text:
Forgetting 2019: A Poem
[Prefatory Note: At this age, having exhausted prose options, I indulge myself during holidays, by sharing poems that seek also your indulgence. I searched 2019 forsome glimmers of good news, and felt stymied. Of course, here, there, everywhere there were glorious private exceptions, yet hovering over the public marketplaces ofthe world I cringe beneath menacing storm clouds and below chaos and misery, and catastrophes waiting to happen. It is this spirit that I looked back on 2019, and yet reject despair, and pledge to fight for what I believe in 2020 with the conviction that it can happen, and of course should happen.]
asphalt rain
darkens green fields
eco-extinction
flares Amazon skies
fake leaders slithering
toward real dangers
seek safe havens
gated nations
hiding from truth
screaming 'no'
migrants fleeing despair
pleading 'please'
hiding from evils
defending genocide
this fallen Nobelist
broadcasting abroad
her deadly message
two centuries ago
arrived in our midst
singing aloud
bewilderingly
of America's future
later lost to predators
seizing their loot
robbing the land
turning dreams
to wilting flowers
our grief becomes
a betrayed destiny
tainted at birth
natives driven
off their sacred land
of holy innocence
the trusted voice
of Toni Morrison
is gone not lost
if we listen
all not yet all
lost futureless
nested eggs contain
our only hope
of what may yet come
of what to renounce
let's start with gold
then learn not to hate
keep love joy truth
Tags: 2019, America, Forgetting 2019, Poem, Walt Whitman
Categories 2019, Commentary, Forgetting 2019, Reflections, Toni Morrison
What Drives Anti-Semitism? The Authentic and the Spurious
[Prefatory Note: This is a modified version of an earlier text published in TMS (Transcend Media Service) in the December 23-29, 2019 edition. For the sake of discouraging anti-Semitism and restoring freedom of expression in Western constitutional democracies denouncing the branding of those in solidarity with struggles for justice and rights on behalf of the Palestinian people should be high on the policy agenda of 2020, and yet we have so far heard only the silence of the lambs in the debates of Democrats seeking the presidential nomination.]
Only the most regressive rendering of tribalist solidarity can explain labeling those
who oppose Israel's abusive treatment of the Palestinian people as 'anti-Semites.'
We look upon Aung San Suu Kyi's failure to condemn the Myanmar abuse
of the Rohingya as casting the darkest of clouds over her Nobel Peace Prize. It
is an insult to Jews and others to allow Zionists, Evangelical, and Trumpsters to brand solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, or even empathy with the Palestinian people long enduring the denial of their most basic rights as a new species of anti-Semitism.
There is little doubt that real anti-Semitism, in the sense of hatred of Jews, has increased
in Europe and North America in the last decade of so. But the nature of why this is happening, and what is its true nature, are especially obscure, and subject to manipulations. Part of this obscurity is deliberate, arising from orchestrated efforts to label criticism of Israel or Zionist tactics and ideology as anti-Semitic, or in some usages as expressive of the 'New Anti-Semitism.' This extension of the scope of anti-Semitism seems designed to inhibit responsible opposition to Israel's conduct in defiance of international law and, further, to make European Jews feel insecure enough in their country of residence so that they would consider emigrating to Israel, which in recent years has experienced a net outflow of Jews.
The essence of the new anti-Semitism is rooted in the definition proposed by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (or IHRA), which blends strong criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews or the Jewish people. President Donald Trump incorporated this IHRA definition into his Executive Order issued on Dec. 11, 2019 that is coupled with lawfare assaults by the US Government and right-wing Zionist organizations on respected American campus initiatives that critically address the Israel/Palestine conflict, including having students and faculty actively engaged in such nonviolent solidarity initiatives in support of the Palestinian quest for basic rights as the BDS Campaign. One recent example of this government pushback are calls for an investigation of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University because some of its members are BDS supporters.
The IHRA definition is elaborated in terms of signs of anti-Semitism as supposedly manifested in criticism of Israel. One of these signs set forth to illustrate the scope of the IHRA definition is singling out of Israel for criticism or coercive acts when its behavior is not worse than that of other human rights violators. This is the basis for the alleged link between BDS and anti-Semitism. Yet in no other context is this kind of test administered, nor is the severity of Israeli wrongdoing ever mentioned or taken into account. Recalling the anti-apartheid campaign against South Africa of 30 years ago, it should be remembered that apologists for apartheid then similarly contended that conditions for black Africans in South Africa were better than elsewhere in the sub-Saharan region. Such contentions were argumentative, but were never used to stifle anti-apartheid activism in foreign countries, including a robust anti-apartheid BDS Campaign in North America and Europe, which many observers believe contributed to the unexpected reversal of course by the Afrikaner leadership in Pretoria that opened gates to achieving transition to a peaceful post-apartheid South Africa, constitutionally premised on racial equality and human dignity for all.
In my experience, the worst overall effects of this effort to stigmatize anti-Israeli speech and activism as anti-Semitism is not its punitive dimensions that target programs and individuals in unfair and harmful ways, but the larger informal and mostly invisible atmosphere of intimidation and silent discrimination that is produced. Already timid academic and institutional administrators are alerted to avoid conference proposals, speaker invitations, and faculty appointments if there exists a plausible prospect of attack, or even criticism, by Zionist watchdog groups. I am sure others have tales along these lines to tell, but in my own case, I have experienced and heard about many such instances. Only a few attain visibility, which can happen when a previously arranged meeting space is cancelled due to backroom pressure or an event is called off because of alleged security concerns. This happened to me in relation to a London launch tour of my book on Israel/Palestine two years ago when stories were circulated, and threats made, of planned disruptions as a way of inducing cancellations, which did occur at two universities. Some of these planned events did go forward, including a somewhat stormy session at the London School of Economics where during the discussion period shouting and hostile behavior by supporters and critics of Israel in the audience were viewed as threatening public order, but the meeting went on to its end. I was told that later on, LSE reacted by adopting stricter regulations to ensure balance in presentations and an entirely neutral identity of the moderator, which is an institutional signal designed to discourage controversial subject-matter. This is bad enough, but I think the real effect of these experiences is to make faculty and administrators think twice before supporting events perceived as critical of Israel or in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. My impression is that the indirect effects of this Zionist pushback is having a more significant inhibiting impact on academic freedom and freedom of expression than the shockingly suppressive initiatives being adopted by legislative bodies in such leading countries as France, Germany, and soon Britain, as well as the United States.
One of the supposed anti-Semitic tropes has been the contention over the centuries that Jews exercise disproportionate influence on public policy in ways that are harmful to the general wellbeing of society. It hard to interpret the success of concerted Zionist and Israeli efforts to adopt the IHRA definition and approach as other than a confirmation of this charge, validating grounds for public concern about the excessive influence wielded by Jews. Two prominent centrist political scientists, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote a very academic study a decade ago to show how the Israeli Lobby in the United States was influencing foreign policy undertakings in ways inimical to national interests. (The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007)) Whether true or not, and I believe it was true, the authors were unjustly vilified even in 2003 for daring to raise such questions about the extent, character, and policy effects of Jewish influence, and although leaders in their field, undoubtedly paid for ever more, subtle hidden career prices. It should be noted that targeting Muslims, which is more common and vicious in Europe and North America, than what has been experienced by Jews, has produced no comparable official condemnations of Islamophobia.
More to the point in any effort to penetrate the penumbra of confusion surrounding this subject-matter is the near fanatical support of certain right-wing political orientations for Israel, while simultaneously pursuing an anti-Semitic agenda. This is the widely known case for many Christian evangelical groups who read the Book of Revelations as promising a Second Coming of Jesus once Israel is reestablished and Jews return, then being given an option of converting or facing damnation. Actually, this seeming tension, almost the opposite of the supposed fusion of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic attitudes in the IHRA approach, actually has deep roots in the pre-Israeli experience of the Zionist Movement. From the start of the British Mandate the Jewish minority in Palestine was under 10%, hardly the basis for a feasible basis to establish a Jewish state in an essentially Arab society in a historical period in which European colonialism was being widely discredited, and starting to collapses. Zionists appreciated the odds against realizing their goals, and resolved by all means to overcome thiis disabling demographic inferiority, especially as national legitimacy seemed connected in both their vision and wider international public opinion with democratic procedures of governance, which in this instance, presupposed a Jewish voting majority.
As a result, Zionists did everything in their power to induce diaspora Jews to move to Palestine, even resorting to striking Faustian Bargains with outrageously anti-Semitic regimes in Europe, including even the Nazi government in Germany. This dynamic of coerced and induced population transfer of Jews is documented on the basis of archival research in The State of Terror (2016) by Thomas Suarez. Against this background the anti-Semitic card has been played in contradictory ways by Zionist hardliners, earlier useful to encourage Jewish immigration to Israel and recently to inhibit criticism of Israel, with the common element being opportunism, entailing a disregard of principle.
There is another reinforcing dimension of such policies that further discredits the IHRA approach. Israeli foreign policy even in circumstances where a Jewish state of Israel exists, and has been given constitutional status by the 2018 Basic Law: "Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People," there continues to be an Israeli willingness to overlook overt anti-Semitism in a foreign leader provided diplomatic friendship is accorded to Israel, or economic gains can be achieved. Viktor Orban of Hungary is the example most often cited, but the pattern seems to explain the choice of Modi, Bolsonaro, and Trump as Israel's preferred benefactors. Netanyahu's Israel reciprocates this friendship with arms deals and military/policy training to governments on the far right, and its ambassador to Myanmar recently went so far as to lend psychological support to the Myanmar Government's legal defense at the World Court against overwhelming evidence of genocide against the Muslim minority, Rohingya. While the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is justified as a check on forgetting the Holocaust, when non-Jews are the victims of genocide a quite different ethical calculus apparently applies. Forgetting genocides, while remembering the Holocaust, seems the tangled message that Israel and Zionist enforcers are sending to the world.
I think these various considerations make it plain that the current surge of emphasis on anti-Semitism is being driven by a combination of many crosscutting factors, some genuine, some fake. One of the more malignant developments in recent years is centered on this attempt to extend the scope of anti-Semitism beyond its core reference to hatred of and hostility toward Jews. In this broad sense, by classifying supporters of the human rights of the Palestinian peoples as anti-Semites there is both a loss of focus on hatred of Jews, combined with a deliberately misleading insistence that those who oppose Israeli apartheid and oppression are anti-Semitic. It seems evident that such distortions of the anti-Semitic discourse reflect the growth of civil society activism, critical of Israel, and reactive to Israel's expansionism and pointedly defiant posture toward criticisms by the UN and human rights organizations. The disgraceful effort to brand Jeremy Corbyn and the British Labour Party as anti-Semitic inserted an irrelevant toxic element into an electoral process in a leading democratic country, and is suggestive of the radiating implications of this irresponsible IHRA approach to anti-Semitism.
A final ground for suspicion about such tactics is the seemingly unconditional disregard of
Israel's behavior. Without such an inquiry, to brand opposition to Israel or solidarity with the Palestinian struggle as anti-Semitic is to engage in a destructive form of anti-democratic polemics that has the perverse secondary effect of encouraging real anti-Semitic behavior that deserves condemnation. Even the notoriously cautious prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has just announced that an investigation of criminal allegations relating to Israel's settlement activities on the West Bank and Gaza. Beyond this there is a growing consensus among those informed about the overall relationship between Israel and the Palestinian people (including those in refugee camps and exile) is accurately understood as based on apartheid structures of control. If this is a reasonable perception, then BDS and other solidarity initiatives are justifiable responses that deserve and need support and protection rather than being shamefully stigmatized as anti-Semitism, and compensate for the inability and unwillingness of established institutions to protect the basic rights of vulnerable people.
