Recent events like solar and lunar eclipses and the nuclear talks with Iran have biblical significance. What do they signify, or do they have any relevance for us?
Einstein said, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”
Two weeks ago, we saw a “rare” solar eclipse falling on the spring equinox accompanied by a supermoon when the moon was as close as possible to the earth. Saturday night we may see a “blood moon” due to a full lunar eclipse.
So what do such signs mean?
A library would likely have the information and here’s where the Spanish language can help us. The word for library in Spanish is biblioteca—Bible tech! That’s right. The Bible has answers, but sometimes we have to be like a librarian to find them. And the more we use the library, the easier it gets as we become familiar with card catalogues or computer searches.
We can do the same with the Bible. Any word or phrase we want to find in the Bible can be found with the use of an online concordance. For example, if we type “sun, moon” into a concordance search, it gives 35 results. Because I’m familiar with this “library,” I find Joel 2:31 helpful:
“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.” The concordance also shows the Hebrew words and what they mean. For example, the word “before” comes from paniym, meaning face or “ in the face of”–impending!
But what does the “day of the Lord” mean? Many people think it means the day Christ comes again, but using the online concordance, we find the phrase 23 times and again Joel has five references to it—more than any other book. Here’s an example:
“The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark…the day of the LORD is great” Joel 2:10,11. The chapter has many other “events,” but not the “2nd coming.” Nevertheless, serious events may be impending.
This week we saw more coincidences. When the U.S., UK, China, France, Germany and Russia have been concerned for 12 years and been negotiating with Iran for 18 months re a nuclear program that came to a head this week, maybe it’s just a coincidence, but what does our library—Bible tech suggest?
“The day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night, For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes” 1Thessalonians 5:2,3. If we are honest, we would have to characterize those talks as “Peace and safety.” This could heighten our expectations for serious events. We might not know exactly, but maybe this is the reason for the blood moon.
As Israel put blood on their doorpost and prayed that God would pass over them in judgment, we can believe God is putting blood on the moon–Who else could arrange that phenomena we are seeing?
Why not ask God to pass over us in any judgments that come. It’s not just Jewish. Christ did the same, asking his followers to “watch and pray.” Wouldn’t that be a more Christian way to celebrate this time than looking for Easter eggs?
We won’t likely hear any voices or see any visions, but people who ask God for things testify that while they don’t always get what they want, they are convinced that He’s there and sometimes they are later glad they didn’t get what [or who] they wanted!
That could also be God’s way of remaining anonymous, and for us, it’s an opportunity to build character based on choices to include or exclude Him—He leaves the choice to us. After all, if He stood over us with a big stick, forcing us to do it His way, we would have no freedom—but He didn’t wanted robots, so He the freedom of choice that He gave us.
EDITORS NOTE: Dr. Richard Ruhling is a physician whose greatest interest in retirement is non-denominational Bible prophecy and he offers more information here and his ebook, Apocalypse 2015, at http://TheBridegroomComes.com.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/history-repeats-itself-hitler-iran.jpg383640Dr. Richard Ruhling, MDhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard Ruhling, MD2015-04-04 14:35:372015-04-05 09:18:02Secular Signs of Spiritual Significance — What Could They Mean?
‘The U.S. negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the P5+1 countries and convince them of a deal.’ What type of hawkish bigot could possibly have made such a claim? Well, it was actually said by an Iranian journalist Amir Hossein Motaghi, a close aide of President Rouhani who headed his public relations team during the 2013 Iranian Presidential elections. While covering the nuclear negotiations in Lausanne Mr. Motaghi decided to defect because he said he was fed up writing what he was told to write by the regime.
Mr Motaghi’s insight is particularly revealing because so comparatively little has emerged from Switzerland this week. Despite the timeline for talks continuously over-running and continuously being extended. The reasons have been rumoured but rarely confirmed. Each time the deadline on the talks has expired the Americans have leaked that they are getting close and that there is no point in halting the talks because of such ‘arbitrary’ deadlines. There are obviously sticking points, as anyone could have foreseen. Though what those sticking points are nobody yet knows.
What does seem to be known is that the Americans have rolled over on a number of concessions. One particularly notable concession which has apparently been made is that the Americans have agreed to allow the Iranians to continue spinning the centrifuges in their Fordow facility. That is the underground facility which President Obama himself has previously said is one that the Iranians do not need if their ambition is to develop a purely peaceful nuclear facility.
The short explanation for what is going on in Lausanne is that the U.S. negotiating team’s position has fundamentally changed. Having promised the American people repeatedly that no deal would be better than a bad deal, they seem to have decided that any deal is better than no deal. There are a variety of reasons people will give for this ranging from malign intent to wilful optimism via the usual problems caused by the fog of negotiations.
In any case it is striking that of the few leaks that have come out from the talks one fact remains clear – that the Iranians haven’t budged an inch. While the Americans continue to try to persuade their negotiating partners to give more concessions to Iran, the Iranians seem perfectly happy where they are. And why would they not be? For even while standing still everything seems to be able to fall into their lap. Just this week they have been able to make further territorial and political gains not just in Iraq but also in Yemen. Indeed the one clear message that is coming out from the region’s instability at the moment is the fact that the only winner anywhere, repeatedly, is Iran.
The American negotiating team in Switzerland may indeed think that their primary requirement in the negotiations is to persuade their European partners to budge in Iran’s favour. The future of the nuclear consensus and the security of the future of the world depends on the Europeans ignoring them.
Dr. Alan Mendoza
FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK
One of the unintentional consequences of America’s Middle East policy in recent months has been to encourage those Arab states threatened by the rise of Iran’s nuclear power and of the spread of Islamic State (IS) to take their security matters into their own hands.
In various iterations, we have seen alliances of different Arab states come together to conduct bombing operations in Libya, participate in air strikes in Syria and Iraq and engage in ground operations in Yemen. Now cooperation has been taken a step further, with the announcement this week that for the first time, the Arab League will develop a multi-national military force capable of insertion into local conflicts.
The last time there was any similar degree of unanimity in the Arab world was in the heady days of Nasserite Pan-Arabism in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Then, Egypt’s President bestrode the region like a colossus, looking to cajole his fellow Arabs into a united socialist nirvana. But whereas Pan-Arabism proved disastrous for the Arab World – and led directly to provocation of Israel and the events of the Six Day War that killed the concept – this new development should be welcomed.
For too long, wealthy states in the Middle East have freeloaded their security requirements off the US commitment to stability in the region. In a world of shrinking defence budgets, this is now an unaffordable luxury. That these states are now feeling the effects of this over-reliance on a US administration whose policies they dislike is no bad thing in and of itself. If it encourages a greater sense of taking control of destinies in the Middle East, then we may even have found one aspect of the Obama administration’s policies – albeit unintentional – to applaud.
Dr Alan Mendoza is Executive Director of The Henry Jackson Society
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/give-an-inch-take-a-mile.jpg346640Henry Jackson Societyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngHenry Jackson Society2015-04-04 07:17:432015-04-04 07:19:53Iran Framework: Give an Inch, Give a Mile
See these smiling faces, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, her boss Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy secretary and former MIT Physicist Ernest Moniz and an unidentified colleague? Their smiling because they may have just laid on Americans, Israelis and the World an April fool’s Joke of no laughing matter – an alleged political framework for a nuclear deal with Iran. A deal yet to be finalized with the Islamic Republic of Iran that their ‘Frank Underwood wannabe boss’, President Obama announced in the Rose Garden yesterday. Obama said:
“Today, after many months of tough, principled diplomacy, we have achieved the framework for that deal. And it is a good deal,” Obama said.
Obama delivered his statement from the Rose Garden where he described it as an “historic” agreement. He said he is “convinced” that, if the framework leads to a final agreement, “it will make our country, our allies, and our world safer.”
