Volker explains what makes the world go round

Yesterday, Halligalli haGalil, the German source for everything you never wanted to know about Judaism, published an interview with Volker Beck, secretary and speaker for human rights matters of the parliamentary faction of the post-Communist/Green Bündnis90/Die Grünen group and long-standing national speaker for the Lesben- und Schwulenverband (Association for Lesbians and Gays -- LSVD). The interview was as surprisingly as inventively titled: "We must do everything to defend Israel's right to exist", and as sparkling as the spirits of my dogs on the tenth day of the blazing heatwave here. Not to talk about my own spirits.

Halligalli haGalil: What do you think about the current human rights situation specifically of gays and lesbians in countries like Iran, Lebanon or the Palestinian Autonomy since Hamas came to power?

Beck: As far as I know, there are no criminal proceedings in the Palestinian Autonomy, but the social stigma is dramatic. In Iran homosexuality can be even subject to capital punishment and such verdicts are, in fact, executed. In Lebanon homosexuality is a punishable crime. About how intensively it is pursued, I don't have any information.
[...]

Halligalli haGalil: What is your comparative assessment of the situation in Israel? Does the fact that Israel is the only democracy in the Near and Middle East have any effect on the situation of gays and lesbians?

Beck: In relative terms, the situation in Israel is progressive. The army doesn't discrimate against people based on their sexual orientation. And there are activities to improve the recognition of homosexual partnerships. Still, there are major problems with religious-conservative Jewish and Muslim groups, like the conflict about the Gay Pride in Jerusalem.

And so on blah blah yabber yabber yack yack -- you get the general idea. No need to unreel the entire, and entirely predictable, agenda.

"Queer logic"

First, let me remind you that this is the same Volker Beck who rallied in deeply pre-democratic Moscow for gay rights recently and was then amazed that he got his nose bloodied by some stuck-in-the-17th-century beefcake who -- are we amazed? -- didn't like gays.

Second, doesn't this great friend of Israel get (on second thoughts, don't the Jews-by-profession at Halligalli haGalil get) how ridiculous, embarrassing and revealing the ever-regurgitated "defending Israel's right to exist" lip-service is? Each and every sovereign state has the "right to exist". By raising the very issue when it comes to Israel one concedes therefore that there may be a question about Israel's "right to exist". Too complicated, Volker? What about you, Halligalli?

Third, don't the people in Muslim countries have other things to worry about than EFFING GAY- AND LESBIAN RIGHTS?

Shouldn't we rather first worry about, say, the fact that in Iran little girls are hanged and, for good measure, raped before the execution so that they won't go to heaven as virgins? And then, say, about the general state of human rights in the Palestinian Authority before we are worrying about how some people can as untroubled as possible let out their sexuality?

Or what about the fact that Israel is currently fighting for her existence and has other things to worry about than curbing the zealousness of some orthodox rabbis who are offended, and have no politically correct hangups about saying so, by the disgusting exhibitionism of a "gay pride" spectacle? Shouldn't that fight be of more interest for somebody who allegedly stands for "Israel's right to exist" than the question where to stick his cock?

Is it possible that Volker Beck, who was favouring the legalisation of peadophilia before the Greens became important and serious and partook in governmental responsibility (and had, of course, to cater for a slightly different clientele from then on) sees the world revolving round his schlong and is it possible that he doesn't give an aviating fornication for human rights as long as those rights are NOT about where to stick that centre of his universe?

Just my two Eurocent!

See you in Tehran, Volker!

Last Saturday, Russian police, nationalist protesters and Orthodox Christians violently prevented gay and lesbian rights activists from rallying in Moscow.

This hit the headlines specifically hard here, because Volker Beck, a leading Green party member and member of the Bundestag, the national German parliament, was notably involved.

A brouhaha started when the crowd opposed to gay rights, including headscarfed women who held up religious icons, men in Cossack traditional dress and nationalist extremists met head-on with the gay rights activists.

While Volker Beck was giving a TV interview at the rally scene, about 20 nationalist youths surrounded him and punched him in his face, bloodying his nose. Beck accuses the Russian security forces now of having left him without any protection.

