Wednesday, April 30, 2014


Another murder by a rejected multiculturalist



A man 'motivated by jealousy' and 'out for revenge' stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death just days after she made a statement in which she said she was petrified of him, a court heard.

Linah Keza, 29, was stabbed to death after David Gikawa, 39, used a key she gave him to sneak into her flat at 4.20am before launching into a 'brutal stabbing'. the Old Bailey was told.

The cause of death was given as stab wounds to the chest, the jury heard.

Gikawa, 39, denies murdering Ms Keza while she was with her young child at her flat in Leyton, east London on July 31 last year.

He used to live with Ms Keza in the flat, but that she had kicked him out the night before and was planning to change the locks, prosecutors said.

Jurors later heard from a witness how Ms Keza screamed and begged a neighbour to kick the door down as she was stabbed to death, while her young daughter shouted ‘leave my mummy alone’.

The 'systems in place failed to prevent' the death of Ms Keza, who had been in contact with both the police and social services, Peter Finnigan QC, prosecuting, told the court.

Mr Finnigan said Gikawa drove from a bar where he had been drinking with friends to Ms Keza's flat where the 'brutal stabbing' took place.

The incident was described by neighbour Gideon Bello, who told the court he went to investigate after hearing the shouts from the flat.

He told how he knocked on the door after hearing a young girl saying: 'Leave my mummy alone'.

Mr Bello said he then heard Ms Keza shouting: 'Please kick down the door, please kick down the door.'

He said: ‘[Gikawa] was holding her with his arm around her neck. I saw his hand moving around as if he was hitting her.

He then told how a blood-stained Gikawa ran away after he challenged him.

Mr Finnigan earlier said the victim wanted to start afresh and be 'free from the fear, threats and control'.

But, he said, Gikawa was 'determined to prevent it' claimed he would rather kill Ms Keza and himself than see her go out with another person.

Characterising the relationship, Mr Finnigan said: ‘He had both used and threatened violence and even death. That was his way of maintaining or controlling the relationship and to some extend he succeed.

‘Linah found it difficult to break away from him. Latterly, as his behaviour degenerated and threats became worse she took increasing action against him to leave her alone.’

Their relationship, which began after they met in 2009, had been 'turbulent from an early stage' and Gikawa had a 'darker side', the court heard.

Mr Finnigan said: 'He had in the past attacked her and beaten her.'

The jury was told about one incident when a knife was allegedly put inside Ms Keza's mouth.

Police were called but she did not want to go to court and the case was dropped, the jury heard.

Mr Finnigan said that just a few days before her death Ms Keza sought a non-molestation order from the court. He then read from the witness statement she gave.

'Very controlling': Ms Keza wrote in her statement how Gikawa had attacked her before. He allegedly sneaked into her flat - to which he still had keys - at around 4am and stabbed her

It said Gikawa was 'very controlling' and she said she could not speak to her family because they would 'disown' her if they knew she was pregnant before being married.

Reading from the statement, Mr Finnigan said: 'I'm petrified of him. I don't want a life of violence any more. I just want to live a safe life.'

The statement also told how in April 2011 Gikawa allegedly attacked her at his home in Edmonton, north London, after she found out he had been cheating on him with another woman.

‘He pushed me on the bed, he pushed the pillow on to my head and punched the pillow several times,’ she wrote.

The jury heard that the police were called on July 29 - two days before Ms Keza's death - three times.

Mr Finnigan said that police said during a conversation with them Ms Keza alleged that Gikawa 'carries a kitchen knife that he had sharpened'.

Gikawa, of Leyton, East London, denies murder. [Africans very rarely admit guilt, even when it is obvious]. The trial continues.

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Mere abuse won't stop voters backing Ukip

This paper holds no brief for Ukip [a British patriotic party], whose leaders we would shrink from trusting with the levers of power. The party also appears to attract more than its fair share of candidates with eccentric and, in some cases, obnoxious views.

But when polls show Nigel Farage’s supporters streaking ahead of Labour and the Conservatives, while trampling the Lib Dems into dust, isn’t it time for the mainstream parties to wake up to what’s happening in modern politics?

To date, their sole line of attack has been to seek out and heap abuse on mavericks in Ukip’s ranks.

