Via Gates of Vienna
Friday, October 14, 2011
It Is Better to Die in Freedom Than to Live in Submission
This is the story of a courageous former Muslim named Sabatina James, as told by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and Michael Stürzenberger of Politically Incorrect.
Sabatina James: It Is Better to Die in Freedom Than to Live in Submission
by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff
It was because of two books that I became active in the Counterjihad.
Readers are aware of a book called Gabriel’s Whisperings by Jaya Gopal (more about this book soon), but Sabatina James’ You Must Die for Your Happiness (Sterben sollst Du für Dein Glück) may not ring a bell.In late 2003, perhaps early 2004, Sabatina’s story became public in Austria, a story that thus far had not been considered possible: A young woman of Pakistani origin sentenced to death by her own family for converting to Christianity. Prior to that she had been sent to Pakistan to study the “real Islam” in a madrassa, where she was taught to hate the West, and then to be married to her cousin, Salman. In both of her books she recounts her harrowing time in the madrassa, the brainwashing she was subjected to, her trying — in vain — to speak to Allah.
Her story is one that has become so familiar in recent years: A Girl of Muslim background starts living a “Western” life by dressing in non-Islamic clothes, meeting boys, and going to discos. Her brothers and father strongly disagree, while the girl is either “subdued”, pressured into Muslim life, or decides to flee, thereby risking a death fatwa or death itself. In Sabatina’s case, the death fatwa was put on her head because she did something that was worse than anything else she did: she converted to Christianity.
Sabatina has not only lost her entire family, but also her country, Austria. The Austrian authorities showed special incompetence by not helping Sabatina, forcing her to relocate to Germany, where she is now in a witness protection program. This has not stopped her from helping to prevent girls from going through the same nightmare: her own non-profit organization, Sabatina e.V., aims to support young Muslim girls seeking help from their violent families or protection from arranged marriages. The organization offers counseling and education in human rights (the universal ones).
I have always admired Sabatina’s courage. She is truly a beacon in our fight for the preservation of Western Judeo-Christian values, of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, of our way of life. Sabatina’s latest book focuses on her “life between Islam and Christianity”, one that is focused on Christian values and a Muslim background, both of which are crucial in helping her important work with battered Muslim girls and women. It is my hope that both her books will become available in English soon.
In the meantime, I leave the reader with a blurb by Ayaan Hirsi Ali:Sabatina has paid a high price to live in freedom with her self-chosen belief. Today she takes a stand for other Muslim women who are confronted in their own families with abuse, oppression and deadly violence. I wish there were thousands of Sabatinas…And Sabatina in her own words:I [say] that I am afraid, afraid of the pain when I am about to be murdered. But as a Christian I believe that that my body can be killed, but not my soul. You can kill me, but not my courage, my moral courage.Below is an article about Sabatina from Politically Incorrect. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:
It is better to die in freedom than to live in submission
Sabatina James: “Islam Is Incapable of Peace”
Testimony reveals NYPD false arrests
Via III Percent Patriots
I'm sure no one is surprised.
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MOREA former New York narcotics detective has testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.Stephen Anderson testified under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors after he was implicated in the corruption scandal that resulted in the arrests of eight police officers and a department shake-up, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.
Anderson was arrested for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out a fellow officer, Henry Tavarez, whose "buy-and-bust" arrests had been low, the newspaper reported.
My best coin day...E.V.E.R...
Via Old Virginia
6 1/2 pounds of various silver coins from 1750 to 1832. Jump to the end to view them all, if you wish not to see each find.
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The Reuther Memorandum, Dec 1961
I’ve looked at a number of sources to see whether the Reuther Memorandum was a hoax or not, designed to discredit the Left but it appears to be genuine. Here’s one source discussing it in the context of the times. Scribd has source material. Below is a reprint by Unqualified Reservations.
Basically, the Left has a problem with the Centre-Right, which is what the term indicates – moderates who advocate nation, sovereignty, patriotism, family, private property, inheritance, freedom of choice, free enterprise, small[ish] government, the rule of law, common sense, initiative and so on.
As this large sector of the population – in America, the majority – can’t be directly vilified, as the Left has stolen many of those words for itself, particularly liberty and freedom, which of course leftist policies achieve the opposite of, then they have to counterattack something, someone and this was the context of the Reuther Memorandum, given to President Kennedy as a possible solution to the Right.
