ANGELA MERKEL CALLS MULTICULTURALISM POLICIES A SHAM WHICH ACTUALLY ENCOURAGES TERRORISM

‪

ANGELA MERKEL CALLS MULTICULTURALISM POLICIES A SHAM WHICH ACTUALLY ENCOURAGES TERRORISM:

GERMANY'S CHANCELLOR VOWS TO REDUCE NUMBER REFUGEES ENTERING HER COUNTRY.

~ Multiculturalism is a sham, says Angela Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy has attracted praise from all over the world. 

Time magazine and the Financial Times newspaper recently named her Person of the Year, and delegates applauded her for so long at her party's convention on Monday that she had to stop them.

The speech that followed, however, may have surprised supporters of her policies: "Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a ‘life lie,’ ” or a sham, she said, before adding that Germany may be reaching its limits in terms of accepting more refugees. "The challenge is immense," she said. "We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably."

Although those remarks may seem uncharacteristic of Merkel, she probably would insist that she was not contradicting herself. In fact, she was only repeating a sentiment she first voiced several years ago when she said multiculturalism in Germany had "utterly failed."

"Of course the tendency had been to say, 'Let's adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other.' But this concept has failed, and failed utterly," she said in 2010.

Repeating those ideas on Monday was meant to calm her supporters who have grown increasingly weary of the influx of refugees. Newcomers, Merkel stressed, should assimilate to German values and culture, and respect the country's laws.

Merkel emphasized that despite her commitment to limit the influx of refugees, she was standing by her decision to open the borders earlier this fall. “It is a historical test for Europe,” she said, adding that other countries in Europe should accept more refugees to take some of the burden off Germany.

Refugees in need should be helped, she said, but she also suggested that not everyone who has come to Germany fulfilled those criteria. German authorities are expected to ramp up deportations in the coming months.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that multiculturalism in Germany remains "a lie," telling immigrants to "obey our laws, values and traditions." Her comments came as part of a speech on Dec. 14, in Karlsruhe, a city dominated by Europe's refugee crisis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy has attracted praise from all over the world. Time magazine and the Financial Times newspaper recently named her Person of the Year, and delegates applauded her for so long at her party's convention on Monday that she had to stop them.

The speech that followed, however, may have surprised supporters of her policies: "Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a ‘life lie,’ ” or a sham, she said, before adding that Germany may be reaching its limits in terms of accepting more refugees. "The challenge is immense," she said. "We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably."

Although those remarks may seem uncharacteristic of Merkel, she probably would insist that she was not contradicting herself. In fact, she was only repeating a sentiment she first voiced several years ago when she said multiculturalism in Germany had "utterly failed."

"Of course the tendency had been to say, 'Let's adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other.' But this concept has failed, and failed utterly," she said in 2010.

Repeating those ideas on Monday was meant to calm her supporters who have grown increasingly weary of the influx of refugees. Newcomers, Merkel stressed, should assimilate to German values and culture, and respect the country's laws.

Merkel emphasized that despite her commitment to limit the influx of refugees, she was standing by her decision to open the borders earlier this fall. “It is a historical test for Europe,” she said, adding that other countries in Europe should accept more refugees to take some of the burden off Germany.

Refugees in need should be helped, she said, but she also suggested that not everyone who has come to Germany fulfilled those criteria. German authorities are expected to ramp up deportations in the coming months.

Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, overwhelmingly approved of her refugee policy, with only two out of about 1,000 delegates voting against a resolution in support of it.

Merkel's comments may also reflect a particular understanding of assimilation. Many Germans expect immigrants to quickly learn the German language and to contribute to their communities and work life.

Multiculturalism usually has a positive connotation, but to Merkel it symbolizes the emergence of isolated societies within Germany — and ultimately a failure of assimilating immigrants. 

Her policy toward the issue is supposed to avoid the creation of suburbs such as the areas around Paris, for instance, where young immigrants are isolated from the rest of society.

