Middle-School Teacher Kills Self After Being Accused of Sex with Student
Posted: May 11, 2017 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Education, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Bayelsa State, Chairman, Drake Middle School, efferson County Sheriff’s Office, English Language, Gretchen Krohnfeldt, Primary school, Rivers State Senior Secondary Schools Board, State school, Teacher, Yenagoa Leave a comment
Middle school teacher and married mother-of-three, 47, ‘kills herself in front of cops’ one day after she was accused of having sex with a student.
Snejana Farberov reports: A middle school teacher and married mother-of-three was found dead inside her home from a suspected suicide Tuesday, one day after she was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a former student.
Gretchen Krohnfeldt, 47, was pronounced dead in her Arvada home at around 1pm. There was no immediate word on her cause and manner of death.
CBS Denver reported, citing unnamed police sources, that the eighth-grade social studies teacher at Drake Middle School took her own life as police officers were approaching her home to interview her about the alleged affair.
The suspected suicide was reportedly witnessed by at least one law enforcement official.
On Monday, Krohnfeldt was placed on administrative leave after a resource officer at Drake Middle School received a tip that the veteran educator had a tryst with a former student, who was now in high school.
Krohnfeldt was placed on administrative leave after a resource officer at Drake Middle School (pictured) in Jefferson County, Colorado, got a tip.
According to a statement put out by the Arvada Police Department and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the initial report was made by a Drake staffer.
The local CBS station reported that the school employee claimed to have seen Krohnfeldt engage in unspecified inappropriate behavior with the male student months prior, but the staffer only came forward about it this week. Read the rest of this entry »
Helen Raleigh: Countries Like China Memory Hole Socialism’s Atrocities
Posted: October 2, 2016 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Global, History | Tags: AC power, Allegation, Angela Merkel, Ash Carter, Beijing, China, Communist Party of China, English Language, Hong Kong, Xi Jinping Leave a comment
Chairman Mao inflicted human suffering in one country equivalent to the entirety of World War II. Not that socialism will allow its victims any remembrance.
Helen Raleigh writes: October 1 marks the 67-year anniversary of the founding of Communist China. A moment like this usually calls for some reflection on China’s past and future. Unfortunately, in today’s China under President Xi, seeking the truth about the past can be a dangerous endeavor if anyone dares to dissent from the government’s official versions. Napoleon Bonaparte once said “history is a set of lies agreed upon.” In China, it’s probably more accurate to say the government-sanctioned history is a set of lies forced upon its people.
“Unfortunately, in today’s China under President Xi, seeking the truth about the past can be a dangerous endeavor if anyone dares to dissent from the government’s official versions.”
I was born in China, and finished my undergraduate education before coming to the United States to pursue a master’s degree. So I was typical of the output of China’s government-sanctioned education system. When I 
first came to the United States, although I had some doubts here and there about certain historical events I had been taught in China, I spent very little time questioning them. Instead, I focused on working hard to better myself economically, like many other immigrants have.
[Read the full text of Helen Raleigh‘s article here, at thefederalist.com]
My parents rarely mentioned to me anything that had happened in the past. One thing they did tell me was that our family’ genealogy book, which covered many generations of our clan, was destroyed in China’s Cultural Revolution. As a writer, I always wanted to write a family history book. So when my parents turned 70 several years ago, I realized I’d better get my parents talking about the past.
What My Parents Remembered
What I learned from my parents was shockingly different from what I had been taught in China. Allow me to present two historical events to illustrate my point.
The first historical event is the “land reform.” The Chinese Communist Party pushed for nationwide “land reform” from 1950 to 1953. In our high school history book, there were only a few sentences about land reform. The movement was depicted as a popular and necessary measure to distribute land back to poor Chinese peasants, who were supposed to be the rightful owner of the land.
“Napoleon Bonaparte once said ‘history is a set of lies agreed upon.’ In China, it’s probably more accurate to say the government-sanctioned history is a set of lies forced upon its people.”