At my own place, commenting on Eric Foner and the Hard Left who have infiltrated all institutions in the society via a plethora of organizations from ACORN to ASH and who infest the universities, I put what I saw as the major sectors of society:
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Via Chuck
Sirius-XM‘s ’Opie’ Confronted With Alinsky-Like Tactics At Occupy Wall Street
Gregg “Opie” Hughes (one half of the popular radio team of Opie & Anthony) visited the Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan earlier this week and expected to find something he could support, instead he was driven out of the area by a gang of protesters using the classic tactics of Saul Alinsky.
An an exclusive interview with The Blaze, Opie makes no bones about being slightly more liberal than his outspoken, conservative, radio partner Anthony Cumia. On Tuesday, he spent almost three hours in Zucotti Park, shooting videos for his “Opie’s Eye” YouTube channel. He stated to us and repeated it several times on the radio that he believed he would find common ground with the protesters. However, he left the park calling them “filthy hippies.”
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Obama Administration Cuts Major Part Of Health Care Reform Law: CLASS Long-Term Insurance Program Canceled
Via Randy's Right
Awww, what a shame......
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The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president's signature health overhaul law – a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.Targeted by congressional Republicans for repeal, the program became the first casualty in the political and policy wars over the health care law. It had been expected to launch in 2013.
"This is a victory for the American taxpayer and future generations," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., spearheading opposition in the Senate. "The administration is finally admitting (the long-term care plan) is unsustainable and cannot be implemented."
Veterans Airlift Command
Dixie sees and reads everything that Bill Whittle and John Stossel produce as part of her homeschool. Both extraordinary men.
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Richard Weaver: Historian of the South by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Can't remember who to credit for this.
========Around the world, secession and devolution movements abound; even the European Union can at times be heard to acknowledge the desire for devolution. The Confederate Battle Flag, ignorantly condemned by American Jacobins as a symbol of slavery that should be forcibly uprooted wherever it is found, has been seen to fly wherever in the world a people seeks to resist their subordination to unchecked central authority.
These are some of the valuable things that Richard Weaver found in Southern civilization, and why we can say, with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, that "the cause of the South is the cause of us all.
Richard Weaver: Historian of the South
Oh, goody, another war......
Via Randy's Right
ABC News’ Jake Tapper and Luis Martinez report:
Two days ago President Obama authorized the deployment to Uganda of approximately 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to help regional forces “remove from the battlefield” – meaning capture or kill – Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the LRA.
The forces will deploy beginning with a small group and grow over the next month to 100. They will ultimately go to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the permission of those countries.
The president made this announcement in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Friday afternoon, saying that “deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central Africa.”
He said that “although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.”
MSNBC Analyst Says Donny Deutsch Occupy Wall Street Needs A 'Kent State' Moment
Via III Percent Patriots
If it does transpire Mr. Collectivist, you'll be sorry you fomented this Reichstag Fire
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House Bill Would Criminalize Satire of TSA
Via Troublesome Times
On September 22, 2011, H.R. 3011 was introduced in the House. It is entitled the “Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act of 2011” and it contains some curious language.
Two thirds of the way through the ponderous bill, in Sec. 295, we find the following:
Whoever, except with the written permission of the Assistant Secretary for Transportation Security (or the Director of the Federal Air Marshal Service for issues involving the Federal Air Marshal Service), knowingly uses the words ‘Transportation Security Administration’, ‘United States Transportation Security Administration’, ‘Federal Air Marshal Service’, ‘United States Federal Air Marshal Service’, ‘Federal Air Marshals’, the initials ‘T.S.A.’, ‘F.A.M.S.’, ‘F.A.M.’, or any colorable imitation of such words or initials, or the likeness of a Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service badge, logo, or insignia on any item of apparel, in connection with any advertisement, circular, book, pamphlet, software, or other publication, or with any play, motion picture, broadcast, telecast, or other production, in a matter that is reasonably calculated to convey the impression that the wearer of the item of apparel is acting pursuant to the legal authority of the Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service, or to convey the impression that such advertisement, circular, book, pamphlet, software, or other publication, or such play, motion picture, broadcast, telecast, or other production, is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service. (Emphasis added.)
You say you want a revolution
Via GardenSerf
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
….
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
….
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
….
You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
….
