Author Archives: admin
Leaked: USDA ‘cultural sensitivity’ training is a brainwashing ritual for federal immigration ‘recalibration’
Some bombastic idiot got paid $200,000 to make USDA employees repeat mantras about diversity and multiculturalism. The videos are rapidly vanishing from the internet, but you can follow the links.
– USDA sensitivity training video excerpt 1 – “If you take a look at all of you here and you think about your salaries and your benefits and what you have left undone – plus my fee – plus the expense of the team that putting the video together, this is a huge expense.”
– USDA sensitivity training video excerpt 2 – “I want you to say that American was founded by outsiders – say that – who are today’s insiders, who are very nervous about today’s outsiders. I want you to say, ‘The pilgrims were illegal aliens.’ Say, ‘The pilgrims never gave their passports to the Indians.’” Betances also asked the audience, “Give me a bam,” after these statements, to which the audience replied in unison.
– USDA sensitivity training video excerpt 3 – “By the way, I don’t like the word ‘minorities.’ How about ‘emerging majorities?’”
German homeschoolers fight for asylum in US
Asylum seekers: the term conjures up images of desperate families fleeing impoverished, war-torn countries.
But the Romeike family, who live in the US state of Tennessee, are not ordinary asylum seekers. Devout Christians from southwestern Germany, the Romeikes say they will be persecuted if they are made to return because their five children are homeschooled – which is forbidden in the European Union’s most populous country.
Next month, an American appeals court will hear oral arguments on whether they should be allowed to stay, in a case legal experts say will help clarify the scope of US asylum law.
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, both music teachers, decided to take their children out of the public school system in 2006, claiming they were “bombarded with negative influences” and taught disrespect for authority.
As a result, the parents were slapped with thousands of euros in fines, and one day, Uwe alleged, police came to their home to take the crying children to school in a police van.
Worried the German government might eventually take custody of their children, the Romeikes moved to the United States in 2008, where an estimated 1.5 to 2 million children are legally homeschooled. (Read more)
George H.W. Bush can’t remember where he was during the JFK assassination
the speaker is the author of Family of Secrets.
Evolutionary Psychology vs Feminism
Fascinating!
German imaptience with Southern European irresponsibility
Open Europe news summary:
German tabloid Bild asks “Will Italy’s political clowns destroy the euro?”, while in an op-ed, Ernst Elitz argues that “After these elections it is clear that the future of our continent will not be decided in Brussels or Berlin but in individual member states that have almost been declared dead already. If the voters there do not vote with understanding but rather on a whim then no bailout fund can help”. Writing in FAZ, Anton Börner, President of the Federation of German Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services (BGA), argues that “Monetary stability cannot be negotiated and we need to send a clear message to the South: For us there is life after the euro.”
Anti-Euro Party Appears in Germany
I hope the 65% of Germans who oppose the Euro support these guys, but I doubt it.
Well, it was probably only a matter of time: a German anti-euro party has just come onto the scene.
Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reports that the new party will launch in April under the name “Alternative for Germany”. The party appears to be an offspring of “Wahlalternative 2013” (Election Alternative 2013) – a group consisting mostly of academics but also including Hans-Olaf Henkel, the well-known and outspoken former head of Germany’s employers federation BDI. (Read more)
Guaranteed Employment, say EU Ministers!
Young people without a job will be guaranteed the offer of employment, training or further education under a new decision agreed yesterday (28 February) by EU national ministers.
The new scheme, to be introduced by each EU country according to its individual need, will apply to young people who are out of work for more than four months. It aims to give them a real chance to further their education, or get a job, apprenticeship or traineeship.
One in five young Europeans is jobless. In countries such as Greece and Spain, half are unemployed.
“Too many young Europeans are asking if they will ever find a job or have the same quality of life as their parents,” European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said, welcoming the ministers’ decision. (Read more)
‘Toaster Pastry Gun Freedom Act’ proposed in Maryland
Who says politicians don’t create anything worthwhile? This is damn good comedy:
A Maryland state senator has crafted a bill to curb the zeal of public school officials who are tempted to suspend students as young as kindergarten for having things — or talking about things, or eating things — that represent guns, but aren’t actually anything like real guns.
Sen. J. B. Jennings, a Republican who represents Baltimore Harford Counties, introduced “The Reasonable School Discipline Act of 2013″ on Thursday, reports The Star Democrat.
“We really need to re-evaluate how kids are punished,” Jennings told The Star Democrat. “These kids can’t comprehend what they are doing or the ramifications of their actions.”
“These suspensions are going on their permanent records and could have lasting effects on their educations,” he added.
A nationwide flurry of suspensions seemed to reach an absurd level recently when Josh Welch, a second-grader at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a strawberry, pre-baked toaster pastry into something resembling a gun. (RELATED: Second-grader suspended for breakfast pastry)
“I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top of it and kind of looked like a gun,” the seven-year-old told Fox News.
“But it wasn’t,” he astutely added.
As Reason’s Hit & Run blog noted, Park Elementary School officials later offered counseling to other students who may have been traumatized by the pastry.
Read more: dailycaller.com/2013/03/10/toaster-pastry-gun-freedom-act-proposed-in-maryland/#ixzz2NKWo2bAf
Keep in mind, this counseling for a gun-shaped pastry is being offered in a country where kids used to bring rifles to school, leave them in their lockers, then walk home along the corn fields shooting vermin.
Anthropologist dares to identify cognitive differences bw/ peoples
IN THE SUMMER of 1995, a young graduate student in anthropology at UCLA named Joe Henrich traveled to Peru to carry out some fieldwork among the Machiguenga, an indigenous people who live north of Machu Picchu in the Amazon basin. . . .
