Sunday, June 12, 2016

Katie Couric Anti-Gun Doc Deceptively Edited to Suggest Gun Rights Activists Don't Have Answers
A segment in the Katie Couric documentary Under the Gun, airing on EPIX, featuring a question about background checks and terrorists and felons asked to gun rights activists, was deceptively edited to replace a slew of answers from gun rights activists with nine seconds of their silence.

The Washington Free Beacon obtained an audio recording of the original exchange. The nine seconds of silence was taken from elsewhere in the footage the film crew collected. A spokeswoman for EPIX responded to the Free Beacon, saying the company stood behind Couric and her crew's "creative and editorial judgment."

Meanwhile, Couric's director says she added the pause so that viewers "could consider this important question" before providing an answer, according to Fox News' Howard Kurtz, who also tweeted that Couric said she was "very proud" of the film. The question is not presented from a narrator to the viewers, but from Couric to the group of gun rights activists.

Unfortunately, such journalistic malpractice is not uncommon. Documentaries like Blackfish (about SeaWorld) and Gasland (about fracking) twist the truth in the service of an agenda. Such films know their conclusions and go out in search of premises. Under the Gun sounds like it comes from the same genre.

Such shenanigans, of course, tend to fall under the protections of free speech—but they're notable in a climate where some politicians, and their backers, often from the same side of the ideological divide as films like Under the Gun and Gasland, seek to classify political speech and advocacy they disagree with as prohibited, under the guise of campaign finance or corporate regulation or whatever excuse those who wish to silence speech concoct. This makes false but persistent claims of objectivity particularly noxious....
THE BIG UNEASY
...Aaron Pressman, a politics and law-and-society major, told me that he has always felt free to express his opinions on campus, but has faced “a lot of social backlash.” One of his ambitions is to become a public defender, and he has studied the free-speech work of the A.C.L.U. Last year, when he noticed a broadly worded clause about flirtatious speech in Oberlin’s new sexual-harassment policy, he advocated for more precise language. (His research told him that such broad prohibitions were often used to target ethnic groups.) “A student came up to me several days later and started screaming at me, saying I’m not allowed to have this opinion, because I’m a white cisgender male,” Pressman recalled. He feels that his white maleness shouldn’t be disqualifying. “I’ve had people respond to me, ‘You could never understand—your culture has never been oppressed.’ ” Pressman laughed. “I’m, like, ‘Really? The Holocaust?’ ”...

...“We’re asking to be reflected in our education,” Adams cuts in. “I literally am so tired of learning about Marx, when he did not include race in his discussion of the market!” She shrugs incredulously. “As a person who plans on returning to my community, I don’t want to assimilate into middle-class values. I’m going home, back to the ’hood of Chicago, to be exactly who I was before I came to Oberlin.”...

...Acey, who insists that Karega’s posts were more anti-Zionist than anti-Semitic, thinks professors often hide their racial biases. “But they’ll vote in a way that does not benefit the students,” he says. “Like, the way the courses are set up. You know, we’re paying for a service. We’re paying for our attendance here. We need to be able to get what we need in a way that we can actually consume it.” He pauses. “Because I’m dealing with having been arrested on campus, or having to deal with the things that my family are going through because of larger systems—having to deal with all of that, I can’t produce the work that they want me to do. But I understand the material, and I can give it to you in different ways. There’s professors who have openly been, like, ‘Yeah, instead of, you know, writing out this midterm, come in to my office hours, and you can just speak it,’ right? But that’s not institutionalized. I have to find that professor.”...

The Transgender Bathroom Debate and the Looming Title IX Crisis
...Whether or not the federal government acted unlawfully, it has now set in motion a potential Title IX collision course between its directives on sexual violence and on bathrooms. Schools attempting to comply with the federal bathroom policy have at least two possible ways of doing so: allow students to use sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity, or move away from sex segregation of such facilities. The latter, gender-inclusive arrangement, which was in place in my college dormitory more than twenty years ago, is not uncommon on campuses, and a social movement to desegregate at least some portion of bathrooms is growing. Some colleges have made every bathroom on campus open to any gender, and this solution could well become a practical choice at K-12 public schools.

