It’s been a long time since I attended college, so the idea of a summer book assignment for all incoming freshmen is new to me — which I learned from a cheerful segment on taxpayer-funded NPR.
Not that a required book reading is a bad notion per se, but look at the choice. Out of many thousands of suitable titles in print – Moby Dick! Team of Rivals! — the selection of “Enrique’s Journey” is an insult to traditional American values, like sovereignty. These days, it’s unfashionable to address issues of law and fairness, because having the proper emotional response is more valued in academia.
The book started out as a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times, noted in 2003 by Joe Guzzardi in VARE.com: And the Loser Is… America!. The paper also published a series of accompanying photos, apparently chosen for their emotional appeal.
The articles/book followed the trek of a Honduran boy crossing illegally into the United States to join up with his mother, also an unlawful entrant.
Plus, there is also a website for the book, which includes ways that persons touched by Enrique’s struggle can “help” foreign lawbreakers — specifically where to send money.
The professors who chose the book may have thought that starting off with Marx might be too challenging for young readers.
Interestingly, NPR interviewed Rick Mayes, associate professor of public policy from the University of Richmond, about his use of the book in his classroom:
“It’s a great book, and the students do respond to it very emotionally. We, at the University of Richmond, we try to take the learning out of the classroom and into the community as best we can. And this book is a great catalyst for that. We end up taking them to two local destinations. One is a free health clinic that ends up serving a lot of the people that are described in the book by local clinicians. And we get to interview both the patients and the clinicians who devote their lives to it. And that produces another kind of emotional response when they see people who have very basic health needs that aren’t met.”
Everybody gets trained as a community organizer filled with touchy-feely empathy for the diverse downtrodden — that’s college education for too many these days. Look at the Occupiers. They graduated the liberal curriculum and pitched their tents on public property with a list of vague but insistent demands for social justice.
Transcript:
LYNN NEARY, HOST: Every summer, many incoming college freshmen get their first assignment: common reads. Colleges and universities assign the same book for freshman to read over the summer and follow it up with a discussion once they arrive on campus. Up first in our Freshman Reads series is Sonia Nazario’s widely read book “Enrique’s Journey.” Since its release in 2006, freshmen across the country have been absorbed by the story of a Honduran boy’s perilous trek across borders in hopes of reuniting with his mother in the United States after 11 years of separation.
It continues to be on the reading list of not just colleges and universities, but common reads for many cities, as well. Sonia Nazario joins us in a moment. But first, we want to hear from you. If you’ve read “Enrique’s Journey,” what did you take away from it? Our number is 800-989-8255, and our email address is talk@npr.org. You can join the conversation on Twitter. Tweet us @totn. Sonia Nazario won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2002 reporting on the real-life journey that is “Enrique’s Journey.”
We turned her reporting in the book. And Sonia Nazario joins us now. She turned her reporting into a book, and Sonia Nazario joins us now by phone.
Welcome to the program, Sonia.
SONIA NAZARIO: It’s an honor to be here. Thank you, Lynn.
NEARY: Now, your book revolves around a very important, very sensitive, very timely topic in this country right now: immigration. So why do you think that is a good subject for a book that freshmen will be reading as they start college?
NAZARIO: Well, I think in terms of college, a lot of colleges look for a checklist of 10 different things that they’re looking for in a book. And much to my delight, “Enrique’s Journey” had a lot of those elements. I think what’s unique about it is that it broadens an awareness of cultures other than what most people know, and it promotes global awareness, which is one of those things on that checklist. But it’s also about something that’s happening in a lot of these students’ backyards. Continue reading this article
Are diversity and one-worlderism worth social breakdown and civil war? Greece is asking that question, and its officials seem to take the danger of civil turmoil seriously, as evidenced by their round-up of illegal aliens recently, although massive deportations have not yet been seen.
According to most of the media, Greece’s misery and unrest is completely due to its economic situation, which is certainly very bad. But not everyone agrees with that characterization, clearly, when an official calls the unwanted influx the nation’s “greatest invasion ever.” Greece is the on-ramp of Europe, where illegals find it easy to enter Europe from Africa and Asia. It’s estimated that 10 percent of residents are illegal aliens, and many are young men of employable age — that’s rough in a country where the most recent unemployment rate was 23.1 percent (May). More than half of young people under 25 are jobless — 54.9 percent.
The most recent violence has been a firebombing of the office of the Golden Dawn, a political party which calls for tough immigration enforcement and a pro-Greek agenda. The attack followed a murder of an Iraqi in Athens which was called a racist act.
