First of all, I have an enormous amount of respect for Robert Spencer and Pamela Gellar. While I don't always agree with them, I do respect the fact that they are attacking radical Islam and that takes a lot of courage.
Now having said that, I think that their recent attacks on moderate Muslim, and one of my heroes, Dr. Zudhi Jasser are counterproductive and a waste of time. Spencer and Gellar imply that Jasser is covertly a radical Muslim and just lying about his support of America. They say that being a Muslim and being a loyal American are incompatible because, basically, all true Muslims who adhere to Islamic doctorine hate Israel and America. They say that he is lying when he says there are Muslims that have no problem with Israel.
In all honesty, I can say, is, from my own first hand experience, I am on Jasser's side on this one. There is an incredible amount of anti-semitism, racism and anti-American feeling within the hearts of many Muslims around the world, but having said that, there are over 1 billion Muslims. I see no reason to antagonize them all and say that they are all terrorists. That they are all fanatics. Because they are not. The real problem with Muslims, is that they are brainwashed. Their imams and other religious leaders, for the most part, preach intolerance and hatred of those who are not Muslim. There are many Muslims who accept this narrative but there are some who do not. And we should work with and support those who wish for peaceful co-existance. As I have said many, many times before earlier, some of my biggest influences are Muslims such as Dr. Tawfik Hamid. I am far from someone who hates Muslims. However, having said that, it doesn't mean that I'm going to stay silent when I see crimes being committed by individual Muslims and Islamic governments. I'm not going to stay silent in the face of Islamist groups that advocate destroying America and other countries.
In fact, throughout history, there are many points where Muslims were the more enlightened ones, the more tolerant ones than the Christians. This is no longer the case and hasn't been for some time, but having said that, it does prove that the argument of some on the right, that Christians were always and will always be better than Muslims is incorrect.
Now having said all of the above, it is an undeniable fact that these people are in the minority. But in our battle against Islamic extremism, Islamism, we can take all the allies we can get. The absolute last thing we should be doing is attacking our friends, and Dr. Jasser is, without a doubt, a freedom fighter and patriotic American.
The fact of the matter, what everyone forgets, especially most Muslims, is that radical Islam, besides being a threat to Jews and Christians, is in a way, an even greater threat to liberal Muslims, Islamic reformers, people who want to modernize the religion because the radicals consider them worthy of death, just like Jews and Christians. Therefore, moderate Muslims have a strong incentive to work with us in order to defeat the radicals.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Friday, November 12, 2010
The Black Male Education Disaster
The following story is from the New York Times. I have added my comments below:
Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected
By TRIP GABRIEL
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
This is a complete and utter disaster. What is holding black America back is this lack of education and the black community needs to tackle this like the disaster that it is. It is time for us to abandon the usual "reasons" and "excuses" and actually work together to get to the bottom of this and get this resolved. Instead of spending millions protesting racism and shaking down business, Jesse Jackson and the other so-called black leaders need to get together and actually work together to improve this situation. I can't see anything more urgent and important.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
Yes, the problem in part is cultural. We have more and more black children being raised by the government. There is no father in the house and the mother is working all of the time. In fact today, 70 percent of black children are being born to single mothers. This situation makes the child more likely to do poorly in school, drop out early and get involved with gangs and drugs.
The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, “A Call for Change,” is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.
Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls “jaw-dropping data” in one place will spark a new sense of national urgency.
“What this clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch are doing no better than white males who are poor,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.
Because in the black community, there is an expression called "acting white." Children who are achievers, who work hard are often said to be "acting white," implying that high academic achievement is not a genuinely "black" trait. This acts to discourage children from getting good grades.
The report shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years. Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job. In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower.
The analysis of results on the national tests found that math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.
Besides the cultural issues discussed earlier, we need to actually allow black children to escape these horrible inner city schools and get into schools where they are educated. These same children, who are failing in public schools, are much more likely to succeed in private schools. And they must and should have this option, something that the leftists hate to discuss.
The search for explanations has recently looked at causes besides poverty, and this report may further spur those efforts.
“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”
Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”
No. It doesn't have anything to do with how much children are talked to. It has everything to do with whether they are being taught by competent teachers teaching in a good school. It has everything to do with whether they come from a family with two parents. That is what makes the difference. What never ceases to amaze me about liberals is they can go on and on about the evils of voucher programs, yet the liberal elitists don't send THEIR children to public schools. Why is that? If the schools are so good, why don't they send their children to them. It is the absolute height of hypocrisy.
The report urges convening a White House conference, encouraging Congress to appropriate more money for schools and establishing networks of black mentors.
What it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers.
In other words, in typical leftist fashion, they can identify the problem, but they can't actually face the solution. This whole idea of increasing funding for the schools is frankly, a bunch of BS. China spends less per pupil than we do and their children, along with the children of many other countries which spend less money per pupil than we do, score higher on standardized tests. So that isn't the problem. Things are actually so bad today, that the level of literacy in the African American community today, is lower than it was during the era of Jim Crow.