Rather than practice traditional ethnography, he decided to run a behavioral experiment that had been developed by economists. Henrich used a “game”—along the lines of the famous prisoner’s dilemma—to see whether isolated cultures shared with the West the same basic instinct for fairness. In doing so, Henrich expected to confirm one of the foundational assumptions underlying such experiments, and indeed underpinning the entire fields of economics and psychology: that humans all share the same cognitive machinery—the same evolved rational and psychological hardwiring. . . .
At the heart of most of that research was the implicit assumption that the results revealed evolved psychological traits common to all humans, never mind that the test subjects were nearly always from the industrialized West. Henrich realized that if the Machiguenga results stood up, and if similar differences could be measured across other populations, this assumption of universality would have to be challenged.
Henrich had thought he would be adding a small branch to an established tree of knowledge. It turned out he was sawing at the very trunk. He began to wonder: What other certainties about “human nature” in social science research would need to be reconsidered when tested across diverse populations?
Henrich soon landed a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to take his fairness games on the road. With the help of a dozen other colleagues he led a study of 14 other small-scale societies, in locales from Tanzania to Indonesia. Differences abounded in the behavior of both players in the ultimatum game. In no society did he find people who were purely selfish (that is, who always offered the lowest amount, and never refused a split), but average offers from place to place varied widely and, in some societies—ones where gift-giving is heavily used to curry favor or gain allegiance—the first player would often make overly generous offers in excess of 60 percent, and the second player would often reject them, behaviors almost never observed among Americans.
The research established Henrich as an up-and-coming scholar. In 2004, he was given the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for young scientists at the White House. But his work also made him a controversial figure. When he presented his research to the anthropology department at the University of British Columbia during a job interview a year later, he recalls a hostile reception. Anthropology is the social science most interested in cultural differences, but the young scholar’s methods of using games and statistics to test and compare cultures with the West seemed heavy-handed and invasive to some. “Professors from the anthropology department suggested it was a bad thing that I was doing,” Henrich remembers. “The word ‘unethical’ came up.”
So instead of toeing the line, he switched teams. A few well-placed people at the University of British Columbia saw great promise in Henrich’s work and created a position for him, split between the economics department and the psychology department. . . .
A MODERN LIBERAL ARTS education gives lots of lip service to the idea of cultural diversity. It’s generally agreed that all of us see the world in ways that are sometimes socially and culturally constructed, that pluralism is good, and that ethnocentrism is bad. But beyond that the ideas get muddy. That we should welcome and celebrate people of all backgrounds seems obvious, but the implied corollary—that people from different ethno-cultural origins have particular attributes that add spice to the body politic—becomes more problematic. To avoid stereotyping, it is rarely stated bluntly just exactly what those culturally derived qualities might be. Challenge liberal arts graduates on their appreciation of cultural diversity and you’ll often find them retreating to the anodyne notion that under the skin everyone is really alike. (Read more)
The nine men, from Berkshire and Oxfordshire, are accused of sexually exploiting six girls, aged between 11 and 15
The defendants, all in custody, are:
Kamar Jamil, 27, formerly of Aldrich Road, Oxford
Akhtar Dogar, 32, of Tawney Street, Oxford; and his brother Anjum Dogar, 30, of Tawney Street, Oxford
Assad Hussain, 32, of Ashurst Way, Oxford
Mohammed Karrar, 38, of Kames Close, Oxford; and his brother Bassam Karrar, 33, of Hundred Acres Close, Oxford
Mohammed Hussain, 24, of Horspath Road, Oxford
Zeeshan Ahmed, 27, of Palmer Road, Oxford
Bilal Ahmed, 26, of Suffolk Road, Maidenhead
(Read more)
Monsanto vs. a 75-year-old farmer
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a 75-year-old soybean farmer’s appeal against biotech giant Monsanto, in a case that could permanently reshape the genetically modified (GM) crop industry. Victor “Hugh” Bowman has been battling the corporation since 2007, when Monsanto sued him for violating their patent protection by purchasing second-generation GM seeds from a grain elevator. An appeals court ruled in favor of Monsanto, and despite the Obama administration’s urging to let the decision stand, the nine justices will hear Bowman make his case today.
Monsanto is notorious among farmers for the company’s aggressive investigations and pursuit of farmers they believe have infringed on Monsanto’s patents. In the past 13 years, Monsanto has sued 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses, almost always settling out of court (the few farmers that can afford to go to trial are always defeated). These farmers were usually sued for saving second-generation seeds for the next harvest — a basic farming practice rendered illegal because seeds generated by GM crops contain Monsanto’s patented genes.
Monsanto’s winning streak hinges on a controversial Supreme Court decision from 1981, which ruled on a 5-4 split that living organisms could be patented as private property. As a result of that decision, every new generation of GM seeds — and their self-replicating technology — is considered Monsanto’s property.
Robert Murphy — Prisons in a free society
Robert Murphy is one of the most under-appreciated minds today. He has a stage, but deserves much bigger one.
I don’t need a man, but…
Deadly Bangladesh clashes over ‘atheist bloggers’
Protesting FOR the execution of atheist bloggers…
Bangladesh police fired tear gas and rubber bullets Friday in fierce clashes with conservatists demanding the execution of bloggers they accused of blasphemy, killing one person and injuring around 100.
Parts of central Dhaka turned into a battlefield as protesters attacked police with bricks and sticks in front of the national mosque.
The security forces responded with hundreds of rounds of rubber bullets and tear gas shells, according to witnesses.
The country’s 12 religious parties called the protests after the Friday prayers in nearly half a million mosques nationwide, demanding the execution of bloggers they say were behind blasphemous writings against Islam and Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). (Read more)