Time, gentlemen

Check this out:

More than two dozen African countries have already imposed restrictions or outright bans on travel to and from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and numerous air carriers have canceled flights.

http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-ebola-air-travel-20141016-story.html#navtype=outfit

I earlier mentioned the stalwart stance of KSA, in banning the inflight of (pourtant) Muslims  from the top three infected countries, to the Hajj;  thank goodness, this year’s pilgrimmage seems to have gone off especially well.

But I had no idea that so many African countries  were less paralyzed by political correctness, than is America, Belgium, or France.

Ebola nurse, enjoying her Caribbean cruise.

[Update 20 Oct 2014]  And now yet another African country has decided it doesn’t want to be a sacrificial lamb just to please the bleeding-hearts:  Morocco has just rescinded its commitment to host the Coupe d’Afrique des Nations (soccer tournament) in January, owing to the risk.   The soccer authorities tried to twist their arm, but Morocco held tough.

~

There has been much tut-tutting about ‘scare tactics’ re ebola.  In principle, that is a valid concern.  There have historically been many cases of media-inflated panics, simply to “sell newspapers” (permit me this somewhat archaic formulation, propre à  un sexagénaire).  In our own day, “shark attacks” (or child abductions) regularly fill the news vacuum during the summer doldrums; eventually it is acknowledged that there was  statistically  nothing to it.

But there is a contrary possibility, that of “sedative tactics” or “soporific tactics”.  Thus, consider what your impressions are, of the progression of ebola.

[Pause while you reflect.  Then, scroll down.]

.

.

.

.

.

The sense one gets from the media is:

(1) First, one has a slight fever, then perhaps diarrheia and vomiting.  All quite familiar symptoms of a host of minor illnesses, from childhood on, and in that sense  almost reassuring.

(2)  Next, either

(a) you are all better again, feeling your oats, clicking your heels, and immune for evermore,

or

(b) somehow, silently, in the night, (no-one knows quite how)
a gentle death spreads o’er thee,

like some sweet dream,

and thou art risen among the angels,

world without end.

Actually, as a matter of medical fact, there seems to be an intermediate stage, at least in some cases.   These you will not generally hear of.

The standard image in the media these days, is this:

Kinda cute li'l critter, big eyes and a lopsided grin

Not very threatening;  might almost be one of those ribbon stick-ons for your car, in support of Breast Cancer Awareness or whatever.

But if you google-image “ebola symptoms”, a different picture emerges:

Coming soon ...

... to a nursery school ...

.... near you.

Enjoy the epidemic!

Heaven forbid we should offend anyone, by actually protecting ourselves...

Sorry to have to display such things;  but the fact is, the airbrushing of ebola's real nature   amounts to a kind of cover-up.

[Update 18 October 2014]  Never mind, stand down.  Everything is now under control.

The President has just appointed a lawyer and “longtime political operative” as “ebola czar”.   That should fix things.

Problem solved.

(Wonder if, a few months from now, we’ll be hearing “Klainy, you’re doing a heckuva job.”)

[Update 19 October 2014]  Hmm …

President Obama on Saturday evening met with members of his national security and public health teams for an update on the administration's response to the Ebola outbreak. The president's new Ebola czar, Ron Klain, did not take part in the meeting, according to the White House.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/221194-officials-brief-obama-on-ebola-response

Interesting.  Second such meeting he’s missed, so they say.  Is he perhaps, ahh, feeling a little under the weather?  Running a slight fever? ….

OK, let’s go back to panic.

  ~

Yes, all this is kind of harsh;  but that is called-for, given the continuing fog of obfuscation and patronizing Pollyannaism we are being fed.

Thus, the other day, one of the major media outlets had a nice simplified graphic, of the sort that could be understood even by illiterates, to “educate the public”.  Eager to learn, we set down our crayons and pulled our chairs close.

