CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTIONS NEEDED IN ALL USA STATES TODAY

Mom, sent me the following:

LOOKING AT THE HEALTH CARE PACKAGE THAT CONGRESS GETS, AMERICANS NEED TO ORGANIZE IMMEDIATELY


"When the people fear their government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson

They would fear this! Time for a 28th Amendment.

Amendment 28

Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.

Let's get this passed around, folks - these people have brought this upon themselves!!!

THEY WERE SINGLES, TOO—A LOOK AT NEHEMIA AND JEREMIAH

THEY WERE SINGLES, TOO—A LOOK AT NEHEMIA AND JEREMIAH

By Kevin Anthony Stoda

Our church and world are already inundated with conflicting views on single life. Basically, “single” means simply that one is not living with husband or wife. One might be a widow, a divorce, or never even been married. There are, however, many myths about leadership roles in churches as related to singleness. These myths include the idea that only “marrieds” should hold leadership roles in the church. We need to avoid such myths.

Last summer, I shared with my congregation a sermon about New Testament role models, such as the Apostle Paul, about Martha & Mary, Anne at the Alter, and John the Babtist. All these New Testament heroes were singles—as was, of course, Jesus the Christ.

Today, I want to encourage more involvement from all church members & participants by sharing on inspiring Old Testament figures who were single and super role models for Christians in all our fellowships worldwide today. They are models of faith and communities of which they were full members.

Again, I have a lot of the basis for this message from David M. Hoffeditz’s work, THEY WERE SINGLE, TOO.

http://www.amazon.com/They-Were-Single-Too-Biblical/dp/0825427762#reader_0825427762

I will share today from the lives of Jeremiah & Nehemiah as singles and motivating examples to all Christians—not only for singles but to all in the Christian community worldwide.

Psalm 13 starts, “How long, Lord, will you ignore me? How long will you pay no attention to me?” That was a song of David’s, but it certainly reflected the lonely and single life of Jeremiah, too. Hoffeditz writes, “Until, ‘the fall of Jerusalem in 587 (BC), his [Jeremiah] forty-year ministry was marked by opponents’ attempts to silence him by means of arrests, trials, beatings, imprisonments, and’ assassination.

Throughout his life, Jeremiah was seen as both an angry man and a weeping prophet. He even called down judgment (through the power of God) on some of this opposition.

However, more than the behavior Jeremiah showed in importance are the sacrifices he made. One of them was his call to not marry, as reported in 16:2 of Jeremiah; he was also certainly called to not have children, too. It should be noted that at the time in Israel’s history, there was not even a Hebrew word in existence for “bachelor”. It was generally not an acceptable condition in Hebrew society.
Throughout the entire book, Jeremiah shows us at least 5 ways to persevere and succeed as a child & a prophet of God’s—even with our loneliness and our persecutions. First of all, Jeremiah was appointed from birth to take on his role as prophet or even as human being. God tells him in Jeremiah 1:4-5, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you prophet to the nations.”

This news is similar to what Apostle Paul told the Ephesians in 1:4-6. There we are told that Jesus chose us before the world was created. Moreover, before Jeremiah knew God; God already knew Jeremiah—and the same is true for you and me. And while Jeremiah (and we) doubt, GOD SUPPLIES.

Second, we need to trust in God’s control. By chapter 15, Jeremiah has experienced a lot of stress—including isolation and loneliness, totally marginalized and feeling rejected by ALL. Jeremiah makes a list of over a dozen things he has done to serve the Lord. He petitions God for an explanation. Soon, God responds that he is in control. Finally, in 16:9, Jeremiah pronounces that the Lord “is my strength and fortress, and my refuge in my day of affliction.

Third, and very importantly, we can each learn God’s perspective. This can be seen in Jeremiah’s purchase of a field n the midst of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. WOULD YOU BUY PROPERTY UNDER BOMBARDMENT? In 32:16-25, we see that Jeremiah can do this because he recognizes God’s perspective of things. “Ah Lord God, it is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arms. Nothing is too hard for you 9and) you show steadfast love to the 1000th generation.” Through the power of prayer, Jeremiah had received the vision to buy the field in war time.

According to Hoffeditz, Eugene Peterson writes of Jeremiah, “No one becomes human the way Jeremiah was human by posing in a posture of victory. It was prayers, hidden but persistent, that brought him to human wholeness and spiritual sensity that we want.” Jeremiah’s prayer life also attests to his heart and the fact that God wants to communicate with us there in our hearts.

A fifth lesson from the life of Jeremiah is that he did have and these friends played great and supportive roles. In the same way, we are called to be friends to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are called to act in supportive roles, too.

Recall the Eunuch in the King’s court who came to rescue Jeremiah in 38:1-13. His name was Ebed Melech—and as a eunuch, by definition , he was single, too. This Ethiopian slave took his own life into his hands by challenging the King Zedekiah and eventually b rescuing Jeremiah. Others who aided Jeremiah and his works included Gedoliah, the Governor of Judah, and Elash, the Son of Saphan. Both faced death threats. As well, Baruch served Jeremiah despite losing his royal lineage rights in the Kingdom of Israel.

We turn now to another single who was a role model in the Old Testament: Nehemiah, who came back from the exile to Jerusalem to reconstruct the Kingdom, we find a man who is neither a prophet nor a born leader. He is simply a cupbearer. Like Jeremiah, Nehemiah was ridiculed by his own workers, by the work he performed, and even mocked by the materials he had chosen. Tobiah, a principle opponent, even sent letters threatening his life and that of his workers.

In all this, any individual—let alone a single person and an outsider in Jerusalem—might have been engulfed by depression at such a moment. What drove Nehemiah on??? It was his commitment to the Lord. This commitment truly represents the character of Nehemiah.

Hoffeditz notes, “Living with imperfect people creates frustration and discouragement.” In building the Old Testament Jerusalem Wall anew, we observe that Nehemiah observed many intraparty and intra-familial feuds. There were the struggles between those who had much and those who had little. There was anger amongst those who had good property and those who had less good quality land and homes. Socially there was struggle constantly.

However, from the first part of Nehemiah’s book onwards we see that Nehemiah’s actions and character revealed a full commitment to the Lord [despite the people’s sins and failures evidenced all around him]. Commitment was what Nehemiah was about. This was how a young untrained leader—a cupbearer—was able to lead his people to do more & more while surmounting all kinds of obstacles for over 12 years.

Nehemiah’s commitment rested not only on the knowledge of God’s words and promises in scripture nor legends. Like Jeremiah, Nehemiah walked with God, i.e. just as Adam in the garden of Eden. JI Packer is quoted by Hoffeditz: Nehemiah “saturated with praying and praying of the truest kind—the kind of prayer that is always seeking to clarify its own vision of who and what God is, and to celebrate his reality in constant adoration, and to rethink in his presence such needs and requests as one is bringing to him . . .”

God, help us all to pray like that!

As Hoffeditz, himself shares, “There are no easy twelve steps or instant packets to obtain commitment to the Lord.” It requires prayer, searching for knowledge, avoiding false concepts of self-sufficiency, and a focus on the vision of God and his commitment to us and our communities on earth.

Through his intimate relationship to God, Nehemiah’s commitment grew. For example, he prays when he asks for provision from the Persian King (2:4). He prays for the safety of his people and the guards (4:9). In 6:9, he calls for the lord to strengthen his people further in the midst of foreign pressure. Finally, in various verses (2:20, 4:15) we can see that Nehemiah seems often to fully rest in comfort that the Lord will act. For example, in his prayers and actions, he moves quickly away from ever asking: “Why am I persecuted?” or “Why are my people so besieged?” Instead, he moves quickly to calling on God to tackle his assignments.

The Lord was in charge. Nehemiah simply had faith in this.


A final reason that this single man pursued that Restoration of Jerusalem project--not to be an example for us for all time—but rather because he enjoyed the privilege and joy of serving the Lord.

Let us do the same. Find our calls and follow with commitment.

In summary, Jeremiah & Nehemiah were committed to the Lord and therefore did not quit. Five areas of Jeremiah’s are lifted up in this Message for reflection on how Jeremiah was able to overcome so much trouble in his life as a prophet. This enabled him to not only to survive but to productively serve the Lord as we should;

(1) “Jeremiah recognized that the Lord had called him.”
(2) Jeremiah’s trust in God’s control serve as a defense against loneliness and isolation.
(3) Jeremiah could continue on in spite of opposition and trouble because he came to embrace God’s Perspective.
(4) Both Jeremiah and Nehemiah were committed to prayer life everyday with the Lord—on their knees or off them.
(5) Jeremiah needed friends and supporters—and had them throughout his long life—[Let’s be supporters of one another like Jeremiah!!!!]

In the life of Nehemiah we see two more insights into how we—whether singles or marrieds—can carry on and succeed.

Nehemiah was but a humble cupbearer, but he was willing to give up everything—moving a thousand kilometers from a royal court to dusty and filled with rubble Jerusalem. He gave up his time, too. For 12 years, he put up with great opposition from military powers and 12 years of infighting among the Israelis themselves.

Nehemiah was threatened with his life. He was mocked and ridiculed, but he continued. In all this a second insight becomes visible. If we, too, are committed to service and God’s community we will feel a joy of blessings and privilege.

Amen.

SUICIDE ATTENTION NEEDED WORLDWIDE FOR SOLDIERS—not just in the USA

SUICIDE ATTENTION NEEDED WORLDWIDE FOR SOLDIERS—not just in the USA

By Kevin Stoda, Germany

American suicide rates for military personnel are setting all-time highs, but America is not the only place where PTSD and related war experiences can lead to violence. Germany is only now beginning to brace itself for the hard lessons of war and war zone experience—and how that continues to effect volunteers and their loved ones (and society) long after the battles are over.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125720469173424023.html

During most of the Cold War era, no German soldiers were sent to engage in wars, battles or do international peace keeping duties until the Yugoslavian breakup of the 1990s and the end of Cambodian wars. Since that decade, German forces have been found in war zones in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and in Africa. Since Germany sees its forces abroad as working in peacekeeping and development capacity, there has been little inclination to really face the issues of post-traumatic stress faced by its troops.

James Dunnigan wrote in August, “In the last three years, some 62,000 German troops have been stationed in combat (or peacekeeping) zones, where they can be exposed to traumatic events, the most traumatic one being not allowed to fight back.”

Dunnigan claimed that a lot of the stress had had to do with the rules of engagement (ROE) that most German, non-combat and combat troops find themselves in. “While many Germans oppose the presence of their troops in Afghanistan, the restrictive ROEs [prior to changes in August this year] had become a growing embarrassment. The thousands of German soldiers who had served in Afghanistan continued to complain about it when they returned home. And then there the growing number of soldiers coming back suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Last year, 245 German soldiers, who had served in war zones (including Afghanistan), were classified as PTSD casualties. The year before, there were only 83 PTSD casualties. The restrictive ROE caused stress. Just the thought of it can be stressful.”

Suicide attempts have not been uncommon among returnees from wherever German Peacekeepers have been, though. The Yugoslavian occupations have brought back severely strained troops to make their way in a post-military Germany.

http://www.militaerseelsorge.bundeswehr.de/portal/a/eka/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLN3KLNzTxdgRJQjnmvvqRCPGglFR9b31fj_zcVP0A_YLciHJHR0VFAFDaJAY!/delta/base64xml/L2dJQSEvUUt3QS80SVVFLzZfMkZfMTQ5RQ!!?yw_contentURL=%2F01DB090200000001%2FW27VVHL9421INFODE%2Fcontent.jsp

In an article entitled, “Already Forgotten” [Schon Vergerssen], a German Bundeswehr (Military) article on the web recently talked of the work the Evangelical church is offering on behalf of returning soldiers—who are no longer helped nor covered by PTSD assistance offered by military psychologists. This lack of help for former soldiers by the Bundeswehr itself has forced many concerned former soldiers to create their own self-help organizations.

http://www.br-online.de/bayerisches-fernsehen/kontrovers/kontrovers-beitrag-afghanistan-ID1248687952301.xml


One such self-help group is named SKARABAES after the Egyptian beetle god of stong transformation or “transforming strength”. Heinz Sonnenstrahl, a former sergeant, founded the group in 2003 for those no longer serving in the military. Sonnenstrahl is particularly concerned that some of these soldiers will eventually undertake an attack on society as American’s witnessed in the recent Fort Hood massacre.

Just as Dunnigan (above) was concerned with the extra stress that Germans face often as non-combatants in a war-zone, Sonnenstrahl has noted that 8 years of war in Afghanistan is longer than the duration of WWII. He pointed out in an interview with the Left Party’s newspaper, KLAR, last week that it is quite clear that military forces are “ill-fit to fulfill the role of peacekeeper in Afghanistan”.

Sonnenstrahl notes that until now German society and its national military leaders are keeping the vast number of problems faced by war-zone returnees a bit under wraps because all of Germany’s international activities require volunteers.

Sonnestrahl claims that if knowledge of the vast problem of PTSD “were well-known, military volunteerism in Germany would be significantly adversely affected”.

Sonnenstrahl also explains that the most traumatic phases of PTSD sometimes only manifest themselves after forces have been out of Afghanistan or other war zones for a long time. Therefore, the lack of trained professional help (outside the military or Bundeswehr) after one leaves the military is a grave issue in Germany these days. The founder of SKARABAES adds, “It is often much later, after returning or leaving the military, that the total collapse for individual victims of PTSD occurs.”

Eminent Domain and America

Eminent Domain and America

By Kevin Anthony Stoda


I have just heard of Pfizer Pharmaceutical’s decision to leave New London, Connecticut. The state of Connecticut has done nothing to protect the citizens of New London abused by local usage of eminent domain for decades. Many other states have been concerned of the run amok real estate and city planning practices in Connecticut, New York and other places in America. Americans are growing wary, but more must be done.

I would suggest all reader write the following emails: “Dear, Connecticut Government Leaders, Why not use Eminent Domain and take over Pfizer and all those big bad insurance companies that misuse America’s total landscape?”

http://www.ct.gov/ctportal/taxonomy/taxonomy.asp?DLN=27537&ctportalNav=|27537|&ctportalPNavCtr=|27608|#27608


According to DEMOCRACY NOW, “Homeowners in New London, Connecticut [had taken] . . . on the city’s leaders after they announced plans to condemn all of the homes in one neighborhood to make way for a private development project for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The city said it would bring in thousands of jobs. After a 2005 Supreme Court ruling against the homeowners, the entire neighborhood was bulldozed. This week Pfizer announced it is shutting down its research center.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/13/eminent

Dana Berliner is senior attorney at the Institute of Justice, and she had “represented the homeowners in Kelo v. New London, in which the US Supreme Court ruled that cities could condemn property because other uses may produce an increase in tax dollars and jobs.”

http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2004/2004_04_108

Berliner noted that the Supreme Court, in its outrageous 2005 decision, refused to look at the facts on the ground that the ill-thought-out development-scheme involving Pfizer’s expected commitment to the city of New London was absolutely not going to work.

http://www.ij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=920&Itemid=165

The Supreme Court decision was so outrageous that over 20 US states immediately rewrote their own eminent domain laws to try to stop the horribly bad decision-making seen in New London “would and could not happen here”.

DN’s Juan Gonzalez explained, “The proposed $75 million [New London] project was part of the city’s efforts to spruce up the area for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which had agreed to construct a $300 million research facility adjacent to Fort Trumbull. The city claimed the project would create 3,000 jobs. Several homeowners refused to give up their homes, and their case made it all the way to the Supreme Court. In June, 2005, the court ruled by a 5-4 majority that New London’s seizure of the homes for private development was a permissible ‘public purpose.’ The decision, Kelo v. New London, infuriated millions of property rights advocates across the country. After the decision, the neighborhood was bulldozed.”

From ZIMBABWE to Small Town America--STERLING, KANSAS
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/05/zimbabwe-whites-flown-bac_n_211858.html
Whenever I hear the words “eminent domain”, I almost always recall talks I have had with many white (and black) citizens from Zimbabwe who have had their properties seized over the past two or three decades under the Mugabe regime. For example, a judge in Zimbabwe had his farm taken personally by Robert Mugabe’s wife early in 2009.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/4447091/Robert-Mugabes-wife-Grace-seizes-Zimbabwe-farm.html
After these Zimbabweans have talked about their history with property seizures in their homelands, I have shared with these Zimbabweans that in America for decades real estate, business shylocks, and city developers have been abusing American property owners for years, i.e. using eminent domain and laws of condemnation to take property again and again.
In my family’s case, in the mid-1990s, the small town of Sterling, Kansas (approx. 2000 residents) simply took over my mother’s house and property—without even contacting her. You see, my mom had been divorced over 15 years earlier—a process through which the full property eventually became hers. In the early 1980s, there had been recession in property and job market throughout all rural areas in America, so the property often went unsold for years.
In short, my family had gone to neighbors all around the location of the house in Sterling over several years trying to sell the house to no avail. No one took the offer.
Meanwhile, my mom had been working for the United Methodists of Oklahoma continuously from 1980 through the end of the 1990s. (She had even become a minister first in the 1970s in Sterling, Kansas through the UM church there. Until late 1979, mom had been a minister in Kansas for the UM church, too.) In short, mom was a public individual in the Midwest and a simple background check through local, state or federal police would and could have provided the City of Sterling, Kansas with the phone number and address of my mother quite easily. They could have contacted her at the time the city took over the property, but they did not claiming that the owner could not be found.
Claiming to have been unable to find out where my mother lived,, Sterling city administrators took away my parent’s old house for a pittance. So, the house and property were confiscated. The house was then torn down and the land was put up for auction. Only then, after the auction, was a 4 or 5 thousand dollar check sent to my mother in Oklahoma.
In conclusion, at auction my mom’s property was sold to a neighbor--who had strong connections for years with the local city police.

BACK TO NEW LONDON
New London’s Michael Cristofaro tearfully reported on Democracy Now, “Well, I mean, that [the intention of Pfizer to leave now] hurts even more, because, you know, the state and the city—you know, Pfizer came in. They [the real estate leaders, Pfizer, and city fathers] said what they would like to see happen, you know, to the neighborhood. And they had executives who basically said they didn’t want to look out their tenements down at—I mean, look out their windows down at these tenements and, you know, ‘We would like to have a biotech buildings and office park there.’ And so, that’s what the city did. They accommodated them. And they gave them all these tax breaks.”
Cristofaro concluded, “And the hopes and dreams were that this Pfizer Global Research Center was going to draw all these major corporations into New London, and it was going to save them, you know, by increasing the tax rolls. And here it is, ten years later, they actually extended tax abatements an additional three years to entice Pfizer to come here. And here it is, the tenth year, and the tax abatements are finally up, and they turn around and drop this bombshell, saying, ‘We are leaving.’”
In short, there never has been any justice and never will be any justice until more rigorous eminent domain laws are implemented in America. Moreover, the Supreme Court must support individuals over-run-amok city leaders and development mongers as it failed to do in the landmark 2005 case.
Worse still, in the case of the recent seizing of mosques from Muslim community groups this past week, America can only make more enemies world wide until common sense and legal protection are finally applied prior to seizures of property.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/13/mosques
“The Council on American-Islamic Relations warns that the seizure of places of worship may have First Amendment implications for the American Muslim community,” according to Democracy Now.
Wake up, America, fight for change and justice!!!!!

DOES THE USA ARMY NOT KNOW that the KOCH Government in Hessen DOESN’T REALLY LIKE FOREIGNERS—AT ALL? Why is USA army moving from Heidelberg to Wiesba

DOES THE USA ARMY NOT KNOW THAT THE KOCH DOESN’T REALLY LIKE FOREIGNERS—AT ALL? Why is USA army moving from Heidelberg to Wiesbaden, Hessen?

By Kevin Stoda, Wiesbaden


The USA Army in Germany is helping to drive up housing and living costs in Hessen with its newest move to Wiesbaden from Baden-Württemberg’s Heidelberg base over the next two years. This comes at a time when the USA needs to be watching its overall federal budget much more carefully.

According to USACE, Justin Ward, “With the demolition of a few empty storage bunkers south of the Wiesbaden Army Airfield recently, a new era has begun. The flattening of the garrison's Basic Load Ammunition Storage Area is the first significant step to prepare a 99-acre tract of land for a new $133 million military family housing community. The project marks the first Army-funded townhouse community in Wiesbaden - a change in direction from stairwell living. It also marks the first visible sign of 7th Army Headquarters’ move from Heidelberg to Wiesbaden.”

http://www.army.mil/-news/2009/04/21/19915-wiesbaden-prepares-new-townhomes/


Another US Army Corp of Engineers spokesperson in Wiesbaden, Syballe Ballnath, shares, “This housing project is monumental not only in its size, but also in its symbolism. . . . By building this community, we're setting the stage for the future footprint of the Armed Forces in Europe.”

Ward writes, “By early 2012, plans call for up to 324 new townhouses, duplexes, and single family homes to be built for the staffers of 7th Army's operational facilities. The community will include a mix of three- and four-bedroom quarters ranging from junior enlisted to general officer. Recreation areas will include 10 playgrounds, seven picnic areas with grills and shelters, two sports fields, two community plazas for yard sales and shuttle bus service, and a running path. When fully funded, the two-phased construction project will be the Army's largest ever in Wiesbaden.”


DESPITE ALL THE HOOPLA

In short, less than a decade or so after the USA Air Force in Europe moved its headquarters in Europe away from Wiesbaden, thousands of Americans are now set to move back into the Wiesbaden, Hessen area, i.e. near the Rhine River and Frankfurt’s many regional and international airports.

The huge reversal in American Department of Defense (DOD) plans to build new base capacity in Europe has come at a terrible time in many ways. First of all, the U.S. Dollar to Euro exchange rate is currently at its worst level in history—(1) making it unwieldy in to keep budgets on target (in terms of U.S. Dollar expenditures) to build this new Army Command in Europe at this particular time and (2) making it extremely expensive for U.S. personnel and contractors to be sent into central Europe to work for years on end.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,531486,00.html


Finally, (3) the leadership of the very state of Hessen, where Wiesbaden is the capital, under the Christian Democratic Union (CDU party) political leadership under Roland Koch over the past decade (1999-2009) has become considered throughout Germany to be one of the least-foreigner friendly state in Germany to migrate to.

That status of Hessen’s having the most xenophobic political leadership in Germany may come as a surprise to many European experts, i.e. who have witnessed a more officially evident rise in nationalism and xenophobia in the former East German states of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt over the past two decades. However, Koch has worked hard at this reputation and was reelected in 2009 once again without disavowing much—if any--of his prior anti-foreigner stance

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119281521/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0


In 2008, Charles Hawley had written in Der Spiegel magazine predicted that the next major elections in Hessen state would be different. He had written: “The center-right in Germany has often used xenophobic campaigns to propel them to power. Roland Koch's anti-foreigner campaign in Hesse [in recent months] , however, [has] backfired, showing that he has lost touch with his electorate.”

Whereas, that may have been true in 2008, at the same Roland Koch, after a short political hiatus, was reelected to lead the Hessen Landtag again in January 2009. In short, “Koch's years of experience as a prominent Christian Democrat (CDU) politician [have continually] told him that a bit of foreigner bashing is a sure way to win votes. It had, after all, worked before -- Koch became governor in 1999 after a populist signature gathering campaign against double citizenship -- one that many observers saw as profoundly xenophobic.”

Last year, the African People’s Convention concurred, “We have seen this in the past through his [Koch’s] propaganda campaign against Dual Citizenship proposal in 1999 that brought him to power. Roland Koch is actually seeking rightist support. Election watchers outside Germany have pointed out that the reason the far right vote collapsed in Germany is the policies of Roland Koch and some of his fellow politicians in the Christian Democrats. They have not become far right Party, but they have started speaking in tongues to the anti-immigrant vote, which may not be a good political strategy. The natural strategy for the right is in fact to start taking the immigration issues, crime, law and other related issues as an important topic to look into. It is however, a topic which plays on certain fears, rational or irrational on the minds of the less educated, the less enlightened and the less secured populace who think immigrants are the cause of all social problems in Germany.”

Koch consistently has declared that far too many crimes in Germany are committed by foreigners while ignoring the actual enforcement rules of police in handling, charging, and prosecuting criminals in the country. In short, foreigner violence is more visible in regions where unemployment is high—and due to the poor integration policies and job policies in Germany many more foreigners are out of work while failing to get government assistance in a fair and timely manner.


Moreover, the as the APC noted, “This hostility towards foreigners [under Koch in Hessen] has manifested in discrimination against foreigners, and in extreme cases, violent attack on an entire community. The reason for the rise of the far right attacks in Germany is the failure to integrate immigrants socially and economically into the German society unlike the United Kingdom and U.S.A, where the melting pot seems to work and has worked for many decades. In Germany, the melting pot has failed tremendously.”


Not only Africans and Americans need to be wary of Koch and his anti-foreigner bias. Koch has also been charged as behaving and speaking anti-Semitic phrases in many speeches, whether in making allusions to Jewish and German history or to Muslims or Arabs.


http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,226775,00.html



"The Central Council of Jews in Germany is right," said Kenan Kolat, who heads the umbrella group of Germany's Turkish community. "The level of Mr. Koch's campaign is hardly distinguishable from those run by the (neo-Nazi National Democratic Party -- NPD). ... I hope voters give Mr. Koch what he deserves for his xenophobic rhetoric."


“’Ali Kizilkaya of the (German) Islam Council called Koch's campaign ‘wind in the sails of right-wing radical parties.’ He echoed the sentiment of Thursday's letter by saying that he is concerned that Koch might be sacrificing social cohesion in Germany for short-term political gain.”


ANTI-AMERICAN VISA AND WORK ISSUES ARE MANY


All of Germany has become a more unfriendly place for Americans to work over the past two to three decades. This has occurred parallel to the growth and power of the European Union as a whole, which has decided to position itself as an alternative to America on the global political economic stage. This has occurred even as more and more Germans have come to confess that historically both Germany and Central Europe have been a multicultural melting pot for the continent for millennia. Even today, “Berlin the German capital and international metropolis in the heart of Europe” is not only a “city of culture, sports, politics, and science [but a] . . . population of almost 3.4 million fills an area of 890 km², including people from more than 200 different countries who have chosen the melting pot of Berlin for their new 'heimat'.”

http://www.linguee.de/uebersetzung/deutsch/melting+pot.html

Many other regions of Germany, such as the Industrial Ruhr River region (in North Rhine Westphalia) have—with the exception of 12 years of the Nazi era—consistently seen itself as a multicultural region in Germany.

http://www.geschichte.nrw.de/artikel.php?artikel[id]=337&lkz=de
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0708/yongho/yongho2.html


Similarly, as in Switzerland, the Rhine River in Germany has often played a role in the Rhine regions’ development as a multicultural identity--in the centuries prior to 19th Century when Romanticism and Nationalism became the prominent regional paradigm. By the way, Wiesbaden, where the new American Army base is to be located in Hessen, is also on the Rhine. Even in the days of the Roman occupation of the Rhine, two millennia ago, the Rhine region was certainly considered a multicultural place.

Nearby Frankfurt on the Main River in Hessen, too, is seen as another great melting pot--as are the great cities of Cologne and Duesseldorf to the north, i.e. where the Rhine River eventually passes into Holland and the Netherlands.

http://www.comenius-multiculturalism.eu/frankfurt/introduction.pdf

Meanwhile, in Germany, many Americans who come over to join their family members here have found that they will never get any visa to work in the state of Hessen. The job situation for Americans is so bad that the USA Department of Defense is currently telling teachers arriving at the DOD schools throughout Germany (but especially in the Wiesbaden region) not to try and bring spouses nor kids over here because:

(1) the cost of living is to high,

(2) Germans almost never give spousal visas to work (and, in my case, even a spousal visa to live with me), and

(3) integration in Hessen for long-term foreign labor and children of laborers has been abysmal for decades.

In other words, although almost 1 out of every 3 Wiesbaden residents are of foreign birth or of foreign-born parentage, most of these foreign youth—as a whole—do not do outstandingly well in the educational and training system (for which Germany has been renowned for decades). This means that very few children of foreign born-and-raised households do as well financially and academically in society as their German counterparts.

http://www.hr-online.de/website/rubriken/nachrichten/indexhessen34938.jsp?key=standard_document_37947046&rubrik=34954


“Immigrants rarely have in their possession formal vocational training certificates or qualifications that can easily match the German standards. Employees who came to Germany as immigrants can hardly expect any career advances in their companies, as company training programs are either too limited or non-existent.”

https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/equal/jsp/dpComplete.jsp?cip=DE&national=XB4-76051-20-ST%2F210


“The effect of that is that they are quite frequently employed as unskilled workers or aides, or that they are unemployed. A reason for that is the lack of awareness on the part of the employer, the firm, and the employees’ representations both in the company and beyond. In addition to that, more and more youngsters and young adults try to get access to the training market. Quite frequently, they will experience adjustment and integration problems in job training and social life similar to those of their parents. Typical is the phenomenon of isolation, compartmentalization, and exclusion.”

This is neglect of foreign born residents is pretty sad because nearly 1 in 5 (or even 1 in 4) Americans of Caucasian descent have ancestors from Germany. With the American economy in the doldrums a closed Fortress Europe is not helpful to the many qualified and technically talented Americans who could otherwise succeed here.
Historically, American soldiers, veterans, and military personnel (and their families) have enjoyed their time in Germany. However, over the past decade—with the larger anti-foreigner backlash in some regions in Germany and with the rising value of the Euro, Germany and other lands are becoming hardship duties for USA personnel and their families—as well as for the 1000s of subcontractors, who are supporting the building and creation of the newest—most monumental—base in Wiesbaden in this 2009-2012 transition period.

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2009/10/dear-cdu-csu-fdp-greens-left-spd-please.html


In short, due to the lack of good integration practices and related educational skills training or certification, Americans and other foreigners here often remain fairly isolated and under-integrated in German society—even when and where Americans have played an important economic role in the community for decades, such has been the case for 7 decades in Wiesbaden, via DOD expenditures and other direct foreign investment.

http://www.wiesbaden.army.mil/sites/local/


Now, with the cost of living in Europe so high due to the drop in the dollar and because of the anti-immigration character of the Hessen state currently in 2009, it is not clear whether American military personnel, their dependence, and related U.S.A. laborers will have much joy living and working on or for in new Wiesbaden Army base—except on the new USA military base itself—which serves as an advanced sort of reservation—or ghetto (where the Americans continue to remain separated from the changing cultures of Central Europe around them). In short, it will become a more quarantined world than American military experience in the past in Hessen have witnessed in the last 5 decades.

Initiative für soziale Gerechtigkeit in Wiesbaden

I have written before over this organizations work for peace and justice for the poor and marginalized in Wiesbaden.

Finally, another local newspaper has picked up on the work of the der Initiative für soziale Gerechtigkeit in Wiesbaden. Here is the complete article in German from the Wiesbadener Tagblatt.

http://www.wiesbadener-tagblatt.de/region/themen/mein-verein/7851635.htm

Gewollt provokant

12.11.2009 - WIESBADEN

Von Anja Baumgart-Pietsch

HILFSVEREIN Initiative für soziale Grechtigkeit stellt sich an die Seite der Schwachen

"Wir sind ein Kampfverein", sagt Ansgar Robel, Zweiter Vorsitzender der Initiative für soziale Gerechtigkeit. Seit einem Jahr ist der Verein in Wiesbaden präsent und vielen durch seine oft provokanten Plakate, die in der Stadt aufgehängt sind, bekannt.

"Kampfverein" meint Robel im Sinne des Kampfes für sein Klientel - Hartz-IV-Empfänger und andere sozial schwächergestellte Personen. Dass es in diesem Kampf oft mit härteren Bandagen zugeht, nimmt der Verein in Kauf: So wird Aufmerksamkeit gewonnen, und das führte bereits in einigen Fällen zu Fortschritten, meint Robel. "Wir haben bereits einige Verbesserungen der Situation von Hartz-IV-Empfängern in Wiesbaden erreicht." Durch seine Existenz nehme der Verein auch oft Druck aus Einzelfällen heraus. "Was vorher oft bei den Behörden abgeladen wurde, landet jetzt bei uns."

Die Initiative hält einmal im Monat Beratungsstunden ab - keine Rechtsberatung, aber man könne Fragen stellen, sich begleiten lassen und Dinge loswerden, die zu den Themen Hartz IV, Ein-Euro-Jobs und weitere in diesem Bereich gehören. Vorträge finden ebenfalls statt: Zuletzt hielt Prof. Albrecht Brühl, der als Konsiliaranwalt für die Soziale Hilfe Wiesbaden tätig ist, einen Vortrag zum Thema "Selbständige und Künstler unter dem Hartz-IV-Regime".

Bewusst sind die Plakate wie der Öffentlichkeitsauftritt überhaupt provokativ formuliert und gestaltet - und der Zuspruch ist rege. 70 Mitglieder zähle der Verein mittlerweile, sagt Ansgar Robel. "Eigentlich arbeiten wir quasi an unserer eigenen Abschaffung, denn wenn sich die gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen und Strukturen ändern, hätten wir unser Ziel erreicht und können aufhören." Dass dies nicht so bald der Fall sein werde, sei klar.

Besonders hat sich der Verein die kritische Begleitung der Ein-Euro-Arbeitsverhältnisse auf die Fahne geschrieben und ist dabei schon des öfteren mit Wiesbadener Institutionen über Kreuz geraten, die solche Arbeitsverhältnisse anbieten. Der Verein hält diese in den meisten Fällen für "arbeitsplatzvernichtend und rechtswidrig". Einige Erfolge in diesem Bereich könne man bereits verzeichnen, so Ansgar Robel: Manche derartigen Arbeitsverhältnisse seien in reguläre umgewandelt worden. Außerdem: Hartz-IV-und Sozialhilfeempfänger werden beim Sozialamt jetzt besser behandelt", konstatiert Robel zufrieden. Durch die Aufmerksamkeit, die mit den oft sehr plakativen Aktionen erreicht wurde, habe sich manches geändert. Deswegen werde auch das Konfliktpotenzial immer geringer, und das sei ja unbestritten ein Erfolg, sagt Robel.

