Dialog International

Who shot down MH17? Many Germans point to the US.

Malaysian Airlines Flight LH17 crashed in the eastern Ukraine, The evidence mounts that it was brought down by a Russian-made missile launched by Russian separatists in a region under their control, possibly with the support of the Russian military.  You would think that this development would demoralize the legions of Putin-Verehrer ("Putin admirers") in Germany.  You would be wrong, however. 

The mainstream press outlets in Germany have done a good job on reporting the facts as they emerge.  But many commenters in the reader forums and many bloggers have latched on to wild conspiracy theories - usually claiming that the event was somehow orchestrated by the United States.  Why?  To force the EU into accepting tougher sanctions against Russia and/or to start a war ("die Amerikaner sind imperialistische Kriegshetzer")/

Typical reader comment found on the Web site of Die Welt:

die Russen kann man unbedenklich ausschließen, die haben keinen Grund in es wäre ihnen klar, dass sie, wie es auch gerade geschieht, verantwortlich gemacht werden. Die Ukrainische Armee und die amerikanischen und polnischen Milizen an deren Seite hätten die Möglichkeit und Gründe.

(you can exclude the Russians without reservation, they don't have any reason to do this and they know that they would be held responsible. The Ukrainian army and their Polish and American militia supporters have the capability and the motive.)

Another:

Klar Putin wars wieder. Natürlich nicht die USA, die die Ukraine destabilisiert haben mit 5 Milliarden Dollar und den Putsch finanziert haben, nein sicherlich nicht. Der böse böse Putin hat auf der Krim, die schon immer russisch war, eine demokratische Abstimmung vorgenommen, wie konnte er nur. Laut USA versteht man unter Demokratie das Werfen von Bomben und Töten von Menschen.

Wenn Morgen in China ein Sack Reis umfällt, wars wahrscheinlich auch Putin. Bedankt euch lieber bei Putin, ohne ihn hätten wir schon den 3. Weltkrieg. Seiner Geduld haben wir es zu verdanken, dass er auf die Provokationen der USA/NATO/EU bisher nicht eingegangen ist. Aus diesem Grund steht Deutschland zu 90 % hinter Putin und Russland.

(Of course it was Putin. Of course the USA is innocent, even though the destablized the Ukraine with $5 billion and financed the putsch - of course it couldn't be them. That evil, evil Putin held a democratic eleciton in Crimea, which was always Russian - how could he do such a thing?  The US understands democracy as dropping bombs and killing people.

If a sack of rice falls over tomorrow in China it is probably Putin's fault. We should be grateful to Putin, without him there would be World War III.  He has been patient and up to now not giving in to  the provocations of the USA/NATO/EU.  Because of this 90% of Germans stand behind Putin and Russia.)

There are thousands of similar comments I could quote from Welt, Spiegel, SZ, Zeit, etc.  Some of the blogs are equally hysterical in blaming the US for the tragedy.  This comment on the left-wing blog "Spiegelfechter" compares the US to the Third Reich:

Und der Absturz, Abschuss, Bombenanschlag, Elektronikanschlag, Qualitätsproblem-GAU oder was auch immer es war, wird von den USA gerade jetzt zur Durchsetzung ihrer geostrategischen Ziele aus- und benutzt.
Dabei finde ich es gar nicht so wichtig, ob die USA selbst hinter dem Absturz stecken, was gar nicht so unwahrscheinlich ist, oder komplett unschuldig sind – es wird haargenau dasselbe gemacht, was damals nach 911 erfolgreich weltweit durchgezogen wurde. Auf den Leichen nicht von knapp 300 Menschen, sondern auf den Leichen von akkumuliert 100.000enden.
Es ist einfach ganz objektiv so, dass die USA in der Summe mehr Kriege und mehr Tote als jede andere Nation verursacht haben. Sie können da durchaus auch mit dem Dritten Reich verglichen werden, welches aus anderen Motiven ebenfalls Menschenverachtung praktizierte.

And not just the left.  The right-wing conspiracy site Kopp-Online immediately accused the US of being behind the MH17 tragedy: 

Wem nützt es?

