And Another Canine-Induced Blog Hiatus

After three months, one of the people who bought my puppies gave her back because of a "dog allergy" last Saturday. Now I have to deal with a fucked-up, lost little creature whose world has fallen apart. I could weep.

But apart from the emotional aspect, there are logistics of everyday life as well. This is not as if I had five dogs now instead of four, this is as if I had ten. The little one is totally without manners and the problem is that her brothers are, of course, emulating her. She chases everything that moves and Sunday she vanished after some bicyclists, barking frenziedly. Her brothers came promptly back when I called, but she didn't and I was lucky to be able to pick her up in a beergarden two hours later, thanks to the helpful nature and kindness of the people here. However, next time they will probably all go for a run. Nightmare! So I will have to exercise them separately and teach the little one the basic manners in the process she ought to have been taught months ago.

Inability to train a dog often causes "dog allergies". The animal shelters are full of such cases. I guess I am lucky that they gave her back at all and at least she wasn't beaten or anything like that.

The funny thing is: she is such a homely little creature, but as soon as she sees water she goes for it like a Navy SEAL, grabbing everything that crosses her way, sticks, algae, the lot, and takes them ashore, as proud as Punch, and that while her handsome, hunky brothers are dumbly watching.

We will manage, given time. Right now, I am just once again at my wit's (and strength's) end.

The picture is of her sister whose new owners DID take the trouble to teach her manners and are thus very happy with her.

I'll go on blogging as soon as the worst is over or at least as soon as we have become used to it.

Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retty

Who was Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retty?

Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retty was born on September 23, 1938 in Vienna into an old family of artistes and actors. Her paternal grandmother Rosa Albach-Retty was a stage actress and an icon of her time, her father, handsome Wolf Albach-Retty, would be well nigh forgotten now weren't it for his exceptional daughter. Her mother was Magda Schneider, another actress and a star in many of the partly notable, partly notorious, films during the Thousand Years between 1933 - 1945.

After her divorce from Albach-Retty in 1945, Magda Schneider took care of her daughter. Four years, from 1949 to 1953, Romy was educated in an exclusive and very much Catholic boarding school under the supervision of the "Englische Fräulein" (English Sisters). Romy had made her film debut already in 1953, aged 15, with "Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht" and taken her mother's name as screen name. Magda supervised her career, often appearing alongside her daughter.

Romy and Magda in "Sissi".

Young Romy's career was also overseen by her then stepfather Hans-Herbert Blatzheim whom Magda had married in 1953, a well-known and wealthy restaurateur, who, so Romy Schneider later indicated, had an unhealthy interest in her. When her first husband Harry Meyen sorted out her finances, it turned out that Blatzheim owed her SF 1,251418.15, part of which she got back after her stepfather's death.

In the film "Mädchenjahre einer Königin" (Ernst Marischka, 1954) about the girl- and early womanhood of Queen Victoria of England, Romy Schneider portrayed for the first time a royal. Her break­through to stardom, however, came with her interpretation of the young Princess Elisabeth in Bavaria -- later Empress Elisabeth of Austria -- in the romantic biopic "Sissi" (1955) and its two sequels 1956 and 1957.

Sickened by the syrupy image the "Sissi" genre had bestowed upon her, Schneider leapt at the chance of starring in the sombre "Christine" (1958), a remake of Max Ophüls' 1933 film "Liebelei" based upon a play by Arthur Schnitzler. Interestingly, in the original version of the film, Romy's mother, the rather homely Magda, had proved, as far as I know for the one and only time, that she could act. It was during the filming of "Christine" that Romy fell in love with French actor "bad guy" Alain Delon, who co-starred in the movie. Schneider became engaged to him in 1959, and the couple moved, to the chagrin of Romy's German audience, to Paris.

This was the start of her international film career, her escape from "football-mom" Magda Schneider and "Daddy" (as he was known) Blatzheim and the "sweet young thang" image that had become the only way her Germano-Austrian audience was willing to accept her. She had no easy start abroad, though. She once said something to the effect that to the Germans she was a traitor to the fatherland and to the French somebody who climbs mountains in ethnic costume and brogues.

Her ensuing career, however, took her far and even to Hollywood ("Good Neighbor Sam", a 1964 comedy with Jack Lemmon, and the 1965 movie "What's New, Pussycat" with Woody Allen). Mainly, however, she stayed in France, working with film directors such as Orson Welles ("Le Procès" of 1963, based upon Franz Kafka's "The Trial") and Luchino Visconti ("Ludwig", a 1972 film about the life of King Ludwig II of Bavaria in which she played a much maturer Elisabeth of Austria again). "Sissi sticks to me just like oatmeal", she once said.

Schneider's private life was a chain of failed relationships. Dumped by Delon in 1963, she married (1966) and divorced (1975) Harry Meyen, a renowned German stage actor, who committed suicide in 1979. In 1966 their son, David-Christopher had been born. 1975 she married Daniel Biasini, her private secretary. They separated in 1981.

Her daughter by this marriage, Sarah Magdalena Biasini (b. July 14, 1977), although blonde, stunningly resembles Romy, and even shows a tiny fraction of her mother's charme.

Even after the breakup of their relationship, Schneider continued starring in films with Delon ("La Piscine", 1969). Of her other films, the haunting, macabre (and, dare I say it: degenerate) "Le trio infernal" (1974) and "Les choses de la vie" (1969), both with Michel Piccoli, are of particular importance. I loved her in "Max et les ferrailleurs" (France 1971) another film with her favourite co-star Michel Piccoli who, as a policeman and ever the seducer, traps her, a hooker, into inadvertently betraying her petty criminal cronies.

A street walker with a heart of gold and an air of innocence, something only Romy was able to get across.

Her last film was "La Passante du Sans-Souci" (The Passerby, 1982).

A heavy smoker all her life, Schneider also took to drinking in her later years, especially after the death of her son David. David was found impaled on a fence at his step­father's parents' house which he had attempted to climb on July 5, 1981. After the removal of a kidney, Romy was not supposed to drink alcohol anymore. However, she did. Less than a year after the death of David, she was found dead in her flat in Paris, aged only 43. It turned out that she had taken a strong combination of alcohol and sleeping pills that night, but no post-mortem was performed and she was officially declared as having died of cardiac arrest. She was so overindebted, that nobody accepted her inheritance.

Romy was talented, beautiful and weak and gullible and vulnerable. Compared to her, even legendary Hollywood divas appear one-dimensional, wooden and cold, like Grace Kelly, or blowzy and common, like Liz Taylor. And as to her own generation -- WAS there really ever anybody worth comparing? What French actress could ever even remotely reach her?

