WSJ:

The fight over school curriculum in Texas, recently focused on biology, has entered a new arena, with a brewing debate over how much faith belongs in American history classrooms.

The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state’s social studies curriculum. In early recommendations from outside experts appointed by the board, a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history.

Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

“We’re in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it,” said Rev. Peter Marshall, a Christian minister and one of the reviewers appointed by the conservative camp.

Three other reviewers, all selected by politically moderate or liberal members of the board, recommended less-sweeping changes to the existing curriculum. But one suggested including more diverse role models, especially Latinos, in teaching materials. “We have tended to exclude or marginalize the role of Hispanic and Native American participants in the state’s history,” said Jesús F. de la Teja, chairman of the history department at Texas State University.

The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America’s founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man’s fall and inherent sinfulness, or “radical depravity,” which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.

The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good — and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.

“America is a special place and we need to be sure we communicate that to our children,” said Don McLeroy, a leading conservative on the board. “The foundational principles of our country are very biblical…. That needs to come out in the textbooks.” (emp- SC&A)

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The First Post:

Perhaps it is because we are so preoccupied with climate change that we pay so little attention to another form of change – this time demographic – which is also creeping up on us. Already, Europe’s people are older than any other continent’s and its fertility rate, at 1.5 children per woman, is way below replacement level. Across the continent deaths outnumber births. At the same time life expectancy is increasing, so much so that 19 out of the world’s 20 oldest countries, in terms of population age, are European:

*In 1950 there were 5.5 million people aged over 65 in Britain. Now there are more than 10 million, and in twenty five years time there will be over 15 million. But the number of people of working age, who will have to support them, is likely to stay roughly the same at a little over 40 million.

*The British birth rate has been below replacement level since the mid-1970s, yet our population is not just growing but rocketing. By 2030 it is projected to increase by 10 million to over 70 million. By 2050 it is projected to reach 75 million

*This is mainly because net immigration into this country over the last decade has been running at 200,000 a year, sometimes even more. Allowing for the 200,000 people who also leave the country annually, we have recently been taking up to half-a-million migrants a year – the highest in our history.
Without immigration, the population would rise to just 64 million by 2030, mainly as a result of people living longer, before slowly declining. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe the big worry is what will happen when populations fall.

*The Russian population is already dropping at the rate of 10,000 a week, thanks to a very low birth rate and reduced life expectancy after the collapse of Communism. In 2000 there were 148 million Russians, by 2050 this is projected to fall to 116 million.

*In Germany they live longer, but a birth rate of just 1.4 children per woman and comparatively low immigration means their population is also projected to fall – by 12 million between now and mid-century.

*Countries with very low birth rates and emigration, rather than immigration, will shrink even faster. By 2050 Bulgaria is projected to lose 30 per cent of its population, Ukraine and Belarus nearly 25 per cent apiece, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania roughly 20 per cent each, Croatia 15 per cent and Hungary 10 per cent.

*It had been thought that Italy and Spain would also shrink because of their very low birth rates. But immigration into both countries has recently been even higher than it is here. Between 2000 and 2005 net immigration averaged 500,000 a year in Spain and 350,000 a year in Italy. As a result the populations of both are now expected to level peg, but this will not stop them ageing dramatically. By 2050, a third of all Italians are expected to be pensioners.

Around the world, by mid-century the UN reckons that there will be over a billion more Asians, just under a billion more Africans, 200 million more Latin Americans, 130 million more North Americans – and some 40 million fewer Europeans.

Reuters:

When Micky Mayon fled the United States, where he faced firearms charges, the alleged member of an anti-Semitic white supremacist group chose what he might have seen as a perfect hideout — the Jewish state.

Mayon, 32, of Steelton, Pa., was arrested in Tel Aviv on Monday by an Israeli law enforcement unit that searches for illegal migrants. He had been on the run for two years.

“He was here because he thought this was the last place they would look for him,” said Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for Israel’s Interior Ministry which oversees the unit.

Mayon fled the United States after he was suspected of burning the car of a judge who had ordered he stand trial on the firearms charges, Haddad said, basing her information on details provided by Interpol.

Haddad said Israeli authorities were told by Interpol that Mayon belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group described by the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League as a racist, anti-Semitic movement.

“The search for Mayon came to a successful conclusion today with the actions in Israel,” said U.S. Marshal Michael R. Regan. “Locating and identifying Mayon in a foreign country sends a strong message that you can run, but you cannot hide.”

Mayon was being sought by U.S. marshals on two arrest warrants. Charges included illegal possession of a firearm, reckless endangerment and flight to avoid apprehension.

Read it all.

