Friday, February 28, 2014


But they still won't say sorry: Labour's Harman and Dromey finally break their silence over links to paedophile group


Harman is one of the British Left's prime haters

Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman finally broke her silence yesterday over her links with a paedophile group.

Miss Harman, her MP husband Jack Dromey, and former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt have been under mounting pressure to explain the connections to the Paedophile Information Exchange while holding key roles in the National Council for Civil Liberties.

The pressure group granted ‘affiliate’ status to PIE, a notorious group of predatory paedophiles.
The BBC was accused yesterday of keeping the growing paedophilia scandal from the airwaves in order to protect the Labour Party
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The BBC was accused yesterday of keeping the growing paedophilia scandal from the airwaves in order to protect the Labour Party

Last night Miss Harman dismissed the revelations as a ‘politically-motivated smear campaign’ and offered no apology over the NCCL’s extraordinary relationship with the PIE.

That is despite the fact that Shami Chakrabarti, current director of Liberty – the new name for NCCL – has previously issued an apology for the links with PIE.

In a statement Miss Harman said: ‘They have accused me of being an apologist for child sex abuse, of supporting a vile paedophile organisation, of having a relaxed attitude to paedophilia and of watering down child pornography laws.

‘These are horrific allegations and I strongly deny all of them.’

The Mail discovered that during the 1970s and 80s, Miss Hewitt described PIE – granted formal ‘affiliate’ status from 1975 to the mid-Eighties – in glowing terms as ‘a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children’.

NCCL archives showed how the pressure group lobbied Parliament for the age of sexual consent to be cut to ten if the child consented and ‘understood the nature of the act’. It also called for incest to be legalised in what one MP called a ‘Lolita’s charter’.

The NCCL – now the respected Liberty – filed a submission to Parliament claiming that ‘childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult, result in no identifiable damage’.

Miss Harman, as NCCL legal officer, tried to water down child pornography laws. NCCL lawyers acted for PIE members who were questioned by police over their disgusting behaviour.

Miss Hewitt was general secretary of the NCCL from 1974-83, Miss Harman was a newly qualified solicitor when she became its legal officer in 1978 until 1982, when she entered Parliament. Mr Dromey sat on the NCCL executive committee for almost a decade from 1970 to 1979.

Police are investigating PIE as part of Operation Fernbridge, launched after the Jimmy Savile affair, with one source saying there is evidence that PIE members were abusing children ‘on an industrial scale’.

The Home Office is also carrying out a ‘thorough, independent investigation’ into shocking claims that the Labour government of the 1970s may have helped finance the notorious group.

Ever since December, when The Mail first investigated the NCCL’s links to the paedophile lobby, we have been sending detailed questions to Miss Harman, Miss Hewitt and Mr Dromey about their links to PIE and whether they now regret supporting such a group. Miss Hewitt has still to respond but Miss Harman – after initially dismissing the story as ‘untrue and ridiculous’ – and her husband finally issued a statement via the Labour Party yesterday.

Miss Harman denied allegations that she supported lowering the age of consent to ten or opposed the law on incest – despite the Mail investigation never having made such a claim. Instead this newspaper stated that the NCCL, which she joined in 1978, had controversially lobbied on these issues two years earlier.

She also said that an allegation that she sought in 1978 to water down a proposed ban on child pornography was untrue.

Responding to the NCCL’s decision to grant ‘affiliate’s status to the notorious paedophile group, Miss Harman said: ‘The Mail have tried to make me guilty by way of guilt by association.

‘When I was at NCCL there were around 6,000 members and nearly 1,000 affiliated organisations of which PIE was one.

‘I was aware that because NCCL opposed censorship and supported gay rights, paedophiles had sought to exploit that and use NCCL as a vehicle to make their arguments. But by the time I came to work for NCCL this vile organisation had already been vigorously challenged within the organisation.’

She added: ‘The reason I decided to go to work for NCCL was because I actively supported the work they had done and in particular the work of their women’s rights committee on the Equal Pay Act, on the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act and for greater protection of victims of domestic violence and against race discrimination.’

Mr Dromey said: ‘During my time on the NCCL executive, I was at the forefront of repeated public condemnations of PIE and their despicable views.  ‘The accusations of the Daily Mail are untrue and beneath contempt.’

Labour leader Ed Miliband defended his deputy. He said: ‘Harriet Harman is somebody of huge decency and integrity. I know she has a long and proud record of being on the right side of all of these issues.’

Last night the Mail said: ‘For ten weeks now the Mail has repeatedly asked three leading Labour figures to answer questions about the involvement of the NCCL, a body in which they played leading roles, with a vile paedophile group whose actions are currently being investigated by the police.

‘The belated statements today of Miss Harman and her husband – full of pedantry and obfuscation – failed to answer the Mail’s central points and deny allegations the Mail has not made.

‘More pertinently they have failed to utter a word of contrition or sorrow about the NCCL’s closeness to the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange, an organisation that validated the activities of a monster like Jimmy Savile.  Nor do they utter a word of apology to the victims of PIE.

‘In stark contrast, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, which took over the NCCL’s mantle, has condemned the historic links with PIE as a “source of continuing disgust and horror”.

‘As for smears, it is a newspaper’s job to ask awkward and controversial questions – questions that in this instance are still awaiting a satisfactory answer.’

SOURCE






Labour's paedophile problem is more about press regulation
 
If the Roman Catholic Church had forged links - even as far back as the 1970s - with something called the Paedophile Information Exchange, the political outrage and media onslaught would have been monumental. Certainly, there have been many thousands of appalling cases and a chronic culture of cover-up, but no one can pretend that this was countenanced by canon lawyers or advocated by the Magisterium. Similarly, if the BBC were found to have proven historic (= Savile-era) connections with a group which favoured easing restrictions on child pornography; advocated a more relaxed attitude to paedophilia; proposed the legalisation of incest; and wanted to lower the age of consent to 10, there would be urgent demands for a public inquiry, with immediate suspensions and assurances in Parliament that heads will roll.

But when three current Labour politicians - former officers of National Council for Civil Liberties - are confronted with documented links to something that really was called the Paedophile Information Exchange, and when it is set down in black and white that this group really did agitate for all of the aforementioned 'progressive' policies, you have to wonder why Ed Miliband has not at least instigated an internal inquiry and done a few background checks on Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and (former MP) Patricia Hewitt. Instead, he declared that he doesn't "set any store by these allegations", and that Harriet Harman in particular is a person of "huge decency and integrity".

The evidence (if it be) has been set out in the Daily Mail, even alleging that "the Labour government of the time may have helped finance the organisation". Unsurprisingly, Ms Harman has dismissed this as a politically motivated campaign - a smear, indeed, of the most despicable Dacre sort, to which depths of journalism neither she nor Labour would ever stoop.

The thing is, Pope Benedict XVI spent much of his pontificate issuing profuse expressions of remorse and repentance on behalf of his church for the heinous acts of paedophile priests and the post-conciliar hierarchical conspiracy of cover-up. And the BBC is still apologising over its 1970s "groupie" culture of misogynistic permissiveness and predatory paedophilia. Both institutions are horrified and appalled - 40 years on - that they did nothing to protect so many vulnerable victims over such a long period. But at least the perpetrators are now being held to account - one of them even post mortem.

But last night Harriet Harman refused eight times to accept that her connection with the Paedophile Information Exchange was a mistake. This is not just any Labour politician: it is the party's Deputy Leader. She didn't just deflect the question once: she side-stepped it eight times. She has 'clarified' her position this morning in a hastily-penned statement of 'regret', but that doesn't quite explain her cagey obfuscation last night on Newsnight.

It is curious how Mr & Mrs Jack Dromey are more concerned with rubbishing Dacre and berating the Mail than they are with repudiating a group which sought to take advantage of children. If it is moral and just to arrest aging entertainers and prosecute abusive priests in their 70s and 80s, how can it not be right to investigate the alleged links between Labour, the NCCL and PIE? Is the Mail's political smear agenda really more repugnant than historic matters of child abuse, rape and torture?

Or is Harriet Harman's real objective here to situate herself and her husband as latter-day Dowlers - the latest victims of vile press abuse - and thereby reinforce the need for a Leveson framework of press control to protect the poor and vulnerable (and the rich and powerful)?

SOURCE





Maybe the young are not so bad

America's most popular cable news host is upset. "Marijuana use, video games and texting (are) creating major social problems," says Bill O'Reilly. "This is an epidemic that will lead to a weaker nation!"

Give me a break.

Crotchety old geezers always complain about "the kids." The Boston Globe frets about "Idle Trophy Kids." The New York Post asks if millennials are "The Worst Generation?" Older folks (my age) complain that young people spend so much time texting each other that they can't communicate. And because they spend hours playing violent video games, violence is up.

Bunk.

It's true that kids today play incredibly violent games like "Halo" and "Grand Theft Auto," but as the games' popularity increased (over the past 20 years), youth violence dropped 55 percent. In Japan, kids spend more time playing violent games, and there's even less violence. And in America, despite media hype, there are fewer school shootings now, not more.

Kids "can't communicate" because they text all the time? Recently, kids invented Facebook, YouTube, Firefox, Groupon, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and so on. They communicate something .