Dennoch werde man nicht nachlassen, sich auch künftig gegen Ungerechtigkeiten aller Art zu wehren - wenn nötig auch mit offensiver Öffentlichkeitsarbeit - und Betroffenen versuchen zu helfen. Die Initiative setzt sich beispielsweise auch für die Schaffung eines Computerraums ein, wo Arbeitslose ihre Bewerbung unter Anleitung schreiben können, denn viele Betroffene haben keine eigenen technischen Möglichkeiten dazu. Mit einer sehr ausführlichen Internetpräsenz informiert die Initiative alle, die Zugang zum Computer haben: Gesetze, Urteile und die Dokumentation aller Aktionen und Aktivitäten sind hier verzeichnet.

Sehr geehrten Herrn Dr. Christian Kirchberg, Karlsruhe und Anwaelte/innen in Deutschland, Ich merke, dass in den Greundgesaetz, dass Alle Menschen vo

Sehr geehrten Herrn Dr. Christian Kirchberg, Karlsruhe und Anwaelte/innen in Deutschland,

Ich merke, dass in den Greundgesaetz, dass Alle Menschen vor dem Gesetz gleich sind.

Artikel 3
(1) Alle Menschen sind vor dem Gesetz gleich.
(2) Männer und Frauen sind gleichberechtigt. Der Staat fördert die tatsächliche Durchsetzung der Gleichberechtigung von Frauen und Männern und wirkt auf die Beseitigung bestehender Nachteile hin.
(3) Niemand darf wegen seines Geschlechtes, seiner Abstammung, seiner Rasse, seiner Sprache, seiner Heimat und Herkunft, seines Glaubens, seiner religiösen oder politischen Anschauungen benachteiligt oder bevorzugt werden. Niemand darf wegen seiner Behinderung benachteiligt werden.
Ich bin Amerikaner aber wohne und arbeite in Deutschland (und zahle Steuer hier) und sollte mit diesem Artikel 3 von Willkuerlichketiten von Beamten/innen und alle staatliche ungerichtigen Vorgaengsweise geschutzt worden, aber wie ist es mit meiner Frau, die seit Abril 2009 Schikanenwegens von unfair Prozesse(n) in Deutschland in Ausland bleiben muss. Haben meine Frau und ich Schuetz dagegen?
Lass mich ein Bischen erklaeren.
Seit Juni 2009 in dem Botschaft Deutschlands in Kuwait und bei dem Petitionsausschuss in Hessenlandestag haben meine Frau und ich den Anrechnungsmethoden den Integrationsbeamten in Deutschland in Frage gestellt. Trotzdem haben seit mehrere Monaten meine Frau und ich keinen richtige Hilfe und Justiz miterlebt.
Waehrend diesen Prozesse und auch fruehr haben meine Frau und ich mehrmals unten viele Schwierigkeiten (fuer Buerger und Familien) in Deutschland und Ausland gelitten muessen, wobei die Beamtern mehrmals Fragwuerdigen Methoden eingefuhrt haben.
Richter in Deutschland haben daher Rechnungsmethoden als Rechtswiedrig verurteilt. Habe ich Gruend zu klagen?
• BVerfG, “Anrechnungsmethode”, 5.2.02
Art. 6 I, 3 II GG, §§ 1577, 1578 BGB, Verfassungswidrigkeit der bislang von den Familiengerichten angewandten “Anrechnungsmethode” bei der Bestimmung des nachehelichen Ehegattenunterhalts: Kindererziehung und Haushaltsführung stehen gleichrangig neben der Beschaffung des Einkommens (Hinweis: die “Anrechnungsmethode” ist vom BGH bereits in der Entscheidung «Familienarbeit der Ehefrau» aufgegeben worden)
Willkuer in den Ermittlungen des Gesaetzes sowie in den Fallen Beamteruebereinkommen sind auch nicht in Deutschland unerhoert. Habe ich den Recht zu klagen?
• BAG, Werkstudent, 30.8.00 (NZA 2001, 613)
Art. 1 III GG, keine unmittelbare Bindung der Tarifpartner an die Grundrechte, Vorrang der Koalitionsfreiheit (Art. 9 III GG) vor dem Gleichheitssatz (Art. 3 I GG) bei der Bestimmung des persönlichen Anwendungsbereichs von Tarifverträgen, Grenze der Willkür;
§ 45 ArbGG, zu den Voraussetzungen der Vorlagepflicht (hier: fehlende Entscheidungserheblichkeit)
Ich weiss noch nicht, ob ich Schmerzengeld irgenwann verlangen soll, aber die tragodische Politik und Vorgaengsweise beim Ablehnung des Visums meiner Frau wird wahrscheinlich im 2009 bis 12.500 Euro meiner Familie kosten. Ausserdem habe ich mehr als 30 bis 60 Stuende mit dem Visumprozess verbracht. Diese Ueberstunden belasstet meine Arbeit sowie Gesundheit.

• BVerfG, “Prinzessinnenprivileg”, 8.3.00 (NJW 2000, 2187)
Art. 3 GG, verfassungsrechtlich unbedenkliche Bemessung von Schmerzensgeld (§ 847 BGB aF, nun § 253 BGB) wegen psychischer Schädigungen im Verhältnis
1. zu der Bemessung des Geldanspruches wegen Verletzung des allgemeinen Persönlichkeitsrechts (Art. 2 I, 1 I GG) von Prominenten,
2. zu der Bemessung von Schmerzensgeld für physische Schädigungen

Willkuerlichkeit Seites der Behoerden und ihre bevorzuegte Methoden spielen ein rieseger Rolle in den Verlauf des Visumprozesess und in den Prozess des Remonstrierungs im Ausland und im Inland in 2009
• BVerfG, Briefanhaltung durch Ermittlungsrichter, 28.9.99 (NJW 2000, 273)
Art. 3 I GG, Willkürverbot: zur Frage, wann in der analogen Anwendung einer Vorschrift richterliche Willkür liegt (hier bejaht bei der analogen Anwendung von § 119 VI StPO auf den Vollzug der Erzwingungshaft gem. § 70 II StPO, § 171 StVollzG)

Willkuerverbote sollten in Deutschland nicht ueblich (nicht gestattet). Wenn meine Frau Amerikanerin oder aus einen Osteuropaeisches (nicht EU ) Land stammte, haetten sie und ich weniger Willkuer erlebt, aber zur Zeit ist selten etwas als rechtwidrig gegen nicht Europaer in Deutschland von Beamteeranwaeltengeforscht.
Dieses Situation soll und muss sich aendern.
• BVerfG, Fernsehinterview des iranischen Asylbewerbers, 16.10.98 (DVBl 1999, 165)
§ 51 I AuslG, Art. 3 GG, Willkürverbot, sachfremde Erwägungen des Gerichts, Anforderungen an die Begründung

Unfaehigkeiten der Beamter/innen, insbesonderweise wichtige Detailles von meiner Familie des Visumsbefragung und Ablehnung nicht beruecksichtigt.
Im kurzen wird Soziale Gesichtspunkten fuer Familien, wie meine und in ganz Deutschland, nichtmal beruecksichtigt?
• BVerfG, Kindergartengebühr IV, 10.3.98 (BVerfGE 97, 332)
Art. 2 I, Gesetzgebungskompetenz, Art. 75, 105;
Art. 3 I, sachlicher Grund für Gebührenstaffelung, soziale Gesichtspunkte sind berücksichtigungsfähig

Insgesammt verlange ich, dass den Justiz in dem Fall meiner Ehezusammenzeihung ab Sofort Gewaehrungspflichtig realisiert wird.
• BVerwG, Urteilsveröffentlichungen, 26.2.97 (BVerwGE 104, 105)
Art. 3 I GG i.V.m. Art. 5 I 2 GG, Art. 20 III GG, Rechtsstaatsgebot, Justizgewährungspflicht, Demokratiegebot, Gewaltenteilung
und
• BVerfG, § 611a BGB, 16.11.93 (BVerfGE 89, 276)
§ 611a BGB aF, Art. 3 II GG, Anwendung einfachen Rechts, grundrechtliche Schutzpflichten;
§ 611a BGB, “Motivbündel”

Sollten Allgemeines Persoenlichkeitsrechte weder von den Ablehnungen Beamters noch von fragwuerdigen Vorgaengsweise Direkt und Indirekt angetasstet werden?
• BGH, iranisches Sorgerecht, 14.10.92 (BGHZ 120, 29)
Art. 6 EGBGB, Art. 3 II GG, Internationalen Privatrecht, Berücksichtigung der Grundrechte der Kinder, Art. 2 I GG, allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht

Die erweiterte Ablehnung eines Visums fuer meine Frau im Jahr 2009 stoesst Beide den rechten des Einzelnen und der Familien sich zu ernaehren, zu entfalten, zu verwirklichen, unsw.
• BVerfG, Kapitalertragssteuer, 27.6.91 (BVerfGE 84, 239)
Art. 3 I GG, Recht des Einzelnen auf materielle Steuergerechtigkeit, Abgrenzung zu dem nicht gegebenen Anspruch auf “Gleicheit im Unrecht”, gesetzgeberische Pflicht zur Kontrolle der “Steuerehrlichkeit”

Hier habe ich bis jetzt keinen Beweis, aber Willkuerlichkeit scheint in den Fall meiner Ehe und Visum ziemlich ueblich.
• BVerfG, Überlinger Zweitwohnungssteuer, 6.12.83 (BVerfGE 65, 325)
Art. 105 IIa GG, § 6 IV KAG, Aufwandsteuer, Art. 3 I GG, willkürliche Ungleichbehandlung
Keine Beruecksichtigung auf Haertefaellen sind auch nicht von Beamter in meinen Fall nicht gezeigt, obwohl ich wannsinnig viele Ueberstuende leisten muss, und mehrmals nach anderen Kontinenten zu meine Frau fliegen muesste.
• BVerfG, Pflichtexemplar, 14.7.81 (BVerfGE 58, 137)
Art. 14 I GG, Verhältnismäßigkeit, Art. 3 GG, Berücksichtigung von Härtefällen

Fast Niemand hat mir bis Jetzt Hilfe angeboten. Wieso denn nicht? Oftmals habe ich Hilfe(n) gewollte und es verlangt mit Anwaelte/innen von dem Integrationsamt zu sprechen, aber niemals habe ich richtige und Zeitgemaess Auskuenfte sowie weder richtige Rat noch Gespraechsmoeglichkeiten erhalten.
• BVerfG, Gerichtskostenvorschuß, 16.1.60 (BVerfGE 10, 262)
Art. 19 IV, 3, Prozeßkostenhilfe

Ich danke Alle fuer weitere Anweisungen.

Ihr,

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/dear-bundesministerin-ursula-von-der-leyen-i-agree-with-you-that-your-ministry-for-family-seniors-women-and-youth-needs-to-take-on-more-of-the-%e2%80%9crentenreform%e2%80%9d-or-%e2%80%9cpension/

AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS—under BUSH and OBAMA—Continue to pay bribes to Taliban in Afghanistan in the millions each year: THIS IS NO WAY TO RUN A WAR,

AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS—under BUSH and OBAMA—Continue to pay bribes to Taliban in Afghanistan in the millions each year: THIS IS NO WAY TO RUN A WAR, AMERICA—Let’s Get Out


I heard this story and interview on Democracy Now yesterday. The case is clear, the USA continues to fund to the tune of millions or billions for the Talibans and enemies of democracy in Afghanistan.
Foreign money from USA contractors go to the Taliban because the USA cannot or will not protect shipments in most corners of the countries for development, etc.
See or listen to the story here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/12/taliban

Aram Roston says that Afghanistan is a carnival for rogues making billions off the war. Read his piece in THE NATION, too.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston


In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack. [includes rush transcript]

JUAN GONZALEZ: The US ambassador to Afghanistan is warning against sending more troops to fight in the Afghan war. In a last-minute dissent, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry sent two cables this week casting doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems.
Well, today we turn to a new report that reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. “How the US Funds the Taliban” is the cover story of the latest issue of The Nation magazine.
Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack. The practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. US military officials in Kabul told Roston that a minimum of ten percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts consists of payments to the Taliban.
AMY GOODMAN: That translates into millions of dollars being funneled to the Taliban. This summer, anticipating a surge of US troops, the military expanded its trucking contracts in Afghanistan by 600 percent to a total of over $2 billion.
Well, Aram Roston joins us now here in our firehouse studio, the author of the book The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi. His latest piece, “How the US Funds the Taliban,” was supported by the investigative fund at the Nation Institute.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! When did you return from Afghanistan?
ARAM ROSTON: About three weeks ago.
AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us what you found. How does the US fund the Taliban?
ARAM ROSTON: Well, it’s bizarre, but the US has to maintain, obviously, all these bases, these forward operating bases and combat outposts throughout Afghanistan. They have to supply them. The way they supply them is trucking convoys, civilian trucking convoys. They call it “Host Nation Trucking,” and what they mean is that Afghan-owned trucks and Afghan drivers drive everything. They drive all the supplies, the guns, the MRAPs, the ammunition. Just everything needs to get to these—every part of Afghanistan. And they’ve issued these large contracts, but they don’t protect the convoys. By definition, these convoys are driving through some very tough terrain, controlled by warlords, by the Taliban, by insurgents.
And what they’ve ended up doing—and this is apparently unanimous, with some small exceptions—is the security companies reach arrangements with the local Taliban, the local warlords and various insiders to pay them off for protection. It’s very much like an extortion racket and very much like a protection racket, and it amounts to huge amounts of money. Some say ten percent, some say far more than ten percent, of the convoys. Some say that most of the security budgets are going towards these payments to the Taliban and to the tribal leaders and the warlords. The fact is the US often doesn’t even know who they’re paying off. These contractors don’t necessarily know who they’re paying off. They just know they’re bad guys. So they’ve ended up with this bizarre situation, and there’s nothing they can really do about it.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, your article goes into the shadowy—the network of companies, and specifying several of the companies that are involved. And you point how many of them have—are headed by relatives of people who are high up in the Karzai government. Could you talk about, for instance, Watan Risk, is it?
ARAM ROSTON: Yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And NCL Holdings?
ARAM ROSTON: Yeah, that was—the original mission I was doing was—original story I was doing was this sort of web of nepotism and corruption, inside deals, in security contracts and logistics contracts. And it expanded when I—people all started trying to tell me, “You should do this story, as well.”
Watan Risk is an extraordinary company. It’s run by the—by two brothers, the Popal brothers. They’re relatives of the President of the country. They’re also convicted felons here in the United States for drug offenses. And one of them was an interpreter and basically a spokesman for the Taliban at the end of the Taliban regime in 2001. And yet, here he is now. He runs, and his brother—he and his brother run this very lucrative, very important, very big security company, Watan Risk Group. According to many people I spoke to, it runs this very important corridor. It controls it, because it has a relationship with the key warlord and commands who controls that.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And that corridor is Highway 1, is it?
ARAM ROSTON: Highway 1, which runs through Kandahar, which leads you to the South, leads you to, in many cases—basically leads you to the war zone. This is where you need to go to get to the conflict, to the border, and so forth.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us where you start this article? You’re mentioning these people, like Ahmad Rateb Popal, but talking about what happened October 29th, 2001, the news conference.
ARAM ROSTON: It’s pretty bizarre, but on October 29th, 2001, there’s this news conference in Islamabad. If you remember, while the US began its campaign against the Taliban, there was a Taliban ambassador in Pakistan who was talking as a representative. His main interpreter and representative was this English-speaking gentleman who looked very distinctive. He had an eye patch, he was missing an arm, and he had this huge beard and this black turban. This is Ahmad Rateb Popal. He has now trimmed his beard. He looks different. He still has the eye patch. But he’s now an international businessman, rather than the interpreter for the Taliban. He’s a relative of, like I say, of the President of Afghanistan. And it’s one of these things where everybody seems to have to pay this company if they want security along this very important route. And they control convoy traffic heading through that region.
JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the other companies you mention is NCL Holdings, which is run by the son of the Minister of Defense, has a $380 million contract. But the Minister of Defense claims he knows nothing about the son’s contract.
ARAM ROSTON: I believe him. It’s a really interesting thing. In other words, he maybe just—the son, everybody knows who he is, of course. Everybody knows he’s—his name is Hamed Wardak. His father’s name is Rahim Wardak. Rahim Wardak was a mujahideen leader during the fight against the Soviets. The US worked with him. Case officers like Milt Bearden, a top CIA official at the time, and the station chief in Islamabad, he worked with him. The fellow shows up in the book Charlie Wilson’s War, as does Milt Bearden, the CIA official.
So, somehow this general’s son ends up starting this—he’s an American, American Afghan. He starts this company called NCL and, last year—well, 2009, wins this contract that, over the summer, blossoms into a $360 million contract to transport American goods throughout the country. It’s incredibly lucrative.
AMY GOODMAN: This is a guy who was raised and schooled in the United States, valedictorian at Georgetown 1997, a Rhodes scholar, then interned at the think tank American Enterprise Institute.
ARAM ROSTON: Exactly. This is—he’s very much an American, but very much an Afghan, and very much the son of the Defense Minister. The Defense Ministry is obviously key, because that’s where a lot of US resources are going. That’s—we’re supposed to be training up the Afghan army, which is overseen by the Defense Ministry, and the Afghan security forces, controlled by the Defense Ministry. So that ministry is so important.
But what’s so interesting is I did—the only person on that case who would talk to me on the record was the father. And he, himself, seemed embarrassed, when I met him, about the whole situation. He just didn’t know why his son had got the contract. He didn’t realize it was that big a contract. He realized his son’s company was doing
AMY GOODMAN: And again, the contract was…?
ARAM ROSTON: Was for logistics. It was called Host Nation Trucking.
AMY GOODMAN: And the amount?
ARAM ROSTON: Well, it was a sixth of this $2.2 billion contract. It was $360 million. And even a relative of the President—
JUAN GONZALEZ: And your sense is that a portion of that goes, obviously, to pay off the local warlords or Taliban when they’re delivering stuff.
ARAM ROSTON: I have very good sources who told me that. The assured me it—unfortunately, this—from this contract, too, a bulk of it, good portion of it, goes directly to these insurgent leaders to ensure safe passage, you can say, you could call it.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What do the—you quoted several American military officers in the field who acknowledged knowing about this and expressing disgust about it. Could you talk about that?
ARAM ROSTON: Yeah, that was with David Haight, who runs the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, and he oversees Logar. His brigade oversees Logar Province and Wardak Province, and Highway 1 goes through part of it. And I asked him about it, and he said he was aware of it, and he said it repulsed him. It repulsed him that this was the situation. But he said, “It is what it is.” They know that’s the way it is. They know that’s the way American contractors are handling business. And at this point, they feel there’s nothing they can do about it.
Now, there are some things—the point is, a lot of people know about it there. And Afghans are very upset by it, too. A top Afghan security official brought it to my attention. He says he’d been trying to fix it in secret for a long time, bring it to the Americans’ attention, and little has happened. American contractors, security contractors and trucking contractors, said they’ve brought it to the attention of American officials, American military officials. And they assure me the American military officials have been told, you know, many times. These people don’t want to be doing this. They don’t want to be paying money to the people that the US is fighting.
AMY GOODMAN: Last week, President Obama urged President Hamid Karzai to tackle corruption in his country. In an interview on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer this week, President Karzai said he was trying to rout out corruption, but added that foreign money is making the problem worse.
PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI: We also mean corruption of a different kind, which is a lot more serious, which is new to Afghanistan. That is with the arrival of a lot of tough money to Afghanistan, the lack of transparency in the award of contracts, the serious corruption in implementing projects. It’s the international community also that shares responsibility with us, and that’s what I hope we can correct together. But the stigma falls mainly on Afghanistan, because that’s where it happens.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s President Hamid Karzai. Aram Roston, your response?
ARAM ROSTON: He raises a very good point. It is international money. Much of it’s American money. This contract I just mentioned, $2.2 billion, that’s like a big chunk of Afghanistan’s GNP. They functionally don’t have much of a budget. It’s all international money coming in.
You can see a lot of—there has been an effort by US investigators to now probe US contract steering, bribes. There’s cases in American court now of people taking bribes, people giving bribes. But there’s far more that hasn’t been done. It’s a really—ironically, he’s raising an important point. But, of course, he’s also steering the issue to say, “Don’t look at me. Look at them.”
JUAN GONZALEZ: But isn’t the reality that if the—if these companies did not pay these bribes or this extortion, then the US military would have to actually defend these convoys to be able to get supplies to its troops, which would mean more American casualties, so this is, in effect, a way to avoid more American casualties in the war?
ARAM ROSTON: That’s right, but is that a smart way to fight a war? That’s the issue.
AMY GOODMAN: I just wanted to go back to the Popal brothers for a minute, Hamid Karzai’s cousin, as you said, where you begin the piece, talking about them being businessmen now. You say, though, here in the United States, one, for example, pleaded guilty to—what was it? Heroin?
ARAM ROSTON: Heroin, yeah, conspiracy. One was a—
AMY GOODMAN: In 1997.
ARAM ROSTON: One was 1997 or 1996, whatever I wrote, and one was in ’89 was—he was charged. And he was released from prison in ’97. There were two brothers.
AMY GOODMAN: Conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin.
ARAM ROSTON: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.
ARAM ROSTON: Yeah, it was right here in New York City, both cases. That’s why it’s such a fascinating case—a fascinating place to do reporting. It’s like a carnival of really strange characters who are getting very, very rich off this war.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, as President Obama—word comes out of the war cabinet he had yesterday that he is raising questions about the surge. We’ll see what happens. Aram Roston, thanks so much for being with us, investigative journalist. He wrote the book The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi. But he has the latest story in The Nation magazine called “How the US Funds the Taliban.”

Dear Bundesministerin Ursula von der Leyen, I agree with you that your Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women, and Youth needs to take on more of the “R

Dear Bundesministerin Ursula von der Leyen,

I agree with you that your Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women, and Youth needs to take on more of the “Rentenreform” or “Pension/Social Security Issues” from the rest of Germany’s Innenministerium (Ministry of the Interior).

One obvious problem in 2009 that is not being discussed properly at a national level (and should be) is the rapidly declining population of the country, which makes it very difficult to imagine that the working population of Germany will be adequate in size and monetary earning power to take care of retirees properly now and in the near future.

According to latest German press releases, Germany’s population has sunk for 9 straight years—at a time that post-war baby boomers are starting to retire en masse.

This rapid decline has occurred during and after the implementation of new nationalization laws (10 years ago) and immigration reform (4-7 years ago). In short, the nation of Germany has implemented so terribly draconian laws in terms of immigration that Germany no longer has sustainable population growth at all—a big reversal from the 1990s.

I am a foreigner working in Germany who does pay taxes and for other people’s social security (known as Renten in Germany) here.

At the same time MY FAMILY life has suffered unfairly all of 2009 because of the restrictive, unfair( and likely illegal, i.e. against EU law) restrictions prohibiting reunification and unification of families in Germany.

I currently have standing in courts in this case as victim in Germany because my wife of Filipino descent has been prohibited from receiving ether (1) a visit visa or (2) a spousal visa all of 2009.

The badly thought out set of laws in Germany has, in recent years, even led to less applications for migration to Germany (each year that the new migration law have been in place since 2005).

NOTE:::45,000dollars is not enough to live as a couple—according to the draconian immigration legislation.

In May 2009, I asked a local Auslaendsbehoerde (civil servant in Wiesbaden Hessen’s integration/immigration office) exactly how much I would need to earn in order to legally bring my wife to live with me as I work in Germany.

I asked exactly, “Would 30,000 Euros (45,000 dollars) be enough to get my wife a spousal visa?”

The woman shook her head, indicating that 45,000 dollars in a year is not enough for an American to bring his or her spouse here to live.

Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen, don’t you think that is currently a ridiculously high restriction for anyone—let alone for Americans of German ancestry to face—in order to come and live in Germany?

Worse still, family and children are also affected by such a blindly bad monetary restriction.

Worse still, I earn or will have received as of end of November over 60,000-plus dollars (due to inheritance and a recently sold piece of property) in 2009 alone.

Nonetheless, I am being told by both the Wiesbaden Integration Office and the German Foreign Affairs office to-date, that I still do not earn enough to bring my wife over and reunite my household.

My wife has filed a petition against this decision with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I have tried to file a petition with the Ministry of the Interior in Germany---to no avail. (They told me to contact the Parliament of Hessen instead.)

In July 2009, I have filed a petition in the state of Hessen for an investigation concerning the torturous restrictions on my households—and similar households in Germany and abroad. Until now, the Hessen Landestag has had no influence on the somewhat out of control Integrationsamt offices in Wiesbaden, which seem to answer to no one.

Now, I ask that the Bundesministerin für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, which you lead, to intervene on behalf of all citizens in Germany who are being adversely affected by draconian visa restrictions, which, in turn, are threatening the stability of German society by the inability of the country to gain fresh blood, youth, and technical or soft skills to support Germany’s aging and retiring populations.

Please support my test query immediately and help your nation (to which I am committed) see that there is an important link between family, seniors and fair migration legislation, i.e. legislation and civil servants within Germany and Europe are needed who really do support families—even foreign born parents.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Kevin Anthony Stoda
902 Pennell Street Oranienstr. 62
Carl Junction, MO 64834 Wiesbaden 65185
USA Germany
e-mail: eslkevin1@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/eslkevin & http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/
home phone USA (417)649-4110 Germany Cell: (01522)8996853
home phone: (0611)4699954

RSVP

DOSES OF REALITY & WHY MANY AMERICANS NEED THE PUBLIC HEALTH CARE OPTION AS OF YESTERDAY

DOSES OF REALITY & WHY MANY AMERICANS NEED THE PUBLIC HEALTH CARE OPTION AS OF YESTERDAY

By F.

Hi, America,

I hope you can link on to this video...it's an amazing story about why the public health care option is so important. It's about 10 minutes long but worth watching. If the link doesn't work copy and paste it in your browser.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33487061#33487061

Love,

F.

P.S. Here are more. Tell the Senate to get to work!!!!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33487061#33441674

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33487061#33422099

THE WALL 30 YEAR ANNIVERSARY—20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

THE WALL 30 YEAR ANNIVERSARY—20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

By Kevin Anthony Stoda, America, Germany, Europe


Well, as this November 2009 is the 30th Anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s THE WALL, I thought I would watch the film again. It is online here currently.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7537901785624234406#

I remember that autumn 1979, we seniors in high school had already been inundated by the tune “Another Brink in the Wall (Part2)”. Those lyrics went something like this.

We don't need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Two years later at college, I would paint my room with the white and black bricks of THE WALL album cover.

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Coming from Kansas schools, where education in the 1970s was still well-above national average, I was not one to chime in with those second groups of lyrics—but I did understand sentiments to the Wasteland of the Midwest. On the other hand, I could not understand these lines because we never had much pudding, like Roger Gilmour and his British friends in the band.

"Wrong, Do it again!"
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
"You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"

I recall once getting whipped with a paddle for a crime in school that I didn’t do back in the 4th grade in Wentzville, Missouri, but otherwise, I feel as an educator that students are just as likely to abuse a teacher as the other way around.

Now that I look at the 1982 film, THE WALL, I am stuck by the fact that it is not British cops beating the mostly Caucasian youth in the film with Bob Geldof, who went on to create the LIVE AID CONCERTS. It is an American flag and the cop cars are large American cars—albeit with a British paddy wagon.

http://www.bobgeldof.info/Charity/

I wonder why the American allusion when the band, Pink Floyd, is British…?

According to one synopsis, “The movie tells the story of rock singer ‘Pink’ who is sitting in his hotel room in Los Angeles, burnt out from the music business and only able to perform on stage with the help of drugs. Based on the 1979 double album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd, the film begins in Pink's youth where he is crushed by the love of his mother. Several years later he is punished by the teachers in school because he is starting to write poems. Slowly he begins to build a wall around himself to be protected from the world outside. The film shows all this in massive and epic pictures until the very end where he tears down the wall and breaks free.”

Ok, so perhaps the story takes place partially in the USA—and it is American fascism, not European fascism that is Roger Water’s worry.

Another small synopsis points out, “The life of the fictional rock star 'Pink' is the subject of the visually evocative cult film based upon the music and visions of the group Pink Floyd as portrayed in the album of the same title. Relationships, drug abuse, sex, childhood, WWII and fascism combine in a disturbing mix of episodic live action and lyrical animation drawn by British caricaturist Gerald Scarfe.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084503/plotsummary

I would have to say, despite the allusion to the USA, the Bricks in the Wall take place in young Pink’s European world of fascism, drugs, and Rock’n Roll. On the other hand, the violence in schools roles began to change in the UK in the 1990s with children being massacred in a Scottish school.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/15/world/scottish-school-killer-had-stormy-past.html

By Spring 1992 Los Angeles was burning after the first Rodney King trial, too.

http://www.noob.us/miscellaneous/video-of-the-1992-los-angeles-riots/

Finally, by the end of the 1990s massacres, like at Columbine High were far too common.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvEzz4Mi7mc

Now, in Germany, this is student on society or school violence is all too common place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roDd310t4HM

There seems to be a hunger and rage built up in some schools. Hazing is not uncommon in any school, but society out of control and leading to violence and drugs is so much part of THE WALL story that one cannot help but feel that in 2009, the European fascist world is equally seen on both sides of the Atlantic—even in countries, like Germany where such violence was unheard of until about 2002.

http://nachrichten.t-online.de/bonn-geplanter-amoklauf-waere-fast-zur-katastrophe-geworden/id_19659580/index

On the other hand, the Cold War had kept a lot of societal divisions and social inequities, i.e. in terms of power and access to life choices, under wraps through the 1980s. That is most of us were sure up through the early 1980s that the Superpowers would accidentally blow up the planet, so we were all out walking on eggshells a bit in those days.

Don’t forget how Roger Waters wrote in “Mother” of the bomb and our need to be calm and cool it:

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother do you think they'll like this song?
Mother do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother should I build the wall?
Mother should I run for president?
Mother should I trust the government?
Mother will they put me in the firing line?
Mother am I really dying?

Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry.
Mother's gonna make all your nightmares come true.
Mother's gonna put all her fears into you.
Mother's gonna keep you right here under her wing.


THE WALL AND BERLIN

The Berlin Wall was synonymous with the Cold War. On November 9, 1989, through an accident of history, the East German government allowed the Anti-Capitalist Protection Wall be opened up a day earlier than planned. Unlike the Cold War--filled as it was with fear, arms buildups, threats, distant wars, and lies—the thousands of protestors of East Germany in 1989 took a peaceful route to change. They, the East German protestors, marched en masse to the key phrases, such as NO TO VIOLENCE and AGAINST ALL VIOLENCE that revolutionary year.

These sort of words mixed with thousands holding candles in their hands was too much for the communist fascist regime in East Germany in October and November. They capitulated and the Berlin Wall was open.

Similarly, in “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)”, Pink had sung the following:
I don't need no arms around me
And I don’t need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.

Could the “no arms” be understood as no-to-weapons by the masses in 1989 in Eastern Germany?

In any case, the peaceful end of the 1980s in Germany could be contrasted with the violence that we see in Germany, in the UK, in Spain, and the USA today in terms people finding peaceful ways to settle differences in and among members of peace loving societies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oy8eI75t1I

On July 21, 1990 millions around the world watched or listened to THE WALL being performed on the NO MANS LAND near Potsdammer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate. It was a metaphorical celebration to the end of an AGE. That was an age when people could be walled in by their leaders—or the end of the age when masses would allow themselves to be walled in by others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_-_Live_in_Berlin

This excitement at beginning a new age is why I enjoyed the concert in Berlin of THE WALL on July 21, 1990 more than at any other time.

Interestingly, at that very moment, Saddam Hussein was planning to takeover and absorb his neighbor, Kuwait, within less than two weeks of that Berlin THE WALL event.

Our world has not been so peaceable since.

GERMANY LIKES TO BUILD WALLS—or Chancellor Merkel, Tear Down Those Walls?

GERMANY LIKES TO BUILD WALLS—or Chancellor Merkel,
Tear Down Those Walls?

By Kevin Stoda, in Germany

As most readers know, American visa seekers and long-term North American residents in Germany have been facing a lot of trouble in recent years keeping visas for themselves and getting proper visas for their loved ones.

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/the-criticisim-is-increasing-the-german-visa-and-immigration-process-needs-to-be-investigated-by-canada-usa-and-uk/

Just today, I learned of an American missionary in Bremen, who was recently threatened with expulsion after it was determined that she, too, did not earn enough money to be allowed to continue to receive a visa in Germany. The woman has already lived in the country of Germany six years.

Even though I earn (or receive as inheritance) over 60,000 dollars this particular year, I have been notified by the Wiesbaden integration office (Auslandsbehoerde) that I earn too little money to bring my Filipino-born wife into Germany to live. Therefore, I feel that there is a strong case for xenophobia directed towards American passport holders in 2009. On the other hand, the xenophobia is certainly more wide-spread than simple anti-Americanism. In other words, Germany has put a great Wall up in central Europe to keep non-Germans out.

This wall-building against feared foreign hordes Central Europe is partially the result of widespread lawlessness and abuses in the visa system and foreign policy of Germany after the Wall opened up in 1989 and when the Soviet Union disintegrated a few years later. During the 1990s, Germany was unusually hospitable to refugees and a particularly group of Eastern Europeans who could prove German ancestry.

This later group is sometimes referred to as “spaet Sielder” (late settlers) or “deutsche Einsieldler aus Ost Europa” (German settlers from Eastern Europe). The Soviet regimes had scattered, for example, German speaking peoples of Volga and Ukraine as far as Kazakhstan and Siberia in the wake of WWII. These peoples made up the last great wave of German integration of the past decade. In short, between the collapse of the wall, the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the Balkans wars of the 1990s, Germany took on several million new residents.

This ten resulted in a severe tightening of border control and in the area of visa regulations in Germany in the first part of this decade. Later, after the Spanish and London train bombings, the noose was tightened further. Now, everyone who is foreign and wants to live in Germany appears to need to earn over 60,000 US dollars per year and must already have family living here.

