The religious-right hits a new low: History of the Homo

In a recent web-surfing adventure, I found a hilarious site attempting to give a nice completely biased view of the history of homosexuality. Don't get me wrong, GLBT advocacy sites also worry me a bit in terms of their various interpretations of history, however focusonthefamily.org and it's various mirror site such as the one I'm about to introduce you to, are so very egregious in their interpretation of the facts as to make scholars everywhere spin their collective heads.

Here goes:
http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t0w32homosexuality.htm

The text of the site appears here in red my response appears in italics.
Homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual until 1973 when sodomy advocates and lesbian organizations lobbied for de-listing. Report on other turning points towards the acceptance of homosexuality from ancient to modern times across cultures.

It is true that the APA amended the Diagnositic and Statistical Manual in 1973 removing homosexuality as a mental disorder. "Sodomy advocates" as Nosotro (the author) calls them is hardly an appropriate monkier for civil rights advocates. "Sodomy" after all has several meanings, "masturbation" among them.
It should also be noted that popular right-wing notion that the APA was just responding to partisan politics is, bluntly, wrong. The APA based its majority decision on a general trend occuring at the time, moving away from psycho-analysis's dominance. Not to mention that homosexuality's original inclusion in the DSM was value-laden, and didn't rest on evidence; try as the might, a link between psychopathy and homosexuality could not be established.
One must also make note that given the general attitude of the time, the APA was not bowing to pressure from "sodomy advocates", as the pressure to ignore the lack of evidence and uphold the status-quo was much greater then any "advocate" simply bringing the APA's attention to a flaw in scholarship.

Has homosexual behavior always been wrong or does it depend on culture, time, and place? Many people believe, under the banner of ‘tolerance’, that gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry with the same benefits, privileges, and acceptance that straight people receive. In the promotion of homosexuality, advocates imply that the life style has been accepted for centuries before the Puritans. How have homosexuals been accepted throughout history? Is today's Christian mainstream all so different from the stream of world history in the response to homosexuality? Why have past societies been uncomfortable with homosexuality?

One must immediately notice this article's thesis: has homosexuality always been wrong..? Biased and partisan "scholarship" does nothing to advance knowledge, it just reinforces notions of a specific society in a specific time period. In essence, it simply buttresses a position which can't be based purely on fact, most likely because said position is not actually supported by fact. A better thesis, and historical question would be: "How have same-sex interactions been viewed by cultures through the ages?" The last question that rounds out this paragraph is perhaps the most laughable. The author assumes that all past societies, including non-western cultures, have been "uncomfortable" with homosexuality. The author assumes, a very dangerous thing to do in historical research, that his own attitudes, and the societal norms which mold them are the same norms which dictated comfort-level in past societies, regardless of how they defined comfort, or their position on our modern conception of homosexuality.

Modern Jews are seen as accepting of homosexuality, however, their history and their laws, which are kept now only by the devout, show plainly that all historical Jewish cultures forbid homosexuality. During the Renaissance in Europe was when accepted homosexuality began to take root. More so in Italy, but nevertheless throughout the “enlightened” continent people began to preach homosexuality as just another thing that people sometimes do, like painting or traveling to England. This is also the period in which numerous and stringent laws began to be placed on “buggery”, “sodomy”, and other-worded things of that nature. From this point, the controversy over homosexuality ever so slowly gathered momentum until it became what it is today.

Here, the author blatantly states that reform and reconstructionists Jews are not devout (who as movements, have supported gay-rights), nor any jew that does not believe the author's interpretation of Judaism. This is perhaps on the verge of anti-semitism.

In stylistic terms, claiming the non-devoutness of jews as fact, without any support and ignoring context in history, is akin to holocaust denial. The same sort of methods are used. Many a synagogue-going-reform-Jew would vehemently deny any lack of religious devotion. Perhaps a better question the author should be concerning himself with is what has changed in Jewish thought? The author posits that the change in western (and Jewish) thought in regards to homosexuality all began with that insidious Renaissance. Let us remember that the Renaissance is a period when essentially medieval Europeans experienced a return to classicism in the arts, culture, and thinking. Yet, illogically, the author goes on later in his "article" to state that homosexuality was largely either absent or frowned upon by classical western cultures. Apparently, the critical thinker is left to believe that homosexuality's supposedly "warm reception" in the modern world began in the Renaissance, without any continuity of causes...it just "appeared".

