A Well-Meaning Suggestion for American Homeschoolers

Several American friends have asked me about the cases of aborted "homeschooling" attempts in Germany. My stance regarding that is known.

Of the two cases that recently made the headlines here is one a case of (sorry for the cliché!) bible-thumping lobbyists, the other one has no religious implications at all and is just abused by those over-zealous lovers of liberty and freedom only America is able to produce. As THEY understand those values, mind you. That to us freedom of thought might mean as well to expose the young to other opinions than that of their parents seems to be beyond their grasp.

However, in the second case, Melissa, the girl in question, was simply not up to the curriculum and has to repeat the class, to which the parents, who are not even school-deniers, objected. As there is not a single English language link that relies on a modicum of information and reports the case without "Nazi" or other preposterous comparisons (so much for the love and justice and truth about which Americans are talking so much), a German one will have to do here.

Homeschooling just isn't done here. Full stop! There is religious education for the major denominations at state schools, there is, too, the right to opt out of religious education. There are private schools if one puts added emphasis on a Christian, non-state education and has the money to afford it, but a school (which has to comply with certain standards set by the state) it will have to be. That has nothing to do with a lack of freedom, and everything with protecting children and ensuring a certain standard of education.

Besides, I think without compulsory school attendance the big problem we have with Islam already would grow into uncontrollable dimensions. Here I commented on a case from Austria (where homeschooling IS allowed, although scarcely practiced and limited by restrictions) where Muslim parents demanded the female teachers of a state school to wear a headscarf, otherwise they'd withdraw their children from the state school system. Due to the backbone of some, sadly and notabene extreme right-wing, politicians, that didn't happen.

Homeschooling wouldn't work in Germany. Nothing here, culture, mentality, whatever, would be suited to it.

I, personally, have never met or even heard of a single German (apart of those nutters who made the headlines lately and that were two) expressing the wish to homeschool his or her children. Not even the most religious parents, not even the most devoted of parents, not even the most independent of thinkers, not even those who could well afford it. Nobody. Never.

America is completely different from Germany. Not monolithic, like we tend to be. It's huge, full of individualists (for better or worse), an immigration country with a young history, ready to experiment, able to absorb their mistakes, ready to learn. Or at least so I still hope, in spite of all the hackneyed, dumb and maliciously uninformed drivel coming that way.

Just finally and once and for all get that, America, and please be so kind as to extend your homeschooling efforts to some basic knowledge of foreign countries and people.

Elsewhere, WND are making fools of themselves ONCE AGAIN, by "reporting" the Melissa case, providing a link to a "human rights group" working on the case. I expected, as the context suggested, at least AI or some other worthy and above board cause, when I discovered that this "human rights group" that was -- specifically set up for this case.

Let's add "bad style" to "hackneyed, dumb and maliciously uninformed drivel".

Guilt Is A Mighty Lever

I am not known to have feminist leanings. However, the (THE!) German feminist, publisher of the feminist magazine Emma, Alice Schwarzer didn't shun the truth yesterday in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, at least not once one has discarded the politically correct hangups, mainly about gender, from which she is suffering. The interview was prompted by the court verdict against a 26-year old woman with two small children (as SPIEGEL ONLINE had reported on Tuesday), who was seeking an expedite divorce, something German divorce law allows under certain circumstances. Otherwise, the woman would have had to ride out the standard one-year waiting period. The police had already confirmed that the husband, a Moroccan (the wife was born in Germany to Morrocan parents), had beaten her. The husband was ordered out of the mutual dwelling, but went on terrorising and even threatened to murder her. The judge, notabene a woman, had, against everybody's expectations, denied the request because, so she argues, the husband is from Morocco and in Morocco (listen well!) the Koran allows men to beat their wives, so staying married to the wife-beater is, according to this judge, "no unreasonable cruelty within the meaning of paragraph 1565 BGB" [of the German civil law, which covers expedite divorce].

"Our Jurisdiction Is Being Undermined by Islamist Power"

[…]
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ms. Schwarzer, a female judge* at the Frankfurt local court has denied the request of a woman for expedite divorce because the Koran allows physical violence as a disciplinary measure. A sad exception or are we watching some method here?

