Expert: sauna decreases intelligence
Berlin, Germany
October 9, 2001
dpaIn the opinion of an expert, sweating in the sauna decreases intelligence. Even after plenty to drink, the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) does not go back up to its usual level within 24 hours, said medical psychologist Siegfried Lehrl of the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg's psychiatric clinic in a meeting with the dpa. He also said that intelligence has decreased up to 10 points, "not inconsiderably," if there is insufficient light, too few carbohydrates in the diet, or lack of motion.
"Everyday we have to fight to keep our intelligence," believes Lehrl. Because of this he advocates "breaking your routine every now and then." For instance, short, simple exercises, such as picking out certain words on the page of a newspaper can increase motivation. Especially important in doing this is movement, which stimulates the brain, thereby freeing the way for better performance. According to Lehrl, studies have shown that mental activity training done everyday can raise IQ up to 15 points. The maximum increase has been reached after about four weeks, he said.
But a balanced breakfast with whole grain bread or muesli and little snacks throughout the day at intervals of one and a half hours also keep the IQ stable, said Lehrl. Fatty foods and thirst, on the contrary, were said to decrease intelligence. Even clothing allegedly affects IQ: for instance there was said to be a British study whereby men with tighter shirt collars had lower intelligence, because that restricted the blood flow, thereby decreasing oxygen to the brain, reported Lehrl.
In his opinion, motion is especially important, for instance, sedentary activities should not go on uninterrupted for a long time. He also said it was more advantageous to talk on the telephone moving rather than sitting. That requires a "more precise" listening skill. Those who cannot stand while on the telephone should protect themselves from drowsiness by scribbling on a piece of paper. Otherwise the body goes into a rest state in which IQ decreases. In order to be able to think clearly about something, Lehrl recommends a jaunt through the forest. He says that makes thinking easier, and that many have the feeling they can solve their problems faster that way.
The jumbled patchwork of political Islam contains a brief mention of Scientology
In Germany, the most diverse groups from the radical spectrum of Islam strive for influence among the Muslims.
Berlin, Germany
September 18, 2001
http://www.taz.deTAZ report Claudia Dantschke / Eberhard Seidel
by Claudia Dantschke and Eberhard Seidel
The Islamic community - Milli Goerues (IGMG) is the largest organization of political Islam in Germany. It is the European subsidiary of the Turkish Islamist leader necmettin Erbakan. Milli Goerues propagate an anti-secular, anti-zionist and anti-semitic worldview. The IGMG maintains good relations with representatives of the CDU and puts the attainment of cultural hegemony at the top of the their list of political goals. They are financially supported by Islamic "Holdings." According to their own statements, the IGMG has over 82,137 members across Europe, and is organized in 511 youth, university and women's groups and Mosque associations. Functionaries of the IGMG maintain relations with the multi-national Muslim fraternity, the Palestinian Hamas, to Scientology and to Libyan revolutionary leader Khaddafi.
The Association of Islamic Associations and Communities (ICCB) is a radical Islamic association of Turkish Sunnites which currently has about 1,100 members. It was founded in 1983 by Cemaleddin Kaplan ("Khomeini from Cologne") as a radical splinter group of the Milli Goerues. Kaplan (deceased 1995) called for a holy war against the Turks. In the battle of succession, his son, Metin Kaplan, pronounced a death-Fatah against Berlin doctor Halil Ibrahim Sofu. In 1997, Sofu was murdered execution style. Last year, Kaplan was sentenced to four years in prison. In October 1998, for the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey, about 30 Kaplan adherents had planned a suicide mission with an aircraft on the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara.
The Islami Haraket (Islamic Movement) split off from the ICCB in 1989. It is regarded as the German branch of the Turkish-Sunnite Hizbullah terrorist organization, which is responsible for numerous murders in Southeast Anatolia. In Germany, the organization has about 300 members. It agitates against the "capitalistic and Zionist devil" and glorifies martyrdom.
The Association of Islamist Culture Centers (VIKZ), headquartered in Cologne, has about 20,000 association members. The VIKZ runs 315 mosque associations in Germany. After many years of keeping separate from German society, the VIKZ started opening up more between 1993 and 2000. On order from the current leader, Ahmet Arif Denizoglu, a former representative of the Turkish Refah Party, the dialogue was broken off one year ago. In August 2000, the VIKZ left the Central Council of Muslims.
The adherents of Fethullah Guelen in Germany are estimated to be 20,000 people. Guelen is a charismatic leader of the so-called Nurculuk movement (students of Divine Light). The movement goes back to Said Nursi (1876-1960), an outspoken opponent of Turkish laicism. Guelen, who has long been regarded as a representative of a moderate Islam, has developed into a strategist for Islamic infiltration of the Turkish state. In order to avoid arrest, he left for the USA in March 1999. Guelen controls over 200 foundations in 54 countries, about 200 private schools and 500 student homes, and finds his adherents primarily among intellectuals.
About 400 members of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Salafistic Group for Prophecy and Combat (GSPC), which was founded in Algeria in 1996, live in Germany. They maintain connections to the Mujaheddin movement of Ossama Bin Laden. In December 2000 and early 2001, adherents of the GSPC were arrested in Frankfurt am Main. They were accused of having planned an attack in Strassburg. The Jihad Islami (Islamic Holy War) is an Egyptian terrorist organization. Members and functionaries use Germany as a place to retreat to and relax.
The Islamic Alliance of Palestine (IFB) was founded in Munich in 1981 and runs an Islamic cultural and education center in Berlin as a central meeting point. The IFB is the Palestinian branch of the Sunnite Muslim fraternity and is regarded as a collection point for Hamas adherents in Germany. Its approximately 250 members call anti-Israeli demonstrations and collect money. The donation association for the Hamas is the Al-Aqsa Inc. in Aachen. There are connections between the Hamas and Turkish Islamists, mainly the Milli Goerues.
The Shiite Hizb Allah (Party of God) was founded in Lebanon in 1982 as a radical Islamic movement. Its goal is an Islamic state in accordance with the Iranian model. In its fight against Zionism, it propagates suicide operations as the most important weapon. In Germany, it limits itself to education in its ideology and to anti-Israeli demonstrations.
The Arabic Pan-Islamists of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) propagates the fight of the Muslm World community (Ummah) mainly against Israel and the USA. In Germany, the Hizb-ut-Tahrir is active primarily in universities.
The Pasban-e Kahtm-e nabuwwat (PKN) is a radical Islamist current from Pakistan. The PKN has also been active in Baden-Wuerttemberg since 1998. There it terrorizes mainly members of the Pakistani Ahmaddiya group, which has allegedly "deviated from true belief." The association headquarters is in Heilbronn in the "Vorposten der Khatme Nabuwwat" assocation. Should the association be dissolved, the assets will go to the Milli Goerues.
Office ruins - housing for addicts
Building on Steindamm empty for years - puzzling prostitute murder
Berlin, Germany
June 12, 2001
Die Welt
http://www.welt.deThe trash piles high and used needles lie on the floor. Food remnants root. Excrement spreads a bestial stink.
Here, in the giant office building ruins on Steindamm, was found the body of the 22 year old prostitute Melanie Rottmann on Friday. The drug addicted woman had been strangled. She is the second victim from the prostitute scene of St. Georg in a week. On the Sunday before in an hourly hotel on Steindamm the 20 year old Maria Kuenstler had been strangled by a customer.
The criminal police cannot rule out a serial murder. Investigations in both cases are extremely difficult. In the first case the police know only that the last customer, and presumably the perpetrator, was an African.
There were no witnesses of use.
"You can't assume anything. Most of the addicts who are there don't know what they did the day before," said an investigator. The case of Melanie Rottmann had been the first in years. It had brought attention to the giant DAK building which had been built in the 1960s. The 18,000 square meter building complex, in which there are about 700 offices, has been empty since 1993.
Addicts and homeless have been using the ruins, in which there is no electricity and no water, as housing. Ten years ago the building was sold from the DAK to an international construction agency.
In 1993 the last employee was on sick leave.
There had been big plans, but nothing ever came of them. As late as 1998 it was announced in a big way that construction would begin on the plans of architectural professor Dieter Patschan. 70 million marks were to be invested in an 18-story tower and an eight-story structure. It was hoped to enhance that part of the city and to transform Steindamm into a downtown boulevard. No construction happened. There are no new plans.
In the downtown district office nothing has been heard for over a year from the owners, who are said to have their offices in the USA. Supposedly over 100 people live in the ruins today. The building across the street which used to belong to Scientology is also being used by addicts and borderline cases.
Porno-western with extraterrestrials
A night of Popular Stage for William S. Burroughs
Berlin, Germany
March 29, 2001
Berliner Zeitung Kultur
http://www.BerlinOnline.deNils Michaelis
The text which author and translator Carl Weissner read on Wednesday evening on the People's Stage was not his own. But the words never would have existed without him. Without Weissner's translations, it is possible that William S. Burroughs would have always been known as an author of third-class porno books - and not as the author of canonical classics like "Naked Lunch," "Junkie," or "The Wild Boys."
None of those were on the program this time; Weissner read unpublished fragments of a Western begun in the middle of the 1960s, but never completed. Nevertheless the public was not disappointed: even when Burroughs wrote a Western, he did not long content himself with Indians and prairie dogs, but philosophized over preferred calibers and gay sex and peppered his story with armies of crafty "rednecks." Otherwise, so Weissner stated, "it is clear that a Western by Burroughs doesn't need all of one and a half pages before the first extraterrestrial appears."
At the time it was written, this text was pretty strong stuff. When the romantically inclined Jack Kerouac once started to type a hand-written Burroughs text, he ran away repulsed. "We can't all live in trash cans," raged "Die Zeit" magazine on the occasion of the first German translation - which back then had not come from Weissner; it was not until the end of the 1970s that his humorous and ambivalent references painted unimagined images from Burroughs' novels and short stories.
At that time Weissner, as he revealed in an interview, had met his poet for the first time back in 1964. Burroughs, who back then was using the psychological control system of the Scientology sect, first tested out his new acquaintance with an "e-meter," (a kind of primitive lie detector which the sect sells its members for horrendous amounts of money). It was not until he determined that Weissner remained emotionally calm when hearing the key word "fatherland" that he would trust the young German man.
Much has happened since then. In any case, the reaction of the Public Stage audience opened up to an unreserved understanding of the Weissner translation. If the last reading which Burroughs gave personally in Berlin in 1986 had been overshadowed by the lesser tumult of the post-Punk generation, his text would now have been decoded as the predecessor of a new era of shrill social criticism: in retrospect Burroughs seems to us a predecessor of the Simpsons.
Birthdays
Cologne, Germany March 13, 2001 20 Minuten Vermischtes
http://www.20minutenkoeln.deThe names are from the original text, but this is an annotated version to explain who some of the people are.
Joseph II, (1741–1790), Kaiser, Holy Roman Empire, became Kaiser in 1765 and co-regent of his mother Maria Theresa, sole ruler from 1780 on, acquired Galicia for Austria in 1772 and Bucovina in 1775. As a radical reformer Joseph did away with (involuntary) agricultural servitude (serfdom) and vouchsafed religious freedom.
Karl Friedrich Schinkel, German master builder (1781–1841), classical structures in Berlin: the New Guard (1816 to 1818), the playhouse on Gendarmenmarket (1818 to 1821), the Old Museum (1822 to 1830), Friedrich-Werdersche Church (1824 to 1830) and the Nikolas Church in Potsdam (1830 to 1837).
Gebhard Seelos, German diplomat (1901–1984)
Josef Afritsch, Austrian SPÖ politician (1901–1964)
L. Ron Hubbard, American author and Scientology founder (1911–1986)
Herbert Gienow, German industry manager (1926–)
Hans Boesch, Swiss author and traffic planner (1926–)
Raúl Alfonsin, Argentinian jurist and politician, former president of state (1926–)
Wolfgang Kohlhaase, German author and script writer (1931–)
Josef Kompalla, German ice hockey referee (1936–)
Adam Clayton, Irish rock musician („U2“) (1960–) <...>
Rich in Miami:
Daniel Deubelbeiss
Boris Becker's ex-wife Barbara is getting advice from a shady entrepreneur who is being tracked by German investigators:
Daniel Deubelbeiss attracts professionally naive investors.It is not easy to grasp why anyone would trust this gentleman with anything. Much less money.