Our Chinese literature class reinforced this notion. One of the required readings was an excerpt from a novel titled “Hurricane” (Baofeng Zhouyu, or 暴风骤雨) by a Chinese novelist, Zhou Libo. The novel supposedly presented the most realistic picture of land reform. It showed how the righteous landless peasants fought and won land reform despite sabotage by the evil landowners.
[Read the full story here, at thefederalist.com]
I especially remember the excerpt we were required to memorize. It illustrated what a joyful event it was armies took land and farm animals from land owners and redistributed them to poor peasants. This novel was so popular in China that it was later adapted into a movie and stage play. Read the rest of this entry »
South China Morning Post Closes its Chinese-Language Websites Without Warning
Posted: September 12, 2016 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Global, Mediasphere | Tags: Barack Obama, Celsius, China, Chinese language, English Language, Hangzhou, South China Morning Post, The Washington Times, United States, Xi Jinping 1 Comment
Things just keep getting worse and worse for Hong Kong’s paper of record.
Now, if you try to log onto South China Morning Post‘s Chinese-language news site or lifestyle site you are redirected to the paper’s English-language website and informed that SCMP’s Chinese-language services have been closed in order to better “integrate resources.” The message concludes, “We thank you for your past support.”
And just like that years of Chinese-language reporting by the SCMP has been wiped out. Current and former employees told Quartz that they were not told in advance about the decision to close the site. This is backed up by the fact that SCMP’s Chinese-language news site, nanzao.com, was still posting stories on Facebook as late as this afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »
A Constitutional Amendment Overturning Citizens United: Really? How?
Posted: August 12, 2016 Filed under: Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Antonin Scalia, Attorney general, Citizens United, English Language, Fairness Doctrine, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again, Hillary Clinton, Peter J. Wallison, SOTUS, Supreme Court, The Second Amendment 1 Comment
Peter J. Wallison writes: One jarring note in Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was her statement that she would press for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission.
“The New York Times is a corporation, so this language would prohibit the Times from editorializing in favor of or against either Ms. Clinton or Donald Trump. Moreover, it might shut down blogs, or firms like Facebook or Twitter, that are corporate vehicles for the expression of opinions about candidates by others.”
This 2009 Supreme Court case held that corporations had the same rights as individuals to make statements for or against the election of a candidate for public office. Particularly difficult to understand was her linking Citizens United to the fact that our economy is not functioning well for many Americans.
A sign during a protest against the Citizens United decision in Portland, Oregon. Credit: Flickr/lance_mountain
“Clearly, closing down newspapers that publish editorials wouldn’t be satisfactory to many Americans, and if extended to other corporate opinion forums would be highly unpopular among the American people. How, then, could the language be modified to allow the New York Times and other corporations to express their views and still overturn Citizens United?”
Taking the last point first, what could be the link between Citizens United and a poorly functioning economy? It’s likely that Ms. Clinton wanted her listeners to infer that corporate power, expressed through independent expenditures—presumably 
contributions to superpacs or other hidden sources—had distorted the public’s will for the benefit of powerful private parties.
[Order Peter J. Wallison’s book “Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again“ from Amazon.com]
This is a peculiar claim to make after almost eight years of the Obama presidency, in which the most significant government actions—the Dodd-Frank Act, ObamaCare, and various tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals—could hardly be said to favor corporations or business interests generally. It is also peculiar in light of a recent Wall Street Journal report that hedge fund contributions to Clinton superpacs have outraised those to Trump superpacs by a ratio of more than 2000-to-1 ($46.5 million to $19,000).
But leaving aside these anomalies, what is it about Citizens United that has stirred Ms. Clinton to propose something as drastic as a constitutional amendment, especially one affecting the First Amendment’s right to free speech?
[Read the full story here, at AEI]
Many of Ms. Clinton’s listeners who cheered her idea probably believe that their right to free speech would not be affected by overturning Citizens United. Of course, the language of the amendment would be determinative, but let’s assume it is as simple as adding new language at the end of the First Amendment as it now reads. Read the rest of this entry »
Amnesty Activists Launch Campaign to Naturalize Immigrants, Register Them to Vote
Posted: December 11, 2015 Filed under: Global, Health and Social Issues, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: English Language, Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Illegal immigration, Immigration, Immigration law, Immigration to the United States, Natural-born-citizen clause, Republican Party (United States), United States 1 Comment
Caroline May reports: The Latino Victory Foundation and the National Partnership for New Americans launched the New American Democracy Campaign this week in an effort to increase immigrant participation in elections.