Inevitably, we older people misunderstand new ways young people do things -- we are frightened by the risks and oblivious to the benefits.

If O'Reilly had been on TV in the '50s, he would have ranted about comic books causing juvenile delinquency. The Senate actually held hearings in which the public was instructed that Superman "embodied sadistic fantasies ... injurious to children ... "

Today O'Reilly opines, "The cyberspace addiction rate among American children is off the charts ... they don't learn coping skills! ... In China, young people are encouraged to compete, be disciplined, live in the real world. Not here."

Even if that were true, what have Chinese young people invented lately? Any companies? What music and art did they compose?

O'Reilly worries about "America going to pot ... If you use any intoxicating agent, your goal is to leave reality. You're not satisfied with your current state of mind, you want to get high, buzzed, blasted, whatever."

I say, so what?

Some people like the sensation of getting "buzzed." Some are not satisfied with their current state of mind. Good. That's what gets people to learn new things.

Altering our minds is a most basic right. We alter our minds -- often for the better -- every time we read a book, fall in love or watch a TV show, including O'Reilly's.

But old people worry that young people are exposed to sexual imagery. It's true the Web brings pornography to children's computers, and that culture is often coarse. When Miley twerks, I cringe.

But again, where's the harm? As reporter Michael Moynihan will point out on my TV show this week, "Over the past 20 or so years, sex has been in everyone's face, yet teen pregnancy dropped by 50 percent."

I wish outraged oldsters remembered how we once laughed at those who were frightened by Elvis Presley.

In 1956, The New York Times said Elvis had "no discernable singing ability." The New York Daily News called his act "animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos." Even Frank Sinatra said his kind of music is "deplorable, a rancid, smelling aphrodisiac (that) fosters destructive relations in young people."

Somehow, America survived Elvis.

"Moral panics are one of our favorite things," says Moynihan. "If there's nothing to be panicked about, what do you write about?" Being outraged is part of the media circus.

The danger is that the outrage undermines perspective. It creates a false impression of how risky the present is, and it fuels unnecessary, freedom-killing regulations.

Old people always talk about the good old days. But the good old days were not so good. When I was young, more kids were intolerant, racist, sexist and homophobic. They had little knowledge of life beyond their neighborhoods. Today, thanks to the Web and other innovations, life is better, not worse.

SOURCE





Gay activists have met their match with Muslim barbers

So a lesbian walks into a Muslim barbershop, and asks for a “businessmen’s haircut”.

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it really happened, and now a government agency called the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario will hear her complaint.

Faith McGregor is the lesbian who doesn’t like the girly cuts that they do at a salon. She wants the boy’s hairdo.

Omar Mahrouk is the owner of the Terminal Barber Shop in Toronto. He follows Shariah law, so he thinks women have cooties. As Mahrouk and the other barbers there say, they don’t believe in touching women other than their own wives.

But that’s what multiculturalism and unlimited immigration from illiberal countries means. A central pillar of many immigrant cultures is the second-class citizenship of women and gays.

So if we now believe in multiculturalism, and that our Canadian culture of tolerance isn’t any better than the Shariah culture of sex crimes and gender apartheid, who are we to complain when Omar Mahrouk takes us up on our promise that he can continue to practise his culture — lesbian haircuts be damned?

He’s not the one who passed the Multiculturalism Act, and invited in hundreds of thousands of immigrants with medieval attitudes towards women and gays and Jews, etc. We did.

Mahrouk’s view is illiberal. But in Canada we believe in property rights and freedom of association — and in this case, freedom of religion, too.

But McGregor ran to the Human Rights Tribunal and demanded that Mahrouk give her a haircut.

In the past, human rights commissions have been a great ally to gay activists. Because, traditionally, gay activists have complained against Christians. And white Christians are the one ethnic identity group that human rights commissions don’t value, and that multiculturalism doesn’t include.

In recent years, Canadian human rights commissions have weighed a complaint about a women’s-only health club that refused a pre-operative transsexual male who wanted to change in the locker rooms.

They’ve ordered bed and breakfasts owned by Christian families to take in gay couples. They’ve censored pastors and priests who have criticized gay marriage. Gays win, because it’s a test of who is most outraged and offended.

But in the case of the Muslim barbers, the gay activists have met their match. If the test is who can be the most offended or most politically correct, a lesbian’s just not going to cut it.

Oh, McGregor is politically correct. But just not politically correct enough. It’s like poker.

A white, Christian male has the lowest hand — it’s like he’s got just one high card, maybe an ace. So almost everyone trumps him.

A white woman is just a bit higher — like a pair of twos. Enough to beat a white man, but not much more.

A gay man is like having two pairs in poker.

A gay woman — a lesbian like McGregor — is like having three of a kind.

A black lesbian is a full house — pretty tough to beat.

Unless she’s also in a wheelchair, which means she’s pretty much a straight flush.

The only person who could trump that would be a royal flush. If the late Sammy Davis Jr. — who was black, Jewish and half-blind — were to convert to Islam and discover he was 1/64th Aboriginal.

So which is a better hand: A lesbian who wants a haircut or a Muslim who doesn’t want to give it to her?

I’m betting on Mahrouk. And I predict that Muslim activists — not quiet barbers like Mahrouk, but professional Muslim busybodies — will start using human rights commissions more and more to push their way into places where they have no legal right, but where the human rights commissions are more than happy to engineer things for them, if they complain loud enough.

If I were a gay activist, I’d probably want to declare victory and shut down these human rights commissions right now.

In five years time, it won’t be gay activists forcing themselves into Christian B&Bs. It’ll be Muslim activists vetoing the gay pride parade.

SOURCE

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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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Thursday, February 27, 2014


Multicultural manslaughter in Britain


Gill

With a single, vicious and unprovoked punch, a life is tragically ended.  Andrew Young, 40, paid an appalling price for his good citizen act of challenging a cyclist who was  riding on the pavement.

The cyclist’s friend, a convicted robber, delivered the killer blow – yet could spend just two years behind bars. Mr Young’s mother yesterday described the sentence as an ‘absolute joke’.

Mr Young was attacked by Gill after the 40-year-old became involved in an argument with his friend

The shocking incident took place on a busy street in Bournemouth when Mr Young warned Victor Ibitoye that riding on the pavement was dangerous.  When the conversation ended Lewis Gill, who was with Mr Ibitoye, punched Mr Young, taking him by surprise.

Distressing CCTV footage shows the Asperger’s sufferer toppling back on to the road, violently striking his head.

Gill, who has a conviction for handling stolen goods as well as robbery, then walks away, with a glance back at his motionless victim.

Passers-by came to Mr Young’s aid but he died the following day in hospital. His mother Pamela was at his bedside.

Yesterday Gill, 20, pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter for which he was jailed for just four years.

He was sentenced by Judge Keith Cutler, who was criticised for his handling of the inquest into the gangster Mark Duggan, whose shooting by police sparked the riots of 2011.

Mrs Young said: ‘You can see Andrew didn’t cause Lewis Gill any harm.  ‘I wish that awful man who took my son away had pleaded not guilty so he would have got a longer sentence. The sentence is an absolute joke.

‘I’m a committed Christian but I think that if someone takes a life they should be prepared to forfeit their own.’ She said that too few killers served full sentences.

Tory MP David Davies said of Gill’s punishment: ‘That’s an outrageously lean sentence. In two years he will be out walking the streets after taking somebody’s life.

‘He has attacked someone unprovoked and should be properly punished. People need to realise if you punch someone like that, and they fall backward, they can die.’

The judge told the hearing at Salisbury Crown Court on Friday that the case lay somewhere between murder and manslaughter.

‘I bear in mind your early guilty plea. I accept there is no pre-meditated element and provocation does exist,’ he told Gill.

The maximum sentence for manslaughter is life, but the term can be shorter, at the discretion of the judge. With half his sentence served on licence, and allowing for time already served, Gill could be out of jail in under two years.

The judge told Gill, from Sutton, Surrey, that Mr Young was no threat: ‘You are a powerfully built young man. You must have known that [the punch] was going to cause a significant injury and, very sadly, it did.’

Gill was also sentenced to two three-month terms to run consecutively with the manslaughter sentence.

This was for committing the crime while on a suspended sentence for the robbery and handling offences. In mitigation, Steven Perian said: ‘He wishes he could turn back the clock and not react in the way he did.’

Mr Young, a former grammar school pupil, regular church-goer and speaker of several languages, was said to have the social skills of a 14-year-old due to his Asperger’s.

Taxi driver Simon Scott said of him: ‘Andrew was always friendly and polite and often struck up conversations with strangers. He was gentle and wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

SOURCE





Millionaire Gay Couple Sues to Force Church Wedding in Britain

Millionaire gay couple the Drewitt-Barlows have confirmed they have launched a legal challenge to the right of churches to opt out of gay weddings.

In fresh comments published by the Chelmsford Weekly News in the U.K. today, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow said legal action had started.  “We’ve launched a challenge to the government’s decision to allow some religious groups to opt out of marrying same-sex couples," he said.   “We feel we have the right as parishioners in our village to utilize the church we attend to get married.

“It is no reflection on our local church, who have been nothing but supportive towards us. We understand their hands are tied by a higher group of people within the church.”