The report did not go down this road because “there’s not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results,” Mr. Casserly said.
This conclusion is absolutely ridiculous and I am the living proof of it. My parents who I love and adore, struggled for years to send me to private school. I never went to a public school and today I have a great job in the IT field, working in the entertainment industry. There is NO way I would be where I am today, if I had gotten the substandard, shoddy education that so many young black men get.
Other have a different response. The key to narrowing the achievement gap, said Dr. Ferguson, is “really good teaching.”
One large urban school district that has made progress is Baltimore’s, where the dropout rate for African-American boys declined to 4.9 percent during the last academic year, down from 11.9 percent four years earlier. Graduation rates for black boys were also up: 57 percent in 2009-10, compared with 51 percent three years earlier.
Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive of the Baltimore City Public Schools, said the improvement had little to do with changes at the margins, like lengthening the school day or adding mentors. Rather, Mr. Alonso cited aggressively closing failing schools, knocking on the doors of dropouts’ homes to lure them back and creating real-time alerts — “almost like an electrical charge” — when a student misses several days of school.
“Hispanic kids and African-American kids this year had a lower dropout rate than white kids,” Mr. Alonso said.
This is a good start, but much, much more needs to be done. Like how about linking the money to the student instead of the school. Let the child go to ANY school he wants to, private, public or charter. The pressure of the free market will force the schools to improve. The teachers who are good at what they do will get more money, because the competition between good schools will increase the demand for good teachers. And the bad teachers will find themselves without a job. And the children will actually get educated. And again, I don't care about the excuses. The excuses are simply excuses. What we need are actual, workable solutions like school choice, not more excuses.
Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected
By TRIP GABRIEL
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
This is a complete and utter disaster. What is holding black America back is this lack of education and the black community needs to tackle this like the disaster that it is. It is time for us to abandon the usual "reasons" and "excuses" and actually work together to get to the bottom of this and get this resolved. Instead of spending millions protesting racism and shaking down business, Jesse Jackson and the other so-called black leaders need to get together and actually work together to improve this situation. I can't see anything more urgent and important.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
Yes, the problem in part is cultural. We have more and more black children being raised by the government. There is no father in the house and the mother is working all of the time. In fact today, 70 percent of black children are being born to single mothers. This situation makes the child more likely to do poorly in school, drop out early and get involved with gangs and drugs.
The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, “A Call for Change,” is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.
Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls “jaw-dropping data” in one place will spark a new sense of national urgency.
“What this clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch are doing no better than white males who are poor,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.
Because in the black community, there is an expression called "acting white." Children who are achievers, who work hard are often said to be "acting white," implying that high academic achievement is not a genuinely "black" trait. This acts to discourage children from getting good grades.
The report shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years. Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job. In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower.
The analysis of results on the national tests found that math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.
Besides the cultural issues discussed earlier, we need to actually allow black children to escape these horrible inner city schools and get into schools where they are educated. These same children, who are failing in public schools, are much more likely to succeed in private schools. And they must and should have this option, something that the leftists hate to discuss.
The search for explanations has recently looked at causes besides poverty, and this report may further spur those efforts.
“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”
Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”
No. It doesn't have anything to do with how much children are talked to. It has everything to do with whether they are being taught by competent teachers teaching in a good school. It has everything to do with whether they come from a family with two parents. That is what makes the difference. What never ceases to amaze me about liberals is they can go on and on about the evils of voucher programs, yet the liberal elitists don't send THEIR children to public schools. Why is that? If the schools are so good, why don't they send their children to them. It is the absolute height of hypocrisy.
The report urges convening a White House conference, encouraging Congress to appropriate more money for schools and establishing networks of black mentors.
What it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers.
In other words, in typical leftist fashion, they can identify the problem, but they can't actually face the solution. This whole idea of increasing funding for the schools is frankly, a bunch of BS. China spends less per pupil than we do and their children, along with the children of many other countries which spend less money per pupil than we do, score higher on standardized tests. So that isn't the problem. Things are actually so bad today, that the level of literacy in the African American community today, is lower than it was during the era of Jim Crow.
The report did not go down this road because “there’s not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results,” Mr. Casserly said.
This conclusion is absolutely ridiculous and I am the living proof of it. My parents who I love and adore, struggled for years to send me to private school. I never went to a public school and today I have a great job in the IT field, working in the entertainment industry. There is NO way I would be where I am today, if I had gotten the substandard, shoddy education that so many young black men get.
Other have a different response. The key to narrowing the achievement gap, said Dr. Ferguson, is “really good teaching.”
