If you're really deep in shit, just shut up and pretend to be one of them!
December 31, 2006
Saddam's Execution as a Media Event
... and predictably, there are videos of his execution all over the Internet already.
Is it right to show them?
It is a fact that capital punishment has a brutalising effect on society.
I think, however, that in this case capital punishment was inevitable for purely practical/feasibility reasons, similar to the Nazi war criminals at Nürnberg. To be precise: Would it be supportable to imprison him and let innocent people die for a, without doubt highly ethical, ideal when his supporters would try to free him, as they would have been bound to do?
That said, I do not see what good could ever come from showing such a clip, even for practical reasons.
Will it deter people from becoming a nasty dictator? You must be joking.
No, I remain principally opposed to capital punishment. "Thou shalt not kill." And what is forbidden for humans is surely forbidden for the state as well, which is, after all, just an organisational tool -- a THING -- to serve people, and not a higher being.
This may be a day to feel relieved, but certainly not a day to revel.
Shame on all who show it and watch it. Brutalising, cynical, perverted, disgusting!
Is it right to show them?
It is a fact that capital punishment has a brutalising effect on society.
I think, however, that in this case capital punishment was inevitable for purely practical/feasibility reasons, similar to the Nazi war criminals at Nürnberg. To be precise: Would it be supportable to imprison him and let innocent people die for a, without doubt highly ethical, ideal when his supporters would try to free him, as they would have been bound to do?
That said, I do not see what good could ever come from showing such a clip, even for practical reasons.
Will it deter people from becoming a nasty dictator? You must be joking.
No, I remain principally opposed to capital punishment. "Thou shalt not kill." And what is forbidden for humans is surely forbidden for the state as well, which is, after all, just an organisational tool -- a THING -- to serve people, and not a higher being.
This may be a day to feel relieved, but certainly not a day to revel.
Shame on all who show it and watch it. Brutalising, cynical, perverted, disgusting!
December 30, 2006
Dumb, dumber, American Conservative
I didn't send Christmas cards this year to my friends. Why? Because there ARE no Christmas cards anymore. There are colourful, glittering greeting cards. Some are even pretty, but Christmas cards they ain't.The customary Adventskalender (a Christmas countdown calendar) I get every year from friends showed for the 24th of December not the expected nativity scene, but a teddy bear.
Yes, you got that right. AN EFFING TEDDY BEAR! In a glass bubble.
Not that it there had been any reference to the origin of the holiday behind the earlier little "doors", mind you. But I really thought that the Christmas Eve one would reveal something related to, well, Christmas.
It didn't.
I thought I'd write about all that to vent my frustration and went looking what others might think and I came across a WND bit.
Usually, I don't read WND anymore. They are a tad too hyperventilating over their cause for my taste and –- worse -– they don't bother enough to back up their claims and I hate shoddy journalism. Even more so if it's supposed to be "on my side".
Frankly, since they (in February 2005 that was) published this little gem: "Women told, 'Work in brothel, or else' -- German law forces out-of-work females to take sex jobs or lose unemployment benefits" I can't stand them anymore. Back then, those brave champions of the conservative cause quoted an article from the Daily Telegraph, which in turn got their information from an article on jungle-world.com, which is, by its self-description, a "leftist weekly" and an "antigerman" one to boot, plus information found in an article from the "alternative" Berlin daily taz (incidentally another leftist rag), filed on December 18, 2004(!). The woman, a waitress, had been sent to a brothel instead to a reputable place because the employment center clerks hadn't the foggiest what this job offer was really about. In the meantime, German employment centers, appalled by the gaffe, have duly and dumbly asserted what was clear anyway, namely that they would not be passing on such job offers. There is, additionally, a German law as well, which states quite clearly that nobody must be forced to work as a prostitute, but who gives an aviating fornication for facts when it's such a juicy, drool-inducing little morsel of a story.
(As an aside: what can one expect from a medium that advertises SPECIAL OFFERS (in capital letters!) for "new natural lithium pill (that) fight(s) mood disorders" or a "secret to unplugging your toilet" (I kid you not!). They must be seriously in need of dough.)
But then, maybe even WND have a shame threshold low enough to remove that idiotic bit of writing. It used to be here:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42615.
But then, maybe they don't and it was just removed anyway.
However, I thought they deserved a second chance and I read what a guy who looks like a German skinhead had to say about the sad deprivation of Christmas.
To cut matters short: I shouldn't have done it.
In Cuba, pastors are being detained and imprisoned without being charged with any crime, while their churches are being closed by the Castro regime.Notabene that, apart from Australia and India (although to the latter I apply the epithet "democratic" only with utter reserve), there are nothing but Islamic, rogue-, pre-democratic and dictatorial states on lil' Mr. Skinhead Hairdo's list.
In Peru, the government has finally ordered the arrest of its ''counter-terrorist'' soldiers who murdered five young men and a boy at a church service ... only 22 years after the murders were committed.
In China, four house church leaders were sentenced to years of ''re-education through hard labour'' on July 25. They will be forced to serve their sentence at the Langzhong Detention House, which, according to its director, was ''built for Christians.''
In Belarus, Pastor Georgi Vladimirovich Vyazovsky was arrested and sentenced to jail for ''holding systematic religious meetings in his home without permission from the local authorities.''
In India, Christians were attacked in two locations on December 17 by Hindus, after which the police registered a formal complaint against pastor Philip Jagdalla for ''hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus,'' a violation of section 295A of the Indian penal code.
In Australia, two pastors were found guilty of ''vilifying Muslims'' under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, required to publish a statement in several newspapers acknowledging their guilt, and avoid making statements about Muslims and Islam in the future.
In Iran, members of a house church movement were arrested on Dec. 10 by the secret police. Seven men and one woman remain in custody; the authorities instructed church members remaining at liberty not to send news about the arrests to anyone outside the country.
In Iraq, an Evangelical Presbyterian elder was kidnapped and murdered on November 30, just after his body was found, on Dec. 5, Father Samy Abdulahad was kidnapped after leaving his church in Baghdad.
In Egypt, former sheikh Bahaa el-Din Ahmed Hussein el-Akkad was transferred to another prison on Oct. 21, despite his release having been ordered after serving 18 months of provisional detention for ''insulting Islam'' by converting to Christianity.
In Germany, Christian homeschooling mother Katherina Plett was arrested and sentenced to ten days in prison for violating the 1938 Nazi law against homeschooling.
So let's have a deeper look into the German case:
1. The woman concerned is called Katharina, NOT Katherina. I don't want to appear petty, but mis-spelling names is slovenly, rude and – worse – dumb. Get at least your basic facts right.
2. Germany was the first country in the world to have free elementary education available to all people. This was brought about by the Lutheran Reformation. Remember the translation of the Bible? So that it could be read by everybody literate himself? You do? Good!
Another one of the reasons for compulsory education was that children would get the chance to learn to read and not to be kept home and forced to work. Not a strong argument, admittedly, for an American Libertarian, but we take the liberty to see things a bit differently.
Consequently, compulsory state schooling was set up first in Saxony, where Martin Luther lived and worked. Ernst der Fromme, Duke of Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg, introduced compulsory school attendance in 1642 and saw that his schools were well equipped (printing of schoolbooks). Other German states followed suit, for example Prussia with the Principia regulativa of Friedrich Wilhelm I. in 1717. Of course, day-by-day realisation was somewhat slower. However, by the end of the 19th century all of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Scandinavia and France had put into practise compulsory school attendance laws.
