I just switched on the radio in time to hear a woman speaking about the “law is the law” and if the evidence is there it applies across the board. Has Steven Nolan got the first Minister Arlene Foster into the studio?, I wondered .On tuning in further, I realised it was actually Jamie Bryson speaking in his usual high-pitched voice, defending the police’s inaction on loyalist intimidation and assorted acts of gangsterism.He couldn’t bring himself to condemn any of it at all. He reckons that the law is there already and if the police have the evidence they should act on it ,If that is the case .I had to wonder why people think terrorism exists at all.If it doesn’t exist , then that’s obviously why there is no evidence. Obviously , I can only imagine that people are making the whole thing up to sell newspapers.I suppose the police have no idea who paints the huge murals on gable walls, either. Given that these are sometimes supportive of illegal organisations,which have long been banned, you’d imagine that the perpetrators would be asked to paint over them and then be imprisoned for their original efforts.It’s a funny old world alright.Nobody knows anything. Thes policemen are certainly not like the detectives in television crime shows. They never seem to get their man …..ever.
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I wonder are we expecting too much of our politicians to expect them to know what is really going on around them in the world .Like most people who haven’t been” living under that rock ” like the DUP’s Trevor Clarke, who admitted recently that he had no notion that just about anyone could get the HIV virus ,I’ve been aware , for example that the AIDS/HIV virus was a contagion that could be picked up by anyone across the sexes, usually by fluids. It’s something I’ve known about for around thirty years ,I suppose.It was first mentioned around 1983….some thirty three years ago .It is a virus closely related to the SIV virus found in our monke-cousins and other human-related apes. If this politician does not know , surely this kind of information should be taught at schools to enlighten our future citizens of the dangers of such a disease.
Scientists realised these connections and studied how the similar virus SIV had developed in chimpanzees.They discovered that chimps hunted smaller species of monkeys such as red-capped mangabeys and greater spot-nosed monkeys and from them became infected with two different strains of SIV..The two different strains of SIV then joined to form a new virus which could be passed on to other chimps.This is the strain that can also infect humans.
There was the possibility that humans first contracted the disease from infected “bush-meat” (i.e. eating chimpanzees and monkeys). The infected blood within the human body then evolved and adapted to produce a slightly different strain specific to the new host body.That would be HIV/AIDS.
Since the days of these studies ,a family tree of the development of AIDS/HIV has allowed scientists to trace it right back to an origin source, sometime during 1920 in the Congo.Most of the high -profile deaths and infections associated with the virus ,known to the public ,involve famous people who were either homosexual, haemophiliacs or heroin users but the disease can obviously be also cotracted across the sexes as well as across the species. Sex is the most obvious method.
When society became aware of AIDS there was much talk and discussion about it and there were even a series of very frightening public information short films shown on television every day to remind people to be aware.Films such as “Philadelphia”(1993) starring everyman actor Tom Hanks pursued the theme and indeed many famous people were dying of the disease.It makes me wonder how anyone could still have any real confusion about the disease when the information has been around for decades.
None so blind Harry, as those who cannot (refuse to) see. Funny our interpretations of the Good Book
You have to wonder sometimes about the explanation of the origins of these diseases. Nobody really can put their finger on it eg eating bushmeat is a theory. However we never seem to blame humans for deliberately creating such diseases? What are/were all these scientists doing experimenting/testing various strains of this and that? Well at one time various countries were striving to create weapons of mass distruction via novel new chemical and biological dirty bombs. Whose to say they arnt still at it?
Btw, when HIV/AIDS was first discovered it was known as G.R.I.D but that was a few years before the big awareness campaign in the ’80’s when it was renamed as HIV/AIDS. Maybe that’s why Trevor Clarke is ‘living under a rock’? Just saying.
They seem to know exactly where the disease originated .It was a specific strain found in Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo in the 1920s. There are two types of the HIV virus (1 and 2) HIV 1 is the most virulent and is the one closely related to a virus found in our cousins the chimpanzees.These live in the forests of Central Africa.The HIV2 one is confined more to West Africa and is less easy to transmit .It has a close relative in a virus found in monkeys in Senegal , Sierra Leone , Liberia and so on. They know how and where that evolved and mutated in humans.
This kind of research is at the level of genome and DNA studies. They’ve been able to use HIV1 genome sequences from human biological samples to trace the viral mutation .The “bushmeat” theory seems the most plausible method of first contact ,because before the Second World War, many rural Africans turned to the hunting and butchering of wild animals instead of domesticated ones and this became their main source of protein.The butchery and consumption or possibly a bite from one of these creatures increased the chances of blood- to -blood contact which also increased the probability of transmitting the virus .It’s the very same way it tansfers across humans in fluids .It is reckoned that the SIV virus easily adapted to the t-cells in humans to become HIV because of our common compatability . You’d imagine that such a disease being such a huge news story throughout this past thirty years that such as Trevor Clarke might be expected to know just the basics of the story.There has been a very long list of deaths, after all….many famous ones ,but probably a lot more more just plain ordinary folks like the rest of us.You ‘d like to think that your children or your grandchildren would go out into the world with a lttle knowledge of the risks .
Aye paddy they could say anything that would ‘seem’ to know where a disease originates but that doesn’t make it true. Remember it’s believed ‘they’ introduced diseases to the native Americans in order to cull them. I bet you they didn’t admit that at the time either. As you say all our kids should go out into the world with a little knowledge of the risks……..especially knowledge of those who claim they’ll keep us right.
You wouldn’t be developing one of those conspiracy theories there, Wolfie , would you ?
Well paddy don’t be silly. I certainly do not believe the likes of greedy Betty Windsor,Tony Blair,Hilary Clinton,Donald tusk, Edna Kenny etc are all conspiring to make our lives better and lie awake at night stressing themselves over the homeless,the sick and those lesser educated than themselves. That’s too far fetched for simple folk like myself.
That pesky Castro was evil and invested a lot of his country’s income on medicine and education. On the other hand those good guys like thatcher,Blair,bush had other priorities like bombs,weapons and palaces…….cos they care for us simple folk, right?