Dumb As A Rock: You Will Be Absolutely Amazed At The Things That U.S. High School Students Do Not Know

Dumb As A Rock: You Will Be Absolutely Amazed At The Things That U.S. High School Students Do Not Know

 

Are we raising the stupidest generation in American history?  The statistics that you are about to read below are incredibly shocking.  They indicate that U.S. high school students are basically as dumb as a rock.  As you read the rest of this article, you will be absolutely amazed at the things that U.S. high school students do not know.  At this point, it is really hard to argue that the U.S. education system is a success.  Our children are spoiled and lazy, our schools do not challenge them and students in Europe and in Asia routinely outperform our students very badly on standardized tests.  In particular, schools in America do an incredibly poor job of teaching our students subjects such as history, economics and geography that are necessary for understanding the things that are taking place in our world today.  For example, according to a survey conducted by the National Geographic Society, only 37 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can find Iraq on a map of the world.  According to that same survey, 50 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can't even find the state of New York on a map.  If our students cannot even find Iraq and New York on a map, what hope is there that they will be able to think critically about the important world events of our day?

Sadly, almost every survey or study about high school students that gets done shows that most of our students are not even receiving a basic education.

For example, the following comes from an article posted on MSNBC....

Just 13 percent of high school seniors who took the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress — called the Nation's Report Card — showed solid academic performance in American history.

So only 13 percent of our high school seniors are proficient in history?

That doesn't sound good.

So what does that mean exactly?

Well, there have been some other surveys and studies that have quizzed U.S. high school students about specific historical facts.

The following are some of the absolutely amazing results of a study conducted a few years ago by Common Core....

*Only 43 percent of all U.S. high school students knew that the Civil War was fought some time between 1850 and 1900.

*More than a quarter of all U.S. high school students thought that Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean after the year 1750.

*Approximately a third of all U.S. high school students did not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  (This is a topic that I touched on yesterday).

*Only 60 percent of all U.S. students knew that World War I was fought some time between 1900 and 1950.

Even more shocking were the results of a survey of Oklahoma high school students conducted back in 2009.  The following is a list of the questions that were asked and the percentage of students that answered correctly....

What is the supreme law of the land? 28 percent

What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? 26 percent

What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress? 27 percent

How many justices are there on the Supreme Court? 10 percent

Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? 14 percent

What ocean is on the east coast of the United States? 61 percent

What are the two major political parties in the United States? 43 percent

We elect a U.S. senator for how many years? 11 percent

Who was the first President of the United States? 23 percent

Who is in charge of the executive branch? 29 percent

Some have criticized the survey results above because they came from a telephone survey, but the truth is that they are not some sort of an anomaly.  Many other surveys have produced similar results.  It doesn't take a genius to realize that a large percentage of our high school students are as dumb as a rock.

The following is from an article written by reporter Mark Morford in which he described his conversations with a longtime Oakland high school teacher that was nearing retirement....

It's gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.
Now, you may think he's merely a curmudgeon, a tired old teacher who stopped caring long ago. Not true. Teaching is his life. He says he loves his students, loves education and learning and watching young minds awaken. Problem is, he is seeing much less of it.

Later on in that same article, Morford tells us that the high school teacher even admitted that very few of his students even know how to put a sentence together....

It gets worse. My friend cites the fact that, of the 6,000 high school students he estimates he's taught over the span of his career, only a small fraction now make it to his grade with a functioning understanding of written English. They do not know how to form a sentence. They cannot write an intelligible paragraph. Recently, after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, he realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler.

It is not that our students do not have the capacity to be great.

It is just that they have learned to be incredibly lazy and our schools do not challenge them at all.

One study found that 55 percent of all U.S. high school students spend 3 hours or less per week preparing for class.

Other nations require their students to work far longer and far harder.

And they get much better results.

Today, American 15-year-olds do not even rank in the top half of all advanced nations when it comes to math or science literacy.

So how do we expect to compete if this continues?

If we would just challenge our students and require more out of them we could do so much better.  What most public schools are doing right now simply does not work.  The following is from a report that John Stossel did a few years ago entitled "Stupid In America"....

I talked with 18-year-old Dorian Cain in South Carolina, who was still struggling to read a single sentence in a first-grade level book when I met him. Although his public schools had spent nearly $100,000 on him over 12 years, he still couldn't read.
So "20/20" sent Dorian to a private learning center, Sylvan, to see if teachers there could teach Dorian to read when the South Carolina public schools failed to.
Using computers and workbooks, Dorian's reading went up two grade levels -- after just 72 hours of instruction.
His mother, Gena Cain, is thrilled with Dorian's progress but disappointed with his public schools. "With Sylvan, it's a huge improvement. And they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're on point. But I can't say the same for the public schools," she said.