Berlin, Germany
February 11, 2001
Der SpiegelA 1997 video shows how the gentleman operates: Daniel Deubelbeiss, heralded by his introductory speaker as "our president, our visionary, our friend and our director and leader and thinker," comes in wearing violet colored glasses, a grungy little beard, braided hair hanging down past his shoulder blades, with a body circumference as if he had actually "eaten 200 of Al Gore's votes," as Harald Schmidt has said about him.
Then he preaches: about Galileo Galilei who centuries ago was misunderstood much as he unfortunately is today, about "100 percent commitment" and about "faith." Soon he lets drop all the words used by any cult: "dreams," "motivation," "network" and "team spirit."
In essence, up to Monday of last week Deubelbeiss, 36, was acquainted with a couple of thousand people who lost a lot of money at the end of the 1990s. Then he told three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker in a SPIEGEL interview (SPIEGEL 06/2001) that a "certain Daniel" was Barbara his ex-wife's "psychological road guide." She indeed had stated that the gentleman was "a friend whom I can depend on" - but Deubelbeiss has a rather shady past.
The Munich state attorney has been investigating the entrepreneur who since has moved to Miami and is living as a wealthy man. On suspicion of fraud. In the mid-1990s Deubelbeiss was running a project by the name of "Treasure Facts" in a sort of Ponzi scheme. The investigators have found that he invested the money he took in without having informed the investors.
But the coup was yet to come: on St. Nicholas day in 1995, Deubelbeiss founded a psycho-business by the name of "Vanilla." Since he left filthy rich in 1999, many people who handed over their money have been in mourning their lost savings.
Vanilla was supposed to have been "the movement of the new millennium." The ideologist borrowed a little bit from Scientology and a little from a basic philosophy course. "We worry about ourselves first so that we can worry about the others afterward," announced Deubelbeiss. Businesswise it consisted of not much more than the idea of doing e-commerce in pants and shirts. But there was a "Vanilla Community," a virtual "Vanilla City" and the "Dream Factory" for social relationships. The "Vanillists" who Deubelbeiss said had "immortal bodies" were also the chosen few, "Us against the Rest of the world."
"Me against you" would probably have been more honest. Vanilla promised the founding of a Vanilla Bank and flew 200 people who were interested to Thailand. The trips cost 2,500 marks apiece which was to be recompensed when participants bought stock in the bank for 20,000 marks. That is what many did, but to date no bank exists.
Nasdaq waiting on Vanilla
Vanilla also promised action on Nasdaq, the American technology stock exchange. Beautiful certificates with fat seals were issued - but Nasdaq would have to wait on Vanilla, too.
"Gold Accumulation" was the name of the third source of money, and it worked like the chain letters of the 1980s: people were told they could acquire gold coins without payments - if they got 14 new customers. "Am I satisfied with my own performance for this week?", was on the accompanying letter.
Vanilla was said to have had 45,000 customers and believers, many of them in Poland and Slovenia. Deubelbeiss now describes his activities as a "fling" that had not gone especially successfully. "I took over a job as CEO for a stock exchange, that was all," he said in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. He said he never had anything to do with the finances. Others who were there say that Vanilla was Deubelbeiss.
"I was always a showman"
Daniel Christian Deubelbeiss comes from the little Swiss village of Sempach. He half-way grew up in a boarding school, afterwards he got training in the hotel business. Later the Swiss man moved to London. "I was always a showman" said Deubelbeiss. "He talks like he's seen everything already," said Becker. The Beckers got to know the sports fan at basketball games and have been guests in his loge.
In Vanilla he called himself a "thinker and philosopher." "That was a marketing stunt, a pitch for the customers," he admits today. The Vanilla story came to an end in 1999. Hardly anybody else wanted gold, so Deubelbeiss sold the corporation to Dutch investors, one of whom was Lambers, who now says he has suffered financial loss. The investments never paid off - and Deubelbeiss wants "nothing more to do with the firm."
Now he describes himself as a media consultant and manages a company called Vincenti and Lampert on Miami's San Remo Avenue. And in Munich he holds office as business manager in companies like TV Company's "Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs-GmbH" and "Eldan-Lavi Holding GmbH." Boris Becker said that in America Deubelbeiss wanted to "found a firm with me which featured celebrities as high-profile lobbyists for a fee." Nothing more came of that.
Of course it could be that Deubelbeiss is just being a friend for Barbara Becker. But it could also be that many millions are again at stake. Would her attorney Heinz Stolzki be of assistance in case of emergency? Stolzki from Munich was already worked for Deubelbeiss and was a director in Vanilla - he is also being investigated by the Munich state attorney's office on suspicion of fraud.
Klaus Brinkbaeumer, Matthias Gebauer, Conny Neumann
(C) SPIEGEL ONLINE - 11. Februar 2001, 13:49
The German-language article is accessible on the internet at URL
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,116964,00.html
Justice
A state without throne
The Karlsruhe Religion decision on the Jehovah's Witnesses
Berlin, Germany
December 23, 2000
Der TagesspiegelRobert Leicht
The latest decision from Karlsruhe - it had to do with the Jehovah's Witnesses - was handled more from the throne than from the altar, if one recalls the long forgotten "Alliance of Throne and Altar." That means it was treated more from the state's understanding of self than from the behavior of the sect. And therefore the victory is that of the liberal state, which would be the case opponent, not the not-at-all-liberal complainant.
Now step by step - and without any of the confounded details of "corporation of public rights": the Jehovah's Witnesses wanted something from the state and even managed to get it until they went before the Federal Administrative Court. The Federal Administrative Court, not lazy at all - or, much more precisely: rather lazy - put all really decisive questions on hold. The issue did not depend on them at all because the Jehovah's Witnesses were said not to be "loyal to the state": how could one demand something from the state, for instance, acknowledgment as a ... - but we did not want to talk about that in detail.
So, how could one demand something from the state if one did not want to play along with the state, but would rather, for example, urgently advise against participating in a democratic election? (That sounds a little bit like the old argument: go back where you came from if you don't like it here ...)
But there are still judges in Karlsruhe who say that what needs to be reviewed is whether the Jehovah's Witnesses respect the fundamental rights of citizens (which would mainly include its adherents' children). What it mainly depends on is whether their membership as a group is constructed on the principle of free will: free to join, free to leave. Any assumed loyalty to the state as such would not be required.
By doing that the priorities are properly sorted out from a liberal perspective: first the state has to be loyal to its citizens and not vice versa; so the state has to see that the citizens respect each other's rights. For the state is there by the will of the people - the people are not there by the will of the state.
Now one can ask how the state should protect these rights if someone does not intend to protect the state? But this response cannot equalize the fundamental asymmetry either: the state is the tool, not the citizen. Therefore it's enough for the citizen to respect what the state has to respect, too: other citizens' rights.
So it may be that the Jehovah's Witnesses have argued completely illogically - but still not lose their rights to the state. And another factor could enter the picture, that the Jehovah's Witnesses lose in the next hearing even though they were ready to cooperate in the elections, "loyal to the state" - but continue to disregard the rights of their own members. On which account they may have as good as lost this hearing, which is only a non-binding procedure.
But the state has already won this procedure in Karlsruhe: through intelligent self-restriction! That's the way it is in a liberal state - without a throne: We free citizens, unlike a bound state, are not required to be logical (that means logical for the state), we are "only" required to be faithful to rights. Logical.
Interview
"The decision promotes religious pluralism"
Nadeem Elyas of the Central Council of Muslims (ZMD) welcomes the ruling from Karlsruhe
[* ZMD: Central Council of Moslems in Germany
Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland
Corporation of Public Rights
Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts (KdöR) ]Berlin, Germany
December 20, 2000
TAZ Nr. 6327taz: Mr. Elyas, the Constitutional Court judgment on the Jehovah's Witnesses gives the Central Council (ZMD) a good chance of being recognized as a "corporation of public rights." When are you putting in your application?
Nadeem Elyas: We decided years ago we would not even put in an application. Basic law has given us all the rights we want to make use of. Besides that we want to make sure of our inner structures before we submit an application of that sort.
Wouldn't you take in a little money if you were to become a KdöR?
We don't anticipate any large amounts. Besides that our apparatus has not yet grown to the point that these financial injections would be necessary. And as long as our structures are as weak as there are, internal disputes over money are not likely to happen.
The judgment said that a KdöR would have to keep Basic Law - is that the case in your organization?
In every case. All of our associations and mosques keep the Basic Law and heed the liberal democratic basic system [the democratic system by which Germany operates].
The court requires that people always be able to leave the community when they want - how are you with that?
That is a given. All Muslims are free to leave. So far one association has left the ZMD. In addition we also excluded only one association because we had reason to believe that it maintained contact with Scientology.
But what about raising children such as is the discussion with the Jehovah's Witnesses: does Islamic law, the Scharia, also permit a violent upbringing?
In exceptional cases there are families which use such methods. But the Scharia itself recognizes no form of upbringing which is violent. It's more the case that Islam supports raising children through conviction, love and mercy.
Is there a risk now that Islamic groups will be acknowledged as KdöRs and be promoted because people are not that familiar with them?
Among others the Islamic Milli Goerues and the Islamrat have put in applications. The Millie Goerues have been under surveillance by Constitutional Security for years, but have never been charged before a court of counter-constitutional activities. This missing consequence drives all Muslim associations into the vacuum of uncertainty.
Could Islamic groups now be more easily alienated?
We are aware of the prejudice against Muslims and that disturbs us. But it does not become more true through repetition. Only one percent of the Muslims in Germany are engaged against the state, and only several hundred of them are actively engaged - that is little in comparison to the three million Muslims in Germany. Muslims should not be alienated, otherwise parallel societies could form which provide room for the Fundamentalists.
Would the state now be giving a sort of seal of approval by awarding KdöR status?
The decision is wise in that it does not judge the belief of the people, but their conduct. Through the ruling of the Constitutional Court religious pluralism in Germany will be advanced without the major churches being disadvantaged by the action. Also those who think that women should be suppressed and that the legal system in the Islamic world be reorganized according to the Scharia will not be condemned as long as they do not behave in this sense.
Interview: Philipp Gessler
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Karlsruhe deciding on Jehovah's Witnesses
Must a religious community be "loyal to the state" to enjoy the privileges of the major churches? Today the Constitutional Court decides
Berlin, Germany
December 19, 2000
NetzeitungKarlsruhe/Berlin. For ten years the Jehovah's Witnesses have been struggling with German officials and in German courts to receive the same privileges as other major religious communities in the Federal Republic. To no avail: first the Berlin Senate refused the Jehovah's Witnesses, and in 1997, so did the Federal Administrative Court.
[ ... snip ... ]
In their constitutional complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court to become a "corporation of public rights", the Jehovah's Witnesses will argue that the 1997 decision violates their religious freedom and breaks the principle of equality. Outside of the two major churches, 30 smaller religious denominations enjoy the privileges which the Jehovah's Witnesses have been denied thus far.
Scientology has been waiting
There has already been one hearing in Karlsruhe in September. The Jehovah's Witnesses found a prominent attorney: Hermann Weber, law professor and publisher of the "Neuen Juristischen" weekly. He criticizes that the criterium of "state loyalty" is being misapplied to the Jehovah's Witnesses in an impermissible way: "Because there is no obligation to vote in Germany, refusal to vote is completely legal."
If the Second Senate should share that view, there may be consequences for other groups: Scientology and Islamic organizations are also interested in the privileges of a "corporation of public rights."
