The plan of the Berlin Senator of Justice, Dirk Behrendt ( Green Party), to change the law on neutrality this year, has met with sharp disapproval from school headmasters in Berlin. The wearing of religious clothing and symbols in schools will be allowed.

For Karina Jehniche, this is a “fatal” plan. “The school must remain a neutral place where ordinary democratic values are taught,” the deputy chairperson of the Interest Group of Berlin School Principals (IBS) told the newspaper Tagesspiegel. The pedagogue speaks for about 300 senior teachers in the capital.In her concerns, she has both young primary school pupils and young learners at secondary schools in mind. Many young Muslim pupils say they will only marry a woman who wears a headscarf because she has certain moral values,” said Jeniche, who also runs the Christian Morgenstern School in Spandau.She sees the danger that pupils could demand to be taught only by a teacher wearing a headscarf. “We would pave the way for this discussion if the neutrality law were to be changed. Then it would no longer be about pedagogical skills, but about acceptance based on external symbols.” In a second step, parents could then suddenly demand that their children only be taught by teachers wearing headscarves.

The teacher has already had special experiences concerning very conservative Muslim parents at her own school. At and after parents’ meetings, her completely normal but body-hugging clothing was the topic of conversation. It was mentioned disapprovingly by Muslim mothers and fathers that she allegedly did not dress Islamically enough.

At the Morgenstern primary school, an eleven-year-old Muslim had also threatened his teacher with beheading if the teacher insisted that the boy’s parents come to a parent-teacher meeting.The next problem for Jehniche: “Up to now, as headmistress, I have been hiring the teachers I would like to have on my own. I decide according to pedagogical aspects and see if someone fits into the team. But if the headscarf is now allowed to be worn, do I have to hire someone with a headscarf on a quota basis, even though I’m not convinced of their pedagogical abilities? And if I don’t, do I even have to justify my decision?”

There are special aspects to consider at a primary school. “For young children, the teacher is an important reference person, she virtually takes part in the family,” says Jehniche. “What the teacher says, they approve of.” The problem arises when little girls and boys ask a teacher why she wears a headscarf. “She can then either say she doesn’t answer that question, or she then has to refer to her religious beliefs.

Do we allow such personal religious discussions to take place in a public school? Is school allowed to be a space where people discuss such private matters with students? We want to give suggestions and educate broadly based humanistically, but not push children in one direction.”Of course, everyone is free to choose their religion, but an educator should not encourage people to follow a certain direction. This applies to all religious symbols. School has the task to inform about religion, but not to judge which religion is better than others. “I fear that someone who wears a headscarf can no longer credibly provide this neutrality.”

Justice Senator Behrendt’s plans are a reaction to a decision by the Federal Labour Court in Erfurt. In August 2020, the court ruled that Berlin could not ban a Muslim applicant for a teaching position from wearing a headscarf. She had been denied a lateral entry position.

According to the court, the ban on wearing religious symbols in class, which is contained in Berlin’s neutrality law, constitutes an inadmissible encroachment on religious freedom. The judges referred to the requirements of the Federal Constitutional Court and demanded that the law be interpreted in a way that complies with the constitution: Only a concrete danger to the peace of the school or the neutrality of the state could justify a headscarf ban.Peter Stolz is also critical of Behrendt’s plans. “A teacher has to support all her pupils in a neutral way, but that will not work credibly if someone lives her Islamic faith so demonstratively,” said the chairman of the Berlin branch of the Association of History Teachers in Germany. For girls, it will be even more difficult than it already is to freely choose a religion if their teacher covers her head for religious reasons.And should a teacher with a headscarf teach in a class with almost exclusively Muslim boys and girls: “How does she behave when it comes to the question of how to evaluate the murder of a teacher like Samuel Paty, who was murdered because of Mohammed cartoons? Does she argue on the basis of the Basic Law?”, said Stolz.

