Schools handing out morning after pill to under-age girls backed by Ofsted
By LAURA CLARK 12th April 2007

More schools will be encouraged to hand out the morning-after pill to underage girls after a strong endorsement of the service from Ofsted inspectors.

Around one in three children already has easy access to condoms and emergency contraception – without their parents’ knowledge or consent – thanks to sexual health clinics based at secondary schools.

Many more heads are expected to set up contraception services in their schools following Ofsted’s warm endorsement in a report published yesterday.

The education watchdog declared that school nurses ‘provide a valuable service’ distributing contraception and advising pupils on birth control.

Inspectors even complained that progress towards establishing the centres had so far been ‘modest’.

Last night family campaigners warned the initiative may simply encourage promiscuity.

They pointed out that more than 20 studies have failed to find a link between better access to the morning-after pill and a fewer teenage pregnancies.

By 2010, ministers want every secondary school to have access to a nurse providing emergency contraception and advice as part of a drive to reduce the number of teenagers becoming parents.

In its latest report on the state of sex education, Ofsted inspectors said handing out the morning-after pill was more effective at reducing teenage pregnancies than promoting abstinence.

‘There is no evidence….that “abstinence- only” education reduces teenage pregnancy or improves sexual health,’ their report said.

‘There is also no evidence to support claims that teaching about contraception leads to increased sexual activity.’

The report said: ‘School nurses can arrange visits from their colleagues in the community and work with them to promote health and improve young people’s access to health services.’

It added: ‘School nurses can also provide a valuable service, particularly in terms of providing emergency hormonal contraception and advising on other forms of contraception.

‘Progress towards establishing such centres has been modest, but many extended schools are now providing a good range of services.’

Norman Wells, of the pressure group Family and Youth Concern, was concerned about the resulting message to children. ‘In putting its faith in sex education and contraception to deal with high teenage pregnancy rates and the crisis in sexual health among young people, Ofsted is blindly following the dogma at the heart of the government’s teenage pregnancy strategy,’ he said.

‘Ofsted has swallowed the lie being peddled by the sex education and contraceptive industry that using contraception is the mark of sexual responsibility.

‘No less than 23 studies from ten countries have found that increased access to the morning-after pill has made no difference to unintended pregnancy and abortion rates, yet Ofsted continues to fly in the face of international evidence.’

Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said school nurses gave children the chance to talk to someone impartial outside the classroom, where they may be embarrassed to ask questions.

But she added: ‘When it comes to things like morning-after pills and condoms there are many parents who will be concerned if they are not informed.

‘The majority will be quite devastated if they suddenly found that their kids were on birth control pills and they didn’t know anything about it.’

Official figures show pregnancies among under-18s rose in 2005 to 39,683 – up from 39,593 in 2004 and much higher than the 35,400 recorded a decade earlier in 1995.

Children’s minister Beverley Hughes welcomed the Ofsted finding that the quality of personal, social and health education, which includes sex education, had improved.

But help was also needed on the homefront. ‘We are taking steps to improve the support we give to parents to talk about sex and relationships,’ she said.

Daily Mail

So, Ofstead makes a ‘societal preference‘ to promote promiscuity and by extension, call your daughter a whore, but this is all OK [whine] because its good for society to stop teenage pregnancy [/whine].

Consent of the governed, a SANE voice, says:

With the establishment of school health clinics and national control of education creeping its way along in our country, we will not be too far behind with the implementation of these kinds of programs, funded by our tax dollars. School clinics in some places might already give out birth control and abortion referrals. Some states have policy on this and others do not. As it is now, kids cannot and may not buy a coke from a school vending machine in CT (Connecticut), but they can get an abortion without parental consent. Something is definitely wrong with that picture.. it not only throws parents out of the picture completely but also may further enable kids to engage in risky behaviors, because they know they can just as easily abort the “consequence”. Many people will say.. well kids will have sex anyway, so let’s give them tools to deal with “the consequences” without their parents even knowing. How can the schools enable sex between minors which is also a crime in many states?

[…]

Putting the moral and religious issue of abortion aside, I think the minimization and exclusion of parents regarding this issue is reprehensible. Undermining parental authority and consent is just really wrong, in my opinion. Yet, parents are supposed to be held responsible if their kids break the law or go truant from school?? How come parents are responsible in some instances and not allowed to be included in others?

I would think that school boards should be held liable for the results from negligent referrals regarding “sexual health” of a child. What happens if a child is harmed by either referred procedures or school administered medication like the Morning After pill? Schools and taxpayers will naturally be averse to this type of legal and economic liability.

[…]

For me as a parent, it is yet another reason to homeschool our kids, and be able to more directly and effectively deal with our kids without government enabling of bad behavior and without government inserting itself into the picture.

[…]

Consent of the governed

A refreshing blast of cool fresh air on a fetid sticky stinky summer day in the city.

Now, there are those blockheads who say:

This is a sensitive subject, far more than truancy or otherwise. The addition of sex into the equation adds a completely new element. I can think of plenty of examples in which it would be in the student’s best interest to keep sexual activity from their parents. One notable example would be a fundamentalist religious family in which any child from the resulting pregnancy would be shunned along with the child’s mother, forcing both into a hard position as social pariahs.

Personally I would rather give students the ability to decide what happens in their body without pressure from parents who’s motives may not always be the child’s well-being.

And this is the problem. This man, this idiot, a commenter on Consent of the governed blog to this post, is clearly not a parent of a female. He probably isn’t a parent of any kind. No parent would think it is appropriate that their child was given access to these abortion drugs, let alone the information that accompanies them.

Each family, each parent is responsible for imparting this sensitive information in the way that they see fit. School should not have regularly scheduled sex education for minors. When you are doing your biology GCSE however, reproduction should be taught, but that is different to sex education which is what is being pushed in schools.

But I digress.

This MORON has a vote. He can vote and express his opinion that, “Personally I would rather give students the ability to decide what happens in their body without pressure from parents” which means anything from forcing your daughter to be implanted with sterilizing drugs without your consent to, by the doctrine of ‘societal preference‘, YOUR DAUGHTER being given abortion drugs without any referral to you as the parent. He can justify your daughter being taught things that come directly from pornography, without your consent.

Now, having thought about that, and being repulsed as a parent, you might think, “to hell with that, I am going to home school my daughter. I don’t agree with any of this at all, and since I can’t be there to monitor the class and swoop her out when these vile lectures begin, I have to remove my daughter from that system entirely”.

But some other brain dead schmuck has expressed his ‘societal preference‘ which means your daughter cannot be home schooled, or, that home schoolers must follow a state issued curriculum, so YOU end up teaching your 11 year old pornographic sex tricks, that she will be examined on by the state.

That is what happens when unthinking people exercise their ‘societal preference‘, for ‘the good of society’. Organizations like Ofstead, which cannot introduce programs to solve literacy and numeracy problems approve giving out contraceptives to children, because they ‘think its right’. And next, they want to go straight into your house to provide ‘help on the homefront’, i.e. telling you how to teach your children about the most vile and repulsive behavior imaginable, right in your own home.

These are the same people, the ones who blithely express their ‘societal preference‘ who then say that it is wrong that children are becoming sexualized. Once again, they want it both ways; they want the schools to be teaching pornography and perversion, they want children to have free access to abortion and contraception, and EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION, but they also want children to be children.