Alice Schwarzer: This reasoning is sadly all but an isolated case. In the past decades there have been many decisions – even in murder cases – where the perpetrator was convicted or even acquitted – in fact in cases of murder as well – in the name of "different customs" and a another "culture". Within the context of a recently growing sensitivity, honour killings come in here as well, but such an open violation of our jurisdiction by a German judge is startling all the same.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you see a general decay of the Grundgesetz [the German constitution] to the benefit of a religious appreciation of law?

Alice Schwarzer: Yes, and such an undermining process is not accidental. In fact, the currect legal system is being systematically undermined by Islamist powers for a long time now. Converts are involved here too and specifically.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Should the autonomy of the judge [German judges are, although part of the Beamten-hierarchy, not subject to directives by senior judges, which is considered one of the pillars of German jurisdiction] be taken as far as to a judge basing her verdict on the Koran?

Alice Schwarzer: A judge who relies on the Koran for her verdict administers the law based on Sharia and not based on the Grundgesetz. She has no place in a German courtroom.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What should be the politicians' reaction? Does the case call for a change of the current divorce law?

Alice Schwarzer: No, I think our law is sufficient. But the federal minister for justice and the ministers of justice of the states ought to be alarmed by the fact that a German judge dares to administer "justice" this way. I am under the impression for some time now that there is a false "tolerance" rampant within the judiciary. Maybe there should be courses of instruction performed to clarify that human rights are not subject to relativation and that our law applies to male and female migrants as well.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is your advice for the Morrocan woman who is being threatened by her husband? Will we have to offer additional support for Muslim women in Germany? Maybe additional regulations as well?

Alice Schwarzer: The Germano-Moroccan needs help and protection – otherwise she would have to give up on Germany in despair. And that does not just apply to her, but to thousands of women from the Muslim culture as well, whose human rights, that goes without saying, must be protected equally to our own.

Interview: Anna Reimann

(Translation mine.)

Feminists living up their lives in dignity. (Photo from 2018.)

As an aside for my special American friends who have dubbed me a "self-hating German": To be honest, I am, at least in this case, quite a bit proud of that crone. Whereas American feminists are putting the Three Wise Monkeys to shame regarding the appaling brutality with which Islam is treating its women because they are too busy whingeing about the Western patriarchal cesspool that doesn't allow lesbians to live their lives in dignity they so much crave and the sex-discriminatory all-male membership of a golf club, this woman is alienating herself from her entire leftist infrastructure, if not putting her life at risk.

So back to Germany: The verdict of the German court has once again highlighted the danger cultural relativism holds for human rights and the rule of law. "Culture" has become a rewarding value worth protecting per se. Anybody who justifyies his (or her) actions with his (or her) "culture" can be sure to be judged with restraint, respect and awe.

The harm this post-colonial European trauma wrecked is hardly commensurable. What worth has a so-called civilised society that seems to have forgotten that it is their duty and theirs specifically to protect other individuals from submission under the inhuman demands of their own culture? Justice and humanity are indivisible.

Of course, this guilt-complex is being abused by those in power, the media, the politicians, whoever will profit from it. Guilt is a mighty lever! Multiculturalism as invariably portrayed as a positive, all-embracing lifestyle, which – and that is the crucial point – no reasonable person would reject. Denouncing multiculturalism has somewhat gained a sort of self-evident irrational wickedness akin to, for example, denying the Holocaust.

This is sad, dangerous and to use an, alas outmoded, epithet: Evil. With a capital "E".

The first aphorism I put up in the header of my blog was the (as far as I know) anonymous quote "Culture is to make a nice drinking bowl from one's enemy's skull -- Civilisation is to go to prison for that."

It is still there and it still says all that is to say about it.

---

* Translator's note: Throughout the interview, the term "Richterin" (female judge) as opposed to the generic term "Richter" is used. I have used the qualification "female" where it deemed important to me within the given context if the gender wasn't clear because of the personal pronoun anyway, otherwise I have omitted it. My apologies should I have violated Ms. Schwarzer's feminist sensitivities.

