Doaa El-Bey tries to separate swine flu fact from fiction In their attempt to assess the danger of swine flu writers asked whether it is a real pandemic or just a temporary disease, and was it created by nature or by man. Ali Al-Khalili wrote that because pandemics know no borders between states or peoples, do not differentiate between one sect and another, and do not look at the social status of people, they are capable of uniting humanity in a jiffy because they target humanity. In the meantime humanity must have the means to face them or else it will mean complete extinction. But he questioned why humanity forgets after the end of each pandemic although it knows that there are more to come. After bird flu and mad cow disease has come swine flu to wage another war against humanity. But the media, which was keen to cover all the details about the disease, showed differences among humanity rather than similarities. Ironically, the differences were over the name of the disease -- as if the name would make any difference. Opposition erupted in Mexico when a few called it Mexican flu. Conflicts that could have led to a religious war between those who eat pigs and those who do not was raised until the WHO decided to call the disease H1N1. These differences indicate that the unity of humanity in the face of the epidemic is shallow, faked and influenced by conflict over borders, beliefs and interests. However, it is surprising that humanity, which shows fake unity in battling epidemics, contributes to forming and storing these epidemics to use them in their wars against each other. "It is man, not birds, insects, pigs or any other creature that is the source of epidemics. Man has managed to use his power and mind to destroy himself and everything that surrounds him," Al-Khalili wrote in the independent political Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. How can one believe that countries like the US and Israel care to contain an epidemic when they possess tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of atomic bombs? The two atomic bombs thrown at Japan at the end of World War II killed more people than any pandemic, the writer concluded. Ahmed Mansour agreed with Al-Khalili that man made these epidemics. The amount of destruction caused by the US since World War II in its wars in Korea, Vietnam; its intervention in Lebanon and Somalia; its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; and providing Israel with lethal weapons, all indicate that swine flu, bird flu and other deadly viruses are part of germ warfare. According to plans in collaboration with international organisations, these germs are allowed out of the research labs to spread in the world and cause horror and panic. "How can one explain horrifying the world and raising the state of alert to phase 5 when only 300 people were infected in more than 10 days, while nobody moved when Israel used its lethal weapons to kill more than 1,500 Palestinians and injure some 5,000 during its three-week war against Gaza?" the writer asked in the Qatari daily Al-Watan. Mansour ruled out that he was trying to belittle the danger of flu viruses, but put them within the manufacture of disease and their spread among humanity. There are many states like the US and Israel, as Mansour added, that spend billions of dollars on biological research that aim to spread diseases and epidemics among their enemies. They have spread these lethal germs in some Arab states like Egypt, Iraq, Palestine and Sudan. And that explains the spread of many diseases like cancer in these countries. By following the media propaganda about diseases and epidemics, we simply shut an eye to what happens in our countries against our people and cover for the West its crimes against our future generations. Thus Mansour called for quick steps to save our people and disclose what these criminals are doing against humanity. Khairi Mansour described the current situation as an ally between animals, birds and insects led by an utterly worn out nature. And it is only man who is paying the price. The inter-continental virus does not respect borders and poses a threat to the poor and illiterate. However, the terminology used by the media and health institutions gives the impression that a global war is about to erupt. But, Mansour added, what could one expect in a world where water and air are polluted and where desertification has swallowed green areas? He questioned which animal, bird, or insect will next make a new ally against man. "The earth is not suitable for life anymore because man, who thought that he controlled it, threw his waste in its seas and rivers and buried nuclear wastes in the shores of poor countries. We need to put human farms -- not animal or insect farms -- under scrutiny. They have turned out to be overwhelmed by cross border corruption and inter- continental viruses," Mansour wrote in the Jordanian political independent daily Addustour. Badr Abdel-Malek wrote that given that swine flu can be transmitted from one person to another, then culling pigs will not contain the disease. Thus preventive measures rather then spreading horror is the best way to protect society. Mexico found that the best way to contain the flu is to give the people a five-day holiday, thereby proving that the main source of the disease is the human being, not the pig. However, the game of exaggeration and spreading horror has always accompanied the discovery of any strange or new problem. It happened before with mad cow disease, bird flu and AIDS. That exaggeration makes use of the peoples' limited awareness of their own interests. The writer criticised the Egyptian decision to cull all pigs. "The problem is not in mass culling of pigs or compensating their owners. That is why the owners of pig farms showed opposition to mass culling which made their life a nightmare," Abdul-Malek wrote in the United Arab Emirates daily Al-Bayan. Nasri Al-Sayeg wrote that it was not unexpected from farmers to complain bitterly and loudly after the decision to cull all pigs in Egypt. Thus the picture in Egypt became as follows: those harmed by the cull are mainly Christians, so Coptic voices inside and outside Egypt called for dissent. They criticised the government to the extent that some described the cull as a religious fatwa against Christians. The writer also did not view the interference of the church as unexpected. In societies that are socially loose and controlled by strict security forces, people resort to the protection of ethnic or religious sects. "If the aggressive state is one side of the picture, the protective sect is the other," Al-Sayeg wrote in the Lebanese daily As-Safir.
