Parents accused of kidnapping child from the Reich

Family decides Iran has more educational freedom, reports Bob Unruh at WorldNetDaily.

The family son, Marian, has been homeschooled since 2006, taking theater, "gifted and talented courses," foreign languages, gymnastics, horseback riding and music. He obtained a certificate from the Children's College of Rheinland-Pfalz – Gifted and Talented Center last summer stating that he "integrates himself very quickly into the groups … and has made some friendships here." It describes the student as "a friendly, highly motivated child, achieving very good results…"

But local school officials objected to the program of education for Marian, the family letter said.

"Because the public school authority of Wiesbaden has no suitable schools for a highly gifted and talented child such as our Marian, they, along with Child Protective Services, wanted to force him to attend the Special Education branch Friedrich-von-Schiller School for children with behavioral problems and for low performing children," the letter said.

Marian already had experience at that school, because it was there when he was 6 that he was struck by a teacher who later faced a criminal complaint making accusations of Willful Aggravated Battery in Office, the family said.

"Because we resisted the educational poverty, the boredom and the violence in the schools, Child Protective Services moved in Family Court to strip us of custody of our son and place him in a foster home, in an illegitimate trial without our being present or having an opportunity to present the circumstances from our perspective, so that the state could destroy and make pliable the mind of a gifted and talented child who intellectually stood in their way," the letter said.

Said the bureaukraut: "After all, parents cannot be allowed to begin to think independently about their children's failure in school . . ."

Speaking Farsi, cont'd

Niall Ferguson, Harvard historian and annoyingly-brilliant-but-with-a-pleasant-Scottish-accent commentator on international relations, sees an opportunity for a McCain presidency to make some real headway with Iran:

On Mr Bush’s watch, Iran’s political position has got stronger. If the US quits Iraq prematurely, Persian hegemony in the Gulf could become a reality, even without nukes.

Mr Bush’s successor needs a different approach, offering a grand bargain to Tehran: economic assistance and diplomatic rapprochement for a renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. Sounds implausible? No more so than Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon’s opening to Maoist China in 1972. But which of today’s presidential candidates could pull it off? Surely not foreign policy novices like Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee. Surely not the fire-breathing Rudy Giuliani, a paid-up believer in world war four. Surely not, Iran being what it is, a woman.

Step forward John McCain. For who could more credibly put the next world war on ice than a veteran of Vietnam, itself a subplot in the third world’s war?

speak Farsi and carry a big stick

Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and informal foreign policy adviser to John McCain, tells the Bush administration it's "Time to Talk to Iran"

This is as good a time as any. The United States is not in a position of weakness. The embarrassment of the NIE will be fleeting. Strategic realities are more durable. America remains powerful in the world and in the Middle East. The success of the surge policy in Iraq means that the United States may be establishing a sustainable position in the region -- a far cry from a year ago, when it seemed about to be driven out
. . .

They should also address the Iranian government's violation of human rights and its tightening political repression. Some argue that you can't talk to a country while seeking political change within it. This is nonsense. The United States simultaneously contained the Soviet Union, negotiated with the Soviet Union and pressed for political change in the Soviet Union -- supporting dissidents, communicating directly to the Russian people through radio and other media, and holding the Soviet government to account under such international human rights agreements as the Helsinki Accords. There's no reason the United States cannot talk to Iran while beefing up containment in the region and pressing for change within Iran.