Tag Archives: Germany

Recent Fairy Tales I Have Encountered

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Breitbart.com is reporting the following today:

Peter Altmaier who is both the German federal refugee coordinator and a member of Angela Merkel’s own Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) said that Mrs. Merkel will convert these misogynistic migrants’ attitudes toward women into something more in line with German progressive attitudes, reports the Kurier.

He sat on a panel at the Munich Security Conference Friday when a local politician told him that many migrants in local asylum centres refused to listen to the instructions of female workers and refused food and money from them demanding that they would only accept aid from fellow men.

Altmaier answered the question by saying that the asylum workers should tell each migrant who does not listen to a woman that he must respect women like he would respect Chancellor Merkel. “you have to explain to him that there are hundreds of thousands of “Angela Merkels” in Germany who have just as much to say,” and that they should treat women with the same reverence.

I hate to be a pessimist about this, but this is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time. There are some very stark differences between western civilization (based on a Judeo-Christian ethic) and Islamic society (based on Sharia Law). One of those differences has to do with the role of women and the value placed on women as people. The migrants in question are simply behaving in a way that is culturally in tune with their upbringing–since German women are not fully covered, they are subject to groping and possible rape. This is not a simple matter of bad behavior–it is a matter of ingrained, learned behavior. The migrants have no incentive to change–they don’t believe that what they are doing is wrong.

This will not end well.

Of Course They Are Vetted

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Breitbart.com is reporting today that German police are tracking a terrorist commander living among the refugees.

The article reports:

Two houses in the village (Sankt Johann) are used to house Syrian refugees, but among the opponents of the Assad regime living there SPIEGEL TV tracked down a suspected commander of the Islamic State terror group after tip offs from other Syrian activists. They had identified him as a man called Bassam, a notorious commander said to be responsible for the deaths of dozens of people.

…As Breitbart London recently reported, German security forces have received more than 100 tip-offs that Islamic State fighters may be hiding among migrants currently staying in the country.

Houston, we have a problem.

 

 

A Way Of Thinking That Is Incompatible With Civilization

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Breitbart.com posted an article yesterday about some recent comments by Imam Sami Abu-Yusuf, the Imam of a Salafist Cologne mosque.

The article reports:

Explaining in the view of Salafist Islam why hundreds of women found themselves groped, sexually assaulted and in some cases raped by gangs of migrant men in cities across Germany the Imam said: “the events of New Year’s Eve were the girls own fault, because they were half naked and wearing perfume. It is not surprising the men wanted to attack them. [Dressing like that] is like adding fuel to the fire”.

The tone of the report was telling, expressing no surprise that Muslim mass migration would result in violence and gang-rape. The narrator of the report told viewers that after the events of New Year’s Eve it was becoming difficult to tell who’s country Germany was, one belonging to Muslims or to Germans. Also expressed was the opinion that the sex attacks were no more than a dress rehearsal for something much bigger to come.

Again, according to the teaching in this sector of Islam, the groping and rapes were justified by the way the women were dressed. I would be the first to state that I don’t always agree with the way some women dress, but last time I checked, western civilization did not have a dress code.

Remember, rape of non-Muslim women is an acceptable practice in the eyes of some sects of Islam. We need to consider that when accepting refugees into America. The compromise might be to allow refugees in small numbers on the condition that they are willing to assimilate and adopt western culture. If they are not willing to do that, they need to find a country where their views on women and other matters are accepted.

The horrid conditions in the countries Middle Eastern refugees are fleeing are not due entirely to wars–they have a lot to do with the prevailing culture in these countries. We need to consider how much of that culture we are willing to tolerate in America.

When Civilizations Are Not Compatible

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Hot Air posted a story today about a town in Germany that is attempting to deal with an influx of Islamic refugees who have brought their culture with them.

The article reports:

A town in Germany has banned male asylum seekers from public swimming pools after complaints from women that they were being harassed by migrants, AFP learnt Friday.

A spokesman for the local government of Bornheim said the ban on male asylum seekers above the age of 18 came after six people filed complaints “over the sexually offensive behaviour of some migrant men at the pool”.

The measure aimed at “making it clear to the men that the right of women in Germany is inviolable”, he added.

Officials have gone personally to three asylum seeker shelters near the pools to deliver news of the ban and emphasise how people should behave in swimming pools, said the spokesman.

