Does Burkhart have a head full of Islamic [...]]]> In the video below, CBS in Los Angeles reports that suspected arson terrorist Harry Burkhart flew into Las Vegas from Chechnya (his birthplace, an outpost of Islamist separatism) on a Russian passport last October. Apparently that degree of hostile diversity is no problema in today’s wide open America.

Does Burkhart have a head full of Islamic poison against America or is he just a garden-variety crazy? He played up the insanity angle in court, but his long-time hairstylist did not describe him as disturbed. We may never find out, given the court system’s disinterest in jihad as a possible motive.

It was further discussed that Burkhart and his mother may have engaged in insurance fraud via fire in Germany, which is why that government requested the mom be returned to them.

Accused Hollywood Arsonist Appears Ill In Court, CBS Los Angeles, January 4, 2012

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Suspected Hollywood firebug Harry Burkhart, 24, appeared in a Los Angeles court Wednesday to answer 37 charges in a string of fires set in Hollywood, West Hollywood, and surrounding areas.

Burkhart, who used a German interpreter, appeared ill after entering the courtroom. He was twitching and leaning his head back, requiring the assistance of three deputies to stand and, even, hold his head up. The judge ordered photographers present to not take his picture.

It was reported earlier Wednesday that Burkhart was under suicide watch.

The accused fire starter faces 28 counts of arson of property and nine counts of arson of an inhabited structure.

Prosecutor Sean Carney charged that Burkhart engaged “in what essentially amounts to a campaign of terror in this community.”

Carney said Burkhart is believed to have set “upwards of 52 arson fires.”

Burkhart’s alleged fire spree began around midnight on Dec. 30. He was taken into custody on Jan. 2 after officials circulated images obtained from surveillance camera footage.

“The people believe that the defendant engaged in this conduct because he has a hatred for Americans,” Carney told the judge.

The district attorney’s office says the fires began the evening after Burkhart was forced from a courtroom upon becoming enraged during an extradition hearing for his mother.

Court papers show investigators discovered newspaper articles about the local fires during a search of Burkhart’s Hollywood apartment. Searchers also found newspaper articles about similar fires in Germany.

Investigators also found bomb-making materials in Burkhart’s van.

Burkhart is reportedly being investigated by German officials in the torching of his family residence on Oct. 14. He and his family filed an insurance claim that same day.

The judge Wednesday set Burkhart’s bail at $2,850,000 and demanded seizure of his passport, which was already set to expire at the end of January.

“A lot of harm he did to the psyche of the citizens of these particular communities and all of Los Angeles County I think it merits a life term, L.A. District Attorney Steve Cooley.

Burkhart’s arraignment was continued to Jan. 24.

Cooley said Burkhart will likely face additional charges. If convicted, he could face state prison time.

Unsurprisingly, the liberal radio network assumes the advisability of bilingualism where Spanish is accepted as a co-equal language in America. Spanish education will “help create the next generation of bilingual doctors, executives and teachers,” [...]]]> National Public Radio notes the increase of Spanish-speaking kiddies in southern states and the pressure their language diversity has made on schools.

Unsurprisingly, the liberal radio network assumes the advisability of bilingualism where Spanish is accepted as a co-equal language in America. Spanish education will “help create the next generation of bilingual doctors, executives and teachers,” the report states.

Earlier waves of immigrants received no special educational programs with credentialed bilingual instructors, but were expected to learn English by hearing it from their teachers.

NPR’s report focuses on the small Mississippi town of Vardaman, population 1300, where nearly half of the elementary school students are Spanish speakers.

There is no mention of the cost of educating so many foreign children or the immigration status of their farmworker parents. (A report elsewhere observes the routinely high level of pregnant teens and dropouts in high school among the hispanics.)

The linked story includes an audio file of the radio version:

Rise In Spanish Speakers Has School Trying To Adapt, NPR, January 4, 2012

Year over year, the number of Spanish-speaking kindergarteners at Vardaman Elementary School in northeast Mississippi has been on the rise.

Census numbers show the South has the fastest-growing Hispanic population in the country. Now, Vardaman Elementary is about to become Mississippi’s first predominantly Latino primary school, and that’s posing special challenges when it comes to finding teachers who can help Spanish-speaking students adapt to the American classroom.

Vardaman Takes Its Own Approach
Resources are scarce in the school’s small farming community of Vardaman. But of the town’s approximately 1,300 residents, at least one-third are Hispanic — and that number is growing.

Over at Vardaman Elementary, many of Angela Barnette’s second-grade students are American-born, but close to half are also native Spanish speakers. It’s a language Barnette doesn’t speak, but she does her best to encourage it. She says she often picks books with English and Spanish words to read to the class.

“They love it when they see the teacher who can’t speak [Spanish],” Barnette says. “It makes them feel special that they can say those words and the others can’t. They love that.”

Across the country, debate continues over how best to teach English-language learners. Some states, like Arizona, have English-immersion policies mandating that no Spanish be spoken in the classroom. Other states, such as Texas, use a bilingual approach. Mississippi leaves it up to individual districts to determine the best method.

The ‘Cyclical Issue’ Of Bilingual Education
Vardaman Elementary Principal Pamela Lee says a big concern for her is finding bilingual instructors.

“I had one position for a certified teacher open last year and I interviewed 10 people,” Lee says. “No one in that pool of 10 people was bilingual.”