Its just plain stupid.

This is the TRUE problem of ‘societal preference‘. It is the means by which everything is dismantled and the all powerful state gets into every nook and cranny of your life…even your pants…your children’s pants and their minds.

Only the most sick, twisted, perverted and deluded of people think that any of this is correct.

You cannot be FOR ‘societal preference‘ and AGAINST schoolchildren being manipulated and brainwashed. Its is an ‘either or’ situation. If you are FOR ‘societal preference‘ then you are FOR these repulsive and diabolical schemes. If you are AGAINST ‘societal preference‘ then you are against the state:

• telling you what you can do in your own house
• controlling you as a parent in ANY way
• mandating that you can or cannot own a gun
• stipulating what you can and cannot ingest
• forcing your children to attend state schools
• issuing compulsory Identity Cards
• outlawing species of plant
• engaging in mass surveillance as found in the UK/USA
• using secret travel ban lists as found in the USA
• setting up random checkpoints

And all the other things that we really really and rightfully hate.

What is it that you REALLY want? What are the consequences of your ‘societal preference‘? This is what you have to consider VERY CAREFULLY before you give any control over to the state.

Gun control: the bloggers’ view

Matthew Weaver
Tuesday April 17, 2007

After the deadliest mass shooting in American history you might think that Virginia Tech killings would prompt a rethink about gun control in the US. But No. If anything American’s stance of the right to bear arms is hardening, judging by what the bloggers have to say.

Trish and Halli, two harmless looking old ladies who post “great recipe” suggestions from Idaho, argue that some of the 32 deaths could have been prevented if guns had been more freely available. Halli posts: “If some students and faculty had been carrying their legally permitted guns today, it is likely that a few deaths would have occurred. However, in at least two instances the murderer chained classroom doors closed and proceeded to fire at students. In all likelihood an armed student would have stopped him before 32 people had been executed.”

Similarly Frank Staheli argues that if more students carried gun there would be fewer spree killings.

The National Rifle Association is reluctant to be drawn on the issue, But Gun Owners of America demands a end to gun-free zones in schools and campuses. It says: “It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell citizens that they may not have guns at schools. The Virginia Tech shooting shows that killers have no concern about a gun ban when murder is in their hearts.”

So what about the politicians? The leading Democratic presidential contenders all steer clear of advocating gun control. Instead Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all turn to prayer.

According to Robin Toner on the New York Times political blogging site the Caucus says that Democrat hopefuls don’t want to harm their chances of election by calling for gun control as Al Gore did in 2000.

John Nichols in the Nation argues that US has failed to learn the lesson of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.

Raised in Chaos calls for a deeper examination of the malaise in American society She says:

“The issue is not guns, and while I personally believe there should be no need for them in a “civilized” society, and that fucking ANYONE shouldn’t be able to pick up a rifle and a pack of Cheetos at your local Wal-Mart, this is not the context in which to have this debate.

Instead, when a man with a gun (and do we know yet if he was a student or not?) strolls into a college dormitory at 7 a.m. and starts shooting people at random, we really need to take a critical look at the kind of society we live in.”

[…]

BBQ was taking the ‘why have they not banned guns line’ from the outset, and these same morons are also dismayed by the thinking of people like Paul Craig Roberts:

[…]

Guns have been around for a long time, but these crazy shootings are a new development that point to a failure of culture to produce people with a sense of responsibility and self-control. When I was a kid, a youngster could walk into a local hardware store and buy a gun. There were no restrictions. If a kid was so young that he couldn’t see over the counter, the store owner might call a parent for approval. We all had guns, and we never shot ourselves or anyone else.

One of my grandmothers thought nothing of me and my friends playing with the World War II weapons my uncle had brought back. My other grandmother never batted an eye when I collected my grandfather’s shotgun from behind the door and went off to match wits with the crows that raided the pecan trees or the poisonous cottonmouth snakes that could be found along the creek that ran through the farm.

My grandmother never worried about me until I got a horse, a more dangerous object in her view than a gun.

We also all had knives, which we carried in our pockets to school every day. We never stabbed anyone and very seldom cut our own fingers.

We often had fights, more often wrestling each other to the ground than fist fights. No one ever thought of pulling a knife or a gun on his antagonist. Parents and teachers did not exactly approve of fights, but they considered them natural. We were not arrested, handcuffed and finger-printed for being in a fight. […]

You need to read the entire article.

My brother kept guns at the age of 16; an M16 and some handguns. We had a ball with them. I did shooting at school as a sport. Guns are not a big deal, and they are not the problem. They are actually a huge amount of fun and a fantastic sport to be involved in.

‘Matthew Weaver’ says attitudes are hardening. Actually, everyone is fed up with the illogical and absurd newspaper lead idea that because someone snaps and goes berserk, we should all pay a penalty by having to suffer a raft of new and hastily drafted regulations.

Its appalling and sad when crazy people do stuff, but the law abiding should not be made to suffer a reduction in the quality of their life because a single nut-case does something terrible.

It is this same knee jerk mentality that allows people to think that its OK to ban home schooling because there was a single instance of a family that didn’t pull it off ‘correctly’, or the genocide of a whole breed of dogs because one owner let his dog bite a little girl. It is madness to live that way.

It is the criminals who should be made to conform to community standards, not the community being whittled down to the level that assumes everyone is a potential mass murderer or dog fighter.

Many people who are unfamiliar with homeschooling picture it as a bunch of religious fanatics socially isolating their kids from culture and diversity in order to brainwash their kids. However, the facts bear witness to the fact that the opposite is true. Here are some facts culled from the excellent Homeschooling entry at wikipedia.

In general, people who are against home schooling are ignorant of it’s history in America, it’s proven benefits, it’s proven superiority over public schooling, and that the classic criticisms leveled against it, primarily those of social and religious extremism, omissions of critical subjects (like evolution), and poor socialization, have been shown by many studies to be nearly entirely false. In fact, as it turns out, homeschoolers are better educated, more emotionally stable and mature, more socially adjusted, and more academically balanced than students who emerge from our faithless, Darwinist, underperforming public schools.

The Downsides of Public Schooling

• Damaging emotional development: “where possible, children should be withheld from formal schooling until at least ages eight – ten.”. Their reason was that children, “are not mature enough for formal school programs until their senses, coordination, neurological development and cognition are ready.”
• Other negative emotional pressures of formal schooling: the outcome of forcing children into formal schooling is a sequence of “1) uncertainty as the child leaves the family nest early for a less secure environment, 2) puzzlement at the new pressures and restrictions of the classroom, 3) frustration because unready learning tools — senses, cognition, brain hemispheres, coordination — cannot handle the regimentation of formal lessons and the pressures they bring, 4) hyperactivity growing out of nerves and jitter, from frustration, 5) failure which quite naturally flows from the four experiences above, and 6) delinquency which is failure’s twin and apparently for the same reason.”
• Damaging social development: Aside from academic performance, early formal schooling also destroys “positive sociability”, encourages peer dependence, and discourages self worth, optimism, respect for parents, and trust in peers. This situation is particularly acute for boys because of their delay in maturity.