“This has been a long time coming. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been advancing its nuclear program for decades,” Obama said.
He said Iran has “eliminated its stockpile of dangerous nuclear material.”
Obama said the deal was the “best option” to address concerns about Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon because the country had agreed to a “robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime” that ensured it would not be able to produce a weapon covertly.
According to the president, the agreement outlined in the framework “shuts down Iran’s path to a bomb using enriched uranium” because Iran will not be permitted to enrich uranium for ten years.
Obama noted the deal would include sanctions relief for Iran. However, he specified some US sanctions would not be lifted and said “sanctions can be snapped back into place” if Iran violates any agreement.
Obama, who described the framework simply as a “good deal,” alluded to critics who have been skeptical of the negotiations when he said they “succeeded exactly as intended.”
“Iran has met all of its obligations,” Obama said.
Obama said the framework sets the stage for an agreement that “would cut off every pathway Iran could take” to a nuclear weapon. He also stressed any final agreement would include strict measures to verify Iran is complying.
“Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime,” he said. “This deal was not based on trust. It’s based on unprecedented verification.”
Watch this C-SPAN Video announcement of the Framework Agreement with Iran at the White House Rose Garden:
Israeli PM Netanyahu 4-2-15. Source: Times of Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in a telephone conversation with President Obama told him “A deal based on this framework would threaten the survival of Israel.” USA Today noted Netanyahu‘s objections:
In a string of tweets, Netanyahu spokesman Regev outlined a series of objections to the Iran plan.
“Such a deal would not block Iran’s path to the bomb,” he added. “It would pave it.”
Netanyahu also said that “the alternative is standing firm and increasing the pressure on Iran until a better deal is achieved,” Regev wrote.
The White House readout of the call with Netanyahu President said that Obama “underscored that progress on the nuclear issue in no way diminishes our concerns with respect to Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and threats towards Israel and emphasized that the United States remains steadfast in our commitment to the security of Israel. Further, “he has directed his national security team to increase consultations with the new Israeli government about how we can further strengthen our long-term security cooperation with Israel and remain vigilant in countering Iran’s threats.”
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL)
It was left to the architect of much of the Iran nuclear sanctions legislation of the past decade, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) to blast the framework deal announced by President Obama. As cited in a Politico article:
The Illinois Republican trashed a deal struck by global powers with Tehran, concluding in a phone interview “that Neville Chamberlain got a lot of more out of Hitler than Wendy Sherman got out of Iran,” a reference to a top State Department negotiator on the deal.
But Kirk wasn’t done, forecasting that lifting any more sanctions on Iran “dooms the Middle East to yet another war,” one that Israel will have to clean up, perhaps in a nuclear fashion.
“We should be a reviewing presence to see how this unfolds,” Kirk said of Congress’ role, adding: “Which we all know is going to end with a mushroom cloud somewhere near Tehran.”
Kirk’s office called to clarify that Kirk was referring to a nuclear test in Iran.
Asked if he could find anything to like in the deal, Kirk responded: “No.”
He said now Iran could speed its production of nuclear weapons, which he fears could end up in the hands of Iranian-backed rebels throughout the Middle East, including Yemen.
“There’s nothing for Iranians to do but go at breakneck speed to a nuclear weapon,” Kirk said. “We’re moving straight to forcing Israel to clean up this mess … when the West does nothing; Israel over and over has done something.”
The deal, he added, “commits Israel on a path to war with Iran. And we shouldn’t force our best ally in the region to clean up the mess.”
Not exactly the balm of Gilead to Netanyahu who has had a fractious contentious relationship with the Administration on this existential issue confronting the Jewish nation. Netanyahu is huddling with his Security Cabinet discussing the fine points of what some have called a ‘vapor agreement’ as even the State Department negotiating team of experts believe it will require word smithing over every term in every sentence of the definitive agreement which could mean that the June 30th deadline may not see the end of negotiations. That in fact, negotiations could go on with Iran past the end of the President term in January 2017. In which case it would left to his successor to conclude or walk away from the framework deal ending Obama’s legacy endeavoring to bring the Islamic republic into the regional and world umbrella of responsible governments. A faint hope that the successor might be more responsible than aging Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Khamenei, aged 75 and in alleged poor health who declared “death to America” in the midst of final framework negotiations. Then there is the senior Iranian IRGC official who this week said that destruction of Israel was “non-negotiable.” This all sounds like the old English adage “if wishes were horses then beggars could ride”.
You might ask yourself how Obama got to this position. As much as he never stops blaming the Bush Administration for everything that has gone wrong in the Middle East and especially with Iran’s nukes, the origins of the game of diplomacy with coercive sanctions began in the latter half of the Bush Administration from 2005 to 2008 when the original E+3 negotiations with the Islamic Republic started during the Iraq War. The architects of the prototype strategy were Secretary of State Condi Rice and Phillip Zelikow, former 9/11 Commission Director and Counselor at State. That is revealed in a fascinating Commentary article, “How America Bamboozled Itself about Iran”.
Criticism can be found in the current edition of a new international business Journal, Quartz co-authored by Mark Dubowitz, Executive Director and Annie Fixler of the Center for Sanctions and Illicit Finance of the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). FDD’s experts led by Dubowitz have provided important testimony on Capitol over the debates on the virtues of Iran nuclear sanctions and achievement of possible nuclear breakout under various scenarios. The Quartz article title by Dubowitz and Fixler echoes Israeli PM Netanyahu’s response about the framework on his call with President Obama, “Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran puts the world’s safety at risk.”
The key concerns rose by Dubowitz, Fixler and others are:
The Administration abandoned original commitments to “dismantle” “a lot” or “significant” portions of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. As evidenced by comments in Lausanne by Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, the infrastructure to create fissile material remains intact which is unlikely to keep Iran away from achieving nuclear breakout in a year or less, notwithstanding the alleged sunset provisions.
The deal will sunset in 10 to 15 years, which presumably would enable a subsequent Iranian regime to vastly expand centrifuges to achieve nuclear breakout in a year or less.
Iran will no longer have to ship its current stockpile of enriched uranium outside of Iran for reduction, but will convert it to a gaseous form easily reversible technically in a few weeks.
Iran will retain over 6000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, that the authors point out is more than six times the level originally sought by the Administration and just enough for producing fissile material for bomb making.
Fordow, the underground centrifuge hall near Qom would have less than 1,000 centrifuges allegedly for isotope research but easily converting to nuclear fuel enrichment and it is ‘impervious to possible Israeli attack”.
There is only nodding mention of Iran’s non-compliance with repeated requests by the IAEA for information on previous military developments such as nuclear explosive triggers, miniaturization of warheads and the ICBM program that may already have been accomplished in cooperation with North Korea.
Proposed redesign of the Arak heavy water reactor may still leave the project capable of producing plutonium;
The President’s comment that “if Iran cheats the world will know about it” seems implausible given that the IAEA will not have inspection access to known facilities on an unscheduled basis, nor because of Iran’s non compliance on previous military developments would it have information on illicit or clandestine locations, such as those alleged elsewhere in Iran, Syria and North Korea.
As the authors write, the questions the President’s boast that if the terms of the technical agreement are violated by Iran, that tough sanctions “can be snapped back” is implausible given current experiences with Russia and China. They warn, “Once strictures are loosened, it will be difficult to put the sanctions back together again. Western economic leverage will be sharply reduced, leaving military strikes as America’s only real option to stop an Iranian bomb.”
The authors conclude:
Once upon a time, the administration insisted that no deal was better than a bad deal. The parameters of the nuclear deal that have emerged look like we are headed toward a seriously flawed one. This will leave Iran as a threshold nuclear weapons state increasingly immune to economic pressure, further supercharge Iranian aggression in the region, fan the flames of sectarian warfare, and possibly even encourage Iran’s Sunni adversaries to develop their own nuke capabilities. Indeed, “game-changing, legacy-setting” it will be.