There we saw an icon of a meal with one of those diagonal ‘Not’ lines through it.  Actually that isn’t as easy to interpret as the editors apparently thought, since the most obvious interpretation -- “Don’t eat” (here, or this, or whatever) -- is the opposite to the one intended.   What they meant was:  Go ahead -- “Whatsoever ye find in the market, that eat” (as St Paul put it):  you “can’t get ebola from food.”

Now, we shall readily grant that the chances of contracting ebola from a pizza or whatever  are effectively nil;  but that cheerful slogan brushes over the generally accepted account that this outbreak entered the human population precisely via food:  Namely, bushmeat.

Oh well, true enough (you might tut-tut), but none of that has any relevance to the West, where we don’t eat monkeys and pangolins and bats and what-have-you.  Only … wherever you have pockets of African ex-pats, you are going to find illegal importation of bushmeat, generally in the suitcases of travelers (which means that, in addition, it will not be of the freshest).   A recent article states that 270 tons of the stuff -- viande de brousse -- is smuggled-in annually via Roissy airport alone.

270 tonnes de viande de brousse illégale transitent chaque année par l'aéroport de Roissy (France)

http://www.notre-planete.info/actualites/actu_2451.php

De la viande de brousse est toujours importée illégalement en France

http://www.notre-planete.info/actualites/actu_2840_viande_de_brousse_France.php#bouton

Don’t take their word for it; here is an official source:

http://www.gendarmerie.interieur.gouv.fr/eng/Sites/Gendarmerie/Presse/Communiques/Operation-de-controle-des-importations-de-viande-de-brousse-a-Roissy

Ebola tourism

Medical tourism -- motivated often by economics, sometimes by quality of care -- has been one of the top health-stories of the past decade.   This morning I was going to post a note about an impending variant on this, called “Ebola tourism”, since the early news reports from Dallas were dominated by smileyface happytalk from the likes of the CDC;  however, by now people have wised up, and that is no longer necessary.   Still, for a glimpse of the dynamics of media-vs-the-people, check out the following remarkably clueless WaPo article, by Abby Phillip:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/10/01/why-hasnt-the-u-s-closed-its-airports-to-travelers-from-ebola-ravaged-countries/

then read the readers’ tart and observant comments.

Just a word, then, on the media aspects.

(1)  I subscribed to WaPo ever since moving to the area, then watched it deteriorate from year to year, and finally let the subscription lapse.  But occasionally I consult their website, for the readers’ comments.  These seem to be only lightly censored.  Often they are nothing but content-free Obama-bashing, but sometimes, as in articles relating to federal employment, the commentors are very well informed;  and in the present case, although almost none of the readers had any special expertise, still  they easily overleaped the very low bar offered by the article.

(2) As regards the information released by the government, there were curious parallels between the Dallas Ebola case and that of the White House intruder.  Both cases featured lies and/or stonewalling, of a sort that could not possibly hold good for more than a day or two.    In Dallas, the number of persons who might have been put at risk by Patient Zero  was initially reported  at around a half dozen; then eighteen; then eighty (numbers easy to confuse, to be sure);  and, as of current writing, around a hundred (unless someone innocently confused “100” with such other zero-rich numbers as “1000” or “10000”).  Additionally, the Texan spokesman at first refused to reveal the nationality of Patient Zero (thus telling us all we need to know), or to reveal his itinerary (the airlines later came clean).

One mealy-mouthed CDC spokesperson (reminiscent of the White-House assaults whitewashers) stated:

"The ill person did not exhibit symptoms of Ebola during the flights from West Africa and CDC does not recommend that people on the same commercial airline flights undergo monitoring, as Ebola is only contagious if the person is experiencing active symptoms."

And how, pray, do they know that? -- that he did not sweat (body fluid), nor throw up or have diarrhea in the john (either on one of the planes, or at one of the airports)?  They don’t;  and worse, given their proven predilection for cover-up, it is by no means a given that, if they had contrary information in their possession, they would share it.