Earlier this month, Drewitt-Barlow said he and his civil partner, Tony, would go to court to force gay weddings on churches. He said at the time, “The only way forward for us now is to make a challenge in the courts against the church.  “It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into a court to get them to recognize us.”

He added, “It upsets me because I want it so much—a big lavish ceremony, the whole works. I just don’t think it is going to happen straight away.  “As much as people are saying this is a good thing, I am still not getting what I want.”

A government bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the U.K. cleared Parliament earlier this year, and the first same-sex weddings are expected in 2014.

The legislation allows churches to opt out of performing gay weddings, and it specifically protects the Church of England.

However, top human rights lawyer Aidan O’Neill says protection for the Anglican Church is “eminently challengeable” in court.

A copy of O’Neill’s legal advice was sent to the prime minister in January, but Mr. Cameron nevertheless proceeded with the legislation.

SOURCE





On the run, the foreign killers and rapists that Britain can't throw out: 750 criminals simply disappear after being set free

More than 750 foreign criminals – including killers, rapists and paedophiles – are walking the streets after jumping bail.

They should have been deported after completing their sentences, but instead have been released from detention under human rights laws and then gone on the run.

Among those at large are serious violent criminals, including 11 rapists, at least two killers and several child abusers and arsonists.

The previously unseen figures show the total also includes six burglars, 26 robbers, dozens of violent thugs and 76 drug dealers.

The Home Office is refusing to identify the criminals by name because to do so would breach their ‘right’ to privacy.

The figures were released to the Daily Mail after a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Home Office revealed that 752 foreign offenders who have committed crimes in Britain have absconded after they were released on bail from prison or immigration detention and have never been found.  Of those, 16 have been on the run for more than ten years, and 158 for between five and ten years.

Another 310 have been on the run for between two and five years, while 191 have been at large for between one and two years, and 77 for less than a year.

Human rights rulings mean foreign criminals who the Home Office is struggling to remove from Britain cannot be kept behind bars indefinitely.

They can only remain in custody as long as there is a reasonable prospect of officials being able to remove them in the near future.

But in many cases, human rights laws block their return. Other barriers can include difficulties in obtaining a passport for offenders who destroyed their travel documents on their arrival.

As a result, even the most dangerous offenders can be let out on bail by a judge.

Tory MP Nick de Bois said: ‘It is deeply worrying that so many dangerous foreign criminals are walking the streets and urgent action must be taken to find them.

‘The British public are losing patience with so-called human rights claims putting them at risk. These criminals should by rights have been thrown out of this country and put back in jail in their country of origin.’

The new scandal is the latest blow to the reputation of the beleaguered immigration service, and is a serious blow to David Cameron, who has made personal pledges to deport more foreign offenders.

The freedom of information request was made in March last year, but despite a legal requirement to release the information after 21 days, no response was received until last month.

The Home Office refused to say which countries the offenders are from. It claimed releasing that information could undermine its ability to negotiate deportation agreements with foreign governments.

Officials also refused to say exactly how many criminals had committed particular offences – if the total was fewer than five – in case it could aid public identification.

But they said there were fewer than five criminals guilty of manslaughter, and at least one guilty of conspiracy to murder.

They admitted they did not classify the criminals according to how much of a risk they pose to the public.

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We believe foreign nationals who break our rules should be removed from the UK at the earliest opportunity.

‘Last year we removed more than 4,500 foreign national offenders. Where individuals abscond from our controls, we work closely with the police and probation services and employ specialist trace teams to return these individuals to prison.

‘Absconders are circulated on the Police National Computer and are added to our watch lists in case those who have left the country seek to re-enter.’

SOURCE






Did social workers take this middle class family's adored child to meet adoption targets? Four-year-old boy was torn from loving mother at hospital even though no one had hurt him

You could be forgiven for thinking Wendy Tricker has the perfect life. A five-bedroom house in Shropshire; a good career as a management accountant; a supportive and successful husband; two BMWs, a Mercedes and three acres of land filled with a menagerie of animals.

It’s a lifestyle their little grandson adored; running around the grounds, feeding the ducks and chickens, helping Granny walk her beloved eight-year-old German Shepherd, Rupert, whenever he visited.

But the four-year-old boy hasn’t been to see her for nearly 18 months. And Wendy hasn’t seen him at all since last May. Nor has her daughter Charlotte, 21, the youngster’s mother.

There’s been no family rift. Instead, the Trickers insist they are the victims of a social services department hell-bent on taking a child away from his perfectly safe, loving home.

And, short of a miracle tomorrow — when the young boy’s adoption case will be finally rubber-stamped by the courts  — those social services will be successful.

It’s impossible to overstate the heartache wreaked on this respectable family. ‘It mostly hits me in supermarkets,’ says Wendy, 52. ‘Charlotte and I were walking down the aisle of one recently and saw a display of nappies. We just held each other, and cried and cried.

‘Once, Charlotte saw a pushchair from behind, with a child’s foot sticking out. It was the same shoe as his. She raced round to see. But, of course, it wasn’t him. I’ve done the same. You find yourself staring at children. But he could be anywhere.’

Wendy is among a growing number of grandparents who maintain their families are being taken from them for the most insubstantial of reasons.

Last month, this paper reported on the case of Graham and Gail Curlew, from Sheringham, Norfolk, whose grandchildren were removed from them with no reason ever given.

Then there were Lee and Katrina Parker, from Colchester, Essex, who very nearly lost their grand-daughter simply because social services thought their family, with seven children, was too large.

It is hard to think of a worse wrong the state could sanction. And yet, partly because of the ongoing privacy of the family courts, the outcry doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.

Maybe it’s because most of us simply don’t believe it could happen to us; that only dysfunctional, neglectful families have children who are taken into care.

It’s obvious when I meet them that Wendy and Charlotte Tricker are both capable, hard-working and loving. And as Wendy warns: ‘We loved him so much and cared for him so well. It’s proof that if it can happen to us, it really can happen to absolutely anyone.

‘How many more grandparents like me have to lose their beloved grandchildren before someone stands up to the family courts?’

Their problems began in 2007 when Wendy, who was divorced from Charlotte’s father, remarried and moved the family from Norfolk to Shropshire.

Charlotte, then 14, started at a new school. However, she was soon targeted by a 31-year-old man who police and social services suspected of being a paedophile. He and Charlotte began a relationship without her parents’ knowledge and she fell pregnant soon after turning 16.

‘Of course, I was disappointed,’ says Wendy. ‘I wanted her to have a career first and children later, when she was in a settled relationship.

‘As she was barely two weeks into the pregnancy when I found out, I admit that, yes, we did talk about abortion, but Charlotte was very committed to having the baby.’

Besides, Shropshire Social Services, who were involved because of their fears about the father, insisted Charlotte had ‘a human right’ to have her baby. How ironic, given what later happened.

Charlotte was provided with a flat and benefits by the state, and Wendy and her husband furnished it for her.

In February 2010, just short of her 17th birthday, Charlotte went into labour. Wendy was her birthing partner. ‘I will remember it till the day I die. The moment I saw my grandson, it changed everything — I was elated beyond words.’

In the weeks that followed, Charlotte proved to be a good mother, making ends meet and keeping her adored and thriving son clean and well-fed.

A year later, having split from the boy’s father during her pregnancy, Charlotte met a new boyfriend. Nearly ten years older and a bit of a drifter, he was far from the partner Wendy had dreamed of for her daughter — but he adored Charlotte. He regularly showered her with flowers and was devoted to her son, and the three were happy together. All seemed calm.

Then came the events of September 19, 2012. Wendy and her husband were in Madeira to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Charlotte’s boyfriend and her son were having a bath together, as they often did, while Charlotte caught up with bills and paperwork in the next room. The toddler had recently started potty training, so after his bath he was allowed to play naked from the waist down.

It was then he went up to his mother and said: ‘Mummy, willy sore.’ Charlotte examined him and noticed some discolouration and swelling. After texting her mum for advice, she decided to see if it was better the next day.

It wasn’t. Fatefully, Wendy suggested Charlotte take him to her GP — advice she says she will regret giving till her dying day.

Despite examining the boy, the doctor was baffled and so sent the family to the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford.

Several junior doctors looked at the child, and all were puzzled. Eventually, a consultant paediatrician examined him. In his notes, he put forward two hypotheses: that the penis was swollen due to a naturally occurring condition, or that it could have been caused by a wound deliberately inflicted. Both comments were accompanied by question marks. In other words, he didn’t know either.

Police were called to the hospital, where they interviewed Charlotte, her partner and the paediatrician. There was, they said, no case to answer: as far as the police were concerned, no crime had been committed.

The hospital decided to keep her son in overnight, so Charlotte and her boyfriend slept in chairs near his bed. The next day, however, they were told to go home without him.

They were distressed beyond measure, says Wendy, and Charlotte ‘went berserk’ with worry and anger.

When they arrived home, the couple started a desperate hunt for clues, photographing anything in the flat on which the boy could have hurt himself.

But knowing they had done nothing wrong, they reassured themselves that the matter would be cleared up within days.

Instead, to their shock, they were told there would be a hearing at Telford County Court on September 25 to decide what action to take.  Wendy and her husband found an expert in family law to represent Charlotte and her partner.