It absolutely amazes me how millions upon millions of our students can get all the way through high school without ever learning how to read, write or speak at a functional level.

Instead of producing the leaders of tomorrow, our education system is producing a bunch of sheep that are trained to take orders and that are pretty good at taking multiple choice tests.

If you want to get really depressed about the future of America, just watch some of the Jaywalking segments that Jay Leno does.  Yes, it is funny to watch as he demonstrates how little Americans actually know about world events.  But it is also a sign of how far our education system has fallen.

If Americans cannot even answer basic factual questions about our own government, then how in the world will anyone ever be able to persuade them to think critically about the Federal Reserve, the economic crisis or about our corrupt political system?

Our children are the future of this nation, and right now that future is looking quite bleak.

So what do all of you think about the U.S. education system?  Do any of you have any education horror stories to share?  Do you believe that our schools have rapidly gone downhill?  Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below....

Honeybee Deaths Linked To Seed Insecticide Exposure

Researchers: Honeybee Deaths Linked To Seed Insecticide Exposure

 

Thu Jan 12 19:25

Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

 

Honey Bees

Credit: Wikipedia

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil - up to two years after treated seed was planted - on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings.

The United States is losing about one-third of its honeybee hives each year, according to Greg Hunt, a Purdue professor of behavioral genetics, honeybee specialist and co-author of the findings. Hunt said no one factor is to blame, though scientists believe that others such as mites and insecticides are all working against the bees, which are important for pollinating food crops and wild plants.

"It’s like death by a thousand cuts for these bees," Hunt said.

Krupke and Hunt received reports that bee deaths in 2010 and 2011 were occurring at planting time in hives near agricultural fields. Toxicological screenings performed by Brian Eitzer, a co-author of the study from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, for an array of pesticides showed that the neonicotinoids used to treat corn and soybean seed were present in each sample of affected bees. Krupke said other bees at those hives exhibited tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of insecticide poisoning.

Seeds of most annual crops are coated in neonicotinoid insecticides for protection after planting. All corn seed and about half of all soybean seed is treated. The coatings are sticky, and in order to keep seeds flowing freely in the vacuum systems used in planters, they are mixed with talc. Excess talc used in the process is released during planting and routine planter cleaning procedures.

"Given the rates of corn planting and talc usage, we are blowing large amounts of contaminated talc into the environment. The dust is quite light and appears to be quite mobile," Krupke said.

Krupke said the corn pollen that bees were bringing back to hives later in the year tested positive for neonicotinoids at levels roughly below 100 parts per billion.

"That's enough to kill bees if sufficient amounts are consumed, but it is not acutely toxic," he said.

On the other hand, the exhausted talc showed extremely high levels of the insecticides - up to about 700,000 times the lethal contact dose for a bee.

"Whatever was on the seed was being exhausted into the environment," Krupke said. "This material is so concentrated that even small amounts landing on flowering plants around a field can kill foragers or be transported to the hive in contaminated pollen. This might be why we found these insecticides in pollen that the bees had collected and brought back to their hives."

Krupke suggested that efforts could be made to limit or eliminate talc emissions during planting.

"That's the first target for corrective action," he said. "It stands out as being an enormous source of potential environmental contamination, not just for honeybees, but for any insects living in or near these fields. The fact that these compounds can persist for months or years means that plants growing in these soils can take up these compounds in leaf tissue or pollen."

Although corn and soybean production does not require insect pollinators, that is not the case for most plants that provide food. Krupke said protecting bees benefits agriculture since most fruit, nut and vegetable crop plants depend upon honeybees for pollination. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the value of honeybees to commercial agriculture at $15 billion to $20 billion annually.

Hunt said he would continue to study the sublethal effects of neonicotinoids. He said for bees that do not die from the insecticide there could be other effects, such as loss of homing ability or less resistance to disease or mites.

"I think we need to stop and try to understand the risks associated with these insecticides," Hunt said.

The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and the USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative funded the research.


Contacts and sources:
Brian Wallheimer
Purdue University

Saudi Arabia's old regime grows older!

Saudi Arabia's old regime grows older!

The death of Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud highlights the decrepit nature of the Saudi leadership.

Mai Yamani Last Modified: 26 Oct 2011 12:13

The body of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Sultan is carried during his funeral in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [REUTERS]

The contrast between the deaths, within two days of each other, of Libya's Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi and Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz is one of terminal buffoonery versus decadent gerontocracy. And their demise is likely to lead to very different outcomes: liberation for the Libyans and stagnation for the Saudis.

But the death of Sultan, at 86, marks the beginning of a critical period of domestic and foreign uncertainty for the Kingdom. After all, Sultan's half-brother, King Abdullah, 87, is still hospitalised in Riyadh, following a major operation last month. The regime is ageing and ailing, and is perceived by the population as being on life support.
 
