There was a time, between the mid 1960s and the collapse of the Evil Empire around 1990, when little children were raised by “progressive” parents to fear that a terrible nuclear war was about to destroy all life on earth, starting at any moment, and all because the Western world was armed with nuclear weapons. The instilling of terror in the poor tots could not start early enough in the passionate opinion of hippie and New Left moms and dads. Ghoulish lullabies were sung to babies about carrion crows sitting on their cradles.

By winning the Cold War, the wicked West – led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – put an end to that scam. Though maybe not to the effects of the dread deeply implanted in two or three generations of children.

What is it with the Left that it wants to instill anxiety and fear in their kids? Do they want their nights riven with shrieks as junior wakes hysterical from a nightmare? Seems so.

They’re at it again. This time the bed-time story – and the day time lesson – is that the earth is about to heat red hot, boiling oceans are about to rise and flood the continents, all the cuddly white polar bears will drown (because they cannot swim and have to dwell on ice floes which will melt under them), the tops of the mountains will lose their pretty caps of snow, fish will mutate into Jesus Christ or Charles Darwin, and all because the wicked West won’t stop using aerosol cans, herding flatulent cows, driving motorcars, and breathing out.

This is from Front Page, by Mary Grabar:

Under [Arne Duncan’s] watch the Department of Education has become a propaganda arm used to influence the next generation to accept the idea of catastrophic man-made climate change as per the UN, the Environmental Protection Agency, and such groups as the National Wildlife Federation. 

In a multi-pronged approach, the Department is teaming up with various non-profit and government organizations and curriculum companies to promote “fun” contests and activities for students, while promoting the next phase of Common Core “State Standards” — in science.

For example, the Department’s latest Green Strides newsletter (February 28) announced three contests for K-12 students who display their agreement with the government’s position on climate change.

In that newsletter, the Department of Education announced that another federal agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], and its National Environmental Education Foundation, have “launched an exciting video challenge for middle school students called Climate Change in Focus”.  In this contest, middle school students are asked to make a video that “expresses why they care about climate change and what they are doing to reduce emissions or to prepare for its impacts”.  To win loyalty to the EPA, it is announced that winning videos will be highlighted on the EPA website. The effort sounds like the kids’ cereal box promotions of yore: the top three entries will receive “cool prizes like a solar charging backpack”,  winning class projects will receive special recognition for their school, and the first 100 entrants will receive a year’s subscription to National Geographic Kids Magazine.

Another contest, National Wildlife Federation’s Young Reporters for the Environment, invites students “between the ages of 13-21 to report on an environmental issue in their community in an article, photo or photo essay, or short video”. Entries should “reflect firsthand investigation of topics related to the environment and sustainability in the students’ own communities, draw connections between local and global perspectives, and propose solutions”.

Students are also encouraged to make nominations for “Champions of the Earth”, a “UN-sponsored award for environment, Green Economy, and sustainability”. …

Students already get exposed to climate change and sustainability in textbooks which are bought with taxpayer funds, as well as in videos and online materials produced by taxpayer-supported Public Broadcasting. Many students, of course, have had to sit through Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. …

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) — the next phase of Common Core — will make the situation worse, however. Students will be even less capable of distinguishing science from propaganda. These standards, like those for math and English Language Arts, were produced by Achieve, a nonprofit education group started by corporate leaders and some governors.

Started by lefties is our guess. Sensible decision to be “non-profit”. Who would buy their product?

As in the standards for English Language Arts and math, the NGSS are intended to be transformative, or as Appendix A states, “to reflect a new vision for American science education”. They call for new “performance expectations” that “focus on understanding and applications as opposed to memorization of facts devoid of context”. 

In plain words, indoctrination – teaching what to think,  instead of education – teaching how to think.

And they can even manage to do this with the teaching of Mathematics. Wow!