Tags: IHRA Definition, New Anti-Semitism, Smearing versus Hating, Zionism
Categories Commentary, IHRA Definition of New Anti-Semitism, Israel/Palestine, Reflections
Reconciling Ecological Imperatives and the Right to Food at a Time of Bio-Ethical Crisis
Reconciling Ecological Imperatives and the Right to Food at a Time of Bio-Ethical Crisis[1]
A Perspective
Humanity faces an unprecedented challenge in the coming decades that threatens the foundations of life itself, and yet to date societal reactions have been disappointingly weak and evasive, aside from voices in the wilderness. Despite expertly documented studies from the most qualified climate scientists, the overall response of supposedly responsible political and economic elites has been tepid, escapist, and even denialist. The United State Government has led the way toward doom by withdrawing from the 2015 UN Paris Climate Change Agreement, an international agreement that did not go far enough to meet the challenges of climate change, but it was an encouraging step in the right direction that was taken by virtually every government on the face of the earth. With nihilistic audacity the American president, Donald Trump, has formally withdrawn American participation in this international framework that mandates national reductions in carbon emissions with the overall objective of keeping global warming from increases above 2%, which is higher than the 1.5% that the scientific consensus proposes as necessary, but far lower than what we can expect if present emissions trends continue without significant cutbacks and regulatory oversight.
I wish to give attention to this extremely disturbing evolving situation by labeling it 'the first bio-ethical crisis to confront humanity.' It is bio-ethical in the primary sense that the challenges posed are fundamentally directed at the wellbeing and even survival of the species as a whole, which is a new occurrence for the human species. The crisis has an ethical character because knowledge and resources exist to overcome these challenges, and yet such suitable action is not taken. We need to ask 'why?' to discern the obstacles. In essence, these challenges to our human future could be addressed within the broad framework of a feasible reconfiguring of the industrial foundations and ethical outlook of modernity, and yet it is not happening. By having the knowledge of such a menacing future and yet choosing not to act is itself an ethical choice of the greatest magnitude. It is not as if a gigantic meteor was hurtling toward the earth with no known way of diverting its path or cushioning its impact. We know, and yet we lack the fortitude to act even for the sake of future generations that will suffer the main consequences of our profound irresponsibility.
Putting these concerns in the context of the right to food and food security generally, we are keenly aware that food and water are the most indispensable aspects to the right to life itself. We also realize that rights to material necessities are drained of meaning if extreme poverty deprives the poorest among us the purchasing power to purchase food that is affordable, sufficient, and nutritious. Although some governments are more protective of the vulnerable segments of their population than others, experience teaches us that social protection cannot be left to the good will of governments. Rights must be reinforced by practical remedies that are accessible to ordinary people, and can be successfully implemented. In many countries of the West where capitalism and fiscal austerity prevail, there is an ethically deficient ideological insistence on allowing the market to decide on the wellbeing of the members of society. This sends a perverse ethical message: the rich deserve their bounty, while the poor deserve their hardships. From such a strictly capitalist standpoint, pleading for the intervention of the state is alleged to make matters worse by imposing restraints on economic growth.
My attempt is to identify the obstacles, and suggest how these might be overcome. Put differently, we know what is wrong, we know what should be done, and yet it does not happen.
Further, the longer that it doesn't happen the more burdensome will be the adjustment, and there are risks that by not acting responsibly in the present, tipping points of irreversibility will be crossed making societal adjustments if not impossible, almost so. Illustratively, if diets now limited meat consumption by one or two meatless days a week, there might be some prospect of achieving ecological balance by gradual measures, but if diets are unregulated for the next two decades, adjustment to avert catastrophe may require a mandatory vegetarian diet.
Confronting the Obstacles: These obstacles overlap and reinforce one another, and should not be regarded as entirely distinct. Such an assessment suggest that an integrated and transformative approach should be developed to comprehend these four types of obstacles in an integrated and comprehensive manner, and what might be done to overcome them.
Ideological (1)
Our social relationship to food and agriculture deeply reflect the interplay of capitalism—maximizing profits and consumerism—which includes maximizing choice, identified positively as freedom. Interferences by governing authorities occur only if overwhelming demonstrations of adverse health effects can be demonstrated, but usually only after costly delays resulting from 'expert' reassurances on food safety given by corporate high paid consultants. Such market-driven patterns, fueled by advertising and addictive products produce unhealthy dietary habits throughout society, causing epidemics of obesity and many serious health issues.
Social concerns on an international level are understandably focused on avoiding humanitarian catastrophes in the form of mass starvation or famine. This kind of preoccupation places an emphasis on disaster relief and response to emergencies while ignoring the underlying ideological problem arising from distorted priorities of profits and unregulated markets over human health and ecological stability. The same forces that suppress and distort information pertaining to health are irresponsible abusers of environment, and disrupters of ecological balance. A vivid recent example is the burning of the Brazilian rainforest to satisfy market demands for high-yield logging and livestock farming, while undermining the viability of the rainforest as a major carbon capture resource and a precious storehouse of biodiversity.
Seeking to balance food security against these ecological concerns is often at odds with the human and global interest. The structures of authority that shape global policy are overwhelming responsive to national interests, and this includes the UN System. Again, using the example of Brazil giving priority to development over planetary dimensions with respect to the Amazon rainforest by deferring to claims of national sovereignty so as to override objections about the dangerous impacts of this behavior on global warming and ecological equilibrium. Despite the global scale of the effects of agriculture, particularly agro-business, there is no effective international mechanisms to achieve responsible behavior on a national level.
Even when governments cooperate for the public common good, as was the case with the Paris Climate Change Agreement (2015), the commitment is framed in an unenforceable and sovereignty respecting manner. This means that even if the pledges of reductions in carbon emissions were to be fulfilled, it would still fall short of what the respected IPCC Panel prescribes as essential to avoid dangerous, possibly catastrophic effects of further global warming. Similar considerations bear on meat consumption undertaken without any effort at achieving a global regulatory perspective. Such an approach is also shaken by irresponsible global leadership as currently exercised by the United States, epitomized by its recent support of Brazil's sovereignty claims with respect to the management of the Amazon rainforest and by the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement, creating dreadful precedents that will certainly affect poorer, more economically stressed countries, and eventually the rest of us. Why should a country confronted by a food and agriculture crisis, for instance, Zimbabwe, forego developmental opportunities by acting more ecologically responsible when the world's largest per capita carbon emitter is behaving so irresponsibly?
(3) Temporal
The most influential sources and structures of influence and authority have evolved in the modern period by being excessively attentive to short-term results. Such short-termism is associated with holding political leaders and corporate executives accountable to citizens and shareholder. Democracy rests on this proposition that voters get the chance every four years to heed the call that "it time for a change," or more crudely, 'throw the bastards out.' This pattern can be observed in the preoccupation of political leaders with the electoral cycles, which are seen as decisive when it comes to assessing performance. Even for non-democratic forms of governance short-term results shape views of whether the leadership should be supported and given signs of approval.
It is no different for the economy, which exhibits an even more pronounced tendency toward short-termism. Most corporate and financial executives are judged by quarterly balance sheets when it comes to performance, and given little or no credit by shareholders and hedge fund managers for normative achievements relating to health, safety, and environment.
The importance of longer horizons of accountability is a consequence of the character of current world order challenges, with preservation of environment, avoidance of human-generated climate change, and maintenance of ecosystem stability being illustrative of the growing importance of thinking further ahead than in the past, especially when it comes to government and private sector behavior. Yet to propose such an adjustment is far easier than it is to envision how such temporal adjustments to human and ecological wellbeing could be brought about. These clusters of concerns bear directly on all dimensions of food and agricultural policy. In earlier periods adverse change from mismanagement and shortsightedness led to relatively local and national, or at most regional, harm, but the threats at this time are more systemic, totalistic, and more costly to reverse or correct. Such issues as land use, pesticides, herbicides, soil preservation, genetically modified foods, and agricultural production priorities suggest how crucial it has become to plan in a time frame that is as sensitive as possible to the precautionary principle as it applies to risk management, and thus relates to all aspects of food policy.
(4) Normative
In considering these broad issues of risk and choice in a food context we encounter a distinctive array of normative concerns of an ethical, legal, and even spiritual character. At issue most basically is the way humanity interacts with nature. Modernity, with its vision of progress resting on science and technology, regarded the natural surrounding as a series of venues useful for exploitation to enrich human society. That path brought us many interim benefits and pleasures, but it also set in motion trends that over time have produced the current bio-ethical crisis that challenges, as never before, the future wellbeing and even survival of the human species. It is relevant even in this circumstance of bio-ethical crisis to alter our way of seeing so that it encompasses ecological wellbeing in addition to human wellbeing. It is my belief that this kind of ecological consciousness as an alternative to anthropocentric orientations will provide human society with also yield benefits of a spiritual nature that go beyond meeting the materialist challenges of human existence, thus reenchanting the human experience with meaning and purpose in ways that the great religions did in the past.
Food and agriculture provide the vital linkages between this search for better forms of coexistence between nature and human experience, what pre-modern society often achieved but lost with the advent of modernity. Translating such a vision into practical policies is the work of specialists and those who are attuned both to human and ecological imperatives, but whose guidance will fail unless leaders in all spheres of collective existence are held accountable by popular will, strengthened by activism and education, so as to be properly attuned to the complex interplay of human activity and the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth.
A Concluding Plea
Pointing toward a desired reconciliation between ecological imperatives and the fulfillment of the right to food requires our attention, as well as our moral and political imagination. From such a perspective I offer these suggestions:
–applying the precautionary principle in all policymaking arenas with an awareness of the need to reconcile food and agricultural policy with ecological imperatives;
–identify the obstacles to such a reconciliation with a stress on the human as distinct from the national, on the ecological as distinct from the anthropocentric, on the intermediate and long-term as distinct from the short-term;
–without minimizing the magnitude of the challenges or the resistance of the obstacles find hope in 'a politics of impossibility'; many historical developments from the collapse of colonialism to the collapse of apartheid in South Africa and repressive communism in Soviet Russia demonstrate that 'the impossible happens.' As a result, the future is uncertain to the extent that we have an opportunity and a related responsibility to act as if what seems impossible can still be made to happen. Such is our situation, such is our hope.
[1] Remarks as modified, first presented at "The 2nd International Agricultural & Food Congress,"
25 October 2019, Izmir, Turkey.
Tags: Agriculture, Capitalism, consumerism, Ecological Challenges, For Security, Imposing Limits on Food Policy
Categories Capitalist Constraints, Commentary, Ecological Constraints, food security, Reflections, Right to Food
Learning from Others (about racism in German and the American South)
Learning from Others: Germans and White Supremacists
