Taxpayer-Funded 'Islamic Propaganda,' Attacks on Christianity Forced on Michigan Teachers

Taxpayer-Funded 'Islamic Propaganda,' Attacks on Christianity Forced on Michigan Teachers

 

BY TYLER O'NEIL 

(Shutterstock)

New documents unearthed by the Thomas More Law Center show how a Muslim instructor pushed "Islamic propaganda" on teachers in Novi, Mich., in 2017. According to the Law Center, the instructor also denigrated Christianity and America in her "diversity" training.

"We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers," Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Law Center, said in a statement. "This type of infiltration amounts to an Islamic Trojan horse within our public-school systems. No other religion gets this kind of special treatment in our schools."

Huda Essa, a Muslim from the Dearborn area and founder of Culture Links, L.L.C., appeared before Novi teachers in a hijab, billing herself as an expert in "cultural competency" and "culturally responsive teaching." She led a training on August 28 and 29, 2017. TMLC heard about the training roughly one year later and filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in the fall of 2018.

During her presentation, Essa claimed that her mother's decision to wear the hijab was met with "rage" from random Americans. She described Muslim women as victims of Islamophobia on the part of bigoted Americans, saying they have been spat upon, had hot liquids poured over them, been beaten, and even been killed because they wear the hijab.

She did not mention when or where these atrocities happened, and she did not present hate crime statistics to back up her claims. According to the FBI, anti-Muslim attacks are relatively rare in the U.S., and they actually fell by 17 percent in 2017. Anti-Jewish hate crimes outnumbered anti-Muslim offenses by nearly four to one that year alone. According to Open Doors, Christians are the most persecuted of all religious groups globally. Of the 50 most dangerous countries to be a Christian, Islamic oppression fuels persecution in 33.

Report: Islamic Oppression Fuels Two-Thirds of the Worst Persecution Against Christians

Essa did not deny the poor treatment of women in Islamic countries, but she attributed their struggles to "cultural" differences, not to Islam. While Muslims differ in their interpretations of Sharia (Islamic law), TMLC noted that the Quran instructs husbands to beat their disobedient wives (Surah 4:34) and that Mohammed reportedly said that the majority of hell would be populated by women (Sahih Bukhari hadith, Vol. 1:28, 301; Vol. 2:161, Vol. 7:124-126).

The Muslim instructor claimed that Muslims love Jesus and refer to him as "messiah," but she left out the key differences between what Christians and Muslims believe about Jesus. While Christians believe the Messiah saves people from sin, Muslims see Jesus as a lower prophet under Mohammed, not the Son of God. They believe Jesus did not die on the cross or rise from the dead.

Essa attacked the authority of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, repeating the Islamic line that the Old and New Testaments were "corrupted." The Quran, she insisted, contains the final "pure" words of God. She said Christianity and Islam were "mostly similar," but claimed that Islam is the world's "only purely monotheistic religion."

Interestingly, she defended the Quran as coming straight from Allah to the prophet Mohammed, but refused to mention the passage commanding Muslims to "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war" (Surah 9:5).

She also insisted that the phrase "Allahu Akbar!" ("Allah is the greatest!") — well known as the battle cry of radical Islamic terrorists — is just a refrain Muslims use to convey feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, or thankfulness.

Essa further claimed that "Islam" is an offshoot of the Arabic term "Salaam," which means peace. In reality, the term "Islam" means "submission" — to Allah and to Shariah.

TMLC also faulted Essa for noting that Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion while omitting the fact that Muslims who leave the faith are considered apostates — and are subject to severe punishment in many countries, up to and including death.

TLMC described many slides as presenting an anti-American, revisionist history that painted the United States as "cultural genocide" and suggested that its treatment of Native Americans was as bad or worse than the Nazi holocaust. It appears she might have posted some of these slides on Instagram:

She claimed that the U.S.'s "genocide" against Native Americans was worse than the Holocaust.