The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani), in the Negative Confession, equates homosexuality with sin in a sort of Old Testament list of wrongs and sins that the speaker has not committed. A small portion of the list reads, “Hail, Qerrti, who comest forth from Amentet, I have not committed adultery, I have not lain with men. Hail, Her-f-ha-f, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have made none to weep.10” The Assyrian Laws of c. 1450-1250 B.C. contain the tidbit, “If a man has lain with his male friend and a charge is brought and proved against him, the same thing shall be done to him and he shall be made a eunuch.11”

In this paragraph, the author attempts to use the Papyrus of Ani as evidence that the ancient Egyptians despised homosexuality with the same amount of scorn the author does. Unfortunately for him, this certainly does not add up. The Papyrus of Ani is filled with hymns to Osiris, Isis and other deities, and with spells to assist the Necromancer and the deceased. The Papyrus of Ani, and other works like it, is a scroll which has been placed in a coffin or burial chamber; in other words, a book of the dead. Unlike the Bible, The Book of the Dead does not set forth religious tenets and was not considered by the ancient Egyptians to be the product of divine revelation, which allowed the content of the book of the dead to change over time. The things mentioned in the "Negative confession" portion of the Papyrus are not sins. In context of the Papyrus, the "Negative Confessions" portion is just where the deceased was to assert his innocence to the gods. It was the completion of this religious procedure that the Papyrus outlines that showed piety to the gods in Egyptian Religion, not that fact that the deceased was or was not honest when "confessing". Interestingly, when one actually reads the Papyrus, they read "..O He Who Sees What Has Been Brought, who comes forth from Panopolis,I have not ejaculated. " Obviously, given the importance of child-rearing in ancient Egypt, both the author and the deceased for whom this Papyrus was produced almost certainly ejaculated at some point. Even more interestingly, "..I have not lain with men" does NOT appear in any modern translation of the text. Apparently, the author must now invent information.

The author may actually seem to have a point in regards to assyrian law. However Assyrian law was largely an edition of Hammurabi's code, which said nothing pertaining to homosexuality. Additionally, the specific law the author does cite, is a law pertaining to RAPE. That is, it is listed under a section dealing conduct toward married women and rape. It must be remembered that in this part of the world in this time period, women were considered property. To rape another man was akin to making him property. However, sex with a temple-prostitute, male or female, was considered just being neighborly. The author, once again, takes facts out of historical context (this time, ancient near-eastern attitudes towards sex) and not only assumes (again) that they were similar to his own, but does it to push his own agenda. In other words, he's suppressing evidence.

Greece is the example many homosexuals turn to in their search for acceptance in ancient societies, yet their sources are vague, citing things like obscure vase art and a new interpretation of classic stories12.

This is perhaps the best example of what extremes the author will go too to prove his point, without getting into the messy business of actual scholarship. Archaeologists routinely draw information from "obscure" sources like vase art, along with every other physical artifact and remain left behind by cultures. Indeed, the actual written sources, by ancient Greeks themselves, mention what today we would term as "homosexual" (Read the works of Sappho), legitimate historians and anthropologists have written whole library sections on the subject. It is interesting however, how the author side-steps the entire issue of same-sex relations in the ancient Hellenistic world by branding every single primary source which indicates it as false. This is what is known as a "double standard fallacy" in which the author uses the a physical artifact such as the Papyrus of Ani to back up his claim (even though it doesn't) while dismissing the whole body of evidence from the greek-world.

Stick around for Part deux of "The religious-right hits a new low: History of the Homo", where we take a deep look at other claims of the author, and reasons as to what motivates his "research".

Ecolinguistics, continued.

As I do love refuting the diatribe of pseudo-intellectuals, I just had to post this little gem.

Here's a copy of the original article in red italics: (download this article here).