However, her speech comes at a sensitive time. Germany has opened its borders to approximately 1 million refugees this year, many of whom are still being accommodated in makeshift housing. Fights have broken out in multiple reception centers, raising fears about the country's ability to deal with the influx.

Local disputes have caused tensions in national politics as well. 

Last year, Germany's influential Christian Social Union party proposed that everyone in Germany should be required to speak German "in public and in private with their families." The public backlash forced the party to retract the draft resolution.

Compared to 2010, when Merkel first voiced her criticism of multiculturalism, there was little reaction Monday. The applause following her speech lasted nine minutes and again had to be interrupted by Merkel. "Thanks, but we have work to do," she said.

Credits:  Daily Mail, Reuters, Washington Post, The Independent, YouTube

Condolezza Rice & Joel Klein: "Education Reform Is Necessary For Our National Security"

Condoleezza Rice on Education: American Dream on Verge of Collapse


America's national security and the upward mobility the country was built upon could collapse if the education system isn't rapidly improved, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Tuesday.

"If you look at why [Americans] are here or why their parents are here or their grandparents are here, someone believed that in the United States of America, if you worked hard, you could have a better life. That's what set us apart," she told a group at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It's fragile, and we have to make sure that's [still] true. If it ever becomes not true because the education system can't deliver it, then there's no hope of rebuilding it."

Rice and former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein co-chaired a task force that looked into the relationship between education reform and America's national security. American students have fallen into the second tier of achievement when compared to international competitors such as China, South Korea, and many European countries. That failure threatens America's economic future, its physical safety, ability to protect cyber assets, awareness of other cultures, and the country's sense of unity, the report warns.

The task force said America should throw its support behind and expand the Common Core State Standards—benchmarks in English and math that have been adopted by all but five states—to other subjects; provide more school choice to students, so they are not stuck in "dropout factories" that graduate a low percentage of students; and launch a "National Security Readiness Audit" that would determine whether students are learning national security skills such as foreign languages and computer programming.

According to the report, America's educational system is "not adequately preparing its citizens to protect America or its national interests." The Department of Defense estimates that 75 percent of young Americans are not eligible to serve in the military because they didn't graduate from high school, are obese, or have criminal records. "Among recent high school graduates who are eligible to apply, 30 percent score too low on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery to be recruited."

At the Council on Foreign Relations event, Klein said that the country's fading education system is threatening America's identity. If the education system fails, there's no Plan B, he said.

"If people don't believe they can get a fair shake with education, then I think the [national] cohesion erodes," he added.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

OCCUPY EDUCATION!!!

Time is running out for REAL Education Reform in America or Europe & China will leave Our students in the dust!
EFFECTIVE EDUCATION REFORM IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT THE COOPERATION OF TEACHER UNIONS.


22 Steps to 21st Century Education Reform:


1) REPEAL No Child Left Behind! Please!

2) Enact REAL Educational Reform within the U.S. Dept of Education & the National Public School System. This includes the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept of Education.

3) Link the Montessori Pre-School Experience (4 year-olds) to Direct Student Achievement via Hiring Montessori Certified Teachers to teach in Pre-Schools housed on Public School & Charter School Campuses.

4) Eliminate the current Student Testing System & Focus on Subject Matter Content & Student Creativity to Enhance Critical Thinking Skills.

5) Increase Teacher Pay based on a combination of Qualifications, Job Performance, Merit & Student Achievement NOT just Student Test Scores.

6) Require Parents & Guardians to Partner with Teachers and Schools.

7) Bail Out the Federal Student Loan Program just like Congress Bailed Out Wall Street & STOP Funding For-Profit Schools & Colleges which are Nothing more than Student Loan Mills!

8) Allow More Charter Schools to Operate & Provide More Funding those Schools.

9) Ensure that EVERY Public School & Charter School is Asbestos-Free, Up to Date, has a 21st Century Technology Lab & a Community Garden. Especially Schools in Urban Communities. Offer FREE Technology lessons for Parents at School Technology Labs.