There is a model for what the US and its benighted P5+1 partners have signed off on in the framework agreement with failed North Korean nuclear agreements. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal column by Dan Henninger , “Why the Iran Deal is Irrelevant” cited chapter and verse of the history over the period from 1990 to 2013 of wholesale cheating found by the IAEA, clandestine development and test of nuclear weapons and ICBMs by the hermit kingdom of the People’s Republic of North Korea. Lest we forget Ms. Sherman was involved in the failed Clinton era negotiations of a similar framework agreement involving exchange of light water reactors for heavy water ones and interim fuel oil. That collapsed with tests of ICBMs in 1998. Then we had similar exasperating experiences during the Bush era culminating in the October 2006 test of a nuclear device. This despite the repeated use of six party discussions with North Korea involving China Russia, South Korea, Japan and the US. Repeated UN Security Council resolutions passed following each violation by North Korea imposing sanctions. Those coercive measures did not deter the hermit Kingdom from its strategic objectives of a missile deliverable nuclear capability threatening Japan, South Korea and the US.
Henninger’s money quote from his column “Nuclear talks with North Korea prove that Iran’s nuclear program will go on-deal or no deal.”
The cheating by Iran has already started. Foreign Minister Zarif criticized the State Department Fact Sheet on the framework agreement as “lies”. Stay tuned for developments.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Smiling-State-Department-negotiating-team-e1428144896903.jpg357640Jerry Gordonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Gordon2015-04-04 06:55:262015-04-04 07:03:01President Obama’s Questionable Framework Agreement for an Iranian Nuclear Deal
A group of concerned experts got together to create logical and thoughtful solutions (HB1121 and SB1496), informed by other states’ efforts to remove Common Core and high stakes testing. We were excited to present the best solutions we’d seen nationwide. We trooped off to Tallahassee and presented this to as many Florida legislators as possible.
What we were told was shocking! Several legislators said nothing gets done at all unless you have the blessing of the leadership which would not be forthcoming because they don’t want to embarrass Jeb Bush or repudiate the mantra of common core and high stakes testing. Essentially, they do what they’re told. While they campaigned to be our champions and fight Common Core, they did nothing but push the buttons they were told to push.
So we went to the leadership, and we saw the education advisor for Speaker Crisafulli, a skinny old crone who had been on this job over 30 years, Lynn Cobb, Special Counsel to the Speaker at Florida House of Representatives. She cackled and growled that the Democrats own education and then denigrated the unions. She claimed the ACT isn’t a nationally normed test used in Florida and then called US conspiracy theorists when we showed her the actual data from the ACT website. We were summarily dismissed like navel lint.
Using lies, obfuscation and false data, they have managed to ruin the Florida’s education system and cripple our children as evidenced by the ACT results which show that we now rank 47th in the country.
Jeb Bush has used this failed system as his personal piggy bank for his presidential race, selling out to the vendors such as Pearson PLC, Microsoft, GE and others who stand to gain enormous wealth from the High Stakes Testing plan to test only on computers. This enables them major access to the $1.3 TRILLION market through the activities of the JEB BUSH Foundation for Excellence in Education.
Meetings of this foundation have been used to pay legislators and bureaucrats to travel and enjoy conferences, all expenses paid plus, where they will spend time with the vendors who will also become their benefactors. This is not a new plan for him as he used the same strategy with the Foundation for Florida’s Future to gather money all over the nation trading on his father’s name to become governor in the first place. See the article in St. Pete Times.
John Legg, Erik Fresen, Kelly Stargel, Manny Diaz, Marlene O’Toole, Don Gaetz, Matt Gaetz, Gary Chartrand and many others directly benefit either by owning charter schools or by potential positions in a new Jeb Bush White House, or other direct monetary benefit.
There is absolutely NO evidence, report, or theory which says computer testing is better for accuracy, ease of administration, fairness, data analysis or any logical reason. Using technology for learning is wonderful as an aid, but not necessary for testing. So why would we force our districts to spend over $2 billion on implementing this testing technology? None of this expense was ever presented to the public or they would certainly have “sticker shock.”
This expense is just the beginning. There are replacement costs, maintenance costs, upgrade costs, staff costs, training costs, and facility costs to stack on top of that. Four Districts in California have sued that state for a $BILLION for the unfunded mandates. Certainly we can expect the same here. Then taxpayers get to pay on both sides of that lawsuit because legislators ignore their duty to the voters in exchange for personal gain.
The bill that passed, SB616, requires a limit of 5% of time (9 of 180 days) for state testing UNLESS they have parental permission for more. How is that time counted? Who counts it? Who sends out letters to parents for permission? Who tracks their responses? What if some parents say “no”? What about the time wasted while kids are playing “musical computers” to share testing resources? Why isn’t that counted?
My head is spinning with the bureaucratic complexity and arbitrariness of that figure. Why not 3% or 13%? Why not just get out of the maniacal micromanagement of public schools? Teachers are certified and schools are accredited. Legislators are NOT.
State tests AND state standards LIMIT education choices and results. Who achieves the best results? Home school tops the chart. Private and religious schools do better as well. WHY? They can choose standards and curriculum to match individual needs. Because they allow more instruction time and less testing, they have more enrichment courses, and they don’t have to teach to the test.
I suggest that the Emperor, Jeb Bush, has no clothes. Here’s what one of his MAIN supporters, Senator Gaetz, said in committee January 7, 2015: http://thefloridachannel.org/videos/1715-senate-education-prek-12-committee/. At hour 1:15, after Commissioner Pam Stewart’s presentation.
“Here’s what I’ve learned today”
“We don’t know how much time is consumed by Statewide Assessments.”
“We don’t know how much money it costs to perform state mandated tests.”
“We don’t know whether tests that are performed by state mandate are valid and reliable.”
“We’ve learned today that we have no contingency plan if there are problems with statewide assessments.”
“We have not beta tested statewide assessments.”
Then he voted for it.
Your children, your state, your taxes, your future just went down the drain. Are you going to let Jeb Bush and his sycophants get away with it?
Governor Scott should show us that he is not part of this. Tell him to VETO this bill. He has the power to rid us of Common Core and High Stakes testing by executive order.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Stop-common-core-e1393587360879.jpg426640Chris Quackenbushhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngChris Quackenbush2015-04-04 06:39:082015-04-05 07:24:50The Florida FIX was IN: How Jeb Bush and his puppets threw our kids under the bus
Muslim slaughter of Christians at Garissa University, Kenya.
“We have come to be kill and be killed,” the Muslims screamed out as they shot the Christians. Where did they get the idea to scream out something like that? From the Qur’an: “Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they kill and are killed.” (9:111) Not that this has anything to do with Islam!
“Laughing Somali gunmen taunted victims in university massacre,” by Adow Jubat, AFP, April 3, 2015:
Garissa (Kenya) (AFP) – Piles of bodies and pools of blood running down the corridors: survivors of the Kenya university massacre described how laughing gunmen taunted their victims amid scenes of total carnage.
Salias Omosa, an 20-year-old education student, said the victims were woken up at gunpoint in Thursday’s pre-dawn attack, and Muslims and non-Muslims picked out by “how they were dressed”.
“‘We don’t fear death, this will be a good Easter holiday for us,’ the attackers were shouting in Swahili, then shooting their guns,” Omosa recounted, still trembling with terror and sitting in the refuge of a military camp.
Omosa managed to escape amid the carnage at Garissa University, after seeing two of his friends executed by the Al-Qaeda-linked attackers, who he said were wearing masks and military-style uniforms.
“I have seen many things, but nothing like that,” said Reuben Nyaora, a clinical officer working for the aid agency International Rescue Committee (IRC).