“Our community is under attack and our future is at stake. Now more than ever it’s important that those who are able to naturalize do so and make their voices heard at the polls. Research shows that newly naturalized Latino respondents have a high propensity to vote—67 percent voted at least once and 84 percent registered to vote.”
— Cristóbal J. Alex, Latino Victory Foundation president, in a statement
The government estimates there are about 8.8 million legal permanent residents who are eligible to apply for naturalization. According to the groups that launched the NADC Thursday, their goal is to increase the rate of naturalization in 2016 by 38 percent so that 1 million immigrants to become citizens next year.
Once citizens, NADC plans to assist the newly eligible with voter registration. Additionally the group will be encouraging the citizen children of immigrants to register and vote as well.
“Latinos and all immigrants need to use all of their power to defend their communities in this toxic political moment. That means naturalizing, registering and turning out to vote. The time is now.”
— Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans
NADC organizers cited the recent political rhetoric as a mobilizing factor that compels those immigrants — and Latinos in particular — who are eligible to vote….(read more)
Source: Breitbart
[VIDEO] Fistfight! Ukrainian Parliament
Posted: December 11, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Global, Humor, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Crimea, English Language, EUROPE, European Union, Government of Ukraine, KIEV, Mustafa Abdülcemil Qırımoğlu, Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine, RUSSIA, The Daily Beast, Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada 2 Comments
Brawl erupted in Ukraine’s upper house of parliament when a member of the legislature attempted to drag prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk from the floor’s podium.
From The Daily Beast:
The Ukrainian parliament on Friday broke out into a brawl after one member approached Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, handed him a bouquet of roses, and then forcefully picked him up by the crotch, and removed him from the podium. Mayhem ensued, with members rushing toward the two men. The prime minister had been defending his embattled government.
‘Clock Boy’ Ahmed’s Cuckoo Bananas Dad Shares 9/11 ‘Truther’ Posts on Facebook
Posted: October 8, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: 9/11 Commission, 9/11 conspiracy theories, 9/11 Truth movement, al Qaeda, Anwar al-Aulaqi, Conspiracy theory, Democratic Party (United States), English Language, Muslim, Seattle Seahawks, September 11 attacks, United States, United States Navy SEALs, War crime, World Trade Center Leave a comment
Inside Job? The post appeared as recently as Thursday morning but has since been taken down.
Merrill Hope reports: Last month, on September 12, Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed, father of Texas ‘Clock Boy’ Ahmed Mohamed, posted on Facebook a photo of the World Trade Center Twin Towers shrouded in raging smoke in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The photo appeared on his Sudanese National Reform party page on the day after the 9/11 anniversary.
The post appeared as recently as Thursday morning but has since been taken down. It sourced to the Sudanese Military Establishment and asserts a truther philosophy that 9/11 was an inside job, calling these “so-called” events a “rumor.”
Through the social media site’s Arabic translation, the post also describes 9/11 as “just an American industry media” that “some tried leveled terrorism ‘Islamist.” Conversely, it also alleges America deserved the Al Qaeda perpetrated attack, calling it the “egg that lays golden eggs for America has terrorism” that “came to her on a plate to invade Muslim countries.”
Qatar is Amazing!! https://t.co/alrZZ4195I
— Ahmed Mohamed (@IStandWithAhmed) October 6, 2015
Presently, Mohamed tours the Middle East with his clock-making son, but he is also a Sudanese Reform Party activist and the repeatedly failed Sudanese National Reform party candidate for president of that country, although he and his family reside in Irving, a Dallas suburb.
[Read the full text here, at Brietbart.com]
Two days after the 9/11 truther post, on Sept. 14, son Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing in the unassigned homemade clock-in-a-box that appeared to be a suitcase timepiece hoax bomb to school district officials and local law enforcement, although charges were dropped.