Coming soon to a hospital near U !

(3)  Since the beginning of this slowly swelling crisis, the bien-pensant media coverage has worn two faces.

(a) As regards the threat to Africa:  This is the most deadly event since Noah’s Flood!  Man every resource -- send doctors, send nurses, send troops, spare no expense! This should be the #1 priority of the West!

(b) As regards the threat to the West:  Nothing to worry about;  way overblown; nothing to see here, move along.

As one reader commented, re an article revealing that now an NBC cameraman has been infected:

Was the journalist working as a cameraman handling bodily fluids of Ebola patients? I don't know about you folks but I am beginning to doubt that Ebola is as difficult to contract as we've been told. There are just too many bodies piling up for transmission to be as difficult as they want us to believe.

(4)  Saudi Arabia banned people in affected African countries  from attending the current hajj.  Several African counties likewise imposed travel bans against their west African sisters.  The USA has not had the courage to do so -- its will perhaps sapped by decades of spineless refusal to seal our borders against illegal immigrants.   (And don’t just blame Obama -- Dubya was even worse.)

If the Dallas outbreak were to spin out of control, then  just as with the case of the White House intruder (and sniper, and elevator-rider), it may wind up having a salutory effect, as the public finally says, Enough!

(5)  The US itself is actually not especially vulnerable to travelers bringing in Ebola:  there are no direct flights from Liberia;  the journey of the traveler to Dallas had several legs, and he could have been stopped at any one.

The flight information for the Ebola patient diagnosed in Texas will not be released by health officials because "It's just not necessary," a spokesperson at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told ABC News.

Flights from the airport in the Liberian capital of Monrovia fly to only six destinations -- four in West and Central Africa, one flight to Morocco and one flight to Brussels, Belgium. There are no direct flights into the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport from any of those six destinations, meaning that man had to make at least one more change

http://abcnews.go.com/US/cdc-release-ebola-patients-flight-information/story?id=25890108

As it happens, his first stop was Brussels.   Had he been stopped there, he would have become Belgium’s problem:  and even less than the US does the EU have the guts to send home those who slip across their borders from abroad.  (There would even be a certain poetic justice to that, since “Brussels” is synonymous with European Union bien-pensance.)

So, now suppose that Belgium gets its man-card, and bans flights from the affected countries of West Africa.  Well, all the infected person has to do is to fly to one of the other five African destinations.   So suppose Belgium were to ban all flights from Africa.   At that point, America could largely rest easy, protected as it is by a whole ocean;  but Europe would still be in peril.  After all, many thousands of Africans enter Europe illegally every year.  Indeed, in response to pressure from the politically-correct, Italy effectively set up a trans-Mediterranean maritime “taxi service”, paid for by the smiling Italian taxpayers.   All you have to do is to make it into something that floats, then send out a distress signal (with no cumbersome temperature-checks on the Maghreb side);  the misnamed Italian “Guardia”  Costiera will rush to pick you up;  in-cruise peanuts served free of charge.  (That doesn’t mean they’ll take care of you once you hit Italy;  but they will helpfully point out the quickest route to France, and perhaps even give you a free ticket.  Once there, French taxpayers joyfully welcome the new arrivals, in anticipation of shuffling them on further to Angleterre.  But the Brits, burned by the bombings, haven’t been so welcoming of late;  and so the human cargo in Calais, sits and stews.)

Note:  That self-inflicted ferry-service is ironically named Mare Nostrum;  a more accurate title would be Mare Vestrum.   You can read about it here:

Cruori spumantem

So, if Ebola Tourism does become the next big thing, Europe will likely be ravaged long before we are.

[Update 6 Oct 2014]  France is beginning to realize its unusually high vulnerability:

http://www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/0203832788384-le-risque-quebola-atteigne-la-france-est-eleve-1050056.php

Since, however, the current Socialist government has shown no inclination to defend the nation against various foreign plagues, it will probably do nothing now.