You better free you mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow–Revolution, by the Beatles
Obama Spoke About "Fast & Furious" Before Holder Claimed He Knew ++
Via Sipsey Street Irregulars
Naughty, naughty, naughty.......
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Preborn Children Lobby on Capitol Hill
Godfather Politics
VERBATIM POST
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VERBATIM POST
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For the first time in history, preborn children as young as first trimester were on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to lobby for their right to life.
Voices from the Womb launched their national campaign by holding a presentation in a Congressional Auditorium. Using the newest state-of-the-art ultrasound equipment, the group displayed images and sounds recorded from the womb. With this new technology, heartbeats of preborn babies can be heard as early as five to six weeks when they are no larger than a grain of rice.
Politicians across the Hill were invited to visit the presentation that consisted of ultrasound video and audio that showed the development of fingers and toes as the babies grow, move and react to sounds.
Brandi Swindell from Stanton Healthcare in Boise, Idaho, explained it this way:
“We are taking a brand new, state-of-the-art ultrasound machine to a Congressional Auditorium on Capitol Hill in which we are going to invite all the members of Congress to come to this presentation where they are going to see — in real time — preborn children in their mothers’ womb… Even when it’s five and six weeks old — the size of a grain of rice — you can still pick up that beating heart. And it is so powerful as you see the baby grow in the womb, and you can start to make out the fingers and the toes and the head and the little body forming.”
Swindell also stated that after seeing the Voice from the Womb presentation, that “there’s no way that anybody can deny the humanity of the preborn child.”
If the organization can raise enough funds, they plan on taking this powerful presentation to every state capitol in the nation.
We need to pray in earnest that liberal pro-abortion politicians from both parties and independents alike, took the opportunity to witness this historic event as the preborn children of America make their heartbeats heard and lobby for themselves that other preborns will be protected from being murdered and having their lives end before they see the light day.
National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Daily Recap 10-13-11
Injustice Everywhere
VERBATIM POST
VERBATIM POST
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- Morgan Co WV deputy sued by man shot 2x through closed door during domestic call, dashcam audio apparently contradicted the cop’s story but state police exonerated him in their investigation anyway. [4] bit.ly/nyE2uF
- 2 Pocatello ID cops sued by man who suffered hearing loss & a fractured skull when he was tasered when he allegedly tried to surrender during a traffic stop. [3] http://t.co/FPn7xHET
- Waukegan IL police sued by man claiming he was intimidated and beaten for over 26 hours by police into making a false confession to a murder where DNA later implicated another man who went to prison for armed robbery. [4] trib.in/pgxJwu
- Miami FL settles suit for $500k to woman who was kidnapped & raped by cop now serving 10yr sentence [0] bit.ly/qMFvjA
- New York NY cop’s testimony alleges that the practice of planting drugs on suspects and innocent people in order to meet drug arrest quotas by padding numbers with false arrests was widespread at all levels in that department. [4] bit.ly/q2eV7k
- Glendale CA police subject of suit by ACLU alleging racial profiling & harassment of Latino students who were detained at school [3] lat.ms/pqBrT5
- Penn Hills PA cop & Vandergrift Co PA constable sued by woman claiming they broke into her home without a warrant in search of her boyfriend who didn’t live there, over unpaid traffic tickets. [3] bit.ly/qJ1c2U
- Denver CO settles class action suit for $200k to 93 people caught up in mass arrest during the 2008 DNC [0] bit.ly/oi355D
- Will Co IL sheriff & a sheriff’s detective were named in suit by a Lynwood cop wrongfully accused in a series of shootings last year [0] trib.in/o51Tx7
- West Chester OH cop indicted on unspecified felony obstruction & evidence tampering charges in ongoing probe [2] bit.ly/n7JcFq
- Delavan WI cop charged w/obstruction for allegedly lying to Whitewater police looking for an assault suspect [0] bit.ly/qXHWNF
- Oregon Co MO deputy arrested for apparently blackmailing a woman w/threats of arrest in exchange for $5k in cash [1] bit.ly/njM84u
- Hanging Rock OH cop pleads guilty to theft in office & evidence tampering for taking cash for traffic tickets [0] bit.ly/py7Vyx
- Williamsport PA cop sentenced to probation after convicted for tampering w/public records and obstruction [0] bit.ly/qhbvLF
- Lawrenceburg IN cop police captain suspended after charged w/official misconduct for campaigning while on duty [0] bit.ly/rs4R5b
- Calhoun Co IL sheriff indicted on official misconduct & disorderly conduct charges in board of commissioners dispute[2] bit.ly/n6lX0W
- Ridgefield CT cop arrested on threatening & disorderly conduct charges involving dispute with ex-wife [0] bit.ly/pdzV8Y
- Central Saanich BC cop censured for trying to use his badge in order to get out of a DUI arrest [0] http://bit.ly/qMI0wp
- Peel ON retired cop who beat child porn charges now charged w/possession of several stolen police badges [0] http://bit.ly/mTkbAo
- Hoboken NJ cop arrested on DUI charges after crashing into several parked cars & landing his car on it’s side [0] bit.ly/nDYL5s
Squeezed Out in India, Students Turn to U.S.