Die Antwortauf die Frage »Wem nützt es?« liegtebenfallsauf der Hand: den USA. Das total bankrotteSchuldenimperiumbrauchteinenKrieg, um von seiner prekären Lageabzulenkenund um seine Schuldenzuannullieren. Zwaristauchdas natürlich nochkeinBeweis – aberzumindesteinplausiblerAnfangsverdacht.

DasneuerlicheVerschwindeneinesMalaysian-FlugesunddasAuftaucheneines Trümmer- undLeichenfeldesauf »separatistischem Boden« spielen den Kriegsinteressen der USA in die Hände. Es riechtnacheinerProvokationundeinem False-Flag-Anschlag, wie er schon lange geplant wird. Mit 80 Kindernund 20 Amerikanern an Bord wurde die Maschineperfekt ausgewählt, um die USA und die Weltöffentlichkeit psychologisch in den Konflikthineinzuziehen.

(Who benefits? The answer is crystal clear: the USA. The completely bankrupt debtor empire needs a war to distract from its precarious situaiton and wipe outits debts. That is not proof - but a plausible suspicion. The recent disappearance of a Malaysian flight and the appearance of wreckage and strewn bodies on "separatist soil" works in favor of the war interests of the US. I smells like a provocation and a False-Flag attack that has been planned for a long time. With 80 children and 20 Americans (sic!) on board the plane was perfectly chosen in order to draw the US and global opinion into the conflict.)

(By the way, the same publication accused the US of shooting down Malaysian Airline Flight MH370 during a missile test launch that went astray.)

Recently I have been reading another anti-American "news" site - Hintergrund - which often reads like a German version of Russia Today.  The author Wolfgang Bittner, commenting on Russia's activity in the Ukraine, has a hysterical rant about Obama, NATO the United States, etc:

Barack Obama, der einstige Hoffnungsträger, entwickelt sich mehr und mehr zu einer Ausgeburt des Schreckens für die ganze Welt. Waren die Bush-Präsidenten schon furchtbar, scheint er sie inzwischen zu übertreffen. Er wird uns am 4. Juni vor einem amerikanischen Kampfjet auf polnischem Territorium präsentiert und warnt Russland vor einer militärischen Intervention gegen westliche Staaten, für die es jedoch keinerlei Anzeichen gibt.

(Barack Obama, at onetime the hope for the world, has turned more and more into a monster of horror for the entire world.  While the Bush presidencies were awful, he has now surpassed them.  On June 4 he stood before a US fighter jet on Polish terrority and warns Russia against military intervention against western nation, for which there are zero indications.)

Are these minority views in Germany?  Yes, but a vocal minority which each day grows louder.

In the next days and weeks, as further evidence is presented to the world concerning Russia's involvement in the MH17 tragedy, these folks will simply see this as further proof that the United States brought down the plane.

The "NSA massive surveillance of German citizens" that never happened

Two weeks ago we were informed by Der Spiegel that the NSA was capturing "500 million data points" of voice and e-mail communication of German citizens - each month!  The "revelation" unleased a firestorm of anti-American and anti-Merkel frenzy.  According Spiegel columnist Jakob Augstein Obama had transformed the US to a totalitarian state whose mission was to "control" Germany.  His colleague Sascha Lobo had a real hissy fit ("man hat ein fucking Recht darauf, in einem fucking Rechtsstaat mit einer fucking beachteten Verfassung zu leben.") And the story dominated the campaign of SPD candidate Peer Steinbrück, who over and over again essentially accused German chancellor Angela Merkel of treason (" Jeden Monat wurden 500 Millionen persönliche Verbindungsdaten von uns abgesaugt... ahrelange, millionenfache Grundrechtsverletzung“). 

Just one problem for Augstein, Steinbrück, Spiegel & Co:  The massive spying on German citizens by the NSA never happened.  First, the "500 million data points" were collected by the GERMAN intelligence service BND, and transfered to the NSA after any reference to German citizens was scrubbed.  Second, the data involved communication data from Afghanistan - nothing to do with Germany.  The truth was finally acknowledged in Der Spiegel: 

Should the BND information be correct, it could provide Berlin a convenient way to save face. The data gathered in Bad Aibling apparently would seem to relate to the BND's legal foreign surveillance targets, which consists primarily of data transmitted in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

In response to inquiries, the BND confirmed that it does transmit connection data to the NSA. But it notes: "Before metadata relating to other countries is passed on, it is purged, in a multistep process, of any personal data about German citizens it may contain." According to the BND, its surveillance does not apply to German telecommunications and German citizens. In addition, say BND officials, there is currently no reason to believe that the "NSA gathers personal data on German citizens in Germany."

