Solidarity II

If it turns out that indeed the virus is fatal almost only to the old and frail, governments will find it very difficult to discipline social distancing and even the stringent hygiene regulations for the whole of the population. 

It will not take long for the younger generation to openly tell old people that if they do not want to get infected, they can stay at home. When they leave their homes, old people should not demand that others keep their distance or even avoid spreading the virus, which to the young seems like just a flu. 

For most people, solidarity, a bit like an erection, is difficult to maintain after the first excitement is over. We saw it with the welcome many Germans showered on the refugees in the 2015 refugee wave. It did not take long for ugly racism to rear its head. Watch this space. 

In a recent conversation with Mrs. dW, the 87-year-old former housekeeper of friends of mine in Germany, she mentioned the many refugees, who have recently arrived in Germany. Having been one herself, she added, she well understands their plight. She continued and made some statements about there being too many refugees for the country to cope with and that other solutions will have to be found. But she seemed to have true empathy with the current wave of homeless people.

Her family had originally come from Silesia, after it had become part of Poland in 1945. I asked her to recount her story and how she ended up in Southern Germany. She was 14 when her mother, with three children, was forced to give up their farm in Silesia and forced to leave and move to Germany. She and her siblings went to school and her mother started working as a farm hand for a local farmer in the community to which they were assigned in (East) Germany. In 1951, as a 19-year-old, she fled the DDR and moved West, bringing her mother over sometime later. There are, of course, hundreds of thousands, millions in fact, of such stories all over Europe.

She was 15 years old, in the summer of 1946, food was scarce at the time and one of the girls in her school had invited all her classmates to pick and eat berries in her parents’ farm. Only that refugee children were told that they were not included in the invitation. More than 70 years have passed and this hurt of being excluded has not been forgotten.

Spunky

On the Berlin underground, a sperm bank advertises its search for sperm donors. €80 per shot is being offered. Some of the ads are in German but some are also in English and I am curious about the decision to advertise for foreign sperm. 

Are donors of all ethnicities welcome? Would this be a way for young travellers to finance their trip to Berlin? 

And… the big question, what about all the asylum seekers, is their sperm welcome? 

Asylum seekers in Germany are not permitted to work, as long as their application is being considered, a process that can last several years. Until then, they get a basic state allowance. Doing their bit for the plight of childless German couples, could be a novel concept in the search of how to successfully integrate. 

Those worried about Islamisation of Europe, will of course be worried by racial purity…

Should Moroccans take up space in a refugee camp?

Last week, in a tram in Cologne, I was offered a seat by a very friendly young chap. His German was nonexistent, as was his English, he came from Morocco, he told me in broken French. He has been in Germany for a month and is hoping to find work. No, he has no profession and he may move to Spain in a few months time, he said and if that does not work out, he will go back home. For the time being, he is staying at the local refugee camp.  

Friends had told him that Europe was so beautiful, but it’s so cold in Germany and Morocco is very beautiful too, he proudly said. His parents, he told me in answer to my question, want him to come back home.

I later remembered how when I was his age, I also travelled in Europe, I stayed in large dormitories, perhaps like the camp the young Moroccan was put up in, they were called youth hostels but I had to buy my own food and was not given any pocket money by the countries I visited.

Refugees and German Girls

“I will not allow anyone to say that I am a Nazi. My father was in a concentration camp because of the Nazis.” Without going into the question whether the speaker’s father had indeed been imprisoned by the Nazis and for what reason, that fact alone would not automatically immunize the son from becoming a neo-Nazi.

It appears that Jürgen Mannke, head teacher in a gymnasium and the head of a teaching union in the German state of Sachsen Anhalt, has warned - in an article in his union’s magazine - of the danger posed to young German girls by Muslim male immigrants.

“Many young, strong and mostly Muslim men… not always with the most honourable intentions…often uneducated” are coming to Germany, and have a desire for sexuality, the authors of the article explain and ask, “How shall we form sexual education for our girls, 12 years and older, so that they do not let themselves into superficial relationships with the often attractive Muslim males.”

It is curious how the sexual fantasies of right-wingers worldwide drive them insane when they imagine the always-attractive outsider male screwing their women. 

Worryingly, Mannke claims to have received 90 per cent positive reactions to the article.

Queen Rania and Saudi Arabia

Queen Rania of Jordan has just called on Europe not to turn its back on Syrian refugees. My first thought was that the Jordanian queen should have addressed her plea to the more logical direction of the Gulf states. After all, they are fellow Arabs, fellow Muslims and they are rich.

And then I remembered reading some time ago that the Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait) had set up a US$ 5 billion fund that invests in capital projects in Jordan … 

The Queen of Jordan is perhaps not really free to talk frankly to Saudi Arabia. Much easier to tell the Europeans what to do. And yet, we should not forget that Jordan itself has been bearing much if the burden (like Turkey), having had to take in great numbers of Syrian refugees: more than 600 thousand in Jordan and almost two million in Turkey.

So how about it Saudi?