Frontpage Magazine posted an article that includes a video that gives some insight to the behavior of these Muslim immigrants:

The video was translated by Memri. The professor is from Al-Azhar, which is as mainstream establishment as Islam gets in Egypt. She limits this to what she describes as “legitimate wars”, suggests that Jewish women in Israel should be a target, but then appears to sarcastically backtrack, this may be a backhanded attack on Egypt’s government.

But here’s how she describes the practice of Islamic sanctioned rape itself. “The female prisoners of wars are ‘those whom you own.’ In order to humiliate them, they become the property of the army commander, or of a Muslim, and he can have sex with them just like he has sex with his wives.”

If you still think Islam has anything in common with normative religion, think again. There’s no religious gloss over this. After having moderately isolated contexts in which rape is acceptable, the reason for it is bluntly nasty. Better Islamic apologists will claim that it was some favor to the women. But she is honest about that at least. The purpose of this Koranic rape, like all rape, is degradation.

Many of the Islamic refugees who are currently living in Europe are not refugees–they are invaders–they regard the European women as people they are entitled to rape. If we bring enough of these young men into America, they will do the same thing here.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

Critics may wish to claim that there’s no parallel between a cultural acceptance of child brides or pedophilia and sexual assaults on German women in public spaces, but I would argue otherwise. These simply aren’t western values and Europe is getting a big taste of it as turmoil continues to roil their nation. Merkel has now taken in well over one million immigrants from a very different culture an her citizens don’t seem to be terribly enamored of the results. Other countries in the EU are tightening their borders and turning people away, so where will they go? To Germany? This pot is close to boiling already and I still wonder if this won’t be the single issue which eventually brings down one of Europe’s most successful leaders in the modern era.

Unless the refugees coming to America are willing to assimilate, we would be wise not to accept them.

The Problem With Syrian Refugees

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On September 21, 2015, the Israel National News posted a story about an ISIS recruiter posing as a refugee at the Stuttgart Germany refugee center.

The article reports:

At the same time, a German finance ministry spokesman has acknowledged the seizure of “boxes” of fake Syrian passports, destined for sale and distribution to the new refugees from Syria and elsewhere.Bulgarian police confiscated 10,000 fake Syrian passports on their way to Germany.

As I reported on October 7:

Senior FBI officials recently testified that they have no idea who these people are, and they can’t find out what type of backgrounds they have — criminal, terrorist or otherwise — because there are no vetting opportunities in those war-torn countries.

Syria and Iraq, along with Somalia and Sudan, are failed states where police records aren’t even kept. Agents can’t vet somebody if they don’t have documentation and don’t even have the criminal databases to screen applicants.

The article in the Israel National News further reports:

Regarding the Syrian passports, an article in the German Tagespiegelreported that it is not only Syrians who are interested in them: “Refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan want to become Syrian in order to secure their recognition as asylum seekers in Western Europe. According to press reports, nine out of ten refugees who came from Macedonia to Serbia claimed they were Syrians.”

The EU frontier police chief, Fabrice Leggeri, recently told Europe 1 TV that the trade in fake Syrian passports originated in Turkey. “There are people who are now in Turkey, buying false Syrian passports because they have obviously realized that it is a windfall, since Syrians get asylum in all Member States in the European Union,” he said.

This tide of refugees needs to be examined very carefully. Refugees are people leaving horrible conditions in their home countries seeking a better life in another country. The unsaid part of this is that they will assimilate into their new countries and become peaceful citizens of their new country. We are already seeing some problems with this concept. On September 19th, I posted an article about Muslims who initiated a petition on Change.org urging the City of Munich to end the Un-Islamic Oktoberfest. That is not assimilation. The proper refugee behavior would be simply not to attend the festival–not immediately to attempt to change the culture of the country they fled to.

Refugees who want to assimilate into western countries should be welcomed. Those refugees who want to create Islamic enclaves in western countries should be sent back to other Arab countries in the Middle East. Otherwise–this is not a refugee crisis–it is an invasion.

This Is Not A Culture Western Civilization Wants To Import

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As the refugees stream into western countries, we need to think about the implications of this influx of Muslims. Most of the refugees are Muslim, for whatever reason America and Europe do not seem to be reaching out to the Christians. Accepting refugees is the humanitarian thing to do, but there are some things we need to consider. One of these things is the willingness (or unwillingness) of the refugees to adapt to western culture. There is no problem with their keeping their religion if they choose, but the refugees need to know what is acceptable behavior and what is not.