Language & Ecology Online Journal (2004) available from http:// www.ecoling.net/journal.html
[updated version Dec 2006]
Masculinity, health and ecological destruction
by Arran Stibbe
One important way that language is connected to ecology is through the discursive construction of gender. As ecofeminists such as Diamond and Orenstein (1990) and Adams (1993) show, there is a high correlation between patriarchal social structures and ecological destruction, and social structures are created, partially, through language. Discourses which play roles in constructing images of masculinity and femininity are all around, but for this article I will concentrate on one example: an instance of a particular discourse of masculinity which has been called ‘hegemonic masculinity’. In Stibbe (2004), I analysed the construction of hegemonic masculinity in the discourse of Men’s Health magazine, drawing out implications for the emerging concept of health. There other important implications, however, in terms of ecology, and this current article looks at discourse of Men’s Health magazine in terms of its ecological implications.
The covers of the magazine, seen by far more people than those who actually buy it, display a black and white picture of an 'ideal' man, and a series of short statements in various font sizes. The majority of these statements use the conventional syntax of lifestyle magazines to set up various goals for readers, such as being thin or being a great heterosexual lover (Lose your belly! Gold medal sex etc). These are treated as something which is obviously desirable, but they may be implicated more in creating desires than responding to already existing desires. For instance, men may not have realised before that it was desirable to ‘Add 2 inches to your chest!’.
Good health is strongly correlated to ecological sustainability: a diet consisting of local produced, varied, organic fruits and vegetables is as good for biodiversity and the land as it is for health, as is avoiding canned and processed food and walking instead of taking the car. However, rather than goals which simultaneous promote health and ecological sustainability, the main goal that the magazine sets up for readers is the achievement of a huge, muscular body. Clearly this goal is related to images of power and masculinity rather than health. The following are just some of the statements from the cover of the magazine:
l SOLID MUSCLE! l BIGGER BICEPS l BUILD THIS BODY [with arrow pointing at a huge torso] l A HARD BODY l gain muscle l FIND YOUR ABS! l ADD 2 inches to your chest l HARD MUSCLES FAST! l PACK ON MUSCLE! (Men's Health 06/2000 - 09/2001 covers)
Achievement of a huge, muscular body demands the wasteful consumption of large amounts of food, and the magazine recommends one kind of food over all others:
 meat has big advantages over all other foods: It packs muscle-building protein… (Men's Health 2000: December:166)
 Meat is loaded with the protein needed to build new muscle (Men's Health 2000:December:166)
 The muscle stoker [recipe]…eat this meal and you’ll grow your biceps…That’s because the protein in the beef [1lb top London broil] helps to build new muscle tissue (Men's Health 2000:July/August:87)
 make your meat beef and you’ll also get testosterone-boosting amino acids. Testosterone helps you lift more weight and build more muscle. (Men's Health 2000: November, p84)
The cause and effect relationship between been eating meat and growing muscle is clearly expressed in the expression 'muscle-building protein', as if the protein itself will grow muscle without any effort on the part of the person eating it. Likewise, 'protein' is the agent of the verb 'build' in 'protein...helps to build new muscle', rather than the reader. In 'eat this meal and you'll grow your biceps', the reader is the agent of 'grow', but the only activity that the sentence suggests is 'eat this meal'.
Despite the associated risks of heart disease and prostate cancer Men's Health is recommending the consumption of large amounts of red meat, in order to achieve the goal of a muscular body. And meat, when produced in intensive units using chemically treated grains, genetic modification and growth hormones, is one of the most inefficient and ecologically destructive ways of producing food (Turner 1999).
This pattern of connections is repeated in relation to convenience food. In accordance with to the masculinist overtones throughout the magazine, cooking is assigned to women (Fiddes 1991:158). If men must cook, then they should do it the masculine way - with convenience foods. The association of masculinity with convenience food is accomplished through a memorable rhyme:
 A Man, A Plan, A Can: All you need is a can-opener (or a wife) (Men's Health 2000:June:96).
or a simple equation:
 You + a can opener = 12 manly meals (Men's Health June 2000, contents)
or the following imperative:
 Nuke your gut. The TV dinner diet. Three minutes to a leaner waist. These dinners aren’t just easy to make, they’re a fast way to lose weight…low in calories and incredibly tasty. Fill your freezer with these 13 meals… (Men's Health:December:133)
In terms of the environment, of course, convenience foods take a heavy toll in terms of packaging materials, processing, and refrigeration. By encouraging men to grow huge bodies on a diet of meat and convenience food, Men's Health magazine appears to be using language to establish artificial goals which celebrate hegemonic masculinity and male power, and lead to ecologically destructive behaviour. And if men find that a diet of frozen pizza and canned food does not lead to the hugely muscular and lean body of the cover model, then they can always buy one of the huge SUV cars which are heavily advertised in the magazine as a substitute.
The images in the magazine of huge muscular men and the constant implication that this is the ideal shape for a man have the potential to lead to body dissatisfaction. Body dissatisfaction, in turn, could lead to following the dietary recommendations of the magazine to consume large amounts of meat and convenience food, or to compensate for the lack of ideal physique through purchase of the range of luxury consumer items offered by the magazine. In this way, social constructions of gender - masculinity in this case - have the potential to encourage behaviours which damage ecosystems.