AMERICANS OFTEN DON´T COUNT AS FAMILY IN GERMANY

Wait a second, I have family here in Germany. However, according to the visa offices in Wiesbaden and elsewhere, they do not count.

Yeah, I have a sister, a brother-in-law, and 3 nephews and nieces living in Bavaria right now. However, since my brother-in-law is in the U.S. military, he and his family do not count as family for would-be American settlers or day-laborers in Germany. That is, my immediate family lives in a special economic zone in Germany, i.e. in an area called a military post or military reservation.

This sort of location in Germany is known as living-off-the-economy. By the way, living-on-the-economy is the rest of Germany, i.e. not covered by such special economic zones. These special areas on the reservations or military bases use dollars and have their own commissaries and regulated gas prices.

If one lives on or visits one of these special economic zones from overseas, one is seldom (if-ever) given a visa to work in Germany on-the-economy. In short, teenagers who grow up on such military reserves have no right to live or work outside the reservation. Likewise, mothers who live on such bases have no right to go looking for part-time jobs off the reservation.

In short, through my USA family connections in Bavaria for visa purposes, neither my wife and nor I know visa security in Germany. The Visa offices in Germany treat my sister’s family on the reservation as a non-existent family (who live by definition off-the-economy). Amazingly, though, my sister’s family and many other Americans living on such military reservations find themselves spending a humongous share of their savings in Euros and in the German economy. For example, they go out for a bite of wiener schnitzel at the local restaurants or they travel on holiday into the Alps (to Christmas markets, etc.) or they seek out doctors off-the-post for assistance with childhood and special medical help.

Likewise, even if an American military family would seek housing off the post or reservation, they would get soaked for rent of double the normal price because they would be competing with military subcontractors from the USA, who locate themselves near and around the bases.


DO AMERICANS NEED A VISA TO TRAVEL TO GERMANY?

Wait a minute—you might ask—do Americans need to acquire German visas before arriving in Europe?

Well, the answer is NO. An American visitor can receive a stamp on arrival.

However, my wife is not American. She was born in the Philippines. So, she is being currently barred from either visiting or living with me in Germany because the local Wiesbaden Integration Office (using bizarre criteria designed to keep most foreigners out) says that 60,000 dollars is too little for a couple to live on in Germany in 2009—although the German economy has had little-to-no inflation this year. ALDI’s, the great supermarket chain, has lowered prices 33 times this year already.

Meanwhile, according to a Middle Eastern newspaper, the population of Germany has sunk again. “Germany’s population shrank for a sixth straight year in 2008, according to official data published on Wednesday. The number of people in Western Europe’s most populous country now stands at 82.06 million people, down 160,000 from 82.22 million in 2007, the statistics office said in a statement. The number of births and deaths in Germany last year was roughly unchanged compared to 2007, with around 690,000 births and about 845,000 deaths.”

With continued draconian measures against would-be immigrants, such as my poor wife, in 2009 the state of German, Central & Western Europe’s most populous one, now has its lowest population total since East and West Germany unified in 1990.

It appears now, in 2009, that the only way to gain legal residence in Germany these days is to come here illegally and apply. Thousands of Turkish and Eastern Europeans do so regularly. Then, after paying a fine, they proceed with their true European rights before the courts.

However, this sort of land-crossing option is not possible for North Americans nor Filipinos—especially if they adamantly do not want to break immigration law and face expulsion nor arrest.


TEAR DOWN THE WALL—ANGIE, PLEASE!!!

Tomorrow, Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, will meet with Hillary Clinton, Michael Gorbachev, and other world leaders to commemorate the opening of the Berlin and East German borders on November 9, 1989—20 years ago.

That was a joyous time.

Families who had not been able to see each other easily for decades were able to cross the East and West German borders at will.

Unification was soon in site.

Please, Chancellor Merkel, tear down the wall run by both the foreign ministry and at the various integration offices (Auslands- und Visumbehoerde) in Germany, run by the Interior Ministry.

Otherwise, years from now, people will remember Germany in this very decade not as a unified growing and positive example of global integration (and global unification)—but as a walled fortress hostile to new blood and peoples, i.e. a country which shrank into oblivion and never really learned to accept the needs of others knocking at their door seeking family unification, employment, and justice.

NOTES

(1) German Retail sales need to increase in order to supplant the declines in the losses on the global economy in the 2008 to 2014 period, but a decrease in in-grown purchasing power due to smaller population and smaller demands related to smaller demographics throughout Germany is not helpful.

http://eurowatch.blogspot.com/2008/05/german-retail-sales-april-2008.html

(2) More information on German and Japanese demographic issues can be found here:

http://www.glocom.org/special_topics/social_trends/20021224_trends_s21/index.html


(3) Another reason for outbound migration from Germany is discussed here:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/HOMESCHOOLING-VERBOTEN-IN-by-ALONE-090611-541.html

(4) According to the website below, “An investigation carried out in 1978 revealed that since 1820 over 6,978,000 people emigrated to the United States from Germany. This amounted to 14.3 percent of the total foreign immigration during this period.” In short, no country sent more peoples to live in America than did Germany.

http://www.perfspot.com/groups/group.asp?id=8202177D-D9CA-4882-920F-73CD272EA8AA

“In 1829, Gottfried Duden, a German visitor to America, published his book, Report of a Journey to the Western States of North America. The book providing a very attractive account of German immigrant life in America. As well as describing spectacular harvests, Duden praised the intellectual freedom enjoyed by people living in America. The book sold in large numbers and persuaded thousands of Germans to emigrate.”´

It was in this waive that Friedrich Stade (Stoda), my great, great, great grandfather arrived in America.

“The failed German revolution in 1848 also stimulated emigration. Over the next ten years over a million people left Germany and settled in the United States. Some were the intellectual leaders of this rebellion, but most were impoverished Germans who had lost confidence in its government’s ability to solve the country's economic problems.”
Many other Germans left to live in other parts of continental Europe and into the open space of the Ukraine and Russia. Later, some of these same Russian and Ukraine Germans settled in the plains of the USA and Canada. I went to a Kansas college founded by such immigrants.

“Others left (Germany) because they feared constant political turmoil in Germany. One prosperous innkeeper wrote after arriving in Wisconsin: "I would prefer the civilized, cultured, Germany to America if it were still in its former orderly condition, but as it has turned out recently, and with the threatening prospect for the future of religion and politics, I prefer America. Here I can live a more quiet, and undisturbed life.´”

I wanted to bring my wife to live in the peace and quiet of Germany after living in the Middle East most of the past decade. I had expected to show her around Germany and Europe, but AULSAENDER VERBOTEN is the rule if one doesn’t come from certain nationalities or races.

Again, I ask: “Frau Chancellor Merkel, TEAR DOWN THE BUREAUCRATIC AND ANTI-FOREIGNER WALLS NOW this November 9, 2009”

NETWORKS AGAINST NAZIS, NPD MARCHES STOPPED?, & Other Anti-Fascist News from Germany

NETWORKS AGAINST NAZIS, NPD MARCHES STOPPED?, & Other Anti-Fascist News from Germany

By Kevin Stoda, Hessen, Germany

This is called an “Action Week Against Anti-Semitism” in Germany by the Netz.Gegen.Nazis.de. This week was chosen because November 9, 1938 was the day when most synagogues in Germany were burned down during the Nazi era. Judges are permitting an NPD march today, November 7, by the NPD in Friedberg, Hessen. Friedberg has a long history in the Jewish community in German, for example, many noted rabbis over the century came from Friedberg.

http://www.netz-gegen-nazis.de/artikel/aktionswochen-gegen-antisemitismus-2009-starten

On August 1, 2009, a pair of NPD marches were stopped in the Hessen towns of Nidda and Friedberg by massive counterdemonstrations. In Friedberg, there were no less than five counterdemonstrations.

http://www.fr-online.de/top_news/1860751_Friedberg-in-Hessen-Gegendemo-blockiert-NPD-Aufmarsch.html

The Nationalist Party of Germany (the NPD) had called out a march with the slogan: “Germans Defend Yourself Against Islam and Foreign Domination”. In Friedberg, there were on August 1 several scuffles between the two groups of demonstrators early on. Some 1700 counter-demonstrators force the NPD to seek out new locations.

http://antinazi.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/friedberg-7-11-vg-giesen-gibt-npd-antrga-statt-route-durch-die-altstadt-bestatigt-stadt-ruft-den-vgh-in-kassel-an/

It is anticipated that today similar hundreds and thousands of counterdemonstrators will be present in the streets of Friedberg and at the train station to meet the NPD demonstrators.

Netz.Gegen.Nazis.de is a very active network of German citizens and foreigners who work together to keep fascists out of the hands of internet and internet chat rooms nationwide. There website provides links for many other groups and encourages participants of all ages to do something to stop the rising harmful influences of Nazi and fascist ideology on web in Germany.

Internet portals have been the main means of quietly contacting and recruiting German youth in the last years just as Anti-Nazi groups organize and use the web to spread more factual information about the fascist groups intentions.

The ability of anti-fascist groups to gather quickly at the scenes of marches, such as that of the NPD this weekend in Friedberg, comes through a combination of internet and cell phone technologies, such as Twitter.

Besides Netz.Gegen.Nazis.de, which means Network Against Nazis in Germany,

http://www.netz-gegen-nazis.de/

there are many other cooperating web organizations, the Federal Center for Political Education,

http://www.bpb.de/themen/R2IRZM,0,Rechtsextremismus.html ,

Shoah Germany,

http://www.shoa.de/

Step 21, the Initiative for Tolerance and Responsibility,

http://www.step21.de/

and

Schools without Racism,

http://www.schule-ohne-rassismus.org/ .


Each of these sites has its specialty, some are targeted at teens, others at twenty-somethings, and others across-the-spectrum. Netz.Gegen.Nazis.de provides background and detailed location information on fascist writers and leaders in Hessen and other parts of Germany, so that people understand where cell groups might sprout up or be sprouting up their neighborhood.

THREE WALL STORIES, THREE NEWSPAPERS, THREE PHOTOS, & 3 Editorials

THREE WALL STORIES, THREE NEWSPAPERS, THREE PHOTOS

By Kevin Stoda, Germany

I decided last weekend to make a trip to Berlin.

On the drive to Berlin from Wiesbaden, I came upon a McDonald’s offering a free BILD newspaper (dated October 31, 2009) , with cover stories and photos of 3 aging men who are intrinsically intertwined in the popular myths about the collapse of communism and the opening of the Wall in Berlin on November 9, 1989. The faces were of Helmut Kohl (called the Unification Chancellor by many), George Herbert Walker Bush ( the former US President and ex-CIA chief, who made one his unusually good moves in foreign policy by supporting German unification in 1990), and Michael Gorbachev (renowned as the architect of a new Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, i.e. through his leadership as final Soviet Premier in the era called Perestroika by modern European historians).

http://www.bild.de/BILD/politik/topics/vaeter-der-einheit/kohl-bush-gorbatschow.html

The BILD Zeitung (Newspaper) is the most-read tabloid in Europe, thanks to its many bare-breasted beauties scattered throughout its bountiful pages. The paper is owned by the Axel Springer Verlag, and used to be the bastion of what Americanologists see as Germany’s equivalent to the USA’s FOX-NEWS-type culture of readers and consumers.
Founded in the middle of the Cold War, “[f]rom the outset, the editorial drift [of BILD] was unabashedly conservative and nationalist.” BILD had called the East German government simply by the name “Soviet Occupation Zone” for decades

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild

BILD, back in the 1960s and early 1970s, had often unfairly biased many West Germans against the student protest and reform movements. “A popular catchphrase in left-wing circles sympathetic to student radicalism was "Bild hat mitgeschossen!" (Bild shot at him too). At the height of left-wing terrorism around 1977, Bild took a strong stance that could be said to have contributed to the climate of fear and suspicion.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Honour_of_Katharina_Blum

In Nobel Prize winning author’s, Heinrich Boell’s novelette, THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM, the BILD-like German newspaper is considered the main character or target of the author’s venom. The subtitle of the work is “how violence develops and where it can lead”. In short, according to Boell, media (like BILD) has the ability to kill and to propagate violence—and most of the left-wing audience of Germany back in the 1970s agreed with Boell’s opinion on BILD.

Interestingly, following the collapse of communism in the 1990s, this very wealthy newspaper, BILD, has actually moved closer to the center. This trend enabled the paper to finally pick up its roots and move from a conservative location in Hamburg it was publishing out of for decades to the modern and moderate city of Berlin in 2008.

Wrapped in its new image, BILD, has now somewhat reverted to its older image by bringing Kohl and Bush, as cold warriors, back to the center stage in this week—i.e. during the 20th anniversary of the collapse of a communist regime in East Germany. Simultaneously, Kohl and Bush (the elder) see this week of festivities in Berlin as a means to roll-back-the-clock on historians who have been painting the collapse of communism as a more populist or people’s affair. In short, Kohl and Bush legacies have quite a lot invested in reviving or keeping up the myth that only by outspending and out-threatening the Soviet Union in the arms race had the immediate collapse of Communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s occurred.

NOTE: Interestingly, Michael Gorbachev has been using his own public podium in Berlin this week to note that both the USA (and Germany) need a bit more Perestroika, too, these days.

http://www.javno.com/en-world/gorbachev--obama-needs-to-start-us-perestroika_200512

Interestingly, on my journy to Berlin last weekend, I sat down with a former CIA agent, who had been married to a Sovietologist in the early 1980s.

That Sovietologist had written a major article in the early 1980s for the newly elected Ronald Reagan-George Bush regime--in which this Sovietologists had outlined that the Kremlin was then already being torn asunder by the ascendancy of Doves (whom Gorbachev would join) , i.e. leaders in the Kremlin who were interested more in détente with the West than in the Breschnev-Andropov policies of the previous decades. However, the CIA leadership in the 1981-84 period told that young Sovietologist to “stuff it”, i.e. the Hawkish Reagan-Bush regime at that time was not interested in hearing about the ascendancy of Doves in the Kremlin --while NATO and the USA was busy blowing away trillions in the biggest arms buildup in peace time history.


A PICTURE OF A WALL ON PAGE 9

On Monday, November 2, 2009, on p. 9, in the BERLINER ZEITUNG was a photo and a map of a wall. As I looked closely at the photo and map, I smiled at the obvious irony.

http://www.berlin.de/tourismus/twinity/berliner_mauer/ankuendigung_en/

You see… all around one in Berlin this month, there are expositions, tours, memorials, and museums commemorating the memory of the various East German Walls and the Collapse of the STASI (State Security) Regime.

http://www.u2station.com/news/2009/11/u2-commemorate-fall-of-berlin-wall-at-mtv-europe-music-awards.php

However, what was shown on p. 9 of the Berliner Newspaper was of a man standing on a ladder leaning against a large cement wall, built to separate permanently neighbors from neighbors. The title under the picture was: “Locked Out.” The text under the photo in bold read “A Man looks over the Great Israeli Protection Wall to the settlement of Nilin, which is [actually] located on Palestinian territory.”

http://www.goethe.de/ges/prj/mar/pro/flyer/flyer_goethe.pdf

Beside the photo of the solitary Palestinian (p.9) looking over the Israeli Wall at his own land is a settlement map of Western Jordan, i.e. the West Bank. Below the map is the statement that 470,000 Israeli Jews live in the occupied territory of West Jordan. (In addition, another 190,000 Israelis have occupied and live in Arab territory in and around Jerusalem.) Some of the Israeli settlements have 30,000 Israeli settlers on them.

http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2009/1102/politik/0034/index.html

Interestingly, the photo and map are missing from the online version of Nov. 2, 2009’s BZ (Berliner Zeitung). However, the message of the photo of the Apartheid Wall of Israel and the map of the West Bank were not lost on German readers of the article on Hillary Clinton in Israel, written by Inge Guenther. The headline on that same page 9 read: “Hillary Clinton supports Nenayahu” and his reasons not to fully stop settlement building in Israel.

The decision to introduce the photo and the map during the 20th Anniversary Wall celebrations and reunions in Berlin are a clear editorial comment that no-such walls are really acceptable to the peoples divided by them.

SWARM INTELLIGIENCE AND COLLAPSE OF WALLS

Similarly, there was a photographic comment or editorialmade by the publishers of WELT KOMPAKT, another Springer newspaper publication in Germany, on November 2, 2009. The Kompakt newspaper is like a Readers Digest of articles from the more famous DIE WELT newspaper in Germany. The article of interest to me was one on “Swarm Intelligience”.

Interestingly, DIE WELT had published an article last August with the title and same photo you see on this link below. In that article, entitled BIOLOGISTS RIDICULE THE IDEA OF SWARM INTELLIGIENCE, DIE WELT writer Matthias Glaubrecht reveals that many biologists do not consider “swarm intelligence” as being intelligent at all.

http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article2287063/Biologen-dementieren-die-Schwarmintelligenz.html

“Swarm Intelligence” is also called collective intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence

Collective intelligence consists of three types of manifest intelligence from biology, neurology and the social sciences. It involves cooperation, coordination, and related social and individual cognitions. “The best-known collective intelligence projects are political parties, which mobilize large numbers of people to form policy, select candidates and to finance and run election campaigns.”

Scholarpedia explains that “Swarm intelligence is the discipline that deals with natural and artificial systems composed of many individuals that coordinate using decentralized control and self-organization.” Belgium researchers, Marco Dorigo and Mauro Birattari, also note “In particular, the discipline focuses on the collective behaviors that result from the local interactions of the individuals with each other and with their environment. Examples of systems studied by swarm intelligence are colonies of ants and termites, schools of fish, flocks of birds, herds of land animals.”

The WELT KOPMAKT article, written by Axel Tiedemann, was entitled “Die Schwarmintelligenz” and had the subtitle: “Humans behave like Schools of Fish—Only a few Control the Many”.

http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article5057937/Menschen-verhalten-sich-in-Gruppen-wie-Fische.html

Tiedemann describes sociological experiments whereby many participating volunteers are asked to stand in a large auditorium or to walk around. No one amongst the greatest share of volunteers was given any direction as to how to move about.

However, 5 percent of those participating had, in fact, been given clear indication that they were to act in coordination. In short, soon the great mass of students began to act and travel about the auditorium as a coordinated school of fish--without even knowing that they were being led to do so by no more than 5 percent of the population.

In short, what revolutionary, anarchists, and secret agents, such as those in the CIA, observed a long time ago, a small group of coordinated leaders can get the great masses of others in a society to follow them simply by working the masses like the few leaders in a school of fish do.

Why am I sharing this particular fish story about “swarm intelligence” after talking about Walls in East Germany and Israel?

Well, you see, the editors of the WELT KOMPAKT on Monday had decided to put a photo of hundreds of people sitting on the Wall in front of the Brandenburg gate in November 2009 under the photo of the fish and under the title of the “Swarm Intelligence” article.

In short, the editors of WELT KOMPAKT insinuate that besides telling robots how to think and how science might create other artificial designs, swarm intelligence might better explain how a small minority of educated and convicted pacifists and religious leaders in East Germany in 1989 were able to pull off the first peaceful revolution in Central European history.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Any comments? i.e before the Wall falls down?






NOTES

Bush Senior to meet Kohl and Gorby in Berlin,
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20091021-22725.html

Dear USA Congressmen and Senators, For over half of my adult life, I have been without insurance in the USA.

Dear USA Congressmen and Senators,

For over half of my adult life, I have been without insurance in the USA.

I have been properly diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrom, fibromyalgia, sleep apnea, arthritis, & adult attention deficit. Can you imagine how much I have to worry and chase after health care while trying to keep working fulltime and over time?


Is one of over a million members of MomsRising, I am writing to urge you to vote YES on the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962).

All women and their families need coverage that delivers the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford, regardless of their employment or family status. For the millions of mothers who aren't eligible for job-based coverage because they work part-time or because they are full-time caregivers for their children, this need is especially critical. The Affordable Health Care for America Act will provide much-needed help to families by offering financial assistance for premiums and capping out of pocket costs.

Fixing the economy and fixing the nation's health care system are inextricably linked. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill will reduce deficits by at least $30 billion over ten years. This bill is fiscally responsible and desperately needed by the 46 million people in America without health insurance and the many millions more who will lose their insurance when they lose jobs or become sick.

Please support our nation's families by voting yes on the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962).

http://momsrising.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/questionnaire.jsp?questionnaire_KEY=848


Sincerely,

Kevin Stoda
USA

EVERYONE WHO IS A VICTIM OF BANKS, LIKE GOLDMAN SACHS OR CITIBANK, NEED TO READ THESE ARTICLES.

The McClatchy News Service has put out a wonderful series of written and audio-visual reports on the apparent crimes and deceit of Goldman and Sachs, who have benefitted so much from Federal bailouts even though it had safely extricated itself from the worst forms of usery in the housing market between 2002 and 2007.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/77852.html

"Why did blue-chip Goldman take a walk on subprime's wild side?" reveals how GS listed the bad paper at AAA in the Cayman islands even as the value tumbled in the USA.

McClatchy investigative reporter, Greg Gordan, stated the following:

"Well, I think what we really wanted to know is how did Goldman Sachs get out when nobody else did? And so, we looked and tried to reconstruct what happened in 2006 and 2007, looking at the SEC filings that Goldman made, which is a trick in itself, because when these Wall Street firms bought mortgages from subprime lenders, they put them into trust accounts, but you can’t really find the trust accounts in the SEC files unless you know what the name of the trust accounts are, or you get very lucky kind of rummaging through the files. So, at any rate, we tried to reconstruct what happened."

"And what we discovered is that Goldman sold $39 billion in securitized subprime mortgages and other risky mortgages that it had purchased itself, and it turned into bonds—and it turned them into bonds and sold them off to pension funds and insurance companies and foreign banks. And the question was, OK, so if Goldman—how did Goldman get out so safely?"

"And, of course, we all know that when the government bailed out the American International Group, the giant insurer, last fall, a year ago last—a year ago in September and then in the ensuing months, that there was a sort of a payoff to all of the firms that had pending insurance-like contracts known as credit default swaps. And these are sophisticated and complex bets that Wall Street firms and others have secretly made in a dark market for at least well over a decade, I believe, but certainly in escalating fashion in recent years."

"So Goldman, in 2005 and 2006, began to place these swap bets that would, you know, make money for Goldman or hedge its risks if the housing market turned down. At the same time, Goldman was selling off these bonds to pension funds and others, and it did not disclose that it was betting the other way, not on the very same securities, but on very similar securities. Certainly, if its bets, secret bets, paid off, that meant that the value of these bonds was going to go down."

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/4/sachs

Here are some other links from McClatchy

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash

Goldman left foreign investors holding the subprime bag

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/329/story/77844.html

Mortgage crisis shows why financial regulation is needed

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/309/story/78026.html

Research on migrants, religions, love languages of God, society, and Germany needed

KEVIN STODA KURZEXPOSE DOKTORANDENSTIPENDIEN zum THEMENFELD MIGRATION und RELIGION

My two M.A.s are in Political Science and in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. That means I have a great deal of background and training in working with peoples of other cultures and have focused most of my adult life on working to help others to improve their language skills and cross-cultural awareness and relates skills. In addition, as a historian in my younger days, I had focused on Western European History but later became a universalist with a strong background in IPE, international political economy.

Prior to my coming to Germany to teach in January of this year, I had worked in Kuwait or the Middle East for six of the prior 9 years. During that time, I not only taught and trained with Arabs and Muslims from all walks of life and age levels (and gender), but I was also an active participant and presenter, for example at the AWARE CENTER in Kuwait, a non-profit organization, which promoted cultural and religious exchanges between East and West.

http://www.aware.com.kw/html/default.asp

I should add here, that Kuwait is a much more multi-cultural land than is Germany currently. For examples, roughly half the population is Muslim and Arab, but at least half of the Arabs are not Kuwaitis. (Arabic and its related dialects is spoken in nearly 40 countries worldwide.) Likewise, there are living in Kuwait South Asians, who make up approximately one-third of the national population. (The Indian Rupee was the currency of exchange in Kuwait till its Independence after 1959.) Other migratory groups in Kuwait are smaller but mixed—Western Europe, North and South America, as well as Southeast and Far East Asia, and Africa. (My wife, whom I met in Kuwait, is Filipino.) Officially, only Ibrahamic (or Abrahamic) faiths are permitted in Kuwait, but unofficially--and to a great degree fairly tolerated under the Kuwaiti regime--are the following: Baha’is’, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, and various other faiths. (The Greeks had also worshipped their Gods in Kuwait on the Isle of Ikarus, now called Failaka.)

One of my more popular presentations and sources of discussion for Muslims, Christians and other faiths in Kuwait at the AWARE CENTER and in some local church communities was based on the ideas outlined by Gary Chapmen in his “Love Languages of God” metaphor.

http://www.fivelovelanguages.com/

The “love languages” metaphor was first developed for counseling purposes, i.e. counseling amongst men and women, teens and adults and others in North America some decades ago. As with many driving metaphors on building interpersonal and intra-group relationships (such as John Grey’s “Venus and Mars” metaphor or Daniel Goleman’s concept of “Emotional Intelligence, i.e. among peoples of different religious and cultural backgrounds) ,Chapman’s “love languages” is fairly holistic and certainly can be used as a core area for building common understandings within a variety of settings, and among peoples of many different faiths.

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

My interpretation of the “Five Love Language” metaphor is a essentially the same as that advocated by the biblically oriented Chapmen. However, unlike Chapmen, who saw “love languages” as a Christian-specific metaphor to be applied in Western faith settings only, I explored initially in Kuwait the cross-over to Islam.

Later, I discussed the “love languages” content with Buddhists and Baha’is. These peoples of other faiths, too, found sufficient common overlap. Reading any of Gary Chapman's books (or even by simply viewing his own website), one can gain a brief and important introduction into what his five love languages metaphor is all about. We learn that the five love languages of man are identified as (1) Words of Affirmation, (2) Quality Time, (3) Gift Giving, (4) Acts of Service, and (5) Physical Touch.

“Words of Affirmation” acknowledges that using words to affirm the other person is a key way to express love. There are thousands of ways to express affirmation by words The words may be spoken, written, in prayer, or in a song. To people whose primary love language is words of affirmation, such affirming words fall like spring rain on barren soil.

NOTE: I should add here that each person is born and/or raised to prefer one of the five love languages. That is, the form of the love language one most naturally uses with others is often a reflection of one’s own manifestation of perceived, needed, or desired format of love (as shown through action, word, and deed in the form of one of the 5 love languages).

Second, “Quality Time” means: Giving the other undivided attention. Chapmen says, “The important thing is not the activity but that the two of you are together. When you give someone quality time, you are giving him or her part of your life. It is a deep communication of love.”

Third, “Gifts” communicate: He or she was thinking about me. For these people, nothing makes them feel more loved than a gift. “Gifts need not be expensive. You pick up a colored, twisted stone while hiking, …take it home …give it to a ten-year old boy, tell him where you found it, and tell him you were thinking of him…when he is twenty-three, he will still have that stone in his drawer.”

Fourth, “Acts of Service” claims that actions speak louder than words, so doing something for someone else is an expression of love. “To the person whose primary love language is acts of service, words may indeed be empty if they are not accompanied by acts of service. The husband says, ‘I love you,’ and she’s thinking, ‘If he loved me, he would do something around here.’”

Finally, “Physical Touch” recognizes that long before a child understands what the meaning of love is, he may identify love with a touch. “If the child’s primary love language is physical touch, nothing is more important.” Even if, later as a teenager, the very same child pulls back at an approaching hug or kiss, he or she would still like a pat on the back or an arm around the shoulder (or some other physical contact)—otherwise, he/she will feel unloved.

Chapmen finds through his decades of counseling that each human being has a preference for one form of communication(or Love Language) when relating to their loved ones or even to their Lord or God.


DOES IT WORK WHEN APPLIED TO ISLAMIC PRACTICES, TOO?

As noted above, Chapmen focused his 5 Love Languages of God on the Christian God, with which he was familiar. However, I then asked people in Kuwait, could this metaphor be extended to other faiths around the globe—including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Animism, etc.? That is, could the 5 love languages metaphor be applicable across all societies around the globe? Would the insights provided be as obvious in such other societies and families?

At the AWARE CENER, I had often looked at this topic from the Islamic and Arab perspectives-- not only through the (from Chapmen) intended Christian perspective. In doing so, I found it actually quite helpful in discussing commonalities in the belief systems among parents from both Eastern and Western societies and family backgrounds. It was for example, easy to find many Koranic verses and famous Hadiths which supported the views of other Ibrahamic faiths. These texts could be woven into lectures on the LOVE LANGUAGES OF GOD that I had given fairly easily—adding to mutual awareness and points of contact among cultures.

One important Muslim perspective on worship [and man’s relationship to God or Allah] often revolves around concepts and practices, which are well-known as the 5 Pillars of Islam. These 5 main deeds or pillars in Islam are: (1) Declaration of Faith, (2) Five Daily Prayers, (3) Zakat, (4) Fasting, especially in Ramadan, and (5) Hajj. Most of these five deeds are easy to understand or appreciate as part of worship and lifestyle of prayer or faith. This is because most every religions around the world, including Christianity use fasting and prayer or statements of faith in making communications to their Lord and loved ones within the brotherhood or sisterhood of faith.

Likewise, a declaration of faith in Islam could be correlated to a baptism or a public announcement/confirmation of one’s faith before church congregation. Finally, the five daily prayer rite means that at five specified times each day, a Muslim will carry out prayers. Meanwhile, “The Hajj” is the most famous and most highly practiced form of pilgrimage in the world. It involves a journey from any corner of the planet to Mecca via Medina carried out once in believer’s lifetime. Finally, “Zakat” refers to acts of charity and tithing.

Most importantly, each of these Five Pillars of Faith (or deeds) in Islam provide perspectives on or interpretations through which the five categories or love languages of God coincide. Recall thosse five love languages: (1) Words of Affirmation, (2) Quality Time, (3) Gifts, (4) Acts of Service, and (5) Physical Touch!

The prayer 5 times a day in Islam is certainly a physical act, i.e. related to the 5th language above. Likewise, the giving of Zeikat or alms is certainly an example of either the 3rd or 4th languages (or both). The Haj also manifests a mix of all five love languages in all its elements. Similar is the time of fasting in Ramadan.

This hypothesis concerning the transferability of the Love Languages of God metaphors came from my own observation of Islam, i.e. as a Christian observer who has lived in and traveled in a dozen Islamic lands. As noted above, when I presented on the Love Languages of God and discussed their content in a vary mixed audience of males, females, old, young, Christian, Muslims, and others in Kuwait, I discovered an immediate embracing of the metaphors by the many different participants, especially in how the metaphor(s) provided a common or basic of understanding among the participants.

One interesting facet of looking at man’s relationship to the Almighty (and to his relationship to others in his world) through love languages is that the process frees man from his ethno-religious trappings to some degree while analyzing what his relation to God is. In other words, it provides an objective framework to describe and share subjective experiences. In other words, traditional religious baggage--which may either prescribe or proscribe what a man must do in his faith or religion, can be eliminated from a good part of the discussion. One focuses primarily instead on the relationship of God to individuals—and/or how God and the believer (or the community of believers) communicates or relates to God and others.

WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF “Love Languages” METAPHOR

Chapman's weakest point seems to be that he fails to readily admit that some people might have several love languages—not necessarily just one or primarily one. On the other hand, the metaphor of 5 love languages seems to apply well to relations among men, women and children of whatever nation or family.

The metaphor continues, according to Chapmen and my research to date:

(1) God speaks all 5 love languages, and
(2) Man can learn to speak more than one love language and can learn to appreciate it when the others, including God, communicate to him in another love language as well.
(3) Moreover, Chapman concedes, there are also many dialects of the 5 love languages by which man can relate to others or his Lord.

The important point is that upon gaining a self-awareness of these languages and one’s own preferences, one can grow as a human being and relate to others in one’s family and nation more successfully.


DETERMINING YOUR PERSONAL LOVE LANGUAGE

According to Chapmen, to determine one’s own personal love language, one should carry-out a relatively straight forward task. One simply needs to ask oneself these questions:

(1) How do I most express love to other people?
(2) What do I complain about most often?
(3) What do I request from others most often?

Amazingly, here—in answering these 3 questions--one is often quickly determine what their primary love language is. Alternatively, one can take the questions to friends and loved ones to gain helpful feedback if encountering difficulty identifying your primary love language.

NOTE: Sadly, when I tried this, I came up with 5 different answers depending on which facets of each of the three questions I focused on. As well, those friends, whom I have met with and discussed the questions with, were unable to provide perspective on which of the five love languages is my primary love language. Nonetheless, the majority of people I have interviewed find it relatively easy to narrow their own love languages to one or two. (This enables them, in turn, to note what they are weak in or need to consider working on when dealing with loved ones and others.)

This trouble in determining my own love language is, in a way, to some degree the more troubling aspect for some reviewers of Gary Chapman’s metaphor of love languages.

On the other hand, I personally have attention deficit, which likely makes it hard for me to focus on all aspects of these simple 3 questions in determining what my primary love language is. (Nonetheless, I realize from my own international and intercultural life experience that some persons, like myself, quite likely consistently use a variety of dialects of the five love languages. These languages overlap one or more other love language. In short, having lived in nearly ten nations and having traveled in more than 100 lands, I likely often love a bit more multilingually than the average person.)


RESEARCH FOR GERMANY---DETERMINING ONE’S LOVE LANGUAGE WITH GOD

According to Chapman, how one person talks to or communicates with God is basically answered by the same questions as noted above:

(1) How do I most express love to God?
(2) What do I complain to God about most often?
(3) What do I request of God most often?

Again, personally, I have realized that answering these 3 questions was not especially of much help to me in determining my primary love language with the Almighty. Through having spent my time meeting different peoples and worshipping in different environments over three decades, I have likely acquired a multiplicity of dialects in more than just one primary love language.

On the other hand, almost half the people I know manifest the same love language to the Almighty that they manifest to their loved ones and to others. Nearly, all the people I have met have been able to identify which primary or secondary manifestations of love are to their Lord.

