Author: Mick Hartley

You’d have to be churlish not to rejoice in Liverpool’s triumph. So who’s pissing on the parade? Who else but a Man U fan:

I was desperate for Milan to hammer Liverpool, and when the Italian team led 3-0 at half time, I hoped it might be six by the end.

This was not because Milan were the better team. (Although as Diego Maradona said: “I have seen comebacks like that in football, but never against a team so clearly superior as Milan were.”) It was because I always want other English teams to lose in Europe. And above all, because I honestly hate Liverpool FC.

For how much longer must we put up with this unpleasantness from Man U fans?

It seems to me that a solution presents itself here to the dilemma of Liverpool being unable to defend their European title. Man U should bow out of Europe next season, with Liverpool replacing them. It would give European football fans a welcome break from pictures of Alex Ferguson chewing gum, and Wayne Rooney or Roy Keane abusing other players and match officials. It would also go someway towards redeeming the reputation of a club that, frankly, could do with some good PR. Maybe Man U fans could lead the campaign: it would be one in the eye for Malcolm Glazer, and isn’t that what they want? If they started losing money maybe he’d sell his shares. And by such an act of largesse they’d show that football can rise above petty rivalries, and be capable of heart-warming gestures of solidarity with other clubs. Anyway it’s not like they’re going to do well in Europe next season or anything.

Here’s a problem which hasn’t been given enough thought, in my opinion. Before the invention of scissors, how did people cut their hair? No, seriously.

I seem to remember a suggestion from some evolutionary psychologist that we evolved hair which required cutting so the socially capable could distinguish themselves from social outcasts, who, unable to find anyone to groom their matted locks, would wander round looking like Ozzy Osbourne. But that presupposes some hair-cutting technology. I’ve never tried cutting hair with a sharpened flint stone, but imagine it wouldn’t be easy. In fact it’d be hopeless. Singeing it off? A bit risky. I’ve really no idea.

And then there’s toe nails….

As Kofi Annan arrives in Sudan, The Scotsman report a shortfall in the amount pledged by donor nations to finance an adequate AU force:

Diplomats charged with funding an expanded African Union peacekeeping force to prevent further slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan yesterday pledged less than a half of the money needed for the mission.

A year on since the genocide in Darfur was first brought to the attention of the United Nations, and in spite of a growing clamour for action led by human rights campaigners, aid agencies and newspapers such as The Scotsman, the UN concedes that the situation in the western region of the vast African country remains critical.

Yesterday, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, told a conference in Ethiopia that they were “running a race against time”.

Mr Annan urged rich nations to fund an expansion of the small African Union forces sent to Sudan “without delay”, saying civilians were still being attacked. “An expanded African Mission, at full operational capability, will mean the great majority of vulnerable civilians in Darfur will be protected from violence,” he said.

But, despite the reports of continuing attacks in Darfur, where upwards of 300,000 people are already believed to have died as a result of conflict, the countries gathered at the conference failed to come up with the cash required.

The African Union told donors that it needed $466 million (£256 million) to more than triple its existing force in Darfur and to equip it with six helicopter gunships, 116 armoured personnel carriers and fuel.

Instead the donors pledged only $200 million (£110 million), $134 million of that coming from Canada alone. The United States pledged $50 million on top of the $95 million it had already offered to end what Charles Snyder, the US State Department’s senior representative on Sudan, described as “acts of genocide”. Britain offered $12 million and Germany $1 million.

escapees—that is to say, for aiding in their relocation to the South, for welcoming them into South Korean life, and for positively determining to abet their integration as ROK citizens and members of ROK society—is compelling, in fact overwhelming.

Indeed, I believe it is imperative that the ROK—for legal, and for moral, but also for entirely practical reasons—accept the challenge now posed by the continuing distress of these very vulnerable fellow Koreans (Koreans so far from home, and yet so near!) and actively rise to meet it.

gerian states that refused the polio vaccine, justified the decision not to vaccinate on the grounds that “it is a lesser of two evils to sacrifice two, three, four, five, even 10 children [to polio] than allow hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of girl-children likely to be rendered infertile.”

The Baltimore Sun offers the example of a young Nigerian mother who rejected polio vaccine for her child. The child did get polio, and the mother was asked if she regretted her decision. Unhesitatingly, she replied, “No, I would do the same [again].” Villagers saw the vaccination program as a threat and on occasion “chased, threatened and assaulted vaccinators. Frustrated, some vaccination teams dumped thousands of doses of the vaccine rather than face angry villagers.”

By mid-2004 the conspiracy theory had jumped to India, where a health worker noted that in one slum, “many poor and ignorant women regard the anti-polio drops as a deceptive strategy to control the birth rate.”

Such phobia about the West infecting Muslims with diseases is nothing new. In a 1997 book I surveyed some earlier accusations:
The British imported cholera and malaria to Egypt after World War II; a British midwife who trained in the Kabylia province of Algeria got accused by an angry Algerian supervisor of working in league with the “white-coated saboteurs passing their hands from vagina to vagina, infecting my heroic people with syphilis!” An unnamed enemy – presumably American – infiltrated deadly diseases into Iraq via maggot-ridden cigarettes; Israel transmitted cancer to Palestinians by getting them to take dangerous factory jobs, or subjecting them to phosphorous searches.