Now let’s look at some things wrong with this sadly illogical article, namely, that it simply refuses to acknowledge the bigger picture.

Whether a man is gay or straight, the very reason they read Men’s Health and try to attain a muscled physique and know-how in the bedroom is TO ATTRACT POTENTIAL MATES. There’s a simple logic behind this: the majority of the aforementioned traits are found to be attractive among potential mates, thusly, if one doesn’t posses these traits they may be passed over in favor of someone else. And yes, it’s a two-way street ladies, most straight men don’t find fat women attractive. Indeed, no matter one’s sexual orientation, the vast majority of people don’t find the un-fit attractive due to our collective biological imperative to breed. This is because the physically un-fit are seen as possessing traits which preferably wouldn’t be passed on to offspring (this can also be seen as an inability to care for offspring). Contrary to what radical feminists would have us believe, we are bound by biology in very real ways - our perceptions included.

So, that said, let’s go a bit more indepth with this.

1. How are patriarchal social structures defined? How is environmental destruction defined? Would not an ecofeminist have a bias in linking the two into a positive correlation? Are their research methods really unbiased?
2. Desirable traits, such as big biceps, are actually linked to better health. Admittedly, this link is open, and often culturally defined. However, this feminist assumes, like so many feminist, that what's physically preferable is dictated solely by a "boy's club" of men - and completely ignores the actual interplay that occurs.
3. Maintaining a “well-built” muscular body DOES NOT equal the wasteful consumption of a large amount of food. It requires a careful and varied diet. Maintaining such a physique doesn’t require one to consume a large amount of food, it’s absurd to assume so.
4. While a single article in the 2000 issue of Men’s Health encourages the eating of red meat - the vast majority of its online edition encourages the eating of fish (usually broiled) along with a balanced diet and regular exercise. It really seems as if the author was digging with this one, and the fact that Arran Stibbe didn’t include the information in an honest context means I place the author in same academic category as white supremacists who disregard information outside their worldview and “pick and choose” facts without looking at their outside context. For example, holocaust deniers “pick and choose” the fact that Hitler issued a “no liquidation order”, but completely disregard the historical context.

5. The "easy" food preparation diatribe Stibbe drawls on about doesn't have a root cause in men dominating women, it's root cause is laziness, a trait both genders share. Being able to simply pop something in a microwave rather then break out pots and pans appeals to the lazy side in all of us. Also, I seriously doubt Men's Health recommends chowing down on a frozen pizza, most likely they mean "Lean Cuisine".

If you really want a clean sustainable world where everyone shops at an organic foods store and we treat each other as equals, then stop being such a pompous ass.

You femi-nazi. : )

Beware Conspiracy theorists: Aliens built the Pyramids

This particular theory of faulty thinking has annoyed me for quite some time and will thusly be refered to as: Pyramidiocy.

Pyramidiocy is characterized by having an outlandish, farfetched theory about the origin, nature or purpose of the Egyptian pyramids. The theories of pyramidiots are barely supported by slender threads of evidence. They serve little purpose except to stand as bad examples of speculative thought and fanciful imagination.

Some pyramidiots, such as Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin, claim that the ancient Egyptians were too backwards to have constructed the pyramids without the help of extraterrestrials. Edgar Cayce (professional bullshit artist, also known as "psychic") claimed that beings from Atlantis helped the Egyptians build the pyramids by showing them how to levitate stones. Charles Berlitz claimed that Atlantis lay beneath the Bermuda Triangle and had a pyramid the same size as the Great Pyramid at Giza. Pyramidiots think Atlantis is the link between the pyramids of Egypt and the pyramids of Mexico.