Still, I need to hone my skills in a plurality of love languages. As a matter of fact, we all do. Chapmen assumes that awareness of the language preference of oneself is just a starter, i.e. when we are talking about the global need to communicate to others and the ALMIGHTY our love. For example, you might be weak in any particular one of the five love languages at various times in some corner of your life or another. Therefore, you should be prepared to try to improve your language skills simply to make your communication with the Lord (and others in faith) more fulfilling. Likewise, improving one’s skill in another love language can only help you to get along and love other humans more.

My proposed research would be to attempt to develop a variety of new perspectives on this metaphor of LOVE LANGUAGES OF GOD to create a network of bridges between the myriad of German citizens and migrants in Germany today.

PHASE 1: Develop a series of lectures for different religious communities
in Germany, especially in North Rhine Westphalia. This is not intended to be exhaustive but simply a representative locations and communities will be sought out and contacted. Some initial educational material and questionnaires can be developed and used during this phase.

PHASE 2: Develop questionnaires for surveying a larger representative
body concerning love languages for others and love languages
of God—and how these manifest themselves in family, society,
and business.

Both Phases 1 & 2 can be done simultaneously—and may continue into Phases 3 & 4.

PHASE 3: Revise/create more didactic materials to bridge what has
been learned or acquired so far in first phases of research
in Germany.

PHASE 4: Create and try out role plays, games, and political/social
Experiments, which demonstrate trends in behavior and
attitudes and how negative trends in society may be handled or how positive trends may be further supported through awareness and political/social/religious/economic education.


WORKING HYPOTHESES:

Hypothesis 1: Chapmen’s Love Language metaphor is useful across faiths for education, awareness, and mutual understanding.

Hypothesis 2: Chapmen’s Love Language metaphor is useful within groups and peoples of a single faith for education, awareness, and mutual understanding.

Hypothesis 3: Increased awareness of common and weak or strong areas of love language improves individuals relationship to a greater or larger non-faith-community.

Hypothesis 4: Increased awareness of common and weak or strong areas of love language improves ethnic group’s relationship to a greater or larger non-faith- or lesser non-in-group community.

I must cry that the Visa Authorities in Wiesbaden have been sitting on documents and refusing to communicate with me properly.

I must cry that the Visa Authorities in Wiesbaden have been sitting on documents and refusing to communicate with me properly. Have they communicated with your office in Kuwait ?





Thu, October 29, 2009 7:45:05 PM





Dear German Embassy in Kuwait ,



http://www.kuwait.diplo.de/Vertretung/kuwait/en/Startseite.html



As you know, at the end of June 2009 my wife, Maria Victoria M. Baradero, had her visa turned down here in Wiesbaden on questionable grounds. Soon after that, my wife filed for "remonstrierung" ( a friendly review of the decision process) in the decision. She did this on the very date your office stamped in her visa that she would not be allowed to apply again for a visa till next year.



Then in July I sent you a lot of electronic paperwork per your request in relation to the investigation.



Later, in July 2009, after finishing your initial investigation, you returned the paperwork & copies, which I had provided you, to Wiesbaden authorities. Because the Integrationsamt failed to act on the documents you sent, I soon had to file with the PETITIONSAUSSCHUESS in the Hessen Landtag for help



Well, since July 2009, the Wiesbaden Integrationsamt has done little or nothing. They claim that they do not have to make a decision until the Petionsauschuess has finished investigating the matter.



In short, the Visa Office in Wiesbaden invented a lot of Catch-22s in order not to communicate to me and in order to not make any decision—even as I piled on more and more documents out of my own desire to show good will in the process in support of my wife’s visa.



In a hearing in Frankfurt on Monday with the Petionsauschuess I discussed these matters. The Ausschuess Committee members whom I met with found what the Wiesbaden Integrationsamt was telling me was totally inaccurate, i.e. the Visa Office did not have to wait for the Petitions Committee to finish its investigation before making up their minds how to respond to the pile of evidence that had been forwarded to its offices in the last 4 months..



Meanwhile, the Wiesbaden Integration Office has also stated that Remonstrierungsverfahrung, started in the German Embassy in Kuwait in July, is also on hold or limbo--and will continue to be because the Wiesbaden Integration Office refuses to take a second look at their decision from 23 June 2009.



Please read my recent correspondence with the Petionsauschuess in Hessen from earlier today and note that I have no idea whether the Wiesbaden Integration Office has even been in communication with you in Kuwait at the German Embassy. (As a whole, their communication skills and research methods verge almost on incompetent at this junction.)



(a) Where does the remonstrierungs process--or investigation of the Wiesbaden Integration´s Office--and all now stand before you in Kuwait ?



(b) Have the authorities at the Wiesbaden Integration Office told you what documents I still need to present? They have, until now, fairly refused to communicate much either in writing or orally to me in the last 4 months. (I do most of the communicating and bending over backwards to their beck and call--but they seldom-to-never call.)



Please note that I will forward a copy of this letter to the Petitionsausschuss in Hessen.



Yours,





Kevin Anthony Stoda

Hessen



----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Kevin Stoda
To: S.Brink@ltg.hessen.de
Sent: Thu, October 29, 2009 7:25:42 PM
Subject:

Sehr geehrte Petitionsausschuss Landtag Hessens



Ich danke Ihnen, aber ich bin seit Juli (oder frueher, insbesonderes seit Mai) 2008 fast total Ahnungslos im Bezueg den erforderlichen Nachweise über einen gesicherten Lebensunterhalt, wessen mir von dem Integrationsbehoerden/Visum oder Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden in den letzteren Zeit angeblich erwartet wird.



Hier sind eine Liste von den verschiedenen Faellen, die zeigen Kommunikationsinkompetenz Seiter des Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden in 2009.



(1) Insgesamt habe ich keinen einzigen genemigte Brief von dem Integrationsbehoerden/Visum oder Auslaendersbehoerden im Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden in den letzten 4 1/2 Monaten nimmer direkt von mir fast kein mehr Information angefordert.

(3) Im Beiden September und Oktober 2009 bin ich zu der Sachverarbeiterinnen in dem Bueros der Integrationsbehoerden und Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden gegangen. Beides Mal hat den Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden mir gesagt, dass Sie nichts mehr von mir brauchte.

(4) Ich habe auch pro Email und muendlicherweise von der Sachverarbeiterinnen in den letzeren Zeiten ( September und Oktober 2009) mehrmals gefragt, ob ich noch etwas zusenden oder vorbeibringen soll.

(5) Stattdessen habe ich nur mehrmals den Antwort muendlich bekommen, dass der Entscheid bleibt Offen bis dem der Petitionsausschuss ihre Verfarungen beendent/vollendet haette.



Dieser ganzen Zirkus habe ich seit Monaten hin und wieder miterlebt.



(6) Zusaetzlich bin ich von der Sachverarbeiterinnen bei dem Integrationsbehoerden/Visum--oder Auslaendersbehoerden--im Wiesbaden in den letzten 2 Monaten mehrmals muendlich informiert, dass der Remonstrierungsprozess (in Kuwait angefangen schon am Ende Juni 2009) auch darauf wartete, dass der Petitionsausschuss den Verfahren beenden sollte, bevor den deutschen Botschaft in Kuwait einen Anwort auf Ihren Fragen an den Wiesbadener Integrationsbehoerden/Visum erhalten kann.



Ja, es ist Kafkaesque.



Im moment bleibe ich Ahnunglos, "was die da wollen", da ich schon mehr als hunderten Seiten von Papier und Kopien an den Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden (und ueber Kuwait) in den letzten 7 Monaten gesendent haben.



(7) Ich sollte es Ihnen weiter erwaehnen, dass im ganzen Monat Julis 2009 die Behoerden in Wiesbaden mir pro Email geschrieben hat, dass ich ihnen keinen mehr Emails senden sollte. (Die Sachvererarbeiterin des Visums meiner Frau hat mir schriftlich geschrieben und gebitten, dass ich Ihr gar nichts senden soll. Sie mente, dass ich alle Kopien nur an den deutschen Botschaft nunher weiter senden sollte. Ich bin natuerlich Ihren Anweisungen gefolgt.)



(8) Auch heute und gestern habe ich weder Brief noch email von dem Beamten in Wiesbaden erhalten.





Soll ich nun den Petitionsausschuss die Beweisse meine Erben und Verdienst senden, da die Integrationsbehoerden/ Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden in den letzten 7 Monaten wenig Vertrauen verdient haben? Ich bin bereit Ihnen beim Petitionsausschuss alle emails und Kopien zusenden. Sagen Sie mir nur das Wort.



Ich glaube insgesamt BeratungsKompetenz und anderen Kommmunikationsproblemen laufen ueberfuellt bei den Integrationsbehoerden/Visum (Auslaendersbehoerden) im Wiesbaden in den in 2009.



Im Allem weiss ich, dass nicht nur meine Frau und ich Schwierigkeiten habe.



Ich habe diesen inkompetenz beim Handeln mit anderen auslaendische Kunden in Wiesbaden miterlebt. Deswegen bin ich bereit, zusaetzlich zu meiner Unterrichts taetigkeiten in Hessen, eine Teilzeitstelle als Unterstuetzer Auslaender (und als Ausbilder fuer besseren Kundendienst beim Integrationsbehoerden/ Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden) taetig zu sein.



Ich sende einen Kopie dieses Emails an den deutschen Botschaft, da offentsichtlich seit Juli 2009, (laut ihrem Brief Unten) das Integrationsbehoerdamt (oder Auslaendersbehoerden) im Wiesbaden in den letzten 4 Monaten niemals (oder kaum) mit dem Botschaft richtig kommuniziert hatten, nachdem der Remonstrierungsprozess im frueh Sommer angefangen ist.





Danke fuer Ihre Zeit und Ihre Bemuehungen fuer Gerechtigkeiten und Uebersicht bei "a very secretive agency which handles visas in Wiesbaden".



Ihr,



Kevin Stoda

who does not no what papers are still awaited from me by the mysteriously operating "Integrationsbehoerden/Visum oder Auslaendersbehoerden im Wiesbaden "

AW:

Sehr geehrter Herr Stoda,

in der Bürgersprechstunde am vergangenen Montag wurde Ihnen eine Nachfrage bei der Ausländerbehörde der Stadt Wiesbaden bezüglich des Stands des Einreiseverfahrens Ihrer Ehefrau zugesagt.

Der Sachstand stellt sich wie Folgt dar: Nach Auskunft der Ausländerbehörde haben Sie bislang den für die Erteilung eines Visums erforderlichen Nachweis über einen gesicherten Lebensunterhalt nicht erbracht. Gegen die ablehnende Entscheidung der zuständigen Auslandsvertretung (Botschaft) läuft eine Remonstrationsverfahren.

Es kann Ihnen daher nur empfohlen werden, sämtliche für die Erteilung eines Visums erforderliche Unterlagen (Nachweise über ausreichende finanzielle Mittel) vorzulegen.

PHILIPP ROESLER, of Vietnamese Descent. to Head the Health Ministry in Germany, as his own Party Plans to Push for more Free Market and Higher Fees

PHILIPP ROESLER, of Vietnamese Descent. to Head the Health Ministry in Germany, as his own Party Plans to Push for more Free Market and Higher Fees in the National Health Care Service Industry

By Kevin Stoda, Germany

Philipp Roesler, born Khan Hooa in Vietnam, has been selected to become the Minister of Health Care during this second term of governance under Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany starting this very week.

Roesler is the first South-East-Asian-born German to be appointed to such a high post in Germany. Roessler is an eye doctor by profession and is known as a man-of-the-people, especially due to the tone he displays when he speaks. Moreover, Roesler is quite able to take complicated themes and articulate them in simple & understandable ways for a mass audience. Roesler is only 36 years old and is thus the youngest cabinet member as well.

http://www.philipp-roesler.de/

With Roesler’s own party, the FDP (Free Liberal Democratic Party), leading the way for Health Care reforms (especially in the area of decreased spending) in Germany over the coming months and years, the young politician, Philipp Roesler, has agreed to take on a daunting position at this time. Interestingly, Roesler also currently claims he will retire from politics by the age of 45. Perhaps this means, Roesler plans to be unpopular but get the job-done, which he will be setting out to do.

In the meantime, Roesler is considered a rising star all over the German political landscape. That is, he is possibly more popular than other politician at this moment in Berlin.

http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/roeslerportraet100.html

However, because both Roesler’s party, the FDP, and Chancellor Merkel’s CDU (Christian Democratic Union) party have been far too vague on what they exactly plan to do in many parts of the German regime over the next two to four years. This has vagueness after a month of planning and negotiating ha already made not only the opposition upset but has caused most of the German public to become irritated and suspicious of the new government. For example, the CDU-FDP coalition recently attempted to create “a shadow budget” (like the Clinton and Bush administrations did) to cover up deficit spending. This practice is considered unconstitutional in Germany.

http://www.welt.de/news/article4919478/Kritik-an-Finanzierungsplaenen-von-Union-und-FDP.html

At 9-months, the baby, Khan Hooa, was taken from his Vietnamese orphanage and adopted in Germany by a North Saxony couple. In North Saxony, the child was renamed Philipp Roesler. Later, the boy became a man and married another physician during his college days. They now have twins. He is a catholic-by-choice and joined the FDP in 1992. His grandfather and great grandfathers were politically active as well.

One thing that makes Philipp Roesler a man to watch is certainly the fact that his rise as a politician in Northern Germany reflects a growing tolerance within German society to peoples of different skin color and gender preferences. In addition, Roesler’s manner of talking makes him much-less elite-sounding than does his main counterpart in the FDP, Guido Westerwelle, who has been appointed in this same Chancellor Merkel cabinet to become the nation’s first publically gay minister (Foreign Minister).

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2009/10/press-and-secrets-even-when-people-are.html

Press and Secrets: Even when People are OUT Political Correctness Dominates in German Press

Press and Secrets: Even when People are OUT Political Correctness Dominates in German Press

By William Walker, Kuwait

Since as early as 2000, the new German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, has been one of the three or four most-well known gay politicians in Central Europe. The Free Democratic (FDP or Liberal) Party leader, Westerwelle, took his party to an unprecedented electoral success in September of this very year.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,651688,00.html

This last weekend, Westerwelle’s party signed an agreement to co-lead the German national government for the next for years with Angela Merkel’s CDU-CSU coalition. For the first time in years, Westerwelle’s appointment had brought criticism to his preferred gender relationships here in Germany. Fore example, it was highly questioned by some circles whether the foreign minister of Germany would be accepted in all international circles. For example, one newspaper noted that in the Middle East Westerwelle would be looked upon particularly askance, i.e. as representative of the nation state of Germany.

That was an interesting focus of critique when one considers that the more important matter or critique of the appointment of Westerwelle is that he has had little to no background in foreign policy making. [On the other hand, many of his predecessors the Foreign Affairs Office in Germany, including Hans Dietrich Genscher (FDP) and Joshka Fischer (Greens), had entered their office as Minister of Foreign Affairs with little to no experience in foreign affairs either.]

My perspective, after having lived in the Middle East for nearly a decade, is that whether one is gay or not has little effect on leadership there. Accordingly, the King of Oman, Sultan Qaboos, has been openly gay for decades and no big deal is made in the press reports about his ability to carry out national or foreign affairs. [Naturally, the press is to some degree censored everywhere.]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=102358§ionid=351020101

On the other hand, it is surprising that more open discussion does not occur much either in the press in the Middle East or Germany about such topics. Perhaps the subject is just as taboo in Germany as Germans perceive it is elsewhere. [Self-cencorship about biases is another sort of censorship under a politically correct banner.] In short, German critics [of a choice of leader or foreign minister] need to understand world politics a bit better before they criticize other cultures and their perceived stereotypes of them.

WALLS AND FENCES (Part 2) Germany's Wall in the Head Phenomena and Integration Issues in 2009

WALLS AND FENCES (Part 2)

By Kevin Stoda

Between late Summer 1989 and November of that same year, the first successful peaceful revolution in Germany’s history took place. In this peaceful revolution, the masses and leadership accepted a status quo of no-to-violence (Keine Gewalt).

However, this revolution was restricted to the former East Germany (DDR). That is, the vast majority of West Germans looked on with great interest but were not endangered participants when the Honecker’s regime in its last days, i.e. on October 7 and 8, took swings of violence, arrests, and harassment of protesters in all corners of the walled in territories of Communist East Germany.

By October 9, 1989 with the amazingly peaceful demonstrations, prayers, and marches in Leipzig and elsewhere, the East German regime was suddenly on the verge of collapse—as no more shots were fired and no arrests were made.

The DDR government had begun to capitulate to those who sought peaceful change without a bullet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_demonstrations_in_East_Germany

Within 26 days of the Peaceful Demonstrations of October 9, the largest peaceful mass demonstration in the DDR’s history would take place with opposition and government showing many words and manifestations of peace and good will to one another. “On the morning of 4 November 1989, approximately 500,000 demonstrators (sometimes the number is even said to have been nearly a million) made their way through East Berlin's center, past the East German Parliament and the Privy Council Building. At the end a rally was held on Alexanderplatz.”

http://uinic.de/alex/en/proj/4nov.html

“The organizers registered the event officially, in order to take legal proceedings for the recovery of the basic right to the freedoms of assembly, of expression and of the press, which were anchored in the constitution of the GDR, but never actually granted by the state. A security partnership was agreed upon with the police, who hardly made an appearance. Actors with green and yellow sashes and the inscription »No Violence« acted as supervisors.”

According to most witnesses and historian, »Never before had Berlin experienced so much shared determination, spontaneous imagination and, despite all radicalism, circumspection.«


Within 31 days (November 9) the border would be open.

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/summit/871/mauer.html


By March 1990 the unification of East and West Germany was fully underway, after the DDR held its first free elections.

On October 3, 1990, the two separate Germanies were no more. There was only one—and the revolutionary change movement in East Germany had all-but-collapsed.


AN OLD DDR JOKE FROM THE 1980s

I lived in West Germany of the 1980s and had made about ten visits to Berlin—often going to East Germany for a day in the late 1980s. One of the East German jokes of the era was about Erich Honecker and his wife, Margot. The two, as a duo, had been a formidable couple—ruling the country for nearly 20 years.

http://www.niester.de/p_politik/honecker/honecker.html

The joke went as follows with Honaker’s wife begging him, “Ahh, Erich, please open the wall up so people can be free to go.”

Erich looked at her with a loving twinkle in his eye, “Margot, I see mein Schatz(my dear). You want us to be alone here [in the DDR behind the Wall].”

In hindsight—and with knowledge of this sort of East German gallows humor—it is astounding that no one predicted what would happen the minute the Wall was opened up in November 1989.

In turn, I, like many pacifists in West Germany, had hoped that the Walls opening would bring great reform and change to all of what had been East and West Germany till 1989.


MY CROSSING OVER THE WALL AT BRANDENBURG GATE

Well, most of the physical wall around Berlin and between Western and East Germany was gone forever in an amazingly short period of time. I, myself, visited The Wall on December 31, 1989 and peoples were busy hammering away still write at the Brandenburg Gate.

I climbed up onto the Wall. There with 1000s of others on the wall near the Reichstag and Spree River--where crosses hung to victims who had died trying to cross no-man’s land there over the years.

That snowy cold day, I had come from the West Berlin side to the Brandenburg Gate and had then climbed down from the Wall to go through that once-forbidden symbol of Berlin and Germany. In moments—and almost shaking--I strolled slowly down the famous Unter den Linden street past the Soviet-, USA-, and other Embassies.

I reached in my pocket and realized that day I had forgotten to bring my passport.

At that moment, I felt a sense of wonder and honor at experiencing that particular moment in history. I shivered at the realization. I had just entered the DDR without passport, where only a few years earlier, I had been strip-searched at and rejected at a border crossing near there.


SOMETHING INSIDE US DOESN’T LIKE A WALL

Well, walls are not easy to take down—no more easier than the fences referred to in Chuck in DC’s writings.

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/walls-and-fences-part-1/

Recall that Chuck in DC had written: “Our obsession with fences, whether they serve a right or wrong purpose, is really a reflection of our conflicts with one another. Would we really need fences if there was no such thing as burglary? If we got along with our neighbors? If there was unity and harmony in our neighborhoods and communities? Robert Frost . . . says, ‘Something there is (within us) that doesn’t like a wall.’ In an ideal world, we feel, there is no need for fences. We hardly think of God’s kingdom in terms of fenced-in properties, do we?’”

I hate walls, too.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3736

This is certainly why I felt joy for both myself—and for Germany that special winter day. The bureaucratic wall of East Berlin keeping me out of one-side of the City was gone—just as the wall keeping East Germans in their place was being pounded into oblivion.


BUT, WHAT OF THE WALL?

Throughout the 1990s (and even into this decade) Eastern and Western Germans have spoken of the continuing exists of Walls in Their Own Heads. These walls have had to be built down over a long time frame than the physical barrier wall of Berlin and East Germany. Meanwhile, tearing that physical wall apart had only taken a few months.

http://alone.gnn.tv/articles/1246/Border_Towns_and_Divided_Cities_Divided_Cultures_Imaginary_or_Real_Walls

Stories like this in the press have still been common——in Germany of the 3rd Millennia:

“In Berlin today, there's very little left of the Berlin Wall. Even those who've lived here all their lives have difficulty remembering exactly where it used to be. But if every fifth person in Germany had their way, the barrier that split the country during the Cold War would be resurrected.”—Detusche Welle (DW), 2004

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1344803,00.html

Deutsche Welle writers have noted, “Although the physical barrier between east and west is a thing of the past, many Germans still speak about the ‘Mauer im Kopf’-- the Wall in the head.”
DW gave the following examples: “Stereotypes about East and West are stubborn. East Germans think of westerners as ‘Besser-Wessies,’ or arrogant know-it-alls. West Germans, in turn, roll their eyes about the ‘Jammer Ossies,’ or whining easterners.’
That is, “’East Germans have a false perception of affluence in the West. They overestimate the level of prosperity, and take the upper income level as the average, so many of their demands are unrealistic,’ says Klaus Schröder, an expert on the former East Germany at Berlin's Free University. ‘West Germans are envious when they see how much money is being transferred to the East. Many people feel that the true cost of reunification is being hidden from them.’”
On the other hand, “Negative western stereotypes about easterners have even been passed down to the younger generation, to those who were teenagers when the Wall fell. There's been an exodus of young easterners to western cities in the 14 years following reunification, but those who've remained in the East are often pegged as lazy, unmotivated, and bitter about their future prospects. Those assumptions are wrong, say sociologists at a leading public opinion research institute in the southern German city of Allensbach. They quizzed 2,000 Germans on their attitudes on typically Western values. While they concluded that, in the East, values such as equality and social justice ranked higher than individual freedom, the researchers admit they were surprised by the responses of young easterners.”

The good news is that most youth today see these different Weltanschauungen (World Views) as stereotypes and face-to-face, east or west, get along together to a great degree. Many of the younger generation have given up on manifesting any difference between eastern and western Germans at all publicly. They demand to be seen as simply German in both walk and talk (lifestyle).


WHERE ARE THE WALLS THEN MOST VISIBLE in GERMANY?

Well, even before the East German Wall came down in 1989-1990, I had observed other forms of “walls in the head phenomena” in Western Germany. By the 1980s, Berlin had become the largest Turkish City outside Istanbul.

In addition, German had for, example, become the second (or third) highest Muslim-populated state in Western Europe, even as the country’s Chancellor was telling almost all of them that they had no chance of ever becoming German citizens. That Chancellor was Helmut Kohl, the Unification Chancellor. He had stated several times prior to getting elected chancellor in 1983 that “German was not an immigration country”.

I thought, “Talk about a mass of people going around with blindfolds I thought back in the 1980s. Germany is already an immigrant land. Look at the millions of non-Germans and blood-Germans (first generation refugees) from all over the planet.”

At that time (1980s), though, one had to be a blood German to become a citizen so millions of Turks, Italians, Greeks, and others had no chance of getting permanent green cards or citizenship before the late 1990s when the citizenship rules changed—and Germans built down their anti-foreign-integration-walls a bit. [On the other hand, I noted that the definition of blood German was only Eastern European oriented. America—my homeland—and Canada have another 60 to 70 million people of blood German descent, all of whom/which Germany refuses to count.]

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2009/10/as-american-who-lived-in-wuppertal-from.html

However, the building-down-of-walls-against foreigners (xenophobic bureaucracy and society) was more difficult in East Germany, where the DDR government in early 1990 was able to expel hundreds of thousands of non-German nationals just before unification occurred.

http://gdrddr.wordpress.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/17/world/foreign-workers-leaving-eastern-germany.html

In short, the idea of integrating foreigners had never come the minds of the great majority of the peaceful demonstrators and wall-knockers of the 1989-1990 period.

Moreover, East Germany not only had exported its foreign worker force just after the wall came down, but it was able to shift hundreds of thousands of Russian military personnel and their families from eastern government lands during the early years of unification.

These sweeping away of masses of foreigners in East Germany in this early period of the new Berlin Republic led to an even greater anti-foreigner backlash in the eastern part of the country than in the west—where the foreign born populations were much higher, even before the Wall came down and a rush of post-Soviet era blood German refugees made their way to the new German state in the 1990s.

By the time, that Germany was even considering changing its citizenship laws, the CDU was winning elections in Hessen by demanding that any new German be forced to give up any alternative citizenship—before becoming German. This was a nationalist front-type campaign which looked more like what would have happened in France under Le Pen (a fringe party leader who plays on xenophobia), but the CDU has been in charge in Hessen for most of the past decade. The CDU under Chancellor Merkel has been in charge of Germany since 2005.

During the last 4 years, a Dr. Wolfgang Shaeubel of the CDU, has taken a strong hand in limiting immigration to Germany to record lows of the century. His turn-the-clock-back approach looks more like it comes directly from the pocket of Helmut Kohl of the 1980s than of an enlightened Germany of the 21st Century.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U0Kf-QTk2I&feature=related

In short, Germany has been building walls up against foreigners as fast as it has been trying to integrate those who already live within German borders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3as91uqtWY&feature=related

The HIGH-BUILT WALL by German Integration Officers in Schaeubel’s Germany is scary and contradicts the intention of millions of Germans and government leaders to reduce walls against integration of new settlers in Germany in this 3rd Millenia.

http://www.migration-boell.de/web/integration/47_2163.asp


FINAL THOUGHT ON WALLS

A German once wrote, “The worst kind of walls are often the ones we have built ourselves because we don’t recognize they are there.”

Germany in 2009-2010 needs to reflect on those words.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,603588,00.html

The Spiegel magazine reported this year that one “third of all children born in Germany belong to immigrant families, but many immigrants are poorly integrated into German society. A new study has shown that Turks in particular are faring poorly in Germany.”
Moreover, “A new study has delivered a damning verdict on the integration of Germany's immigrants, concluding that an alarmingly high percentage of them live in a parallel world with poor prospects of a decent education and career advancement.”
Bertelsman and other surveys show “that foreigners who come to live in Germany tend to remain strangers, even after 50 years and three generations in some cases. There are even problems among those who hold German passports.”
The Spiegel writers summarize, “It's a disturbing trend for Germany. The country needs immigrants because Germans aren't having enough children. The population is shrinking and aging and its productivity is in danger. If the immigrants, who tend to have more children, are poorly educated and can't find jobs, they'll end up costing the state money rather than supporting it.”

Thema 44? Mehr Kinderfreundlich Deutschland? Sie brauchen viele Veraenderung schon ab Gestern I wrote the following blog article to Rockland Radio

Thema 44? Mehr Kinderfreundlich Deutschland? Sie brauchen viele Veraenderung schon ab Gestern

I wrote the following blog article to Rockland Radio

http://www.rockland.de/on-air/aktuelles/erraten-sie-die-zeitungsente/

as there was a discussion this week on why so few couples have children in Germany.

Ich bin amerikaner. In den 80er Jahr wohnte ich hier. Damals gab es weniger Kinderspielplaetze und Kindereinrichtungen in den BRD (West Deutschland) als jetzt. Nun 20 Jahre spaeter bin ich zurueck und merke: hier sind mehr Spielparke, Wasserparke, und Spielplaetze.

Warum denn immer noch so wenig Kinder? Vielleicht hat es mit Politik, Gesellschaft oder Eltern, die nicht genug Chancen fuer Kindern in Deutschland sehen. Ich glaube, insgesamt ist ein Tendenz mit zuviele Buerokratie, Steuer fuer den Aermeren (und Mitteschichten), und zuviele Regeln.

Zum Beispiel, warum muss am Anfang des Schuljahres, Eltern 4 Paar Schuehen fuer jedes Kind direkt einkaufen mussen? (Ein Kind geuegt, eh?)

Anderen Beispieles sind die Keuschheitsguertels fuer einen Ehepaar, die als Mauer zwischen Mann und Frau, die die auf den Ministeriumsebenen aufgebauet sind. In meiner Fall--und in den Faellen von 1000den Deutschen alljaehrlich--muss man ein bis drei Jahr warten, um einen Ehepartner, die ins Auslandlebt legal nach Deutschland bringen. (Meine Frau ist Filipiner und wohnte auf einen sehr schoenen Inselparadis: Palawan

http://www.tourspalawan.com/

. Sie komme nur nach Deutschland um mit hrem man zu sein—nicht den deutschen Gesellschaft und Sozialversicherun heraus zu plundern.)

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/sehr-geehrte-auslaenderbeirat-wiesbadens/

Offentsichtlich unterstuetzt den Gesellschaft und den Regierungen wenig jungen und aelteren Partnern Kinder zu haben, ob die deutschstammig- oder nicht sind.

Sowas braucht Aenderung ab gestern--sonst werden Spielparke und Spielplaetze nie genuegend um das Land attraktiver fuer Kinder und Familien.

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/dear-cdu-csu-fdp-greens-the-left-spd-et-al-reform-in-integration-policy-needs-to-really-protect-family-unification-not-force-seperation/

Building Walls and Fences (Part 1)

I was doing a websearch on the concept of "the worst kind of walls are the one's we build ourselves because we often don't know they are there".

The concept relates to the presentation I would like to give to the PETITIONSAUSSCHUSS (Parliamentary Committee) fuer Auslaender (foreigners in Hessen at the Roemer in Frankfurt.

I will write more on how this Wall in the head mentality hurts our ability to build bridges and to get along with or integrate with others, especially those others from a culture which is not of our own.

In the meantime, enjoy this lesson on Fences that we build or don't know we ave built from Chuck in DC.

Christ's Last Words
by Chuck in DC
based on John 17:1-11

In last week's service we read the apostle Paul's last words to the church. We talked about how important the last words of a person are and how we especially honor those last words.
A few moments ago, we read Jesus's last words to the church. He spoke these words right before he was taken up into heaven. That's why we celebrate Ascension Sunday today. Jesus is taken up by God and is no longer physically present with the church. And before Jesus leaves, we find him praying for the church, and blessing the church. One last time the disciples gather around the Master and listen intently to his words of prayer.
And how appropriate are Jesus' words of petition for the church. He prays for the church's unity, for oneness in Spirit, so that the church may keep the revelation of the one true God of love and peace. And as we look around us we realize how urgently we need this prayer: instead of being one we find ourselves separated. We find ourselves putting up dividers, fences.
Fences differ in function and purpose. Some fences are actually good. The ones we put up in our back yards, for instance, may serve for the protection of our little ones so they won't get hurt by the cars that go by. Then there are fences that deter burglars from breaking into our homes, prevent wildlife from destroying our gardens and dogs from using our backyard for their business.
Fences to keep out, fences to keep in, fences to protect or to guard--we are surrounded by fences. Our neighborhood is full of crisscrossing fences. And the thing about fences is that we tend not to see them until something happens to draw our attention to them. And if we do notice them, we are likely to say with Robert Frost: "Good fences make good neighbors!"
But, then there are also those barbed wire-fences from behind which we see outstretched arms and terrified faces, like those surrounding concentration camps, POW camps, refugee camps. There are fences or walls separating whole countries like the ones that separate Yugoslavia into Albanians and Serbs.
Our obsession with fences, whether they serve a right or wrong purpose, is really a reflection of our conflicts with one another. Would we really need fences if there was no such thing as burglary? If we got along with our neighbors? If there was unity and harmony in our neighborhoods and communities? Robert Frost, in the same poem I quoted above says, "Something there is (within us) that doesn't like a wall." In an ideal world, we feel, there is no need for fences. We hardly think of God's kingdom in terms of fenced-in properties, do we?
And the worst kind of fences--and the most difficult to detect--are the ones that are invisible to our eyes. Where are those invisible fences that keep us from being united with our neighbors and God, from being one in the Spirit? There are fences based on physical appearances, separating persons of different race or ethnicity or gender. There are fences based on nationality, regions, or language, or even accents. There are fences between different generations, between people of different theological, ethical, or political persuasions.
We do not easily agree on which fences to preserve and which to tear down in our Christian communities. Some say we must keep distinctions clear, those whom we allow to come to the Lord's table and those we need to refuse. Fences are erected over such issues as birth-control, sexuality, euthanasia, when or how Jesus will come again, whether or not women can preach, whether we should be one sort of church or another. We disagree over the length of the service, what kind of hymns or instrumentation is acceptable, what prayers should be included, who should or should not do certain parts of the service, how people should dress, and much more.
And amidst all our squabbles over where fences should be erected or preserved and where they should be torn down, amidst our disagreements and confusion, we find the Founder of the church praying--one last time. And he prays for unity, for peace and for love among the people of God. And as we listen to Jesus praying for the church's unity, we are reminded of Jesus ministry to the people. We see Christ with arms open wide, welcoming, forgiving, accepting, loving, healing, not just some, a few--no he stretched his arms out to all.
Jesus certainly gave us guidelines, he gave us fences, but Jesus certainly also abolished some of the fences of his time. His ministry was to all--even the outlawed, the unclean, the sinners: "For God so loved the world that God gave his only Son, that whosoever believes shall be saved--whosoever!!--not just a few elect...Teacher, how can you fellowship with the ceremonially unclean and with sinners? is the question the Pharisees asked. Jesus answered: "Those who are healthy, do not need a physician, those who are sick do. I came to seek and save the lost." It seems to me that Jesus erected fences of good standards, healthy living and morality, but never to a point where people were shut out. When it comes to dealing with people, he never turns his back on anyone--not even the one who crucified him. Remember his prayer: "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do?"
So, as we argue over which fences to erect, which to keep, and which to tear down, we should keep this in mind. It is true, God calls us to hate the sin, but he also calls us to love the sinner. Just like Jesus, we must pray for love and unity. Jesus knew that the enemy was out there, ready to cause dissention, to cause strife and hatred among God's children.