Still, Der Spiegel is trying to gin up a scandal, implying that the decades-long cooperation between the NSA and the BND is somehow illegitimate.

The respected Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was much harsher in its assessment, blasting Steinbrück for his defamatory accusations: 500 Millionen Irrtümer (5oo Million Mistakes):

Die (SPD) hatte die Diskussion über den Umgang der Vereinigten Staaten mit weltweit geschürften persönlichen Daten aus sozialen Netzwerken, Internetsurfing oder Telefonaten nutzen wollen, um die Bundesregierung mit der Kanzlerin an der Spitze als Marionette der NSA zu denunzieren. Das ist nun vorerst missglückt, und Peer Steinbrück hat seinen Ruf gefestigt, mitunter unbedachte Äußerungen zu tätigen.

For Augstein, Steinbrück, Spiegel & Co America is always the bogeyman, but this particular line of attack evidently blew up in their face.

 

 

 

 

The Common Roots of Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism

When analyzing the virulent anti-American sentiment that has resurfaced in Germany - especially among left-wing pundits and observers - following the Snowden revelations concerning massive data-mining, it is useful to consider the recent history of anti-Semitism. 

Martin Engelberg, writing in Die Presse, sees a close connection between both positions, which are particularly entrenched in the German left today: 

Dazu werden beide ("die Amerikaner" und "die Juden") für bestimmte Erscheinungen – insbesondere der Moderne – personifiziert und diffamiert. Juden und Amerikaner werden als „das andere“ oder „das Böse“, als konträr der eigenen moralischen Position gegenüber bezeichnet. Bereits zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts wurde der „amerikanische Geist“ als bedrohlich und zersetzend für die deutsche Kultur angesehen; sehr ähnlich der „jüdische Geist“, dessen Bekämpfung in der Nazi-Zeit ihren Höhepunkt fand.

(Both the Americans and the Jews personify certain social phemonena - especially modernity - and are reviled for this.  Jew and Americans are seen as "the other" and "evil", since they are contrary to the superior moral standing of the Volk.  Already at the beginning of the 2oth century the "American spirit" was seen as a corrosive influence on the "German spirit; the same as well with the "Jewish spirit", the resistance against which reached its apex in tne Nazi era.)

Underlying both anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, according to Martin Engelberg, is a feeling of profound powerlessness: 

Amerikanern und Juden wird gleichermaßen zugeschrieben, die Macht zu besitzen, das Weltgeschehen bis in Details zu bestimmen. Die Bedrohung durch beide ist deshalb so gefährlich, weil sie sich im Inneren europäischer Gesellschaften „eingenistet“ haben. Die Juden lebten tatsächlich bis zur Nazi-Zeit inmitten europäischer Gesellschaften, die USA drangen mit ihrer Sprache, Kultur, ihrem Lebensgefühl in Herz und Seele der Europäer ein. Bei jeder sich bietenden Gelegenheit muss die Volksseele versuchen, sich dieser Dominanz zu entledigen.

(It is taken for granted that both the Americans and "the Jews" have the power to influence world events down to the smallest detail. They pose such a great threat since both have "burrowed" deeply in European society.  Up until the Nazi era the Jews lived in the heart of European society, while the US forced itself into the European soul with its language, its culture, its American way of life. The pure soul of the Volk must take every opportunity to throw off this dominance.)

But Engelberg's critique is tame compared with that of Andrei S. Markovits, who sees anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism as "Siamese Twins" in Europe today.  Markovits has written a good book about the history of anti-Americanism in Europe:  Amerika, dich hasst sich's besser.  In another essay he writes about how the perception of an all-powerful Israel has bled into the perception of an all-powerful America - creating a two-headed evil monster in the left-wing imagination:

In today's intellectual Europe it is illegitimate to view European Jews as Shylocks (or deride them as such), but it is entirely legitimate to portray those Jews who, instead of fitting the picture of the weak pariah, have built their own state (namely Israel and the Israelis) as Rambos and to hate them as such.¹³ It is the figure of the tough, aggressive, unscrupulous, and ruthless Jew in the form of the powerful, brutal Israeli that is lending a new dimension to contemporary European anti-Semitism. And it is strength and (military) power that assigns anti-Americanism an auxiliary and indispensable role in this new form of anti-Semitism (outfitted as hostility toward Israel)¹⁴ and that turns these two phenomena into politically potent Siamese twins throughout Europe.

