http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360345/budget-fight-and-obamas-vindictive-streak-jonah-goldberg Shutting down the government in an effort to use a budget fight to get rid of Obamacare is not the strategy I would have recommended for the GOP. And while Republicans can be blamed for starting the shutdown, it’s increasingly apparent that President Obama and the Democrats deserve the lion’s share of blame for […]
http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=9665
A once-great education scholar rejects everything she previously believed.
Education writer and activist Diane Ravitch is very angry these days. She’s convinced herself and her followers that elements of the American corporate elite are working to destroy the nation’s public schools, the indispensable institution that has held our republic together for more than two centuries. According to Ravitch, these fake reformers—the “billionaire boys’ club,” as she calls them—are driven by greed: after destroying the schools and stigmatizing hardworking teachers, she says, they want to privatize education and reap the profits from the new market.
Heading Ravitch’s corporate enemies list are superrich philanthropists such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, and Michael Bloomberg, who’ve promoted the hated ideas. Equally despised are the education officials and politicians carrying out their dirty work—reformers such as ex-Washington, D.C., public schools’ chief Michelle Rhee, former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and education secretary Arne Duncan (and, by implication, his boss, the president, too).
A few years ago, Ravitch grew so troubled about the purported threat to the public schools that she went through an amazing life change for a 73-year-old historian, whose previous career had been spent writing scholarly books. She reinvented herself as a vehement political activist. Once one of the conservative school-reform movement’s most visible faces, Ravitch became the inspirational leader of a radical countermovement that is rising from the grass roots to oppose the corporate villains. Evoking the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Ravitch proclaims that the only answer to the corporate school-reform agenda is to “build a political movement so united and clear in its purpose that it would be heard in every state Capitol and even in Washington, D.C.” The problem is that Ravitch’s civil rights analogy is misplaced; her new ideological allies have proved themselves utterly incapable of raising the educational achievement of poor minority kids.
Ravitch first entered the education-reform wars in 1974 with her well-received The Great School Wars, a history of New York City’s public schools. She was then a research fellow and lecturer at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Teachers College was and remains a progressive-education bastion, but Ravitch brought a moderate, centrist perspective to exploring the public schools’ problems. She launched her writing career at publications such as the neoconservative Commentary and The New Leader. Politically, she was basically a Henry “Scoop” Jackson Democrat. The sixties New Left and counterculture seemed to have passed her by. In her book on the city schools, she scorned “limousine liberals” like New York mayor John Lindsay and the Ford Foundation for creating experimental, “community-controlled” school districts and turning them over to black nationalists, with disastrous results.
Ravitch gained wider prominence in the 1980s as she joined in the criticism of the public schools unleashed by the Reagan administration’s 1983 Nation at Risk report, with its frequently quoted warning: “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.” Five years later, she coauthored, with Chester E. Finn, What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? The well-researched book’s answer: not much. The authors blamed American students’ ignorance partly on the fact that public schools lacked a “coherent literature curriculum.” Indeed, Ravitch began calling for voluntary national standards and championed the teaching of rich academic content knowledge, even in the early grades, and she became associated with E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge movement. In his 1987 bestseller, Cultural Literacy, Hirsch credited Ravitch for providing “the single greatest impetus for writing this book” and for suggesting the title. Ravitch soon found herself facing nasty attacks from progressive educators for her “elitism” and for championing “dead white males.”
Though still nominally a Democrat, Ravitch accepted an offer from newly elected president George H. W. Bush to become his assistant secretary of education. Her official assignment was to develop voluntary national standards, but she also came to agree with the administration’s support for school choice. When Ravitch’s Bush stint was over, the Teachers College mandarins, offended by her making common cause with reactionary Republicans, told her not to bother reapplying for her old job. Instead, she became a fellow at the Brookings Institution and wrote a book on national standards. Though the federal government couldn’t require the states to adopt such standards, she concluded, students would benefit if the states voluntarily moved toward them.
