An axe-wielding multiculturalist



Two shop workers managed to wrestle an axe-wielding armed raider as he attempted to rob a London convenience store.

Errol Woodger, 28, threatened one staff member behind the counter of the convenience store in Greenwich, south east London on October 13, last.

Woodger raced behind the counter and punched his victim. He then lashed out several times with his axe in a bid to force the man to open up the till.

The 28-year-old criminal waved the axe at a second man, believed to be a customer, before returning his attention to the man behind the till.

After 22 seconds, a second employee approached the scene was threatened by Woodger, who had a hooded top tightly secured around his head.

A few seconds later, the first employee manages to grab the end of the axe and Woodger panics and tries to flee.

The second worker races to the hatch at the end of the counter and tackles the raider. Both shop workers wrestle with Woodger, forcing him to the ground, narrowly avoiding a display of wine bottles.

During the assault, Woodger kicked the man behind the counter several time and lashed out at the cash register with the axe in an effort to smash it open.

Police arrived at the St Nicholas convenience store in Greenwich to find Woodger being pinned to the ground by the two shop assistants.

The men, who are both in their late 30s, were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

Woodger was later jailed for four years at Woolwich Crown Court  late last month for attempted robbery and possession of an offensive weapon.

Detective Constable Laura Hills of Greenwich CID said: 'This was a vicious attempt to rob the store and I would like to commend the victims for their extreme bravery in tackling and apprehending a man armed with an axe until police arrived. 'Greenwich will be a safer place with Woodger behind bars.'

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Psychology Today No Longer Accepting Ads for Gay Conversion Therapy

It's true that the therapy has low rates of success but so does psychoanalysis.  Are they banning psychoanalysis too?

 Psychology Today announced last week that it will no longer accept ads from therapists who offer “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy” to gays who want to leave the homosexual lifestyle.  The magazine has also deleted any medical practitioners who provide such treatment from its professional listings.

“Psychology Today does not endorse or publish ads for reparative therapy in print, online or in professionals’ profiles,” Charles Frank, who runs the magazine’s Therapy Directory, said in a March 3 statement.

“The Therapy Directory has removed the individual whose profile included a discussion of conversion therapy. We have informed all Directory professionals that those whose profiles offer conversion therapy will be delisted.”

The announcement came less than four hours after Frank emailed The Huffington Post saying that “we take care not to sit in judgment of others by allowing or denying individual participation” in the directory.

On February 23, Fred Sainz, vice president of communications and marketing for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a gay rights group, wrote a letter to the magazine’s CEO and publisher stating that “by offering a venue for these medically debunked practices, Psychology Today is lending them a veneer of credibility – propping up a fraudulent industry that takes advantage of vulnerable individuals, including children and families….

“These practices are based on the false idea that being LGBT is a mental illness than needs to be cured, an ideal that has been rejected by every major mental health group for decades,” Sainz wrote.

Gay conversion therapy for minors has been banned in New Jersey, California and the District of Columbia. A bill outlawing it passed the Colorado House on Monday.

The HRC letter specifically mentioned a therapist in California who provides gay conversion therapy as part of his practice.

“On February 14, 2015, HRC became aware that licensed Marriage & Family Therapist Thomas Schmierer was advertising conversion therapy services through the Psychology Today website,” the letter stated.

“Mr. Schmierer is based in California and the group therapy sessions offered are based in Riverside, California. While California law makes clear that these practices may not be offered to minors, the advertisement does not clarify that minors may not participate in the advertised sessions,” the letter said.

But Schmierer says he has broken no laws and has had “a lot of success” treating patients with unwanted same-sex attraction.

“What I’m doing is legal,” he told CNSNews.com in an email. “I have a state license to do it. I basically sit in a room with my clients and I talk and listen, mostly listen. I care for my client’s with a fatherly love. They feel that love and ultimately feel loved and lovable. This process is transformational. 

“I have a lot of success in treating those with unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA). At this point in my career, I actually expect my therapy to work as long as the client is willing to put in the work.

“Most of my clients with unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA) desire to be married to a woman and to have children with her. They want to decrease their same-sex feelings and increase their opposite-sex feelings. I accept my clients as they are. I don’t tell them what they should or should not believe. I affirm them,” Schmierer said.

“Psychology Today and the so-called Human Rights Campaign (HRC) do not accept my clients for who they are as individuals with unwanted same-sex attraction. They seem to want to rigidly force my clients to change so that they will hold the same beliefs as them, that one must embrace one’s homosexuality.

“I can’t do that. I’m not that rigid. I respect freedom and individuality too much,” Schmierer told CNSNews.com.

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) is urging the magazine to reconsider its decision, citing studies of twins on three continents that found that most identical co-twins did not share their siblings’ same-sex attractions.

“If an identical twin has same-sex attraction, the chances the co-twin has it are only about 11 percent for men and 14 percent for women. Because they have identical DNA, it ought to be 100 percent,” said Dr. Neil Whitehead, a biochemist and statistician from New Zealand.

“The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors... Sexual orientation is not set in concrete,” he said.

“We are deeply disappointed that Psychology Today’s leadership chose to cave to the pressure of the pro-homosexual lobby rather than continue to offer individuals access to information that can help them in their journey towards overcoming unwanted same-sex attraction and gender confusion,” PFOX’s executive director, Regina Griggs, said in a statement.

“PFOX supports the right of every person to obtain the type of help that best meets their personal needs, and this includes the right to talk therapy. We urge Psychology Today to reconsider its decision and support the opportunity for individuals to access the help they decide is best for them.”

