Displaying posts published in

February 2016

Kevin Donnelly An Education You Can’t Buy

If there is anything more predictable than the sun rising of a morning it is Big Chalk’s immediate response to any and all discussions of standards. ‘Give us more money,’ unions and lobbyists demand, thereby demonstrating either a gross failure of comprehension or a willingness to mislead
The Australian Education Union and the Labor Party, when justifying the additional billions of dollars needed to fully fund the Gonski Report’s school funding model, argue that Australia’s education system is inequitable. Government school advocate Trevor Cobbold from Save Our Schools is also in no doubt that Australia’s education system is inequitable when he argues, “Clearly, Australia is at the bottom end of OECD countries in terms of equality in education outcomes”. Alan Reid, from the University of South Australia, in a report commissioned by the Australian Government Primary Principals Association argues in a similar vein when he says, “Australia is near the bottom of OECD countries in terms of equity and education”.

All argue that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, the majority of whom are in government schools, consistently underperform as a result of being disadvantaged and only increased funding will improve outcomes and raise standards. Based on their belief that Australia’s education system is unfair and that government school students are the most adversely affected, both Cobbold and Reid go on to argue that governments must redirect funding from so-called privileged Catholic and Independent schools to government schools.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that Australian schools do not reinforce disadvantage and, based on research carried out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, our education system is ‘high-equity’.

France’s Relentless Hostility to the Jewish State by Guy Millière

France today is one of the main enemies of Israel — maybe its main enemy — in the Western world. France’s disregard of the threats faced by Israel is more than simple willful blindness. It is complicity.

At a time when Mahmoud Abbas constantly encourages terror and hatred against Israel, and when murders of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs occur on a daily basis, France’s anti-Israel relentlessness can only be seen as the latest extension of France’s centuries-old anti-Semitism.

France’s “Arab policy” has gone hand-in-hand with a massive wave of Muslim immigration. France has quickly become the main Muslim country in Europe. More than six million Muslims live in France, and make up approximately 10% of the population. The Muslim vote is now an important factor in French politicians’ decisions; the risk of Muslim riots is taken into account.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran — a regime that denies the fact that the Holocaust occurred and does not hide its intention to commit another holocaust — arrived in Paris for an official visit.

Two days earlier, Rouhani had been in Rome, where the Italian authorities, in a gesture of submission, covered up the nude statues of Rome’s Capitoline Museum.

Rouhani thanked Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi for his “hospitality”. He did not thank President François Hollande for having hosted him on January 27.

Denmark Criminalizes Free Speech – Selectively by Judith Bergman

According to the court decision, pointing out the totalitarian and cruel aspects of Islam itself is now a criminal offense, considered “insulting and demeaning” to Muslims in Denmark and therefore constituting “racism.” In effect, this means that the court is conflating what might possibly constitute blasphemy with racism.

Conversely, when a Danish imam called Jews “the offspring of apes and pigs,” he was officially reported to the police for breaching § 266b, but no legal charges were ever filed against him.

In Denmark, apparently, it is a crime to criticize Islam and “Islamists,” but calling Jews the “offspring of apes and pigs” and inciting their murder in a packed mosque (and calling non-Muslims in general “animals”) can be done with impunity.

Last week, a Danish district court ruled that what a Danish citizen had written on Facebook in November 2013 violated the Danish criminal code.

In response to a debate about the local activities of a radical Islamic organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which works for the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate, he wrote: “The ideology of Islam is as loathsome, disgusting, oppressive and as misanthropic as Nazism. The massive immigration of Islamists into Denmark is the most devastating thing to happen to Danish society in recent history.”

According to § 266b of Denmark’s criminal code, it is prohibited and punishable by fine or prison publicly to threaten, insult or demean a group of persons because of their race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, faith or sexual orientation.

‘Cease-fire’ in Russian, Arabic and Farsi Ruthie Blum

As the ostensible cease-fire deal agreed upon during a security conference in Munich last week was supposed to take effect in Syria a few days from now, some 50 civilians were killed Monday in Russian airstrikes on two medical facilities.

This kind of deadly paradox is par for the course in the Middle East, particularly when none of the parties involved actually signed any agreement about what European brokers called a “cessation of hostilities.”

Russia, for example, which has been fighting ferociously to rescue the regime of Syrian dictator President Bashar Assad, announced that such a “cessation” would not apply to its bombing of opposition targets.

Assad echoed this in a televised address on Monday, saying that a cease-fire would not include a halt to the use of weapons by the warring parties. No, he explained, the real aim of a “cessation of hostilities” would be to prevent his enemies “from strengthening their positions. Movement of weapons, equipment or terrorists, or fortification of positions, will not be allowed.”

Nidra Poller The Black Flag of Jihad Stalks la République

Kindle & paperback editions now available

July 26, 2014, “Pro-Palestinians” proclaiming love for Gaza wave the black flag of jihad on the pedestal of the Marianne statue, symbol of the French Republic.
Israel was fighting back against a constant barrage of rockets launched from Gaza, one more episode in a genocidal war disguised as a national liberation movement. Hamas résistance, Jihad résistance—that was the battle cry chanted in the summer of 2014 Five months later, in January 2015, jihadis decimated the staff of Charlie Hebdo, executed policemen, assassinated Jews in a kosher grocery store. In Syria and Iraq, mujahidin, raging under that black flag behead journalists, conquer territory, destroy treasures of humanity, persecute Christians, enslave Yazidi women. Thousands of European Muslims join the ranks of Daesh and plot against the lands of their birth. And the free world snuggles up to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Paris 13 November 2015: 129 dead, 352 maimed or wounded

The Perfect Refugee Storm It is leveling Europe and it won’t stop there. By Jed Babbin

Sebastian Junger’s memorable book, we learned that weather systems, which usually work to cancel each other out, can in that once-in-a-century circumstance combine to create a perfect and awesomely destructive storm.