I would like to close with a little anecdote from the Tales of the Hasidim:
An old rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun. "Could it be," asked one student, "when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it's a sheep or a dog?" "No," answered the rabbi. Another asked, "Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it's a fig tree or a peach tree?" "No," answered the rabbi. "Then when is it?" the pupils demanded. "It is when you can look on the face of any person and see that it is your sister and brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night." Amen!

http://www.desperatepreacher.com/sample/pool/christs_last.htm

As an American who lived in Wuppertal from 1986 through 1990, I came to know the historical setting and modern developments in a SEKTEN NEST

As an American who lived in Wuppertal from 1986 through 1990, I came to know the historical setting and modern developments in what had traditionally been cynically called the “Sektennest” of Germany. That is, long before most of the rest of Germany new what church groups, like the Brethren, the church of Christ, Methodists, etc. were, the people of the Wupper Valley had heard of them. This historical oddity in North Rhine Westphalia is one reason why I had ended up studying there in Wupperta. This was certainly also more directly the special relationship between Bethel College in Kansas, my alma mater, and the educational institutions in Elberfeld and Barmen.

After WWII, students of my alma mater, Bethel College (Kansas), i.e. with their Mennonite traditions anchored in Germany and northern Europe, had reached out to renew ancient connections. It is important to note that most of the ancestors of Mennonites from Kansas were either Ukrainian, Russian, Volga, or East Prussian Germans. Even during- and after WWII this Germanic religious and cultural identity was still deep for the Mennonites of all of North America. In short, like many religious minorities today, for the Mennonite, the separation between a culture, a language and a religion have tied together for generations.

Therefore, starting in 1950, students from Wuppertals Theological Hochschulen and at some neighboring schools in North Rhine Westphalia had been invited free-of-charge annually to attend Bethel College at the Bethel College student’s expense. (This charity continued up through the 1960s.) In those post-war years the Mennonites of North America wanted to re-forge links with post-National Socialist Germany, so they ad collected their own monies to promote an exchange program.

By the time, in autumn 1986, I went to study at the Bergische Universitaet-Gesamthochschule (BUGH) the German language I had already gotten to know many Wuppertal students. (Note: All of these exchange students from Germany to my homeland of Kansas, USA, in the 1980s were of the Northern European physical type—no Turkish, Asian, or other types of students were being sent to America on the continuing exchange program from Wuppertal.)

However, living in the university dormitory across from the BUGH in the 1980s, I was shown a very different multicultural world than I had expected. My view of Germany as a place in the midst of a multi-culturalization phase stems from those years in Wuppertal. On my wing in the dormitory alone, we had three Germans, a Persian, an Arab, a Chinese, an Indonesian, and me (an American). Naturally, we students saw our hall and most of the dormitory as an art ghettoized-view of Germany. However, I felt we were seeing a present and future of Germany that was being shunted in the press and by a government that should have known better.

My Iranian and Chadian colleagues prayed regularly and went to “the mosque”. Likewise, as the Wupper Valley had always been more, like America, i.e. filled with dozens and dozens of different churches in every section of town, I—as a Christian—found the tolerance for other faiths to be initially higher and more tolerant—than when I had lived in Alsace some years earlier in the same decade.

For example, there were many Christian organizations who were interested in introducing immigrants to one another (and to Germans) through regular meeting nights and weekend events—alas these events were mostly targeted at the student population rather than the general population. I noted, however, that many times Muslims, Catholics, and agnostic Chinese were on hand for various programs or festivals. They felt welcome and semi-integrated in such weekly foyers.

On one night a week, I might attend a meeting of Evangelical students who were very active with foreign students in the Wupper area. Another night, I might have a meal down at the Catholic Student Center across town. Foreign students from Ghana and Nigeria invited me along several times.

As I am fairly religious—and fairly serious Bible student—I also hung with the more evangelical Christians, too. However, I attended a variety of fellowships, including the traditional and Reformed Lutherans as well as the Bruedergemeinden--because their historical links to the Mennonites and other smaller protestant groups are strong and fascinating to me as a Christian and European historian.

Meanwhile, the Turkish population of the city and region of the Bergischenland remained enclave-like. This did not mean I had no contact with Turkish peoples. Mostly, my contacts were in the supermarket.

However, in the few main contacts I had, I found the Turkish peoples to be the most-self-absorbed of populations. One could barely draw them out in lengthy dialogues about themselves.

I would likely have had no contact at all with many Turkish Germans at that time in Wuppertal at all, except I had begun to teach English a few hours a week at the AVMZ on the University. These Turkish students were not very serious about attending their English practice labs nor were they strong in English. On the other hand, like many of the Polish students I taught, these more (acculturated) language-wise Germans at university level often spoke better German than most Germans had thought they did—due to preconception issues prevalent in the German society.

Likewise, at times, I tutored some (Referendar) teachers before their Staatsexamen, and I came to learn a lot about the problems that their Turkish students were having in terms of self-esteem and integration in the overall society. I knew that clubs for Turkish-only youth, however, would not promote the integration needed in a society. In short, I could see in the mid-1980s that the entire country of West German was already much more multi-cultural than Germans were letting on. This was straight-jacketing social and school developments left and right.

I, myself, had considered staying and integrating in Germany but too many societal walls had made Germany an unwelcome place for me, too, as an American. First of all, the University in Wuppertal had not recognized my completed BA degree for teaching and history. (It would be over 15 years before a Bachelors degree would be accepted in Wuppertal and many other German universities.) So, completing my students at an MA level or with a Referendar level in Germany would have been prohibitively long and I had only a little outside income.

NOTE: Between 1990( when I left Germany) and 2008, I traveled in over a hundred lands and taught in many different countries. I taught in Japan and the Middle East (Asia) for 9 of those years and in Latin America and North America another decade—even as I worked on a variety of M.A.s in the USA.

RETURN TO A DIFFERENT GERMANY?

In January 2009, I returned to teach at the Dualuniversitaet -Level and Professional School levels in Germany in both Frankfurt and Mannheim. I have since earned two MAs—one in Teaching English and the other in Political Science.

I have moved to Wiesbaden, which is one of the more multi-national cities in Germany with 30% of those in the area of foreign birth. Likewise, my current engineering and English students are of all kinds of backgrounds, i.e.. reflecting the multi-cultural trends of the past decades. For example, at least 1 in 8 of my students are first or second generation Germans from Eastern Europe. Another 1 in 10 are either of Turkish, Western European, Asian or American background (not of traditional German stock).

In any case, I can observe also that the 25 percent of the Hessens in the Rhine-Main region who have not come from more traditional German households are not making it very easily to university nor Beruefschuelen as they should.

Likewise, last spring I happened upon three different classes of older teenagers visiting exhibitions during the Anne Frank months in Wiesbaden. I talked with their teachers to find out why these groups of students were made up entirely of Asian, Middle Eastern, and other non-Northern European faces. Some of the women had head coverings. I was told that they were all in a special one year program for those pupils in German schools who did not do well enough in school to move on with their lives. They had grades so poor that they couldn’t even get work practicum easily coming out of school. They were, therefore, getting an extra year of schooling.

Some of these young people’s German was worse than mine. At that very moment, I began thinking of how I might be able to be a useful trainer, teacher, and consultant of this generation of Germans trying to figure out how to integrate peoples better. I thought:
“I have taught Muslims from at least 20 different countries as well as peoples from some 80 other lands as an English teacher since 1986. Certainly, there is need for someone with my multicultural and multilingual talents.”

When I recently (September 2009) talked with the German Ministry of Labor (Bundesministerium fuer Arbeit), he was told his skills were not needed and they refused to help him find extra work in society as a teacher, trainer, or counselor.

The author of this article, Kevin Anthony Stoda, was born in the tiny town of Sycamore, IL(USA) in 1962. He was certified by the State of Kansas (Topeka) to teach ESL, German, Spanish, American History, World History, and American Government/Political Science.



Notes

Dear Foreign Representatives in INTEGRATIONS OFFICE and Foreign Citizen Advisers of Wiesbaden City Council,
http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/dear-foreign-representatives-in-integrations-office-and-foreign-citizen-advisers-of-wiesbaden-city-council/

Dear CDU, CSU, FDP, Greens, The Left, SPD, Really Get Good Family Unification Practices at Integration Offices
http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=14631

Joffe stellt die Frage, “Wie gehen wier in Deutschland mit unseren Einwanderern um, die wir gern als “Zuwander” betrachten, also nicht unbedingt als die Unserigen von morgen?”
http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2009/10/joffe-stellt-die-frage-wie-gehen-wier.html

Why did the European Press do Such a bad job of covering world wide and continental actions?

There should be demonstrations everywhere on the European Continent starting yesterday: THE DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION.

I have heard none of the state or regional news stations in Germany or nearby lands giving events this weekend, i.e. starting yesterday October 24,2009 the attention that is required.

Here is why an organization and action day was started in the first place.

http://www.350.org/en
What does the number 350 mean?

350 is the most important number in the world–it’s what scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Two years ago, after leading climatologists observed rapid ice melt in the Arctic and other frightening signs of climate change, they issued a series of studies showing that the planet faced both human and natural disaster if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 remained above 350 parts per million.

Everyone from Al Gore to the U.N.’s top climate scientist has now embraced this goal as necessary for stabilizing the planet and preventing complete disaster. Now the trick is getting our leaders to pay attention and craft policies that will put the world on track to get to 350.
Is 350 scientifically possible?

Right now, mostly because we’ve burned so much fossil fuel, the atmospheric concentration of co2 is 390 ppm—that’s way too high, and it’s why ice is melting, drought is spreading, forests are dying. To bring that number down, the first task is to stop putting more carbon into the atmosphere. That means a very fast transition to sun and wind and other renewable forms of power. If we can stop pouring more carbon into the atmosphere, then forests and oceans will slowly suck some of it out of the air and return us to safe levels.
Is 350 politically possible?

It’s very hard. It means switching off fossil fuel much more quickly than governments and corporations have been planning. Our best chance to speed up that process will come in December in Copenhagen, when the world’s nations meet to agree on a new climate treaty. Right now, they’re not planning to do enough. But we can change that–if we mobilize the world to swift and bold climate action, which is what we’re planning to do on October 24th.
What is the day of action?

On October 24, the International Day of Climate Action will cover almost every country on earth, the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history.

There will be big rallies in big cities, and incredible creative actions across the globe: mountain climbers on our highest peaks with banners, underwater demonstrations in island nations threatened by sea level rise, churches and mosques and synagogues and ashrams engaged in symbolic action, star athletes organizing mass bike rides–and hundreds upon hundreds of community events to raise awareness of the need for urgent action.

Every event will highlight the number 350–and people will gather at some point for a big group photo depicting that all important message. At 350.org, we’ll assemble all the photos for a gigantic, global, visual petition.

The thousands of events on October 24 will drive 350 and all that it represents into the human imagination, and change the negotiating environment as we head towards the crucial UN Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen in December of 2009. Copenhagen may well be the pivotal moment that determines whether or not we get the planet out of the climate crisis, and your actions on October 24 will help our leaders realize we need a real solution that pays attention to the science.
How will this make a difference?

October 24 has finally put the focus where it needs to be: on the science and the citizens, not the special interests and the backroom deals.

People have sent in thousands of images of citizens gathering at important places around the world—from the melting peaks of Mt. Everest to the sinking beaches of the Maldives—displaying the number 350 in a creative way. 350.org staff are be getting those pictures for display on the big screens in Times Square and projecting them at the UN headquarters. Those photos are appearing in newspapers large and small—the same newspapers that politicians all over the world use as a barometer of public opinion. We’re also delivering copies of the images—and the stories that go with them—to national delegates, environment ministers, and heads of state the world over.

But more importantly, grassroots global action will be useful to put pressure on the huge UN Climate meeting in Copenhagen. Together we can remind our leaders that they need to take physical reality—and not political expediency—into account when they’re making decisions about our collective future. 350 is a clear and specific goal (unlike vague demands to “stop global warming”) that helps move the negotiations in the direction science and justice demand. We’ll make sure your voice is heard, and this debate is re-framed in time to make a difference.

Bill Kibbons,a cofounder of 350.org, stated that the whole continent (and planet, needs to be up and active. (Too many people point to leaders or powers-that-be and don’t act.)

“Here’s the thing about Obama and Copenhagen and everything else. We can’t blame our leaders yet, because we haven’t built the kind of movements that demand that they do things and that give them the political space to do it. If Copenhagen is a failure, that failure will be measured not in decades, but in geological time. President Obama can’t let it be a failure. None of us can let it be a failure. “
Kibbons concluded, “Everybody who’s listening to this, there’s a rally or event happening within a few miles of their home tomorrow. If they go to 350.org, they can find out exactly where it is. Make some noise. We’ve got no right to complain about our leaders until we’ve given them the leadership they need. That’s how it works.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/23/amidst_uncertainty_on_us_role_in

Guenther Wallraff Returns—from WAY DOWN UNDER to BLACK on WHITE

Guenther Wallraff Returns—from WAY DOWN UNDER to BLACK on WHITE

By Kevin Stoda, Germany

About two decades and a half ago, journalist Guenther Wallraff went under-cover in his own Western German (BRD) society, i.e disguised as a Turkish guest worker: Levent (Ali) Sigirlioğlu. Ali looked for the many bottom-rung-societal-jobs in Germany which millions of foreigners had undertaken in the Post-WWII Western European miracle years to help empower the West German society to become one of the wealthiest lands in the world.

Wallraff as “Ali” was in Germany working without official papers and visa; therefore, Ali represented an important part of the Turkish-German society and many other foreigners in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, i.e. who were not being welcomed into the German fold despite contributing to its great success.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Wallraff

Disguised as Ali, Wallraff took on jobs as laborer in construction firms, on farms, janitorial service, and even as a day laborer in a nuclear power plant. [In the publication of his 2-year adventure as Turk in Germany, LOWEST OF THE LOW, Guenther Walraff later revealed that the Turkish workers at the power plant were not even provided the same amount of protective clothing at the nuclear power plant as were the German employees at the same plant.]

As well as showing how both difficult and easy it was in Germany to find work as a day laborer, Wallraff also demonstrated how difficult it was to find a place to live or rent in Germany, especially if one’s skin color was different than the majority of Germans.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganz_unten

In the subsequent Wallraff book, entitled LOWEST OF THE LOW (Ganz Unten), the author as “Ali” also shared of his visits to football matches and to restaurants around Germany. Even though, the Turkish Ali rooted for the German national team against his homeland throughout the match, Walraff “as Turk” was pelted with cigarette stubs and cries of “Sieg Heil” and “Turk, Go Home!” Finally, beer was even dumped on his hair by the German nationalist fans around him.

LOWEST OF THE LOW (Ganz Unten) was first brought out in book form in 1985 and then in a documentary format the next year. By 1988, parts of a new documentary work on this same 1983-1985 Turkish experiment by Wallraff had already been published in 30 languages.

http://www.amazon.de/Ganz-unten-Erweiterte-Neuauflage-Dokumentation/dp/3462019244/ref=sr_1_3/277-0112585-6527556?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255854975&sr=8-3

Now, in 2009, Guenther Wallraff is back at it again—putting a mask over what his reality as typical Caucasian-German is in order to de-mask the society in which he lives and works. This next week, his new documentary film is being made public: Guenther Wallraff: BLACK ON WHITE[ Schwarz auf Weiss]”.


This new documentary film finds Wallraff dressed and masked most often as a Somali asylum seeker, who has apparently lived in Germany long enough to “speak German very well” and who actually holds a German pass.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/725/491095/text/

Wallraff says he wanted to put on the mask of a black person in Germany for over three decades but he hadn’t trusted the skin painting and mask technology until recently. Therefore, only since 2007 has Wallraff been out and about as a black-German in both the former Eastern and Western Germanies, which now make up the Bundesrepublikdeutschlands (BRD).

From the experiences, Wallraff shared recently in DIE ZEIT, “My travels as a black-German are now over. In all these months, however, I have never felt comfortable in my black skin—that is, I felt my skin was the target for feelings or reflections of shame for the most part. It is hard to say which is more difficult—the open aggressiveness of skinheads and full-frontal racism or the behind-the-back racism of the average citizen, who practices being friendly to one’s face only to be lying all the time about that supposed respect that is spouting out of their mouths. In the end, I can put my black alter ego down and walk away, but the others in this country cannot.”

http://www.zeit.de/2009/43/Wallraff-43

Naturally, just as Germany’s current reputation has made internationally clear, there are more skinheads and neo-nazi or fascist oriented lifestyles in those areas of Germany today—which before the Wall opened up in 1989 had belonged to the East German Communist government.

Therefore, unlike as “Ali” in West Germany of the 1980s, Wallraff, as black, was afraid even to enter the Cottbuss stadium as black-German in 2009. Wallraff simply stood outside the stadium before-, during-, and after the match as Cottbuss played another eastern German team, Dresden. Constantly, Wallraff attempted to engage in friendly conversations but was always received by hate and venomous words—simply because he was wearing a black man’s skin.

Later, Wallraff noted he was saved at least once by intervention by some policemen on a Dresden-fans-filled train. On the other hand, other policemen in Eastern Germany just ignored the illegal Hitler salutes of the neo-Nazi youth going and coming from the stadium—and the life-threatening words coming from their mouths in Cotbuss.

In contrast, when the black Wallraff was later threatened in a bar in Bavaria, two men stood up for him there fairly forcefully. Wallraff was pleased by this civil courage. [Wallraff notes in der ZEIT article, that it is not only racism that has led to citizens failing often to stand up to protect fellow citizens from abuse.]

In his own hometown of Cologne, Germany, Wallraff generally usually perceives a cosmopolitan atmosphere—i.e. in a city with2000 years acceptance of immigrants. However, just as Wallraff had experienced 25 years earlier discrimination as the Turk “Ali”, Wallraff found house- and flathunting in Cologne full of latent discrimination.

In summary, unlike in eastern Germany, the discrimination in western part of Germany was covered by a coating of Prussian business politeness or brusqueness—a brusqueness which in Germany should not be automatically read as racism.

However, after the black-German, Wallraff, left an apartment where such politically-correct conversation had taken place in traditional Prussian exactness, his own colleagues from his documentary team for the film came into look at renting the same flat.

When these Caucasian-German colleagues spoke to the landlady—only to hear many bad words about how horrible Wallraff as black Somolia-born man had made that poor German landlady feel, e.g. so uncomfortable. She almost whined, “That kind of black hair doesn’t belong here. Oooooah.”

http://www.film-zeit.de/Film/21016/G%C3%BCNTER-WALLRAFF-SCHWARZ-AUF-WEI%C3%9F/Crew/

The book, BLACK LIKE ME, is still on reading lists throughout the United States of America—even thought John Howard Griffin originally published his experiment as black man in America almost 5 decades ago. So, perhaps a few decades from now, Germans will still be reading and seeing Guenther Wallraff books and documentaries.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Griffin

In short, just as late in the 1950s America, John Howard Griffin, traveled for weeks around the USA in a public Greyhound bus disguised as black man, Guenther Wallraff has been up to the same tricks in Germany for many decades as an undercover-journalist.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Black-like-Me/John-Howard-Griffin/e/9780451192035

The exercise of not-just-stepping-into-the-other’s-shoes but jumping-into-the-other’s skin is important now and again for Germany and every other society to undertake and imagine.

I’m sure that the new film from Walraff: SCHWARZ AUF WEISS (Black on White) will bring new insights and discussions to a boil in Germany concerning immigration and integration in society. Hopefully, legislation and education will follow to support greater and better integration and immigration in Germany in the coming decade, too.

According to Broader Unemployment Figures 17% of Americans are Jobless --to Be Higher Soon

According to Broader Unemployment Figures 17% of Americans are Jobless

By Kevin Anthony Stoda


According to early reports this October, “The government’s broader measure [of unemployment], known as the’U-6’ for its data classification, hit 17% in September, 0.2 percentage points higher than August.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/10/02/broader-unemployment-rate-hits-17-in-september/

According to the Wall Street Journal report on September statistics in the USA, “Most forecasters expect the official unemployment rate to top 10% by the end of this year, and the broader rate could easily top 18%. For people in this group, comparisons to the Great Depression (when 25% of Americans were out of work) may not look so wild even if overall economic activity is holding up better.”
One critique of the Wall Street Journal article wrote as follows, ”If you add the long term unemployed and many people who are just unreachable for polling. Bureau of Labor
Statistical methods has it’s limits and constraints. Real unemployment is easily in the neighborhood of 20%. The economy moves on but many in the US population have been locked out of work and prosperity. This is the major marker or characteristic of the 1929 Depression (1929-1945).”
I am not nearly that pessimistic.
I do, however, firmly believe that this current depression (recession if you will) is already worse than the one faced in the early Reagan era—1981 to 1984. In those years, it was hard for college-student-aged and high-school-aged persons in the USA to find work, too, but not as difficult as it was in the summer of 2009. (I was one of those students in the 1980s who was affected in my job searches but I found seasonal work. From what I see now, it is even harder to even come up with seasonal part-time work according to USA summer jobless rates among young peoples.)
The difference between 1983 and now is that more sectors and counties of America are affected than then. The rustbelt states were taking it more on the chin than the rest of the USA back then. In 1983, 40-plus percent of the black male population in urban centers like Chicago could not get work.
However, now in 2009, many more regions—including rural, semi-urban, and urban demographic regions around America are running real unemployment (beyond the U-6 indicator) between 20 and 45%. These figure would include many independent contractors, who are not controlled for in government figures at all to date.
Without a doubt, the only organization getting a boon from this unemployment situation in the depressed USA is the Department of Defense, where recruitment of soldier-targets were achieved recently for the first time in decades. “In announcing the milestone, the Pentagon said the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression played a key role in boosting enlistments. Senior Pentagon official Curtis Gilroy said a ten percent increase in the national unemployment rate generally translates into a four to six percent improvement in recruiting goals. Another top official, Bill Carr, called the recession ‘a force,’ adding, ‘unemployment…allowed us to be for much of the year in a very favorable position.’”
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/headlines#17

Joffe stellt die Frage, “Wie gehen wier in Deutschland mit unseren Einwanderern um, die wir gern als “Zuwander” betrachten?"

Joffe stellt die Frage, “Wie gehen wier in Deutschland mit unseren Einwanderern um, die wir gern als “Zuwander” betrachten, also nicht unbedingt als die Unserigen von morgen?”

By Kevin Stoda, Wiesbaden


Am 15. Oktober hat der Herausgeber der ZEIT (Zeitschrift), Josef Joffe, in einen Artikel, dass NOBEL IN AMERIKA hiess, bemerkt, dass wannsinnige Viele Nobelpreistaeger ins Ausland geboren sind, aber endlichmal nach Amerika einwandern oder zuwandern hatten.

Joffe stellt die Frage, “Wie gehen wier in Deutschland mit unseren Einwanderern um, die wir gern als “Zuwander” betrachten, also nicht unbedingt als die Unserigen von morgen?”

Dann fing Joffe mit wichtigen Statistiken an, “Die allgemeine deutsche Abiturientenquote liegt bei 42%, die der in Deutschland lebenden Tuerken bei sechs Prozent. Deutschstaemmige Einwanderer (24 Prozent) machen viermal oefter das Abituer als tuerkischstaemmige, hinken dennoch weit hinter der Gesamtquote her. Fazit: Die Neuen, egal, welcher Ethnie, kommen hier nicht richtig voran.”

In allem, sieht Joffe das eigentliche Problem in den BRD, als mangelnde “Auftiegs- und Karrierechancen”.

Joffe teilte mit, “Sonst wuerden die ‘richtigen’ nicht nach Amerika, Australien oder Kanada gehen, in Einwanderungslaender, die laengst gelernt haben, Talent emit den ‘falschen’ Paesse nicht als Eindringlinge, sondern als ‘Bodenschaetze’ auf zwei Beinen zu behandeln.”

Anschliessend hat Joffe einen Beispiel ausgedacht, “Ob Sergei Brin, der Standfor-Stipendiat aus Moskau, seine Firma Google auch in bonn oder Bologna haette gruenden koennen? Aus dem ‘Nein’ muss zuegig ein ‘Ja’ warden.”

HOPE worldwide Philippines Typhoon Ondoy (ketsana) Update October 17, 2009

It's been less than a month since the worst typhoon in 50 years hit the Philippines. Here is an update and request for help. I especially appreciate how the needs are listed clearly. KAS

p.s. if you are outside of the Philippines and you want to send aid to these special needs on Luzon isle etc., you can do so with HOPE WORLD WIDE. [In the comments you can direct your donation to the Philippines and victims of Ondoy.]

https://www.hopeww.org/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?&pid=749

HOPE worldwide Philippines

Typhoon Ondoy (ketsana) Update
October 17, 2009



On September 26, 2009, Typhoon Ondoy brought a month's worth of rainfall to Metro Manila and nearby areas in just a few hours, causing severe flooding, which resulted in the loss of many lives and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. To add to the already overwhelming damage, Typhoon Pepeng struck the northern regions of the Philippines eight days later.



The National Disaster Coordinating Council reported on October 13, 2009 that Typhoon Ondoy had affected a total of 880,175 families or 4,320,699 people in 1,902 barangays, 155 municipalities, and 32 cities of 25 provinces. The current number of evacuees inside the 443 evacuation centers is 45,129 families/216,941 persons. The total number of casualties is 682, which is broken down into 337 dead, 308 injured, and 37 missing. Damage to infrastructure has reached Php3.684billion and Php6.766billion for agriculture, which has an estimated total of Php10.450 billion. Assistance provided by the government and Non-government agencies totals about Php94,224,687.51.



Center of HOPE Laguna
In Binan, Laguna, the waters are slowly receding, but the trauma and effects of Typhoon Ondoy are still just being realized. Many people in the area are now just assessing their losses as they stay in their still flooded houses or at crowded evacuation centers.



The Center of HOPE in Laguna remains flooded. The government projects that the water will take four to six months to recede. In the meantime, both the children and caregivers have moved to temporary housing. The bigger challenge is that 90% of the HOPE workers’ houses are still in 4 feet of water or higher. Most of their furniture and household materials were destroyed by the floods. As a result of this, our staff, along with the children and communities we serve, also need help. We have provided a temporary place for the staff and some volunteers to stay this month until they are able to find a permanent place for their families to live.



HOPE worldwide Philippines is currently working closely with the local government of Binan, Laguna to provide relief and recovery programs for the 5,000 affected families. Our partners and donors such as the World Emergency Relief, Springboard Foundation, Children’s Hunger Relief Funds, Giving Hands Germany, Metro Manila Christian Church, HOPE worldwide main office and affiliates, Australian and New Zealand Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ANZCHAM), Fortune General, Brent International School, German Embassy, and the International Churches of Christ have joined hands with us to deliver immediate support for the affected families in Binan, Laguna; this includes the future rehabilitation of the Center of HOPE residential and treatment facility for abused children.



Update/Highlights (October 10-16)

1. Max restaurant generously lent us their 800 square meter building for our Disaster Operation and temporary office. They have only asked us a minimal amount to pay the salary of the 2 security guards of the building.

2. Rodel Gonzalez, Preston Shepherd, Koko Enrile and other local leaders of ICOC visited our Center of Hope and delivered in-kind goods for the Laguna Victims

3. The Philippine Amusement & Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) partnered with us in providing medical missions and relief goods distributions to over 1,000 underserved affected families.

4. Pacific Cement also partnered with us in the distribution of 280 relief goods to underserved affected families in other areas.

5. All 37 Daycare students of the Center of Hope Laguna were traced and given relief goods and hot meals.

6. Child Protection: 262 children undergone Psychosocial activities through the help of MMCC volunteers

7. Retrieval of office and children’s materials in the Laguna Center of Hope through the help of many volunteers

8. Stress debriefing of HOPE staff

9. Packed 870 relief goods that will be distributed Saturday, October 17.

10. Transfer of the Laguna Center of Hope children from Canlubang to an apartment in Binan.

11. Assisted current and prospected donors to the disaster areas and our HOPE center.



Current Challenges and Difficulties:

1. HOPE Staff: the morale is affected due to the real and personal properties lost from the floods. There are also some issues and conflicts that have risen in the staff housing: too many staff in one room apartment; some feel rejection from the house owners while they are looking for a house; and some feel of responsibility to do more and help the other victims of the floods but have limited resources.

2. Transition in the behavior of the children in the Center of Hope Laguna due to the limited space for activity and guidelines in the new apartment they are staying.

3. Challenges on reaching out to poor families who are still living in their homes in the far flung flooded areas.

4. Complaints by flood beneficiaries on the relief goods distributions from different agencies. Majority of the affected families in the far flooded areas are barely receiving relief.

5. Processing and fees for donations coming from abroad



Plans and schedule this week:

1. Disaster Management meeting and planning with the 7 affected barangays (villages) in Binan, Laguna.

2. Relief distribution to two evacuation centers and two other areas where people have remained in their houses despite the floods.

3. Continuation of Psychosocial Support activities for children in the 3 evacuation centers of Brgy. DelaPaz in Binan.

4. Implementation of the hot-meals-on-the-boat feeding program for children in the far flung flooded areas; especially those families who are living along the lakes and rivers.

5. To establish a “Safe Place” & mobile program for children inside and outside the evacuation centers.

6. Advocacy on the prevention of child abuse in the affected areas, especially in the evacuation centers.

7. Psychosocial Support training for staff and volunteers to provide activities for children & adults.

8. Admission of 2 new clients for the Center of Hope Laguna.



Many volunteers still needed this week for:

* Community organizing/social workers for Community Assessment
* Relief Packing and Preparation
* Community Relief distribution
* Volunteers for Center of Hope retrieval operations
* Volunteers for our children’s psychosocial activities and hot-meals-on-the-boat feeding program
* Staff Support / Relievers / Volunteer Support
* Volunteers to help set up the temporary office
* Volunteers for the Laguna Center of Hope children during Saturdays and Sundays
* Resource mobilization/fundraisers
* Writers (to help write the stories and update of the operations)
* Photographers to document the daily relief operations of the organization and raising awareness of the needs of the people
* IT and website designers

Needs for funds or in-kind good to supply families in our Disaster Response Community Program:

* Canned Goods / Dried goods
* Rice, Noodles, Bread, Biscuits
* Blankets, Clothes
* Cooking utensils
* Slippers/Shoes
* Medicines (for wounds & skin diseases)
* Medicines (for headache, cold, cough)
* First aid kits / Medicine packs
* Water / Juice and other drinks
* Candles / matches and lighters
* Toiletries and hygiene materials (toothbrush, soap, etc)
* Flashlights with batteries
* Any food and materials we can use for our ‘hot-meals-on-the-boat feeding program’ for children
* School supplies and materials for our ‘Safe Place’ program and psychosocial activities for children

Other Needs:

* Stress management / debriefing for staff and other beneficiaries
* Temporary Office Set-up / IT set-up with Network
* Encouragement and Prayers… Prayers… Prayers!

Thanks for all your help
*********************************************
MOISES 'JUN' G. VELASCO
Executive Director

HOPE worldwide Philippines, Inc.
Coastal Road, Brgy. Dela paz, Binan, Laguna
Philippines 4024
Telefax: 63.49.511.3377
Telephone: 63.2.906.4153
Mobile: 0917.510.7875
Email: jun_velasco@hopeww.org / velascojun@yahoo.com
Website: www.hopewwph.org

'making the Philippines
a safer place for all children'

US SENATE CANDIDATE MAKES new RECOMMENDATION FOR PLACEMENT OF GUANTANAMO PRISONERS IN THE USA: The W. Ranch near Crawford, Texas

US SENATE CANDIDATE MAKES new RECOMMENDATION FOR PLACEMENT OF GUANTANAMO PRISONERS IN THE USA: The W. Ranch near Crawford, Texas

A Writing on the 150th anniversary of the Harper’s Ferry Incidents

Dear Fellow Americans,

It is 2009 and the horrors of Guantanamo Prisoners and lack of prisoner rights barring torture and rights to lawyers and US courts definitely need to come to an end this year.

There has to be accountability concerning the past--and investigations into the past must be undertaken. We cannot look back until human rights have a major place in the hearts of Americans, i.e. the very many confused Americans who have come to question whether torture and kangaroo courts are against American ideals.

These national shames from events and neglects over the last decade have led to a growing and dangerous anti-Americanism worlwide.

Like John Brown was, Americans are called to take a stand.

Some months ago, I had first advocated that the remaining Guantanamo prisoners be sent to Ft. Benning, Georgia, where the former SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS was located—and continues to be located under an new pseudonym, “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

So, far Congress and Senators from the state of Kansas have not pushed for the symbolic move.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/KEVIN-STODA-On-Line-Indep-by-ALONE-090522-893.html

Now, in the tradition of symbolism of the Harper’s Ferry fighters under former Kansan John Brown, who is being commemorated today, I make a new proposal.

NOTE: “Commemorations are being held in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland today to mark the 150th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry.” They should be being held in Kansas.

The Best sort of Symbolism that could be employed in 2009—as George W. Bush has just left office this same year—is to move all the prisoners to PRAIRIE CHAPEL RANCH, or formerly known as W.’s Western White House for 8 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Chapel_Ranch

In this way, George W. Bush can be called in for questioning as much fairer trials are carried out.

I think the world will understand the symbolism and contrition in America if the former Western White House is turned into Guantanamo prisoner’s direct access to U.S. courts.