“There were bodies everywhere in execution lines, we saw people whose heads had been blown off, bullet wounds everywhere, it was a grisly mess,” Nyaora told AFP.
Nyaora had rushed with colleagues from his normal work with an IRC ambulance team in the giant Dadaab refugee camp, some 90 kilometres (50 miles) away.
He was one of first frontline medics to enter university halls, providing first aid to both survivors and troops wounded in the heavy fighting.
“We were giving first aid during the fighting – and there were soldiers being shot right in front of us, as well as the casualties among the hostages,” the 32-year old Kenyan told AFP, his voice trembling.
“Then when we went into the halls, it was too horrible, too awful to imagine, and yet we saw it,” he said.
“Everyone seemed dead, but then as we talked, some students who had been hidden for hours came out – some from wardrobes, others from the ceiling, and then others who had lain down with the dead, covered in blood, hidden among their friends who had been killed.”
He described how he witnessed three women apparently dead, covered head to toe entirely in blood but in fact physically unharmed, pick themselves up from a pile of corpses.
“The ladies said the gunmen had screamed out in Swahili as they shot the men: ‘We have come to be kill and be killed,’” Nyaora said.
“Then they told the women to ‘swim in the blood’”, as though they were making fun of them, playing games and apparently enjoying the killing, he said, before moving on after apparently forgetting to shoot them too….
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/garisa-church40712-e1428142888332.jpg370640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2015-04-04 06:22:372015-04-04 06:27:13Kenya: Laughing Muslims taunted Christians as they massacred them, “This will be a good Easter holiday for us”
On March 31, 2015, the New York State Assembly proved that budgeting well takes a back seat to “budgeting badly but on time.”
Even before the official vote was taken, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie knew that the budget would pass the Democrat-controlled Assembly because “the people of this state want an on-time budget.”
So, according to Heastie, it’s “the people” who “want” politicians to tell New York schools how to evaluate teachers– just so long as the screwy budget that also relieves New York’s wealthiest from sales tax on yachts is Approved. On. Time.
Due to that Democrat-induced, “on time” approval, New York now has a similar teacher evaluation stupidity that passed in Louisiana in 2012 (with student test scores counting for 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation unless the teacher is rated “ineffective,” in which case the test scores override all else). Moreover, New York has an extra layer of idiocy, even outdoing Louisiana: the “independent evaluator” nonsense that promises to introduce unprecedented disruption in the running of already-pressured schools as their administrators could be required to travel to other schools to evaluate teachers in unfamiliar contexts.
Did I mention that all of this “admin swap” means nothing in the face of the “ineffective test scores” trump card?
And “ineffective,” well, that is To Be Determined by the New York State Education Department (NYSED).
Ahh, yes. The bottom line is that all New York career teachers are now at the mercy of whatever test score “growth” NYSED concocts in its effort to please a governor who is decidedly and openly hostile to the “public school monopoly” he vowed to “bust” upon reelection.
There you have it, People of New York: A casualty of the “budgeting on time” that Heastie says you demand.
Therefore, don’t blame the “heavy-hearted” Democrats captured in short order in the brief, powerful video below. And certainly don’t blame those clueless legislators who voted for a budget without fully comprehending its ramifications.
The politicians are innocent… right?
Future of NYS Education, by Stronger Together (ST) Caucus
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/new-york-state-dept-of-education-building.png400640Mercedes Schneiderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercedes Schneider2015-04-04 06:10:552015-04-04 06:11:20Powerful Video: Future of New York State Education Exposed
We wish all participants and observers of this Holy Season a Happy Good Friday, a Happy Easter, and a Happy Passover.
Today’s treatment of Christians in a great many nations is disturbingly and reminiscent of the brutal persecution and genocide of the early followers of Jesus Christ; it is a current day “Crime Against Humanity.” Christian Americans are frustrated by the indifference displayed by the U.S. Government’s in its refusal to join in with world leaders to condemn the persecution, torture, and genocide of helpless Syrian and Assyrian Christians by Radical Islamic Terrorists members of Islamic State and Al Q’ieda as the genocide intensifies from week to week. We are now also observing the religious persecution of conscientious and believing Christians in the United States, led by the left of center liberal media establishment, because of their refusal to participate in or provide support for religious ceremonies that their well held religious beliefs don’t agree with.
The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Royal Family in England, the UK Prime Minister, the King of Jordan, the President of Egypt, the President of Kurdistan, the Prime Minister of Japan, the Prime Minister of Australian, President George W. Bush, Reverend Billy Graham, the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Prime Ministers of NATO nations, the Prime Minister of Israel, Christian Religious Leaders of every denomination from throughout the world, the current crop of candidates seeking to run for President of the United States, Christians worldwide, and the Secretary General of the United Nations have all raised their voices in unison to demand that the bloody genocide of Christians in Africa, Syria, and on the Plains of Nineveh in Iraq stop.
Unfortunately for three years, the occupant of the Oval Office has not joined in with other world leaders in their condemnation of the genocide of Christians by Radical Islamic Terrorists members of the Islamic State and Al Q’ieda in this current Jihad against Christians—that silence from the Oval Office for the last three years has been deafening!
Inside ISIS’ Shocking Persecution of Assyrian Christians on the Plains of Ninveh in Iraq
Assyrian Christianity started in the Plains of Nineveh with first-century Apostles in churches the Disciples founded, and Assyrian Christians still speak Aramaic, the language that Christ spoke. For over 2000 years, they endured and survived the Roman persecution of Christians, sieges by Saladin, conquests by the Persians, persecution by the Ottoman Empire, oppression by the Mongols, the survived Turkish genocide at the turn of the century, WWI, WWII, Iraq’s long war with Iran, the US led coalition Iraqi War with Saddam Hussein.,
But in just 10 months of control, Islamic State and Al Q’ieda, the members of Radical Islamic Jihadists perpetrating worldwide Jihad, have forced hundreds of thousands of Assyrian Christians into exile. At one time, 4 million Assyrian Christians made the Plains of Ninveh, in what was once Mesopotamia (Iraq today), their traditional home for over 2000 years. By clicking on the below listed link you can view the 60 Minutes segment that will take you inside Iraq today and will describe the life and death struggle that the Assyrian Christians, trying to survive, are involved in with Radical Islamic Jihadists.
Assyrian Christians are being crucified, beheaded, being forced to kneel to be shot, thrown off buildings to their deaths, being buried alive, being burned alive, whose children are being cut in half, and whose female children & women are being raped then killed for refusing to deny that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior. For the last 3 years the Obama administration has refused to provide logistic support and small arms to the Assyrian Christians; in the last 10 months the Assyrian Christian Militia has been training, employing the paucity of funds donated to their cause by American citizens. The newly constituted Assyrian Christian Militia has been trying to protect the Assyrian Christians who have migrate toward the Kurdish lines on the eastern end of the Plains of Ninveh Although 51 US Congressmen have petitioned the Obama administration to simply provide logistics and defensive small arms for the Assyrian Christian Militia engaged with ISIL, their requests have been ignored, yet US military air support and logistic aide is being provided to Iraq and their ally, the Iranian Quid’s Force, with boots on the ground in Iraq who are also engaged with ISIL.
ISTANBUL — The reports are horrifying, something out of a distant era of ancient conquests: entire villages emptied, with hundreds taken prisoner, others kept as slaves; the destruction of irreplaceable works of art; a tax on religious minorities, payable in gold.
A rampage reminiscent of Tamerlane or Genghis Khan, perhaps, but in reality, according to reports by residents, activist groups and the assailants themselves, a description of the modus operandi of the Islamic State’s self-declared Islamic caliphate this week as it prosecuted a relentless campaign in Iraq and Syria against what have historically been religiously and ethnically diverse areas with traces of civilizations dating to ancient Mesopotamia.