The polio-vaccine conspiracy theory has had direct consequences: 16 countries where polio had been eradicated have in recent months reported outbreaks of the disease – 12 in Africa (Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Sudan and Togo) and four in Asia (India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen). Yemen has had the largest polio outbreak, with more than 83 cases since April. The WHO calls this “a major epidemic.”

A classic conspiracy theory is Edward Hooper’s book “The River: A Journey Back to the Source of HIV and AIDS” which suggests that AIDS originated through the use of contaminated polio vaccines in the Congo in the Fifities. Of course the whole MMR-Autism scare is another example closer to home.

e the Yanomami synonymous with aggression, Tierney charges that Chagnon himself fomented wars through his tactics of creating false alliances, giving away machetes, and staging scenes in order to substantiate his own belief in male aggression. Even worse, Tierney believes that Chagnon and his mentor, the famous geneticist James Neel, actually started the measles epidemic that decimated up to 20 percent of the tribe’s population by administering a contraindicated “dinosaur vaccine” to a highly vulnerable population. Tierney paints a horrific picture of Neel and his team of scientists rushing to get their samples of blood, urine, and saliva out of the tropical heat–and Chagnon choreographing his documentary–while the Yanomami fall like flies around them.

So we’re not just talking about a lack of professional ethics here: we’re talking about mass murder, on a scale even Mengele (whose name inevitably crops up) would have been proud of. But really, any old accusation will do, even including child abuse.

The vaccine accusation was effectively rebutted as soon as the book appeared. As for the rest, well, read the article.

In Venezuela and Brazil, as we write, the Yanomami are dying from malaria, tuberculosis, and malnutrition. In the face of this tragedy, the association has squandered its moral capital and its civility on an ad hominem attack on Napoleon Chagnon and the late James Neel. While the Yanomami die, the association debates whether Neel’s lifesaving research and immunization campaign in 1968 met standards of informed consent.

There’s also a good summary of the case from 2001 by Andrew Brown here.

It’s worth noting though from the Amazon reviews how much people want to believe this sort of anti-Western anti-science guff. The UK site has only one, five-star review:

A very moving book to read indeed. An untouched, isolated, civilised tribe called the Yanomami’s are exposed to the greediness of a modern civilisation brought down to Brazil from the capitalist west. Financial riches is the motivation for Gold diggers who destructively cause environmental damages to what was once a serene and natural area.

The US site has a far more balanced range, but again there are enough of those for whom such accusations merely confirm what they already knew:

Tierney weaves a spellbinding tale of how a mild-mannered group of starving Amazonian Indians came to be misportrayed as “The Fierce People” to promote the careers and ideological beliefs of scientists funded by a powerful U.S. govt. agency in the mid-20th century. This book rights a great wrong — the domination and extermination of native American peoples, making it a hero’s tale and thus a joy to read. The author also fulfills a journalist’s most important mission — bringing truth to light. There’s always a place on my bookshelf for books like “Darkness” that entertain, enlighten, and correct social myths that excuse, cover-up and glorify violence. I have a social science Ph.D. and Mr. Tierney’s exhaustive research, careful analysis and reasonable, thoughtful arguments seemed to me a model for social science and journalists. I’m also a working journalist, and this book was as we say in the biz, a “great read.”

ot nothing to do with science.

Update: Tom Hamilton looks at this in more detail on his let’s be sensible blog.

At Amarji, Syrian author Ammar Abdulhamid disagrees with those who believe the Baathists are capable of reform, and that Assad can ride the storm:

[W]hen people say that the President is popular, I think they are often referring to the sentiments of the continuously shrinking Middle Class, that is, to people who still have something to lose, and are therefore still inclined to believe that the President can do it, that he can still save the day. They want to believe.

The poor, on the other hand, who represent the majority at this stage, seem to be beginning to realize that the President is neither capable nor even interested in improving their lot. And they seem to be going past the frustration stage into a state of anger. This bodes ill for the stability of the country. Indeed, the days of open rioting in major cities like Damascus, Aleppo, and Lattakia are fast approaching.

he ruling party won March parliamentary elections.

In recent days only a few government buses have been running, leaving thousands of commuters stranded.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said President Robert Mugabe was seeking an excuse to impose a State of Emergency and had ordered the crackdown to stop second-hand dealers undercutting cheap imports from China.

Similar operations are taking place in the cities of Gweru and Bulawayo.

The Zimbabwean dollar was devalued by 45% last week.

ud, theft and usury. This is pure Nazi theory, that he says it was genetic.”

Mr Farias said the dissertation also attacked revolutionaries, saying that although they might appear normal, they were actually sociopaths.

As for Chileans, Mr Farias said the dissertation quoted a theory that the Spaniards’ 300-year fight to colonise Chile had weeded out the weak from both Spanish and native Indian populations, leaving the proud Chileans with the best from both races.

The Allende family, which includes the late president’s niece, the novelist Isabel Allende, has attacked Mr Farias for “dishonest work” and said the disclosures have no “historical relevance”.

Victor Farias, it should be said, is a reputable historian. His book Heidegger and Nazism, published in 1987, was instrumental in establishing that the philosopher had not just gone along with the rise of Nazism out of expedience, as he and his followers liked to claim, but was in fact a willing and enthusiastic supporter. So this is something of an embarrassing skeleton in the closet for such an iconic figure of the left.