Fascist Roots of Anti-Americanism

Below is an essay on anti-Americanism, it's roots in Counter-Enlightenment pseudo-philosophy, and the roots of Nazism and post-modernist Left fascism:


James W. Ceaser, "A genealogy of anti-Americanism," The Public Interest (Summer 2003).

According to the French analyst Jean François Revel, "If you remove anti-Americanism, nothing remains of French political thought today, either on the Left or on the Right." Revel might just as well have said the same thing about German political thought or the thought of almost any Western European country, where anti-Americanism reigns as the lingua franca of the intellectual class

Anti-Americanism rests on the singular idea that something associated with the United States, something at the core of American life, is deeply wrong and threatening to the rest of the world. This idea is certainly nothing new. Over a half-century ago, the novelist Henry de Montherlant put the following statement in the mouth of one of his characters (a journalist): "One nation that manages to lower intelligence, morality, human quality on nearly all the surface of the earth, such a thing has never been seen before in the existence of the planet. I accuse the United States of being in a permanent state of crime against humankind." America, from this point of view, is a symbol for all that is grotesque, obscene, monstrous, stultifying, stunted, leveling, deadening, deracinating, deforming, and rootless.

Anti-Americanism, while having some elements of prejudice, has been mostly a creation of "high" thought and philosophy. Some of the greatest European minds of the past two centuries have contributed to its making. The concept of America was built in such a way as to make it almost impervious to refutation by mere facts. The interest of these thinkers was not always with a real country or people, but more often with general ideas of modernity, for which "America" became the name or symbol. Indeed, many who played a chief part in discovering this symbolic America never visited the United States or showed much interest in its actual social and political conditions. The identification of America with a general idea or concept has gone so far as to have given birth to new words that are treated nowadays as normal categories of thought, such as "Americanization" or "Americanism." (By contrast, no one speaks of Venezuelanization or New Zealandism.) Americanization today, for example, is almost the perfect synonym for the general concept of "globalization," differing only in having a slightly more sinister face.

Although anti-Americanism is a construct of European thought, it would be an error to suppose that it has remained confined to its birthplace. On the contrary, over the last century anti-Americanism has spread out over much of the globe, helping, for example, to shape opinion in pre-World War II Japan, where many in the elite had studied German philosophy, and to influence thinking in Latin American and African countries today, where French philosophy carries so much weight. Its influence has been considerable within the Arab world as well. Recent accounts of the intellectual origins of contemporary radical Islamic movements have demonstrated that their views of the West and America by no means derive exclusively from indigenous sources, but have been largely drawn from various currents of Western philosophy. Western thought is at least in part responsible for the innumerable fatwahs and the countless jihads that have been pronounced against the West. What has been attributed to a "clash of civilizations" has sometimes been no more than a facet of internecine intellectual warfare, conducted with the assistance of mercenary forces recruited from other cultures. It is vitally important that we understand the complex intellectual lineage behind anti-Americanism. Our aim should be to undo the damage it has wrought, while not using it as an excuse to shield this country from all criticism.

Developed over a period of more than two centuries by many diverse thinkers, the concept of America has involved at least five major layers or strata, each of which has influenced those that succeeded it. The initial layer, found in the scientific thought of the mid-eighteenth century, is known as the "degeneracy thesis." It can be conceived of as a kind of prehistory of anti-Americanism, since it occurred mostly before the founding of the United States and referred not just to this country but to all of the New World. The thesis held that, due chiefly to atmospheric conditions, in particular excessive humidity, all living things in the Americas were not only inferior to those found in Europe but also in a condition of decline. An excellent summary of this position appears, quite unexpectedly, in The Federalist Papers. In the midst of a political discussion, Publius (Alexander Hamilton) suddenly breaks in with the comment: "Men admired as profound philosophers gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America -- that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere." The oddity of this claim does not belie the fact that it was regarded for a time as cutting-edge science. As such, it merited lengthy responses from two of America's most notable scientific thinkers, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. In Jefferson's case, the better part of his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia, consists of a detailed response to the originator of this thesis and the leading biologist of the age, the Count de Buffon. The interest of Franklin and Jefferson in refuting this thesis went beyond that of pure science to practical politics. Who in Europe would be willing to invest in and support the United States if America were regarded as a dying continent?

Although Buffon was its originator, the most earnest and best known proponent of the degeneracy thesis at the time was Cornelius de Pauw, whom Hamilton cited for the aforementioned claim of canine quietude. Pauw's three-volume study of America, which was widely regarded as the book on the subject, begins with the observation that "it is a great and terrible spectacle to see one half of the globe so disfavored by nature that everything found there is degenerate or monstrous." (The attribution of monstrosity, seemingly in tension with the more general characteristic of contraction, was thought to apply to many of the lower species, such as lizards, snakes, reptiles, and insects, producing a still more sinister picture of America.) It was Pauw who insisted as well on the inevitability of an ongoing and active degeneration in America, a point on which Buffon equivocated: No sooner did the Europeans debark from their ships than they began the process of decline, physical and mental. America, accordingly, would never be able to produce a political system or culture of any merit. Paraphrasing a sentence of Pauw's, the great Encyclopedist Abbé Raynal famously opined: "America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science."

The degeneracy thesis could not in the end stand up to Franklin's and Jefferson's careful empirical criticisms, which demonstrated that nothing, on the surface at least, was degenerating at an unusual rate in America. Nature, as Jefferson so felicitously put it, was the same on both sides of the Atlantic. But what their responses could not entirely refute was the contention that the quality of life and the political system of America were inferior. Precisely this claim lay at the core of the second layer of anti-American thought, developed by a number of romantic thinkers in the early part of the nineteenth century. These thinkers placed degeneracy - for almost the same language was used - on a new theoretical foundation, arguing that it resulted not from the workings of the physical environment but from the intellectual ideas on which the United States had been founded. Anti-Americanism now became what it has remained ever since, a doctrine applicable exclusively to the United States, and not Canada or Mexico or any other nation of the New World. Many who complain bitterly that the United States has unjustifiably appropriated the label of America have nonetheless gladly allowed that anti-Americanism should refer only to the United States.

