 novembre, Pier Paolo Pasolini era morto da poco. Il film, al centro anche delle vicende giudiziarie, era ancora in fase di montaggio quando il corpo del poeta fu trovato privo di vita all’idroscalo di Ostia. Ma fu lo stesso una bomba. Contro il potere, contro i moralismi, contro un’arte accondiscendente. Le polemiche e la censura furono immediati. Ci vollero altri due anni prima che il film potesse essere proiettato nelle sale, potesse circolare, portare in Italia e nel mondo le immagini e le parole di quello che è considerato, insieme a Petrolio , anch’esso postumo, il testamento artistico e morale del grande intellettuale. (more…)

Maybe I am too naive, but it struck me that the World Bank concerns fighting diseases and providing health care a matter related to business and development and not human rights.

The report ‘Corporate Responses to HIV/AIDS‘ - released in July 2007 - says India’s private sector will gain considerably from supporting interventions aimed at preventing HIV both at the workplace and in local communities. The World Bank report, points out that that some of the hardest-hit countries with generalised epidemics may see their GDP growth reduced by about 2% or more annually.

Businesses have an enormous stake in the fight against the disease and, if left unchecked, it can rob them of their workers, their markets and their profits. Hence, they stand to gain from supporting interventions aimed at preventing the disease. The Report says that it’s a well-known fact that AIDS has a direct impact on a companies’ profits especially in countries where the disease is widespread. It results in greater absenteeism and staff turnover, higher recruitment and training costs, and higher costs in medical care or insurance coverage, and retirement funds.

Sudafed is a brand name decongestants manufactured in the States. It provides fast and effective relief of nasal congestion for many hours. You can buy it without prescription and it either makes you extremely hyper and distressed by severe cold.
But in late 2005, the U.S. House passed an amendment to the renewal of the Patriot Act, also known as Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 (”CMEA”). As consequences many retailers such as Wal-Mart or CVS have created corporate policies restricting the sale of products such as Sudafed. Fortunately they just limited purchase quantities and required a minimum age with proper identification. right, I don’t need a prescription but my passport for buying Sudafed pills.

Acording to Vunet, travellers flying from Europe to the US will have their personal data kept on record by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) until 2022. Data could include political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership and sexual orientation. All these information will be useful for preventing terrorism and “other serious offences that are transnational in nature”. But it will be accessible by any US law enforcement agency in pursuit of ” serious crimes”.
Is this kind of data deemed important for preventing terrorism?

Matthew Rettenmund | Boy Culture

The new Out (August 2007) drops on Tuesday and has a great story on barebacking called “Baring The Truth” by James Gavin. Ignore the silly illustration that merges bareback horseriding with bareback sex (the other illos are much better anyway). I’ve argued many of the points of this piece on my blog before—that barebacking is quietly becoming totally normal and acceptable in gay porn, that porn coaches us on how to have sex and therefore bareback porn can only be described as fetishizing and advocating unsafe sex, that some people will do anything to turn a buck. (more…)

James Gavin | Out

The sticker on the video box was as chilling as a skull and crossbones: bareback. It was 1998, and an HIV-positive couple from Palm Springs, Calif., had just begun videotaping bareback orgies and releasing the tapes under the company name Hot Desert Knights. After a decade of scrupulous condom use in gay porn, after all the deaths from AIDS complications and the struggle to curb HIV, these films seemed to betray everyone who had fought the fight. Chi Chi LaRue, the hefty cross-dressing porn director, who entered the industry in 1987, recalls his response to those first bareback videos: “Shock. Anger. Sadness. I thought, Why?”

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I though it was a joke, when Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told the National Assembly:

“France is a country that thinks. There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”

But it wasn’t a joke, and yoo can read on Herald Tribune an exhaustive article about this new anti-intellectual trend: New leaders say pensive French think too much

“Chi si oppone al G8 non combatte otto protagonisti eletti democraticamente nei loro paesi, ma combatte l’occidente, combatte la sua filosofia, combatte la libera iniziativa e il libero mercato” (Sivio Berlusconi, La Stampa 2001)

In 2001 Genoa witnessed the worst human rights violations in the short history of the young movement against capitalist globalisation. Two people were killed by the police on the 20th, one in Genoa and one at the border, and many others have been beat up in the most outrageous display of fascist state brutality in recent Western European history.

In one sense, a death in Genoa during the G8 in 2001 was predictable, practically predicted by Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian Prime Minister, who boasted of the military hardware to be deployed against protesters. In an environment of militarized repression, armed paramilitary squads, and good evidence of government-backed provocateurs inciting violence, death was nearly inevitable.

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Marco Revelli, Il Manifesto

Il movimento dei movimenti aveva dalla sua tutte le ragioni. Eppure ha perso. Perché schiacciato dallo stato e dalla messa in mora del diritto. Perché la politica ufficiale è rimasta impenetrabile e sorda. Ma anche per debolezze «interne». Non ha saputo coltivare le proprie differenze come il bene più prezioso, in una carenza di democrazia. Poi è rimasto subalterno al quadro politico e di potere tradizionale, nell’illusione di poterlo condizionare con una sorta di delega o di pressione.
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