1 Corinthians 4 34-35

There is this perfectly idiotic bit from the Emory University website and I couldn't RESIST fiddling with it:

Margot Kässmann (Dr. Rev.), ex-lay-bishopette and as such former head of the Protestant* church in Germany, is culturally enriching Emory University during the fall semester, serving as Distinguished Theologian-in-Residence at the university’s Candler School of Theology, and as a Distinguished Fellow of the Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning, which lends a so far unknown meaning to the word "distinguished".

A theologian, pastor, prolific author and able to hold more booze than an entire troop of Russians, Kässmann is an influential leader in the international ecumenical arena and an enormously popular speaker in Europe, often drawing crowds in the thousands, specifically since she was caught in a drunk-driving incident with more than three times over the limit, which proves that we have become an undiscerning, sheepish breed with a knack for the sleazy.

“When I became dean at Candler, I issued her a standing invitation to join us for a semester at our rowdy stagettes whenever she could, and I’m delighted that she has accepted,” says Love, dean of Candler. “Candler faculty and students will be able to interact personally with an extraordinarily creative, charismatic and chadbandian Christian leader. Plus, with our new strategic emphasis on internationalizing the curriculum, whatever that is worth, the fit of having her on campus for a semester could not be better”, says Jan Love. Love is, who would have thought so, female.

Since Kässmann's election in 1983 as one of the youngest members of the board of directors of the WCC, she has broken age and (retch) gender barriers within the leadership of the Protestant church, and it shows. First in 1999 with her election as the first female bishop of the Protestant Church of Hannover — the largest worldwide, then in 2009, when she was elected chair (barf) of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD), the governing body of 24 million Protestants. She enjoyed (you bet) a lot of media attention and even granted interviews about intimate matters to the sleaziest of all Caesarean media whores, BILD.

Kässmann’s February 2010 voluntary resignation from her roles as bishop and chair (barf) of the EKD after a drunk-driving conviction when she had always vocally condemned all forms of "excess", has not diminished her popularity, but, as it could be expected in a totally worth- and shameless society, enhanced it: She received several standing ovations at her first major appearance after her resignation, a Bible study for 5,000 people at the Ecumenical “Kirchentag” in Munich this May, which ought to teach Catholics what ecumenism is worth.

“I think the public see her as a leader who models honesty and integrity in the face of difficulty — a model of authentic leadership at a time when too few leaders own up to the consequences of their inappropriate actions,” simpered Love lovingly. Just imagine for a fraction of a moment what the slimy old bag would have said, had a Catholic bishop committed the same "inappropriate action".

Known for her administrative acumen, prophetic witness and pastoral ability to address complex dilemmas of everyday life (burp), Kässmann is the author of more than 40 books on spirituality, the quest for Christian unity, Christian social engagement and Bible study and about all other thinkable footling and fatuous attention whorish things with which a certain ilk of theologians, not all of them female, poisons the hearts and brains of the undiscerning.

During her semester at Candler, Kässmann will deliver lectures, participate in panel discussions, hen parties and preach, addressing such hilariously funny and utterly worthless topics as women’s leadership in the church, post-modern and secular challenges to the church’s mission, and Protestant spirituality, all of which are unbearable below a blood alcohol level of 1.5 o/oo.

Kässmann is the featured speaker at the following events, which are free and open to the public, which is self-explaining because otherwise she wouldn't attend anyway:

Lecture in the Luminaries Series, "The Challenges and Opportunities of Women's Leadership in the Church Worldwide," Sept. 21, 4:30-6:00 p.m., Cannon Chapel, Emory Campus. A reception will follow. Bring your own bottle because Margot will swig the lot. Lecture co-sponsored by Emory’s Office of the Provost, Luminaries Series, Candler School of Theology, la Veuve Clicquot and The Halle Institute.


Preaching, preening and presiding while pissed, Reformation Day Chapel Service, Oct. 19, 11:15 a.m., Cannon Chapel, 510 Kilgo Circle, Emory Campus.

Preaching at Emory University Worship Margot Service on Reformation Sunday, Oct. 31, 11:00 a.m., Cannon Chapel, 510 Kilgo Circle, Emory Campus. Drinks will be served.

Lecture, "Bible, Prayer and Confession: Anticipating the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation," Nov. 16, 4:30-6:00 p.m., Cannon Chapel, 510 Kilgo Circle, Emory Campus. A reception will follow. Bring your own bottle because Margot will swig the lot. Lecture co-sponsored by Candler School of Theology, The Halle Institute and Johnnie Walker. 


*I am not using "Evangelical Church", the literal translation of the German term "Evangelische Kirche", of which Americans are so fond. It is misleading, and so "Protestant" will have to do.

Now I was pointed at a recent bout of verbal diarrhoea of that woman, exactly one of those for which she is so widely revered in this country. She explains Americans how they ought to feel about the Ground Zero Mosque, which is, after all, ten whopping walking minutes away from Ground Zero. "Does this building of a mosque really hurts the feelings of Americans? Does it really have anything to do with the terrorist deed of September 11?" In a word: Don't make such a fuss, Amis!

How was that about the religion of the natives? It was considered inferior, dismissed, eliminated by forced baptisms, wiped out. Today there are Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists here -- and they all define themselves as Americans. [No, NOT ALL do that, Margot.] And yet there is an undercurrent: An American is Christian.

If there is a single politically correct issue, however far-fetched, in the vicinity, that woman will grab it and twist it to fit her own shallow, vain, slimy and sleazy devices.

She then goes on to inform us about the evil Pilgrim Fathers and their rigid understanding of religion, and goes on -- as a German SHE CAN NOT HELP IT -- to wax lyrically about the Koran burning of that "fundamentalist" pastor in Florida that never happened and how hurtful this was for, yes, not just Muslims, but specifically for us as Germans -- the entire old schtick of the child molester who thinks he is especially qualified for a job as a kindergarden teacher.

She left out, I guess yet and just, the slavery issue, and I spare you the rest, Americans. Frankly, I've got neither the time nor the stomach to translate the rest of that totally predictable, hackneyed, undignified drivel. Here we have a woman, a woman who holds a doctorate in theology, a woman who used to head one of the largest Protestant churches worldwide, a woman who has supposedly taught for two months now at an American university, a woman who IS BOUND TO HAVE spoken to Americans, a woman who still doesn't know how Americans, her hosts, think, feel and define themselves. Why? Because she doesn't give a damn as long as she looks pretty in the process.

In a word: a woman.

She is supposed to come back to Germany later this year. Do me a favour: Keep her!

The Potential of Attention Whoredom

Have you ever seen something quite as grossly nauseating as that?

However, it's the circumstances that are really remarkable. Here we have somebody who converted to Islam, half-sister to somebody for whom the description "has been" would be quite apropos, and all the world is as ecstatic as if the Pope had. And now we have to suffer the ubiquitous pictures of another sickeningly simpering blonde clad in a headrag. The phenomenon that lets women put on a self-congratulatory, smug smirk as soon as they are wearing such a piece of cloth, is something else!

I educated myself about her because I had never heard of her before. At home, she enjoys (You BET!) a modest notability as a TV personality, just exactly the vulgar, obnoxious lower class broad with a horrible accent one would expect, who makes the max out of her faint connection with the pre-previous PM.