The romantics' interpretation of America owed something to the French Revolution, which inspired loathing among conservative philosophers such as Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre. The French Revolution was seen as an attempt to remake constitutions and societies on the basis of abstract and universal principles of nature and science. The United States, as the precursor of the French Revolution, was often implicated in this critique. These philosophers' major claim was that nothing created or fashioned under the guidance of universal principles or with the assistance of rational science - nothing, to use The Federalist's words, constructed chiefly by "reflection and choice" - was solid or could long endure. Joseph de Maistre went so far as to deny the existence of "man" or "humankind," such as in the Declaration of Independence's statement that "all men are created equal." According to Maistre, "There is no such thing in this world as man; I have seen in my life French, Italians, and Russians ... but as for man, I declare that I have never met one in my life; if he exists, it is entirely without my knowledge." Not only was the Declaration based on flawed premises, but so too was the U.S. Constitution with its proposition that men could establish a new government. "All that is new in [America's] constitution, all that results from common deliberation," Maistre warned, "is the most fragile thing in the world: one could not bring together more symptoms of weakness and decay."

By the early nineteenth century, as the principal surviving society based on an Enlightenment notion of nature, America became the target of many romantic thinkers. Instead of human reason and rational deliberation, romantic thinkers placed their confidence in the organic growth of distinct and separate communities; they put their trust in history. Now, merely by surviving - not to mention by prospering - the United States had refuted the charges of the inherent fragility of societies founded with the aid of reason. But the romantics went on to charge that America's survival was at the cost of everything deep or profound. Nothing constructed on the thin soil of Enlightenment principles could sustain a genuine culture. The poet Nikolaus Lenau, sometimes referred to as the "German Byron," provided the classic summary of the anti-American thought of the romantics: "With the expression Bodenlosigkeit [rootlessness] I think I am able to indicate the general character of all American institutions; what we call Fatherland is here only a property insurance scheme." In other words, there was no real community in America, no real volk. America's culture "had in no sense come up organically from within." There was only a dull materialism: "The American knows nothing; he seeks nothing but money; he has no ideas." Then came Lenau's haunting image, reminiscent of Pauw's picture of America: "the true land of the end, the outer edge of man."

Even America's vaunted freedom was seen by many romantics as an illusion. American society was the very picture of a deadening conformity. The great romantic poet Heinrich Heine gave expression to this sentiment: "Sometimes it comes to my mind/To sail to America/To that pig-pen of Freedom/Inhabited by boors living in equality." America, as Heine put it in his prose writing, was a "gigantic prison of freedom," where the "most extensive of all tyrannies, that of the masses, exercises its crude authority."
A third stratum of thought in the development of anti-Americanism was the product of racialist theory, first systematically elaborated in the middle of the nineteenth century. To understand today why this thought qualifies as anti-American requires, of course, allowing oneself to think in the framework of another period. The core of racialist theory was the idea that the various races of man - with race understood to refer not only to the major color groups but to different subgroups such as Aryans, Slavs, Latins, and Jews - are hierarchically arranged in respect to such important qualities as strength, intelligence, and courage. A mixing of the races was said to be either impossible, in the sense that it could not sustain biological fecundity; or, if fecundity was sustainable, that it would result in a leveling of the overall quality of the species, with the higher race being pulled down as a result of mingling with the lower ones.

The individual most responsible for elaborating a complete theory of race was Arthur de Gobineau, known today as the father of racialist thinking. Gobineau's one- thousand-page opus, Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, focused on the fate of the Aryans, whom he considered the purest and highest of all the races. His account was deeply pessimistic, as he argued that the Aryans were allowing themselves to be bred out of existence in Europe. America became an important focus of his analysis since, as he explained, many at the time championed America as the Great White Hope, the nation in which the Aryans (Anglo-Saxons and Nordics) would reinvigorate their stock and reassert their rightful dominance in the world. In this view, while America's formal principle was democracy, its real constitution was that of Anglo-Saxon racial hegemony. But Gobineau was convinced that this hope was illusory. The universalistic idea of natural equality in America was in fact promoting a democracy of blood, in which the very idea of "race," which was meant to be a term of distinction, was vanishing. Europe was dumping its "garbage" races into America, and these had already begun to mix with the Anglo-Saxons.

With notable perspicacity, Gobineau foresaw the Tiger Woods phenomenon. The natural result of the democratic idea, he argued, was amalgamation. America was creating a new "race" of man, the last race, the human race - which was no race at all. Gobineau modeled his system on Hegel's philosophy of history, substituting blood for Spirit as the active motor of historical movement. The elimination of race marked the end of history. It presented - and here one could, in his view, see America's future - a lamentable spectacle of creatures of the "greatest mediocrity in all fields: mediocrity of physical strength, mediocrity of beauty, mediocrity of intellectual capacities - we could almost say nothingness."

Racialist ideas persisted throughout the nineteenth century and affected many of the social sciences, especially anthropology, a discipline that remains so traumatized by its origins that even today it cannot treat questions of race without indulging in paroxysms of guilt. The extreme of racialist thinking in the early twentieth century served as the foundation of Nazism. Today, the substance of the racialist philosophy is rejected except by a few elements on the extreme right. Yet traces of it have managed to find their way, often unconsciously, into subsequent theorizing about America. The European anti-American Left today has been divided in its criticisms of race in relation to America. Some follow the analysis, though not the evaluations, of Gobineau, arguing that the universal principles in the American experience, when they have not produced the brutal repression of the "Other" (the Indian and African), have fostered blandness and homogeneity. Alternatively, it is sometimes said that the process of amalgamation is not proceeding rapidly enough, especially in regard to African Americans. America is tardy and hypocritical in its promise to eliminate race as a basis of social and political judgment.

The fourth stratum in the construction of anti-Americanism was created during the era of heavy industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. America was now associated with a different kind of deformation, this time in the direction of the gigantesque and the gargantuan. America was seen as the source of the techniques of mass production and of the methods and the mentality that supported this system. Nietzsche was an early exponent of this view, arguing that America sought the reduction of everything to the calculable in an effort to dominate and enrich: "The breathless haste with which they [the Americans] work - the distinctive vice of the new world - is already beginning ferociously to infect old Europe and is spreading a spiritual emptiness over the continent." Long in advance of Hollywood movies or rap music, the spread of American culture was likened to a form of disease. Its progress in Europe seemed ineluctable. "The faith of the Americans is becoming the faith of the European as well," Nietzsche warned.

It was Nietzsche's disciples, however, who transformed the idea of America into an abstract category. Arthur Moeller Van den Bruck, best known for having popularized the phrase "The Third Reich," proposed the concept of Amerikanertum (Americanness) which was to be "not geographically but spiritually understood." Americanness marks "the decisive step by which we make our way from a dependence on the earth to the use of the earth, the step that mechanizes and electrifies inanimate material and makes the elements of the world into agencies of human use." It embraces a mentality of dominance, use, and exploitation on an ever-expanding scale, or what came to be called the mentality of "technologism" (die Technik): "In America, everything is a block, pragmatism, and the national Taylor system." Another author, Paul Dehns, entitled an article, significantly, "The Americanization of the World." Americanization was defined here in the "economic sense" as the "modernization of methods of industry, exchange, and agriculture, as well as all areas of practical life," and in a wider and more general sense as the "uninterrupted, exclusive and relentless striving after gain, riches and influence."

