German Job Centre's Brothel Offer Shocks Teenager
BBC: A German job centre has apologised after offering work as a hostess in a brothel to a teenage girl, according to a local newspaper in Augsburg, Bavaria.

The 19-year-old's mother screamed when she saw the letter offering her daughter the work placement, the Augsburger Allgemeine reports.

The head of the job centre was quoted as saying it should have asked the young woman before sending the letter.

Roland Fuerst stressed that the work being offered was not prostitution. » | Thursday, February 07, 2013

Europe's Biggest Brothel – Complete with Coach Parking – To Open in Austria
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: An Austrian entrepreneur has announced plans to open Europe's biggest brothel, with a complex boasting a 147 rooms and coach parking.

When opened in 2014 the giant brothel, officially dubbed the "FunMotel", will have capacity for 1,000 "guests" a day with around 150 sex workers employed in the £12 million project. Along with room for buses it will also have 350 parking spaces and a three-metre high perimeter wall to ensure privacy.

Peter Laskaris, the businessman behind the project who already operates a brothel in Vienna, said that the glitzy bordello's "four-star hotel" facilities will be the sex industry's shift from "grocer to supermarket".

The FunMotel will offer "swinger parties, gangbangs" and "porn stars" along with more mundane hotel attractions such as restaurants, beauty salon and gym. But 8Quadrat Developers, the Vienna-based company developing the project, claim that "the number of females" and the "affordable prices" will "ensure absolute satisfaction for male customers".

The brothel will be built at a still undisclosed location in the north-eastern state of Lower Austria, which surrounds the Austrian capital. » | Matthew Day, Warsaw | Monday, November 05, 2012

DER STANDARD: Das Mega-Laufhaus vor den Toren Wiens: Für 15 Millionen Euro planen Wiener Rotlicht-Größen das größte Laufhaus Europas in Niederösterreich. Der genaue Standort ist noch geheim, die Option auf ein Grundstück wurde bereits bezahlt » | Julia Herrnböck | Freitag, 02. November 2012

Tunisian Fundamentalists Burn Down Brothels
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Islamic fundamentalists attempted a show of force in Tunis on Friday by burning down a street of brothels.

Dozens of Islamists calling for Tunisia's brothels to be closed had rallied outside the interior ministry following Friday prayers before marching to Abdallah Guech Street.

At least three people were injured when security forces fired in the air to disperse the crowd.

The incident was the latest sign of Islamists organising in the North African state, the only Arab country with legal prostitution, after an uprising toppled President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali last month.

"Almost 500 Islamists, many wearing beards, were demonstrating in Old Medina to demand the closure of a brothel," said Mourad Barhoumi, a Tunis resident who witnessed the demonstration. >>> | Saturday, February 19, 2011

LE MONDE: Tunisie : un prêtre égorgé, des islamistes attaquent un lieu de prostitution – L'insécurité et le risque de poussée intégriste en Tunisie ont été illustrés, vendredi 18 février, par le meurtre d'un prêtre polonais retrouvé égorgé "par des extrémistes", aux dires des autorités, et l'attaque d'une rue fréquentée par des prostituées par des islamistes qui voulaient incendier une maison close. >>> LEMONDE.FR avec AFP | Vendredi 18 Février 2011

Lest We Forget – Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution
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New Book Reveals Horror of Nazi Camp Brothels
REUTERS: BERLIN - In 1942, the Nazis decided that forced labourers in concentration camps would work harder if they were promised sex -- so they made female prisoners work in brothels for them.

The brothels form the subject of "Das KZ Bordell" (The Concentration Camp Brothel) by Robert Sommer, a book that has been hailed as the first comprehensive account of a little known chapter of Nazi oppression in World War Two.

Sommer's 460-page work, due to be presented at the Berlin state parliament on Wednesday, explores the origins, structure and impact of the "Sonderbauten" (special buildings) run by Heinrich Himmler's SS in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe.

"In the collective memory and written history of World War Two, the camp brothels were for a long time taboo," the 35-year-old Berliner told Reuters. "The former prisoners didn't want to talk about it: it was a difficult subject to handle.

"It didn't fit so easily into the postwar image of the concentration camps as monuments to suffering."

Beginning with the Austrian camp at Mauthausen in 1942, the SS opened 10 brothels, the biggest of which was in Auschwitz, in modern Poland, where as many as 21 women prisoners once worked. The last opened in early 1945, the year the war ended.