But there is also a growing sense that some females will not feel safe sharing bathrooms, shower rooms, or locker rooms with males. And if a female student claimed that a bathroom or locker room that her school had her share with male students caused her to feel sexually vulnerable and created a hostile environment, the complaint would be difficult to dismiss, particularly since the federal government has interpreted Title IX broadly and said that schools must try to prevent a hostile environment. This is not wholly hypothetical. Brandeis University found a male student responsible for sexual misconduct for looking at his boyfriend’s genitals while both were using a communal school shower. The disciplined student then sued the school for denying him basic fairness in its disciplinary process, and a federal court recently refused to dismiss the suit....
Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users.

Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all. The former curators, all of whom worked as contractors, also said they were directed not to include news about Facebook itself in the trending module....
Prepare to have your sex life regulated by government
Adults may soon find their sex lives regulated to the point where nearly every sexual encounter is defined as rape unless neither party reports the activity.

The American Law Institute will vote in May on whether to adopt a model penal code that would make "affirmative consent" the official position of the organization. Affirmative consent — or "yes means yes" — policies have already been adopted by many colleges and universities, and have been passed as law in California and New York....

...Under affirmative consent policies, there is no way to actually prove such consent was obtained. Students are required under the policies to ask permission for each level of sexual activity. So a typical sexual encounter would cease to be a passionate act and instead become a contractual, question-and-answer session. From the moment any physical contact is about to be made, one person must begin asking for permission.

"May I touch you here?" "May I kiss you?" "May I kiss you here?" and the like would all be required questions under such policies....
MPs warn voters being 'conned' as Brussels keeps plans for EU army secret until after referendum
British voters are being “conned” by Brussels officials who are keeping plans for a European army secret until after the referendum, leading Tories have claimed.

Liam Fox, the former defence secretary who served under David Cameron, told The Telegraph that the ambitions showed the EU is wedded to the “dangerous fantasy” of creating a single defence force.

Another eurosceptic Tory MP said voters were being “deceived” and “hoodwinked” about the true scale of the EU’s drive to create a single army.

The backlash came as it emerged plans to move towards the creation of a European army are being kept secret from British voters until the day after next month’s referendum....
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has accused Google of making a deal with Hillary Clinton.
"Google is directly engaged with Hillary Clinton’s campaign," Assange said via video link at the international media forum "New Era of Journalism: Farewell to Mainstream" hosted by Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.

A video link up with Julian Assange, journalist, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, at the session, End of the Monopoly: The Open Information Age, held as part of the New Era of Journalism: Farewell to Mainstream international media forum at the Rossiya Segodnya International Multimedia Press Center

Moreover, the Internet giant Google is heavily integrated with the US establishment and is allying with the US exceptionalism campaign, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday. "Google is heavily integrated with Washington power, at personal level and at business level… Google which has increasing control over the distribution channels… is intensely allying itself US exceptionalism," Assange added....
California to extend Obamacare to illegal immigrants using ‘innovation waiver’
California legislators have passed a bill which would allow illegal immigrants to purchase insurance on the state’s Obamacare exchange. The bill first has to be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown and then the change would need to be approved by the federal government.

If approved, the change would break another promise made by President Obama when selling the law to Americans. During a 2009 address to Congress Obama said, “There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants.” He added, “This too is false. The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” That was when Rep. Joe Wilson famously interjected, “You lie!” The break in decorum earned him an official rebuke....
Around the world in 80 lays: Traveller who bonked her way out of heartbreak after split with long-term boyfriend
HEARTBROKEN after being dumped, Laura Jane Williams indulged her passion for travelling – but instead of sight-seeing, she immersed herself in local culture by sleeping with countless men.

The 30-year-old writer from Derby went on a sex spree in Europe, America and the UK – detailed in her book, Becoming – until her bed-hopping came to a sudden and bizarre end...

... pulled one man in a bar while carrying a tray of greasy chips.