But what fascinates me most about her is that even now, after almost fifty years have past since its premiere and having seen it for the nth time, one still longs to see the image of that beautiful child who, in spite of all the historical inaccuracy and saccharine was never, never kitschy herself.

As Mattussek and Beier put it in their recent DER SPIEGEL article: "That was Romy Schneider for the German cinema: a golden cloud that faded away. But every time one of her films is shown, the cloud builds anew. And puffs out again."

Hand me over the "Sissi" trilogy on DVD and I will watch it on any rainy Sunday afternoon again (and again) without becoming bored! And yes, all you "good taste" conscious Neuer Deutscher Film or Nouvelle Vague afficionados, BITE ME!

Rosemarie Magdalena Albach-Retty died 25 years ago today. Romy Schneider, forever young and beautiful, will live on for a long time.

---

This entry includes information from a Wikipedia article and a recent article in the 21/07 print-edition of DER SPIEGEL (see left), "Die Königin der Schmerzen" by Matthias Matussek and Lars-Olav Beier. "Königin der Schmerzen" (queen of pains) is a pun, somewhat tastelessly and not at all in line with the content of the article, based on the label stuck on Princess Diana, "Königin der Herzen" (queen of hearts).

For more information and pictures go to "Das Romy Schneider Archiv".

Cryptic Reasons for Flaring a Jewish Temple

Last Thurday, a synagogue in Geneva fell prey to a fire. The German Handelsblatt comments:

During the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, the largest synagogue in Geneva was destroyed by a fire on Thursday. The police proceed on the assumption of arson. Whether there is an antisemitic implication can't be told yet. Incidents like that are extremely rare in Switzerland.

We are relieved. How good of the Swiss!

And thanks to the Handelsblatt we are now saved from jumping to the premature and hackneyed conclusion that people who flare Jewish places of worship might necessarily be antisemites.

Roncesvalles Retroactively

I was able to retrieve a lot of the content of my first blog, somewhat boringly named "Editor's Daily Blog". Of course, most of the posts appear mundane and dated now, as old blog posts tend to be. However, I will re-post a few I consider worth keeping. I am posting them under the date they first appeared and label them for better retrieval due to the criteria of this blog. Sadly, it is impossible to retrieve the comments as well.

Roncesvalles started on October 29, 2005, so it can be safely assumed that the earlier entries are re-posted from the old blog.

Who Murdered The Queen of Hearts? Mystery Finally Solved?

Editrix' Office was the first to cover it (page down just trust me), now today's SPIEGEL ONLINE International issues strong circumstancial evidence regarding the unresolved gruesome slay of Princess Diana of Wales aka "The Queen of Hearts" aka "Her Sanctimoniousness" aka "She-Who-Died-for-Our-Sins". Why was the unidentified wheelchair in the Paris tunnel that fateful night so totally and utterly ignored?

German in Wheelchair Busted For Drunk Driving

A wheelchair-bound man was spotted by police driving down the middle of the road in a village in eastern Germany. When they breathalysed him they were shocked to find that he was ten times over the legal limit for drivers.
[...]
"He was right in the middle of the road," a spokesman for the police told Reuters Tuesday. "The officers couldn't believe it when they saw the results of the breath test. That's a life- threatening figure."

The 31-year-old had been out partying with a pal, he confessed when pulled over. In fact he was just a mile from home when he was rumbled.
[...]
Now the authorities are faced with the tricky task of how to penalize this kind of behavior. Technically the man was traveling as a pedestrian, and so cannot be charged with a driving offence.

I ask you, if a clinically dead man was able to somewhat competently drive a wheelchair across a country road, why shouldn't a 97 year old biddy, as sharp as a pin, drive one -- and force Diana's limo off the road? Easy! The scandalous manner in which the French authorities have chosen to ignore statements made by various French, British and American citizens who were eyewitnesses to the tragic circumstances surrounding the fatal crash in the Alma tunnel strongly suggests that the death of Princess Diana was premeditated murder. Even Diana herself feared that she would be the target of an assassination orchestrated by security forces on behalf of her in-laws. A year prior to her death, she wrote: "My husband is planning 'an accident' in my car ... in order to make the path clear for him to marry." And hey! Weren't Charles and his grandmother inordinately close?

Watch this space for additional proof.

This is wonderful, incredible, sensational, touching!

I got this from the German blog Statler & Waldorf.

Chaim Oschri, Yitzhak Yifat (center) and Zion Karsenti at the Western Wall. Once a paratrooper -- always a paratrooper. (from: Maariv, Mai 17, 2007)

"I saw Roman horse riders trampling people. I saw the war of the Maccabees, the concentration camps and the 1948 War of Independence when supplies couldn't reach Jerusalem. I saw all of these ...". (Yitzhak Yifat)

The Selective Practice of Granting Asylum

The Khaled El-Masri rendition case has been the focus of heavy media attention not just in Germany, but internationally as well since the story of his alleged abduction, long imprisonment and torturing by American secret service men on the grounds of a mixup of his name with that of a leading Al-Quaida member, first broke in 2005. SPIEGEL ONLINE International published the following news report on January 14 of that year:

"Khaled el-Masri just wanted to go on a short holiday to Skopje, he says. He needed some time alone -- away from the clamor of his four young sons. A couple of days. But it turned out to be a longer trip than he had planned. And he didn't end up seeing much of the Macedonian capital, either. Rather, he spent months locked up in a dirty prison cell in Afghanistan.

El-Masri, a 41-year-old German citizen who lives in the western German city of Ulm, was kidnapped on the Macedonian border by secret service personnel -- he doesn't know what country they were from -- on Dec. 31, 2003. From there, he was brought to a hotel in Skopje where he was not allowed to leave his room for three weeks. His captors began interrogating him there: "They offered me a deal," he told the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "I should sign a confession that I was a member of al-Qaida and then they would let me go."

After five months, the intelligence agencies reportedly twigged that they held the wrong man and released El-Masri, allegedly offering him money to remain silent. Media sources indicated that US intelligence contacted German authorities after apprehending El-Masri, triggering off a major political controversy at top level in Germany. El-Masri also claimed he was interrogated by a German who identified himself as "Sam" while in Afghanistan. All speculatoons on the identity of "Sam", however, remained without results. According to The International Herald Tribune Europe:

German officials said they knew nothing about the man's abduction and have repeatedly pressed Washington for information about the case, which has sparked outrage here. At a meeting in Berlin in December, Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded an explanation of the incident from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

But on Monday in nearby New Ulm, the police and prosecutors opened an investigation into whether Germany served as a silent partner of the United States in the abduction of the man, Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Arab descent who was detained on New Year's Eve 2003 in Macedonia and flown to the Kabul prison.