There is only one possible explanation. The corrupted media, hell-bent on the Islamisation of the West, are hoping for copycat conversions because they know quite well that women will fall for any (but ANY) little bit of potential attention whoredom, however cheap, however dangerous, however evil.

Why I'm Not a Monarchist Anymore

We have a new head of state. Angela Merkel's candidate Christian Wulff won a much watched election in the third round of voting to become Germany's next president. The high office is largely ceremonial, however, Germans like to be able to identify with the office holder and his wife.

Wulff won an absolute majority of 625 of the 1,242 votes cast in a special parliamentary assembly, the Bundesrat, in the third and final ballot in which a simple majority would have sufficed. His main opponent, Joachim Gauck, won 494 votes. He was governor of the state of Lower Saxony since 2003 before his candidacy and will be at 51 the youngest president in Germany's history.

Wulff, who is a lawyer by profession, is one of those typical empty-faced, profile- and characterless career politicians whom we exactly do NOT want in that office. But then, maybe we do.

Because it gets worse. In March 2008, after the divorce from his much-respected first wife of almost 20 years, the lawyer Christa, he married wife #2, with whom he had already fathered a child while still married to his first wife. Wife #2, 14 years his junior, has another child, as it is so preciously put, "from a previous relationship".

It gets worse. This is our brand new first lady:
Foto: Reuters.

The conservative (giggle) FAZ, who informs us that people with tattoos are keen on making new experiences (which fits the second Mrs. Wulff to a "T") and more ready to go off the beaten track than others, qualities, which ought to be seen as a good omen for German politics, asked:

What is that supposed to be? A keyhole with licking tongues of flame surrounding it ...?

Well, to play Old Dr. Freud: Not really a KEYhole.
However, bad as all this may be, the good thing is that we will be rid of Wulff and the Missus (whoever she may be then) in 5 or 10 years, the latter if the worst-case scenario happens. This comes, mind you, from a supporter of the monarchist thought who was badly burnt by the recent -- sortof -- royal wedding where the future Queen of Sweden married a gigolo form the fish'n chips shop her "fitnesstrainer".

One Gets What One Asks For

Today it made moderate headlines that Edward "Buzz" Aldrin of Second-Man-on-the-Moon fame had done what -- I believe -- passes for "Rap" among the young together with that unspeakable bit of human flotsam that goes by the moniker of "Snoop Dogg". I'm largely a stranger to this genre.

While this shows a deplorable drop in standards, it was, after all, just an old coot with (presumably) hair growing out of his nose and ears in a last grasp at some headlines, and now listen well to MY story: In Old Europe, two veritable foreign ministers, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Bernard Kouchner, hit the bottom of the barrel of humanity when they, in November 2007, that was, "rapped" together for -- you've guessed it -- multiculiti as part of an "integration summit". As Snoop Dogg wasn't an option, an, as it is called, Germano-Turkish specimen of that genre did as well.

"Muhabbet" had summoned the two politicians to a studio in Kreuzberg, the quasi-Turkish suburb of Berlin, and they happily, numbly and dumbly obliged.

"We Germans need to open up a little bit more to the world", Steinmeier was quoted as saying while Kouchner wasn't ashamed of expressing great pleasure at adding some colour to the integration summit via such activity, and affirmed readiness for recording further songs.

"Everybody accepts that Germany is a country of migration. And we are the fruits of this migration", Muhabbet said.

Without doubt.

Then the stellar example for integration came tumbling down, as stellar examples for integration tend to, when the journalist and filmmaker Esther Schapira made it public that she had been attacked at a pre-viewing of her film about the murder of Theo van Gogh by our paragon of assimilation virtue, who had stated that he'd have done the same and would have tortured van Gogh to boot.

Steinmeier remained astonishingly sanguine and declared par ordre de mufti that Muhabbet was a good guy and called for calm. And indeed, Muhabbet is not an extremist, he is the mainstream.

People then had a closer look at his "lyrics" and discovered -- who would have thought so -- an abyss of obscenity, hate, racism, misogyny and homophobia, all things Muhabbet's vast followership, at least the ethnic German faction, abhors, but only if it comes from one of them. I am not averse to the odd expletive when it serves a purpose, but I won't translate that, so you'll have to believe me.

What does that teach us?

It teaches us that one gets what one asks for. Had Steinmeier and Kouchner performed German Lieder together with Thomas Quasthoff this wouldn't have happened.

It teaches us too that, when it comes to Islam, you get what you are asking for as well, namely Islam.

And it asks for some leniency for Buzz Aldrin.

Hat tip: VFR!

When do we know something is wrong with a country?

When the Wikipedia-entry for "Officer's Commission" shows the commission ceremony of a woman, a woman who hasn't bothered to comb her hair.


Cross-posted at The Evil Style Queen.

Oversexed, Overpaid and Over There with the Noble Savages

Or: Joanie Making Politics on Her Back

I admit I hate the Dutch. I hate the way one, being German, is treated in that pokey little country (it has become a bit better over the years, but I still hate them), I hate that they nevertheless have no compunctions about taking our money, and I hate that sanctimonious post-war attitude even more because the valiant Dutch had been the only people raided by the Germans in WWII that surrendered without firing a single shot and who delivered their Jews gratuitously and free platform edge. I hate their ugly, pink, fat and blonde royals whom even two generations of inordinately goodlooking German husbands weren't able to prettify and I hate, once again, their sanctimoniousness which showed, impressively although not exclusively, when they disinvited the future father-in-law of the future fat, pink and blonde king from the wedding because he (the father-in-law) had once hold a mediocre office in the Cabinet of a third-rate, long forgotten South American dictator, whereas same future king's German grandfather had only been in the SS.

And BOY! DO I hate that unspeakable slag that made headlines recently because Geert Wilders (whom the Dutch don't deserve and whose only shortcoming is that he looks irritatingly Dutch) had cited her as a prime example of the moral decline of the elites in his country.

Joanie de Rijke is a Dutch journalist who was kidnapped in Afghanistan last November when all she wanted was to do some serious research on on the deaths of ten French soldiers hacked to pieces by the Taliban for the arse-and-tits magazine she is working for. Joanie looks painfully Dutch and exactly like the simpering silly bitch she is.

When she met the Taliban to 'hear their side of the story', the valiant freedom fighters, who would have thought so, kidnapped and the commander frequently raped her but not nearly enough because she wrote a book about it later and regurgitated it in chat shows (see picture) too. She still thinks (if one can call it that) that she was not taking unnecessary risks.

“This story” Wilders said, “is a perfect illustration of the moral decline of our elites. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth. Rape? Well, I would put this into perspective, says the leftist journalist: the Taliban are not monsters. Our elites prefer to deny reality rather than face it. Our elites, whether they are politicians, journalists, judges, subsidy gobblers or civil servants, have dumped common sense in order to deny reality. It is not just this raped journalist who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but the entire Dutch elite. The only moral reference they have is: do not irritate the Muslims - that is the one thing they will condemn.”

So what did Joanie say:

"It's not black and white. It was the commander who raped me. I wanted to give vent to my hatred, to chop his head off and kick it off the cliff. He was schizophrenic: the following day, he said he was sorry. In that sort of situation - no matter how awful - you develop a bond with those people. You have to, if you want to survive. You could say the hatred and that bond go side by side."