We are talking here, mind you, about one of the great civilisatory achievements, of which Europe, and specifically Germany, can be justifiedly proud.
3. Katharina Plett wasn't quite the innocent Christian victim of a, dare we uttering that word, secular state, American religious zeal would like her to be.
Fact is, the Pletts (ethnic Germans from Russia) refused to let their children attend a theater performance of König Drosselbart (King Thrushbeard) because they considered it "devil's handiwork" and refused to pay the legally required fine. Coercive detention was the only possible legal consequence. What were the authorities supposed to do? Let them and the other whacko fundies get away with it and hand over the German state school system to Pat Robertson? Closing down the school so as not to anger the, possibly American, backers of the campaign? And a calculated campaign it was, not an individual act of resistance by desperate parents. (Memories of Rosa Parks, you conservatives out there? Can you spell "goose -- gander"?)
Or can you imagine what the reaction of "conservatives" to a similar conduct by Muslims would be?
According to district chief executive Sven-Georg Adenauer (CDU) – a great grandson of first German chancellor and Catholic Konrad Adenauer, by the way – the Pletts had additionally intimidated other students and bullied them with occult allusions and that the teaching at that school was "bewitched".
4. The allusion to "Nazi law" is preposterous.
Between 1933 and 1945, countless regulations, rules and decrees were passed, which were unashamedly against God's and men's law. There had been, however, regulations, rules and decrees passed, which were part of the everyday business of running a state –- ANY state.
It is not as if Hitler and his cronies had destroyed a thriving homeschooling infrastructure and it is of scandalous intellectual lack of integrity to suggest it was so! In fact, there WAS no such infrastructure and never had been. The lawmaking process just did what would have been done sooner or later by any German government anyway, namely legally clarifying the status quo. If there was any political intention, it was anti-elitist and if there were people in Germany who were practising homeschooling at that time, it were some of the aristocratic owners of the big estates east of the Elbe, a negligible number altogether, who didn't have their children privately tutored because they mistrusted a not-Christian-enough state school system, but because there were no higher schools available close by or because they didn't fancy sending their children to the village school to rub elbows with the peasants and because they could afford it.
Taking a law, which HAPPENED TO BE passed in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and discredit it as "Nazi" because it covers a cause of which one personally doesn't approve is not an isolated case. It is done by the intellectually dishonest or plain dumb all the time. The banning of hunting the life fox to hounds in 1934 comes to mind as well.
Notabene, the anti-fox-hunting law was prepared already by the administration preceding the Nazis who then passed it. Not to mention the fact that there had never been, very much like homeschooling, much of hunting the life fox to hounds in Germany anyway. Just another case of demagogically tarring something one simply doesn't like with the Nazi brush.
To make it quite clear, I am an ardent supporter of hunting to hounds. I am just embarrassed by having intellectual fraudsters on my side of the issue.
Homeschooling, as much as I'd wish it weren't, is a non-starter in Germany. The fact that people like the Pletts have become champions of it, speaks for itself, as does the fact that the dismal Waldorfschule is among the most successful of the (few -- about 7%) private schools here. As does the fact that the practice to grant German students at university level absolute freedom to choose their own curriculum has led us down to the academic standard of a third-world country. (By the way, private schools are heavily subsidized by the state in Germany.)
Historically, Germany is a nation with one of the proudest scholarly and intellectual traditions worldwide (and that doesn't even take the Ashkenazim Jews into account who contributed so much to it before they were murdered or, if they were lucky, sent packing) precisely because the cause of public education was taken seriously, and the fact that we have dropped well below mediocrity has nothing to do with any lack of homeschooling but with the fact that teachers (state employees and not subject to call almost all of them) have long forgotten that they are supposed to serve the community and not to own it, and are more busy enjoying their de facto 12 weeks of paid holidays instead performing their teaching obligations. But then, service has become a dirty word in Germany, as have duty and responsibility.
"Conservativism" has many faces.
Obviously, some American "conservatives" are too dumb to understand that and that their own traditions, historical development, understanding of personal freedom and scepticism towards governmental paternalism -- in a word: mentality -- can not be applied offhandedly to other, specifically European, countries. If that were so easy, they'd still be over here.
Just let US GERMANS deal with OUR problems ourselves and next time you say something get a modicum of education and information first.
December 24, 2006
Merry Christmas
This virtual Christmas card is by the wonderful German Cartoonist Loriot.
The caption says: "Stop that, children -- you will get cold paws!"
December 22, 2006
Roncesvalles Christmas Raffle
Do you know Google Trends -- 'See what the world is searching for'?
Google Trends analyzes Google web searches and figures out how many searches have been done for the terms one enters relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. Then graph with the results are shown, one for cities, one for regions, and one for languages.
If one enters, for example, Weißbier, one will see Munich for city because Munich is the capital of Weißbier.
If one enters, for example, Wiener and Schnitzel, one will see Vienna for city, because Vienna is the capital of Wiener Schnitzel.
If one enters, for example, Blue and Grass, one will see Lexington, Kentucky for city, because Lexington is the capital of Blue Grass.
Question: Which city will one see if one enters Lolita and sex?
Please submit the answers to the Turkish embassy next to you and wait for your award.
December 20, 2006
Only Xenophobes Don't Admire Islam
Sociologist Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Heitmeyer is the director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Conflict and Violence Research at the University of Bielefeld.
An article in the "conservative" newspaper DIE WELT from December 14 sheds some light on one of his ongoing projects:
So you are not admiring Islam anymore? That makes you xenophobic and a right wing populist. And to blame are things like the 2005 "Du bist Deutschland" ("You Are Germany") media campaign, started by Bertelsmann jointly with 24 other media companies. Its aim was stimulating and instilling optimism about the future among the young Germans. It was harmless at best, slightly embarrassing in its self-conscious well-intendedness and political correctness at worst.
So that and the "party patriotism" are the obstacles on the German way to perfection. Oh my oh my, I bet Heitmeyer and his buddies were really pissed that any stranger-bashing didn't happen. Wouldn't have it added some spice to the Worldcup and, of course, weight to their warped theories.
The measurable consequences, however, have been horrifying. The percentage of those who are "proud of the German history" rose from a meagre 36.9 to a whopping 46.2 percent, and that in the face of the fact that this history covered not more than 12 years, whereas the trust in the social security system dropped dramatically from 63.5 to an alarming 57.8 percent.
Fancy that! Another one of them Worldcups and we will be a nation of rootless misfits who think that Haydn, Heine, Hegel and Humboldt are more important than Hartz IV.
Let alone the admiration for a murderous death cult.
On a more serious note, I wonder if Heitmeyer would draw the same conclusions had he ever come close to an environment where his son would be beaten half to death in the schoolyard to for his mobile phone or his eight-year-old daughter raped by some admirable Muslim youths. But even the issues closer to home for him, for example the cancelling of an opera to avoid Muslim violence, not to speak of such negligible events like 9/11, Madrid or London, doesn't seem to distract him from his zeal of instilling some goodness in the German's cold hearts.
People like Heitmeyer would be superfluous (well, they are superfluous already, but they would become OBVIOUSLY superfluous) if their apocalyptic scenarios would be debunked as what they are, namely another case of control freakyness and protection of sinecures. Nobody can tell me that a man educated to that level doesn't know what he is doing. He and his ilk are knowingly and consciously buttressing and perpetuating the misery of those who are so far removed from their own life that they can safely assume that they will never hit by it themselves.