In a July 2013 oped published in USA Today, Nicholas Cummings, a former president of the American Psychological Association (APA) who sponsored the APA’s 1975 resolution that declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder, wrote that “contending that all same-sex attraction is immutable is a distortion of reality.

“Attempting to characterize all sexual reorientation therapy as ‘unethical’ violates patient choice and gives an outside party a veto over patients’ goals for their own treatment. A political agenda shouldn’t prevent gays and lesbians who desire to change from making their own decisions,” Cummings wrote.

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The U.S. navy says Christian chaplains must not teach the Bible

If you think chaplains have some of the safest jobs in the military, think again. Men of the cloth are under some of the heaviest fire – and it’s coming from their own side! In the Navy, the message is clear: get on board with political correctness or lose your job. Like most Christians, Lt. Commander Wes Modder knew the military was changing. But he didn’t know how much until the battle landed on his doorstep. For years, Modder had served some of the most elite fighting forces in the military: Navy SEALs.

I say “had,” because the 19-year veteran has been stripped of his duties for sharing the good news he was hired to share. In a stunning turn of events, the chaplain was sabotaged by one of his own men, who secretly gathered enough information on Modder’s beliefs and private counseling sessions to file a formal complaint. Believe it or not, he was targeted by his own assistant – who Modder didn’t realize was gay. Looking back, the chaplain says the young officer asked a lot of questions about homosexuality, which Modder answered as most would expect: in accordance with the Bible’s teachings.

The mask finally slipped in December, when representatives with the Equal Opportunity office served Modder with papers accusing him of “discrimination.” Captain Jon Fahs – who five months earlier praised Modder as the “best of the best” – now insists that he “failed to show tolerance and respect.” Worse, he didn’t have a chance to defend himself. Almost immediately, the dad of four was relieved of his duties and told to clean out his office.

He was guilty before proven innocent. And of what? Fulfilling his job description? Modder’s attorney, Michael Berry, doesn’t deny that Chaplain Modder exercised his faith. It was, after all, his primary role! “To be clear,” Berry told Fox News’s Todd Starnes, “Chaplain Modder does not dispute that during private, one-on-one pastoral care and counseling sessions, he expressed his sincerely held religious beliefs that: sexual acts outside of marriage are contrary to biblical teaching.”

Shocked but not shaken, Modder says that he’ll push back. (Hear the story in his own words here.) “Every fiber in my being wants to run away from this – but if I do, I’m not being obedient to the Lord. I need to stand up for righteousness… It’s going to be hard for me, but it’s what God has called me to do.” Chaplain Modder knows that this isn’t just about him – but every service member who deserves the right to enjoy the religious liberty they’re fighting for. “Anytime somebody wants to live their faith out – there are people who say that is offensive,” Berry explained. But when a chaplain can’t speak on the tenets of his faith, what’s left to say? Why bother having chaplains at all?

Unfortunately, these are the consequences of the radical social policies President Obama has forced on the military. Now we have Bibles being tossed from Navy lodges, cadets ordered to erase Scripture from personal white boards, and chaplains hauled before boards of inquiry. It isn’t supposed to be this way – and it doesn’t have to be this way – if Americans who love their freedoms and their country will stand up and speak out! Click over to our petition to the Secretary of the Navy and Defense Secretary Ash Carter and demand Chaplain Modder’s reinstatement!

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Believe it or not, people actually like  eating fatty food and smoking

Public information campaigns and nutritional labelling are good at informing people about what’s healthy and what isn’t, but don’t seem to have much impact on what they actually eat. That’s what a comprehensive review of 121 ‘healthy eating’ policies found, and I think it should make us rethink more heavy-handed policies to do with unhealthy food, tobacco and alcohol.

There are benefits as well as costs to every activity that public health groups want to discourage. We know there are benefits because people do them freely. But we know there are costs as well, like living a shorter and less healthy life.

The liberal view is that each person’s cost-benefit calculation is different, because they enjoy and dislike things differently. In this view there’s no case for stopping people from doing things unless they don’t actually have the information they need to make a judgement. We should want to make people’s lives better as they themselves understand ‘better’, not according to a single measure we’ve decided on, like lifespan.

So telling people that sugar makes them fatter may be a good policy, if they didn’t already know that. And policies that do that do seem to make people more informed. But what’s interesting is the impact they have on people’s diets – usually not much, and sometimes an unexpected one.

For example, a 2008 study found that people who used nutrition labels had big increases in fiber and iron intake, but no change to their total fat, saturated fat or cholesterol intake. The UK’s ‘five a day’ campaign about fruit and veg was very successful at getting people to think about eating more fruit and veg, but increased people’s intake by an average of 0.3 portions a day (which was not viewed as being a very good improvement). 44 studies of similar campaigns in the US and EU have shown about the same size effect.

To some people that might make it look like we need to do more. To me it looks as if people view the costs of changing their diet to something less enjoyable or convenient as being quite important, and are willing to forgo some level of health to avoid that.

Maybe this tells us something about cigarette regulation too – there is some evidence that smokers actually overestimate the risk of smoking and some that they underestimate it. If they do overestimate the risks, we’re ‘informing’ people so much that it’s become misleading.

It would be fair to respond to this that people have no real way of doing a proper cost-benefit analysis about eating sugary foods or smoking, but because the state can’t measure the benefits – that is, the pleasure – it is just as limited.

The fact that people do change their habits about iron and fibre, but not fats, suggests that they aren’t ignorant, they just don’t want to eat less fat! If that’s the case and we’re working to improve people’s lives on their terms, there is no case at all for more heavy-handed policies like taxes, ingredients restrictions and advertising bans.

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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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