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/berliner-lehrpersonal-und-religioese-symbole-jemand-mit-kopftuch-kann-neutralitaet-nicht-glaubhaft-vermitteln/26771020.html

The mayor of the popular Austrian ski resort Semmering had found himself in the middle of a media whirlwind after suggesting that many of his town’s visitors have behaved irresponsibly, breaking quarantine rules and generally had displayed anti-social behavior while visiting the resort’s leisure facilities.

The claims would have not caused any controversy, and the mayor could as well have been hailed as a responsible and dedicated official, were the story not have received a political and cultural undertone touching on the topics of immigration and coronavirus.

The Austrian newspaper Kurier had published an article about how the behavior of some visitors at ski resorts which have remained open despite strict measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus have created a perfect breeding ground for the spread of the virus at the peak of the second wave of the pandemic. The newspaper investigation was triggered by the complaints of Semmering’s mayor, Hermann Doppelreiter, who had claimed that at peak times there were over 4,700 visitors in close proximity with each other who were using the sporting facilities with little concern about social distancing or wearing masks.

Yet, the delicacy of the story springs from the fact that the Kurier newspaper checked the mobile phone records where the visitors to Semmering had come from. The commercially available mobile app had shown that most of the visitors came from the capital Vienna, and crucially, they were overwhelmingly from the district of Favoriten, known for its large population with a migration background, mostly from Turkey and the Balkans.

To make his complaint more specific, Mayor Doppelreiter had pointed to the fact that according to his and his colleagues’ observation, a large proportion of the visitors were of a migrant background and had refused to abide by rules set by health authorities, but also ignored that usual etiquette expected at a family leisure resort. Doppelreiter also complained that undisciplined drivers have illegally blocked the road for kilometers, and removed bollards and barriers at restricted areas.

The town had to employ 30 security personnel to manage the huge influx of disorderly visitors, and authorities have resorted to feeding information to Turkish language Austrian newspapers, radios and internet platforms asking people to stay away at peak times.

What the original Kurier article had published and the full complaint of Mayor Doppelreiter is hard to ascertain as due to pressure and criticism from progressive media outlets the article was later modified and the mayor had to retract some of his claims. One of the largest Austrian dailies, the Der Standard, relativizes the Kurier article by suggesting that the whole story is right-wing media hype in line with other stories such as that there is a reluctance in the foreign-born community to get vaccinated, or with earlier claims made by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Interior Minister Karl Nehammer that the second wave had started after the summer due to the return of migrant workers from the Balkans bringing in the virus.

Der Standard also points to the fact that Favoriten is the most populous district of Vienna, therefore it makes sense that most Viennese visitors had come from that district.

Wherever the truth lies with regards to the ski resort’s unruly visitors, the whole story and the following media reaction highlights a general tension between the capital and the rest of the country. Vienna is widely regarded as a bastion of the left in Austria, with Social Democrat Mayor Michael Ludwig at its helm, as well as the capital being largely responsible for the election of the Green Party Alexander Van der Bellen as president of the country.

According to 2019 figures, around 41 percent of the capital’s residents were foreign citizens, or were born outside of Austria, not counting second-generation citizens with migration background. Foreigners also make up over 50 percent of Austria’s prison population.

Vienna was the only state district where the Social Democrats have come up on top during the 2019 national elections, while in all other states, the centrist ÖVP led by Kurz won.

Austria: Ski resort mayor in hot water over suggesting migrants are breaking quarantine rules

In a survey, the majority of Germans spoke out against compulsory vaccination to combat the Corona pandemic. Some 56 percent of the respondents rejected this measure.

A survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of the news agency dpa showed that only 33 percent supported mandatory immunization against the virus. Eleven percent of those surveyed did not commit.

Notably, according to the survey, 62 percent rejected privileges for vaccinated people. Only six percent were in favor of people being allowed to visit restaurants again after the vaccination, for example. If a vaccination would stop the virus, on the other hand, 23 percent advocated advantages for vaccinated people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has assumed that it would take a vaccination rate of 60 to 70 percent to stop the pandemic. For this reason, the federal government has repeatedly emphasized the importance of this measure in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, the government and country leaders agreed to extend and tighten the lockdown. The restrictions on public life that have been in force since December 16 should last at least until the end of January.