It was only after a meeting with him that they discovered what a serious predicament they were in. When they asked if they’d be able to take the little boy home, the solicitor replied: ‘I don’t think so.’

‘We were in shock,’ Wendy explains. ‘If you are innocent, you assume everything will be all right. I believed in British justice. Even at this stage we all thought it was just a matter of time before he would be home.’

At the hearing, it was decided that the boy would be placed with foster parents, who turned out to be older than his grandparents. Charlotte was allowed just an hour-and-a-half of supervised contact, eventually with her mother in attendance, twice a week.

‘He was distraught,’ says Wendy. ‘Every time he saw Charlotte, he ran to her, threw his arms around her and said: “Don’t go, Mummy; don’t go!”

‘Putting him in the car and seeing him sobbing as he waved goodbye was awful every time. And Charlotte wasn’t allowed to tell him that the separation was involuntary, so what was going through his little mind? I dread to think of the long-term effects.’

Charlotte launched her own legal battle but when her solicitor suggested she blame her boyfriend for the injury as it was her best chance of recovering her son, she refused point blank — after all, he hadn’t done anything.

Eventually, though, despite believing in his innocence, she ended the relationship and broke off all  contact with him in a bid to get her son back. The endless stress took a toll on Charlotte’s health: her weight plummeted from ten to just six-and-a-half stone — dangerous for her 5ft 9in height — and she stopped sleeping.

A further court date for February 2013 was set and the family held their breath, praying that their beloved boy would be returned to them.  ‘Because we all knew no one had hurt him, we had every confidence the expert witnesses would exonerate the family,’ says Wendy. ‘Sooner or later, everyone would see sense.’

Despite their hopes, the boy was taken away from them, even though no definitive medical diagnosis had been made of his condition and  its cause.  Then, on May 17 last year, another court ratified his adoption.

The next day, Charlotte received an official letter saying her contact with her son was at an end. She would have to say goodbye to her little boy for ever on May 24, 2013.

‘How do you say goodbye to someone you love?’ asks Wendy, sobbing so much she can barely speak. ‘You can’t. It’s like murder.

‘As we left him, I told him that Charlotte was his mummy. I said: “Never forget that: she’s your real, your only mummy.”

‘And then [the social worker] lied to him: they told him he just needed to go to the toilet . . . but instead they took him away for ever.

‘What happened next is a bit of a blur. We were screaming, hysterical with grief. I told a social worker: “If you hadn’t lied in court, this would never have happened.” We were beside ourselves.

The foster mother even asked us for some mementos, his first rattle for example. It was as though they wanted to take everything — it was sick.’

In October 2013, Wendy went to court herself to request contact with her grandson. Social Services opposed her application, saying she was unstable and citing her grief-stricken reaction as her grandson was torn from their arms. The court found against her.

Tomorrow, the adoption will be final. After that, no court in the land can give him back to his family. ‘One day,’ Wendy says, ‘we hope that he will go on the internet, read stories about us, and learn that we fought tooth and nail for him, and we love him to bits. Perhaps his adoptive family will read our story, know we love him, and be kind and take pity on us.’

‘They decided to take him from us the moment we set foot in the hospital,’ Charlotte says. ‘They didn’t want me to be a good mum: they wanted adoption. Lovely children are in demand for adoption. He’s been so loved, he’ll be easy to love. If he’d really been abused, he’d be difficult, and who wants “damaged goods”?’

The government target is to increase adoptions of children in care. Children who go back to their parents — or to loving grandparents — do not meet the target. Thus, in 1995 the number of children under five adopted in England was a mere 560, while children under five whose care ceased (a term that includes those who go back to live with their families) was double this.

By 2012, the number whose care ceased was much the same, while adoptions had more than quadrupled: of these a staggering 1,100 were ominously described as ‘consent dispensed with’.

‘The obsession with adoption is splitting up many families merely because of government diktat,’ says John Hemming MP, chairman of Families for Justice which fights for those who suffer at the courts’ hands.

‘I expect in years to come the then government will apologise to the children for what has been done to them today. What matters now, however, is to change the system so the needs of children come to the fore rather than government policy.

‘In particular, the system ignores grandparents. For children to be taken into care is often a traumatic step, whereas staying with grandparents is normal life and a far better option than foster care. However, grandparents, uncles and aunts have no right to be heard by the court.’

Wendy agrees: ‘The impact this has had on my grandson will never heal. Any physical trauma he suffered was gone within days.  Losing his birth family will haunt him for ever.

‘And that’s not even thinking of the rest of us. I’ll be 65 before I see him again [when he turns 18 and is allowed to search for his biological family], if I ever do. He gave my 82-year-old mother reason to go on living after she suffered a stroke. Yesterday, she pointed at his toy in her house — she won’t let us remove it — and the tears were streaming down her face. She will never see him again.’

SOURCE

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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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Wednesday, February 26, 2014


BBC's censorship of paedophilia scandal 'reveals its left-wing bias': Corporation accused of refusing to report story to protect the Labour party

The BBC was accused yesterday of keeping the growing paedophilia scandal from the airwaves in order to protect the Labour Party.

Until yesterday afternoon, the corporation had refused to report that three Labour figures had leading positions in a human rights group that backed the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange.

The story has been on the Mail’s front page three times but the BBC cut all reference to it from its press reviews yesterday.

Philip Davies, a Tory MP on the Commons culture, media and sport committee, said the reason for the BBC’s continued silence was institutional left-wing bias.

‘It is a scandal that the Daily Mail is one of the most read papers in the country but is ignored by the national broadcaster,’ he said.

‘The BBC is interested only in stories that favour the Labour party or that appear in the Guardian. If this were about Conservative MPs the Labour party would be up in arms and the story would have been leading Newsnight five days running.’

A BBC spokesman said: ‘BBC News is an impartial, independent news organisation and decides its editorial priorities based on merit alone and without external help.’

Adding to the mounting confusion, its own journalists have provided contradictory excuses for why the story has been ignored.

While some claimed they were given ‘legal advice’ to drop it, an official spokesman insisted news bosses simply decided the story was ‘not new’.

Since it published the results of its PIE investigation last Wednesday, the Daily Mail has run a series of articles – including two further front page splashes - calling for the Labour trio to answer key questions about their time at the National Council For Civil Liberties (NCCL) in the 1970s.

But yesterday’s front page story was still ignored by the BBC in its daily newspaper round ups on TV and radio.

Late on Sunday night, the BBC News Channel was the first to preview the next day’s front pages.

It found time to discuss the front pages of the The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The Daily Express and The Sun, but made no mention of the Mail’s main story.

On Radio 4, the Today programme yesterday summarised a string of articles – from the situation in Ukraine to the news Piers Morgan has quit his CNN talk show – in its two newspaper reviews at 6.38am and 7.35am. Once again, there was no mention of the PIE.

Radio Five Live also omitted the Daily Mail story from its 5.15am newspaper summary, and an online article about the day’s front pages made no mention of the PIE story.

The striking gap in the BBC’s coverage was not missed by its viewers and listeners, many of whom took to Twitter to voice their frustration that the story had not been given airtime.

But the corporation gave conflicting justifications for the continued omission.

Last Wednesday, Five Live broadcaster Nicky Campbell blamed ‘legal advice’ for his failure to mention the Mail’s original splash in his newspaper review, saying there was a ‘lack of sources’ and adding it ‘would have been one to go big on if we could stand up.’

But when MailOnline published copies of all the key documents in the investigation later the same day, the BBC quickly changed its stance.

An official spokesman claimed the affair was in fact being ignored for editorial reasons, adding: ‘The story in question is not new, and instead, we have followed several big, breaking news story.’

The BBC’s first mention of the story was in an online article yesterday afternoon that repeated Miss Harman’s allegation she was the victim of a ‘politically motivated smear campaign.’

Its reticence was in marked contrast to its commercial rival Sky News.

The channel aired a lengthy discussion about yesterday’s Daily Mail front page on its Sunday night press preview programme.

Presenter Eamonn Holmes again mentioned the story in his round-up of the day’s papers in his early morning show Sunrise.

And yesterday afternoon Sky journalist Jon Craig confronted Labour leader Ed Miliband about the affair and reported on the affair during the evening news bulletin.

SOURCE





Hillary’s Sugar Daddy Socialism Is Fair Game

It’s now officially sexist to hold someone accountable for her legacy of failure – as long as she is a liberal. Nonsense. Rand Paul was absolutely right to declare open season on Hillary’s track record of actively enabling Bubba’s grotesque satyrism.

Naturally, her mainstream media cover-up crew swung into action, decreeing that examining her record is verboten. It’s adorable how, in the age of the internet, these has-beens still think they get to decide what we can and can’t discuss. Give it another year or so until these dinosaur hacks are at the bottom of off-ramps with signs reading, “Will gatekeep for food.”

Hillary proves the old adage that a liberal feminist needs a man like a fish needs water. We just aren’t supposed to say that either.

Ah, the wonders of liberal feminism. What can’t it do – besides actually improve the lives of women who don’t manage to hook up with a powerful man who will hand them a career? Here’s the cold, hard truth: If Hillary hadn’t kept her part of the bargain with Bill Clinton by putting up with his serial abuse, she’d be just another grim liberal matron scowling at the thought that somewhere, out there, a man isn’t apologizing.