Christian Student Forced to Write Islamic Conversion Creed Appeals Case to Supreme Court

She also emphasized America's ugly racial past.

As TMLC noted, however, "Essa was silent on the 1400 years of actual genocides, also known as jihads, in which Muslims wiped out Jewish tribes on the Arabian Peninsula, and slaughtered millions of Christians throughout the Middle East, North Africa and the European Continent." The Middle East and North Africa were overwhelmingly Christian until Muslims invaded and Islamized those areas.

Essa also omitted any mention of the multiple radical Islamic terror attacks on U.S. soil.

She completely ignored the jihadi terrorist attacks conducted on U.S. soil: The 9/11 attack that murdered nearly 3,000 people, the Fort Hood massacre of 12 U.S. soldiers, the Pulse Nightclub attack that killed 49 Americans in Orlando, the San Bernardino attack that killed 14 at a Christmas party, the Chattanooga shooting that killed five at a Navy recruitment and reserve center, the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and left hundreds wounded, and the Chelsea, New York, pipe-bombing that injured 30 innocent Americans. Not to mention the countless terror attacks that have been foiled by the FBI.

According to TMLC, Essa also suggested that white Christian males are more of a terror threat than radical Islamic terrorists. "White Christian males," she suggested, "are more dangerous than Islamic radicals."

TMLC's FOIA request revealed that the Novi school district did not fully vet Essa before her presentation and the district did not have documents showing any sort of investigation to fact-check her presentation. However, the request did reveal that the district paid $5,000 for the presentation. During the past five years, the school district has not forced teachers to take any seminar on Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion — only Islam.

Essa's client list includes colleges, universities, schools, and professional educator associations in Michigan, California, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and more. In Michigan, her website lists nine school districts: Oakland County Schools, Ann Arbor Schools, L’Anse Creuse Public Schools, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, Roseville Community Schools, Farmington Public Schools, Dearborn Public Schools, Birmingham Public Schools, and Melvindale Public Schools.

TMLC has many active cases involving public schools promoting Islam and attacking Christianity. In New Jersey, seventh graders were taught that "Islam is the true faith," required to learn the Muslim creed (the Shahada), and forced to watch proselytizing videos. TMLC is representing another student in Maryland, where kids were taught that "Most Muslims' faith is stronger than the average Christian" and "Islam at heart is a peaceful religion."

It may make sense to educate teachers — and students — about the nuances of different interpretations of Sharia, explaining that some Muslim sects disagree with the radical interpretations that support terrorism and oppression across the world. But any such training must acknowledge Islam's history, and if taxpayers are to be made to pay for such training, teachers should also be trained in Christianity and Judaism — especially since America's Judeo-Christian heritage is so often demonized and under assault.

One-sided, propagandistic, and offensive teaching like this should be rebutted at the very least, and taxpayers should not be forced to support it.

Follow Tyler O'Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.

https://pjmedia.com/parenting/taxpayer-funded-islamic-propaganda-attacks-on-christianity-forced-on-michigan-teachers/

NO U.S. WARMING SINCE 2005

NO U.S. WARMING SINCE 2005

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CLIMATE

One of the problems in assessing global climate is that the surface temperature record is terrible. There are very few weather stations world-wide, and fewer all the time. Seventy per cent of the world is ocean, and therefore hard or impossible to measure accurately. Most temperatures that go into calculations of a global average are not even measured: they are interpolated, assumed temperatures based on records at other stations.

Even when measured, temperature records are not very reliable. The U.S. is generally considered to have the best records, but surveys show that over half of our weather stations do not comply with written standards. Some are located in places that obviously will be warmer than surrounding air, e.g., next to airport runways. Many are in cities, where temperatures are artificially inflated by concentrations of people, motor vehicles, buildings, etc. And on top of all of that, the alarmists who curate weather records have systematically fiddled with them, lowering temperatures that were recorded decades ago and raising recent ones, to exaggerate the supposed phenomenon of global warming.