The latest to face the militants’ onslaught are the Assyrian Christians of northeastern Syria, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, some speaking a modern version of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Assyrian leaders have stated hundreds Assyrian Christians men, women, and children have been taken captive, along with civilian men and fighters from Assyrian Christian Militias, said Dawoud Dawoud, an Assyrian political activist who had just toured the area, in the vicinity of the Syrian city of Qamishli. Thirty villages had been emptied, he said.
The Syriac Military Council, a local Assyrian militia, put the number of those taken in the hundreds.
Reached in Qamishli, Adul Ahad Nissan, 48, an accountant and music composer who fled his village before the brunt of the fighting, said a close friend and his wife had been captured.
“I used to call them every other day. Now their mobile is off,” he said. “I tried and tried. It’s so painful not to see your friends again.”
Members of the Assyrian diaspora have called for international intervention, and on Thursday, warplanes of the United States-led coalition struck targets in the area, suggesting that the threat to a minority enclave had galvanized a reaction, as a similar threat did in the Kurdish city of Kobani last year.
The assault on the Assyrian communities comes amid battles for a key crossroads in the area. But to residents, it also seems to be part of the latest effort by the Islamic State militants to eradicate or subordinate anyone and anything that does not comport with their vision of Islamic rule — whether a minority sect that has survived centuries of conquerors and massacres or, as the world was reminded on Thursday, the archaeological traces of pre-Islamic antiquity.
An Islamic State video distributed on the worldwide Internet shows Radical Islamic Terrorists smashing statues with sledgehammers inside the Mosul Museum, in northern Iraq, that showcases recent archaeological finds from the ancient Assyrian empire. The relics include items from the palace of King Sennacherib, who in the Byron poem “came down like the wolf on the fold” to destroy his enemies.
“A tragedy and catastrophic loss for Iraqi history and archaeology beyond comprehension,” Amr al-Azm, the Syrian anthropologist and historian, called the destruction on his Facebook page.
“These are some of the most wonderful examples of Assyrian art, and they’re part of the great history of Iraq, and of Mesopotamia,” he said in an interview. “The whole world has lost this.”
Islamic State militants seized the museum — which had not yet opened to the public — when they took over Mosul in June and have repeatedly threatened to destroy its collection.
In the video, put out by the Islamic State’s media office for Nineveh Province — named for an ancient Assyrian city — a man explains, “The monuments that you can see behind me are but statues and idols of people from previous centuries, which they used to worship instead of God.”
A message flashing on the screen read: “Those statues and idols weren’t there at the time of the Prophet nor his companions. They have been excavated by Satanists.”
The men, some bearded and in traditional Islamic dress, others clean-shaven in jeans and T-shirts, were filmed toppling and destroying artifacts. One is using a power tool to deface a winged lion much like a pair on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has presented itself as a modern-day equivalent of the conquering invaders of Sennacherib’s day, or as Islamic zealots smashing relics out of religious conviction.
Yet in the past, the militants have veered between ideology and pragmatism in their relationship to antiquity — destroying historic mosques, tombs and artifacts that they consider forms of idolatry, but also selling more portable objects to fill their coffers.
The latest eye-catching destruction could have a more strategic aim, said Mr. Azm, who closely follows the Syrian conflict and opposes both the Islamic State and the government.
“It’s all a provocation,” he said, aimed at accelerating a planned effort, led by Iraqi forces and backed by United States warplanes, to take back Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
“They want a fight with the West because that’s how they gain credibility and recruits,” Mr. Azm said. “They want boots on the ground. They want another Falluja,” a reference to the 2004 battle in which United States Marines, in the largest ground engagement since Vietnam, took that Iraqi city from Qaeda-linked insurgents whose organization would eventually give birth to the Islamic State.
The Islamic State has been ecumenical in its violence against the modern diversity of Iraq and Syria. It considers Shiite Muslims apostates, and has destroyed Shiite shrines and massacred more than 1,000 Shiite Iraqi soldiers. It has demanded that Christians living in its territories pay the jizya, a tax on religious minorities dating to early Islamic rule.
Islamic State militants have also slaughtered fellow Sunni Muslims who reject their rule, killing hundreds of members of the Shueitat tribe in eastern Syria in one clash alone. They have also massacred and enslaved members of the Yazidi sect in Iraq.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Christian-Persecution.jpg360638Joseph R. Johnhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJoseph R. John2015-04-04 05:39:272015-04-05 09:20:38Genocide of Christians in Kenya, Syria and Iraq ‘Intensifying’
Disparity: Convictions in Atlanta, Impunity in Miami-Dade Schools.
On Wednesday, an Atlanta jury convicted 11 teachers on racketeering charges, with mixed verdicts on theft and false statement charges, in connection with the massive test cheating scandal in the Atlanta Public Schools.
The defendants, including teachers, a principal and other administrators, were accused of falsifying and altering test results to collect bonuses (incentive funds) and/or to keep their jobs.
One teacher was acquitted and 21 others took plea deals. The 35 educators were indicted in March 2013 by a grand jury.
Prosecutors claimed and successfully argued that the educators conspired to cheat on standardized tests as far back as 2005 after feeling pressure from school district officials to meet federal and local testing standards.
The educators said the pressure came from their supervisors, including former Superintendent Beverly Hall, who died of breast cancer last month.
Hall, who was superintendent for more than a decade, and her lawyer had argued she was too sick to stand trial.
In their report, investigators wrote that Hall “created a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation” that allowed cheating to go on for years.
Hall maintained that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but resigned during the investigation.
Jurors deliberated for more than eight days. The racketeering charges could carry up to a 20-year prison sentence, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Sentencing is scheduled for April 8, 2015.
“This is a huge story and absolutely the biggest development in American education law since forever,” said University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson. “It has to send a message to educators here and broadly across the nation. Playing with student test scores is very, very dangerous business.”
Logically, Mr. Carlson seems correct as the former Superintendent of El Paso, Texas schools, Lorenzo Garcia, was sent to federal prison, and five teachers and four principals were arrested in Philadelphia over the past year for test cheating with more arrests expected.
Each teacher at Miami Norland Senior High School received $1730.41.
Though the teachers got paid, the big winners from Norland’s academic successes tainted by cheating were school and district administrators: Reginald Lee went from being an assistant principal over the vocational department in which the cheating took place to the principal of Charles Drew Middle School and then Norland in November 2012; Luis Solanowent from being the principal at Norland to the Associate Superintendent, Curriculum & Instruction at Collier County Public Schools in Naples; Nikolai Vitti went from being the Assistant Superintendent of the Education Transformation Office (ETO) at M-DCPS to the Chief Academic Officer of M-DCPS and then became the Superintendent of Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville; and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho became the Florida and National Superintendent of the Year shortly thereafter.
Also, the Florida Department of Education recently released information that revealed that Miami Norland SHS had 96 FCAT/EOC test invalidations over the past three school years.
Interestingly, 25 other public schools, all high schools, had more test invalidations that Norland, with 20 of the schools being in Miami-Dade, most of them in the Education Transformation Office.
The breakdown for the 26 schools, all high schools, in the graphic: 21 from Miami-Dade (96 at Norland-275 invalidations at North Miami Senior); 2 from Broward (97, 134 invalidations); 2 from Palm Beach (99, 100 invalidations); and 1 from Duval (110 invalidations).
For more information on how this information was obtained, please read pages 38-40 of the Test Score Validation Processmanual proffered by Pearson.
Furthermore, the FBI declined to investigate as they deferred to the USDOE OIG who dismissed Colestock’s complaints and took no action.
Simply put, Florida and federal officials, unlike former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, passed the buck.
Perhaps politics played a part as Florida is, and has been, the epicenter of standardized testing since instituting the first high school graduation test in 1976, and reports of test cheating undermine the politics and profitability of standardized testing.