  

[Update 7 October 2014]  And now this, from Le Figaro:

l'Hexagone est le deuxième pays le plus à risque d'avoir un cas importé de la maladie, derrière le Ghana.

Ghana!

[Update 9 October 2014]   Likewise vulnerable is Spain, via their enclave of Melilla in Morocco.   For reasons of political correctness, Spain has refrained from erecting an adequate barrier, so that the one they have is often scaled or knocked down.  Just yesterday, over three hundred sub-Saharans assaulted the enclave at several points simultaneously (apparently coordinated by traffickers) -- some over the wall, some coming into the port on a float.   All this in the hope (which in the past has repeatedly been fulfilled) of being sent on their merry way to Spain, courtesy of the taxpayer, legality be damned, and with all the diseases they might be carrying.  Melilla itself lacks appropriate specialized hospital facilities, and has requested them, in the face of the continued refusal on the part of the Spanish government  to defend the enclave, or to allow it to defend itself.  (Indeed, just a few days ago, yet another bisounours European commission delivered a tut-tut report against the Melillian (and Moroccan) authorities  for insufficient TLC towards the invaders.

(6)  There has been some speculation that al-Qaeda or (more likely) ISIL, might dispatch ebola-infected operatives to the West.  Indeed, given their predilection for suicide ops, an istishhâdi might even deliberately court infection -- just as some have strapped on the belt, or allowed themselves to be shtupped up the keister with explosives.   Further, AQ has for years been interested in, and sometimes actively working on, poisons and pathogens -- particularly ricin, which is, however not contagious.  For certain, the current band of decapitators would have no moral qualms about such an attack.

ISIL favors maximal effect from minimalist means -- like that Tweet from Syria that set all Australia on its ear.   They could even implement such an attack (since they have a hankering for the picturesque) as a kind of “I Love You” Bug v. 2.0 : simply go around hugging and kissing every American you meet, posing for selfies.  (Les Roms in Paris have a similar scam: sidling up to tourists with a sob story about how oppressed they are, while a confederate steals your cellphone, wallet, and passport.)   Or they could imitate the mindless followers of that Indian guru in Oregon, who went around spraying pathogens on salad-bars:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_attack

If so, that would not be the first time an alien cult had launched a bioattack in CONUS.

(7)  Just as defending against a missile once it has been launched, is much dicier than taking it out while it is still on the ground,  so too, we need to consider protecting ourselves via action closer to the source -- before the effects have radiated beyond reach.

The international transportation system has also proved to have porous screening procedures. In an indication that current safety procedures are relying heavily on the honesty of travelers and the diligence of airport workers, the chairman of the Liberian national airport authority… said Thursday that Mr. Duncan had been deceptive about his exposure to the virus when he flew out of Roberts International Airport in Monrovia on Sept. 19.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/dallas-ebola-case-thomas-duncan-contacts.html

Well, perhaps the Roberts International Airport  needs to become a bit less international for a while.

Several commentors have sighed online  that there is nothing the US can do about the Monrovia airport.   On the contrary, we could shut it down in a heartbeat, if the Liberian government refuses to do so.   In fact, we already have boots on the ground who could do it, with more on the way:

The United States has made the largest contribution and is sending 3,000 troops to Liberia to assist with healthcare logistics. It is the biggest military operation for America in Africa since withdrawing forces from Somalia in 1993.

http://www.voanews.com/content/us-troops-help-liberia-combat-ebola-/2465887.html

 

I’m not saying we necessarily should do that;  merely, that this whimpering that “there’s nothing that can be done” is pitiful.

(8)  Just happened upon this comment from an alert reader:

What is more scary, Ebola or the cdc. As we have seen so many times lately they are just another incompetent govt body now or soon will be. Are they not the same ones that allowed the prez. to ride a elevator with a three time convicted gun holding criminal.

