Tuesday, April 07, 2015



Gang of multiculturalists battered 81-year-old woman with metal bar as they ransacked her home



A gang of thugs who battered an 81-year-old woman with a metal bar as they ransacked her home were jailed for a total of 44 years.

Jermaine Kellman, 29, Marvin Sempler, 30, Clinton Jackson, 25, and Darren Lewis, 34, targeted the couple in their 80s after they were tipped off that money was kept in their home in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.

Verna Fisher, then 81, awoke in total darkness in the early hours of 31 July last year confronted by four men wearing white balaclavas and gloves.

She tried to cry out for help, but Lewis had his hand clasped over her mouth while demanding money, the Old Bailey heard.

Mrs Fisher was thrown off the bed while the burglars took her purse containing £250 and a mobile phone from under her pillow.

But the men continued to demand more money before Lewis struck the pensioner twice with a metal bar, leaving her covered in blood, prosecutor Philip Evans said.

Her bed-ridden husband Mortimer, who was 85, was sleeping in another room and woke with a man standing over him, but was powerless to help his wife.

The couple were so traumatised by the terrifying ordeal that they had to leave their home.  Mrs Fisher now lives with her daughter, while Mr Fisher sadly passed away in October 2014.

There were gasps from the public gallery as Jackson was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment and brothers Kellman and Sempler were each handed 13-year jail terms. Lewis will be sentenced later this month.

Judge Steven Gullick said offences of violence committed at night in the homes of the elderly and vulnerable must be met with significant custodial sentences.

The court heard a cousin of Sempler and Kellman, who had worked for the Fishers as a cleaner, told the brothers that the couple kept cash in their home.

Lewis was the man brandishing an eight or nine inch metal bar as he demanded money off the petrified pensioner, the prosecutor said.

Mrs Fisher was then thrown off her bed and the gang found a purse, containing £250 and her bank cards, and a mobile phone under her pillow.

‘Lewis continued to demand money and to reinforce his demands struck her twice on the nose with the metal bar,’ Judge Gullick said.

He also demanded she give him the PIN number to her bank cards, the court heard.

‘Despite her ordeal Mrs Fisher had the presence of mind to give Lewis numbers to cards she knew were not in her purse,’ the judge added.

Kellman, of Wandsworth, southeast London; Sempler, of Lewisham, and Lewis, of Croydon pleaded guilty to a single count of aggravated burglary.  Jackson, of Norwood, south London, was convicted of the same offence following a trial at St Albans Crown Court.

SOURCE






I Oppose Gay Marriage. Should I Still Be Able to Get a Job?

A pizzeria in Indiana may go out of business because its owners told a local TV station they wouldn’t cater a gay wedding.

Amid the uproar over the state’s religious freedom law, Crystal O’Connor, owner of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Ind., told a local ABC News affiliate, “If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no.”

The owners were clear they serve LGBT customers outside of a gay wedding. “If a gay couple or a couple belonging to another religion came in to the restaurant to eat, they would never deny them service,” reported the ABC affiliate.

But that’s not good enough.

“Oh, and if you believe this review isn’t a review because I’ve never been to this pizzeria, I have been. We’ve all been. It was called Auschwitz,” wrote Lenore C. on Yelp.

“Die in a pizza fire, haters! If you’re going to hate, you don’t deserve love in any form. No love from your neighbors, your “god”, or my wallet. You don’t deserve to live in the united states, and you most certainly don’t deserve to own a business!” wrote A.R., also on Yelp.

Is this the path Americans—whether for or against legalizing gay marriage—want to go down?

Memories Pizza isn’t an isolated incident. Last year, Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was forced to step down, after a heated campaign against him because he had donated in support of California’s Proposition 8, which held that marriage was between a man and a woman. In January, Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran was fired after an uproar over passages in his self-published book that denounced homosexual actions.

Neither Eich or Cochran was accused of discrimination against LGBT Americans. “I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness,” said Mozilla executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker of Eich in 2014. Cochran told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution “city officials told him that their investigation showed ‘zero’ instances where he had discriminated against anybody as chief.”

But this isn’t about actual discrimination, apparently. It’s about demanding all Americans support gay marriage.

Yes, polling shows increased support for gay marriage in recent years. (Converts include President Obama. Why was it not bigoted to vote for him in 2008 again?) But polling also shows a significant chunk of Americans remain opposed. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this month showed about a third of Americans oppose gay marriage.

But this isn’t about the numbers. It’s about whether we want to exclude from jobs Americans—including yes, myself—who don’t support same-sex marriage. It’s about whether we want to force businesses to either support same-sex marriage or potentially face fines and/or being forced to shut down

According to a February poll, that’s not what most Americans want. Fifty-seven percent of Americans thought wedding-related businesses with religious concerns should be allowed to refuse providing service to same-sex couples, while 39 percent thought they shouldn’t.

Of course, Americans should be able to choose which businesses they patronize—and which they don’t. But do we really want to make supporting gay marriage a litmus test for every business owner and employee?

Do we really want to make Americans afraid to say they oppose same-sex marriage for fear it will lead to being fired or threatened?

The likely closing of Memories Pizza—although the over $150K raised for the O’Connors in fundraising site GoFundMe from supporters suggests they will have financial support for what they do next—isn’t a win for gay marriage advocates (some of whom believe in religious freedom for all Americans, including those who oppose same-sex marriage.) It’s a win for bullies—and for those who seek to impose their own beliefs on everyone else. And it’s a loss for the rest of us.

