STUDENTS of 20th-century European history will hardly have failed to see distasteful parallels unfolding here in the "new Bermuda''.

In the early 1920s the National Socialist Party in Germany began a virulent and raucous ten-year harangue at public meetings and in the media, claiming that the successes of the minorities, mainly German Jews, and all other minority races in the country, were entirely at the expense, and to the deprivation of, the so-called "Aryan'' majority race.

To quote internationally eminent historian Martin Gilbert, the deliberate, calculated and emotional rilings of the racial majority to guarantee gaining power "was a process that depended upon the rousing of historic hatreds and ancient prejudice''.

Winning power thereby, the National Socialist Party then set about ensuring that the New Germany or "New Order'' government would become a "Thousand Year Reich'', remaining in power forever.

All moderates now effectively removed from the entirely Aryan rubber-stamp government which itself then never again met, the regime quickly became a dictatorship, a constitutional change that even these awful people took care to endorse by plebiscite (Pamela and Walton, take heart but don't hold your breath), piece by piece concentrating all power into the office of the leader or "Fuhrer''.

The remaining Ministers (one at least of whom had a serious drug involvement), squabbling among themselves as to who would be the leader's successor (and incidentally provided with specially-built oversized Mercedes cars) began fulfilling the racial expectations they themselves had incited in the Aryan majority.

Saturated with the distortions of ten years of pervasive racial propaganda, many Germans initially supported or turned a blind eye to the bloody victimisation of these now impotent minorities.

But when the Party rhetoric actually materialised as hard fact, and not just electoral bombast, many, including large, often international corporations that had initially backed the regime as a better alternative than the communist threat, rued the day.

By then it was too late, both the electoral system and the media were emasculated, the beautiful and multi-ethnic land of the German Luthers, the Flemish van Beethovens and the Jewish Einsteins was on a fast track to the utter ruin that is still, even today, in the process of only slow repair.

In Germany, with absolute power assured, censuses and registrations had been quickly imposed. The Nuremberg Race Laws of September 1935 provided instructional charts to identify a "full'' minority person (three minority grandparents). The new laws established a comprehensive racial registration system tracking exactly where each person lived and worked. In April 1938 a decree requiring a census of incomes and property was added.

Now legally and geographically identified, decrees were drawn up to prevent the minorities from practising law or medicine, from editing newspapers, and even from holding the necessary ticket for employment, membership in the government's new, compulsory, labour union.

The regime, now free from the leash of electoral retribution, by this process of racial location and identification eventually concentrated the minorities from Germany and then neighbouring countries into camps, and then exterminated over six million of them, primarily by gassing.

Ironically, the thus cleansed and substantially brutish remainder deprived only themselves, among other things of the technical expertise with which they could certainly have won the race for the atomic bomb; it was an ill wind indeed.

It is said that people who do not study history are doomed to relive it. In our case, it seems that all the progress and spectacular successes of the last 50 years here in Bermuda is now held forfeit to the historic hatreds and ancient prejudices dredged from the past, and emanating substantially from southern colleges of the United States in the '60s -- in which many of us were socially immersed -- and the historic inequities of which have been duly imported, and imparted, even via the pulpit, to those who were not.

Specifically, we should first see that racially motivated edicts, analyses, CURE programmes, income censuses and tracking simply polarise the attitudes they are purportedly designed to dispel.

It should be no surprise, to those who turn on the tap of racial divisiveness to gain power, that the polarisation so triggered materialises initially as crude, and uncontrollable, ignorant abuse, both verbal and then physical -- as witnessed in the Munich beer hall tirades brutalised by Brownshirt thugs, and by the human rights deprived Portuguese in recent similarly brutalised local meetings.

In our case, what these long-suffering people experienced -- imported to Bermuda to carry out much of the work Bermudians are now claiming they themselves did but would not do in the building of Bermuda -- is a clear regurgitation of the crude Nazi tactics that Western civilisation believed dead and buried.

Secondly, we should also see, just as clearly, the slippery slope that the state of mind that imposes them in the first place can and is leading on toward. We have too many outstanding young multi-ethnic Bermudian Luthers, Beethovens and Einsteins, qualifying and achieving, to allow such misguided attitudes and policies, based on real frustrations of the past, to destroy the foundation of their future.

BAD ECHO City of Hamilton Masterpiece of twisted logic September 26, 2000 THE Tourism Ministry propaganda sheet "Bermuda in perspective'' for July is a masterpiece of twisted logic, distorted deduction and completely misleads the public.

Opening paragraph: "Bermuda's hotel properties continued to benefit from strong peak season bookings, registering a combined occupancy of nearly 83 per cent, up nearly six percentage points over 1999. This was the best recorded occupancy for the month of July in 13 years and the fourth highest dating back to 1980.'' Wow! Hail Mary and all the Saints, you might say -- read no further. Tourism has at last Turn to Page 8, Col. 4 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (continued from page 4) Continued from page 4 turned around not only has it turned round it has taken off, full-blast, toward the broad, sunlit uplands of yesteryear.