The Germans are following in the footsteps of France: a YouGov poll conducted for The HuffPost on January 5 and 6 and published on Thursday confirmed the real reluctance of a large part of the French population to be vaccinated against the virus.

According to The Huffington Post, only 44 percent of respondents answered “yes” to the question “if the vaccine were available to all French people, would you be vaccinated?”. The most suspicious were the voters of the National Rally (37 percent).

https://freewestmedia.com/2021/01/08/germans-reject-compulsory-vaccination-against-corona/

by Giulio Meotti

“Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!” proclaimed Heather Levine, who teaches at Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Massachusetts.It is the Wall Street Journal that tells us about the most grotesque madness of American cancel culture. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical theory ideologues, teachers, school bureaucrats and Twitter agitators are purging the classics, from Homer to Francis Scott Fitzgerald from schools. The prohibition of any literary masterpiece unorthodox on gender and race is invoked in justification..

Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn writes that she “would rather die” than bring “The Scarlet Letter” to class, unless Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is used to “combat misogyny”. When the “anti-racist teacher” Lorena Germán complained that many classics are affected by their time, writer Jessica Cluess retorted: “If you think Hawthorne was on the side of the judgmental Puritans, then you are an idiot and you shouldn’t be given the title of educator”. An online horde accused Cluess, the author of the popular “Kingdom of Fire” series, of “racism” and “violence” and asked Penguin Random House to terminate her contract.

The publisher did not obey, perhaps because Cluess self denounced on time, saying “I take full responsibility for my unprovoked anger towards Lorena Germán”. But it didn’t stop Cluess’s literary agent Brooks Sherman from ending their professional relationship.

According to this logic, Homer would be only the progenitor of “toxic masculinity”. And it is certainly not the first time. Columbia students asked that Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” be preceded by a trigger warning on the sex scenes; at Brown University the students took it out on the statues of the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Augustus who were “white supremacists”; theThe New York Times asked if “we should erase Aristotle” and Oxford announced that it would review the study of Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid to facilitate “diversity” in the literae humaniores, the ancient glory of the university.

When Victor Davis Hanson, emeritus professor of classical studies at California State University, wrote “Who killed Homer” in 2001, he never imagined that the father of the Western Canon would be banned in American high schools.

“Anything remotely associated with stereotypical ‘white males’ is cause for cancellation, or rather opportunity for the mediocre to virtue signal their ignorance” Victor Davis Hanson told me. “Homer both creates Western values and critiques them at the same time; his treatment of women, slaves, and the poor show a sensitivity lacking in any other culture of the time.”

“The university is not a serious place and its reputation is eroding under massive student debt, ideological attacks on the First Amendment, and general mediocrity. Paying 75 thousand dollars for tuition to zoom in on classes is not sustainable. Those who cancel Homer usually never read him. How can you say Odysseus or Circe or Polyphemus is toxic when you have no idea who they are?

“The Left tries to wipe out the past to create a new future, but has nothing but nihilism to offer in place of what it destroys. Western youth suffers from prolonged adolescence; an entire generation is struggling under student debt, lack of adequate education despite being credentialed, not marrying, childlessness, and living at home. It lacks any formative challenges—buying a home, caring for a spouse, raising a child—that direct attention away from the self, or at least tend to make one more traditional and conservative. Without any positive referents or achievements it can only destroy or cancel in its nihilist madness”.

In the last few years, I have written hundreds of articles on this American political correctness, which is now affecting and corrupting also Europe’s cultural life. As a conservative Catholic author, I look at this American madness with sadness and concern.

Because I believe that it’s not funny at all, but that this “systemic anti-racism”, the new Achilles heel of Western culture, along with civilizational multiculturalism and pathological self hate, if not stopped on time will bring America to its knees.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/294436

Heavy charges against the Afghan Ali R. (23 years old) from Großenhain. The hairdresser and father of a family (one son, 16 months) has been standing trial since Tuesday for attempted rape and assault.