The good (?) thing about that is that they are wrong.
People like Heitmeyer would like to keep the people where they are, meek, politically correct, malleable and bullyable, and hey, a bad conscience is always a great lever. They want to ban everything that reeks remotely of fun. They would ban sex, if they could.
More than just a hat tip to outcut TV.
An article in the "conservative" newspaper DIE WELT from December 14 sheds some light on one of his ongoing projects:
Berlin - Immer mehr Deutsche empfinden Angst vor Muslimen, grenzen Fremde aus und lehnen das demokratische System ab. Schuld daran sollen auch die zunehmenden Identitäts- und Patriotismuskampagnen wie die Nationalstolzkampagne bei der Fußball-WM im Sommer sein. Das sind die diesjährigen Ergebnisse der Langzeituntersuchung „Deutsche Zustände“ des Bielefelder Instituts für interdisziplinäre Konflikt- und Gewaltforschung, die am Donnerstag in Berlin präsentiert wurden.Isn't that precious? Here we have another overpaid expert not subject to call who is telling us what the hoi polloi ought to feel.
Danach sieht mittlerweile die Hälfte der Bundesbürger im Islam keine bewundernswerte Kultur mehr, knapp 50 Prozent sind allgemein fremdenfeindlich eingestellt. Fast jeder fünfte Deutsche hänge rechtspopulistischen Vorstellungen an...
[…]
Auch der während der diesjährigen Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft entstandene „Party-Patriotismus“ ziehe „keine positiven Effekte nach sich“, behauptet Heitmeyer. Als Beleg führte er eine Befragung an, die unmittelbar vor und nach der Fußball-WM stattfand. Danach stieg der Anteil der derjenigen, die „stolz auf die deutsche Geschichte sind“, von 36,9 auf 46,2 Prozent, sowie derjenigen, die „stolz darauf sind, Deutscher zu sein“, von 79,5 auf 86,4 Prozent. Dagegen sank der Anteil derjenigen, die „stolz auf die Demokratie in Deutschland sind“, von 76,4 auf 64,9 Prozent, sowie derjenigen, die „stolz auf die soziale Sicherheit sind“, von 63,5 auf 57,8 Prozent…
[…]
Berlin – An increasing number of Germans are afraid of Muslims, are excluding foreigners and are against the democratic system. Responsible for that are supposedly the increasing number of (German) identity- and patriotism campaigns, like the national pride campaign during the Football Worldcup last summer. That is this year's result of the long-term study "German Circumstances" of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Conflict and Violence Research at the University of Bielefeld, which was introduced in Berlin on Thursday.
According to this study, half of the German population doesn't consider Islam an admirable culture anymore, almost 50 percent are generally xenophobic. Almost every fifth German hatches right-wing populist views...
[…]
The "party-patriotism", which emerged during the Football Worldcup doesn't have any positive effects either, so Heitmeyer. As proof he quotes a survey before and after the Worldcup. According to that, the percentage of those who are "proud of the German history" rose from 36.9 to 46.2 percent and those who are "proud to be German" from 79.5 to 86.4 percent. In contrast, the percentage of those who are "proud of the democracy in Germany" dropped from 76.4 to 64.9 percent and the percentage of those who are "proud of the social security" from 63.5 to 57.8 percent…
[…]
So you are not admiring Islam anymore? That makes you xenophobic and a right wing populist. And to blame are things like the 2005 "Du bist Deutschland" ("You Are Germany") media campaign, started by Bertelsmann jointly with 24 other media companies. Its aim was stimulating and instilling optimism about the future among the young Germans. It was harmless at best, slightly embarrassing in its self-conscious well-intendedness and political correctness at worst.
So that and the "party patriotism" are the obstacles on the German way to perfection. Oh my oh my, I bet Heitmeyer and his buddies were really pissed that any stranger-bashing didn't happen. Wouldn't have it added some spice to the Worldcup and, of course, weight to their warped theories.
The measurable consequences, however, have been horrifying. The percentage of those who are "proud of the German history" rose from a meagre 36.9 to a whopping 46.2 percent, and that in the face of the fact that this history covered not more than 12 years, whereas the trust in the social security system dropped dramatically from 63.5 to an alarming 57.8 percent.
Fancy that! Another one of them Worldcups and we will be a nation of rootless misfits who think that Haydn, Heine, Hegel and Humboldt are more important than Hartz IV.
Let alone the admiration for a murderous death cult.
On a more serious note, I wonder if Heitmeyer would draw the same conclusions had he ever come close to an environment where his son would be beaten half to death in the schoolyard to for his mobile phone or his eight-year-old daughter raped by some admirable Muslim youths. But even the issues closer to home for him, for example the cancelling of an opera to avoid Muslim violence, not to speak of such negligible events like 9/11, Madrid or London, doesn't seem to distract him from his zeal of instilling some goodness in the German's cold hearts.
People like Heitmeyer would be superfluous (well, they are superfluous already, but they would become OBVIOUSLY superfluous) if their apocalyptic scenarios would be debunked as what they are, namely another case of control freakyness and protection of sinecures. Nobody can tell me that a man educated to that level doesn't know what he is doing. He and his ilk are knowingly and consciously buttressing and perpetuating the misery of those who are so far removed from their own life that they can safely assume that they will never hit by it themselves.
The good (?) thing about that is that they are wrong.
People like Heitmeyer would like to keep the people where they are, meek, politically correct, malleable and bullyable, and hey, a bad conscience is always a great lever. They want to ban everything that reeks remotely of fun. They would ban sex, if they could.
More than just a hat tip to outcut TV.
December 19, 2006
The Muslim faith is not a totalitarian dictatorship
I realise that this is old news if one is judging news simply by date. However, this is, in all its uglyness, still topical. No, let me rephrase this: This is still topical BECAUSE of its uglyness.
On October 31, in the town of Erfurt, the 73 year old Lutheran vicar Roland Weisselberg set himself on fire in the monastery where Martin Luther took his monastic vows in 1505. It was a public holiday, Reformationstag, in that German Protestants celebrate the Reformation. Weisselberg later died of his injuries.
In a farewell letter to his wife the vicar wrote that he was doing what he did to warn against the danger of the Islamisation of Europe.
During the past four years the vicar had frequently expressed his concern about the expansion of Islam, urging the Lutheran Church to take a principled stance regarding this issue.
The online edition of the newsmagazine DER SPIEGEL talked to Axel Noack, the Lutheran Bishop of Saxony. This is an excerpt. The original is German, the translation is, as usual, by me:
Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the man who is not fit to be an example for others anymore?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a theologian, spiritual writer, author of fiction and poetry and a central figure in the Christian resistance against the Nazis.
For Bonhoeffer, the foundation of ethical behaviour lay in how the reality of the world and the reality of God were reconciled in the reality of Christ. To him, ethics were centred on the concrete action by responsible men and women in the face of evil. He was sharply critical of ethical theory because of its failure to tackle evil head-on. Evil, he asserted, was concrete and specific, and it could be combated only by the actions of principled men and women. Thus, the adamant position Bonhoeffer took in his seminal work Ethics was directly reflected in his stance against Nazism. His early opposition turned into active resistance in 1940, which cost him his life.
In 2000 the Catholic Church published a 'roster of martyrs' for the German-speaking countries, in which the non-Catholic Dietrich Bonhoeffer is listed as well.