Teachers are already in short supply in Mississippi’s rural areas, and Lee says a starting salary of less than $30,000 makes it even harder to recruit bilingual educators.

She says she ultimately filled the opening with a non-bilingual teacher. After all, Mississippi doesn’t actually require schools with Spanish speakers to employ bilingual instructors.

Education researcher Megan Hopkins says that’s a problem.

“Bilingual instruction isn’t valued, so teachers are not pursuing that credential,” Hopkins says. “My work shows that likely, [as] we have fewer and fewer [bilingual instructors], that may not be a good thing for kids.”

Hopkins, who studies at Northwestern University, says schools need Spanish-speaking educators to help create the next generation of bilingual doctors, executives and teachers.

“It’s sort of a cyclical issue,” she says.

Working To Meet Demand
Annie Anderson is Vardaman Elementary’s one bilingual teacher, and as the Hispanic population has grown, so have her responsibilities. Her job is to improve the English of every Spanish-speaking student at the school, which means coaching 170 students one by one through their English assignments every week.

It’s a big job for one person, and it has educators worrying that if they can’t find more bilingual teachers like Anderson, Mississippi schools will just fall further behind.

Below, over $3 million in damage was caused by 54 fires in four days of intense arson attacks [...]]]> I’ll admit that I half expected the Los Angeles arsonist to be named Mohammed, because of Europe’s recent history of Muslim youth burning down cars and buildings, sometimes for weeks on end, like the 2005 France civil unrest.

Below, over $3 million in damage was caused by 54 fires in four days of intense arson attacks in Los Angeles.

The arrested guy’s name is Harry Burkhart, so no obvious line to Islam there. However, the accused arsonist is German and said he “hates America,” perhaps because his mother was facing deportation. So immigration appears to be a motivator, in a bad way.

In addition, Burkhart’s travel documents indicated he travelled to Chechnya, home of many hostile Muslims and not a groovy tourist spot. Chechens have been in a sort of terror war with Russia, with one of the worst atrocities being the 2004 murder of more than 300 schoolchildren in Beslan.

So there may be an Islamic connection after all. Stay tuned.

Arson suspect’s anti-American rant helped track him, authorities say, Los Angeles Times, January 3, 2012

Weeks before a string of arson fires began, the suspect in the case went on an anti-American rant at an immigration court hearing in Los Angeles, authorities say.

According to law enforcement sources, Harry Burkhart was angry that the federal government was trying to deport his mother. At the hearing, he erupted in an angry tirade, spewing anti-American statements.

He had to be escorted from the court, one source said.

When the LAPD released a photo of a “person of interest” in the fires on Sunday, an official involved in the case recognized him. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said that was the big break that led to Burkhart’s arrest.

The suspected arsonist is a 24-year-old German national who carried travel papers from Chechnya. He had spent time in Germany, they said, but had lived in Southern California for the last several years.

Police searched a Sunset Boulevard home Monday evening in connection with the case.

Witnesses said the search took place in the 7200 block of West Sunset Boulevard in a second-story apartment above a hair salon and optical shop where Burkhart is believed to have lived. Pieces of yellow police tape remained outside the building late Monday.

Shlomo Elady, a 44-year-old hairstylist, works on the first floor of the building at Le Figaro Hairstyling. He said he had cut Burkhart’s hair for more than a year and that he saw Burkhart leave the building each morning and return late at night. He did not know if he had a job.

“I cut his hair just a week and a half ago,” Elady said. “I’m in shock. He’s my client. I never saw any sign of trouble.”

A reserve sheriff’s deputy arrested Burkhart early Monday based on a description of the suspect’s vehicle gleaned from the federal official’s tip.

TV footage showed Burkhart after his arrest, dressed in black, wearing his hair in a ponytail and grinning.

Investigators are trying to determine if other people were involved in the arson rampage that had parts of the city on edge for four days.

Since Friday morning, at least 50 fires were set, mostly in the Hollywood area, but also on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley. Many of the blazes were in carports and driveways, and spread to apartment buildings and homes.

Furthermore, when millions [...]]]> One of the most disturbing aspects to the unwelcome Mexicanization of the United States is the intrusion of Spanish into American life. There is nothing that prevents assimilation more than the increasing ease by which Spanish speakers can function in this country without learning English, a situation created by both business and government.

Furthermore, when millions of people don’t speak the national language and cannot communicate, conflict naturally arises. Richard Lamm’s ironic op-ed “I Have a Plan to Destroy America,” lists bilingualism as the first to-do item of cultural annihilation.

The story of Babel in the Bible was not about celebrating diversity, but was a curse from God to punish humanity.

Government media, particularly NPR and PBS, are particularly disgusting in the way they hawk Spanish as the cool new thing for the kiddies to learn, like on Sesame Street. Let’s all speak Spanish, they propagandize.

In the real world, the only good reason to learn Spanish is to understand what MS-13 gangsters are planning, if you are so unlucky to be within earshot.

Naturally, the AP is all in for language diversity on the taxpayer tab.

Public radio in Spanish gives US Latinos a voice, Associated Press, January 1, 2012

FRESNO, Calif.—Phones at the radio studios on the outskirts of town kept ringing.

Saul from Visalia lamented cuts to public education, calling in on a December afternoon to Linea Abierta, the first nationwide Spanish-language public affairs show. Miguel from Madera asked how county taxes are distributed and Manuel from Calexico wanted to know whether schools still receive lottery funds.