Indeed, this was the approach adopted yesterday by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, a normally mildly-spoken Cameron ally, who condemned the offensive views of a local council candidate as ‘absolutely disgusting’, ‘divisive’ and ‘un-British’.

But if the idea is to tarnish Mr Farage’s whole party with guilt by association, it clearly isn’t working.

With 31 per cent now saying they’ll vote Ukip in the euro-elections – against 28 per cent for Labour, 19 per cent for the Tories and 9 per cent for the Lib Dems – it seems that the more the party is insulted, the stronger its support grows.

Are Mr Hunt and Co trying to suggest that almost a third of the population are disgusting, divisive and un-British?

On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of Ukip supporters are decent people, heartily fed up with having their views ignored by the political class.

If they want to regain lost ground, the mainstream parties should try heeding voters’ wishes on such issues as uncontrolled immigration, human rights madness and the relentless surrender of our sovereignty to Brussels.

Abuse alone, however merited in individual cases, just sounds like panic.

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China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years

It is said to be China's biggest church and on Easter Sunday thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.

The 5,000-capacity Liushi church, which boasts more than twice as many seats as Westminster Abbey and a 206ft crucifix that can be seen for miles around, opened last year with one theologian declaring it a "miracle that such a small town was able to build such a grand church".

The £8 million building is also one of the most visible symbols of Communist China's breakneck conversion as it evolves into one of the largest Christian congregations on earth.

"It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence," beamed Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor who was admiring the golden cross above Liushi's altar in the lead up to Holy Week.

"If everyone in China believed in Jesus then we would have no more need for police stations. There would be no more bad people and therefore no more crime," she added.

Officially, the People's Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied.

Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao's death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world's number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation.

"By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon," said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule.

"It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change."

China's Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline.

By 2030, China's total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted.

"Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this," Prof Yang said. "It's ironic – they didn't. They actually failed completely."

Like many Chinese churches, the church in the town of Liushi, 200 miles south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province, has had a turbulent history.

It was founded in 1886 after William Edward Soothill, a Yorkshire-born missionary and future Oxford University professor, began evangelising local communities.

But by the late 1950s, as the region was engulfed by Mao's violent anti-Christian campaigns, it was forced to close.

Liushi remained shut throughout the decade of the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966, as places of worship were destroyed across the country.

Since it reopened in 1978 its congregation has gone from strength to strength as part of China's officially sanctioned Christian church – along with thousands of others that have accepted Communist Party oversight in return for being allowed to worship.

Today it has 2,600 regular churchgoers and holds up to 70 baptisms each year, according to Shi Xiaoli, its 27-year-old preacher. The parish's revival reached a crescendo last year with the opening of its new 1,500ft mega-church, reputedly the biggest in mainland China.

"Our old church was small and hard to find," said Ms Shi. "There wasn't room in the old building for all the followers, especially at Christmas and at Easter. The new one is big and eye-catching."

The Liushi church is not alone. From Yunnan province in China's balmy southwest to Liaoning in its industrial northeast, congregations are booming and more Chinese are thought to attend Sunday services each week than do Christians across the whole of Europe.

A recent study found that online searches for the words "Christian Congregation" and "Jesus" far outnumbered those for "The Communist Party" and "Xi Jinping", China's president.

Among China's Protestants are also many millions who worship at illegal underground "house churches", which hold unsupervised services – often in people's homes – in an attempt to evade the prying eyes of the Communist Party.

Such churches are mostly behind China's embryonic missionary movement – a reversal of roles after the country was for centuries the target of foreign missionaries. Now it is starting to send its own missionaries abroad, notably into North Korea, in search of souls.

"We want to help and it is easier for us than for British, South Korean or American missionaries," said one underground church leader in north China who asked not to be named.

The new spread of Christianity has the Communist Party scratching its head.

"The child suddenly grew up and the parents don't know how to deal with the adult," the preacher, who is from China's illegal house-church movement, said.

Some officials argue that religious groups can provide social services the government cannot, while simultaneously helping reverse a growing moral crisis in a land where cash, not Communism, has now become king.

