Jay Bennish: BDS sufferer

Yesterday’s story on Jay Bennish, the unhinged Denver public high school teacher caught on tape by 16-year-old student Sean Allen, continues to resonate.

Expose the Left has video of Sean’s appearance last night on Hannity and Colmes:

Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker reflects on the power of technology to shake up the government school system:

The MP3 revolution is upon us. iPods are ubiquitous. For as little as fifteen bucks a tiny device clicks in and turns the iPod into a digital recorder. Suitable for uploading to the web by any kid in America.

Think of the historic opportunity we have to improve education by decentralized monitoring of classroom conduct. I am certain sanctimonious arguments are made to respect the privacy and intimacy of he teacher-student bond. The learning process depends on trust. Laymen just don’t understand the complexities.

Spare me. These are public employees, union members more than independent professionals, and they are hired to teach geography not spew political hyperbole. We need to monitor them. They shouldn’t say anything in the classroom on our dime that they aren’t willing to see heard on the internet.

Full coverage and related analysis of teachers gone wild at Front Page Magazine:

Indoctrination High
Academic Hanky-Panky
Historians vs. History

Klaus at Dignan’s blog dissects Bennish’s rant.

Bennish, put on leave, reportedly plans to file a lawsuit today to get back to work.

Stay tuned.

Update: The transcript of the audiotape below is now complete. A sample from the latter half of the tape:

Teacher Jay Bennish: If you were Palestinians, who are the real terrorists? The Israelis, who fire missiles that they purchased from the United States government into Palestinian neighborhoods and refugees and maybe kill a terrorist, but also kill innocent women and children. And when you shoot a missile into Pakistan to quote-unquote kill a known terrorist, and we just killed 75 people that have nothing to do with al Qaeda, as far as they’re concerned, we’re the terrorists. We’ve attacked them on their soil with the intention of killing their innocent people.

1215

Student Sean Allen: But we did not have the intention of killing innocent people. We had the intention of killing an al Qaeda terrorist.

Bennish: Do you know that?

Allen: So, you’re saying the United States has intentions to kill innocent people?

Bennish: I don’t know the answer to that question.

Allen: But what gain do we get from killing innocent people in the Middle East? What gain does that pose to us?

Bennish: Let me ask you this. During the 1980s, Iran and Iraq were involved in an 8-year-long war. The United States sold missiles, tanks, guns, planes, to which side?

Unidentified student: Iraq?

Bennish: Both. The answer is both. Why would we send armaments to two sides that are fighting each other. That seems to be self-defeating. Don’t we want one side to win? Not always! Sometimes you just want there to be conflict!

The British — this is one of the grand strategies of the British imperial system–was to play local animosities off each other. To prevent them is to divide and conquer.

Do we really want the Middle East to unite as one cohesive political and cultural body?

No! Because then they could what? Threaten our supremacy.

We want to keep the world divided. Do we really want to kill innocent people? I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that.

I know there are some Americans who do. People who work in the CIA. People who have to think like that. Those kind of dirty minds, dirty tricks. That’s how the intelligence world works. Sometimes you do want to kill people just for the sake of killing them. Right?

Do you think Jay Bennish could pass a World Geography quiz? (Hat tip: reader Bob B.)