Again, on Sept. 28, Mohamed’s National Reform Party Facebook page posted a 15 minute English language video chockful of 9/11 conspiracy theories insinuating the collapse of the Trade Center’s twin towers was because “explosives were placed in these buildings before the attacks.” Read the rest of this entry »
HISTORY June 29, 1613: ‘Oh Sorrow, Pittifull Sorrow’ The Globe Theater Burns Down
Posted: June 29, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Humor | Tags: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Albert Francis Hegenberger, Aldwych Theatre, English Language, Globe Theatre, Henry VIII of England, London, Royal Shakespeare Company, William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's plays Leave a comment
The Globe Theater, where most of Shakespeare’s plays debuted, burned down on this day in 1613.
The Globe was built by Shakespeare’s acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, in 1599 from the timbers ofLondon’s very first permanent theater, Burbage’s Theater, built in 1576. 
Before James Burbage built his theater, plays and dramatic performances were ad hoc affairs, performed on street corners and in the yards of inns. However, the Common Council of London, in 1574, started licensing theatrical pieces performed in inn yards within the city limits. To escape the restriction, actor James Burbage built his own theater on land he leased outside the city limits. When Burbage’s lease ran out, the Lord Chamberlain’s men moved the timbers to a new location and created the Globe. Like other theaters of its time, the Globe was a round wooden structure with a stage at one end, and covered balconies for the gentry. The galleries could seat about 1,000 people, with room for another 2,000 “groundlings,” who could stand on the ground around the stage.
The Lord Chamberlain’s men built Blackfriars theater in 1608, a smaller theater that seated about 700 people, to use in winter when the open-air Globe wasn’t practical.
June 29, 2012, at theshakespeareblog.com, Sylvia Morris writes:
The remains must still have been smoking when the amusing ballad A Sonnett upon the pittiful burneinge of the Globe Playhouse in London was printed the next day. It consists of eight verses, each one ending with the refrain punning on the alternative title for Henry VIII, “All is true”. “Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yet all this is true”. Here are two verses:
No shower his raine did there downe force
In all that Sunn-shine weather
To save that great renowned howse;
Nor thou, O ale-house, neither.
Had itt begunne belowe, sans doubte,
Their wives for feare had pissed itt out.
Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yet all this is true.
Bee warned, yow stage-strutters all,
Least yow again be catched,
And such a burneing doe befall,
As to them whose howse was thatched;
Forbeare your whoreing, breeding biles,
And laye up that expence for tiles.
Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yet all this is true.
Rod Liddle: The Top 10 Most Fatuous Phrases in the English Language
Posted: November 1, 2014 Filed under: Humor, Mediasphere, Reading Room | Tags: Battling my demons, clichés, Denier, Diversity, English Language, evasions, Fatuous, Jonah Goldberg, lies, obfuscations, PC, PC euphemisms, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rod Liddle, The Tyranny of Cliches, Wrong side of History Leave a comment
Rod Liddle writes: Below are a bunch of the clichés, lies, evasions, obfuscations, PC euphemisms and disingenuous balls words and phrases which, in recent years, have annoyed me the most. There are countless others, but these are the ones which for one reason or other stick in my craw. And of course we begin with:
1. Battling my demons
It was demons who held down that actress/pop singer/reality TV star and rammed four kilos of charlie up her left nostril leaving her with the IQ of an aspidistra and, alas, sans septum. It was demons who injected Philip Seymour Hoffman with skag. The same creatures regularly waylay the former footballer Paul Gascoigne and siphon several 
litres of vodka down his throat. And it was demons, a whole bunch of them, who grappled with Brooks Newmark’s penis and ensured it was transmitted digitally to the fictitious woman of his choice. This was my original Fatuous Phrase of the Week, an utterly ubiquitous cliché which serves only to absolve people from responsibility.
2. Vulnerable
It’s official — the most abused word in the English language these days. Today, as used by the whining liberal left, it means anyone who isn’t an able-bodied middle-aged white heterosexual male in full possession of his mental faculties. In other words, about 70 per cent of the population. It is frequently used as a euphemism for educationally retarded, or what we used to call ‘backward’; when you hear on the news that someone was ‘vulnerable’, you have to work out for yourself why. It’s not 
usually hard.
[You’re on the wrong side of history if you haven’t read Jonah Goldberg‘s book, “The Tyranny of Cliches“, but you can order it from Amazon]
[The complete text of Rod Liddle‘s article is here, at The Spectator]
3. Diversity
Something brilliant, to be championed. We all love diversity, don’t we? As used by the left it means ‘lots of ethnic 
minorities’. Quite often it is deployed to mean precisely the opposite of its original meaning. As in ‘the area is very diverse’, referring to a place populated exclusively by Bangladeshis.
4. Denier
A horrible and recent confection of, again, the liberal left. You can be a ‘climate change denier’, which means you might doubt that global warming will cause quite the catastrophic circumstances — annihilation of all living creatures, earth burned to a crust, polar bears howling in agony — dreamed up by the maddest, gibbering eco-warriors. You can be a ‘sexual abuse denier’, which means you have one or two doubts about Operation Yewtree. The term was appropriated from the Holocaust, of course: the implication being that to deny that absolutely all 1970s celebrities were busy molesting kiddies is on a par with denying that Nazi Germany murdered six million Jewish people. Nice. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World
Posted: December 7, 2013 Filed under: Art & Culture, History, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: Anglo-Saxon, Anglosphere, Conservative, Daniel Hannan, English Civil War, English Language, European Parliament, Member of the European Parliament, United States 3 CommentsI heard a portion of an interview with Hannan on the radio yesterday, it was compelling, made me want to hear more. Maybe I’ll get the ebook edition.
Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World [Kindle Edition] [Hardcover Edition]
Daniel Hannan writes: How many countries fought for liberty in both World Wars and the Cold War?
We are still experiencing the after-effects of an astonishing event. The inhabitants of a damp island at the western tip of the Eurasian landmass stumbled upon the idea that the government ought to be subject to the law, not the other way around. The rule of law created security of property and contract, which in turn led to industrialisation and modern capitalism. For the first time in the history of the species, a system grew up that, on the whole, rewarded production better than predation.
Why did it happen? Why, after thousands of years of oligarchy and tyranny, did a system evolve that lifted the individual above the tribe rather than the reverse? How did that system see off rival models that elevated collective endeavour, martial glory, faith and sacrifice over liberty and property? How did the world come to speak our language?
I set out to answer these questions in my book, published in North America as Inventing Freedom and in the rest of the Anglosphere as How we Invented Freedom. (It’s reviewed here by Charles Moore.) I trace the lineage of liberty back through its great landmarks – the war against slavery, the American Revolution, the Glorious Revolution, the English Civil War, Magna Carta – to its origins in the folkright of Anglo-Saxon common law. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Selfie’ Is Oxford’s 2013 Word of the Year
Posted: November 19, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Reading Room | Tags: Australia, English Language, Internet forum, Neologism, Oxford Dictionaries, Reuters, Social media, Word of the Year Leave a comment
- Selfie of the Century
Selfie
/selfē/
(n.) a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.
If you’re wondering why there was a definition at the beginning of the post, it’s because “selfie” is Oxford Dictionary’s 2013 word of the year.
Made famous by celebrities, friends, family, and annoying coworkers, the digital self-portrait has boomed in recent years. The dictionary says usage of the word has risen by 17,000 percent in the past 12 months.
The Apocalypse is Here: State Department bureau spent $630,000 on Facebook ‘likes’
Posted: July 3, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Advertising campaign, English Language, Facebook, Inspector General, International Information Programs Bureau, Social media, State Department, United States Department of State Leave a comment
State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook “likes,” prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was “buying fans” in social media, the agency’s inspector general says.
The department’s Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its “likes” count between 2011 and March 2013.
“Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as ‘buying fans’ who may have once clicked on an ad or ‘liked’ a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further,” the inspector general reported.
The spending increased the bureau’s English-language Facebook page likes from 100,000 to more than 2 million and to 450,000 on Facebook’s foreign-language pages.
Despite the surge in likes, the IG said the effort failed to reach the bureau’s target audience, which is largely older and more influential than the people liking its pages. Only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.
Read the rest of this entry »
pundit from another planet 