The original German was edited for the web by Astrid Geisler
Fanaticism
Terrorism for immortality
Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton on dangerous cults, doomsday gurus and neo-Nazi killers in the USA
Berlin, Germany
December 13, 2000
TagesspiegelChristian Boehme
At several locations in the Tokyo subway, several thousand people gasped for air in the early morning hours of March 20, 1995. Their eyes watered and their heads hurt. Many vomited and were wracked with cramps. Blood dripped from their noses. Several frothed at the mouth before collapsing several minutes later, dead. They were victims of a terrorist attack with Sarin nerve gas.
As it later turned out, adherents of Japanese guru Shoko Asahara had smuggled the poison onto the subway. Members of his Aum Shinrikyo (highest truth) sect then used the tips of their umbrellas to poke holes in the plastic bags which were wrapped in newspaper and which contained the odorless gas. By doing so, they wished to bring on the Third World War and the Apocalypse. Twelve people had to pay with their lives and almost 5,000 were injured for this mixture of religious fanaticism and criminal energy. A nightmare had become reality.
For centuries there have been people who are ready to give up their own lives or kill others for their beliefs. The attack in the Japanese capitol, however, had a completely new dimension, according to American psychologist Robert Jay Lifton. The dangers resulting from cult terrorism were revealed for the first time in this murderous attack. "Shoko Asahara and his disciples had access to modern technology and weapons of mass destruction. And they were ready to use this lethal means. With the goal of destroying the world to save it," said the New York professor in an interview with the Tagesspiegel.
As a prototype of a guru prone to violence, more or less, in Lifton's research (appearing in book form under the title "Terror fuer die Unsterblichkeit" from Hanser-Verlag) is Shoko Asahara. Repeatedly enlightened by "visions," the almost blind Aum chief, born in 1955, formed his world bound for destruction from elements of various religions, cults and doomsday theories (Yoga, Buddhism, New Age, Nostradamus, millennium hysteria). And he found adherents ready to follow him and his deluded teachings without condition. Lifton conducted many interviews with former Aum members between 1995 and 1997. What most surprised him was that while those he interviewed did condemn the Tokyo attack, they still missed the giant Asahara as "leader."
Now, he said, the rest of the world can calmly record the poison gas attack by Aum disciples as the evil delusions of a remote, foreign culture, all the more so since the murderous guru and his deputies have been caught and have had to answer in court. Yet Lifton warned of premature conclusions. "Ideas which resemble that of the Shoko Asahara's doomsday scenario exist in almost all countries and their spiritual traditions," said the 74-year-old man. In addition, he said, national borders no longer play a big role for doomsday fanatics: weapons of mass destruction were relatively easily accessible and their dreadful effect is not restricted to certain locations. Therefore Lifton spoke out in favor of reducing existing weapons arsenals and making access to them more difficult.
Besides the crises smoldering in the Near East beset by fundamentalism on all sides, Lifton also sees a great danger in the American sect presence. Of most concern, he said, were the activities of rightwing white radical racists. Charles Manson thought of himself as Jesus Christ and was going to save the world. Together with several followers, he committed several murders. Their most prominent victim was the pregnant Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski. They wanted to destroy the "civil world" and bring on Armageddon.
Timothy McVeigh's rightwing extremist ideology had even more devastating consequences. Crazy about weapons, in April 1995 he blew up a Federal building in Oklahoma City. It was the worst act of terrorism in American history. 168 people died because McVeigh damned the state and saw himself as a "revolutionary" for a new world order.
The former special forces soldier cannot be categorized in any certain sect. Nevertheless Lifton is convinced that violence-prone rightwing extremists in the USA agree in several ways. As Timothy McVeigh had so made many of the so-called Turner diaries into his gospel, a new-Nazi, racist vision of a project of world destruction. At the centerpoint was a white "hero" who runs a suicide mission on the Pentagon with an atomic bomb. The American rightwing have not yet had a guru like Shoko Asahara, but they have a role model: Adolf Hitler.
Legastheny
Critical analysis of the "Davis Method"
Hochtaunus, Germany
December 7, 2000
Hochtaunus newspaper (not sure of sourceFor several years there has been advertising in Germany for Legastheny, the allegedly helpful methods of American Ronald D. Davis.
A former teacher also employs this concept in Wetterau County. It is controversial for two reasons: for one thing scientists and Legastheny associations have accused Davis of using methods of treatment that have not been verified or scientifically founded. For another Davis was formerly a Scientologist. He graduated the highest courses there; his methods of operation have significant similarities in some places to Scientology which were published over 15 years ago.
The state school office for Hochtaunus and Wetterau counties spoke out against the Davis method last Fall. Neither is the training for "Davis consultants" cheap: a one-week intensive course of 30 hours costs DM 3,000. The advertised claim that children are exempt from going to school for this period of instruction may be technically false, at least for our school district. In addition, the youth office in our county is not prepared to financially reimburse parents for that expense.
Michaela Treinen-Fuerst, graduate psychologist and Legastheny diagnostician, and Thomas Fuerst, teacher at Weidig School and familiar with the problems of new religious movements for more than 20 years, have worked out an eight-page comprehensive criticism of the Davis Method.; the Davis Method itself is presented in brief and subjected to extensive criticism. In the second part Davis' connection to Scientology is presented with his biography, then other quotes from his Legastheny book are compared to quotes from older Scientology literature. The text can be ordered through Weidig School for a distribution fee. [Fue]
"Lesen kann ich auch unten" S.Krikaljow (z.Z. ISS)
Netwire
For anonymity's sake ....
Berlin, Germany
November 22, 2000
Der Spiegel, 47/2000by Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti
"I'm in," simple as that. Now here I go. Just click on the search engine. Click on news. Click on book dealers. Click on my private home page. Those who think these clicks are not being monitored are deceiving themselves.
Cookies record clicks and know which internet addresses are finally accessed. They record the IP number from which the user has dialed into the network.
Anyone who wants to know exactly what on-line providers are doing with their personal data used to have to agonize laboriously over fine print, often in a foreign language [i.e., English]. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has therefore worked out a new standard which enables more transparency in matters of data security: the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P).
Over 30 corporations, including not only Microsoft, AOL and AT&T, but also European data security delegates, have cooperated. Using P3P, web surfers will be able to select their personal preferences in their browsers. As of today, cookies can be blocked out via a browser option.
Using P3P entire web sites will be able to be evaluated as far as their data security policy goes; that is because under XML-based policy, the instructions for handling customer data is programmed into the pages. Users may quickly find out whether their data is being handled according to European data security law. Then they can decide whether they want to trust their data on that web site. However the software does not check to see if the company actually does what it says. That would require legislative measures.
Providers currently are mercilessly exploiting user data to their heart's content. For example Microsoft collects GUID numbers in all "Word" and "Excel" files. The "Globally Unique Identifier" (GUID) is the serial number which can be read from your computer's network card. The music player Realjukbox even covertly transmits the GUID with much other information, such as the number and formats of the music titles stored on the computer.
The leading internet marketing company "Double-Click" exchanges information about users with other on-line agencies. The goal of the advertising network is to present each individual user with the appropriate ad banner. Search engines Altavista and Yahoo cooperate with the ad companies - now you need not wonder why a related ad banner shows up in your browser after making a search entry.
Additional information is provided by little web beetles, invisible pictures in the size of 1x1 pixels. They send IP addresses, the internet address of the web site visited, browser type and cookie information to the marketing companies' servers. Not before they see to it that information about various remote sites can be correlated.
US American data security advocate Richard Smith has found out that not only things like e-mail addresses, names, snail mail addresses and telephone numbers are transmitted, but also transaction data and search terms. Data banks process this information and produce individual user profiles.
Many users are not pleased that these data are being covertly collected. Only a few providers, Firefly web service for instance, obtain the express permission of the user. Other web services, like "Free" from the Canadian company "Zero Knowledge Systems" enable users to remain anonymous by using diverse anonymized and encrypted servers, called "mixers."
Unlike an anonymizer, "Free" does not transmit all the files through a central computer. The operator cannot be forced to reveal the identity of a pseudonym by a court, such as what happened with the pseudonymous e-mail service anon.penet.fi and the Scientology sect.
Identity manager
Nevertheless surfing anonymously reaches its limits when anonymity no longer serves a purpose. For instance a shipping address has to be typed in to buy something on-line. It is primarily for those cases that companies are currently developing tools based on P3P.
A sort of identity manager is supposed to note down which information has been given out under which conditions. After all, who can remember who he has told what to after a year? And what passwords he had to set up to do it? That type of software could also be used for purposes of identification. Additionally, such a manager could administer different pseudonyms which are used by a user.
Data security experts Mark Koehntopp of the Independent State Center for Data Security in Schleswig-Holstein and Andreas Pfitzmann of the Technical University of Dresden have even proposed that the identity manager use interfaces to all possible applications. A new type of chip or a new device would not then be needed for every application. Ultimately that would enable the intelligent ID manager to be integrated not only in PCs, but also in intelligent digital telephones or hand-held computers.
German book suggestion: Helmut Bäumler (Hrsg.): E-Privacy, Vieweg 2000.
On the internet see
- Zero-Knowledge-Systems
http://www.zks.net- Free
http://www.freedom.net- Doubleclick
http://www.doubleclick.com- Richard Smith
http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/privacy/banads.htm- Platform for Privacy
http://www.w3.org/p3p- Anonymizer
http://www.anonymizer.com
How the Falun Gong cult gently manipulates the media
Master Li and the media counter-campaign
Berlin, Germany
November 21, 2000
Badische ZeitungThe voice sounded conspirative. "It's about the group whose members have been arrested on the big square in Peking," said the man on the other end of the telephone line. He said he was a Sinology student from Frankfurt just back from a trip to China and he would like to have a conversation "about the reporting by German newspapers."
The young German who introduced himself as Peter Recknagel said he had good reason to be careful. The "group" which he mentioned on the telephone was the Falun Gong movement, which is banned in China. Thousands of Falun Gong adherents had been taken into custody and the state media resound with a propaganda war against the alleged "devil's cult" ("xiejiao").
So what does Peter Recknagel have to do with that? It wasn't long before the small, wiry man got to the point. The German media did report on the persecution of the Falun Gong movement in China, said Recknagel and looked quite concerned, "but they write that we are a cult."
Journalist in Peking are familiar with the arguments which the young man brought forward. When the Chinese banned the movement in June 1999, adherents from overseas launched a media counter-campaign. Journalists who described them as a "cult" or "sect" received letters, e-mails or telephone calls from disciples of the Falun Gong. The movement, founded by "Master" Li Hongzhi, living in exile, is said to be neither a religion nor a cult or a sect, they say. "We are a harmless meditation movement," stated Peter Recknagel.
But the Falun Gong is probably not that harmless. The movement, which says it has gained several dozen million adherents worldwide since 1992, has elements of Qi-Gong, Buddhism and Taoism, and it fixates upon its founder Li Hongzhi in a bizarre personality cult. Indeed his meditation exercises basically aim for a "moral improvement" of the practitioners. But racist and discriminatory elements also surface in his teachings. The Master describes half-breeds as "defective persons." As far as he is concerned, homosexuality is as bad as murder or using narcotics. "Falun Gong can be described as a sect - it is a community with common beliefs, rituals and assemblies," says Sebastian Heilmann, professor of Sinology at the Trier University. But it is not to be regarded as a "Chinese Scientology." The adherents are subjected to neither financial nor to emotional pressure.
A string of evidence points to there being a powerful organization which directs the Falun Gong disciples in the background. The center of the movement, which makes considerable income through book rights and videos, is in New York, the place of exile for Li Hongzhis. Apparently it is from New York that the demonstrations of Falun Gong disciples on the Square of Heavenly Peace are coordinated.
There also appears to be some calculation behind the media work by the Falun Gong disciples. The cult is presented solely as a victim in the constant operations and provoked arrests. Background on Master Li, the organizational structure or the psychic results of the teachings of salvation upon the disciples can barely be found in the media. Peter Recknagel, chief of the Frankfurt section of the Falung Gong association, also keeps that to himself. He either cannot or will not report on how the Master in New York manages his worldwide community.