That is true;  the President was visiting CDC in Atlanta when that contractor was allowed into the elevator.

So, the Secret-Service Scandals story and the Dallas Ebola Scandal  intersect at an additional node.

[Update 4 October 2014]  Political correctness can kill:

Federal officials flatly rejected the idea of expanding the screening of passengers arriving from West Africa, and said they would not support calls for a ban on travel to the United States from countries being ravaged by the disease.

[Update 5 October 2014]  After previous assurances that the Dallas health authorities had quarantined everyone who’d been in close contact with Patient Zero after he became fully symptomatic,  this just in:

Authorities in Dallas are looking for a man who had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola in a Dallas hospital.

"We have our Dallas County Sheriff's Department and Dallas Police Department teams on the ground," Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said in a statement. "We are working to locate the individual and get him to a comfortable, compassionate place where we can monitor him and care for his every need for the full incubation period."

The Dallas Morning News reports the man, who may be homeless, was in the ambulance that took Duncan to the hospital.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/10/05/353889266/authorities-in-dallas-looking-for-man-who-had-contact-with-ebola-patient

The only reason I cite that, is because it is so exactly like the sort of plot twist that the TV show “24” used to pull repeatedly out of a hat, so that the plot could go chugging forward for a full 24 episodes (as it did, back in the Golden Age) even after some situation had seemingly been resolved.  It always seemed contrived; sometimes such incidents do happen.

(You can almost film the sequel in your own head:  Cut to a dazed-looking hobo, shuffling along skid row.   A sidewalk-sitter invites him to share some Ripple.  As he puts the bottle to his lips, we notice that sweat is breaking out on this forehead, some of it dripping on to the bottle, which he hands back to his host, who takes a long swig…)

Cinematic footnote:  A similar fantasy has already been very well filmed.   The movie is called “12 Monkeys”.

L'Armée des douze singes 

Update 6 October 2014]  Slowly, slowly, they are coming around.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/06/epidemiologist-stop-the-flights-now/

[Update 7 October 2014]  The qualms that some leading scientists have about po-faced CDC happytalk  is finally being allowed to make it into the mainstream media.  An abundance of testimony here:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ebola-questions-20141007-story.html#navtype=outfit

[Update 8 October 2014] Draw your own conclusions:

(1) In Madrid, una auxiliar de enfermería (“nurse’s aide”, which the American press continues to misreport as a “nurse”) contracted ebola from a dying patient, though she had only been in his room twice -- the second time, after his death.   The details of how she got it (apparently touching her face with a glove) don’t matter in this connection;  what matters is that she was a health professional, with many years experience in the field, and working at a premier Spanish hospital, with intense media attention on the case.   In short, conditions where you would be on your best behavior.

(2)  The U.S. is sending thousands of soldiers into harm’s way in West Africa.  With few exceptions, these guys are not health workers by training, let alone with years of experience in the field.

Your assignment:  Consider the implications of these two facts.

.

France through the eyes of Medi1

One of the more popular posts among French visitors to this site, is the periodically updated France Through the Eyes of the New YorkTimes.  It tells Americans something about their own journalism, and a little about France.  It tells the French how the Yanks are slanting, sifting, simplifying French affairs.

On the whole, over the years, the New York Times has had spotty but revealing coverage of France.  There is no-one now like Janet Flanner of The New Yorker, back in “Genêt” days, whose regular dispatches were eagerly awaited.  But you do learn things worth knowing, including, occasionally, things that Le Monde won’t tell you.

There is a very well-run Franco-Moroccan radio venture, Medi 1, which I listen to nightly on the Internet -- always the French-language news broadcast, and often the Arabic.  Apart from linguistic factors, the French-language coverage is somewhat more accessible to Westerners;  though neither side of the house is polemical or even especially politicized, they are not sentence-for-sentence translational equivalents.  For instance, in French,  Spain’s enclaves amid Moroccan territory, Ceuta and Melilla, are called just that;  whereas in the Arabic version, they are always dutifully referred to as “occupied” Ceuta and Melilla.   The French channel in general gives the impression of treading a little less gingerly.