Yesterday the U.K. Daily Mail posted an article that shows what happens when Muslims bring their culture into the west and continue with those practices that are not acceptable in western culture.

The article reports:

A Muslim man has confessed to strangling his 19-year-old daughter to death with his bare hands after learning from police she had been caught shoplifting condoms to have sex with her forbidden boyfriend.

Asadullah Khan and his wife Shazia then dressed dead daughter Lareeb, a dental technician, in her clothes.

They then wheeled her in a wheelchair from their high-rise apartment to the family car, drove to a secluded embankment in their home city of Darmstadt in Germany, and tipped the corpse down it.

Under Sharia Law this conduct is acceptable. In western countries this is not acceptable behavior. This is one example of why Sharia Law should never be accepted in America.

The Danger In Taking In Too Many Refugees

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Gateway Pundit posted an article about the impact of the wave of immigrants flooding into Germany.

The article reports:

Muslims initiated a petition on Change.org urging the City of Munich to end Un-Islamic Oktoberfest.

Regardless of how you feel about Oktoberfest, it is a German tradition. It is part of German culture and German heritage. If Germany is gracious enough to provide a safe haven for the refugees fleeing the Middle East, the refugees need to be gracious in accepting the customs and hospitality of their new country. The need to stop trying to import their culture rather than accepting the culture they fled to. It should also be noted that the Arab countries in the Middle East have not stepped forward to take in the refugees–the Arab countries would be a much better fit culturally for the refugees.

If the Middle Eastern refugees want to be welcome in western countries, they need to appreciate the culture they are fleeing to. There is no better way to wear out your welcome than to begin criticizing your host.

The Canary In The Coal Mine

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Tonight I attended an event at Ahavath Torah Congregation in Stoughton, Massachusetts, entitled, “From Austria to Israel: The Worldwide Assault on Christians and Jews.” The speakers were Elizabeth Sabatisch Wolf, Renya Matti, and Moshe and Leah Goldsmith. All of these people are on the front lines of the battle for Western Civilization, and each one had a story to tell.

Ms. Sabatisch Wolf was charged with hate speech in Austria when a journalist recorded a seminar on Islam she was conducting. The European Union does not have a First Amendment that guarantees the right of free speech, and the growing Muslim population of the EU is using the lack of free speech as a weapon to prohibit any criticism of Islam. Mrs. Sabatisch spoke about the growing problem of anti-Semitism in Europe as a result of Europe’s exploding Muslim population.

Ms. Matti is an Assyrian Christian who explained what is happening to Christians and Jews in the Middle East. She reminded us that radical Muslims want to eliminate anyone who does not practice Islam. Her family fled Syria and is now living in Austria. She mentioned that the groups that were attempting to overthrow the government of Syria had been killing Christians and Jews from the beginning of the Syrian civil war. There are no supporters of freedom in that war.

Moshe and Leah Goldsmith are a Jewish couple from Brooklyn who now live in Itamar, Israel. Itamar is in the center of Israel, in the region of Judea and Samaria. They have lived there for more than thirty years, and have witnessed terrorism first hand. Moshe was one of the first responders the night the Fogel family was murdered. They explained the way the media has misrepresented the fact that Judea and Samaria are in the heart of Israel and are an integral part of the country.

The event was a reminder that all of us have a choice to make. What are we going to do about radical Islam? It is not only a European problem; it is not only an Israel problem. After recent events in Garland, Texas, many of us have realized that it is also an American problem. As much as we may want to ignore it, radical Islam will not ignore us. It is time to educate ourselves to this major threat to our freedom and our lives.

Videos of tonight’s event will be posted at the Gates of Vienna website in the near future. It is time for all Americans to wake up and defend their freedom.

 

 

Are They Being Denied Asylum Because They Might Vote Republican?

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PLEASE SEE THE UPDATE AT THE END OF THIS STORY!!!!!

America has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to stay in this country. The Obama Administration has made it easy for children who were brought here to get tuition breaks, temporary visas, and many things to allow them to remain in America. However, one family seeking asylum because they fear having their children taken away from them has been denied asylum by the Obama Administration. The family was originally granted asylum, but the Obama Administration then denied that asylum, and the family began a court battle to remain in America. The odd thing here is that the Obama Administration has spent a lot of resources fighting the original asylum decision, while at the same time loosening immigration laws for thousands of other people. It makes no sense. However, here is the story.