The public affairs show is produced daily by Radio Bilingue, the nation’s only public, non-commercial Spanish-language radio network. With seven FM stations in California and more than 100 affiliates nationwide airing its programs, the Fresno-based network reaches an estimated 500,000 Latino listeners per week.

Controlled by Latinos and run by a Harvard-educated former farmworker, the network fills a crucial gap in public broadcasting, which attracts overwhelmingly white, middle- or upper-class, English speaking audiences. The industry has been struggling to capture Latino listeners.

“We want to offer news and information that’s relevant to the lives of our listeners,” said Linea Abierta’s executive producer Samuel Orozco, “so that they can use it as citizens, to be able to participate in the decision making process and be active members of society.”

Radio Bilingue focuses on immigrant and first generation Latinos who are predominantly low-income, young and under-educated. It offers a platform to the working poor, the undocumented, Indians from Mexico and
farmworkers.

The network is now expanding and building five stations along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Experts say Radio Bilingue’s efforts to foster civic engagement are key as the number of Latinos in the U.S. keeps growing and the nation moves toward a presidential election.

“They’re a model of how Latino public broadcasting can flourish,” said Florence Hernandez-Ramos, director of Denver-based Latino Public Radio Consortium. “There are a lot of people in the U.S. that speak primarily in Spanish. They have a right to engage in the national conversation.”

Hugo Morales, a former farmworker who graduated from Harvard Law School, founded Radio Bilingue more than 30 years ago because he felt poor Latino farmworkers had no voice.

“I was shocked that the mainstream saw our community as basically having no brains,” Morales said.

A Mixtec Indian born in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, Morales arrived in California when he was 9 years old, joining his farmworker father on a prune farm near Santa Rosa. He worked in the orchards, studied and helped his brother run a local Spanish-language radio show.

After graduating from law school, Morales lectured for La Raza Studies at California State University in Fresno and founded the radio station. The all-volunteer station eventually went professional and grew into a network with nationally distributed programming. Morales won a MacArthur “genius” grant and the Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio’s highest honor, for his work.

The Latino population nearly quadrupled in size since Radio Bilingue began broadcasting, to more than 50 million or 16 percent of the nation last year. But Latino participation in public media remains minimal. So the network’s mission changed to fill that gap: it would serve Latinos in general, not just farmworkers.
The network struggles to secure funding. Unlike traditional public broadcasting—which relies on donations from well-off listeners—Radio Bilingue relies on grants from private foundations and the government.

It has had difficulty securing stations in urban areas, especially Los Angeles, because new frequencies are not available in major markets and purchasing a station is expensive.

About 1,000 public radio stations broadcast today, and fewer than two dozen are Latino, said Joseph Tovares, senior vice president for diversity and innovation at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which gives federal funding to public media. Non-Latino stations, Tovares said, have been struggling to provide culturally authentic, relevant content to Latinos.

“We have not been able to provide the content this demographic will need going forward,” Tovares said. “There’s been a population explosion and we’re playing catch-up.”

Only about 5 percent of the listeners of NPR, the largest producer of public radio programming, are Latino, which the network is trying to change through diversity initiatives.

“If we are to survive,” Tovares said, “we need to reach these folks.”

The number of commercial Spanish-language stations, on the other hand, has skyrocketed to over 1,300, according to Arbitron research. But some commercial programming perpetuates stereotypes against gay and indigenous Latinos, Orozco said.

“What investors are seeing is not Latinos as citizens, but as consumers, as dollar signs,” he said. “The service for them is cheap entertainment that caters to the lowest common denominator.”

In addition to the public affairs show, Radio Bilingue produces a national news service, a talk show in Mixteco that simultaneously airs on stations in Oaxaca, a call-in youth show about sexuality and original reporting on topics from the arts to the environment. It airs programs from radio partners in Mexico.

The network, which also has Internet broadcasts, refuses to air narcocorridos, the popular drug ballads, and doesn’t accept money from alcohol companies. It produces educational messages and guides listeners to resources. Music—from Cuban jazz to mariachi to rock en espanol—is used to attract different audience subsets. In addition to professional producers, 90 volunteers host programs and help at the stations.

“Where Radio Bilingue is pretty extraordinary is that it’s pro-social; it uses radio as a medium for positive impact,” said Ed Kissam, an independent researcher who has studied the network’s impact.

The Bloomberg report below curiously frames the issue as Asian American students versus foreign Asians, particularly Chinese, but the statistics cited are worth attention.

The [...]]]> As a result of California being too stupidly broke to fund the university system adequately, state residents are being severely slashed in admissions in favor of foreign students paying much higher tuition.

The Bloomberg report below curiously frames the issue as Asian American students versus foreign Asians, particularly Chinese, but the statistics cited are worth attention.

The shrinking proportion of white students at UC (falling 29 percent in 2010 at Berkeley) gets but a single sentence in this longish piece.

The important point is that qualified California residents of all races are being shunted aside so the University can charge more money from foreigners.

In addition, some, perhaps many, of the Red Chinese students are certainly spies and come to vacuum up valuable technology and science. It’s crazy for Obama (and some Republican Presidential candidates) to say that every foreign student who earns an advanced degree should get an automatic green card, thereby welcoming ruthless Chinese spies and endangering national security.

Below, Asian students at UC Berkeley are comfortable displaying signs in Chinese, even though diverse California is home to just 3.4 percent Chinese.