The action came after a two-and-a- half-hour meeting at police headquarters in which Masri told the police that he was "90 percent" certain that a senior German police official was the interrogator who had visited him three times inside the prison in Kabul but had identified himself only as "Sam."
[...]
In broadening its criminal inquiry into the abduction of Masri to the activities of its own government, the prosecutors are trying to determine whether German officials worked secretly with the United States in a practice known as "rendition," in which terror suspects are sent to be interrogated in other countries where torture is commonly used.

Since then, El-Masri has become an international cause célèbre and romping ground for all those whi are into all things good and noble all the time. His case is the subject of a major parliamentary investigation in Germany about to which extent the then government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had knowledge of the kidnapping. In America, his case has been frequently cited by human rights activists in their campaign to stop the practice of renditions.

However, the question remained whether El-Masri was really just the innocent victim of a freak muddle or whether he HAD connections to extreme Islam. The German newsmagazine Focus reported in February 2006 that el-Masri had been the commando chief of a radical movement in Lebanon according to information from German intelligence, Focus claimed to have gotten from the 273 comprehensive secret report of the German security authorities for the parliamentary oversight committee (PKG). According to it, El-Masri was a leading member of the radical movement Al-Tawhid in the Lebanon of the early Eighties. The organisation, so the report, had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and fought the dissident Alavite sect in Lebanon. The area of operations for El-Masri and his gang was Tripoli, so the report stated.

Records of El Masri's life between emigration to Germany and his abduction are curiously scant. He came to Germany in 1985 as a political asylum seeker and applied for a German passport, which he got in 1995. Then, in 2003, he suddenly decides to take a break from his stressful family and to have a vacation in Macedonia, surely THE holiday hotspot in a case like that.

The rest is history.

Last Thursday, the story got a follow-up, almost as enigmatic as the first part. Khaled el-Masri went berserk in an Ulm supermarket and set fire to it, causing roughly half a million Euros of damage. Prior to the arson attack el-Masri had spat in the face of one of the store's female staff after the warranty issue wasn't quite clear and she had refused to take back an iPod he had bought there. His lawyer Manfred Gnjidic explained why: "This is an example of what happens to torture victims when they are left on their own and not given any proper treatment." The lawyer stated that he had asked doctors and appealed to the government for help in providing the kind of psychiatric care his client badly needed, but nobody had offered to take him. That is not exactly true, because since his release from the CIA prison in Afghanistan in May 2004, el-Masri HAS received treatment at a "centre for torture victims", a treatment that is not covered by health insurance.

German state prosecutors committed el-Masri to a psychiatric institution for an indefinite period immediately after the arson attack. Mr Gnjidic said yesterday that in common with other victims of the CIA's controversial "renditions" programme, Masri had been severely traumatised by his experiences and had been unable to recover. "He had to become a criminal to get the therapy to which he was entitled as a victims for years now", his lawyer stated.

Prosecutors said that Masri is also facing charges for attacking an instructor who had been teaching him how to drive lorries. It transpired that el-Masri had lost his temper after the instructor didn't take kindly to the fact that he failed to attend his lessons.

Liza sez: If you have problems with your health insurance, there's always a supermarket next door.

Jump cut: While I am writing this, a Google search for "abschiebehaft selbstmord" (custody pending deportation and suicide) clocks up 37.200 hits The first 20 hits refer to:

• • No country or name specified
• • A Morrocan
• • Altankov Dagwasoundel - Mongolian
• • F.O. - Turkish Kurd
• • Not specified
• • Not specified
• • Aamir Ageeb from Sudan (died through police brutality, no suicide)
• • Not specified
• • Arumugasamy Subramaniam - Tamil*
• • Cemal Altun -- Turkish Kurd
• • The countries Usbekistan and Turkmenistan,
• • Arumugasamy Subramaniam - Tamil*
• • Mehmet Emin Tirok - Turkish Kurd
• • Not specified
• • Aamir Omer Mohamed Ahmed Ageeb from Sudan (see above)
• • Naimah H. from Algeria
• • Juri Palienko - Ukrainian
• • Not specified
• • Not specified
• • Marin Mogos - Romanian.

Do you see a pattern? I do. There is not a single case from a Middle Eastern country. While we are throwing shelter, a lifelihood, social security, training, compassion and care after hordes of thugs from the Middle East, this sort of faux humanity ends exactly at the point where Israel (or America, for that) can't be blamed for their misery.

Where do I have to apply for membership in your "Hooray-Israel-narrow-gauge-thinkers" club, Liza?

---

*See my blog entry Dead Children without Importance.

After-Hours-Terrorism

Do you know Private Eye? Private Eye is a fortnightly satirical magazine, English, of course, edited by Ian Hislop. They are often accused of revelling in scurrilous gossip and scandal about the misdeeds of the powerful and famous, have been at the recieving end of countless libel writs and they are said to have the best legal department of any company or organisation worldwide. They frequently report news that the mainstream press is too shit-scared to use for fear of legal reprisals, because they are of minority interest or simply not politically correct. Private Eye will print a story without hard evidence when there is an overwhelming consensus that the story is true. It also seems that they avoid breaking stories of politicians' extramarital rompings on moral grounds, but they will freely comment on such matters when they are unearthed elsewhere. They are irreverent, funny and annoying.

In a word: They are HEROES!

Every admirer of Private Eye will remember the cover about the splendid welcome that was given to President Nicolae and Madame Elena Ceausescu of Romania, with the Ceausescus, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in full evening regalia at a state banquet. In speech bubbles (the standard stylistic device Private Eye uses for the cover), Prince Philip asks: "And does he have any hobbies?" Elena Ceausescu: "He’s a mass murderer." The Queen: "How very interesting."

Yes, this IS funny, but that is not why I am unearthing it. Let's make a little leap:

Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post reported, based on revelations by Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), that a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who works for the humanitarian NGO Doctors Without Borders had been arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Israeli politicians.

Mazab Bashir, 25, from Deir el-Balah began working with Doctors Without Borders five years ago. In April, he revealed during a Shin Bet interrogation that he had been collecting intelligence on senior Israeli officials -- including Olmert and a number of Knesset members -- for months. Bashir met with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in September 2006, and said that the assassination was meant to avenge the deaths of Palestinian civilians. He also underwent arms training with the PFLP, and was picked to carry out the planned assassination. When he realized that the security surrounding Olmert was impenetrable, Bashir decided in December 2006 to kill David Be'eri, head of the Elad organization, a group involved in purchasing Arab homes in Jerusalem's Old City, and that same month he underwent combat training in the Gaza Strip in order to learn to kill without using weapons.