Harald Maass
[The "e-meter" has been said to be a crude lie detector.]
It is of no use in clearing away suspicion of sexual abuse, and it could not exonerate field athlete Dieter Baumann of possible "doping": The so-called "lie detector test." It is also "completely unsuited" for use as evidence in criminal legal procedures, according to a decision by the Supreme court. In police interrogations and for preliminary review of a person's "word of honor," though, it provides completely practical possibilities.
"The logic of the investigative method using the so-called lie detector is basically alright," said Dr. Klaus-Peter Dahle from the work group led by FU psychologist Prof. Dr. Max Steller, on whose opinion the decision of December 1998 by the Supreme court is based and who received the "German Psychology Award" on September 24, 2000. "But there are large areas in which the results obtained can be wrongly interpreted." In any one test, the polygraph, or lie detector, can miss not only depth and frequency of breathing, but blood pressure and skin conductivity which increases with a "nervous sweat", and documentation of how strongly the person reacted to a control stimulus, e.g., an embarrassing question. But this test gives no "typical" reaction of a liar: one person might not be easily unsettled while another may react extremely nervously. The lie detector can only be used to compare one person's reactions to various questions as a whole. Thus the art to it is to draw conclusions as to guilt or innocence from comparison of an individual's reactions.
There are two test methods for that: in the control question test, questions relevant to the fact are asked, as are "control questions," which all are part of the same general subject - sex, for example. However the control questions have to be of more significance to the non-doer than the relevant questions. Those who react more strongly to the control questions are deemed in the lie detector test to be innocent. But whether the control questions obtained the desired outcome depends mainly upon the skill of the person who asks the questions. That person's competence, and thereby the success of this method, is not monitored, but must be provided for in the evaluation of the results. - Reason enough for the rejection of this method of testing by the Supreme Court.
For the second method, the factual knowledge test, the probability of the result has to be statistically reviewed: this test is based on the assumption that a guilty party will be more familiar with certain details of the commission of a deed, and will therefore react more strongly if asked a question about time or place of the deed, weapon used, etc. "It happens as good as never that an innocent person gives the maximum reactions to the details of the deed at the appropriate spots," Dahle assures us. This lie detector method, however, is also unsuited for court trials: by the time he gets to the hearing, an innocent suspect has already been questioned so many times that he gets familiar, anyway, with the details of the deed.
Application areas for the factual knowledge test would be police interrogations, criminal diagnoses and improved monitoring of sex offenders out on parole, Klaus-Peter Dahle believes. He, together with his students, tested a highly specialized alternative for application: clearing up affairs on party donations [this was a big scandal in Germany recently]. They wanted to try to find out from a group of ten subjects which of them had participated in a "conspirative" meet which involved handing over a leather suitcase. The results? Klaus-Peter Dahle: "It worked wonderfully. We caught each one who did it."
When horror has a happy ending
Chuck Russell filmed "Die Prophezeiung"
[American title: "Bless the Child"] with Kim BasingerBerlin, Germany
October 26, 2000
Die WeltChuck Russel began his career as producer with the horror shock film "Nightmare on Elm Street III." That was followed by the comedy "Die Maske" with Jim Carrey and "Eraser" with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Russel came to Berlin for the first time for the action-thriller "Die Prophezeiung" (starting November 9th in theaters). On Tuesday evening at the Hyatt Hotel he introduced his suspenseful mystery thriller in which Kim Basinger plays the lead role. She plays the aunt of a six-year old girl who is blessed with supernatural powers and falls into the clutches of a sect guru. Katharina Dockhorn spoke with Chuck Russell.
DIE WELT: What attracted you to "Die Prophezeiung"?
Chuck Russell: I like horror shows, especially when supernatural phenomena are involved and the audience is struck not only with fear, but with questions about the struggle between good and evil. In other films, the good often comes up too short for me.
DIE WELT: You have also voiced criticism about sects like Scientology ...
Russell: I didn't have a special institution in mind because there are so many shady operators who assimilate the lives and spirits of people to defraud them of their hopes and goods. Everyday we should ask to whom we belong and who comes between individual people and God.
DIE WELT: Why do you offer the Catholic Church as a solution?
Russell: I don't intend to defend the political misuse of power by the Catholic Church or apologize for the Pope. But basically there exists in Christian ethics the morals necessary for getting along with people and which can influence people's lives in a positive manner. The movie illustrates what we all learned in Sunday school: not only is there a supernatural evil, there is also a supernatural good which we can all arouse in ourselves. It does not take a beautiful angel to do that, in the form of a ballerina as we have seen in Christmas cards, but a strong will.
DIE WELT: Has there ever been a situation for you which made you feel very close to God?
Russell: In one clip of my first film I had to give instructions to the stunt men. I slipped and had to hold on to bare stone with my fingers to keep myself from falling. In that situation I pled my Creator for help from his angels. Just as I have often cursed the power of the devil who brought me into that kind of situation.
Two men for the Uncouth
How the International Olympic Committee has its image polished by a doubtful PR agency
Berlin, Germany
September 15, 2000
Berliner ZeitungJens Weinreich
Sydney, September 14. The two gentlemen moved back into the second to last row. Peter Clark and Michael Kontos, the two special agents of the Hill & Knowlton PR agency, closely observed their clients' appearance on the podium down below. Up front, the management crew of the International Olympic Committee are lined up, in the rear of the Sydney press auditorium, Clark and Kontos have a view of the event. Clark, the elder of the two, rests deeply in his plastic chair. Kontos stands up and slowly walks up and down the row of chairs. Again and again he glances at those assembled. Hardly one word, hardly one movement, escapes the two IOC agents.
IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch has traditionally given a press conference one day before the Olympic games begin. His strategists contrived a gag for this occasion. But it fizzled after the first three words by the 80-year old Spaniard. "I have decided," began the President, "I have decided that Dawn Fraser may accompany me as the Olympic First Lady to the opening celebration." Samaranch paused briefly and glanced around expectantly. Wasn't that a fine idea? This Friday he would sit with the four-time Australian Olympic winner in the VIP loge of the Australia Stadium - and not with his wife, who is ill and could not go to Australia. And then this beautiful title "Olympic First Lady," wasn't that original? But outside of several claquers, hardly anyone laughed.
In risk groups
Michael Kontos does not make a comment on the appearance by Samaranch. "Generally speaking, I don't talk about clients," is all he says. During such media goings-on like on Thursday, Kontos reacts in a completely professional manner. The 30-year-old American knows which journalists will ask the critical questions. At the beginning of his operation, he categorized them all into various risk groups.
Kontos has been working for the bedraggled Olympic agency since January 1999. He moved into an office at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, and saw to it that the IOC communications director, Franklin Servan-Schreiber, made no important decisions without feedback from him. His colleague, Clark, works in Sydney. Clark and Kontos are two of the most important of about 60 staff at Hill & Knowlton. The agency is supposed to create a better image for the IOC.
The strategists of Hill & Knowlton, however, do not enjoy the best of reputations. The company for the uncouth has worked for the Scientology Church, for a radical anti-abortion association, the Chinese government, nuclear power plant operators and for Haiti's bloodthirsty dictator, Baby Doc Duvalier. The IOC is part of this illustrious clientele. Hill & Knowlton made world headlines once as Kuwait's representative in trying to get the world to agree on an estimated eight million dollars for the American attack on Iraq - for which several perfidious tricks were used.
At the high point of the scandal concerning Salt Lake City's successful campaigning to be an Olympic site, Hill & Knowlton were contacted by IOC General Director Francois Carrard and Vice President Richard Point. It was not until a month later, at a board meeting in Lausanne, that Samaranch learned of the contract and that 1.5 million dollars had already been expended (since then it is said to have been five million). The President was beside himself with rage, as documented by an internal IOC record. One and a half years later, though, all important IOC members have conceded that the work done by Hill & Knowlton was helpful. "Take responsibility without admitting to guilt," read the first strategy paper. That is how the "negative business and legal effects" of the bribery affair were to be minimized. Michael Kontos and his white-washers coordinated appointments and interviews, went to Samaranch's hearing before the U.S. Senate in Washington, and have flooded the world with expensive advertising videos and reports of success. From their view, the plan was a total success: in May of this year, Richard Hyde, the boss at Hill & Knowlton, was awarded "PR Allstar" in the category of crisis management.
Like the Communist Part of the Soviet Union
"Without them, we could not have made it through this crisis," said IOC marketing chief Michael Payne. "Without the millions in expenditures for Hill & Knowlton, the journalists would have seen to it that our sponsors ran off in droves," said Servan-Schreiber. Thanks to Hill & Knowlton, the IOC is now able to sell itself as a transparent organization. Anyone who was able to observe Samaranch's media reception on Thursday, however, would have believed they had been beamed through a time machine back to a Soviet Union Communist Party convention. That was chiefly due to Australian Vice President Kevan Gosper, who solely decided as chief of the IOC media commission who could ask questions of Samaranch and his colleagues. "Identify yourself by name and organization," Gosper yelled at the journalists, "make it short, never mind a self-presentation and think about it, you only get one question."
Amy Shipley of the Washington Post, who illuminated all the crevices of the IOC scandal, was one of the first to gain Gosper's attention. "Mr. Samaranch, the past week has brought a new round scandals and stories of corruption in the IOC. What has to happen during the games in Sydney so that these stories are forgotten?", asked Shipley. "I don't know of what you are speaking, you would have to tell me more about that. I don't know what kind of problems those could have been."
But Miss Shipley did not get a chance to remind the forgetful Samaranch. Kevan Gosper was up front, "One question only. Now the next one, yes, you back there, right in front of the cameras." What it would have been necessary to remind him of was that, in that past week, letters had been published by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Wall Street Journal which Samaranch had written to Australia's Prime Minister John Howard and to Indonesia's State President Abdurrahman Wahid. In both of them, he interceded on behalf of a high sports functionary who was highly suspected of corruption. The Usbeki Gafour Rachimov, according to FBI statements a leading Mafioso, was refused entry into the country, as Howard stated, "for reasons of national security." Indonesian IOC member Bob Hasan could not even board the plane to Sydney because he was sitting in a holding cell and was going to trial in the next few days.
In the meantime, it has become one of the rules of Samaranch's court that master of ceremonies Gosper allows only one question from the English journalist Andrew Jennings, a man who has performed the most valuable expose work about the IOC. This time, Jennings asked about which personal characteristics had predestined Bob Hasan for membership in the IOC; Hasan was said to have contributed to corruption in the amount of millions of dollars and was also one of the largest participants in the deforestation of the rain forests. Samaranch, who has declared environmental protection to be the third column of the Olympics, did not pursue that question this time, either. Instead, he counted off Bob Hasan's sports functions in a singsong monotone. That did not make any sense, but that's not what he was trying to do.
Michael Kontos did not get excited during any of this. A few months prior he had met with Albert Knechtel, a documentary film interviewer, and calmly said, "I once had a job of selling coffee to the Chinese. That was more difficult than this assignment for the IOC."
But no matter how cool and collected Kontos appeared, in reality he is not. He just got wrapped around the axle with a reporter just recently. He gave the journalist, Albert Knechtel, access to the innermost circles of the IOC over a period of months - Kontos thought that Knechtel would put a brave face on the IOC functionaries. Then Knechtel mercilessly exploited that for a critical documentary called, "The Game Maker" and ridiculed people like Gosper with his own statements. Short version of the film have already been sold to a dozen broadcaster in Europe. By the time the IOC found out that Knechtel had been working with Andrew Jennings, there was nothing left to save.
Kontos had no comment on that catastrophe. He just stared rather pointedly. Then he said what a PR man in that situation has to say, "After these games, nobody will be talking about the IOC crisis any more." He didn't sound convincing. But who would be interested in that.