Lure of Chinese Tuition Squeezes Out Asian-American Students, Bloomberg News, December 30, 2011

Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) — Kwanhyun Park, the 18-year-old son of Korean immigrants, spent four years at Beverly Hills High School earning the straight As and high test scores he thought would get him into the University of California, San Diego. They weren’t enough.

The sought-after school, half a mile from the Pacific Ocean, admitted 1,460 fewer California residents this year to accept higher-paying students from out-of-state, many from China.

“I was shocked,” said Park, who also was rejected from four other UC schools, including the top-ranked campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles, even with a 4.0 grade-point average and an SAT score above the UC San Diego average. “I took it terribly. I felt like I was doing well and I failed.”

The University of California system, rocked by budget cuts, is enrolling record numbers of out-of-state and international students, who pay almost twice that of in-state residents. Among those being squeezed out: high-achieving Asian-Americans, many of them children of immigrants, who for decades flocked to the state’s elite public colleges to move up the economic ladder.

In 2009, University of California administrators told the San Diego campus to reduce its number of in-state freshmen by 500 to about 3,400 and fill the spots with out-of-state and international students, said Mae Brown, the school’s admissions director. California residents pay $13,234 in annual tuition while nonresidents pay $22,878.

12-Fold Surge

As a result, almost 200 freshmen from China enrolled in 2011, up from 16 in 2009, a 12-fold increase. At the same time, the number of Asian-American Californians enrolled fell 29 percent to 1,230, from 1,723 in 2009. The 2009 figure is from the UC system’s office because San Diego didn’t have it available.

While the San Diego campus is accepting more Chinese students, the decline in Asian-American enrollment may be a result of the total drop in California resident admissions, and two years’ data doesn’t reflect a trend, said Christine Clark, a university spokeswoman.

“UC San Diego is committed to admitting and enrolling talented students from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds,” Clark said in an e-mailed statement.

Asian-American students fighting to distinguish themselves to college admissions officers now have to go up against Asians from overseas, said Casey Chang, a Chinese-American senior at Claremont High School in Claremont, California, east of Los Angeles. He said he has a 4.7 grade-point average and is applying to the San Diego campus for a joint undergraduate/medical-school program.

One in Five

“We’re all competing for the same goal, and the fact that they’re international makes them that much more interesting to the UCs,” Chang said.

One in five international students nationwide, or 57,000 undergraduates, came from China in 2010-11, a 43 percent increase over the previous year, according to the Institute of International Education in Washington. Colleges are more frequently tapping this pool as the surge in middle-class incomes in China coincides with steep budget cuts at U.S. state universities.

UC San Diego received $227 million from the state in the 2011-12 academic year, down from $301 million in 2007-08. Funding for the nine other University of California campuses dropped as well.

Helping to Pay

“The state is not a fully reliable partner in funding anymore,” said Scott Waugh, the provost at UCLA, where foreign enrollments have quadrupled since 2009. “If we’re going to give California residents the education they want and deserve, we need non-Californians to help pay for it.”

UCLA is increasing the size of its student body to accommodate more nonresidents, said Janina Montero, vice chancellor for student affairs.

Asian-Americans already are being displaced by University of California admissions policies that give preference to first- generation college students. The guidelines benefit low-income Latino and African-American students over middle-income Asian- Americans whose parents went to college, said Mitchell Chang, an education professor at UCLA.

“When you add this new trend on top of the political shifts, you might have a double whammy that tends to disadvantage Asian-Americans,” Chang said.

California students and their parents, Asian-Americans and others, say they’re fighting an uphill battle to enter schools that were established to provide them with an affordable education.

‘Taken Away’

Veronica Zavala’s son Brandon is a senior at Diamond Bar High School, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. As an A student and the son of taxpayers and a state employee — Brandon’s father is a prison guard — he should be able to attend a University of California school, she said.

“There’s no reason why someone from another country should come and take my son’s spot,” Zavala said.

U.S. universities are expanding their ties to China and increasingly looking to China for financial support. At least a dozen private and public colleges are opening Chinese campuses with funding from Chinese municipalities. A Chinese government affiliate has spent millions of dollars to establish Confucius Institutes for Chinese language and culture at 75 American schools, including UCLA.

UCLA has received Chinese funding for its Confucius Institute since 2007, with the most recent grant of $320,000 for teacher training in Mandarin and for studying ways to integrate Eastern and Western medicine, according to the university.

The University of California’s state appropriation has been cut 28 percent — almost $1 billion — since 2007-08 and faces a midyear $100 million cut this year.

Enrollment of Chinese and other international students are surging at state universities across the U.S.

Washington, Michigan State

At the University of Washington in Seattle, the number of in-state students in the freshman class declined by almost 500 between 2007 and 2011, even as the school enrolled more total students. The percentage of out-of-state students surged to 34 percent of the freshman class from 19 percent over that same period, with more than half from overseas. Almost two-thirds of the international students are from China.

Washington residents pay $10,346 in tuition and fees while nonresidents pay $27,830.

At Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Chinese undergraduate enrollment soared 23-fold in five years, to 2,217 in 2011 from 94 in 2006. Total international enrollment almost tripled to 3,402 in the period and now makes up close to 10 percent of undergraduates.

Office in Beijing

Michigan State opened an office in Beijing in 2008 to improve recruiting efforts, said James Cotter, director of admissions. Student applications are vetted by the staff in Beijing, he said.

The increase in nonresident students comes as Michigan’s high-school population is expected to decrease 20 percent over two decades, so local students aren’t being squeezed out, Cotter said.

Park, who graduated from Beverly Hills High School in June, thinks he would have been admitted to UC San Diego if it hadn’t reduced the number of slots for California residents. His combined math and verbal SAT score of 1340 exceeded the university’s average of 1233. His older brother was admitted to the school in 2009 with lower test scores, Park said.

“It’s kind of unfair,” said Park, who played volleyball and basketball in high school and took eight advanced placement classes, all with the aim of getting into an elite university. While he dreamed of attending Berkeley, his guidance counselor told him that San Diego was a realistic goal.

“I feel I met the university’s standards to get in,” he said. “I expected to get in.”

‘13th Grade’

Instead, Park is taking classes at Santa Monica College, a two-year community college he once mocked as “13th grade.” He’s reapplying to the UCs this fall as a transfer student.

While it cut in-state freshman enrollment, UC San Diego increased the number of resident transfer students from California community colleges to 2,340 from 1,624 over two years, said Brown, the admissions director.

“The University of California has been the major vehicle for social mobility for the Asian-American community,” said Don Nakanishi, a retired UCLA professor who ran the school’s Asian American Studies Center for 20 years. The campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego are among the most selective public colleges in the U.S., admitting less than 40 percent of all undergraduate applicants.

About 43 percent of all undergraduates at Berkeley are Asian-American, compared with 16 percent at Harvard University and Yale University and 23 percent at Stanford University.

Nonresident Plans

To boost revenue, the University of California system plans to increase nonresident enrollment to 10 percent from 6.6 percent of all undergraduates, said Nathan Brostrom, the University of California’s executive vice president of business operations. Much of that increase will be at Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego, the campuses with the greatest appeal to out-of-state students, he said.

Berkeley enrolled 96 Chinese students in 2010, up from 55 in 2009. In the same period, the number of Asian-American freshmen who enrolled at Berkeley dropped 22 percent to 1,116, the lowest since 1995. Enrollment of white students at Berkeley also fell 29 percent as total admissions of state residents dropped.

While California and other state universities admit foreign students for legitimate educational reasons, some may be abdicating their responsibility to educate their own citizens, said Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute.

‘Revenue Chasing’

“At what point is this not diversifying the student population and just becomes another form of revenue chasing?” said Callan, who is based in San Jose, California. “We’re in some danger of simply taking whoever can pay the most.”

At UC San Diego, Chinese students say they are viewed skeptically by other students who think they’re only there because they pay more, said Zijin Xiao, 20, a freshman from Shenzhen, China.

“They think ‘The foreign students, they admit some who are not fit, maybe they’re not good at academics,’” Xiao said. “It makes me upset.”

She and fellow Chinese students say they are comforted by the large number of their compatriots at the university, which makes the transition to a new country easier.

Xiaojing Pang, 22, a communications major from Guangdong province who goes by Celia, said the cost of San Diego’s tuition is a burden, though she understands the tradeoff.

“I need the education and they need my money,” she said.

Even [...]]]> Invasive Mexicans, the type that believes the American southwest belongs to them, have been expanding their propaganda efforts in the last few years. Chicano studies in the universities have been popular, with dozens of universities offering degrees in the subject. Naturally those graduates then become the leadership cadre for leading the raza assault against America.

Even top universities, like Stanford, offer degrees in chicano studies. Stanford further provides a chicano residence hall, Casa Zapata, so the young revolutionaries can communicate in comfort about their oppression. The dorm includes a mural in which Che replaces Jesus in a raza-themed diverse Last Supper (below).

Anyway, not every young chicano can get an expensive degree in ethnic marxism charged to the taxpayers as happens in state universities, so the indoctrination activists have moved into the high schools. This scenario has played out very publicly in Arizona, which had a particularly virulent form of Mexican studies — so much so that in 2010 state voters approved an initiative to end seditious ethnic programs. (See Raza Racists Angered at Arizona’s Ethnic Studies Prohibitions.)

Below, Tucson High raza students wore their Che-inspired revolutionary berets to protest the cut of their anti-American class.

A recent report from Tucson shows the raza bunch are as revolting as ever.

Arizona educators clash over Mexican American studies, Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2011

A new Arizona law aims to ban ethnic studies classes deemed to be divisive, and the state’s schools superintendent says Tucson’s program is in violation. Teachers and students are fighting back.

Reporting from Tucson — Arizona’s public schools chief had heard unsettling reports about what was being taught in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American studies program and decided to see for himself.

As he sat in on a Chicano literature class, Supt. John Huppenthal noticed an image of Che Guevera hanging on a wall and listened to a lecturer cast Benjamin Franklin as a racist.

And though teacher Curtis Acosta did not directly portray Mexican Americans as an oppressed minority, he discussed educational theorist Paulo Freire and his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” which the Tucson High Magnet School students used as a textbook. To Huppenthal, the message was clear and disturbing.

“These kids got it,” he said. “They understood the framework that was being laid out — that Hispanics are the oppressed and Caucasians are the oppressors. That’s very troubling.”

A state law adopted this year aims to outlaw divisive ethnic studies, and Huppenthal will soon decide whether the Tucson district’s program violates the law and should be eliminated. In a state known for cultural clashes, the debate over the future of Mexican American studies in Tucson is particularly charged, prompting raucous protests and a host of accusations — of brainwashing, of sloppy academics, of racism.