In January 2007, Bashir entered Israel again on behalf of Doctors Without Borders, and began collecting information on Be'eri. He made additional trips to Jerusalem in February and March, and on April 18 and was arrested on April 19.

During his interrogation, Bashir said he had planned to return to Gaza to complete his combat training and learn, among other things, how to break necks. He said he intended to use his skills to kill Be'eri. Bashir was indicted Thursday in the Jerusalem District Court.

So far so bad. And the reaction of the very NGO that provided the backup for the intended murder?

Duncan Mclean, head of 'Doctors Without Borders' in the region, told Israel Radio, "I don't think embarrassed would be the right word. We are very sad for Bashir who has been working for us for almost six years. But we would like to make it very clear that we make a distinction between his professional work and what he does on his personal time in the sense that all our staff is hired for professional reasons and I don't think our organization can be held liable for every aspect of their life."

I got it now! As Liza put it: Don't mix business and pleasure. At daytime, a pleasant bedside-manner for the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, after hours, murdering Jews. A doctor without borders for sure.

Jerusalem of Gold

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent,
for Jerusalem's sake I will not remain quiet,
till her righteousness shines out like the dawn,
her salvation like a blazing torch.
(Jesaja 62-1)

just to retrieve this from the blog bilges AGAIN...

All you hypocritical politicians, journalists, and general bleeding heart do-gooders who are now pissing and moaning over the fact that some terrorist murderers might have to do their full time in prison:

WHERE WERE YOU, WHERE WERE YOUR VOICES, WHEN FARIBA TAJIANI-EMAMQOLI WAS HANGED?









Disclaimer: If this is not Seifert-safe, I am awfully sorry. Not. It is, however moderately well documented and researched, although it may be considered "gruselig" and "lächerlich" (creepy and ridiculous) by some and "Zwischentöne" (nuances) are sadly missing as well. Let me see... how's that for a nuance: At least Fariba wasn't ten years old when they hanged her, like other females were.

Operation Chastise

To remember the day, a story from home:

Almost everybody has heard of the "Dambusters", an elite Lancaster bomber unit in WWII. They have become a major part of WWII "folklore". What exactly did they do?

It all started with Dr. Barnes Wallis. Dr. Wallis was an employee of the Vickers Aircraft Company. In March 1941, he completed a paper "A note on the method of attacking the Axis powers". Wallis idea was a to use a gigantic bomb against the Germans so that any structure would become vulnerable to aerial attacks, even if built underground. Wallis proved that a 10 ton bomb dropped at 40,000 feet would go 135 feet into a normal surface and would create no crater as all energy would be directed into an earthquake effect with highly destructive consequences. However, no one was particularly interested in what Wallis had written. No one had ever built a 10 tons bomb, no bomber had ever been built able to carry such a bomb, not to speak of a plane flying at 40,000 feet.

However, one part of his paper did attract the attention of the War Office. Wallis believed that Germany’s industrial heart could be destroyed –- literally drowned -– if the dams of the tributaries to the river Ruhr were destroyed, emptying the reservoirs and unleashing a deluge into the densely populated industrial Ruhr area. An ‘Air Attack on Dams Committee’ was formed in 1941, who decided that the primary target should be the Möhne Dam in the idyllic South Westphalian uplands of the Sauerland. The Möhne reservoir was (and still is) the main water supply for the Ruhr area. The dam was 130 feet high and 112 feet wide at its base and still 25 feet wide at the top. In July 1941, the Air Attack on Dams Committee concluded that "There seems to be no doubt that an attack on the Möhne Dam is impracticable with existing weapons."

A torpedo type bomb, too, was out of the question as the Germans had already thought of that and had protected the dam with anti-torpedo nets. The final plan Wallis came up with was, according to him, "childishly simple". He stated that a "bouncing bomb" would clear the protective nets, smash into the dam wall, stay intact and then sink to a depth of 30 feet before exploding using a hydrostatic fuse.

Lancaster bombers: An artist's understanding of the events.

Wallis received permission to develop the bomb – code-named "Upkeep". The bomb was 50 inches in diameter, 60 inches long and weighed 9250 lbs. Of this weight, 6,600 lbs was RDX explosive, it was designed to be mounted across the bomb bay of a Lancaster bomber.

It was clearly not an easy bomb to deliver and an elite new bomber squadron, 617, was formed in March 1943 to deliver the goods. The crew had to release the bomb while flying at exactly 220 mph and at a height of exactly 60 feet above the water. Top-precision flying was needed to get the bomb in motion. To add to it, the crew had to drop the bomb at exactly 425 yards from the dam wall. There could only be 25 yards in either side of this figure, not to forget that German guns would be targeting them and the fact that the attack had to be carried out at night.



Wing Commander Guy Gibson (center) and his airmen.

617 Squadron was lead by Wing Commander Guy Gibson and he was allowed to select the men who were to be on the attack among those who had survived about 60 bombing raids. The operation was given the code-name Chastise. 617 Squadron undertook extensive practising sessions of low flying but none of them knew the target. This they were told at the last minute.

On the night of May 16th, 1943, nineteen Lancaster bombers took off from Scampton in Lincolnshire. They had three primary targets: the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams and two secondary ones, the Lister and the Ennepe dams. Of the nineteen planes, five would be held in reserve during the attacks. To achieve the correct height (altimeters using air pressure were unreliable in the mountainous terrain so close to the ground) they fixed two spotlights to the nose and tail of the Lancaster and directed their beams downwards so that they crossed 60 feet under the craft. The navigator would direct the pilot up or down until the spots touched, forming a figure 8. The bomb aimer found the correct distance from the dam by looking through a simple hand-held wooden triangle with dowel markers. When the dowels lined up with the towers on the dam he would release the bomb.

The Möhne dam immediately after the attack.

Gibson led the first attack. At 00.56 hours, the Möhne Dam was breached and by 01.54 hours so was the Eder Dam. The Sorpe Dam was attacked by planes from the reserve force but, though hit, held out.

The attack had enormous propaganda value and made Gibson a hero of national importance. In the following euphoria, the unusually high losses were forgotten. Over 50 percent of the flyers never returned. 53 men died, 13 of them Canadians.

A picture of the devastation further down the river.

Quickly, the Germans repaired the damaged dams. Steel production in the Ruhr valley doubled that year. Few remember, or know, that much more than 1,000 (the casualty numbers vary grossly depending on the source) people died in the floods following the dam bombing, many of them Ukrainian women and children, trapped in a camp below the Möhne dam.