In order to address some of these problems, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) implemented, beginning in 2005, a new surface temperature measurement system in the U.S.

[The U.S. Climate Reference Network] includes 114 pristinely maintained temperature stations spaced relatively uniformly across the lower 48 states. NOAA selected locations that were far away from urban and land-development impacts that might artificially taint temperature readings.

Prior to the USCRN going online, alarmists and skeptics sparred over the accuracy of reported temperature data. With most preexisting temperature stations located in or near urban settings that are subject to false temperature signals and create their own microclimates that change over time, government officials performed many often-controversial adjustments to the raw temperature data. Skeptics of an asserted climate crisis pointed out that most of the reported warming in the United States was non-existent in the raw temperature data, but was added to the record by government officials.

The USCRN has eliminated the need to rely on, and adjust the data from, outdated temperature stations.

So–not to keep you in suspense–what does the USCRN show so far? No warming:

At Real Clear Energy, James Taylor adds:

There is also good reason to believe U.S. temperatures have not warmed at all since the 1930s. Raw temperature readings at the preexisting stations indicate temperatures are the same now as 80 years ago. All of the asserted U.S. warming since 1930 is the product of the controversial adjustments made to the raw data. Skeptics point out that as the American population has grown, so has the artificial warming signal generated by growing cities, more asphalt, more automobiles, and more machinery.

If anything, the raw temperature readings should be adjusted downward today relative to past temperatures (or past temperatures adjusted upward in comparison to present temperatures) rather than the other way around. If raw temperature readings are the same today as they were 80 years ago, when there were fewer artificial factors spuriously raising temperature readings, then U.S. temperatures today may actually be cooler than they were in the early 20th century.

More at the link. USCRN promises to be a valuable contribution to the raging debate over climate, as long as the alarmists don’t get their hands on the data and start changing it.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/08/no-u-s-warming-since-2005.php

How The Media Enables Destructive Climate Change Hysteria

How The Media Enables Destructive Climate Change Hysteria

Reporters have a responsibility to challenge the assumptions and exaggerations of activists.

By David Harsanyi

Last weekend, the former chairman of psychiatry at Duke University, Dr. Allen Frances, claimed that Donald Trump “may be responsible for many more million deaths” than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong combined. Frances, author of the fittingly titled “Twilight of American Sanity,” would later clarify by tweeting that he was talking about the “[t]errible damage Trump is doing to world climate at this global warming tipping point may be irreversable/could kill hundreds of millions of people in the coming decades.”

That’s quite the bold statement, considering the hefty death toll the Big Three extracted. But, really, it isn’t that shocking to hear. Frances’ pseudohistoric twaddle comports well with the pseudoscientific twaddle that’s been normalized in political discourse. Every year Democrats ratchet up the doomsday scenarios, so we should expect related political rhetoric to become correspondingly unhinged.

All of this is a manifestation of 50 years of scaremongering on climate change. Paul Ehrlich famously promised that “hundreds of millions of people” would “starve to death,” while in the real world we saw hunger precipitously drop, and the world become increasingly cleaner. Yet, neo-Malthusians keep coming back with fresh iterations of the same hysteria, ignoring mankind’s ability to adapt.

At a 2005 London conference of “concerned climate scientists and politicians” that helped launch contemporary climate rhetoric, attendees warned that the world had as little as 10 years before the Earth reached “the point of no return on global warming.” Humans, they claimed, would soon be grappling with “widespread agricultural failure,” “major droughts,” “increased disease,” “the death of forests,” and the “switching-off of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream,” among many other calamities.

Since then, the Earth has gotten greener. This year, for the first time since we began logging data in 2000, there were no “extreme” or “exceptional” droughts across the contiguous United States—although we’ve come close to zero on numerous occasions over the past decade. Every time there’s a drought anywhere in the world, climate change will be blamed. But world crop yields continue to ensure that fewer people are hungry than ever. I’m not a scientist, but I assume the North Atlantic Gulf Stream is still with us.

It doesn’t matter. Four years after the last point of no return was reached, the noted naturalist David Attenborough warned the world at a United Nations climate change summit that “collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

Climate change is always an extinction-level event. When the Democratic National Committee rejected counterproductive single-issue debates this week (climate change being the most notable), a member complained, “If an asteroid was coming to Earth, there would be no question about having a debate about it, but with this existential crisis facing the world, we all sit and wring our hands.” This is how a lot of Democrats speak. They are never challenged.

And if you truly believe a slight variation in climate is comparable to an asteroid barreling towards the Earth—and if we trust their rhetoric, every Democrat presidential candidate does—why wouldn’t you support the authoritarian policy proposals of the Green New Deal?

And why wouldn’t you accuse those who oppose more solar panel subsidies and tax hikes of being mass murderers? Why wouldn’t you celebrate the death of philanthropists like David Koch? These people are literally “spinning us all toward environmental doom.”

On climate change, you can say virtually anything, and no one will challenge your zealotry.

Recently I noticed that CNN, where Frances accused the president of being the worst mass murderer in history without any pushback, refers to “climate change” as the “climate crisis” in news stories—which is editorializing, not reporting.

If journalists did their jobs, they would contest some of the assumptions and exaggerations that have now congealed as “crisis” in their newsrooms. Not necessarily the science, but the predictive abilities of scientists or the hyperbolic statements of politicians. But how can any reporter be skeptical of anyone when news organizations have already conceded that what they’re covering is a “crisis?” It would be an apostasy. Chuck Todd won’t give any airtime to “deniers,” but he’ll open his show any Chicken Little who can get elected.

Not long ago, candidates and mainstream media outlets like CNN were acting as if floods in the Midwest were an unprecedented environmental disaster. In reality, deaths from extreme weather have dropped somewhere around 99.9 percent since the 1920s. Tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, and extreme temperatures can still be killers, but thanks to increasingly affordable fossil-fueled heating and air-conditioning systems, safer buildings, and better warning systems—among other technological advances—the vast majority of Americans will never have to fear weather in any genuine way.

Put it this way: Since 1980, death caused by all natural disasters and heat and cold is well under 0.5 percent of the total.

Yet, never, to my recollection, has a mainstream reporter asked an environmental activist why, if the world is headed towards Armageddon, humans are better off now than they were 50 years ago, or 20 years ago or 10 years ago? Climate change is supposedly in full swing, yet fewer people are hungry, fewer people are displaced, and we have to fight fewer wars over resources. Extreme poverty has steeply dropped over the past 30 years. There is no evidence that this trajectory is about to change.

Worse, instead of conveying this good news, the media keeps cherrypicking problems without any context. They’ve convinced large swaths of young Americans that everything is getting worse, when the opposite is true.

Nearly every day, I read some new chilling climate change story. “Climate Change Is Driving An Increase In A Deadly Flesh-Eating Bacteria And Spreading It To New Areas,” says BuzzFeed. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of reported cases of the “Vibrio” illness has more than tripled since 1997, from 386 to 1,256 in 201. The same day I read about the Deadly Flesh-Eating Bacteria, I read, in far less dramatic terms, about a new pill that researchers believe might be able to prevent a third of all heart attacks and strokes, potentially saving millions of lives.

Or take The Washington Post, which recently offered a beautifully packaged article written by a long-time environmental activist turned “reporter.” It cobbled together stories of suffering under climate change. What it failed to point out is that the vast majority of Americans rely on cheap energy and will never have to alter our lifestyles because of the climate—other than perhaps using air conditioning a few extra days.

We’re going to have to learn to deal with Deadly Flesh-Eating Bacteria, because the billions of people who once lived (and live) in disease-ridden areas in the developing world will want heart pills and cars and air conditioners. No sane nation is going to run its economy on expensive and unproductive energy sources.

Some people will argue that the failure of previous scares to materialize doesn’t mean this one isn’t real. Some people will argue human adaptation doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening. Of course not. But adaptation is the point.