Meanwhile, the succession is still being argued. Sultan's death is the first time that the burial of a Saudi royal has been delayed to give the ruling family time to decide on the next in line - a sign of internal discord (and concord on the continuation of dynastic rule).

Who will be next in line?

The Saudi regime's stability now depends on its ability to maintain unity and establish clarity in its system of succession. With the Crown Prince's death, schisms are particularly threatening to the Kingdom's stability (and that of oil exports), because the ruling Al Saud have swelled to 22,000 members, which has given rise to factional clashes among increasingly numerous claimants to power.

Sultan had already been dead - politically, that is - for the last three years; indeed, since June 2011, when he left for New York for medical treatment, young Saudis speculated on numerous websites that this was also literally the case.

Abdullah's octogenarian line of successors recalls the final years of the Soviet Union, when one infirm leader after another succeeded to power for a brief period of inert rule. Many Saudi subjects feel the same pattern of continuous uncertainty and torpor.

Making matters worse, the rule of succession is ambiguous. After Abdullah succeeded his brother Fahd, who ruled for 23 years until his death in 2005, he created an Allegiance Council, an ambiguous and mysterious family body that resembled the Vatican's College of Cardinals. But here, restrictions are not based entirely on age, but on family bloodlines. The Council included the surviving royal princes of the 43 sons of Ibn Saud, the Kingdom's founder, and the sons of their deceased brothers - for example, the late King Faisal's brood.

But, as Sultan's health deteriorated, Abdullah bypassed his own creation and appointed Prince Naif, the interior minister, as a second deputy. In other words, Naif will be anointed Crown Prince. But, befitting this increasingly exsanguinous imperium, Naif, 82, is known to suffer from leukaemia.

Sultan's fortune is estimated at $270bn, which he distributed between his sons prior to his death in order to shore up their political position in the competitive princely arena. The reality is that every senior prince has placed his favorite sons in important positions in the Kingdom. Sultan secured the defence ministry for his son Khaled, and brought back Khaled's notorious brother, Bandar, to head the Intelligence Security Council. Abdullah guaranteed his son Mitaeb's position as head of the National Guard. The new Crown Prince-in-waiting, Naif, has established his son Mohammed as the next interior minister.

Injection of young blood needed

In short, despite Abdullah's innovations in the succession process, it is an open secret that nothing guarantees a transition to a younger generation of leaders - or that an effective ruler will emerge. The story of the Al Saud's succession struggle is no longer whispered behind closed doors. The internet has opened a window on all of the royal family's plots, ambitions and double-dealings.

The Al Saud resembles a family business, established in 1932. Ibn Saud managed to conquer and unite the vast territory of the Arabian Peninsula, give it his family name, and alienate, divide, and control his cousins and brothers in order to establish a clear and undisputed line of succession through his sons. After Ibn Saud's death, his sons, though never entirely united, maintained enough coherence to keep the store running. That is no longer true of the thousands of princes that they produced. As the older generation dies off, the new generation has fallen to fighting in front of the customers.

Indeed, with the ratio of royals to commoners now at one to a thousand (compared to one to five million in the United Kingdom), the challenge of managing princely privileges, salaries, and demand for jobs has never been more intense. Royal perks include lifetime sinecures and domination of the civil service, which enable the princes to award contracts and receive commissions on top of their salaries.

So the Saudi regime is divided, its legitimacy is questioned, and sectarian tensions are growing. Moreover, while oil-export revenue is booming, the neighborhood is in revolutionary flames.

In the short term, the iron-fisted Naif, as Crown Prince, will push the Kingdom into greater repression, in part by strengthening the hardline Wahhabi clerics' place in the country's power nexus. Magnificent sums of money, backed by Wahhabi dogma, will be deployed to ensure popular submission and silence. Whereas Abdullah at least talked about reform (though with no real consequences), Naif can barely bring himself to utter the word.

Denial remains the Saudi rulers' dominant mindset. The royals believe that custodianship of Islam's holy places gives them a special status in the Arab world, and that no revolution can touch them. And, if anyone tries, they will follow Naif's counsel: “What we took by the sword we will hold by the sword.”

Throughout the region, newly mobilised (and thus empowered) Arab youth are trying to move their countries towards reform and liberalisation. Saudi Arabia, unfortunately, is moving in the opposite direction.

Mai Yamani's most recent book is Cradle of Islam.

A version of this article first appeared on Project Syndicate.

WHY the Wall Street protests ?

WHY  the Wall Street protests ?

Immunity and impunity in elite America

 
The top one per cent of US society is enjoying a two-tiered system of justice and politics.

 
Glenn Greenwald Last Modified: 27 Oct 2011 16:08

As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American foundation - indeed, an integral part of it.

Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades.
As journalist Tim Noah described the process: "During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth - the ‘seven fat years’ and the ‘long boom’. Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 per cent of total increase in Americans' income went to the top one per cent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts [the first decade of the new century], but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 per cent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads."
The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the trend, but not radically: the top one per cent of earners in the US have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades.
 

Inferiors and superiors

In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in US political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised "the natural aristocracy" as "the most precious gift of nature" for the "government of society". John Adams concurred: "It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the… course of nature the foundation of the distinction."
 

Not only have the overwhelming majority of those in the US long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.
In the 1980s, this paradox - whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state - became more firmly entrenched. That's because it found a folksy, friendly face. Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. "A rising tide," as one former US president put it, "lifts all boats". 

The sum of his wisdom being: It is in your interest when the rich get richer.
Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, invented technologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found ways to improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, it was in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible, because that would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us ever greater life-improving gifts.

Gratefulness for the leadership

We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge the multimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we should admire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. It was in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest but less, as their enhanced wealth - their pocket change - would trickle down in various ways to all of us.
This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in the way of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed. It’s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality as legitimate.
 

Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered such inequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, as cheating. Most of all, the legal system that once served as the legitimising anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law - that most basic of American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all - has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.
While the founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasised - over and over - that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that "the poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favoured one whenever their rights seem to jar". Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce "total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections" between the rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against "counterfeit nobles", those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.

Definition of tyranny

After all, one of their principal grievances against the British king was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society. In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.
Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalised for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.
If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it’s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.

That catches the mood of the US in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.

It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality - acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world - without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.

Writing laws

Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of those in the US that the wealth of the top one per cent is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunise themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping programme.

It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans, but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks "frankly own the place".

If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions. 

‘Two-tiered justice system’

In lieu of the rule of law - the equal application of rules to everyone - what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunised, while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.

The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimising anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.

That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fuelling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.
 ---------------

Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional and civil rights litigator and a current contributing writer at Salon.com. He is the author of two New York Times bestselling books on the Bush administration's executive power and foreign policy abuses. His just-released book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (Metropolitan Books), is a scathing indictment of America's two-tiered system of justice.  He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.
A version of this article previously appeared on TomDispatch.com.

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Europe to destroy traditional family and sexual identity

10.10.2011 18:17

Traditional words 'father' and 'mother' will be replaced with official terms Parent 1 and Parent 2 in Britain. The terms will be used in official documents. The authorities decided to make such a "politically correct" move to accommodate same-sex couples. Experts are sure, though, that the matter is not about the requirements of certain social groups. The decision is another step towards the destruction of traditional families.

The words 'father' and 'mother' will be removed from British passport applications before December 2011. This became an achievement of Stonewall group, which defends the rights of sex minorities. The US State Department tried to do the same before, but it was eventually decided not to remove the two words from US passport applications.

The subject about novelties in the field of gender relations has been getting more and more popular recently. Not so long ago, Pravda.Ru wrote about the kindergarten in Sweden, which became world-famous after its administration decided to simply abolish the use of 'he' and 'she' pronouns.

Last year, the European Parliament published the brochure, which recommended not to use the words 'Missus' and 'Miss', 'Mademoiselle', 'Seniora' and 'Seniorita'.  From the point of view of the European parliament, the use of such words was discriminating against women because they directly indicated their sexual identity.

One does not have to be an expert to realize that such novelties in various countries are not just a coincidence. It is a trend, the goal of which is to change the public perception of the role of the sexes in the society.

Pavel Parfentyev, the chairman of the inter-regional public organization "For Family Rights" also shares this point of view.

"Indeed, this is a serious international trend. It started back in the seventies and the eighties as a powerful movement to defend the rights of sexual minorities. There were organizations that tried to defend even the rights of pedophiles, who, as they believed, also had the rights for their own sexual preferences.

"The organizations publicly said that their goal was to destroy family. Afterwards, under the pressure of public opinion, many activists decided to refuse from the openly sexual bias in their activities. They proceeded towards the protection of human rights. This is how they approach children's rights today. They think that children must be protected from the despotism of their parents - from any forms of traditional upbringing, that is to say. In order to accomplish that, one has to destroy the traditional family first and to make the family become a form that enslaves and binds children," the expert said.

In order to be more efficient, representatives of such movements began to cooperate with large international organizations such as the UN and the Council of Europe. This led to the creation of a small, albeit a very strong lobby for the protection of the rights of sexual minorities on the international level, Pavel Parfentyev believes. The lobby intends to distort the perception of traditional family in the modern society.

As a result, European officials already try to avoid the use of the word 'family' in top-level international documents. Instead, they use "family in all of its forms" expression, which implies all forms of cohabitation. As a matter of fact, they deliberately erode and expand the notion of family. The family as we know it has virtually disappeared from the new term.