World Affairs Journal:

The specter of anti-Semitism is stalking Britain. It is guilt-free and unrestrained by historical literacy. According to a recent survey, many British children believe Auschwitz is a brand of beer. Placards equating the swastika to the Star of David have become so common a feature at demonstrations that the linkage has become virtually common wisdom. The Holocaust is not so much something that happened, as something that is happening now—to Palestinians. With all the obstacles to ignorance presented by an informed understanding of the past now being smoothed away, the future is increasingly shaped in Britain by a politically tinged anti-Semitism that seeks to impose itself on national culture wherever possible and by whatever means available. This triumphalist movement’s fanciful but murderous perception of Jews has become one of those bad ideas whose bad consequences are everywhere on display in British society.

As Israel’s military operation in Gaza came to a halt in mid-February, a Jewish defense organization had already recorded some 270 cases of anti-Semitic attacks and harassment in Britain. This figure included 88 violent assaults and 74 cases of damage to Jewish property. The year 2009, therefore, is likely to surpass the total of 598 and 541 anti-Semitic attacks for the entire years of 2006 and 2008 respectively, hitherto the highest on record. These incidents were mostly disorganized, local disturbances in the street or the playground that were anecdotal in character but nonetheless a barometer of evolving public opinion. A man, incidentally a lawyer, shouts “Jew boy” at a fan of the rival team at a football match. In Birmingham, a 12-year-old girl and the only Jewish child in the school is terrorized by a mob of twenty youths shouting, “Kill all Jews” and “Death to Jews.” In the East End of London, windows are smashed and “Kill Jews” daubed on a supermarket, part of a chain started by a Jewish owner.

Such events have played out against a backdrop of demographic change whose net effect has been to remind Britons which side their bread is buttered on. There are roughly 300,000 Jews in Britain. Over the decades, Muslims have been immigrating legally and illegally, often not identified as Muslims in censuses, and therefore not easily quantifiable. But according to best estimates, there are probably 2 million in Britain.

True to their pragmatic nature, the British dealt with Muslim immigration by improvising an informal policy of multiculturalism, which in practice became a high-flown euphemism for separation. Politicians did not bother to think through the consequences of the new social world being created as a fact on the ground. In what was assumed to be their best interest, Muslims were encouraged to stay together but apart, to build mosques, keep to Islamic dietary injunctions, and cultivate their original languages and customs. When these customs included Jew-hatred, the authorities, which had enabled these developments by surrendering their ideal of assimilation, had little choice but to look away. Whether to promote further multiculturalism or to reverse it, and if so how: these are questions that demographic critical mass and past political incoherence forbid being asked today.

The Times:

The advice appears in leaflets circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers and is meant to update sex education by telling students about the benefits of enjoyable sex.

The authors of the guidance say that for too long, experts have concentrated on the need for “safe sex” and committed relationships while ignoring the principle reason that many people have sex.

Entitled Pleasure, the leaflet has been drawn up by NHS Sheffield, but it also being circulated outside the city.

The leaflet carries the slogan “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”. It also says: “Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes’ physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?”

Steve Slack, the director of the Centre for HIV and Sexual Health at NHS Sheffield, who is one of the leaflet’s authors, says that instead of promoting teenage sex, it could encourage young people to delay losing their virginity until they are certain they will enjoy the experience.

Mr Slack believes that if teenagers are fully informed about sex and are making their decisions of their own will in a loving relationship, they have an equal right as an adult to an enjoyable sex life.

Anthony Seldon, the headmaster of Wellington College, which recently introduced classes in emotional wellbeing, said the leaflets were “deplorable”.

World Affairs Journal:

Every time I despair of the way women are treated in Muslim countries—and the few syllables Western leaders and op-ed columnists expend on their humiliations, mutilations, harassments, and, yes, murders—I turn to the Web site of Mona Eltahawy. Eltahawy spent her formative years in Egypt and Saudi Arabia:

A couple of years after I stopped visiting, a horrific fire broke out in a school in Mecca, home to the Muslim world’s holiest site. Fifteen girls burned to death because morality police standing outside the school wouldn’t let them out of the burning building. Why? Because they weren’t wearing headscarves and abayas, the black cloaks that girls and women must wear in public in Saudi Arabia.

And here is Eltahawy on a girl’s lot in Egypt:

When I was only four years old and still living in Cairo, a man exposed himself to me as I stood on a balcony at my family’s, and gestured for me to come down. At 15, I was groped as I was performing the rites of the hajj pilgrimage at Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims. Every part of my body was covered except for my face and hands. I’d never been groped before and burst into tears, but I was too ashamed to explain to my family what had happened.