"Just let me make one thing clear: I hate him for what he did to me. I hate him because he raped me. I was very, very mad and I wanted to kill him right away. But the day after it happened, he more or less asked me to forgive him. That was very confusing for me. It was a very schizophrenic situation because he had mood swings. I just had to cope with that. Normally you can show that you are angry but I couldn't of course. I had to get on with them. I just couldn't say to this commander what I was really thinking because then he would have killed me right away."

Very very mad Joanie said, too, that she was nevertheless shown respect.

Which eerily recalls the old joke, where the lady of the house is one female short for a proper dinner placement and, desperate, puts good clothes on a pretty maid and hopes for the best. When she asks her afterwards whether she's been respected, the girl replies: "Yes ma'am. Once on the balcony and twice in the garden."

And now Joanie is angry - not at her rapist but at Geert Wilders: "Geert Wilders bedrijft politiek over mijn rug." "He makes politics on my back." To make politics on her back is something to which Joanie can rightfully claim exclusive rights.

It may be a measure of the decline of our culture that even the attention whores have no class anymore. Many years ago Oriana Fallaci delivered a piece of memorable journalism and later recalled:

... that she found Khomeini intelligent, and “the most handsome old man I had ever met in my life. He resembled the ‘Moses’ sculpted by Michelangelo.” And, she said, Khomeini was “not a puppet like Arafat or Qaddafi or the many other dictators I met in the Islamic world. He was a sort of Pope, a sort of king—a real leader. And it did not take long to realize that in spite of his quiet appearance he represented the Robespierre or the Lenin of something which would go very far and would poison the world. People loved him too much. They saw in him another Prophet. Worse: a God.”

And nobody laughed or expressed embarrassment after it appeared in The New Yorker in 2006. It was, after all, by "La Fallaci".

It was a doubtful thing, anyway, to give Khomeini publicity to begin with, but Fallaci didn't really do research to inform but was collecting scalps and thus couldn't resist.

She, too, cashed in on matters which had better remained private. What does one call a woman who had an, as an uncritically adoring media called it, "tempestuous" affair with a much younger man who then kicked his unborn child out of her womb, a woman who didn't leave that man and rather wrote two books about it?

And exactly like that was her criticism of Islam, shrill and PMS-ingly hysterical. She stomped her little foot and wrote not what Islam is, but how "La Fallaci" found it.

But to do her justice, at least Fallaci was seriously attractive, did not write for crappy men's mags AND ABOVE ALL SHE WAS NOT DUTCH.

But what makes a serious journalist and writer like Fallaci and a floozy like Joanie de Rijke tick when putting themselves in harm's way to then write books about it? What made the ageing Fallaci swoon and drool over an old billy goat like Khomeini? Shameless lucre? Yes, but not JUST that. Attention whoredom? Yes, and again not just that. I think it's boredom. Boredom with their lifes, with the "good" men they meet, boredom with the little things in life, with a normal, ordinary life, with ordinary, everyday human decency. An able, clever woman like Fallaci goes and interviews Khomeini and Kissinger and writes well-received books about an unsavoury relationship with an unsuitable man, a silly bitch like de Rijke goes to Afghanistan to be raped by a Taliban, then writes a book about it to be totally overwhelmed by the brouhaha she caused and which to understand she is too pathetic. And at the bottom of the barrel, yes at the absolute bottom of the very same barrel we find those females who go and marry death row inmates. Our only hope remains that they'll never find out how to write books.

Hat tip: VFR.

---

Edited to add: To end this on a conciliatory note, I'd like to say finally something nice about the Dutch. There IS after all, something that is bigger than their dhimmitude and that's their tightfistedness. Which shows that they are not totally without principles. I overlooked that when I first read the article in the Brussels Journal from which I took the Wilders-quote.

As Joanie put it so endearingly:

“The Belgians have done nothing. They said it was a matter for the Dutch. And the Dutch authorities said they never pay ransom. In Afghanistan they know well enough that Western governments pay up after an abduction. Germany, Italy and France have all paid ransoms.”

Which may not be a terrific argument, but it at least reminds of another one of those vacuous, thrill-addicted women, the German archaeologist Susanne Osthoff, who was kidnapped in Iraq and whom I will now take up from the blog bilges in the next entry.

Edited to add: Done!

Western civilization reeks of rot:

Chantelle apparently slept with many boys near the time of conception. A war of single parents is developing, each proudly claiming paternity by their teen sons.

Well, what can one say? Things like that always seem to happen to girls with crappy names like "Chantelle". Had her parents named her, for example, Elizabeth Rose or Fiona none of this would have happened.

Hat tip: MND.
Cross-posted at The Evil Style Queen.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Or: The man who has blood on his hands, sort of...

Last week, the Al Guardian (no link) published this vile and smug little bit by the unspeakable "Lord Ahmed". Yes, that does sound like the member of a Sixties' Beat Group, but he is just a member in the House of Lords:

When I found out that Geert Wilders was planning to come to Britain and that Baroness Cox and Lord Pearson wanted to show his film, I wrote to the Home Office, the leader of the House of Lords and Black Rod to say that his presence would lead to the incitement of religious and racial hatred, which constitutes a public order offence.

I pointed out that Wilders is already facing a serious charge in his home country for inciting racial hatred. Furthermore, Cox and Pearson could hardly use an argument for free speech to justify giving him this platform because Wilders himself is calling for the banning of the Qur'an.

Wilders' film, Fitna, takes a lot of Qur'anic verses out of context and relates them to some terrible terrorist events, connecting them as though such acts are a religious teaching. I thought this would lead to extremist groups from both sides – far-right organisations like the BNP and extremist Muslims – rallying behind him.

As a result of my letters, the home secretary wrote to Wilders to say his presence would "threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK", and that therefore he was banned from entering the UK under EU laws enabling member states to exclude someone whose presence would be a threat to national security, public order or the safety of its citizens. I agree with her assessment. In the past, we have refused entry to people like Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others because of the language they have used, which could incite hatred and violence.

In an article in the Spectator, Melanie Phillips falsely claims that I had threatened to mobilise 10,000 Muslims to demonstrate against Wilders. As a result, I have had hundreds of abusive emails, phone calls and threats from around the world to my office, my staff and myself.

The Quilliam Foundation says it disagrees with the ban, but it doesn't represent the masses and it doesn't have the support of the majority of the Muslim community. I represent views that I believe are in the best interests of our country.

In 1958, the predominantly hereditary nature of the House of Lords had been changed by the Life Peerages Act, which allowed for the creation of life baronies. The number of Life Peers then gradually increased, though not at a constant rate.

The Labour Party had for most of the Twentieth Century a commitment, based on the party's historic opposition to class privilege, to abolish the House of Lords, or at least expel the hereditary element. In 1968, the Labour Government of Harold Wilson attempted a reform of The House by introducing a system under which hereditary peers would be allowed to remain in the House and take part in debate, but would be unable to vote. This plan, however, was defeated in the House of Commons by a coalition of traditionalist Conservatives, such as Enoch Powell, and Labour members who continued to advocate the outright abolition of the Upper House.

In the end, the Labour Party included in its 1997 General Election Manifesto a commitment to remove the hereditary peerage from the House of Lords. Their election victory in 1997 under Tony Blair thus heralded the demise of the traditional institution. The Labour Government introduced legislation to expel all hereditary peers from the Upper House as a first step in Lords reform, but as part of a compromise agreed to permit 92 hereditary peers to remain until the reforms were complete. Thus all but 92 hereditary peers were expelled under the House of Lords Act 1999, making the House of Lords predominantly an appointed house.