"The lobby prefers to move in small steps. At first they say that one should not discriminate human beings on their gender rights and sexual orientation. It is hard to argue with this indeed. In Russia, there is no discrimination of real human rights on the base of sexual preferences. At the same time, they create special, previously unseen "rights" and preferences for homosexuals on the international level. As a result, they attach special importance to sexual orientation, which distinguishes a person and makes them stand higher than others," Pavel Parfentyev said.

The words indicating the sexual identity of people gradually disappear from official speech and documents. If they abolish 'he', 'she', 'father' and 'mother' they will not be able to abolish the gender per se. However, it can be possible to undermine the traditional perception of gender.

"A family is much more than a marital union of two people. It is a reproduction mechanism for the whole society. The movements for the protection of rights of sexual minorities are trying to undermine the traditional or natural family, as we call it. They want to take it beyond the scope of public values. More importantly, they want to separate the process of procreation and childcare from marriage and family. According to them, children and parents are two different things that must exist separately from each other. They cast doubts on the special role of parents in raising children," the expert added.

Many people in Britain claimed that the above-mentioned novelties undermine family grounds in the country.

Svetlana Smetanina

 

Muslim immigrants want Switzerland to change national flag

12.10.2011 10:33

A group of Muslim immigrants wants to force Switzerland to abandon the current flag - a white cross on the red background. They say that it violates the rights of the representatives of non-Christian confessions. They seem to have been hurt by the recent ban on minarets construction. However, their proposal is unlikely to be welcomed by the native Swiss and will only increase the number of votes in favor of the treasury of the local far-right People's Party.
   

The first suggestion to remove the cross from the Swiss flag was made not by a Muslim, but (judging by the name) an ethnic Croat and Catholic vice-president of the association of immigrants Secondos Plus Ivica Petrushich. "The cross does not fit today's multicultural Switzerland," he said. The organization of the Turkish, Albanian and other immigrants from Muslim countries followed with a similar initiative. Instead, they suggested using a green-yellow-red flag of Helvetic Republic that existed at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. It has no cross on it.

It is hardly coincidental that the issue of replacing the flag was raised by the representatives of immigrant organizations. Today, over 20 percent of seven million-strong Swiss population is immigrants. Naturally, the Muslims will be more than others insistent on replacing the flag. There are nearly 400,000 of them (more than five percent of the population). The largest "ethnic Muslim" community is Albanian, followed by the Turkish one. Arabs and Bosnian Muslims also reside in Switzerland. Many of them certainly do not like the cross.

The vast majority of Swiss Muslims virtually broke off with the religion of their ancestors. No more than 50 thousand of the faithful pray five times a day. However, women in headscarves have become an integral part of the cityscape of Zurich or Geneva. Furthermore, the birthrate in religious Muslim families is much higher than among the other population. Finally, all Swiss followers of Islam are not natives, but immigrants and their descendants. Their support of changing the appearance of the flag is, to say the least, ambiguous.


Apparently, this circumstance was taken into account by the head of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Switzerland Mayzar Hisham, who called the idea of ​​changing the flag "counterproductive." He said that they did not demand anyone to change the ancient traditions of their countries. It is hard not to agree with his words. The relations of the indigenous Swiss and immigrants have already passed a difficult strength test. The desire to change the flag will only add fuel to the fire.
Two years ago the Muslim community wanted to attach minarets to the existing mosques. However, Switzerland is different from all other countries in a way that each more or less relevant issue is solved by holding a referendum. Negotiations with the government officials were not sufficient, and they had to ask the opinion of the population. This opinion was not in favor of the Muslim immigrants.

The initiator of the referendum two years ago was the ultra-right Swiss People's Party that called to stop the "creeping Islamization". A deputy of the Swiss Parliament Ulrich Shlyuer said that minarets were a political symbol of the implementation of Islam. Step by step, Sharia was conquering Switzerland, acting in parallel with the Swiss law. Statistics show that the degree of religiosity of the local Muslim population is exaggerated, but for the ordinary Swiss even a hint of a violation of their habitual way of living was sufficient.

The results of voting on November 29, 2009 shocked Europe. 57.5 percent of the Swiss population was in favor of a ban on construction of minarets. At the same time kosher and halal slaughter of animals was banned (because of cruelty). Islamic organizations, human rights activists, and many European politicians expressed their outrage. However, the law came into force. The EU could not influence Switzerland as it is not its member.
 
Many of those dissatisfied with the verdict (including indigenous Europeans who had departed from the religion) were eager for revenge, and eventually decided to strike from the other side. They inquired why the flag of the Swiss Confederation had a Christian cross on it if construction of minarets was banned. Allegedly, it violated the rights of not only Muslims but also non-believers. That is why the red-green-yellow flag of the Helvetic Republic would be better.