Until recently, it was clear how the U.S.-Israel relationship fit into this line of thinking: It was the powerful United States that was using Israel as a marionette or "aircraft carrier" for its "imperialist" and "neo-colonial" schemes; the U.S. was the real power, and Israel was the henchman. But in the discourse of many Europeans after 11 September 2001 - and especially since the Iraq war - this has been reversed almost 180 degrees.

The current controversy around the spying activity of the HSA will gradually fade away, but anti-Americanism is bound to resurface in Germany over and over again.

 

The Hochstapler from Bavaria

One of my favorite works by Thomas Mann is the ironic Bildungsroman Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull.  Felix, whose ambition and talent for acting - and lying - , take him from a small town in Germany to aristocratic circles in Paris, is able to effortlessly deceive people about his true background and identity.  People - especially upper bourgeois and aristocratic variety - project on Felix their own fantasies, to which he gladly adapts. 

But Felix Krull was a rank amateur compared to Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who for years was able to fool people - including two wives - that he belonged to America's iconic aristocratic families - the Rockefellers.  Not bad for someone who grew up in rural Upper Bavaria: 

Am 21. Februar 1961 wird in Siegsdorf der kleine Christian geboren und wächst im benachbarten Bergen auf, nahe der österreichischen Grenze. Der Chiemgau muss eine kleine, enge Welt gewesen sein. Zu eng und zu klein für die großen Träume des jungen Gerhartsreiter. Der Vater ist Landschaftsmaler, die Mutter arbeitet als Näherin. In der Schule gibt Christian gern den Klassenclown. Er spielt Telefonstreiche und ordert gleich zwei Rolls-Royce. Das zeigt sein Talent.

(Little Christian was born on February 21, 1961 and grew up in the surrounding mountains, close to the Austrian border.  The Cheimgau must have seemed like a small, circumsribed world. Too small for the big dreams of young Gerhartsreiter.  The father paints landscapes, the mother works as a seamstress.  At school Christian plays the class clown.  He plays pranks on the telephone and orders two Rolls-Royces.  This shows his talent. )

Christian set out for America, where, to quote PT Barnum "There's a sucker born every minute." The rest is history, and stuff of made for TV movies.

It's hard to imagine being taken in by an utterly absurd Hochstapler like Gerhartsreiter, but the writer Walter Kirn ("Up in the Air") has a terrific piece in the New Yorker which describes in detail how it can happen. (unfortunately, the piece is behind the paywall) KIrn was friends with "Clark Rockefeller" for 15 years - you might even say he was a close friend, and, despite numerous signs that things were amiss, never questioned Clark's identity.  It was only at Gerhartsretier's murder trial did the magnitude of the deception sink in.  Kirn describes his total humiliation:

"Getting to know an old friend through his murder trial after failing to know him through normal means is a formula for humiliation.  As Balian falled his last few witnesses and reporters placed their bets, and reporters placed their bets, anticipating a hung jury, I started replaying scenes in my mind, imagining what would have happened had I been less eager to collaborate in Clark's fantasies and cover stories.  When fresh information discredits past perceptions, the underlying memories don't change; you're left to construct a new puzzle from the shaken-loose pieces of the old one.  It's infuriating. And the fury wants an object that's not yourself."

KIrn's piece is brutally honest, and shows in detail how easily we can fall for conmen like Gerhartsreiter or Bernie Madoff

Race, IQ, Immigration - Again

In 2010 the banker and amateur geneticist Thilo Sarrazin published his book on immigration - Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Abolishes Itself) - in which he argued that low-IQ immigrants from Turkey and Arab countries were "over-breeding" and displacing high IQ Germans who were having fewer and fewer children.  Intelligence, Sarrazin explained, is genetically determined, so the Muslim community in Germany was simply reinforcing its dull-wittedness by bearing more children, and, to the extent that Muslims were interbreeding with Germans, were dumbing down the "thoroughbred race horse" Germans into a race of "mules" ("Ackergaul").  Jews, on the other hand, are highly intelligent thanks to a "Jewish gene."

