Not given much attention

What with all the kerfuffle about President Obama's Teleprompter's first State of the Union Address (which seems to have gone down not at all well with anybody except the hard core of the faithful) and the fuss about .... errm ... nothing very much in British and European politics, one story was not given very much attention., except, for understandably reasons, in Germany.
(Though, to be fair, the Guardian has reported it.)

Der Spiegel reported that an Evangelical Christian family who wanted to home-school their children were granted an asylum in the United States. Though one might think it was the religion that was the problem from the headline, it was actually the home-schooling, which is illegal in Germany.

Judge Lawrence Burman in Memphis, Tennessee stated that the Romeike family were entitled to asylum because their basic human rights were encroached on.

HSLDA [Home School Legal Defense Association] attorney Mike Donnelly called the decision "embarrassing for Germany." According to Donnelly, the Memphis court issued a final ruling "that homeschoolers are a social group that is being
persecuted in Germany." A "Western nation should uphold basic human rights, which include allowing parents to raise and educate their own children," Donnelly said. "This is simply about the German state trying to coerce ideological uniformity in a way that is frighteningly reminiscent of past history."

There is no need, in my opinion, to remind people about Nazism as modern Germany is not a bit like Hitler's Germany. Furthermore, home schooling is a sore point in many countries. Indeed, there have been attempts to control it in the United States. Mostly they have failed.

Deutsche Welle takes out the religion and concentrates on the home-schooling.

While religious homeschoolers are often covered in the media, they don't represent all German homeschooling families, said Dagmar Neubronner, a publisher and therapist in Bremen who moved her children from Germany to France to homeschool them.

Neubronner told Deutsche Welle when her children were in public schools they often complained of not having enough academic freedom and of noise and disruptions from classmates.

"Our children didn't thrive in school," she said.

After attempting to get permission from German courts to homeschool her children, she says she was threatened with fines and jail time. It was then that she and her husband decided to move their children to France where they could legally homeschool them.

When asked whether homeschooled children have difficulty integrating into society, Neubronner said those claims were "not proven by reality."

"Just look around to all those countries where homeschooling is permitted," she said. "You don't find a group of ex-homeschoolers who fail in life."

Eugene Volokh, himself a successful past asylum speaker, raises the question of whether not having the right to home schooling does give one the right to asylum in the United States. Without saying so, he seems to be doubtful. The discussion, as usual, is very interesting and well worth reading in full.

There are many aspects to this case that will reverberate in other countries, not least Britain. The situation here as regards home-schooling is rather confused. Legally it is perfectly acceptable. It is not schooling that is compulsory but education, though LEAs (local education authorities), Ofsted ( Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) and other suchlike organizations would prefer it if people did not know about this distinction.

Officials spend a good deal of time harassing home-schoolers and demanding proof that the education thus provided is "adequate", proof of which they do not seem to demand from schools. As the term "adequate" is defined by these officials with no reference to anything outside themselves and their ideas, proof of it becomes hard to impossible to provide.

Most recently, educational and "child welfare" officials have found another way in which they can harass home-schoolers. The latter would now have to prove that they are not paedophiles (after all, what other reason can one have for wanting to give one's child a real education?) and some of the children have been put on the at-risk lists. One wonders how many of them are now contemplating the notion of asking for asylum in the United States.

Man bites dog

According to the BBC, Human Rights Watch has rejected claims made by Hamas that it did not target Israeli civilians during the war in Gaza in December 2008. Goodness me, are you trying to tell me that Hamas does bad things and is not just the rightful expression of the Palestinian anger/misery (delete as applicable)? Now all Human Rights Watch and the BBC have to do is acknowledge the constant shelling of Sderot from Gaza, where the allegedly poverty-stricken people seem to have no trouble in acquiring rockets and explosives.

Battling the finances

Oddly enough, I do not propose to write about the brave battle that various incompetent politicians are waging against the not-very-competent-but-largely-wealth-creating financial institutions. Well, not this time, anyway.

Yesterday I attended a talk given by Jonathan Schanzer, organized by the indefatigable Henry Jackson Society, entitled Terror Finance and the Transatlantic Relationship. They could not have picked a much better person if they wanted to give us the more or less official point of view:

Jonathan Schanzer is a leading American author & scholar in Middle Eastern studies, and formerly a counterterrorism analyst for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury where he tracked the activities of terrorist financiers. Prior to joining the Treasury, he served as a Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he authored the book “Al-Qaeda's Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the Next Generation of Terror”. He also participated in a Washington Institute fact-finding mission in Iraq in 2004. His most recent published book is “Hamas vs Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine”. In addition Mr Schanzer has published numerous scholarly journal articles, national newspaper editorials, and magazine features. He has appeared with frequency on American television channels, such as Fox News and CNN, as well as Arab television channels, such as al-Jazeera. Mr. Schanzer has travelled widely in Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. He will shortly be joining the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as Vice-President.

To be fair to Mr Schanzer he did make some comments that showed him to be not entirely in sympathy with the present Administration in its extraordinary financial profligacy and even more extraordinary assumption that it is a good idea to follow in the EU3's unsuccessful footsteps and "engage" with Iran. Nor did he seem to be terribly happy about the fact that no Administration has shown itself to be ready to tackle the vexed question of Saudi Arabia, the support for Wahhabi extremism and terrorism that comes from that country and the American reliance on its oil. I am not sure that his idea of renewables would provide a solution in the near future but, at least, he has noted the problem.