The Fox and The Henhouse

Germany knows the institution of the Beamter (female: Beamtin, plural: Beamte). It is pronounced be-AHM-tuhr with a glottal stop between the E and A. The original idea behind the institution was that whoever represents the state by doing official duties should have a special kind of relationship with the it and is rooted in the history of the German states with absolutist tendencies and strong bureaucracies. The status of a Beamter (civil servant is a confusing and far from adequate translation) was endowed with many privileges, among them life-long tenure (not subject to notice) and considerably secure, albeit not abundant, social security. Specifically life-long tenure remains the exclusive privilege of the Beamte. So to say in exchange, the Beamter has a special duty of loyalty towards the state and is, for example, banned from striking.

The institution has remained untouched until today (I refrain here from commenting whether for better or worse) and, not surprising, one of its pillars are the police.

Not surprising, too, that one of the main prerequisites for achieving Beamten-status is German citizenship.

Why am I telling you this? Well, not just to pontificate about German history, but to make my readers aware of a significant change that is currently happening, namely in the state of Northrhine-Westphalia, where non-Germans are accepted now as Beamte.

Why? Because German police is unable to cope with the ever-growing number of, to use politically correct babble, fellow townsmen with a migration background.

So they are hiring.



They are hiring, and, judging from this poster, targeting people without a command of German sufficient to read a job-advert.

The website of the regional TV-station WDR informs us how a young Turkish woman sees her job as a policewoman:

Fatma Yilmaz very often acts as a broker between the cultures: "If a suspect gets abusive or aggressive, I know the background", she says. "I am able to assess how Turks are taking specific things and how they will react to them, and then I explain that to my colleagues."

Well, when a German gets "abusive or aggressive", no German policeman will be asking how he is taking specific things and why he is reacting in the was he does. They will sock it to him or do whatever else is necessary. (As an aside: The young policewoman prefers to remain anonymous. Why? She often has to deal with intimidation or threats. Is it possible that our fellow townsmen with a migration background are not as appreciative as they should of either, the German rule of law generally and the inordinate consideration they are receiving here?)

Scene change: The Brussels Journal reported recently the case of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old, as Paul Belien is plucky enough to call it, indigenous Dutchman who was shot dead by a police officer when he tried to protect a pregnant woman who was being harassed by some of her fellow townsmen with a migration background. Belien continues:

According to our sources the police officer who killed Mulder is a woman of Moroccan origin.

Northrhine Westphalia is my native state. I don't like it. I don't like it A BIT!

Fibonacci Series for Dhimmies

I was intending to comment on this idiot article from Al Reuters website, dating February 22, as soon as it appeared, but, as I said, I am pretty busy lately outside the Internet. And anyway, self-hate like that is neither new nor will it be the last incidence, so it's not quite as if I'd missed the catching of Osama Bin Laden or something like that.

Of course, it's not just the cultural relativist and self-hating aspect that is so offputting, it's the shoddy journalism as well. If a headline informs me that "Medieval Muslims made stunning math breakthrough" I expect medieval Muslims having made a, well, stunning math breakthrough, and not some random stumbling over something mathematicians find intriguing.

Joshua Socolar, a Duke university physicist, said it is unclear whether the medieval Islamic artisans fully understood the mathematical properties of the patterns they were making.

So what is it? I wonder whether sunflowers know about the Fibonacci series according to which they are growing. "Sunflowers made stunning math breakthrough"... now THAT would be a headline, but sunflowers don't seem to be very high up in the sucking-up hierarchy.

However, no article about the random stumblings stunning breakthroughs Muslims made without a flattering comparison to the European "Dark Ages", even though professional historians, who are, different from journalists, mired in a deplorable quagmire of knowledge, and thus sadly have to rein in their politically correct urges, have ceased using it. Al Reuters has no such compunctions:

While Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, Islamic culture flourished beginning in the 7th century, with achievements over numerous centuries in mathematics, medicine, engineering, ceramics, art, textiles, architecture and other areas.

That's great! And, not to forget, achievements in the field of institutionalising slavery, pedophilia, misogyny, cruelty and belligerence in an unbroken tradition since the, yes, 7th century.