Liberal feminism was always about the liberalism, never about the female. Like every liberal pose, it is based upon a lie. Women, to liberal feminists like Hillary, are simply a means to an end. Hillary’s end was personal power, and all she had to do was destroy the occasional Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey if they protested being her hubby’s glorified sex toys.

We aren’t supposed to talk about how liberal feminism messed up our culture for women who aren’t married to a rich former president, and we aren’t supposed to mention that Hillary embodies liberal feminism better than almost anything except Ted Kennedy’s Oldsmobile.

Real feminism should be concerned with women having the same opportunities as men. But liberal feminism is only concerned with turning women into a perpetual left wing voting block. The left doesn’t woo them by promising to build a society without arbitrary discrimination where, with hard work, they can realize their ambitions. Instead, liberals promise to hook them up with Uncle Sam – he’s older and not so hot, but he’s got a lot of dough and will take care of all you helpless Julias!

That’s Hillary in a nutshell, the poster gal for Sugar Daddy Socialism.

Lisa De Pasquale of Townhall illustrates the collateral damage in her new book Finding Mr. Righteous. Lisa (a friend who shares my agent and publisher) writes about her life as a single women in modern America with agonizing honesty. As she goes from guy to guy, we see that women today have career opportunities but not the traditional structures that create opportunities for personal happiness.

But hey, ask liberal feminists, who needs traditional structures? Well, we do – something else we’re not supposed to say. Where is the social structure that protected and enabled women – and that gave purpose to men? In its place, as Lisa shows us, is a world of young people who spend an extraordinary amount of time alienated and alone. Much of her human interaction is actually electronic, even her intimate interaction. If Helen Reddy wrote her big hit today, it would be called “I Am Women, Hear Me Sext.”

Helen Smith’s Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters showed us the cultural forces – many of them spurred on by liberal feminists like Hillary – that incentivize males to remain man-children. The men in Lisa’s world (at least until the end of the book) seem largely beaten and weak, drained of confidence and ambition – in other words, they turned out exactly as feminists hoped. Lisa shows us how this impacts women. The gallant Knight in Shining Armor is now a patriarchal relic; here comes the broke Dude in Torn Cargo Shorts asking if his date can spot him $25 for dinner because his mom finally started making him pay rent.

And when they try to act like men, it’s often only a parody of masculinity that confuses the kind of seedy priapism exemplified by Bill Clinton with true manhood. After all, Hillary and her fellow feminist enablers gave such cheesy sexual aggression a big thumbs up, and Lisa demonstrates that young men were watching. There are no cigar antics, thankfully, but Lisa’s no-holds-barred peek into reality is quite terrifying. And I know terrifying – I watch Girls.

Maybe Lisa should have done what Hillary and her pal Wendy Davis did – latch onto a successful guy and had him create a career for her. It’s totally empowering.

No, we’re not supposed to comment on how Hillary has accomplished absolutely nothing by herself, except Benghazi.

Wanna see a liberal squirm? Ask him to name Hillary’s greatest success as Secretary of State. You’ll get: “Uh, she raised awareness of women’s issues around the world.” Apparently, until she dumped a zillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere jetting around from “Reset” fiasco to Arab Spring disaster, the world was unaware of women.

As Secretary of State, foreign potentates understood her as a mere flunky. But if the American people elect this empty pantsuit president, how will they treat her? They know Bill used her like a doormat. They will too. Why would anyone have any respect for her – or fear of her?

You won’t hear that from the slobbering sycophants of solidarity in the mainstream media. After all, when it comes to protecting Hillary’s façade of accomplishment, it takes a Potemkin Village.

Wait, can we say that?

SOURCE





Sex-Obsessed Lefty Horrified by ‘Toxic Purity Culture’

Hey, gals, want to avoid being raped? Put away that Lady Smith 38. No need for pepper spray. Self-defense classes? Not necessary. The solution is simple. The best defense against rape is to just cast away your “deeply troubling” Christianity and become a secularist slut.

So goes the advice of one Katie McDonough, Salon.com assistant editor, fertile fount of millennial wisdom and – well – and whatever else.

In an article published at Salon Feb. 20 titled, “The right’s warped ‘purity’ culture: 4 ways evangelical views of sex took over America,” Ms. McDonough provides an unvarnished glimpse into the profligate mind of the postmodern “progressive.” (Yes, you read that right. Purity is warped and biblical sexual morality has taken over America.)

In what amounts to little more than an anti-Christian hit piece on Patrick Henry College – or “God’s Harvard” as the evidently prone-position-prone journo pejoratively pokes – Ms. McDonough says that it’s time for American women to reject all those biblically imposed “gender complementarian” norms and do away with our “toxic purity culture” once and for all. (Because, just look around. That dang ol’ toxic purity is everywhere. What America really needs is more debauchery.)

It gets better.

Christianity causes rape, McDonough asserts, warning us that we suffer a “convergence of rape culture (whatever that is) and evangelical culture.”

Get that? In this woman’s “progressive” mind, when the lady says, “I’m saving myself for marriage,” the bad guy hears, “Come and get it!” Still, Ms. McDonough does have this much right: It can’t be rape if you’re giving it away like peanuts on the plane.

She goes on: “While it may be tempting to draw a red line around Christian fundamentalist views on gender and sexuality to distinguish them from supposedly evolved ‘secular’ culture, there is considerable, uncomfortable overlap between the two.” (The cognitive dissonance: It hurts!)

So, if I’m understanding her right – and, admittedly, Ms. McDonough’s screed is borderline coherent – what she’s essentially claiming is that, when it comes to sex, both secular America and Christian America are really just one big ball of puritanical prudery.

In fairness, I suppose she could actually believe this. It’s all relative with the relativist. For the “anything goes”-type, Miley Cyrus may well be indistinguishable from the Virgin Mary. When you’re colorblind, everything looks kinda gray.

She continues: “Evangelical Christianity makes visible – through purity pledges and doctrine assigning women the role of man’s ‘helpmate’ – the norms and expectations about female virginity and subservience that so often remain hidden in the secular world.” (Ooh. Loves me some man-hate.)

So, get it? Purity and virginity bad. Impurity and promiscuity good. I’ll give Ms. McDonough this: She calls it like she sees it.

She goes on to make the same tired “war on women” claim we’ve heard so much of lately, warning the would-be chaste that biblical sexual morality is really “only about reproduction and male entitlement.”

She then mocks columnist Susan Patton as “a joke” for “arguing in mainstream publications that women who have sex outside of marriage are setting themselves up for disaster and heartbreak.” (Yeah, and?) This is in response to Patton’s observation in a recent Wall Street Journal column that, “The grandmotherly message of yesterday is still true today: Men won’t buy the cow if the milk is free.” To which, with indignation, McDonough sneers: “This is purity culture passed off as ‘common-sense’ wisdom, which was published in a ‘serious’ and secular paper. In 2014.” (So now “secular” is synonymous with slutty?)

McDonough’s advice? Girls, give away that milk now, ya hear! (To which the frisky-frat-boy “bro-choice” choir sings: “Amen!” Hey, “pro-choice” gals, you do know that most “pro-choice” guys only support your so-called “abortion rights” so that you’ll put out, right?)

Secular-”progressives” like McDonough have been working to deconstruct traditional sexual morality for generations. And today – more than at any point in history – they’re having success in spades. Despite her wincey whines to the contrary, Ms. McDonough knows this to be true.

And so do you.

The goal is to impose – under penalty of law – the left’s own moral relativist, sexual anarchist worldview. Hence, we see a flood of unelected liberal judges, for instance, arbitrarily ramming counterfeit “gay marriage” down the throats of millions of Americans, complete with the threat that Christians either join the delusion – and pretend that sin-centered “same-sex marriage” is real and right – or suffer the consequences.

Another example is Obamacare’s despotic HHS abortion mandate that unconstitutionally requires Christian organizations to cast aside millennia-old church doctrine and get with the postmodern, pro-abort program.

The list goes on.

All of which makes McDonough’s central declaration her most ludicrous: “[O]ne point remains clear,” she proclaims. “Conservatives want to enshrine religiously defined norms about sexuality into law.”

No, Ms. McDonough. The only people “enshrining sexuality” into law are “progressive” social engineers like Barack Obama, Justice Anthony Kennedy and the rest of you godless lefties – hell-bent on taking the screws to America.

Now that is “rape culture.”

SOURCE






On White Liberal Hypocrisy: Smug Diversity Pushers And The Safe White Neighborhoods They Live In

By Frank Borzellieri (I have Frank's 2004 book on my desk as I write this.  You can get Don't take it personally here.  That's one way to help him. He comments on ethnic matters with rare frankness  --JR

The hypocrisy of white liberals over integration and the wonderful enrichment that mass immigration is supposed to bring is the gift that never stops giving. If there is one thing you can be absolutely sure of whenever you hear a white liberal espousing the vital importance of diversity, it is that the same person lives in a safe, lily-white community.