Another was a 19-year-old father of one who I had sex with every night for a month. I treated him like dirt — and when I ended it he chased me down his road in his pyjamas to tell me he loved me....
The federal government should buy coal plants, shut them down and pay to retrain their employees
...There is another alternative — which I’ll call Plan A — that would avoid the considerable litigation risks of the Clean Power Plan and achieve more quickly and with greater certainty a reduction in emissions at least equal to those of the Clean Power initiative. Under Plan A, the federal government would buy or, if necessary, seize under eminent domain all existing U.S. coal plants and close them over 10 years. Such a use of federal authority is well-established and would not be subject to serious legal challenge. (Plant owners could dispute the amount of compensation offered but not the public purpose of federal action intended to protect the environment.) ...
Professional Educator: Grades, Showing Up On Time Are A Form Of White Supremacy
...Heather Hackman operates Hackman Consulting Group and was formerly a professor of multicultural education at Minnesota’s St. Cloud State University, where she taught future teachers. On Friday, Hackman was given a platform at WPC to deliver a workshop with the lengthy title “No Freedom Unless We Call Out the Wizard Behind The Curtain: Critically Addressing the Corrosive Effects of Whiteness in Teacher Education and Professional Development.” The long title masked a simple thesis on Hackman’s part: Modern education is hopelessly tainted by white supremacy and the “white imperial gaze,” and the solution is to train prospective teachers in college to be activists as well as pedagogues....

But Hackman acknowledged in the current white supremacist system, there is some expectation that teachers will know conventional English and possess other basic knowledge. As a result, she admitted modern activist teachers should try to learn those things sufficiently to get a job, but only for the purpose of infiltrating schools to change them from within.

“My long game was, get you in, get you tenured, get you in that system and change that system,” she said.......She predicted her approach will triumph, and the sinister force she dubbed “Super-Whitey” (and compared to the Eye of Sauron) will eventually be swept aside.

“Your time has come,” Hackman said. “If I was a white faculty member and unwilling to get with the program, I do not have any business in teacher education … We do see you, Super-Whitey. We’re coming for you.”
Number of hate crimes against Jews soars as report says anti-semitism is at the 'core' of far-Left beliefs
Number of hate crimes against Jews in Britain has reached shocking high
Police recorded almost 1,000 anti-Semitic offences in 2015 - up 25 per cent
Findings revealed ‘growth in anti-Semitism as core part of far-Left’ ideology
Report comes as the Labour Party is gripped by anti-Semitism allegations

...The report says that there has been a ‘growth in anti-Semitism as a core part of far-Left’ ideology. The findings come as the Labour Party is gripped by anti-Semitism allegations: MP Naz Shah and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone have both been suspended in the past week, and an internal investigation has been set up by beleaguered party leader Jeremy Corbyn...
Radical tourists have been deluded pimps for Venezuela
...Never underestimate the power worship of those who claim to speak for the powerless, or the credulity of the supposedly wised-up critical theorist. For those who yearn in their dark hearts for strong men, who can crush all enemies, Chavismo reeked of machismo, and provided the great leaders they could adore.

“Hated by the entrenched classes,” burbled a star-struck and grief-stricken Oliver Stone on the day of the leader’s death, “Hugo Chávez will live for ever in history. My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned.”...

...I could go on, but a last desperate excuse needs to be dismissed. Every oil-producing economy has been hit by falling prices, but none, not even states as ill-governed as Nigeria and Russia, has experienced the social collapse of Venezuela. Even they did not engage in the Weimar-scale money-printing of the Chavista regime. Even they, despite all the stout efforts of their leaders, were not as corrupt as the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela. Transparency International puts Venezuela among the top 10 most corrupt countries in the world. First Chávez and then Maduro did, indeed, redistribute oil wealth to the poor, but they distributed most of it to their clients....

...The thoughts of Venezuelans, who watched as westerners treated their country as an ideological playground, cannot be dismissed lightly, either. “There should be a special circle in hell for them,” Thor Halvorssen, the founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, told me. The regime shot his mother and jailed his Venezuelan father. It holds his cousin, the opposition leader, Leopoldo López, as a political prisoner because he had the nerve to oppose it. Halvorssen thinks the Chavistas would not have gone so far in debasing the constitution and looting the state if it had not been able to count on a herd of bovine leftists mooing down all who raised concerns about fundamental rights....