The fifth and final stratum in the construction of the concept of anti-Americanism - and the one that still most powerfully influences contemporary discourse on America - was the creation of the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Like his predecessors in Germany, Heidegger once offered a technical or philosophical definition of the concept of Americanism, apart, as it were, from the United States. Americanism is "the still unfolding and not yet full or completed essence of the emerging monstrousness of modern times." But Heidegger in this case clearly was less interested in definitions than in fashioning a symbol - something more vivid and human than "technologism." In a word - and the word was Heidegger's - America was katestrophenhaft, the site of catastrophe. In his earliest and perhaps best known passages on America, Heidegger in 1935 echoed the prevalent view of Europe being in a "middle" position:

Europe lies today in a great pincer, squeezed between Russia on the one side and America on the other. From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same, with the same dreary technological frenzy and the same unrestricted organization of the average man.

Even though European thinkers, as the originators of modern science, were largely responsible for this development, Europe, with its pull of tradition, had managed to stop well short of its full implementation. It was in America and Russia that the idea of quantity divorced from quality had taken over and grown, as Heidegger put it, "into a boundless et cetera of indifference and always the sameness." The result in both countries was "an active onslaught that destroys all rank and every world creating impulse.... This is the onslaught of what we call the demonic, in the sense of destructive evil."

America and the Soviet Union comprised, one might say, the axis of evil. But America, in Heidegger's view, represented the greater and more significant threat, as "Bolshevism is only a variant of Americanism." In a kind of overture to the Left after the Second World War, Heidegger spoke of entering into a "dialogue" with Marxism, which was possible because of its sensitivity to the general idea of history. A similar encounter with Americanism was out of the question, as America was without a genuine sense of history. Americanism was "the most dangerous form of boundlessness, because it appears in a middle class way of life mixed with Christianity, and all this in an atmosphere that lacks completely any sense of history." When the United States declared war on Germany, Heidegger wrote: "We know today that the Anglo Saxon world of Americanism is resolved to destroy Europe.... The entry of America into this world war is not an entry into history, but is already the last American act of American absence of historical sense."

In creating this symbol of America, Heidegger managed to include within it many of the problems or maladies of modern times, from the rise of instantaneous global communication, to an indifference to the environment, to the reduction of culture to a commodity for consumption. He was especially interested in consumerism, which he thought was emblematic of the spirit of his age: "Consumption for the sake of consumption is the sole procedure that distinctively characterizes the history of a world that has become an unworld.... Being today means being replaceable." America was the home of this way of thinking; it was the very embodiment of the reign of the ersatz, encouraging the absorption of the unique and authentic into the uniform and the standard. Heidegger cited a passage from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

Now is emerging from out of America pure undifferentiated things, mere things of appearance, sham articles.... A house in the American understanding, an American apple or an American vine has nothing in common with the house, the fruit, or the grape that had been adopted in the hopes and thoughts of our forefathers.

Following Nietzsche, Heidegger depicted America as an invasive force taking over the soul of Europe, sapping it of its depth and spirit: "The surrender of the German essence to Americanism has already gone so far as on occasion to produce the disastrous effect that Germany actually feels herself ashamed that her people were once considered to be 'the people of poetry and thought.'" Europe was almost dead, but not quite. It might still put itself in the position of being ready to receive what Heidegger called "the Happening," but only if it were able to summon the interior strength to reject Americanism and push it back to the other hemisphere.

Heidegger's political views are commonly deplored today because of his early and open support of Nazism, and many suppose that his influence on subsequent political thought in Europe has been meager. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Heidegger's major ideas were sufficiently protean that with a bit of tinkering they could easily be adopted by the Left. Following the war, Heidegger's thought, shorn of its national socialism but fortified in its anti-Americanism, was embraced by many on the left, often without attribution. Through the writings of thinkers like John-Paul Sartre, "Heideggerianism" was married to communism, and this odd coupling became the core of the intellectual Left in Europe for the next generation. Communist parties, for their own obvious purposes, seized on the weapon of anti-Americanism. They employed it with such frequency and efficacy that it widely came to be thought of as a creation of communism that would vanish if ever communism should cease. The collapse of communism has served, on the contrary, to reveal the true depth and strength of anti-Americanism. Uncoupled from communism, which gave it a certain strength but also placed limits on its appeal, anti-Americanism has worked its way more than ever before into the mainstream of European thought.

Only one claw of the infamous Heideggerian pincer now remains, one clear force threatening Europe. If Europe once found identity in being in "the middle" (or as a "third force"), many argue today that it must find its identity in becoming a "pole of opposition" to America (and the leader of a "second force"). Emmanuel Todd develops this logic in his book, arguing that Europe should put together a new "entente" with Russia and Japan that would serve as a counterforce to the American empire.

There is a great need today for both Europeans and Americans to understand the career of this powerful doctrine of anti-Americanism. As long as its influence remains, rational discussion of the practical differences between America and Europe becomes more and more difficult. No issue or question is addressed on its merits, and instead commentators tend to reason from conclusions to facts rather than from facts to conclusions. Arguments, no matter how reasonable they appear on the surface, are advanced to promote or confirm the pre-existing concept of America constructed by Heidegger and others. In the past, European political leaders had powerful reasons to resist this approach. Such practical concerns as alliances, the personal ties and contacts forged with American officials, commercial relations, and a fear of communism worked to dampen anti-Americanism. But of late, European leaders have been tempted to use anti-Americanism as an easy way to court favor with parts of the public, especially with intellectual and media elites. This has unfortunately added a new level of legitimacy to the anti-American mindset.

Not only does anti-Americanism make rational discussion impossible, it threatens the idea of a community of interests between Europe and America. Indeed, it threatens the idea of the West itself. According to the most developed views of anti-Americanism, there is no community of interests between the two sides of the Atlantic because America is a different and alien place. To "prove" this point without using such obvious, value-laden terms as "degeneracy" or the "site of catastrophe," proponents invest differences that exist between Europe and America with a level of significance all out of proportion with their real weight. True, Europeans spend more on the welfare state than do Americans, and Europeans have eliminated capital punishment while many American states still employ it. But to listen to the way in which these facts are discussed, one would think that they add up to different civilizations. This kind of analysis goes so far as to place in question even the commonality of democracy. Since democracy is now unquestionably regarded as a good thing - never mind, of course, that such an attachment to democracy arguably constitutes the most fundamental instance of Americanization - America cannot be a real democracy. And so it is said that American capitalism makes a mockery of the idea of equality, or that low rates of voting participation disqualify America from being in the camp of democratic states.