Sarrazin's book and his speeches have make him enormously popular - and wealthy - in Germany.  Others have been less complimentary: recently, the United Nations condemned the German government for not clamping down on Sarrazin for his racist views.  Sarrazin, however, is unrepentent and is working on yet another incendiary book (see this interview in Business Week: Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Euro, Thilo Sarrazin is Not Sorry).

Attacking races because of their supposed inferior genes remains popular - and not just in Germany. Recently, the American conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation released a study which claims that granting amnesty and a path to US citizenship to illegal Hispanic immigrants would cost the US over $6 trillion - due to the fact that low-intelligence, lazy Latinos would rely on welfare and food stamps for support. 

The Heritage study was cowritten by Jason Richwine, who earned a doctorate at Harvard University with a dissertation analyzing the low IQ's of Hispanic immigrants to the US.  “Today’s immigrants are not as intelligent on average as white natives,’’ Richwine wrote in the thesis. “The IQ difference between the two groups is large enough to have substantial negative effects on the economy and on American society.”  Sounding very much like Thilo Sarrazin in Germany, Richwine argues in his work that the US should only allow immigrants with high IQs.  Richwine's Harvard dissertation is just one more chapter in the sorry history of Ivy League insttituions linking race and intelligence. 

Both Sarrazin and Richwine acknowledge their indebtednes to (Harvard grad) Charles Murray, whose 1991 book The Bell Curve used crude statistical analysis to "prove" the inferior intelligence of African Americans.  Richwine went so far as to apprentice with Murray at the neo-conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. 

It is obvious why studies linking race and intelligence appeal to conservatives in Germany and the United States.  Persistent poverty among immigrant and minority communities can be explained not as an outcome of racial discrimination, but rather because the minorities are simply not smart enough to succeed on American or German society.  Conservatives can attack liberal programs such as the early-childhood Head Start program in the US as well-meaning but useless, since no amount of intervention can overcome the genetic deficiencies of these groups with respect to intelligence. 

But these attacks on "stupid immigrants" are as old as America itself.  It was one of our founding fathers - Benjamin Franklin - who warned that the influx of "stupid" Germans represented a grave danger to America:

"Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation…and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain…Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it…I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in droves, and carry all before them, except in one or two Counties...In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious."

Sarrazin Nation?

I have been trying to forget Thilo Sarrazin, whose crude racial theories - put forward in his best selling book Deutschland schafft sich ab - were all the rage several years ago.  In the meantime, Sarrazin has pretty much faded from public view and is no longer invited on the TV talk shows.  His last book - a rant against the Euro - did not sell nearly as well as his first, so I was hopeful that Sarrazin's 15 minutes of fame was over for good.

Now, the United Nations has brought Thilo Sarrazin back into public view with a scathing report on the Federal Republic's response - or lack thereof - to Sarrazin's crude racial stereotyping: 

A United Nations committee has reprimanded Germany in strong language, saying that the country had violated an international anti-racism convention.

At issue are controversial statements made in 2009 by Thilo Sarrazin, a former finance senator for the city-state of Berlin, about Turks and Arabs, who he said sponged off the state and were incapable of integrating, among other things. But a complaint submitted to public prosecutors in Berlin was rejected on grounds that the comments were permissible under Germany's freedom of expression law. An appeal to the decision was rejected as well.

According to the UN's Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), however, this constituted a violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, because it failed to conduct an "effective investigation" into the matter.

"This is a historic decision," said the TBB Turkish Union, the cultural organization that submitted the case to the committee, in a statment on Thursday. "CERD has determined that Mr. Sarrazin's comments touch on a feeling of racist superiority or racial hatred and contain elements of incitement to racial discrimination."

You can read the entire CERD report here (pdf warning).

The UN committee has given Berlin 90 days to respond.

Much as I despise Sarrazin and agree with the sentiments of the CERD Report, I don't believe the German government has any compelling reason to respond to the report.  Sarrazin's book and his idiotic comments are protected under the right of freedom of expression.  The government has no role in censoring speech - even hateful, stupid speech - as long as it is not inciting  violence.  It is not the task of the German government to moderate the response to a book, no matter how detestable.  Descrimination based on gender or ethnic origin is prohibited under German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) and the government's job is to enforce the law. 