I am not quite sure yet, towards what kind of paragon for Christian values the Protestant Bishop Noack is inclined. On that level, Michael Schumacher or Franz Beckenbauer come to mind.
Saint Dietrich Bonhoeffer pray for us.
"The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years (December 1942)
Sources and additionnal information:
http://www.bonhoeffer.com/
http://www.bonhoeffer.com/art/DB_009.jpg
http://www.ushmm.org/bonhoeffer/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/bonhoeff.htm
On October 31, in the town of Erfurt, the 73 year old Lutheran vicar Roland Weisselberg set himself on fire in the monastery where Martin Luther took his monastic vows in 1505. It was a public holiday, Reformationstag, in that German Protestants celebrate the Reformation. Weisselberg later died of his injuries.
In a farewell letter to his wife the vicar wrote that he was doing what he did to warn against the danger of the Islamisation of Europe.
During the past four years the vicar had frequently expressed his concern about the expansion of Islam, urging the Lutheran Church to take a principled stance regarding this issue.
The online edition of the newsmagazine DER SPIEGEL talked to Axel Noack, the Lutheran Bishop of Saxony. This is an excerpt. The original is German, the translation is, as usual, by me:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Die letzten Worte von Pfarrer Weisselberg sollen "Jesus und Oskar" gewesen sein, in Anspielung an den Amtsbruder Oskar Brüsewitz. Der verbrannte sich 1976 aus Protest gegen das DDR-Regime - und aus Protest dagegen, dass er in seinem Kampf gegen den Kommunismus nicht genügend Unterstützung in der Kirche erfuhr. Ist die Kirche zu lax, wenn es darum geht, Widerstand gegen menschenverachtende politische oder religiöse Ideologien zu leisten?This is so full of politically correct and relativist bullshit, that I'd ridicule it -- so to say out of habit -- until not a single letter would be left. But frankly, I'm too stunned for that. This is beyond ridicule. The good bishop has beaten me. If Christian bishops and their opinions can be taken as yardsticks for civilisatory standards, this society is demolishing itself.
Noack: Brüsewitz und Weisselberg kann man nicht vergleichen. Brüsewitz war während der Herrschaft des Kommunismus Verfolgter. Herr Weisselberg war nicht verfolgt. Der Glaube der Muslime ist keine totalitäre Diktatur.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Wird der Islam von der Kirche nicht als konkurrierende Religion gesehen, die das Christentum bedroht?
Noack: Natürlich ist es eine konkurrierende Religion. Wir haben als Christen ja auch einen klaren Wahrheitsanspruch. Doch gleichzeitig gilt es, tolerant zu sein. Tolerieren kann ich jedoch nur, was ich für falsch halte, sonst wäre es keine Toleranz. Wir wollen andere überzeugen, doch niemals mit Gewalt. Auch nicht mit Gewalt gegen den eigenen Körper.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Sie verurteilen die Tat Weisselbergs?
Noack: Die Tat Weisselbergs verurteile ich, den Menschen Roland Weisselberg dagegen nicht. Wir müssen uns fragen, warum es niemand gab, an den er sich hätte wenden können.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Der Pfarrer Dietrich Bonhoeffer wurde wegen der Unterstützung der Widerständler des 20. Juli 1944 von den Nazis hingerichtet. Ist diese Tradition der Standfestigkeit heute im Denken und Handeln der Kirche stark genug präsent? Hat sie Widerstandspotential?
Noack: Bonhoeffer ist in der Kirche umstritten. Er kann nicht für jedermann als Vorbild dienen, denn die meisten Menschen haben nicht das Zeug zum Helden. Die Forderung, man müsse Bonhoeffer nachfolgen, ist eine Überforderung. Wer zu gut von den Menschen denkt und zuviel verlangt, wird grausam gegen sie. Die Haltung "Wehret den Anfängen" muss allerdings ganz entschieden gegen Gewalt und Terrorismus eingenommen werden. Andererseits darf man auch nicht vergessen: Der Krieg im Irak war der Popularität westlicher Werte nicht zuträglich.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Vicar Weisselberg's last words are said to have been "Jesus und Oskar", refering to his colleague Oskar Brüsewitz, who set himself on fire in 1976, protesting against the GDR-regime -- and to protest the fact that he didn't get enough support from the church in his fight against Communism. Is the church too lenient when it comes to resist inhuman political and religious ideologies?
Noack: One can't compare Brüsewitz and Weisselberg. Brüsewitz was persecuted during the reign of Communism. Herr Weisselberg was not persecuted. The Muslim faith is not a totalitarian dictatorship.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does the church not see Islam as a competing religion gesehen, which threatens Christendom?
Noack: Of course it is a competing religion. We, as Christians, have a definite claim to truth as well. But however, one has to be tolerant. But I can only tolerate what I consider wrong, or it wouldn't be tolerance. We do want to convince others, but never by force. Not even by force against one's own body.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You decry what Weisselberg did?
Noack: I decry the deed, I do, however, not decry the person Roland Weisselberg. We will have to ask ourselves, why there has been nobody for him to turn to.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Vicar Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed because of his support for the members of the resistance group behind the July 20, 1944 events. Is such a tradition of steadfastness strong enough in the thoughts and deeds in today's church? Does the church have potential for resistance?
Noack: Bonhoeffer is a controversial figure within church circles. He can't serve as an example for everybody because most people are not made to be heroes. To ask to follow Bonhoeffer is asking too much. Think too highly of people means to be cruel towards them. To 'resist the first advances', however, must be decidedly done when it comes to violence and terrorism. On the other hand one shouldn't forget that the war in Iraq was adverse to the popularity of Western values.
Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the man who is not fit to be an example for others anymore?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a theologian, spiritual writer, author of fiction and poetry and a central figure in the Christian resistance against the Nazis.
For Bonhoeffer, the foundation of ethical behaviour lay in how the reality of the world and the reality of God were reconciled in the reality of Christ. To him, ethics were centred on the concrete action by responsible men and women in the face of evil. He was sharply critical of ethical theory because of its failure to tackle evil head-on. Evil, he asserted, was concrete and specific, and it could be combated only by the actions of principled men and women. Thus, the adamant position Bonhoeffer took in his seminal work Ethics was directly reflected in his stance against Nazism. His early opposition turned into active resistance in 1940, which cost him his life.
In 2000 the Catholic Church published a 'roster of martyrs' for the German-speaking countries, in which the non-Catholic Dietrich Bonhoeffer is listed as well.
I am not quite sure yet, towards what kind of paragon for Christian values the Protestant Bishop Noack is inclined. On that level, Michael Schumacher or Franz Beckenbauer come to mind.
Saint Dietrich Bonhoeffer pray for us.
"The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years (December 1942)
Sources and additionnal information:
http://www.bonhoeffer.com/
http://www.bonhoeffer.com/art/DB_009.jpg
http://www.ushmm.org/bonhoeffer/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/bonhoeff.htm
December 18, 2006
Yobbofication is a safe bet and pity is cheap
The following is SO typically German in its megalomania, whining self-pity, misdirected empathy and general lack of common sense:
We have an underclass! *WHINE*
YES! WE Germans have an underclass! *WHIMPER*
And that when everybody, but certainly we, thought we were perfect! *SOB*
That this is the model definition of underclass mentality, almost comical in its stereotype, doesn't seem to be of any interest to anybody and the fact that that flotsam of society reaches only a remarkably low and celebration-worthy volume of 4 percent is a "societal scandal" because we think that we deserve to be a nation of millionaires and Nobel Laureates. (We will come to the significantly higher figures in the former GDR later.)