The chapter is separate from the annals of the Holocaust of European Jews. Jewish women were not recruited as prostitutes, and Jewish men were not admitted to the brothels.

Sommer estimates around 200 women inmates in total were forced to work in the brothels -- initially offered the prospect of escaping the brutality of the concentration camps.

"They were promised release after half a year if they served in the brothel. But the promises were never honoured," he said. "Later, the SS just selected women they felt were suitable."

"Jews were not allowed in. Neither were Soviet prisoners of war," he added. "Jewish women did not serve as sex workers."

Tens of thousands of captured soldiers, political prisoners and people branded socially undesirable by the Nazis, including Roma and homosexuals, were held in camps alongside the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust.

"The idea behind the brothels was to raise productivity by providing forced labourers with added incentive," said Sommer. "Yet from what I found, it didn't work at all. Only a few people were actually in a physical condition to go to them."

According to Sommer, the use of prisoners to provide sex to other prisoners was purely a Nazi phenomenon in the war. >>> Dave Graham, Editing by Kevin Liffey | Monday, August 17, 2009

Amsterdam's Brothels and Cannabis Cafés Furious over Mayor's 'Clean-up'
THE GUARDIAN: Dissent grows over a planned crackdown on prostitution and drugs aimed at curbing organised crime in the red-light district

Amsterdam has long been famed for its relaxed approach to prostitution and soft drugs, making the Dutch city one of the most popular destinations for tens of thousands of Britons on stag and hen parties.

But all that may be about to change. As part of a major 'clean-up' of the city centre, the local authorities yesterday unveiled plans to close half of the brothels and the little coffee shops where cannabis can be bought and smoked, prompting warnings that they will cost the city dear as visitors head elsewhere.

Although prostitution has been legal for eight years, and possession of small amounts of drugs has long been tolerated, the latest moves mark an escalation in the culture wars in a country that many of its people believe has become too liberal.

At the heart of the new initiative is the city's drive against the organised crime that it claims gravitates to the areas with high concentrations of 'coffee shops', brothels and the 'windows' where women advertise themselves.

While Amsterdam has long been held up as a model of the argument in favour of the legalisation of soft drugs and the sex trade, its critics counter that the windows and coffee shops mask the violent reality of organised crime. 'By reduction and zoning of these kinds of functions, we will be able to manage and tackle the criminal infrastructure better,' the city said in a statement.

Opponents of the clean-up - including coffee-shop owners and the prostitutes' union, De Rode Draad (Red Thread), which represents 20,000 Dutch prostitutes - told The Observer yesterday that they believed that, far from reducing crime, it would encourage drug dealers and prostitutes to go underground in areas where they were banned.

They also warned that the new clampdown on drugs and the sex industry would have a profound effect on the economics of a city famous for both things. 'Amsterdam is the city of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll,' said Metje Blaak, a spokeswoman for De Rode Draad, which provides health screening and other training for its members.

'Now we have no sex. No drugs. The women will go on the streets and to the hotels. It is very bad, not least in terms of women's health and safety. The mayor has not listened to the women or the coffee shops,' she added. >>> Peter Beaumont | December 7, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback – The Netherlands) >>>

The Sensual Orient Has Become Chaste
RADIO NETHERLANDS WORLDWIDE: Dutch writers and artists in the 19th century took great interest in the Middle East. Art historian Jan de Hond wrote his dissertation about these orientalists. Some were out to prove the superiority of their own Western culture, while others were searching for something missing at home, such as free love.

In the 19th century, thousands of European writers and artists travelled to the Islamic countries around the Mediterranean. Their books and paintings found immense popularity among a large section of the public. French and British writers and artists were perhaps more obsessed with oriental culture than others but Orientalism was also a phenomenon in the Netherlands and it interested writers such as Marcellus Emants and Louis Couperus and the artist Marius Bauer.

What lay at the bottom of the enormous interest in the Orient? According to the Palestinian literary theorist Edward Said, the image that European writers and artists constructed of the Orient was dependent on colonialism. In order to justify colonialism, the Orient was presented as the opposite of the occident and the opposite of how Europeans saw themselves. Europe was dynamic, enlightened, rational and democratic and the Orient was seen as static, backward, irrational and despotic. In the 1970s, Mr Said's book, Orientalism became the bible of left-wing Arab intellectuals. One-dimensional >>> By Michel Hoebink | 29-02-2008

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)