The same can be true of political and historical forces that we are compelled to conclude have combined to create the perfect refugee storm now rapidly destroying the European Union.

The immediate cause is, of course, the so-called civil war in Syria. It’s not a civil war because Russian and Iranian forces have long since replaced the Assad regime’s forces as one side’s primary belligerent against the Saudi-led effort to overthrow Assad. The risible new “truce” so expertly negotiated by John Kerry does not include Russian air forces in it, so the most devastating part of the fight will continue uninterrupted.

Vladimir Putin couldn’t have foreseen the exodus of people from Syria, but his forces are continuing the pressure that caused it. The fighting around the city of Aleppo alone has produced as many as three hundred thousand refugees, most of whom are gathered on the Syrian-Turkish border. Putin sees the opportunity to destabilize Western Europe by pushing more refugees into its borders. It’s a very useful (to him) byproduct of his military intervention in Syria.

Our Inability to Confront Our Immigration Crisis What America’s immigration infrastructure lacks – with a dire cost. Michael Cutler

When immigration is discussed publicly, most of the news reports and most of the statements made by politicians focus on the presence of illegal aliens in the United States while problems within legal side of the issue are ignored. Additionally, most of these discussions begin by talking about the lack of security to be found along the U.S./Mexican border while ignoring the other dysfunctional components of the immigration system.

There is no doubt that the U.S./Mexican border lacks meaningful integrity. There is also no doubt that the Mexican border must be secured- however, simply securing that border will not end the immigration crisis and not eliminate the threats posed by international terrorists and transnational criminals.

Incredibly the Obama administration has made it all but impossible for the valiant Border Patrol agents along that border to do their jobs. On February 4, 2016 the Washington Examiner posted the report, “Border agent: ‘We might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether’” in which the president of the National Council of the Border Patrol testified before a congressional hearing on the restrictions placed on the Border Patrol to make it all but impossible for them to take illegal aliens into custody or even process them for future hearings.

The Ted Cruz Eligibility Question by Paul R. Hollrah

Donald Trump keeps charging, and Ted Cruz keeps denying. If it is within Ted Cruz’s power to shed light on his citizenship status, why doesn’t he do it? The country’s problems are far too critical for these two men to waste out time on useless bickering over Cruz’s eligibility.
Senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz (R-TX), a leading candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, was born on December 22, 1970, at the Foothills General Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. His parents were Eleanor Elizabeth (Wilson) Cruz, a U.S. citizen, born in Wilmington, Delaware, and Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, a native of Matanzas, Cuba.
Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate, first uncovered and released by the Dallas Morning News on August 18, 2013, nearly eight months after he was sworn in as the junior senator from Texas, shows that his birth was registered with the Division of Vital Statistics in Edmonton, Alberta, on December 31, 1970. When Ted was three years old his father returned to Texas, leaving his wife and son in Canada. Several months later the parents reunited and the Cruzes moved to Houston.

In a February 11, 2016, recap in the Dallas Morning News, questioning whether Cruz is eligible to serve as president of the United States, campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier attempted to put the best possible face on the issue. Ignoring the existence of his Canadian birth certificate, Frazier said, “Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen. To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship.”

THE CASE OF MOHAMMED AND AISHA — ON THE GLAZOV GANG

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/02/19/the-case-of-mohammed-and-aisha-on-the-glazov-gang-3/

A recent bill in Pakistan sought to ban child marriage, but it miserably failed — after a prominent religious body declared the legislation “un-Islamic.” The UN also recently voiced alarm at the growing number of forced child marriages in Iran. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child denounced laws permitting sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine — and it urged Iran to “repeal all legal provisions that authorize, condone or lead to child sexual abuse.”

In response to these developments, The Glazov Gang is running its special episode with Louis Lionheart, a scholar of Islam who came on the show to discuss The Case of Mohammed and Aisha, dealing with the prophet of Islam’s marriage to a 6-year-old girl, and his “consummation” of that marriage when she was 9. Louis discusses the Islamic theology and texts that describe this marriage and how the Islamic and non-Islamic world has dealt, and not dealt, with the Islamic reality of this case.

Don’t miss it!

Majoring in Anti-Semitism at Vassar A number of events over the past two years have transformed a prestigious institution into a parody ripe for ridicule. By Mark G. Yudof and Ken Waltzer

http://www.wsj.com/articles/majoring-in-anti-semitism-at-vassar-1455751940

Anti-Israel sentiment mixed with age-old anti-Semitism has reached a fever pitch at Vassar College. It is time that faculty and administrators take a stand against this toxic brew on behalf of academic values.

The campus of this private liberal-arts college in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., has experienced more than its share of anti-Israel activity. In the spring of 2014, the boycott of a course in the International Studies Program—because it involved a trip to Israel—included heckling students and picketing the class. During the fall of 2015, attempts were made to boycott Sabra hummus because the maker of this popular food is partly owned by an Israeli food company.

The most recent incident was a talk on Feb. 3 by Jasbir Puar, a Rutgers associate professor of women’s and gender studies. The address, “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters,” was sponsored by eight Vassar departments and programs, including Jewish Studies and American Studies. READ MORE AT SITE