What brain disease is it that makes people unable to understand that those people are not miserable because of their circumstances, but that their circumstances are suboptimal because they are miserable. A textbook case of confusing cause and effect. The only thing that is "new" about it is that the state is finally running out of money to sponsor that sort of ineffectivity.
Isn't that precious? When will people learn that not everybody is equally talented, motivated, intelligent, assertive and endowed with the same sort of elbows and that it is not the state's business to level all of nature's inequalities? That moronic bit of journalism sounds as if Germany was still a feudal society where privileges are granted by birth and not a welfare state with a society that is dominated by upstarts from the lower middle and working classes who have gotten where they are because they were hardworking, intelligent and tough enough to get on in life and who are taxed witless now to keep all the damnés de la terre with a hardly basic education and lacking desire for social advancement safely in fags, the latest state-of-the-art mobile phones, designer-basecaps, booze and junkfood.
I wonder whether all those who are distributing other people's money so liberally ever gave a thought why the underclass described above is so significantly more widespread in East Germany than in the West. It is precisely because they have been robbed by more than four decades of Socialist "welfare" of the basic human wish to get on in life and all the phoney do-gooders can't wait to introduce that in the West as well. And instead of investing in an already rotten educational system that let Germany drop down to the level of some third-world countries to finally sponsor those who are bright and advancement-orientated, it's free kindergardens and more full-time schools for the flotsam of society so that the mothers can sleep all through the morning and then stuff their faces with crisps while watching telly and boozing. After all, the little 'uns will at least be able to fill in their dole-money application forms themselves once they are grown up.
But it doesn't end here. I wish it would, but no such luck!
While in any sane country the above politicians would be laughed out of the door, here, they get flak from a certain branch of academia because it's all still not bad enough:
That's right. Let's make the rest poor as well!
I seemed to vaguely remember this silly name from my time at university, so I searched for his bio and lo and behold, he used to be one of those "STAMOKAP" Socialists within the Socialdemocratic Party, influenced by the Stalinist DKP (German Communist Party), who sought to "conquer state power" and thus "overcome the structures of capitalism" in the Seventies. Back then, some were discharged from the SPD, as was Butterwegge.
Butterwegge is living proof for the fact that he and his ilk long since managed to perform the "march through the institutions" to the top as opinion leaders and opinion makers and what seemed to be fairly outrageous back then has become the accepted mainstream since – and we all didn't even notice it.
When even shrewd analysts of the economic situation like the journalist Gabor Steingart,of Spiegel fame, is starting to tout the 'underclass' cause, something stinks seriously.
Fact is, basic foodstuff is cheap and of good quality here. (You don't believe me? That's fine! I wouldn't have believed it either before I went to work in the UK and tried to make ends meet there.) With basic foodstuff I mean bread, flour, margarine (even butter if not needed in huge quantities), eggs (if you don't insist on the politically correct "free range" variety), cheeses (if you are not into goat's cheese and other French excrescences), sausage (again if you are not into hand-sliced, air-dried Italian salami), canned, frozen and fresh vegetables and fruit in season. There are enough opportunities to get the latter even free, but picking apples would interfere with idling away time with the camera mobile phone bought on the never-never. The price of meat and fish are dependent on season and local circumstances, but by no means prohibitively expensive if one isn't going for filet mignon.
But then, what does it help that flour, vegetables, oil/margarine/shortening and meat are cheap. One would have to shift one's lazy ass away from the telly and the beer crate to process it into something useful and edible and the mere sound of the word "useful" is anathema among the new damnés de la terre.
NOT cheap is the processed and semi-processed junk with which les forçats de la faim are slowly poisoning themselves and their children, like fried onions in a glass jar, fried bacon in plastic containers, fried meatloafs ready to eat together with mustard and ketchup so that the busy housewife doesn't even need bothering to put mustard and ketchup on the table, ready-made dough for pizzas (not to speak of ready-made pizzas). Hell, there are even ready filled sandwiches because mothers today are obviously too lazy to make sandwiches for their children to take to school. I tried them, they taste like sawdust filled with sawdust and they are, of course, ridiculously expensive.
Some months ago I was listening to the wireless, as usual in the car. The programme was about poverty in Germany. The definition I remember best was the mother who had to *gasp* save to buy her son a ticket for an "Abenteuerschwimmbad" a sort of wet amusement park and then couldn't go with him *sob* because there wasn't enough money for a second ticket.
Yes, those urinals for the lower classes ARE prohibitively expensive, but what about a nice walk through the woods? But then, watching kingfishers or the red deer rut is boring – and so boringly free! (And yes, where I used to live until recently for two unforgettable years, one of the most underclass-infested regions in Germany, one could reach places like that within 20 minutes by car and even by public transport within less than an hour, so don't give me any bull about the hardship of urban living.)
So that's those who never advanced. A different aspect of the "underclass" discussion are those who advanced and fell.
The famously liberal weekly DIE ZEIT tells the sad, sad story of a once well-to-do couple, architects both, who lost their jobs and their entire assets through bad luck, economic circumstances and bad business decisions. (And WOW! DO I can relate to that!) However, I do not share the view that they are "underclass". Yes, they have a huge money problem. But they are educated, they are "well spoken", books are part of their life, they know how to use them and how to help their child to get on in school (which is, if I may remind you, free in Germany) and only a perverted society totally void of any standards save the monthly income will grade those people as "underclass".
I do not share, either, the view that society is in any way responsible to make good for people's bad luck, wrong decisions and lack in business acumen.
The same article mentions a village school with 245 students, two or three of which in each class go without breakfast. I remain adamant that NO child in Germany needs to go to school hungry and without "school sandwich". (Let me remind you that schools in Germany are mostly of the half-day sort and that usually no school lunch is provided.) If you have a look at the prices of the most popular and ubiquitous food discounter ALDI, you will see what I mean. You'll find bread (Brot) under Backwaren (=baked goods). Most other stuff is self explaining.
The interesting part of it is that those families, unable to provide their children with food, are described as "fugitives from the city" because housing is cheaper in the country. So if housing is cheap (and paid for by the state anyway if the family is recieving social security funds), for what on earth do they spend their money if they'll have to send their children to school without "school sandwich"?
Is it really enough to write something – ANYTHING – in one of the most lauded papers nationwide as long as it's compliant with the current mainstream extracerebral discharge?
The same article informs us that those parents can't afford 2.60 Euro for their children's swimming lessons. That is sad. What is even more sad is the fact that they obviously can't be bothered to teach their children swimming themselves. There are countless big, small and tiny lakes or quarry ponds in Germany free for all, clean and pleasant, no problem to reach for those in the country anyway and within cycling distance from the big cities as well (or close to a public transport station). No Maldives, not even Mallorca needed. Just some good will and self-reliance, but that exactly is the missing ingredient. It has obviously run out of fashion to do something more proactive than collecting subsidy from "Father State" and exchange it for booze, fags and junk food.