One large urban school district that has made progress is Baltimore’s, where the dropout rate for African-American boys declined to 4.9 percent during the last academic year, down from 11.9 percent four years earlier. Graduation rates for black boys were also up: 57 percent in 2009-10, compared with 51 percent three years earlier.
Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive of the Baltimore City Public Schools, said the improvement had little to do with changes at the margins, like lengthening the school day or adding mentors. Rather, Mr. Alonso cited aggressively closing failing schools, knocking on the doors of dropouts’ homes to lure them back and creating real-time alerts — “almost like an electrical charge” — when a student misses several days of school.
“Hispanic kids and African-American kids this year had a lower dropout rate than white kids,” Mr. Alonso said.
This is a good start, but much, much more needs to be done. Like how about linking the money to the student instead of the school. Let the child go to ANY school he wants to, private, public or charter. The pressure of the free market will force the schools to improve. The teachers who are good at what they do will get more money, because the competition between good schools will increase the demand for good teachers. And the bad teachers will find themselves without a job. And the children will actually get educated. And again, I don't care about the excuses. The excuses are simply excuses. What we need are actual, workable solutions like school choice, not more excuses.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Want to get rid of Terror? Stop Supporting It
In the west, we have a schizophrenic relationship with radical Islam. On one hand we defend the biggest exporters of radical Islam, Saudi Arabia. We sell them our most advanced weapons and are at their beck and call. The Saudis and the Gulf states control most of our foreign policy when it comes to the Middle East. Our elected officials, both Democrats and Repulicans refer to these countries as United States "allies" while they spread the most hateful propoganda and teachings about the West, Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism, the religions of our allies. While they teach their citizens to hate us and kill us. While they created and today support groups that are fighting America, like the Taliban, in Afghanistan.
Then when a generation of youth raised to hate America and the West arrises, these very same "allies" work with our enemeies to arm these people and before you know it, there is suddenly a global "hot spot" in some country and America has to go in and blow some country to pieces to get at some Islamic terrorists. But simply going in and fighting is a short term solution. Yes, terrorists have to be destroyed, but you can't bomb forever. And the big problem with going in and bombing areas is you inevitabely hit innocent civilians. And when you do that, you create even more enemies where you didn't have enemies before. When someone is sitting in their house and it has been bombed out, or they are looking at the corpse of some family member or friend, you have created an enemy. You have created someone that is going to do everything he can to destory you. So this doesn't even fully solve the problem. In the end, simply bombing, shooting and fighting are not the solution.
And the liberal solution, to simply tolerate this kind of teaching and say that it is acceptable is also not workable. Becuase then you are permitting the cancer to grow.
The solution, is that America and the West need to stop their unconditional support and defense of regimes, like the one in Saudi Arabia, that are exporters of the terrorist ideology. They need to realize that in some cases, spreading hatred is as bad as or worse than, spreading actual weapons. They need to realize that the oppression, by these regimes of their citizens is simply creating a siutation that will later boil over and in the end, require more US military intervention.
We need to drill here. In the lower 48 states, there is as much oil as Saudi Arabia, if not more, but we just haven't drilled. So we need a crash drilling program, to drill here in America, drill everywhere their is oil, so we are not sending billions of dollars over to that part of the world, which they use to incite violence and hatred towards us.
Another part of the solution is education. Instead of unconditionally supporting radical Muslims, such as those that compromise the governments of Saudi Arabia and many other Arab states, we should support moderate Muslims, like my hero Dr. Tawfik Hamid. We should support moderate Muslims that teach peaceful interpertations of Islamic verses. We need to listen to Muslims that want to work with us peacefully, and are willing to live in peace with the West, such as Dr. Zudhi Jasser. We need to work to gradually detoxify Muslims of the hatreds they have been indoctrinated in. These are the real long term solutions. This doesn't mean that you don't defend yourself. You have to. Terrorist groups, like the Taliban, have to be defeated. But that doesn't mean that all that you do is fight. You have to fight but you also have to change the ideology so that you don't have generations of young Muslims being raised in hatred.
Then when a generation of youth raised to hate America and the West arrises, these very same "allies" work with our enemeies to arm these people and before you know it, there is suddenly a global "hot spot" in some country and America has to go in and blow some country to pieces to get at some Islamic terrorists. But simply going in and fighting is a short term solution. Yes, terrorists have to be destroyed, but you can't bomb forever. And the big problem with going in and bombing areas is you inevitabely hit innocent civilians. And when you do that, you create even more enemies where you didn't have enemies before. When someone is sitting in their house and it has been bombed out, or they are looking at the corpse of some family member or friend, you have created an enemy. You have created someone that is going to do everything he can to destory you. So this doesn't even fully solve the problem. In the end, simply bombing, shooting and fighting are not the solution.
And the liberal solution, to simply tolerate this kind of teaching and say that it is acceptable is also not workable. Becuase then you are permitting the cancer to grow.