The Washington Post reported the story yesterday:

The Supreme Court on Monday (March 3) declined to hear an appeal from a family seeking asylum in the United States because home schooling is not allowed in their native Germany.

…HSLDA helped the Romeikes leave Germany in 2008 after they were threatened with jail time and losing custody of their children. The Romeikes are evangelical Christians, and say they should be allowed to keep their children home to teach them Christian values.

An immigration judge in Tennessee granted the Romeikes’ bid in 2010, but the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the ruling in 2012, arguing that religious home-schoolers don’t face any special threats.

The family lost their appeal in federal court in May 2013. The U.S. grants safe haven to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution, but not necessarily to those under governments with laws that differ from those in the U.S., Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the court’s decision.

“The German authorities have not singled out the Romeikes in particular or homeschoolers in general for persecution,” Sutton wrote.

We need to remember that parents should have the last word in the education of their children.

From the Home School Legal Defense Association Facebook (HSLDA)  page:

Today, a Supervisor with the Department of Homeland Security called a member of our legal team to inform us that the Romeike family has been granted “indefinite deferred status”. This means that the Romeikes can stay in the United States permanently (unless they are convicted of a crime, etc.)

This is an incredible victory that can only be credited to our Almighty God.

We also want to thank those of who spoke up on this issue–including that long ago White House petition. We believe that the public outcry made this possible while God delivered the victory.

This is an amazing turnaround in 24 hours. Praise the Lord.

Proverbs 21: 1 “The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord, He guides it wherever He pleases.”
~~Michael Farris

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This Shouldn’t Be A Surprise To Anyone

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about the United Nation‘s suggested solution to climate change. United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres stated that democracy is a poor form a government to solve the problem of global warming–communism works much better.

When you consider some of the problems in communist countries in regard to environmental damage, this statement is ridiculous. We remember Chernobyl. We have seen the pictures of Chinese cities where the smog is so thick people are wearing surgical masks.

On Monday, The Federalist posted an article about communism and its impact on the environment. The article reported:

When the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Curtain was finally lifted to expose the inner workings of communism to Western eyes, one of the more shocking discoveries was the nightmarish scale of environmental destruction. The statistics for East Germany alone tell a horrific tale: at the time of its reunification with West Germany an estimated 42 percent of moving water and 24 percent of still waters were so polluted that they could not be used to process drinking water, almost half of the country’s lakes were considered dead or dying and unable to sustain fish or other forms of life, and only one-third of industrial sewage along with half of domestic sewage received treatment.

An estimated 44 percent of East German forests were damaged by acid rain — little surprise given that the country produced proportionally more sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and coal dust than any other in the world. In some areas of East Germany the level of air pollution was between eight and twelve times greater than that found in West Germany, and 40 percent of East Germany’s population lived in conditions that would have justified a smog warning across the border. Only one power station in East Germany had the necessary equipment to clean sulphur from emissions.

The article at The Federalist concludes:

There is no society, nor has one ever existed, which featured zero pollution or harm to the environment. The only question is how best to manage it, and which system is best positioned to accomplish this. On that question the answer is surely capitalism, home to the world’s richest countries and cleanest environments. It isn’t even close.

Actually, democracy is not the entire answer. The other part of the answer is private property rights and free enterprise. When people own something, they take better care of it. When it pays to invent a cleaner way of doing something, that method gets invented. When people are oppressed by their government, they don’t have the energy to worry about their environment–they are simply worried about getting enough food to feed their families and enough heat to stay warm. Worry about the environment in a communist country is a luxury that people cannot afford.

To suggest that communism is the solution to the (non-existent) problem of global warming is naive at best. Christiana Figueres’ statement shows how far the United Nations has come from the idea of supporting the concept of freedom for all people. The United Nations has become a reflection of the tin-horn dictators that have taken it over in recent years.

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Is This The Right Time?

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I am asking the above question because I really don’t know the answer. The article that follows is for your consideration.

The U.K. Independent is reporting today that a previously unseen Alfred Hitchcock documentary about the Holocaust is about to be released.