Nazir Ahmed, born 1958 in Pakistan, attended Spurley Hey Comprehensive school, then Thomas Rotherham Sixth Form College. He studied Public Administration at Sheffield Hallam University and joined the Labour Party when he was 18 years old.

While he worked as a grocer, he began his political career as a local councillor, with most of his activity centred around the North of England. He recognized the significance of grass roots politics and founded the British Muslim Councillors' Forum in 1992. Ahmed was also made a Justice of the Peace in the same year and chaired the South Yorkshire Labour Party for some years.

In 1998 Ahmed was appointed to the House of Lords, becoming the first Muslim life peer as Baron Ahmed, of Rotherham in the County of South Yorkshire.

Quite the immigrant success story, eh?

Yes and no. To add a little bit flesh to the bones, here is an alternative CV: Born in Mirpur, Pakistan, in 1958, little Nazir Ahmed emigrated to Britain with his parents, where he took advantage of the free education provided by the British taxpayer and attended university while working for the Labour Party. In 1992, he founded the Muslim Councillors Forum, and was active in local politics in the North of England where he championed countless Muslim causes. 1998 he was appointed to the House of Lords, swearing his oath of allegiance on the Koran, as one does in a vibrant, multicultural and tolerant country like Britain. As a Muslim peer, much of his activities relate to the Muslim community, both at home and internationally because Britains primary concern is to form the best of relations with Muslims worldwide. As well as being an active figure in the Indian Subcontinent, he has worked on the plight of Muslims terrorist scum around the world, from the collapse of former Yugoslavia, to the Chechens and Palestinians. He has been on many delegations to the Arab world, the US, Eastern Europe, Africa, the former states of the USSR and the Far East, meeting with heads of state to discuss their respective problems and how he may be able to assist them. He was, too, the first Member of the Upper House to lead delegations on behalf of the British government (yes!) to Saudi Arabia for the Haj, to keep his priorities in balance.

On 23 February 2005, Lord Ahmed hosted a book launch in the (yes!) House of Lords for author Israel Shamir. On the 22 March, Stephen Pollard wrote in The Times that Shamir "is, in fact, a Swedish-domiciled anti-Semite also known as Jöran Jermas" known for statements like "Jews control ... a big share of mass media" (including the BNP) and also suggested that the large Muslim population in Britain was important to turn the tide of 'Judaic Values' in Britain. Lord Ahmed, when challenged, refused to comment on Shamir's remarks.

On 25 July 2005, Lord Ahmed, in an interview on National Public Radio, said that the London suicide bombers of 7/7 had an "identity crisis" and, that "unfortunately, our imams and mosques have not been able to communicate the true message of Islam in the language that these young people can understand."

Picture: Getty Images
Traces of the "identity crisis" of young Muslims in London 2005.

On 19 June 2007 Lord Ahmed criticised the honouring of Salman Rushdie with a knighthood because of what he saw as Rushdie's offensiveness to Islam. He reportedly said, "It's hypocrisy by Tony Blair who two weeks ago was talking about building bridges to mainstream Muslims, and then he's honouring a man who has insulted the British public and been divisive in community relations." And: "This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world. Forgiving and forgetting is one thing, but honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far." Sort of.

In an interview with Press TV (self-reference: "Press TV takes revolutionary steps as the first Iranian international news network, broadcasting in English on a round-the-clock basis"), performed by one Fareena Alam on February 3, Lord Ahmed informed us:

Press TV: Lord Nazir Ahmed, you raised question in Parliament about the legal implications of British Jews serving in the IDF. What was the response?

Lord Ahmed: I asked Her Majesty's government if they were aware of British citizens who may have been involved with the war crimes committed by the Israeli Defense Force and Israeli Defense Reserves. Her Majesty's government did not have any figures because dual nationals do not have to inform the government. However, there are reports in the Daily Mirror and The Sun with the names of British citizens who have been fighting in Gaza.

The point I was making is that war crimes have been committed, white phosphorous has been used and if there are people who have broken the 4th Geneva Convention, then whoever they are, when they return to this country, they should be arrested and charged - unlike the Major General who escaped in 2005.

Press TV: Are you certain these are up to date reports about British citizens serving in Israel?

Lord Ahmed: These are very new reports, dated January 2009, of British citizens who have gone out to fight against the Palestinian people as part of the IDF. Their names and ages are mentioned in these reports.
We know that there are student unions that have been actively recruiting young people in Britain to join the Israeli Defense Force and we also know that there are young Jewish students who go and serve on the kibbutz and also in schools, who are also then doing national service in Israel.

How many of those have been involved in war crimes? How many of those have broken the Geneva Convention? When they come back to this country, we want our government to take some legal action against them.

Press TV: Will our government take such action?

Lord Ahmed: Yes - if there is evidence and if the United Nations is strong enough. At the moment they have not even decided how they are going to conduct this independent investigation into the use of white phosphorous and other weapons prohibited by the United Nations.

There is very clear evidence that the 4th Geneva Convention has been breached - we know there was collective punishment, excessive and disproportionate use of force against civilians and deliberate attacks on schools, hospitals and ambulances. There have even been attacks on UNRWA personnel and warehouses.

If the United Nations makes a statement or if someone goes to the courts and gets an order against these people then I am sure the government has to take some legal action.

Press TV: Were you surprised by the response from the government?

Lord Ahmed: I am not surprised at all. Lord Malloch-Brown did actually say that if there is any evidence of the 4th Geneva Convention being breached, and it doesn't matter whether they are British citizens or whether they are other nationalities, these people will be arrested and they will be tried in this country.

Press TV: How do you think the British Jewish community will react to such a move?

Lord Ahmed: Well the reaction was very obvious. One of their lordships got up and started to praise the British citizens who were fighting in Gaza. He said: shouldn't we be proud of the fact they are fighting against terrorists who are hell bent on trying to destroy Israel.

But they are not fighting against a terrorist organization as such. The IDF and those who serve in it have been involved in the massacre of civilians, including hundreds of Palestinian children and attacks on the United Nations and even the American school. There is just no excuse for anyone to get away from these war crimes this time.

Press TV: Is this situation comparable to British Muslims allegedly going to fight in foreign conflicts?

Lord Ahmed: There have been many government statements with regards to British Muslims going abroad to foreign madrasahs and then seeking training. There was a huge outcry across the board - from government officials, politicians and civil society.

Of course, we do not support anyone who has been involved with terrorism or killing of innocent civilians anywhere, or those who fight British troops abroad.

However, to me there is no difference whether the young person is from a Jewish background or Muslim background. The only difference is that one has a uniform and the other does not. Both kill innocent civilians. Both need to be brought justice.

This is why Baroness Tongue asked the question about the number of British youth who go to religious Jewish schools and also the kibbutz. In this case, it is a double standard to allow young British citizens of whatever religion, who go to religious schools and then get involved in armed conflicts and join a terrorist state.

The very fact that in both cases, they kill innocent civilians, including children warrants a fresh look at this issue, as was recommended by Lord Wallace of Saltaire.

Press TV: Are you expecting any progress now that you have raised the issue?