The tribal violence is regrettable, but predictable. The Greeks are acting like typical humans, hard-wired to protect their group’s interests.
We all like our own tribe the best because we feel safe among those who share our values and understand our jokes. When diversity gets out of hand and the citizens are harmed by the lawbreaking newbies, then anger results.
So America should learn from Greece’s example, not merely to avoid spending off a cliff, but also to return to being a nation of laws, where the Obama vision of selected groups having special rights is rejected.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Authorities say arsonists have firebombed an Athens office of a far-right, anti-immigrant party, a day after the suspected racist murder of an Iraqi man in the Greek capital.
The fire brigade says nobody was hurt in Monday’s attack on the Golden Dawn facility in the central Pangrati area. The assailants escaped arrest.
The party, which rejects the neo-Nazi label, won 18 of the Greek Parliament’s 300 seats in June elections by running on an anti-immigration, nationalist platform.
Debt-crippled Greece is the European Union’s main entry point for illegal immigrants.
The government has sought to blunt Golden Dawn’s rising influence by placing illegal immigrants in detention camps pending their deportation.
The party’s ascendance has been coupled with growing reports of attacks on immigrants. The Iraqi’s attackers remain at large and unidentified.
As McCarthy summarized, “Ms. Abedin had a very lengthy affiliation with an institute founded by a top figure at the nexus between Saudi terror funding, Brotherhood ideology, and al Qaeda’s jihad against the United States.” Even so, he further observed, “No one I know, least of all me, is contending that President Obama or Secretary Clinton needed Huma Abedin in order to develop Islamist sympathies.” (Text of the speech is here.)
The latest episode in this drama shows how national security has become dangerously off-kilter in the current administration. President Obama used the occasion of his White House iftar Ramadan dinner to praise the “patriotism” of Huma Abedin — as pictured below…
A couple of highlights videos have appeared pulling important clips from McCarthy’s nearly 2-hour Press Club speech plus Q&A. Vladtepes has edited together one that emphasizes the background. Below is another, which lists the rather alarming changes made in US policy under the Obama administration regarding the Muslim Brotherhood (see the bulleted list here):
Obama’s support of Huma was covered by the mainstream press:
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Friday called Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an “American patriot” after a group of Republican lawmakers accused her of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political organization.
“She has been nothing less than extraordinary in representing our country and the democratic values that we hold dear,” Obama said at a White House Iftar dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
“The American people owe her a debt of gratitude because Huma is an American patriot and an example of what we need in this country — more public servants with her sense of decency, her grace and her generosity of spirit.”
In June, Representative Michele Bachmann along with four other Republican lawmakers questioned Abedin’s security clearance in a letter to the State Department’s inspector general. They suggested members of her family had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, which the writers said may be seeking access to high levels of the U.S. government.
“If my family members were associated with Hamas, a terrorist organization, that alone could be sufficient to disqualify me from getting a security clearance,” Bachmann said on conservative host Glenn Beck’s talk show. Continue reading this article
Last May, Muslim soldier (and pacifist poser) Naser Abdo was convicted of plotting to bomb Fort Hood troops in a nearby restaurant, an attack which he hoped would surpass that of his hero, Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan who succeeded in murdering 13 and wounding 32 others.
Repentance has not come to Private Abdo during his period of incarceration before trial and sentencing. In fact, he doubled down on his dedication to Islo-supremacism and mass murder for Allah. He was made to wear a mask in court because he spit blood at officers escorting him.
Furthermore, at sentencing he vowed to continue jihad from behind bars. Maybe he doesn’t understand that the purpose of prison is to restrict anti-social behavior.
Naser Abdo grew up in Garland, Texas, near Dallas, raised by his Muslim immigrant father Jamal after the parents divorced. Jamal Abdo was imprisoned, then deported to Jordan in 2010 for soliciting sex with a minor. Such is the diversity that Muslim immigration has brought, with its disrespect for women and girls, not to mention its ideology of destroying all things non-Muslim.
WACO, Texas (AP) — Naser Jason Abdo sat alone in court with his hands shackled and a white cloth secured over his mouth and neck. The soldier who went AWOL and plotted to kill other troops outside a Texas Army post remained defiant Friday as he was sentenced to life in prison, not asking for mercy and vowing to never end what he considers his holy war.
“I will continue until the day the dead are called to account for their deeds,” Abdo said in a low, gravelly voice through the cloth mask.
A federal judge sentenced Abdo, 22, to two life terms plus additional time. The federal prison system offers no chance of parole. He was convicted of planning what he claimed would have been a massive attack on a Texas restaurant filled with troops from Fort Hood.