The solution, is that America and the West need to stop their unconditional support and defense of regimes, like the one in Saudi Arabia, that are exporters of the terrorist ideology. They need to realize that in some cases, spreading hatred is as bad as or worse than, spreading actual weapons. They need to realize that the oppression, by these regimes of their citizens is simply creating a siutation that will later boil over and in the end, require more US military intervention.
We need to drill here. In the lower 48 states, there is as much oil as Saudi Arabia, if not more, but we just haven't drilled. So we need a crash drilling program, to drill here in America, drill everywhere their is oil, so we are not sending billions of dollars over to that part of the world, which they use to incite violence and hatred towards us.
Another part of the solution is education. Instead of unconditionally supporting radical Muslims, such as those that compromise the governments of Saudi Arabia and many other Arab states, we should support moderate Muslims, like my hero Dr. Tawfik Hamid. We should support moderate Muslims that teach peaceful interpertations of Islamic verses. We need to listen to Muslims that want to work with us peacefully, and are willing to live in peace with the West, such as Dr. Zudhi Jasser. We need to work to gradually detoxify Muslims of the hatreds they have been indoctrinated in. These are the real long term solutions. This doesn't mean that you don't defend yourself. You have to. Terrorist groups, like the Taliban, have to be defeated. But that doesn't mean that all that you do is fight. You have to fight but you also have to change the ideology so that you don't have generations of young Muslims being raised in hatred.
Police Brutality and Oscar Grant
This post will not earn me many kudos with my fellow conservatives, but I have to say, that the sentencing of former police officer Johannes Mehserle to prison for two years for killing an unarmed man, Oscar Grant, is simply disgusting. The video shows that the man was unarmed and was not a life or death threat when the officer shot him. I understand that Mehserle says it was a mistake, and mistakes happen. But it is also true that Grant had a family. He was someone's son. Someon's relative. People cared about him. Some mistakes have consequences and I know that if someone "accidently" shot a cop or if Grant was the son or relative of an important figure, the leading politicians would be up in arms, demanding justice, demanding an investigation. But I don't see that happening. And frankly I find it disgusting.
That is one thing that I disagree with some of my fellow Republicans about. Police brutality. Yes we do need to be hard on crime. Without a doubt. But there is absolutely no reason to shoot someone who is lying on the ground handcuffed. There is no reason to beat someone up for no real reason, something which certain police officers have done and has been reported in the media. This doesn't mean that you go the opposite way and argue that criminals are poor abused things. You don't. But at some point there has to be a point of view in between, where you are not leniant on criminals but at the same time, there is no senseless violence towards suspects, becuase frankly, needless violence increases lawlessness.
That is one thing that I disagree with some of my fellow Republicans about. Police brutality. Yes we do need to be hard on crime. Without a doubt. But there is absolutely no reason to shoot someone who is lying on the ground handcuffed. There is no reason to beat someone up for no real reason, something which certain police officers have done and has been reported in the media. This doesn't mean that you go the opposite way and argue that criminals are poor abused things. You don't. But at some point there has to be a point of view in between, where you are not leniant on criminals but at the same time, there is no senseless violence towards suspects, becuase frankly, needless violence increases lawlessness.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Republican Revolution
I am so happy and excited that the Republicans have swept to victory in the US midterms. This is a strong rebuke to Obama's behavior over the last two years and will, if the Republicans are conservatives, act as a roadblock in Obama's push to turn America into a European style socialist state.
Now that the Republicans have won, it is important that they, at least for the most part, keep the promises they made on the campaign trail. They need to work to cut government, cut taxes and therefore get the economy moving in a positive direction.
Now that the Republicans have won, it is important that they, at least for the most part, keep the promises they made on the campaign trail. They need to work to cut government, cut taxes and therefore get the economy moving in a positive direction.
The Blame Game
As I have said before, my ideas regarding the middle east are close to those of one of my biggest influences, the Muslim hero, Dr. Tawfik Hamid, who I deeply admire and several other "renegade" Arab Muslims and Arab Christians. In fact, a lot of my passion about the subject comes from having read the writings of people such as Dr. Hamid, as I said before, Brigitte Gabriel, Kameel Saleem and others. The bottom line is that the hatred that so many Arab Muslims have towards Jews and Christians hurts us, but to a much greater extent it hurts the Muslims themselves. As I have said many times before, I do not hate Muslims. I do hate the sin that is being done in the name of this religion but this hatred is towards the sin and not the sinner.
Some months ago, I read a book called Cruel and Usual Punishment by Nonnie Darwish. I am a strong man, but there were parts of this book, where she went into the suffering of the Arab Muslim people, which made me almost cry. She talked about how, in the name of Islam, rich Muslim countries refused to do anything for other poor Muslims who were poor and suffering. In an era where far too many Muslims struggle, hungry, without a consistent source of clean drinking water, rich Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia donate barely any money towards helping other Muslims. I read about Muslim women being beaten and treated like trash in the name of Islam. Of Muslim women being killed simply because they were the victim of sexual attacks by men. All in the name of Shariah, Islamic law. And from my earlier studies, I know that these kinds of abuses are the tip of the iceberg. Whenever Islamic law rules, there is human suffering and injustice. And that is why I oppose it. I read the Islamic press, I watch Arab language broadcasts, and instead of tackling the root cause of these problems, radical Islam and extremist Islamic laws, dictators and corrupt Arab princes, they blame the Christians and Jews. That may be satisfying for a minute, to believe that your suffering is due to Israel or the United States, but in the long run it is simply a lie which permits oppression to continue, since if the root cause of something is not faced, it will continue to exist.
For example, let's say that a person doesn't have a job and therefore doesn't have any money. Instead of developing skills and getting a job, they decide to blame, for example, German people for their lack of a money. The person might feel good for a while being able to blame Germans for his situation, but in the long run, the situation will not resolve because the root of the problem is not Germans, it is the fact that the person doesn't have a job. And until the person confronts the fact that they don't have a job and need a job in order to get money, they will continue for a long time with no money. In fact, they can go on for decades, with the false idea that the reason they don't have any money is due to Germans. But thinking this, talking about this will never solve the problem. Only getting a job will ultimately solve the problem of not having money. However, let's say they never came to his realization, and they got really angry with these German people and even killed some of them, simply because he didn't have any money and expected that G-d would reward him, give him some money if he killed Germans. Why obviously, since these actions are not aimed at getting a job, the jobless condition will continue to exist and the person will continue to be poor. Until the real reason for the lack of money is confronted, which is not having a job, the problem will continue to exist. If this person has a friend, the friend needs to clearly and consistently tell him that his irrational obsession with Germans is in fact an irrational, insane obsession and in order to get money they need to stop blaming others and get to work.
And that is my point of view when it comes to the Arab world. All of this blame of Israel and the United States does not make the Arab world more successful. All the blame in the world will not feed hungry Muslims in Darfur. It will not give clean drinking water to all of the desperately poor Muslims throughout the Islamic world that don't have access to clean drinking water. A true friend of the Arab people will point this out and get them to look at what they can do to resolve their own issues instead of joining into their blame game which may feel good but doesn't really solve anything.
And for the record, I feel the exact same way about my fellow black people. We as a community do the same thing as the Arabs, but to a lesser extant. We are always blaming this one, blaming that one for our own situation, but we never look at what we can do ourselves to resolve our condition. For example, we have a situation today where 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock. These babies are statistically, less likely to succeed and more likely to be poor than babies born to a married couple. They are less likely to go to college. They are more likely to be poor. Yet we demand endless government programs to resolve something which can, in actual fact, be resolved by simply following biblical values and abandoning leftist "values" promoted in large part by social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists. The anything goes culture, where a girl is "sexually free" to have sex with however many guys she wants is not the right path. The idea, avidly promoted by many so-called mental health professionals, that teenagers have the right to explore their sexual barriers free from any sort of parental morality is in actual fact, not good for the black community and does not lead to good mental health.
We look at the poor state of our communities, we are angry about our representation, but what do we do? We vote for the liberals, the same people who introduced these destructive ideas into our community in the first place. We fight the conservatives who promote solutions that really will help resolve the issues that we are facing. But we can't accept the ideas because it comes from "racist" Republicans, despite the fact that a higher number of Republicans voted for the civil rights act than Democrats. Despite the fact that the leftist ideas, that the Democratic party avidly promotes, have only harmed the black community.
And then our so called leaders, instead of confronting real issues in our community, such as the appalling number of black men in prison, the out of wedlock births or the large number of our young people on drugs, spend endless amounts of time blaming Jews, White people, Republicans or the government. And this is completely counter-productive and a waste of time. That energy needs to be focused on taking advantage of the programs that we already have and working to put back together the black family for starters. We need to work to instill moral values in our young people. We should demand that instead of children studying the latest anything goes philosophy from some leftist psychologist, who says that parents should not "repress" children by disciplining them, they should spend that time becoming more familiar with religious moral values, starting with the ten commandments. Instead of teaching them deviant sexuality in school, how about teaching them how to take care of children and hold together a family. Teach them the value of saving sex for a committed relationship. It is funny, so many children know everything about abortion, they know about homosexuality, they know various sexual positions. They know that it is "normal" to have lots of sexual partners. But they don't know the basics of taking care of children. They don't know the slightest bit about maintaining a successful relationship. They can't get a job because they read way below grade level. The are behind grade level in their other subjects. Why aren't the succeeding? Because most black children go to absolutely awful schools, staffed by, for the most part, inadequate teachers that have no fear of being fired because of teachers unions which are the biggest thing that prevents change in the education system. Yet election after election, blacks vote for Democrats, the very same people that support these failing teachers and this situation that keeps us down. These Democrats and our so-called Black leaders are constant opponents of things, such as school choice, which would help children move out of these failing schools and get a real education. Yet the black community votes for politicians that are against this time and time again.