Susan Neiman has written a remarkable book, Learning from Others: Race and the Problem of Evil (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019). What makes it remarkable is the clarity, approach, and particular angles of interpretation taken toward racism, exploring with depth and originality the mystifying evil realities of prolonged lethal racist behavior, with a focus on its toxic longevity, and the importance of learning how its legacy in particular contexts might be best addressed. Neiman brings to bear her knowledge and craft as a professional philosopher, who at the same time philosophizes in an instructive manner that is far removed from the fixations on language and logic that is the mainstay of contemporary Western philosophy, whether Anglo-American or Continental. In this regard her stance toward philosophy is also a therapeutic undertaking that in its own way seems as vexing as is racism itself. In her own relevant words of lamentation, "(T)here was a time when American philosophers brought passion and clarity to the major social and political events of their day." (261) She illustrates this observation by reference to Emerson and Thoreau, who in their time not only decried slavery, but supplemented their moral condemnation by engaging in acts of nonviolent and unlawful solidarity. Such is Neiman's engagement with her challenging subject-matter.
Neiman insists that her preoccupation with evil is not so strange for a traditional philosopher. She is, as always, clear about her work being situated in what was once the philosophical mainstream: "How should we live in a world riven with evil? Is the question that has driven philosophy from its beginnings." (18) Surely, this is one of the questions, but is it the question? I have my doubts. And certainly, the main philosophical work of the past century has dwelled on evil here and there. It is my impression that the most influential Anglo-American philosophers during my lifetime have made it almost dogma to avoid altogether the challenge of evil as a dimension of the human condition.
A further feature of Nieman's book, not often encountered in a self-consciously 'philosophical' book, is the insinuation of autobiographical details that express her personal connection with the argument being advanced. She informs readers at the very outset: "I began life as a white girl in the segregated South and I am likely to end it as a Jewish woman in Berlin." (3) And she finishes her book by describing the failure of her attempt to live with her children in Israel. She was put off by what she experience of Israel's tribalism, and this discomfort occurred despite the rather strong sense of Jewishness and its traditions that informs her worldview. That she feels more at home in Berlin than in Tel Aviv is both significant and intriguing, and goes along with her obvious tough love engagement with the deep South, especially the state of Mississippi. I suppose part of an explanation is an obsession with the occurrence of evil, how it happens, how it can be overcome, and above all how might the evil genie be returned to its bottle, although without minimizing the risks of a future escape as part of a justification for the preoccupation. In this sense, Learning from Others, can be read as citizen engagement on behalf of avoiding the recurrence of racism and other evils, or put crudely, as a way of taking seriously the rather flip slogan, 'Never Again!.' Her sense of citizenship, it strike me, centers on working to sustain freedom and a democratic spirit, in essence, a neo-Jeffersonian commitment to the 'eternal vigilance' Jefferson believed vital if democracy was remain true to its values in the course of time.
One other feature of the way Neiman proceeds arises from her sense that reality needs to be approached by listening with great care to how others with relevant experience articulate their engagement with this blight of collective racism, whether the voice is that of victim, resister, or even perpetrator. Her words: "I just became aware that you need to see events from many different angles before you can get as close as possible to the truth about them."(83) What I found most impressive about this willingness to listen attentively and at length to all sides is that these conversations that appear throughout the book build toward moral clarity rather than encourage a suspension of judgment or the adoption of a posture of moral neutrality. Neiman avoid any pretense of detachment or professional distance, refusing to copy the supposed objectivity of a natural scientist or mathematician. Neiman leaves even the most casual reader with little doubt as to where she stands with respect to refusals by a social order and its members to purge the present of the past (that is never entirely past) by redressing evil, although she empathetically acknowledges that in the face of military and political defeat, such a redemptive healing process is more likely to occur, but takes time, patience, persistence, and maybe a bit of luck.
The thematic unity of the book is achieved by a focus on one of those incredibly inflected German words, vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, which Neiman renders in English as 'working-off-the-past.' (7). In effect, the taint of past evil, in this case the twelve years of Nazi rule or the stages of racist abuse, from slavery to Jim Crow to the resurgence of white supremacy in the American South, do not disappear on their own. It requires a deliberate often anguishing willingness to look the past in the eye, and to be sure in the present to rid the societal landscape of glorifying reminders of what needs to be rejected. In this regard she revisits in detail debates about the presence of monuments to Confederate heroes of the past and the ongoing attachment of most white southerners to the Confederate flag. She contrasts this American failure to get beyond its shameful racist past with the relative success of the German experience. It would be unthinkable, for instance, for a Nazi town or city to erect a statue of Hitler or fail to preserve the memory of a nearby death camp. The book acknowledges that maybe Germans were helped by not only losing the war, but by being occupied by foreign liberating forces for fifty years thereafter. The contrasting non-repentance of the American South is a major theme.
There are some surprising, well-reasoned, conclusions that give an interesting twist to German post-Nazi experience, living as a divided country from 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I had never stopped to think why former Nazis seemed to have such an easy time in West Germany. Neiman sets forth two convincing explanations from her research and experience. Perhaps, most prominent, was the priority accorded in West Germany, especially by the United States, to anti-Communism, a credential that for a time virtually erased any blight from past Nazi affinities and activities so long as deactivated in the present. Of course, in East Germany under Soviet occupation and influence, the equation was somewhat reversed. Anti-Communism in any form was totally unacceptable, while anti-Fascism was the order of the day, infusing education and ideology. In effect, for this reason it took West Germans much longer to clear their body politic of the Nazi virus. Neiman is certainly not giving the East Germans a clean bill of health when it comes to addressing contextual evil, as she takes note of the failure of East Germany to acknowledge, much less repudiate, the crimes of Stalinism and the Soviet Union. At the same time, she believes that Nazism was a much more severe immersion in evil, and rejects the fashionable claim of their equivalence.
When it comes to American racism as still manifest in the South, Neiman convincingly notes the impact of conservative American presidents, including Nixon, Reagan, and most of all, Trump who has given racist dog whistles so loud as to be discernable by the most dimwitted. They signal that it is okay to revere the Confederate ethos and its heroes, that it is part of the American past, acceptable at the time, that need not be hidden or occasion shame. In her view, this tolerance of past racism unsurprisingly encourages extreme and pathological racists to translate their views into action in the present, and incidents such as the Charlottesville March and the Charleston massacre in a black denominational church are almost bound to occur.
A distinctive dimension of Neiman's methodology is the presentation of extensive interview material from prominent historical figures, community leaders, and ordinary folk with stories to tell. Such an approach, according value to the voices of those with a relationship to memories and remnants draws on Neiman's skill as an interviewer, or more accurately, a conversationalist. This includes the capacity to listen sympathetically, yet never foregoing her own unwavering and unconditional repudiation of racism whether in Germany or the Southland of America. I know of no philosopher of her distinction that dismounts from the elegant horses of philosophical abstraction to gather evidence from the trenches where the relevant realities of her inquiry are situated. The lucid prose style gives the book a clarity enlivened by a kind of storytelling quality. It is against this background of blending philosophical concerns with deep aspects of the human condition—in the spirit of Hannah Arendt—that a profound understanding of prolonged racism occurs. Neiman's special type of empiricism blends philosophical inquire with social science. It makes this treatment of overcoming racism rather unique. Its special quality is also enriched by Nieman's long personal experience in both Germany and the deep South. She does not write as an outsider, but in neither setting does she fully qualify an insider.
Perhaps, the most intriguing conclusion drawn from the comparative aspect of Learning from the Germans is that the Germans have done a better job of overcoming their past than have their American counterparts. Although Neiman discussed the rise of the far right AfD Party in considerable critical detail, she seems to feel that although the AfD is a disturbing reminder that the Nazi virus is still present in the German body politic, it is a marginal phenomenon, drawing its strength not so much from the past as from the anti-migrant stance that has nudged the politics of all major European countries to the right. By way of disturbing contrast, the American people have elected as their president a person who actively encourages and embodies such a rightwards lurch, including a disparagement of the most basic institutions of constitutional democracy, as well as many signs of tolerance for if not sympathy with extreme racism as manifest in the majority racist politics of several southern states. I find Neiman's insight here significant. In effect, Trump exhibits a pre-fascist potentiality in America, which is more fearsome than having a neo-fascist presence at the margins of mainstream politics as seems the case in Germany. Of course, if conditions change the margins can be erased or erode the mainstream in ways that should not be ignored as future possibilities. And in America, if Trump and Trumpism are repudiated in the 2020 elections, the country might again seem to resume the trajectory of creative democratic constitutionalism.
With moral clarity Neiman supports the call for reparations to be paid to African-Americans. She considers the arguments opposed to reparations, but is unpersuaded, suggesting that it is an unpaid debt to the victims of slavery and Jim Crow that needs to be paid to survivors and descendants, if nothing else, . Neiman rejects the contention that those not victims are undeserving or those not perpetrators have no responsibility. She points to the wealth that slavery and racism brought to white society, and the impoverishment endured by African Americans, currently reflected in their differential wealth and income. In this instance, Neiman support a controversial argument, put forward most coherently Ta-Nehisi Coates, that even progressive political figures , such as Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren have not adopted, which would strike the American mainstream as unacceptably 'radical.' In effect, Neiman insists that working off the past of white racism requires something more tangible and ongoing than an apology, and that given the past enrichment achieved by society due to racist forms of exploitation, a monetary form of redress is quite appropriate.
This brings me, finally, to the question of Palestine as it plays out in Germany. Although Neiman does not embrace conventional Zionist arguments that are now insisting that criticisms of Israel are the 'new anti-Semitism,' she fails to take note of the unlearned lessons by Germans and Germany with regard to Israeli anti-Palestinian racism as practiced over the course of several decades. As a result of several recent actions Germany had taken strong official steps to discredit the BDS Campaign and its supporters. Beyond this the German Government has refrained from any criticism of the unlawful and abusive policies and practices relied upon by the Israeli state in dealing with the Palestinian people. Overcoming the Nazi past would seem to involve a repudiation of racist patterns of behavior, regardless of the identity of the perpetrator. For Germany to be inhibited from criticizing Israel because it proclaims itself the nation-state of the Jewish people is to confuse the behavior of a state with hatred of its people. To criticize Israel is not to attack the Jewish people, provided of course that the criticism rests on evidence and is proportionate to the wrong perceived. I find this oversight on Neiman's part to be the only serious shortcoming of her book, and as serious in its way as she finds the failure of the United States to pay reparations to African Americans.
As indicated at the outset, Susan Neiman has contributed to an indispensable addition to the scholarship addressing links between past and present with respect to racism. Although the objects of her concern are limited to Nazism and the American South, the methodology of her inquiry and the insights that result can be derived from comparable studies of past evil and its legacies. Unfortunately, the histories of genocide and racism remain incomplete, with new
circumstances of moral outrage emergent in many distinct civilizational settings. In the end we are challenged by Neiman not to consider racism or evil as matters of destiny, but fully subject to the vagaries of human responsibility, which includes the domain of a free society.
Tags: Confederacy, Germany, Legacies of racism, monuments, Nazism, reparations, Susan Neiman
Categories Commentary, Legacies of racism, Nazism, Reflections, reparations


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Genome-wide analyses disclose the distinctive HLA architecture and the pharmacogenetic landscape of the Somali population
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Pedro R. S. Cruz, Galina Ananina, … Mônica Barbosa de Melo
Abshir A. Ali1,
Mikko Aalto2,
Jon Jonasson3 &
Abdimajid Osman4
African populations are underrepresented in medical genomics studies. For the Somali population, there is virtually no information on genomic markers with significance to precision medicine. Here, we analyzed nearly 900,000 genomic markers in samples collected from 95 unrelated individuals in the North Eastern Somalia. ADMIXTURE program for estimation of individual ancestries revealed a homogenous Somali population. Principal component analysis with PLINK software showed approximately 60% East African and 40% West Eurasian genes in the Somali population, with a close relation to the Cushitic and Semitic speaking Ethiopian populations. We report the unique features of human leukocyte antigens (HLA) in the Somali population, which seem to differentiate from all other neighboring regions compared. Current study identified high prevalence of the diabetes type 1 (T1D) predisposing HLA DR-DQ haplotypes in Somalia. This finding may explain the increased T1D risk observed among Somali children. In addition, ethnic Somalis were found to host the highest frequencies observed thus far for several pharmacogenetic variants, including UGT1A4*2. In conclusion, we report that the Somali population displays genetic traits of significance to health and disease. The Somali dataset is publicly available and will add more information to the few genomic datasets available for African populations.
Africa harbors the largest human genetic variation in the world1,2,3,4,5 and many human gene variants are found only in Africa6 including those associated with drug response. Yet, many ethnic populations in Sub-Saharan Africa are not represented in medical genomics studies found in the literature, mainly because of the generally lower level of medical research conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa compared with developed countries due to insufficient research infrastructures or resources. As a result, most of the human genetic variation present in Africa is yet unexplored. Some efforts have been made in recent years to better understand African genetic variation. These include studies that examined genetic markers for diabetes7,8 and those investigating the genetic selection in Africa as a result of disease exposure or environmental adaptation4,9. However, the need for more genomic data from African populations still persists, notably for underrepresented ethnolinguistic groups, including the Somali population, where there is still lack of information on genetic markers for drug responses, immunity and diseases.
Somalia is located in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea,), a historic site for human migrations into either direction of Africa or Eurasia10,11,12,13. Rock art paintings in multiple sites of Northern Somalia show Neolithic human activities in this part of East Africa14,15. Later Himyarite and Sabaean inscriptions found in the same Somali region suggest existence of socio-cultural mingling with the ancient Axumite-South Arabian sphere15. Due to the geographic location of Somalia, the Somalis have both African and non-African ancestries12,13,16,17. Most of the genetic studies involving ethnic Somalis in recent years have mainly focused either on forensic genetic markers used for legal issues18,19,20,21, or on anthropological genetics for assessment of ancestry and ancient demographic history12,16, using DNA samples collected from the Somali diaspora outside Africa. While such studies have provided interesting information on the genetic history of Somalia, there is scarce information on genomic data of importance to health and disease for the Somali population, apart from some single-gene-disorder case reports involving Somali patients living in Western countries. As an example, there are no datasets available concerning pharmacogenetics of drug metabolizing enzymes and transporters (DMET), HLA alleles, or disease markers for the Somali population. This lack of genomic information can be partly, but not wholly, explained by the political situation in the country, which has discouraged local and international researchers to conduct medical research during the turbulent years of Somalia. The few genetic case reports available in the literature, nevertheless, suggest that Somalia harbors some unique human genetic traits with implications to health and disease. These include the exceptionally high prevalence (93%) of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) DRB1*03:01 allele found in Somali children with type 1 diabetes (T1D) in Minnesota22, the high frequency (75%) of the T1D predisposing HLA DR3-DQ2 haplotypes identified in Somali children with T1D in Finland23, the founder effect in the Horn of Africa of the insulin receptor mutation p.Ile119Met identified in unrelated Somali families living in the United Kingdom24, and the high incidence rate of mutations in adenosine deaminase (ADA) causing ADA-deficiency observed in Somali immigrants living in Denmark25. In the present study, we have tried to address the aforementioned needs for a Somali genomic data and for the first time created a genome-wide, publicly accessible, dataset containing genomic markers with significance to precision medicine for this ethnic population.
Array analysis summary
A total number of 95 samples and 1 Quality Control sample (included in the PMRA reagent) were analyzed on the GeneTitan MC Instrument. All samples passed the Dish QC (DQC) test. There were 888,799 markers analyzed in the study. Average genotype quality control call rate (QC CR) was 99.6%, which generated 849,267 high-quality markers that were included in the downstream analyses. Gender call counts (male = 57; female = 38; unknown = 0) matched perfectly with the documented gender identity for study participants. Results for QC analyses are available in Supplementary Fig. 1–4 (Supplemental Data file).
Genotype data verification
To validate the genotype data, we examined markers known to associate with ethnic and geographic variations that were included in the PMRA analysis. First, we estimated the distribution of ABO and Rh blood groups in our Somali population using a set of 8 SNPs: rs8176719, rs8176746, rs505922, rs8176749, rs7853989, rs8176740, rs56392308 (ABO blood groups), and rs590787 (Rh blood type). The most common ABO blood group in Somalia was found to be O blood (60%), followed by A blood group (22%, of which 14% of the total A belonged to A2 type), B blood group (14%), and AB blood group (4%). The proportion of Rh+ and Rh- were 88% and 12%, respectively. These results were consistent with the previously reported Somali phenotype blood group data26 as well as with our previous O blood group genotype assessments for ethnic Somalis27. We also examined the distribution of Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) gene variants in the Somali population using the SNPs rs429358 and rs7412. ApoE is a genetic and anthropological marker that shows geographical and ethnic variations28. Our analysis showed that the most common ApoE gene variant in Somalia is ApoE-ε3 (79%), followed by ApoE-ε4 (16%), and ApoE-ε2 (6%). Homozygosity for the ε4 variant (ApoE-ε4/ε4) reported to show the strongest association with Alzheimer's disease in western countries29 was found at 2% in Somalia. These ApoE gene frequencies are close to those previously identified in the neighboring Ethiopia28,30,31.
The ADMIXTURE results (Fig. 1) indicate that the subjects of this study constitute a homogeneous and representative sample of Somalis having approximately 60% East-African and 40% West Eurasian gene components. The K3 factor in Fig. 1A corresponds to the ADMIXTURE K10 in Fig. 1A of Hodgson et al.16 and shows approximately 60% East African and 40% West Eurasian (25% West Asian and 15% North African) ancestry in the Somali population. The similarity of individuals is apparent, which presumably reflects very ancient admixture events and a unification process through endogamy. In addition, the non-African components in the Somali population seem to show relatively little inter-individual variations (K12 in Fig. 1B), also consistent with the finding of Hodgson et al.16. As expected, PCA (Fig. 2) shows a close relation of the study population with the two Ethiopian ethnic groups of Oromo (Cushitic speaking) and Ethiopian Jews (Semitic speaking). The PCA in Fig. 2 shows nearly a straight line relationship between PC1 and PC2 when African and West Eurasian populations are included. To identify the degree of relatedness between each pair of study samples, identity by descent (IBD) analysis was performed. Apart from two outliers who supposedly represented a pair of two pairs of double first cousins, the study cohort did not represent closely related individuals (Fig. 3). No first degree relationship was observed. The mean kinship coefficient was 0.011.
Maximum likelihood estimation of the ethnic descent of the 95 Somali individuals in this study. Data used comprised 849,267 markers in the Axiom PMRA multilocus SNP genotyping. PLINK 1.9 with a setting of MAF ≥ 0.4 was used along with analysis by the ADMIXTURE 1.3.0 program with K = 3 and K = 12, respectively (http://software.genetics.ucla.edu/admixture/). (A) K = 3 proportions represent East-African genes (blue), genes from West Asia (red), and North African genes (green), respectively. (B) K = 12 splits the supposedly non-African contributions into several minor bands (mixed colors), although the similarity of individuals is well preserved.
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the Axiom PMRA array data from 95 Somali study subjects. Somali data were projected onto African-West Eurasian PC1 and PC2 data from PGG population. The Luhya population in Kenya clustered with West Africans (far left on the diagram) rather than with East Africans.
Identity by descent (IBD) analysis performed on the Somali study participants (n = 95). The plot shows observed identity by descent for each individual. Each of the 2 outliers shown in the graph was supposedly a first cousin to another individual in the cohort.
Drug metabolizing enzymes and transporters (DMET) variants
More than 1200 pharmacogenetic variants were analyzed in the Somali population, of which we identified 631 clinically relevant DMET common variants listed in the PharmGKB database (https://www.pharmgkb.org/) (Supplementary Table 1 file). Comparing with the data found in the Genome Aggregation Database (https://gnomad.broadinstitute.org/) and the 1000 genomes project (https://www.internationalgenome.org/), a set of 9 pharmacogenetically relevant SNPs was found with unusually high prevalence in Somalia when compared with all other world populations (Table 1). We found the highest frequency of UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 1A4 *2 (UGT1A4*2; rs6755571; p.Pro24Thr) reported to date in the Somali cohort. UGT1A4 catalyzes the conjugation of a wide range of xenobiotic and endogenic substrates32 and UGT1A4*2 was found to correlate with altered glucuronidation of various drugs33. Although homozygosity to UGT1A4*2 is rare in other populations, 3 individuals (3%) were homozygous to this variant in our Somali cohort, which along with 20 heterozygotes suggested that 24% of the Somalis carry UGT1A4*2 with an allele frequency of 14% (Table 1). This study also identified VKORC1 Asp36Tyr (rs61742245) previously reported to be associated with warfarin resistance in Ethiopians34. In our Somali population, 16 individuals (17%) were heterozygous to VKORC1 Asp36Tyr corresponding to a minor allele frequency (MAF) of 8% (Table 1).
Table 1 Nine SNPs listed in the PharmGKB database (https://www.pharmgkb.org/) with the highest frequencies in Somalia compared with other world populations.
VKORC1 has been extensively studied in recent years since its discovery35,36 in 2004, and we used Haploview software to examine its haplotype structure in the Somalis using tag SNPs discriminating VKORC1*2, VKORC1*3, and VKORC1*4 haplotypes, as we previously described37. Our analysis suggested that VKORC1 haplotype frequencies among ethnic Somalis were close to those observed in West Eurasians38,39. Three SNPs, rs2359612, rs8050894 and rs9934438, previously reported to be part of the VKORC1*2 haplotype and being associated with lower warfarin dose requirement38, were found to be in linkage disequilibrium in the Somali population (Fig. 4A). The most common VKORC1 haplotype in Somalia was VKORC1*2 (43%), followed by VKORC1*3 (32%) and VKORC1*4 (14%). The VKORC1*1 haplotype previously reported to be the ancestral haplotype38 had a frequency of 11% in Somalia (Fig. 4B). All SNPs were in concordance with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.
Haplotype structure of the VKORC1 gene in the Somali population. (A) A region of 5805 base pairs in the VKORC1 gene is shown with tag SNPs for different VKORC1 haplotypes. The SNPs rs2359612, rs8050894, and rs9934438 previously reported to be part of VKORC*2 haplotype and found to be predictive of warfarin dose requirement in both European and Asian-descent individuals are in linkage disequilibrium in the Somali population. SNP rs61742245 represents VKORC1 Asp36Tyr associated with warfarin resistance. 16 of 95 Somali individuals were heterozygous to this variant. (B) Proportion of VKORC1 haplotypes in the Somali population.
Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles
We evaluated >9,000 HLA markers with the Axiom HLA Analysis software to infer HLA alleles from 11 major MHC Class I and Class II HLA loci. After quality filtering, 94 HLA alleles in a 4-digit resolution were compiled for the Somali population (Supplementary Table 2, in the Supplemental Data file), of which 5 were listed in the PharmGKB database: HLA-A*02:01, HLA-B*58:01, HLA-C*18:01, HLA-DQA1*02:01 and HLA-DRB1*03:01. In Table 2, the 20 most frequent HLA alleles in Somalia are shown. To compare the Somali HLA data with those of other populations, we applied hierarchical clustering and PCA using populations available on the Allele Frequency Net Database (AFND; http://www.allelefrequencies.net/). Of the 94 HLA alleles identified in Somalia, 61 were available on the AFND for all populations compared, and these 61 HLA were used for the analysis (Supplementary Table 3, in the Supplemental Data file). As can been in Fig. 5A, the Somali samples clustered separately from other populations. Some HLA alleles were particularly more frequent in Somalia than in any other geographic location compared, including the T1D predisposing DRB1*03:01, previously reported to be highly frequent in Somali children with T1D22 and also found to be associated with autoimmune hepatitis type-140. We also performed PCA to examine the relative genetic distance in HLA type between different populations. Although we found Ethiopia to be the closest genetic neighbor to Somalia with regard to HLA, the Somali population deviated from other populations in the PCA (Fig. 5B). The Somalis had also the largest contribution to PCA dimensions of all populations, twice more than the next population (Fig. 5C).
Table 2 The top 20 most frequent HLA alleles (4-digits resolution) in Somalia.
HLA Allele frequencies in different world populations, including Somalis. (A) Hierarchical population clustering of 61 HLA alleles in different world populations. Somalia clustered separately from neighboring countries/populations. (B) Principal component analysis (PCA) using the same set of 61 HLA alleles. Color and size of cos2 signify the quality of representation; the larger a circle is the greater is its contribution to the variables. It is worth to note the considerable variation between African populations compared to non-African populations who seem to be closer to one another. (C) Population contribution to the first two principal components. The Somali population has the largest contribution to the first two dimensions. The Ethiopian population in the analysis did not include Ethiopian Somalis, but rather comprised Oromo, Amhara and Ethiopian Jews. Populations compared were Somalia (SOM), Central Africa (CAF), Kenyan Luo tribe (KNL), Ethiopia (ETH), North Africa (NAF), South Arabia (SAR), North Europe (NEU), Han Chinese (CHH), and Native Americans (AMR).
Finally, we investigated the correlation in gene frequencies for HLA and DMET between Somalia and Ethiopia, using the abovementioned 61 HLA alleles as well as a group of 15 DMET alleles previously studied in Ethiopia41,42,43,44,45. We found that DMET frequencies correlated better than HLA frequencies between the two populations (Fig. 6).
Correlations of HLA (n = 61) and DMET (n = 15) alleles between Somali and Ethiopian populations. Horizontal and vertical axes represent allele frequencies in each population.