Sarrazin's festival of hate has played itself out in Germany; ultimately, it is Sarrazin who is the loser in the court of public opinion.  Let's leave it at that.

Should the word "Neger" be cut from German texts?

This is the silly season in Germany, where entire talkshows are devoted to the inappropriate suggestive comments of a middle-age politician to a young female reporter, or to whether the word Neger is racist and should be removed from any children's books. (The word "Neger" can be translated as the anachronistic "Negro" or the perjorative "Nigger".)  In a way, I am jealous that such innocuous topics can dominate public discourse. Here in America we are grappling with an epidemic of gun violence (240 shooting incidents just yesterday). 

The Neger controversy was started by German Family MInister Kristina Schröder: 

When Pippi Longstocking's father is referred to as "Negro-King" or Jim Button is called "Negro-Baby" (in the 1960 children's novel by Michael Ende) Schröder intends to "replace them on the spot while I'm reading, in order to protect my child from taking on such expressions," she told Die Zeit weekly.

"Even without bad intentions, words can cause damage," she said. "When a child is older, I would explain what kind of history the word Neger has, and how hurtful it is to use that word."

Depending on how it is used, the German word Neger can mean anything from the outdated and inappropriate term "negro" to the seriously offensive "nigger" in English.

This is not the first time that Kristina Schröder raised eyebrows with her politically correct approach to the German language.  Several months ago she confessed that when speaking with her daughter she referred to God as "das Gott" - using the neuter gender definitive article instead of the grammatically correct masculine "der Gott."

Should we change texts to conform to modern sensibilities?  Call me a purist, but I don't believe we should  - especially with a classic such as Pippi Longstocking.  Even when reading to children, we can use the language to talk about the work in its historical context and how attitudes have changed.

Every few years a the same controversy flares up regarding an American classic - Huckleberry Finn -  and Mark Twain's character "Nigger Jim".  Fortunately, most teachers have resisted the effort to "sanitize" this wonderful novel.  And last week I went to see Quentin Tarantino's new movie Django Unchained where the "N-Word" is used at least a hundred times.  Nobody in audience complained - maybe because the main figure Django turns the table on the slaveholders.

But I'm willing to admit that as a white male perhaps I'm missing something here.  Spiegel reporter Dialika Neufeld, whose father is Senegalese, has a much different take on the issue: 

"Is it acceptable to alter the original version of a text?

I say yes, when the texts in question are children's books that serve to perpetuate racist stereotypes. These books are not only read aloud to children, they are also read by children themselves, without anyone there to help them make sense of what they read. And the things children pick up from their reading, they bring with them into the classroom -- classrooms where their fellow students might have parents who come from Ghana or Pakistan. One in five children born in Germany today has some kind of immigrant background.

The worst thing for me as a child was being ostracized and insulted because of the color of my skin. And it wasn't just about language. This was the 1990s, when neo-Nazis set homes for asylum-seekers on fire and black people were chased through the streets by right-wing thugs. "nigger," for me, was neo-Nazi language."

The Myth of Nazi Gun Control

Tune into Fox News any time day or night and you will find frequent comparisons of President Obama to Adolf Hitler.  For just like Hitler, Obama wants to disarm the American people so that he can impose a Socialist/Fascist dictatorship.  The "Gun Control = Holocaust" meme is so pervasive that it is even invoked by Republican members of Congress. The premise is that Hitler was able to consolidate his power through implementing a gun registry, and then murder six million Jews by confiscating their weapons. It is an article of faith among American gun fetishists that "the first thing Hitler did was round up all the guns."

The myth of Nazi gun control was exploded already in 2004 by Bernard E. Harcourt in his article On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (pdf warning) published in the Journal of the University of Chicago Law School.  It turns out, as Harcourt documents, that the Nazis relaxed many of the gun ownership restrictions that were put in place during the Weimar Republic (as required under the Versailles Treaty). And one could argue that the Nazi Party might not have successfully seized power if gun laws had been strictly enforced during the Weimar Republic, since Hitler had few problems procuring illegal weapons for his paramilitary troops such as the SA. 

