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This is the last reply to you. I could care less if you or they are offended. I know what happened, i know what the Germans told me, etc. I did not live on the base i lived on the economy (= in German neighborhoods 30 minutes or more from the post) and found out many things directly from the Germans and others i lived around. I already stated this in one of my other replies. When i heard certain things i would then check with the authorities who were over me to see if they were true or not in regard to the law. When hearing, reading, seeing on the news strange stories i asked my German friends directly who were not in the military, as well as some who were married to soldiers. So the Germans you know now are saying not true but the ones i lived around said they were. I feel you are speaking dbl talk. You are saying what you saw and hear is fact, but not me, it is only my perception, narrowed by living on post, which i did not. This is yet one of the reasons i hardly post on this forum because people like yourself act like you are the ultimate authority on issues that you can't prove either. You can't prove your hear say but act as if i should have to or am not allowed to speak about the things i learned and observed from being there.

Your holier than thou attitude and covered insults are offensive to me. I am totally entitled to my opinion and have a right to liken it to dictatorship, just as you have your right to hold it up as the picture of perfection and what all of America or it's health care should be like. As i stated before maybe it is a difference in states, etc. Or maybe you are right and all the professional and non professional Germans i spoke with were lying. So i guess it was one big conspiracy to freak the American girl out. If that were the case and they are liars as you have said, that does not say much for your friends either then, because either things are different or Germans happen to have a higher level or story stretchers than i realized, and if so then that tells me i can't trust your comments from the Germans you know cause they could be liars too. It was my German OB who had nothing to do with the military who told me that only men could have the professor status at the hospital = be in charge, not a woman.

I never said our schools were better, i said one family specifically was debating on leaving there so her daughter(s) could choose her own career path. I did say that at the time they also ranked the lowest in the EU reports, that was in the news/newspaper not anything i made up. If they asp arents feel their school system is not up to speed and want to homeschool it is their right. We do it because our kids do not get a good enough education especially in history. So just because their students are better educated than here does not mean they are poor compared to other countries nor that the parents there should be denied their rights to provide their children with a better one at home.

As far as i know many countries and our own states have homeschooling legal in their own constitutions that were made prior to the "zealous" parents activism to make it legal. Many of the original settlers were home schooled and home schooled their kids so this is not something modern or new. Where as taking away parental rights to home school in our country and others is modern, info on the home school issues i brought up can be read here
http://tinyurl.com/yf8qgh5
I have also read about things on personal websites and blogs of German "underground" homeschoolers. I believe they said it is one of the only enforced Nazi laws, that prior to Hitler it was legal to home school. But hey you can research that one yourself. AS for rooting out the homeschoolers you ask them how they feel about it. I am sure they do feel it is Reno style especially when they are being fined with such hefty fines they are facing the reality of losing their home, imprisonment after, and losing their kids.

As for great access to raw milk and whole natural foods did you not read that there was only 1 store in our entire town to get organic foods from and even the store owners said raw milk was illegal when i asked if they knew where to get some. We found one farmer who told us we HAD to "cook the milk" to make it safe. When we asked if she drank the same milk she said but "only cooked". I find it far easier here to find all that i want in regards to WAPF in my own home town. in fact i could not even begin to get totally strict with our WAPF diet until leaving there because most things were not accessible. I had to mail order it from the US. Their farmers sprayed pesticides too. 2 of the houses i lived in the German landlords warned to stay inside and keep the doors closed when spraying came because it was "bad for you". You could buy round up there too at any home and garden store. It was far from this idealist picture perfect scenario you paint. Especially in regards to food. Yeah fresh food at weekly farmers markets but when you asked do you use pesticides/sprays they would laugh and say "well yes!" The only thing i found true to the healthy food claim was they are fearful of GMO and hormones in animals.

Back to you saying they are just telling me what i want to hear or pulling one over on me, i guess not only was the various Germans i associated with liars/kidders but their media (which after knowing about ours, i guess so). Boy they sure had to cover their bases from the neighbor to the OB and the news and all those inbetween to really pull one over on the American girl. Sorry i did not think to save the online news articles from German newspapers regarding some of the other issues. If i had foresight to know that some know-it-all was going to rake me over the coals for my own observations, experiences, to keep it in case i was accused of lying or twisting facts etc. i would have saved all the articles regarding some of the cases just for your personally. And again i echo my experiences were very off post talking to people who worked in stores i shopped at, German neighbors in my German neighborhood, professionals like the doctors i saw during PG as military does not provide for that on some posts, etc. It was not jsut military people and even if so they knew far more than you realize. Many have lived there 5 - 20 yrs and are very aware of German culture and politics, who felt it was home away from home and these are the people i ran questions by. Not ignorant people who never left post.