Hardly any reasonable person today would dismiss the seriousness of many of the challenges that have been raised against "modernity." Nor would any reasonable person deny that America, as one of the most modern and the most powerful of nations, has been the effective source of many of the trends of modernity, which therefore inevitably take on an American cast. But it is possible to acknowledge all of this without identifying modernity with a single people or place, as if the problems of modernity were purely American in origin or as if only Europeans, and not Americans, have been struggling with the question of how to deal with them. Anti-Americanism has become the lazy person's way of treating these issues. It allows those using this label to avoid confronting some of the hard questions that their own analysis demands be asked. To provide just one striking example, America is regularly criticized for being too modern (it has, for example, developed "fast food"), except when it is criticized for not being modern enough (a large portion of the population is still religious).

A genuine dialogue between America and Europe will become possible only when Europeans start the long and arduous process of freeing themselves from the grip of anti-Americanism - a process, fortunately, that several courageous European intellectuals have already launched. But it is also important for Americans not to fall into the error of using anti-Americanism as an excuse to ignore all criticisms made of their country. This temptation is to be found far more among conservative intellectuals than among liberals, who have traditionally paid great respect to the arguments of anti-American thinkers. Much recent conservative commentary has been too quick to dismiss challenges to current American strategic thinking and immediately to attribute them, without sufficient analysis, to the worst elements found in the historical sack of anti-Americanism, from anti-technologism to anti-Semitism. It would be more than ironic - it would be tragic -- if in combating anti-Americanism, we were to embrace an ideology of anti-Europeanism.

James W. Ceaser is professor of politics at the University of Virginia and co-author of The Perfect Tie: The True Story of the 2000 Presidential Election (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

Blog like an Egyptian

The constant spitting of epithets like "racist" at those of us who hate Islam must eventually tire the tongues of even the stupidest ideologues. No? Well, of course not. Let them spit. Let them drool all over themselves. Let's look to those people who might, if they're strong enough and lucky enough, change our world by changing theirs for the better. Maybe if we can pound our idiot dhimmi fascists hard enough it'll give a ray of hope and an ounce of strength to our comrades and friends in Muslim lands so they can fight against the fascism of Islam and free their nations for the journey into Modernity. If it happens, it might well happen through connections via the Internet. Below we have part of a feature from the Christian Science Monitor on bloggers in Egypt, followed by a blog address of a real person you might wish to drop an encouraging line to.

Egypt's growing blogger community pushes limit of dissent

Despite a crackdown on the Net by other Arab countries, Egypt's bloggers are leading anti-government protests.

By Charles Levinson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

CAIRO – With unkempt black locks and a laptop tucked under his arm, Alaa Fattah has a voice that carries further than those of other anti-government activists.

Mr. Fattah, just 23, is one of Egypt's leading bloggers, part of an online community that acts as a virtual megaphone for Egypt's burgeoning opposition movement. Other countries in the Middle East have started cracking down on the Internet, arresting bloggers and imposing strict censorship regimes.

As bloggers gain clout in Cairo, observers say it is only a matter of time before Egypt follows suit.

At a recent demonstration in Cairo's Opera Square against the 25-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, activists distributed placards that read "Freedom Now" and "No to Oppression." Fattah, on the other hand, passed out lists of websites to a dozen or so local bloggers who act as an unofficial media outlet for Egypt's disparate opposition.

"You just can't rely on the mainstream media here," he says.
***

The number of blogs worldwide has doubled in the past five months, and a new blog is created every second, according to a recent report by the blog-watchers Technorati. The Middle East is witnessing its share of that growth.

Many Arab bloggers are tackling sensitive political and human rights issues rarely broached by the state-controlled media. They are proving to be a powerful source of information, capable of reaching a few hundred like-minded activists, or of rallying international attention to a cherished cause.

After government supporters attacked and beat protesters in late May, Egypt's blogging community led the effort to publicize what had happened.

"I had never heard the word blogger until May 25," says Rabab al-Mahdi, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, and an opposition activist. "But now I know them well because of all the amazing coverage they had of the protests. My friends overseas all followed what happened through the blogs, because they have more credibility than the mainstream media."

Activists in Egypt rely on blogs like Fattah's to find out the time and place of future demonstrations, to learn who has been arrested and where they have been taken, and to debate the effectiveness of opposition strategies. In short order, Egypt's bloggers have become a political force, capable of more than merely commenting from the sidelines.

In early June, Fattah and two other bloggers decided they were tired of protesting in the same tired locations, with the same hackneyed slogans. Acting independently of opposition elders, they used their blogs to organize a protest in a working-class Cairo neighborhood, which attracted a respectable 300 people. The young bloggers' innovative logos, slogans, and choice of location prompted a sweeping debate among the Egyptian opposition.

Similarly, after three suicide bombers pounded the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh on July 23, three other Egyptian bloggers organized an anti-terrorism candle light vigil. It attracted so much interest that the government banned it at the last minute.

"Egypt's bloggers seem to have been able to make the transition from spouting hot air, to political organization and political work and that's impressive," says Marc Lynch, a political science professor specializing in Arab media at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

The new threat is only beginning to dawn on Middle Eastern regimes, long accustomed to tightly regulating the flow of information. Bloggers and online journalists have been imprisoned in Iran, Syria, Bahrain, and Tunisia. Several others closely monitor and restrict access to Web content. Media observers expect the region's bloggers to face growing intolerance from governments.

"In the Middle East, the mechanisms of oppression are already there, and the number of bloggers is growing," says Curt Hopkins, director of the eight-month-old Committee to Protect Bloggers. "There's going to be a convergence in the not too distant future with a lot of cracking down on bloggers."

More:

http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com

France and the decline of Civilitity

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle.

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

Who knows of the conditions of the French nation of the 1930s? Who among the French today recall the conditions of their grandparents? Who recalls Leon Blum?

Immediately below are excerpts from a history of the 1930s. Look at France in these short quotations, at a time before things got bad. Today the French bemoan themselves endlessly about the evils of America, of England, of Capitalism, of Globalization. In a coming post we'll look at the implications of bird flu. Below we'll look at France then and now. This is the beginning of the beginning of the next round of decline, whether severe or not. What will the French do this time round? What does this portend for the Islamic presence in France?