The most important impact of the raid was that 20,000 men working on the Atlantic Wall had been moved to the Ruhr to carry out repairs to the damaged and breached dams.

Guy Gibson returned to operational duties in 1944 and was killed on a bombing raid on Rheydt (a borough of Mönchengladbach) operating as the Master Bomber, when his de Havilland Mosquito crashed near Steenbergen, Netherlands, on 19 September 1944. It was assumed for many years that he had been shot down, but following the discovery of the wreckage of his plane, it was found that his aircraft had simply run out of fuel.

Blog Notification

I was made aware that the fact that I am using English as my blogging language, which is not my mothertongue, might be construed as pretensions of a cosmopolitanism I patently don't possess.

I am shattered.

Therefore, I will change the description of my blog from "Biased News and Views from Dhimmified Germanistan" to "Biased News and Views from the German Backwaters".

I even considered briefly to dumb down my English -- everything to please the public -- but came to the conclusion that that might be too much of an effort for me. Awfully sorry to lose a couple of hits, but there you are...

Well, changing the description might even have the beneficial side-effect that drooling morons, hell-bent on sniffing out terms like "Dhimmi" or quips like "Germanistan", will pass by my blog in the future.

Yom Yerushalaim

Thank you Spirit of Entebbe (Motto: "It was a daring raid, even by Israeli standards") for the pictures, of which I stole two:



The coolest tractor-driver: Shaul Mofaz.



The Golan protecting Jerusalem for 40 years now.


Hat-tip: Liza!

Mentioning Dhimmies Brings on Drooling

I am SO flattered!

Friday week, on May 4, the eminent Neue Zürcher Zeitung, one of the oldest newspapers still published, of the reputation of a world-class newspaper and with a small but influential circulation of 160,000 (Yes, we yawned too!) has taken notice of me. A guy who goes by the name of Heribert Seifert told the world what he thinks of the Islam-critics among us bloggers and the headline reveals the stance already: "The Battle Bloggers" (Die Kampf-Blogger).

My co-defendants have dealt pretty competently with the -- to put it politely -- philosophy behind Seifert's rant earlier, so let me add some thoughts in the spirit of Anton Kuh: Why getting even-handed when an ad hominem will do as well?

Just who is Heribert Seifert? A brief online search tells us that Seifert, born 1948 in Dorsten (Westphalia), a place that is lending new dimensions to the terms "provincial" and "in the sticks" (trust me, I am from that part of the world as well), read history, German philology, philosophy and education to become a grammar school teacher in Recklinghausen, which is just a stonethrow away from Dorsten. He then progressed to become a teacher of teachers in nearby Gelsenkirchen and his day job at a Studienseminar (a teacher training college) leaves him apparently enough time to write for the NZZ on a regular basis (and occasionally for other media as well).

As this blog entry is about understanding Heribert Seifert and what makes him tick, a closer look at the city of his ministry should be in order: Gelsenkirchen is a city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the industrial Ruhr area. In the early 20th century, Gelsenkirchen was the most important coalmining town in Europe. Today, with the mines once and for all confined to history, Gelsenkirchen is lumbered for decades now with one of the highest unemployment rates in Germany. Gelsenkirchen is, too, the city where schools are facing serious intercultural trouble, for example by demands from Turkish parents not to teach the theory of evolution anymore and to include "more Islamic content".

A teacher at a Gelsenkirchen comprehensive informed the WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk, one of the public broadcasters) that he had been molested over a period of time by Turkish students on the grounds of his suspected Jewishness.

"I had mentiond during history classes that my great-grandmother had been Jewish", which had led, so the teacher, to verbal abuse as "son of a bitch (whore), miscreant and Jew." He was, too, asked several times whether he believed the lie that humans are derived from apes and why the students had to learn such a lie – even though the theory of evolution wasn't even part of the current curriculum.

As it happened, it was in Gelsenkirchen, too, where a man was killed by his fellow-Muslims, which led the renowned journalists Dirk Maxeiner and Michael Miersch to the following comment in the newspaper DIE WELT:

When last week [end of January 2004] a Moslem shot dead two fellow Muslims in a mosque in Gelsenkirchen because out of a feeling of violated honour, it received only minor interest in most newspapers. One has simply gotten used to the fact that right in the middle of a liberal society the Middle Ages are being raised from the dead: Honour killings, forced marriages, deprivation of liberty with women and girls as victims, vigilante justice based on perceived "honour violations". "Should my sister have pre-marital sex, I'll cut her up, that's clear", a young Muslim told a taz-peporter unselfconsciously. Attacks on pedestrians who are perceived as gay or Jewish in the eyes of the militant protectors of the faith are increasing.

No doubt, being a teacher in Gelsenkirchen is NOT nice.

Incidentally, Maxeiner und Miersch, together with the equally renowned journalist, writer and sometimes critic of Islam, Henryk M. Broder, are running the (sometimes Islam-critical) blog Die Achse des Guten, a (yes!) blog that conspiciously escaped Seifert's attention, while he is listing the blog Dhimmideutsch (or, as Seifert puts it so endearingly "Dhimideutsch" – don't they have proofreaders at the NZZ?) a blog with the whopping content of 33 posts.

Everywhere do «Akte Islam», «Politically Incorrect», «Fakten & Fiktionen», «Jihad Watch», «Daniel Pipes», «Gudrun Eussner», «Roncevalles», «Dhimideutsch» and their comrades in combat find proof of their suspicion that 'the' Islam and 'the' Muslims are working openly or clandestinely to take over the power. Whereas in the USA well-known publicists like Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch) and Daniel Pipes are running those blogs, in Germany and Switzerland they are, apart from a very few rare exceptions, strangers to the world of publishing.

As links are notably absent, let me first introduce the "bloggers" Seifert mentions.

First there is Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the man behind Akte Islam, a lawyer, political scientist and much-published author on, among other issues, secret services, white-collar crime and Islam in Europe. I am sure he knows about what he is talking, but I rarely visit his website on purely personal grounds. Gratuitiously rude people like Ulfkotte, who scour the Internet for little bloggers who happen to err in details, like Esther from the Islam in Europe blog, to then deliver a dressing down from a great height

...I am German. And I just read your article … I write books on that issue. And I really have problems if people like you say that the things that I quote are not true. So please be so kind and write a correction ! I would kindly welcome that...

depress me.

But whatever. Ulfkotte's website Akte Islam is not a blog, which is not just a technical difference, and which seems to have escaped blogger-hunter Seifert's attention, as did the fact that the "stranger to the world of publishing" Ulfkotte is known roughly seven times better by Google than Seifert.