During his tenure as Florida governor, Bush expanded testing significantly, with lucrative contracts for testing and scoring going to Pearson, while creating the school grading system through his A+ Plan.
Beverly Hall served as the Atlanta Public Schools superintendent for more than a decade and was named Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009. She was credited with raising student test scores and graduation rates, particularly among poor and minority students.
However, the award quickly lost its luster and was tarnished as the cheating scandal began to unfold when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that some scores were statistically improbable.
Likewise, Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho was named the state and national Superintendent of the Year over the past year and lauded for the same accomplishments in test scores and graduation rates.
Could it be that Adobegate and high number of test invalidations on the FCAT and/or EOC exams over the past three school years went unanswered and unpunished to protect standardized testing and spare Mr. Carvalho, who like Beverly Hall is close to President Obama, from going down in flames like Ms. Hall and Mr. Garcia by the state and federal governments respectively?
A reasonable person may assume that Miami-Dade County Public Schools “created a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation” when it chose to transfer and retaliate against Mr. Colestock for reporting, exposing, and publishing articles about the test cheating while returning Mrs. Muchnick to Norland and never seeking her or Mr. Fleurantin’s prosecution.
The implied message to teachers in Miami-Dade seems to be “keep your mouth shut about test cheating lest you want to end up like Mr. Colestock.”
The lack of inaction by the federal and state governments seem to condone M-DCPS’s actions and test cheating in general.
Like Atlanta, the victims in Miami-Dade County, Florida, besides the taxpayer, are low-income minority (mostly black) school children who are being denied the remedial help they need as false and misleading test scores suggest otherwise.
Where are the talking heads and advocacy groups who decry events in Brooklyn and Ferguson when it comes to test cheating in Atlanta and Miami? Why are they silent on these issues?
Question: Why is Florida rewarding test cheaters while Georgia, Texas and Pennsylvania are punishing test cheaters?
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/a-tales-of-test-cheating-altanta-miami.png391640Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2015-04-03 09:26:042015-04-07 07:53:11Florida and Georgia: A Tale of Test Cheating Scandals in Two States
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/religious-freedom.jpg406639Bill Finlayhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngBill Finlay2015-04-03 08:48:582015-05-14 07:30:57Homosexuals, Religious Freedom and Obeying the Higher Law
On March 26th, 2015, John Stemberger, President and General Counsel of the Florida Family Policy Council, participated in a debate and panel discussion at the Saint Petersburg College’s Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions on the topic of the impact to society and culture from same-sex marriage. Mr. Stemberger’s seven minute opening remarks begin at minute 19:10 in the below video and the lively question and answer session that followed was also very interesting and educational.
The panel included another lawyer, a sociology professor and a gay activist.
In what way is Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh a “Texas man”? He was born there. Yet it is unlikely that he has anything but contempt for many, if not most, of his fellow Texans — those who would not wish to see Texas become an Islamic state. It is unlikely that Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh has any regard for Texas’ history and heritage — that is alljahiliyya, the worthless trash that one finds in the society of unbelievers.
But the Los Angeles Times, like the rest of the mainstream media, is determined to ignore what this conflict is really all about. It can’t call Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh a Muslim, even if Islam motivated and incited his jihad action in this case, as it seems to have done. But to refrain from identifying why Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh did what he did, even though it is standard mainstream media practice, is only to ensure that there will be others like him in the future. “Texas man charged with aiding anti-U.S. terrorist groups in Afghanistan,” by Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2015:
A Texas-born man was charged Thursday with conspiring to aid militant groups fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan, becoming the latest American to be prosecuted in federal court on suspicion of assisting terrorist cells overseas.
Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh faces 15 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. He appeared in federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday afternoon following his deportation from Pakistan and was being held without bail.
Farekh, who was not asked to enter a plea, is next due in court in May.
The announcement of the charges against Farekh came on the same day that federal prosecutors in New York announced the indictment of two Queens, N.Y., women on charges of plotting to build a bomb for use against U.S. targets.
That case is unrelated to Farekh’s, but prosecutors said the cases underscored the broad reach of terrorist threats against U.S. targets, including by American citizens.
According to a 13-page criminal complaint, Farekh began plotting with two co-conspirators in December 2006 to travel to Pakistan “with the intention of training for violent jihad against U.S. military personnel operating in Afghanistan.” At the time, Farekh was a student at the University of Manitoba in Canada.
One of his suspected co-conspirators was Ferid Imam, a Canadian citizen who has been charged in separate terrorism cases in Canada and New York. The other alleged conspirator, a Canadian who has provided information to prosecutors, was not identified, nor were other witnesses cited in the complaint….
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Muhanad-Mahmoud-al-Farekh-e1428062732718.jpeg370640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2015-04-03 08:05:502015-04-03 08:55:22Texas: Muslim charged with aiding Afghan jihad groups
It may have happened in April Fools Day, but it was certainly no joke.
On April 1, 2015, 11 Atlanta educators were convicted of racketeering related to their roles in what has come to be widely known as “the Atlanta cheating scandal.” I first read of the verdict in the New York Times:
…A jury here (in Atlanta) on Wednesday convicted 11 educators for their roles in a standardized test cheating scandal that tarnished a major school district’s reputation and raised broader questions about the role of high-stakes testing in American schools.
On their eighth day of deliberations, the jurors convicted 11 of the 12 defendants of racketeering, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. Many of the defendants — a mixture of Atlanta public school teachers, testing coordinators and administrators — were also convicted of other charges, such as making false statements, that could add years to their sentences.
The New York Times article linked above also refers to the Atlanta cheating scandal as, “what has been described as the largest cheating scandal in the nation’s history.”
I’m not so sure about that.
I think the under-investigated, test score “erasure” situation during former DC chancellor Michelle Rhee could top the Atlanta cheating scandal– if the situation is ever properly investigated.
In my book, A Chronicle of Echoes, I offer a detailed discussion of the events surrounding Rhee’s questionable test score gains, including the shallow “investigation” into erasures and the test score plummet that occurred once Rhee was no longer DC chancellor.
I also discuss the involvement of former DC principal, Adell Cothorne, who refused to keep silent when she encountered DC teachers altering student test documents and who demanded heightened security for her school’s tests.
On April 2, 2015, I asked Cothorne if she would weigh in on the Atlanta verdict.
She agreed.
The remainder of this post is Cothorne’s initial reaction to the Atlanta verdict. I have invited her to expand upon her initial reaction once she has had some more time to ponder the situation, so stay tuned.
Adell Cothorne
On April 1, 2015, 11 Atlanta educators were indicted in a cheating scandal that has captured public attention for the last three years. One of the defendants called the judge’s decision to have the educators immediately sent to jail “unnecessary and vindictive”. Many argue – via social media – that the judge was too harsh and only handed down such a stern decision because the defendants were African-American.
There will be many people who weigh in during the next few days, weeks, and even years about what this verdict means. Some pundits will have had zero experience in education but feel they can wax poetic about the virtues of merit pay, testing, and the “plight” of educating urban children.
Let me take a moment to deliver a brief synopsis of mycredentials:
I have been an educator for over 20 years and spent the bulk of my ACTUAL classroom and administrative experience in elementary (Kindergarten – 5th grade) and Kindergarten – 8th grade (K – 8) settings
My Masters in Administration and Supervision was earned at Johns Hopkins University and I am currently in the process of completing my doctorate
Recently, I worked for a Harvard project based in Baltimore City supporting various schools and school stakeholders
Most importantly, I am the FORMER District of Columbia (DC) principal who uncovered a cheating scandal and made the decision to file a whistleblower’s lawsuit against DC Public schools.
So when I tell you I have the experience and expertise to respond to the Atlanta verdict, it is not by happenstance.
