Christian Sciene Monitor Article: Is Peace In The Middle East Possible?
West Bank settlements loom as Mideast peace talks head for Jerusalem
Adding a day of talks in Jerusalem is thought to demonstrate the seriousness of the Mideast peace talks between Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mahmoud Abbas. A moratorium on West Bank settlement construction expires Sept. 26.
By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer / September 7, 2010
Washington
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will shift renewed Mideast peace talks back to the region next week when the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority meet in Egypt as announced at last week’s re-launch of direct negotiations.
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But in a symbolic move aimed at demonstrating the seriousness of the renewed peace process, the three key players in the talks – Secretary Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – are now set to meet for additional talks in Jerusalem. Israel claims an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, but the Palestinians also claim Arab East Jerusalem as the rightful capital of a future Palestinian state.
At the formal restart of direct peace talks in Washington last week, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed their first order of business in the renewed negotiations would be to come up with a “framework agreement” setting down the key points of a peace accord on which both sides will have to make tough compromises. Jerusalem is expected to be one of those difficult core issues.
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas are to resume their talks Sept. 14 in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. On the following day, the talks will shift to Jerusalem. The plan sketched out in Washington last week is for the two sides to meet approximately every two weeks after that, with the goal of reaching a peace accord within a year.
The plan to hold a day of talks in Jerusalem with Clinton present is seen by some Mideast analysts as a concession to Netanyahu, who has a tough political decision to make before the end of September if the talks are to continue into October. The Israeli government’s partial moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank is about to expire, but Abbas continues to warn that he will walk out of the talks if the moratorium is not extended.
“The Israelis always want the Palestinians to negotiate in Jerusalem, they want the recognition that comes with having this level of talks there,” says Sam Lewis, a former US ambassador to Israel and an adviser to the Israel Policy Forum, a group of experts promoting avenues to regional peace. “It could be that this is one way of paying [Netanyahu] for a very difficult decision he has to make and giving him something to show his cabinet.”
Israel’s 10-month settlement moratorium ends Sept. 26, with most of the Israeli government opposing an extension of the freeze.
“The important point here is that if they don’t finesse this Sept. 26 deadline, it’s not going to matter where they talk,” Mr. Lewis says. Noting that many regional analysts, including some on the Israeli left, now consider Netanyahu a sincere peacemaker, Lewis says any failure of the talks over the moratorium issue could sink the prime minister’s newly minted image.
“Some people out there are saying [Netanyahu] is following the advice to ‘sound like you want to make peace, and let the Palestinians screw it up,’” he says. “This moratorium issue poses a real problem for him.”
Does The Gay Community Stereotype Gay Black Men Based On The Skin Tone?
I really enjoyed this conversation because in the black community there is a problem with internalized racism. Some black people believe a person with lighter skin is better. For instance, some black men will date a lighter skinned woman because they want to be closer to a white image. Some gay black men do the exact same thing. I thought it was profound when the light skinned gay man in the video said he hated it when people told him they liked him just because he is light. He was insulted because he feels there is more to him than just his skin colour.
Guardian UK Article: Study Finds That Young White Gay Men In Europe Not Practicing Safer Sex To Blame For HIV Infection!!!
Young gay men fuelling HIV epidemic, study warns
Researchers say that rising rates of syphilis along HIV among young gay men suggests risky sexual behaviour was to blame
- Sarah Boseley, health editor
- The Guardian, Tuesday 7 September 2010
Risky behaviour among young gay men is contributing to the rise in HIV in Europe, say researchers. Photograph: RexThe HIV epidemic in Europe, including the UK, is being fuelled by the risky behaviour of young gay men, according to research published today.
Public messages and campaigns about the dangers of unsafe sex do not appear to be getting through to men who have sex with men, the researchers say – particularly the young ones.
By investigating the genetic profile of the virus in more than 500 newly screened patients over nine years, scientists in Belgium have identified clusters of people with type B virus – not the one that is most prevalent in Africa.
Those infected are almost all white, male, gay and young, they say. These men also tend to have other sexual diseases, such as syphillis, which suggests that they are involved in unsafe sexual behaviour and are not using condoms.
The research was carried out by scientists at Ghent University in Belgium, and there is every indication that their findings hold true for the UK. Nick Partridge, the chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said that gay men were the group most at risk of HIV infection in the UK.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA), which monitors HIV numbers in the UK, warns every year of the rising rate of infections among men who have sex with men (MSM). In its last full report, for 2009, it said that the rate of infection among gay men remained high, even though there had been a slight overall drop.
HIV infection can go unnoticed for years, but the HPA report said one in five of those diagnosed had become infected within the previous six months – suggesting recent risky behaviour was to blame.
A 2008 report specifically on HIV among men who have sex with men said there were around 32,000 living with HIV in the UK. Just under half of all new diagnoses were among men who had sex with men, and 82% of the infections were probably acquired within the UK.
The Belgian researchers, Kristen Chalmet and colleagues from the Aids Reference Laboratory at Ghent University, found one “striking and alarming” cluster of cases. Over the nine years of the study, 57 men acquired genetically very similar viruses, they say. Eight of them did so in the last year. “Members of this cluster are significantly younger than the rest of the population and have more chlamydia and syphilis infections,” they write today, in the open access journal BioMed Central Infectious Diseases.
Even excluding that group from the study, there was still a relationship between HIV infection and contracting syphilis, which suggested risky sexual behaviour.
The study found two main types of HIV, but their analysis found that those infected with the two sub-types were “significantly different populations”. The vast majority of cases of infection within Belgium were sub-type B cases, and those infected were most often men who have sex with men. The non-B cases were more likely to be in heterosexuals and to have been acquired abroad.
“We clearly demonstrate that, despite the existence of prevention programmes, easily available testing facilities and a supposedly broad public awareness of the infection and its possible routes of transmission, MSM still account for the majority of local onward transmissions,” they write.
“Continuous efforts to sustain prevention programmes targeting MSM are definitely needed.”
Nick Partridge echoed the call for targeted campaigns. “Gay men are still the most at risk of HIV infection in the UK. We also know that more than a quarter of people with HIV in the UK are currently undiagnosed, and they’re far more likely to pass the virus on than those who know they have it.” “Targeted HIV prevention programmes are key to reducing the numbers of new infections each year. But we’d also argue for innovative testing services to better diagnose men who’ve been at most risk.”
Professor Pat Cane, head of the HPA’s antiviral unit, said work done in the UK with the Medical Research Council, “has shown that there are two predominant sources of HIV circulating in the UK at the moment – one in men who have sex with men (HIV1, sub-type B) and the other associated with sub-Saharan Africa (non B, HIV1).”
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