What was termed “white flight” in the 1950s and 1960s is a demographic fact of life and everyone knows it. No less an unwilling witness than the U.S. government has reported what everyone knows: when the non-white population of a community reaches between 10 and 20 percent, whites simply leave. Whites will not live in non-white neighborhoods in any meaningful percentage.[The Residential Preferences of Blacks and Whites: A Four-Metropolis Analysis, Housing Policy Debate,  January 1997(PDF)]

I personally, as a libertarian, think all people—black, white, Hispanic, or Asian—should be allowed to live anywhere they want without being browbeaten or forced to live where they don’t want to. My problem is with white liberals who claim that “diversity is strength” but whose actions are very different when it comes to their own lives, their own homes, their own children and their own neighborhoods.

All of this brings me to the particular white liberal hypocrites who have caused me to be fired as a Catholic school principal, not once but twice, for political writings that were never secret and which Monsignor Michael Hull, the “Censor Librorum” of the New York Archdiocese, had already approved as not in violation of Catholic teaching. (See Jared Taylor’s article on the incident [PDF] and this video interview.)

Corinne Lestch, (email her )the New York Daily News reporter who wrote the defamatory 2011 article that threw the New York Archdiocese into panic, is a left-wing activist and who prides herself on destroying people who don’t toe the Politically Correct line on race.

Surely, if there is one white person who must absolutely certainly practice what she so devotedly preaches, it must be Corinne Lestch.  But where does Corinne Lestch live? Well, in Bronxville, New York, a town that is 92 percent white and just one percent black!  No integration or diversity for Corinne Lestch and her family—just for everyone else!

Fran Davies, [Email her] the public relations director for the Archdiocese of New York, who was instrumental in getting me fired from Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in 2011.  Davies is another blowhard when it comes to the great wonders and benefits of racial integration and diversity.

Any diversity for her? Yeah, right. Davies lives in the exclusive town of Bedford, New York, a place that is 88 percent white and 1 percent Hispanic.  I guess diversity is only a strength for other people, not for your family, right, Fran?

New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling [Email him] said in an official statement my views were incompatible with Catholic teaching, contrary to what I had been told four years earlier.

Zwilling is nevertheless living more in accordance with my “incompatible” views than with those he claims for the Church—in Franklin Square, New York, which is 92 percent white and less than one percent black!  Oh my, Joe, how can you deprive your family of the joyous benefits of multi-racialism that you claim to believe in so much?

Timothy McNiff, [Email him] the school superintendent who answers only to the Cardinal himself.  McNiff in a meeting impressed upon me the need to embrace multiculturalism, and actually said “diversity is our strength.” But he lives in the lily-white town of Fairfax Station, Virginia, which is 84 percent white and three percent black!

In a hilarious irony, McNiff and his family live in the same neighborhood as Jared Taylor, the editor of American Renaissance—whom McNiff thinks is a “white supremacist.”  But when it comes to his own home and his own family, McNiff prefers the choices and lifestyle of Jared Taylor than the lifestyle he claims to believe in.

Even in the home he has taken in New York, McNiff has chosen a spot on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which is described by a city website as follows:  "For many class-conscious residents, there's simply no other place to live. Since the late 1800s, it has been the place for Manhattanites who value the cachet of their address, as well as for those who truly appreciate the serenity, charm and rich architecture inherent in the neighborhood's personality.
Maybe they have a diverse doorman..."

Well, well. “Class-conscious”; “cachet”; “serenity, charm and rich architecture.” Isn’t that nice?  By the way, the Upper East Side is also 89 percent white and only 2 percent black.

Why not live in the black section of Harlem, Tim, which is only a few miles away? What about the south Bronx or Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, Tim, if diversity is such a strength? Why are you assiduously avoiding this great strength for yourself and your family?

Eric Rapaglia, the priest who fired me, after weeks of assuring me that he would stand by me (and who used my heterodox writings in a Sunday homily).  Fr. Rapaglia does live in a largely non-white immigrant neighborhood in the Bronx, but because he is assigned there as a priest. His family on Long Island, Staten Island and Florida all live in white neighborhoods.

Is he going to fire them, too?

This hypocrisy on the part of white liberals who push racial integration on everyone else, yet avoid it in their own lives has become cliché. It’s right up there with death and taxes.

White liberal hypocrisy may be a cliché—but it’s not a joke. It destroys lives. I would end this article with a picture of my own residence, but having lost two jobs and exhausted my savings, I am now homeless.

SOURCE

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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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Tuesday, February 25, 2014


Black instructor in Britain accused of £50,000 benefit fraud told he CAN keep claiming disability allowance - despite being filmed playing football



A man who was filmed playing football despite claiming he could often barely walk has been found not guilty of a £50,000 benefit fraud.

Rayan Wilson, 29, has the rare genetic blood condition sickle-cell anaemia.  He was granted the top rate of disability living allowance in 2003 after telling Department for Work and Pensions officials he often had to crawl rather than walk.

However, assessors became suspicious in 2011 when he told them he was working  in injury rehabilitation at Bristol Rovers  Football Club for three to seven hours a week. Investigators then filmed him making slide-tackles as star midfielder for a pub team in a Sunday football league.

Mr Wilson told Bristol Crown Court that his condition fluctuates and on many days he can only walk six to eight yards.

Prosecuting, Francisca Da Costa said: ‘He was observed playing football, running, jumping, making sliding tackles.’

But Tom Wainwright, defending, gave  evidence from sickle-cell doctors that Mr Wilson’s condition – in which the blood cannot carry enough oxygen – is variable.

His clinical coordinator Dr Mark Critchley said Mr Wilson was telling the truth, and had been admitted to hospital 19 times between 2003 and 2013.

Judge Michael Longman directed the jury to find him not guilty of three charges of dishonest representation from 2003 to 2011. Mr Wilson, of Bristol, said: ‘I’m relieved. I had no reason to lie. I hope the case raises the profile for people with sickle cell.’

SOURCE






Are Domestic Violence Statistics Bogus?

A dominant voice in victim-advocacy and research on domestic violence stands accused of flatly fabricating data.

Jacquelyn C. Campbell, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, is accused of fabricating “key statements [about domestic violence] and then representing the statements as findings of a government survey.” On January 14, the victim-advocacy organization Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) filed a formal complaint with the Office of Research Integrity of the Department of Health and Human Services. SAVE wants the unit to “investigate these allegations of research misconduct by Dr. Campbell and colleagues, and take appropriate corrective action.” (As of January 31, the complaint has been rejected and the rejection is being appealed.)

In two highly respected journals, Campbell and various colleagues claimed that “the leading cause of death in the United States among African American women aged 15 to 45 years” was homicide. In the American Journal of Public Health Vol. 93, No. 7, 2003, page 1089, the deaths were described as “femicide, the homicide of women.” In the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Journal 2003, page 18, the deaths were ascribed to “intimate partner violence” or domestic violence homicide.

Attorney General Eric Holder repeated the domestic violence version of the statistic in a 2009 speech; he stated, “Disturbingly, intimate partner homicide is the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 15 to 45.” The statistic was posted in at least two places at the Department of Justice (DOJ) website. The conservative feminist Christina Hoff Sommers took exception. In USA Today (Feb. 4, 2011), she wrote, “That's a horrifying statistic, and it would be a shocking reflection of the black family, and American society generally, if it were true. But it isn't true.”

Over two years later, the Washington Post fact checker, Glenn Kessler investigated Holder's statement and published his results. Kessler wrote that CDC “data show that, for the year 2008 (the year before Holder’s speeches), cancer, heart disease, unintentional injury and HIV/AIDS all topped homicide. Then if you break out intimate-partner homicide, that ends up being seventh or eighth on the list (depending on whether you also include all homicides.)” As a basis of comparison, in 2008, cancer killed 1,871 black females; heart disease, 1,629; all homicides, 326.

Kessler next ran a forensic investigation of the claim. “As best we [Washington Post] and the Justice Department can determine,” he stated, “this all started with a 1998 study by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), titled “Violence Against Intimates,” that examined the data concerning crimes committed by current and former spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends.” But that study did not find domestic-violence homicide to be the leading cause of death in black women aged 15 to 45 years. Indeed, the study even reported a marked decline in such homicides. “From 1976 to 1996, the number of murders of black spouses, ex-spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends decreased from 14 per 100,000 black age 20-44 to just under 4 per 100,000.” Meanwhile, the general murder rate declined only an average of six percent a year.

Where did Holder get such a dramatically inaccurate statistic? Kessler fast forwarded to the 2003 studies in which Campbell was the principal researcher. The American Journal of Public Health study was published earliest, and it referred to “femicide” as the leading cause of death for African-American women aged 15 to 45. The later NIJ study stated “intimate partner violence” was “the leading cause of death.” The 1998 BJS study was cited as a source in both cases but, as Kessler commented, “these facts cannot be found in the original BJS report.”

Campbell did not respond to his request for clarification.

Since 2003, the inexplicable and unexplained statistic has assumed a life of its own. The University of Minnesota’s Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American community Community reiterates it the claim on its website, citing the NIJ study as its source. Other journals, newspapers, and at least one book also use the statistic. According to Google, the American Journal of Public Health study has been referenced online 567 times as of January 13.