In court, Abdo referred to Maj. Nidal Hasan — the Army psychiatrist soon to be tried in a deadly shooting rampage at that Army post — as “my brother.” He said he lived in Hasan’s shadow despite “efforts to outdo him.” Continue reading this article
Too bad America doesn’t have a network that broadcasts regular news about what hostile Islamists are up to. For that, we have to watch Canada’s Sun TV on YouTube.
For this week’s segment, the rally by pro-West freedom fighters in Stockholm headlined. Speakers Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Tommy Robinson and Paul Weston brought the message of free speech and individual freedom to one of the more benighted centers of socialism and dhimmitude in Europe.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy appeared at the National Press Club on Wednesday and delivered nearly an hour of prepared remarks with a detailed analysis of Islamist penetration of the highest levels of Washington. He spoke in support of the five members of Congress who asked for inspectors general of several agencies to investigate the threat, but were attacked for their concerns.
McCarthy took pains to say that just the appearance of a conflict of interest was a disqualifier in background checks a few years ago, but that’s no longer the case, apparently. That fact alone should be a wake-up call.
Of all the important points elucidated in the presentation, McCarthy’s list of ways the State Department has bent to the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood is particularly disturbing:
Still, it is Congress’s responsibility to scrutinize executive branch policy, especially when the policy choices endanger the nation. Let’s consider just some of those policy choices in the last three-and-a-half years. Since 2009, the Obama administration has abandoned the federal government’s prior policy against dealing directly and formally with the Muslim Brotherhood. The State Department has not only been supportive of this dramatic shift; it has embraced a number of Muslim Brotherhood positions that undermine both American constitutional rights and our alliance with Israel. To name just a few manifestations of this policy sea change:
● The State Department has an emissary in Egypt who trains operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures. We’re helping them get elected.
● The State Department announced that the Obama administration would be “satisfied” with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government in Egypt.
● The State Department has collaborated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of governments heavily influenced by the Brotherhood, in seeking to restrict American free-speech rights in deference to sharia prohibitions against examination and negative criticism of Islam. Continue reading this article
Now Islam investigator Erick Stakelbeck has compiled some background on the Muslim Brotherhood and how it is working toward world domination for Islam in the Middle East and in the West.
Hostile Muslims are patient and take the long view in their aim of achieving a world Islamic government — something that have worked toward for 1400 years.
The so-called Arab Spring has seen the Muslim Brotherhood rise to power in the Middle East and North Africa.
But those aren’t the only regions where the group is spreading its influence: the Brotherhood has also been active in the West for decades.
CBN News recently traveled to Europe to discover how the Muslim Brotherhood got here and what it has planned.
Sparking a Capitol Debate It’s an issue that continues to heat up on Capitol Hill.
When Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and four other GOP House members called for an investigation recently into Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government, they were widely criticized, even by some of their Republican colleagues.
Yet documents captured by the FBI show cleary that the Muslim Brotherhood is active in the United States.
And Egypt’s new president, Mohammed Morsi, reportedly joined the group while he was a student at the University of Southern California in the late 1970s and early 80s.
Establishing a Toehold The Brotherhood’s presence in the West, however, goes back much further than that.
CBN News recently visited the Islamic Center of Munich, which many consider the birthplace of radical Islam in the West.
It was there that the Muslim Brotherhood first established a presence in the West and spread its tentacles throughout Europe and the United States.
“Initially, the mosque was an idea of the West Germans, who also wanted to harness Islam for its political purposes in the Cold War,” said Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Mosque in Munich.
“But the project was taken over by young students, mostly members or sympathizers with the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.
Johnson told CBN News the United States and West Germany initially supported the mosque as a buffer against Soviet communism during the Cold War.
The varieties of amnesties over the years have been a history of bad-faith documents, filled with loopholes and lies to benefit foreign lawbreakers. Every piece of amnesty legislation has been a stab in the back for American citizens, whether passed or not, starting with the 1986 Reagan Amnesty.
Below, candidates for Obama’s administrative DREAM amnesty?
Senator Jeff Sessions has been a dependable watchdog of amnesty legislation and has revealed the abundance of giveaways built in, such as the 2007 Senate bill with 20 Loopholes. In July 2011, the Senator’s research found that the DREAM Act then under consideration was “worse than before” with its pricetag for taxpayers of $5 billion and forgiveness for criminals.
Now Senator Sessions is back with a warning that Obama’s administrative amnesty is criminal friendly. All sorts of crimes will be no problema for entrance to the President’s protected circle.