If we look at the nature of harvests we see that during fat times peasants worry considerably less about rats than they do about feasting themselves. The maggot in the cheese-head laying in the cellar can stay undisturbed if there are many cheese-heads atop it. In the lean times the rats die like rats. We know this. We know the French, like others facing leaness, compete.
***

Then: "Unemployment was low because France had been shorn of manpower during the war--1.3 million dead and 1.1 million made permanent invalids.... The population problem was obvious, but this did not stop busy "faiseuses d'anges " --angel makers-- from performing perhaps as many as a million abortions per year...." (Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley. New York: Vintage. 2000: p.159)

During 1931 industrial production declined by nearly a fifth. Unemployment rose from 12,000 to 190,000. Over 100 banks closed their doors and business bankruptcies increased by 60 per cent/ Farm prices collapsed.... [F]rom 1928 to 1934 peasant earnings fell by more than half. (p. 165.)

Toward the end of 1933...the jobless numbered well over 300,000. (p. 169.)

Abuses endured in prosperity provoked trouble during times of trial. By the freezing winter of 1932-33 French production had fallen to two thirds of its 1929 level and over 250,000 people were unemployed. (p. 167.)

Intolerable stress...stimulated extremist movements and ushered in a "time of hate." (p. 166.)
***

And Now: Aug. 30, 2005
La Crise: the depression hanging over a nation going back to work

From Charles Bremner in Paris

FRANCE basked in sunshine yesterday, but a sense of gloom descended on the nation as the end of the long summer holidays magnified a belief that disaster lurks around the corner.

La rentrée, the traditional week when France returns to work, strike or school and the media take the national pulse, was proclaimed to be the most fraught for years.

Soaring petrol prices and fear of crashing aircraft and bird flu compounded Gallic anguish over 10 per cent unemployment and falling real incomes. Nothing, say returning vacanciers, seems to halt the decline that has afflicted the country for more than a decade. While better-off Britons and other foreigners crowded France's envied holiday spots, the natives moaned about "la crise" around café tables and camp sites. "La rentrée has never been so morose," France Soir reported yesterday over four pages on why "the French are Worried".

"The French went on holiday with their morale already at rock bottom," the tabloid newspaper said. "They were crushed by the insolent success of the British, their eternal rivals. Growth, consumption, unemployment, Olympic Games — they had everything and we had nothing. Tony Blair was making fun of Jacques Chirac at European summits and the ideas of France and its social model were no longer worth tuppence."

Now things were only worse, it added. Le Parisien offered two pages of tips on "How to escape the September depression". One of them was not "how to make a fast getaway" because the Government added to the gloom at the weekend by announcing a possible cut in the national speed limit from 130km/h (81mph) to 115km/h (72mph) to curb fuel consumption. Le Monde which prefers understatement, noted on its front page: "High unemployment, weak growth, rising petrol prices: the economic outlook is grey at the moment that the French go back to work."

Ouest-France reported that only 30 per cent of the French were optimistic about their future, compared with 59 per cent a year ago. The figure was by far the lowest since the poll began in 1995 — the year that President Chirac won office promising to cut unemployment and revive the sagging economy. Growth and unemployment are the same now as then. Bad news over the past month has sharpened what commentators and psychologists are calling a "state of fear" that is paralysing France. The spate of August air disasters — two involving French aircraft or mainly French nationals — have put the wind up travellers. Hundreds of airline passengers have mutinied in the past two weeks, refusing to board foreign charter aircraft that frightened them.

Two dozen went home from a Paris airport on Sunday rather than continue on a back-up airliner sent by their Turkish airline after all the passengers balked at the first aircraft. The Government yesterday announced a blacklist of five banned airlines, which was immediately attacked as insufficient.

National decline has been a favourite theme of books for the past three years as experts have catalogued the country's sense of losing its soul and prosperity to "Anglo-Saxon" globalisation. Fear is now replacing decline as the diagnosis. Christophe Lambert, the chief of the Publicis advertising giant, has made a splash in recent days with La Société de la peur (The Fearful Society). His book that says that France is petrified with "fear of the future, fear of losing, fear of others, fear of taking a risk, fear of solitude, fear of growing old".

He said yesterday: "Our society is depressed, listless, turned towards the past and negative."

The rejection in May of the European constitution referendum was a perfect illustration, symbolised by the fear of "the Bolkestein directive", he said. This was the draft EU law on services that France feared would trigger an invasion of Polish plumbers.

According to Nicolas Baverez, author of "La France qui tombe," the first of the "declinist" books, agreed with M Lambert. "Confronted with (globalisation), France is the only developed democracy that has been carried away by uncontrolled individual and collective fear."

M Lambert and most other "fear theorists" are modernisers who blame political leaders of both the left and right who have lacked the courage to tell France that its paternalist state cannot survive the free world market. M Chirac has governed by fanning fear rather than by promoting real reform, M Lambert said. The only French politician aiming to wake up the country was Nicolas Sarkozy, star Cabinet minister and leader of M Chirac's Union for a Presidential Majority (UMP), he said. M Sarkozy, a friend of M Lambert, is running to succeed M Chirac in 2007.

M Chirac is blamed by the left-wing opposition for failing to shore up the protective state against globalisation. At beginning-of-term party conferences over the weekend, Socialists, Communists and Trotskyites searched for a saviour to lead France out of its crisis. Among the Communists and the Trotskyites, an informal consensus settled on a potential leader: José Bové, the sheep farmer whose 1999 attack on a McDonald's restaurant turned him into a hero of the left.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk
***

Look at Leon Blum. What will happen if there is a flu epidemic that devastates the French economy? What then the ignorant welfare armies that clash by night?

The Road to Oblivion

Culture is the intellectual version of inbreeding. What happens when culture demands sexual inbreeding as well as intellectual inbreeding? We include articles on diabetes in Arabia, albinism in Egypt, FGM in the Gulf, and a survey of birth defects across the Arabian Islamic world. Our conclusion is that Arabia is facing, aside from military annihilation by the West, its worst scenario in itself, its own inability to adapt to the physical world due to its totalitarian fetish of Islamic and tribalist intellectual inbreeding.

As the Islamic populations continue to rise, as some Islamic states continue to rely on rentier incomes from unearned oil revenue, and as other Islamic nations survive on foreign aid while at the same time biting the hands that feed them, the Islamic world faces a crisis of implosion: The populations rise while the content of their economies is a vacuum; they strive for further indulgences in phantasy ideologies at the expense of rational economies; and they risk provoking the militarily, economically, and intellectually superior Western world into self-defensive war.

Because of the irrationality of the Islamic cultural world-view, based as it is on the tenets of fascism, regardless of how primitive, they cannot act in their own best interest. Without endless and increasing foreign aid, without foreign technology, without foreign compassion, the Islamic world will collapse of its own internal rot.

