Polio, once virtually wiped out across the face of the Earth, is making a comeback in black-ruled Africa. Recent infections in Mali and Guinea increase to 12 the number of once polio-free African countries in which the disease has reappeared during the past two years. As of August 2004, of the 602 polio cases known worldwide, 476 were in Nigeria. Nigeria and Niger together accounted for 90 percent of all cases, with Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Chad, Sudan, and Togo sharing the balance of this dubious honor.

***

According to the League for Human Rights of B'nai B'rith Canada, "anti-Semitic incidents" in our super-tolerant northern neighbor doubled between 2001 and 2003. Of the 584 reported incidents for 2003, 66.6 percent were classified as harassment, 30.8 percent as vandalism, and only 2.6 percent (15 incidents) as involving violence — the latter figure representing an actual decrease from 2002. As in previous surveys, the overwhelming majority (417 of the 584 incidents) occurred in Greater Toronto and Greater Montreal — where, the report claims, most Canadian Jews live. Doesn't this demonstrate yet again the ancient and oft-proven maxim that anti-Semitism is a disease that is spread primarily by contact with Jews?

***

For those who claim "there's no such thing as race": In the largest study ever performed among blacks with heart failure, an experimental drug improved their survival rate by 43 percent and significantly reduced hospitalization. Whites were excluded from the study for "business reasons," according to an Associated Press account, but previous tests of the same chemicals failed to establish any benefit among Caucasians. "It's a delight to see a trial that clearly shows a benefit of therapy in a particular racial group," claimed Dr. Augustus Grant, past president of the Association of Black Cardiologists. (The Association of White Cardiologists was apparently not consulted.)

In another study, standard drug treatment for hepatitis-C was determined to be far less effective in blacks than in whites — 75 percent of whites were cured, and only 25 percent of Negroes. One co-author of the study speculated that blacks "might harbor characteristics in their immune systems that boost harmful inflammation ... and thus hamper the body's response to the virus," but we'll bet Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would still claim that the real problem is "racism."

***

As everyone knows, homosexual men have the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the United States. But a new Food and Drug Administration policy barring "gay" men from donating sperm anonymously was denounced by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — not, needless to say, out of consistent libertarian principle. "It's one thing to base these rules on legitimate scientific concerns," moaned executive director Matt Foreman, "but it's another to reinforce baseless stereotypes." Baseless ...?

***

Those who refuse to believe that demography is destiny should consider a recent report that the most popular name for male children born in Israel today is — Muhammad.

***

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 22 nations have populations of which 35 percent or more are undernourished. Sixteen of those are in Africa and one additional country (Haiti) is peopled exclusively by Africans. The other states are Cambodia, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Armenia, and Tajikistan — the last two, remnants of the former Soviet Union, being listed in this category as "countries in transition." Can the all-purpose excuse of "racism" explain the dramatic racial imbalance, or is it simply the inevitable result of the "liberation" of formerly food-exporting African colonies from their white "oppressors"?

***

The city of Detroit suffered a net loss of 40,000 residents between 2000 and 2003, according to Census Bureau estimates — a 4.2 percent drop, which is the largest loss for any U.S. city of 100,000 or more. Why? Well, not that this explains anything, but the city is 80 percent black, with a 14 percent unemployment rate and 26 percent of its population living below the "poverty line."

One recent response to Detroit's eternal crisis is the city council's endorsement of a plan to use $30 million for grants and low-interest loans exclusively to minorities, and for the creation of African Town — a business district of black-owned businesses catering to a black clientele. The report that led to this move also damned immigrants from Mexico, the Middle East, and Asia for "stealing" jobs and economic opportunities from blacks.

Detroit was recently cited as the most dangerous city of its size in the United States, on the basis of its rates for murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, and auto theft — followed by Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, which are, to put it mildly, demographically similar.

***

On the November ballot in Alabama was a constitutional amendment to remove language mandating segregation and poll taxes, as well as language declaring that there is no right to a free "public" education at public expense, all of which provisions have been unenforceable for decades under federal court rulings but never removed from the state's constitution. To the surprise of many, the amendment was defeated — albeit by a narrow margin — so Alabamians did manage to strike a symbolic blow against their federal occupiers.

***

A 2004 report, "Locating the Dropout Crisis," by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Organization of Schools is worth a look. The study measured the "promoting power" — a comparison of entering freshmen to seniors four years later — of 10,000 high schools with enrollments exceeding 300 students. The results are hardly surprising:

• Institutions with high minority enrollments are five times more likely to have "weak promoting power" than majority-white schools.

• In 50 urban areas, a majority of schools have "weak promoting power."

• More than half of the black students in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania go to schools where the majority of students fail to graduate on schedule.

• Almost half of the schools with the most dropouts are in the South and Southwest (where most black and Hispanic students live). The usual excuses are made for these very predictable failures, and the usual remedy of pouring more money down the state-educationist rathole is recommended.

January 4, 2005

© 2005 Douglas Olson.

Mr. Olson's first "Unthinkable thoughts" column (May 2004).

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