Homeschool Benefits

• How to develop genius: A Smithsonian Report on the development of genius, indicating a requirement for “1) much time spent with warm, responsive parents and other adults, 2) very little time spent with peers, and 3) a great deal of free exploration under parental guidance.
• Academic performance: the average homeschooled student outperforms their public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects. The study also indicates that public school performance gaps between minorities and genders are virtually non-existent among homeschooled students.
• What children need for learning and healthy mental/emotional development: Their analysis suggested that children need “more of home and less of formal school” “more free exploration with…parents, and fewer limits of classroom and books,” and “more old fashioned chores – children working with parents – and less attention to rivalry sports and amusements.”
• Healthier self concept: Dr. John Taylor later found, using the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale, “while half of the conventionally schooled children scored at or below the 50th percentile (in self-concept), only 10.3% of the home-schooling children did so.”
• Better socialization: Regarding socialization, it appears that very few home-schooling children are socially deprived. Critics who speak out against home schooling on the basis of social deprivation are actually addressing an area which favors home schoolers. Apparently, the research data indicates that it is the conventionally schooled child who is actually deprived.”
• Graduates are more socially involved than public school children: Homeschool graduates are active and involved in their communities. 71% participate in an ongoing community service activity, like coaching a sports team, volunteering at a school, or working with a church or neighborhood association, compared with 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages from a traditional education background.
• Graduates are more active in civics: Homeschool graduates are more involved in civic affairs and vote in much higher percentages than their peers. 76% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 voted within the last five years, compared with only 29% of the corresponding U.S. populace. The numbers are even greater in older age groups, with voting levels not falling below 95%, compared with a high of 53% for the corresponding U.S. populace.

Graduates report being happier and more excited about life: 58.9% report that they are “very happy” with life, compared with 27.6% for the general U.S. population. 73.2% find life “exciting”, compared with 47.3%

Now, imagine if I went out to the homeschooling sites and mined even more information. However, I understand that it takes time to change people’s minds, esp. when mired in years of brainwashing regarding the superiority of public education. But education is changing public opinion:

Gallup polls of American voters have shown a significant change in attitude in the last twenty years, from 73% opposed to home education in 1985 to 54% opposed in 2001. […]

http://www.twoorthree.net/2007/03/the_superiority.html

If I told you that intelligent, mature, socially involved, well-educated teens, just 15 years ago, were being denied entry to college you would not believe me.

Unfortunately, it was true. Many of the nation’s burgeoning number of home-school graduates had, and on many occasions still have today, a very difficult time navigating the college admission process. Fortunately, in 2007, the situation has dramatically improved, but just 15 years ago home-schoolers faced huge obstacles accessing college.

Although a legitimate criticism of colleges is that they were relatively slow to react to the growing numbers of home-school graduates, it is fairly easy to sympathize with their situation.

Home-schooling began its resurgence in the 1980s. Consequently, the first wave of home-school graduates was ready to enter college in the early 1990s.

For decades, colleges had been focused on traditional high school applicants from both public and private school. Procedures, experience and expectations were firmly entrenched. When a home-schooler knocked on the door, with a diploma signed by his parents, colleges did not know what to do.

Home School Legal Defense Association, founded in 1983, intervened on behalf of home-schoolers and showed that a parent-signed diploma was valid. HSLDA, however, recognized that any college would need more information about whether an individual home-schooler was ready for college level work before it could make an informed decision. We suggested that a policy which focused on the SAT or ACT scores plus references and portfolios of work would satisfy any reasonable entry requirements.

Over the past 15 years, many colleges have developed either a home-school admissions policy or hired a home-school admissions officer. In fact, today, 85 percent of colleges have one, or both, of these in place. But some colleges have gone further and chosen to actively seek home-school graduates. The most recent example is the University of California at Riverside, which last year changed its policy to allow home-schoolers to submit a portfolio of work.

“We are excited about the positive response from home-schooled and nontraditionally educated students and their parents,” said Interim Director of Admissions Merlyn Campos.

Frank Vahid, professor in the Department of Computer Science, said: “It looks like we’ve tapped into a pipeline of great students.”

It is no surprise to home-schooling families that their children succeed in college. The genius of a home education is an individualized learning plan. The education is tailored to the child. In addition, most home-schooled children are encouraged to work on their own. To get the most out of college, a student needs to be self-directed, which is the methodology that home-schoolers have been using for years.

Every year, the total number of home-school high school graduates increases. The best estimate for the numbers of home-schoolers is 2 million children spread relatively evenly across the grades. Therefore, we can expect to see around 100,000 home-schooled graduates per year. A significant percentage of these students will seek college admission.

College entrance, and subsequent success in a college program, helps complete the education picture for home-schoolers. For many, it is the final step on a long educational journey. […]

Washington Times

Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer interviews Scott Ritter.

The former U.N. weapons inspector, who was scorned for saying there were no WMD in Iraq, speaks with Robert Scheer about American ignorance, the lies that led us to war, Iran’s nuclear program and more.

Special thanks to the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Public Library for hosting the event.

http://www.truthdig.com/

Adam Curtis, who made the documentaries ‘The Power of Nightmares‘ and ‘Century of the Self‘ has his new work broadcast by BBQ2: ‘The Trap’. This first installment is up to his usual high standards.

Its thesis is fascinating, and is similar to ‘Century of the Self’; a clutch of academics come up with ways of explaining the world that can be applied directly to human affairs, inagination-less politicians read their works, become enamored by them, implement them, and the side effects are entirely negative.

In this installment, the academic is John Nash, (who the insightful Mimi Majick immediately identified as being Autistic), whose work at The Rand Corporation and his “Nash Equilibrium” equations helped form the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Please watch this installment for the background.

Curtis explains clearly how the “Nash Equilibrium” works, and my first thoughts were these:

Equilibrium is a state that can be found at a large number of points in a dynamic system. Some we want, and some we do not want. If M.A.D. were carried out, we would reach equilibrium where no one had nuclear weapons and the threat would be over. There could be described as the equilibrium of unburied death. But that is just one possible outcome, one possible point of equilibrium, out of a near infinite number of possibilities.

We are all familiar with coupled pendulums, and multiple magnet toys. These dynamic systems take a very few elements running on simple rules which when coupled together, create a system that is impossible to predict, yet which operates within a gamut that can be unambiguously written out and expressed as a formula.

Human beings, when they are left to their own devices will interact in the same way and out of this will emerge a dynamic system. We can loosely predict the states generated by the result of huge human populations interacting as individuals, and we can cause changes in the states of these populations by increasing or decreasing inputs like V.A.T., propaganda or legislation.

Think of a stream of water coming out of tap. We have all played around with them. the shape of the falling water is constant when the speed of the water is not varied and the slightest increase or decrease can change it from drips a braided stream a spluttering gush or any one of an infinite number of variations in between. The point is that there is no one way to achieve any particular state of equilibrium, and we have to strive for an equilibrium that is desirable, not undesirable.

Nash did work that expressed in a formula how people could always make an optimum decision when they are interacting in an adversarial game. His theories work from the position that people are selfish, that they are adversarial, suspicious of each other trying to ‘figure out’ what their fellow man is going to do at any time, by nature. This is where Mimi Majick chimed in with, “That guy is AUTISTIC!“.

If Nash is autistic (at the very least, the documentary says that he was suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia when he did his award winning work) then it would make perfect sense that this is how he saw other people; sufferers of Autism cannot put themselves into the minds of other people; they cannot read other people’s faces or emotions; they live in a confusing world where other people’s behavior cannot be predicted. It is a frustrating world for them, and the have to devise their own strategies and rules of thumb to get along in situations that we all take for granted.