A recent book, Tom Woods’ "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" is better suited than I to deal with those self-hating clichés and offers a cornucopia of facts. It does, however, deal with what ought to be common knowledge, not with stunning new revelations and thus the question remains why have we all but forgotten our own history and its great progress in the fields of art, science and philosophy, made long before the Enlightenment, the only, so it seems, "legitimate" Western achievement, took place? Why do we tend to see our history as one burdened story of violence, intolerance, spiritual and intellectual decrepitude? And, worse, why do our educated and opinion-making classes suck up to a death cult who hasn't achieved anything but power through cruelty, violence and intimidation (oh yes, and some stunning florets arranged according to the Fibonacci series mosaics) over the course of more than a millenium, so that members of same death cult can now add a more subtle method like playing the bad conscience card of the West to their quaint stockpile of tactics like beheading, stoning, torture and rape.

Thank you, Al Reuters. As a news service, you are a multiplier. At least we know now what the reports from around the world you are supplying to newspapers and broadcasters are worth.

The Selective Approach of Breaking Taboos

A case of incest has caught much attention here lately. Of course, when sex meets Nazi history, even the last slobbering idiot tries to sell his glandular activities as his opinion.

And of course, the real point is once again drowned in a sea of drool.

If this were about the procreation of genetically handicapped offspring, people with hereditary diseases would be banned from procreating, which they aren't. (A double-edged thing for sure, but what other way is there in a free society.)

And why should people, who successfully applied in- and line breeding methods to agriculture and animal husbandry since time immemorial, not use these very same methods for improving their own offspring if the issue were genetics and genetics only? Yet no sane, ethical people ever have.

On a more speculative note, incest laws had, historically, probably a lot to do with control. They may have helped those in power to prevent other families or tribes from accumulating too much strength (endogamy encourages group identification and bonding) and wealth. Thus, it doesn't seem too amazing that marriage between near relatives has been much less exeptional within patrician circles throughout history. We are, mind you, talking about parallel cousin marriage here, in patriarchal societies usually between the children of two brothers, both members of the same patrilineage.

And if incest were about genetics, why would quite a few cultures then subsume those related by adoption or marriage under the incest definition?

The incest taboo has very little to do with genetics and keeping the "race" healthy and vigorous. It is a social term and a social term only. Do I really have to spell out the devastating results if people within a community as closely knit as a nuclear family would feel free to have sex with each other?

No! This is just another one of those oh-so-progressive attempts at using fuzzy "anti Nazi" notions to destroy traditional values, because the average German will swallow anything (but ANYthing!) not to be called a Nazi. You can be a pedophile, a whoremonger, a thief and a liar, that's fine and dandy as long as you are not a *gasp* Nazi.

What was the case about that started it all?

The world was shocked by the story of a German couple, Patrick and Susan Stübing, brother and sister who grew up apart but met, fell in love and had three mutual children of whom at least two are retarded.

This is The Al Guardian's take on it:

In public, at least, they seem remarkably unfazed by what they have done. And in some senses, of course, they needn't be. They are a loving couple, who have been together for seven years and want to be with no one else. They have had four children. Beyond these details, however, the story gets more troubling. Patrick and Susan Stübing, who live in Zwenkau, near Leipzig, are brother and sister. Two of their four children have developmental problems, and all four have been taken into care. Patrick, 30, has served more than two years of a prison sentence for incest. Asked if she felt guilty about this breach of one of the last taboos, Susan, 22, simply shook her head and said: "No, I just want us to be able to live together."
[...]
What has been discussed less, is that the Stübings seem to be a textbook example of a phenomenon called genetic sexual attraction (GSA). It occurs between blood relatives who have been separated for most of their lives, and meet in adulthood; it has been known to happen in all sorts of permutations - father/daughter, birth mother/son, siblings - even, occasionally, same-sex relationships between people who would not otherwise identify themselves as homosexual.

Patrick had already been put in a children's home in East Germany when his sister was born, the third of eight children, five of whom died. (Asked in an interview what the others died of, Susan simply shrugged her shoulders.) After a lifetime spent in and out of care homes and foster families, he finally found his mother in 2000, but she died of a heart attack six months later. Brother and sister - neither of whom had known of the other's existence before this - had only each other for comfort.