While homosexuality is officially not actionable anymore since 1993 in Russia, the rally was not officially authorised.

Predictably, the debate was hijacked by the it's-all-the-Nazis'-fault faction here and another member of the Bundestag, Andreas Schockenhoff, Russia expert of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) kicked off a minor avalanche of righteous indignation, including but not limited to, his own party, when he accused Beck of violating the "rules of the game" in Russia and that he, Beck, was only seeking attention by participating in the demonstration.

Women in headscarves, men in Cossack dresses -- that doesn't sound like the average neo-Nazi-skinhead type which seems to be the only variety of evildoer the media here seem to discern. However, it does not need an expert on that country's affairs to understand that Russian society is, IS BOUND TO BE, steeped deeply in pre-democratic traditions and that they lack the Western refinement to "tolerate" something that even pushes the borders of tolerance here.

I don't know what the participants in the rally were wearing. Maybe not those stomach-turning outfits one knows from so-called "gay parades" in Western cities, but still, the reaction of the Russian public was not exactly a surprise, or was it?

Not to speak of the reaction from the authorities in a country that can be described as "pseudo-democracy" at best.

I think now the customary, or rather compulsory, disclaimer is in order: I have nothing against gays. As far as I am concerned, everything two grown-up people do behind closed doors is their own business. But that is where it begins and where it ends.

I do NOT want to have their sexuality forced on me, as I do not want to have forced other people's heterosexual sexuality forced on me either, but "hetero parades" are not all THAT en vogue yet, or are they? I find it objectionable that this is sold as "just another" lifestyle. I find the public promotion of aggression, exhibitionism, violence and voyeurism connected to sexuality objectionable. I find it objectionable (and I am refraining from showing a picture here for obvious reasons) that people who are strutting their stuff in skin-tight leather pants that expose the buttocks are trying to make us believe that they can be good family men. I find it objectionable that for the sake of political correctness the law protecting minors is being abandoned. And most of all I find it objectionable, hypocritical and deeply wrong that a case is declared sacrosanct, including all its excrescences, simply because it is persecuted somewhere else or had once been persecuted by us. The fact that something was liable to prosecution and incurred a severe retribution under Nazi-rule does not make it automatically a good and noble cause.

Bad conscience is a bad adviser.

Beck is back in the meantime, proudly announcing that he is craving for a punch on the nose from a Polish beefcake's fist next.

Blood quickly stanched, he then ought to echo his fellow-Greens admiration for Iran, for example, Angelika Beer's, German Greens MEP who thinks that Iran is "a fascinating country with a young well-educated society" or Hans Christian Ströbele's who thinks that Iran has the right of using nuclear technology and that, if Iran is banned from having nukes, Israel ought to be too, and stage a pro-gay-rights rally in Tehran.

But I have a hunch he won't.

The Editrix Apologises or: Roncesvalles Multiple Redux II

I am sorry! I'm really sorry! I'm deeply and seriously repentant.

Why?

It is, because I have called the Rhenish carnival a heathen spectacle where pissed-as-a-newt scum hits the streets (or something to the same effect).

I am sorry. I repent.

This year, the valiant carnivalists of the city of Düsseldorf, one of the three strongholds of the Rhenish carnival (Cologne and Mainz being the others), where more than half a million people watched the traditional Rose Monday Parade, sent one themed wagon (or is is a float?) on its way, carrying two identical "mullah" figures, each wearing a suicide-bomber's belt and brandishing scimitar and gun. One was labelled "the cliché," the other one "the reality."

The messages of the floats have to be, naturally, succinct, and frankly, as much as I hate so say it, that's a seriously good one! Succinct, to the point, illustrative, illuminating.

Of course, Muslims were miffed. Aiman A. Mazyek, Secretary General of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, found that

This hasn't got anything to do with humour. I am reading the message like this: 'We love our prejudices, we'll defend them, even even with flagrant lies, if necessary.'... "As a born-and-bred Rhinelander, I am rather laid back about it. I'm sure most of the Jecken [carnival celebrants] don't want to make Islam-despising cynicism acceptable.

Then why say anything at all?

That is the same Aiman A. Mazyek, mind you, who wants to see more jokes about Islam.