Ravitch received financial support for her scholarly work from the conservative John M. Olin Foundation and eventually joined the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution. The education-reform movement had acquired a new star, a Democrat supporting almost the entire Republican education agenda—vouchers, more testing, teacher accountability, and higher standards. Ravitch even served on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign as an education advisor, though she withdrew before the election.
Sometime around 2007, Ravitch began having second thoughts about the free-market components of education reform. In a public debate at Hoover, she teamed with Hirsch to argue in favor of a resolution affirming that “true school reform demands more attention to curriculum and instruction than to markets and choice.” In a controversial 2008 City Journal essay, I argued something similar, and Ravitch came to my defense, publishing a short City Journal piece endorsing “a coherent, year-by-year progression of studies in science, history, literature, geography, civics, economics, and the arts” in the public schools. In history, she explained, students in the early grades would “learn about the great deeds of significant men and women, study distant civilizations, and begin to understand chronology and the relation between causes and effects.” Ravitch also urged reformers “to view the evidence with open minds and be prepared to change course in light of new evidence.”
Ravitch elaborated on these arguments in her best-selling 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. She explained there how “new evidence” had led her to change her mind on vouchers and on evaluating teachers by their students’ test scores, but she still expressed hope that the American people would support national standards and “a sequential, knowledge-rich curriculum.”
Ravitch had also initiated a series of written exchanges about key education issues with the prominent progressive educator Deborah Meier. “Bridging Differences” ran in Education Week for almost five years. Ravitch noted at the series’ outset that she “was wrong to support choice as a primary mechanism for school reform.” But throughout the colloquy, she held firm against the progressive-education agenda on issues such as curriculum and standards. It could not have been an easy situation for Ravitch. She now stood apart from both the Right and the Left, loyal only to the evidence—or so she claimed.
Then, Ravitch abruptly took yet another dramatic spin and wound up surrendering abjectly to Meier, champion of social-justice teaching and other progressive fads. For the progressives, it was similar to the defection of a top general from the enemy side. Ravitch later said that Meier had convinced her that she was wrong about everything. Not only had Ravitch changed her mind about school choice and testing; she had closed her mind to the possibility of any successful reforms, including national standards, curriculum, and classroom instruction. And anyone who persisted in supporting such “de-forms,” she maintained, must either be a reactionary or (like Duncan, presumably) a dupe of the reactionary corporate-reform movement. In Ravitch’s new lexicon, the word “reformer” became pejorative.
The diplomat the whole world ignores Catherine Ashton heads a wasteful, top-heavy and ineffectual project costing European taxpayers half a billion pounds a year. She’s a living metaphor for the EU as a whole
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4221/the_diplomat_the_whole_world_ignores
SHE DOES OCCASIONALLY WORK…ONE OF HER PET PROJECTS WAS TO GET PRODUCTS FROM ISRAEL TO THE EU LABELED IF THEY ORIGINATED IN THE “WEST BANK”….RSK
It was like an assignation in a spy thriller. A helicopter picked up the middle-aged woman in the early hours and flew her to a secret location deep in Egypt. Then she was whisked to a military base, where she met an infamous Islamist hidden from the world for a month.
Afterwards, the woman faced the world’s press to reveal that Mohamed Morsi, the elected president overthrown in a controversial coup by his army generals, was in good health. She refused to divulge details of their two-hour conversation — “I’m not going to put words into his mouth,” she said a little pompously — but threw in the tidbit that Morsi, held with two advisers, had a well-stocked fridge and access to television.
It was Baroness Ashton’s finest moment in the four turbulent years since she took on her job as the European Union’s top diplomat, becoming then the world’s highest-paid female politician despite never having faced an electorate. For all the achievement of becoming the first foreign dignitary to see the Muslim Brotherhood leader since he was toppled, she has little to show for her time in the job, despite clocking up an impressive number of air miles.