The article reports:

In 1945, Hitchcock had been enlisted by his friend and patron Sidney Bernstein to help with a documentary on German wartime atrocities, based on the footage of the camps shot by British and Soviet film units. In the event, that documentary was never seen.

“It was suppressed because of the changing political situation, particularly for the British,” suggests Dr Toby Haggith, Senior Curator at the Department of Research, Imperial War Museum. “Once they discovered the camps, the Americans and British were keen to release a film very quickly that would show the camps and get the German people to accept their responsibility for the atrocities that were there.”

The film took far longer to make than had originally been envisaged. By late 1945, the need for it began to wane. The Allied military government decided that rubbing the Germans’ noses in their own guilt wouldn’t help with postwar reconstruction.

Five of the film’s six reels were eventually deposited in the Imperial War Museum and the project was quietly forgotten.

In the 1980’s the film was found, restored, and the missing sixth reel reconstructed. The film and a new documentary, Night Will Fall, are scheduled to be shown on British TV in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the “liberation” of Europe.

Showing the film would remind the world of what happened in Germany and it would take some of the wind out of the sails of those who deny the Holocaust. Releasing the film would illustrate how cruel man can be to his fellow men, but will it actually accomplish anything?

The thing to remember is that there are people who walk among us who still are anti-Semitic. Releasing the film (or not releasing the film) is not going to impact that fact at all.

I am in favor of releasing the film because it represents a real part of the history of the world. It shouldn’t be glossed over as if it didn’t happen. The Holocaust happened to real people with real children and real parents. In some cases entire families were wiped out. It is a shameful event in world history, and if reminding the world of that event will prevent it from happening again, we need to remind the world of that event every day.

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A Post From The Gates Of Vienna Website

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Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. The following commentary was taken from the Gates of Vienna website. I am not going to comment on it, it speaks for itself:

What made the Nazi Holocaust possible? Gun control

The Night of the Broken Glass, the Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jews [occurred] on Nov. 9-10, 1938. Historians have documented most everything about it except what made it so easy to attack the defenseless Jews without fear of resistance. Their guns were registered and thus easily confiscated.

To illustrate, turn the clock back further and focus on just one victim, a renowned German athlete.

Alfred Flatow won first place in gymnastics at the 1896 Olympics. In 1932, he dutifully registered three handguns, as required by a decree of the liberal Weimar Republic. The decree also provided that in times of unrest, the guns could be confiscated. The government gullibly neglected to consider that only law-abiding citizens would register, while political extremists and criminals would not. However, it did warn that the gun-registration records must be carefully stored so they would not fall into the hands of extremists.

The ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power just a year later, in 1933. The Nazis immediately used the firearms-registration records to identify, disarm and attack “enemies of the state,” a euphemism for Social Democrats and other political opponents of all types. Police conducted search-and-seizure operations for guns and “subversive” literature in Jewish communities and working-class neighborhoods.

Jews were increasingly deprived of more and more rights of citizenship in the coming years. The Gestapo cautioned the police that it would endanger public safety to issue gun permits to Jews. Hitler faked a show of tolerance for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but Flatow refused to attend the reunion there of former champions. He was Jewish and would not endorse the farce.

By fall of 1938, the Nazis were ratcheting up measures to expropriate the assets of Jews. To ensure that they had no means of resistance, the Jews were ordered to surrender their firearms.

Flatow walked into a Berlin police station to comply with the command and was arrested on the spot, as were other Jews standing in line. The arrest report confirmed that his pistols were duly registered…

…which was obviously how the police knew he had them. While no law prohibited a Jew from owning guns, the report recited the Nazi mantra: “Jews in possession of weapons are a danger to the German people.” Despite his compliance, Flatow was turned over to the Gestapo.

This scenario took place all over Germany — firearms were confiscated from all Jews registered as gun owners. As this was occurring, a wholly irrelevant event provided just the excuse needed to launch a violent attack on the Jewish community: A Polish teenager who was Jewish shot a German diplomat in Paris. The stage was set to instigate Kristallnacht, a carefully orchestrated Nazi onslaught against the entire Jewish community in Germany that horrified the world and even the German public.

Kristallnacht has been called “the day the Holocaust began.” Flatow’s footsteps can be followed to see why. He would be required to wear the Star of David. In 1942, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he starved to death.