They are not dissuaded by the fact that the one was primarily funerary while the other was primarily used for ceremonies, including some which involved human sacrifice. Arguments demonstrating that the ancient Egyptians or Mexicans were intelligent and resourceful enough to build pyramids are to no avail. This is a particularly frustrating aspect of this fanciful thinking, as it assumes our collective ancestors were as dumb as the proponents of this theory.

Other pyramidiots ascribe super technological or paranormal powers to the ancient Egyptians. Traditional explanations in terms of religion, tombs for pharaohs and their families, belief in immortality, or paid workers, slipways, canals, slaves (new evidence indicates that slaves were not directly used in the construction of the pyramids) , etc. are rejected by pyramidiots in favor of theories claiming that the pyramids were power stations or water pumps. They don't seem to realize there was little use for a power station in ancient Egypt (they didn't have light-bulbs, or anything that requires AC or DC current); plus like all ancient societies it's labor was drawn from slaves and paid-workers - not machines. Not to mention the lack of plumbing beneath the pyramids.

Some pyramidiots claim that the pyramids were built according to some sort of mystical numerology to contain coded messages. Some believe that the Great Pyramid at Giza is at the center of the world (The fact that the Earth is spherical escapes them). Some think the pyramids are a map of the sky. To put it shortly, numerological beliefs about the pyramids are like a horn-of-plenty. Some believe only God could have designed such a numerical mystery. That almost anything in the universe can be found to have interesting mathematical proportions or be related to several interesting mathematical formulae is of little interest to pyramidiots.
That there is no evidence for such beliefs seems to cheer rather than dishearten pyramidiots.

I can't quite figure out why, but then they don't seem to be the most logical bunch.

Beware Conspiracy theorists: Holocaust Denial

While I don't want my humble blog to become the vanguard against zany conspiracy "theories" - the fact is, given the sizable multitude of the simply weird things people believe, I feel it's unfortunately necessary.

That said, let's start with a particularly damaging and ugly conspiracy theory: Holocaust denial.

The mass extermination of the Jews and other “undesirables” at the hands of the Nazis during World War II is referred to as the Holocaust. It has become a symbol of evil in our time. Like many symbols, the Holocaust has become sacrosanct. To many people, both Jews and non-Jews, the Holocaust symbolizes the horror of genocide against the Jews, Romani, Homosexuals, and the disabled. Some modern anti-Semites (that includes persons on the extreme political right, and left) have found that attacking the Holocaust causes as much suffering to some Jews as attacking Jews themselves. “Holocaust denial” refers to attacking the accuracy of any aspect of the symbology or history of the Holocaust.

Holocaust denial seems to be the main motivation of the Institute for Historical Review and its Journal of Historical Review. Since 1980 this journal has been publishing articles attacking the accuracy of various claims about the Holocaust. There is clearly an agenda when a journal is devoted almost exclusively to the single issue of making the Holocaust seem like an exaggeration of biased historians. Indeed, I personally consider the entire "Institute" an affront to academic scholarship. If truth and historical accuracy were the only goals of this group, it would be praised rather than despised. However, it seems that its promoters are more concerned with hatred than with truth.

Thus, even the inaccuracies that they correctly identify are met with scorn and derision. For they never once deal with the central question of the Holocaust. They deal with details and technical issues: Were there six million or four million Jews who died or were killed? Could this particular shower have been used as a gas chamber? Were these deaths due to natural causes or not? Did Hitler issue a Final Solution order or not? If so, where is it? These are legitimate historical issues. However, the Holocaust deniers do not deal with the questions of racial laws that led to the arrest and imprisonment of millions of Jews in several countries for the “crime” of race. They do not concern themselves with the policy of herding people like animals and transporting them to “camps” where millions died of disease or malnutrition, or were murdered. They don’t address the moral issues of medical experimentation on humans or of persecution of homosexuals and the infirm. Why not? In other words, they only concern themselves with questions that are convenient to them.