Would the majority of the Swiss agree with this point of view?

Unlike neighboring France and Germany, the Swiss society is rather conservative. While there is no case of absolute religiousness of the Swiss society, the number of believers in Switzerland is higher than in the neighboring countries. This can be partially explained by a high proportion of rural population scattered along numerous mountain valleys in 20 cantons and six half-cantons of the country. Approximately half of the indigenous Swiss are Catholics; a little fewer are Protestant Calvinists. The cross on the flag is something that unites the country, and does not divide it.

As for the flag, the current symbol was first used in Switzerland in 1339, when the union of separate cantons just started to take shape. It achieved its official status in 1848, when the last standoff on this land ended, crowned with a robust Swiss Confederation. To some extent, it is a symbol of freedom and peace, a path to which took many centuries and numerous wars. 
The Helvetic Republic, whose flag is offered instead of the current one, is not particularly respected by the Swiss. It was created by Napoleon who occupied the country and decided to build entities supervised by the French on its territory. For the free-spirited Swiss this flag is a symbol of oppression.

Not to mention the fact that the combination of green, red and yellow colors is characteristic mainly of African countries. In Europe, only Lithuania has a similar flag.
 
Do the immigrants have a right to teach the Swiss tolerance? For over 160 years there has been no bloodshed on this territory. This is all the more surprising considering that the country is multinational. Nearly three-quarters of the indigenous Swiss speak German, one-fifth speaks French, five or six percent speak Italian, and a little less than one percent - the Romansh language. All these languages ​​have the official status, but there is one dominant language group in each canton (with rare exceptions). They managed to combine small mono-national "houses" with a multinational one. The country is not threated by a collapse.
 
Encroaching on the foundation of the state, immigrants cause a reaction from the German Swiss, French Swiss and Italian Swiss.  

Ultra People's Party is gaining popularity among all of them. Its symbol is three white sheep (the number of the top three language groups), kicking the fourth, black one. This is a clear hint to what should be done with immigrants. Four years ago, the party secured 29 percent of the Swiss votes, and it was a shock to Europe. In the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 23, the result may be even higher.



As is evident from the story with the restrictions on ritual slaughter of animals and minarets construction, the Swiss are not afraid to challenge the infamous political correctness. A ban on wearing the veil is to follow. The more you attempt to encroach on the foundation of the Swiss state, the stronger will be the response. It took Switzerland and its people too long to achieve stability and peace of mind to just give up on their values.


Vadim Trukhachev


GENOCIDE IN JAPAN! - Professor Chris Busby

Water situation in Palestine is "catastrophic"

Conference told that water situation in Palestine is "catastrophic"

Middle East Monitor

September 12, 2011 A conference in Jericho and the Jordan Valley has been told that the water situation in Palestine is "catastrophic". Delegates at the "Water is a Human Right" conference include Palestinian and international organisations, individuals and activists.  They heard the head of the Palestinian Water Authority accuse the Israelis of destroying wells and water conduits which have supplied Palestinians since the Roman era, citing in particular three wells in Nasseriya and Jiftlik at the Jordan Valley.  "This is a violation of all conventions to preserve our heritage," said Shaddad Atilli. "Where is UNESCO?". He called on European activists to let the public across the EU know about this "tragic situation". The conference has been organised by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee in collaboration with the Italian NGO Caravan Water. The governor of Jericho and the Jordan Valley said that the region suffers from a shortage of artesian wells because the Israeli occupation authorities ban the restoration and digging of Palestinian wells used to irrigate crops. At one time, said the governor, the region had 170 artesian wells, but only 50 remain. "Water is a right for all of the people in the region," he said. Speaking on behalf of Caravan Water, a spokesman said that international reports illustrate that Israel uses 80% of water sources in the occupied West Bank, leaving the Palestinians just 20%. "On average," he added, "a Palestinian consumes 70 litres of water while an Israeli uses 300 litres." The 450,000 illegal settlers use more water than the 2.3 million indigenous Palestinians. "The situation," he claimed, "is even worse in Gaza."

The number of Christians in CHINA multiplies.

Christians in China: Is the country in spiritual crisis?

By Tim Gardam Radio 4's God in China
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14838749 

 

More people go to church on Sunday in China than in the whole of Europe.

Many of China's churches are overflowing, as the number of Christians in the country multiplies. In the past, repression drove people to convert - is the cause now rampant capitalism?

It is impossible to say how many Christians there are in China today, but no-one denies the numbers are exploding.

The government says 25 million, 18 million Protestants and six million Catholics. Independent estimates all agree this is a vast underestimate. A conservative figure is 60 million. There are already more Chinese at church on a Sunday than in the whole of Europe.

The new converts can be found from peasants in the remote rural villages to the sophisticated young middle class in the booming cities.