~

At the moment, however, there is a story at the top of French-Moroccan news (nary a ripple on this side of the pond) about which Medi1 will leave you more ignorant than before.  The story, as reported there (or rather, skirted-around there) has clearly been madly mangled -- politically strangled -- to the point of complete incomprehensibility to anyone who didn’t already independently know what the score was.    Apart from any political interest, the phenomenon is intriguing to a linguist or literary critic, as presenting a clear case in which, purely from internal textual evidence, and knowing nothing of the background, you can tell that this journalism is nonsense.

Thus, tonight’s story reported that Morocco is in a huff against France, and is withdrawing certain of its legates, and breaking off some aspect of diplomatic relations, and generally lecturing the French about elementary diplomatic duties and decencies.  What-all might have brought this on, the listener can only wonder;  you are simply left with the general impression that France, or perhaps specially its diplomatic corps, has recently perpetrated acts too unspeakable to mention.   Whether this involved ambassadorial carnal connection with the local shepherds and their sheep, or simply using the wrong fork at the fish course at a state dinner, is left to the imagination.

If, however, you have been faithfully listening daily, as I do, you would have heard, early on, something about the scandal whose effects are still being felt (and even escalating), but which is no longer allowed to be explicitly or even obliquely described on Medi1.  Namely, an incident of torture is said, or alleged, or said to have been intimated to have been rumored to have occurred,  recently  on Moroccan soil, in which a High French Official  was somehow implicated or involved.  Just in what way, was never hinted at;  however, the student of history recalls French such actions in Algeria during the war, so who knows.   I came away with a vague impression that, while the HFO (as we shall call him, otherwise nameless, his sinister shadow sliding fleetingly along the alley wall), while perhaps not having personally applied the electric prods or heated tongs or whatever, had anyhow ordered the torture, or overseen it, or perhaps simply handed over someone who stood in French disfavor  to Moroccan authorities for them to do as they pleased (wink wink) -- cf. CIA renditions to Egypt.  Though in that last case, objectively, the bulk of the blame would rest with the Moroccans, and they aren’t acknowledging any fault.

*

Travaillant au noir,

le détective  se trouve aux prises

avec le Saint-Esprit

C’est quoi, le péché irrémissible???

*

To find out what actually happened, you have to turn to another news source.  Let’s take Le Figaro:

À l'origine de cette crise, trois plaintes déposées à Paris la semaine dernière contre le patron du contre-espionnage marocain, Abdellatif Hammouchi, pour «torture» …  Sept policiers se sont rendus à la résidence de l'ambassadeur marocain à Paris pour notifier à Abdellatif Hammouchi, dont la présence avait été rapportée, une convocation émanant d'un juge d'instruction. Le Maroc, furieux, reproche notamment aux autorités françaises d'avoir ignoré les canaux diplomatiques.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2014/02/25/01003-20140225ARTFIG00045-tension-diplomatique-entre-la-france-et-le-maroc.php

You ... will ... tell ... me ...  everything ...

[Philological footnote: Abdellatif Hammouchi is a big fish, the head of Moroccan domestic intelligence.  Ironically, his given-name means, in Arabic,  ‘servant of the Gentle, the Merciful’. ]

In other words:  France itself was in no way implicated in the torture, which is purely a Moroccan matter, and probably had no notion of it, but is merely responding, as it legally must, to three formal complaints, with a view to finding out what might have happened.   Morocco’s objection is that France did not discreetly hush the whole thing up -- though lord knows, the French have hardly been trumpeting it;  what made the headlines were not the unproved allegations, but the over-the-top Moroccan diplomatic response.   In general, France is very discreet and complicitous with regard to the shenanigans of its Third World semi-allies, but they do have to draw the line somewhere, when the latter are so indiscreet.   The message is:  Do whatever you like in your own country, but please do not send your top torturers to visit in France;  it embarrasses us.