Her tenure has been scarred by backbiting and blunders as she has built an extravagant empire of Eurocrats around the world. Yet it seems largely pointless and ineffective, despite having 139 “embassies”, 3,417 staff, 650 cars and costing close to half a billion pounds each year. Catherine Ashton’s creation, the European External Action Service (EEAS)-a legacy of the controversial 2007 Lisbon Treaty — is part of Europe’s ambition to seize control of foreign policy. It is typically wasteful and top-heavy: at least 50 officials earn more than our own Prime Minister’s £142,500 salary.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4227/islam_s_jihad_against_the_west_is_centuries_old The predominant historical narrative in the West is that Muslims are the historic “victims” of “intolerant” Western Christians. The truth is closer to the reverse of that Rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe, it recently occurred to me how ignorant the modern West is of its own past. The […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/clapper-shutdown-a-dreamland-for-foreign-intelligence-services-to-recruit?f=puball The following is a report from state-supported Russia Televsion on DNI Clapper’s testimony on the impact on the government shutdown on inteligence. The italics are in the original — so the Big Boss is sure to notice. What drew my eye was this (itals in original): “This is a dreamland for foreign intelligence services to […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/10/jesse_jackson_did_not_meet_with_black_political_prisoners_in_cuba.html My friend Carlos Eire, author, university professor and one of the 14,000 unaccompanied children who came to the US under “Pedro Pan” in the 1960s, alerted us to the latest display of Jesse Jackson irresponsibility. Incredibly, Jesse Jackson, the same man who could not speak enough about Nelson Mandela and aparthed in the […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/are_cnns_iran_reports_biased_inept_or_corrupt.html Al-Jazeera bought access to US public opinion when it purchased Current TV from Al Gore, but it faces stiff competition from CNN when it comes to misleading viewers about the Middle East. Over the last week, CNN has promoted a biased, re-branded image of the Iranian regime on at least three major programs. […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304176904579111084193512104.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Golda Meir didn’t strike pre-emptively in 1973 because she was ‘scared’ of angering the White House.
With all due respect for Halevi, the real lesson from the Yom Kippur War is that Israel has a strategic need as well as legal and historic rights to retain Judea and Samaria. ….Sadat, humbled in war even with the help of Kissinger who pummeled Israel into accepting Egypt’s terms for a final cease fire line, then came to Jerusalem to bark his demands before Israel’s parliament which acquiesced to all his demands including the promise of “autonomy” for West Bank Arabs….And the rest is the history of the foul and dangerous notion of “territory for peace which has clouded all Israel’s subsequent negotiations….rsk
As Israeli leaders weigh their response to the tentative dialogue between Tehran and Washington, which they regard as an Iranian ruse, the invisible presence at the cabinet table in Jerusalem will be the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
In declassified testimony just released by an Israeli national commission investigating the country’s initial failures during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, Meir explained why she hadn’t ordered a pre-emptive airstrike against Arab forces, though she knew by the morning of Oct. 6 that an invasion would happen within hours. She feared losing American support. “I am scared,” she recalled telling her cabinet. “We will not receive necessary assistance when we have the need for it.”
Meir’s restraint was vindicated by an American airlift of military aid during the war. Yet her decision not to order a strike, along with the army’s failure to respond to earlier intelligence warnings by drafting reservists, almost resulted in Israel’s first military defeat.
Recently, Secretary of State, John Kerry signed a U.N. Arms Treaty in violation of the Second Amendment to our Constitution. On August 5, 2013, the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs released the results of the Disarmament Commission study (summarized below) that focused on the confiscation of all civilian weapons, specifically from Americans, […]
http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2013/10/america-and-the-good-psychopat.php?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=America+and+the+good+psychopaths&utm_campaign=20131004_m117448204_America+and+the+good+psychopaths&utm_term=Continue+reading___
In his speech on Tuesday before the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tried to get the Americans to stop their collective swooning at the sight of an Iranian president who smiled in their general direction.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the premier warned, “I wish I could believe [President Hassan] Rouhani, but I don’t because facts are stubborn things. And the facts are that Iran’s savage record flatly contradicts Rouhani’s soothing rhetoric.”