Driven underground

There is a complexity in the structures of Chinese Christianity which is little understood in the West. To start with, Catholicism and Protestantism are designated by the state as two separate religions.

 

The Haidian Christian Church in Beijing was completely re-built to cope with rising numbers

 

Throughout the 20th Century, Christianity was associated with Western imperialism. After the Communist victory in 1949, the missionaries were expelled, but Christianity was permitted in state-sanctioned churches, so long as they gave their primary allegiance to the Communist Party.

Mao, on the other hand, described religion as "poison", and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s attempted to eradicate it. Driven underground, Christianity not only survived, but with its own Chinese martyrs, it grew in strength.

Since the 1980s, when religious belief was again permitted, the official Churches have gradually created more space for themselves.

They report to the State Administration for Religious Affairs. They are forbidden to take part in any religious activity outside their places of worship and sign up to the slogan, "Love the country - love your religion."

In return the Party promotes atheism in schools but undertakes "to protect and respect religion until such time as religion itself will disappear".

House Churches

Protestants and Catholics are both divided into official and unofficial Churches.

“Start Quote

The old have seen the old certainties of Marxism-Leninism transmute into the most visceral capitalist society on earth”

The officially sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Association appoints its own bishops and is not allowed to have any dealings with the Vatican, though Catholics are allowed to recognise the spiritual authority of the Pope.

There is a larger Catholic underground church, supported by the Vatican. Inch by inch, the Vatican and the government have been moving towards accommodation. Most bishops are now recognised by both, with neither side admitting the greater sovereignty of the other.

Yet in the past few months, the Chinese government has again turned tough, ordaining its bishops in the teeth of opposition from the Vatican which has in turn excommunicated one of them.

Even so, it would be wrong simply to dismiss the official church as a sham.

In the mountains West of Beijing, I visited the village of Hou Sangyu where a Catholic Church has stood since the 14th Century. 

• Tim Gardam is the Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford.
• He is pictured here with the Catholic Sisters of Sangyu.
• God in China, Christianity and Catholicism will be on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Monday 12 September.

The tough faith of these old people had withstood the Japanese invasion and the Cultural Revolution. The village clinic was run by nuns, one from Inner Mongolia, a Catholic stronghold.

It is from such villages that the Catholic Church recruits its young ordinands, to undertake training for the priesthood.

The official Protestant Church is growing faster than Catholicism.

On Easter morning, in downtown Beijing, I watched five services, each packed with over 1,500 worshippers. Sunday school was spilling on to the street.

However, these numbers are dwarfed by the unofficial "house churches", spreading across the country, at odds with the official Church which fears the house churches' fervour may provoke a backlash.

What the authorities consider non-negotiable is the house churches' refusal to acknowledge any official authority over their organisation.

The State fears the influence of zealous American evangelism and some of the House Church theology has those characteristics, but, in many other respects, it seems to be an indigenous Chinese movement - charismatic, energetic and young.

An educated young Christian described her church to me: "We have 50 young professionals in this church. Everyone is so busy working, you don't have time socialising, and even if you are socialising, you are putting on a fake face.

"But in church people feel warm, they feel welcome… they feel people really love them so they really want to join the community, a lot of people come for this."

Alpha marriage course

A Chinese academic close to the government told me that the government would prefer to ignore the house churches, as unlike the Falun Gong they are not seen as a threat. But where a church oversteps the line, as happened in Beijing this year, taking its worship on to the streets, then the authorities will crack down.

“Start Quote

The worship of Mammon… has become many people's life purpose”

Professor He Guanghu Renmin University, Beijing

 

In some areas the state has sought to enlist Christianity into its "big idea" of a "harmonious society" - the slogan that dominates Chinese public life. There has been official interest in the Western evangelical Alpha Marriage Course, because of alarm at the escalating divorce rate among young Chinese.

What must unsettle the authorities most is the reason why so many are turning to the churches.

I heard people talking again and again of a "spiritual crisis" in China - a phrase that has even been used by the Premier Wen Jiao Bao. The old have seen the old certainties of Marxism-Leninism transmute into the most visceral capitalist society on earth.

For the young, in the stampede to get rich, trust in institutions, between individuals, between the generations, is breaking down.

As one of China's most eminent philosophers of religion - Professor He Guanghu, at Renmin University in Beijing put it to me: "The worship of Mammon… has become many people's life purpose.

"I think it is very natural that many other people will not be satisfied... will seek some meaning for their lives so that when Christianity falls into their lives, they will seize it very tightly."

The Israeli system

It isn’t Bibi - it's the system, stupid

08/18/2011 14:11   By ALON PINKAS

Misguided coalitionists hail the system as being the only one that can accommodate Israel’s diversity and heterogeneity. They fail to comprehend that it is also a breeding ground for governmental dysfunction and paralysis.