What I found specifically enlightening (we're still at the same article, mind you!) was this little gem:
What we are experiencing is not a pauperisation, but a fast progressing yobbofication of the German population. The first is a matter of means, the second is a matter of minds. Where have the nice, sound, respectable shops with good quality stuff gone? One can still get high-end goods in the big cities (I guess), but those upper middle-range shops, be it for clothes, household goods or whatever, are gone. Vanished from the face of the earth. Our inner towns and cities are now crammed with those unspeakable "Everything-for-1-Euro" shops, where, of course, NOT everything is for 1 Euro and not offered because people need them, but because they were bought for next-to-nothing somewhere in the Far East and can be sold now for a whopping profit to the undiscerning. Not to speak of the clothes shops, where young girls can buy cheap stuff that makes them look like sluts – correction: CHEAP sluts – to match their earringed boyfriends and which will fall off anyway after the first attempt at washing it, so they'll buy more. The problem, again, is not lack of money, but lack of discernment.
How did we get where we are? As I said before, this is a society made by upstarts from the lower middle and working classes. My maternal grandparents may serve as an example. They came after WWI from West Prussia to the industrial area along the river Ruhr to find a life better than that of a farm worker, which didn't mean to be just poor, but living within a society that was still into the remnants of the rigid feudal system of the Germany east of the river Elbe. They arrived piss-poor in a freight train, travelling with their meagre belongings. By the early Thirties, (my grandfather was holding a good job at the steel works) they had built a nice house and acquired a modicum of "good taste". Books had always been part of family life. In other words, they had arrived safely at the middle class side of society. And all that without free kindergardens, full-time schools and dole money.
Of course, they didn't think that fashionable and throwaway sluttyness in appearance or instant gratification in lifestyle had any particular merit. My mother tells me that they never bought anything cheap or shoddy, be it clothes, household goods or the modest ornaments they had. In fact, my handsome, stately grandfather in his Sunday clothes got, to his intense embarrassment, often an appreciative "nod of same classness" from men who wouldn't have noticed him in the workplace. The fact that he had a scar similar to a student's duelling scar from an accident in the steel works added to that impression. When, during WWII, material was rationed, my grandmother didn't go out anymore and gave her clothes coupons away to keep her pretty daughters well dressed. Of course, she had always been there for the family and didn't see any need to go out to work for either "self-fulfilment", her wardrobe or the annual family stint of beach-front binge-drinking at Mallorca's Ballermann, the legendary hang-out for the holidaying German underclasses.
Not that this is anything special. Countless people of my generation can report a similar family history and, at the end of the day, such families became the backbone of todays prosperity – or what is left of it. Will their spirit persevere? Not very likely. It rather looks as if they are succumbing, if not to the allure of welfare, but to the creeping intellectual depravation as demonstated by the success of TV-shows like "Big Brother".
Of course there IS a lack of opportunities and perspectives, but it doesn't help to deny the crucial point, namely the fact that our system of social security is adverse to any self-reliance, self-protection and fighting spirit and only cements the sad status quo. It shouldn't be left unmentioned, either, that the many crippling tax- and other regulations, stifle in the bud any self-initiative of those who haven't yet resigned. There is method behind this madness, however. Solving societal problems by handing out welfare checks and thus buying a travesty of social peace has worked so far. This latter-day selling of indulgences isn't even, mind you, done to satisfy a warped ideal of justice, but solely for the protection of the sinecures of the new ruling classes, think: poverty researcher (not subject to call) with social worker wife (not subject to call) or liberal fishwrap Schmock with teacher wife (not subject to call).
A large yobbofied underclass doesn't give them any headaches, it secures their lifelihood – and pity is cheap.
We have an underclass! *WHINE*
YES! WE Germans have an underclass! *WHIMPER*
And that when everybody, but certainly we, thought we were perfect! *SOB*
DER TAGESSPIEGEL ONLINETo reduce the findings of the survey (as mentioned in the above article) to their core: there are a certain percentage of people with substandard education, lacking in vocational (or any) mobility and the will to get on in life who are -– who would have thought so! –- not doing well.
Neue Unterschicht ein "gesellschaftlicher Skandal"
In Deutschland ist eine neue gesellschaftliche Unterschicht entstanden, der acht Prozent der Bevölkerung angehören. Die SPD-Spitze sieht diese Entwicklung als "gesellschaftlichen Skandal".
Hamburg - Dies berichtet die "Bild am Sonntag" unter Berufung auf eine repräsentative Studie von TNS Infratest im Auftrag der SPD-nahen Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Zur neuen Unterschicht zählen … 20 Prozent der Ost- und vier Prozent der Westdeutschen. Viele dieser Menschen empfänden ihr Leben als "gesellschaftlichen Abstieg"; ihr Bildungsgrad sei überwiegend einfach, berufliche Mobilität und Aufstiegswillen seien nur gering ausgeprägt.
[...]
… die SPD-Spitze [bewertet] die Ergebnisse der Studie als "handfesten gesellschaftlichen Skandal". Sie sollen jetzt in die Debatte um das neue Grundsatzprogramm der Partei einfließen. Parteichef Kurt Beck wolle einen "Bildungsaufbruch" organisieren, um den Kindern der Unterschicht den Aufstieg zu ermöglichen. Beitragsfreie Kindergärten und der Ausbau von Ganztagsschulen seien Teil der Pläne. (tso/AFP)
New Underclass a "societal scandal"
Germany has bred a new underclass to which 8% of the population belong. The SPD (Socialdemocratic Party) leadership sees such a development as a "societal scandal".
Hamburg - "Bild am Sonntag" reported with reference to a representative survey of TNS Infratest commissioned by the SPD-associated foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. The new underclass includes … 20 percent of East- and four percent of West Germans. Many of those people believe their life to be a "social decline"; their education is only basic, vocational mobility and the desire for social advancement are rather underdeveloped.
[...]
…the SPD (Socialdemocratic Party) leadership [considers] the results of the survey an "undeniable societal scandal". They are supposed now to influence the party's new fundamental policy statement. Chairman Kurt Beck wants to organise "educational new horizons" to open the doors to social advancement to the children of the underclass. Free kindergardens and more full-time schools are part of the plans. (tso/AFP)
That this is the model definition of underclass mentality, almost comical in its stereotype, doesn't seem to be of any interest to anybody and the fact that that flotsam of society reaches only a remarkably low and celebration-worthy volume of 4 percent is a "societal scandal" because we think that we deserve to be a nation of millionaires and Nobel Laureates. (We will come to the significantly higher figures in the former GDR later.)
What brain disease is it that makes people unable to understand that those people are not miserable because of their circumstances, but that their circumstances are suboptimal because they are miserable. A textbook case of confusing cause and effect. The only thing that is "new" about it is that the state is finally running out of money to sponsor that sort of ineffectivity.
Isn't that precious? When will people learn that not everybody is equally talented, motivated, intelligent, assertive and endowed with the same sort of elbows and that it is not the state's business to level all of nature's inequalities? That moronic bit of journalism sounds as if Germany was still a feudal society where privileges are granted by birth and not a welfare state with a society that is dominated by upstarts from the lower middle and working classes who have gotten where they are because they were hardworking, intelligent and tough enough to get on in life and who are taxed witless now to keep all the damnés de la terre with a hardly basic education and lacking desire for social advancement safely in fags, the latest state-of-the-art mobile phones, designer-basecaps, booze and junkfood.I wonder whether all those who are distributing other people's money so liberally ever gave a thought why the underclass described above is so significantly more widespread in East Germany than in the West. It is precisely because they have been robbed by more than four decades of Socialist "welfare" of the basic human wish to get on in life and all the phoney do-gooders can't wait to introduce that in the West as well. And instead of investing in an already rotten educational system that let Germany drop down to the level of some third-world countries to finally sponsor those who are bright and advancement-orientated, it's free kindergardens and more full-time schools for the flotsam of society so that the mothers can sleep all through the morning and then stuff their faces with crisps while watching telly and boozing. After all, the little 'uns will at least be able to fill in their dole-money application forms themselves once they are grown up.