Numerous genetic variants associated with drug response and disease susceptibility have been identified in the past in different populations. Unfortunately, African populations are underrepresented in these studies despite most of the human genetic variation being present in Africa1,2,3,4,5,9. In this context, we have created a genome-wide and publicly accessible Somali dataset using Axiom PMRA SNP array. The Somali people speak the Somali language, an Eastern branch of the Cushitic language family that is a division of the great Afro-Asiatic phylum. Unsurprisingly, our Somali samples clustered with other Horn of African populations (Oromo and Ethiopian Jews), mirroring the geographic location of Somalia. Ethnic Somalis, approximately 30 million worldwide, are unified by a shared culture, language and religion. Our data reveal a remarkably homogeneous Somali population with roots from ancient mixtures of populations from Africa and the Middle East. We observed that a vast majority of our study individuals carried similar proportions of genes from those ancient populations, which possibly can be explained by the fact that ethnic Somalis have a strong genetic unification by endogamy, due to the custom of marrying only within the limits of their ethnic group, in addition to consanguineous practices46. It is worth to mention that most of our samples were collected in the North Eastern region (Puntland) and that results in this study may reflect the genetic makeup of the population in this part of Somalia. However, recent evidences based on Y-STR haplotypes studied on Somalis from diverse geographic locations and clans suggest that ethnic Somalis are largely homogenous17, supporting the representativeness of our samples for the larger Somali population. In addition, frequencies of ABO and Rh blood groups estimated in this study are consistent with those found in an earlier study performed in 1987 by the Somali Red Crescent Society and the Finnish Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service who analyzed 1,026 blood samples of Somalis from the entire country26. Although ABO/Rh systems tend to show similar distributions for all neighboring populations, our genotypic blood group estimation is remarkably very close to the previously reported Somali phenotypic blood group data, again supporting a representative Somali population in our cohort.
We identified a number of pharmacogenetic gene variants with unusually high prevalence in the Somali population compared with all other populations, although studies involving Somali patients will be required to evaluate the significance of these as well as other variants for drug response in this population. Current study, nevertheless, confirms the Horn of African origin of VKORC1 Asp36Tyr (rs61742245), a variant identified to be associated with warfarin resistance, initially among Ethiopians34 and later in other populations in the Middle East, with an allele frequency peaking in Ethiopia47. The 8% MAF for this variant that we found in our Somali population is the second highest frequency of VKORC1 Asp36Tyr reported so far in the world, suggesting that this variant presumably arose in the Horn of Africa and spread into other neighboring regions. This study also found that VKORC1 haplotypes in Somalia are more similar to those found in West Eurasians rather than in other Sub-Saharan Africans, probably reflecting the considerable West Eurasian gene components found in the Somali population. The high frequency of VKORC1 Asp36Tyr and the type of VKORC1 haplotypes found in Somalia have consequences for precision medicine. Although novel oral anticoagulants, or non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants, (NOACs) are increasingly replacing warfarin for treatment and prophylaxis of venous thromboembolism (VTE)48, warfarin is still in use and may likely remain in use for years to come. Thus, Somali VTE patients undergoing warfarin treatment could benefit from genotyping for VKORC1 Asp36Tyr variant as well as for VKORC1 haplotypes to establish a proper warfarin dosing regimen for avoiding unwanted fluctuations in PT/INR during the initiation period of warfarin.
We found only 15 DMET gene variants genotyped in Ethiopia in the literature, whose frequencies correlated very well with those we identified in Somalia. In contrast, when HLA alleles were compared between the two populations, the correlation was considerably poorer (Fig. 6), suggesting that frequencies of DMET alleles have remained relatively unchanged in the Horn of Africa since the separation of Cushitic and Semitic speaking groups, whereas the more extensively polymorphic HLA genes49 presumably have been more affected by historical changes in environment and disease burden in the Horn of Africa. Exceptions include DRB1*13:02 and DRB1*01:02, which show Horn of African signatures with frequencies peaking in Somalia and Ethiopia. It is, however, likely that local adaptations as a result of exposure to differing infectious diseases have resulted in a differentiated HLA architecture in Somalia. There are considerable environmental and geological differences between Somalia and Ethiopia. Whereas Somalia and the Eastern Somali region of Ethiopia are largely arid or semi-arid, there have been historically more favorable conditions for vegetation and farming in larger parts of Ethiopia. Recent studies carried on African populations observed differentiations in genes involved in immunity as a result of altered environment and exposure to diseases4,9. As an example, Gurdasani et al. previously reported that HLA-DRB1 is differentiated in some African populations as a result of historical exposure to Lassa fever9. Overall, HLA alleles in Somalia appear to diverge from those in proximal geographic locations as can be seen in the hierarchical heatmap plot (Fig. 5A). Our PCA plot (Fig. 5C) also reveals that the Somali samples contributed the greatest variance to the first two principal components, suggesting that the Somali population has a unique HLA profile.
Remarkably, several HLA alleles with high prevalence in Somalia have been found to be associated with T1D in other studies. In particular, the genotypic combination DRB1*03:01 – DQA1*05:01 – DQB1*02:01 (DR-DQ haplotype) has been found to significantly increase T1D risk50. Onengut-Gumuscu et al.8 recently reported several ancestry-specific and disease-associated HLA variants. In their study, the MHC class II haplotype DRB1*03:01-DQA1*05:01-DQB1*02:01 was a marker for T1D in Caucasians (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 3.91; P = 2.6 × 10−78). In our study, the Somali population appears to host the highest frequency in the world for this HLA haplotype. In contrast, African American-specific HLA haplotypes identified by Onengut-Gumuscu et al.8 are not prevalent in Somalia. This may be explained by the fact that most African Americans have their African ancestry in West/Central Africa, in populations speaking Niger-Congo languages who are not ethnolinguistically related to the Cushitic-Semitic speaking ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa. Another SNP, rs9273363 (HLA-DQB1-AS1), in the MHC gene with strong association with T1D8 (OR = 5.48; P = 4.61 × 10−138) was also found to have the highest allele frequency (AF) in the world in Somalia, with an AF of 0.35 in our cohort. Corresponding AF for SNP rs9273363 in other populations is 0.091 in other Sub-Saharan Africans, 0.331 in Native Americans, 0.319 in East Asians, 0.262 in Europeans, and 0.257 in South Asians, according to the 1000 genomes reference panel (https://www.internationalgenome.org). There is no genomic data for Horn of African populations in the 1000 genomes project. This highlights the considerable genetic diversity existing among populations of African ancestry and the need to include more African ethnic groups in DNA sequencing studies, as we previously stressed2. At least 140 million Cushitic and Semitic speaking ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa are not represented in the international genomic projects such as the 1000 genomes and the HapMap.
The predisposition of HLA DR-DQ haplotypes to diabetes among Somali children was indeed previously reported by two studies. First, Oilinki et al.23 found that DR3-DQ2 was the dominating HLA haplotype in Somali children with T1D in Finland. In another study, Sunni et al.22 studied Somali children with T1D in Minnesota (US) and found that most of them (93%) carried the T1D susceptibility HLA allele DRB1*03:01. Another HLA allele, DRB3*02:02, which was frequent in our Somali study population (Table 2) forms haplotype with DRB1*03:01 and was previously found to be associated with T1D51. Moreover, a Swedish study52 investigating T1D risk among children compared 35,756 children of Horn of African ancestry (Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea) with 1,666,051 children of native Swedish parents and found that children with Horn of African ancestry had significantly increased risk for T1D. The risk was highest among Eritreans, followed by Somalis and lowest among Ethiopians. Unfortunately, we could not find enough HLA data for Eritreans in the literature to include in our analysis and it is therefore not inconceivable that T1D predisposing HLA alleles are also prevalent in Eritrea. These evidences suggest that Somali children are genetically predisposed to juvenile autoimmune diabetes, with HLA as an important contributing factor. Thus, physicians and other healthcare workers should be aware of the genetic predisposition to T1D among Somali children when performing differential diagnosis, warranting inclusion of blood sugar tests even in cases in which classical diabetes symptoms cannot be clearly observed. In addition to T1D, a study by D'Souza et al. identified an unusual form of autoimmune hepatitis observed in Somali men living in the United Kingdom53. Although the authors emphasized their study to be underpowered, they speculated that HLA types among Somalis appear to differ from those seen in other ethnic groups, an observation we corroborate in this study.
This study has some limitations. One major limitation is the absence of cases in the analyses. For investigating the role of HLA DR-DQ haplotypes in T1D risk among Somalis, a case-controlled study with sufficient power will be required. Such study should preferably also include neighboring Horn of African populations, including Djibouti and Eritrea, for whom there are no or little genomic data available. To explore mechanisms involving disease alleles or pharmacogenetic variants, approaches recently reported by Adeyemo et al.7 will be useful to employ.
In conclusion, this study provides the first publicly available Somali genomic dataset with significance to precision medicine. We report that ethnic Somalis are an East African population with unique HLA composition and that the Somali population hosts high frequencies of genetic variants with implications to T1D and pharmacogenetics. These variants should be validated in Somali patients in the future.
All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.
The study was granted with ethical permissions from the National Ethics Review Authority in Sweden (registration number: 2019–00926) as well as from the East Africa University in Bosaso, Somalia (registration number: JBA-XG-0424). Written informed consent was obtained from all study subjects.
Study population
The study recruited 95 unrelated individuals living in Bosaso city in the Northeastern region (Puntland) of Somalia. Birth places were confirmed with available documents or based on questionnaires. All participants were identified as ethnic Somalis belonging to the recognized clans of the Somali lineage. Age ranged between 18 and 65 years (57 males and 38 females). Most of the study participants (96%) were born in Puntland. Two individuals were born in South-Central Somalia, another person was born in Northwestern Somalia (Somaliland), and one individual was born in the Somali region of Eastern Ethiopia.
Population databases
For genome-wide principal component analysis (PCA), the Somali genotype data were projected onto African – West Eurasian PC1 and PC2 data from populations in the PGG.Population database (https://pggpopulation.org/). For HLA analysis, the Allele Frequency Net Database (http://www.allelefrequencies.net/) was used to collect data on HLA frequencies for other world populations. Populations with close genetic and geographic distance were merged into a single group, e.g. Oromo, Amhara, Ethiopian Jews (=Ethiopia), Kongo Kinshasa, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Uganda (=Central Africa), Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco (=North Africa), Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (=South Arabia), England, Germany, Sweden, Norway (=North Europe), Native Americans (=AMR).
DNA extraction and Genotyping
Blood was collected into PAXgene Blood DNA Tubes (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) and DNA was extracted using QIAamp DNA Blood Midi kit (Qiagen). Subsequent to DNA quality control, samples were genotyped using the Axiom Precision Medicine Research Array (PMRA) at the Array and Analysis Facility, Uppsala University, Sweden. The PMRA enabled genotyping of nearly 900,000 genomic markers, including >1,200 pharmacogenetic variants, >9,000 HLA markers, >2,000 blood phenotypes, >23,000 variants in ClinVar, as well as other disease or immunological markers. The analysis was performed according to the protocol described in the Axiom 2.0 Assay Manual Workflow User Guide (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Waltham, MA, USA). Briefly, DNA amplification was followed by fragmentation and DNA precipitation. The next steps included drying, resuspension, denaturation and hybridization of the DNA onto the arrays, which were followed by ligation, staining and scanning of the arrays. The array processing was performed using the GeneTitan MC Instrument, the GeneTitan Instrument Control software and the AGCC Portal 4.0 software (Thermo Fisher).
For genotyping, raw data was analyzed with the Axiom Array Analysis Suite, version 4.0.3.3 (Thermo Fisher), using the Best Practices Workflow with default settings. To infer HLA types of the Somali samples from the Axiom PMRA genotype data, the Axiom HLA Analysis 1.2 software (Thermo Fisher) was utilized with default settings. Genome-wide PCA analysis was performed using the PLINK 1.9 software (http://zzz.bwh.harvard.edu/plink/)54. Maximum likelihood estimation of individual ancestries from the Axiom PMRA multilocus SNP genotypes was evaluated using the ADMIXTURE 1.3.0 software (http://software.genetics.ucla.edu/admixture/)55. Hierarchical clustering and PCA for HLA were carried out with R software (https://www.R-project.org/). Identity by descent (IBD) analysis was performed using PLINK 1.9 and the gdsfmt as well as SNPRelate R packages56. Haplotype analysis of vitamin K epoxide reductase complex subunit 1 (VKORC1) gene was performed with the Haploview 4.0 software (https://www.broadinstitute.org/haploview/haploview)57. Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium was evaluated using Chi2 test with a significance level of P < 0.05.
Raw experimental files (CEL files) from the Axiom PMRA analyses are publicly available on the Array Express database (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress), with the accession number: E-MTAB-8331.
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We are grateful to Menikae K. Heenkenda for her assistance in some stages of this study. Open access funding provided by Linköping University.
Faculty of Medicine, East Africa University, Bosaso, Puntland, Somalia
Abshir A. Ali
Bosaso general hospital, Bosaso, Puntland, Somalia
Mikko Aalto
Department of Clinical Genetics, and Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
Jon Jonasson
Department of Clinical Chemistry, and Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
Abdimajid Osman
A.O. and A.A.A. conceptualized and designed the project. A.A.A. recruited study participants and collected the samples. J.J. and A.O. analysed the data. A.O. supervised the study. A.O. and J.J. wrote the paper. M.A. contributed intellectually to the project.
Correspondence to Abdimajid Osman.
Supplementary Information 1.
Ali, A.A., Aalto, M., Jonasson, J. et al. Genome-wide analyses disclose the distinctive HLA architecture and the pharmacogenetic landscape of the Somali population. Sci Rep 10, 5652 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62645-0
Accepted: 17 March 2020
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Siegmar Mosdorf (* 29. Januar 1952 in Erfurt) ist ein deutscher Politiker (SPD). Von 1998 bis 2002 war er Parlamentarischer Staatssekretär beim Bundesminister für Wirtschaft und Technologie. Seit 2002 ist er Partner bei der internationalen Unternehmensberatung Kekst CNC AG.