I, too, would have liked to smile and laugh at Muslims. Is that not permitted? Who is prohibiting it? Maybe a Fatwa? A body of censors? Notabene, I am talking about laughing, not hurtful sneering at or dirty jokes about Islam. One can very well make fun of a Muslim without hurting his dignity or can't one? One can waffle about his putative flaws without besmirching his religion.

Well, he is saying it loud and clear himself, or isn't he? It is only permitted to make jokes about PUTATIVE flaws of the religion od peace. The real ones are taboo.

And, Aiman, as much as I hate to say it, you are NOT a "born-and-bred Rhinelander". A pig that is born in a kennel is no dog either. A Rhinelander has a sense of humour, however grotty it may be. He will be able to laugh about himself and his ilk. And if that is too involved a concept for you, here is an example, picture included: Rhinelanders are Catholics and here you see a float from the 2005 Cologne parade with a theme that was certainly very offensive to a lot of Rhinelanders (and other Catholics), namely Cardinal Meisner burning a woman who had had an abortion at the stakes. Nobody rioted, nobody was miffed, and if they were, they kept their traps shut. It was, after all, carnival.

At the same time when you and your co-religionists took offense, the parade in Mainz showed Pope Benedict colliding in his Papamobil with a minaret, thus making fun of his perfectly justified criticism of Islam. Guess what? I found that offensive. And I am sure a lot of others did too. But I kept my trap shut because it was carnival. And I am not even a Rhinelander (Thank God for that!).

However, you and your ilk have one advantage over the pig born in a kennel. You can change -- theoretically, that is. Yes, you could become dogs. You would just have to accept the culture into which you were born as yours. I mean really accept. Not just the affluent lifestyle, the concept of charity (of which you are only too often at the receiving end), the freedom and the tolerance towards yourself, but the sides you don't like as well. For example the concept that freedom, tolerance and charity are not a cul-de-sac.

Read the great satirical online-magazine The Onion, Aiman. Specifically the bit about the Crazed Palestinian Gunman who felt hurt by the negative portrayal of his people in the media and thought that he should not "have to live with stereotyping and ignorance… Any time I enter a crowded temple with fully loaded AK-47s in both hands, people just assume I'm going to open fire… That really hurts."

So The Onion twigged almost to the day ten years ago that you are laughing stock. Maybe it is time that you do, too.

That was all for now!

On an additional note, not too surprisingly, the Green Party stridently condemned the Islam-criticising display. Volker Beck, secretary of the parliamentary group of the Greens within the Bundestag, said to the netzzeitung: "This is all but funny."

That is the same Volker Beck, mind you, who once openly asked for the "de-criminalisation" of sex with children. With getting more politically savvy, he is not so outspoken about it anymore, but, as Mark Twain observed, "You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into" and professions about being a reformed paederast campaigner sound somewhat lame. However, Volker seems to overlook that he, as a practising homosexual, might, like other homosexuals did, end up swinging from a rope at a crane without even a smidgeon of gratefulness for his as touching as gratuitous tolerance and understanding of other cultures, in which, by the way, homosexuality is a tabooed as widely practised, not to speak of paedophilia.

Which would be all but funny.

What a Maiz!

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière [də mɛˈzi̯ɛːɐ̯] and a member of the Islam Conference, Hamideh Mohagheghi, meet the press after talks in Berlin on May 17, 2010.

A major round of government-sponsored talks with the intention to integrate Germany's Muslims into mainstream society opened at the German Historical Museum in Berlin on Monday. The Second Islam Conference, which will entail regular meetings between Muslim representatives and government officials until 2013, was opened by interior minister Thomas de Maizière, who urged a "strengthened participation of Muslims in Germany". "To strengthen the sense of belonging: That is our goal," de Maizière stated.

The conference is supposed, among other things, to draw up plans on how best to train imams and to teach the Islamic faith in schools. It would also support Muslim congregations' right to put them on a more equal footing with other religious bodies, such as churches, something which has far-reaching implications in Germany.

The First Islam Conference, which took place between 2006 and 2008 had "laid the groundwork for our dialogue," the over-optimistic minister said. However, it is making nobody happy, neither in its run-up, nor in its course, let alone in its aftermath.