Nash, being a gifted mathematician will have applied his powerful skills to this ‘problem’, as it would have been very troubling to him that for all his life he could never read the emotional states and more importantly, the intentions, of other people.

The implications of this are frightening. Following Nash’s work was wrong not only because there are an infinite number of points of equilibrium in human interactions that are all possible (and more preferable), but because policy has been built around the affliction of an Autistic man, whose world view is totally abnormal and in fact, inhuman.

I can give two examples of humans reaching mutually beneficial equilibrium through the opposite of Nash’s distorted world view of inherent human distrust and selfishness.

The first is amongst the rough diamond dealers in Antwerp. Orthodox Jews in Antwerp can do diamond deals worth any amount of money and pay with slips of paper in exchange for goods. These ‘IOUs’ are as good as money. They all trust each other totally. This community has less friction than communities where there is distrust; you can do a deal anywhere and with confidence. You don’t have to run security checks or any of the high friction malarky that distrustful communities and relationships are burdened with. Everyone trusts each other, everyone makes a profit. No one is cheated. The community is in equilibrium, and the only way it can work is if everyone trusts each other.

The other example is that of Free Software and Open Source Software. In these software communities, everyone is generous and not selfish. We have all seen (and you are reading this on the results of) this approach. It has literally changed the world, for the better, and we are moving toward an equilibrium state where everyone has free software, all are benefitting, and anyone can make money off of the free software.

Imagine if Eric S Raymond worked for The Rand Corporation, and instead of the literally sick and abnormal world view of Nash, we had a variation of The Cathedral and the Bazar as the starting point for the position that we are in now. I think we would all be better off.

Perhaps in the future we will see a documentary describing how little know men like Richard Stallman implemented radical ideas that spread throughout society, changing it for the better.

I’m looking forward to the other parts of this documentary.

It is hard to believe that within the civilized world in the 21st century we would still need to talk about actions used by the Nazi party in Germany to enforce civic conformity to the Nazi ideal. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is taking place in Germany today, and home-schoolers are the targets.

On Feb. 1 Melissa Busekros, a home-schooled 15-year-old from Bavaria, was forcibly removed from her home by a team of 15 SWAT officers. She was placed in the psychiatric wing of a Nuremberg clinic and her parents were not allowed to see her. She was deemed to be suffering from “school phobia.”

Melissa was then taken to another psychiatric institution and her parents were not informed of her location. Eventually Melissa was allowed to call her parents so they could hear her voice, but then the authorities took her to another undisclosed location.

As of this writing, Melissa is allowed a brief, once-per-week visit with her parents, at a government building, but still cannot tell them where she is being held. This ordeal is horrifying for Melissa and her parents.

Aside from the fact that this treatment should not happen to anyone, the Busekros are not a family that should have attracted any police attention. As recently as Dec. 23, the family was pictured in Erlanger Nachrichten, the local daily newspaper, as an example of a rare “model family.” It was the fact that Melissa’s parents chose home-schooling that brought down the wrath of the government.

Melissa had been attending public school but fell behind in math and Latin due to severe classroom disruptions. Her parents decided to home-school her in these subjects. Melissa continued to participate in music and sang in the choir through the public school. She took advanced courses in English and French at the local community college.

It should be noted that home-schooling is illegal in Germany, but the Busekros family hoped that the school authorities would be flexible since Melissa was no longer subject to full-time attendance requirements. The recalcitrance of German authorities can be traced back to 1938, when Adolf Hitler, fearing that parents had too much influence over their children, banned home-schooling.

This law still exists in Germany today. The German government fears the development of parallel societies and will act aggressively to stop anyone trying to move away from the state-sanctioned educational system. Melissa is just the latest example of heavy-handed state action.

Every person in the civilized world should be shocked and appalled about these events in Germany. If the German government is not held accountable for these actions, then it is likely the problem will spread. If Germany does not recognize the fundamental right of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children, then it can no longer be considered a free country. In this case, Germany could learn a lesson from the United States.

On this side of the Atlantic, at the moment, we take very different approach. The U.S. Supreme Court case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1925, addressed an attempt on the part of Oregon to require all children to attend a public school. In Pierce, the concerns were the same as in Germany. Oregon decided that religious schools were a threat and could produce a parallel society. Therefore, all children should be forced into public school, where all would receive the same education.

The court rightly determined that the child is not the mere creature of the state and consequently there was no compelling government reason to force children into one mode of education. The ruling recognized the fundamental right of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

This ruling has served the country well. While there are regular conflicts with state authorities, parental rights are still generally upheld within the court system.

The concern for the United States is that when U.S. judges look to foreign precedents to inform their decisions, parental rights could be in jeopardy. The fight for freedom is becoming globalized. What happens in other countries can find its way to our shores.

It is hoped that the German government will do the right thing and relent from pursuing parents who want to exercise their fundamental right to home-school their children in peace.

Michael Smith is the president of the Home School Legal Defense Association. He may be contacted at 540/338-5600.

The Washington Times

The National Home Education Research Institute, a non-profit research group, recently completed a comprehensive study of how former homeschoolers are faring in their adult lives. Of the 7,306 participants, 5,254 had been homeschooled for at least seven years.

Some findings:

• 74.2 percent had attained some college courses or higher in their education. In the general U.S. population in the same age range, the number is 46.2 percent.
• 71 percent of the former homeschoolers are participating in an ongoing community activity, compared to 39 percent of all U.S. adults.
• 55 percent say they would homeschool their own children.

Lots more at the link.

Homeschooled kids are coming of age and putting the world on notice that there really is “no place like home (school)”.

Snarfed from:

http://lpcolorado.blogs.com/lpcolorado/2007/02/9_news_covers_h.html

The 9News Piece

Like I said before; if everyone is educated in a monolithic system, the entire population is uniform and easily programmed. It also makes it easy for a diseased philosophy to spread like the plague through a society.

The ease of programming a society is proportional to the square of the number of different philosophies in that society; so, if you have one philosophy in a country, the ease of programming its population is 1. 1f you have two concurrent philosophies in a society, it is 2 times harder than if the society was homogenous. In a society with hundreds of different philosophies and cultures, then it is 100s of times as hard to get a message across it cannot actually be done as we can see all across Europe in the recent…philosophical differences we have been experiencing.

Home schooling produces a population of people who are not brainwashed, who are better citizens, better thinkers and better human beings. That is why in the above study, 71% of former home schoolers participate in ongoing community activity, i.e. they are not selfish, self centered, greed oriented people. They are protected from brainwashing – immunized from the group think diseases that sweep through the masses like the black death.

The american system of education is a total success in that it takes people from different backgrounds and then turns them into americans. This is how the american government is able to get a single message across to everyone in that country where the population is sourced from every corner of the globe. That is how successive american governments have been able to get away with the sad things they have been doing for decades…but I digress.

You cannot argue with the facts. The numbers make it absolutely clear; home schooling is better for everyone. Better for the individual, better for the family, better for the country, for human culture and ultimately better for the entire world.

There are 2.1 million families in the USA who home school. They sometimes come under attack from simpletons and busy bodies who report them anonymously to the authorities. Clearly, a massive educational campaign on what home schooling is needs to be mounted, so that everyone everywhere understands that not only is it harmless, but that it is superior to sending your child to a school.