Via Wes
October 13, 2011
Squeezed Out in India, Students Turn to U.S. (Affirmative Action Paradise)
By NIDA NAJAR
NEW DELHI — Moulshri Mohan was an excellent student at one of the top private high schools in New Delhi. When she applied to colleges, she received scholarship offers of $20,000 from Dartmouth and $15,000 from Smith. Her pile of acceptance letters would have made any ambitious teenager smile: Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Duke, Wesleyan, Barnard and the University of Virginia.
But because of her 93.5 percent cumulative score on her final high school examinations, which are the sole criteria for admission to most colleges here, Ms. Mohan was rejected by the top colleges at Delhi University, better known as D.U., her family’s first choice and one of India’s top schools.
“Daughter now enrolled at Dartmouth!” her mother, Madhavi Chandra, wrote, updating her Facebook page. “Strange swings this admission season has shown us. Can’t get into DU, can make it to the Ivies.”
Ms. Mohan, 18, is now one of a surging number of Indian students attending American colleges and universities, as competition in India has grown formidable, even for the best students. With about half of India’s 1.2 billion people under the age of 25, and with the ranks of the middle class swelling, the country’s handful of highly selective universities are overwhelmed.
This summer, Delhi University issued cutoff scores at its top colleges that reached a near-impossible 100 percent in some cases. The Indian Institutes of Technology, which are spread across the country, have an acceptance rate of less than 2 percent — and that is only from a pool of roughly 500,000 who qualify to take the entrance exam, a feat that requires two years of specialized coaching after school.
“The problem is clear,” said Kapil Sibal, the government minister overseeing education in India, who studied law at Harvard. “There is a demand and supply issue. You don’t have enough quality institutions, and there are enough quality young people who want to go to only quality institutions.”
American universities and colleges have been more than happy to pick up the slack. Faced with shrinking returns from endowment funds, a decline in the number of high school graduates in the United States and growing economic hardship among American families, they have stepped up their efforts to woo Indian students thousands of miles away.
Representatives from many of the Ivy League institutions have begun making trips to India to recruit students and explore partnerships with Indian schools. Some have set up offices in India, partly aimed at attracting a wider base of students. The State Department held a United States-India higher education summit meeting on Thursday at Georgetown University to promote the partnership between the countries.
Indians are now the second-largest foreign student population in America, after the Chinese, with almost 105,000 students in the United States in the 2009-10 academic year, the last for which comprehensive figures were available. Student visa applications from India increased 20 percent in the past year, according to the American Embassy here.
Although a majority of Indian students in the United States are graduate students, undergraduate enrollment has grown by more than 20 percent in the past few years. And while wealthy Indian families have been sending their children to the best American schools for years, the idea is beginning to spread to middle-class families, for whom Delhi University has historically been the best option.
American universities have now become “safety schools” for increasingly stressed and traumatized Indian students and parents, who complain that one fateful event — the final high school examination — can make or break a teenager’s future career.
This admissions season, students exchanged exam horror stories. One knew a boy who was sick with typhoid but could not reschedule. “I know a girl who saw the physics paper and she fainted,” said Nikita Sachdeva, her eyes widening.
Ms. Sachdeva, 19, graduated from Delhi Public School in 2010, with a 94.5 percent exam score, one point shy of the cutoff to study economics at St. Stephen’s, one of the top colleges at Delhi University. She decided to take a year off and work as an intern at a nonprofit group affiliated with the World Health Organization, while applying to American universities.