I will not reply further to you because of your constant insinuation i am lying and purposely skewing info and experiences for my own agenda.

Thank you though Bill for the unfriendly reminder to avoid pots by people like you who act as though you, only you, and only your ideas, experiences, etc. are accurate.

--- In native-nutrition@yahoogroups.com, "Bill" <lynchwt@...> wrote:
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> Well, look, it is not a matter of perception, but of fact. The problem is that you are taking a few facts and twisting them bizarrely. Just to make sure I wasn't missing something, I passed these claims by some Germans we know and they were alternatively amused and angered. They were particularly upset by the claim that Germany was essentially a dictatorship. So let's go through a few points.
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> Does Germany dictate to its citizens what career they must follow? No, they absolutely do not. Like most of our public schools, there are different tracks after primary school that incorporate advanced or vocational emphases, and your grades matter but they doesn't prevent anyone from taking the exam for college. One woman we asked about--her husband is a professor (who can be women by the way!) and has many graduate students who did not go to Gymnasium. In any event, the topic of reforming this system is a live one among Germans, which is why you may have picked up complaints about this system. I can guarantee you that even those non-Gymnasium students are better educated than most U.S. _college_ graduates, let alone high school graduates. Conversations with everyday Europeans contrast markedly with conversations with Americans--they know basic geography and history, for instance.
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> Home schooling is not allowed--historically, universal education is a modern democratic demand and it was introduced as complusory everywhere that I know about, including the United States. Home school exceptions to this requirement in the U.S. have been carved out by the activism of zealous parents. The original requirement is based on the assumption that democracy is not possible unless everyone has a base level education, where previously access to education had been restricted by class, not merit. They do not pursue a Janet Reno-style repressive program at rooting out home schoolers, as you implied.
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> Do the accused have rights to representation and are the lawyers prosecuted for representing them? Yes to the first and no to the second. There are complaints on Neo-Nazi sites about lawyers being prosecuted for associating with their clients--perhaps this is what you are referring to? If true, it doesn't indicate general denial of due process any more than due process is completely lacking in our country because lawyers for accused terrorists get arrested for allegedly passing on information from their clients to those on the outside. An abuse of power is connected to an issue each government has a serious issue with that erodes the normal protections in particular cases. The exception to freedom of speech in Germany is endorsement of national socialism, something one might expect, however misguided, given their history.
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> They do cap their vitamin supplements for health safety reasons, as they limit things like bleach for environmental reasons. Hard to see this as the mark of dictatorship rather than different judgments about how to protect the public. If we are to judge them solely by WAPF standards, I'll take the certified raw milk availability and greater access to organic agriculture any day.
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> Living on a military base is living in a U.S. zone within a larger country--it skews your perception of the country, especially when every difference is interpreted by invidious contrast with one's own native way of life. The context in which you interact with people from a foreign culture really matters, or they will give you back what they think you want to hear or serve up distortions that reflect their own agendas. Get away from the military base and talk to a range of people that are not captive to that relationship and you may get a different view, but only if you don't flag every difference from the American way of life with the label "oppression."
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> Bill
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> --- In native-nutrition@yahoogroups.com, "slbooks4me" <beauty4ashesisaiah61@> wrote:
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> > I don't think so bill. The moms were very serious about their childrens paths being chosen. And the officials on the military installation even confirmed the fining for mowing my lawn etc. on Sunday. Just because it does not fit with what you knew does not mean i do not know what we experienced there, nor what we were told officially and confirmed by German friends. You don't have to believe it if you don't want to that is fine. But please do not act like i have no idea how to tell the difference between someone yanking my chain or not. We can agree to disagree on our opinions of Germany that we are both basing on what we experienced while there. But i assure you i know the difference between the two. And when things like this came up that i found hard to believe i not only asked nationals i asked the US military officials who we were employed under to be sure i did not get in trouble for something as stupid as mowing.
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> > Julia
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> > --- In native-nutrition@yahoogroups.com, "Bill" <lynchwt@> wrote:
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> > > East Germans had their career path set--that's why they were happy to be reunited, to get rid of it and go to the Western model. This description does not match the reality over there at all. I can only imagine that someone was having a little fun with you. They have more of an active democracy and practical freedom than over here. It's not the middle ages any more and no one fines you if you work on the sabbath. Some people might be conservative and set in their ways but others are extremely libertine. The laws are, on the whole, very much less confining than here. It just doesn't sound like a description of Germany at all.
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> > > Bill
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