It is true that after the Novemberpogrom of 1938 the Nazi regime expressly forbade Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other "undesirables" from owning any weapons (Waffengesetz von 1938), but it is not clear at all that this had any significant effect on the persecution of Jews. And it is patently absurd to point to this as the cause of the Holocaust.  The Jews that were detained and then deported after 1938 tended to be older and less-well off; most Jews with any resources left Germany much earlier.  The deportation took place with the open or tacit approval and complicity of the vast majority of Germans; any act of armed resistance would have been completely futile.   In any case, most of the Jews who perished in in the Nazi death camps were non-Germans and not subject to the Waffengesetz. 

But don't expect any rational discussion of history to change the Gun Control = Holocaust hysteria.  There is a segment of white males in America who fantasize about using their AR-15 military assault rifles to mow down Obama's gay Muslim storm-troopers who will be coming to a neighborhood near you to take your guns. 

Jakob Augstein a "Top Ten Anti-Semite"

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Augstein, publisher of Der Freitag, son of Der Spiegel founder Rudolf Augstein, and himself a Spiegel-columnist, is one of the world's top ten anti-Semites, along side other personalities like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and groups such as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (see the list- pdf). BY including Augstein on this list, the Wiesenthal Center has made a big mistake; it diminishes the Center's important work and demeans the concept of "anti-Semitism".  There is nothing "anti-Semitic" about any of Jakob Augstein's writings.  Like many Liberal thinkers within Israel, Augstein has been highly critical of Israel's settlement policies and the positions of Bibi Netanyahu.  His criticism of Israel - still something of a taboo in Germany - has enraged LIkud apologists, who are eager to excoriate Germans for any hint of ant-Semitism. 

In this case, the Simon WIesenthal Center has overreached, and even conservative publications like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung have come to Augstein's defense: 

In seinen Texten geht es nicht um die Juden und nicht um den Juden. Er propagiert keine Gewalt, zieht keine Traditionslinien und operiert nicht mit Vorurteilen. Was er kritisiert, ist nicht das Symptom eines in der Existenz der Juden oder Israels wurzelnden Übels, sondern das Resultat politischer Entscheidungen der aktuellen israelischen Regierung. Ein Vergleich seiner Zitate auf der Homepage des SWC mit denen der anderen aufgeführten Personen macht diesen entscheidenden Unterschied sofort deutlich.

("There is nothing in his writings about Jews or "the Jew".  He does not advocate violence, doesn't draw on lines of tradition and doesn't operate with any prejudice.  He's not criticizing some fundamental evil rooted in the existence of Jews or Israel, but rather the result of political decisions made by the current Israeli government.  A comparison with the other people or groups on the list makes this distinction clear.")

Why did the Wiesenthal Center turn their attention to Jakob Augstein?  It turns out they were influenced by none other than Henryk Broder  - a notorious Islamophobe who makes a nice living in Germany by smearing anyone who disagrees with him as an anti-Semite (an effective technique for stifling discourse in Germany). Henryk Broder was an inspiration to the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik.  Last year, when the writer and anti-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali expressed sympathy for Breivik in a speech given in Berlin, Broder gave her a standing ovation. 

German court acquits rapist; 15-year-old victim "did not resist enough"

This story has outraged many in Germany and beyond:

A German teenager who said she was raped by a 31-year-old man was told by the judge she had not defended herself enough for the law to convict him – simply saying no was not enough.

The young girl told her rapist to "stop" assaulting her, but that was not enough for the court to convict him:

The physically strong man and the girl had sex, despite her having told him, “No, I don’t want to,” the court heard.

“This is not enough to meet one of the three conditions laid out in paragraph 117 of the criminal law code,” Wolfgang Schmidt, spokesman for the court and a judge himself, told The Local.

“The door to the flat was unlocked, it was in a building with other flats. She could have left with the other women or called out for help, for example. There was no evidence presented to the court of violence being used, or threatened, and her position could not be described as defenceless.

To which the Mädchenmannschaft blog comments sardonically:

"Man kann schließlich von keinem Mann erwarten, dass er ‚Nein ich will keinen Sex‘ versteht!"

(You can't expect any man to understand it when you say:"No, I don't want to have sex!")

Of course, in the US, even consensual sex with a child under 17 is considered "statutory rape", although I suspect that many American Republicans would agree with the German court that the case here does not meet the standards of "legitimate rape.