The story of humankind is one of acclimatization. We use technological advances and efficiencies to deal with change. We will adapt to organic and anthropogenic changes, as we always do, because it’s a lot cheaper than dismantling modernity. That’s the reality, no matter how hysterical activists get on TV.

David Harsanyi is a Senior Editor at The Federalist. He is the author of First Freedom: A Ride Through America's Enduring History with the Gun, From the Revolution to Today. Follow him on Twitter.

https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7273666970697605402#editor/target=post;postID=6957746617967133912

Commentary: Everything You’ve Heard About the Amazon Fires Is Wrong

August 27, 2019 Admin

• 441

by Dr. Ryan Maue

The international news coverage of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest fires has been a complete disaster. News outlets published inaccurate yet easily verifiable “facts” about the number of fires, declaring the situation “record-breaking” and “unprecedented.” Social media lit up with misleading claims about the loss of planetary oxygen supply (20 percent, said French President Emmanuel Macron) threatening to asphyxiate us all. Stock photos and images of forest fires from the last two decades including Peru and Bolivia were shared widely and wildly. Celebrities and politicians alike heaped condemnation upon Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro leading to an ongoing geopolitical crisis.

The origin of this Amazon fire crisis traces back to the beginning of August, when Bolsonaro sacked his Space Institute minister for publishing worrisome data about the 2019 fire season. The dry season in Brazil typically runs from August to November, as farmers use these months to burn dried-out timber previously cut during land clearing operations. Ranchers also prepare the land for cattle grazing.

An important point to remember about these fires, however, is that the rainforests themselves are not entirely or uncontrollably ablaze. Natural fire does not typically occur in these tropical forests due to suffocating humidity, wet dense foliage, and daily thunderstorms. What is burning right now is land near the forests where farmers and ranchers have cleared hundreds and hundreds of acres of trees. This is easily seen in satellite imagery, which scientists finally examined and compared to the past two decades.

The New York Times pumped the brakes on the misinformation and published a highly informative map showing the location of the fires on previously cleared land obviously related to farmers and ranchers.

The Brazilian state of Mato Grasso has been transformed into an “ocean of soybeans” the size of Iowa. On the periphery, the land is cleared at the rate of 2,500-square-miles annually.

This deforestation peaked in the 1990s but lessened significantly over the past 10 years. There is evidence, however, to suggest Bolsonaro’s government had cut back on enforcement measures against illegal fires and land-clearing activities. The initial reports about the beginning of fire season sent the international community into a panic, led by the Europeans.

The number of fires and cumulative area burned so far in 2019, on the other hand, is on par with previous years and described as “near average” by NASA.

European news outlets already had an enemy in Bolsonaro with his nationalistic and anti-globalist sentiment. Conversely, Brazilian leaders, including officials in the military, pushed back against European colonialist rhetoric threatening the nation’s sovereignty. A full-blown international crisis expanded into threats of scuttling a major EU-Brazil trade deal and cancellation of foreign aid to prevent deforestation.

The importance of the Amazon rainforests to global climate action was exemplified by the extreme reaction and rhetoric of European elites. Bolsonaro was compelled to order the military to help fight the illegal fires. Yet, we should not turn a blind eye to the motivations of the Brazilian government to open the Amazonian frontier for development.

The chain reaction of misinformation is easily visible in real-time especially with climate change related narratives. All it takes is one misleading headline, such as the Guardian’s “12-years left to avoid climate catastrophe,” to set off an uncontrollable cascade of virtue signaling and outrage. Celebrities and politicians amplify the message on social media. Non-governmental activist organizations swoop in to manage the narrative.

Sometimes journalists are responsible for initiating misinformation, usually due to sloppy fact-checking. But often there is a more fundamental breakdown in the coverage of environmental news: the outrage and hysteria is self-reinforcing and all in the service of stated and approved goals of an agenda-driven activist media. Awards and plaudits are showered upon journalists or scientists themselves who consistently exaggerate the links between climate change and extreme weather. The next doomsday deadline is right around the corner.