But it doesn't end here. I wish it would, but no such luck!
While in any sane country the above politicians would be laughed out of the door, here, they get flak from a certain branch of academia because it's all still not bad enough:
Armutsforscher fordert mehr Druck auf ReicheWhatever a poverty researcher does, he doesn't do it for tips. Buttertwegge, who earns as a C4- (full) university professor's salary between 4,000.00 and more than 6,000.00 Euro per month, perks not included, who is subject to life tenure and a hefty pension, is known to have coined the priceless quote: 'Poverty in such a rich country like Germany is even more humiliating.'
In der Debatte über eine soziale Spaltung der Gesellschaft werden Forderungen nach mehr Druck auf Besserverdienende laut. Wer Armut mit Erfolg bekämpfen wolle, müsse auch die Reichen in die Pflicht nehmen.
Experten haben angesichts der Unterschichten-Debatte wirkungsvollere Maßnahmen gegen die wachsende Kluft zwischen Arm und Reich angemahnt. So plädierte der Armutsforscher Christoph Butterwegge dafür, Reiche sollten mehr Verantwortung übernehmen und von ihrem Vermögen mehr abgeben. «Man müsste dafür sorgen, dass der Reichtum nicht weiter von unten nach oben verteilt wird.
[…]
Butterwegge zeigte sich verwundert über die Aussagen des SPD- Vorsitzenden Kurt Beck zu einem wachsenden «Unterschichten-Problem» in Deutschland. Wenn die Politik nun die zunehmende Passivität sozial schwacher Menschen beklage, seien dies «Krokodilstränen». Denn die Politik habe die «objektiven Bedingungen» dafür geschaffen. Vor allem die Arbeitsmarktreform Hartz IV habe dafür gesorgt, dass die Kluft zwischen Arm und Reich immer größer werde und die Armut sich bis in die Mitte der Gesellschaft hin ausbreite.
[…]
Poverty Researcher Calls to Increase Pressure on the Rich
[…]
Following the underclass-debate, experts have called for more effective measures against the growing gap between poor and rich. The poverty researcher Christoph Butterwegge therfore asked for the rich to take over more responsibility and to give away more from their wealth. "There ought to be measures to prevent that richness is not distributed further from the bottom to the top."
[…]
Butterwegge showed amazement regarding the statements of SPD-chairman Kurt Beck regarding the growing "underclass problem". If the politicians are complaining now about the growing passivity of socially disadvantaged people, they are shedding "crocodile's tears", because the politicians created the "objective conditions" for that. Above everything else, the job market reform Hartz IV has to answer for the growing gap between rich and poor and that poverty has already reached the middle ranks of society.
That's right. Let's make the rest poor as well!
I seemed to vaguely remember this silly name from my time at university, so I searched for his bio and lo and behold, he used to be one of those "STAMOKAP" Socialists within the Socialdemocratic Party, influenced by the Stalinist DKP (German Communist Party), who sought to "conquer state power" and thus "overcome the structures of capitalism" in the Seventies. Back then, some were discharged from the SPD, as was Butterwegge.
Butterwegge is living proof for the fact that he and his ilk long since managed to perform the "march through the institutions" to the top as opinion leaders and opinion makers and what seemed to be fairly outrageous back then has become the accepted mainstream since – and we all didn't even notice it.
When even shrewd analysts of the economic situation like the journalist Gabor Steingart,of Spiegel fame, is starting to tout the 'underclass' cause, something stinks seriously.
What is citizenship worth if people are denied the opportunity to participate in the working world? What use are civil liberties if the right to an independent lifestyle is no longer among them? Would it be acceptable if the rights set down in the constitution were only applicable to the educated classes?Cynically put, maybe it would be a step in the right direction. Everybody who goes through life with open eyes in Germany can't help seeing countless things that don't go together with the "poverty" whine.
Fact is, basic foodstuff is cheap and of good quality here. (You don't believe me? That's fine! I wouldn't have believed it either before I went to work in the UK and tried to make ends meet there.) With basic foodstuff I mean bread, flour, margarine (even butter if not needed in huge quantities), eggs (if you don't insist on the politically correct "free range" variety), cheeses (if you are not into goat's cheese and other French excrescences), sausage (again if you are not into hand-sliced, air-dried Italian salami), canned, frozen and fresh vegetables and fruit in season. There are enough opportunities to get the latter even free, but picking apples would interfere with idling away time with the camera mobile phone bought on the never-never. The price of meat and fish are dependent on season and local circumstances, but by no means prohibitively expensive if one isn't going for filet mignon.
But then, what does it help that flour, vegetables, oil/margarine/shortening and meat are cheap. One would have to shift one's lazy ass away from the telly and the beer crate to process it into something useful and edible and the mere sound of the word "useful" is anathema among the new damnés de la terre.
NOT cheap is the processed and semi-processed junk with which les forçats de la faim are slowly poisoning themselves and their children, like fried onions in a glass jar, fried bacon in plastic containers, fried meatloafs ready to eat together with mustard and ketchup so that the busy housewife doesn't even need bothering to put mustard and ketchup on the table, ready-made dough for pizzas (not to speak of ready-made pizzas). Hell, there are even ready filled sandwiches because mothers today are obviously too lazy to make sandwiches for their children to take to school. I tried them, they taste like sawdust filled with sawdust and they are, of course, ridiculously expensive.
Some months ago I was listening to the wireless, as usual in the car. The programme was about poverty in Germany. The definition I remember best was the mother who had to *gasp* save to buy her son a ticket for an "Abenteuerschwimmbad" a sort of wet amusement park and then couldn't go with him *sob* because there wasn't enough money for a second ticket.
Yes, those urinals for the lower classes ARE prohibitively expensive, but what about a nice walk through the woods? But then, watching kingfishers or the red deer rut is boring – and so boringly free! (And yes, where I used to live until recently for two unforgettable years, one of the most underclass-infested regions in Germany, one could reach places like that within 20 minutes by car and even by public transport within less than an hour, so don't give me any bull about the hardship of urban living.)
So that's those who never advanced. A different aspect of the "underclass" discussion are those who advanced and fell.
The famously liberal weekly DIE ZEIT tells the sad, sad story of a once well-to-do couple, architects both, who lost their jobs and their entire assets through bad luck, economic circumstances and bad business decisions. (And WOW! DO I can relate to that!) However, I do not share the view that they are "underclass". Yes, they have a huge money problem. But they are educated, they are "well spoken", books are part of their life, they know how to use them and how to help their child to get on in school (which is, if I may remind you, free in Germany) and only a perverted society totally void of any standards save the monthly income will grade those people as "underclass".
I do not share, either, the view that society is in any way responsible to make good for people's bad luck, wrong decisions and lack in business acumen.
The same article mentions a village school with 245 students, two or three of which in each class go without breakfast. I remain adamant that NO child in Germany needs to go to school hungry and without "school sandwich". (Let me remind you that schools in Germany are mostly of the half-day sort and that usually no school lunch is provided.) If you have a look at the prices of the most popular and ubiquitous food discounter ALDI, you will see what I mean. You'll find bread (Brot) under Backwaren (=baked goods). Most other stuff is self explaining.