Program proponents say the classes push Latino students to excel and teach a long-neglected slice of America’s cultural heritage — Chicano perspectives on literature, history and social justice.

Its critics — led by Huppenthal, a veteran state senator elected superintendent of public instruction last year — say that framing historical events in racial terms “to create a sense of solidarity” promotes groupthink and victimhood. “It has a very toxic effect, and we think it’s just not tolerable in an educational setting,” Huppenthal said.

For many Latinos, the controversy is not only about the program. It’s about identity — and the feeling that Arizona is trying to rein in the burgeoning social and political influence of Latinos in the state. Last year the state passed the controversial illegal immigration law SB 1070, which includes a provision that requires police to determine the immigration status of people they lawfully stop and whom they suspect to be in the country illegally. That portion of the law has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

For nearly a decade, teachers could be removed from the classroom if their English was too heavily accented — a practice Huppenthal ended this year after federal authorities launched a civil rights investigation.

“The academic success of our students is a threat, a danger to the status quo,” said Lorenzo Lopez, a Mexican American studies teacher at Cholla High Magnet School in Tucson. “There is empirical data that shows the academic success — the matriculation onto higher education, higher standardized test scores, higher graduation rates. Those successes are why we’re being singled out.”

Huppenthal deemed the Tucson program in violation of the law in June. The school district appealed the ruling, and testimony before an administrative law judge overseeing the appeal concluded last month. The judge will make a recommendation on the legality of the program, but Huppenthal still has the final say, which means the chief impact of the recommendation may be in setting the stage for later legal action.

In a separate case, 11 teachers and two students from the school district have sued, contending that the law is unconstitutional. Last week they asked for an injunction to halt the law’s implementation.

The push against Mexican American studies in Tucson can be traced to 2006, when activist Dolores Huerta told students at Tucson High Magnet School that “Republicans hate Latinos.” Tom Horne, then the state’s schools superintendent, sought to counter the message by sending his deputy, Margaret Garcia Dugan, a Latina Republican, to address the students.

When she began speaking, some students stood, turned their backs and lifted clenched fists in the air. Some covered their mouths with tape. Some walked out.
Horne responded with an open letter to the citizens of Tucson: “I believe the students did not learn this rudeness at home, but from their Raza teachers.”

Horne, who is now attorney general, helped craft the law targeting the program. It does not ban all forms of ethnically based courses in Arizona public schools. The law was designed, in effect, to target what critics say are hallmarks of Mexican American studies classes offered to junior and high school students in the Tucson district.

Among other things, the law bans classes primarily designed for a particular ethnic group or that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.” Defenders of the courses say they do no such thing.

Not long after Huppenthal took office in January, he commissioned a $110,000 audit of the program. To the surprise and relief of the program’s defenders, the audit concluded that the program complied with the law and that “students are taught to be accepting of multiple ethnicities of people.”

Huppenthal rejected the audit. “When you’re being watched, you don’t do the things that are inappropriate,” he said.

This summer, Huppenthal drew fire after suggesting similarities between the program and the Hitler Youth. Huppenthal said the remarks were made on “an academic basis” and misunderstood.

He no longer draws the comparison, he said, because it is too inflammatory. But in an interview, he said, “The thing that Hitler did was he used perceptions of historical injustice, he cast them in racial terms, and then he also referred to the Sudetenland as a stolen land — that’s the parallel.”

Lopez, the Cholla High teacher, counters that the material is designed to reach underperforming and marginalized students. “It’s not un-American to expose narratives that aren’t necessarily covered in traditional history texts,” he said.

Supporters like to note that since the program’s inception, 89% of its students have graduated high school — and that some non-Latinos enroll in the classes.

The passions surrounding the program were on display last month when Huppenthal traveled to Tucson to attend the screening of a documentary on a Phoenix school. He agreed to participate in a panel to discuss the movie, but Mexican American studies came up.

“Stop demonizing the teachers, demonizing the courses that teach kids to aspire to higher things, to do good in their lives,” said Salomon R. Baldenegro, a former assistant dean at the University of Arizona.

Many in the crowd stood and offered applause, which slowly evolved into a rhythmic united clap.

Huppenthal replied that curriculum must reach a standard that all Arizonans can be proud of. “I’d ask those people who have challenged me, have they really met that standard over the last couple years?”

As he left the theater, Huppenthal continued talking with program supporters, teachers and parents as they followed him to the parking lot. “If the court finds nothing wrong, are you still going to ban ethnic studies?” one asked him.

“You’re telling lies!” a woman shouted.

Lopez stepped up with his daughter at his side. “I’m one of the teachers that you have vilified. My daughter, she hopes to take these classes,” he told Huppenthal. “Your action will deny her the opportunity to learn of her culture, of her past within the school system.”

“We certainly hope not,” Huppenthal said. Then he walked off, got in the passenger side of a car and rode away.

Well, [...]]]> In Britain, some people object to seeing the flag of the nation being flown nearby. A diverse fellow in the video below asks how Brits would feel if he flew a Caribbean flag by his home — completely ignoring the fact that he is residing in Britain, not the island where his loyalties obviously lie.

Well, fortunately we don’t have that sort of post-national political correctness in America.

Oh, wait. The American flag has is now considered objectionable in California, and young citizens are not allowed to wear flag-emblazoned clothing to Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill on certain days, i.e. Cinco de Mayo. (See background at Crazy Mexifornia, May 5, 2010.)