When the Missionaries are at your front door
A discussion with two church representatives at the front door:
What are Mormons, really?Berlin, Germany
August 28, 2000
Berliner Morgenpost 2000by Stephan Lahl (17)
Who hasn't seen them, the mostly American young men in their black suits? On their jackets they have a little label with their names, the words "Elder" and "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints." The Mormon Church thinks highly of these missionaries. Many come from the USA - the main offices of the church are in Salt Lake City. They wander from door to door, under the pretext of introducing their "Bible," the Book of Mormon, to find people who want to get involved in a lengthy conversation.
That's the way it happened with me, too. My first impression, naturally, was "just to blow them off, they were only another cult." But after a few minutes I could not really imagine that the two were really members of a controversial congregation. Besides that, I had never really listened to what they had to say before. So I put them off and told them to come back in a week.
First I wanted to find out what there was to know about Mormons. "Don't trust anybody who wants to sell you something unless you have read the consumer information on them," I thought to myself, and found an informative internet page (www.mormonen.de) from a student and ex-Mormon from Leipzig.
I read through a text about the origins of the Mormon Church: in the early 19th century, a man by the name of Joseph Smith thought that God had left him a message for all faithful people. The foundation of the Mormon belief is "The Book of Mormon." Members donate ten percent of their income to the Church. On the "seventh day" (Sunday) they spend the entire day with the church community. If the faithful do what they are commanded, then God will give them a secret password to get into heaven during a ritual ceremony. After their death then, they finally turn into a God themselves.
And that was about what the missionaries told me, too, when I saw them, - naturally a bit more smoothly and nicer. During their narratives, the missionaries continually referred to their Book of Mormon, until I interrupted and asked them why the Book would tell a story which could not be scientifically proved.
The one missionary, who had not been moving up to that time, except to play with his ball-point pen, suddenly let it drop. The other sat up with a start. When I asked, on top of that, why the Church had done away with several of its controversial commandments when things got too hot, like polygamy or forbidding blacks to become priests, then the one began to feverishly leaf through his papers. The other very, very slowly leaned over to pick up his pen. They looked at each other and finally said that they would come back another time with a member of the Church who could answer my questions. But I replied that I would not be interested in a church which did not even keep its own missionaries in the light about things.
After that I got into contact with two ex-Mormons through the web site. Both thought it not worthwhile getting involved with this church any further. They said everything the church had to offer sounded very enlightening, but it was not until people started asking questions and looking around that they noticed the holes in the reasoning. Therefore the Church prohibited its members from answering questions. The two ex-Mormons told me that one could get so involved with faith "that a person would no longer see the forest because of the loud trees." And exactly that, they said, was why it was dangerous.
Banning the Bible
Families Ministry sued
Berlin, Germany
August 24, 2000
http://www.mainpost.deIn a dispute to classify the Bible as literature which poses a risk to young people, two attorneys from Marktheidenfeld have now made their appeal in the halls of justice. Dr. Christian Sailer revealed that they intend to force the involvement of federal review board for young people's literature by filing suit yesterday in the Berlin Administrative Court.
In early August the Federal Families Ministry had rejected classification of the Bible as literature which poses a risk to young people as a "misplaced request." Among other things, the Bible serves in research and teachings, and is therefore protected from being rated by the government, a Ministry spokesman stated.
In the 70-page lawsuit, the lawyer, who is well-known as the attorney for the Universal Life (UL) congregation, is representing two families in the Lower Franconia area in the matter about the narratives which include a "gruesome massacre," "hate and violence against strangers," and the stoning of homosexuals, adulterers and disobedient children. There is a reason that churches are always coming out with new "children's Bibles" in which the bloodthirsty parts of the Bible are understated, Sailer thinks.
"Heil Hitler" - grounds for dismissal
Berlin operations announce disciplinary measures against radical rightwing staff: employees risk dismissal without notice for "disturbing the peace at work." Unions support the process and offer tolerance seminars.
Berlin, German
August 10, 2000
tazby Richard Rother
Fewer and fewer Berlin operations intend to tolerate rightwing radicals among their staff. Employees who bring attention to themselves in this way risk disciplinary measures - up to and including dismissal.
"We do not accept radical, rightwing endeavors in our business," said one "Bewag" spokesman. That, he said, could harm the company's image. As a result, "Bewag" takes action against staff in that regard - according to the severity of the offence. "Which could include termination without notice." But before that come verbal and written warnings. "We want dismissals to endure labor court."
"Schering" does not tolerate rightwingers, either. "We are an international corporation; naturally we are tolerant," a spokeswoman stressed. Those who verbally harass staff are disrupting the operating climate and have to reckon with consequences up to and including dismissal. That does not concern only rightwing extremists, but also leftwing radicals and Scientology adherents.
People in civil service also highly value this perspective. "Anyone who lets rightwing or leftwing radicalism interfere with his service has to count on there being consequences," said to a spokesman from the Interior Administration. Unlike open business, civil service already offered this option.
Nothing funny is going on behind the scenes at the Berlin Water Plant (BWB) or at Siemens, either. "Tolerance is important," said a BWB spokesman.
Same thing at the city sanitation plant (BSR). "We take affirmative action on that," said a BSR spokesman. The BSR let an apprentice go back in 1997. He had put a sign on a co-worker's locker that said "Work makes you free, Turkey, a beautiful country." The case went all the way up to the Federal Labor Court, which confirmed the dismissal. Since then there has been a mandatory tolerance program at the BSR for apprentices. In their first year of apprenticeship they have an academic field trip to the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
There have also been dire consequences in other operations: Coca-Cola fired a doorman who entered the canteen and gave the Hitler salute. BMW let an employee go for making anti-Semitic statements.
The DGB (German union federation) welcomes the businesses' processes against employees. "We should all express ourselves against the rightwing," said DGB state vice president Bernd Rissmann. In labor law, it is possible to terminate someone for "disturbing the peace at work." The company boards would also approve of the termination. "The person involved in this kind of case would hardly stand a chance in court." The DGB currently requires in writing of all company boards that they take affirmative action against rightwing radicals in their companies.
But the DGB will not leave it at words alone. Since May the union stewards have been conducting training seminars for young members. The topic: Tolerance and Rightwing Extremism. About 1,000 young people will have attended the seminar by year's end. The DGB has trained over 20 people to give the seminar.
What now, Waldorf?
The Dialogue begins
5 letters to the editor
in response to "Intimidation, Waldorf style
of August 4, 2000Berlin, Germany
August 10, 2000
taz"Private intelligence service" verified
re: "Intimidation Waldorf style," taz of August 4, 2000
Letters to the editor and advertisements should not be confused with editorial articles, even if they both have the name of the newspaper at the top of the page. In like manner, one should not confuse the content of one home page with links to other pages, even though the url line sometimes does not change with "frames."
On his company's home page, http://www.fmp-entertainments.de/aktion, Raphael Fellmer, student of the Berlin Rudolf Steiner School in Berlin, has been calling for a protest against the "Report" broadcast at the end of February for several months. In a spontaneous action, the students got together and, among other things, produced this page on their own. On this page, which the student had under his own personal copyright, there was only one link to www.waldorf.net, on which exists another link to www.waldorfschule.de. Neither the alliance nor waldorf.net called for a protest, counter to the contention by Arno Frank in the "taz" newspaper.
In the meantime, I can verify the existence of a "private intelligence service." I immediately created a dossier on Arno Frank in that I clipped and filed his article. Also, yesterday I conducted a conspiratorial telephone conversation with other comrades in the "Anthro-scene" and would not rule out that in the past 20 years I have quoted from its articles for the purpose of discrediting it as unprofessional. Aren't they awful, those people who think differently?
Detlef Hardorp
Educational Political Spokesman of the Waldorf Schools in Berlin
Brandenburg
Journalists are a sub-culture unto themselves. They criticize other people, but then scream when the people they write about send faxes. Newspapers and rubberneckers may say anything they want to, but when the people they are looking at want to defend themselves, as anybody who has tried to submit a counter-presentation knows, they are stonewalled. And what is so terrible about an organization asking its members to defend themselves? Would the "taz" like to do away with legitimate, democratic means?
My children went to the Ludwigsburg Waldorf School. Of course there were things there to be critical of, but there was really no trace of racism. [. . .]
Hartmut Bernecker, Bietigheim-Bissingen
[. . .] I see two aspects in Steiner's ideology which would really have to make racism impossible for Anthroposophists. First, all human souls go through all races in the course of their incarnations. Secondly, just as racial differences once came about and previously did not exist, so they will disappear some time in the future. Both aspects can be regarded identically for differences in gender. [. . .] And the decisive factor: the Anthroposophical movement "prepares at the spiritual level what will later happen on the physical plane: the re-unification of the sexes." (Steiner quote). The same thing should also apply to the issue of race (unfortunately I don't have the quote for that at hand).
It is worth one's while to differentiate between teachings and representatives: Anthroposophy has many ideas and suggestions concerning survival of race and sex discrimination, but some "Anthroposophists" don't understand them at all. For example, these ideas abound in the Anthroposophical healing methodology: there all people are equally seen as handicapped, as "lacking in spiritual care." In other areas of life, such an attitude would obviously still have to be developed.
Perhaps it is exactly for these reasons that Anthroposophists cannot tolerate criticism: Anthroposophy is such a strong super-ego that many talk themselves into believing that they are already so good and pure as they have to be or would like to be. People who have a concept like that always have to defend themselves. But one can use high ideals as well as sources of power: only the courage to dream gives the power to fight - not against the rest of the world, but for a better world! [. . .]
Christoph Kranich, Hamburg
Because I really don't have any negative opinion about Anthroposophists from my personal experiences, I am amazed at how these people and the Waldorf Schools deal with the accusations of racism from "Report." Factually dealing with Steiner's statements would be more honest. Unfortunately I was disappointed to read how the Waldorf experts react to criticism, how journalists defame Anthroposophist Stefan Leber, and what kind of spiritual similarity there is to Scientology and other totalitarian organizations.
Freedom of the press be praised, also the "taz" newspaper be praised, but technically difficult themes like this need free journalism.
Horst Grzywaczewski, Iserlohn
Do the Waldorf Schools really have room to operate legally? Can it be that a book written in 1936 and which was published again and again is only today classified as "for adults only" based on the "Report" broadcast? [. . .] Meanwhile anybody who wants to know can find out: The Waldorf Schools are based on the ideology of a single man. This ideology is, to a wide extent, racist and culturally imperialistic.
Anybody who brings that up is overwhelmed with lawsuits. The otherwise chronically financially weak Waldorf Schools immediately have any amount of money when it comes to intimidating troublesome critics into silence. That means the public coffers are financing this type of school so that the Waldorf's can pick and choose as they like. [. . .] Reinhard Karst, Bruchsal
The editors reserve the right to print letters in whole or in part. The letters from readers do not necessarily reflect the opinion of "taz" newspaper.
Intimidation of the Waldorf kind
by Arno Frank
Berlin, Germany
August 4, 2000
taz Nr. 6210He who throws a stone into the water may at least expect some ripples. In its broadcasts of February 28 and July 10, 2000, "Report" politics magazine from Mainz (ARD) threw two stones - the result was a wave of lawsuits and a flood of protest.
The first broadcast was about very extensive anti-Semitic incidents at the Waldorf schools, the second was about racism in the book, "Atlantis und das Raetsel der Eiszeitkunst" - a little volume authored by Ernst Uehli, the first Waldorf teacher, which is on a list of literature which is put at the disposal of Waldorf teachers as preparation for history instruction - in the meantime the Waldorf schools have distanced themselves from the book after the Federal Families Ministry filed an application for classification. The book contains a racist ("Today's Negro is childish and has remained an imitative being") and esoteric mixture ("The seed of genius has already been placed for the Aryan race in their cradle of Atlantis"). The "Report" broadcast ended with the unusual comment, "We will not let ourselves be intimidated."
"Jewish Propaganda"
The nature of this "intimidation" was revealed by Fritz Frey, chief editor at "Report": "After an earlier broadcast in February, the Alliance of Free Waldorf Schools flooded us with a number of lawsuits, demands for counter-presentations and demands to cease and desist. They used every means at their disposal to put their own interests into action, like several hundred faxes and letters to the editors."
