Social Issues

In their ongoing attempts to assimilate and integrate the several hundred thousand recent middle-eastern refugees, both Germany and Austria have resorted to what some have dubbed childish measures, creating pamphlets and websites explaining what is permitted, either in public, by the swimming pool, or even what is proper and improper during sex (along with a basic sex education course). Not surprisingly, these have failed to work, as today's report of 69,000 crimes committed by German refugees in just the first quarter has demonstrated.

In the latest development that is certain to raise the heat under Merkel's cabinet and may lead to even higher support for Germany's anti-immigrant AfD party, Reuters reports that migrants in Germany committed or tried to commit some 69,000 crimes in the first quarter of 2016, according to a police report "that could raise unease, especially among anti-immigrant groups, about Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal migrant policy."

A reader writes to say, “Here we go. This is state indoctrination in transgender ideology.” He’s right:

Kindergarten used to be a place for children to learn how to add, subtract, and read.  Next year, Washington school children as young as five years old will instead be learning about gender fluidity and the differences between gender and sexual identity.

The month of May was very contentious one for Euro-Turkey relations.

A reader sends in this Sarah Carr article from Slate, talking about how schools are changing and will have to change to accommodate the fact that whites will be a minority in the US. It’s already the case that whites are a minority among the school-age population, she says. Excerpts: