Dumbing down: the proof (may have to register)

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=5313&issue=2004-11-27
Issue: 27 November 2004

As a service to Spectator readers who still have any doubts about the decline in educational standards, we are printing these exam papers taken by 11-year-olds applying for places to King Edward’s School in Birmingham in 1898.

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

1. Write out in your best handwriting:-

‘O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o’ Dee.’
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
And all alone went she.

The western tide crept up along the sand,
And o’er and o’er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The rolling mist came down and hid the land –
And never home came she.

2. Parse fully ‘And call the cattle home.’

3. Explain the meaning of o’ Dee, dank with foam, western tide, round and round the sand, the rolling mist.

4. Write out separately the simple sentences in the last two lines of the above passage and analyse them.

5. Write out what you consider to be the meaning of the above passage.

GEOGRAPHY

1. On the outline map provided, mark the position of Carlisle, Canterbury, Plymouth, Hull, Gloucester, Swansea, Southampton, Worcester, Leeds, Leicester and Norwich; Morecambe Bay, The Wash, Solent, Menai Straits and Lyme Bay; St Bees Head, The Naze, Lizard Point; the rivers Trent and Severn; Whernside, the North Downs, and Plinlimmon; and state on a separate paper what the towns named above are noted for.

2. Where are silver, platinum, tin, wool, wheat, palm oil, furs and cacao got from?

3. Name the conditions upon which the climate of a country depends, and explain the reason of any one of them.

4. Name the British possessions in America with the chief town in each. Which is the most important?

5. Where are Omdurman, Wai-Hei-Wai, Crete, Santiago, and West Key, and what are they noted for?

LATIN

1. Write in columns the nominative singular, genitive plural, gender, and meaning of:- operibus, principe, imperatori, genere, apro, nivem, vires, frondi, muri.

2. Give the comparative of noxius, acer, male, diu; the superlative of piger, humilis, fortiter, multum; the English and genitive sing. of solus, uter, quisque.

3. Write these phrases in a column and put opposite to each its Latin: he will go; he may wish; he had; he had been; he will be heard; and give in a column the English of fore, amatum, regendus, monetor.

4. Give in columns the perfect Indic. and active supine of ago, pono, dono, cedo, jungo, claudo.

Mention one example each of verbs followed by the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the dative, the ablative.

5. Translate into Latin:-

1. The general’s little son was loved by the soldiers.
2. Let no bodies be buried within this city.
3. Ask Tullius who found the lions.
4. He said that the city had been taken, and, the war being finished, the forces would return.
6. Translate into English:-

Exceptus est imperatoris adventus incredibili honore atque amore: tum primum enim veniebat ab illo Aegypti bello. Nihil relinquebatur quod ad ornatum locorum omnium qua iturus erat excogitari posset.

ENGLISH HISTORY

1. What kings of England began to reign in the years 871, 1135, 1216, 1377, 1422, 1509, 1625, 1685, 1727, 1830?

2. Give some account of Egbert, William II, Richard III, Robert Blake, Lord Nelson.

3. State what you know of – Henry II’s quarrel with Becket, the taking of Calais by Edward III, the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen, the trial of the Seven bishops, the Gordon riots.

4. What important results followed – the raising of the siege of Orleans, the Gunpowder plot, the Scottish rebellion of 1639, the surrender at Yorktown, the battles of Bannockburn, Bosworth, Ethandune, La Hogue, Plassey, and Vittoria?

5. How are the following persons connected with English History,- Harold Hardrada, Saladin, James IV of Scotland, Philip II of Spain, Frederick the Elector Palatine?

ARITHMETIC

1. Multiply 642035 by 24506.

2. Add together £132 4s. 1d., £243 7s. 2d., £303 16s 2d., and £1.030 5s. 3d.; and divide the sum by 17. (Two answers to be given.)

3. Write out Length Measure, and reduce 217204 inches to miles.

4. Find the G.C.M. of 13621 and 159848.

5. Find, by Practice, the cost of 537 things at £5 3s. 71/2d. each.

6. Subtract 37/16 from 51/4; multiply 63/4 by 5/36; divide 43/8 by 11/6; and find the value of 21/4 of 12/3 of 13/5.

7. Five horses and 28 sheep cost £126 14s., and 16 sheep cost £22 8s.; find the total cost of 2 horses and 10 sheep.

8. Subtract 3.25741 from 3.3; multiply 28.436 by 8.245; and divide .86655 by 26.5.

9. Simplify 183/4 – 22/3 ÷ 11/5 – 31/2 x 4/7.

10. Find the square root of 5,185,440,100.

11. Find the cost of papering the walls of a room 16ft long, 13ft 6in. wide, and 9ft high, with paper 11/2ft wide at 2s. 3d. a piece of 12yds in length.

12. A and B rent a number of fields between them for a year, the rent and other expenses amounting to £108 17s. 6d. A puts in 2 horses, 5 oxen and 10 sheep; and B puts in 4 horses, 1 ox, and 27 sheep. If a horse eats as much as 3 sheep and an ox as much as 2 sheep, how much should A and B each pay?

These papers were kindly sent in by Humphrey Stanbury, whose father took the exam, and passed.

[…]

http://www.rense.com/general75/pass.htm

The image at the top is from this site:

http://americandeception.com/

A standard 1954 civics test on the U.S. Constitution on which student Kenny Hignite received a 98^1/₂% score.

You will remember Naomi Wolf and our post about her:

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree – domestically – as many other nations.

Only the weak minded and people who never watched Star Trek re-runs have a hard time ‘considering’ this. This person is of the exact age she needed to be to have this built in apprehension. Also, the American Constitution and its founding fathers designed the country SPECIFICALLY to stop the emergence of tyranny; every REAL american understands that ALL government, ESPECIALLY your own is capable of turning to tyranny. Americans of her generation were taught about this ever-present danger in great clarity; everyone who did ’social studies’ class was given lessons in this, in healthy distrust of government. it is bewildering that an american of that age can even say this.

Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government

You did, and you forgot!

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=701

I wonder if Kenny Hignite remembered his ‘Social Studies’ lessons in his adulthood and realized that his country was being dismantled. Even if he did not have a full grasp of the meaning of everything in that exam, he was able to memorize all the facts and reproduce them on the day of the exam in fairly neat handwriting; I know a ten year old and an eight year old who have better handwriting by the way.

I am of the opinion that the principles of freedom, the very core ideas of it are what need to be instilled in the young, and they need to be fully understood before you start talking about government. That is the only way you can be fully prepared and made to see clearly just how unjust and bad government is.

This is the threat that the Germans understand fully; Home Schoolers produce people that are able to think for themselves in ways that are unpredictable, non standard and, to them, undesirable. The Buskeros child simply walked away from the detention centre where she was being held, reminiscent of the scene in THX-1138 where the two felons and the hologram penetrate the infinite white void and SEN, astonished says, “nothing stopped us!”. This is the ultimate nightmare for all governments; the tipping point when people understand that their cage is an imaginary one and that there is no one there to stop them from being free.

Of course the Germans are insane for suppressing Home Schoolers; it is precisely those people who create the greatest most imaginative works in the future.

A homeschooling father and mother from Germany have fled to Iran with their son in search of educational freedom and apparently are being sought by authorities for child kidnapping, according to WND sources.

Meanwhile, a new campaign has been launched by German lawmakers to approve a provision that would allow authorities to simply take legal custody of children whose parents are trying to avoid problems associated with the public school system.

The two situations are the latest developments as parental rights in Germany are under attack, especially regarding the right to direct the education of their own children, homeschool advocates say.

WND just weeks ago reported on an “open season,” on homeschoolers in Germany when a government letter to school officials revealed that when parents refuse to send their children to a state-approved school, it is now considered “a misuse of parental custody rights, which violates the well-being of the child.”

Now word has surfaced about a couple whose concern for their gifted son prompted their flight to Iran.

“As a family with a gifted and talented child, we fled Germany … with two suitcases and with the last of our money being spent on our flight to Iran,” a letter from the Mahjoubi Assil family to “supporting friends” said.

The family includes the father, the mother, and the son. It was written by the mother on behalf of the family*.

“As things stand now, Germany is unworthy of membership in the European Community, or to speak on Human Rights in the international arena. The shadows of the Third Reich and the ideology of Adolf Hitler – if not worse – still drift over Germany,” the letter said.

*The names of the family members have been removed at their request.

[…]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59823

All to be upstanding:

Sar Zad Az Ufuq Mihr-i Hawaran
Furug-i Dida-yi Haqq-bawaran
Bahman – Farr-i Iman-i Mast
Payamat Ay Imam Istiqlal. Azadi-naqs-i Gan-i Mast
Sahidan – Picida Dar Gus-i Zaman Faryad-i Tan
Payanda Mani Wa Gawidan
Gumhuri-yi Islami-i Iran

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjqv-USwHPY

By Bob Unruh

Homeschoolers need to be making plans to flee Germany en masse after a government document implied the advent of a coming crackdown that would target them, an advocate says.

The government letter is addressed to “School Administrations of State and Private Schools” and its subject line specifies “Custody withdrawal for violation of mandatory school attendance.”

“The [German] court determined that the parents’ refusal to send their children to either a state or a state approved private school is a misuse of parental custody rights, which violates the well-being of the child,” the letter, dated just a few weeks ago, said, “and which requires actions by the family court. …”

“We ask for acknowledgment and compliance,” the letter, signed by N. Hauf., director of school affairs, said.

WND has carried numerous reports of homeschooling families in Germany running afoul of that nation’s Nazi-era law banning homeschooling, and being fined or otherwise penalized. In recent days, however, the threats against homeschooling parents frequently have included loss of custody of their children, and several families already have fled.

The government letter was forwarded to the United States by a homeschooling advocate in Germany, who expressed his own personal fears for the safety of his family and contemplated leaving his home country himself.

“It is very likely that our family [will have] to leave the country this year. Maybe I have to bring my children and my wife to a place of safety within the next weeks or even days,” the advocate said in a personal message to the Home School Legal Defense Association, the world’s largest homeschool advocacy organization, which has been involved in a number of recent cases in Germany.