But it would probably be fair to say that there would have been more to it than grief. Those who experience GSA speak of what they feel in terms we all recognise as romantic ideals of perfect love.
[...]
There is more going on than simple attraction between strangers. "It was something to do with recognition. It was like kinship, the proof you're finding each other. It was just mutual, unspoken," said a respondent in one of the only scientific studies conducted of the phenomenon, by Dr Maurice Greenberg and Professor Roland Littlewood of University College London, in The British Journal of Medical Psychology in 1995. They were surprised to find that more than 50% of people who sought post-adoption counselling "experienced strong sexual feelings in reunions".
[...]
The term "genetical sexual attraction" seems to have been coined by a woman called Barbara Gonyo, who was taken aback by the lust she felt when she was reunited with a 26-year-old son she had given up as a baby. The relationship was never consummated, because he did not reciprocate, and the feelings faded when he married. But she wrote a book about it in which she suggests, wrote Alix Kirsta in this paper three years ago, "that romantic love and erotic arousal may be the delayed by-product of 'missed bonding' that would have normally taken place between a mother and her newborn infant, or between siblings had they not been separated by adoption. Many such people, as adults, need to go through that early missed closeness. It may become sexual, or it may not."

There is certainly something childlike in the way the Stübings relate to each other. A reporter who recently organised a clandestine meeting with the couple found them sitting side by side on a bed in a motorway hotel. Much of the meeting was characterised by the couple's shoulder-shrugging, Susan Stübing's obsessive nail biting and anxious glances towards their media adviser. When questions were not directed at her, Susan, who dropped out of school at 15 with no qualifications, turned her pink pumps in circles like a child. At one point, the adviser told her: "Take that chewing gum out of your mouth." It is clear, say those who have met them, that the couple need looking after, which is one reason why, according to youth workers, their children have been taken away.
[...]
When relationships such as this do become sexual, they tend greatly to complicate knee-jerk assumptions about abuse and incest: "There is no force, coercion, usually no betrayal of trust," Greenberg told Kirsta. "And no victim. If sex occurs, it involves consenting adults."

So if we strip that of all trendy waffling, what do we have here? Another case where -- to use an Americanism -- trailer park trash, their futility, help- and haplessness is abused by the media to hammer home a fashionable cause, usually one that destroys traditional values. No doubt, there could be found an unbureaucratic solution for the few people who find themselves, like the Stübings, in such an undeserved predicament. After all, biological sisters who meet late in life, fall in love (whatever that is), have sex and, in the worst case, children, are not such an everyday occurence. But helping them is not the issue.

The issue is to throw another one of those taboos, on which our civilisation is built, on the dungheap of history. In this case it's keeping the nuclear family free from sex.

So if you feel the urge to have sex with your son, call it "genetical sexual attraction" (and write a book about it -- sex, specifically illicit sex, sells) and tell the dumb that lusting after your next of kin is not a serious social aberration but "that romantic love and erotic arousal may be the delayed by-product of 'missed bonding'".

Wait a second while I am rummaging for my sick bag...

Interestingly, it was The Al Guardian, too, who published, uncritically, the whinings of adulterers and other promiscuous scum who strive to be accepted not as what they are -- promiscuous scum -- but as "polyamorous".

Nobody with a modicum of self-control HAS to fall in love and not everybody who is in love HAS to have sex with the object of his (or her) adulation, and specifically not if there are as strong rational reasons as next-of-kin genetics speaking against it. But here we have a taboo that will not be as easily breakable as the negligible incest thingy: It is not allowed to call a spade a spade anymore. In this case it is the simple fact that the "loving couple" are coming from a class where, to put it politely, controlling one's urges is not considered a primary value. And worse, it is considered untoward by those who ought to know better to teach them any better. Besides, as the unknowing, effective and cheap vanguard of the destruction of family values, they are much more useful.

on a personal note

No reason for (depending on view) either -- mourning or joy. I am still alive and kicking. I just have so much going on in real live right now that I can't find the time, let alone the nerve, for blogging. Three adorable but hyperactive, 14-weeks-old Parson Russell Terrier puppies (two more will have to go) are driving me to the end of my nerves' tether. They are not a pack of puppies, they are a terrorist gang. I have Al Quaida at home.