10) HIRE & Train Qualified People from Corporate America to Work as Teachers, using the "Teach For America" Business Model.

11) Focus More on Reading, Science, Math, Art and...... Music.

Art & Music Must remain a part of Student Achievement because Creativity helps Children to thrive Academically.

12) Don't Allow Teachers to Teach the SAME Grade Level past 3 Years as to prevent Stagnation & Complacency.
Don't Allow Principals to remain at the SAME Schools past 5 Years.

13) Allow BAD, Poor Performing, Complacent Teachers to be FIRED!

Recruit & HIRE More Part - time & Full -time Instructional Teacher Assistants for Grades: Kindergarten - 8th.

14) Encourage Local & Global Businesses to Form Partnerships with or Adopt EACH Public & Charter School in Every City & Community. Especially those located in Urban & Rural Communities.

15) Bail Out Student Loan Debt which has now reached $1 Trillion Dollars, just like the Bail Out Wall Street received.

16) Integrate Student Appropriate Entrepreneurship & Tech Start Up Programs into Student Curriculum beginning in the Kindergarten.

17) Make Student Attendance Mandatory. Hold Parents & Legal Guardians Accountable!

18) Focus on High School Graduation for EVERY Student! Start in Pre-School & Kindergarten.

19) Offer the Federal "Breakfast in the Classroom" Program in ALL Pre-School & Elementary Classrooms. Also Open Food Banks in ALL Public & Charter Schools.

20) "It Takes A Village!" Allow NO Student to FAIL! Drill Student Achievement into Every Teacher, Student, Principal, Parent & Legal Guardian.

21) Open Student Career/ Workforce Programs in ALL High Schools.

22) Help Students who want to enter the Teaching & Medical Profession to obtain College Scholarships & REAL Financial Aid prior to High School Graduation.
OCCUPY EDUCATION!!


Sources: Fox News, Mediaite.com, MSNBC, PBS News, US News, Youtube

Angela Merkel Slams Muslim Extremists & Multi-Culturalism

David Frum's Commentary: Germany's Merkel Is Right -- Multi-Culturalism Has Failed


The Germans, for obvious reasons, prefer their politicians dull. The current German chancellor, Angela Merkel, more than meets local expectations. So on the rare occasion when Merkel says something vivid, something important must be going on.

It is.

Speaking in Potsdam on Saturday, Chancellor Merkel told a gathering of young Christian Democrats that Multi-Culturalism has failed.

That might seem to be saying the obvious.

Item: December 20, 2007. Two young men are smoking on a Munich subway train, where smoking is prohibited. A fellow passenger, a 76-year-old pensioner, asks them to stop. What happened next was captured on surveillance cameras. The young men call the old man a "s--- German" and savagely beat and kick him, fracturing his skull. Other passengers on the train failed to intervene. One of the attackers was a Greek immigrant, 17. The other, 20, was born in Germany of Turkish parents.

The Munich train story captured the attention of the country, symbolizing an apparent deterioration of public order driven by multicultural immigration.

After the attack, Hesse governor Roland Koch asked:: "How much are we prepared to take from a small proportion of violent youths, who frequently have a foreign background?"

There are more than 15 million people living in Germany who were either born outside Germany or whose parents were born outside Germany. That amounts to almost 20 percent of the population.

This immigrant population is disproportionately connected to almost all of the social problems of modern Germany. Yet the problem that has transfixed the country is, very understandably, the problem of crime.

In Berlin, young men of immigrant stock are three times as likely to commit a crime as young men of German background, reports Germany's state broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. In a September interview, Chancellor Merkel endorsed claims that religious young men of Muslim origin were more likely to commit acts of violence than other young Germans.

These crimes seem increasingly the work of criminal gangs of immigrant origin that organize resistance to police authority in what the German media -- with tabloid exaggeration -- increasingly call "No Go areas." Violent assaults upon police officers jumped 60 percent between 2005 and 2009, according to the German newspaper Bild.