Court backs Morgan Hill school in flag dispute, San Francisco Chronicle, November 12, 2011

A Morgan Hill high school principal reasonably feared violence on campus when he saw a group of students wearing American flags on their shirts on Cinco de Mayo, and he did not violate their freedom of speech by telling them to turn the shirts inside out or go home, a federal judge has ruled.

Citing past clashes between Mexican American and Anglo students over their clothing on the Mexican holiday, Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware of San Francisco said school officials “reasonably forecast that (the shirts) could cause a substantial disruption” and were entitled to take steps to prevent it.

While the Supreme Court has ruled that public school students have the right to engage in nondisruptive free speech, that ruling “does not require that school officials wait until disruption occurs before they act,” Ware said in his ruling Tuesday dismissing the students’ lawsuit.

Mark Posard, a lawyer for the Morgan Hill Unified School District, said Friday that Ware’s decision “affirmed that school safety is paramount.”

Bill Becker, a lawyer for the youths and their parents, said they would appeal “this bizarre ruling.”

“The court found that the rights of students promoting their Mexican heritage trumped the rights of students expressing their patriotism,” Becker said. If school officials feared disruption, he said, they should have canceled the Cinco de Mayo observance.

The case arose in an ethnically charged atmosphere at Live Oak High School. On the previous Cinco de Mayo, Ware said, a group of Mexican-American students walked around with a Mexican flag, and a group of Anglo students responded by hoisting a makeshift American flag up a tree, chanting “USA” and exchanging profanities and threats with the Latino youths.

When three students showed up on May 5, 2010, with U.S. flag images on their shirts, the judge said, an assistant principal asked them to remove the shirts or turn them inside out, and ordered them to his office when they refused. After a 90-minute session with the students, two others wearing similar shirts and one parent, the principal sent two of the youths home for the day.

Their lawsuit accused school officials of violating the standard that the Supreme Court set in 1969 when it upheld students’ right to wear black armbands to class, in a silent protest against the Vietnam War, and said schools can suppress student expression only when it threatens to disrupt the educational process.

The flag-bearing shirts caused no disruption, the students’ lawyers said, and school officials were not entitled to interfere just because they believed “the patriotic message may offend some students.” They also said the school allowed Mexican-American youths to wear colors of the Mexican flag that day.

But Ware said post-1969 rulings by federal courts have deferred to school officials’ conclusions that certain types of student expression could endanger the speakers – for example, decisions by three appellate courts upholding bans on the Confederate flag in schools with histories of racial tension.

Before the Live Oak students were sent home, the judge said, all of them encountered hostility from other students about their clothing, and all acknowledged to the assistant principal that they might be in danger but said they were willing to take their chances.

Ware also rejected the students’ claim of discrimination. There was no evidence that youths who wore Mexican flag colors were in danger, he said, and “all students whose safety was in jeopardy were treated equally.”

The Lee partisans are seen to “help” elderly Chinese by placing a stencil over the absentee ballot which allows the pencil to mark Mayor Lee’s name only.

Of course, [...]]]> In San Francisco, diverse Chinese voting practices — perpetrated by supporters of current Mayor Ed Lee — have come under scrutiny. (Love those digital cameras and Youtube.)

The Lee partisans are seen to “help” elderly Chinese by placing a stencil over the absentee ballot which allows the pencil to mark Mayor Lee’s name only.

Of course, nobody even questions whether the voters are American citizens.

Voter Fraud Allegations Hit San Francisco Mayor’s Race, Fox News, October 25, 2011

Shocking voter fraud allegations are rocking the mayor’s race in San Francisco. District Attorney George Gascon has launched an investigation and demands are growing for federal authorities to move in.

One campaign official fears the election could be stolen if nothing is done.

Supporters of incumbent Mayor Ed Lee, who is running for a full four-year term next month, are accused of illegally handling vote-by-mail ballots.

Witnesses say workers for the group, SF Neighbor Alliance, set up a makeshift sidewalk voting site in the city’s Chinatown and accuse it of illegally casting absentee ballots for elderly Chinese voters.

The witnesses claim cell-phone videos show workers telling voters to vote for Lee, filling out ballots for the voters and even using a stencil to hide the names of rival candidates so the voters could only chose one — Lee.

They also say that the completed ballots were stuffed in plastic bags, which is prohibited by state election law.

“At first we thought they were just helping them understand what absentee ballots were,” witness Malana Moberg told Fox News, saying that she saw a worker filling out a voter’s ballot.

But she said, “It was pretty blatant.”

“I noticed that someone who was working at that booth, who had an Ed Lee shirt on, fill in an absentee ballot on behalf of the voter, and I was immediately shocked and couldn’t believe that someone would actually fill in the ballot. I thought it was probably illegal, and if not at the very least, unethical,” Moberg said, adding that “someone filling out a ballot for somebody else seemed completely inappropriate.”

One of videos was shot by Adam Keigwin, a campaign official for State Sen. Leland Yee, one of Lee’s opponents.

“Individuals were marking ballots for elderly voters. They would literally mark the ballot, seal it, and put it in bags behind them. There are so many violations there, almost too numerous to mention,” he said.

Keigwin told us the alleged ballot stuffing happened right out in the open, for anyone to see.