For a glimpse at that latter aspect of French diplomacy, cf. now this:

La France a démenti mercredi les propos prêtés à son ambassadeur à l'Onu qui ont provoqué un incident diplomatique entre Rabat et Paris, dont les relations sont déjà envenimées par des plaintes contre le patron du renseignement marocain.

L'acteur espagnol Javier Bardem, partisan d'un référendum d'autodétermination du Sahara occidental, une ancienne colonie espagnole au Maroc, a fait état dans Le Monde d'une conversation qu'il aurait eue en 2011 avec Gérard Araud.

"Le Maroc est une maîtresse avec laquelle on dort toutes les nuits, dont on n'est pas particulièrement amoureux mais qu'on doit défendre. Autrement dit, on détourne les yeux", lui aurait alors dit l'ambassadeur.

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/topnews/20140226.REU1659/paris-dement-les-propos-anti-marocains-pretes-a-son-ambassadeur.html

[Update 5 avril 2014]  Morocco blusters back:

http://www.lejdd.fr/International/Maghreb/Mohammed-VI-contre-attaque-sur-la-torture-660399

Linguistic pollution (mise à jour)

[Sept 2011] The media seems so far uncertain, whether the victors in Tunisia’s elections, Ennahda (i.e., Hizb al-Nahda

حزب النهضة 

‘the Renaissance party’) are “moderates” or “Islamists” or both.  But recent remarks of its leader, Rached al-Ghannoochi [pron. RASH-id al-ghan-NOO-shee]  give one pause:

Soufflant le chaud et le froid, il a regretté que les Tunisiens soient devenus «franco-arabes» dans la pratique du langage. «Nous sommes arabes et notre langue c'est la langue arabe», a-t-il martelé. «On est devenu franco-arabe, c'est de la pollution linguistique», a déploré le chef d'Ennahda, reprenant un des thèmes de prédilection du Front islamique du salut en Algérie au début des années quatre-vingt-dix. Formé en Égypte et en Syrie puis exilé vingt ans à Londres, Rached Ghannouchi parle anglais couramment mais ne maîtrise pas le français qui est encore largement pratiqué depuis l'indépendance dans les milieux éduqués tunisiens.

Executive summary:  the Arabic language is polluted by French.

*

Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

*

English, of course, has been in this pickle ever since 1066.  Of the three main words in the phrase “the language is polluted by French”, only one is not of French origin -- the word French itself, cognate with Frankish, named for the Germanic tribe, the Franks.  Yet somehow our Saxon tongue manages to hobble along regardless.

The liberal response is to shrug, at most to scold.  Yet notice this vigorous, and to an American probably unexpected response from a reader:

Moi je dis bravo les tunisiens, vous avez une identité, vous avez une culture et vous voulez la garder, c'est tout à votre honneur.
La mondialisation ne vous amènera rien, restez tunisiens de souche, et n'ayez pas honte.
Nous en France on fait l'inverse, et on va même beaucoup plus loin! Etre fier d'être blanc, en France, c'est du racisme ! Admettre qu'on a une histoire chrétienne, c'est injuste. On a même viré Charles Martel de nos bouquins d'histoire, pour pas irriter nos immigrés (tant pis si c'est notre histoire)...
Cette préférence étrangère s'estompera un jour. A aller dans un sens à l'extrême (par intérêt politique principalement, pas par noblesse), vous verrez qu'on basculera dans l'autre sens à l'extrême, et la ca sera écoeurant ...

This is the sort of text which future historians will unearth, shaking their heads, as a sour smoke rises from the embers …

For more on the dimensions of these tensions, click here.

*

Travaillant au noir,

le détective  se trouve aux prises

avec le Saint-Esprit

C’est quoi, le péché irrémissible???