Politically Incorrect is number four of ALL (not just the political, as Seifert states) German blogs with 9908 unique visitors and 29914 clicks last Friday.

My personal opinion is that the PI team are doing a good job when it comes to information about Islam and they had very little to take back yet, which is quite an accomplishment in the face of the sheer volume of their published content. The comment section has some visitors I wouldn't let post at my blog, but then, my number of comments are a negligible fraction of theirs and I guess to make the comment section of a blog like PI watertight one would need the spare time a teacher at a Studienseminar probably has. Well, and for the "strangers to the world of publishing" bit: Google offers more than twice the number of hits for Stefan Herre, (PI's owner and founder) Heribert Seifert gets.

Kewil's Fakten&Fiktionen, a one-man-effort, can boast a respectable rank 27 among the German blogs. Kudos!

That said, Kewil is one of those bloggers that make me always cringe when I realise that we are on the same side of the criticising-Islam-issue (a feeling that is very probably mutual). But, interestingly and revealingly, it wasn't Kewil's Nazi-history-relativising or bordering on antisemitic content that got Seifert's attention, but this blogger's criticism of Islam.

Kewil's (a nom de plume) popularity-factor at Google is thrice that of Seifert's.

Gudrun Eussner's website, notably another non-blog, contains a wealth of articles, meticulously written and even better researched, on many issues, including, but not limited to, the threat of Islam to our Western culture.

Dr. Gudrun Eussner is a political scientist with Orientalism as minor subject who used to work for international organisations in the Middle East and Google mentions her ten times more frequently than -- you guessed it -- Heribert Seifert.

[Notabene that the "Heribert Seifert" hits include the mentionings of another chap similarly named (my condolences!) who is a proficient table-tennis player and that the recent blog-reactions to the NZZ-article boosted the results to boot.]

Much of what those blogs are publishing is without doubt unappetising, laden with resentment and no argument for their claim to counter the «cartel of silence of the mainstream-media» with truth. Because they do not offer own research. With the tunnel-vision of the Islam-hating zealot, those culture warriors are scouring the websites of the international media for the truth and they even pay attention to the local sections. Thus, an extremely biased selection is compiled, which is massively offered and allows for no distinction. There work is specifically geared at the knocking down of those boundaries, by which for example dailies are discriminating the important from the less important. Those bloggers are turning an act of abuse of Turkish youth, which was previously limited to the local section of a Bavarian daily into an event that can be noticed worldwide.

That exactly those "boundaries by which… dailies are discriminating the important from the less important" can be -- and ARE -- used as a massive manipulation tool by those very dailies seems to escape our paragon of publishing accomplishment, expert usage of the tools of the trade and good journalistic practice, and the fact that he finds the above mentioned news report not noteworthy allows us to get a whiff of from where Seifert is coming.

Let me limit the rest of this post to Roncesvalles, not because I feel a necessity to justify myself, but because I know my own blog and work best.

On May 3, the day before the slanderous NZZ-article appeared, the start page of my blog contained the following posts:

"The Ugly Duck(ling) Narcissist Who Thinks He Is A Swan", "KAWOOOM QUACK QUACK", "Cross-post from badeagle.org", and "LOL ROFL ROFLMAO ROFLMAOPMP", all four about a petty private feud I am childishly cultivating, "Obituary for David Reimer" an anti-feminist topic, "On a completely different personal note", "on another personal note" and "on a personal note", all about, as indicated by the headers, personal matters, "It Stinks Where 'It' Thinks" is one of my frequent (and better ones, by the way) rants about German history, as is "The Perennial Wish to Kill Jews by Proxy". "Media Darlings of the Unenlightened Masses" is about the notorious German lack of discernment and has only a very peripheral connection with Islam, if any, "Happy Easter" just shows a picture of the pope, "A Well-Meaning Suggestion for American Homeschoolers" is one of those rants I usually deliver when I caught some culturally over-zealous American talking about things German he patently knows nothing about and "The Selective Approach of Breaking Taboos" is about a case of incest and its apoplogists in Germany.

"The Strange Effects of Mountain Air" is about a German politician who aspires to talk to "Taliban moderates" (probably accompanied by multipara virgins),"Some Facts about Leeds University" is about the curbing of academic freedom at an English university, "Guilt Is A Mighty Lever" is about a case of perversion of justice by a German court in a divorce suit, "The Fox, The Henhouse …" is about another case of perversion of justice in a different context, whereas "Fibonacci Series for Dhimmies" is about fashionable self-hating and cultural relativist media-drivel and "Ten Years of Innocence Abused" is a travesty about the endless patience the media is mustering up when it is about murdering Jews in the Middle East. All of those posts are NOT ABOUT Islam, but about reactions TO Islam, but I am not petty.

Doubtlessly about Islam is the entry "Islam is tolerance" -- about the imprisonment of a blogger in Egypt to be precise.

Interestingly, it escaped our master-researcher's attention that I, on the start page of my blog, questioned the source of a report of a Muslim atrocity, even to the extent of contacting Robert Spencer who had published it. Three posts, "Untruth does not go away just because it is buried in the blog bilges -- redux", "untruth does not go away just because it is buried in the blog bilges" and "The Sheer Monstrosity Defies Belief " are about it. But what the hell, a phrase like "the tunnel-vision of the Islam-hating zealot" HAD to come out not to cause Heribert mental flatulences.

I will even grant our teacher of teachers that he may not be able to see that I am performing a critical assessment of sources far beyond what journalists are usually doing or what would be necessary according to the standard of a blog that is not part of a post-doc project, or that I keep meticulously opinion and facts apart. Recognising that would be a matter of both, analytic skills and intellectual honesty, which is clearly not everybody's thing. However, master-researcher Seifert didn't even notice what was plainly in front of his nose: namely that I use exclusively major media like DER SPIEGEL (repeatedly), Reuters, International Herald Tribune, DIE ZEIT, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Der Standard, DIE WELT, UPI, The Guardian, or the WDR-website. Not a single local paper or -section in sight. He ignored, too, that I am backing up the information and opinions I provide by in-depth links, and to a far greater extent any journalist in the print media would (and could) do.

I believe he didn't even bother to read my blog, or the others, for that. As well as he sold us the 33-entries-blog Dhimmideutsch as a "Battle-Blog", he just read Roncesvalles' sub-header and started to drool like a Pavlovian dog hearing the dinner bell. And he doesn't even know what a blog is or he wouldn't have included Eussner's and Ulfkotte's websites in his list.