The Venezuelan Effort to Build a New Food and Agriculture System
....In early 2009, as the financial crisis dominated headlines, Chávez made a similar promise: “Despite the world financial crisis, Venezuela’s agrarian revolution will not be detained.”37 The recent decline in oil prices has led some to wonder what will become of the Bolivarian Revolution and its social programs and to point to reliance on oil wealth for social spending as a strategic flaw. Others, however, see the government using its oil wealth to diversify the economy and to build new systems that will ultimately sustain themselves. This is what Chávez claims to be doing with respect to the country’s food sovereignty efforts. A promising indication is that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently recognized Venezuela as having taken necessary steps to strengthen its ability and that of its neighbors to withstand the worsening global food crisis.37 As other countries throughout the world, including the United States, grapple with food issues amid global crises, perhaps they can learn from the experience of Venezuela, where political will and community empowerment are forming the basis for food sovereignty.

Marching in Place
The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps been taken over en bloc from the old Liberal Party. In addition to this there is the horrible —- the really disquieting —- prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured ‘Socialists’, as who should say, ‘Red Indians’. He was probably right-—the I.L.P. [Independent Labor Party] were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.
-- George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

Sunday, June 05, 2016

Presidents of ABC and CBS News Have Siblings Working at White House With Ties to Benghazi
"CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi."...

...For the record, Ben Sherwood's sister, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, is the Special Assistant to Barack Obama.

Virginia Moseley's husband, Tom Nides, is the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.

As for David Rhodes' brother Ben, he is Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communication...

Did the New York Times just accidentally tell the truth about the Obama administration?
...Rhodes’s story is even stranger when you start at the beginning. It turns out he was an aspiring writer of fiction—keep this thought at your elbow—who tumbled (with a nudge of nepotism) into Washington’s foreign policy cliques. Rhodes had no background or experience in international relations—a blank slate—but he held a pretty handy pen. So he got into speechwriting, and then into the Obama campaign in 2007, and then into a basement office at the White House after the 2008 election, from which he exerts an almost inconceivable measure of influence. Walter Mitty could not have told a less likely tale....

White House seeks to contain fallout from aide’s comments
...Rhodes, who is 38 and holds a master of fine arts in creative writing, derided the press corps as too naive to cover world events.

He said the average reporter the White House talks to “is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns,” suggesting that allowed him to easily manipulate media coverage of U.S. foreign policy.

“They literally know nothing,” he said. ...

Charlie Rose and President’s Speechwriters Laugh About ObamaCare Lie
CHARLIE ROSE: My point is do you have equal impact on serious speeches? Because it’s about style, use of language, etcetera?

JON LOVETT, FORMER OBAMA SPEECH WRITER: I really like, I was very — the joke speeches is the most fun part of this. But the things I’m the most proud of were the most serious speeches, I think. Health care, economic speeches.

JON FAVREAU, FORMER OBAMA SPEECH WRITER: Lovett wrote the line about “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.”

LOVETT: How dare you!

[laughter]

LOVETT: And you know what? It’s still true! No.
The federal government should buy coal plants, shut them down and pay to retrain their employees
...There is another alternative — which I’ll call Plan A — that would avoid the considerable litigation risks of the Clean Power Plan and achieve more quickly and with greater certainty a reduction in emissions at least equal to those of the Clean Power initiative. Under Plan A, the federal government would buy or, if necessary, seize under eminent domain all existing U.S. coal plants and close them over 10 years. Such a use of federal authority is well-established and would not be subject to serious legal challenge. (Plant owners could dispute the amount of compensation offered but not the public purpose of federal action intended to protect the environment.) ...

Radar images reveal Mars is coming out of an ice age
An analysis of radar images that peered inside the polar ice caps of Mars shows that Earth's neighbor is coming out of an ice age that is part of an ongoing cycle of climate change, scientists said on Thursday....