He might have saved his breath. The Americans weren’t interested.
Two days after Netanyahu’s speech, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel issued a rejoinder to Netanyahu. “I have never believed that foreign policy is a zero-sum game,” Hagel said.
Well, maybe he hasn’t. But the Iranians have.
And they still do view diplomacy – like all their dealings with their sworn enemies – as a zero-sum game.
As a curtain raiser for Rouhani’s visit, veteran New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins wrote a long profile of Iran’s real strongman for The New Yorker. Qassem Suleimani is the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. It is the most powerful organ of the Iranian regime, and Suleimani is Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s closest confidante and adviser.
Rouhani doesn’t hold a candle to Suleimani.
Filkin’s profile is detailed, but deeply deceptive. The clear sense he wishes to impart on his readers is that Suleimani is a storied war veteran and a pragmatist. He is an Iranian patriot who cares about his soldiers. He’s been willing to cut deals with the Americans in the past when he believed it served Iran’s interests. And given Suleimani’s record, it is reasonable to assume that Rouhani – who is far more moderate than he – is in a position to make a deal and will make one.
The problem with Filkin’s portrayal of Suleimani as a pragmatist, and a commander who cares about the lives of his soldiers – and so, presumably cares about the lives of Iranians – is that it is belied by the stories Filkins reported in the article.
Filkins describes at length how Suleimani came of age as a Revolutionary Guard division commander during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, and how that war made him the complicated, but ultimately reasonable, (indeed parts of the profile are downright endearing), pragmatist he is today.
As the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Suleimani commands the Syrian military and the foreign forces from Iran, Hezbollah and Iraq that have been deployed to Syria to keep Bashar Assad in power.
Filkins quotes an Iraqi politician who claimed that in a conversation with Suleimani last year, the Iranian called the Syrian military “worthless.”
He then went on to say, “Give me one brigade of the Basij, and I could conquer the whole country.”
Filkins notes that it was the Basij that crushed the anti-Islamist Green Revolution in Iran in 2009. But for a man whose formative experience was serving as a Revolutionary Guards commander in the Iran-Iraq War, Suleimani’s view of the Basij as a war-fighting unit owes to what it did in its glory days, in that war, not on the streets of Tehran in 2009.
As Matthias Kuntzel reported in 2006, the Revolutionary Guards formed the Basij during the Iran-Iraq War to serve as cannon fodder. Basij units were made up of boys as young as 12.
They were given light doses of military training and heavy doses of indoctrination in which they were brainwashed to reject life and martyr themselves for the revolution.
As these children were being recruited from Iran’s poorest villages, Ayatollah Khomeini purchased a half million small plastic keys from Taiwan.
They were given to the boys before they were sent to battle and told that they were the keys to paradise. The children were then sent into minefields to die and deployed as human waves in frontal assaults against superior Iraqi forces.
By the end of the war some 100,000 of these young boys became the child sacrifices of the regime.
When we assess Suleimani’s longing for a Basij brigade in Syria in its proper historical and strategic context – that is, in the context of how he and his fellow Revolutionary Guards commanders deployed such brigades in the 1980s, we realize that far from being a pragmatist, Suleimani is a psychopath.
Filkins did not invent his romanticized version of what makes Suleimani tick. It is a view that has been cultivated for years by senior US officials.
Former US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker spoke at length with Filkins about his indirect dealings with Suleimani through Iranian negotiators who answered to him, and through Iraqi politicians whom he controlled.
Crocker attests that secretary of state Colin Powell dispatched him to Geneva in the weeks before the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to negotiate with the Iranians. Those discussions, which he claims involved the US and Iran trading information about the whereabouts of al- Qaida operatives in Afghanistan and Iran, could have led to an historic rapprochement, Crocker claims. But, he bemoans, hope for such an alliance were dashed in January 2002, when George W. Bush labeled Iran as a member of the “Axis of Evil,” in his State of the Union address.