It is our clearly stated thesis that the Islamic world is beyond hope of self-recovery from its current condition, and that only massive foreign intervention by way of and means of colonialism and intermarriage with the indigenous population will save the world Islamic population from extinction. If the West does not invade, conquer, and rule the Islamic world, that same Islamic world will continue to commit its own genocide, turning itself into a sand diorama.

For those who would shrug, let us point out that the public health risk of such a massive depletion of the world's population within the space of a mater of some few months would lead inevitably to plagues the like of which the world has never witnessed. It's not merely immoral, therefore, to allow the continued disaster of Islam, it is imprudent. And if that isn't sufficient to motivate a change of thought on the subject of the world's relationship with Islam, let us point out further and more immediate self-interest: The Islamic world is underdeveloped in all ways, emotionally, socially, culturally, technologically, economically, and by any other civilized measure one cares to apply to it. That alone supports the idea of invasion by superior forces to fill the vacuum, opportunities to amass wealth and power while, perhaps as an unintended benefit, one might well save a large part of the Human race.

Below we have some pieces on medical conditions that arise from culture and tradition. Physical sickness is a mental conditon that often arises from lack of thought itself. In some cases, one must assume that without a change of mental direction in culture, the road to the future leads to oblivion.
***

Diabetes 'a ticking timebomb' in Gulf
Dubai |By Mona Ahmed, Staff Reporter | 20-01-2004

Diabetes in the Gulf is a timebomb ticking down to a massive explosion, unless policy makers take a grip of the disease.

This was the stark warning issued here yesterday by a doctor who said as much as 50 per cent of the local Arab population in the Gulf states is at risk of suffering diabetes-related diseases.

In the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain, up to one third of the population is obese, and at current levels half of them will get diabetes type two, according to Dr Oussama Khatib, regional advisor on non-communicable diseases for the World Health Organisation in Egypt.

Speaking during the Arab Health Congress, he said diabetes is the fourth largest cause of death in the region, and action from policy makers is needed now to stop deaths from this manageable disease.

He added that there are few health professionals qualified to deal with the disease in the region, and there is a great and urgent need for not only 'diabetologists', but also diabetic educators, nutritionists and even chiropodists, one who treats feet and their ailments.

He presented a paper at Arab Health 2004, the Middle East's leading exhibition and conference on hospital services and medical equipment being held at Dubai International Exhibition Centre (DIEC) until January 21.

"This region has more than 3.5 million diabetes type two sufferers and children as young as ten are being diagnosed with the disease due to obesity, coupled with physical inactivity, an unhealthy diet and hypertension," Dr Khatib pointed out.

"This problem is now at pandemic proportions, and is a great burden in terms of cost. This is no longer a problem for the individual sufferer, it is a problem for society, for government, it's a huge social challenge," he added.

He called on policy makers to introduce immediate public health programmes to increase awareness of the disease, "which is both preventable and manageable".

But in extreme cases, diabetes type two can result in blindness, kidney failure, amputations and death.

"Effective preventative solutions exist, but these are not being rationally or widely used in the region. While special treatment centres exist, most of them are beyond the reach of ordinary people, and there are still people in the wider region dying of the disease for want of insulin.

"If not addressed now, this will become the most expensive health problem ever faced by regional health care services," he added.
http://www.gulf-news.com
***

SIWAN CULTURE

I invite you all to experience the magical world that is the Siwa Oasis. We wish to share our rich tradition and culture with you. We originate from the North African Berber tribes known as Amazigh. We are the Siwan Berbers. Because of our geographical isolation we have remained relatively unchanged. (To learn more about individual families please click on the family tree)

We live in a tribal system. This is broken up into two main groups, the East tribe and the West tribe. There are ten tribes within these two groups and one group lives in El Gara.

The leader of each group is the the chief we know as Amazigh Agleed, or as the Sheikh, the head of the family. He leads the family council of ten members, all respected elders of the tribe. He personally settles problems within the family group and also gives advice to other tribes. In this way, harmony, respect and close relationships are maintained both within the family tribe and co-existing tribes.

In the case of disputes between members of different tribes, the respective sheikhs arbitrate using the Siwan law and the Koran. Admonishments may be beatings, the giving of alms, fines or banishment from the tribe. If the problem is connected with the land, a special committee will gather and decide the land rights using old papers relating to the land. Some of these important papers are more than one hundred years old.

The Egyptian police also work in cooperation with the Sheikh when appropriate. The young are brought up to respect their elders and the Sheikh is respected by all. A child pretending to be an adult by doing what grown-ups do is chastised by being called 'Agleed'. It is a society where everyone has a place.

The Siwan people have a different perspective on life from other Egyptians. It is a mentality based on the tribal family. We marry within our own tribe as this is our preferred way. In this way we preserve the integrity of our community. However there are drawbacks to this as it can lead to genetic problems such as albinos.

We live a healthy life in the oasis. We help each other. There is nothing that we will not do for each other. In times of hardship we will give help and money. If one of us is punished then we help each other pay the fine or it may well be that the fine is not required as long as an apology has been given. We forgive each other.

Wealthier individuals will assist those who are less fortunate and will do this unobtrusively by setting up covenants. At Ramadan and after the Eid el Fitr and the Eid el Adha alms are given. These are also occasions of great celebrations. For more details click on the menu.
http://www.haberlah.com
***
FGM in Arabia:

In many countries in Africa, in Oman, Yemen and in the United Arab Emirates, clitoridectomies (the surgical removal of the clitoris) are quite commonly performed on girls. There are several different procedures, but all of them are exceedingly painful and mutilating. The risk of infection is often very high, and girls do die from complications. These operations are generally performed between infanthood and adolescence. There are many intricately ensnarled reasons for female circumcision, including traditional customs, religious beliefs, curbing sexual desire, protecting virginity and preventing immorality. Female circumcision, as anyone can imagine, seriously impedes or totally extinguishes any potential enjoyment of sex for the woman (4).
http://www.queendom.com
***
A study of possible deleterious effects of consanguinity.

Abdulrazzaq YM , Bener A, al-Gazali LI, al-Khayat AI, Micallef R, Gaber T.

Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, United Arab Emirates.