Lord Ahmed: My intention was to bring this matter to the attention of parliament. The second was to discuss this openly in the media. It has always been a taboo to ask any questions about Jewish youth who go to Israel for training and service in the IDF.

We have received a government statement. Now, it is for the legal experts to take it up in the courts and to make sure the government takes legal action against people who may have been in breach of international law.

As a general point, I was surprised by how the entire British society was moved by this crisis. In almost every town and city, people went out to demonstrate against the bombing and killing of innocent civilians. They put pressure on the government and at least the government has done a few things such as taking the resolution to the UN.

But more importantly, I have definitely seen the mood amongst British politicians change to become more openly critical of the Israeli government. Unfortunately, that is not the same in Europe.

We went to see the President of the European Parliament and met with a number of Members of the European Parliament who feel that Germany, Austria and France and other parts of Europe still have guilt in relation to the Holocaust. That is why Israel can get away with anything it wants.

We know that very fine members of parliament like Gerald Kaufman MP, who is himself Jewish, very openly said that just because these people were victims of the Holocaust does not mean they should perpetrate another holocaust on the Palestinian people.

We need to speak out and support Jews, like Gerald Kaufman and Jews for Justice for Palestine, who have been supporting the Palestinians.

And nobody laughed.

So poor Lord Ahmed and those whose welfare he has, as a member of parliament, in mind are victims of Geert Wilders, Salman Rushdie, and, of course, The Jews, who are all so offensive that those many peaceful, tolerant Muslims must be protected from their inflammatory words and actions, or they might do something ... inflammatory.

I have hardly ever seen a more shameless reversal of the perpetrator : victim reality -- or taqqiya.

As for the Brits, I can only hope that they are happy with what they jettisoned the Upper Classes for. Egalitarianism has taken them a long way already, and no doubt the women of the new elites will not hurt the sensibilities of the masses anymore with offensive duds like cashmere sweaters, Alice bands, pearls, Barbours or green gumboots.

The new elites in full fly: Lord Ahmed showing his loyalty to Queen and Fatherland.

---

Information on the House of Lords and Lord Ahmed mainly from Wikipedia where the verifications can be found.

The Corporate State - Blessing or Curse?

At her highly intriguing blog A Letter To The Times, Cassandra Goldman published yesterday the thought-provoking entry Aristocracy fosters high achievement. Bringing back the monarchy seems indeed too weird a concept to merit serious contemplation. But is it really?

The sacred cow, or perhaps I should say golden calf, of “equality” is wreaking immeasurable damage on our society. It started with a principle that at least sounds good, that of “equality before the law”. Of course, equality before the law precludes any sort of nobility or aristocracy, and now we are feeling the lack of those.

The principle of equality before the law had its first major exploitation when feminists demanded that women be treated precisely the same as men by the law. The problem here is that women are not the same as men. Women have different capabilities and needs. Women require more protection from roving criminals; men are more apt to be able to defend themselves... Naturally, the attempt to force the law to treat men and women equally has backfired in a thousand ways, and by now, of course, the legal inequality has simply been adjusted...

The mania for “equality” has created in most people a pathological intolerance for being shut out of anything. It has also led to an excessive emphasis on age, as children or adolescents are among the few people who can still be justifiably discriminated against. In the introduction to a recent edition of one of E. Nesbit’s novels, a modern woman told us everything that was wrong with these nonetheless charming novels. (I don’t have a sarcasm font, but let me assure you that the sarcasm is very much there.) She attacked a scene in which a man took one of the boys aside for a man-to-man talk about how he shouldn’t be mean to his sisters because girls and boys are different, and have to be to do the grownup work of women and men. She was furious at how “patronizing” this was; personally, I wish that the boys I was forced to associate with as a child had patronized me that way. She was also outraged that these upper-class children gave orders to the family’s adult servants, and demonstrated better judgment than they did. She did not explain how she thought the children and servants ought to have related to each other, but I hazard a guess that she thought that these children, who would grow up to have a measure of power and influence in their society, ought to have been deferring to, taking orders from, and perhaps even learning from their servants. Reflect for a moment on whether you wish your laws to be made by people who were taught about the world by servants, or whether you wish your retirement fund to be invested in the stock of a company run by such men, and you will see how absurd the notion is.

[...]

... We are now even seeing various proposals to prevent people from leaving their own property to their own children, because God forbid that those children should have any “unearned” privilege. That parents work for the express purpose of creating a legacy which can be passed down to their descendants, a legacy of property or beliefs or codes of behavior or skills, seems to elude these egalitarians. Deprive people of the right to bequeath a legacy to their own children - which is precisely what schools do when they teach children values different from those of their parents - and soon there will be no more reason for achievement of any sort. We have to endure a bit of “inequality” in order to enjoy the benefits of civilization.

[...]

I submit that people had a healthier attitude towards inequality when it was institutionalized - that is, when we had an aristocracy. A thousand social customs and laws reminded people from day to day of the very real differences in rank and station. This constant reinforcement of inequality of rank no doubt aided people in accepting differences in ability, made it easier for them to accept that some people were better at things than they were. They were used to being unequal; encountering a different sort of inequality was just a fact of life.

In addition, the modern attacks on ability were unknown, because ability was one of the few ways in which those born to a low station could hope to rise. Nowadays we punish people for superior ability. Bright children are expected to wait for their duller agemates to catch up, because what is important is that everyone go through precisely the same indoctrination routine, not that they be taught anything. Capable men see the jobs they have spent years working towards being given to less qualified women who then demand the right to be paid the same amount for part-time work. Such madness was unknown a mere century ago.

Bring back titled aristocracy and we will become a meritocracy again in no time.

A fascinating topic indeed, to which I, a European who was socialized in Germany as well as in England, would very much like to add some points. But before I come to comment on the gist of Cassandra's post, with which I basically agree, I’d first like to nitpick about a certain detail: "Reflect for a moment on whether you wish your laws to be made by people who were taught about the world by servants…". I think most people who grew up in a household that included servants (to which I happen to belong) will disagree with such a summary statement, and specifically the generation of the English aristocracy who were still brought up by nannies. I think it is the easy mutual understanding and acceptance of SOCIAL inequality, an understanding that goes together with a mutual respect as humans, which breeds the positive social climate Cassandra understandably wants to bring back. Case in point: English aristocrats of the old school tend to be uncomfortable around members of the middle classes, but comfortable with the working classes and vice versa. As long as such a "social contract" existed, by the time the parents took over (schools, more likely), the children were very much aware about the world.

The funny thing about my own upbringing is that my father was a Socialist. That, together with the fact that we had a live-in maid (or, as it is put oh-so-coyly today,"help in the house") and a chauffeur who worked in my father’s business as a driver when he wasn’t needed, made me aware at an early age of the absurdity of this outlook. I owe that woman the happy part of my childhood, being lumbered with a mother wo was both, clinging and remote.

In a social climate of jealousy so typical for Germany, we, my mother more than I, were made aware all the time that we were expected to apologize for such a non-politically correct member of the household. I guess it is owing to aristocracy still in situ (socially, even if not politically) that such things are accepted with more grace in England.