So, today, I again turn to these following Senators and Representatives from the state of Kansas to demand this demonstrative move immediately: U.S. Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, and U.S. Representatives to Washington, D.C.—Kansans Jerry Moran (1st Dist.), Lynn Jenkins (2nd Dist.), Dennis Moore (3rd Dist.), and Todd Tiahrt (4th Dist.).

Please ask the FBI and federal courts to immediately investigate and undertake the procedures to seize as eminent domain this property and its owner: 43 Prairie Chapel Ranch, Crawford, TX 76638. I believe the owner to the property is still George W. Bush.

Yours,


Kevin Stoda
U.S. Candidate for Senator, Kansas 2010

Dear CDU, CSU, FDP, Greens, The Left, SPD, please support real Family Unification in Practice

TO: All Political Parties Represented in the German Bundestag 2009-1010

SUBJECT: Need for the BundesInnenministerium and Foreign Affairs Office to Develop newer and better questionnaires and monetary calculations to use when deciding whether a spouse earns enough or receives enough money to take care of my family in Germany. In my case, though today, nearly 55- or 60,000 Euros is not enough for family unification—and I don’t even have any children, just a wife. This forced separation from Spouse as is the case to date appears to be a national eugenics experiment.

Dear CDU, CSU, FDP, Greens, The Left, SPD, et. al. represented in the parliament.

I am a tax payer in Germany and I have had to suffer a forced seperation from my wife for nearly a year due to the fact that the criteria officially sanctioned by the Bundesinnenministerium is fairly incomplete and verging on ractist and nationalist in its blindsided application.

I contacted Herrn Schaeble's office in late June 2009 about this problem. The Innenministerium then told me to contact the Hessen Bundestag.

By the middle of July 2009, I had already asked the Hessen Bundestag in a Petition to check into the wanting-methodology which had led the Wiesbaden Integrationsamt to deny my wife entry into Germany on the 23rd of June 2009--despite the fact that I earn over 30,000 euros per year and receive an annual inheritance in 2009 from my father of 15- to 25 thousand dollars. (With the denial for my wife to enter Germany, I had been told by the Wiesbaden Integeration Office that I earned 148 Euros too little per month.)

I have since researched the matter and have found the fact that neither I ((USA) nor my wife (Philippines) have been handled fairly or equally through the fairly incomplete Visa and Auslaenderbehoerder application processes we have faced thus far in 2009.

I have also discovered that even UK and Canadian residents with Asian wives have faced similar discriminations since at least 2006--leading to many fleeing to Canada to start over.

In short, it is Bundesinnenministerium numbers-racket (with fixed winners and losers) when it comes to considering what is adequate for a spouse to take care of a family in Germany. Because the numbers are skewed and in some ways so terribly arbitrary that the process appears to be racist and xenophobicin many case.

Here are a few articles that I have written on the matter since spring 2009 on this topic:

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2009/06/no-malicei-just-want-glueck-or.html

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2009/07/sehr-geehrte-hessesischen-landtag-und.html

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/269/

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/the-criticisim-is-increasing-the-german-visa-and-immigration-process-needs-to-be-investigated-by-canada-usa-and-uk/

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/sehr-geehrte-auslaenderbeirat-wiesbadens/

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/dear-foreign-representatives-in-integrations-office-and-foreign-citizen-advisers-of-wiesbaden-city-council/



Recently a lawyer at Caritas said to my sachverarbeiter that this whole issue has to do with bad policy from Berlin and the Innenministerium--as well as bad foreign policy as practiced out of certain German Embassies around the globe.

This is why I am writing the Bundestag and all its parties to force a house cleaning and a new calculus of what is needed for reunion of families in Germany. This current smells of simple eugenics.

Kevin Anthony Stoda
Oranienstr. 62
Wiesbaden


p.s. If anyone wishes to write in support of a big reform in the out-of control situation with numbers and facts at the Bundesinnenministry which adversely affect integration in Germany, make contact here in Berlin at this website..

https://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/service/contact/index.jsp

WHY THE LACK OF CONGRESSIONAL OUTRAGE IS HELPING THE DOLLAR TANK AND FOREIGN INVESTORS TO BE WARY OF SUPPORTING THE USA IN 2009-2010, even while Wall

WHY THE LACK OF CONGRESSIONAL OUTRAGE IS HELPING THE DOLLAR TANK AND FOREIGN INVESTORS TO BE WARY OF SUPPORTING THE USA IN 2009-2010, even while Wall Street Booms


By Kevin Stoda, Wiesbaden , Germany


This is the second of a series of articles on the lack of outrage in America today.

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/why-the-17500000000000-bailout-hasn%c2%b4t-helped-the-majority-of-americans-much-why-the-dollar-continues-to-crash/

William Black was on Democracy Now today. He was explaining how the stock market boom and the continued existence of many BAD & BIG BANKS in the USA were now screwing up long term investment in all parts of the more “real American economy”. He pointed out that the stock market’s current boom or growth was simply a matter of banks sitting on mountains of bad loans rather than declaring the bankruptcies properly. Black noted that the only reason to inflate one’s appraisal is for the purpose of fraud and that is what many of the BAD BANKS are up to.


http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/black


William Black is the author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry. He is a former Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation investigator. (Remember the epidemic of Savings & Loan accounting fraud related to home and other proper loans in the 1980s. Oh, we forgot about that one that helped created the depression in USA between 1987 and 1994!!!)


Black is now a professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City . His discussion on DN point out that the greatest frauds in America’s Financial Crises of the past 5 years have been almost entirely in the banks—these banks are still not being controlled nor investigated properly. These same banks are now giving huge bonuses to bank CEOs and their cronies this very autumn 2009—with millions having lost property due to foreclosures in the last year or so.


Black let’s it be known that USA taxpayers are still paying for this.
Juan Gonzaley of Democracy Now asked, “William Black, where is the outrage? It seems to me, at this stage, with the—as the foreclosures continue to escalate in numbers, and yet we’re seeing these enormous profits less than a year after the financial crisis. There doesn’t seem to be the kind of outrage, even in Congress, that there was six months or eight months ago.”


William Black replied, “There’s no palpable outrage, certainly not in Congress. The reform efforts on derivatives, for example, are a scandal. They exempt virtually all of the problem derivatives, and they’re designed to exempt it. And that’s the bill that’s introduced, and of course it’s likely to get worse with additional lobbying from the special interests.”



Black admonished all Americans to be concerned: “Link the things that you’ve just been talking about. You talked about foreclosures reaching record highs. But in fact, foreclosures, relative to delinquencies, are quite low compared to historical ratios. In other words, banks have tons of folks who are not paying their mortgages on time, and they’re not foreclosing. And the reason they’re not foreclosing is, once you foreclose, you have to recognize losses under the accounting rules. And the banks gimmicked the accounting rules. They put pressure on Congress, and Congress put pressure on the accounting profession to gimmick the accounting rules now about a year ago. Now, these bonuses, of course, are paid compared to alleged profits. What happens if you understate your losses dramatically? You report much higher profits and much higher bonuses. So this is a web of fraud, in which they are getting as much as they can before the place goes to hell in a hand basket again.”

SYSTEM FUNCTIONS EVEN WHEN NOT CREDIBLE?



Interestingly enough, Slavoj Žižek came on the same Democracy Now program a few minutes later and noted that it is not only the average or common man who does not get outraged or ask the right questions about the crises of the past few decades in America (and around the globe).


http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/slovenian_philosopher_slavoj_zizek_on_the


Gonzalez announced, “His latest (work), just out from Verso, is called First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. It analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown. Žižek’s latest offering, also excerpted in the October issue of Harper’s Magazine, opens with the words, quote, `The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable.”

He goes on to recall how the demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank over the past decade all protested the ways in which banks were playing with money and warned of an impending crash. They were met with tear gas and mass arrests.`”


I had to confess that Mr. Žižek’s comment in the Harper´s interview hit home for me and should hit home to all major media consumers. Most of the planet was, indeed, caught by surprise by the big bank collapses and financial collapses of the past year or so. On the other hand, for thousands (or millions) of individuals and concerned parties, such as those out protesting, getting tear-gassed in Seattle, Chiapas, London, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere for over two decades, this sort of crisis was already fully underway.


The bottom line for Mr. Žižek says that “this is my whole thesis, that capitalism always was socialism for those who are on the top. This is the basic paradox of it, no?”


HOWEVER; EUROPE MAY BE WORSE THAN THE USA ?? I doubt it


Žižek says that, in contrast to many Europeans, many Americans do recognize this fact about the relationship between socialism for the rich.


However, in Europe , where Žižek is from, the Left does not get it. He says that the Left (and the Right) these days are tending to believe that the forms of choice for their socio-capitalist development are very very narrow.


Žižek summarized his thoughts, “I see more hope at this moment with you in United States than with Europe . Europe is now, I think, in great decline. I had (had)some hopes about Europe (but not any more). Why? Because, to put it very simply, it still looks that we have two models now which are in competition, if I simplify the analysis very much: (1) the Anglo-Saxon liberal market model and what we (2) poetically call capitalism with Asian values, which means authoritarian capitalism. This is what every leftist, as I repeat it, should worry about, because let’s concede to the devil what belongs to the devil. . . . ’til recently—I’m sorry to tell you again, as a strange communist, you will say—there was one good argument for capitalism? . . . . It may have been that capitalism needed dictatorship for ten, twenty years— Chile , South Korea —but when things started to move, capitalism always engendered a push toward some kind of democracy. No longer. I claim that what is now emerging in the Far East started—it started in Singapore , this kind of so-called, again, authoritarian capitalism.”



This great narrowing of choices may be true for Europe in either the near- or the far future, but in the meantime, Americans poorest and most vulnerable wander around without health care, property, nor jobs—while humongous banks with huge lobbies laugh all the way . . . to the bank.


The only plan now is to sink the US dollar´s value until American investment becomes too tantalizing to keep foreigners out of the market—despite the apparently narrowed-mindedness of USA bankers and financiers.


William Black explains socialism for the rich—i.e. paid for with USA tax dollars: “What happened then (in the Saving and Loan Scandal days) was an epidemic of what we call in criminology ´control fraud.´ And that means what happens when the fraud is led by the person who controls a seemingly legitimate corporation or government agency. In this case, they were savings and loans. And these frauds were growing at an annual rate of over 50 percent. Their weapon of choice is accounting fraud.”


Black explained, “So it’s real easy. It’s a three-part optimization. First thing you do is grow like crazy, Ponzi-like scheme. Second thing you do is deliberately make really bad loans, because they have a higher interest and higher expenses associated with them, so you report more profits. And the third thing you do is have extraordinary leverage. Leverage is simply lots of debt compared to your equity. And the point of this is, if you do those three things, you are mathematically guaranteed to report not just profits, but record profits.”


Sadly, Black points out that his Federal Savings and Loan Investigation group had approached the problem of growth and had controlled it with good regulation and oversight.


However, it was this same exemplary oversight of derivatives etc. that the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have refused to use with America ’s most powerful financiers in 3 full decades--or more.


This leaves Americans wide open to abuse more than ever.


Americans need to demand a completely new Congress and Senate without the banks money in 2010 or they will be enslaved to Citigroup and friends forever.


DN notes that currently Congress has already received 200 million dollars this year from banking and finance lobbies—paid with by American taxpayer largess. Black responded to this fact by pointing out, “Barney Frank has proposed legislation on financial derivatives that essentially exempts what are called over-the-counter derivatives from most regulation, and it is over-the-counter derivatives that have been a major cause of this crisis. So that’s utterly insane. There’s no conceivable justification for it. And he stacked the hearing. There were nine witnesses; eight of them were from the industry and, of course, testified that they were vital to the world. The ninth witness was the only person who was in the least bit skeptical, and he was promptly gaveled down, unlike the others, by the chair. So it’s not only a farce; they’re willing to have us see that it’s a farce. They are so little afraid of public opinion and outrage that they’re not even taking steps to cover up the cover-up.”

NOTES


Black, William, William Black is the author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry,

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/blabes.html

Stoda, Kevin, “WHY THE $17,500,000,000,000 BAILOUT HASN?T HELPED THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANs MUCH & WHY THE DOLLAR CONTINUES TO CRASH”, http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=14589

WTO PROTESTS IN SEATTLE 1999, http://www.globalissues.org/article/46/wto-protests-in-seattle-1999

Žižek, Slavoj, “To each according to his greed”, http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/10/0082658

Dear Foreign Representatives in INTEGRATIONS OFFICE and Foreign Citizen Advisers of Wiesbaden City Council,

Dear Foreign Representatives in INTEGRATIONS OFFICE and Foreign Citizen Advisers of Wiesbaden City Council,

Today is the day when a few more North Americans will be forced to leave Germany and move back to Canada because the current Visa handlers at the Integration Office in Wiesbaden, Hessen in Germany continue to apply (without whistleblowing) unfair and illegal or unfair treatment of foreigners based on race and nationality. This failure is explained in more detail in this WORPRESS article link.

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/the-criticisim-is-increasing-the-german-visa-and-immigration-process-needs-to-be-investigated-by-canada-usa-and-uk/

Before I give my provocative speech, let me share with you that clearly this case of today’s Canadian family (who had moved to Wiesbaden two years ago in full-faith that Germany wanted highly trained technically talented foreigners here) is not a singular event.

I-for-one am expecting the Wiesbaden Integration Office to apply another illegal or questionable procedure to keep my wife from joining me during my working life here in Germany this 2009.

It is very likely that such an action to prohibit my wife joining me here in Germany will eventually force me to move to some country I have never lived in before to work next year. I would call that sort of policy an expulsion or exile. Wouldn’t you?

So, let’s look at the cards that have been dealt my wife and I since the beginning of 2009, i.e. when I moved to Wiesbaden on January 3.

On Monday, October 12, 2009 I was in the Representative for the Integration Office to the Foreign Representative Council. That morning, the representative for the foreigners council in Wiesbaden was on the phone to the head of the Integration Office for Wiesbaden. (The Integration office that claimed unfairly on the 23rd of June of this year that I was earning 147 Euros too little to bring my wife here to live in Germany--despite my paying three times that much to take care of her every month while she lives abroad.)

The Head of the Integration Office made a claim that made my jaw drop.

The Head of the Wiesbaden Integration Office claimed that the decision to deny my wife entry into Germany had only to do with my wages—i.e. it had nothing to do with either my wife’s or my nationality or race.

Oh, come now. Let’s discuss this.


AREN’T ALMOST ALL IMMIGRATION LAWS & RULES RELATED TO RACE & NATIONALISM?

Naturally, the current laws, procedures, and problematic handling of almost all visas in and outside of Germany are intrinsically race and nationalist-related.?!

Aren’t they?

Here are some examples:

(1) If my wife had an American passport or a European one, she would have certainly been allowed to accompany me on my flight to Frankfurt, Germany on January 3, 2009.

(2) If the Wiesbaden Integration office hadn’t put my employer under pressure in February and March 2009 to reapply for a severely restricted single year visa for me—rather than the anticipated multi-year visa I had been told I was, indeed, eligible for--, my wife would have been in Germany with me months ago.

(3) Since I, myself, do not come from a desired-land to work as an adjunct or associate professor or lecturer at German universities, etc., I was forced to accept the unexpectedly restricted visa at the end of March 2009. Because of these extreme restrictions, I have not been able to pick up extra work to overcome the supposed 147 Euro earnings hurdle through October 2009.

(4) If my wife was nor originally from Southeast Asia, her visa application would not have taken a full 5 ½ weeks to go from the German Embassy in Kuwait—where she and I had lived for five years or more—to Wiesbaden Germany this spring.

(5) Likewise, if my wife and I had not been married in the country of Kuwait, our marriage certificate would not have been called into question by the Wiesbaden Integration Officials so severely in May 2009.

(6) At the end of May 2009, although I again flew from Frankfurt to Kuwait and tried to pick up my wife in order to bring her to Germany, I was not permitted to do so. However, I did have the opportunity on that journey to visit the German Embassy. Over the window where visas are applied for in that German Embassy is a sign with the following statement: “Peoples of these countries will have to wait at least 10 days before their visa application in the German Embassy in Kuwait will even be looked at it.” Among those countries listed were many South Asian and Southeast Asian lands—oh no, that is where my wife is from!!!> No one at that German Embassy could deny that race and nationality play a factor in how our visas are handled.

(7) If I was from many other lands, besides the USA, I would have likely received more written- and vocal support for my wife’s cause starting in July when I was forced to file a petition with the Hessen Parliament asking for an investigation of the unfriendly and probably illegal policy which was used to bar my wife’s entry into Germany the month before. I am simply being hyperbolic [i.e. provocative] here—but where exactly are the far East and South Asians or North & South Americans of Wiesbaden represented on the Foreigner Council in Wiesbaden?

(8) If I was from a country more geographically closer to Germany, it is likely that my wife’s visa would have been accepted on the 23rd of June 2009. This because different rules based upon nationality are used when calculating earning needs. However, no one at the visa offices ever told me what the earnings minimums are or were. By the way, my wife’s visa to join me here was turned down even though on top of my regular contracted salary in Germany in 2009, I will have received around 20,000 dollars in all from my father as inheritance this same year. The Integration Office has refused to consider these or any other moneys because I am from the USA.

(9) If either my wife or I were from many other countries, perhaps she would certainly be here by now—if for no other reason than because my employer and I will have tossed nearly 20,000 euros in the form of taxes and required health care fees into the local Wiesbaden economy in 2009—even as I received 33,000 euros as salary, etc. to toss in, too.

In the article mentioned above I have also described the experience of my predecessor at my own firm here in Germany.

Three or so years ago, my predecessor at my job here in Wiesbaden had arrived from England accompanied by his wife, a Taiwanese woman who had lived for more than a decade in the UK. My predecessor enjoyed his work but unfortunately every single month, he (like me) had to fight to get his wife some more permission to stay and live with him legally in Germany. The upshot was that he and his wife fled to Canada at the end of 2008.

In short, the visa approval and application system is based to a great degree on race and nationalism—or Eurocentrism. Such racist or anti-non European procedures are used at the immigration offices in Wiesbaden around Germany and abroad.

This is why I ask that you meet with me.

In summary, with this letter I ask of the (Auslaenderbeirat Wiesbadens) Foreign Citizen Advisers of Wiesbaden City Council, that you undertake these two key steps as soon as possible.

(1) The Foreign Citizen Advisers of Wiesbaden City Council or Auslaenderbeirat Wiesbadens needs to write letters in support of my request or petition in Parliament [an den Voreiterzendes des Petitionsausschusses Hessens] and to the Bundesinnenministerium to demand that the uninformed standard criteria be set aside—i.e. this current biased criteria fails to take into account my financial inheritance and other earnings for 2009 when deciding whether I can afford to take care of my wife in Germany.
(2) Invite me to come by and give me face to face advice and council. Too many Americans—of both North and South—and East Asians do not have as much experience as Turkish and Near Asian settlers in Germany. We need more advice.


Finally, the processes of issuing my own visa and the processes of denying my wife’s visa since January 2009 appears to be racist in at least one other key way.

This phenomena is in the manner that the Hessen Integration Office in Wiesbaden and Bundesinnenmisterium (as well as German foreign offices) appear to be simply extending my separation from my wife because she and I are not of direct European descent.

You might claim that Germany has the right to such a policy.

Let me give you a metaphor for this process for keeping man and wife separated for years at a time against European law and against tolerant traditions. This process is called eugenics.

In other words, the reason for keeping my wife and I separated has nothing to do with money, it has to do with the fact that my wife is still of child-bearing age. The continued forced separation is seen by the Integration Office as a means of providing a condom between my wife and I on continental Europe.

WHAT DO I MEAN BY EUGENICS?

NOTE: (1) I have already flown out of the country to my wife three times this year, i.e. my financial status in flying to my wife is not the real issue. (2) Likewise, in my visit to the Philippines over a 5 week period THIS SUMMER, whereby I always had to pay to stay in a hotel, I had spent already 4000 Euros or more. In short, money is not the reason my wife is being kept out of Germany. (3) During August 2009 I bought property and got a building permit in the Philippines for my wife and I. In short, we have enough money to build a house. Money is absolutely not the key issue here.

The key issue is to keep my wife and I celibate on continental Europe.

In summary, separation is the goal of the current integrationsamt (Integration Office as well as Bundesinnenministerium and Foreign offices’) policy. This seperationist policy is equal to a metaphorical Chastity Belt for foreign workers in Germany (or Europe) in 2009.

In other words, throughout 2009 I have faced all kinds of pressures from the Civil Servants here in Wiesbaden and at various ministries here and abroad simply to keep me from having time with my wife in Germany or Europe—as any normal couple would hope to do if they have enough money (and are not out to make trouble here) and the husband works here teaching hundreds of Germans at the university level.

In short, the Civil Servants at the Integration Offices could use much better policies and practices than they are using now.

These same officials could also unify family members with one another more quickly in Germany if that was the actual goal or policy intended by the current dragging rules and regulation in Germany today.

No, the real goal seems to be to keep people of non-European parentage from being created or born in Germany as of 2009.

I can think of no better metaphor than a CHASTITY BELT to describe this policy and these practices experienced by my wife and I since January 2009.

In this sense, a sort of eugenics is now officially or unofficially being practiced here in Germany and some other European lands. This is likely why my UK predecessor and his wife fled to Canada in 2008.

This is why I ask that the Council of Foreign Persons for the Integration Office and City of Wiesbaden speak up and call these practices what they are before the Hessen Landtag.


CLARITY

By now, it is clear I think that there is evidence to claim that the policy, rules, and criteria to keep my wife and I separated are based on Race and Nationality. These racist and nationalist roots need to be called into question and a truly fair due-process must be demanded for foreign workers now and in the future.

I thank you for reading to this point and thank you for your support in my wife’s and my cause—and ask for further support for ALL other foreigners in Germany who have been left out in the cold without awareness of rights etc. that are or should be available here.

LOVE IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR. LOVE IS WORTH IT.

Sincerely,



Kevin Anthony Stoda

Sehr geehrte Auslaenderbeirat Wiesbadens

Sehr geehrte Auslaenderbeirat Wiesbadens,

Heute is einen Tag, wobei noch einen anderen Nordamerikanische Familie nach Kanada zurueck kehren mussten, da die jetzige Visa- und Auslaender Behoerden innerhalb und Ausserhalb Deutschlands, diesen kanadische Familie fehlbehandelt hat. (Ich schilde den Fall dieser Familie in diesen Umschreibum beim WORDPRESS.)

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/the-criticisim-is-increasing-the-german-visa-and-immigration-process-needs-to-be-investigated-by-canada-usa-and-uk/

Bevor ich ein bischen polemische reden darf, teile ich mit, dass den Fall dieser kanadischen Familien keine Einzelfall ist. Ich erwarte es bald, dass der Integrationsamt Wiesbaden weiter den Fall meiner Frau und ich weiter fehlbehandlen wird.

Vielleicht muss ich aber in meinem Fall nach einen anderen Land umziehen, wo ich niemals vorhergelebt habe.

So sehen zur Zeit, die Karten vor mir und meine Frau Maria Victoria M. Baradero aus den Philippinen aus.

Am Montag morgen den 12. Oktober 2009 habe ich meinem Fall mit dem Stellvertretern des Auslaenderbeirat Wiesbadens. Dabei hat der Stellvertreter mit dem Chef des Integrationsamts Wiesbadens telefoniert. Der Chef hat gemeint, dass das Entscheid meiner Frau von mir Fern (weit weg zum bis 14.000 kilometer) seit beinahe 10-Monaten zu halten, hat nur mit Geld und Verdienst zu tun—nichts, meinte der Chef, mit wedere Rassismus noch gegen bestimmte Nationalitaeten zu tun.

Ich war erstaunt.


ENTSCHEIDUNG HABEN NICHTS MIT WEDER RASSE ODER HERRKUNFT ZU TUN???

Natuerlich sind die Gesetze und Handlugprozesse von Anfang an im Ausland sowie im Inland (Deutschlands) von Rassischtiche und Nationalitaetenbedingte Vorgaengsweis des Visumbewerbers beeinflusst.!?

Oder?

(1) Waere Meine Frau mit entweder einen amerikanische Passport oder einen Europaische Staatsangehoerigpassport geboren, haette meine Frau mit mir schon am 3. Janaur 2009 ab Kuwait nach Deutschland geflogen.
(2) Haette ich in Februar oder Maerz einen anderen Visum bekommen, als mein Chef unter Drueck von dem Visum Beamtern Wiesbaden endlichmal aushandeln mussten, wuerde meine Frau auch schon hier.
(3) Aber, da ich aus einen nicht-hochgewunschtes Land bei meinem Beruf als English Lektor oder Trainerhierstamme und weil meinen Chef damals kein Anwalt hat, musste ich ein sehr sehr eingeschraenkten Visum erhalten. Wegen dieser unfair Einschraenkungen kann meine Frau nicht hierherkomme, obwohl wegen meinen Ausbildungen und technisch Trainingkenntnisse Ausgesehens, haette ich ein viele bessere und nicht eingeschraenkt Visum erhalten sollte.
(4) Staemmte meine Frau nicht urspruenglich aus Suedostasien, haette sie nichts 5 ½ Wochen warten muesse, bevor ihr Passport den Weg von dem deutschen Botscahften in Kuwait nach Wiesbaden in Abril und Mai agekommen hatte.
(5) Waere meine Frau und ich nicht in Kuwait erst Ehrenamtlich verheiratet, haette die Beamter in Wiesbaden schneller unsere Ehe ohne grosse Zeitschwierigkeiten anerkannt.
(6) Allerdings flog ich selber nach Kuwait um meine Frau am Ende Mai 2009 bei dem deutschen Botschaft hilfreich zu sein,und um meine Frau um 1. Juni sie nach Deutschland zu bringen . Dort ueber den Empfang des Visums war be idem deutsche Botschaftlen ein Schild, das Schild zeigt wie Rasse und Nationaliateten in dem Visum Prozesses eine Rolle spielte: Auf dem Schild stand nehmlich etwas wie diese Woerter: “Peoples of these lands will have to wait 10 days before their visa application in the German Embassy in Kuwait will even be looked at it” Dabei war eine Liste von mindestans 20 verschiedene Laender—meistens aus Asien. Niemanden bei jenem Botschaft waere auf die Idee gekommen, dass weder Rasse noch Nationalitaeten mit Visumprozesse zu tun. Oder? Die Fakten war am Amfang klar.
(7) Waere ich aus einem anderen Land alsz.B. den USA, haette ich vieleicht mehr unterstuetzen beim Auslanderrat seitdem den Visum meiner Frau am 23 Juni 2009 abgelehnt war, obwohl ich im 2009 mehrmals 20.000 dollar von dem Erbschaft meinese Vaters become. Ich weiss es nicht aber wo sind die Amerikaner—sued oder nord—und Ostasiaten im Auslanderrat?Ich meine sowas nicht so Ernst—nur polemisch zu sein hier.
(8) Waere meine Frau oder ich aus andere Laender, vielleich haette sie ja kommen duerfe, da ich in diesem Jahr in Deutschland ueber 33.000 Euro verdiene—und meine Firme und ich in den Renten- und andere Staatskassen zusammen beinahe 20.000 Euro fliessen lassen.

In dem Oben angedeutete Artikel habe ich auch geschrieben, wobei mein Vorgaenger und seine Frau (beim selben Firme als mein jetzigen) im 2008 nach Kanada umsiedeln muessen (sich forziert fuellte) nachdem der Mann (der aus den UK stammte) keine richtige Visum fuer seine Frau in Wiesbaden bekommen koennte, da sie auch aus Asien stammte.

Im Kurzem das System hier ist mit Rasse- und National-haessliche Verfahrungen euberfuellt, aber der Stellvertreter fuer den Auslaenderbeirats Wiesbadens—sowie der Auslaenderbeirat Wiesbadens—haben weder meine Frau noch ich zum Vorgesparaech eingeladen. Warum denn nicht? Ich musste bis jetzt selbst einen Petition be idem Landtag im Juli vorliegen. (Wier will ich hier nur polemisch sein. Ich stele eher hier einen retorische Frage.)

Mit diesem Brief moechte ich genau von Ihnen verlangen;

(1) Der Auslaenderbeirat Wiesbadens sollte mich zum Gesspraech und Aufklaerung einladen.
(2) Der Auslaenderbeirat Wiesbadens soll an den Voreiterzendes des Petitionsausschusses Hessens, sowie an den Bundesministeriums Deutschlands, einigen Briefe schreiben, in dem das Geld von dem Erbscahft meines Vaters und andere Verdienste beim Ehezusammenbringen ins Betracht eingenommen sein sollte.

Der Prozess meiner Frau und ich seit Januar 2009 sieht sehr rassistich Unserseits aus.
Zum Beispiel, es scheint, dass der weitere Trennung mir und meiner Frau den wirkliche Hauptziele der Verweigerung den Ehevisum meiner Frau zu genehmigen ist.


WAS MEINE ICH MIT EUGENIK?

Dieser langeTrennung wird beim Integrationsaemter als ein Art Keuschheitsguertels fuer einen Ehepaar wie meine Frau und ich misbraucht.

Im Kurzum die Beamtern, statt schneller und fairer Entscheidungen-zu-treffen-orientiert sind, suchen Gruende, so dass meine Frau in Deutschland nicht Schwanger wird.

Deswegen ist das besten Metafora des Keuschheitsguertels des fuer den Prozesses, die ich hier seit Januar 2009 miterlebt habe.

In diesem Sinn ist es ein Art Eugenikprxis, die gegen ein zukuenftige oder potentialle deutsche-Staatsbuerger eingerichtet ist, der in diesem Fall mit aeltern aus Asien und Nordamerikas zur Welt kommt.

Ich hoffe es is nun Klar ist, wobei Rassisumus und nti-asiatischen sowie anti-amerikanern Wuerzeln den ganze Prozessen einer wichtige Role bis jetzt in dem Visaprozesses abgespielt ist.

Ich danke Ihnen im Voraus fuer Ihre Unterstuetzungen.

Ihr,


Kevin Anthony Stoda

Oranienstr. 62 Wiesbaden



p.s Ich schreibe diesen Text auf englisch un schicke es Ihnen.

THE CRITICISM IS INCREASING: THE GERMAN VISA AND IMMIGRATION PROCESS NEEDS TO BE INVESTIGATED BY CANADA, USA, and other Lands

THE CRITICISM IS INCREASING: THE GERMAN VISA AND IMMIGRATION PROCESS NEEDS TO BE INVESTIGATED BY CANADA, USA, and other Lands

By Kevin Stoda, Wiesbaden

(Note: the names and some small details are changed to protect the identities of the North Americans mentioned in this article.)

This article begins laying the groundwork for an international investigation of German Visa laws and practices as of 2009-2010. Until a few years ago, Germany was the number one destination in Europe for immigrants. That has changed sharply due partially to a serious of draconian measures implemented in the last half decade.


WIESBADEN

Let me tell you about Molly.

Molly is an American who used to work for the USA State Department during the Reagan years in Bonn. Later, Molly returned to Europe around 1990 and has worked free-lance in both the Czech Republic and Germany for most of the past 20 years.

As Molly has gotten older, she has tried to get a better social welfare net under her wings--as well as health insurance--but for the past few years in Germany, she has only received a visa to work free lance as trainer, i.e. not a type of visa enabling her to become employed full-time and thus become eligible to receive the benefits of laboring so many years in Europe (in terms of health care and other benefits). In short, Molly has only a free-lance visa and being a North American provides little to no benefits in Europe these days.

Belatedly in early 2009, the Riad Family from Canada discovered this same fact about receiving-only-limited-to-poor-help in obtaining proper visas from German officials. The Riads learned the-hard-way that it is often much harder than one would think to either continue receiving visas or to ever receive a renewal of a work visa in Germany—regardless of how many qualifications one has.

The father of the Riad household is Abdul. He had received a well-paying job offer to come to Germany and work in 2007.

Before bringing his family to Europe, Abdul had been assured that Germany was a changing land and was interested in integrating foreigners, especially technically gifted foreigners, such as himself. Since Abdul was in-between work at the time, he accepted the well-paying offer to come to Germany two years ago. He soon moved here to work near Wiesbaden in Hessen with his entire household.

Then in late 2008 came the big economic collapse across the European continent. Abdul’s firm was not spared. Abdul was laid off earlier this very year.

Abdul’s wife, Melinda, is a certified English trainerr, so when Abdul was laid off in late 2008, Melinda quickly went out looking for work. However, even after Melinda had found herself a lot of work as an English trainer with one several of the local Wiesbaden firms, the Integrationsamt (local Wiesbaden Visa Office) in town refused to allow Melinda to receive her work visa. The visa office claimed incorrectly that there are many Germans who can or are willing to do similar work.

NOTE: One reason many German citizens do not take such training jobs in firms and in private universities is because the work is often unsteady, or underpaid s, and/or it is offered without the traditional working benefits which typical Germans have come to demand and expect over the decades.

Meanwhile, as Abdul is a highly trained and qualified technician, he has gone out to interview for several well-paying positions. However, unlike at his original workplace in Germany, once Abdul walked into the interview door and was seen as a foreigner, i.e. of Middle Eastern parentage, his chances of landing a new job in Germany came to appear to be worse by the week.

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/269/


EVEN UK FOLKS GET HURT BY VISA AUTHORITIES

Similarly, due to visa manipulations at the Wiesbaden Integrationsamt over the previous three years, John Walker of the UK moved with his wife, Melia, at the end of last year, to Canada.

John has been a life-long trainer in various companies and at universities in the UK and abroad over the last few decades . Three years ago, John had arrived in Wiesbaden, Germany with Melia in order to teach and work in universities and training centers in Frankfurt and Mannheim. John liked his work here in Hessen, but his wife, Melia, was constantly having visa troubles. In two and a half years, the couple had to apply 5 times for a visa for Melia to stay in Germany

You see, Meli, who had lived in the UK for the previous 15 years of her life, was of Taiwanese descent. In short, Melia had never bothered to get a European passport.

To make a long story short, after her husband, John, had fought the German bureaucrats for nearly three years, Melissa (and John) decided to take the first visa- and job offer to Canada in November 2008.