Kessler's Washington Post article was published on December 18, 2013. He noted that DOJ officials had assured him “that in coming days they planned to append a note to the Web pages in question making clear that the claim is not valid.” The outrageous inaccuracy remains in the text of material on DOJ site, as it has for over four years. On January 17, changes were made, however. The following statement appears at the bottom of the page:

“These remarks, as originally delivered in 2009, cited a statistic naming intimate partner homicide as the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 15 to 45. This statistic was drawn from a range of reputable sources, including a 2003 study by the National Institute of Justice. However, recent figures indicate other causes of death—including cancer and heart disease—outrank intimate partner homicide for this age group.”

This “clarification” vindicates the statistic as being from reliable sources and implies that it was once correct.

Killing a False 'Fact' Can Be Almost Impossible

Mark Perry is not surprised at the DOJ's failure to make a genuine correction. Perry is an economics professor at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The Washington Post fact checking occurred only because Perry pursued that avenue as a last resort. In an AEI article (Dec. 5, 2013), Perry stated that the false data was “being extensively quoted by universities, journalists, in books and YouTube videos, and by the American Bar Association.” Perry called the DOJ failure especially disturbing in light of Obama's 2009 declaration, “Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over... To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy.”

Christina Hoff Sommers is also unsurprised. For years, Sommers has been battling bad data produced by politically correct feminism. She is perhaps best known for constantly correcting statistics which exclude men and boys or inaccurately represent them.

More HERE






Don’t you dare tell me to check my privilege

Today’s left is a competition in shouting one another down

JULIE BURCHILL, an old-fashioned socialist, hits back at the whining classes

While working-class left-wing political activism was always about fighting the powerful, treating people how you would wish to be treated and believing that we’re all basically the same, modern, non-working-class left-wing politics is about… other stuff. Class guilt, sexual kinks, personal prejudice and repressed lust for power. The trade union movement gave us brother Bill Morris and Mrs Desai; the diversity movement has given us a rainbow coalition of cranks and charlatans. Which has, in turn, has given us intersectionality.

Intersectionality may well sound like some unfortunate bowel complaint resulting in copious use of a colostomy bag, and indeed it does contain a large amount of ordure. Wikipedia defines it as ‘the study of intersections between different disenfranchised groups or groups of minorities; specifically, the study of the interactions of multiple systems of oppression or discrimination’, which seems rather mature and dignified. In reality, it seeks to make a manifesto out of the nastiest bits of Mean Girls, wherein non-white feminists especially are encouraged to bypass the obvious task of tackling the patriarchy’s power in favour of bitching about white women’s perceived privilege in terms of hair texture and body shape.

Think of all those episodes of Jerry Springer where two women who look like Victoria’s Secret models — one black, one white — bitch-fight over a man who resembles a Jerusalem artichoke, sitting smugly in the middle, and you have the end result of intersectionality made all too foul flesh. It may have been intended as a way for disabled women of colour to address such allegedly white-ableist-feminist-specific issues as equal pay, but it’s ended up as a screaming, squawking, grievance-hawking shambles.

The supreme irony of intersectionality is that it both barracks ‘traditional’ feminists for ignoring the issues of differently abled and differently ethnic women while at the same time telling them they have no right to discuss them because they don’t understand them — a veritable Pushmi-Pullyu of a political movement. Entering the crazy world of intersectionality is quite like being locked in a hall of mirrors with a borderline personality disorder coach party. ‘Stop looking at me funny! Why are you ignoring me? Go away, I hate you! Come back, how dare you reject me!’ It’s politics, Jim, but certainly not as my dear old dad knew it.

In-fighting and backbiting have been raised to the level of a very sad Olympic sport — that’ll be the Special Olympics, of course, the real ones being ‘able-ist’. Every thought is an ism and every person an ist in the insania of intersectionality, where it is always winter and never Christmas — sorry, ‘Winterval’. (Mustn’t be Islamophobic.) But sexism, interestingly, isn’t really the hot ticket there; women get picked on — or ‘called out’, to use the approved phrase — more than anyone. Natural-born women, that is. When it happened to one of my dearest friends last year, I became an unwitting participant in this modern danse macabre.

One Friday in January 2013, I was showing off on Facebook of an afternoon — as is my wont now my career’s gone up the Swannee — when it was drawn to my attention that my amica of several decades standing, Suzanne Moore, was being ‘monstered’, as modern parlance has it, on Twitter. She’d actually been driven off it for refusing to apologise for something she’d said, subsequently becoming the target for all sorts of vile threats, including having her face ripped off and fed to feral dogs. Always up for a fight, I hurried through cyberspace, only to find my homey the target of a thoroughly monstrous regiment of bellicose transsexuals and their bed-wetting ‘cheerleaders’. Both groups had taken exception to the following line by Suzanne from an essay on female anger: ‘We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape — that of a Brazilian transsexual.’

Repelled by the filthy threats which were flying fierce and fast at my friend, I began to talk trash on my Facebook page — though even my trash-talk, it must be said, has a vicious elegance that most people’s A-game lacks. I opined that a bunch of gender-benders trying to tell my mate how to write was akin to the Black and White Minstrels advising Usain Bolt on how to run. I stated that it was outrageous that a woman of style and substance should be driven from her chosen mode of time-wasting by a bunch of dicks in chicks’ clothing and their snivelling suck-ups. The usual cool, calm and collected sort of consideration I’m famous for.

It was interesting to me that, rather than join Miss Moore in decrying the notion that every broad should aim to look like an oven-ready porn star, the very cross cross-dressing lobby and their grim groupies had picked on the messenger instead — presumably in order to add to their already flourishing sense of grievance. Suzanne is a life-long left-winger and a feminist — why, I wondered, were fellow travellers threatening her in so rabid a manner? But this, I was to learn, was par for the crotchety course.

Suzanne’s crime, it transpired, was to be ‘cis-gendered’ as opposed to transgendered (that is, she was born female) and not to have ‘checked her privilege’ — what passes for a battle cry in certain ever-decreasing circles these dog days. It’s hardly ‘No pasarán!’ — rather, it declares an intention that it is better to be nagged to death on one’s knees rather than stand by one’s principles on one’s feet. Consider how lucky you are, born women, before you raise your voice above that of a trans-sister! — that veritable cornucopian horn of plenty which we lucky breed fortunate enough to be born to a sensory smorgasbord of periods, PMT, the menopause, HRT and being bothered ceaselessly for sex by random male strangers since puberty take such flagrant delight in revelling in, shameless hussies that we are.

Add to this that Suzanne was, like myself, born into the English working class, and therefore marginally less likely to have beaten the odds than a dancing dog or busker’s cat to have become a public figure, and I was buggered (not being homophobic, there) if I was going to put up with a bunch of middle-class seat-sniffers, educated beyond all instinct and honesty, laying into my girl.

But it wasn’t just that. It was an instinctive desire to defend the socialism of my dead father. Because intersectionality is actually the opposite of socialism! Intersectionality believes that there is ‘no such thing as society’ — just various special interests.

In my opinion, we only become truly brave, truly above self-interest, when fighting for people different from ourselves. My hero as a kid was Jack Ashley — a deaf MP who became the champion of rape victims. These days, the likes of those who went after Suzanne would probably dismiss him as a self-loathing cis-ableist. Intersectionality, like identity politics before it, is pure narcissism.

Though it reminds us ceaselessly to ‘check our privilege’, intersectionality is the silliest privilege of them all, a gang of tools and twats tiptoeing around others’ finer feelings rather than getting stuck in, mucking in, like proper mates — the ultimate privilege, which is to serve each other with collective love and action. The most recently inter-species ruckus happened when the Deirdre Spart impersonator Laurie Penny wrote a passionate defence of the pixie cut in the New Statesman, only to get it in the sleekly shaved neck from women who accused her of not taking the different behaviour of African hair into consideration. When I asked a supporter of this lunacy whether she thought that every subject of interest to women should have every type of woman weighing in with her written opinion, she answered that yes, she did. Seriously? I don’t think my heart can stand the excitement of a weekly Staggers the size of a telephone directory.

I personally can understand black women occasionally getting teed off with their apparently carefree Wash’n’Go white stepsisters. But the most recent and reactionary development within this hissy-fitting hothouse — the insistence of intersectional feminists on the right of transsexuals not to be offended — tells you all you need to know about the essential stupidity of the movement.

The idea that a person can chose their gender — in a world where millions of people, especially ‘cis-gendered’ women, are not free to choose who they marry, what they eat or whether or not their genitals are cut off and sewn up with barbed wire when they are still babies — and have their major beautification operations paid for by the National Health Service seems the ultimate privilege, so don’t tell me to check mine. Here’s hoping that the in-fighting in-crowd of intersectionality disappear up their own intersection really soon, so the rest of us can resume creating a tolerant and united socialism.

SOURCE






Former Tory MPs: ‘If these silly modern female MPs can’t cope, they shouldn’t be there’

The rowdy, aggressive atmosphere in the House of Commons has become so bad that even speaker John Bercow thinks it is a "testosterone-fulled place of yobbery" that is encouraging female MPs to leave.

Indeed four female Tory MPs elected in 2010 have announced they won't stand again in the next election, and there has been speculation that it is because of this male-dominated yobbishness.

But two veteran female politicians believe that the modern crop of female politicians merely need to grow a bit of backbone.