Global Warming Scaled Back, Say Two New Studies
...Two new studies look at the long-run projections of climate computer models and suggest that they are running too hot. One critical parameter is equilibrium climate sensitivity, which is conventionally defined as the amounf of warming that can be expected from doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide. In the current issue of the journal, Earth and Space Science, mathematician J. Ray Bates, from the Meteorology and Climate Centre at the University College Dublin, calculates climate sensitivity focusing specifically the meteorological dynamics in the tropics that are mostly ignored in climate models. Basically, the tropics are more effective at expelling extra heat into space than the models project.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change widened its range of climate sensitivity estimates to 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius in its latest report, dropping the lower bound from 2 degrees. The new study suggests that climate sensitivity could be much the lower, about 1 degree C for doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide. If this were true, then the climates models are proejcting future temperarture increases that are 2 to 4 times hotter than the actual likely trend. It is worth noting that the satellite data find that the global rate of temperature increase since 1979 has been +0.12 degree Celsius per decade which suggests that the lower estimates of climate sensitivity may be correct.

Another study published in Nature by the researchers at European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN finds that the world was much cloudier in the pre-industrial age than previously thought. The researchers suggest that a cloudier world was a cooler world. Computer climate models assume that man-made atmospheric pollutants like sulfur dioxide have increased modern cloudiness which has further shielded the planet from higher temperatures. If it turns out that early eras were somewhat cloudier than represented in the models that means that future warming has again been overestimated....

25 Years Of Predicting The Global Warming ‘Tipping Point’
...Would you believe it was eight years ago today that the United Nations predicted we only had “as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more.” This failed prediction, however, has not stopped the U.N. from issuing more apocalyptic predictions since.

To celebrate more than two decades of dire predictions, The Daily Caller News Foundation presents this list of some of the “greatest” predictions made by scientists, activists and politicians — most of which we’ve now passed....

...The San Jose Mercury News reported on June 30, 1989 that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”...
California to extend Obamacare to illegal immigrants using ‘innovation waiver’
California legislators have passed a bill which would allow illegal immigrants to purchase insurance on the state’s Obamacare exchange. The bill first has to be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown and then the change would need to be approved by the federal government.

If approved, the change would break another promise made by President Obama when selling the law to Americans. During a 2009 address to Congress Obama said, “There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants.” He added, “This too is false. The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” That was when Rep. Joe Wilson famously interjected, “You lie!” The break in decorum earned him an official rebuke.

According to U.S. News and World Report, just two years after the program took effect it looks like the president’s promise is about to be undone in America’s largest state...

Europe Demands Referendum Ban After Immigration Policy Rejected
A former European Union official has called for a ban on referenda across the bloc following the Dutch rejection of EU’s immigration policy in a nationwide poll last week. Voters in The Netherlands were promised the right to decide whether every Ukrainian should be given the right to live in their country, but when they voted no the EU said it would push ahead anyway.

Fraser Cameron, a former senior adviser to the European Commission, has now said Brussels should consider outlawing referenda altogether because democracy are making it harder for the EU to push through what it wants....

'You mustn't touch me, you mustn't touch me': New footage of Cologne New Year sex attacks shows screaming woman as overwhelmed police struggle to control crowds of migrant men
New footage of mob sex attacks in Cologne on New Year's Eve
Shows police struggling to contain the crowds at main train station
Over 1,100 criminal complaints filed after New Years in Cologne

Labour's 'secret plan' to lure migrants
...The paper said migration would “enhance economic growth” and made clear that trying to halt or reverse it could be “economically damaging”. But it also stated that immigration had general “benefits” and that a new policy framework was needed to “maximise” the contribution of migration to the Government’s wider social aims.

The Government has always denied that social engineering played a part in its migration policy.

However, the paper, which was written in 2000 at a time when immigration began to increase dramatically, said controls were contrary to its policy objectives and could lead to “social exclusion”....

...Voting trends indicate that migrants and their descendants are much more likely to vote Labour....

...Labour has overseen an unprecedented rise in immigration, which has led to a rise of about three million in the UK population since 1997. Until recently, it accused opponents who called for tougher controls of playing the “race card”. Labour was forced to change its rhetoric amid concerns that the economic and social reality of immigration had alienated voters in its heartlands.....

Conman Blair's cynical conspiracy to deceive the British people and let in 2million migrants against the rules: Explosive new biography lays ex-PM's betrayal bare
Tom Bower's new book Broken Vows: Tony Blair - The Tragedy of Power lays bare how PM presided over a silent conspiracy to change face of UK
Book reveals how Blair instructed ministers to wave tens of thousands of asylum seekers into the UK under cover of their being ‘economic migrants’
Also sheds light on his shocking dealings with some of the world's worst dictators, his relationship with Wendi Deng and Cherie's jealousy

...But behind the scenes ministers were instructed to wave tens of thousands of asylum seekers into the UK under cover of their being ‘economic migrants’. Astonishingly, the minister Mr Blair put in charge of borders ruled against deporting failed claimants because it would be too ‘emotional’....