How can you detect misinformation in the mainstream media when it comes to environmental news coverage? Large outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press employ professionals with teams dedicated to fact-checking the numbers and data provided by government agencies and scientists. These are not millennial bloggers looking to impress their friends on Twitter.

But what about the opposite end of the spectrum where editorial standards are completely missing? Here, climate change news is an exercise in political outrage almost always aimed at President Trump. You are right to question their motivations and you should not trust them for an honest, good faith appraisal of the facts.

More importantly, conservatives should not cede this battleground to the activists. Destruction of the rainforest and climate change are critical issues that demand honest and fair media coverage, not kneejerk outrage.

– – –

Dr. Ryan Maue is a private sector meteorologist with almost decades of experience in the field.

https://tennesseestar.com/2019/08/27/commentary-everything-youve-heard-about-the-amazon-fires-is-wrong/

MAGA: Make All Greenlanders Americans

MAGA: Make All Greenlanders Americans

 

BY JIM TREACHER 

The harbor at the town of Tasiilaq in Greenland. Creative Commons, author Ray Swi-hymn.

When the news broke that President Trump had talked to his advisors about buying Greenland, I did what any cuck RINO traitor (who probably wanted Hillary to win in 2016) would do: I scoffed. Buying Greenland? What a crazy idea. Oh, that Trump!

But after giving it some thought and taking a cursory glance at Greenland's Wikipedia entry, I'm starting to like the idea. Why not MAGA: Make All Greenlanders Americans? As Stephen Kruiser notes: "We haven't done a major real estate deal in over 150 years and we're certainly not picking up any new territory via warfare these days."

Here are six perfectly good reasons for the United States to buy Greenland:

1. We can finally rename it. Every schoolkid knows that Greenland is icy and Iceland is green. Whose stupid idea was that? If we buy Greenland, we can finally end this needless confusion. Greenland should have a name more befitting its historical significance. Suggestions: Trumpland, Trump Island, Trumptopia, Trumpstralia, Isle of Trump.

2. The Inuits are basically Americans by default anyway. Most GreenlandersTrumplanders are Inuits whose ancestors emigrated from Alaska hundreds of years ago. Alaska is ours now, and rightfully so. Now we just need to complete the set. Plus, we'd be spit-roasting Canada, which would really annoy those Canucks.

3. Plenty of room for condos and strip malls and office buildings. GreenlandTrumpland is the least densely populated territory in the world, with only 0.13671 people per square kilometer. (Whatever a kilometer is.) We can do better than that! The great Jon Gabriel saw this glorious vision of the future:

jon gabriel

✔@exjon

Greenland in 10 years.

27.6K

4:07 PM - Aug 15, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

6,715 people are talking about this

4. It'll own the libs. If you're a Democrat, you have to loudly oppose any idea Trump has or else all your pals will think you don't hate Trump enough. No matter how much sense it makes to buy Greenland Trumpland and do something useful with it for a change, libs have to throw a fit about it. Doing the right thing here would produce a lot of crazy tweets from lefties, so that would be pretty funny.

5. It's a refuge from global warming. Sure, Greenland Trumpland is freezing cold and mostly covered in ice... for now. But if you really believe climate change will make the continental U.S. uninhabitable, shouldn't you be looking for someplace to relocate? Future generations of Trumplanders will sing your praises as they bask in their tropical paradise.

6. Why not? We're the United States of America. We put a man on the moon. We invented Coca-Cola, heavier-than-air flight, and the Avengers. We elected Trump. We can do whatever the hell we want, and whoever doesn't like it can step off. Denmark? What's a Denmark?

Hang in there, Greenlanders Trumplanders. We'll rescue you from obscurity and rampant Danishness. MAGA!

https://pjmedia.com/trending/maga-make-all-greenlanders-americans/