“It is about our democracy and whether we are going to protect the integrity of the vote. I saw hundreds of voters come and drop off their ballots and have them filled out or being filled out with a stencil,” he told Fox News. “That was just in a 45-minute period and that’s just one incident that’s happening. What else is happening out there? It’s certainly potentially, in a very close election like what we’re expecting on November 8th, this could end up being an election that is stolen.”

In an unprecedented move, seven of Lee’s opponents — from the president of the city’s Board of Supervisors to the city attorney — jointly signed a letter demanding a federal investigation and the deployment of election monitors.

“Given their (the allegations’) gravity, the importance of protecting voting rights, and assuring voter confidence in our electoral process, we believe federal observers and election monitors are immediately warranted,” they wrote.

Lee has responded to the furor by saying he agrees that an investigation is warranted. He strongly denies any wrongdoing by his election operation.

“It has nothing to do with my campaign,” he said.

Lee says SF Neighbors Alliance is not in any way affiliated with his campaign, and he has called what happened, “moronic.”

“They shouldn’t handle other people’s ballots,” the mayor told reporters. “It should be the individual who is voting, who has that chance to vote for him or her as to who their choice is. That is a sacred, sacred right to do. They should never be intimidated to vote for anybody. It should be something that is cleanly done by the individual themselves, and if there is anyone out there who thinks they represent me, or any other candidate, they should cease and desist.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco is reviewing the case. But John Arntz, the director of the San Francisco City and County Department of Elections, has said that he doesn’t think there is a clear cut case of voter fraud because, among other reasons, the site was not a sanctioned polling place involving election workers.

“There’s nothing that I saw that is a clear violation of the election code. I mean, on its face, it doesn’t look real good,” Arntz said.

As for the SF Neighbor Alliance, its spokesman previously told the San Francisco Chronicle that the group was only doing voter outreach and education. The spokesman has not returned Fox News’ calls for comment.

Moberg says she remains troubled by what she witnessed.

“I think it’s one person one vote,” she said. “I think it’s a very critical part of our democracy. I think voting is where democracy comes together and that’s where the rubber hits the road. And if you have any sign of impropriety in the voting process, I just think that makes the whole thing stink.”

If you suspect voter fraud or voter and election problems where you live, e-mail us at: Voterfraud@FoxNews.com.

Washington has had its share of [...]]]> Is Washington DC not a dangerous enough city crime-wise? The current mayor, Vincent Gray, must not think so, since he has signed an executive order making illegal aliens safe from police inquiries about their immigration status. So lawbreakers get a pass, making public safety less a priority of the police.

Washington has had its share of preventable crime. When I think of Washington DC illegal alien violence, Chandra Levy comes to mind. She was murdered by a previously arrested illegal alien who was not deported, one Ingmar Guandique, a nasty piece of work. The case got loads of tabloidesque media coverage because Chandra was having an affair with despicable Congressman Gary Condit who acted guilty as hell. But the truth was found to be far less appealing by the press which paid little attention to Guandique’s murder trial, guilty verdict and sentencing to sixty years in prison.

One of the mayor’s mouthpieces said something unintelligible about Secure Communities, that the city really wasn’t opting out, although non-cooperation is what’s happening. The gibberish is another case of blatant lying that passes for political discourse these days.

Illegal aliens don’t like Secure Communities because it is effective, so they promote silly lies like the idea that enforcing immigration laws worsens communication between “immigrants” and police.

My idea of good communication between cops and lawbreakers is the former saying to the latter, “You’re under arrest.”

D.C. Mayor Orders Police Not to Check Immigration Statuses, Even in Arrests, Fox News, October 19, 2011

The nation’s capital has officially become the latest safe haven for illegal immigrants.
District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray on Wednesday signed an executive order instructing police officers not to question people about their immigration status — even people who are arrested on other matters — unless immigration status is directly related to a criminal investigation.

“This executive order ensures public safety by ensuring that our police resources are deployed wisely and our immigrant communities feel safe cooperating with those who are sworn to protect them,” Gray said in a statement.

“The district is home to thousands of immigrants,” he added. “If they are afraid to cooperate with authorities on criminal investigations because they fear it might endanger their presence in the United States or the presence of a loved one, then it endangers their public safety and that of our entire city.”

Although district officials say the order only confirms a longstanding policy, critics still blasted the move.

“This is an abomination,” said Corey Stewart, the Republican chairman-at-large of Prince William County of Virginia, which is about 25 miles south of D.C. Stewart’s county has sued the Department of Homeland Security twice, seeking information on 4,000 illegal immigrants that the county has arrested and turned over to Homeland Security for deportation.

“This is the capital of the United States,” Stewart told FoxNews.com, “and to have the nation’s capital as a sanctuary city where essentially federal law is not going to be enforced sends all the wrong messages — not just in the United States but around the world.”

The term “sanctuary city” is used to describe places where local officials refuse to enforce federal immigration laws and undocumented workers are free to seek jobs, housing or local government services without fear of deportation unless targeted by federal agencies.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Paul Quander said the order does not mean the district is opting out of a mandatory federal program called Secure Communities, which directs local agencies to share fingerprints collected from people in local jails with the Department of Homeland Security. The program is expected to be in place nationwide by 2013.

But Stewart noted Secure Communities is only relevant once people are arrested and jailed.

“So the fact they they’re going to comply with Secure Communities is of little consequence.”

In signing the order, Gray said he wanted to clarify that the local police in district are not in the business of enforcing federal immigration laws.