One wonders what thoughts may have occurred to Flatow in his last days. Perhaps memories of the Olympics and of a better Germany flashed before his eyes. Did he have second thoughts about whether he should have registered his guns in 1932? …

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America Used To Be A Beacon Of Freedom

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The Blaze is reporting today that the German family seeking political asylum in the United States because they want to homeschool their children will take their case to the Supreme Court.

An immigration judge granted the Romeike family asylum in 2010, but the U.S. government appealed. An immigration appeals board sided with the government, and the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals last week denied the family’s request for a new hearing.

The Home School Legal Defense Association is representing the family and has stated that they will take the case to the Supreme Court.

The article reports:

“The German High Court is on record for saying that religious homeschoolers should be targeted and severely punished, yet our Justice Department sees nothing wrong with that,” Farris (Home School Legal Defense Association founder Michael Farris) said. “The attorney general and Sixth Circuit are ignoring critical evidence and are trying to send back this family who is trying to stay in our country legally. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will go the other way and see what the original immigration judge saw: that this family and other religious homeschoolers in Germany are being persecuted for what they believe is the right way to raise their children.”

These are exactly the kind of people who should be granted asylum in the United States. Hopefully the Supreme Court will take the case and grant the Romeike family the freedom they are seeking.

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America Used To Be A Place Of Sanctuary For The Persecuted

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Yesterday the Washington Free Beacon posted a story about Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, German parents who sought to home school their children in Germany. They felt that the curriculum in the public schools was in conflict with their Christian beliefs.

The article reports the challenges they faced in Germany:

German law mandates that children attend a public or state-approved school. The local mayor informed the family that they would face fines and could lose the custody of their children if they did not attend school. The parents also faced potential jail time.

The government fined the family heavily and at one point seized the children to force them to attend school.

In 2008 the Romeike family left Germany and moved to Tennessee. There they sought asylum in the United States. An immigration judge granted it to them, citing a well-founded fear of persecution if they returned to Germany.

Unfortunately, the happy ending did not last–the article reports:

However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), appealed the ruling to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

The board overturned the original judge’s ruling and ordered the Romeikes deported to Germany. The Romeikes appealed their case to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, where their case will be heard April 23.

At issue is whether the German law constitutes persecution against Christians for their faith, qualifying them for asylum under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

I am having a hard time understanding this. At the same time the Obama Administration seems to be willing to let anyone enter the country illegally and become a citizen, they are closing the door to a family genuinely seeking asylum. America used to be a beacon of freedom in the world.  I fear that we have forgotten our roots.

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It Was Worse Than We Previously Thought

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This article is based on two stories–one posted at the New York Times yesterday and one posted at the New York Daily News today.

The Holocaust is a horrible part of history. It is hard to understand how any person could let this happen to his neighbors and fellow countrymen. The picture painted has always been that the majority of Germans didn’t know what was going on–the camps were in isolated areas and the citizens thought that they were simply work camps. I am not sure if anyone actually believed that, but that is the story that I was told. My father was one of the soldiers who liberated one of the camps (I don’t know which one), and when I read somewhere that General Eisenhower made the citizens of the neighboring town walk through one of the camps to see what was going on there, my father confirmed that this was true.

Both the Times and the Daily News posted articles explaining that research done by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has found that there were many more camps than historians had previously been aware of.

The New York Times reports:

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

The Daily News cites the story in the New York Times:

The research team uncovered 30,000 slave camps, 1,150 Jewish ghettos, 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps, 980 concentration camps, 500 sex-slave brothels and thousands of other camps serving a myriad of wicked ends: forced abortions, mandatory euthanasia of the elderly and ill, “Germanisation” and transportation hubs to murder sites, according to the Times.

The New York Times article concludes:

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

How could the citizens of Germany let this happen? I don’t think we will ever have the answer to that question.

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Editorial Compliance Equals Access

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The German newspaper called Deutsche Welle posted a story last Thursday about the American media. The headline of the story was “US journalists trade independence for access.” The article points out that in Germany it is not unusual to require authorization before interviews can be published, but that America is moving in that direction.

The article reports:

But in the United States, the balance of power between the journalist and the politician has increasingly shifted in favor of the latter. According to a July 15 report by Jeremy W. Peters of the New York Times, political journalists in Washington are increasingly trading their editorial independence for high-level access to members of the Obama administration.