President Obama’s new immigration plan will provide safe harbor to criminal aliens and will lead to a “capitulation to lawlessness” that could threaten public safety, according to U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions R-AL.
Fox News has obtained an internal document detailing how the Dept. of Homeland Security plans on implementing what critics say amounts to an amnesty policy for what could be more than one million illegal immigrants.
Sessions said aliens convicted of felonies or misdemeanors under “state immigration laws” may be granted deferred action. Aliens who have repeatedly entered the United States illegally will also be eligible. And traffic violations will not be considered a misdemeanor.
“It is a direct threat to the rule of law and to the demonstrated desire of the American people for a lawful system of immigration,” Sessions said. “I believe this administration has utilized this policy to basically undermine and negate the ability of the law officers to do what they have been hired and paid to do.”
Sessions told Fox News that according to his understanding of the implementation documents, aliens who are using stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers in order to gain employment will not be charged with a crime.
It can also be reasonably stated, given the multitude of exemptions for criminal history, that even a conviction for fraudulent document usage would not disqualify someone from amnesty, Sessions told Fox News.
Sessions said the implementation plan goes well beyond the individuals who were supposed to be covered in the DREAM Act. Continue reading this article
The social fabric must be getting pretty frayed in Greece, judging by the police making a big show of gathering up hundreds of illegal aliens. It’s hard to judge from afar, of course, but there are signs that the normal society has been shredded by the financial crisis, and order has come unglued as a result. An early casualty has been the Greeks’ appreciation of diversity.
One indicator: Afghan “refugees” parked in Greece say they wish they’d stayed home. Getting beat up in the street will do that.
ATHENS, Greece — While the Greeks struggle with life amidst a collapsed economy, life for another group in Greece has become dangerous and unbearable: refugees.
Afghan refugees, huddled in their flat in central Athens, told CBN News that coming to Greece was the biggest mistake they ever made.
They called their life in Greece “a nightmare,” and claimed they hide in their home as much as possible to avoid being beaten up in the street.
Worse than Afghanistan If they could, the Afghans said, they would go back to Afghanistan tomorrow.
It appears the only thing worse than being in Greece during the economic crisis is being an immigrant or refugee. The economic collapse has turned many Greeks against outsiders, especially from non-Western nations. [. . .]
When the government doesn’t provide order and protect public safety, vigilante groups arise to fill the void. Two examples from American history are the Vigilance Committees of San Francisco and the Minutemen who kept watch on the Arizona border.
A June 9 report from the BBC (Journey across crisis-hit Greece) included remarks from a man whose cousin was murdered by Afghans.
“We can’t have so many immigrants – we don’t even have jobs ourselves,” he says. “The migrants are in a way the victims of this whole story. But I would blame the government that doesn’t do anything to protect Greeks from the hordes who come here. We’re very scared of them – people say they would take the law into their own hands.”
Would he take the law into his own hands?
“If the state can’t protect me, someone has to. Myself and my family,” he says.
If the government isn’t holding up its end of the social contract by providing public safety, then concerned citizens will look to themselves.
The minister [of public order], Nikos Dendias, defended the mass detentions, saying that a failure to curb a relentless flow of immigrants into Greece would lead the country, which is surviving on foreign loans, to collapse. “Our social fabric is at risk of unraveling,” Mr. Dendias told a private television channel, Skai. “The immigration problem is perhaps even greater than the financial one.”
Funny how the Times can report on excess illegal immigration (“Invasion”!) causing a social breakdown overseas while the paper continues to preach to virtues of mega-diverse immigration at home.
At any rate, the minister’s statement shows the leaders know the social dynamite on their plate and are taking action. Citizens need to believe that their government is willing to protect them.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Authorities in Greece are rounding up thousands of suspected illegal immigrants in a large-scale deportation drive to combat what a government official compared to a prehistoric invasion.
Greece has long been Europe’s main entry point for illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa seeking a better life in the West. But Greece’s severe economic problems and high unemployment are making the problem worse than ever.
Police said Monday that 6,000 people were detained over the weekend in Athens in a massive operation incongruously named after the ancient Greek god of hospitality, Zeus Xenios. Continue reading this article
Local reporter (and friend of illegal aliens) Matt O’Brien is talking up the high number of DREAMer “kids” located in the nine counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay — more than in all of Arizona!
Woo hoo, that’ll show the hateful border defenders — we have more lawbreakers than you! Good times for Democrats and Raza-tarians.