I agree with Judge Jerry Baxter – these people are convicted felons and should be treated as such.
Do I condone what they did in reference to manipulating students’ tests? No I do not – in any way, shape, or form.
Do I understand why they participated in these egregious acts? I do!
Society as a whole has turned a blind eye to the incessant destruction of public education. Pretty much the way we ignored union bustingand the corporate takeover of teaching hospitals– we have ignored the dismantling of public school systems. All too often, the collective “we” trust that those with the “expertise” make the most logical decision based on the “good of the group.” Education reform (and everything that comes along with it) has illustrated that there is only one thing considered when a society-altering decision is made – money!
A large component of education reform is merit pay. Many feel that merit pay is a fair way to reward teachers. Merit-pay isn’t really about rewarding teachers who teach effectively and increase student achievement. Merit pay is holistically about creating a mechanism to prove teachers aren’t teaching effectively. Why, you ask? A teacher who is proven ineffective can be terminated and not receive a pension. Not allowing as many people to receive pensions is a real money saver for those persons in powerful (and financially wealthy) positions. I won’t go on too much about merit pay here. I’ve written about how merit pay is calculated in one school district in another piece.
I believe many were coerced into changing student test answers. I have firsthand knowledge and experience of being bullied, harassed and professionally threatened. It is not an easy situation. Yet, at the end of the day I could not become complicit in acts that robbed hundreds of children of opportunity. The test scores did not match the student ability I observed. I had eighth-grade students in my building who could not compose a paragraph. Some of these eighth-grade students were 15 years old!
In my time as a DC principal, I had staff members who not only could not deliver effective instruction but were actuallyphysically and emotionally abusive to students. Yet these staff members did not fear retribution because they felt protected by certain DCPS executive staff members. My reprimands and written admonishments fell on deaf ears.
My frustration in trying to do right by my students in DC brings me to the issue of the former Atlanta school superintendent Beverly Hall denying she had any knowledge of cheating. I can say with complete confidence – that was a lie! Anyone in education knows that the current state of affairs in education, with its “data-driven reform,” calls for all school stakeholders (specifically teachers, administrators and central office staff) to look at student data on a regular basis (at least monthly). This data many times is all-inclusive and ranges from attendance to achievement to how many students receive free and reduced meals.
As a former administrator, I was taught (as many of my counterparts were) to question any huge gains in data. A huge gain is usually equivalent to a score increase of 7 percent or more. So even though Ms. Hall may not have given a directmandate for schools to improve scores by any means, she was complicit in her silence.
Please do not think doing the right thing comes without a price. As I sit here typing this response, I am unemployed. I have interviewed for a few positions (with public school systems and in the private sector). Many times I get called back for a second or third interview only to be sent an email basically saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Both my gut and some brave souls willing to commend my action tell me that– because of my decision to advocate for thousands of students and be a voice– I have to take some hits.
I’m okay with that.
This is part of my journey.
And I won’t stop talking!
–Adell Cothorne
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of former Atlanta Public Schools School Research Team Director Tamara Cotman, center, is led to a holding cell after a jury found her guilty in the test-cheating trial on April 1 in Atlanta. Source: Kent D. Johnson/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/atlanta-cheating-school-verdict.jpg420600Mercedes Schneiderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercedes Schneider2015-04-03 07:36:502015-04-03 08:10:33Whistleblower Principal, Adell Cothorne, on the Atlanta Cheating Verdict
Many say that America is now the land of the free and home of the brave in concept only. It is getting more difficult to argue with that assessment. When Indiana governor, Mike Pence initially signed into law a religious liberty bill I was pleased and thought highly of the Hoosier State leader. Unfortunately, after a hot air blow back from the usual progressive suspects, a proposal to amend changes to the bill was brought forth by the governor. So basically, certain individuals and anti- Christian groups don’t approve of Christians exercising their religious beliefs in the operation of their businesses. Even NASCAR went to nutsville, making some idiotic proclamation about welcoming homosexuals to their events. NASCAR’S little statement was nothing more than phony grand-standing event to make brownie points with anti-Christians zealots.
No-one advocates not allowing homosexuals to be prevented from being treated with the same respect due anyone else. By the way, for you anything goes promoters, the personal life choice of an individual or group does not supersede the right of another to operate according to his or her religious beliefs. It is about time that homosexuals and their progressive supporters grow up and stop trying to bully people who don’t think and believe as they do. I know that many homosexuals, just like liberals, progressives, dedicated Muslims, etc. are not stupid. So let’s cut to the chase. You people and groups want to fundamentally change America into a land void of the Christian values she was founded upon, including virtue and traditional family values. It is you liberals, homosexuals, dedicated Muslims and progressives who truly discriminate against sovereign individuals who don’t believe, act or think like you do.
If a homosexual, transvestite, or lesbian wants to walk into any bakery in America, they can purchase a cake. But Christians who actually believe the word of God concerning unnatural lifestyles may not want to sale a cake for that purpose. It is not about discrimination against anyone. What is going on is homo-intimidation of those who believe in and operate according to a different lifestyle standard.
The Bible states that certain things are an abomination to God, including men laying with men in a sexual manner, also adultery and fornication. The last time I checked (and I really did check) American Christians are being forced to celebrate unnatural sexual activities. But a funny thing occurred to me. Adulterers are not filing into bakeries and demanding adultery cakes, or fornication cakes for fornicators. There are a great number of non-Christian specialty bakeries willing to oblige, just not a Christian bakery.
Besides, if I were not a Christian and homosexual who wanted to purchase a cake that reflects something totally non-Christian, I would try to force a Christian bakery to take my business. To try and bully others just to force them to serve your cause is not justice, nor is it morally correct. The so-called tolerance of the unnatural sexual practitioners always harp about is a crock of you know what.
It was a shame that governor Pence folded under pressure from people who do not believe in religious liberty. The left is hoping that those they oppose will give up their beliefs and cow-tow to their outrageous demands. Such actions exhibited by governor Pence is indicative of part of the reason why our republic turned mob rule democracy is in mortal danger of collapsing from within. If we are not willing to stand for what we believe or know to be right, our nation will end up falling for anything and suffer the consequences.
“We the People” can no longer afford to give in or give out because it may be a bit of uncomfortable persecution from the bigoted progressives. The more of our unalienable rights we allow to be trampled upon just to get along to go along, the more difficult it will be to simply live in the United States. The progressives, liberals and unnatural sexual practitioners will never stop complaining about others who don’t walk in lockstep with them. For example the legions of homosexual supporters and other leftists who threatened the lives of pizzeria owners in Walktertown, Indiana because they are Christians who would not cater a homosexual wedding. I thank God for the even greater numbers of Americans, both gay and straight, who showed with monetary support and words of encouragement for the pizzeria owners who only expressed their faith.
My fellow Americans, let’s remember the worthy words of the Revolutionary War her Thomas Paine. “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
Wake up America and avoid certain doom, let us together resume our nation’s destiny of greatness.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/religious-liberty.jpg402640Ron Edwardshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRon Edwards2015-04-03 07:06:202015-04-04 07:09:03Is Liberty Now A Thing Of The Past?
Early Thursday morning Al Shabaab jihadis swarmed into the grounds of Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya with over 815 students stealthily knowing at 5:30 AM that Muslim students would be at morning prayers leaving vulnerable Christian students in their dormitories. The toll during the several hour siege was 147 killed, dozens of others injured and many students unaccounted for. USA Todayreported “the White House strongly condemned the attack and said the United States was providing assistance to the Kenyan government. We extend our deep condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed in this heinous attack, which reportedly included the targeting of Christian students,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement.”
Watch this AP Report on the Garissa, College siege:
Fox News provided details on the Garassi College attack and siege:
Hours after the assault began, Kenyan security forces cornered the gunmen in a dormitory at the school, and President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a speech to the nation that the attackers were holding hostages.