But for some students, it is not merely the competition that drives them to apply to study in the United States. It is also the greater intellectual freedom of an American liberal arts education.
India’s educational system is rigid, locking students into an area of study and affording them little opportunity to take courses outside their major beyond the 11th grade.
Only a few courses of study are considered lucrative career paths. Economics, commerce, engineering and medicine have a certain cachet, while English, history and languages are less well regarded. Often students who cannot afford to study abroad end up in less competitive courses, with a contraction of career possibilities.
“If somebody majors in English here, it’s like, ‘O.K., she’ll get married,’ ” said Ms. Sachdeva, who is attending the University of Chicago this fall and is planning to major in economics with a minor in creative writing.
Other students, finding entrance to their dream school in India impossible, have made similar choices. Siddhant Puri had wanted to study computer engineering at one of the Indian Institutes of Technology since he was a child. But after a month of coaching in the 11th grade, he decided it was not for him. Instead, he became the vice president of his high school class and played soccer, and he now plans to study German literature and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Such students have provided a welcome and much needed boon to American universities.
“We’re accepting an increasing number of students, and they’re excellent,” said Matthew Gutmann, the vice president for international affairs at Brown University, which plans to open an office in New Delhi partly dedicated to recruiting students. Undergraduate applications from India have grown from 86 in 2008 to more than 300 for this academic year at Brown.
“India’s a really big country; it therefore has a really big middle class,” said Allan Goodman, the president of the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit organization based in New York. “They value education so much so they have been saving for education, and they’re willing to invest in education. And our prices are very high.”
The financial strain is considerable. Some middle-class salaries in India are below the poverty line in the West. The difference in tuition between top American and Indian universities is staggering. Tuition at Dartmouth is $41,736 a year, not including room and board, while most of the colleges of Delhi University cost about $150 to $500 per year.
The emotional sacrifice of letting a teenager travel across an ocean is no less acute for some parents. Dr. Chandra spent the days before her daughter’s departure in a near panic. But she has accepted the idea that there is no college in India quite suitable for a young woman like her daughter, who wants to study psychology and who spent the past few months putting the finishing touches on a documentary she is making — on the short shrift the humanities receive in the Indian educational system.
“In the end, I’m glad it happened,” Dr. Chandra said. “She’s been an excellent student, and she’s not used to settling for second best.”
October 13, 2011
Squeezed Out in India, Students Turn to U.S. (Affirmative Action Paradise)
By NIDA NAJAR
NEW DELHI — Moulshri Mohan was an excellent student at one of the top private high schools in New Delhi. When she applied to colleges, she received scholarship offers of $20,000 from Dartmouth and $15,000 from Smith. Her pile of acceptance letters would have made any ambitious teenager smile: Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Duke, Wesleyan, Barnard and the University of Virginia.
But because of her 93.5 percent cumulative score on her final high school examinations, which are the sole criteria for admission to most colleges here, Ms. Mohan was rejected by the top colleges at Delhi University, better known as D.U., her family’s first choice and one of India’s top schools.
“Daughter now enrolled at Dartmouth!” her mother, Madhavi Chandra, wrote, updating her Facebook page. “Strange swings this admission season has shown us. Can’t get into DU, can make it to the Ivies.”
Ms. Mohan, 18, is now one of a surging number of Indian students attending American colleges and universities, as competition in India has grown formidable, even for the best students. With about half of India’s 1.2 billion people under the age of 25, and with the ranks of the middle class swelling, the country’s handful of highly selective universities are overwhelmed.
This summer, Delhi University issued cutoff scores at its top colleges that reached a near-impossible 100 percent in some cases. The Indian Institutes of Technology, which are spread across the country, have an acceptance rate of less than 2 percent — and that is only from a pool of roughly 500,000 who qualify to take the entrance exam, a feat that requires two years of specialized coaching after school.
“The problem is clear,” said Kapil Sibal, the government minister overseeing education in India, who studied law at Harvard. “There is a demand and supply issue. You don’t have enough quality institutions, and there are enough quality young people who want to go to only quality institutions.”
American universities and colleges have been more than happy to pick up the slack. Faced with shrinking returns from endowment funds, a decline in the number of high school graduates in the United States and growing economic hardship among American families, they have stepped up their efforts to woo Indian students thousands of miles away.