“The behavior of German authorities against families who homeschool goes against the very fiber of what free and democratic societies stand for – that governments exist to protect the rights of people not to take them away,” Mike Donnelly, a staff attorney for the HSLDA, said. “In Germany it appears that the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government do not care to protect the human right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children which includes the right to homeschool – a view shared by nearly all other western civilized countries.”

The government letter was from the State of Bavaria’s Ministry of Education and appeared to be directed to local school officials, essentially declaring an open season on homeschoolers in Germany.

It followed a recent Federal High Court decision, which now remains under appeal, that “schulverweigerung” – or those who “refuse” to give their children to public school authorities – actually are misusing their parental rights.

It calls for action against those people, and finishes with the phrase, translated into English, meaning, “To your attention.”

That, the German homeschool advocate said, is an encouragement for civil and criminal case authorities to act against such families.

“There was not yet an official reaction from our authorities, but the case of the Landahl family shows that they can act very quickly,” the advocate said. “So it seems to me the best to think about leaving Germany. The situation is horrible. Homeschoolers who are still here are fearful what happens next. Germany changes quickly into a brutal tyranny and dictatorship.”

Without help, he said, “All homeschool families must leave our country or even give up.”

The Landahl family recently reached England in its flight from Germany in the face of a court case assembled by the mayor of Altenschieg.

The government letter noted the federal court concluded “that the partial withdrawal of custody and the withdrawal of the parental right to determine the place where their children stay to be legitimate when the mandatory school attendance law is violated continuously.”

The letter advised local authorities, “to initiate appropriate action is generally the responsibility of Youth Administration (Child Protective Services). Long term violations of the mandatory school attendance law are to be reported by the schools to the Youth Administration …,” it said.

“The County Court Houses and the County-free cities have been informed by the government accordingly,” it said.

Government crackdowns, or pogroms, are not new in Germany. The most famous probably was Kristallnacht, perpetrated in Hitler’s buildup to World War II, when The Times of London concluded, “No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings … which disgraced that country yesterday.”

In one night, thousands of businesses owned by Jews and synagogues were destroyed, and tens of thousands of people jailed.

Homeschoolers fear the letter is part of a mechanism that would trigger a nationwide roundup of such “lawbreakers.”

“We are seeing what may be a severe crackdown against homeschoolers in Germany,” Donnelly said. This document “appears to send the message to local school officials that it is ‘open season’ on homeschoolers in Germany.”

He said there has been an increase in the number of families fleeing persecution in Germany, and “even American citizens in Germany are also being told that they must enroll their children in the public schools or an approved private school or else face the same measures that German families face.”

He said what’s startling is the absolute unanimity of judges’ opinions in recent cases. “Such unanimity amongst judges in Germany is itself hard to understand. I can’t imagine such unanimity amongst judges in our own country or any other free democratic society –which I suppose points out some of the important differences and why we are having these problems in Germany and nowhere else,” Donnelly said.

Even before the 2007 court ruling and the recent letter, Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, or Network for Freedom in Education, reported that German authorities were rigid in their interpretation of homeschooling bans, up to the point that they expressed plans to change the religious opinions of a family.

The group described a situation in which local police had picked up three children from one family and taken them physically to a public school.

WND reported when a German family wrote to object to such actions. “The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling,” said a government letter in response. “… You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers. …In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement.”

The European Human Rights Court earlier affirmed Germany’s homeschool ban.

That specific case addressed in the opinion involved Fritz and Marianna Konrad, who filed the complaint in 2003 and argued that Germany’s compulsory school attendance endangered their children’s religious upbringing and promotes teaching inconsistent with the family’s Christian faith.

The court said the Konrads belong to a “Christian community which is strongly attached to the Bible” and rejected public schooling because of the explicit sexual indoctrination programs that the courses there include.

The German court already had ruled that the parental “wish” to have their children grow up in a home without such influences “could not take priority over compulsory school attendance.” The decision also said the parents do not have an “exclusive” right to lead their children’s.

The family had appealed under the European Convention on Human Rights statement that: “No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”

But the court’s ruling said, instead, that schools represent society, and “it was in the children’s interest to become part of that society … The parents’ right to education did not go as far as to deprive their children of that experience.”

Government officials repeatedly have expressed a determination to stamp out “parallel societies” and that includes homeschooling. An American family of Baptist missionaries reports being threatened with deportation for homeschool, and a teenager, Melissa Busekros, eventually was returned to her family months after German authorities took her from her home and forcibly detained her in a psychiatric facility for being homeschooled.

“Even the United Nations has called on Germany to reform the way it treats homeschoolers.We appeal to the German people and German leadership to do what is right and to protect rather than attack families who choose to homeschool their children,” the HSDLA has noted.

In the case involving Melissa Busekros, a German appeals court ultimately ordered legal custody of the teenager who was taken from her home by a police squad and detained in a psychiatric hospital in 2007 for being homeschooled be returned to her family because she no longer is in danger.

The lower court’s ruling had ordered police officers to take Melissa – then 15 – from her home, if necessary by force, and place her in a mental institution for a variety of evaluations. She was kept in custody from early February until April, when she turned 16 and under German law was subject to different laws.

At that point she simply walked away from the foster home where she had been required to stay and returned home.

Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government “has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole.”

Drautz said homeschool students’ test results may be as good as for those in school, but “school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens.”

[…]

World Net Daily

I feel very sorry for the Home Schooling Germans.

They need to understand that there is a huge population of Home Schoolers in the UK, and that they have the right to move here and live here whenever they choose. They can and should sell their houses and turn their backs on Germany.

That is exactly what they should do. The Germans are experts in rounding up people – everyone in the world know it. Germany has not been a free country before during or after the Nazis, and as this article vividly explains, it is just as Nazi now as it was in the 1930’s and Herr ‘N. Hauf’ is a Nazi, pure and simple.

It is also another clear example of how the German Constitution is completely worthless. Germans can let roll off of their tongues, phrases like, “misuse of parental custody rights”. Sound familiar? This is the same language that destroys every delineated right in their constitution.

All Germans today are clearly brainwashed against Home Schooling, otherwise there would be widespread outrage that their government was proposing to crack down on these people who are harming no one and simply minding their own business. Any nation of free people where the majority of people understand the principles of freedom would not sit down silently while a group of people were persecuted in this way…but then, we are talking about Germany, and they have a history of sitting down quietly while minorities are eliminated.

These are the facts.

Trying to make Germans and Germany into decent people is like trying to make dry water. Free people are anathema to the Germans and the national character of that country makes it easy for them to suppress or murder anyone that does not conform.

These Home Schoolers are very lucky; they can simply get on a train and arrive in St. Pancras a few hours later as free people. They can move their assets also. It would be difficult and painful to do, but it can be done, and once finished, they will be able to do exactly as they please. They can even go back to Germany whenever they like, to visit their relatives.

Other people who were put on trains by the German government were not so lucky.

No doubt the German government will try and stop the free movement of Germans and their assets to lock in Home Schoolers.

I know some German Home Schoolers, and they are perfectly pleasant people; not brainwashed, decent, friendly, considerate, good parents and exactly the sort of person you would like to have as a neighbor.

German culture is in fact the pure evil here; you can find decent people anywhere from any country – you know this – it is a case of a human brain running an operating system.

People running German culture OS, are running a closed source, non free OS like a certain Borg-like disease that we all love to hate.

People running any Free thinking OS are like Linux; open source, free, extensible, infinitely customizable, portable, unlocked, beautiful, useful and more human like.

Großbritannien wartet Sie deutsche Hauptschulefamilien!

An educated lurker writes:

>>From BBC reportage:
>
> For Mr Huckabee, the key word was “values”,
> with many Republican caucus-goers saying
> the former Baptist minister was someone
> “who shares my values”.
>
> His win was built on the support he got
> from evangelical voters. More
> than half of Republicans interviewed as
> they attended the caucuses said
> they were either born-again or evangelical
> Christians, the Associated
> Press news agency reported.

This report, and most brits have missed and are missing the big news of the campaign; Ron Paul.

Not everyone in the states is an ‘Evangelical’ and if it is the case that ‘more than half’ of the idiots who voted for Huckleberry are those types, then that caucus is skewed.

read this:

http://www.ronpaulnews.net

every day, and watch ALL of the videos on that site going back through the weeks. ITs worth the effort, because this man is causing a revolution in the usa, and its effects are spreading outside the usa also.

> This won’t be good for reasserting the
> separation of church and state,
> obviously.

Ron Paul advocates TOTAL separation of church and state.

> No more freedom of choice on abortion,

Ron Paul is for removing the federal jurisdiction on the abortion matter.

> but more people on
> death row.

Ron Paul is for abolishing capital punishment

> Less big government, but more diktats.

Ron Paul is for a constitutional sized federal government; ie, no diktats.

> And more ‘keeping up with the Muhammeds’

Ron Paul is for removing ALL of america’s 570,000 troops from ALL bases all over the world.

> when it comes to creating an indoctrinated
> population capable of supporting
> faith-based conflict (sick)

Ron Paul is for home schooling and the abolition of the Department of Education.

> in all
> aspects of trade, migration and power-grabbing.
> (Remember the nice lady pastor talking about
> creating an army to combat ‘The Muslims’ at the
> beginning of jesus camp? Heart-warming stuff)

Ron Paul is for open trade and cultural exchange on the personal level with all countries and all peoples without exception and without restriction.

> And the alternative?

Ron Paul!

> Blandness Inc., an everyman for the
> head-in-the-sand generation. A man as strong,
> stand-uppish and resilient
> as the celery sticks in my fridge no longer
> fit even for stock.

You mean Obama of course :)

> Gah!

Ditto.

America is undergoing a volcanic change, and now, even the Main Stream Media is beginning to get on board with the revolution, whereas before, they were entirely dismissive and even openly hostile to Ron Paul.

Why?

Because everyone of them knows that business as usual is off the table, and if America (with a capital ‘A’) is to re-emerge, then Ron Paul is the only candidate that they have who will do the job.

The media in Britain is completely clueless about what is happening over there. Just look at how The Times has been reporting it. Even British journalists in the USA are completely blind to it; read the amazingly blinkered writings of Justin Webb for a tea soaked taste.

Something BIG is happening in america; America is making a comeback, as I said it could, and its about time.

Mike Huckabee is a fraud. He is a two faced, opportunist, hypocritical, tax loving, preacher of false religion.

Of course, he is free to believe whatever he wants and he is free to preach it, but anyone who wants high office and who also wears his religion on his sleeve like a brat with a cold who keeps wiping his nose and showing it to you is simply unfit. The only thing the candidates should be talking about is The Constitution, nothing else; not morality, ‘values’ or any other bogus nonsense. Lets look at what this man is ‘for’:

Faith and Politics
My faith is my life – it defines me. My faith doesn’t influence my decisions, it drives them. For example, when it comes to the environment, I believe in being a good steward of the earth. I don’t separate my faith from my personal and professional lives.

That should make loud sirens sound in every americans head; the only thing that should GUIDE the presidents decisions is THE CONSTITUTION not your own religious beliefs. THat he explicitly does not separate his faith from his professional life(, in this case, his profession is politician and potential president of the united states, ) should signal his immediate disqualification as a candidate – this man is a religious leader who doesn’t understand the separation of church and state. People like Mike Huckabee are extremely dangerous, not because they are religious, but because they do not know what their job is meant to be and what its necessary constraints and limits are.

Marriage
I support and have always supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. As President, I will fight for passage of this amendment. My personal belief is that marriage is between one man and one woman, for life.

Marriage is not the business of the state. Period. This is a perfect example of religious fanaticism creeping into policy. It is also a perfect example of why this man cannot be president; his own views and not the constitution are the basis of his policy decisions. Furthermore, he has the effrontery to want to change the Constitution to reflect his own religious beliefs. The president’s job is to protect our liberty, which includes our right to express our religious beliefs, even if you believe marriage means polygamy. This man is dangerous because he believes he knows what the absolute truth is, and hence, what is good for everybody; rather like a Communist or a Fascist Dictator.

Energy Independence
The first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence. We will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term.

Mike Hukcabee is a religious preacher, not a scientist. He doesn’t understand anything about the dynamics of energy supply (or judging by this statement, economics) and has no business trying to organize it for the entire usa. Only the market can correctly supply energy at the greatest efficiency and lowest cost. That is true for everything, and whenever the government gets involved in a market it creates a distortion and ruins everything. Mike Huckabee is dishonest because he is saying that he can solve something that he cannot. Government needs to get out of business and let people take care of themselves. It is presumptuous that he thinks he can solve this problem, and doubly presumptuous that he thinks he is going to get a second term as president.

National Security/Foreign Policy: Iraq
Iraq is a battle in our generational, ideological war on terror. General Petraeus and our troops are giving their all to provide a window of opportunity for the Iraq government to succeed, while the Democrats are running for the exit doors.

There is no ‘war on terror’. Huckabee saying this means that he is committed to war without end, thats what ‘generational’ means in this context. Mike Huckabee is a suicidal maniac who wants to keep america at war, in other peoples business, and he wants americans to continue to pay for it in blood and cash…only there is no more cash to do it; america has to BORROW money or fraudulently PRINT IT to run its insane wars and 300+ bases around the world. There is also no more blood available, meaning that there is going to have to be a draft to replenish the soldiers for his insane quasi religious war.

National Security/Foreign Policy: War On Terror
I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life. They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society, all in the name of a perversion of religion and an impersonal god. We go to great extremes to save lives, they go to great extremes to take them. This war is not a conventional war, and these terrorists are not a conventional enemy. I will fight the war on terror with the intensity and single-mindedness that it deserves.

We are NOT engaged in a world war. That is a lie. If Huckabee believes that, he is delusional and unfit for command. There is no such thing as a ‘Radical Islamic fascist’ and no one has ‘declared war on the american way of life’. No one has sworn to annihilate those who believe in a free society. These are the words of the fantasy prone, warmongers, the ignorant and imbeciles. This sort of talk is the talk of Neoconservatism and insanity, and Mike Huckabee is clearly insane for believing it. A promise to fight the war on terror is a promise to destroy america utterly, by eliminating the last vestiges of its Constitution, cementing soft fascism, and murdering millions more innocent people round the world as Bush, Cheyney, Blair and Brown just have.

Cuba Policy
As President, I will enforce and implement all provisions of U.S. law governing policy toward Cuba including the Libertad Act. I will continue President Bush’s policy of pursuing indictments against any Cuban officials, including Raul Castro, responsible for crimes against U.S. citizens.

He really IS insane!!!!

Crisis Management
You need to know that your President will calmly and confidently lift you up in a crisis. During the massive emergency of Hurricane Katrina, when local, state, and federal governments were in melt-down, I stepped forward and directed the rescue and relief of 75,000 victims. Our island of success in a sea of failure was one of the reasons Time magazine named me one of America’s five best governors.

No, we need to know that our president is there defending our LIBERTY and nothing more you idiot!

Vertical Politics
Vertical Day is here and I want you to be a part of it.

Straight up to heaven?

All of this from Huckabee’s website.

If you didn’t think so before, now it must be absolutely clear; Huckabee is a totally INSANE and unfit candidate!!!!!

Barak Obama is no better; all we need to know about him is that he would invade Pakistan to find OBL. Another business as usual big government warmongering nutcase. His website’s issue page is full of meaningless twaddle, and on his foreign policy page, the word ‘constiution’ only appears once, in reference to Iraq’s Constitution.

I think that says all we need to know about that very young man.

America continues to be in VERY BIG TROUBLE. They and thanks to them, the entire world has been in a nightmare for decades. Now, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Mike Huckabee and Barak Obama want not only to blow up the tunnel, but they want to douse the light as well.

What a life!

Or:
Paedophiles must guard Children
Fire must guard Gasoline
etc etc

MPs say losing computer data should be made a crime

Tania Branigan, political correspondent
Thursday January 3, 2008
The Guardian

Recklessly or repeatedly mishandling personal information should become a criminal offence, a committee of MPs urges today in the wake of the child benefit fiasco.

no, the COLLECTION of personal information under certain circumstances, should become a criminal offence.

A report from the justice select committee says there is evidence of a widespread problem within government and expresses concern that further cases of data loss are still coming to light, adding that concerns about systemic failings were raised two years ago by the man now in charge of the government’s review of security. The committee says that companies should be obliged to report information losses.

They have been warned repeatedly about the problems inherent in centralized databases which are in fact, not needed to improve services or provide greater ‘security’ of documents. These people, these computer illiterate dimwits are the criminals; they push on ahead at the urging of vendors without any care about the consequences or the wishes of the electorate, in a deliberate and evil bid to do this ‘Transformational Government’ magic trick, which will increase their power by orders of magnitude and enrich their friends. Yes indeed, these people are the criminals, and there are no two ways about it.

“The scale of the data loss by government bodies and contractors is truly shocking, but the evidence we have had points to further hidden problems,” warned Alan Beith, chairman of the committee. “It is frankly incredible, for example, that the measures HMRC [HM Revenue & Customs] has [now] put in place were not already standard procedure.”

What is frankly incredible, is that they have been warned about this specifically and everyone in both houses has read the details written in crystal clear english. There is no way that they can claim that they did not understand the consequences of this diabolical plan hatched by the vendors to make victims of the virtuous villigers of England by the voratious vacuuming of their vital data. They are guilty of not heeding the warnings, and going along with it in an act of flagrant negligence.

The committee says the government must find ways to minimise the risks inherent in maintaining large databases to which a large number of people have access and suggests that new offences might strengthen security procedures.

All the comittees and white papers that they can sit at and print will not stop this headlong rush into disaster. All centralized databases of innocent people must be destroyed. All planned databases like ContactPoint and the NIR must be stopped. Everyone everywhere must refuse to cooperate with any document or process that has been derived from an unreasonable use of their personal data. Everyone everywhere must refuse to allow their biometric data to be harvested for collection into these databases. That means no fingerprinting for any reason, no iris scans and no DNA swabs for anyone except those convicted of a violent offence.

Criminal offences under the Data Protection Act – such as unlawfully obtaining or disclosing personal data – only apply to people who are not the “data controller”. That means that although third parties who misuse the details can be prosecuted the people holding the information, such as large businesses or government departments, cannot be held responsible for breaches. Beith said: “Clearly, criminal sanctions are not the only ones you want to use. But perhaps the issue would be taken more seriously if there was a criminal offence at the end of the line.”

These are the words of a total imbecile.

Once the data is out, no criminal sanction can make it private again.. Its like trying to put an egg back together once it has been broken, you know the story Beith, Humpty Dumpty? Does that make this easier for you to understand?

The report also argues that the information commissioner needs more resources. At present his office’s budget is just £10m a year.

[…]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2234448,00.html

Well, what a surprise. They want MORE MONEY from the TAXPAYER to solve a problem that THEY CREATED out of THIN AIR by using the TAXPAYERS MONEY.

These people really are the criminals, that is absolutely clear.

New Jersey has a thing for Eggs…only this time, its Eggs that have been fertilized and that are growing into human beings:

N.J. Orders HIV Testing For Pregnant Women
Some Groups Call Law Unneeded and Intrusive

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 28, 2007; A03

NEW YORK, Dec. 27 — New Jersey this week launched one of the most ambitious efforts in the country to control mother-to-child transmission of HIV, making screening tests mandatory for all pregnant women in the state beginning next year.

A bill signed into law Wednesday by the Senate president, Richard J. Codey, in his capacity as acting governor, requires two tests for pregnant women, at the beginning of the pregnancy and again in the third trimester, unless the mother objects. If the mother objects, the objection will be noted and the newborn will then be tested for HIV, with the only exception being on religious grounds. Newborns will also be tested if the woman tests positive.

Just four other states have mandated testing for pregnant women, and three more– including New York — require screening of newborns. But New Jersey’s law appears to go further by requiring both.

The mandatory screening has raised privacy concerns. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the state’s chapter of the National Organization for Women both questioned whether the mandated tests violate a woman’s right to privacy and the right to make her own medical decisions.

Riki E. Jacobs, executive director of the Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, a New Jersey nonprofit helping people living with AIDS, said the law is unnecessary and comes when the state should be focused on expanding care for pregnant women. “I am adamantly opposed to this bill. New Jersey already reduced the perinatal rate of transmission with mandatory counseling of pregnant women,” she said. “The issue is getting those women who are not in prenatal care in for services and testing.

“I definitely think it is an invasion of privacy,” Jacobs said. She said women choose to test their babies in 98 percent of cases, so the new law’s mandatory provisions for testing children are not needed: “The fact that we assume women won’t choose to test is ludicrous and wrong.”

But in the end, lawmakers decided that the risk of exposing children to the infection outweighed those concerns.

While men represent the majority of new HIV and AIDS cases in the United States, women now account for an increasing share, from just 8 percent of new diagnoses in 1985 to 27 percent in 2005, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Of the estimated 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States in 2005, about 300,000 were women, and the vast majority of them were between 25 and 44 years old.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other groups, has been recommending that HIV screening become a routine part of prenatal tests. The CDC recommended HIV tests become a routine part of the battery of prenatal tests, and that there be no separate written consent required.

Mother-to-child transmission of the disease — during pregnancies and through breast-feeding — peaked in the United States in 1992, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which reported that the number of cases since then has dropped “dramatically” because of early detection and the increased use of antiretroviral therapy, which lowers the risk of transmission to less than 2 percent.

The majority of those new cases that still occur are mostly among black Americans, reflecting the changed demographic of the epidemic since it was first identified.

According to the CDC, 100 to 200 children a year are infected by their mothers. As of 2005, the last year for which figures are available, there were 6,051 people in the United States living with HIV/AIDS who had been infected perinatally — during pregnancy or breast-feeding.

Of those, 66 percent were black and 20 percent identified as Hispanic.

In New Jersey, a June report by the state’s health department reported 78 percent of those with HIV and AIDS were members of minority groups. That report also found that New Jersey has a significant female population living with the disease, 37 percent of the total.

In signing the bill at a local hospital, Codey said, “We can significantly reduce the number of infections to newborns and help break down the stigma associated with the disease.”

He added: “For newborns, early detection can be the ultimate lifesaving measure.”

New Jersey records about 115,000 births each year. While there were no recorded mother-to-child transmissions this year, as of the June report, there were two children born infected in 2006 and seven born infected in 2005, according to the health department.

[…]

Washington Post

The state has no business mandating that anyone be tested for any disease.

What we need is a simple chart that can instantly show how a law like this is wrong to even the thickest of the lowest common denominator.

Hmmmmmmm!

And of course, all these HIV testing kits need to be paid for and replenished. I smell another scam!

If I may add to Georgia Clifton’s Open Letter to Home Schooling Parents on Behalf of Ron Paul:

When the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), an organization of which I am a lifetime member, announced this past summer that they were endorsing Mike Huckabee’s candidacy for President, I had barely heard of Mike Huckabee and decided to do some research and learn about this candidate. As Christians, it is our duty to judge not according to appearance (or words), but to judge righteous judgment. When making weighty decisions such as who will become our next leader, we need to evaluate our choices carefully. My desire is to lay out the facts that I found concerning Mike Huckabee and ask that you receive them with an open spirit of discernment. I will conclude by presenting you with a powerful alternative that you should prayerfully consider.

Why did the HSLDA endorse Huckabee?
In endorsing Huckabee, the HSLDA said that he is:

1) “a principled conservative”
2) “a friend of homeschooling”
3) “a man of character”
4) “a man with a mature faith in Jesus Christ.”

These are the four reasons the HSLDA gave for supporting Mike Huckabee. Incidentally, this was the actual order in which they gave them. Let’s examine each one, in order of my own priorities:

A man with a mature faith in Jesus Christ?
It’s easy to make this claim, but it’s difficult to speak against it, so I won’t. The only way to know with certainty whether a brother has a “mature faith in Jesus Christ” is not to listen to their words, nor to even look at their actions, but to examine their fruit. Along this line, I would ask why Huckabee’s son David was accused of hanging a dog, slitting its throat and then stoning it to death?

[…]

Putting aside for a moment his irreverent attitude, consider this: he was presented with an opportunity to show us just how strong his faith is in the Scriptures and ultimately the Lord Jesus Christ, but he floundered. He then pointed out that he was the only one on that stage with a theological degree. I would remind all of us that Jesus warned us to “beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” This is the same man who took a pretend phone call from God. Blasphemous sacrilege!

[…]

A friend of homeschooling?
I count myself blessed to have known the beauty of loyalty in friendship. The word friend is a powerful word and brings to mind words like “loyalty,” “defense,” and “familiarity.” A friend stands by you through thick and thin and makes sacrifices for you when necessary. It may surprise you, then, that the New Hampshire NEA has also endorsed Huckabee. The NEA is the largest labor union in the United States and represents public school teachers. How can Mike Huckabee be loyal to both homeschoolers and the powerful public school lobby? The answer is: he can’t. Whoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God, and whoever is the friend of the public school union is the enemy of homeschoolers. This may explain why his “Issues: Education” webpage has only one brief and token sentence mentioning homeschooling. It may also explain why he defends the No Child Left Behind Act.

Where are Huckabee’s loyalties? Well, one morning in 1999, homeschoolers in Arkansas woke up to learn that they had been betrayed by their governor and friend, Mike Huckabee. The HSLDA had reported that under Gov. Huckabee, Arkansas became the first state in the nation to add restrictions to its existing home school law. From the report linked above, Huckabee signed the bill that the HSLDA specifically did not support. Can you call this man who signed legislation taking away our homeschooling freedoms a friend? Only if you are the NEA. Why did they pass this law? According to the HSLDA, the “public school lobby had been working overtime to convince the Arkansas legislature that the home school law was too permissive.” Rather than stand up against the powerful public school lobby, Huckabee caved in and took away freedoms that were previously given to homeschoolers. As the Psalmist wrote, “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.”

[…]

A man of character?
Where do I begin? I believe a man is only as good as his word, and when someone lies to me, I find it difficult to ever have that trust restored. I take lying very seriously. Mike Huckabee has been caught telling and repeating an outright falsehood. Read carefully this webpage that details how he got caught in this pretty blatant lie. How can you trust a man’s character when he is caught lying red-handed? Someone who tells lies is a liar, and that makes Mike Huckabee a liar. Why did the Arkansas Ethics Commission officially reprimand him for violations five times in 14 years?

What do his peers in Christianity say? The conservative “700 Club” has disowned him. What is his reputation like among those outside the church? He is known as someone who has “a mean streak, a thin skin and a penchant for revenge.” Huckabee is a member of a music band called “Capitol Offense.” Would Jesus form a band? If he did, would he name it something like that? According to the band’s website, they formed it because of their “love of … classic rock-n-roll.” Where is the gravity and sobriety that Titus chapter 2 calls for in an older man? It’s not a gospel music band, either. It is a cover band with a set list including songs such as “Born to be wild,” the highly sexually charged “Devil with a Blue Dress,” “Freebird, “Honky Tonk Woman, and other similarly ungodly songs. Go read the lyrics to Honky Tonk Woman (it’s offensive) and imagine the pastor of your church singing that song. If a leader in my church formed a band to play that kind of music, I would call that a very serious problem. And we call him a man of character? On the campaign trail and in debates, Huckabee frequently makes mention of his theological training and his status as an ordained minister. Jesus told us to beware of hypocrites who stand in street corners [feigning spirituality] wanting to be seen of men. We are told to go into our closet and close the door when we pray, so the Father can see us in secret. Why is Huckabee so vocal about his faith and his theological ordination? The only reason I can think of is that he’s doing it for political gains.

[…]

A principled conservative?
Huckabee’s history of pardoning violent felons with disastrous outcomes has been a major problem for his campaign. On immigration, he is a flip-flopper. As Arkansas’s governor, Huckabee supported in-state college tuition for young illegal immigrants, but recently, presumably for political expediency, has completely reversed his position. How about taxes? By the end of his ten-year tenure as governor of Arkansas, Huckabee was responsible for a 37% higher sales tax, 16% higher motor fuel taxes, and 103% higher cigarette taxes, according to Americans for Tax Reform. Check out the infamous video of Governor Huckabee practically begging for any new tax.

What about pro-life issues? When asked about embryonic stem cell research, he said, “I don’t think it’s right to create a life to end a life.” So far, so good, but then he added, “That’s not a good health decision.” What on earth does that mean? He was later asked, “As president, you would seek to ban abortion?” and his response was that “I would seek always to promote the view that life is precious and should be protected. But I think it has to be won on a battlefield of one heart at a time rather than pieces of legislation at a time.” He clearly does not have a clear plan to stop or at least slow abortion.

I’m convinced, but what choice do we have? He’s the best candidate we have!
For this, I only need refer you to our brother, Dr. Ron Paul. For the sake of careful discernment, please look at Ron Paul with a fresh and unbiased eye. Ron Paul is a humble brother in Christ with a blameless record. His enemies have no ammunition against him, and his voting record as a 10-term congressman is consistent. He is a man who has proven himself to be trusted with the power he has been given. As an OB/GYN, he has delivered over 4,000 babies. He has been married for 50 years and has 5 children, 18 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild. He is passionately pro-life and successfully defends that view against liberal pro-deathers. He has a plan to end abortion, starting with overturning Roe v. Wade and returning the decision to the local level where it will be handled by local leaders who must answer to their local voters.

His platform is strictly constitutionalist. His principle is that if the Constitution doesn’t specifically allow it, then the Federal government has no business doing it. He wants to abolish entirely the Department of Education, as well as many other massive unconstitutional government bureaucracies, and replace them with nothing. The beautiful thing is that we can trust him to actually do what he promises. He often repeats the mantra that he wants to “keep the government out of our lives.” As homeschoolers who want to raise our children ourselves, this should be music to our ears.

[…]

Is Ron Paul a friend of homeschoolers?
Ron Paul is the only candidate who has an entire microsite devoted specifically to the issue of homeschooling. According to Ron Paul, “The best way to improve education is to return control to the parents who know best what their children need. Congress should empower all parents, including home-schoolers, to control their children’s education…” Ron Paul also believes that “No nation can remain free when the state has greater influence over the knowledge and values transmitted to children than the family.” Amen! Back in the year 2001, Dr. Paul said, “Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states ‘accountable’ for their education performance. In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable by parents, not federal bureaucrats.” Virginia Baker, a national pioneer of present-day home schooling, and the first mother in Texas to do so, has formally endorsed Dr. Ron Paul. She said, “Dr. Paul is the homeschoolers best friend.”

A friend is someone who will loyally defend you, even to the point of sacrifice, and I personally trust ONLY Ron Paul in this area. There is no candidate that can be trusted to protect the rights of parents to direct their own children’s upbringing and education, except for Ron Paul. Jim Fedako, economist and homeschooling father of five wrote, “As a homeschooling father of five, I recognize that there are many individuals and groups who would like to force my children back into the public schools. In fact, the NEA has a statement on their legislative platform that advocates the end of the homeschooling movement. Ron Paul stands for Liberty. He stands for the right of my wife and I to educate our children at home, away from the influences of the NEA and other such organizations.” Ron Paul isn’t swayed by powerful lobbies. He never accepts bribes or gifts, and votes his conscience regardless of how unpopular it makes him. Ron Paul often finds himself casting the only “No” vote on bills before Congress that he sees as unconstitutional. In the face of what must be unimaginable intimidation, Dr. Paul stays true to what he believes. There are literally hundreds of other reasons to support Ron Paul’s candidacy, and I would encourage you to begin at Ron Paul’s website.

But the media keeps saying that he can’t win! I don’t want to waste my vote.
What right does the media have in telling us who can and can’t win an election? Can they see the future? Or do they have information that is not generally available to the public? What is their track record in correctly predicting the outcome of elections? The truth is, Ron Paul dominates in straw polls, and he has raised many millions of dollars from tens of thousands of personal donations. He has an excellent chance of winning, despite what you may have been told. I would say that to simply vote the way the media tells you to vote is the only way to waste your vote. Vote for who you believe is the best candidate, regardless of who you are told is winning. Please, for the sake of our future liberty as homeschooling families, give this serious thought, discernment, and prayer. Should you choose to support Ron Paul, please pray for him, his family, and his candidacy. Support him financially, and tell other homeschooling families about this champion of our liberty.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/whitinger1.html

???!!!

Shocking!

Child database system postponed

Ministers are postponing a new database on every child in England, pending a security review and changes to the system including its access controls.

Children’s minister Kevin Brennan told MPs there would be a five-month delay to the £224m system, ContactPoint.

The security review was ordered after the loss of child benefit discs.

ContactPoint holds name, address, date of birth, gender, parental contact information, details of school and any professionals working with the child.

It does not include actual case records.

The database came out of the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie and is designed to make it easier to co-ordinate the work of different child protection agencies.

‘Questions raised’

Mr Brennan said in a statement: “Over the last few months we have been considering the substantial stakeholder feedback we have received and looked at the implications that the resulting proposed changes could have on the system.

“It is clear from the considerable work we have done so far that we will need more time than we originally planned to address the changes to ContactPoint which potential system users suggested.”

The change to the timetable will mean deployment to the “early adopters” local authorities and national agencies in September or October 2008, and to all others by May 2009.

Mr Brennan said the loss of the Revenue and Customs child benefit data “has raised questions about the safety of large scale personal data in other government systems, including ContactPoint”.

An independent assessment of security procedures would be undertaken by Deloitte.

“Delaying the implementation of ContactPoint will enable the independent assessment of security procedures to take place as well as address the changes to ContactPoint that potential system users have told us they need,” Mr Brennan said.

He added: “The fundamental design of ContactPoint will not change; the alterations will make sure the system works even more effectively for users and improves the ability of local authority ContactPoint teams to manage user access.”

Shadow Children’s Minister Maria Miller said: “The government should also use this opportunity to see whether it really is necessary to have a database for every single child in the country, accessible to 330,000 people, given the significant amount of concern that this could overload the system and lead to a dumbing down of information.

“We have always supported, as an alternative, a slimmed-down tightly controlled database which focuses on those genuinely vulnerable children.”

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7115546.stm

My emphasis.

This is one of the most absurd statements ever. Just when you thought that they couldn’t get more stupid, we have the imbecile ‘Kevin Brennan’ saying they need more time to CHANGE THE VERY NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE and RE-DEFINE THE RULES OF MATHEMATICS before they roll out ContactPoint.

The fact is, you computer illiterate JACKASS, no matter how long you delay it, not matter what you do to re-design it, data will always be copyable, and if you put together ContactPoint in the way it has been planned, it will still be copyable. Read how this is going to be done, in evidence already submitted to you. Even if you make it difficult for insiders with root level DB access, wholesale copying WILL take place on a page by page basis. Remember, there are going to be 300,000 people with authorized access; it will be impossible to monitor them all, like that PHD’s submission says.

No amount of security reviews will be able to stop people from printing off ContactPoint pages. Deloitte knows this. The alterations you are talking about will do nothing to reduce the risk you are putting all the children of the UK in.

These are the FACTS.

ContactPoint MUST BE ABANDONED COMPLETELY, and it is absolutely sickening that you and your inhuman child harming monster colleagues are pushing on with this abomination.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize — much less cultivate — the talents of many brilliant people. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. The universality of his message is evidenced by its rampant popularity online. A typical review: “If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, please stop whatever you’re doing and watch it now.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

and then…

Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of three stories and an argument. The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/187

The guidelines covering Home Schooling in the UK have been published by the DfES. Some HE people think that they are fine, and are actually celebrating them as some sort of triumph. I beg to differ.

As a matter of principle, If you are a free person, your relationship with government must be unambiguous, and the powers of government clearly delineated. You must also have protection from being the victim of false accusations. These guidelines enshrine ambiguity and false accusation as a pretext for investigation (violating the ‘innocent before proven guilty’ principle).

It doesn’t matter what else the guidelines say that is positive for Home Schoolers; as long as the bad sections are in there, your rights are effectively nullified.

The problem with these guidelines boil down to a few words:

under Section 437(1) of the Education Act 1996, local authorities shall intervene if it appears that parents are not providing a suitable education

This means that upon the judgement of an individual in a Local Authority, by his prejudices and background, you can be compelled to account to him that you are educating your children to his satisfaction. What constitutes ‘suitable education’ is not defined in the law, and in fact the guidelines say this, so the onus is placed on individuals to make up standards as they see fit. If you do not satisfy the prejudices of an individual, then they can:

…serve a notice in writing on the parent requiring him to satisfy them within the period specified in the notice that the child is receiving such (suitable) education.

I am completely baffled as to how someone can think this is in any way acceptable. It gets worse. The guidelines say that:

Parents are under no duty to respond to such enquiries, but it would be sensible for them to do so.

The phrase appears three times in the guidelines in slightly different forms.

This is nothing less than a threat. “You had better talk to us…OR ELSE”. I simply cannot believe that this sort of language has been left in this document.

If you do not comply with what they say is ‘sensible to do’ then the Local Authority can serve a ‘school attendance order’ on you, forcing you to send your child to school:

(a) a parent on whom a notice has been served under subsection (1) fails to satisfy the local education authority, within the period specified in the notice, that the child is receiving suitable education, and

(b) in the opinion of the authority it is expedient that the child should attend school, the authority shall serve on the parent an order (referred to in this Act as a “school attendance order”), in such form as may be prescribed, requiring him to cause the child to become a registered pupil at a school named in the order.”

The guidelines are self contradictory. They say on the one hand that ‘suitable education’ is not defined in law, but on the other they say that Local authorities can force you to send your child to school if they determine that you are not providing suitable education. They say that:

It should be noted that parents of all educational, social, racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds successfully educate children outside the school setting and these factors should not in themselves raise a concern about the suitability of the education being provided.

but then there is a section that deals specifically with ‘Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Children’. Why is this section there given the text above? If you regard Roma people as a ‘race’ then it is covered. If you think of them as a ‘social group’ or an ‘ethnic group’ then they are covered. This section is curious, and it speaks to the attitudes of the people who authored this document.

How anyone can construe this as something to celebrate is completely beyond me. The only saving grace about this is that what has been published are guidelines and not new law. Nevertheless, staff in Local Authorities who are hostile to Home Schooling will see this as a new tool in their hands to investigate every Home Schooler in their catchment area.

Let me put it this way to those gleeful Home Schoolers who are celebrating over this weekend. Just imagine if, in your Local Authority, Mr. Tony Mooney was the man in charge of Home Schoolers. Would you like this document to be the thing he uses to guide his actions?

Not a very pleasant thought is it?

The fact of the matter is, every time you have a poorly written and ill thought out document like this governing your life or some aspect of it, you are in danger of being violated. If the current crop of Local Authority staffers are reasonable that is no guarantee that the next lot will be.

That Home Schoolers in the UK are failing to understand this is, frankly, frightening.

Heh, the title is from the film ‘Fortress’ which you, of course, must see:

The story of Fortress takes place in drastically overpopulated America of the year 2017, where each woman is allowed only one pregnancy. John Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and his wife Karen (Loryn Locklin) flee to Mexico when she becomes pregnant after the death of their first child. They are captured by border police and sent to the Fortress, a subterranean high-security prison owned by the Men-Tel corporation and operated by “Zed-10,” an omnipotent computer system, and a sadistic, genetically “enhanced” warden (Kurtwood Smith) who has nefarious plans involving Brennick’s wife and unborn child.

Amazon

In this film, the prisoners are fitted with small, wireless, surgically implanted agony devices that, by voice command, can ‘intestinate’ any prisoner by name. When someone is misbehaving in ‘genpop’ all the warden has to do is say, “intestinate Jones!” and the prisoner Jones will have excruciating pain inflicted upon him in his abdomen. It looks like the effect of a Taser hit, only without the wires.

Which brings us nicely to:

Shock tactics
Hundreds of children no other school wants — from the autistic to the merely troubled — attend a centre in America where electric shocks are administered for even the smallest misdemeanour. Forced to wear 10lb backpacks with electrodes attached to their skin, they never know when their teachers will deliver this ‘behaviour-modification’ therapy. Why hasn’t the school been closed down?

Jennifer Gonnerman

Rob Santana awoke terrified. He’d had that dream again, the one where silver wires ran under his shirt and into his pants, connecting to electrodes attached to his limbs and torso. Adults armed with surveillance cameras and remote-control activators watched his every move. One press of a button, and there was no telling where the shock would hit – his arm or leg or, worse, his stomach. All Rob knew was that the pain would be intense. Every time he woke from this dream, it took him a few moments to remember that he was in his own bed, that there weren’t electrodes locked to his skin, that he wasn’t about to be shocked. It was no mystery to him where this recurring nightmare came from – not A Clockwork Orange or 1984, but the years he spent confined in America’s most controversial “behaviour-modification” institution.

In 1999, when Rob was 13, his parents sent him to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, in Massachusetts, 20 miles outside Boston. The institution, which calls itself a “special-needs school”, takes in all kinds of troubled kids – autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar, emotionally disturbed – and attempts to change their behaviour with a complex system of rewards and punishments, including painful electric shocks to the torso and limbs. Of the 230 residents, about half are wired to receive shocks. Eight states send students to this institution, with New York providing the most. The price tag for a year there is $220,000; states and school districts pick up the tab.

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center is the only institution in the US that disciplines students by giving them electric shocks, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters, or any of more than 2.2m inmates in US jails and prisons. Over its 36-year history, there have been numerous lawsuits and government investigations. Last year, New York-state investigators filed a blistering report that made the place sound like a high-school version of Abu Ghraib. Yet the programme continues to thrive – in large part because nobody, except desperate parents and a few legislators, seems to care about what happens to the hundreds of kids who pass through its gates.

In Rob Santana’s case, he freely admits he was an out-of-control kid with “serious behavioural problems”. At birth he was abandoned at the hospital, traces of cocaine, heroin and alcohol in his body. A middle-class couple adopted him when he was 11 months old, but his troubles continued. He started fires; he got kicked out of preschool for opening the back door of a moving school bus; he cut himself with a razor when he was six. His mother took him to specialists, who diagnosed him with a slew of psychiatric problems: attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Rob remained at the Rotenberg Center for about 31/2 years. From the start, he cursed, hollered and fought with employees. Eventually the staff obtained permission from his mother and a court to use electric shock. Rob was forced to wear a backpack containing five 2lb battery-operated devices, each connected to an electrode attached to his skin. “I felt humiliated,” he says. “You have a bunch of wires coming out of your shirt and pants.”

Rob remained hooked up to the apparatus 24 hours a day. He wore it while jogging on the treadmill and playing basketball, though it wasn’t easy to sink a jump-shot with a 10lb backpack on. At night, he slept with the backpack next to him, under the gaze of a surveillance camera.

[…]

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/

And so on.

How long will it be before ordinary schools demand that the students are fitted with some sort of control device? They are already requiring that backpacks be transparent, breaking the arms of students for dropping cake, requiring students to pass through metal detectors to enter, policing the hallways with armed guards, making the schools more like prisons than schools by any definition.

In this age of pain compliance and its widespread use, the answer must be ‘not long’ methinks. It is a logical and small progression from the preceding incremental nastiness that I listed above.

Like it says in that great film THX-1183, “It all happened so slowly that most men failed to realize that anything had happened at all”.

That is what we are seeing every day.

As for ‘Fortress’, lets look at the elements of the plot line one by one:

The story of Fortress takes place in drastically overpopulated America of the year 2017,

Check, that’s coming.

where each woman is allowed only one pregnancy.

Check, that’s coming.

John Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and his wife Karen (Loryn Locklin) flee to Mexico when she becomes pregnant after the death of their first child. They are captured by border police and…

Will there still be a ‘Mexico’ and a border in 2017? Hmmmm!

…sent to the Fortress, a subterranean high-security prison

Check, already here, ‘Supermax’.

owned by the Men-Tel corporation

Check, already here, prisons are now run by corporations as routine.

and operated by “Zed-10,” an omnipotent computer system

That’s coming, guaranteed.

and a sadistic, genetically “enhanced” warden (Kurtwood Smith)

Check, save the enhancements.

who has nefarious plans involving Brennick’s wife and unborn child.

The state already has this covered, right?

And there you have it.

Is there anyone out there that thinks any of the above either has not happened or is not very much on track to happen?

If there is, I want to be smoking what you are smoking.

As I said to you some time ago, the state will take your children from you if you refuse to promote their propaganda to your children. Read this:

Foster child to be taken away because Christian couple refuse to teach him about homosexuality

They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 30 vulnerable children.

But Vincent and Pauline Matherick will this week have their latest foster son taken away because they have refused to sign new sexual equality regulations.

To do so, they claim, would force them to promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith.

The 11-year-old boy, who has been in their care for two years, will be placed in a council hostel this week and the Mathericks will no longer be given children to look after.

The devastated couple, who have three grown up children of their own, became foster parents in 2001 and have since cared for 28 children at their home in Chard, Somerset.

Earlier this year, Somerset County Council’s social services department asked them to sign a contract to implement Labour’s new Sexual Orientation Regulations, part of the Equality Act 2006, which make discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal.

(Article continues below)

Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages.

They could also be required to take teenagers to gay association meetings.

When the Mathericks objected, they were told they would be taken off the register of foster parents.

The Mathericks have decided to resign rather than face the humiliation of being expelled.

Mr Matherick, a 65-year-old retired travel agent and a primary school governor, said: “I simply could not agree to do it because it is against my central beliefs.

“We have never discriminated against anybody but I cannot preach the benefits of homosexuality when I believe it is against the word of God.”

Mrs Matherick, 61, said they had asked if they could continue looking after their foster son until he is found a permanent home, but officials refused and he will be placed in a council hostel on Friday.

She said: “He was very upset to begin with. We are all very close, but he’s a mature young man and he’s dealing with it.”

The couple, who have six grandchildren and one greatgrandchild, are both ministers at the nonconformist South Chard Christian Church.

When they first started fostering they took in young single mothers and their babies.

More recently they have been caring for children of primary school age.

Mr Matherick added: “It’s terrible that we’ve been forced into this corner. It just should not happen.

“There are not enough foster carers around anyway without these rules.

“They were saying that we had to be prepared to talk about sexuality with 11-year-olds, which I don’t think is appropriate anyway, but not only that, to be prepared to explain how gay people date.

“They said we would even have to take a teenager to gay association meetings.

“How can I do that when it’s totally against what I believe?”

Religious campaigners say the couple are the latest victims of an equality drive which puts gay rights above religious beliefs.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders have complained that the rules force them to overturn long-held beliefs.

The Mathericks are planning to fight their case in the courts with the backing of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship.

The same organisation is backing Christian magistrate Andrew McClintock who resigned from the family courts in a row over gay adoption.

He says he was forced to resign because he was not allowed to opt out of cases where he might have to send a child to live with gay parents.

The Mathericks’ case comes at a time when there is a chronic shortage of foster parents, who work on a voluntary basis.

An extra 8,000 are needed to plug the gaps in the service.

Researchers have found that continually moving children from home to home can have a devastating impact on their education and general welfare.

But a report last year revealed that the shortage of carers meant that some children in care are being forced to move up to three times a year.

David Taylor, Somerset County Council’s corporate director for children and young people, said: “No decision has been made about the deregistration of Mr and Mrs Matherick.

“The council is committed to promoting the interests of children and young people and welcomes foster carers from all backgrounds and faiths.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Now, imagine a situation where people in the UK who choose to home school are forced to sign an agreement that they will follow a state authored curriculum or face sending their children to school by force.

You can bet that such a curriculum will include philosophies and lifestyles of the kind that the Matherics do not agree with, and of course this has nothing to do with any subject in particular, but instead has everything to do with the principle of the state mandating what must and must not be taught to children. The fact that the Matherics are Christians and that they object to Homosexuality is irrelevant, and a distraction.

In the post describing a child kidnapped from its parents by council workers because the child was ‘fat’ we have an example of prejudiced council workers exerting their arbitrary will over decent people. The same is bound to happen again, and to home schoolers, on just about any pretext you can imagine – it is only a matter of time, and as home schooling is adopted in greater numbers the prejudiced and insane workers at local authorities all over the country will feel obliged to butt their ugly heads in and micro manage the lives of home schoolers.

It is essential that home schoolers in the UK refuse any and all involvement by the state. Some home schoolers welcome inspection by the ‘LA’ but this is an error; once you let them in consensually, they can then make an assessment of you and home schooling, extrapolate to all home schoolers, and then before you know it, you will all be compelled to sign agreements to teach what they want you to teach, and by teach I mean indoctrinate. Specifically, we are talking about indoctrinating your children with their beliefs on:

• Citizenship
• Religion
• Sexuality
• Culture
• Politics
• Gender
• Insert what you believe and they don’t here

Letting people into your home to inspect you as you home school is not a simple matter, and it is not a good idea. It is the thin edge of the wedge. It is the door to door salesman wedging his foot in your door. Once they have access to you, they are obliged to find fault with you no matter what you are doing, otherwise, they have no purpose and no job to do. That means that they will by default, come up with ways to interfere with you by at the very least issuing guidelines and at worse, coming up with legally required contracts of the type that foster parents must sign.

This article says that BOYS should be given the anti HPV vaccine Gardasil:

Boys should be vaccinated against the sexually-transmitted disease which causes cervical cancer, a leading specialist said yesterday.
While it is only a minor complaint in boys, the human papilloma virus can be passed on to unvaccinated partners.
Ministers have already announced that girls aged 12 will be given the jab against it in the hope of saving around 700 lives a year.
Now Dr Anne Szarewski of Cancer Research UK says 12 and 13-year-old boys should also receive the jab on the Health Service.

I’m not making this up.

Dr Szarewski told GP magazine that just vaccinating girls sends out ‘a bad public health message.

This is correct; its sends the message that you can have sex without any concerns if you have this vaccination. That is the message it sends, and it is a bad public health message on every level.

‘Not vaccinating boys will increase the risk that homosexual men will become infected.’

Homosexual men do not pas on HPV to women. This vaccine was developed (so they calim) to prevent Cervical cancer. Homosexual men have nothing to do with the equation.

This is from The Daily Mail.

Now, lets THINK about this.

According to the numbers given above, they want to spend £100,000,000 to possibly prevent cervical cancer in 700 people each year.

That is the sole justification for this.

What this article doesn’t count out are the numbers of people who will certainly be permanently damaged by this vaccine:

Jackie Fletcher of the antivaccination campaign group JABS said: ‘It would make far more sense to start offering the cervical cancer smear test to women of a lower age than introducing a new vaccine to the cocktail they already receive.
‘We have concerns about the inadequacy of the safety trials that have been conducted on the HPV vaccine.
‘They have been tested on adult women meaning we do not know whether they are safe for boys and young girls.’

If it is to be given to 100 000 000 / 300 = 333 333.333 and ten percent of these are damaged what this means is that THREE THOUSAND girls will be damaged to POTENTIALLY ‘save 700 lives’:

According to the CDC, four fatalities occurred near the time of the patients’ Gardasil injections. One patient died three hours after receiving the Gardasil vaccination; blood clotting was listed as the cause of death.

A 12-year-old was co-vaccinated with Gardasil and a vaccine targeting Hepatitis A on March 1, 2007, and died six days later.

[…]

http://media.www.loyolaphoenix.com/

And then:

This article is to all you sheeple who have daughters and who believe the lie of better health through chemistry need to read this. Here is an update of the injuries this vaccine is causing.

When I wrote my Medical Alert article July 22, 2007, there were 2207 reported cases of adverse effects from the “wonder vaccine” Gardasil. Today, September 19, 2007, the reported cases are now at 3137. That is am increase of 930 young girls that have had an adverse reaction to the vaccine. So in a little less than 2 months we have had almost 1000 more girls affected.

I think it is safe to say that the number should rise to 940 by the time the two months are over. With that in mind I am going to do some calculations for you.

This would mean that approximately 465 girls are affected each month.

465 girls X 12 months would equal 5,580 young girls will have been hurt or disabled by this vaccine in one year.

There are now 7 reported deaths. Here are a few excerpts from those reports.

19 year old female — Echocardiogram revealed very enlarged right ventricle & small left ventricle as well as large blood clots within both the right atrium & right ventricle.

15 year old female — Consult states had HPV vax at PCP on 3/2 & no other recent vaccines.

11 year old female — She experienced cardiac arrest, required lung bypass (ECMO) and “may not have expired.” It was also reported by the same nurse that the physician from the hospital said that “the death was due to an anaphylactic reaction to Gardasil.”

Unknown — Information has been received from a physician who attended a conference that mentioned two patients who were vaccinated with Gardasil. Subsequently the patients died.

All this sounds so reassuring that the vaccine is safe. NOT

44 were considered life threatening an increase of 13 in two months

1921 were admitted to the emergency room an increase of 536 in two months.

581 at the time of the report had not recovered an increase of 130 in two months.

64 are disabled at the time of the report an increase of 13 newly disabled young people in two months.

The adverse effects of this vaccine were so severe that 94 girls were admitted to the hospital.

One thing you need to remember is that these reports are only for the United States. This vaccine is being administered to girls in many countries around the globe. So, I feel that these numbers could be increased by 3–4 times. That is staggering.

[…]

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/janak/070919

Astonishing.

According to this government document the total number of deaths in the uk for 2005 was 511,071

Deaths from MRSA in 2005 are documented here and were over 2000. It must be pointed out that this number is “the number of death certificates specifying MRSA” in other words there are certainly people in the system who are dying of MRSA complications and this is not being put in the record. You know why.

This £100,000,000 would be FAR better spent cleaning up the filthy hospitals rather than trying to save the small number of lives that MIGHT be saved by this hugely expensive vaccine, from a disease that is acquired by promiscuity and not accident. That is not a judgment on promiscuity obviously, just a statement of fact.

Imagine if they spent £300 on cleaning for each NHS hospital patient each year. Or even £150. MRSA would be wiped out.

The answer is simple: Merck should be given the cleaning contracts for the NHS!

Merck could charge the same money that it would be receiving for Gardasil and the absurd Varivax chickenpox vaccine, and be guaranteed a long term and huge revenue stream without endangering the health of the human cattle that the British Public have become.

As a brilliant immunologist said on this very blog, the chickenpox vaccine is a pure money-making exercise and nothing more, and the vaccine doesn’t even provide life long immunity like REAL chickenpox does.

No doubt we will shortly have a full rundown on Gardasil. In fact…I demand it!

Finally, the graphic above says 1000 women a year are killed by cervical cancer, and Gardisil might save 700.

What about the other 300?

Accept HillaryCare or Face Homelessness

Kurt Nimmo
Wednesday September 19, 2007

“Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health insurance was the only way to achieve universal health care but she rejected the notion of punitive measures to force individuals into the health care system,” reports News for clueless Yahoos.

Sure, Clinton rejects “punitive measures,” that is if you consider homelessness and the prospect of starvation, enforced by the government, something less than punitive. Clinton said “she could envision a day when ‘you have to show proof to your employer that you’re insured as a part of the job interview—like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination,’” Yahoo News continues. In other words, you’ll need HillaryCare in order to get a job, no word on how you’ll be able to afford it after months of unemployment. Call it a Catch-22, one the scribes over at the Associated Press did bother to mention.

Incidentally, for a presidential selectee, Clinton is awful stupid, even though former fed mob boss Alan Greenspan thinks she is a genius. Every single state in the United States allows for vaccination medical exemptions and a few even permit philosophical and/or religious exemptions, although the American Medical Association is attempting to put an end to this and force your children to be injected with thimerosal (i.e., mercury), formaldehyde, aluminum, and other toxins.

In other words, your children are not required to “show proof of vaccination” to enter school, although not going to a federal “education” indoctrination center may be considered a blessing.

Clinton is not stupid, of course. Rather she is an accomplished liar—on par with her war criminal husband—and a conniving Bilderberg doorstop, determined to impose the globalist agenda, even if it results in your kids ending up autistic, thanks to a mercury cocktail lovingly injected.

“On Tuesday, Clinton began airing a 30-second ad statewide in Iowa and New Hampshire promoting her new health care plan. The ad reminds viewers of her failed effort to pass universal health care in the early 1990s, trying to portray a thwarted enterprise as one of vision,” News for Yahoos continues. “The ad also highlights her support as senator for an expanded Children’s Health Insurance Program and for more affordable vaccines…. Her health care plan would require every American to buy health insurance, offering tax credits and subsidies to help those who can’t afford it. The mandatory aspect of her proposal, however, gets glossed over in the ad.”

It stands to reason Clinton’s plan will be “mandatory”—under penalty of taser-wielding, ninja-black drabbed SWAT cops—and, soon after she is selected by way of Diebold, Clinton will make sure millions of kids are stricken with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, seizures, mental retardation, hyperactivity, dyslexia, and other developmental disorders, such as autism.

[…]

http://adereview.com/blog/?p=48

Kurt! Kurt! Kurt! Kurt! Kurt! Kurt! Kurt!

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the modern home education movement was in its infancy. At that time, most Americans viewed home-styled education as a quaint tourist attraction or the lifestyle choice of those willing to endure more hardship than necessary.

What a difference a few decades makes.

Homeschooling has undergone an extreme makeover. From maverick to mainstream, the movement has acquired a glamorous, populist sheen.

Flip through a few issues of Sports Illustrated, circa 2007, and there’s no shortage of news about photogenic homeschoolers who make the athletic cut. Like Jessica Long who was born in Russia, resides in Baltimore, and is an accomplished swimmer. At 15, Jessica became the first paralympian to win the prestigious Sullivan Award, which honors the country’s top amateur athlete. Then there’s the dashing Joey Logano who, at 17, has already won a NASCAR race.

Even presidential hopefuls and their spouses have jumped on the school-thine-own bandwagon. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) has offered enthusiastic support for homeschooling families, and Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Senator John Edwards (D-North Carolina) told the Wall Street Journal that this fall she plans to home educate the couple’s two youngest children “with the help of a tutor.”

As for scholastic achievements, this national competition season was remarkable, seeing home scholars crowned as champs in three major events. A twelve-year-old New Mexican named Matthew Evans won the National Word Power competition, sponsored by Reader’s Digest. Thirteen-year-old Evan O’Dorney of California won the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and fourteen-year-old Caitlin Snaring of Washington was christened the National Geographic Bee champ.

Then there’s Micah Stanley of Minnesota who has yet to receive any lessons in a brick-and-mortar classroom building. For the past few years, he’s been enrolled in the Oak Brook College of Law, a distance learning law school headquartered in Sacramento. This past February, he took the grueling, three-day California general bar examination (California allows correspondence law students to sit for the bar), and he can now add “attorney” to his resume. In his spare time, he’s finishing up a book titled, How to Escape the Holding Tank: A Guide to Help You Get What You Want.

Micah is 19.

A teenage lawyer/budding author, however, wouldn’t surprise John Taylor Gatto, an outspoken critic of compulsory education laws and a former New York State Teacher of the Year. Writing in Harper’s Magazine, Gatto forthrightly argued that “genius is as common as dirt.”

Perhaps. But it’s also understandable that when everyday folks hear about the homeschooled Joeys and Caitlins and Micahs, they become a tad intimidated — as if this educational choice were the exclusive domain of obsessive-compulsive moms and dads with money to burn, time to spare, and a brood of driven, Type-A offspring.

Although it’s commendable when the young achieve Herculean goals, homeschooling has always been more about freedom and personal responsibility than winning an Ivy League scholarship or playing at Wimbledon. In general, it has attracted working-class families of all ethnicities and faiths, who have been eager to provide a nurturing, stimulating learning experience.

Of course, the unabashedly adventuresome are always an endearing staple of the movement. The Burns family, of Alaska, set out on a 36-foot sailboat this summer to travel the world for three years. Chris Burns (the dad) told the Juneau Empire he hopes “to connect with Juneau classrooms and host question-and-answer sessions while at sea,” as well as homeschool the two Burns children.

In a legal sense, homeschools serve as a glaring reminder of a complex issue that has become the stuff of landmark Supreme Court cases: does the state have the authority to coerce a youngster to attend school and sit at a desk for 12 years? Whether said child has the aptitude and maturity for such a long-term contract (or is it involuntary servitude?) remains an uncomfortable topic because, in the acceptable mantra of the day, “education is a right.”

Such a national conversation is long overdue, as there are plenty of signs — costly remedial education and rising dropout rates, to name two — to indicate that the status quo public school model isn’t kid-friendly.

Homeschooling, after all, began to catch on with the masses because a former US Department of Education employee argued that children, like delicate hothouse plants, required a certain type of environment to grow shoots and blossoms, and that loving parents, not institutions, could best create the greenhouses.

It was 1969 when the late Dr. Raymond Moore initiated an inquiry into previously neglected areas of educational research. Two of the questions that Moore and a team of like-minded colleagues set out to answer were (1) Is institutionalizing young children a sound, educational trend? and (2) What is the best timing for school entrance?

In the process of analyzing thousands of studies, twenty of which compared early school entrants with late starters, Moore concluded that developmental problems, such as hyperactivity, nearsightedness, and dyslexia, are often the result of prematurely taxing a child’s nervous system and mind with continuous academic tasks, like reading and writing.

The bulk of the research convinced Moore that formal schooling should be delayed until at least age 8 or 10, or even as late as 12. As he explained, “These findings sparked our concern and convinced us to focus our investigation on two primary areas: formal learning and socializing. Eventually, this work led to an unexpected interest in homeschools.”

“Above all, the merit of homeschooling is that it allows for experimentation, flexibility, and trial & error.”

Moore went on to write Home Grown Kids and Home-Spun Schools. The rest, as they say, is history. The books, published in the 1980s, have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and offer practical advice to potential parent educators.

Nowadays, there’s a sea of such self-help material, scores of commercial products, and online opportunities solely dedicated to encouraging families to learn together in the convenience of their homes. Homeschooling has graduated into a time-tested choice that allows children to thrive, learn at their own pace, and which frequently inspires other success stories. As our nation is famous for encouraging immigrants to reinvent themselves and achieve the American Dream, so home education does for youngsters whether they are late bloomers or are candidates for Mensa.

Above all, the merit of homeschooling is that it allows for experimentation, flexibility, and trial and error. Here is the great contrast with state-provided education. As with all systems hammered out by bureaucracies, public schools get stuck in a rut, perpetuate failures, respond slowly to changing times, and resist all reforms. Errors are not localized and contained, but all consuming and system wide. It’s bad enough when such a system is used to govern labor contracts or postal service; it is a tragic loss when it is used to manage kids’ minds.

[…]

http://www.mises.org/story/2682

Before the measles vaccination, measles used to be considered like chicken pox is today, a nuisance, and nothing more. Why, just because we have a vaccination for it has it suddenly become worthy of HUGE FRONT PAGE HEADLINES? Will chicken pox get the same treatment when the drug peddlers come up with a vaccination against it? Smacks of hysteria and sheep shearing to me.

Irdial; Blogdialian Blarchive, July2nd 2002. http://www.irdial.com/blogger/archive/2004_09_05_blarchive.html#109455661950837288

You can find more preminiscences on Chickenpox vaccines, and our early discussions on their proposed by using the Blarchive search.

Their relevance is cranked up a notch today by this story, the thrust of which we will now deconstruct:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6990643.stm

Children may get chickenpox jab
The Department of Health is to consider a mass vaccination of children in England against chickenpox.
There are now 2 chickenpox vaccines, licenesed for use in the UK since 2002. But the market is tiny, as it costs 60-90 pounds sterling from a private clinic. Which means GSK and Sanofi are missing out on a few quid.
Experts have been drafted in to weigh up the benefits following a recommendation from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
http://www.advisorybodies.doh.gov.uk/jcvi/members.htm

This bit of the article makes it sound like the JCVI is acutely concerned about varicella infection rates and mortality. However, there is nothing on their site about a varicella vaccine report. The minutes of 18th October 2006 say “The JCVI had proposed that subgroups be set up to look at rotavirus vaccines and varicella zoster vaccines. This had not yet been possible they but would be set up shortly.”

From 2001: “Varicella Vaccine

The Committee discussed varicella (chickenpox) vaccine and its potential use in the UK. The Committee agreed that, as far as the vaccine’s use in the wider population was concerned, there was insufficient information on which to make any recommendations. However, the vaccine’s use in health care workers could be considered more immediately as data on its use in this group was available. The vaccine was not yet licensed for use in the UK. A sub-group would look at this further.”

And from 2002, when the vaccine was licensed:

“Effectiveness and cost effectiveness of varicella vaccination This paper suggested that the key factor in the effectiveness of any varicella immunisation programme is the impact on zoster. Based on the assumptions in the paper and the available evidence, the case for routine infant or pre-adolescent immunisation had not been made.

The Committee welcomed the paper. It was suggested that the data offered very much a minimum estimate of the burden of disease. However, based on the current data available the paper’s conclusions were reasonable.”

So what has changed their collective mind? According to the most recent study in the British Medical Journal, deaths from chickenpox are decreasing.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7337/609/a

In context, so as not to scare you with the word ‘deaths’ or an image like this:

Chickenpox can be fatal

it should be noted that deaths predominate among the very immunocompromised, and are often ‘varicella-associated’, which means you die from a secondary infection such as pneumonia while trying to fight off chickenpox or shingles.

Peanuts can be fatal.
Ballpoint pens can be fatal.
It’s all about context.

So then, in 2006;

“13. VARICELLA
The Committee recognised that varicella was an area of increasing importance with recent evidence that vaccine prevented shingles in the elderly. However this is a complex area because of the potential impact of chidhood infection on transmission dynamics at older ages. It was agreed that a sub-group should be setup in the near future to consider the issues.”

This advisory committee are not convinced, are they? But just a few months later and here we are, front page of BBQ News, and about to jab every kid in the land.

From The Telegraph we discover that the news is actually that,

“The Govenment’s advisors, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation have set up a sub-committee into chicken pox and will meet later this year or early next year for the first time.

It will investigate the impact of a vaccination programme for all or selected groups and the cost effectiveness of such a plan.
Advisers have previously rejected calls for chicken pox vaccination in the UK.”

Which is what was in the JCVI minutes from almost a year ago. So what does this lead us to conclude? That someone has fed this story to the press, to increase it’s profile. The Daily Mail will, no doubt, have horror stories about chickenpox spreading like a rash across it’s pages as you read this.

We have, of course, told you before of the major reason behind MMR and now varicella vaccination, and it is money. It is cheaper for the NHS to give you a jab than it is to send a doctor to see your sick child. This is the monetary justification of HMG.

It is essential that the shareholders of GlaxoSmithkline, Merck et al., who make these vaccines, recoup their R&D costs and make substantial profit. Their ideal target market is EVERY PERSON ALIVE. Trebles all round for them, and for the PR companies working on their behalf, if (no, WHEN) HMG adopts a policy of vaccination against chickenpox. The greed of these companies and their financial clout, allied with the corrupt thinking of HMG mean it is all but inevitable that you will be “offered” chickenpox vaccination very soon.

But is there a health-based reason for choosing to vaccinate? In short, no.

The chance of complications from chickenpox are insignificantly higher than the chances of complications from the vaccine.
The protection from natural infection is lifelong. Vaccine-mediated protection is estimated at 9 years. Or if you believe the optimists, 10-20 years.

Since a major reason behind the vaccine is to cut adult deaths (at 40-years plus, in the main) the vaccine is, useless.

So there we go.

Once again the public are being lined up to take a shot in the arm simply to fill the boots of a drug company, at the behest of the government. And they will do it in their droves!

But they can’t say they haven’t been warned.

[…]

From the lab of the scientist and Immunologist Dr. Alun Kirby, “the man who keeps BLOGDIAL honest”.

Council takes overweight child into care

Sarah Knapton
Monday September 10, 2007
The Guardian

A child has been taken away from his parents because, it is understood, they were not coping with his disability and social workers became anxious about his weight.

Social services in Tower Hamlets, east London, removed the boy earlier this year and placed him in council care. He has not been returned to his home.

Social workers were concerned about his increasing bulk which was far above normal for a boy of his age. The council said it could not comment on individual cases.

It follows the case of an eight-year-oldboy who was nearly taken into care this year after reaching 14 stone, more than three times the average for a boy of his age. His family claimed the youngster had an intolerance to fruit and vegetables.

North Tyneside council allowed him to stay with his family after his mother promised to change his diet.

Britain has one of the worst records for childhood obesity in the world.

Around 1 million under-16s are considered dangerously overweight, leading to fears that the country is facing a health timebomb.

In an attempt to tackle the problem the government has launched campaigns to increase fruit and vegetable consumption and has poured cash into school sports schemes. The overall cost of obesity to the NHS is currently around £1bn, with a further £2.3bn to £2.6bn for the economy as a whole.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/children/story/0,,2165891,00.html

This is an interesting story for several reasons, and thank you to that special lurker for bringing it to the attention of BLOGDIAL Man dem.

Now.

As far as I know, there is no legal definition of overweight. Without such a definition, those council workers rely on their personal prejudices to determine what a fat child is.

In Wales, this might mean a fatter child than a one living in Tower Hamlets, where a thinner child is the average.

It is completely absurd that workers in a council can exercise their personal prejudice in this way, and this has a direct bearing on those parents who Home Educate.

If a Home Educator teaches her children that there is such a thing as Sin, and a worker in Camden Council does not believe that this is the case, the council worker, by the example of this ‘overweight’ child, could remove that child from its parents so that it is taught ‘correctly’.

There is no difference between feeding a child’s stomach and feeding its mind, and if you accept that prejudiced workers at any council can take a child from its parents for the ‘protection’ of the child’s well-being in the case of obesity, then there are no limits to what these people can do.

They can take your child because you refuse to:

• vaccinate your child.
• put your child on a diet.
• visit the doctor.
• teach pluralism / multiculturalism / ‘tolerance’.
• {insert your particular belief and exercise thereof}

What they are saying is that your children do not belong to you, and you are not the ultimate parent; your children belong to the state, the state is the ultimate parent, and the state allows you to keep your children as long as you do not disobey their guidelines.

Of course, they refuse to pay for your children to attend good schools, demand taxes from you so that they can finance these evils on you and your family, and they expect you to just sit there and TAKE IT.

You will note that this child lived in Tower Hamlets, where the family is most likely to be poor and uneducated and unable to defend themselves. No council worker in a wealthy borough would DARE do such a thing to a wealthy family, because they know that they will instantly be on the receiving end of a well financed lawsuit, or even worse, be faced with parent that are themselves lawyers.

These laws and council actions are for the poor and uneducated only, who are the eternal victims on this planet.