“There are many dead bodies of Christians inside the building,” Al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab told Sky News. “We are also holding many Christians alive. Fighting still goes on inside the college.”
Collins Wetangula, the vice chairman of the student union, said when the gunmen arrived at his dormitory he could hear them opening doors and asking if the people who had hidden inside whether they were Muslims or Christians.
“If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot,” he said. “With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die.”
A spokesman for the terror group told the BBC that it attacked the school because “it’s on Muslim land colonized by non-Muslims.” The spokesman also said the gunmen had separated non-Muslims from Muslims and had freed 15 of the latter group.
The interior ministry said around 500 of 815 students has been accounted for, but hundreds remain missing. The students at Garissa are predominantly non-Muslim, a source told Fox News.
Police identified a possible mastermind of the attack as Mohammed Mohamud, who is alleged to lead Al-Shabaab’s cross-border raids into Kenya, and they posted a $220,000 bounty for him. Also known by the names Dulyadin and Gamadhere, he was a teacher at an Islamic religious school, or madrassa, and claimed responsibility for a bus attack in Makka, Kenya, in November that killed 28 people.
312 people have been killed in Al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya from 2012 to 2014. Thirty-eight people were killed and 149 wounded in Garissa in the same period, according to police statistics.
Bursting into their residences, these Al Shabaab killers used the same terrifying method perfected in September 2013 to kill innocent non-Muslims at the Westgate Mall massacre. They asked whether they were Christians or if Muslim asked them to recite verses from the Koran or the Shahada-the profession of faith. If they responded as Christian they were summarily shot. Most of those Kenyan students at Garissa College murdered by the al Shabaab attackers were Christians. As Christian victims of this Jihad massacre they became like Jesus, the literal agnus die, lambs of G-d referring to the Passover sacrifice. All of this occurred at the beginning of the conjunction of the Easter–Passover holy days in the Judeo-Christian calendar. Maundy Thursday that occurs three days before Easter commemorates the last supper between Jesus and his apostles believed to have been a Passover Seder.
The slaughter of these Christians in Kenya on Maundy Thursday is believed to be the worst terrorist event since the 1998 East African Embassies attacks by Al Qaeda in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It is alleged that Al Shabaab was reported by intelligence to be planning a retaliation against soft targets inside Kenya for the US drone attack on March 18, 2015 that reportedly took the life of Adan Garar the planner of the September 2013 Westgate Mall Attack in Nairobi. Al Shabaab had engaged in several spectacular recent attacks on hotels and offices in the capital of Mogadishu killing dozens.
The irony is that President Obama considered Somalia, like Yemen, “counterterrorism “successes, despite both being failed states. Yemen is being pounded daily by Saudi air strikes against Houthi rebels who have succeeded in taking the Presidential Palace in Aden. Somalia has been a perennial failed state since the eruption of civil war in 1990. It became the haven for Al Qaeda affiliate Al Shabaab, “the foot soldiers of Islam’ who have conducted an unrelenting campaign against fellow Somali Muslims and across the frontier in indiscriminate attacks on targets of opportunity in Kenya. A Kenya which holds one of the largest Somali refugee camps administered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from which residents have been sent for asylum in the United States. The irony that the children of those refugee émigrés in the US have been recruited to fight and die for Al Shabaab , and now the Islamic State in Syria. Many of those émigrés have been drawn from the twin cities of Minneapolis –St. Paul. They have become a US hub for ISIS and Al Shabaab recruitment aided by extremist Mosque leaders in those Middle West communities.
A UN report released today estimated that more than 25,000 foreign Muslims streamed to the Islamic State and Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra from more than 100 Countries across the globe to be trained in “finishing schools” in Iraq and Syria, to return home as dangerous jihadis. The report noted that besides 22,000 foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, there were also 6,500 in Afghanistan and hundreds more in Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and Somalia.”According to Reuters, the UN panel report estimated that growth of these foreign Muslim jihad recruits rose by more than 70%. It likened the Islamic State as equivalent to Afghanistan in the 1990’s with the growth of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. President Obama met last September with the 15 nation Security Council to develop a strategy for contending with the threat of extremist Islamic terror threats like ISIS, Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Boko Haram in Nigeria that resulted in this report.
This Easter weekend, Christians around the world should grieve for the 147 slaughtered by Al Shabaab jihadis at Garassi College on Maundy Thursday, 2015.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured photo is courtesy of DPA.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/1w650c0.bild_-e1428057118477.jpg360640Jerry Gordonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Gordon2015-04-03 06:33:562015-04-03 08:01:54Christian students slaughtered in Kenya by Islamists
The team of Kerry and Obama view Iran as though it is a common cold; whereas it is a deadly virus.
This is at least the third Obama deadline that has been missed in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Deadlines are in the nature of ‘red lines’. Each time Obama’s red line is breached it sends a clear message to Iran and U.S. allies that nothing the Obama White House says can be relied on or trusted.
Worse it says to Iran that Obama’s fixation with a nuclear deal can be used to extract more concessions until there is virtually nothing left. Iran already knows Obama is ready to offer ‘Unconditional Surrender’. Iran also knows it can breach any agreement any time and in any way because short of military action which they know Obama has taken off the table there will be no repercussions.
In the past Kerry announced that an agreement if entered into will not be legally binding on anyone. Obama and Kerry have offered America a charade in place of a binding agreement. More extensions are almost a certainty because Iran’s game plan is to keep its centrifuges spinning while talks continue and Obama’s game plan is to kick the problem down the road until he is no longer president.
Who will save humanity?
Obama’s policy is like trying to befriend and contain a suicide bomber who murders innocents in the name of Allah.
In the past over the objection of the U.S. and members of the P5+1 countries, Israel destroyed nuclear weapons facilities in Iraq and Syria. To date no one has said thank you. We do not know if Israel has the capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities but we can all pray it does..
It is ironic that one of the smallest and most maligned countries in the world may be the only hope civilization has to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program and to prevent a nuclear arms race followed by Iran’s final apocalyptic battle with its enemies as predicted in its scriptures.
President Obama called the Iran framework “historic” in a Rose Garden speech today, April 2, 2015. New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Mendez thinks differently and by thinking differently he is under attack by the leader of his own party and was forced to step down from his position as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That in and of itself is historic.
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued the following statement after President Obama’s appearance:
“I look forward to hearing from administration officials what specific terms Iran has agreed to as part of what was supposed to be a comprehensive framework agreement, but the initial details appear to be very troubling. Through more than a decade of efforts to resolve international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, this regime has consistently lied about its ambitions and hidden the true nature of its efforts from the world. Among other issues, allowing Iran to retain thousands of centrifuges, keeping facilities such as Fordow open and not limiting Iran’s ballistic missile program indicate to me that this deal is a colossal mistake.
“This attempt to spin diplomatic failure as a success is just the latest example of this administration’s farcical approach to Iran. Under this President’s watch, Iran has expanded its influence in the Middle East, sowing instability throughout the region. Iran’s support for terrorism has continued unabated without a serious response from the United States. The regime’s repression of the Iranian people and its detentions of American citizens continue. And now Tehran is gaining international acceptance of its nuclear ambitions and will receive significant sanctions relief without making serious concessions.
“I intend to work with my colleagues to continue to ensure that any final agreement, if reached, is reviewed by Congress and that additional sanctions continue to be imposed on Iran until it completely gives up its nuclear ambitions and the regime changes its destructive behavior.
“Our message to Iran should be clear: until the regime chooses a different path, the United States will continue to isolate Iran and impose pressure. Today’s announcement takes us in the opposite direction, and I fear it will have devastating consequences for nuclear non-proliferation, the security of our allies and partners, and for U.S. interests in the region.”