Quotes gleaned from administration officials by a reporter are not just reviewed by the publication’s editor, they are often sent to the very same officials for approval – and even redaction – before going to print.

According to Stephen Ward, there is a growing and unhealthy “pressure on journalists and … on news organizations to get the story, to be first, to be the first tweet.”

“The officials who know this are quite aware that in this era of 24 hours news, access is king,” Ward, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told DW. “This is just a game of access – it’s as old as journalism.”

Access may partially explain the leftward tilt of American journalism, but I think there is also another explanation. Since the 1960’s our colleges have shifted to the political left. They have reflected the political and social upheaval of that time. The professors of today are often the students of that era or were educated after the our college campuses turned left. The inmates are running the asylum.

The article concludes:

Ultimately, journalists must assume much of the responsibility for the weakening of their editorial independence, according to Ward. He argues that they have increasingly bought into a partisan political game that revels in scandal at the sake of context.

“We are never going to get rid of all the tweets and the 24-hour business – all the fast-food journalism that we are seeing,” Ward said. “But we can at the core of political discourse maintain certain sources of news and analysis that are informed and not breathless – (that are) thoughtful.”

Our republic depends on a honest mainstream media. It is distressing that at this time we have to turn to the alternative media for the truth.

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Solar Energy In Germany

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As Americans learn about the amount of money the Obama Administration is spending to subsidize solar energy, there is an interesting report posted at The Association of Mature American Citizens website

The article reports:

Germany invested  gargantuan amounts of money in green energy, doling out more than 130 billion in  subsidies to install solar systems and spends an additional 10 billion per year  subsidizing existing solar installations.

Yet after all of this capital  expenditure, Germany has little to show in terms of reducing green house gasses  and helping the country’s power needs. Despite massive investment, solar power  accounts for approximately three percent of Germany’s total energy… when the  sun shines!  To add insult to injury, Germans also pay the second highest  price for electricity in the developed world, due mainly to the fact that they  are heavily subsidizing green energy by adding the cost to everyone’s utility  bills.

The article explains that Germany will be phasing out subsidies for solar energy over the next five years.

The article further reports:

According to Der Spiegel, members of Chancellor Merkel’s staff are  describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s minister  of economics and technology, has called the spiraling solar subsidies a “threat  to the economy.”

We need to learn from Germany’s experience.

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Whoops! We’re Not Melting!

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Investors.com posted an article yesterday stating that new data shows that the Himalayan ice caps are not melting and the polar ice caps are melting much more slowly than previously thought. Whoops!

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite, is a joint project between NASA and Germany launched in 2002. The satellite sees everything from the highest peaks down to the mouths of glaciers.

According to the article:

Before the amazing GRACE data, teams of researchers had to measure ice loss at a few easily accessible glaciers and then extrapolate it to the 200,000 glaciers worldwide. Measuring mountain snow packs, glacier mass and the thickness of polar ice was an inexact science prone to overhyping by climate-change enthusiasts with an agenda.

Now we have the technology to get it right. The new technology reports:

The new study, the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers made possible by the use of satellite data, acknowledges some glacial melting at lower altitudes. But it also says that over the study period enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate — meaning no net loss of ice.

We need to limit air pollution. We need to keep our oceans and rivers clean. We need to do it in a way that respects people, industry, and wildlife. A little balance is in order.

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Art Is Obviously In The Eyes Of The Beholder

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Martin Kippenberger at his METRO-Net Subway st...

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story about a cleaning woman at the Ostwall Museum in Dortmund, Germany, who damaged a sculpture while cleaning it.

The article reports:

A cleaning woman at a museum in Dortmund who mistook a Martin Kippenberger sculpture for an unsightly mess has destroyed the valuable artwork beyond recognition.

The cleaner at the city’s Ostwall Museum went to work on the Kippenberger installation entitled “When It Starts Dripping From the Ceiling” which was valued by insurers at €800,000 ($1.1 million), a museum spokeswoman said on Thursday.

The late contemporary master had created a tower of wooden slats under which a rubber trough was placed with a thin beige layer of paint representing dried rain water. Taking it for an actual stain, the cleaner scrubbed the surface until it gleamed.

 I’m sorry. I find this hilarious. I guess I just don’t understand how art is valued. The cleaning lady can come to my house any time she wants–she obviously likes things clean and neat!

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