Perhaps young Americans trying to find work in California won’t mind the extra competition from tens of thousands getting an amnesty. The newbies will have the added advantage of being diverse, a much desired quality by PC employers these days.
As the Obama administration readies for a rush of applications from young illegal immigrants seeking work permits, a new study predicts one of the largest contingents will come from the Bay Area, perhaps more than from all of Arizona.
And while the majority of the applicants here and across the country were born in Mexico, the Bay Area also has a large number of Asian immigrant youths who are likely to benefit from the new policy.
More than 46,000 Bay Area immigrants who are younger than 31 and were brought to the country illegally when they were children could immediately qualify for two-year, renewable work permits and protection from being deported. Another 19,000 here are children younger than 15 who could benefit when they grow older, according to the estimates by the Immigration Policy Center, an advocacy and research group based in Washington, D.C.
That’s about 65,000 young immigrants eligible for relief, more than the 53,000 estimated in the entire state of Arizona and the roughly 39,000 each in New Jersey and Georgia. California as a whole has about 30 percent of all potential beneficiaries.
Nationwide, the policy center joins other researchers in saying nearly 1 million could immediately qualify when the policy takes effect Aug. 15, but the center is the first to make regional estimates. Continue reading this article
It must be difficult to be a young Muslim woman in the West, and see individual freedom all around that you are not allowed to experience. Shafilea Ahmed wanted to live as a free person, but her Pakistani parents (first cousins) murdered the 17-year-old to cleanse the family honor from the stain of her independent behavior
The parents of Shafilea Ahmed (pictured) were found guilty of the murder recently, nine years after the crime.
Unsurprisingly, Islamic honor killings are increasing in the West because the Muslim population is expanding all the time, and they feel entitled to follow misogynous sharia rather than civil law. Diverse demography is merciless, but at least the low-life parents will do hard time now.
LONDON (AP) — The girl was murdered by her Pakistani parents for her Western ways. And it was her little sister who bravely told jurors how her mother and father suffocated the 17-year-old with a plastic bag — gripping testimony that led to her parents’ murder conviction on Friday.
Justice Roderick Evans sentenced Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana Ahmed, 49, to life in prison for killing their daughter, Shafilea, in 2003. The couple — first cousins from the Pakistani village of Uttam — were ordered to serve a minimum of 25 years in prison.
“She was being squeezed between two cultures — the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace, and the culture and way of life you wanted to impose on her,” Evans said during the sentencing at the Chester Crown Court in northwest England.
In Britain, more than 25 women have been killed in so-called “honor killings” in the past decade. Families have sometimes lashed out at their children on the belief that they have brought their household shame by becoming too westernized or by refusing a marriage.
Shafilea was only 10 when she began to rebel against her parents’ strict rules, according to prosecutor Andrew Edis. Continue reading this article
More evidence that the universe of law and order is inside out under the Obama administration: an ICE agent is under suspension for arresting an unlicensed illegal alien driver with 10 priors, while the 35-year-old illegal was released.
According to a 2008 study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, unlicensed drivers are involved in one in five fatal crashes. So releasing an unlicensed driver — particularly an illegal alien with an obvious disdain for the law — was a threat to public safety.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is demanding answers after a report surfaced that a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is facing punishment for arresting an illegal immigrant.
The unidentified agent could face a three-day suspension after he arrested a 35-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico who had as many as 10 traffic violations. He was nabbed in Newark, Del.
The agent was ordered by supervisors to release the individual because he was not a “priority target.” When the officer balked, he was threatened with a three-day suspension and the illegal alien was let go.
“The actions that it appears were taken by your agency send a message to agents in the field that they will be punished for doing their duty and enforcing the law,” Sessions wrote in an letter to ICE Director John Morton and obtained exclusively by Fox News.
A spokesperson for the Newark Police Dept. told Fox News that had an American citizen been stopped under the same circumstances – they would have been jailed. Sessions said that is a troubling revelation.
“Federal law enforcement should certainly not be giving illegal aliens more preferential treatment that is afforded American citizens,” Sessions wrote. “Your agency’s apparent treatment of the criminal alien sends the troubling message that the demands of public safety are trumped by the desire for reduced deportations of those deemed ‘not presidential priorities.’” Continue reading this article
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Are diversity and one-worlderism worth social breakdown and civil war? Greece is asking that question, and its officials seem to take the danger of civil turmoil seriously, as evidenced by 
Last May, Muslim soldier (and 
The parents of Shafilea Ahmed (pictured) were found guilty of the murder recently, nine years after the crime.
Furthermore, a multiple offender of post-30 vintage is definitely deportable even under the 