According to the indictment, on the night of June 21, 2020, several informal groups of young people were partying under the railway bridge on the Altstädter bank of the Elbe in Meißen.

There, Ali R. allegedly first asked a young woman for her age, then grabbed her buttocks. The girl refused the approach. When she tried to go to the toilet a little later and left the group, the accused allegedly followed her.

Prosecutor Yvonne Birke (50 years old): “He brought her down, hit her in the face with his fists, tried to rape her. When the victim continued to resist, screaming for help, he dragged her into the river Elbe, tried to push her face under the water.”

Pedestrians observed the crime and rescued the teenager. Ali R. is a registered refugee who has been living in Germany for six years. The public prosecutor’s office is still investigating a second rape case against him. The trial will be continued.

https://m.bild.de/regional/dresden/leipzig-news/staatsanwalt-sicher-afghane-23-wollte-17-jaehrige-vergewaltigen-74761272,view=amp.bildMobile.html

Democratic Party politicians recently claimed that they would want to replace terms such as “mother”, “father”, “son”, and “daughter” with more “gender-neutral” words such as “parent” and “child”.

The director of the Ordo Iuris Institute Center for International Law Karolina Pawłowska commented on this development, while also referring to what Joe Biden’s victory meant for Western society.

“We can unfortunately see that along with president Donald Trump’s loss in America, rapid and negative changes concerning the functioning of the political theater will take place. They are aiming to undermine basic social institutions to the whims of radical activists,” she said in the interview for portal Dorzeczy.pl.

Pawłowska believes that these actions are meant to conduct deep social engineering in the US whose main goal is to make humans completely powerless against public institutions by stripping humanity of its basic structures. She warned that this phenomenon was dangerous and due to Biden’s victory, the situation may take a turn for the worse and the changes will be introduced much more rapidly.

The lawyer emphasized that Biden bends under the pressure from radical demands concerning the protection of human life and family. This will impact not only in the US, but will also lead to a change in policy by the US on the international arena.

Pawłowska explained that in that last few years, protection of life, family and fundamental rights was one of the key areas of US foreign policy which was expressed in its actions in the United Nations. She reminded that the US, along with Brazil, Poland and Hungary initiated a coalition in the UN called the “Partnership for Families”. Its crowning achievements was passing the so-called Geneva Consensus on Octt. 22, 2020, which entailed that abortion can never be considered a human right, that every life should be protected, and that family is the fundamental social cell that society rests on.

“Given the current situation, it is almost certain that the US will leave this alliance and go over to the other side. The change of president in the US will probably strongly influence the UN where radical concepts are often the topic of deliberations and resolutions,” Pawłowska said.

“Amen” and “Awomen”

The lawyer also spoke in context of a Democrat representative ending a prayer inaugurating the US Sessions of Congress with the words “amen” and “awoman”. Amen does not even refer to males, but is Latin for “so be it”.

She emphasized that the goal of such a narrative is to create the perception that we live in a world founded by male oppression and domination, which is to be shown even in words which we use on an everyday basis. “In the case of the word “amen” it is a total abuse, as it has not association with men or men and means “so be it”,” she said, adding that a feeling of systematic discrimination is meant to be created in a religious context and installed into the nation’s social consciousness, 

Pawłowska stressed that neo-Marxist theories are using the different issues in functioning of certain social groups to explain the need to conduct social engineering. This is the same rhetoric used by Marxists who claimed that abolishing private property would help create a perfect world. 

“We know very well that is not what happened,” she added.

An estimated 100 million people were killed under communist rule across the world during the 20th century. 

https://rmx.news/article/article/bidens-election-means-acceleration-of-the-neo-marxist-revolution-says-polish-ordo-iuris-lawyer

An unarmed pro-Trump protester was shot dead by Capitol police on Wednesday. On the eve of the election of the US President in Congress on January 6, Washington DC saw a mega-demonstration by Trump supporters.