By the way, Syrian refugees almost sunk Sweden’s welfare state
...In Sweden, there initially was little since the country has historically taken in many refugees across various countries, and it has a very liberal refugee policy. Yet, it’s one where the resources of the state have been pushed to the brink, where new restrictive policies have been adopted to curb the cost of housing the latest influx of refugees, especially from Syria, and where the whole attitude towards refugees has devolved into a debate that’s fractured this society, along with the rest of the European continent....

...Back at the Red Cross station, opinion was surprisingly anti-refugee, including among volunteers. The translator said that he did not believe many of the new arrivals would ever be able to integrate into Sweden’s liberal, individualistic society. A border policeman told me, “Last summer, my grandmother almost starved to death in the hospital, but the migrants get free food and medical care. I think a government’s job is to take care of its own people first, and then, if there’s anything left over, you help other people.” I had heard the same view a few months earlier in Hungary, the country in Europe most outspokenly hostile to refugees — the anti-Sweden....

...Even before Sweden slammed on the brakes, it seemed that the country had posed for itself a test that it could not pass, and could not acknowledge that it could not pass. The financial costs, even for one of Europe’s richest countries, were daunting. Sweden expects to spend about 7 percent of its $100 billion budget next year on refugees. The real number is somewhat higher, since the costs of educating and training those who have already received asylum are not included in that figure. It is, in any case, double the 2015 budget. Where will the additional funds come from? It’s not clear yet, but since the cost of caring for refugees is considered a form of development assistance, Sweden has already cut 30 percent of its very generous foreign aid budget, which largely goes to fortify the very countries from which people are now fleeing, to help make up the difference. Other European donors, including Norway, have done so as well.

The refugee issue has split Sweden’s genteel consensus as no other question has in recent memory. As Ivar Arpi, a columnist at the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and an inveterate critic of the country’s refugee policy, said to me, “People have lost friends over this; families are divided against one another. I’ve had agonizing discussions with my mother and my little sister.” It is very hard to find a middle ground between “we must” and “we can’t.” One of the few people I spoke to who was seeking one was Diana Janse of the Moderates. I asked her if she feared that Sweden was in the process of committing suicide. “It’s an open question,” Janse replied. She worried that the costs of Sweden’s generosity were only beginning to come due, and no one cared to tally them. She had just learned that since the right to 450 days of parental leave per child enshrined in Swedish laws also applies to women who arrive in the country with children under seven, refugees could qualify for several years’ worth of paid leave — even without working, since unemployed women also receive maternal benefits. She was convinced that Sweden needed to end the practice of giving Swedish social payments to refugees, not only because it was unaffordable, but because Sweden had no interest in out-bidding its neighbors to woo refugees.

At first the Swedish government made several very modest concessions to this ugly reality. In November, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven disclosed that migrants would no longer be granted permanent asylum, and thus no longer become eligible for the massive package of social benefits that comes with it. Applicants, if approved, would receive a three-year temporary residency permit with the possibility of renewal. Refugees could still bring in spouses and children under “family reunification” policy, but those relatives would not qualify for social benefits. In late December, Sweden finally threw in the towel. Henceforth, no one would be permitted to enter Sweden without proper identity documents. The new regulations, no longer described as temporary, violated the Schengen regimen; soon after, Austria imposed similar rules. The refugee crisis has, at least temporarily, ended free movement across borders, one of the signal achievements of the European Union.

Since many refugees arrive without passports or other valid forms of identification, the new rules sharply curtailed the number of asylum-seekers arriving overland who would be permitted to enter the country. Cross-border immigration has, in fact, come to an almost complete stop. Sweden now accepts only those refugees arriving directly from Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, and cleared by the U.N. refugee agency. After taking 160,000 refugees — 30,000 less than the maximum it had projected — Sweden had finally run out of room, money, and patience....