And the Jews? Some of them do the same thing. From some on the Israeli right, I hear constant noises about the Arabs. The Arabs this and the Arabs that. The Arabs are responsible for everything bad that his happening. Blah, blah, blah. And yet, I hear a curious silence when it comes to the actions of the anti-Zionist Jews, like George Soros who are actually worse, in my book, than some of the Muslim anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan is not generally believed, but Soros, who has much of the same point of view, vis-a-vis Israel as Farrakhan, is believed. And there is the matter of money, Soros is a billionaire, yet Farrakhan lives off handouts from the Muslim world. I could go on and on for pages about this. The biggest thing that Jews are not facing is the fact that they think that they are only in a war against the Palestinians, when in fact, while they are in a war against Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, they are also in a war against the anti-Zionist Jews and self-hating Jews in their midst. And frankly the former war would have long since been won and be over if it weren't for this second, civil war, the war of ideas within the Jewish community. The war between Jews who want to live and Jews who want to die. Of Jews who love Israel, and of Jews, like Soros, who would be happy or wouldn't care if it were destroyed. That is the biggest war they are fighting, yet the Israeli right doesn't focus anywhere near enough on this war. This has gotten so crazy that a Jewish professor in Israel, in Tel Aviv university, openly consorts with neo-Nazis and spreads Nazi propoganda, yet he continues to be funded by the state and keeps his position teaching. The only word for this is insane and suicidal. Yet all we hear about is the Arabs. Yes., there are some Arabs who are bad, as I have amply described in my many posts on the subject. But as I have also said, there are many wonderful Arab people, the majority are in fact good people and I'm sure would be peaceful if they weren't raised with such religious and racial hatred towards other people. Even with all of that propoganda, you do have people who reject it. The statement by some on the right, that all Arabs are bad, is just frankly false and non-productive. You can blame other groups forever, but sometimes it is necessary, when resolving a situation, to also look at your own group and handle people within it as well.
So,the blame game, whatever you are blaming, may feel good, but in the long run it doesn't lead to an actual resolution of the situation. The only real way to solve these kinds of problems is to look at what you can do to resolve problems that you run into and work towards a resolution, instead of simply blaming other people or other groups.
Some months ago, I read a book called Cruel and Usual Punishment by Nonnie Darwish. I am a strong man, but there were parts of this book, where she went into the suffering of the Arab Muslim people, which made me almost cry. She talked about how, in the name of Islam, rich Muslim countries refused to do anything for other poor Muslims who were poor and suffering. In an era where far too many Muslims struggle, hungry, without a consistent source of clean drinking water, rich Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia donate barely any money towards helping other Muslims. I read about Muslim women being beaten and treated like trash in the name of Islam. Of Muslim women being killed simply because they were the victim of sexual attacks by men. All in the name of Shariah, Islamic law. And from my earlier studies, I know that these kinds of abuses are the tip of the iceberg. Whenever Islamic law rules, there is human suffering and injustice. And that is why I oppose it. I read the Islamic press, I watch Arab language broadcasts, and instead of tackling the root cause of these problems, radical Islam and extremist Islamic laws, dictators and corrupt Arab princes, they blame the Christians and Jews. That may be satisfying for a minute, to believe that your suffering is due to Israel or the United States, but in the long run it is simply a lie which permits oppression to continue, since if the root cause of something is not faced, it will continue to exist.
For example, let's say that a person doesn't have a job and therefore doesn't have any money. Instead of developing skills and getting a job, they decide to blame, for example, German people for their lack of a money. The person might feel good for a while being able to blame Germans for his situation, but in the long run, the situation will not resolve because the root of the problem is not Germans, it is the fact that the person doesn't have a job. And until the person confronts the fact that they don't have a job and need a job in order to get money, they will continue for a long time with no money. In fact, they can go on for decades, with the false idea that the reason they don't have any money is due to Germans. But thinking this, talking about this will never solve the problem. Only getting a job will ultimately solve the problem of not having money. However, let's say they never came to his realization, and they got really angry with these German people and even killed some of them, simply because he didn't have any money and expected that G-d would reward him, give him some money if he killed Germans. Why obviously, since these actions are not aimed at getting a job, the jobless condition will continue to exist and the person will continue to be poor. Until the real reason for the lack of money is confronted, which is not having a job, the problem will continue to exist. If this person has a friend, the friend needs to clearly and consistently tell him that his irrational obsession with Germans is in fact an irrational, insane obsession and in order to get money they need to stop blaming others and get to work.