MORE FLEEING TO CANADA FROM GERMANY

Similarly, after fighting the German bureaucrats in Wiesbaden’s Integration Offices most of 2009, the Abdul Riad family will be flying this very October ( 2009) back to Canada to restart their lives—even though he hasn’t yet found any replacement work for himself and his wife.

For several months, prior to giving up on their dream to move to Germany, Abdul and Melissa, had candidly considered fighting the inhumane treatment of their family under the currently questionable visa restrictions employed in Germany, i.e. they had thought of taking the whole case of visa discrimination to their household through to the Supreme Court in Germany. However, in the end, in order for their family to be spared the probability of facing even more certainty in 2010 while their visa case chugged through the German courts, the Riad family finally took what little they have left of their savings back to Canada, in order to start over.

Molly, too, is throwing in the towel this year on ever getting a decent work visa in Europe. That is a kind of visa that would obtain her legal protections if she lost her job or at least a visa that would lead to her employers helping her pay for the expensive German healthcare system. (Molly will be returning to the USA by the end of November this year.)


HESSEN AND BEYOND

Wiesbaden is not the only city in Germany that seems to strive to get North Americans kicked out or that seems to try to keep North Americans unemployed in Europe.

Let me tell you about Donald.

Donald’s father works for a major U.S. government agency, so Donald’s mother and father moved over to work out of Frankfurt over five years ago. With this job situation, both Donald’s mother and father have received diplomatic visas to live and work in Germany. Alas, some years ago, Donald had been told upon his arrival by authorities in Germany that he was too old to be covered by his parent’ s visa. So, when Donald was in his early 20s he went through the process of applying for a German work visa on his own.

Over the past 4 years, Donald has seen more flipflops and loopholes and criminal irresponsibility at Integrationamts in Frankfurt than even Molly, John & Melia, Abdul and Melissa observed in other locations in Germany.

For example, one year Donald was told point-blank that he couldn’t work in Germany no matter what. Another year he got a work visa with a great fight. Still, another year he was told the visa would not be renewed. He and his parents fought the Integration Office in Frankfurt until the visa was, in fact, renewed last year.

Late this year, 2009, however, Donald was told by Frankfurt Integrationsamt employees that Donald had never needed a visa at-all because his parents’ diplomatic passports stated very clearly that Donald could live and work in Germany under their visa—after all—until the age of 27 as long as he wasn’t married and was in the same house living as a dependent. (Was this was a European-wide law that had suddenly been rediscovered? Or was this something more than incompetence? Was it an anti-North American policy in Frankfurt?)

Since Donald had never really needed a visa, his parents then asked for the money back on the previous visas. The Frankfurt Visa office answered, “No refunds.”


CHANGING THE RULES AND ARGUING TWO SIDES OF A COIN

In short, the credibility of the various Integrations Offices with civil servants and visa authorities who deal with non-German and visas in each township in Germany is extremely low very as 2009 comes to an end. (Wiesbaden has just received recognition as a model city of integration in Hessen. I have offered to work with or for the Integrationsamt if Wiesbaden is ever to maintain such a title in the coming decade.)

Not only do the Wiesbaden and Frankfurt Integration Offices have a bad reputations among most all foreigners and asylum seekers in the region of Hessen, but most such offices around Germany are seen as agencies of impunity, whose rules are almost weekly manipulated and changed arbitrarily, so that public and international credibility are at an all-time BRD low as the decade comes to an end.

Molly, who is going home to the U.S.A. after a two decade-long hiatus, told me recently what had happened to her in Potsdam at the Visa office there for the State of Brandenburg back in 2004.

At that point in her career in Germany, Molly had completed five years of continuous work in the Potsdam and Berlin region and--according to German law at the time--should have had the right to ask for a two or three year visa in her own name (, i.e. not in the name of an employer or particular company as is on my own passport in Wiesbaden.)

The Visa Office in Brandenburg’s Potsdam simply lied in 2004 straight to Molly’s face. These Potsdam visa officials claimed to Molly, “No, you are not eligible for a multiple-year visa and will never receive that right as a free-lancer.”

Humbled by this bold-faced lie (at what later became Potsdam’s Integration Office), Molly paid for another one-year visa and then never returned.

Luckily, the next year, 2005, Molly found herself, instead, working in Bavaria outside Munich. Molly lived and worked most of the time within site of the German Alps in the Allgau region that year. The region was a place where not too many Americans or Canadians around. Moreover, there did not seem to be any pent-up hostility towards Americans or Canadians there.

As the time came for Molly to renew her own work visa, that particular friendly local visa bureaucrat stared at her passport in amazement and asked, “You were eligible for multi-year visa over a year ago. Why didn’t you apply for a multi-year visa and save yourself some money?”

Molly tried to tell that Allgau civil servant that the Potsdam office had said she wasn’t eligible. This honest bureaucrat simply looked at her in astonishment, and was surprised that Molly had accepted the lies of the Potsdam civil service and visa office a year earlier.

To make a long story short, that very same helpful Allgau civil servant obtained a multi-year visa for Molly within a two week time period—in record time.

Molly was blown away.

This is one reason why, when my wife’s spousal visa was turned down last June 2009 here in Wiesbaden, Molly had recommended to me that I move to a small town somewhere, like the Allgau, and seek out fairer civil servants and a foreigner-friendlier Integrationsamt.

http://www.emhosting.de/kunden/fluechtlingsrat-nrw.de/system/upload/download_746.pdf


HIER BIN ICH

In the 1500s, Martin Luther had once stated position before God and man. He had declared before the religious courts and peoples of the German speaking lands, “Here I stand.”

Luterh said this in regards to his beliefs on the Bible, on God, and religious faith and life. Martin Luther is still one of the few world-famous German role models of the last 500 years. In short, he is famous for standing up for what he believed to be the truth and would lead to a more egalitarian world.

Similarly, the October 14, 2009—with the Riad family flying back to Canada--I believe I have got to take a stand like Luther and demand that North Americans and other foreigners get a fair shake, in terms of employment, unification of family visas, and access to fair and equal employment visas.

This is why I haven’t thrown in the towel on my wife’s spousal visa to date. This is why I continue to fight for a change in my extremely restricted work visa

Wouldn’t You?

Shouldn’t I?

Please consider standing with me on this and contact the PETITIONSAUSSCUSCH at the Hessen Landtag and ask the state of Hessen to rethink the state’s--especially Wiesbaden’s and Frankfurt’s--visas-issuing practices now and in 2010.

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/will-the-landestag-in-hessen-let-justice-ring/

Call or write to:
Vorsitzenderinnen des Petitions Ausschusses
Landestag Hessens
&
Auswärtige Amt
das Hessisches Ministerium des Innern und für Sport,
Postfach 31 76,
65021 Wiesbaden
Telefonnummer 0611 350229 bzw. 0611 350230 oder per E-Mail: petitionen@ltg.hessen.de erforderlich.

http://www.iris-gleicke.de/downloads/mt08111401.pdf

Please Write in Support of my wife at the email to Dear Petitions Office Hessen Landtag,

The Hessen Landtag had agreed to help investigate the peculiar decision-making process used in visa offices across Germany to blackball migrants so that European laws on reunification of families could be ignored in 2009-2010.
Instead, the Integration Office simply are rebooting the process rather than investigating.



Dear Petitions Office Hessen Landtag,

This is the first letter enquiring why my petition from the 17th of July to have the Innenministerium´s criteria set aside and have my wife´s visa application reevaluated using wider and more helpful criteria in 2009.

I learned just this morning that, despite my petition to use better criteria, the Wiesbaden Integrationsamt is using the very criteria that should be being researched by the Petitionsausschuss and the the Wiesbaden Integrationsamt. Why is not that questionable criteria being put aside and a wide and friendly sort of evaluation implemented in my wife´s (visa) case.

I congratulate Wiesbaden for its recent honor as being labeled a Model Integration region in Hessen.

http://www.wiesbadener-kurier.de/region/rhein-main/7655993.htm

However, Wiesbaden ’s Integrationsamt can do a lot better.

WHERE ARE THE WHISTLE BLOWERS?

As well, Hessen Landtag, if it would encourage more whistleblowing when something is crooked or broken in the system, could do a lot to support the Integrationsamt, too.


For example, despite my having filed a petition with the Landestag at the Petitionsamt in July 2009 because the current immigration- and visa questionnaires and visa calculating systems used in Hessen—and Deutschland not only unjust is but illegal), the Wiesbaden Integrationsamt continues to use those same extremely questionable criteria approved by some judge and the Innenministry some time ago.
They do this even though Integrationsamt personnel admit that in my case and in some others, “it is indefensible to ignore other income and earnings, etc.” as has been occurring as long as I have been in the country.

The decision-making calculus in questions is an archaic calculus, which is reminiscent of East Germany in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, which is nevertheless being used all over Germany—leaving the world with the impression that Germany is returning to darker days of the 20th century rather than trying to build and live for the 21st Century.

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/ich-bin-zurueck-in-der-ddr-gekehrt-oder/

I have talked with several hundreds (or even thousands of residents) of Wiesbaden in recent weeks—from churchmen to Caritas volunteers to people who work in the Integrationsamt, Einwohnemedleamten, Finanzamt, in schools, and at workplaces, and what did I find?

NO ONE IN GERMANY today finds the current system used by the Bundesinnenministerium in Wiesbaden, Hessen to be appropriate for my case, my wife’s visa—and for perhaps the case of thousands of others of immigrants—who like me find them separated unfairly from their families.

Nevertheless, because Hessen Landtag and its ministry do not encourage whistle-blowing apparently, NO ONE in any ministry is willing to speak up and call a bad set of criteria recognized by some judge a few years back a piece of illegal practice in German burocratic machinery.

In short, the current Innenministerium´s means of calculating one’s ability to take care of one’s wife and family is based solely on income and not on currently received inheritance and savings. This is a system for the blind-to-lead the blind in decision making.

Moreover, the monetary calculus is race and nationality based. (I am always asked what nationality I have when these strange calculations are undertaken.) Finally, with the current deflation in the cost of living in the past year alone, the calculus developed and used for 2009 by the German Innenministerium is not helpful and outdated —except to label Germany as racist and immigrant unfriendly place. Is this the image you want the INTEGRATIONSAMT officers to continue to carry?

PLEASE ENCOURAGE WHISTLE BLOWING IN GERMANY

My wish to make Wiesbaden, Hessen and Germany a better place is why I filed my petition—because without my claim against the illegal basis used to bar my wife entry into Germany on June 23, 2009, I personally would have been in the dark at the thousands of mal-effected peoples and couples in and out of Germany.

In short, I could have given up on Wiesbaden and Hessen—taken the 8000 Euros I have spent in the last few months fighting for right—and left months ago.

Please Petitions Office, do not let the bad calculus and decisionmaking processes used in 2009 to continue to divide families and take Germany back into the darker days of the 20th Century.

Yours,


Kevin Anthony Stoda
Wiesbaden 65185 Germany

p.s Write the Petitions Office and tell them to get Kevin's vife's visa handled properly. Here is the email address.
petitionen@ltg.hessen.de

WHY THE $17,500,000,000,000 BAILOUT HASN´T HELPED THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANs MUCH & WHY THE DOLLAR CONTINUES TO CRASH

WHY THE $17,500,000,000,000 BAILOUT HASN´T HELPED THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANs MUCH & WHY THE DOLLAR CONTINUES TO CRASH

By Kevin Stoda, in Germany, & progressive candidate for US Senate in Kansas


Although I live abroad, I am hurt by the continuing collapse of the dollar and the bad American economy. You see my poor father passed away two years back and left me a small annuity, which is taking a beating each year against the Euro (in which I must use as my currency while working in Europe).

In addition, my father’s former home value dropped nearly 40% in two years due to the fact that banks just don’t give out loans easily to people who need loans these days. Naturally, when my late father’s house eventually sells, I will receive only deflated dollars instead of the powerful euro.

Moreover, unemployment among the youngest and oldest portions of the American population are now at record highs--as more and more Americans lose their homes and go on the dole. This makes it difficult for me (and a million plus other American expatriates, like myself) to even consider moving back to the States right this very moment.

As well, the default levels on loans and overall bankrupcies in the US are at all-time highs. Meanwhile, internationally, the dollar is at an all time low against the Euro and other currencies globally. (The dollar is expected to hit 1.5 to the Euro sometime this next week.)


IN A NUTSHELL

In a nutshell the combined Presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have thrown approximately 17.5 trillion dollars into the American- and global financial investment service pie in the last year—in order to primarily prop up banks and the financial services sector.

According to Nomi Prins and Christopher Hayes, only a “fraction of the $17.5 trillion bailout could have been used to cut the principal of homeowners´ mortgages (using homes, even devalued ones, as collateral) and cover student loans at zero percent interest. Rather than pouring into top layers—the banks—a people’s bailout would have cost less and been more humane. And it would have likely have prevented the ongoing increase in defaults, foreclosures and general economic anxiety.”

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091012/prins_hayes

Without a people´s bailout, recovery for most average and poorer American families will continue to suffer big time in 2010.

What is still worse is that this was all predicted by myself, by political economists, and by people of good judgment two years ago, i.e. before most people had an inkling as to what the banks were up to in 2008. At that time, i.e. by autumn and winter 2007-2008, we were already shouting for a people’s bailout—and not the big bank bailout that we have witnessed in the interim.

This is not rocket science America!

The dollar’s dropping may help a few American export industries and may help some nascent U.S. industries to develop, but the dollar’s lost value will simply increase the price of oil and any other necessary imports that the poorest Americans will suffer the most for—i.e. because America has no great mass transportation system—other than the financially-crippled private airlines. In short, the wealthiest can afford private planes—the rest of us pay taxes.

No later than the end of 2007 and first week of 2008, many of us--from Naomi Klein to Nomi Prins--were warning that the next Shock Doctrine Attack was already being faced by all Americans. We were shouting out for these following reforms immediately.

Nothing happened because the media—as usual failed us and the richest on Wall Street, AIG insiders, and America´ Citibanks lied to us about the true-coming crises—which they would spin to their own sweet successes in late 2008 and 2009.

Below is basically the text what I wrote around 22 months ago and the recommendations still need to be applied for the first time quite fully, America!!!—Otherwise, Americans will suffer more and more till the land becomes an underdeveloped dangerous superpower, like the Soviet Union. That is, if America does not turn from its ways of helping the richest and letting the poorest run around without insurance, without good jobs, good savings & investments, and with a weak dollar for another generation, American overall value in the eyes of the rest of the planet will suffer—just as the vast majority of our people do suffer today..
Wake up, America!

Demand a piece of the pie so you can afford lobbyists like the bankers and insurance companies have because our taxes are lent to them.

NOTE. Kevin Stoda for President in early January 2008 wrote the following text to Iowa Caucus voters. Sometimes foresight is better than hindsight, America.

EMANCIPATION FROM DEBT AROUND OUR NECKS

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_080102_iowa_voters_2c_please_2c.htm

There are many career officers and servicemen who know that a powerful America in 2020 has to be economically sound. They will have suggestions related to policy on how to shave defense and budget costs. Let’s avoid the quagmires and get out of our present messes as fast as possible.

It is time. . . . to stand up against the enslavement of all blacks, white, reds, yellows, pinks, greens, browns etc.—in the military or out of the military—HOMEOWNERS OR NOT!!!

Naturally, a lot of minority neighborhoods are especially suffering due to the lengthy war in Iraq and the soaking up of funds from community development in the name of the MYTHICAL GOD OF NATIONAL SECURITY!!!

This is where a better focus on spending on educational training, on greater alternative energy infrastructure, and on better planned urban, suburban and rural landscape maintenance will make a safer and cleaner world for all. Minorities and others in Midwestern U.S.A. need to see a new emancipation from these shock doctrine economics that other Republicans and Democrats have force-fed upon us over the last four decades—i.e. without providing real protection to many capable farmers, small businessmen, medium-sized businesses, university students (& potential students) , and homeowners—e.g.. by failing to provide proper incentives and infrastructure in timely regions across the U.S.A.

How many good industries—like the steel industry—has America lost out on by bad usage of other resources?

Likewise, how much time has America already wasted in the War rather than spending resources on Reducing Climate Changes’ negative effects (by ignoring high quality research from our education system that long ago pointed the way to solutions in the wind and solar energy sector)?
….
Demand a government that doesn’t prefer bailing out banks (and misguided investors) over bailing out solid American citizens who have served in the armed forces, lost their jobs, and/or have lost their homes—due to combined college debt, personal debt and homeowner debt.

If banks or lenders are to be bailed out NOW force them by law to learn to compete against credit unions and other local banks across the country who are actually concerned with real local development and in the interest of all—not just ensure the creation of large national banks or bad national lenders of any sort.

Farmers and home owners must be bailed out, but so do other sectors of the land and infrastructure of America (need a helping hand)—including creating a high speed train system between Midwestern Airports and (smaller) cities.

COMMUNION: MELVIN AND THE ANTS

COMMUNION: MELVIN AND THE ANTS


Matthew 17:5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"

As you know, my wife is pregnant with child, and I will therefore sometime next year become a father. Whether the baby is a child or a daughter, I look forward to one day being able to say, "This is my Son or Daughter, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Along our journeys together, I expect to act as an example and guide to my children and my household. I plan to share one of my favorite stories with my children until the concept is internalized.

We will call the story “Melvin and the Ants”.

I was told this story while at a Christian camp over 3 decades ago, when I was still in high school. The story goes like this:


MELVIN AND THE ANTS

The boy Melvin was looking at the railroad tracks intently. There was a pile of sand rising up above the rails of one portion of the rails. On top of the ever-growing pile of sand were thousands of ants. The tiny black creatures were all busy running here and there gathering food from the countryside near the railroad line.

Suddenly, the train signal near the railroad tracks came on and signaled with bells and red lights that a train was approaching.

Melvin moved away from the tracks as he knew it was much safer to do so. However, the thousands of small black ants paid no attention and continued scurrying about gathering food and doing their other labors on the huge anthill rising up out of the tracks.

Soon, the train came through and smashed the ants´ home into a million tiny pieces of sand. Hundreds—or even thousands--of aunts on the tracks were squashed to death.

Melvin returned later that afternoon to the same railroad track at the edge of the woods. To his amazement most all of the ants were back hard at work. They were digging out their anthill again. They were bringing in more food and supplies for winter.

Suddenly, once again, the red lights of warning began to go off. A clanging sound was heard in warning of the locomotive which was soon coming.

Again a train was approaching. Again Melvin scurried off to be safely far from the fast-moving train as it passed by.

Again, the train came through and smashed the ants´ home into a million tiny pieces of sanding. Hundreds of aunts on the tracks were squashed to death once again.

Melvin went home with a sense of sadness.

The next day, however, Melvin once again returned to where he had seen the ants twice the day before.

Too Melvin’s amazement--those ants were once again building their humongous anthill in the exact same location as thy had built it the day before. Thousands of ants were once again bringing in ever-more food and supplies from the forest and grasslands nearby.

Melvin was happy to see that these particular ants did not give up easily, but he was quite concerned at the approaching carnage, i.e. when hundreds of ants would again be squashed by a train later that very morning.

Young Melvin went to tell his father.

His father just shook his head at the boys concern.

Then the father patted Melvin on the head and said, “The only way you are ever going to be able to communicate with those ants and tell them to get out of eminent danger is if you become an ant yourself. As well, you will also need to put up a sort of stop sign for the whole community of ants to permanently pay attention to, so they will not build their ant hill on that railroad track again.”

This is what Jesus Christ our Lord did for us, isn’t it?

He became man to come and communicate with us. He took on our struggles and then died for our very own sins, hard-headedness, stupidity and recklessness.

For Christians, the cross is our stop sign. We need to pay attention and listen to his word.

Jesus told us to eat and drink the semblance of wine and bread in remembrance of his coming for us, dying for our sins, his being resurrected, and his making a new Way for us to follow and live out our lives.
Matthew 17:5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"
Ephesians 5:1-2 1Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.


God, the Father says, “Listen to Him.”

Show and state your love and gratitude as you eat the bread and drink the fruit of the vine just as Christ called us to do. Listen to Jesus and follow his will—just as the father recommended.



5 [a]Noch während er so redete, hüllte sie eine leuchtende Wolke ein, und aus der Wolke hörten sie eine Stimme: »Das ist mein geliebter Sohn, an dem ich meine Freude habe. Auf ihn sollt ihr hören.« Matt. 17:5

Epheser 5Leben im Licht1 [a]Ihr seid Gottes geliebte Kinder, daher sollt ihr in allem seinem Vorbild folgen. 2 Geht liebevoll miteinander um, so wie auch Christus euch seine Liebe erwiesen hat. Aus Liebe hat er sein Leben für uns gegeben. Und Gott hat dieses Opfer angenommen.

EUGENICS IN AMERICA, IN TESTING PRACTICES, SCHOOL TRACKING, AND AMERICAN MEMORY

EUGENICS IN AMERICA, IN TESTING PRACTICES, SCHOOL TRACKING, AND AMERICAN MEMORY

By Kevin Stoda, Germany

Last week, I was listening to a discussion on the life and times of Helen Keller, her role in American history, and what our memory of her today is. The discussion was held on Democracy Now, and Kim Nielsen was being interviewed. Dr. Nielsen is the author of three important books on the life of Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan Macy and is professor of history and women’s studies at Wisconsin University at Green.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/8/as_helen_keller_honored_with_statue

Juan Gonzalez, the DN interviewer, enquired of Professor Nielsen whether Helen Keller had ever married. Although Keller was a very outgoing individual, the answer was no. Nielsen explained: “She did not marry. She once applied for a marriage license. She fell in love with a man named Peter Fagan in the late Teens. And this was a period of time where eugenics was very strong. Many felt that women particularly with disabilities should not marry, should not have children. And Keller became engaged to Fagan, contrary to the wishes of and the knowledge of everyone in her family and her friends. And once it became public news that she had gotten a marriage license, the paparazzi of the time got a hold of this. It hit the newspaper very big, and Peter Fagan was, in essence, chased out of Keller’s life.”


Nielsen added a bit more about how influential both superstitions and ideas of pseudo-science, like turn-of-the-century eugenics, was on 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s America, “Her [Keller’s] family was not pleased about this [intention to marry by Helen] at all. Much of the public were questioning. This was a time of great difficulty in Anne Sullivan Macy’s life, as well. And Keller left the relationship. And I think that was very hard for her. She didn’t write that much about that the rest of her life. She left that topic alone and didn’t leave me, as a historian, the juicy letter I wanted. But she did have that romantic relationship.”

MY MEMORIES

Decades later, I recall that such myths were still relevant in the America I grew up in the USA in. My own high school text books, at least through the end of the 1970s, had taken it as standard good science, i.e. concerning genetics, that the earth was made up of different “oids” with different head-shaped peoples with a lot of inbreeding to make world history as we know it. There were the Negroids, the Caucasoids, and the Mongoloids. Likewise, by the 1990s, eugenics-based intelligence and promotion tests were still being (and even increasingly being) required in schools, so as to track children–as had already been taking place for the vast majority of Americans for 5 to 6 preceding generations.

All of us Americanists recall the scenes in the classic 1990s film, Forrest Gump, in which Forrest is initially prohibited from going to school with other kids because his IQ test was considered too low. The Alabama school system of the 1950s used such a system to track its kids—and most school systems do this to some degree still, i.e. as of 2009. Similarly, high stakes testing and school tracking based on tests developed by American eugenics experts a century ago are still used in American schools today.

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=91066111

Many of these tests still appear to reveal more in terms of racial profiling by the test designers than they do about actual potential of those taking the exams.
Peter Sacks, in his book, STANDARDIZED MINDS , (New York: Da Capo Press, 2000), states that now: “IT'S IMPERATIVE TO REMIND OURSELVES of how mental testing got its start in the United States. Modern mental testing, and its principal prescription to allocate opportunity based on the designation of the cognitively deserving and undeserving, is hardly a recent invention.” However, it has skewed the entry of students of particular races taking standardized exams for decades.


I recall my personal misfortune at the misplacement of myself on an almost annual basis while growing up in Wentzville, Missouri in the early 1970s. At the beginning of each school year, I was placed into the wrong track. I am sure that the placement of me into a particular level was the result of a standardized exam used in the school district in the spring of each year. Luckily for me, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades, my misplacement was noted by my homeroom teachers—and my class level was changed within a few weeks. (I am not even sure whether tracking was still legal in Missouri at the time.) However, it is also likely that if I had been Hispanic or colored, my misplacement in that particular track might have gone unnoticed by the very busy instructors.

Sacks warns us American educators, “Recall the eugenics movement earlier this century, when state and national policymakers passed laws to stem the flow of such intellectually and morally ‘inferior breeds’ as Italians, Jews, Poles, and other foreigners who came to America during the waves of European immigration. The nation's pioneers of intelligence testing provided lawmakers with the scientific rationale they needed for policies that are now roundly condemned as cruel and misguided: Tens of thousands of army recruits, including recent immigrants, were subjected to IQ tests; bizarre but supposedly scientific conclusions about the natural laws of intelligence were drawn; and eugenically appropriate public policies were enacted in several states.”

http://www.petersacks.org/standardized_minds__the_high_price_of_america_s_testing_culture_and_what_we_can__2220.htm

Sacks thus calls into question the American army’s much-vaunted intelligence testing as well as the famous Stanford-Benet testing formats which have been ubiquitous for decades. Sacks links all these types of exams to eugenic-tracking schemes developed in the early half to the 20th Century in both the USA and in Europe. In short, many of America’s most-profitable high-stakes testing programs, including those promoted with USA tax dollars under G.W. Bush’s No-Child-Left-Behind programs are part-and-parcel of the eugenics tradition in America.


MORE MEMORY REMEMBERED

Recently, Minna Stern has published several works on the topic of Eugenics in American history: “How is the history of eugenics in America remembered, and forgotten?”

In one of Stern’s articles, she looked at “the recent gubernatorial apologies for forced sterilizations, which were carried out under the authority of state eugenics laws from 1907 until the 1970s. I situate the apologies in the global context of movements for reparations and restitution, examine the discursive architecture of apologies that seek to address the contravention of medical ethics and trust, and suggest that the apologies have the potential to elide important aspects of the history of eugenics in America.”

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118715621/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

A recent Cambridge University review of Minna Stern’s 2005 publication, EUGENIC NATION: FAULTS AND FRONTIERS IN MODERN AMERICA (University of California Press: Berkeley) found, “Using topics as varied as tropical medicine, sterilization practices, and race-based intelligence tests, Minna Stern demonstrates the extent to which eugenics shaped and continues to shape society in the US.”

In addition, the reviewer of Sterns writing, a Professor William Johnson, concludes, “A detailed chronology of race betterment topics in the US, that normally receive little attention, makes this book a must read for individuals wanting to further their understanding of eugenics.”

http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap03.html


At a time when high-stakes testing has influenced education in America so negatively, i.e. as it has in recent decades, it is about time that Americans begin to share with their children the truths about the misuse of eugenic theories and practices in their own society. This is especially important since the eugenic ideas of neo-evolutionists, like Sir Francis Galton, Carl C. Brigham, Binet, and others first indirectly and then directly wrapped themselves (and their skewed world-views up) into tests in America.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml

America’s continued fascination with rankings and questionable testing fallecies related to testing intelligence and potential intelligience—rather than measuring students by performance and production of (common sense and gaining of) better technical and social knowledge—is at issue. Meanwhile, eugenics continues to divide America and its races officially and unofficially. For example, in the over-placement of elite (read in some cases WASP) family offspring into tax-payer supported enrichment programs, while poorer children get only to take test-driven coursework.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/assess.shtml


With all of the genome research going on, it is extremely important for all Americans to think clearly about testing, childbearing, and rearing in America.

http://publish.uwo.ca/~pryan2/My%20Pubs/Unnatural_Selection.pdf

Am I back in the Democratic (Communist) Government of Germany?

Am I back in the Democratic (Communist) Government of Germany?

By Kevin Anthony Stoda, Wiesbaden

http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/ich-bin-zurueck-in-der-ddr-gekehrt-oder/

As I was reading the book, Double Home Identity: Bicultural Lives in Germany or ZWEIHEIMISCH: Bikulturell Leben in Deutschland (Band 579, BPB 2006, pp. 53-54) I came across the following quotation and realized that the current visa regulations for foreigners in Modern United Germany are in 2009 frighten-ly similar to the kinds of immigration visas one received in the DDR (the former East German State) under Erich Honaker from the 1970s onwards:


“Just as in the BRD (West Germany), the East German government needed to attract foreign labor: This was because between 1949 through 1961--when the Eastern German Barrier Wall was built--, 2.7 million residents left East Germany for settlement in West Germany, i.e. hence supporting the economic needs and development of the German society in the West. In response, East Germany initially made contracts with southeastern European states recruiting employees officially from these regional states of Communist or Socialist brothers.”


The next portion of the quotation from DOUBLE HOME IDENTITY applies a great deal to the facts on the ground with both my current visa and my wife’s visa application to enter and live in Wiesbaden in the state of Hessen this 2009.


In short, the restrictions on both my German employment visa of 2009 and my wife’s visa application in the same period are extremely reminiscent of the conditions under which foreign employees received visas in East Germany up through the 1980s.
Am I in East Germany once again?


Before the Wall came down I had visited East Berlin numerous times in the late 1980s. While there, I even met East German hooligans who were being expelled to the West because they would not stop fighting each other and beating up foreigners in their small town. (People would try any way to get out of East Germany back then.)
In the 1980s, “(t)he living and visa conditions of migrating laborers in East Germany were hardly ever discussed at all. When the matter was discussed, it was often pretended that these immigrated laborers were simply in East Germany for a short time in order to undergo temporary work training. Through 1989, therefore, some 190,000 foreigners were found to be living in East Germany on severely restricted work visas. Most of them arrived from socialist lands, for example, there were 59,000 workers from Vietnam and 15,000 from Mozambique. These laborers were in the same role, which was described in Western Germany ubiquitously under the name of ´Guest Workers´.”


“Guest workers” is a euphemism for an unwritten desire that these laborers and families who migrated to West Germany over the decades were only living in that country as “guests”—i.e. not as permanent settlers. When I myself had lived in Germany in the 1980s, there were anywhere from 2 million to 6 million such guest workers and their families in Western Germany.


“Just as in case of West Germany’s migrant `Guest Workers`, the migrant labor of East Germany was necessary but the economic appreciation of this foreign labor force was seldom publically recognized by the DDR government. Problems arose most clearly when the citizens of East Germany (fell in love with and) desired to marry such foreign-born laborers. This was very problematic because the strict emigrant labor visas rules were not only to be enforced by East Germany’s government but were a problem for East Germany’s socialist government counterparts on 4 continents. Socialist Brother states-- along with East Germany--had had signed contracts which sought to be financially beneficial to both laborer and socialist state governments. These contracted emigrant laborers in East Germany were, therefore, only sent to Germany usually on a rotation basis. These laborers would work in a certain factory for a fixed-period of time and then return home for a certain period only to reapply again. However, sometimes a laborer in very special cases was allowed to rotate to a different factory (for at least a short period of time).


Meanwhile, other state-to-state contracts, set the particular wage rates per laborer and stated exactly what portion of those earning that the particular laborer would have to pay the socialist brother land from which the employee arrived. According to the state-to-state contracts, after completion of the work period, each foreign laborer was expected to return to his or her homeland. ”



In many ways, my German employment visa has functioned similarly to that in the DDR of the 1980s. The only area that is dissimilar is that I do not have to give part of my earnings to a third party government—instead I have to repatriate my earnings to my wife in her homeland because the German government wants my wife not to emigrate here.


In short, “Reuniting families was not considered a relevant topic under these East German intra-Socialist state treaties. Foreign immigrant laborers in Eastern Germany were looked down upon and they had little to no political recognition or influence in or on the East German state. Open discussion of these laborers concerns and plights at work and living in the DDR were not topics of public discussion at all. Until the collapse of the East German state in the 1989-1990 period, these labor and visa agreements remained in effect.”


All-in-all, I find great similarities between my March 2009 (Hessen) Germany-issued employment visa, and the failure of European laws to overrule extreme (German national) restrictions on my wife being able to unite with me in Wiesbaden by October 2009.


For example:


(1) My own firm was put under pressure by the Wiesbaden (Hessen) Integration office between January and March 2009 to change my work contract and/or redo my work visa application several times before approval was given. This, in effect means, that I eventually received one of the most restricted visas that many of the German Employment Offices (Agentur fuer Arbeit) employees I have since met with have ever seen in their careers.


(2) This particular work visa restricted my work to a single employer for a period of less than 11 months, i.e. one is not eligible for either work- or employment assistance at the state or national level until one has worked a full year.


(3) Due to my restricted March 2009 visa, i.e.. which restricted my work place to two cities in Germany, the spousal visa application of my wife Maria Victoria was turned down by the same Wiesbaden (Hessen) Integration office on 23rd of June, 2009.


(4) I have now spent the last 4 months trying to reduce or change several of the restrictions in my work visa, but until now, I have not been able to overcome the wage-earning-minimum restriction (set unfairly high) to bring my wife here. This limit is enforced by the same Wiesbaden (Hessen) Integration office.


So, after working in Germany nine full months, my own wife is still abroad and the Wiesbaden (Hessen) Integration office has in the meantime taken no steps to provide family unification. They claim to act under the aegis of the German Interior Ministry. Now, because of this negative approach towards my employment and spousal visa requests and due to my own inability to get a more revised visa, it is not clear at all whether my visa will be renewed in February 2010, i.e. when it comes due again—much as was the case in the DDR, where East German visas for foreign laborers were time-limited.


In summary, 20 Years after the Berlin Wall opened up, as of 2009 the entire country of Germany has consciously chosen to emulate the (anti-foreign ideology of the DDR and) the visa restriction regulations of the DDR-era in both my own case and my wife’s case.


So, I feel I am back in the DDR.

How would you feel?