*

~     ~     ~

Further politico-linguistic comments from readers:

Pour ma part je suis plutot favorable à ce genre de mesure, en effet étant Alsacien je me desole de ce que nous parlions ici En Alsace , une langue étrangere à notre culture d'origine, l'allemand et l'alsacien, et qui de facto nous met au chomage en raison des nombreux emplois qui nous échappent au Baden-Württemberg et en Suisse Alémanique, la france n'assurant pas quant à elle sa part de notre développement , trop occupée à nous pomper notre fric.

[NDLR:  The reference is to Alsatia, part of Alsace-Lorraine -- or,  teutonice, Elsaß-Lothringen.  It was long a political football before winding up permanently in French hands.  As my Romance-philology teacher Yakov Malkiel used to sigh, linguistically the situation is quite simple:  Alsatia is German-speaking, Lorraine is French.  They could have split the difference and spared us all a couple of world wars.]

Vive l'anglophonie. Ghannouchi n'est pas un "franalphabète": il passé 25 ans à London.

La Tunisie doit se débarrasser des vestiges de la colonisation:

- remplacer le français par l'anglais.

 

[NDLR:   I assumed this -- from an anglo-named poster -- was meant as a gonzo provocation, tongue in cheek -- or rather, protruding from the lips.  Yet the same sentiment is reiterated more moderately by another poster:]

En tant que tunisien, je suis favorable à la surpression de la langue française de notre système éducatif. Les plus intelligents ont déjà compris que l'anglais est la langue d'avenir. Sincèrement, le français devient un vrai obstacle pour notre avancement et notre ouverture au monde.

Que dire aux 500 000 tunisiens qui vivent en France et aux étudiants qui viennent dans nos grandes écoles ou universités, justement parce qu'ils n'ont pas de pb de langue, ils sont en effet bilingues dans les classes éduquées.

[NDLR: The same remarks apply mutatis mutandis to English:  a world language, and a gift to the world.]

Le français est aussi truffé de mots anglais...

[NDLR:  Far, far less than the other way around.]

Le français est une langue synthétique ( mélange de latin, grec, patois ) à l'orthographe bordélique et grammaire infernale.
l'arabe une langue pure. Ecriture consonnatique normalisée ( on vous fait grace des voyelles ). Grammaire cartésienne.

[NDLR:  We address such questions in the chapter “Thumbnail Sketches of Arabic” in our book, The Semantics of Form in Arabic, in the Mirror of European Languages.  Also available in Arabic translation.]

L'espace tunisien a été phénicien, romain, vandale, byzantin   puis arabe, turque et français. Jusque dans les années 600 et la conquête arabo-musulmane, il fut le phare africain du christiannisme. Tout au long de cette Histoire, une seule constante : le peuple original de la Tunisie, les Berbères, païens longtemps résistants, et leur langue. La seule langue que devraient revendiquer aujourd'hui les Tunisiens pour affirmer leur identité. L'arabe est une langue importée, comme le français.

[NDLR:  This is historically quite true, though to propose Berber (which dialect?) as the sole language of any country, is a reductio ad absurdam of the politique identitaire.]

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Pour d’autres friandises

de la confiserie 

du docteur Justice,

consultez:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

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[Update 15 VII 2012] More on al-Nahdah:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2012/07/15/01003-20120715ARTFIG00100-tunisie-ennahda-fait-passer-le-pouvoir-avant-l-ideologie.php

[Update 2 December 2013]  On discute beaucoup de ces jours, au Maroc, si l’on devrait évincer l’arabe classique  (الفصحى) dans les écoles, au profit “du” dialectal.    Or, comme avance Omar Saghi, docteur ès sciences politiques, il n’y en a pas qu’un:  la langue populaire diffère de région en région, voire de ville en ville même au dedans des confins du Maroc.

Ici sa conférence

http://www.medi1.com/player/player.php?i=5682442