Read this account of how a home schooling family was falsely accused, and how they stood up for their rights. Sadly in a country like Germany or the UK where there is no constitution at all, you have no rights.

Social Worker Applauds Family for Standing on Constitutional Rights!

In our 24 years of dealing with social workers and anonymous tips, we’ve found it is extremely rare a social worker ever recognizes or seeks to protect a family’s rights. Well, one HSLDA member family recently investigated for false allegations had a happy ending!

The Hayes family from Lapeer, Michigan, was surprised to find themselves under investigation for child abuse. A social worker came to their door, asked if they were homeschooling and was told there were allegations against them that they were “isolating” and “not taking care of their children.”

Although the family was indeed homeschooling, the allegations of abuse were completely false.

The Hayes called the Home School Legal Defense Association and spoke with Senior Counsel Chris Klicka. Klicka told the family about the importance of standing up for their constitutional rights and recommended they have people in the community send reference letters to the social worker. Klicka then explained to the social worker their Fourth Amendment rights in a follow-up letter.

Based on this information, the Hayes did a wonderful job of showing social worker that they were not hiding anything by refusing entrance to their home, but were merely exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Although the Hayes had been told by relatives who are social workers that they should just do whatever the social worker wanted or they would think they were guilty, the Hayes took the advice of Klicka. They firmly but politely told the social worker that when they talked with her it would be outside of their home.

The social worker was at first leery of this unusual insistence, but soon realized that the family was just exercising their constitutional right to be secure in their home and free from unreasonable searches. By taking Klicka’s advice and politely standing on their rights, the family was able to talk with the social worker and have the investigation completed right then on their doorstep—without the earlier demand to interview their children!

HSLDA Social Services Contact Policy

We desire to assist and advise our members in every contact with a social worker and/or police officer in the investigation resulting from allegations of abuse or neglect. If homeschooling is an issue, we will represent our member families until the issue is resolved. On Fourth Amendment unreasonable search and seizure issues, HSLDA will assist and advise our members whenever the privacy of their home is violated by forced or coerced entry for the purpose of an unsubstantiated investigation. HSLDA membership benefits do not extend to court actions resulting from non-homeschooling matters. However, in circumstances where there is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, HSLDA may, as we have done in the past, choose to take the case in an effort to establish legal precedent.

[…]

http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/mi/200703020.asp

And there you have it. In a country with a properly written constitution you can point to clearly defined rights beyond which the state cannot go. Any agent of the state has to show probable cause to enter your house; they cannot just show up and then demand to enter your house because some anonymous caller said, “bad guys live there”. This is essential to the rights of man, and a properly written constitution protects everyone so that they do not have to fight every day of their lives for their natural rights, like the poor suckers in the UK do.

This is why it is such a terrible tragedy that the constitution is being dismantled in the USA…but I digress. Home schoolers in the UK need to be aware that it is their right to educate their children in whatever way they wish. This is not a matter of the efficiency or inefficiency of the state school system, but rather one of your fundamental rights as a human being. Your children are not the property of the state. They are your responsibility. The state has no right to impart its philosophies onto your children. They have no right to indoctrinate them. They have no right to specify what you should or should be teaching as a home schooler. They have no right to inspect you. They have no right to compel you to register as a home schooler. If they try and do any of the above, they are essentially turning you and your children into property.

Their property.

I doubt very much wether the DfES would order that Islamic schools should teach that all religions are equal (for example). And this is another factor of this intrusion. First they will set the precedent with home schoolers that the state has the right to set the curriculum for all children. Then they will go after the schools that do not follow the national curriculum and compel them to do so. There are several schools in the UK which are philosophy based and which do not follow the national curriculum; if the goal of this totalitarian government is to create a uniform population, then these schools must be made to conform or be closed down.

This sinister, and purely evil policy must be disobeyed by all. That much is clear. What is also clear is that we need to mount an information war against this emerging policy. It would also be a good idea to set up a toothed organization like this one that actually has the power to protect its members from abuse:

Superintendent Demands Homeschoolers Register

The George* family recently started homeschooling. However, right after they began their homeschool program, Mrs. George received a phone call from the district’s regional superintendent. The superintendent informed Mrs. George that he needed to meet with her and Mr. George so that the family could show him their curriculum, assignments from their son, as well as any tests that they gave to him. The superintendent indicated that he must meet with them in order to verify that the Georges were, in fact, giving their son a quality education.

Mr. and Mrs. George’s homeschool program fulfills all requirements of Illinois law, and thus is a legal private school program. As the administrators of their private school, the parents are qualified to verify the student’s educational status. Nowhere in the law does it state that the superintendent has the right to demand to meet the administrators of a private school or to see the curriculum, assignments, and tests of a private school.

When HSLDA was informed of the superintendent’s demands, HSLDA’s Senior Counsel Chris Klicka immediately sent a letter to the superintendent explaining that Illinois law does not give him any legal right to take responsibility for a homeschool family.

The family has not been bothered further by the school district.

* Name changed to protect family’s privacy.

My emphasis.

It seems like the ‘George’ family have had to jump through some hoops to protect their rights, but they are able to do so, and when they came under attack, there was someone there upon who they could call to vigorously defend their rights, and put pay to the interfering tomfoolery of the state.

If the British Home Schoolers do not wake up and start to get angry, they will be steamrollered and their children made into property.

I wrote about the German Police enforcing Nazi Laws on home schoolers a month ago.

Now it seems that the rest of the world is catching up, and are rightfully horrified. My emphasis:

Earlier this month, a German teen-ager was forcibly taken from her parents and imprisoned in a psychiatric ward. Her crime? She is being home-schooled.

On Feb. 1, 15 German police officers forced their way into the home of the Busekros family in the Bavarian town of Erlangen. They hauled off 16-year-old Melissa, the eldest of the six Busekros children, to a psychiatric ward in nearby Nuremberg. Last week, a court affirmed that Melissa has to remain in the Child Psychiatry Unit because she is suffering from “school phobia.”

Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since Adolf Hitler outlawed it in 1938 and ordered all children to be sent to state schools. The home-schooling community in Germany is tiny. As Hitler knew, Germans tend to obey orders unquestioningly. Only some 500 children are being home-schooled in a country of 80 million. Home-schooling families are prosecuted without mercy.

Last March, a judge in Hamburg sentenced a home-schooling father of six to a week in prison and a fine of $2,000. Last September, a Paderborn mother of 12 was locked up in jail for two weeks. The family belongs to a group of seven ethnic German families who immigrated to Paderborn from the former Soviet Union. The Soviets persecuted them because they were Baptists. An initiative of the Paderborn Baptists to establish their own private school was rejected by the German authorities. A court ruled that the Baptists showed “a stubborn contempt both for the state’s educational duty as well as the right of their children to develop their personalities by attending school.”

All German political parties, including the Christian Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel, are opposed to home-schooling. They say that “the obligation to attend school is a civil obligation, that cannot be tampered with.” The home-schoolers receive no support from the official (state funded) churches, either. These maintain that home-schoolers “isolate themselves from the world” and that “freedom of religion does not justify opposition against the obligation to attend school.” Six decades after Hitler, German politicians and church leaders still do not understand true freedom: that raising children is a prerogative of their fathers and mothers and not of the state, which is never a benevolent parent and often an enemy.

Hermann Stucher, a pedagogue who called upon Christians to withdraw their children from the state schools which, he says, have fallen into the hands of “neo-Marxist activists,” has been threatened with prosecution for “Hochverrat und Volksverhetzung” (high treason and incitement of the people against the authorities). The fierceness of the authorities’ reaction is telling. The dispute is about the hearts and minds of the children. In Germany, schools have become vehicles of indoctrination, where children are brought up to unquestioningly accept the authority of the state in all areas of life. It is no coincidence that people who have escaped Soviet indoctrination discern what the government is doing in the schools and are sufficiently concerned to want to protect their children from it.

What is worrying is that most “free-born” Germans accept this assault on their freedom as normal and eye parents who opt out of the state system with suspicion.

The situation is hardly better at the European level. Last September, the European Court of Human Rights supported Hitler’s 1938 schooling bill. The Strasburg-based court, whose verdicts apply in the entire European Union, ruled that the right to education “by its very nature calls for regulation by the State.” It upheld the finding of German courts: “Schools represent society, and it is in the children’s interest to become part of that society. The parents’ right to educate does not go so far as to deprive their children of that experience.”

While it is disquieting that Europeans have not learned the lessons from their dictatorial past — upholding Nazi laws and sending dissidents, including children, to psychiatric wards, as the Soviets used to do — there is reason for Americans to worry, too. The United Nations is also restricting the rights of parents. Article 29 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that it is the goal of the state to direct the education of children. In Belgium, the U.N. Convention is currently being used to limit the constitutional right to home-school. In 1995 Britain was told that it violated the U.N. Convention by allowing parents to remove their children from public school sex-education classes.

Last year, the American Home School Legal Defense Association warned that the U.N. Convention could make home-schooling illegal in America, even though the Senate has never ratified it. Some lawyers and liberal politicians in the states claim that U.N. conventions are “customary international law” and should be considered part of American jurisprudence.

[…]

Washington Times

Wow.

As you can see, there are many people who understand perfectly that the right to educate your child is fundamental to your freedom and to the health of ‘society’. A society full of people educated out of a single system is one where everyone is not compliant like sheep, one where a totalitarian government cannot easily take hold, because everyone thinks differently on a fundamental level.

This is directly analogous to the times in the UK where there were only two television channels being watched by millions of people. It was easy to get a single message across to everyone simultaneously, and to herd thought in this way. Now, with many different outlets for thought, it is much harder to steer opinion. The Muslims watch their news on The Islam Channel which has a distinctly different take on reality and what is and is not news.

By eliminating home schooling on a wide scale, you make it much harder for a group of outsiders to exist and to have any sort of voice, and as we know, in the age of the internets, it takes a very small number of outsiders to completely change everything.

German schools are used, overtly, to control and shape society keep everyone in thrall. That is why the Germans (and the populations of Belgium, Italy and other EU states for that matter) accept ID cards without question. That is why they have no understanding of human rights. I have been saying this since 1995, when I wrote a lightweight analysis of the German Constitution, which gives rights and then takes them away with the same breath.

Now these Nazis are breathing down our necks via the EU and the UN. We won’t have it.

The philosophies that are injected into the minds of children in the state sector are simply horrifying. Completely artificial concepts like ‘Hate Speech’ are taking hold in the previously (more) free thinking west because the teachers are drilling this drivel into the young, who take it on faith that indeed there is such a thing as ‘Hate Speech’.

The same goes for all of the other lies and molten lead doublethink that gets poured into the minds of young students – and it doesn’t just happen in the classroom. Schools that are requiring students to be fingerprinted to get books out of the library or to eat lunch are softening up the students to accept this method of criminal control, this violation, as normal and acceptable. The indoctrination runs across the most innocent of actions and activities, and we have the absolute right to say ‘no’ to it and to educate our children to our own standards and in our own philosophies, whatever they may be.

Introduction

On February 18, 2007, the BBC broadcasted an hour-long episode which it claimed would examine and answer the questions of the 9-11 truth movement. However, both the episode and the written Q&A turned out to be attacks on the skeptics rather than a true investigation. The public was presented with a heavily controlled and edited discussion, which was rigged in favour of the official story. Worse yet, propaganda techniques were used to portray the opponents of the official story unfairly. Techniques included: manipulative camerawork, personal attacks and a show which focussed on only the weakest evidence presented by the opponents of the official story.

The aim of this article is to address the inaccurate rebuttals offered by the BBC, as well as to analyse the propaganda techniques and reiterate the questions that the BBC failed to address.

[…]

http://debunking-bbc.blogspot.com/

I saw this programme; it was truly bad, in every possible way.

The programme makers must live in a paralel universe, where there is no internet.

This programme will bring more shame on the BBQ; more people have watched ‘Lose Change’ and Terrorstorm than will ever watch a BBQ propaganda piece.

The shit-storm has already begun, and the programme makers are all running for cover no doubt.

Idiots.

Now listen to the person who made this atrocity get grilled by Alex Jones.

Contact: Ilona, Urban, Blakeley – Press Secretary to Aaron Russo
Company: All Your Freedoms, Inc.

Website: http://www.freedomtofascism.com

Winner of numerous Awards, Aaron Russo, announces documentary milestone:

“America: Freedom To Fascism” a groundbreaking non-partisan political documentary jumps overnight to #1 on “Google Video United Kingdom” and #4 on “Google Video Worldwide”.

“America: Freedom to Fascism”, the Grassroots-driven, underground documentary by Writer/Director/Producer, Aaron Russo is a full length feature film with a 5 star “highest rating” on Google Video.

Overnight, the film jumped in rank to #4 on Google Worldwide and to #1 on Google United Kingdom. As of the morning of February 5, 2007 “America: Freedom to Fascism” has been viewed a total of 1,522,097 times since it was first uploaded to Google on October 20, 2006.

Mr. Russo is gratified with the public success of the film despite the fact it has not received a single review from any mainstream television or major media organization.

The American people are to be congratulated for waking up to the fact their Government has shirked its responsibility to coin money, and instead handed it over to a private banking cartel, the Federal Reserve, which charges the government interest on the paper they print.

This fact explains the American government’s burdensome debt which falls squarely on the shoulders of every working American. Yet no Politician is addressing this issue.

Mr. Russo’s previous films have received 6 Academy Award nominations, and he personally has won an Emmy, Tony, Grammy, Golden Globe and an NAACP Image Award for Best Film of the Year; AND is credited with the all-time classics: The Rose with Bette Midler and Trading Places with Eddie Murphy.

The amazing success of this film illustrates the power of the internet and grassroots word of mouth activism.
This compelling documentary has captivated grassroots audiences worldwide since its Fall theatrical and internet release.

“America: Freedom to Fascism” chronicles the history of the Federal Reserve System, the resultant income tax, and leads the viewer into the imminent future of our soon-to-be controlled, way of life. Russo has brilliantly written a documentary about a seemingly “dry” topic and turned it into a riveting masterpiece. This is one history lesson you’re not likely to forget anytime soon.

Russo affirms, “The People are ready for this. They know something isn’t right, and this explains it all. They are hungry for this information”. People want the truth. Aaron is ready, able and willing to deliver it. Perhaps Mr. Russo is on to something.