The aim of the study was to determine whether consanguineous marriages result in reproductive wastage and an increased incidence of illness in the offspring in a community with a long history of inbreeding and an expected high rate of consanguineous marriage. A representative sample of 2200 women aged > or = 15 years from Dubai and Al Ain, two cities in the United Arab Emirates, representing on the one hand a modern metropolis and on the other a traditional society, were studied. A questionnaire, which included questions on age, parity, gravidity, number of stillbirths, number of abortions, number of children alive, neonatal deaths and specific illnesses in children, was administered by nurses in antenatal and gynaecological clinics in the two cities. The rate of consanguineous marriage was 50.5% and parity, gravidity, ages and number of children were similar in consanguineous and non-consanguineous groups. There was no significant difference in rates of abortion, stillbirth and neonatal death between the two groups. Overall, there was statistically significant higher reproductive wastage in consanguineous couples, but when the category of less than second cousins was excluded from the consanguineous group no difference was found in reproductive wastage between consanguineous and non-consanguineous marriages. Children born to consanguineous unions also had significantly higher incidences of illnesses (37.1%) than those of non-consanguineous unions (29%). The occurrence of malignancies, congenital abnormalities, mental retardation and physical handicap was significantly higher in offspring of consanguineous than non-consanguineous marriages. In conclusion, consanguinity did not result in reproductive wastage, but was found to be an important factor in the causation of specific illnesses in offspring.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
***

Inbreeding and genetic disorder among Arab population

The custom of inbreeding is as ancient as the history of the human life. In fact, it was not an exception among hunter homo sapiens; it was the rule. However, humans learned from experience of its devastating affect upon the offspring. For example, none of the male children of pharaoh Akhenaton that were born out of consanguineous marriages survived. Later, Moses prohibited the marriages between siblings, mother ≠son and father ≠daughter (Thornill, 1993), a very courageous step in a population that had long embraced inbreeding.

The practice of interfamily mariage is still relatively common among Arabs because of the structure of the Arabic society. Nomadic people (Bedouins) do not really have the chance to mix with others. They are organized in tribes based on common ancestry, and when it comes to marriage, the only opportunity is to inbreed (Teebi, 1993). This social structure is common in the Arabic desert in countries like Kuwait. On the other hand, among the agricultural communities, inbreeding also commonly takes place but for different reasons. There it is favored because it ensures the unity of lands. Inheritance of land by males and females is kept within the same family, and this is of great importance for peasants because small pieces of land are inefficient in agricultural economies. This pattern is common among Lebanese, Egyptians, Palestinians, and Jordanians (Klat et al., 1984).

The consequence of consanguinity in the Arabic population is worse than typical. Although Arabs are usually identified as Caucasians, modern Arabic populations especially in Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon, are the result of a long history of blending with different human races (Der Kalustian et al., 1980). Arabs, Africans, Europeans, and other Asian people intermarried during wars, mass migrations, trade and religious practices (pilgrimage). All in all, this kind of "out breeding" rendered Arabic populations more susceptible to genetic disorders when comes to consanguinity; because out breeding introduced different deleterious recessive alleles common among other populations beside those alleles already common among Arabs.

The impact of consanguinity is that it increases the inbreeding coefficient (Thornill et al., 1993). Thus, the chance that an individual will inherit two alleles identical by descent increases. In other words, the frequency of homozygosity increases, while the frequency of heterozygosity decreases. Because recessive disorders phenotypes are only manifested in the homozygous state, their incidence increases in inbreeding populations. In the following section, Iπll discuss the degree of consanguinity and inbreeding coefficient in different Arabic populations.

Jordan

In a study by Khoury et al., 1992, the frequency of consanguinity in Jordan was determined to be 50.33%. The average inbreeding coefficient was 0.0225. Interestingly, the study showed that male education didnπt have much effect on consanguinity. Fourty percent of university graduate males had consanguineous marriages. However, female education seems to be mare important. Only 20% of university graduate females were married to relatives. This study also demonstrated a regressive pattern of inbreeding.A 30% consanguinity rate early in the 20th century increased at the end of the century to 50%. The pattern was also independent of religious beliefs as both Christians and Muslims showed similar results. The types of genetic diseases will be illustrated for later but basically they are very common.

Kuwait:

The Kuwaiti population is made up of Kuwaiti natives and Bedouins (40%), and immigrants from other Arabic countries and southeastern Asia (60%) (Al- Awadi et al., 1985). The incidence of consanguinity was 54.3% among Kuwaiti natives and higher among Bedouins. The average inbreeding coefficient was at least 0.0219.

Table I: The frequency of some genetic diseases in Kuwait compared to other countries. (Al-awadi et al, 1985) (OMIM) (Farag et al, 1983) (Teebi et al, 1994) (Zatz et al, 1989)

Disease Kuwait Others

Bardet-Beidel Syndrome +

Laurence Moon Syndrome 1/50000 Switzerland: 1/150000

Meckelπs Syndrome 1/3530 Finland (na)

Duchene Muscular Dystrophy 1/ 3 of Muscular Dystrophy USA: 5% of M D

PKU 1/6479 USA+Europe:1/11000

Table I. shows the relatively common recessive disorders among the Kuwaiti population. These cases were diagnosed among Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Lebanese; as well as Kuwaitis. Thus, they might be considered representatives of these communities. Noticeable here is the higher incidence of genetics diseases even when compared to high-frequency groups. Other genetic diseases especially high in Kuwait include Cystinuria, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Werdnig-Hoffmann G M1 Gangliosidosis and Gaucher disease type 1.Besides, there are disorders that are endemic to the Mediterranean and gulf area like Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) and Thalessaemia.

Egypt:

The average consanguinity rate is 28.96% with an average inbreeding coefficient of 0.010.A higher incidence of consanguinity is found in rural areas (Abdel-Gafar et al., 1983). This consanguinity rate, though lower than other Arabic countries, is still very high.

The Egyptian population has a high frequency of several genetic disorders such as Adrenal Hyperplasia, FMF, PKU, etc (Barakat et al., 1986). All of these are recessive traits. Thus, again, high rates of consanguinity lead to a higher incidence of recessive disorders.

Lebanon:

The data about Lebanon is especially interesting. It shows a consanguinity of 18% (Der Kalustian). Another study shows a higher consanguinity incidence of 26% (Teebi, 1994). But the second one was done on Lebanese workers in Kuwait. Both studies, however, demonstrated a lower incidence among Christians than among Muslims. In general, the Lebanese community is almost completely divided into subpopulations of Druze, Sunnites, Shiites (Muslim denominations) and Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Armenians (Christian denominations). Christians (about 50% of Lebanese) have a consanguinity incidence of 10% of the general population, the rest are among Muslims 90%. Despite the lower percentage of consanguinity, Lebanese still show higher incidence of genetic diseases including FMF, familial Hyperplasia, Glucose-6-Phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, sickle cell anemia and Thalessaemia ( Der Kalustian et al., 1980). This is consistent with a high frequency of recessive disorders in the general population.