Now lawsuits and notes of protest are legitimate means of defense - but the content of many of these letters are not, as Eric Friedler reports. Letters and telephone calls which the editor of the controversial broadcast received allegedly certified that he was the "reincarnated anti-Christ" and that he belonged "behind bars." Even the friendlier instructions sounded gruesome: "If you go along with Steiner's ideology of repeated life on earth, then the souls of the Atlantans are still among us," said one, and another, "As far as the Negroes, name one who has founded a university." The mother of one student was surprising with her fatal logic, "We are not racists, that is all Jewish propaganda!" Apart from the quality of many reactions, the quantity was also surprising. Frey sensed a concerted action behind the stereotypes and identical reactions, even down to word selection: "There are indications that the schools sounded the cry to harass us."
Actually, on the home page of the Alliance of Free Waldorf Schools (www.waldorf-schule.de) no protest is being called for, but the defeat in the legal dispute with "Report's" SWR is being sold as a victory. Counter-presentations and demands to cease and desist were completely rejected by the Frankfurt State Court and Stuttgart Superior State court. Only the statement that Jewish parents "increasingly" took their children out of the school may not be repeated, as per temporary restraining order - SWR has filed appeal.
SWR may be well-provisioned for a cost intensive legal dispute. But not independent investigative journalists like the Austrian, Angelika Walser, who had published a critical article in the Christian conservative weekly paper "Die Furche": "There was a storm of protest such as "Die Furche" had never before experienced. I was threatened with lawsuits and accused of having falsified much of my information." The affair was then "amicably resolved," as they say so wonderfully in Austria: a preliminary hearing occurred with the Graz Waldorf school, as Walser reported, and her bosses. The journalist gave up the theme out of necessity: "If you investigate them you need broad shoulders."
Austrian television producer and journalist Petrus van der Let had broad shoulders. In a five-part series on the roots of National Socialism, in the "Savior" sequel, he got involved with the role of Rudolf Steiner and the esoteric, occult promises of salvation of Anthroposophy. In a subsequent live discussion, the theme was "energetically and controversially" disputed; soon afterwards the usual officious letters hailed down on van der Let's employer. A board member of the group association of Waldorf schools, Raoul Kneucker, had described the film as a "successful, post-modern collage" during the discussion - but four weeks afterwards in December 1996, before the General Secretary of the Council of Europe he raised an "objection against the promotion of the film project," not only that, but he said that was because of "crass violation of the fundamentals of objectivity."
"Private Intelligence Agency"
Psychologist and publisher Colin Goldner had similar experiences. He had to undergo a concentrated protest letter campaign, letters which threatened him with legal action, restraining orders, along with verbal abuse and defamation because he pointed out the racist passages in Rudolf Steiner's work in a "Spiegel" magazine article. In order to discredit Goldner professionally, "texts were dug out which I had written 20 years ago." That suggested to Goldner that, within Anthroposophy there were apparently maintained "dossiers on disagreeing journalists": "The Anthroposophists have a very good network and quite obviously have a sort of private intelligence service at their disposal for the observation of critics. It is exactly this dealing with those who think differently that creates a parallel in Anthroposophy to totalitarian cults."
Arnold Seul, today employed as an MDR television editor, investigated "unusual disciplinary measures" at a Waldorf School for "Fakt" magazine (of 9-9-96: "Mythos Waldorfpaedagogik"). "Even before airing," he said, "committees like the Broadcast Council were involved, there were letters to television directors from Westdeutschen to Saarlaendishen Broadcasting. I continued with the filming, but got no more voiceovers from Anthroposophists. Instead of that, dozens of letters and complaints."
At a presentation which was supposed to have calmed things down, he found himself "confronted by a tribunal of from 30 to 40 people" who all put pressure on him. "I don't do yellow journalism," Seul reassured the excited Anthroposophists - only to find that sentence repeated later as a confession to parents in a newsletter, but "don't" was deleted.
"Normally one experiences something like that only when one is dealing with Scientology," said Seul - but had two possible explanations for the remarkably thin skin of the Anthroposophists. For one, he thinks the real financial interests of the Alliance of Free Waldorf Schools may be at risk: "After the turn in the GDR, they marched right in as free supporters of schools and were welcomed with open arms. Now one deals with high figures in figuring out what kind of money is involved." Associated with concerns about subsidies, however, is a "persecution complex befitting that of a cult-like association." Seul: "Part of it is they are too alienated from the world to know how to appropriately react to criticism. They have no kind of experience with the culture of the media.
Anthroposophist Stefan Leber, in contrast, not only has experience, but a very flexible picture of what a journalist does - they remind him of "dogs, sniffing from scent mark to scent mark, leaving their own scent behind. They follow a trail, they smell urine and droppings; they have no interest in smelling roses or violets. There is an internal connection between their sniffing and their own excrement," according to Leber, as can be read in the Flensburg volume (63/IV/98) - he is a board member of the Alliance of Free Waldorf Schools and docent for Waldorf academics at the free high school of Stuttgart.
Church service
Ten dollars for a horror story in church
Berlin, Germany
August 4, 2000
junge Welt, FeuilletonBlessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven - this shortened variant of the Bible quotation is still valid in Bryan's Texas church congregation. Pastor Rich Sebastian drives through the little city every Sunday morning in a bus through the poorest district and offers everybody he meets on the street ten dollars if they come to his meeting for one and a half hours. He who has, gives, and he who needs, takes - because the green dollars in the hand are better than beautiful dreams of the future, or perhaps a rich heaven; in the meantime, every fifth person makes use of this pecuniary mission offer. "For someone who has nothing, that is an attraction," faithful marketing specialist Sebastian is sure.
The investment pays off. After a half hour, the mutual reserve of the churchgoers has been overcome and the approximately 80 members of the Bryan congregation - overwhelmingly middle-class white - and the paid poor sing the hallelujahs devoutly together and praise God, enthusiastically reports "Religion Today" information service about the unusual membership recruitment in the USA's South.
At the same time, the German new revelation sect, "Universal Life" (UL) in Bavaria, is trying to get the Holy Scriptures put on a restricted list. UL attorneys, with connection to Scientology, Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel from Marktheidenfeld near Wuerzburg, based their application to have the Bible restricted, according to the news agency, on its bloodthirsty and cynical text which could therefore harm young people's souls.
The Holy Scriptures the same as a horror story or a porno movie? If Pastor Sebastian's potential flock would have known that, he probably could have saved himself the ten dollars, they would have gone to see a Sunday thriller.
(rg)
junge Welt
Berlin, Germany
August 3, 2000
Frankfurter Neue PresseBerlin. The Korean Moon sect uses strange methods to have young people remain chaste before marriage and to infiltrate Christian groups which have a similar goal. As the Berlin-Brandenburg Church commissioner for issues of sects and weltanschauung, Reverend Thomas Gandow, has stated in Berlin, the so-called "Pure Love Alliance" is, in reality, part of the Unification Church of Korean Sung Myung Moon.
Moon, who says he has about two million adherents worldwide, claims that Jesus failed as Messiah because he did not start a family. Moon said he was called to fulfill this mission. With his wife he carries out mass marriages on his adherents. The Moons also have the adherents honor the Moons as their true parents.
In the gatherings of the Moon sect, the participants are supposed to take various vows which, from Moon's point of view, allow them to enter into the true family, that means the Moon sect. In doing this, candy is sometimes distributed which has been processed with so-called "holy wine." According to Gandow, former sect members report, though, that the candy contains a disgusting fluid which consists of the diluted blood and sperm of the sect founder. (idea)
Moon sect intends to infiltrate youth organizations
Berlin-Brandenburg sect commissioner warns about "Pure Love Alliance"
Berlin, Germany
August 2, 2000
idea (Basis edition 93/2000)Berlin (idea) - Apparently the Moon sect plans to systematically infiltrate evangelical youth organizations with a campaign of pre-marital chastity. That was said to the staff at "idea" by the Evangelical Church's commissioner for issues of sects and weltanschauung in Berlin-Brandenburg, Reverend Thomas Gandow of Berlin. The so-called Pure Love Alliance, which provides sexual information for teenagers in the USA, is in reality part of the "Unification Church" of Korean Sung Myung Mun. In its gatherings, the participants are to take vows which, from Moon's perspective, will let them enter the "true family," the Moon sect. Also, candy is distributed which is treated with so-called "Holy Wine" - which former members, according to Gandow, say consists of "diluted blood and sperm of the sect founder." "When they eat this candy they become a member of the Moon Family, since, from Moon's perspective, a physical exchange of blood takes place," Gandow cited the sect's internal documents.
New Mission Objective: Germany
While the "Unification Church" is banned from some schools in the USA, such as in Chicago, the Moon missionaries are now directing their attention to other countries, such as Great Britain, France and Germany. Gandow is concerned that any Christian group can be infiltrated which has as a goal the promotion of sexual abstinence before marriage. In the meantime, the Moon sect has already gotten a toehold in certain evangelical circles in the USA. For instance, conservative preacher Jerry Falwell openly cooperates with Moon organizations.
Gandow: serious chastity campaigns at risk
"It's good there are groups which support chastity before marriage," Gandow told "idea." "But all these serious campaigns are currently at special risk of being infiltrated by the Pure Love Alliance." Gandow continued, "I can't imagine that any evangelical Christian could reconcile with their beliefs the idea of their own children at a gathering focusing on sexual abstinence where they become members of the Moon sect, whose leader has declared that genitals are the center point of the universe." For that purpose he has written a letter to warn the organizers of the Christian campaign "True Love waits" ["Wahre Liebe wartet'] and of the CVJM, "neither of which are suspected of any cooperation with the sect" of the Moon campaign.
Discussion of homosexual marriage favors the mission of the Moon sect
Gandow indicated that according to credible information, about 300 American Moon adherents were coming to Germany from the USA in early August to support the only several hundred German members for the upcoming operation. The plan will take advantage of the current debate on the "marriage" of homosexuals. Gandow said, "This discussion causes a certain anxiety among people of piety - this darker setting is extremely suited for Moon to propagate his ideology under cover of 'pure love and absolute sex'." Moon, who says he has about two million adherents, asserts that Jesus failed as Messiah because he did not start a family. Moon says that he was called to complete Jesus' mission. With his wife he conducts mass marriages of adherents from his religious congregation; they honor the Moons as "true parents." (93/2000/6)
[The short version]
vm/Youth/Moon Sect/Sex
No sex before marriage - Moon sect intends to infiltrate Christian youth groups
Berlin (idea) - The Moon sect plans to infiltrate Christian youth groups with a campaign of chastity before marriage. That was told to the evangelical news agency, "idea," by the Berlin-Brandenburg's Church commissioner for issues of sects and weltanschauung, Reverend Thomas Gandow from Berlin. The so-called Pure Love Alliance, which provides sexual information for teenagers in the USA, was said to be, in reality, part of the "Unification Church" of Korean Sung Myung Mun. In their gatherings, participants are supposed to take vows which, from Moon's perspective, would let them enter the "true family," the Moon sect. Also, candy is distributed which is treated with so-called "Holy Wine" - which former members, according to Gandow, say consists of "diluted blood and sperm of the sect founder." "When they eat this candy they become a member of the Moon Family, since, from Moon's perspective, a physical exchange of blood takes place," Gandow cited the sect's internal documents.
Warning to "True Love waits" ["Wahre Liebe wartet"]
Gandow is concerned that any Christian group can be infiltrated which has as a goal the promotion of sexual abstinence before marriage. "It's good there are groups which support chastity before marriage," Gandow told "idea." "But all these serious campaigns are currently at special risk of being infiltrated by the Pure Love Alliance." He said he had already warned "True Love waits" ["Wahre Liebe wartet'] . Moon, who says he has about two million adherents worldwide, asserts that Jesus failed as Messiah because he did not start a family. Moon says that he was called to complete Jesus' mission. With his wife he conducts mass marriages of adherents from his religious congregation; they honor the Moons as "true parents."