Photo by: Marc Israel Sellem

You would think that in 2000 years of forced Diaspora and life among the nations, Jews would have had ample time to invest their intellectual energies into devising the best possible political system.

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Welfare states and socialism are about as dead as Elvis

You would think that 2000 years of exposure to all conceivable political systems would prepare Jews for the day they regain independence and reclaim sovereignty.

You'd be wrong.

You might also be tempted to think that Jews had drawn lessons from life under the Catholic Church, Turkish Sultanate, England’s Glorious Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Spring of Nations, the Bolshevik Revolution, and a host of other garden-variety systems like fascism, monarchies and totalitarianism.

You would expect Jewish political thinkers, Zionist leaders and the founding fathers of the State of Israel to have come up with the Ten Commandments of a modern, functioning, governability-enabling electoral system.

That Israel is a democracy - and a vibrant one at that, is not to be taken for granted. After all, the Zionists responsible for converting the dream of Zionism into political praxis came from patently non-democratic European societies.

These zealous Zionists then set to bring home their long lost brothers and sisters from Arab countries - again, not exactly bastions of free constitutional republics. In this respect Israel is perhaps an "illiberal democracy," but a democracy nonetheless.

Yet Israel’s democratic origins were shaped by mitigating circumstances from within and without: The confluence of the pre-state Yishuv political institutions and political schisms, the impending end of the British Mandate, and the threat of war lurking ominously on the horizon. This resulted in an urgency to quickly construct a working political model.

So the inherently heterogeneous Israel of circa 1948 (exponentially more heterogeneous in 2011) gave birth to a mutant electoral system, or what political scientists fondly refer to as "proportional representation."  It is a rare, unique and peculiar system.

It is, in essence, the only functioning dysfunctional system known to mankind. At least, that is, to your average homo democraticus. It kind of works, but not really. It represents, but not exactly. It is a distortion, but at least it reflects a real mosaic. It makes governability impossible and paralyzes decision-making, but then so too—if not more so—the American system.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is Israel’s premier by virtue of 24% of the popular vote. That would be impossible in, say, Britain, Germany, Canada and other parliamentary democracies with different electoral systems. Mr. Netanyahu is where he is fair and square. Although he didn’t strictly "win" the 2009 elections, he also did not usurp power. Constitutionally he holds all the powers of a prime minister and until recently was judged by commentators to be a stable (whatever that means) leader.

Yet at the same time, he has no real mandate to do anything autonomously. What he does have—as with many of his predecessors—is a binding, paralyzing and ever-threatening coalition.

Purists in Israel are often heard making the following claim: Stop grumbling about the political system because any other would be unrepresentative and divisive. This country is essentially divided into 6 or 7 tribes with irreconcilable differences; it is heterogeneous beyond a common narrative that is above the lowest common denominator; it is sectorial and sub-sectorial in a way that defies definition. We are still nation-building. Thus, the coalition acts as an adhesive between Israel’s disparate factions and implementing electoral changes would be an exercise in futility at best. In fact, say these proponents, there is no better system that can truly prevent exclusion or resentment while capturing the country’s diversity. As such, in any other systems, the lack of representation would mean that major policies and decisions would be rendered illegitimate.

This attitude may be conducive to countries like Canada, Denmark, Uruguay, Italy, Thailand or anywhere else that doesn't require the decisions that an Israeli government needs to make.

Diversity is not a synonym for dysfunctional politics and heterogeneity should not be an excuse for governance paralysis. For these coalition-condoners, preserving the current model has become the prime objective. Yet they fail to realize that by its very nature, it is a system that nurtures inaction which in turn breeds incompetence; perpetuating politics as nothing more than a reality game of survival.

Keeping this in mind, if we steer the discourse towards the ongoing protest movement the only logical advice to the prime minister is not to change his policies. Netanyahu was not elected as a proponent of the welfare state. Neither is he a social-democrat. Rather, he is more akin to a Thatcherite/Republican conservative who believes in the infinite wisdom of the market and small government.

Netanyahu thinks that redistributive policy and government is a travesty, and that social justice can only be determined by solid economic life and not by legislation or intervention through policy. He never concealed his disdain with the idea of Palestinian statehood and neither does he truly believe in the feasibility of the two-state model.

So why are his detractors still trying to force the leopard prime minister to change his spots? Quite simply, they are in denial about Netanyahu’s real source of power: The system itself.
Consider that 76% of Israelis did not actually vote for Mr. Netanyahu in the 2009 elections! And yet despite this, the system itself—our country’s expression of its bountiful heterogeneity—catapulted him to the very top.

So stop asking Netanyahu to transmogrify into something he never was. You want to change priorities? You demand social justice? You want what you think is a peace process? Then change the system.

The writer is a diplomat who recently served as consul-general in New York.