And just when I was in such fine fettle, I discovered this at the political feature pages of Deutschland Radio:

Trade Union newspapers contain amazingly open descriptions of day-to-day multiculturalism at schools full of violence and racism, which, this time, is coming from the immigrant children. Teachers, some of whom are working for decades dedicatedly and ready for dialogue in "problem neighborhoods", are describing in detail their disappointments and failures.

And their shepherded "victims", the migrants, of all people are sometimes not as innocent as they's like to appear. There are annoying stories of brutality and neglect, of broken-down families, from the destruction of cultural certainties, which makes "integration" to a hardly reachable goal.

What remains of his beef with the "Battle-Bloggers" then? Does Heribert only trust trade union sources? Or do we have just a pedestrian hack here who makes up his shit as he goes along, depending on the current drool-factor of the topic and the lines he and the NZZ are needing?

Get a blog, master researcher! I'll even explain to you what it is, and maybe, one day, you'll get at least THAT way recognition you clearly don't deserve.

---

Seifert closes his article with an appreciative nod towards a site with a less blunt assessment of Islam than the unloved "Battle-Bloggers", the Internet-portal Qantara ("Dialogue with the Islamic World"), whose intellectual dishonesty is of montrous proportions. Qantara is an effort of, among others, the Goethe-Institut, vanguard and flagship of German culture worldwide. That is the same Goethe-Institut, mind you, whose former director of the Ramallah office and then (January 2003) director of the Damaskus office (a Protestant pastor, which makes him automatically an expert of anything good and noble) dubbed Palestinian Arab terrorists "freedom fighters" and was, after a lot of soul-searching, harshly disciplined by a transfer to India, presumably because it's safely Jew-free. Not because anybody saw anything much wrong about his views, but because the cleric's selective liberation-geared ardour, which goes down so well at home in Germany, might cause some raised eyebrows abroad.

The Goethe-Institut, too, is the organisation who wiped Israel off their map. Everything not to offend the Arabs. They could get mad with us.

Or the Turks in Gelsenkirchen with Heribert, for that.

One can not live crooked and think straight! (Hilmar von Campe)

I first met Hilmar von Campe last October – as one does in the Internet.

Different from all other online-encounters was, however, the fact that he was graceful enough to write me an email to thank me for my brief appreciative remarks about him and his work. (I have still no idea how he found them.) We have become friends, are talking on the phone occasionally and I intend to meet him and his wife should circumstances permit it.

This is about my experience with his latest book "How Was it Possible?".

"How Was it Possible?" is introduced as an autobiography. That it is, but it is much more. A passionate polemic pamphlet, a compelling and demanding ethical codex, an authoritative source on the German past with lots of historical information from a contemporary witness, and a declaration of appreciation and gratitude for the country that has become his home, America.

Born in the German province of Westphalia in 1925 to an aristocratic family (the father was a high-ranking civil servant), von Campe offers a, to me, unique Christian perspective on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. His account as both, witness and participant of the horrible outcome of self deception and godlessness in Germany is invaluable. As a Hitler Youth, then as a soldier, he saw the world plunged into war and his country and family destroyed. One of his brothers fell in the war, his father was murdered in a Russian concentration camp. When it was all over, he knew he had nothing to blame but himself and all the many Germans who had looked the other way.

After the war Hilmar von Campe had to come to terms with the fact of the Holocaust but, different from other Germans, he met his moral responsibility head-on, went through a profound ethical change and embarked on a travel of restitution for the crimes of his nation and of reconciliation with the victims. He was received twice by the then executive director of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Washington, Dr. David Weinstein, and apologized to him for the suffering Germany had inflicted on the Jewish people. He told him, "that the crimes of the Nazis were only possible because of the moral cowardice of so many of us non-Nazis."

An honest, remarkable, and remarkably brave, statement indeed!

The most painful part of defining National Socialism was recognizing my own moral responsibility for the Nazi disaster and their crimes against humanity, which boiled down to the accepting the truth that "as I am so is my nation" – in other words, if every German had been like me, it was no wonder that the nation became the tool of gangsters.

Like here, Hilmar von Campe reminds his readers in no uncertain terms throughout his book that the still undecided battle between good and evil is fought with the weapons of truth and lie. He talks about the godless cult of relativism, which is part of the latter, and that every human being will have to decide on which side he or she wants to stand at this historical point in time. There is no cowardly opting out. In his book he sends a warning to every American – to every human – not to look the other way and follow the road of appeasement to evil as millions of Germans did, but stand up for God's truth. One cannot be a bystander and a Christian at the same time, he says.

Von Campe is in an almost unique position to point out the links between Nazi ideology and Islamic hatred, and he tells us clearly and precisely how things are, how Islam follows in the steps of the "Third Reich", how the "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem" and rabid Jew-hater was sponsored by the Nazis, how his relative and ideological foster child Yasser Arafat was recruited and trained by Russia and how the Nazi's persecution of Jews has been taken to new levels by radical Islam and thus become a threat not just to the Jewish people but of the entire free world.

Hilmar von Campe, who had left Germany in the Fifties, spent a long time in various Latin America countries. His experiences have been far outside the "standard", like his kidnapping in Bolivia by mine workers, his living in an Argentine factory in Avellaneda dominated by Peronist workers, his interactions with the leaders of the Communist Dockworkers Union in Rio de Janeiro or his chairmanship of the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce Subcommittee on Foreign Investments. He owned a factory in Mexico and is now president of an Ex- and Import business in the United States. He is married to Dina from Peru. They have two children, Stefan and Sabrina and it is a delight to read how the von Campe family didn't end up as a "multikulti" hotchpotch, but as four tri-lingual individuals who learned to evaluate and respect different cultures. As Hilmar von Campe puts it: "Other nations and what makes them tick has been part of our family as long as our family has existed, and we have been better off for having friends in many parts of the world."

Hilmar von Campe's biography and thinking bears witness to the fact that secular ideologies are no answer to totalitarian and inhuman threats now, as they haven't been an answer seventy years ago, but to me, personally, it doesn't end here.

"How Was it Possible?" is, among the many other things it is, an priceless source for Americans who are interested in truly authentic insight of the German soul beyond "panzer ace" admiration and German self-hatred at two different sides of the same scale. Hilmar von Campe's ethical and political analysis is simple (but far from simplistic), revealing, astounding and thought-provoking at the same time. At a time when a phoney pacifism has all of Germany in its grip and more and more people are surrendering unconditionally to the forces that threaten our culture under the bigoted pretense that our Nazi past means a special "responsibility" not to fight anymore and not even, or rather specifically not, against evil ("Who are we Germans to judge others… we, with OUR past...") I, as a German, appreciate in particular that he has the rare courage to draw the inevitable parallels between Nazi Germany and the recent Muslim threat, a parallel hardly any German is willing to draw. It is, so I think, no mere chance that so many ex-Nazi followers (like Nobel-laureated former SS-man Günther Grass, to mention just one notable example), their children and grandchildren, are falling over their own feet in anticipating obedience, relativist reasoning and dhimmitude* and that their interpretation of the German past and what it should imply is leading to the opposite position of that of a Hilmar von Campe, who is a staunch ally of Israel. Which is, to me, the hallmark of honest German "Vergangenheitsbewältigung".