"I am a bit sad that the state is marching ahead. In fact, I would have wished for the churches to lead this dialogue," de Maizière had stated at the recent oecumenic church congress (Kirchentag) at Munich. And: Christian churches need to make more efforts to come to terms with Islam, a view shared by many. "The churches are doing too little and the state is doing too little", staunchly Protestant canon- and constitutional law professor Gerhard Robbers said during the discussion. According to the law expert, Muslims are not fully recognized as German citizens. "There are too many religious policy jibes," he added, with reference to a ban on headscarves in German schools. "Such bans do not really take Muslims seriously as citizens of this country," Robbers said, and nobody laughed.

The conference includes 17 state representatives and 17 individuals and groups from the Muslim community. But only two of the country's four largest Muslim umbrella groups were at the table on Monday, namely the Turkish Islamic Union (Ditib) and the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers.

A row over the agenda and guest lists prompted Germany's Central Council of Muslims, an alliance of Sunni mosques throughout Germany, to boycott the talks, with its head, Ayyub Axel Köhler, a German convert, denouncing the conference as being "decreed by the government" and saying Muslims had been ignored. Köhler said the conference needs to include discussions about "Islamophobia" and discrimination against Muslims.

The Central Council of Muslims' general secretary, Aiman A. Mazyek, and chairman Axel Ayyub Köhler are considered moderates, while another member of the executive board, Ibrahim Faruk al-Zayad, is regarded with something almost bordering on suspicion. He heads the Islamic Community of Germany (IGD) as well, which is, by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (inland security) considerered to be the biggest organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany. Al-Zayad lost the election as chairman of the Council to Köhler, but is not without influence: His company is reportedly involved in more than 100 mosque building projects in Germany, also, he is married to a niece of Necmettin Erbakan and therefore has excellent contacts with extremist group Milli Görüs. He was as a guest at the Second Islam Conference.

Amazingly, de Maizière had already banned another group, the Islamrat, from the Conference, due to links with the same Milli Görüs. Leaders of Milli Görüs are under investigation for tax fraud and misuse of funds, plus, it has been accused of supporting a fundamentalist brand of Islam.

"These talks have been ill-fated under de Maizière," Green Party Co-chairman Cem Özdemir, the son of Turkish immigrants and paragon of Turko-German (or is it Germano-Turkish?) virtues, the first Muslim elected to chair a German party and considered entirely secular, was quoted as saying. He stressed that it ought to be aiming at full participation of Muslims in society, with all the rights and obligations that others have. "We need a road map with concrete requirements that Muslim organizations must fulfill in order to obtain recognition as a religious community," totally secular Cem said.

Another Greens leader and homosexual lobbyist, Volker Beck, accused de Maizière of having botched the conference: "The new meeting of the Islamic conference has failed before it has begun". He is particularly concerned, because the Islamic world is known to be specifically tolerant towards homosexuals.

Berlin's governing mayor and deputy head of the Social Democrats declared, in the same spirit and equally full of the endearing, if a bit misplaced, concern and care homosexual men seem to feel towards Islam, the Conference to be something of a stillborn child and de Mazière not to be sufficiently interested in it.

Monday's meeting was designed to turn some of the dialogue into practice, said de Maizière. "The working programme encompasses central questions related to the cooperation of minorities and Muslims in Germany." And: "The aim is to come up with defined tasks linked to the subjects on the discussion list."

"To turn some of the dialogue into practice" translates, of course, to: "To sell out our culture and values even more shamelessly to Muslims."

Who will, in turn, feel even more, among other things, misunderstood, excluded, hurt, insulted, overlooked, discriminated against, irgnored and marginalised. Here we have 5 percent of the population who totally dominate our discourse, mind, awareness, peace of mind and everyday life, and nobody seems to notice or to care.

De Maizière is the man who says that he would tolerate a headscarf as an expression of a religious conviction in his office, but not, should it be an "expression of a rejection or even aggressive stance targeted at what the German Ministry of the Interior stands for". The German Interior Minister, who set out and is supposed to protect our constitution, doesn't even know that this always, invariably, inevitably comes as a pair.