Violent BLM riots had raged unhindered in Washington for weeks in the summer of 2020, but the left-wing mayor Muriel Bowser called in the National Guard against Trump supporters and “white supremacists” after protesters massed at the Capitol building on Wednesday during the Save America Rally.

The crowd entered the Capitol Rotunda after police stood down. All legislators were moved to the basement as they tried to lock down the area. The police later used tear gas and stun grenades against the protesters. Pictures show how heavily armed police officers in full standby gear and with gas masks make their way through the building. The pro-Trump rally drew an estimated half a million people to Washington, DC.

The pro-Trump protester killed has been identified as 35-year-old Ashli Elizabeth Babbitt, a 14-year veteran who served four tours with the US Air Force and had worked as a high level security official. The New York Post reported that law enforcement sources told them Babbitt “was apparently shot by Capitol Police”.

Babbit was a strong supporter of President Trump, but a graphic video of her death showed no evidence of her posing any sort of threat. She was shot in the neck. Notably, Facebook has not taken down the thousands of nasty comments on Ashli Babbitt’s personal page celebrating her death.

A video posted by National File, clarified the unwarranted and random nature of the shooting.

In addition to the death of Babbitt, who was shot by the police inside the Capitol, the police confirmed that three other people had died in “medical emergencies” during the protest. It seems strange that there are no facts being communicated as to the circumstances of their deaths.

Some 52 people were arrested during the protest action, while most of them, 47, were arrested for violating the 6pm curfew.

A dozen Republican senators and around 50 Republican MPs had announced their intention to contest the election results for Joe Biden on massive fraud charges. One poll revealed that the majority of all Americans (56-34) believed that “enough fraud took place at the presidential election to change the outcome”.

Earlier, the conservative anti-antifa Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested at the airport in Washington for burning a flag of the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter movement, in an attempt to suppress Wednesday’s peaceful “Stop The Steal” protest. Tarrio was reportedly arrested at gunpoint by DC police.

At a hearing in December before the Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee, witnesses and experts presented striking evidence of electoral fraud in the state. A team of data experts even hacked into the Dominion voting machines in the ongoing Senate elections in real time. These voting machines should not have been connected to the Internet, but clearly were.

Data expert David Cross also demonstrated the statistical impossibility of the large number of Biden votes. The mainstream media simply ignored the Senate hearing.

Election observers Susan Knox and Sally Grubbs documented how bundles of ballot papers were secretly shredded from unsealed trash cans at the Atlanta polling center on the day the alleged recount which had taken place without an observer. When Knox and Grubbs called the police, they were informed that the police had received orders from the city council not to respond to allegations of election fraud.

But in the runoff election in Georgia, according to reports from NBC and CBS, the two Democratic candidates for the Senate, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, prevailed against their Republican opponents.

Townhall reported that Big Tech companies were taking down videos or “encouragement” of the events at the Capitol that “violates our policies”. A video of President Trump addressing a peaceful rally earlier in the day was thus deleted from Facebook and Instagram. Facebook claimed they prohibited incitement or calls for violence, but there were no such calls.

Youtube admitted that they removed content because Trump alleged fraud in the election and they disagreed. Twitter also removed the speech by Trump.

While Twitter blocked Trump’s user account for twelve hours, Facebooktemporarily excluded Trump and put him in a 24-hour ban. Both companies justified their actions with violations of their guidelines.

The Senate dismissed the appeal of Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who had protested against the results of the Pennsylvania presidential election. Some 92 Senators voted against Hawley’s motion, with only seven in favor. This means that the attempt by the Republicans to contest Trump’s defeat has failed.

https://freewestmedia.com/2021/01/07/leftist-mayor-calls-national-guard-to-washington-unarmed-protester-shot-dead/

Clearer video of the shooting death of Roberta Paulsen see here:https://vladtepesblog.com/2021/01/06/protestors-let-in-to-the-capitol-january-6-dc-post-4/