But back to the core topic: I couldn’t agree more. I have no children, but what you describe is exactly the reason for the wreckage of lifes I am forced to watch everywhere around me. Beautiful, intelligent children of my friends, now in their twenties, who are wasting their lifes and their precious inheritance, not in a material, but in a spiritual sense, because the parents were unable to convey the values of their class, wrecked families because the live-in-servants were not kept in their places, marrying the wrong partner in the first place and being excrutiantingly unhappy once the honeymoon is over, on a less tragic but still absurd note: women from the oldest of families who are cleaning after their char because they don’t "dare" to tell her to do her job properly. The list is endless.

It is difficult, mind you, to keep up upper-class customs if one is living in a very middle class environment. A friend of mine who was taught (as it is the custom in oldfashioned aristocratic German families) to kiss an old lady’s hand, kissed the hand of the … postwoman as well. I don’t think it is all that easy to teach children social differences if one’s ordinary rented flat in an ordinary block of flats has only one entrance and not a second one for servants, the more as the postwoman may well be living close by and in a bigger one. A corporate society lives from symbols and keeping up the lifestyle of a manor is impossible in a rented urban flat.

However, assuming it would be possible, bringing back the old order would be like trying to put spilled toothpaste back into the tube. If one sees how once respectable (well, as respectable as glossy magazines go) society mags are celebrating scum like the Beckhams, or some scummy pop stars whose names I can’t remember, together with the Royal Family, if one sees (and this is even worse) how easily and gladly the English upper classes are mingling with just that unspeakable scum (Princess Diana and Elton John is only one noticeable example), one looses the faith that “bringing back titled aristocracy” would lead to anything positive, however alluring the thought may be. People degrade so quickly without proper guiding and, worse, irretrievably, and the upper classes are no exception.

That lead me to additional thoughts and maybe I am falling in the same old equality-trap here, but here it goes: I somehow don't believe that the upper classes are full of people magically blessed by nature with better insight and manners and the working classes equally magically endowed with social contentment and lack of jealousy, but that the strict rules of a corporate state forces the people to bring out their best abilities. Moreover, it encouraged the will to get on and maybe to reach a more elevated position, a position that was not just defined by the money one earned (or rather: that comes flowing in) but requires a more intact personality. The haute volée we are currently watching is the antithesis of such a concept, as are the hoi polloi. The corporate state required, too, responsibility from its higher echelons towards society and one's inheritance. To put something back into society as well as into one's own estate was an, albeit unwritten, law. As such, it couldn't be possibly any further away from most American ideals of freedom and liberty. It is as remarkable as interesting, though, that I seem to discover an increasing number of reflections on monarchy by Americans.

Cross-posted at The Evil Style Queen.

What makes a gentleman?

...asks The Evil Style Queen only to reply:

To summarize, a "good" family" and education helps, as does dress-sense, a tall and slim physique and - even more - a clean-cut face and apparent intelligence. There are, however, clowns from old and "good" families, intelligent, good-looking men who do not, or not quite, make it, as there are well-dressed yobs. At the end of the day, I don't have an answer to my own question.

Here.

Edited to add:
Interesting discussion there!

Cultural Damage of Obscene Proportions

Searching for information about hunting and shooting, I just discovered the blog An Englishman's Castle. A succinct post about the introduction of ID cards to Britain amused me greatly.

Finally One Genuine Good Reason To Welcome ID Cards
US celebrities like Madonna won't come to Britain because of ID cards - Telegraph

The content of the linked "Telegraph" article was even funnier than the Englishman's post, albeit, one can safely assume, unintentionally so.

Britain will suffer cultural and economic damage from the introduction of identity cards for foreigners, preventing stars such as Madonna staying in the UK, according to a group of academics and writers.

One can only wonder what perception of culture the members of this "group of academics and writers" possess to quote, of all people, Madonna as an example, Madonna, the woman whose face is much more obscene than all the semi-pornographic pictures of her together.

But it gets even better in the comment section:

When she moved from the USA to the UK, she made a measurable difference in the two countries' rankings in the intellectual property revenues league tables. I can't find the reference right now, but I think she may even have single-handedly put the UK in first place. Soaking the rich and bitching at the successful is surely the exclusive remit of our talent-free communist masters and their running dogs?

Such an argument comes in handy to effectively dicredit any criticism one doesn't like. Bitching at Madonna is not bitching at a successful, it is bitching at a, well, bitch. A bitch who happens to be successful and what that says about our culture I don't even WANT to exploit. The fact that she made a considerable difference in the British/American intellectual property rankings ought to lead to a re-evaluation of the definition of "intellectual" in those countries, not to an apology of Madonna, at least that is my understanding of the matter. That a "conservative", who ought to stand for family values, should defend that slag because she is successful is rather funny (both, peculiar and haha). But then, maybe the commenter doesn't see himself as one, although those who are ranting about "communists" everywhere usually do.

However, great blog find. Oh the joys of the Internet!

Dulling the Mind

Via Lawrece Auster's VFR I discovered Tiberge's blog Galliawatch and specifically the post from which I quote:

The only factors that propel a language from mere street talk to the level of a great cultural asset are the men of genius who write great literature, the poets who open new avenues of expression, leading to a higher level of consciousness, the artists, musicians, essayists, playwrights, actors, journalists, commentators, teachers, scholars, etc... all of whom use, manipulate and enrich the language with individuality, and at the same time with national pride.

Such men are inspired and inspire others. But how to bring about a return to cultural excellence in this time of spiritual impoverishment? How to generate inspiration? Lawrence Auster, who was responsible for my discovering the site, has some suggestions:

To paraphase Obama's "spreading the wealth," what they're doing now is trying to save French by "spreading the French," instead of by elevating it. Meaning, improve the quality of French among the French people. Teach great literature. Instill love of France and French culture, so that the French have something worth talking about again. Make Muslims unwelcome and start pushing them out, thus re-invigorating French identity. Dismantle the EU and the entire managerial, liberal, egalitarian, and Eurabian agenda and consciousness, which kill the mind, turn language into a PC tool to conceal instead of a tool to communicate truth. Bring back belief in truth, so that there will be things worth saying again, worth using language well for...

[...]

Once French nation and culture and its Western identity have been saved and revived, and once the French used by the French people has been improved and purified, then start to make French attractive again to other Westerners. Forget about trying to make it attractive to Third Worlders. As you suggested from the articles at that site, such efforts do not avail. Accept the fact that France cannot have an empire again, that trying to have a Muslim empire only Islamizes France, but see that French can still be saved, because the greatness and beauty of French can still have a great appeal to fellow white Westerners. Thus encourage French as a universal second language in the West alongside English. It won't be as widespread as English, of course, but the unique beauty of French and the "high" of speaking it gives French an appeal that English can't match.

What do you think?

I responded that I agreed completely with his ideas but didn't think it would happen. However, I added that my more fatalistic view is not to be taken as a prediction. One never knows how things will evolve. After all the Renaissance was ushered in by disastrous events. That could happen again.

I would add a couple of ideas to what he said. First, start teaching LATIN again, and even Greek, if you can find students willing to make the effort. Second, STOP teaching French children the "global" method of reading. This language-destroying method has had a demonstrably disastrous effect on the way the formerly well-educated French spell, conjugate verbs, and express themselves. This applies to the teaching of foreign languages as well. Third, STOP teaching French to foreigners via the "global" (or "audio-visual-lingual") method. This method can lead to chaos. Language study for older students has to be structured and grammar has to be taught systematically, whether the students like it or not. Then it is easy to make the transition to structured speech, and eventually to everyday speech. (Note: the final step to authentic everyday speech at normal speed is never easy.) Foreigners are not learning French any better than the French are learning their own language.