Leben und Beruf
Nach dem Besuch der Hauptschule und der Handelsschule machte Mosdorf sein Abitur am Wirtschaftsgymnasium in Hamburg. Er studierte Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften an der Universität Konstanz und schloss das Studium als Diplom-Verwaltungswissenschaftler ab. Von 1978 bis 1982 arbeitete Mosdorf als Berater für wirtschaftspolitische Angelegenheiten der Betriebs- und Aufsichtsräte von Daimler-Benz, Bosch, IBM, HP und Porsche bei der IG Metall, bevor er als Landesgeschäftsführer zur SPD in Baden-Württemberg wechselte.
Von 1999 bis 2003 war Mosdorf Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender der Mittelstandsbank der Bundesregierung Deutsche Ausgleichsbank, sowie von 1999 bis 2012 Mitglied des Aufsichtsrats der DEG Entwicklungsbank der KfW. Seit März 2002 ist er Partner der internationalen Unternehmensberatung Kekst CNC. Von 2004 bis 2006 lehrte Siegmar Mosdorf an der Universität St. Gallen in der Schweiz. Mosdorf war Kuratoriumsmitglied des Berlin Organising Committee (BOC) für die Leichtathletik-Weltmeisterschaften 2009 in Berlin. Er ist Mitglied des Kuratoriums des Ifo-Instituts, der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Kuratoriumsmitglied der Carlo-Schmid-Stiftung und des Heinrich-Schütz-Haus (Weißenfels), Mitglied des Advisory Council des Deutschen Krebsforschungszentrums sowie Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats der Wirtschaftsholding des Börsenvereins des Deutschen Buchhandels. Außerdem ist Mosdorf Mitglied der Ludwig-Erhard-Stiftung e.V.