Michael Shermer devotes two chapters of Why People Believe Weird Things (1997) to the arguments of the Holocaust deniers. One of the favorite appeals of the Holocaust deniers is to demand some proof that Hitler gave the order for the extermination of the Jews (or the mentally retarded, mentally ill, and physically handicapped). Holocaust deniers point to Himmler’s telephone notes of November 30, 1941, as proof that there was to be no liquidation of the Jews. The actual note says: “Jewish transport from Berlin. No liquidation.” Whatever the note meant, it did not mean that Hitler did not want the Jews liquidated. The transport in question, by the way, was liquidated that evening. In any case, if Hitler ordered no liquidation of the Berlin transport, then liquidation was going on and he knew about it. Hitler’s intentions were made public in his earliest speeches. Even as his regime was being destroyed, Hitler proclaimed: “Against the Jews I fought open-eyed and in view of the whole world. . . . I made it plain that they, this parasitic vermin in Europe, will be finally exterminated.” Hitler at one time compared the Jews to the tuberculosis bacilli that had infected Europe. It was not cruel to shoot them if they would not or could not work. He said: “This is not cruel if one remembers that even innocent creatures of nature, such as hares and deer when infected, have to be killed so that they cannot damage others. Why should the beasts who wanted to bring Bolshevism be spared more than these innocents?”

It should be noted that white supremacists aren't the only ones denying the holocaust, though it is funny to see that whitey's story of what happened is far from consistent; such as when members of neo-nazi groups don shirts that proclaim that Hitler didn't go far enough. Guess they didn't get the memo. Quite a few Iranian, Palestinian, Lebanese, and Saudi leaders have, you guessed it, denied the Holocaust. These are often the same forked tongue leaders that cry for peace with Israel in front of the world, but cry there will be peace when Israel is in pieces to their followers.

As just a side note, the image for this blog was found at an affiliate site of IHR, heretical.com (their "scholarship" just has to be true with that kind of bias!)

,,Die Augen sind die Seelefenster"

That's a nifty little german phrase, its english-approximate being "Eyes are the window of the soul." And as it turns out, it may just be true. Anthropologists have uncovered some interesting findings about our eyes and how others percieve us.
Of course, how we "read" people determines an essential aspect of choosing your future partner. As it turns out, the iris of the eye has two physical traits that have been linked to personality differences. The number of "crypts" or pits in the iris signal how likely you are to be warm, tender and trusting. And the number of "furrows," or curving lines along the outer edge of the iris, signal the degree to which you are likely to be neurotic, impulsive and willing to assuage your cravings. In both cases, the more crypts or furrows, the more likely you are to be, respectively, tender hearted or spontaneous. These traits develop in the womb. In short, we have evolved a remarkable and subtle biological strategy to signal who we are.
In an evolutionary sense, this is a very efficient strategy of helping determine potential mates -- afterall, anything that saves time (instead of spending several months or even years trying to figure out if someone is really loyal, or just manipulative) is inheriently energy saving. Thus, you save resources; and have a better chance of survival. In a wider sense; finding loyal mates that will stick around and support offspring, and yourself, is in terms of survival: excellent.
This also leads to some interesting aspects of culture and history. Nearly every culture throughout history has accentuated the eyes to some extent. Ancient near-eastern peoples would use makeups. For Egyptians specifically, both men and women would use mascara to draw attention to the eyes (plus, the darker paints around the eyes reduce sun-glare -- similar to the way modern day football players stripe their faces before a game.) Not to mention cultural rules on maintaining eye-contact.

Source: http://www.helenfisher.typepad.com/

Darfur

This blogging session will be a little different, as I won't cite sources - mostly just my own personal mussings over a situation that no one seems to care about.

It should be clear by now that Darfur has become the first incident of genocide in the 21st century; with a death toll past half a million. So why is it happening? More importantly, why isn't the world reacting?

The causes of the conflict aren't really as clear as some crazy dictator wanting a "pure" (homogenous) populace. They're partly rooted in colonialism, partly in climatic changes, partly in racial politics. The arab portion of the populace lives in the Nile-valley region, which, due the presence of the river is a bit more resistant to climatic change, and has received much more development during and after colonial times; and ultimately a larger propotion of persons can (or at least claim) to trace their ancestory back to arabs. Arab ancestory, or claiming it, isn't uncommon in east Africa; as many slaves in the past (both pre-colonial, and during the colonial period) were pre-dominately of african origin; as tends to be the pattern all over east Africa (though with sooo much African history, this pattern isn't always true everywhere).