They appear to agree with David Cameron, the British prime minister, who said last week that Christianity could help boost Britain's "spiritual, physical and moral" state.

Ms Shi, Liushi's preacher, who is careful to describe her church as "patriotic", said: "We have two motivations: one is our gospel mission and the other is serving society. Christianity can also play a role in maintaining peace and stability in society. Without God, people can do as they please."

Yet others within China's leadership worry about how the religious landscape might shape its political future, and its possible impact on the Communist Party's grip on power, despite the clause in the country's 1982 constitution that guarantees citizens the right to engage in "normal religious activities".

As a result, a close watch is still kept on churchgoers, and preachers are routinely monitored to ensure their sermons do not diverge from what the Party considers acceptable.

In Liushi church a closed circuit television camera hangs from the ceiling, directly in front of the lectern.

"They want the pastor to preach in a Communist way. They want to train people to practice in a Communist way," said the house-church preacher, who said state churches often shunned potentially subversive sections of the Bible. The Old Testament book in which the exiled Daniel refuses to obey orders to worship the king rather than his own god is seen as "very dangerous", the preacher added.

Such fears may not be entirely unwarranted. Christians' growing power was on show earlier this month when thousands flocked to defend a church in Wenzhou, a city known as the "Jerusalem of the East", after government threats to demolish it. Faced with the congregation's very public show of resistance, officials appear to have backed away from their plans, negotiating a compromise with church leaders.

"They do not trust the church, but they have to tolerate or accept it because the growth is there," said the church leader. "The number of Christians is growing – they cannot fight it. They do not want the 70 million Christians to be their enemy."

The underground leader church leader said many government officials viewed religion as "a sickness" that needed curing, and Prof Yang agreed there was a potential threat.

The Communist Party was "still not sure if Christianity would become an opposition political force" and feared it could be used by "Western forces to overthrow the Communist political system", he said.

Churches were likely to face an increasingly "intense" struggle over coming decade as the Communist Party sought to stifle Christianity's rise, he predicted.

"There are people in the government who are trying to control the church. I think they are making the last attempt to do that."

SOURCE





A weak establishment is letting Islamists threaten British freedoms

Sunday is Easter Day, but the pupils of 25 or so state schools in Birmingham probably do not know what that means for Christians. Argument rages about Islamist infiltration of these schools, and the exclusion of non-Muslim beliefs that results. There is an apparent plot by Muslim extremists to get their people into school governorships and install like-minded heads. This week, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, boldly appointed Peter Clarke, a former senior policeman, as his commissioner to look into the whole thing.

As always with stories about Islam in Britain, the details are incredibly opaque, although The Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan is getting us closer to the truth. Some say that the secret “Trojan Horse” document, which last month revealed the supposed plot, is a forgery. Many of the charges levelled at Tahir Alam, the Islamist chairman of governors of Park View Academy, the school at the centre of the row, are anonymous. In the past six months, five of the non-Muslim heads in schools linked to the alleged plot have retired, but terms and conditions seem to prevent them from speaking. The (Muslim) Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, Khalid Mahmood, has spoken up courageously about what he believes is happening, but he is almost unique. He tells me that most of the many worried (chiefly Muslim) parents who have complained do not want to be identified. They are frightened.

If you stand back and think about it, this fear and confusion are in themselves extraordinary. Here we are in a 21st-century Britain that constantly congratulates itself on its tolerance and openness, and likes to sanctify “whistleblowers”, yet it is seriously difficult to know what on earth is happening to the education of hundreds of children in our second-biggest city.

The schools in question are mainstream, secular, taxpayer-funded state schools, but even asking about them provokes outrage. It is alleged, for instance, that at Park View, speeches in favour of the now-dead al-Qaeda ideologue of terrorism, Anwar al-Awlaki, have been made. Yet there is tremendous institutional resistance to investigating. Imagine what would happen if an authority figure in a predominantly white state school were accused of praising, say, Goebbels in assembly. Surely the truth would out pretty quickly.

But if you look at the reaction to Mr Gove’s intervention from those in power in Birmingham, you see nothing but surly resistance. Mark Rogers, the new chief executive of the council, has said, before he can really know, that there is no plot. It is just a matter, he thinks, of “new communities” raising “legitimate questions” about what they want for their children. He manages to discuss the entire issue without using the word “Muslim” once, a truly heroic piece of evasion.

