IS NOKO COLLAPSING?

Some hopeful news from the worst remaining dictatorship on the planet: Kim Jong Il’s.

AIDS PLUMMETS IN SAN FRAN: More evidence that we are making amazing progress against AIDS in America. San Francisco just released its 2004 stats, showing a 47 percent drop in full-blown AIDS diagnoses from 2003, a pretty stunning collapse. There were a total of 182 deaths from AIDS in San Francisco last year – the lowest number since 1983. Michael Petrelis has the details. I cite this in part because of the reaction I received from the gay and AIDS establishment back in 1996, when I wrote, “When Plagues End,” for the NYT Magazine. In that piece, I argued that although global AIDS remained a horror, and that many would still regrettably die in the U.S., the new meds were a watershed – the beginning of a new, far less dire phase in the epidemic. My many critics have never acknowledged they were wrong. What amazes me about large parts of the left these days is their refusal to acknowledge good news – even when it means the saving of countless lives or the advance of democracy in a place like Afghanistan or Iraq. When did the left become so relentlessly hostile to good news? And doesn’t that have something to do with their waning appeal?