If that it simplistic, so be it, but Hilmar von Campe's sincere, truthful and straightforward reckoning with the past is a previously unknown comfort to this German's heart.

Hilmar von Campe shows us Germans a way out of that endless spiral of hypocrisy and self-hatred. Will we take it? I doubt it.

---

*On an additional note, to what extent there is the conscious ot subconscious desire behind the inflated understanding, even support, of Islamic atrocities that the Arabs may as well finish what the Germans had to be forced to cease – and it needed a world war to do that – namely the Holocaust of the Jews, is maybe not a different question right here, but beyond the scope of this review.

I would like to mention two minor items (page numbers will be added), where I happen not to agree with Hilmar von Campe respectively where I would like to see some additional information:

The hatred of Jews did not start with the infamous "Mufti". It had been, and still is, an integral part of Islam since times immemorial, although it didn't have the genocidal quality of Nazi-antisemitism then.

The other thing is the fact that, when Friedrich von Bodelschwingh and his resistance against the Nazi "euthanasia" (i.e. the killing of "useless" human life) scheme is mentioned, Bishop Clemens August Count Galen ought to be mentioned as well.

Playing Dr. Mengele: Obituary for David Reimer

Today is the obit of David Reimer. Who was David Reimer?

David Reimer was one of the most famous patients in the annals of medicine. Born in 1965 in Winnipeg as Bruce Reimer, he was 8 months old when a doctor used an electrocautery needle instead of a scalpel during a routine circumcision, burning off the little boy's entire penis. David's, very young, parents were referred to John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and to psychologist Dr. John Money, one of the world's leading experts in "gender identity". Money recommended a surgical sex change, from male to female. David's parents eventually agreed, believing Dr. Money's claims that this was their sole hope for raising a child who could have heterosexual intercourse -- even though as a "woman".

For Dr. Money, David was the ultimate experiment to prove that nurture, not nature, determines "gender" and sexual orientation -- an experiment all the more irresistible, notabene, because David was an identical twin. His brother Brian would provide the perfect matched control.

David's infant "sex reassignment" was the first ever conducted on a developmentally normal (not hermaphrodite) child. According to Money's published reports through the 1970s, the experiment was a success. The twins, so Money, were happy in their assigned roles: Brian a rough and tumble boy, his sister Brenda a happy little girl. Money was featured in Time magazine and included a chapter on the twins in his book "Man & Woman, Boy & Girl".

The reality was far more involved and much less happy. At age 2, Brenda angrily tore off her dresses. She refused to play with dolls and would beat up her brother and seize his toy cars and guns. In school, she was relentlessly teased for her masculine traits and behaviour. She let her parents and teachers know that she felt like a boy but was, on Dr. Money's strict orders of secrecy, just told that she was only going "through a phase". Meanwhile, Brenda's guilt-ridden mother attempted suicide, her father lapsed into drinking and the twin, Brian, neglected and problem-ridden as well, descended into drug use, petty crime and depression.

When "Brenda" was 14, a local psychiatrist convinced her parents that she ought to be told the truth. David later said about the revelation: "Suddenly it all made sense why I felt the way I did. I wasn't some sort of weirdo. I wasn't crazy."

Changing his name to David, he then embarked on the painful process of converting back to his biological sex. A double mastectomy removed the breasts that had grown as a result of estrogen therapy, multiple operations created an artificial penis and testicles. Regular testosterone injections masculinised his musculature. Yet David was depressed over what he believed was the impossibility of his ever marrying. He twice attempted suicide in his early 20s. Eventually, he DID marry, but he remained haunted by memories of the frightening annual visits to Dr. Money, who had used pictures of naked adults to "reinforce" Brenda's gender identity and who had pushed him to have further surgery on his "vagina".

When David was almost 30, he met Dr. Milton Diamond, a psychologist and biologist and expert in anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawaii and a long-standing rival of Dr. Money. Diamond had always been interested in the fate of the twins, and specifically so because Money had ceased to publish follow-ups on the case in the late Seventies. Through Diamond, David learned that the supposed success of his sex "reassignment" had been used to legitimise the widespread use of infant sex change in cases of hermaphroditism and genital injury. David agreed to participate in a follow-up by Dr. Diamond, whose myth-shattering paper (co-authored by Dr. Keith Sigmundson) was published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine in March 1997.

In 2002, David's twin Brian died of an overdose of antidepressants. Genetics may have contributed to his suicide. However, the question how much of David's misery was due to inherited depression and how much to the nightmarish life which he had been forced to live FOR THE SAKE OF A FASHIONABLE CAUSE is futile.

Not futile is the question why a term stinking of politically correct bigotry like "gender reinforcement" was invented when it was all clearly about quite a different thing, namely the castration of an infant boy and that within the larger and highly political context of -- yes -- reinforcement of the male sex as a disposable one. Nobody ever even discussed the possibility that such a "method" might be applied in reverse to a little girl. Or why healthy little boys should be subjected to a stunting, superfluous and potentially dangerous mutilation like circumcision in the first place, for that, and that when protests against genital mutilation of little girls in third-world countries are by no means unknown. (Although by far not strident enough. It is, after all, only about third-world little girls and not about the most complaining and most mollycoddled group in the the Western world, white middleclass women.)

Money may have stopped publishing about his "historical scientific success" in the late Seventies, but no admittance of error was ever made, let alone an apology for the ruined life of David Reimer. And no, not either by Alice Schwarzer, THE German feminist who had stated in her epochal book "The Little Differerence and Its Big Effects":

The girl is submitted to a permanent hormone treatment, and post puberty she will get an artificial vagina implanted. Then she will be a normal woman -- just without the ability to give birth. And that ability is really the only difference, which remains between man and woman. Everything else is artificially imposed, a question of the nurtured mental identity.

Emphasis added by me.

On the morning of May 5, 2004, David Reimer took a sawn-off shotgun, drove to the nearby parking lot of a grocery store and ended his sufferings for ever.

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More information by John Colapinto at Slate and by Bettina Roehl at Cicero.

on a completely different personal note

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