| From the archives of The Memory Hole |
The following letter published, in part, in the 3 Dec. 2001 edition of the San Francisco Examiner, concerning the arrests of Act-Up San Francisco activists, including one who accepts the premise that HIV causes AIDS and who is taking the prescribed AIDS toxins, but nonetheless opposes the biomedical establishments’ targeting of gay males for particular and unwarranted abuse, recent cases in point being these arrests on trumped-up charges and the apparent invocation, against the arrestees, of so-called “anti-terrorist” legislation rammed through the U.S. Congress in the aftermath of 11 Sept. 2001 events. The two final paragraphs cut out of the original submission are included here. Also included is an item on breaking news (as of 9 Dec. 2001) of the earliest attempts to invoke the abovementioned legislation, as it happens, against gay males.
30 November 2001
To the Editor:
It was rather a draconian measure to have arrested Michael Petrelis and David Pasquarelli on trumped charges and then set bail at 1/2 million dollars.
What next military tribunals for jay-walking?
It's yet another sign of these dreadful times of State-Corporativist opportunism in the painfully parochial post-9/11 American world that such arrests could be possible and so sublimely written off by major newspapers.
The Examiner article covering this story certainly didn't fail to miss the opportunity yet again to obfuscate the issues that need to be openly debated in such forums as the major newspapers where objectivity on AIDS hysteria in the research community is hardly the order of the day.
For the Examiner to participate in such blur-outs by disinformation and even blackouts by suppression of information as have occurred in the general press on the subject of HIV causality of AIDS indicator diseases is a disgrace to the journalism profession. To go even further than that and publish study results accompanied by policy recommendations of the most oppressive variety without supporting information about study methodology and peer-review criticisms is utterly irresponsible.
The Examiner's inclusion of comments of parties with highly vested interests in the HIV/AIDS industry in this article was wholly gratuitous and served only to add insult to injury to the arrested parties and their supporters.
The biggest scandal, however, is the aiding and abetting of the HIV/AIDS regime whose only known purpose is to terrorize a specifically targeted group of people ultimately at a huge cost to all save the knaves and fools in the biomedical establishment who directly benefit from the massive governmental transfer payments in support of the whole HIV/AIDS enterprise.
Sincerely,
Alan Koontz
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 9, 2001
Contact: Todd Swindell (415) 637-HOMO
Michael Bellefountaine (415) 864-6686
UCSF Calls in FBI to Stop ACT UP
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UCSF HIV Researchers, San Francisco City Officials Met with FBI, File
Domestic Terrorist Charges
San Francisco - Local Gay leaders and staff of the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) met with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials and urged the agency to take action against AIDS activists Michael Petrelis and David Pasquarelli, according to evidence recently secured by their attorneys. Petrelis and Pasquarelli are being held on an outrageously high bail of $500,000 each, stemming from a series of phone calls allegedly made by the two.
Papers obtained from prosecutors by defense attorneys Mark Vermeulen and Stuart Blumstein show a meeting was held with officials from UCSF, the Mayor's AIDS Office and the FBI on November 19, 2001 to discuss ACT UP San Francisco. A week earlier, on November 13, an official complaint of domestic terrorism was filed with the FBI by meeting attendee and UCSF AIDS researcher Stephen Morin, former aide to Minority Whip Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca). Memos from Morin outline a plan to apply the domestic terrorism clause of the Anti-Terrorism Act to ACT UP SF as early as October 25, 2001, before it was even signed into law.
A number of people attended the meeting including gay gadfly and UCSF media representative Jeff Sheehy and the Mayor's AIDS Policy Advisor, Michael Shriver, a former member of ACT UP San Francisco. Shriver was a member of the group in the late eighties and was involved in a number of controversial protests including shutting down the Golden Gate Bridge and the storming of San Francisco's Opera House on opening night.
"What is more outrageous?" asked ACT UP member Karl Goldman, "That people who shut down the Golden Gate Bridge and attacked people at the Opera would now be calling other activists terrorists, or that the San Francisco gay community and UCSF are actively working as informants for the FBI? This is a dangerous precedent that will be used to stop all activists."
Activists are quick to point out that though there are records of meetings and phone calls to the FBI, there was no evidence turned over to corroborate allegations of stalking, harassing or threatening people, including children, violating a restraining order, or most importantly, that there was a bomb threat called into the San Francisco Chronicle. The activists maintain they are innocent of all charges and look forward to proving their case in court.
ACT UP San Francisco members have long been targets of UCSF, and a few prominent gay leaders, because of their stance that HIV cannot be the sole cause of AIDS and that AIDS drugs are toxic. Petrelis, who believes HIV is the cause of AIDS and is on AIDS medication, has been a sharp and vocal critic of local AIDS agencies' lack of financial accountability to the gay community they profess to serve. Petrelis' health has deteriorated since his incarceration, including an alarming incident where he was rushed to the jail medical ward for an AIDS related illness.
"It's frightening that the recent tragedy on September 11th is being exploited by UCSF," stated ACT UP member Michael Bellefountaine. "Its outrageous that UCSF experiments on the gay community, and then when gay activists criticize those experiments, they have them arrested, call them terrorists, and investigated by the FBI."
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ACT UP San Francisco
1884 Market Street * San Francisco, California 94102
Phone: (415) 864-6686 * Fax: (415) 864-6687 * www.actupsf.com