Mr. Allen's reliance on smoke and mirrors, glad-handing parties, jawboning and wishful thinking -- instead of tackling the price/value structure of the industry everyone else thought necessary -- has, unbelievably, actually worked. He has in effect figured a way of selling $150 rooms for $300.

Amazing! At this point you will be excused if, with some small niggling doubt in the back of your mind, you pick your way further into the preamble and turn the pages to the figures on the bottom line.

There, sadly, you will find the unhappy truth -- the fact that the remorseless plunge in bed-nights occupied continues on ever downward -- minus 6.08 per cent for the month -- supported closely by a further slide in air arrivals of no less than 8.17 per cent below 1999.

The most shocking, gut-wrenching figure is a bed-night occupancy for the year that is off 12 per cent so far -- a disaster by any measure.

In fact, what has happened is that the industry is now actually closing down money-losing tourism accommodation faster even than the arrivals drop. Pretty soon, except for those who can squeeze aboard the overfilled cruise ships, we will be down to one bed left and two tourists who have arrived thinking they were going to the Bahamas.

Mr. Allen's propaganda will then claim that we are actually turning away as many tourists as we can comfortably handle.

THE MAD HATTER'S TEA PARTY PS: Americans obviously are attracted by Bermuda -- they fill any cruise ship we allow to come here to overflowing. In fact, we have to fight them off. Why is it that they refuse to come by air or stay in the hotels? What a waste of an ad! September 27, 2000 I SHOULD like to use the letters column in your newspaper to draw attention to a large advertisement which has been running in all of the local papers concerning animal waste disposal.

In this advertisement, the public is told: "If you own an animal (specifically a dog or cat) please help us by disposing of animal waste in one of the following manners'' ... A) Bury the waste in the garden, and there is a tasteful drawing of a human hand with a shovel of earth, covering the artist's rendition of -- presumably -- dog or cat faeces.

Unless you are absolutely sure that your domestic companion animal is absolutely free of intestinal parasites, this is absolutely the least appropriate way of dealing with the bowel movement, and will surely lead to the rapid contamination of your property, and result in a definite health hazard to humans, in particular small children and immune compromised adults.

The reason is that the three most prevalent parasites in Bermuda, namely Toxocara canis (Round worm), Ankylostoma caninum (hookworm) and Toxoplasmosis, can all be preserved for literally years even decades in soil, until conditions are appropriate for their life cycles to continue, or until an appropriate vector, intermediate host, or alternative host comes along. These are also abundant in the Bermuda outdoors and examples of these are mice.

Exposure to the UV rays and intense drying power of sunlight will destroy the eggs and intermediate free larval stages of hookworm, but a damp layer of soil will allow them to hatch into larvae and preserve them until the next dog or human presents any skin contact.

After penetrating the skin, the larval stage will progress through a dog or cat via the blood stream until eventually the lungs are reached. Once there, they will ascend to the back of the throat, and be swallowed into the gastro-intestinal tract to complete the adult and reproductive stage of the infection. Eggs are then shed again with the faeces ...

In humans, which are not the natural host, a skin rash may develop, or a larva migrans or larva which cannot progress beyond the blood stream. Roundworm of the dog and cat can both pose a threat as larvae migrans in humans, although the infection must be from eggs via the oral route, certainly not unthinkable where children playing outdoors are concerned.

Toxoplasmosis is thoroughly endemic in Bermuda, and interestingly it is not the domestic animal which presents the main source of infection to humans, but the soil or undercooked beef. Toxoplasmosis is a protozoon, or one-celled animal.

It lives in the intestines of immune compromised animals, and reproduces there in the cells of the host. Once an intestinal cell has been invaded and used for the purpose of producing hundreds of cysts, these oocysts are expelled with the faeces.

If the oocysts find nice damp soil, they go through a further maturing phase called sporulation, which takes at least 48 hours! Two days! After this time in the nice damp earth, the toxoplasmosis has become able to infect a new host. The well cared for, healthy house cat with a litter tray which is emptied daily, poses absolutely no threat to human health ... kittens' faeces buried in the garden certainly do.

Naturally, it goes without saying that the healthy animals make for healthy people, which is why all companion animals should be examined by a licensed veterinarian at least annually, with all puppies and kittens given regular stool screenings and appropriate treatments during examinations.

A veterinarian will prescribe the correct and effective treatment for your domestic animal, and advise you on property hygiene and contamination problems.

A new Bermuda may be a "cleaner'' Bermuda, but if the public follows the advice given under A) (points B & C seem biologically sensible) it certainly will not be a safer Bermuda.

DR. A.M. WARE-CIETERS City of Hamilton We qualify ...

September 27, 2000 I WAS reminded the other day of the best remarks a citizen has ever uttered about incompetent government with absolute power.

It originated from Bertholt Brecht: "The people have failed, we must elect a New People.'' As far as I can tell, sir, we qualify.

NEW BERMUDIAN