Committed to Newark. Bill Cosby was in Newark, New Jersey — my splendid city — today. He brought to a local vocational high school his message of self-help and refusal to scapegoat whitey for the problems of the black community. He said he was committed to Newark, and pledged to come here "again and again and again". (Unfortunately, Cosby habitually mispronounces that "a-GAEN and a-GAEN and a-GAEN." No, Mr. Cosby. The word is pronounced "a-GEN".)
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Alas, Cosby used one very bad example in his presentation, that (approximate quote) "it's not the white man bringing HIV to black women." No, it's generally not. But it doesn't matter who does, because HIV is harmless.
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Indeed, "HIV" should be understood to mean "Harmless, Irrelevant Virus", because that's what it is.
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The worst that HIV does is produce a flu-like illness of about two weeks' duration. Then the body defeats the infection and inoculates the body against reinfection by pouring antibodies into the bloodstream that permanently defend against any flareup, ever in the future.
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HIV does not kill T-cells. HIV does not produce immunological deficiency nor dementia nor early death. It doesn't do a damned thing but worry people to death. Literally. Some people have become so worried by the harmless virus HIV that they have actually committed suicide! Others have taken deadly pharmaceutical treatments that have killed them — to fend off a harmless virus!
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These things have happened, alas, thanks to credulous people like Bill Cosby.
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Cosby really cares about his people, but he is giving them very bad advice in effectively telling them to heed the U.S. Government when it tells black people never to have sex without a condom. What, pray, will happen to the black race if every (hetero)sexual encounter between blacks involves a condom? Clearly blacks will vanish into history. But that couldn't possibly be what the Republicans who invented AIDS had in mind, could it? No, Republicans LOVE blacks and want to "protect" them. Sure they do.
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It perennially amazes me that some of the most cynical people on the planet believe every single syllable the United States Government issues about AIDS. Astounding.
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How can anyone trust the U.S. Government to tell the truth about anything, if lying will advance its agenda but telling the truth will defeat it?
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AIDS is not the result of infection by Harmless, Irrelevant Virus. It is the fully foreseeable consequence of using drug after drug after drug, for year after year after year. Rick James, a black singer, recently died. His autopsy revealed that he had 9 — count 'em, NINE — different drugs in his system, including methamphetamine and cocaine. Think about that: meth and cocaine! Two stimulants!
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Let's consider the effects of one of them, meth, which can include "lowered resistance to illnesses" and "mental illness" / "brain damage".
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Hmm. What do you call "lowered resistance to illnesses"? Oh, that's right: immunodeficiency, the "I" in AIDS. And what about "mental illness"? Might that be called "dementia", a frequent symptom of AIDS?
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That's just one drug that recreational drug users employ in this country. Many drug abusers use multiple drugs, just like Rick James. They don't all die right away. Some destroy their underlying health and die piecemeal, thru the long downward spiral we call AIDS.
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It is because AIDS is a drug injury that it has never invaded the general, non-drug-abusing community but is concentrated in communities wracked by drug abuse: blacks, Hispanics, and fast-lifestyle gay men. Nobody else in this country gets AIDS — except, sad to say, little babies exposed to drugs in the womb: involuntary drug users.
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Viral diseases don't discriminate against these minorities. AIDS does. Ergo, AIDS is not a viral disease.
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It really is that simple. AIDS has vanished as a public-health concern for most Americans. Only government lies about AIDS in Africa keep Americans outside the drug-soaked minority communities worrying about AIDS.
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But the areas of Africa where AIDS is said to be rampant are poor. They have little food; almost no doctors or clinics or hospitals; no water-purification plants; no refrigeration to keep food safe; no sewage treatment.
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People in such places are dying young from the same causes that have always killed people young. Take a walk thru Trinity Church's or St. Paul's graveyard in New York City, or thru any very old graveyard in this or any other country and read the birth and death dates. Until very recently most of the world died young, because sanitary conditions and medical science were primitive. You really don't need an AIDS plague to explain it. If you look at all the dead young people in our old graveyards, you might think we had an AIDS plague in the 18th Century. We didn't then, and Africa doesn't now.
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Please, Mr. Cosby, realize that the real "plague" upon the black community is DRUGS. We all know it. That's why poor blacks in Newark and every other major city in this country are held back and subject to horrendous violence and self-subversion. Drugs don't just sap ambition and destroy concentration. They also kill, and one way they kill is thru destroying the immune system: AIDS.
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Don't assign the blame to any virus. Don't offer a false solution. It is drugs — and tolerance of drugs — that blacks must drive out of their community. A condom won't protect you from an overdose and won't protect you from AIDS. Tell the people the truth, which is available to everyone at www.virusmyth.com. That's a huge site, with many articles by distinguished scientists. If you don't know what part of that big site to check, or are put off by scientific lingo, you might instead read a brief summary in layman's language of the case against AIDS as HIV that I wrote years ago and which you can find at http://members.aol.com/mrgaypride/AIDS.html.
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So, Mr. Cosby, if you stop talking nonsense about HIV, I will be extremely happy to see you back here in Newark a-GEN and a-GEN and a-GEN. I missed your show at the Performing Arts Center last year. Come back and do another. Come back to Newark as often as you like. You'll see it better every time, but not as much better as it could be if we could END the destruction caused by drugs.
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(Truth in Blogging. This blog entry is dated September 16th but was actually written September 17th because I worked overtime the 16th and was just too tired to address this issue raised by a news report on News 12 New Jersey on the 16th. Since the event was the 16th, and because I don't want to overburden readers with multiple items on a single day, I have assigned the date of the 16th to this entry. Now you know.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:48 PM