Types and Reasons Behind Consanguinity:

Among Muslims and Christians, the most common type of consanguinity is between first cousins especially from the paternal side (Teebi, 1994) (Al-Nassar et al., 1989). In fact, a common Lebanese way of complimenting the spouse is to call her/him "cousin"(Der Kalustian et al., 1980). In addition, marriages within the extended family are also common especially in villages and among Bedouins. However, aunt-nephew and uncle-nice marriages as practiced by Jews from Arabic origin, are prohibited by Islam and by state laws (Teebi et al., 1988). Genetically speaking, aunt-nephew and uncle-niece marriages result in the same inbreeding coefficient of double first cousin marriages (F=1/8) (Abdel-Gafar et al., 1983).

The question is why does the practice of consanguinity persist among Arabs in face of severe genetic consequences. Several factors might be involved here including religion, education, socioeconomic status and culture.

To begin with, most Arabs are Muslims. Many researchers tend to conclude from religious studies that Islam discourages consanguineous marriages (Teebi, 1994). I think Islam is in theory equivocal about this issue. There is a very clear teaching from Prophet Mohammed encouraging people to outbreed. On the other hand, he was very proud of his tribe. One might deduce here that oneπs tribe is favored especially when it comes to marriage.

The data from Lebanon show a significant difference in the incidence of consanguinity between Christians and Muslims (Der Kalustian et al., 1980). However, most Lebanese Christians (Maronites and Armenians) do not identify themselves as Arabs. Clearly, they have different origins and cultural practices. In Jordan, however, consanguinity rates among Christians and Muslims are very similar (Khoury et al., 1992). Besides, the practice is also common among Jews of Arabic origin (Stark et al., 1984). Thus, religion is at least not the single determinant of consanguinity rate.

Another consideration is educational level. I initially thought lack of education was the reason behind consanguinity. However, the data, especially from Jordan, demonstrated that the phenomenon is independent of the degree of education. For instance, university graduates showed a consanguinity rate of 40%, which is close to that of illiterates 44%. Nevertheless, in urban populations, that traditionally have higher degree of education, there is a lower occurrence of consanguinity than among suburban and rural populations. All in all, the relationship between consanguinity rate and educational level remains indirect and thus inconclusive.

I think the consanguinity problem is culturally based. Arabs previously lived as either nomads or as peasants in agricultural villages. Both styles of living, as I mentioned before, have their reasons to inbreed. As people moved toward urban cities in the 20th century, the pattern in cultural practices and inherent mentality remained untouched. Urbanization didnπt challenge the mentality of the old out-dated system, and it didnπt offer any alternative. In fact, it even strengthened the practice with the development of modern statehood in the Arabic countries (in Jordan for example). Political leaders didnπt legitimize their rule based on public consent, elections or economic development, but rather based on the power of their tribes or tribal allies. This tradition has had a great negative impact on the general population.

Conclusion:

The high rate of consanguinity increases the inbreeding coefficient, and the frequency of genetic disorders in Arabic populations. This effects health, psychological state and economic status of many unfortunate families, and it has implications on the whole population. I thought level of education was a key causative element. But to my disappointment, It is not. Clearly, The roots of this problem go deeper. And regardless of the reasons behind it, there has to be an effort at least in the medical field and population genetics to evaluate the situation. There is a lack of research and information concerning the problem. I wasn't able to find the frequencies of endemic genetic disease in the area like thalassemia. Besides, genetic screening has to become both available and mandatory for effected families. Finally, premarital genetic counseling could be of great importance in helping young couples understand the high risk associated with consanguineous marriages.
http://www.as.wvu.edu

Murder by Socialism

Numerous children died in a fire in Paris, and who is to blame for it but an uncaring French society? It does boggle the mind that people can lose their children and not find the sense to realize they are responsible for not only their own lives but for the lives and deaths of own their children.

Below we have excerpts from four sources on the fire and its casualties. We learn that immigrants have squatted in fire-trap housing for upwards of 14 years while they wait for welfare housing. But in those 14 years they did nothing to rid their environment of rats, nothing to fix the building themselves to make it livable, but they had more wives, more children, more building resentment against an uncaring Humanity who didn't take care of their needs.

At what point is enough enough? At what point will men who raise their families turn on those who refuse? How many more dead children will it take before normal people say they've seen enough suffering among children whose parents are little better than savages who refuse to care for their needs? Blame the victims? No, the victims are dead. They will be followed by other children their parents refuse to tend.
***
Friday August 26, 2005 10:16 PM

AP Photo PAR116
By ELAINE GANLEY
Associated Press Writer

PARIS (AP) - A fire that raced through a crowded, rundown Paris apartment building housing African immigrants killed 17 people, most children trapped while they slept, triggering angry calls Friday for action on behalf of France's needy.

``More than ever, housing must be a national priority,'' Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said after Friday's blaze. Paris has 110,000 unanswered requests for low-cost housing, according to associations working with the needy.

Angry African immigrants surrounded Housing Minister Jean-Louis Borloo at the site of the fire, demanding help.

Former Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, said the country has a ``collective'' responsibility for such disasters and called for a more ``heartfelt'' approach toward poor immigrants arriving in France.

In 1991, immigrants and others expelled from lodgings with nowhere to go camped out for four months under tents in the 13th district, not far from the building that caught fire Friday. Many of the building's residents were among the tent protesters 14 years ago.

The lodging was meant to be temporary, but many had lived there for years, underscoring the plight of poor immigrants in expensive Paris.

``It was totally unfit,'' said Cisse, who had lived there for nearly 15 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk

***

"There are no houses in Paris for families with several children. Maybe this society doesn't accept families with five, seven or eight children," he said.

"It is a problem to make real integration. These children are French children. Black but French, born here in Paris. The government and the city has a responsibility to find the correct houses."

http://news.bbc.co.uk
***

Touré did not mourn his family; his two wives and all 13 children survived, helped by firefighters who lifted them out of their smoke-filled bedroom through the window. He said he was thinking of his neighbor, Dramane Diarra, another Malian, who is in the hospital with serious injuries after jumping out of his window to escape the flames: Diarra lost all six of his children in the blaze.

"It is so tragic," Touré said. "Yesterday they were still alive and today they are dead, their lives are wasted."

His voice turned bitter: "Why does it have to come to this before anyone cares about what is going on here? Our problems didn't just start today."

http://www.iht.com
***

Adam Sage, Paris Correspondent for The Times

"However, the finance needed to really sort it out and ensure that everyone lived in safe, clean homes would be phenomenal. The French economy is already under huge pressure and money goes to the most electorally-sensitive areas.

"It would be unfair to say that Paris ignores its immigrant community but as in the rest of Western Europe, their welfare is not as politically sensitive as education, hospitals and crime. From time to time riots erupt in the suburbs and it is these, rather than their day-to-day lives, which inform public opinion.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk