Archive for April 2010

Steyn van Ronge

Steyn van Ronge - who took over the far-right Afrikaner Resistance party after the murder of founder Eugene Terreblanche three weeks ago - chillingly claimed thousands of fans could become infected by the country’s prostitutes.

“South Africa will export Aids to the world,” said Van Ronge. “Six million people here have it and more than 40,000 prostitutes will be imported for the World Cup.

“So if football fans coming here don’t have high moral standards, they will go home and Aids will explode to the highest level ever seen. Millions of people will die.”

Van Ronge, 55, also snapped out a stark warning for England fans aiming to camp out to save money. “Crime in this country is totally out of control. There is no law and order,” he said. “Fans must be prepared for it and not ignore the situation.

“I can say it will escalate when people from overseas come here. So don’t camp - it is not safe. You will become a victim.”

Video linked here.
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After Comedy Central cut a portion of a South Park episode following a death threat from a radical Muslim group, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris wanted to counter the fear. She has declared May 20th “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”

Norris told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross that cartoonists are meant to challenge the lines of political correctness. “That’s a cartoonist’s job, to be non-PC.”

Listen to Molly Norris on Dave Ross

Producers of South Park said Thursday that Comedy Central removed a speech about intimidation and fear from their show after a radical Muslim group warned that they could be killed for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

The group said it wasn’t threatening South Park producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but it included a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004, and said the producers could meet the same fate. The website posted the addresses of Comedy Central’s New York office and the California production studio where South Park is made.
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The Arizona legislature has now passed the toughest measure against illegal immigration in the country, authorizing local police to stop and check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 70% of likely voters in Arizona approve of the legislation, while just 23% oppose it.

Opponents of the measure, including major national Hispanic groups, say it will lead to racial profiling, and 53% of voters in the state are concerned that efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants also will end up violating the civil rights of some U.S. citizens. Forty-six percent (46%) don’t share that concern

Those figures include 23% who are very concerned and 18% who are not at all concerned.
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Riots erupt in Greece as the country has appealed for emergency loans in the first financial rescue of a member of the Euro zone.

When it comes to education trends, as California goes, so goes the nation. Which is all the more reason to be concerned about the latest effort in California to dumb down standards. The University of California’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) has launched another salvo in its long-running war against the SAT, the test used by many colleges and universities to assess academic achievement among high school seniors. This is only the latest in a series of moves by BOARS against the SAT, but this one may be a stalking horse to eliminate standardized tests in general, especially if they conflict with the goal of promoting racial and ethnic diversity.

BOARS has already eliminated a requirement that University of California applicants take at least two subject-matter tests in addition to the SAT Reasoning Test. Now BOARS is taking aim at the SAT directly. What makes the action more suspicious is that BOARS’ own report notes that the SAT-R was developed specifically in response to testing principles it promulgated and that the new test “adds significant gains in predictive power of first year grades at UC.” Nonetheless, BOARS is now recommending that students forgo the SAT in favor of the less-popular ACT.

Both tests have been accepted for more than 30 years and do a good job of predicting first-year grades. So why is BOARS now signaling preference for one test over another? After reading the report, it’s hard to come away without feeling that the real target is standardized testing in general.

As numerous studies and the raw data on test scores have shown, performance on standardized tests varies not just between individuals but also between different racial and ethnic groups. In general, black and Latino students perform less well as a group than do white and Asian students. Since BOARS is committed to boosting the number of black and Latino students admitted to the UC system, standardized tests that do not produce politically correct results are a problem. It’s not too far-fetched to wonder whether BOARS’ effort to discourage students from taking the SAT may be the first step in getting rid of standardized tests altogether.
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Arizona Governor Jan Brewer

‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags were a popular choice at the Tea Party Tax Party on Thursday, Apr. 15, in Washington, D.C.

A new Rasmussen Report survey conducted on the eve of the Tea Party movement’s first anniversary found that U.S. voters who self-identify as part of the Tea Party movement jumped eight points since the previous month. April 15, 2010 marked the one-year anniversary of the movement, which has been a lightning rod for political controversy since its inception.

In March 2010, 16 percent of American voters surveyed identified themselves as Tea Partiers. That number leapt to 24 percent in the most recent poll with another 10 percent saying they are not part of the movement but have close friends or family who are.

Of those surveyed, 55 percent said they are not part of the movement or do not have any ties to the Tea Party, while 11 percent said they are unsure.

The rise in Tea Party support comes as more voters than ever – 58 percent – favor the repeal of Obama’s healthcare reform. Those surveyed say they are convinced that the so-called reform will require all Americans to pay higher taxes to fund the program at a time when 66 percent of voters believe that we are already overtaxed by the government.

The largest discrepancy found in the report was the disparity between how the political class, or political elite, views the movement versus that of mainstream voters. Not surprisingly, 98 percent of the political elite have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party movement.

Conversely, 58 percent of mainstream voters held a favorable opinion of Tea Partiers. It should be noted only four percent of American voters support the Political Class over the people.
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Six-year-olds Pia, Paulina and Markus (left to right) pose on their first day at the Marienfelde Klepert elementary school in Berlin on Aug. 25, 2003.

The doorbell rang early that morning in 2006, before the three oldest Romeike children had begun their schoolwork at the family’s kitchen table in Bissingen, Germany.

Uwe Romeike peeked through a window and saw two police officers.

Romeike’s heart stopped. He didn’t know what to do. He prayed the officers would go away if he didn’t answer the door. Instead, Romeike said, the officers left a voice message threatening to break in.

Daniel, then 9, Lydia, then 8, and Joshua, then 6, were supposed to be in school, the officers said, and they would go to school that day, even if they had to be transported in the back of a police van.

Soon after, Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, stood on their front porch with their two youngest children and watched the van drive away, their three oldest children in the back.

The family knew that it was illegal to not enroll children in a state-registered school in Germany. But Uwe Romeike never thought it would come to that.

“I felt very helpless,” he said. “My children were crying, the police were shouting.”

Hannelore Romeike was able to pick-up her children from the school where they had been delivered, but the family paid thousands of euros in fines over the next few years, and was never sure whether the police would show up again. In 2008, the family moved to Tennessee and applied for asylum.

A Tennessee immigration judge in January ruled that the Romeike family faced persecution in Germany, and approved the asylum request. But weeks later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement appealed the ruling, arguing that the United States recognizes the right of governments to regulate school attendance. It will be months before the Romeikes know for sure whether they can stay in the United States, said Michael Donnelly, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association, which represents the family.
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