Most of the talk was along predictable lines but I was particularly interested in the points he made about Islamic charities and the need the US and UK governments faced to shut some of them down as they were channelling money to terrorists and terror educators.

Let us disregard the inevitable cries of "Islamophobia", which greet every shutting down of an Islamic charity that had been taken over by people whose idea of jihad is most definitely not self-enlightenment but the destruction of everybody else, including and especially other Muslims.

There is the unfortunate truth that many Western charities have succumbed to the same disease. This is not particularly new. I recall being somewhat puzzled when I found out that the address, phone number and personnel of Christian Aid in London was identical with an organization called Defence and Aid, whose work consisted of defending and aiding guerrillas in South Africa and the surrounding countries. Whatever one may think of these people's activity, it was not what people gave money for to the charity.

There is, however, one more point about the subject of funding of terrorism and, especially, terrorist education in places like Gaza - much of that money comes either from charities that have become NGOs and are funded, to a large extent, by various governments and transnational organizations. Even more importantly, funding comes from international aid of various kind. At the very least, that money is fungible; and, at worst, there are no checks at all on what it is spent on. That is why we get such things as the sickening children's programmes on Gaza TV. (Here is the latest news item about Tomorrow's Pioneers. I see there is another large psychotic animal present.)

That subject - the use of taxpayers' money - was raised by a couple of people in the audience (yes, yes, I was one of them) but proved to be a subject too far for Mr Schanzer who rather obviously avoided it.

A necessary public announcement

It would appear that we can no longer refer to the process whereby the Toy Parliament gets involved in EU legislation as Codecision. That, too, was changed by the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty.

In a correspondence with Chris Bryant MP, present Minister for Europe, about a report the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union produced, which will be debated this Thursday, Lord Roper, Chairman of that Committee wrote (somewhat sardonically, in my opinion):

Thank you for your letter of 14 January about scrutiny of Codecision - which we must now call the Ordinary Legislative Procedure.

What, one wonders, might Extraordinary Legislative Procedure be?

The stimulus is a flop - let's have more of it

Oh dear, this is all so familiar. Socialism, we used to say, does not work in any way: economic, social or ethical. Ah yes, they would reply, that is because there is not enough socialism. We must have more. We hear the same about the EU - the reason the European project is failing and not delivering the promised attractions is because there is not enough of it. So, President Obama's stimulus package failed miserably and there are plans to shell out more of the taxpayers' money on another package. Here is Dan Mitchell of Cato Institute explaining why and how it failed. He may be talking about the US but it is horribly relevant to us.

Meanwhile in the House of Lords

Some interesting questions, answers and comment, particularly from such luminaries as Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, formerly known as Our Glenys, the much travelled member of the Toy Parliament.

Wednesday's Hansard yielded a great deal, Thursday's not so much. First off, there was a Starred Question by Lord Ashdown (formerly known as Paddy, he of the permanently furrowed brow and eyes that look to the horizon):

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the present situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Minister, La Kinnock, replied:

My Lords, we remain deeply concerned by the lack of progress on reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina and by recent challenges to the authority of the high representative and to the Dayton peace agreement. We are particularly concerned by positions taken in December by the Republika Srpska Government. We strongly support the Dayton agreement and the authority of the high representative and are engaging intensively with the Peace Implementation Council and European Union partners to address concerns about the current situation.

Thereafter followed the most extraordinary exchange between the Noble Lord and the Noble Baroness as well as other Noble Lords, during which it transpired that the Bosnians appeared to be completely uninterested in the incentive held out to them of European integration.

It was rather amusing to read all those strong statements about the need for Bosnia and Herzegovina to stay united or they cannot come into "Europe". Back in 1989 when the War of Former Yugoslavia was starting there were equally strong statements made to President Milosevic about that country, no longer with us by the likes of Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd and Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jacques Poos. In effect, they were telling Milosevic to do what he liked but keep that country together. We know what happened after that.

Then there was a rather odd Question from Lord Lea of Cronwall, a man of many transnational allegiances:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have investigated whether increased expenditure on contraceptive services globally would produce a greater reduction of carbon dioxide emissions than many green technologies.

An even more curious discussion followed, which might be worth reading though from our point of view only one exchange is of interest. Lord Lawson of Blaby stood up and asked:

What is the Government's view of evidence that has recently come to light of seriously unprofessional conduct by the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Mr Pachauri, and of the worrying conflict of interests between his IPCC responsibilities and his business activities?

The Government's view as expressed by the Noble Minister appeared to be that this was irrelevant, though all discussions about climate change and human contribution to it is predicated on whether one believes the likes of Mr Pachauri. Nevertheless, Lord Brett, the Minister in question summoned his vituperative powers:

I am afraid that I consider that to be quite a long way from the Question on the Order Paper. The noble Lord seems to be becoming on climate change what the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, has become on Europe.

So there we are: you want to insult a peer you compare him or her to the Lord Pearson of Rannoch, than whom there is no one more terrible in the eyes of the Ministers.

A hiatus

I shall be away for the rest of this week, in Vienna and Budapest. I might be able to post or I might not. A hiatus is the most likely development but that should not stop people from discussing matters and I hope they will.

I will return!