Representatives from many of the Ivy League institutions have begun making trips to India to recruit students and explore partnerships with Indian schools. Some have set up offices in India, partly aimed at attracting a wider base of students. The State Department held a United States-India higher education summit meeting on Thursday at Georgetown University to promote the partnership between the countries.
Indians are now the second-largest foreign student population in America, after the Chinese, with almost 105,000 students in the United States in the 2009-10 academic year, the last for which comprehensive figures were available. Student visa applications from India increased 20 percent in the past year, according to the American Embassy here.
Although a majority of Indian students in the United States are graduate students, undergraduate enrollment has grown by more than 20 percent in the past few years. And while wealthy Indian families have been sending their children to the best American schools for years, the idea is beginning to spread to middle-class families, for whom Delhi University has historically been the best option.
American universities have now become “safety schools” for increasingly stressed and traumatized Indian students and parents, who complain that one fateful event — the final high school examination — can make or break a teenager’s future career.
This admissions season, students exchanged exam horror stories. One knew a boy who was sick with typhoid but could not reschedule. “I know a girl who saw the physics paper and she fainted,” said Nikita Sachdeva, her eyes widening.
Ms. Sachdeva, 19, graduated from Delhi Public School in 2010, with a 94.5 percent exam score, one point shy of the cutoff to study economics at St. Stephen’s, one of the top colleges at Delhi University. She decided to take a year off and work as an intern at a nonprofit group affiliated with the World Health Organization, while applying to American universities.
But for some students, it is not merely the competition that drives them to apply to study in the United States. It is also the greater intellectual freedom of an American liberal arts education.
India’s educational system is rigid, locking students into an area of study and affording them little opportunity to take courses outside their major beyond the 11th grade.
Only a few courses of study are considered lucrative career paths. Economics, commerce, engineering and medicine have a certain cachet, while English, history and languages are less well regarded. Often students who cannot afford to study abroad end up in less competitive courses, with a contraction of career possibilities.
“If somebody majors in English here, it’s like, ‘O.K., she’ll get married,’ ” said Ms. Sachdeva, who is attending the University of Chicago this fall and is planning to major in economics with a minor in creative writing.
Other students, finding entrance to their dream school in India impossible, have made similar choices. Siddhant Puri had wanted to study computer engineering at one of the Indian Institutes of Technology since he was a child. But after a month of coaching in the 11th grade, he decided it was not for him. Instead, he became the vice president of his high school class and played soccer, and he now plans to study German literature and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Such students have provided a welcome and much needed boon to American universities.
“We’re accepting an increasing number of students, and they’re excellent,” said Matthew Gutmann, the vice president for international affairs at Brown University, which plans to open an office in New Delhi partly dedicated to recruiting students. Undergraduate applications from India have grown from 86 in 2008 to more than 300 for this academic year at Brown.
“India’s a really big country; it therefore has a really big middle class,” said Allan Goodman, the president of the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit organization based in New York. “They value education so much so they have been saving for education, and they’re willing to invest in education. And our prices are very high.”
The financial strain is considerable. Some middle-class salaries in India are below the poverty line in the West. The difference in tuition between top American and Indian universities is staggering. Tuition at Dartmouth is $41,736 a year, not including room and board, while most of the colleges of Delhi University cost about $150 to $500 per year.
The emotional sacrifice of letting a teenager travel across an ocean is no less acute for some parents. Dr. Chandra spent the days before her daughter’s departure in a near panic. But she has accepted the idea that there is no college in India quite suitable for a young woman like her daughter, who wants to study psychology and who spent the past few months putting the finishing touches on a documentary she is making — on the short shrift the humanities receive in the Indian educational system.
“In the end, I’m glad it happened,” Dr. Chandra said. “She’s been an excellent student, and she’s not used to settling for second best.”
GOA Alert: Rep. Rehberg’s Legislation Protects Veterans’ Second Amendment Rights
GOA Pushing for Veto-Proof Majority in Senate
The House this week adopted legislation protecting the Second Amendment rights of veterans.
Sponsored by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), the legislation requires that before a veteran can lose his or her gun rights, they must receive due process in a court of law. Rehberg offered the measure as an amendment to H.R. 2349, which passed the House on a voice vote.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) told GOA he plans to introduce a Senate version of the bill right away. GOA is working to get as many cosponsors to this legislation as possible. In the last Congress, Sen. Burr’s bill passed out of committee only to be derailed by Harry Reid and anti-gun Senate Democrats.