Don't read this page!
The Truth fails the sect test
Shocking results of a daunting test
Berlin, Germany
July 22, 2000
tazWe have often voiced our disrespectful opinion on these pages about Christian and other types of sects, and in doing that, have not always run into enthusiastic applause from the people we were talking about. As proof that we do not think that we are immune ourselves, we ordered a "sect check list" from the Professional Association of German Psychologists, Inc. in order to investigate The Truth for characteristics of a "destructive cult."
Sect check: Monopoly on Truth: the group has the only valid system of explaining the world.
The Truth: Bingo! At most, we share the sole claim to truth with the Pope.
Expansive claim to power: "We have to save the world" is the pitch.
That's exactly the way it is! Just a smile a day can save the world.
Leader, guru, master, personality cult: He is venerated as God, saint or a "channel" (channel of God), is all-powerful, clairvoyant or has miraculous abilities.
Being master, God, even a channel, that goes without saying for a Truth editor!
Saint-like veneration and idealistic stories are propagated.
Always! We are famous for our stories.
Elite. Members of the group monitor, supervise and punish each other with threats of fire and brimstone. Internally, there is a special jargon.
Yes, our middle names are "fire and brimstone." Besides that we like to mutually discipline ourselves, for example with out special jargon: Ygat grumpf thpthzzzt.
Elite consciousness. Group members feel like the Avant Garde of world salvation.
Is there anything else in the world besides The Truth? What's wrong with that?
Exploitation: Group members (more or less voluntarily) let themselves be exploited as a cheap form of labor.
Of course those who work for the Truth are exploited, they do it to themselves.
Subversive activities: The group believes it is above the law and urges members to perform illegal activities.
Law, what's that? Any more of those lies and we'll send our boys around.
Control of consciousness. De-personalization: total acceptance is demanded, the group and the common goal are more important than the individual.
That is the only way it works!
Material dependency: The group member has no private property and/or money.
What is money? A Truth editor doesn't need money!
Breaking with one's own personal past: relations to family of origin, to spouses and friends are broken off. Schools, studies and careers are given up.
For Truth you just have to make small sacrifices.
Techniques for personality alteration. Techniques are used to mobilize emotions, create a euphoric effect and alter consciousness.
Joking and degrading, ribald tales and comments - all techniques to make even the toughest nuts giggle.
Contact to the outside. The group practices manipulative methods of recruitment in which people are lured in with unrealistic promises.
Why else would the Truth Club have been founded?
Bunker mentality: The group shuts itself off from the outside ("Heaven inside, Hell outside"). Conspiracy theories and persecution complexes are the rule.
That is an untrue claim by our enemies. We are not persecuted by anybody, even though the readers are eavesdropping on us with directional microphones and want to destroy us with death-rays from outer space. The bunker of Truth will prevail!
The disturbing result of the open, self-critical weltanschauung check: The Truth is clearly a dangerous cult. Therefore, don't read this page!
The Return of Miss Amerika
Denglisch (Deutsch - English) Deluxe: after an operation, her 40th birthday and tenth anniversary on stage, entertainer Gayle Tufts is again presenting her show in the "Bar jeder Vernunft."
Berlin, Germany
June 20, 2000
Berliner Morgenpost 2000by Ute Buesing
She has become the American in the flesh, speech and song in Berlin. Because of her comical inter-cultural messages in the pigeon language of Denglisch and her funny songs, the entertainer Gayle Tufts has become a public favorite. "I am a girl from Brockton, Massachusetts. I say what I see, and even Frau Schmidt in Gaggenau accepts that," rejoices Gayle.
The Big Girl with the Big Voice had climbed another rung higher on the scale of popularity when a slipped disk abruptly ended the sold-out presentation of her fifth show, "Miss Amerika." Gayle Tufts had to get an operation and rest for half a year. Now she is back on stage in the "Bar jeder Vernunft." In one short monologue, Tufts went over "the glamorous time in the Gruenheide Recovery Clinic." But other events have more impact on the "always positive-thinking optimist": her 40th birthday and 10 year anniversary in Berlin.
"Becoming 40 is soooo stressful! There is this huge pressure to grow up between today and tomorrow, to get a car, house and children." In talking about that, she was fascinated with transitional periods in which nothing is sure." In one such "messy time" in 1990, Gayle Tufts came to Berlin because the Dance Factory had engaged her to perform in Valeska Gert's expressional piece "Der Riss." Her first Berlin experience, though, had occurred five years previously, as a singer in Max Goldts Band Foyer Des Arts. But it was not until the Dance Factory that she got the "official police report." Now Gayle Tufts enjoys "how Berlin is growing" in that she no longer has to travel to New York to get her "Decaf fat-free Machcino."
Mrs. Tufts also relies upon her growing "harmonic, supportive environment" in "Miss Amerika." Composer and pianist Rainer Bielfeldt, who, for five years, has been writing "soul-filled tunes for every Gelegenheit" from melancholy ballads to hits, indulged her with the song "My congenial escort." Both tease about the "other existence" - Tufts in the form of her American origins and characteristic portliness; Bielfeldt in that he makes allusions to being gay. Slapstick comedy club promoter Thomas Hermanns, after "The Big Show," also put "Miss America" on stage, for which Larent Daniels created a fittingly pompous Art Deco. Finally, it includes an ironic home-sickness, as well as "Big in Berlin," the birth hour of "Germany's first Denglisch Allround Entertainer in the Diaspora.
"There are two worlds here in my heart," announced Gayle Tufts, and contrasted her precise everyday observations in Berlin with the import of unfavored U.S. American products like Burger King, crack and Scientology - if those would not have also included Miles Davis, Hemingway and Faulkner. Which land is her land, Gayle Tufts, her art living in transition, will not and cannot say for a fact. The paradoxical fence-walking stays: under the star-spangled flag she reveals a dirndl: "Help, I've turned German!" Starting today, Gayle Tufts and her "congenial escort" are again in the "Bar."
Berlin, Germany
June 7, 2000
Redaktionsschluss: 17:00 Uhr(151)1. Federal expenses not to exceed 485 billion DM in 2001
2. Persecution of Falun-Gong practitioners in China condemned..........
Committee for Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid
Persecution of Falun-Gong practitioners in China condemned
Berlin: (hib/BOB-mr) On Wednesday afternoon, the Committee for Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid condemned the persecution and arrest of thousands of Falun-Gong practitioners in the Peoples Republic of China. The committee determined in this connection, that China, by signing the Treaty on civil and political rights, as well as the Treaty on commercial, social and cultural rights, is obligated to not discriminate against or pressure anybody based on his political view, his belief or his weltanschauung. The right to peacefully assemble should also be recognized. The human rights committee spoke out in favor of asking the federal government to include this position in their meetings in the scope of legal state dialogues. The representatives made their decision on the basis of a petition of Falun-Gong practitioners in Germany. The petition committee had asked for an official opinion.
Outside of that, the human rights committee refused an application from the F.D.P. (14/2915). That was to have asked the federal government to back a China resolution of the human rights commission of the United Nations. The decision was made with votes from SPD and Buendnis 90/The Greens while CDU/CSU and the PDS abstained. In its basis, the committee majority pointed out that the submissions by the opposition faction had already been done. In addition, the committee had already taken an application on the situation on human rights in China on May 17. The plenum of the German Parliament will be discussing the problem on Thursday (tomorrow).
"The European Model is superior to the American in the long-term"
Berlin, Germany
June 2, 2000
Berliner ZeitungBefore the meeting with Bill Clinton and 15 heads of state from all over the world, a Federal Chancellor, who did not think much of the American way, presented himself to the "Berliner Zeitung." Europe's goal must be to come to the "same eye level" with the USA, said Gerhard Schroeder.
Mr. Chancellor, you have issued invitations to a conference on "Modern Governing" after Berlin. What could such a mammoth meeting with 15 heads of state achieve?
At the gathering we will continue the discussion that we began last year in Florence. Now with basically more participants, that is true. But the attractiveness of the theme was so great that quite a few people expressed an interest. What it boiled down to was the question of how does one align the necessity of modernizing societies and, at the same time, maintain social balance? What political implications does globalization have on the economy?
Along with Bill Clinton comes a beaming patron of world economy. Does he provide us with a model of modern governing?
The causes of the long sustained economic boom in American are manifold. Besides that which has been done for research and development, one reason is certain, that the labor market in the USA is more flexible. But, as Europeans, we have to ask ourselves, do we want this flexibility in that form? I would put a big question mark after that question. I think that the European model which makes an attempt to tie economic stability to societal security, which is greater here than it is in the USA, is superior in the middle and long term.
So learning from America does not mean learning to win?
Those who are preaching to us should consider what would happen in western European society if one were to adapt the American model on a one-to-one basis. That measure of mobility which the American labor force has, for example, fails here in Europe because of cultural traditions which I do not want to simply throw in the hamper. Besides that, it fails here for things as simple as language.
What can American learn from Europe, then?
It can learn that security of and cooperation within society are also economical assets in the long term. Naturally, not all the new jobs in the USA are for cheap labor. Nevertheless, one cannot seriously dispute that the degree of personal security, including the predictability of one's own life, is less in the USA than it is here. Or take the fact that our educational system gives people a chance who cannot afford the 25,000 dollars a year for a place to study.
Germans can hardly put themselves down as a measure of things - with the unemployment, the national debt and the educational woes.
And nobody is doing that. But on the other hand, we have a completely uncalled for tendency not to let others see what we can do. We had a 3.3 percent rate of growth for this year's first quarter. Not too bad, if you ask me.
And the reward for security in European society is high unemployment?
Try working for McDonald's once. That cannot go on, that people who earn 10,000 marks and up [a month] and who have, as a rule, little flexibility on their own call for flexibility when it comes to others. That doesn't work if one want to organize cohesiveness in a society.
That sounds more traditionalist than it does modernist.
I'm just asking you to understand that - with all the need to change this country - it is also my job to do it in such a way that those who do not have economic alternatives at their disposal get the chance to keep up.
It comes down to globalization in both the Anglo-American and the European answer?
Yes, that is so. That is part of a certain competitive relationship with each other that is an expression of different traditions. This competition is productive and so a conference, as we are having one now, will have its effect in the long term. The other point of my invitation after Berlin is that this type of confrontation, organized in and by Germany, is a giant opportunity. Namely, we have to make up for a central deficiency which has been developing with us in the past 15 years, the terrible deficiency in internationality.
Name an example.
That is determined by the individual theme, such as the Green Card. If we don't create the political superstructure so that it can keep pace with the dramatic changes in the economy, then we'll fall behind again.
But the Green Card is also only a half measure. What would really be necessary would be an immigration law.
But that is typical of how debate happens in Germany. We take a step which really helps in an area and which is flexible because we control it with an ordinance but do not initiate a long-term legislative procedure. And right off the bat one says, yes, this is all too little and we wanted an immigration law. That, for various reasons, is the make-or-break point in the debate. That consists of the idea of overcoming the question of immigration for the first time. People who are not involved with politics every day think, Aha! Immigration can help us, too! For the first time one can present the theme in a positive light. Moreover that was one of the reasons for the ordinance, outside of the objective need.
So you don't intend to leave it at this one-time ordinance?
I don't know that. I want to try it first. If it turns out that we need internationality in other areas, too, then that needs to be discussed. And just as pragmatically as we regulated the issue and with the same flexible instrument. The opposing faction now wants an immigration law, but they want to tie it in with the asylum law. All according to the motto, "if you want an intelligent control in one area, then we demand more control in another area which is neither clever, nor particularly human." I won't go along with that.
Europe is trying to form a counter-power to the USA.
I wouldn't say "counter-power." Europe is trying to form itself into a united Europe which represents a power. But that power is not directed toward anybody in particular. If you want to develop self-awareness, then you do that for yourself and not against others.
Would you talk of a relationship on the same eye level?