[…] In the industrialized West, there evolved the prevailing Pseudo-religious dogma that human beings are at the centre of ‘G-d’s creation in the universe’. This dogma is the ideological motivation behind the on-going de-legitimization of the verfiable contact that people have had with Extraterrestrials (ETs). This apparent dogma has become the modern equivalent of the corresponding dogma, that “the world is flat”, which Church and other elites centuries ago used to champion. In contrast, free of Western pseudo-religious based dogma, the Buddhist milieu of China, has freed their scientific community, with the support of government, and ofcommunity participation, to seek to explore UFO incidences and evidence of human contact with Extraterrestrials.

What is dogma?

‘Dogma’ is a system of obfuscations, propaganda and related ideology, which elites present as “truth”, with the aim to maintain social control, and toexpand their own hold on power. Other examples of current operating dogma include schemes of socialization that aim to convince people that “capitalism promotes freedom and democracy”, that “privatization is a good thing”, and that “economic protectionism is a bad thing”.

A notable example of dogma, in the context of the so-called ‘War on Terrorism’, is that “the U.S. and its coalition partners are waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan not subtantively for oil, but to promote human rights;” meanwhile well-documented human destruction, suffering and oppression worsen. […]

Agoracosmopolitan

The Chinese get it, but will they be the first to marked with reverse engineered products? They have done it before.

UFO research is an appreciated and duly recognized science in China

Izvestia reports that China has a record number of UFO scientific and community-based organizations. There are many who even attempt to establish some sort of a contact with extraterrestrials. Their actions are protected by the National Society of the Extraterrestrial Studies, which was founded 25 years ago. This National Society is financed by the government.

Only professional scientists and engineers are allowed members in the Society. A person also required to have Ph.D. in science and have several published works about UFOs. About a third of all members of the society are also members of the Government of China.

The study and civic appreciation of Extraterrestrials are NOT systematically marginalized as the case in the industralized West, which tries to use dogma to ridicule community and academic UFO research initiatives, and also the work of ‘Exopolitics’ groups.

And finally:

Western science and pseudo-religions share corresponding systems of dogma, which seek to deny human contact with Extraterrestrials

In order to appreciate the systematized denial of human extraterrestrial contact and influences on Human civilization, which prevails in the West, one needs to appreciate that “official science” and “institutionalized religion” in the West are two different “heads” of the same body politic. Yes, “official science” in the West talks of “evolution”, and Western institutionalized religion talks of “Creation”. However, both groups have reached an apparent consensus to disregard clear evidence of verifiable contact and influences by Extraterrestrials on Human civilization. This joint denial is based upon a shared oppressive ideology, which seeks to repress critical human knowledge of cosmic associations and interactions with Off-world Human and other ET civilizations.

The very same apparent dogma shared between the Western scientific and institutionalized pseudo-religious Establishment, converges in their “community of interest” associated with their joint pursuit of venality and greed. Examples of the sell-out of integrity, and associated buying into ideology and compromises to elite-induced peer pressure, is well documented in the Western scientific community, that operates in a crass materialistic societal milieu, which ignores basic principles of human rights and democracy. This very same shared dogma between Western scientific and institutionalized pseudo-religious Establishments, is also responsible for the path of oppression, genocide, wars, racisms, and environmental destruction which scientific “techologicalocrats” and self-professed “Christian” pseudo-religious missionaries and other apologists have furthered and have supported.

Jesus who supposedly inspired Western “Christian” religion, which is based on corroborations in the Bible, sought to support the need for wisdom, accompanied by peace and lovingkindness. However, the actual historical practice of institutionalized Christianity, in contrast, has been to maniupate the masses into accepting bigoted views that are designed to complement the materialistic-centred objectives of an “organized power” elite.

Saying that “the Earth is round.. and revolved around the Sun” used to be an indictable offence with the prospective sentence of capital punishment, in Western “Christian” Society which regarded such talk to be the mutterings of seditious lunatics. “Official Science” and “institutionalized religion” in the West is not substantively inspired by the free-spirited pursuit of wisdom. Rather, these Establishment milieus in the West are guided by “elite ideologues” who in contrast with China, and for their own dogma-driven agenda, seek to delude the public on Extraterrestrial awareness, and other areas. […]

As human civilization is being destroyed under the hyprocisy which guides the Western Scientific and pseudo-religious Establishment, the timely needed enlightenment of human populations on a reported Extraterrestrial presence, could very well be led by China. The government of China notwithstanding accounts of human rights abuses, appears to have constructively prepared members of that society, on the kind of potentially vital awareness context, which Western governments continue to deny its own societal members. […]

I like it.

02 February 2007

The mysterious lights in the sky over Archway

DOZENS of mysterious lights were spotted hovering in the sky above Archway – spreading panic among residents below.

Unidentified flying orange objects stopped traffic and left residents staring skyward in disbelief at around 5.30pm on Thursday.

Islington police received four calls within a matter of minutes.

Witness Alix McAlister, 34, a market stall trader from Bredgar Road, Archway, said: “I just picked up my son from nursery in Bredgar Road. I had just come out of the door when I noticed what was going on in the sky.

“There were a group of them – 10 to 15 of them moving together. My first impression was that they reminded me of a squadron of aeroplanes in formation. But they didn’t have a proper formation and they were all moving at the same speed.

“I thought for a while that something was happening in the centre of London. Bombs and planes crossed my mind. But I realised very quickly that they didn’t look like any aircraft I’d seen before.

“They were coming from the north and moving south. And then they kind of stopped and they were hovering. There was no sound. They seemed to fade away and I saw more coming and then they stopped. It lasted about 10 minutes.”

Islington police informed Contact International UFO Research about the sightings. Soon after another witness contacted the Oxford-based organisation, which is devoted to solving the mystery of UFOs, and described what he saw.

A spokesman for Contact International said: “He told me he was picking his daughter up from school and he saw many people looking up in the air. Traffic had stopped and people were staring.

“He said he saw between 12 and 15 orange lights travelling across the sky. Then they would stop and then they went upwards.

[…]

Islington Gazette

hmmmmmm!

don’t go out without your binocs and cameras for the next few months chaps and chapettes!

Visa Denied: How Anti-Arab Visa Policies Destroy US Exports, Jobs and Higher Education In the aftermath of 9/11 US visa processing in the Arab world has ground to a halt.

US consulates formerly striving to outsource key visa processes to travel agencies before the terror attacks are now paralyzed and fearful. Under funded and insufficient security review processes leave Arab executives, prospective students, and vacation travelers in limbo for years or looking for alternative destinations. Shabby treatment of those who successfully run the visa gauntlet leaves many vowing never to return to the US. How much has it cost? The damage assessment is now in:

• Total US manufacturing jobs sustained by Arab market demand reached 215,000 in the year 2005, but could have been 420,000 with more effective and non-discriminatory US visa policies.
• Arab business and tourist travelers remained at half their 2001 levels, creating five year travel related service losses of $1.775 billion and 4,126 potential service jobs.
• In 2005
  Arab student enrollment in the US higher education system reached only 66% of the 2001 level. The US higher education system lost $1.989 billion in revenue and 9,000 education and support service jobs.