Then there is their parents' training, which I have seriously neglected for months now, then there is my shooting/hunting licence project, which I undertake to put those crazy dogs to good use. There are evening classes, including tradition and customs (trust us Germans to take something like that not from a utilitarian or sportsmanlike angle, like the English do, but from an "idealistic" and "meaningful" angle), forestry and agriculture, weapon theory, the relevant law, gundogs, and, of course everything about wildlife, once a week since September AND I am taking extra trap shooting lessons twice a week because -- to be frank -- I am not quite a professsional killer in the making, at least not with a gun. (Neither with a rifle, but the rifle shooting standards are not quite that demanding.) My shoulder and jawbone are hurting and bruised. The final test will be in May and next year I am hoping to have one of the best terrier packs for wild boar hunting in the region. Well, make that locality...

Any sensible woman my age would rather perambulate her grandchildren, but then, nobody has ever accused me of being sensible.

Ten Years of Innocence Abused

As I am inordinately busy lately, not just outside the blogosphere, but offline generally, it comes in handy that we are celebrating today the 10th anniversary of The Onion's inspired and so true portrayal of innocence abused, which I herewith publish in its entirety, because it's so much better than anything I could write anyway.

Crazed Palestinian Gunman Angered By Stereotypes

March 5, 1997 | Issue 31•08

HEBRON, WEST BANK — In an emotionally charged press conference Monday, crazed Palestinian gunman Faisal al Hamad expressed frustration over the stereotyping of his people.



Faisal al Hamad, seen here shrieking anti-U.S. slogans, says that "not every crazed Palestinian gunman is exactly alike."

"As a crazed Palestinian gunman, I feel hurt by the negative portrayal of my people in the media," said al Hamad, 31, a Hebron-area terrorist maniac. "None of us should have to live with stereotyping and ignorance."

He then began screaming and firing into a busload of Israeli schoolchildren.

"It hurts that in this supposedly enlightened day and age, people still make assumptions about other people," al Hamad said. "We should not rely on simple generalizations. Each crazed Palestinian gunman is an individual."

Al Hamad said that he himself has often been unfairly stereotyped. "Any time I enter a crowded temple with fully loaded AK-47s in both hands, people just assume I'm going to open fire," he said. "That really hurts."

"Yes, I sometimes do gun people down in the name of the One True God," he noted. "But there is so much more to me."

Several weeks ago, al Hamad was again the victim of stereotyping during a vacation he took with his family to Washington, D.C.

"When we arrived at the airport in Washington, security guards detained us for more than 12 hours, just because I had 140 pounds of plastic explosives strapped to my chest," al Hamad said. "Do you think they would have called the FBI if I weren't a crazed Palestinian who's on their Ten Most Wanted List? I don't think so."



When this truck blew up in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur last year, Israeli officials suspected PLO involvement. "That really hurt that they would just think that right off the bat," al Hamad said.

Al Hamad said his vacation was ruined when federal agents seized a crate of chemical weapons he had brought into the U.S. as a gift for a friend in New York.

"I explained to them that the weapons were a birthday present for the blind cleric Sayid al Farouq, a good friend of mine from high school," he said. "But they did not believe me and took me into federal custody for nine weeks. Again, it's a case of people jumping to conclusions on the basis of skin color. And that can be very frustrating."

According to al Hamad, stereotypes against crazed Palestinian gunmen don't work because they don't take into account the vast variety of proud histories and diverse cultures among them.

"There are so many different kinds of crazed Palestinian gunmen. Each of us has our own unique reasons and motivations for our bus bombings and suicide missions," he said. "No two fundamentalist agendas are alike."

Al Hamad also stressed the importance of understanding and celebrating the cultural differences between crazed Palestinian gunmen and non-crazed, non-Palestinian non-gunmen.

"All the different peoples of the world have something special to offer each other," he said. "Our diversity is our greatest strength. Let's not make a weakness out of that strength."

To emphasize his point, al Hamad fired into a crowd, killing nine.

"I'm proud to be a crazed Palestinian gunman, obviously," he said in between shouts of anti-imperialist slogans. "But I'm an individual first. I'm me. Die, Yankee infidel pig swine!"

The Onion's ridicule hasn't lost a bit of its clout over the years, quite the contrary. Just do a simple Google search and see how reality beats even the most inspired of satire.