Partei
Siegmar Mosdorf trat 1971 in die SPD ein. Von 1982 bis 1990 arbeitete er als hauptamtlicher Landesgeschäftsführer der SPD in Baden-Württemberg. Im Juli 2000 war Mosdorf Kandidat bei der parteiinternen Urwahl um die Spitzenkandidatur für das Amt des Ministerpräsidenten von Baden-Württemberg, bei der er der Landesvorsitzenden Ute Vogt unterlag.

Abgeordneter
Von 1990 bis 2002 war er Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages. Zunächst zog er dabei über die Landesliste Baden-Württemberg in den Bundestag ein. Bei der Bundestagswahl 1998 wurde Siegmar Mosdorf im Wahlkreis Esslingen mit 45,9 % der Erststimmen direkt in den Bundestag gewählt. Im Parlament gehörte er unter anderem den Ausschüssen für Wirtschaft und Technologie, Auswärtige Angelegenheiten und Sport an. Von 1995 bis 1998 war er Vorsitzender der Enquête-Kommission Zukunft der Medien in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft – Deutschlands Weg in die Informationsgesellschaft. Am 27. Oktober 1998 wurde Mosdorf als Parlamentarischer Staatssekretär beim Bundesminister für Wirtschaft und Technologie in die von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder geführte Bundesregierung berufen. In diesem Amt war er auch Koordinator der Bundesregierung für Luft- und Raumfahrttechnik. Am 1. März 2002 schied er aus der Regierung aus und kandidierte nicht erneut für den Deutschen Bundestag.