Less spectacular -- but as important to ordinary people's feelings of security -- is the perceived deterioration of public order: declining schools, rising welfare rolls and foiled terrorist attacks.

Because of very low birth rates among old-stock Germans, the proportion of foreign-born is highest among those younger than 20s. In the poor Berlin neighborhood of Wedding, three out of four students and at least half the parents lived on unemployment benefits and welfare, even before the global economic crisis. In 2005, The New York Times interviewed a teacher in a Wedding high school:

"In Wedding, [Evelyn] Rühle says, immigrant children today speak poorer German and have less contact with German culture than when she started teaching 20 years ago. Many Muslim students ... go to Koran classes outside of school and speak only Turkish or Arabic at home. Meanwhile, the growth of digital television has made a host of Turkish- and Arabic-language channels available, intensifying language problems and nurturing identities that are informed more by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the war in Iraq than by the local German environment."

A high-tech economy offers few opportunities for the poorly educated, with the result that immigrants and their children increasingly find themselves dependent on public assistance.

In the United States, immigrants are less likely than the native-born to collect welfare or other social benefits. In Europe, immigrants are radically more likely than the native-born to collect welfare and social benefits, with Third World immigrants collecting the most of all. That's the findings of a 2005 study by researchers at Prague's Charles University.

European voters have absorbed these uncomfortable data into a suspicious view of newcomer intentions: According to a recent study by the Friedrich Ebert think tank, 34.3 percent of Germans believe that migrants come to Germany primarily to receive welfare benefits.

Merkel's Potsdam speech did not cite those social problems.

In Germany, the problems created by immigration literally go without saying, and those who do try to talk about them rapidly find themselves ejected from public life. Thilo Sarrazin, a governor of the Bundesbank (and it's worth mentioning, a member of the left-of-center Social Democratic party) was pressured to resign his post in September after publishing a book arguing the failure of Germany's absorption of immigrants.

Yet in the words of Sigmund Freud, the repressed always return.

Even if Germany and the other European Union countries can prevent the immigration population from growing -- and that is a very uncertain if -- they must find ways to deal with integrating the immigrant population already present, both first- and second- generation.

It's safe to say that no country in Europe is succeeding at that all-important job.

Two weeks ago, I visited the British city of Birmingham.

In 2005, the city had been torn by riots that erupted about 50 yards from the lawyer's office in which I met with four community activists. The riots were sparked when a rumor spread through the neighborhood's Afro-Caribbean population that some Asian youths had gang-raped a black girl. That rumor proved false, but only after blacks and Asians had fought two days of street battles that left two people dead.

I asked these local leaders how things had changed since 2005. The answer: not very much at all.

The authorities had responded to the riots by infusing more money into the community and by intensifying police patrols.

But the mutual suspicions between groups had not been allayed. Problems of integration remained. One of the four activists I met was obviously uncomfortable speaking English, even though born and raised in the United Kingdom. One said to me very poignantly: "The British don't know who they are, so they can't teach us how to adapt."

On the other hand, it's not so clear how much the newcomers want to adapt. The man who spoke poor English had spent his entire life inside an Islamic school system, memorizing the Quran in Arabic. Hard to see how that form of knowledge would equip anyone for life in a modern technological society.

Chancellor Merkel's Potsdam speech raised the question: Could more be done to accelerate immigrant adaptation? Unfortunately the speech offered few answers.

Quietly, some Europeans are wondering whether Europe -- by stumbling into an American-style immigration policy -- has willy-nilly forced itself to follow other American policies as well:

-- Tougher law enforcement and longer prison sentences to fight crime.

-- A less generous welfare state that compels migrants to work rather than collect benefits paid for by the native-born.

-- A stronger assertion of national identity -- and a more emphatic demand that newcomers adapt to the existing society.

These days, many American conservatives are warning that the United States is going the way of Europe. But maybe the real story is the reverse: Is it Europe that will soon be imitating the United States?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum.


View Larger Map

Sources: CNN, Deutsche Welle, Youtube, Google Maps