[...]

A return to the teaching of the classics is one very good way of re-stimulating interest in the languages of Europe, including German and Castilian Spanish, which is very difficult - has anyone tackled Don Quijote in Spanish? The original version used to be read in American universities, but that would be very rare today. However a solid background in Latin would facilitate access to the great literatures of Western Europe...

As for German, it was quickly phased out (again, not entirely) after 1968. Nobody was willing to make the effort. Dumbing down the mind, and jacking up the grades became the unexpressed and inexpressible goals of American education.

Finally, what would happen if we suddenly began making intellectual demands on hedonistic young people, or people from different cultures who simply do not have the background to do rigorous work? Would there be violence? Is dumbing down a defense against revolution? Would it be better to just close the schools? I have often thought so, but people turn in disgust from such suggestions. They say "education is our future." That's what we all fear, isn't it?

It is indeed!

I do not speak French well enough to express an educated judgement about that specific language here, I just never liked it on a gut level because I subjectively perceived it as effeminate and still do. I was taught English, French and Latin at school and when I had to choose between the latter two I chose, silly and immature as I was, Latin because it seemed to me the lesser evil (and predictably I wasn't very good at it, which I still deplore and always will) and because I liked the Latin teacher marginally better than the French teacher. I do, however, cherish the basic understanding of language with which my Latin training, imperfect as it may have been, endowed me. I love my native language and I love English, which I speak and write well, I love Shakespeare, that unique all-time chronicler of humanity, I love the intriguing details of that language, its intricate times and mysterious prepositions which I have yet fully to master, its subtle societal implications and snobberies, some of which I am still discovering, a fact that, curiously, led to an even more intense dislike of French because of all the French-based politically correct linguistic abominations which are polluting the English language, most of them via the American backdoor.

I am sure I said something to the same effect before, but any English speaker who uses words like "romance" or "lingerie" ought to be clobbered to death with a leather-bound volume of Burke's Peerage.

But I digress and my lack of affection for the French language doesn't change the truth of what Tiberge and Lawrence Auster are saying, nor, indeed, the point I am trying to make: To place the 'dumbing down the mind, and jacking up the grades' of which Tiberge is speaking and the '"spreading the French," instead of by elevating it', as Lawrence Auster puts it, into the framework of my yobbofication -- a downlevelling to the lowest common denominator -- theory.

Yobbofication, as I understand it, has hijacked each and every nook and cranny of our Western culture, triggered off by the progressive goals, most of which were defined in the Sixties and early Seventies, some much earlier. Whether the problems of race, class, general equality or equal opportunities were tackled, it all ended in new injustices instead of ending the old ones. The following examples are randomly chosen and their order is purely random as well:

Initially, the target was to allow Blacks to become worthy members of the community and to end hatred. Now in countries with a considerable black population whites have become quasi-legitimate targets of black savagery and black gutter-culture has become a defining part of the mainstream.

I wrote at VFR in August:

I used to be crazy about the Olympics until they became totally commercialized and meaningless sometimes in the Eighties and with the Olympic Games going on now, I am reminded of those black American athletes of the past who have been such a credit to their country... The first Olympic Games I was able to follow were the 1960 Games in Rome and I remember how impressed I, a little girl, had been by Wilma Rudolph. Blacks of the generations to which Owens and Rudolph belonged were forced to play their game by the white man's rules. Then they were granted equal rights and sometimes along the way they got (or better: were given) the idea that they were actually superior and deserved preferential treatment. The frightening "yobbofication" (I have made up that word myself for want of a better one) we are currently watching with all its horrific consequences, is a result of white cowardice and a perverted notion of equality and justice. When the eternal truth that people are indeed NOT all equal is given up and ethics, morality and communication are geared to the lowest, instead of the highest, denominator, something horrible will happen, and it has.

Initially, the target was to give women the right not to be treated as second-class citizens. Now female "empowerment" has undermined literally all traditional institutions and values.

Initially, the target was to end a humiliating situation for homosexuals. (Didn't all of us know at least one of those inoffensive, even pleasant, mostly elderly, quiet, educated, middle class couples?). Now we are forced to watch (and even to approve of) debauchery and depravity that defies description.

Initially, the target was to make up for the worst of the gross injustices humans are bound to create, now we do not have limitless estate- or corporate powers anymore, but a welfare state that has crippled people's initiative, will to perform and pride.

Initially, the target was do do away with bigotry, racism, xenophobia and hatred, now we are grovelling before an alien death cult in the name of "religious freedom", "equality" and "multiculturalism".

Initially, the target was to spare some poor souls who had been, by sheer naivity, lack of knowledge and general incompetence, impregnated out of wedlock by some ruthless male a fate of social ostracism, now Little Miss Homebreaker gets an interview in a national glossy magazine right beside the interview with the cheated-upon wife.

Initially, the target was to allow people, who didn't have the money to buy formal clothes, to participate in certain social gatherings, and the outcome is a horrible display of tastelessness, vulgarity and lack of discernment throughout all classes, at each and every occasion, and at all times of the day.

In the same spirit, initially, the target was to do away with arrogance, class consciousness, racism and un-niceness generally and the outcome is the death of togetherness, family, marriage and a --you've guessed it-- horrible display of tastelessness, vulgarity and lack of discernment.

In all those cases, society hasn't elevated "Les Damnés de la Terre" up, but stooped to their level in a sad travesty of justice because the basic truth that NOT all people are equal has been first denied and then vilified and, like people, societies that deny the basic truths of life will get sick.

Take any recent political happening and try to apply my "yobbofication" theory. It will work a treat. Take, for example, Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter! I'd say that in times when we dared calling "nice girls" by that name, nice girls didn't become pregnant. Full stop. Even if the supervision wasn't 24/7, it was understood that, at that age, a relationship with a boy or man intimate enough to get one pregnant was out of the question, contraceptives or not. One respected one's parents and -- yes -- one was afraid of the social consequences as well. But it is elitist now to remind girls of the fact that they are "nice girls". They don't have to fear social consequences anymore (that would be authoritarian) and they don't have something like a "reputation" to lose anymore (that would be sexist) and to be "authoritarian", "sexist" or -- Heaven forbid! -- "elitist" is almost as anathema as being "racist".

Take, to bring this to an end, Tiberge's 'dumbing down the mind, and jacking up the grades', take Lawrence Auster's '"spreading the French," instead of by elevating it', both fit perfectly the picture of downlevelling to the lowest common denominator. I remember, being child-, sibling-, nephew- and nieceless myself and, then, too young to be familiar with children attending Gymnasium (the German version of a grammar school) anyway, how horrified I was when I realized that a friend's son had to write a "critique" of a penny dreadful for his German class when he hadn't even been introduced to the classics or anything else that is good, beautiful and timeless in German literature. That was roughly 30 years ago. Have things improved since then? You must be joking.

Losing our language because it is dumbed down to a simplified everyday-version even a moron can understand means to lose the ability to express our thoughts -- and, finally, to HAVE thoughts. And that is what it is, at the end of the day, all about.

The Great Downlevelling to the Lowest Common Denominator

Another snippet from the same thread at VFR Michelle's physique, cont.