The Labour council leader, the archetypally named Sir Albert Bore, shakes his head about Mr Gove creating “a growing community divide” by sending in Mr Clarke. He thinks that the divide will appear if “this process is interpreted to be one which is about Islamification”. But suppose Islamification does turn out to be the nub of the problem, must Mr Clarke fall silent to ensure that Sir Albert can have a relatively quiet life?

Most egregious is Chris Sims, chief constable of the West Midlands Police. You would think that a policeman would welcome the judgment of an ex-colleague, but Mr Sims appears to be doing whatever he can to put Mr Clarke off. He says Mr Clarke’s appointment is “desperately unfortunate” because “people will inevitably draw unwarranted conclusions from his former role as national coordinator for counter-terrorism”. Of course they will, if a chief constable tells them to do so.

“I am a strong supporter of open and inclusive education for all children in Birmingham,” he adds. I don’t really see why we need a policeman’s opinion about schools policy, but since Mr Sims offers his, why does he not support attempts to make sure that the open and inclusive education he loves is a reality in Birmingham, rather than just a phrase?

The answer lies in the word “community”. It is pleasingly vague, and constantly deployed wherever issues of race or religion are raised. The “community” will resent this, we are told; the “community” will feel threatened by that. “Community” is always cited as a reason for not enforcing the laws of the land. Two key questions are not asked. The first is: “Is it right that public policy in matters like schools or policing should be built round particular religious or ethnic groups, rather than the rights of all citizens?” The second is: “When you speak of the community here, do you know what you are talking about?”

In the Birmingham case, it seems we are dealing with a war within Islam, between the more articulate, extreme and mysteriously well-funded Salafists (or Wahhabis) and the quieter, more traditional and numerous Barelvis. One must doubt whether Mr Rogers, Sir Albert and Mr Sims know their way round these internal Muslim disputes, yet they appear confidently to identify with the Salafists as “community” representatives. In the jargon, they are looking for “credible partners”.

Like a lot of people who are frightened by things they do not understand, they seem instinctively to want to hug closest those who might be nastiest. The people who suffer most from such policies are those whom an open society ought to cherish – Muslims who, while holding to their faith, do not want to have their lives ruled by extreme clerical leaders with a political agenda. In this dispute, the few such people – parents at the schools affected – who do dare to speak, talk straightforwardly of wanting their children to have a normal British education. It is, to reapply Mr Sims’s phrase, “desperately unfortunate” that the local, mainly white establishment is so weak about making sure they get it.

So what can Mr Clarke do between now and July, when he must report? He has statutory powers, so the people he asks must give him answers. If Mr Clarke does not get the information he needs, Mr Gove can take control of the school directly. It is really information that matters the most. Everything to do with Islamism is a web of obscurity, designedly so. People who believe that the Western way of life is a lie which should be overthrown have no scruples about concealing their actions and motives. Although Mr Clarke is not looking for terrorism in this case (and none has been alleged), his former job teaches him at least two relevant things – how extreme Muslims think and how they operate.

There is, of course, a relation between what you think and what you do. It is this that the British authorities are still so bad at identifying when they deal with Islamists. On its website, MI5 says that the concept of “subversion” “focuses on hostility to democratic processes”. It goes on to say that the threat of subversion was a big issue during the Cold War but “is now considered to be negligible”. MI5 “do not currently investigate subversion”.

All Islamist schools of thought are hostile to democratic processes, many explicitly so. They strive to create a global society in thrall to their version of Islamic law. As we learnt when Islamists educated in British comprehensive schools blew themselves up and killed 52 – mainly their fellow citizens – in July 2005, some use violence to try to bring this about. Most don’t, but they do work to subvert – that is the right word – the institutions that we all need. They are organised in schools and universities. They infiltrate local government and public administration. They are expert at getting public money under false pretences. They are not “negligible”, but still we neglect the threat they pose.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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1 comment:

Malcolm Smith said...

With regard to the growth of Christianity in China, I recently did a bit of number crunching using the most conservative figures, and it still came out to a doubling of the church population every 5½ years.
See here