Edwina Currie, who served as a Conservative MP from 1983 to 1997, told Telegraph Wonder Women: “I think one or two current female MPs are fading flowers.  “I’m sure there’s some putting their hand up and saying in a floaty soft voice 'I can’t cope'. They’re just feignons. It’s a French word for the women who carried salts and fainted at the first opportunity.”

She denounced Mr Bercow's comments and said: "I have no respect for [Mr Bercow]. He changes his views according to the world.

“Expressing how you feel about issues may require you to stand up and fight and yell at the Prime Minister. I fail to see that as a bad thing. These silly women should try being a teacher in a tough school in Bermondsey.”

Ann Widdecombe, former Conservative minister, followed Ms Currie's criticisms and said: “If John Bercow can patronisingly say it makes it hard for women, what’s different about us?

“I’m sick of being told that when Parliament gets heated that makes it difficult for women. Does it really mean we can’t hold our own?

“If women are struggling they shouldn’t be there. If you can’t cope with the place don’t be there. Stop thinking of yourself as a woman MP. I never did.”

Their comments come as female MPs have been speaking out against the "aggressive behaviour in the Commons."

SOURCE

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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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Monday, February 24, 2014


NBC Depicts Married 23-Year-Old Olympian as Living an ‘Alternative Lifestyle’



Just read this and weep for our future.

David Wise is at the top of his sport. He’s always smiling among his friends and competitors, however, he’s not like the rest of the field. He is mature.

Not to say the rest of the freestyle skiers of halfpipe are not mature, but Wise is mature far beyond his years. At only twenty-three years old, he has a wife, Alexander, who was waiting patiently in the crowd, and together they have a two-year-old daughter waiting for them to return to their home in Reno, Nevada.

At such a young age, Wise has the lifestyle of an adult.

Well, at 23, he is an adult. He has been an adult for five years. He is old enough to have graduated from college, gotten married, started a family, become a world class skier — all kinds of adult things. Because he is an adult. He also sounds like a great guy.

He wears a Baby Bjorn baby carrier around the house. He also attends church regularly and says he could see himself becoming a pastor a little later down the road.

I’ll grant that in our day, when Christian business owners find their livelihoods threatened by Obamacare mandates and same-sex marriage proponents targeting them with lawsuits, being a Christian is a countercultural path. The culture and the media try their hand at tearing you apart, when they’re not mocking you.

But if being a married, responsible father at 23 is an “alternative lifestyle” then we are well and truly doomed.

Update: NBC has deep-sixed its own story.  I’m sure they’re thrilled that we captured a screenshot of the original story.

Update: NBC aren’t the only ones who have gone after David Wise for being a married adult taking care of his family. Yahoo Sports says he is “wildy uncool.”

SOURCE





What’s the biggest problem with women artists? None of them can actually paint, says Georg Baselitz

Germany’s Georg Baselitz has dismissed centuries of female artists at a stroke – from Artemisia Gentileschi and Frida Kahlo to Bridget Riley and Paula Rego – in his claim that women lack the basic character to become great painters.

Baselitz, who was lauded by the Royal Academy five years ago as one of the greatest living artists, dismissed women painters, saying that they “simply don’t pass the market test, the value test”, adding: “As always, the market is right.”

His comments sparked a backlash, with one art historian calling them “nonsense”.

“Women don’t paint very well. It’s a fact,” the 75-year-old German artist told the German newspaper Der Spiegel. “And that despite the fact that they still constitute the majority of students in the art academies.”

Baselitz conceded there were exceptions, pointing to Agnes Martin, Cecily Brown and Rosemarie Trockel. After praising Paula Modersohn-Becker, however, he added that “she is no Picasso, no Modigliani and no Gauguin”.

Griselda Pollock, professor of the social and critical history of art at the University of Leeds, hit back: “The most boring of all arguments is that men are better than women. It’s self-evidently nonsense.”

Pollock, co-author of Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, said: “Only few men paint brilliantly and it’s not their masculinity that makes them brilliant. It’s their individuality.”

She continued: “You have to change people’s perceptions. Baselitz says women don’t paint very well, with a few exceptions. Men don’t paint very well either, with a few exceptions.”

Baselitz is a divisive figure in the art world. Art critic Martin Gayford has called him a “walking monument of art history, one of the major figures of post-war art, and a point of reference for younger artists”. The Independent’s Michael Glover, meanwhile, has described him as “self-aggrandising and publicity-seeking”.

Sarah Thornton, who wrote Seven Days in the Art World, said: “I disagree with him; the market gets it wrong all the time. To see the market as a mark of quality is going down a delusional path. I’m shocked Baselitz does. His work doesn’t go for so much.”

The record for a work by Baselitz was £3.2m in 2011 for his work Spekulatius. The record for a painting by Yayoi Kusama, a female artist, is £3.8m. In the UK, Bridget Riley has sold for as much as £2.5m.

Pollock said women were held back by several factors but principally the “myth of the painter. The image in the West of a lonely, tortured white man. I could run rings around you with great women artists but there isn’t space in the cultural imagination.”

She added that 20th century art historians had edited out much of the contribution of women painters. “Women have also been put down, when they are good, as having talent and taste, but being too nice and not taking enough risks. It’s a sexist hierarchy.”

Baselitz is not alone in expressing such views about female artists. In 2008, Brian Sewell went further saying there has “never been a first-rank woman artist”. He referred to Bridget Riley and Louise Bourgeois as of the “second and third rank”.

Before the opening of Jenny Saville’s breakout show at the Saatchi Gallery, critic David Sylvester said he “always thought women couldn’t be painters” because “that’s just the way it’s always been”. In 1937, artist Hans Hofmann said Lee Krasner’s work was “so good, you would not know it was painted by a woman”.

Ivan Lindsay, an art dealer and writer, said: “This is a hugely contentious issue. Some people think women just generally aren’t as good, others believe they have been held back throughout history.”

He continued: “It is a fairly outrageous and provocative thing for Baselitz to say and we inevitably react against a comment like that. But he has got to an age where he doesn’t care. Others would probably agree but wouldn’t like to stick their head above the parapet.”

SOURCE





British court prefers political correctness rather than justice in case of a Muslim solicitor and a parking fine

Yesterday, solicitor Asha Khan was given a suspended prison sentence after being found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

The public interest in knowing that a member of the legal profession had herself tried to undermine the very integrity of the justice system is overwhelming.

Yet, disgracefully, the case was almost heard under a shroud of secrecy in the latest example of a court obsessing over political correctness.

Khan, a Muslim who was accused of helping her father dodge a speeding fine, had claimed that for ‘cultural reasons’ she could not speak freely in front of the Press – and, incredibly, Judge Peter Hughes agreed.

It was only after the intervention of this newspaper that the judge accepted he had made a mistake and reversed what risked setting a terrible precedent.

The Mail is glad that – belatedly – the sacred principle of open and transparent justice was upheld.

But doesn’t it speak volumes about how the insidious culture of political correctness has infected every limb of the justice system – from the police and Crown Prosecution Service to the judiciary – that a ban was ever considered acceptable in the first place?

SOURCE





AZ: Lawmakers pass bill to allow faith-based refusal of services

Arizona lawmakers gave final approval on Thursday to a bill that would allow businesses to refuse service to customers when such work would violate their religious beliefs, in a move critics describe as a license to discriminate against gays and others.

Under the bill, a business owner would have a defense against a discrimination lawsuit, provided a decision to deny service was motivated by a "sincerely held" religious belief and that giving such service would have substantially burdened the exercise of their religious beliefs.

"The Arizona legislature sent a clear message today: In our state everyone is free to live and work according to their faith," said Cathi Herrod, president of the conservative Center for Arizona Policy, which helped write the bill.

The bill passed the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives 33-27 on Thursday, a day after it won similar approval in the state Senate. It will go to Republican Governor Jan Brewer, who has not indicated whether she will sign it.

The American Civil Liberties Union branded the legislation as "unnecessary and discriminatory," saying it had nothing to do with God or faith.

"What today's bill does is allow private individuals and businesses to use religion to discriminate, sending a message that Arizona is intolerant and unwelcoming," said Alessandra Soler, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.

The Arizona law is seen by critics as an attack on the rights of gays and lesbians to equality under the law at a time when same-sex marriage activists have notched several court victories in recent months.

Some 17 U.S. states and the District of Columbia now recognize gay marriage in a trend that has gained momentum since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that legally married same-sex couples nationwide are eligible for federal benefits.

Since mid-December, federal judges have ruled curbs on same-sex marriage unconstitutional in Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia, although the decisions have been stayed pending appeal. The New Mexico Supreme Court has also legalized gay marriage.

But Arizona is among more than 30 states that still ban gay or lesbian couples from marrying, by constitutional amendment, statute or both.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, a Democrat who opposed the measure, called it "state-sanctioned discrimination" that clearly targets members of the gay community.

"We're telling them, 'We don't like you,'" Campbell said, during a heated floor debate. "'We don't want you here. We're not going to protect you, we don't want your business, we don't want your money and we don't want your kind around here.'"

State Representative Eddie Farnsworth said the bill was wrongly being portrayed as discriminatory and that it only made "minor tweaks" to current state law.

"This is simply protecting religious freedom that is recognized and defended and supported in the First Amendment that the founders wanted - nothing else," he said.

SOURCE

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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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