To anyone who, like me, has lived in a Muslim nation, none of this behavior is either singular or surprising. It is the way men in most Islamic nations prefer things to be. We can talk forever about the nature of culture versus faith: how ancient rites and practices like the circumcision of girls (85 percent of all Egyptian girls have endured this procedure), or the tradition of keeping women ignorant and housebound, can corrupt a religion that never intended for these things to happen.

But it is no coincidence that women who must submit to Sharia law find themselves in a very bad place, wherever those women and those places happen to be. This includes France, where only last year a court in Lille upheld the right of a Muslim man to hold fast to his faith and annul his marriage when he discovered his bride was not a virgin. And it includes Germany, where in Berlin in 2005 there were eight murders of young women of Turkish origin, executed by members of their own families. And Australia, where, after a group of unveiled Muslim women were raped, the succinct Mufti Taj al-Din al-Hilali explained away the crime as an attack on “uncovered meat.” And it includes the United Kingdom, where Scotland Yard has probed 109 suspicious deaths of women, also likely slaughtered by relatives. Islam is an easy rider: it travels everywhere and often brings with it a lot of baggage.

Bet let’s start with Islam as it affects women in their home countries. Last year, in a poll of 2,000 Egyptian men, 62 percent admitted harassing women: an activity most of those interviewed insisted was not really their fault as their advances, however intemperate and offensive to their victims, had after all been provoked by the women themselves.

World Affairs Journal:

In February 13, 2006, in a grove of trees behind a suburban rail station fifteen miles south of Paris, a 23-year-old French Jew of Moroccan descent named Ilan Halimi was found tied to a tree, barely alive. Kidnappers had left him there naked, handcuffed, hooded, and gagged, after having cut off pieces of his fingers and his ears, stabbed him repeatedly, and burned much of his body. He died before reaching a hospital. The police soon arrested more than twenty youths belonging to a gang called “the Barbarians,” led by a 25-year-old Muslim immigrant from the Ivory Coast named Youssouf Fofana. They had targeted Halimi, and demanded a ransom of over $600,000 (which his family found impossible to raise), because of a vague belief that all Jews are rich. In the time since his arrest, Fofana has shown no remorse and has adopted the language of Islamic extremism. On trial in April of this year, he declared that “Allah will be victorious,” and gave his name as “African Barbarian Army Revolt Salafist” (Salafism is a strain of Islamic thought grounded in a literal interpretation of the Koran).

To those who see the story of French Jewry as predominantly tragic, the killing of Ilan Halimi foreshadows a dark new chapter. They note that it is only the most horrific of hundreds of anti-Semitic incidents and attacks that have taken place in France over the past decade, ranging from simple vandalism and graffiti to the attempted destruction of synagogues to murder. France, they argue, is fundamentally unsafe for Jews. Michel Gurfinkiel, editor of the conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles, recently claimed that “things are getting worse and worse” for French Jews, and that “we are witnessing a terrifying chain of events.”

Ironically, these events have taken place just when anti-Semitism among French Christians has declined to its lowest point in modern history. As the sociologist Michel Wieviorka has observed, opinion polls repeatedly show less hostility to Jews in France than at any time in the past, and less than in most other European countries. While the aged Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the xenophobic Front National, continues to engage in deliberate provocations vis-à-vis Jews (most recently calling the Nazi occupation of France “not especially inhumane”), his party generally devotes much less attention to them than to France’s rapidly expanding Muslim population. And with the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, the most philo-Semitic government in French history came to power. Sarkozy himself has one-quarter Jewish ancestry, and a Jewish daughter-in-law. He has improved France’s legendarily troubled relations with Israel, and repeatedly expressed admiration for France’s Jewish community. He has also gone further than any other French leader in expressing repentance for Vichy France’s persecution of the Jews during World War II. In 2008 he even suggested that all French schoolchildren learn the story of—and each “adopt” one of—the 11,000 French Jewish children deported by Vichy to the death camps.

Given this context, it is tempting to see little connection between the new anti-Semitic violence and the long-term history of French Jewry. Perhaps acts such as the killing of Ilan Halimi reflect nothing more than the rage of young, underprivileged, frustrated, and misguided Muslims all over Europe. Significantly, the violence seems motivated less by resentment of French Jews, than by anger at Israel. The number of incidents spiked dramatically during the intifadas, again with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and yet again this past winter with the invasion of Gaza. Given that France has both the largest Muslim and the largest Jewish populations in Europe (5 to 6 million Muslims and 600,000 Jews),  the recent violence may represent what Michel Gurfinkiel calls an “importation of the Palestinian conflict into France.”