And that is my point of view when it comes to the Arab world. All of this blame of Israel and the United States does not make the Arab world more successful. All the blame in the world will not feed hungry Muslims in Darfur. It will not give clean drinking water to all of the desperately poor Muslims throughout the Islamic world that don't have access to clean drinking water. A true friend of the Arab people will point this out and get them to look at what they can do to resolve their own issues instead of joining into their blame game which may feel good but doesn't really solve anything.
And for the record, I feel the exact same way about my fellow black people. We as a community do the same thing as the Arabs, but to a lesser extant. We are always blaming this one, blaming that one for our own situation, but we never look at what we can do ourselves to resolve our condition. For example, we have a situation today where 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock. These babies are statistically, less likely to succeed and more likely to be poor than babies born to a married couple. They are less likely to go to college. They are more likely to be poor. Yet we demand endless government programs to resolve something which can, in actual fact, be resolved by simply following biblical values and abandoning leftist "values" promoted in large part by social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists. The anything goes culture, where a girl is "sexually free" to have sex with however many guys she wants is not the right path. The idea, avidly promoted by many so-called mental health professionals, that teenagers have the right to explore their sexual barriers free from any sort of parental morality is in actual fact, not good for the black community and does not lead to good mental health.
We look at the poor state of our communities, we are angry about our representation, but what do we do? We vote for the liberals, the same people who introduced these destructive ideas into our community in the first place. We fight the conservatives who promote solutions that really will help resolve the issues that we are facing. But we can't accept the ideas because it comes from "racist" Republicans, despite the fact that a higher number of Republicans voted for the civil rights act than Democrats. Despite the fact that the leftist ideas, that the Democratic party avidly promotes, have only harmed the black community.
And then our so called leaders, instead of confronting real issues in our community, such as the appalling number of black men in prison, the out of wedlock births or the large number of our young people on drugs, spend endless amounts of time blaming Jews, White people, Republicans or the government. And this is completely counter-productive and a waste of time. That energy needs to be focused on taking advantage of the programs that we already have and working to put back together the black family for starters. We need to work to instill moral values in our young people. We should demand that instead of children studying the latest anything goes philosophy from some leftist psychologist, who says that parents should not "repress" children by disciplining them, they should spend that time becoming more familiar with religious moral values, starting with the ten commandments. Instead of teaching them deviant sexuality in school, how about teaching them how to take care of children and hold together a family. Teach them the value of saving sex for a committed relationship. It is funny, so many children know everything about abortion, they know about homosexuality, they know various sexual positions. They know that it is "normal" to have lots of sexual partners. But they don't know the basics of taking care of children. They don't know the slightest bit about maintaining a successful relationship. They can't get a job because they read way below grade level. The are behind grade level in their other subjects. Why aren't the succeeding? Because most black children go to absolutely awful schools, staffed by, for the most part, inadequate teachers that have no fear of being fired because of teachers unions which are the biggest thing that prevents change in the education system. Yet election after election, blacks vote for Democrats, the very same people that support these failing teachers and this situation that keeps us down. These Democrats and our so-called Black leaders are constant opponents of things, such as school choice, which would help children move out of these failing schools and get a real education. Yet the black community votes for politicians that are against this time and time again.
And the Jews? Some of them do the same thing. From some on the Israeli right, I hear constant noises about the Arabs. The Arabs this and the Arabs that. The Arabs are responsible for everything bad that his happening. Blah, blah, blah. And yet, I hear a curious silence when it comes to the actions of the anti-Zionist Jews, like George Soros who are actually worse, in my book, than some of the Muslim anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan is not generally believed, but Soros, who has much of the same point of view, vis-a-vis Israel as Farrakhan, is believed. And there is the matter of money, Soros is a billionaire, yet Farrakhan lives off handouts from the Muslim world. I could go on and on for pages about this. The biggest thing that Jews are not facing is the fact that they think that they are only in a war against the Palestinians, when in fact, while they are in a war against Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, they are also in a war against the anti-Zionist Jews and self-hating Jews in their midst. And frankly the former war would have long since been won and be over if it weren't for this second, civil war, the war of ideas within the Jewish community. The war between Jews who want to live and Jews who want to die. Of Jews who love Israel, and of Jews, like Soros, who would be happy or wouldn't care if it were destroyed. That is the biggest war they are fighting, yet the Israeli right doesn't focus anywhere near enough on this war. This has gotten so crazy that a Jewish professor in Israel, in Tel Aviv university, openly consorts with neo-Nazis and spreads Nazi propoganda, yet he continues to be funded by the state and keeps his position teaching. The only word for this is insane and suicidal. Yet all we hear about is the Arabs. Yes., there are some Arabs who are bad, as I have amply described in my many posts on the subject. But as I have also said, there are many wonderful Arab people, the majority are in fact good people and I'm sure would be peaceful if they weren't raised with such religious and racial hatred towards other people. Even with all of that propoganda, you do have people who reject it. The statement by some on the right, that all Arabs are bad, is just frankly false and non-productive. You can blame other groups forever, but sometimes it is necessary, when resolving a situation, to also look at your own group and handle people within it as well.