In any case, Darfur lies in the marginal lands not bordering on the Nile, and is largely populated by non-Arab africans. When rains didn't come to this Sahel-region, starvation and a certain amount of internal anarchy ensued. Of course, it wasn't completely internal. Lybian President Muammar Gaddafi was obsessed with creating an Arab-dominated Sahel (believing in the racial superiority of Arabs).

To say the least, my brief explanation isn't the end-all be-all. But it shines some light on the situation.

So why isn't the world reacting?

Perhaps its the cynic in me, but most people, even if they know of the situation, figure they won't get anything out of it if they do offer assistence. Plus, in terms of governments; the Sudan is home to large oil reserves; which quite a few nations are willing to overlook a few hundered-thousand deaths for a few hundered-thousand barrels (that's you China).
Perhaps its an isolationist ideal? "It's not our problem, let them work it out."

Given that's it's almost the fourth of July; lets take a look at the awe-inspiring Declaration of Independence, and one of my favorite lines from the document: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.."
Indeed, it's a western-value: equality, and basic human-rights. Just because these aren't American's dieing, much less 'westerners', shouldn't matter to an honorable person, indeed, any person that holds american values close to their heart. How can we proclaim such rights, and never stand behind them with action?
I'm not calling for american forces to jump into the fray; I would like to see some major UN involvement in the area; akin to the Bosinia situation. I would also like to see America declare sanctions against any nation that deals with the Sudanese government (that includes China, as well as Saudi Arab, both of which are the poorest excuses for American allies I've ever seen). Just to bring the point home; close the holocaust museums, and the war-memorial momuments in protest. How much history will view us as the supreme hypocrites if we didn't.

Let Freedom Ring

Recently, there have been some Genocide denial stories in the news - specifically laws being proposed to forbid such denials.

Such as this story detailing the EU's far-reaching attempt at squashing denials.

In Germany, there are actually laws on the book that say its illegal to DENY the holocaust; though as europe as a whole (germany included) is moving to a more conservative stance this could change.I think perhaps the nations in which the genocides or attempted genocides in question occured perhaps should have laws similar to germany's....at least temporarily.In most european nations holocaust denial is actually illegal, and seen as stemming from some kind of neo-nazi agenda; but in France on both sides of the radical spectrum they seem to deny, or doubt the number murdered in the holocaust...but yeah, on the other side of the coin France is trying to pass laws that make denying the armenian genocide illegal....it could be a reaction to increased immigration from nations like turkey.

As for the freedom of speech thing....I think it stems from most of continental europe having a civil-law based system, as opposed to england's having a common law based system. Just different general political philosophies about freedom...the reason I'm actually cautious to actually criticize these types of laws is this:

Gregory H. Stanton, formerly of the US State Department and the founder of Genocide Watch, lists denial as the final stage of a genocide development: "Denial is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial

Now, Gregory H Stanton isn't just "some guy that founded a foundation"; he actually does have some academic authority in the area: he's been a law professor and has a phd in cultural anthropology; in addition to drafting the UN security council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and Cambodia.

It should also be noted that freedom of speech is not absolute. Incitment for example, is not protected; these include incitments to violence such as threats, or encouraging people to preform illegal acts. But, noteably, I think the philosophy that many of these genocide-denial laws come from is that liability and slander are not protected speech. Libel and slander defined as: a false statement, or one put into a context that makes the true statement misleading. So,here in the US at least, you can be prosecuted for lies that damage or defame the reputation of a person or organization as well as inciting violence. In this sense, I think these anti-denial laws are seen as an extention of slander and incitment. We have to remember that in europe when these laws were created, esp in germany, democracy was still fragile. Indeed, in Germany, they had just come out of an era of ethnic hosilities of massive proportions ; and cultural preceptions about jews and other minorities in didn't just change overnight - thus, justice for victims wasn't guaranteed - which yes, without anti-denial laws, could have easily lead to retaliation (by victims), and/or further victimization; which could have easily destabilized the fragile democracy that was just starting to revitalize itself in germany.