Hit by State Agents

President Macron’s 26-year-old “senior security aide” –  whatever that may be – was filmed violently abusing demonstrators in Paris. For 2½ months Macron’s office apparently tried to cover it up. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful.

Lawyers can do wonders, and it remains to be seen if and how they seek to make it all end as fireless smoke.

And yet, whether this man will be found guilty or not is not the main issue. Deriving satisfaction and even pleasure from exercising violence is – as we have learnt over history – much more common than we would like to think and most of us like to have. Law enforcers can often do so with the formal or informal backing of their colleagues.

France is not alone. Despite our commitment to human rights and to the rule of law, we are regularly confronted with the ugly face of supposedly lawful aggression by agents of the state. This is going to become an even more pressing issue, as our countries are moving right.

You Talkin To Me?

Macho Contest between
Iranian President Rouhani: “DO NOT PLAY WITH THE LION'S TAIL OR ELSE YOU WILL REGRET IT… PEACE WITH IRAN WOULD BE THE MOTHER OF ALL PEACE AND WAR WITH IRAN WOULD BE THE MOTHER OF ALL WARS.“
and

US President Trump: “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!“

This somehow reminds me of Robert De Niro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QWL-FwX4t4

My Prognosis at Zenith

Zenith, a magazine that specialises in Middle East, North Africa and Muslim world issues, has just published a short article of mine, on the prognosis for Muslim Antisemitism, in their ... German edition: “Eine gute Prognose für muslimischen Antisemitismus.”

German readers are welcome to follow this link and read the article.  

Once there, you will find plenty of other interesting articles. 

Even I talk about Football

The small number of people who, last night, came to a lecture, held at a university in Berlin, were upset. Germany had just lost to South Korea and was thus out of the world cup. What worried those I spoke with was not having lost, but rather what they expect this loss will do to the national mood.

According to my interlocutors, losing at football, will increase the popularity of Germany’s extreme right, the AfD. The theory being that the football team’s weakness would be considered to reflect the country’s weakness. One more proof, for those who seek it, that Mrs. Merkel must go.

Sounds like a lose-lose situation: if you win at football, you increase nationalistic fervour and if you lose at ball, you increase it too.

I can but hope that they are wrong.

Unclassy Germans travelling 1st Class

This is what I found waiting on my 1^st class seat, when I boarded the train today. Being able to afford 1^st class travel is evidently no indication of class.  

German rail offers free papers in their 1^st class carriages. These include the not so classy BILD Zeitung.

 

Making money out of other people’s tragedies.

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.

In Freiburg and in Berlin

If you happen to be in Freiburg on 21 June or in Berlin on 27 June, or if you know anyone who might be interested:

two events with my book “Muslimischer Antisemitismus: Eine Gefahr für den gesellschaftlichen Frieden in Deutschland?”

FREIBURG

On 21 June, at 7:00 pm, I will be talking about the book and discuss it with the Editor in Chief of the Badische Zeitung.

The event will take place at the Humboldtsaal, Humboldtstr. 2, Freiburg. Tickets reservation necessary: 0800-2224 22431.

BERLIN

On 27 June, at 6:00 pm, I will be discussing my book with Professor Micha Brumlik. Moderator: Professor Rainer Kampling.

The event will take place at the Selma Stern Zentrum für jüdische Studien, Sophienstr. 22a, Berlin.

Please come and feel free to pass the information to others.

Babies at Weddings

Last week, I went to a rather beautiful church in London, for the wedding ceremony of a friend’s son. Not surprisingly, many of the guests were young people, including couples, who – as has become customary – brought their babies with them.

The babies and very young children, understandably, became restless after some time. What I fail to understand is why parents do not take a crying baby and go out, to enable everybody else to concentrate of the religious ceremony. Instead, the young parents seem to just sit there and look at their loud offspring with doting admiring eyes. And let’s face it, a parent admiring his or her one-year-old child, is basically admiring him/herself.

The people who sat in front of me not only played with their two small children throughout the wedding ceremony, they also – evidently incapable of managing two hours without reaching for hydro-oral satisfaction – regularly sipped from the water bottles which they brought with them.  

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…