That has to be the the goal. Presently that is neither a political nor an economic reality. But Europe is in the process of developing this self-awareness in both depth and breadth. If that turns out, then a commercial space will result which will be bigger than the United States. That can definitely lead to an equal eye level in the future.
The American national missile defense project visibly upsets European circles.
Nobody can deny the Americans the right to construct what they feel is necessary for their national defense. On the other hand, we are partners in a common alliance. It is important to attain a politic of disarmament and to clear the way for further steps to nuclear disarmament. We really do not need a new round of arms competition, either politically or economically. Thirdly, the world, and especially Europe, needs to keep its relationship to Russia and other important countries intact. These three viewpoints must be kept under consideration.
Will you speak about that with Clinton in plain language?
It is the Europeans' mission to make clear in fair and open discussion that these aspects are important for them. That will happen. The sovereignty of the USA to decide what it thinks is politically necessary for defense must be reconciled with the interests of partners in its alliance. I am optimistic of that happening, too.
Do you at all share the USA's analysis about the danger of missile attacks from states like Libya and Iraq?
In an alliance, one certainly would not have to talk about whether a presumed threat has a realistic background. But even if people in Europe came to the conclusion that it did not have a realistic background, then that would surely still not mean that that would not be seen differently in America based on different assessments or even emotions. In that regard it makes little sense to talk about the appropriateness of threat analysis.
Disputes about child custody, Scientology and the death penalty - the cultural differences between Germany and American are turning more into a topic of discussion. Why is that?
We can afford to have that type of discussion. It used to be they were dominated - and probably overshadowed, too - by the creation of common security against a commonly perceived threat. Because that threat today no longer exists and because our partnership is based on common convictions, everyday conflicts retain meaning and guide the discussion. That can't be a surprise. That used to be produced by the self-understanding of our partnership.
The interview was conducted by Werner Kolhoff, Rainer Poertner and Martin E. Suesskind.
The political elite seek dialogue with the Milli Goerues, but critical journalists are being intimidated by the Islamic association.
Flirting with the Islamists
Berlin, Germany
May 5, 2000
TAZ reportby Eberhard Seidel
The professor bowed deeply to his former opponents. Three years ago, Udo Steinbach, Director of the German Oriental Institute in Hamburg was warning of the dangers emanating from the Islamist groups in Germany. Now his motto is, "There is a new openness in dialogue. And the anti-Semitic duct in many publications has been deactivated.
It was a conciliatory start to the meeting of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation entitled, "Fellow citizens of the Moslem Faith: the neglected minority," which took place on Thursday in Berlin. Steinbach even made a good witness for the Milli Goerues, the most influential organization of political Islam in Germany. He appears to have forgotten that the Milli Goerues systematically lied to the German public for years - about their organizational structure, their ideology, their sources of finance, their connections to Scientology and their dependency upon Turkish Islamic leader Necmettin Erbakan.
"What is wrong with Steinbach?" puzzled Hasan Oezdogan during the coffee break. The Chairman of the Islamic Council of Germany, which is an umbrella organization dominated by the Milli Goerues, was not expecting an answer. He knows that it is no longer the Milli Goerues, but their critics, who are running against the wind.
During the meeting on Thursday, the moderator tried to play down criticism by Cologne journalist Ahmet Senyurt for the Milli Goerues as an irrelevant private discussion. Senyurt's "private war": he revealed the years of cooperation between the Milli Guerues and Scientology, reported on the money transfers for the Moslem rebels in the Chechnian war, and, in recent times, has been devoting himself to the billion dollar financial and commercial empire which the Islamists have been building up in Germany and Turkey.
Hasan Oezdogan had the upper hand. During the podium discussion, he denounced Senyurt as a "bad journalist" who "reported falsely" and "slandered" the Milli Goerues. A superfluous attack. Because the critical public had lost interest in information of that sort. Instead of that it flirts with high-ranking Milli Goerues functionaries. All at the head of the Heinrich-Boell Foundation, which is aligned with the Greens.
False Pluralism labeling
Since the beginning of the year, the foundation has been advertising with a series of events for more tolerance for the Moslem minority. In doing that, organizer Thomas Hartmann also increasingly supports the Milli Goerues. The speakers, however, are announced as representatives of the Islam College of Berlin, the Islamic Basic School of Berlin, the Center for Islamic Women's Research and Promotion of Cologne or the Institute for International Academics and Didactics of Cologne. The apparent pluralism is false labeling. They are all organizations of Milli Goerues, which are centrally directed from their Cologne headquarters.
Politician also seek proximity to the Milli Guerues. Berlin Foreign Commissioner Barbara John (CDU), for example. When she presented the booklet on "Mosques and Islamic Life in Berlin" last year, there was a lively discussion. Reason: the role of political Islam in Berlin was said to have been de-emphasized. No big surprise. The sponsor of the work was Muesiad, a business association dominated by Islamists who the Milli Goerues would like to assimilate. John's justification, "We would be getting into a disastrous discussion if the attempt were made to declare them to be lepers."
The new openness is astonishing. Because neither the liberal Christian Democrat John, the Heinrich-Boell Foundation nor the Evangelical Academy in Loccum bothers to carry out a dialogue with the Deutschen Volksunion (DVU). The DVU and Milli Goerues have much in common - they do not call for the use of violence, but they split society with ideologies of inequality, have a conspirative and undemocratic management and organizational structure and non-transparent sources of finance. They also share a virulent Anti-semitism. There are, however, two differences: the Milli Goerues are more successful. And the DVU has met with determined resistance from civilian society.
Also the foreign political spokesman for the CDU parliamentary faction, Karl Lamers, no longer finds anything to reproach the Milli Goerues about. In 1999 he participated in their annual gathering at the Muengersdorfer Stadium in Cologne. Lamers criticized the image which German agencies have of the Milli Goerues, "It is strongly influenced by the picture which the Kemalist forces in Turkey have of the Milli Goerues. One will not progress with that."
How should one regard the Milli Goerues? They were founded by Necmettin Erbakan in 1976 in Germany. Today he still determines the politics of the organization. He wants to replace the system in Turkey with one based on the Koran and Sharia. This is not demanded in Germany as long as they are in the minority.
Who determines the rules of play
The politics of the Milli Goerues are being implemented in Europe by means of hundreds of mosque, women's, youth and student associations. Many of these associations belie their dependency upon Milli Goerues. The Islamic Federation in Berlin, for example, which recently has been acknowledged as a religious community. That federation has credibly assured the officials, at least, that it has nothing to do with Milli Goerues. In one of the internal Milli Goerues documents which is available to taz [this newspaper] it says, in contrast, that the "Islamic Federation," which is in nearly all German states, belongs to the Milli Guerues.
What does an organization which lies so consistently have to hide? The German public has lost any interest in getting an answer. In the meantime, the Milli Goerues determine the rules of play. One example: on September 30, 1999, the Islamic Council, dominated by the Milli Goerues, arranged a podium discussion in the Willy-Brandt building, the SPD center in Berlin. Those invited included Theo Sommer, co-publisher of "Zeit," Edzard Reuter, Peter Scholl-Latour and Michel Friedman from the Central Council of the Jews. Two Berlin journalists, Claudia Dantschke and Ali Yildirim, were denied entrance to the meeting by Milli Goerues ushers. The reason: they had published material from a person who had left the Milli Goerues which proved that the Milli Goerues and their cover companies deceive the public and which showed the tricks by which Milli Goerues intend to infiltrate the CDU district group in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Hasan Oezdogan told the taz: "These two journalists are regarded as instigators, slanderers and active opponents of Islam who practice yellow journalism." Oezdogan described correspondent Yildirim as a "former communist and a radical, apostate Alevite with a great desire to exact revenge upon Moslems." Communist, opponent of Islam, apostate Alevite - translated from the language of the Islamists, that means that any means is permitted in taking action against this man. Nobody took the side of the two journalists. Michel Friedman (CDU) praised the event as an "attempt at the conversational principle of respect."
Where does the sudden favoritism for Milli Goerues come from? The answer is clear to Ahmet Senyurt, "the Milli Guerues have influence in the ghetto. And whoever has this influence can win the politicians over." Many politicians are aware of the explosive situation which lies in portions of the city like Berlin-Kreuzberg, where more than thirty percent of the immigrants are unemployed. Milli Goerues offer help. "We bring the young people away from drugs and violence," goes their offer. "If it weren't for us, it would be much less peaceful in Berlin-Kreuzberg and Cologne-Nippes," Mehmet Sabri Erbakan, Germany's chief of the Milli Goerues, gives food for thought.
But things do not have to stay that way. Hasan Oezdogan ominously added on Thursday that if the German public were to force the Milli Goerues into a corner, that there would not be any integration.
Berlin, Germany
April 11, 2000
taz Nr. 6116 Seite 14Collective sense production: At job assistance training in the labor office anyone may tell his story.
ARMY WITHOUT UNIFORMS
Labor Office job assistance training. We sit next to each other in a training room, average age 50 years, the instructor is not there yet. One participant apparently already has gone through several such episodes, "Hopefully we will not have to introduce ourselves," she said, since she thought that was nobody's business. But that is what we had to do when the instructor came in and asked us.
By "we" I mean a hotel manager with a degree, a female financial purchaser, a degreed communications designer, a building fitter ["Bauschlosser"], a camp worker with a a photography studio in California and a degree in business management which was not recognized in Germany; I am a writer, then there is still a salesman, a software installer from the DDR, a woman doctor and a student in social academics who had stopped going to classes.
The passwords and user names for computers and internet were written by the instructor on the blackboard. Coffee, however, is not permitted at our work stations, she said, because the network administrator got upset when it spilt onto the computers. Then she stated that it was now mandatory for employment agencies to write integration plans, IPs: BWB, BKZ, AIS, SchlZ, D 400. "So that everyone can tell his story to the labor office," she said, "of that we are certain."
During our breakfast snack break, the degreed communications designer said that the labor office had reduced his money, his market value had decreased with increased age, as he had been told. In other places, he said, recruitment training began with meditation and went to twelve o'clock at night.
After break a degreed psychologist came and said that he had a taxi license and a taxi business: "Get the taxi license, but don't tell the labor office, otherwise you'll never be unemployed again!" Besides that, the degreed psychologist is also a management consultant and an internal auditor for the labor office. Again everybody had to introduce themselves and state their strengths. I said, "I'll write any kind of garbage for money!"
The degreed psychologist used a projector to put a list on the wall, the top 14 tips from America. Number 10 was "Always improve your own work ethic!", number 11, "Always improve your own work experience!" That reminded me of real-life, existential socialism: constant, multi-sided development in accordance with the plan of the politics of the main mission. Easternization of the West marches on.
Whatever anybody said, the instructor responded, "Exactly!", "Right!" or "You've said it." The gestures and the body language of this employment psychologist compared to those of salespeople for arthritic bandages, members of the hustlers' congress or those of Scientology speakers. Each movement is rehearsed - even showing up late was planned in advance - and crying for sympathy. His coffee cup, his hands, all aspects of his presentation. These same facial expressions, rhetorical pauses, body movements and sentence constructs are recommended by managers the world over. A huge international army that is geared up in suits and ties instead of uniforms. And to fit in, like here, they will also wear jeans and a t-shirt.
Lunch break in the cafeteria. Most, so I learn, are here voluntarily and are convinced of the sense of the job training. The former social studies student said that she had smelled beer at the employment agent's offices. She mentioned something about it and was told, "I can't smell anything, my nosed is clogged up."
After break, an instructor announced that no role call would be taken. Then she stated the basics of how to send an e-mail. Nobody paid attention to me as I went backward, one step at a time, through the door and down the stairs.
Falko Hennig
by Susanne Stiefel
[Article on Heilbronn]
[...]
The Hesserbaeck [name of a beer bar near the cemetery] tells the story behind the latest episode of the current ongoing Heilbronn romance novel. It is the story of the woman gardener up on the corner who took care of the cemetery and left her husband, emptying all savings acc