So,the blame game, whatever you are blaming, may feel good, but in the long run it doesn't lead to an actual resolution of the situation. The only real way to solve these kinds of problems is to look at what you can do to resolve problems that you run into and work towards a resolution, instead of simply blaming other people or other groups.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Wikileaks Publishes Army documents
Below is an article from Voice of America, called "WikiLeaks, the Pentagon and the War in Afghanistan"
with my comments:
MICHAEL MULLEN: "Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing. But the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."
"In London, Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks is still examining fifteen thousand more documents. He says the released documents do not include any top-secret reports or names of informants or information like troop movements.
JULIAN ASSANGE: " This material doesn't just reveal abuses, this material describes the past six years of war, every major attack that resulted in someone being detained or someone being killed."
WikiLeaks is a nonprofit organization that publishes documents from governments and businesses. It released the military documents on Sunday. It gave early copies to three news organizations in the United States, Germany and Britain.
This is a true crime against humanity. At this point, it is not known how many people will die because of this lunatic. But I could easily see it running into the thousands if not tens of thousands. Julian is a true criminal and should be arrested and put in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.
There is a class of people, who care nothing about human life, who can kill with no remorse, no caring, no regret. George Soros is one of these people. But also so is Julian Assange. A person who leaks documents, which will result in the deaths of not only American troops, but also Afghanistan citizens who helped us and their families. And Assange holds this up as some great achievement. True evil.
The White House is urging WikiLeaks not to not publish any more classified documents about the Afghan war.
Good call. I agree with the Obama administration on this. But they need to do more than simply request this. They need to take legal action against the founder and backers of Wikileaks and shut them down. This is a true crime. And I don't believe that they are serving some "higher purpose" by doing this. They are simply getting more people killed. And a full investigation needs to be rapidly done to determine who got these documents to Wikileaks. I don't think it was one person, I suspected a group, considering the number of documents.These soldiers need to be placed for the rest of their life in solitary confinement.
This is yet another example of how the hard left, as represented by Assange, cares nothing about human life.
with my comments:
"This week, the website WikiLeaks published more than seventy-five thousand American military documents on the war in Afghanistan. These documents from the Army and Marine Corps included secret reports from the past six years. ...
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the problems they describe are not new. But he says their release could harm troops and damage American relationships in that part of the world. He says intelligence sources and methods will become known, and Afghans who have helped American forces may now be in danger."
"ROBERT GATES: "Will people trust us? Will people whose lives are on the line trust us to keep their identities secret? Will other governments trust us to keep their documents and their intelligence secret?"
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the problems they describe are not new. But he says their release could harm troops and damage American relationships in that part of the world. He says intelligence sources and methods will become known, and Afghans who have helped American forces may now be in danger."
Gates is 100% right. People will not trust us. This will make it much more difficult to recruit spies and informants in any country. If a lowly soldier can access their identities and put their lives and the lives of their families in danger, then they won't feel safe. And if they don't feel safe, they won't cooperate.
This makes it much harder to get accurate intelligence on the ground. And this means that the war will continue longer and more people will die. And in fact, the lives of people who have trusted the United States, who have helped to save the lives of our soldiers are now in danger.
MICHAEL MULLEN: "Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing. But the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."
"In London, Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks is still examining fifteen thousand more documents. He says the released documents do not include any top-secret reports or names of informants or information like troop movements.
WikiLeaks is a nonprofit organization that publishes documents from governments and businesses. It released the military documents on Sunday. It gave early copies to three news organizations in the United States, Germany and Britain.
This is a true crime against humanity. At this point, it is not known how many people will die because of this lunatic. But I could easily see it running into the thousands if not tens of thousands. Julian is a true criminal and should be arrested and put in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.
There is a class of people, who care nothing about human life, who can kill with no remorse, no caring, no regret. George Soros is one of these people. But also so is Julian Assange. A person who leaks documents, which will result in the deaths of not only American troops, but also Afghanistan citizens who helped us and their families. And Assange holds this up as some great achievement. True evil.
The White House is urging WikiLeaks not to not publish any more classified documents about the Afghan war.
Good call. I agree with the Obama administration on this. But they need to do more than simply request this. They need to take legal action against the founder and backers of Wikileaks and shut them down. This is a true crime. And I don't believe that they are serving some "higher purpose" by doing this. They are simply getting more people killed. And a full investigation needs to be rapidly done to determine who got these documents to Wikileaks. I don't think it was one person, I suspected a group, considering the number of documents.These soldiers need to be placed for the rest of their life in solitary confinement.
This is yet another example of how the hard left, as represented by Assange, cares nothing about human life.
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