The 200 page Visa Denied report quantifies the damage done to US exporters, travel related service industries and the higher education system. Visa Denied recommends steps to correct and realign a severely degraded system to the true opportunity cost of flawed and sometimes discriminatory policies. Visa Denied traces a path from freewheeling days of outsourced national security of the State Department “Visa Express” system exploited by 9/11 hijackers toward the secure, efficient, and color blind visa policy American stakeholders expect and deserve.

Table of Contents and Free Chapters
(All 11.3 MB PDF)

1.0 Executive Summary (.1 MB PDF)

2.0 Free Travel and Free Trade: The US National Interest (1.4 MB PDF)

3.0 The Trade Consequences of US Visa Barriers (6.4 MB PDF)

Affected Industries
Key US State Stakeholders
4.0 Turning Away the World’s Highest-Spending Tourists (.4 MB PDF)

5.0 Cutting America’s Link to Tomorrow’s Leaders (1.3 MB PDF)

Fixing the Fulbright

6.0 Country-Level Damage Assessment
United Arab Emirates
The Dubai Ports World Debacle
Politics vs. National Security Concerns
DPW Analysis and Lessons Learned
Saudi Arabia
2005: A Year of Missed Opportunities
Egypt
Kuwait
Algeria
Qatar
Iraq 7.0 Conclusions: Restoring Visitors and Trade
Appendix – Opportunity Cost Methodology
Travel and Tourism
Arab Students
Arab Market Imports from the US

[…]

http://www.irmep.org/visa.htm

And there you have it.

What this report had better say, is that this 100,000,000,000 dollars is just the beginning and that all of that money was spent in other countries. This money is not sitting in the pockets of people waiting to spend it on america and its products and services, it is GONE, and will continue to evaporate, and the effects of this will last generations; more than the number of generations that The Lord Of Darkness predicts the bogus war on turrr is set to last.

What this article also doesn’t go into is the effect of the loss of influence on the world caused by people never getting to see the inside of the USA, and of course, the rise in influence of other countries as students come back thinking like Germans, Russians, Chinese etc etc.

Told you so.

It’s a new category don’t cha know!

…and that link should point to one of the articles predicting people abandoning the good ‘ol usa as a place to visit, and of course, my google fu is fucked up today and i cant find one….bleh!

by Paul Craig Roberts

Bush’s “surge” speech is a hoax, but members of Congress and media commentators are discussing the surge as if it were real.

I invite the reader to examine the speech. The “surge” content consists of nonsensical propagandistic statements. The real content of the speech is toward the end where Bush mentions Iran and Syria.

Bush makes it clear that success in Iraq does not depend on the surge. Rather, “Succeeding in Iraq . . . begins with addressing Iran and Syria.”

Bush asserts that “these two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”

Bush’s assertions are propagandistic lies.

The Iraq insurgency is Sunni. Iran is Shi’ite. If Iran is supporting anyone in Iraq it is the Shi’ites, who have not been part of the insurgency. Indeed, the Sunni and Shi’ites are engaged in a civil war within Iraq.

Does any intelligent person really believe that Iranian Shi’ites are going to arm Iraqi Sunnis who are killing Iraqi Shi’ites allied with Iran? Does anyone really believe that Iranian Shi’ites are going to provide sanctuary for Iraqi Sunnis?

Bush can tell blatant propagandistic lies, because Congress and the American people don’t know enough facts to realize the absurdity of Bush’s assertions.

Why is Bush telling these lies? Here is the answer: Bush says, “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

In those words, Bush states perfectly clearly that victory in Iraq requires US forces to attack Iran and Syria. Moreover, Bush says, “We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.”

What do two US aircraft carrier attack groups in the Persian Gulf have to do with a guerrilla ground war in Iraq?

The “surge” is merely a tactic to buy time while war with Iran and Syria can be orchestrated. The neoconservative/Israeli cabal feared that the pressure that Congress, the public, and the American foreign policy establishment were putting on Bush to de-escalate in Iraq would terminate their plan to achieve hegemony in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq would mean the end of the neoconservatives’ influence. It would be impossible to start a new war with Iran after losing the war in Iraq.

The neoconservatives and the right-wing Israeli government have clearly stated their plans to overthrow Muslim governments throughout the region and to deracinate Islam. These plans existed long before 9/11.

Near the end of his “surge” speech, Bush adopts the neoconservative program as US policy. The struggle, Bush says, echoing the neoconservatives and the Israeli right-wing, goes far beyond Iraq. “The challenge,” Bush says, is “playing out across the broader Middle East. . . . It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time.” America is pitted against “extremists” who “have declared their intention to destroy our way of life.” “The most realistic way to protect the American people,” Bush says, is “by advancing liberty across a troubled region.”

This, of course, is a massive duplicitous lie. We have brought no liberty to Iraq, but we have destroyed their way of life. Bush suggests that Muslims in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine are waiting and hoping for more invasions to free them of violence. Did Bush’s invasion free Iraq from violence or did it bring violence to Iraq?

It is extraordinary that anyone can listen to this blatant declaration of US aggression in the Middle East without demanding Bush’s immediate impeachment.

Republican US Senator Chuck Hagel declared Bush’s plan to be “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.” In truth, it is far worse. It is naked aggression justified by transparent lies. No one has ever heard governments in Iraq, Syria, or Iran declare “their intention to destroy our way of life.” To the contrary, it is the United States and Israel that are trying to destroy the Muslim way of life.

The crystal clear truth is that fanatical neoconservatives and Israelis are using Bush to commit the United States to a catastrophic course.

[…]

Anti-War

We of course, know that bush doesn’t know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims:

[…] The Iranian government doesn’t ’sponsor terrorism’. The entire cause of ‘terrorism’ is USUKs interference in other people’s countries. Look at this documentary to find out just how IGNORANT Bliar and Bu$h are; the killer part is where the presenter recounts the event where Bu$h took some Shias and Sunnis to the Super Bowl. They talked. Somehow, the discussion came round to Islam, and someone mentioned that Sunnis and Shias sometimes….’don’t get along’, whereupon The Great Satan said, “You mean that there is more than one kind of muslim?”. […]

BLOGDIAL

If americans (and by americans, i mean the 50% that don’t agree with fascism) need to ‘step up to the plate’ and DO SOMETHING about the preparations for an attack on Iran.

At the very minimum, they (the 50%) should stage a seven day national strike. Everyone and every business that is against expanded war close up shop for one solid week.

Thats not so hard is it?

Fact: People actually DO see unknown, advanced performance craft with capabilities well beyond what ANY earth government or military is currently capable of producing. So many tens of thousands of reports from very credible and many technically adept witnesses going back at least to 1947 show that these objects seen are real and that they are not man made.

The same lame categorizing of witnesses who have seen these objects as “believers” is as incredibly stupid as categorizing people who have seen airplanes flying and on the runways as “believers”. Are they to be considered as airplane believers or as witnesses? i think it is those who label witnesses as believers that are the “true believers” of their own horse manure.

Ridicule and debunking of such sightings are the signs of little, fearful minds being confronted with strange things they cannot neatly place into their own extremely limited and prejudiced worldview. […]

Comments on the O’Hare event on Cosmic Log

We have been saying this for decades; its only a matter of time before something irrefutable happens, and thanks to the density of cameras today, its probably going to happen very soon. There are already so many pieces of footage out there it just boggles the imagination that there are still people who think UFOs are not alien spacecraft.

If you get a chance, download or buy Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs there is some footage on there that is mind blowing.