It is precisely such short shrift to knowledge (dismissively referred to as “memorization”) to which science professors Lawrence S. Lerner and Paul Gross object. The standards bypass essential math skills in favor of “process”, they asserted last fall at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation blog. [They said that] Common Core standards, in all disciplines, are written with a lot of fluff to conceal their emptiness. …

Lerner and Gross condemn the “slighting of mathematics”,  which does “increasing mischief as grade level rises, especially in the physical sciences”. Physics is “effectively absent” at the high school level. … [They] attack the “practices” strategy, as an extension of the “inquiry learning” of the early 1990s, which had “no notable effect on the (mediocre) performance of American students in national and international science assessments”. 

With some sarcasm, they write, “It is charming to say ‘students learn science effectively when they actively engage in the practices of science’.” However, … beginners don’t and can’t “practice” [science]  as do experts. The practices of experts exploit prior experience and extensive build-up in long-term memory of scaffolding: facts, procedures, technical know-how, solutions to standard problems in the field, vocabularies — of knowledge in short.

Not only do the Next Generation Science Standards shirk the necessary foundations in math and science knowledge, but they explicitly call for including ideological lessons, such as “Human impacts on Earth systems”.

For grades K-2, students are to understand, “Things people do can affect the environment but they can make choices to reduce their impact.” In grades 3 through 5, students will learn “Societal activities have had major effects on the land, ocean, atmosphere, and even outer space. Societal activities can also help protect Earth’s resources and environments.” …

The objective, of course, is not teaching legitimate science, but indoctrination.

Amazingly, ten states have already voluntarily adopted the Standards.

Such efforts, coordinated by the Department of Education, threaten the future of science itself.

When will this lunacy pass? We venture to state our secret conviction, hoping the all-powerful EPA Gestapo is not listening:

The planet we live on is not under any existential threat. And if it were, there’s not a thing anyone could do about it. 

So sleep well, children. Happy dreams.

 Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. – Valerie Jarrett?

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

Reports resurface of Obama aide Valerie Jarrett forging a secret deal with Tehran as Saudi Arabia reportedly mulls helping Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unlike the U.S., the Saudis recognize the threat.

Israeli television reported Sunday night that Iranian-born White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett negotiated a one-year-in-the-making deal with the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi. That would render the Geneva talks now taking place between the so-called P5-plus-one group ( the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, plus Germany) and Tehran a meaningless facade.

The White House denies the report, made by anonymous senior Israeli officials who claim Jarrett has traveled to a number of Persian Gulf states to meet with Salehi, and describes the U.S. as making concessions to Tehran as “confidence-building measures.”

But everyone knows that this White House lies by reflex.

Valerie Jarrett is the one-who-decides, not Obama.

Whether fact or rumor, it aggravates the fears not only of Israel but of the Mideast’s saner Islamic regimes.

For years, the Israelis, the Saudis and the Egyptians have seen a U.S. president conduct an Iran policy based on applying economic sanctions to fanatics who care little about the well-being of their countrymen, and on the notion that Islamofascists who await the coming of the 12th imam to lead an apocalyptic war against Israel can be reasoned with.

So it isn’t tremendously surprising to read the London Sunday Times report that Riyadh would let Israel fly over its airspace to bomb Iran, plus help out on rescue helicopters, tanker planes and drones.

No sooner had the Sunday Times published this information than Saudi Arabia denied it – of course. And perhaps the  Saudis will now disallow Israel to use its airspace. The chances of the strange co-operation between these enemy states continuing are, however, quite good.

A diplomatic contact told the British newspaper, “The Saudis are furious and are willing to give Israel all the help it needs.” The Saudis indicated several weeks ago that their relations with the U.S. had been breached by President Obama’s overture to Iran.

According to the Times, “Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency is working with Saudi officials on contingency plans for a possible attack on Iran” if a deal in Geneva doesn’t do enough to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.

Both Israel and the Sunni royal rulers of Saudi Arabia believe the Geneva talks with Shiite Iran “amount to appeasement and will do little to slow its development of a nuclear warhead”, the paper said. … But it should be appreciated what a risk it is for the regime to assist Israel. …

The Saudis and the Israelis understand that Iran cannot be appeased out of becoming nuclear-armed. Unfortunately, we have a president intent on doing just that.