This is the 3rd List of Articles by HISTORIANS AGAINST WAR

“Are We the Martians of the Twenty-First Century?”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175124/are_we_the_martians_of_the_twenty_first_century_
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, posted October 8

“Cold War’s Ghost Blocks Mideast Peace”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175123/ira_chernus_cold_war_s_ghost_blocks_mideast_peace
By Ira Chernus, TomDispatch.com, posted October 6

“Celebrating Slaughter: War and Collective Amnesia”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091005_celebrating_slaughter_war_and_collective_amnesia

By Chris Hedges, truthdig.com, posted October 5


”Obama’s Afghanistan Dilemma”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091001_obamas_afghanistan_dilemma/

By Stanley Kutler, truthdig.com, posted October 1


“Congressional Grumbling Won't Stop the War!”
http://www.truthout.org/100109C

By Carolyn Eisenberg, truthout.org, posted October 1


“Top Things You Think You Know About Iran That Are Not True”

http://www.juancole.com/2009/10/top-things-you-think-you-know-about.html

by Juan Cole, Informed Comment (juancole.com), posted October 1


“An Open Letter to President Obama”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/polk
By William R. Polk, The Nation, October 19 edition, posted September 30

(a historically based analysis of what escalation in Afghanistan would mean, with an alternative policy)



How to Trap a President in a Losing War”

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175118/a_military_that_wants_its_way

By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, posted September 24


“The Weakness of National Military Strength”

http://hnn.us/articles/117138.html
By Lawrence Wittner, History News Network, posted September 21


IF YOU HAVE ANY ARGUMENTS OR COMPLAINTS SEND THEM HERE OR TO ME.KAS

To members and friends of Historians Against the War,

This is the third biweekly mailing of links to articles that provide historical background on HAW-relevant topics. Suggestions for inclusion are welcome: they can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com. Members of the working group for this project are listed below.

Sincerely,
Matt Bokovoy,
Carolyn (Rusti) Eisenberg
Jim O'Brien
Maia Ramnath
Sarah Shields

LET THE CHILDREN DANCE

LET THE CHILDREN DANCE

By Alone

This morning, I was watching a short six-minute video of the Rawdat El Zuhur, an elementary school in Jerusalem, doing dances on a website by ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid), an organization that promotes people-to-people exchanges and development in Palestine and Israel.

http://www.anera.org/

As I watched and listened to the Rawdat El Zuhur school children, I was reminded of my days of teaching in Kuwait (2004-2008) and the UAE (1999-2000).

https://secure2.convio.net/anera/site/Donation2?idb=2038303694&df_id=2720&2720.donation=form1&JServSessionIdr002=m82qzbaaz1.app202a

I recalled that in some of the schools in the Middle East dances and programs were planned and prepared annually by most faculty and students every single term. These dances and story telling programs revealed a lot about the history of the country and its peoples. I enjoyed watching the practices.

Alas, when it came the date of the scheduled open production (for parents and family or friends), the administrators of the school invariably had to tell all those students and teachers who had worked so hard, “The board of directors has canceled the program.”

This occurred because in many school communities—both private and public—political conservatives who often (1) knew little about dancing and singing and (2) ignored the role of singing and dancing in their own misguided definition of Islam were winning local elections and putting pressures on school administrations.

Luckily, this black-out on song and dance did not occur at all schools equally. Some schools continued to refuse self-censorship in the Arab world.

On the other hand, this cultural self-censorship, in fact, occurred semester-after-semester at a large percentage of schools across Kuwait.

Not only did this blanket anti-traditionalism affect Arab children, but it also affected non-Arab children in some of these same schools. For example, if westerners wanted to share about Christmas in song and dance or if Indians/Pakistanis wanted to share of there culture, that was a no-go, too in many schools.

I pray that this tendency to squelch tradition ceases in Kuwait and in neighboring Arab lands where misguided hate against singing and dancing lead to unnecessary culture wars among adults and loss of rich culture and tradition among the youth of these Arab lands.

ICH BIN ZURUECK IN DER DDR GEKEHRT, ODER? Als ich das Buch, ZWEIHEIMISCH: Bikulturell Leben in Deutschland (Band 579

ICH BIN ZURUECK IN DER DDR GEKEHRT, ODER?

KEVIN ANTHONY STODA, Wiesbaden


Als ich das Buch, ZWEIHEIMISCH: Bikulturell Leben in Deutschland (Band 579
BPB,2006), gelesen habe, merkte ich auf Seiten 53-54 das folgende Zitat.

http://www.socialnet.de/rezensionen/4483.php


“Wie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, wurden auch in der DDR Arbeitskraefte angeworben: Waehrend mehr als 2,7 Millionen Menschen, die in den Jahren zwischen 1949 und bis zum Mauerrbau 1961 von der DDR in die Bundesrepublik Deutschland uebergesiedelt waren, den stetig steigenden Bedarf an Arbeitskraeften in Westen noch deckten, wurden danach Anwerbevertraege mit suedeuropaischen Staaten abgeschlossen. Arbeitnehmer wurden so offiziell im Ausland rekrutiert.”

Der naechste Teil des Zitates hat mir dennoch erstmals klargemacht, dass mein jetziges Visum in Hessen (nehmlich in dem Bundesrepublikdeutschlands) in 2009, bsw. mein Visum und meine Arbeitserlaubnis hier in Hessen zu arbeiten, ein Visum und die Arbeitserlaubnis, die man in der DDR um Jahr 1985 als Auslaender normaleweise bekommen hatte.

Damals, in den 80er Jahren, “[d]ie Arbeitsmigration in die DDR hingegen wurde totgeschwiegen oder als Ausbildungswanderung bezeichnet. 1989 lebten noch 190000 Auslaender in der DDR, die meisten davon stammten aus befreundeten sozialistischen Laendern, wie etwa 59000 Arbeitskraefte aus Vietnam und 15000 aus Mosambik. Diese Arbeitskraefte uebten, aehnlich wie die so genannten ‘Gastarbeiter’ in der Bundesrepublik , in der Regel Arbeiten aus, die von den Einheimischen wenig geschaetzt wurden. Probleme entstanden vor allem dann, wenn sie Buergerinnen und Buerger der DDR heiraten wollten: Die Arbeiter kamen auf der Basis zwischenstaatlicher Vereinbarungen in die DDR. Sie wurden im Rotationsprinzip in den Betrieben eingesetzt und erhielten nur kurzfristige Vertraege. In der Regel waren sie fuer diese Zeit an einen einzigen Betrieb gebunden. In den staatlichen Vereinbarungen war geregelt, welches Gehalt die Beschaeftigten erhielten und welcher Anteil davon an die Herkunftsstaaten abgefuehrt werden musste. Nach Ablauf der Vertraege hatten sie in ihr Heimatland zurueckzukehren. Familienzusammenfuehrung war in der Migrationsregelung der DDR nicht vorgesehen. Die dort lebenden Auslaender hatten ein niedriges gesellschaftliches Ansehen und weder politische noch gewerkschaftliche Einflussmoeglichkeiten. Oeffentliche Diskussionenen ueber die Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen dieser Beschaeftigten gab es in der DDR nicht. Offizielle Dokumente, Vertraege und Vereinbarungen wurden bis zur Wende unter Verschluss gehalten.”

Hier sind eine von den Aehnlichkeiten fuer mich und meine philipinische Braut, die bis jetzt keinen Einreise genehmigung erhalten hat, obwohl ich seit 4, Januar 2009 in Hessen eingereist bin:

(1) Meine Firme wurde im Januar, Februar, und Maerz 2009 von dem Integrationsamt oder Arbeitsvisumbeamtern mehrmals Unter drueckt gesetzt, um beiden mein Arbeitsvertrag (Angeboten) sowie den Antrag meines Visums zuaendern.
(2) Am Ende Maerz 2009 hatte ich von dem Wiesbaden Integrationsamt ein extreme-eingeschraenkte Visum erhhalten, aehnlich wie was man als Auslaender in der DDRzeit der 80er Jahren erhalten.
(3) Teils wegen dieses sehr eingeschraenkte Visum hatte das Wiesbadener Integrationsamt das Ehevisa fuer meine Frau am Ende Junis 2009 abgelehnt.
(4) Obwohl ich mich sehr angestrengt habe, bis jetzt (Oktober 2009) dieses eingeschraenkten Visum nur Teils veraendern koennen.

Meine Frau ist immer noch nicht hier. Ich habe kaum Glaube mehr, dass im Februar oder Maerz 2010 das Wiesbadener Integrationsamt mein jetzige Visum verlaengern wird.

Im Kurzen ist es etwa deutlich, dass das jetzigen BRD Visum-System fuer Auslaender ist nun im 2009 der DDR system zu aehnlich, in dem viele Visums zu sehr Eingeschraenkt sind.

RADIO BOB HAT UNS NACH LEHRERCESCHICHTEN GEFRAGT, DA HEUTE WELTTAG DES LEHRERS IST

RADIO BOB HAT UNS NACH LEHRERCESCHICHTEN GEFRAGT, DA HEUTE WELTTAG DES LEHRERS IST

By ESLKEVIN

Ich bin der erste von 3 Geschwistern, die Lehrer (beispielweise Lehrerinnen) gewordern sind.

Ich habe in dem 5te Gruendschulklasse, schon einen Lehrerinnen, die mit ihrem Mann mehrmals nach Afrika gereist war. Sie hat uns Jugendlichen von dem Leben und ihren erfahrungen dort erzaehlt. In naechsten Schueljahre habe ich eine anderer Lehrerin gehabt, die sogar aus deutschsprachigen Brazil herstammt. Sie hat uns Schuelern Sozialwissenschaftern und Erkunded Sudamerikas beigebracht.

Schon vor 25 Jahre bin ich auch Leher des Weltgeschichtes und Sozialwissenscahften gewordern.

Frag mich wer mich inspiriert hat?


http://radiobob.de/wunderbare-welt/lehrergeschichten

Ich erinnere mich, wie der Mann meiner Lehrerin im geiles grosseen MOTO Harley in der Naehe von der Schule sie abgeholt hat.
Sie war die Lehrerin, die uns Afrika-kunden beigebracht hat.
Way cool!
Kevin aus Kansas

Viele wollte Wissen Warum ich mich Kahl Schoren Lassen Haben

Viele in dem Gemeinde und viele meine deutschen bekannten wissen wollten, warum ich mich ab den 3 Oktober 2009 keinen Haar auf dem Kopf habe.

Ich habe mich als ein art Geloebnis kahlrasiert, nachdem Monatenlang meine Frau von mir bei dem Integrationsbeamtern Deutschlands(insb.Wiesbaden)fern von mir gehalten ist.

Ich glaube, dass Kopf rasieren hat mit Geloebnisse zu tun in Zeiten bevore Christentum und auch dennoch.

Hilf mir die ganze System wach zu machen, dass das Schneiden von Familienmitgliedern in den Teilung and verschiedenen Kontinenten zusende, im 2009 nicht so ueblich in Deutschland sein sollte.

Leider es ist so.

KAS

I THINK IT IS TIME TO NATIONALIZE CIGNA & A FEW OTHER INSURANCE FIRMS IF UNIVERSAL AND PUBLIC HEALTHCARE IS NOT LAUNCHED IN THE USA as of 1-1-2010

I THINK IT IS TIME TO NATIONALIZE CIGNA & A FEW OTHER INSURANCE FIRMS IF UNIVERSAL AND PUBLIC HEALTHCARE IS NOT LAUNCHED IN THE USA as of January 1, 2010



By Kevin Stoda, online Candidate for U.S. Senate (KS) 2010





I was listening to Stacie Ritter’s story of her twin daughters, who have been denied proper healthcare coverage by CIGNA, one of America ’s most notorious companies—i.e. famous (as it is) for dumping America’s most ill tim- and-again. The story was on Democracy Now last Friday.



http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/1/mother_speaks_out_on_insurance_giant


According to the introduction on DN, “Mother Speaks Out on Insurance Giant CIGNA’s Denial of Healthcare to Cancer-Stricken Twin Daughters

“Stacie Ritter’s twin daughters were diagnosed with cancer at the age of four. Their insurance provider, CIGNA, denied them coverage even though they had been covered by the family’s former insurer. The incident marked just the latest chapter in the family’s ongoing troubles with the health insurance industry. A few years ago, the Ritters filed for bankruptcy due to their high medical expenses—even though they had health insurance at the time. Stacie Ritter joins us to tell her story.”

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1920893,00.html

Former employee for CIGNA, Wendell Potter, stated a few months ago on DN on current CIGNA policy, Potter claimed, “But … (CIGNA) they’re moving away from that to what they refer to as consumer-driven or consumer-directed care, and it really is just a euphemism for shifting the financial burden from insurers and employers onto the shoulders of working men and women. I saw that happening. But I also saw how—you know, the things that they do to maximize their profit, which really boils down to dumping the sick.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/16/former_insurance_exec_wendell_porter

CIGNA & Other USA Insurance Firms--DUMPING THE SICK!!!!!

A majority of people in America who go bankrupt each year go bankrupt due to health issues. A majority of these even have insurance.

My family personally knows “what dumping the sick” by CIGNA and blatant lying. Many school districts throughout the USA use CIGNA. My older brother has been teaching for two decades. He is now back living in our home state of Kansas teaching, but he has been paying the past 5 to 6 years for CIGNA lies and denials from his days teaching in metro- Denver school districts from the early part of this same decade.

First, in my older brother’s case, he had needed a specialist because his feet and bones keep breaking or chipping due to osteoporosis.

Second, the CIGNA agent approved my older brother´s visit to a specialist over the phone—only to lie about it later.

Third, CIGNA then (a few months later) claimed that the specialist (doctor) my brother had had treat him (i.e. with original telephone recommendation & approval by a Colorado CIGNA agent working with School Districts) was not actually covered nor approved under CIGNA. Apparently, the doctor recommended by the agent was not on CIGNA´s approval list in Colorado at the time.

Such humongous medical bills, insurance fraud and denials plus broken laws (& public trust) are good enough reasons for me to state that CIGNA must soon be nationalized until it can be put under proper management. (This is what should have happened to America ’s most badly run banks last year, by the way.) It is too dangerous. Eminent domain can be used if no other laws can be found for the nationalization.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yOtKWipG-o

At CIGNA a CEO can make 78 million dollars in five years. In the meantime, CIGNA is known for killing people, like the Sarkisyans daughter, and making the Ritter family daughters suffer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csEhvFdfM9A&feature=related

Perhaps a good nationalization of CIGNA will getting the hundreds of poorer functioning insurance firms in the USA to behave better.

In short,……..

IF INSURANCE COMPANIES WANT TO PLAY; THEY MUST PLAY FAIR

If insurance companies wish to play ball in the United States , they need to play fair. If not, only allowing a public option is the way America must go in 2009-2010.

However, if private insurers are allowed to play in the USA as of 2010, they will have to become non-profit entities or play by basic rules of humanity—“do onto others as you would have done unto you”.

Any Senator from the state of Kansas (or elsewhere in the USA ) in 2010 must comprehend these basic facts.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/18/deaths.health.insurance/index.html

Nearly 50,000 Americans are dying each year without health insurance. Moreover, pre-existing conditions and contracts with certain doctors are not logical in many or most cases for many patients and for the better doctors.

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=104331

Moreover, (1) pre-existing conditions must be ended as a reason not to treat or approve patients in North America . Poor coverage has been grounds enough for thousands of Americans to-date deciding to try their luck without insurance.

Thousands of others, like the Ritter family, lose their good insurers for bad ones when their employers change from one primary care-giver to another. (2) Portability of insurance is therefore essential for all Americans.

Meanwhile, U.S. Senators in Kansas and across America must demand that CIGNA be nationalized and they must demand that a America become a safe place—without badly run or inhumane insurers. The obvious solution is a Medicare for everyone.

Dear Senators Roberts and Brownback,

Support Americans against bad insurance and bad coverage, NOW—not next year. Otherwise support the public plans up for consideration in the Senate, Today!!!!!!

Moreover, Boeing, GM, and other firms need more national coverage to compete on planet earth,

Wake up and smell the coffee. Get Kansans (Americans) covered now!!!!!

Kevin Stoda

p.s. I am gaining on you. Catch up with America and American needs pronto.

Communication, community, comparing thanksgiving and harvest festivals

ERNTEDANKFEST (FALL FESTIVAL OF THANKSGIVING)

October 4, 2009 at Gemeinde Christe and Church of Christ , Wiesbaden Germany



By Kevin Stoda



Yesterday, I did an internet search for the term „Harvest Festivals” and to my surprise at the top of my search list was a site totally dedicated to Harvest Festivals around the world.



http://www.harvestfestivals.net/harvestfestivals.htm



The site named HARVESTFESTIVALS.NET, had tales and descriptions from 100s of festivals celebrated in some 40 to 50 different countries around the world.



On the website, I learned that in the Alps, in Switzerland , Austria , and “In Germany they hold a harvest festival devoted to the shepherds and cowherds who would return from the mountains. The animals are covered with flowers, and the villagers put on their national costumes to welcome the procession.”



There are in Germany —as well—church festivals like this, called ERNTEDANKFEST; in larger cities and town festivals in the more rural areas to commemorate Harvest. It is usually held--as it is today on the first Sunday of October, much like Canada ’s Thanksgiving Day is.



In America , there are many harvest festivals, including Kwanzaa, which is based on the African harvest festival traditions. As well, Native Americans had their own harvest festivals long before Europeans showed up.



For example, there is the “Green Corn Festival or Ceremony is a Native American harvest celebration. Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Yuchi, and Iroquois Indians as well as other Native American tribes celebrate this ceremony. This ceremony is usually held when their is a full moon, which meant the first corn crop was ready to harvest. The date was not able to be determined ahead of time; it was up to the corn. It is a time to be thankful and also a time of forgiveness.”



The most famous festival of autumn and harvest in the USA is of course called THANKSGIVING DAY and it is national holiday at the end of November every year. It is considered by some to be the most important family day of the year for many who drive long distances to be home with their families.



Both the origins of the American Thanksgiving and the German Erntedankfest (today) combine (1) the celebration of the agricultural harvest of the farms of their nations with (2) thankfulness to the same Lord for making it all possible.



In this way, these two festivals reflect the many millennia-old traditions of Harvest Festivals in the Old Testament times of the Israelites. At that time, there were “many harvest festivals held and all” had “a religious significance and are based around the Torah which is the laws by which everyone must obey. These laws” were about “how people should behave, how to treat the land so it produces good crops. These festivals” were “held to show that they honor and follow the teachings of the Torah.”



Most important for any Erntedankfest is not only the food and fellowship of a community. Rather, it is the THANKS GIVEN TO THE LORD FOR WHAT HE HAS DONE in taking care of us here on your journey on this earth. He has provided a bounty for our physical beings that is more than most of our ancestors could have ever dreamed of.



Similarly, we—as Christians--are gathered at communion time each Sunday to show that we honor, follow and are committed to the words, sacrifice and rising of our Lord Jesus Christ. The symbolic items at Communion time are fairly direct fruits of the earth—bread and wine, created by the God revealed to us all in the words of the Book of Genesis and revealed to us again in the person of his son, Jesus, who walked the earth ages later.



Apostle Paul told us to reenact this taking of bread and wine; just as Jesus, himself, had asked his disciples to do in reenacting the taking of the bread and wine on the very night he was betrayed and taken to die on the Cross for us and our sins and shortfalls. Let´s read what Paul wrote the Corinthians and prepare our hearts to recommit to our Lord in the fellowship of this community today.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (The Message) Paul shares:

23-26Let me go over with you again exactly what goes on in the Lord's Supper and why it is so centrally important. I received my instructions from the Master himself and passed them on to you. The Master, Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, took bread. Having given thanks, he broke it and said,

This is my body, broken for you.
Do this to remember me.
After supper, he did the same thing with the cup:
This cup is my blood, my new covenant with you.
Each time you drink this cup, remember me.
What you must solemnly realize is that every time you eat this bread and every time you drink this cup, you reenact in your words and actions the death of the Master. You will be drawn back to this meal again and again until the Master returns.
1 Korinther 11:23-26 (Hoffnung für Alle)

23 [a]Denn Folgendes habe ich vom Herrn empfangen und euch überliefert:

In der Nacht, in der unser Herr Jesus verraten wurde, nahm er das Brot, 24 dankte Gott dafür, brach es und sprach: »Das ist mein Leib, der für euch hingegeben wird. So oft ihr dieses Brot esst, denkt an mich und an das, was ich für euch getan habe!«

25 [b]Nach dem Essen nahm er den Kelch und sprach: »Dieser Kelch ist der neue Bund zwischen Gott und euch, der durch mein Blut besiegelt wird. So oft ihr aus diesem Kelch trinkt, denkt an mich und an das, was ich für euch getan habe!«

26 [c]Denn jedes Mal, wenn ihr dieses Brot esst und aus diesem Kelch trinkt, verkündet ihr, was der Herr durch seinen Tod für uns getan hat, bis er kommt.

HOW I CELEBRATED THE DAY OF DEUTSCHEN EINHEIT ( Germany Unity): October 3, 2009

HOW I CELEBRATED THE DAY OF DEUTSCHEN EINHEIT ( Germany Unity): October 3, 2009



By Kevin Anthony Stoda, Wiesbaden, Germany





A special German holiday, perhaps the most important new German holiday in more than half a millennia, is known as The Day of German Unity. It has been celebrated since 1990 on October 3 each year. However, it is a fairly quiet affair this year. No one mentioned it at work all this past week in the three towns I work in.



http://www.hdg.de/lemo/html/DieDeutscheEinheit/index.html



There was a lot of discussion on which date the national holiday should be in 1990, i.e. one year after the Berlin (and East German) Wall came wide open and soon broke down forever. Within less than 12 months the two long separated peoples of the West German and East German republics were united as one officially known state (or single entity) on the world’s political maps (again) as of October 3, 2009.



This date of October 3 was not the first German Unification or Unity dates. As far back as the takeover (namely Alsace and Lorraine ) from territory of France by the Prussian governments in a vicious war in 1870-1871, days of German unity were called forth and celebrated in Germany . There are many streets and public squares throughout East and Western Germany to this very day which are called DEUTSCHE EINHEIT or German Unity. However, most of these streets and city squares date from the 1870s wars of Prussia , the era immediately after German speaking peoples were “united” through a series wars of aggression. As well, great statues of the Prussian Kaiser were constructed throughout the German and Prussian states of the regime.



http://www.deuframat.de/parser/parser.php?file=/deuframat/deutsch/3/3_2/bendick/kap3_4.htm



Likewise, the divided Cold War world of both Western and Eastern Germans often found the divided volk considering different times of the year for national unity dates: From 1949 through1989, the Eastern German Democratic Republic officially recognized October 7 as The National Day for Germans. That date was also the founding of the DDR or Democratic Republic of Germany, i.e. with Eastern Berlin as the head of governance.



http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-4894.html



In the same Cold War era, many pro-unification Western Germans, with Bonn as their capital, considered the date of the 17th of June to be for Germany the best date for soberly calling for “German Unity” or unification of the divided peoples. This date was selected after 1953 because on this date in that year, Eastern German and Russian forces violently put down a march by thousands of workers for better wages and equalization with the West economically and socially. Over one-hundred Germans were killed and many others sent to jail or concentration camps for months and years.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprising_of_1953_in_East_Germany



Originally, many Germans in 1990 had considered having November 9 as the day of German unity as that was the very day in 1989 when Eastern Germans had forced the East German communist regime to open the Walled boarders in Berlin (and around the East German state) for the first time in nearly three decades.



These Eastern Germans had succeeded in a manner the Prussian and Hitler regimes had never contemplated. They had unified lands and peoples, peacefully—without firing a shot. This seemed to be a laudable event in modern German history.



However, November 9 was already filled with both bad and very complex but disuniting memories in the 20th Century. For example, there were:



November 9, 1918—the day the German Sailors’ and workers kicked out the Prussian leadership in a series of street battles starting in Hamburg , leading to the end of the First World War and a fairly messed up Weimer Republic .



November 9, 1923—the date of Adolf Hitler’s first coup attempt, which took place in Munich and led to the imprisonment of Hitler, a jail where Hitler wrote his book Mein Kampf.



November 9, 1938—the date of the so-called Reichskrystallnacht, which was a Nazi-orchestrated pogrom to destroy most every German synagogue in a single night.



http://german.about.com/b/2007/11/09/the-9th-of-november-in-german-history.htm



So, without November 9 available, the Eastern and Western German leaders looked for a date that had little negative garbage to its name. In early summer of 1990, Eastern Germans had been united by a financial monetary union. Later that year, on October 3, 1990, the official political unification of Germans under the Basic Law of West Germany went into effect.



In short, October 3 was a fall-back date. This may be why there is little hoopla on October 3, this 2009. Also, perhaps because October 3, 2009 falls on a Saturday, many are just staying home in bed and resting from their workweeks.





HOW I CELEBRATED OR RECALLED THE CONCEPTS OF UNIFICATION OR UNITY



I spent this past week pondering what “unity” means.



One definition of the word “unity” is “the quality of being united into one”.



That sounds like marriage—not a culture where everyone should look and act the same. Nonetheless, some countries are using one-size-fits-all immigration policies.



I wonder what the average German thinks about the people who occupy German territory today. Is each and every German feeling a sense or quality of being united into one or to one
another?



http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,516472,00.html



That is not likely. (Although among those young East Germans and West Germans living together in the part of Hessen where I live, do a better job of feeling one-with-the other than those in the Eastern half of Germany appear to do.)



http://www.allbusiness.com/information/publishing-industries/348938-1.html



Moreover, the growing tolerance in Central Europe in the 1990s which had led ever more-and-more open German populations through 2004 has ended somewhat in the wake of the Islamic-Christian and East-West cultural wars of this decade.



http://www.sprachcaffe.com/english/study_abroad/countries/germany/foreigners_in_germany.htm



Part of the backlash to these cultural wars has been an unbearable pressure against emigrants, foreign-born Germans, and potential immigrants (via the Innenministerium and Auslandministerium). There is a lot of talk about integration in Germany, for example, the Foreigner Office is now known as the “Integration office” in each city, but little progress and training of the aging German ministry officials, who know much better “how to keep immigrants
out” than how to integrate them, has really taken place in this decade.



http://www.gruene-fraktion-hessen.de/cms/integration/dok/307/307603.kinder_ohne_legalen_aufenthaltstatus_due.html





Integration Officials, in Wiesbaden , for example, have been using a one-size-fits-all visa procedure to keep my wife (from the Philippines ) from joining me in my life and work in Germany . That is, these ministry personnel at the Integrationsamt are doing their best to fight “Unity and Unification of Family”—my and 100s or 1000s of others.



I’m sure that means for the reality of most people living in Germany in 2009 that the idea of UNITY as “the quality of being united into one” is being fought at both the interior ministry level and exterior (foreign ministry) level in
Germany this October 3, 2009.



http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/will-the-landestag-in-hessen-let-justice-ring/





ONE-SIZE FITS ALL WORKS AGAINST UNITY AND UNIFICATION



Both my wife (Maria Victoria M. Baradero)and I have extensive experience working cross-culturally and could certainly aid and support Germany to really figure out how to integrate the millions of foreigners who plan to immigrate here or who are already living here.



http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/allow-me-to-introduce-you-a-bit-more-to-victoria/



For example, in my blog yesterday, I noted that my wife, Maria Victoria of the Philippines , has a lot of care-giving experience and experience working with Christians and non-Christians from the Middle East . We, Victoria and I, also both have experience teaching and training youth and young adults. The decision by German officials to make immigration hard for non-Europeans began with fervor in 2004, when the Madrid Bombings took place. This has led to keeping out successful multi-culturalists and other peoples who can serve peace and development in Europe even as the population and demographics change here over coming years.



I, myself, am interested in improving the quality of life for elderly peoples. I have worked in 10 countries, including Germany , where on December 31, 1989 I, myself, climbed over the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and walked down Unter Den Linden without a passport. In short, that is one way I supported German Unity in 1989.



Twenty years later, I do not know what to think of what has happened to the optimism ofGermany in the late-Kohl and Schroeder Eras.



Despite all this current talk of integration, UNITY is being denied Maria Victoria and me as we have been separated by over 12,000 kilometers for most of 2009. This was fully due to a very discriminating blackballing of my wife from entrance to Germany since April 2009 when she applied at the German Embassy inn Kuwait and her application was delayed 5 weeks.



Some Integrationamt officials here in Wiesbaden candidly tell me that Germany is using the same Visa procedures as my homeland, the USA . To a great degree this may be true—many letters or emails from husbands (in the USA ) whose wives have not been allowed to travel to the USA . These have come my way in recent months since I have blogged publically about my wife’s visa treatment in Germany . All of these mails confirm the craziness of a one-size-fits-all emigration policy for both Germany and the USA in 2009. (I have applied for a USA visa for my wife but expect no immediate reply either.)



People are not all the same and treating my wife as though she was a terrorist since she came from a SE Asian country and has Middle East experience is not fair—nor is it good for either Germany or the USA . That is narrow and poor analysis. It is also parochial to fear foreigners because they may take jobs away or partially change your way of life.



Life never stays the same and migration has been the natural course for man in both the USA and in Germany since their inceptions.



Long before deciding to return to work in Germany for the first time in two decades this January 2009, I read a great book on Germany by Bernt Engelmann. The influential work is called DU DEUTSCHE? (Steidl, 2004) and demonstrates that for more than 2000 Years Germany has been a land of immigrants and children of immigrants.



http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernt_Engelmann



Engelmann was such a close friend of East Germans in the 1970s that West German secret agents considered him a spy. In short, he was listened to both in East and West German in the cold war days. (The book DU DEUTSCHE? was published first just before his death in 1994.)



http://alone.gnn.tv/blogs/11451/How_Much_Do_Most_Central_Europeans_Know_about_their_own_Identity



What better voice could Unification of “minds and unity of reality” than hearing this man’s, Bernt Engelmann, sober analysis that Germans and Germany have been made up of Africans, Asian, American, Eastern-Southern-Northern Europeans since time-eternal?



http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/europeans-are-letting-their-future-care-givers-etc-drown-at-sea/







SO, I HAVE SHAVED MY HEAD FOR THE DAY OF UNITY (UNIFICATION)



When two people fall in love and marry, they take a vow—and this is a vow of Unity. Isn’t it?



This doesn’t mean that once we are married that we will be perfect or perfectly one entity (we will have our foibles), but simply that we will be committed to maintaining the quality of oneness or wholeness in our relationship. Being divided and apart is not one-ness. Is it?



Because I had visited Germany several times in the 1990s and the first decade of this century, I had carefully considered returning to Germany to live in 2009 because I felt I wanted my wife to know Europe and a different way of life before we settled down and retired in a few decades. (I had lived over 4 years in Germany in the 1980s.)



Until now, my wife, Maria Victoria, knows only the hard life of a foreign laborer in the Middle East and the hard life in underdeveloped parts of the Philippines . I wanted to grow with her in our marriage vows in Germany first in 2009 because (1) by October 2008 I had a good job offer and (2) I wanted to live with my wife for a few years in a more developed land than the Kuwait where we had known each other since 2005.



I felt Maria Victoria needed a better vision of what could be on planet Earth. She had worked and had a hard life. I envisioned, therefore, that my lifelong partner-to-be, Victoria, could visit and live in both Europe and the USA with me before possibly we would turn to or return to the Philippines at some future date and empowering her family and her people.



Victoria and I had planned this out in 2008.



We did not know that the Germans who had gladly read Bernt Engelmann’s writings between the 1990s and 2004 had already changed. That is, that tolerant and open-minded multi-cultural-striving Germany had disappeared. Germany today, instead of being ambitious and becoming a truly vibrant multicultural land, had decided on an about-face with its EU partners starting in 2004-2005.



http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/workshop/historical.php



Now, the Fortress-Europe-mentality is in charge of Germany and the EU and is running integration and immigration on the continent. It uses both lies and fear tactics to propagate hate amongst peoples within and outside of the continent.



http://deviousdiva.com/



As a lifelong history teacher, I recall where this xenophobia took Europe (and America & Asia) in the 1920s and 1930s. It led to border closings, euthanasia, genocide, and wars. In short, the Fortress Europe mentality will be deadly for the continent in the next decades unless reform and real sense of oneness is built on the continent—i.e. a oneness not built on fear, hate or misunderstanding or marginalization of the other.



http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050613/benjamin



On the evening of October 2 through October 3, 2009, I determined to shave my head as another type of vow. [For marriage in German, a “marriage” or lover’s “vow” is a “Treueschwuere”. For a religious vow, the word “Geluebde” is used. Normal statements of a vow to do something are sometimes translated as “Geloebnis”. The verb form of “vow” is often “etwas globen, zu
tun”.]



I had returned from my July-August 2009 journey to the Philippines with my wife to her home island of Palawan with a vow on my heart. That vow was that I would shave my head in remorse and in remembrance or recognition of the anti-unity model of Nazi-Germany in the 1930s. I planned to do this on October 3, 2009.



http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050613/benjamin





Within a 10 to 12 year period a few Germans attempted to erase 2000-plus years of German Jewish history and made wars on other peoples living within boarders of the Reich—Slavic peoples, the French, non-Aryans, gypsies, Jehova Witnesses, Masons, certain churchmen, emotionally handicapped, socialists, communists, and humanists.



http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/holocaust.htm



The shaved head for that era refers to the prisoners of the concentrations of the death camps and concentration camps of Nazi-Germany of 1933-1945. Since that decade, Germany has made a little- to great progress in integrating the other into their self-image. Now, this DAY OF GERMAN UNITY 2009, I must say that it appears progress has stopped.



I will use the shaved head as both a sign of mourning and a sign of warning to German bureaucrats and others who oppose the unification of husbands and wives or families in Germany in 2009. I will likely keep my head shaven until November 9, 2009.



http://dawndestroyallweaponsnow.com/images/jewish_women.jpg





In short, shaving my head and writing this article are how I, separated by 12,000 miles and bureaucrats of Germany from my wife, have spent part of this DAY OF GERMAN UNITY 2009.



Germany tear down the wall between me and the arrival of my wife. Allow our unification now. --KAS