It's not their fault, it's yours! Swedish GIRLS blamed for rise in migrant sex attacks
SWEDISH police have blamed Scandinavian teenage girls' “Nordic alcohol culture” and Western behaviour for a steep rise in sex attacks carried out by migrants.

The damning police report, which is looking at why Sweden has the worst rates of physical and sexual violence committed against women and girls in Europe, has also excused refugees who it says “cannot handle the alcohol”.

Shockingly, the report revealed the majority of sex attack victims were under the age 15.

Police also admitted the majority of attacks have taken place in public places had been committed by migrants.

But it says refugees might not be able to “handle the alcohol” and simply feel “horny” and have “ignorance of the consequences for the girls”....

...The report comes after it emerged gangs of young men, believed to have been migrants, molested women in Malmö, Karlstad and Kalmar in Sweden on New Year’s Eve....
Great moments in education: The French teacher who doesn’t speak French
...The teacher, Albert Moyer, said in a brief phone interview that the extent of his French education was just one year in high school. So why was he hired? To replace Jean Cius, a certified French teacher for more than 25 years.

“It makes me extremely mad,” Cius said. “I feel bad for the fact that the kids are not learning.”

Records show after a dispute in December, the school’s principal removed Cius from campus. But when he was later declared fit for duty, HISD did not give him back his old job, or any teaching job for that matter. Cius was sent to another HISD campus, where he said he was assigned to monitor the halls.

“I feel so bad for the taxpayers because they’re paying me for not doing anything at all,” he said....

Professional Educator: Grades, Showing Up On Time Are A Form Of White Supremacy
...Heather Hackman operates Hackman Consulting Group and was formerly a professor of multicultural education at Minnesota’s St. Cloud State University, where she taught future teachers. On Friday, Hackman was given a platform at WPC to deliver a workshop with the lengthy title “No Freedom Unless We Call Out the Wizard Behind The Curtain: Critically Addressing the Corrosive Effects of Whiteness in Teacher Education and Professional Development.” The long title masked a simple thesis on Hackman’s part: Modern education is hopelessly tainted by white supremacy and the “white imperial gaze,” and the solution is to train prospective teachers in college to be activists as well as pedagogues.

In fact, Hackman argued teachers shouldn’t even bother teaching if they aren’t committed to promoting social justice in school.

“Education is not about the mere reproduction of knowledge,” Hackman said. “Education is the practice of freedom. And as a result, we have to have [teaching] students becomes activists as well as teachers.”

Creating educators who are proper activists, Hackman continued, means training them to not only to encourage diversity but also to engage with the systemic oppression she says is pervasive in the entire educational system. In Hackman’s telling, virtually everything associated with being a good student in modern education is actually just a tool of racist white supremacy.

“The racial narrative of White tends to be like this: Rugged individual, honest, hard-working, disciplined, rigorous, successful,” she said. “And so then, the narrative of U.S. public education: Individual assessments, competition, outcome over process (I care more about your grades than how you’re doing), ‘discipline’ where we care more about your attendance and making sure you’re not tardy than we care about your relationships … proper English must be spoken (which is just assimilation into standard U.S. dialect), hierarchical power structure, and heavy goal orientation.”...

...Hackman said when she was a professor, she freely employed these methods with her own students. She once let a student complete an essay assignment as a graphic novel, and allowed students to write in non-standard English or even foreign languages she herself couldn’t read.

“If I don’t know [your language,] frankly, that’s my issue,” she said. “All I need to know is that you’re thinking about it, I don’t really care how you do it.”

But Hackman acknowledged in the current white supremacist system, there is some expectation that teachers will know conventional English and possess other basic knowledge. As a result, she admitted modern activist teachers should try to learn those things sufficiently to get a job, but only for the purpose of infiltrating schools to change them from within.

“My long game was, get you in, get you tenured, get you in that system and change that system,” she said.......She predicted her approach will triumph, and the sinister force she dubbed “Super-Whitey” (and compared to the Eye of Sauron) will eventually be swept aside.

“Your time has come,” Hackman said. “If I was a white faculty member and unwilling to get with the program, I do not have any business in teacher education … We do see you, Super-Whitey. We’re coming for you.”