The interesting part of it is that those families, unable to provide their children with food, are described as "fugitives from the city" because housing is cheaper in the country. So if housing is cheap (and paid for by the state anyway if the family is recieving social security funds), for what on earth do they spend their money if they'll have to send their children to school without "school sandwich"?
Is it really enough to write something – ANYTHING – in one of the most lauded papers nationwide as long as it's compliant with the current mainstream extracerebral discharge?
The same article informs us that those parents can't afford 2.60 Euro for their children's swimming lessons. That is sad. What is even more sad is the fact that they obviously can't be bothered to teach their children swimming themselves. There are countless big, small and tiny lakes or quarry ponds in Germany free for all, clean and pleasant, no problem to reach for those in the country anyway and within cycling distance from the big cities as well (or close to a public transport station). No Maldives, not even Mallorca needed. Just some good will and self-reliance, but that exactly is the missing ingredient. It has obviously run out of fashion to do something more proactive than collecting subsidy from "Father State" and exchange it for booze, fags and junk food.
What I found specifically enlightening (we're still at the same article, mind you!) was this little gem:
Psychologen und Ökonomen haben im Rahmen der Glücksforschung herausgefunden, dass es dem Menschen relativ egal ist, ob er 800, 900 oder 1.000 Euro in der Tasche hat. Entscheidend ist das Gefühl, dass es aufwärts geht und dass die Nachbarn, die Freunde, die früheren Kollegen nicht enteilen. Deshalb hat sich ein Arbeitnehmerhaushalt in den Sechzigern ziemlich wohlhabend gefühlt, während sich ein Sozialhilfeempfänger heute ziemlich arm vorkommt.Well, even that "there, there, I can relate to that" journalism can't at last get totally round the truth. We don't have a poverty problem, we have an attitude problem.
Psychologists and economists found during their happiness research [I kid you not!] that a person doesn't mind much whether he has 800, 900 or 1,000 Euro in his pocket. The crucial point is to have the feelings that things are basically progressing and that neighbours, friends and former colleagues won't be lost. Therefore, a jobholder's household in the Sixties had the subjective feeling of being well off, whereas a recipient of social security funds considers himself rather poor.
What we are experiencing is not a pauperisation, but a fast progressing yobbofication of the German population. The first is a matter of means, the second is a matter of minds. Where have the nice, sound, respectable shops with good quality stuff gone? One can still get high-end goods in the big cities (I guess), but those upper middle-range shops, be it for clothes, household goods or whatever, are gone. Vanished from the face of the earth. Our inner towns and cities are now crammed with those unspeakable "Everything-for-1-Euro" shops, where, of course, NOT everything is for 1 Euro and not offered because people need them, but because they were bought for next-to-nothing somewhere in the Far East and can be sold now for a whopping profit to the undiscerning. Not to speak of the clothes shops, where young girls can buy cheap stuff that makes them look like sluts – correction: CHEAP sluts – to match their earringed boyfriends and which will fall off anyway after the first attempt at washing it, so they'll buy more. The problem, again, is not lack of money, but lack of discernment.
How did we get where we are? As I said before, this is a society made by upstarts from the lower middle and working classes. My maternal grandparents may serve as an example. They came after WWI from West Prussia to the industrial area along the river Ruhr to find a life better than that of a farm worker, which didn't mean to be just poor, but living within a society that was still into the remnants of the rigid feudal system of the Germany east of the river Elbe. They arrived piss-poor in a freight train, travelling with their meagre belongings. By the early Thirties, (my grandfather was holding a good job at the steel works) they had built a nice house and acquired a modicum of "good taste". Books had always been part of family life. In other words, they had arrived safely at the middle class side of society. And all that without free kindergardens, full-time schools and dole money.
Of course, they didn't think that fashionable and throwaway sluttyness in appearance or instant gratification in lifestyle had any particular merit. My mother tells me that they never bought anything cheap or shoddy, be it clothes, household goods or the modest ornaments they had. In fact, my handsome, stately grandfather in his Sunday clothes got, to his intense embarrassment, often an appreciative "nod of same classness" from men who wouldn't have noticed him in the workplace. The fact that he had a scar similar to a student's duelling scar from an accident in the steel works added to that impression. When, during WWII, material was rationed, my grandmother didn't go out anymore and gave her clothes coupons away to keep her pretty daughters well dressed. Of course, she had always been there for the family and didn't see any need to go out to work for either "self-fulfilment", her wardrobe or the annual family stint of beach-front binge-drinking at Mallorca's Ballermann, the legendary hang-out for the holidaying German underclasses.
Not that this is anything special. Countless people of my generation can report a similar family history and, at the end of the day, such families became the backbone of todays prosperity – or what is left of it. Will their spirit persevere? Not very likely. It rather looks as if they are succumbing, if not to the allure of welfare, but to the creeping intellectual depravation as demonstated by the success of TV-shows like "Big Brother".
Of course there IS a lack of opportunities and perspectives, but it doesn't help to deny the crucial point, namely the fact that our system of social security is adverse to any self-reliance, self-protection and fighting spirit and only cements the sad status quo. It shouldn't be left unmentioned, either, that the many crippling tax- and other regulations, stifle in the bud any self-initiative of those who haven't yet resigned. There is method behind this madness, however. Solving societal problems by handing out welfare checks and thus buying a travesty of social peace has worked so far. This latter-day selling of indulgences isn't even, mind you, done to satisfy a warped ideal of justice, but solely for the protection of the sinecures of the new ruling classes, think: poverty researcher (not subject to call) with social worker wife (not subject to call) or liberal fishwrap Schmock with teacher wife (not subject to call).
A large yobbofied underclass doesn't give them any headaches, it secures their lifelihood – and pity is cheap.
Back to blogging -- I hope!
It has been awfully long. And I didn't even have an excuse for it, like last time. No moving, no overwhelming other duties, nothing.
In the private field there are rather good news:
Five healthy, vigorous Parson Russell Terrier puppies are keeping their little mother busy while I am reduced to cleaning away the mess, feeding the heavily lactating little bitch well and comforting the extremely frustrated father, who still isn't allowed near the pups.
Maybe it was out of that frustration that he performed well on Saturday in the artificial foxhole, facing the (very much alive and non-artificial) fox. He is trained to attack at the sound of "Arafat", but I'm sure the vixen smelled better than the original did, even when still alive.
I intend to keep two male puppies (there are three dogs and two bitches) and organise a small terrier pack for wild boar hunting. They will love it.
Back on topic and blogging. I can't promise anything, but I hope I have finished feeling burnt out. Please come back from time to time and check.
In the private field there are rather good news:
Five healthy, vigorous Parson Russell Terrier puppies are keeping their little mother busy while I am reduced to cleaning away the mess, feeding the heavily lactating little bitch well and comforting the extremely frustrated father, who still isn't allowed near the pups.
Maybe it was out of that frustration that he performed well on Saturday in the artificial foxhole, facing the (very much alive and non-artificial) fox. He is trained to attack at the sound of "Arafat", but I'm sure the vixen smelled better than the original did, even when still alive.
I intend to keep two male puppies (there are three dogs and two bitches) and organise a small terrier pack for wild boar hunting. They will love it.
Back on topic and blogging. I can't promise anything, but I hope I have finished feeling burnt out. Please come back from time to time and check.
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