And this is from Front Page, by Noah Beck:

According to a recent news report, President Barack Obama has for over a year secretly conducted negotiations with Iran (through his adviser Valerie Jarrett) and the Geneva talks on Iranian nukes now appear to be just a facade providing international legitimacy for Obama’s secret deal with Iran.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s contradictory criticism of Israeli objections to that deal only suggests more bad faith by the Obama administration.

Kerry claims that Israel has been kept fully apprised of the negotiations with Iran but then argues that Israel has never seen the terms of the proposed deal with Iran and therefore shouldn’t question it. The Obama administration apparently wants to present the nuclear deal as a fait accompli that Israel must simply accept as is. …

On the issue of Iranian nukes, France has effectively replaced the U.S. as Israel’s strongest ally and as the most sober-minded advocate of caution when negotiating over the single greatest threat to global security. Incredibly, Saudi Arabia is reportedly replacing the US in providing logistical support for an Israeli strike on Iranian nukes.

Now comes some really good news – or at least some promising information:

Yaakov Amidror, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, recently indicated that the Israeli Air Force has been preparing for a potential strike on Iran. According to Amidror, such a strike could set back Iran’s nuclear program “for a very long time.” So Israel can go it alone, if it must, although the results will be far messier than those produced by a stronger U.S. approach.

While the Obama administration has suggested that critics of the current Geneva deal are “on a march to war,” it is that very deal — which gives Iran a nuclear breakout capacity — that will force the states most threatened by Iran to take preemptive military action. …

If they do not …

An Iranian nuclear weapons breakout capability will produce catastrophic consequences …

1) The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will effectively be finished. The world’s most volatile region will become even more explosive as other regional players scramble to establish their own nuclear arsenals to counter Iran’s. And rogue nations will realize that by following Iran’s deceptive playbook, they too can develop a nuclear capability.

2) The force of U.N. Security Council Resolutions will be further diluted, as Iran will continue flouting six of them with impunity.

3) Iran-backed terrorist organizations — including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah — will grow emboldened by the nuclear umbrella of their patron.

4) Terrorism could go nuclear, should Iran share some of its nuclear materials with the terrorist groups that it supports.

5) U.S. influence in the Middle East will erode even more, as Obama further damages U.S. relationships and influence in the region.

6) U.S. credibility throughout the world will plummet. If the U.S. cannot be trusted to provide strong leadership on the national security issue of greatest concern to the free world, where U.S. interests are directly at stake, what does that mean for U.S. credibility more generally?

7) Global instability and oil prices will skyrocket. If Israel, with Saudi assistance, strikes Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranian retaliation that follows could spark World War III. Will Iran attack Saudi oil fields or otherwise pour more fuel onto the Sunni-Shia fire in Syria? Will Iran and Iran-backed Hezbollah (estimated to have at least 45,000 missiles) launch a massive attack killing thousands of Israeli civilians? Will some of the Syrian chemical weapons held by Assad (another Iranian ally) end up hitting Israel? How would Israel respond?

Is this how Armageddon happens?

8) U.S. interests will be attacked. Obama may think that his policy of appeasement will shield the U.S. from Iranian reprisals, but the opposite is true. When the U.S. appears so weak and ready to abandon allies (as with Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia), Iran has less fear of attacking the U.S. and more reasons to do so, as a way to exacerbate U.S. tensions with Israel.

Will attacking U.S. interests be yet another Obama “red line” that gets crossed with impunity? If so, then whatever is left of U.S. deterrence and credibility will have been destroyed. If not, then the U.S. will get sucked into another Mideast war but on terms dictated by the adversary, and without any first-strike advantage.

The catastrophic consequences outlined above would all directly result from Obama’s disastrously weak policies on the Iranian nuclear threat. …

Obama should know by now that if he forces Israel’s hand, then Israel alone will neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, regardless of how messy the aftermath may be.

We wish we knew that!

What we perceive is that if “Armageddon” develops from this chain of events, its mastermind is one Valerie Jarrett. And religious doom-predictors should note that nobody ever prophesied a 57-year-old woman, elected by nobody and representing no constituency, will launch the destruction of  the world.