Lawrence Auster, having received criticism because he thematised Michelle Obama's appearance, wrote:

Of course, in our society, it is considered unworthy or silly--beneath the level of serious intellectual discussion--to draw attention to or criticize the physical qualities and dress of public people.

I replied:

That is an interesting point and does apply not just to public people. I think it ought to be seen in a broader context because it is part of the sickening "we are all one anyway so what does appearance mean" philosophy that has gone a long way already to undermine our sense of what is proper and decent. Dress used to be one of the most important social markers, its details firmly codified by law within the European corporate system. Not more than three generations ago, even though it had ceased to be a legal requirement, traditions were still strong enough that, for example, a member of the middle classes would frown on a working class woman who left the house without wearing an apron. Anything like that has gone to the dustbin of history, but instead of arriving at a--well--decent and proper solution, we have come together once again at the very lowest common denominator, which is to appear as sluttish and yobbofied as possible.

Female politicians are looking like personal assistants showing cleavage at any time of the day, nice girls are wearing tattoos and a ring through their nostrils. Would they, as they ought to, wear cashmere jerseys and pleated skirts, they'd come across more incongruous than a little green man from outer space, and when the upmarket hooker the French President married made an attempt to look ultra-respectable for meeting the Queen and ended up as the cartoon character of a coy schoolgirl, nobody laughed. Instead, the media, who wouldn't know style even if it hit them square in the face, went over the top to let us know how "she stole the show" from the octogenarian monarch. (Pictures here and here.)

A society that has forgotten what "embarrassment" is, is doomed.

As Jacqueline Kennedy was mentioned in the course of the discussion, this blog entry may explain further what I mean.

It will never cease to amaze me how people can consider the discussion of appearance and deportment, of which dress is not an unimportant part, irrelevant, even shallow. Appearance and deportment is, first and foremost, an expression of how we see ourselves and wish to be seen by others, a statement of respect for those with whom we socialize and a manifestation of dignity. Those who find this irrelevant clearly state where they stand.

Saddam Hussein at the Waldbühne

. . . or: Yes, looks DO matter!

I had an eerie experience yesterday night. I was looking for performances of my all-time favourite singer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau at YouTube, specifically for Au fond du temple saint from Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles, the aria for tenor and baritone to end all arias for tenor and baritone, which he superbly performed together with Carlo Bergonzi at an age when both guys would never see sixty again. Well, it wasn't there. But I became intrigued nevertheless.

Same concert, different aria.

First, there popped up that performance by Roberto Alagna and Bryn Terfel, which would have been rejected by any self-respecting vaudeville show (and yes, looks DO matter!) and then I stumbled over Placido Domingo and Rolando Villazón (Rolando WHO???) and wished I hadn't.

In open-necked shirt and with straggly gray beard, Domingo performed a fair impersonation shtick of Saddam Hussein, whereas Rolando WHO sported a hairdo, that gave an entirely new depth to the epithet "greaseball" (did I mention that looks DO matter?) and the only good thing about it was that, as one of the commentators at YouTube put it, that Domingo finally sang with the baritone voice God gave him. At the Berlin Waldbühne that was, in July 2006. And better forgotten.

But then I was rewarded for my pains. There they were. At the very bottom of the page. In a recording from 1970. Alfredo Kraus, not even arguably the most underrated tenor in the history of singing and Barry McDaniel, an American baritone who never got the international acclaim he deserved, mainly because he chose to work almost exclusively in Germany. Two guys, exceedingly handsome, immaculately groomed in white ties, no popular gimmicks, no tricks. Just pure art. Boring, eh?



And here was I, thinking that nobody could ever beat Fischer-Dieskau and Bergonzi, but Alfredo Kraus is so awesome that, although his partner McDaniel can, as a baritone, not quite touch Fischer-Dieskau and although Fischer-Dieskau's partner Bergonzi is one of the all time great tenors as well, Kraus outshines all that. This performance wins by a clear head. What effortlessness, what style, what poise!

Actually, Alfredo Kraus reminds me of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in his expression, introspectiveness, total devotion to his art and in his elegant, aristocratic bearing as well (which came, due to the ethnic difference, probably easier to him than to the latter).

Comparisons, specifically between singers of different repertoires, are difficult, maybe even unfair. Other tenors certainly had a more dramatic voice. But compared to Alfredo Kraus, Franco Corelli was just a hunk with a clarion-voice, Domingo a mis-casted baritone, and Pavarotti... well, at least Maestro Alfredo has an understudy in heaven now.

Redneck JonBenet and the Integrity of the Media

Recently, stories about a 11-year old boy in Alabama who had valiantly killed a "wild boar" with a handgun made headlines.



Not too surprisingly, the headline-making picture was soon debunked as a PhotoShop-job. As one commentator put it so aptly: "the real jaw-dropper is that anbody in Alabama could figure out how to do it."

But then, hadn't the family been QUITE that greedy and not enlarged the boar THAT much out of proportion, they might have gotten away with it, but I doubt anybody would accuse them of undue subtlety.

To top it, it expired that it wasn't even a wild boar at all, it wasn't even a feral boar. It was a farm-raised pig (obviously with some boar genes) and it all happened at 200 acre low fence area (also reported as 150 acres). Two men, the father and a "guide", watched with rifles ready while the boy tried to kill the pig, which he finally managed three hours and umpteen shots later, which, incidentally, busts another bug in the story: If the animal had been as aggressive as wild boars tend to be, it would surely have attacked the boy after the first shot.

Of course, as it can be expected from an American audience, everybody who doesn't celebrate the fat little kid's performance is a leftist commie liberal, treehugger and worse. So what are reasons to kill an animal?

Food: Yeah! No doubt they had that in mind when they set off for the "wild boar hunt". Frankly, the Stone-family looks as needy of food as monster pig itself and -- boyoboy -- WILL they enjoy their pork sausages for the rest of the year and part of next, and should the cholesterol kill them off -- Three Cheers to Charles Darwin.

Besides, most people's chops aren't usually tormented to death over a longish period of time. The butcher-farmers I trust shoot their animals on the range, so they never know what hits them, or kill them in their own small abattoir or I buy game at shoots which I attended myself. (More expensive than industrially-produced meat? Certainly. But who said that the lower classes ought to hunt?)

Self-defense: Well, they didn't actually need to go into the area where the pig was fenced in or did they?

Preservation of the ecological balance: Right! That was what the Stone-family certainly had in mind when embarking of their hunting-spree.

Fun: Okay with me, but bragging rights for a 11-year-old boy don't count. And if the more educated classes among those who shoot/hunt don't see a point in chasing a terrified tame animal for hours while blowing holes into it, that doesn't make them liberal leftist commies or treehuggers.

All that said, I am not sure how many of the fakes, lies and exaggerations are coming from the family and how many from the media and this is not about a rather obvious and naive PhotoShop job. This is about American child-rearing values. What is the pathetic little boy who took (how many?) shots to kill a tame pig while his father and a second man with rifles were watching that he would be well and truly physically safe all the time, what is he but the male redneck-version of JonBenet Ramsey? The tool and object of perverted parental projections.

And this is, too and above all, about integrity. I would hate to listen to the howling and whining of the international media and public now had Prince Charles taken his sons to butcher a tame pig. What makes an enjoyable little yarn for the mainstream media as long as it's about some rednecks from the American backwaters, would be an outrage of major proportions had the class enemy done just the same.

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.