Veterans Disarmament Act
It might seem like a no-brainer. In America, no one—be they in the military or a civilian—should be stripped of their constitutional liberties without having their day in court, right? But it can happen, and it does happen.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) can deem a veteran as a “mental defective” for the sole reason of having a third party appointed over their financial affairs. Veterans with mental health issues such as temporary memory loss or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) commonly turn over control of their finances to a spouse or family member.
Because persons found to be “mental defectives” are prohibited from owning firearms, the names of these veterans are turned over to the FBI’s NICS system.
No crime needs to have been committed. No finding that the person is even remotely dangerous. No trial by a jury of one’s peers. A veteran can be stripped of his or her gun rights simply by the capricious action of government bureaucrats.
Ok, some may protest, but this must happen rarely. It must be an aberration, a mistake. Wrong.
Since 1999, over 150,000 honorably discharged veterans have lost their gun rights in precisely this manner. And though it’s theoretically possible to get off the list, that rarely—if ever—happens.
Gun owners who are not veterans can also be affected by the current law because the definition of “mental defective” used by the VA applies to anyone. It affects veterams particularly hard because of the ease of information sharing between one federal agency (VA) and another (FBI).
But under ObamaCare, medical records for all Americans will be made increasingly available to Washington bureaucrats. What safeguards are in place to ensure that those records will not likewise be abused? None.
That’s why it is vitally important that all gun owners contact their two Senators and insist that they support Sen. Burr’s Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act.
This bill ensures that a veteran cannot lose his or her gun rights without a finding in a court of law that the person is a danger to self or others.
This would mean no more “psychiatric gun bans” for vets, and it will serve notice to the federal government that the same thing will not be allowed to happen to the rest of the population.
GOA is working to get as many cosponsors as possible. Due process under the law is something even anti-gunners should support (they won’t, of course), and we are pushing to get a veto-proof majority behind this legislation.
ACTION: Please contact your Senators and urge them to cosponsor the Second Amendment Veterans Protection Act.
Forever 1969
“Take back the street.” The “99%er’s.” “The movement.” The level of self-delusion among participants and newsreaders in this country is breathtaking.
For a handful of weeks now some malcontents, joiners, and admittedly, one or two dozen people with legitimate complaints against society have gathered on “Wall Street” to take back the country. They have no stated aims. No coherent message. Several are seeming escapees of mental institutions.
Some of the “movement’s” inconsistencies are evident immediately. For one, they are not actually “taking” anything. They are not storming the floor of the Stock Exchange as any revolutionary with sand would do. They are sitting in a nearby park and engaging in drum circles and drug-doing.
Granted, some brave souls recently tried to thwart society’s direction by stopping its vehicles. Yet one is at a loss to explain how shutting down (or more accurately, inconveniencing) drivers on the Brooklyn Bridge will bring about economic equanimity.
“Not one commentator ever asks, ‘If you want things to change, but the other side has all the money and guns, how do you expect it to happen peacefully?’”
These exhibitionists are nothing if not wholly misdirected. For example, they are not squatting at the wholly private Federal Reserve headquarters, where power lies, but near Wall and Broad, where power is merely exercised. It’s like protesting your local police department because you are upset about the laws passed at the State Capitol.
Is anyone actually putting pressure on the people who envision and then enact loathsome financial regulations? No. They never do. At least not in this country. Thus, they will never succeed.
So what we have is a fictional foray into synthetic significance. For every adolescent it is forever 1969. It doesn’t really matter whether this movement is backed by George Soros or George Bush (Sr.)—both are more akin in their philosophies to one another than with any of the “movementeers.” Someone is bankrolling these bums, but entirely in the service of an ostentatious obfuscation.
There is an old true story told about financier Jay Gould. When asked what he would do if there were ever a threat of a genuine revolution in America he answered, “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.” This is not a facetious statement. He was deadly serious because this tactic always works. It has been refined since then to encourage letting off steam rather than letting off gunpowder, yet it is generally the same.
Whatever background money is being spent to organize this motley group of pretend patriots, you can be sure it is not intended to change anything.
Meanwhile, the Fourth Estate‘s bought-and-paid-for-decades-ago faces ask with their best earnest wide-eyed imitations, “Can this be the beginning of America’s Arab Spring?”
No it is not.
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