Privates
Mosdorf war mit der ehemaligen stellvertretenden WHO-Generaldirektorin Susanne Weber-Mosdorf verheiratet. In zweiter Ehe ist er mit der Journalistin Isolde Krupok verheiratet. Er hat drei Söhne.

Siehe auch
 Kabinett Schröder I

Literatur
 Klaus-Peter Schmid: Rückzug nach vorn – Was kann ein Politprofi außer Politik? In: Die Zeit, Nr. 12/2002

Weblinks

Einzelnachweise

Bundestagsabgeordneter (Baden-Württemberg)
SPD-Mitglied
Parlamentarischer Staatssekretär (Bundesrepublik Deutschland)
Funktionär (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels)
Politiker (20. Jahrhundert)
Politiker (21. Jahrhundert)
Deutscher
Geboren 1952
Mann

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: Grouping in LINQ to XML with "any" or first" aggregation I need to group following XML using LINQ to XML or XPath by param/Type. With grouping I would like to get any (or first, doesn't matter) value of id tag.
<list>
<item>
    <id>1</id>
    <param>
        <type>A</type>
    </param>
</item>
<item>
    <id>2</id>
    <param>
        <type>A</type>
    </param>
</item>
<item>
    <id>3</id>
    <param>
        <type>B</type>
    </param>
</item>
<item>
    <id>4</id>
    <param>
        <type>B</type>
    </param>
</item>

Desirable results is
A - 1
B - 3

I've tried
var content = from item in doc.Descendants("item").Descendants("param")
group item by new
{
       mType = (String)item.Element("type"),
} into g
select new
{
    mType = g.Key.mType,
};

but I cannot figure out how to reference ID that is higher in hierarchy , or how to reference PARAM/TYPE when selecting ID.

A: I would suggest using System.Xml.Linq (XDocument)
If my understanding is good, here is what I've done:
var xml = "<list><item><id>1</id><param><type>A</type></param></item><item><id>2</id><param><type>A</type></param></item><item><id>3</id><param><type>B</type></param></item><item><id>4</id><param><type>B</type></param></item></list>";
var document = XDocument.Parse(xml);

foreach (var param in document.Root.Elements("item").GroupBy(i => i.Element("param").Element("type").Value))
{
    var firstId = param.First().Element("id").Value;
    Console.WriteLine ("The first of {0} = {1}", param.Key, firstId);
}

the output is :
The first of A = 1
The first of B = 3

A: In addition to what was suggested by Cedric, you could accomplish the same thing in pure XPath:
var xml = "<list><item><id>1</id><param><type>A</type></param></item><item><id>2</id><param><type>A</type></param></item><item><id>3</id><param><type>B</type></param></item><item><id>4</id><param><type>B</type></param></item></list>";
var document = XDocument.Parse(xml);

// start at the root, then grab the first item element which has a param/type element whose value is equal to 'B'
var answer = document.Root.XPathSelectElement("./item[./param/type='B'][1]").Element("id").Value;

In XPath, the square brackets function effectively like a where clause. My first set of square brackets qualify that I want an item that contains a matching param/type element. The second set of square brackets limit this down to the first match.

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