SOURCE






Ted Cruz’s Campaign Shows the Duplicity of the ‘Multicultural’ Left

Ted Cruz’s official campaign isn’t even two weeks old, and already it’s done the nation a favor—by highlighting the duplicity of the “multicultural” left and what it is really after.

Ever since Cruz announced his candidacy for president, “Latino leaders” have been stepping all over themselves to declare that not only does he not speak for Hispanics (something only they presumably do) but he’s not even a “legitimate” Hispanic.

All of which serves to pull the curtain back on multiculturalism: Defined by liberals, it’s a concept that exists solely to advance liberal objectives.

It’s not ancestry that makes one a member of a group but whether one adheres to the leftist worldview that created the group-identity mindset in the first place.

And it’s certainly not designed to serve the interests of the individual members of any group, beyond the “benefit” of fostering an “us vs. them” mentality. Thus, the dismissal of Cruz’s “Hispanicity.”

“Although Ted Cruz has a Latino name and immigration in his past, there the similarities between the Latino community and him end,” the co-directors of the Dream Act Coalition, Cesar Vargas and Erika Andiola, said.

Matt Barreto, founder of the leftist-leaning Latino Decisions polling group, took it a step further: “He is going to go after the vote of the people who don’t like Latinos—that’s his crowd, the anti-immigration crowd.”

Cruz, added Barreto, opposes illegal immigration and ObamaCare, and these positions make him a pariah among Hispanics.

And who can forget how former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said that he didn’t think Cruz should even “be defined as a Hispanic”?

Richardson, himself often identified in the media as “a leading Hispanic,” is Mexican on his mother’s side. Cruz is Cuban on his father’s. The Rev. Rafael Bienvenido Cruz was born in Matanzas, Cuba.

Far from running away from his father’s legacy, Cruz speaks often about Rafael’s experiences in Cuba, how he suffered imprisonment and torture there.

He also very often uses the Cuban Revolution as a cautionary tale for what could happen in this country if we adopt central planning.

And Cruz speaks about his father’s immigrant travails in this country—how he washed dishes and made his way, despite starting out with literally only a fistful of dollars.

Again, the senator makes full use of his father’s immigrant story as a parable that demonstrates the virtues of America.

Now, the Census Bureau is crystal clear in its definitions: “‘Hispanic or Latino’ refers to a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.”

As I and many others have long argued, “Hispanics,” like “Asians,” is a synthetically made ethnicity with little basis in reality, but this is what the definition is.

The problem for Ted Cruz is that his and Rafael’s story of endurance, assimilation and ultimate achievement gets it all backward—as far as the guardians of multiculturalism are concerned.

They don’t want immigrants, at least not immigrants as we’ve traditionally thought of them. What the multiculturalists want is something else altogether: They look at the same people and see instead minorities.

Minorities—a concept that came into vogue only in the 1970s—are different. They have grievances that come from “a history of past discrimination” and therefore require “remedies,” such as affirmative action and quotas.

Far from practices that instill pride in immigrant achievement or the country that made it possible, what results is a mindset that nurtures grievances and divides society.

Minorities take the nation from E Pluribus Unum to, in Mayor David Dinkins’ words, a Gorgeous Mosaic.

As John Fonte of the Hudson Institute put it a decade and a half ago, multiculturalism holds that for “subordinate” groups such as minorities to be empowered, it is “necessary first to delegitimize the dominant belief systems of the predominant groups and to create a ‘counter-hegemony’ (i.e., a new system of values for the subordinate groups).”

Multiculturalism is a handy way to make counter-hegemony succeed.

PayPal founder Peter Thiel, in his “The Diversity Myth” (written with David O. Sacks), called it a “word game” that has allowed radicals to succeed, where “an honest discussion would not lead to results that fit the desired agenda.”

Clearly, the Rev. Rafael Bienvenido Cruz and the son he raised would want no part of that. No wonder they find themselves kicked off the Hispanic island.

SOURCE





Devout Christian NHS worker launches appeal after being suspended for inviting a Muslim colleague to church

A devout Christian has launched an appeal against an employment tribunal which found she had ‘bullied’ a Muslim colleague by praying for her and inviting her to church.

Victoria Wasteney, 38, says she was branded a ‘religious nutcase’ when she was suspended from her job as a senior occupational therapist, after her colleague Enya Nawaz, then aged 25, accused her of trying to convert her to Christianity.

Her lawyers have now submitted a challenge to an employment tribunal, arguing that they broke the law by restricting her freedom of conscience and religion - enshrined in article nine of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Miss Wasteney, a born-again Christian, was working at the St John Howard Centre in Homerton, east London, when she became friendly with a junior colleague Miss Nawaz.

The two women had discussed Islam and Christianity, as well as the work done by her church at the Christian Revival Church in the O2 Arena in Greenwich against human trafficking.

When Miss Nawaz was upset about health problems, Miss Wasteney said she offered to pray for her – putting her hand on her knee and asking God for ‘peace and healing’.

She also invited her to church events and gave her colleague a book, I Dared To Call Him Father, about a Muslim woman who converts to Christianity, but denied she was trying to make Miss Nawaz convert.

Miss Nawaz went onto make a formal complaint, and the East London NHS Foundation Trust suspended Ms Wasteney on full pay from her £50,000-a-year job for nine months while they investigated in June 2013.

A disciplinary hearing upheld three complaints about the book, the invitation to attend church and Miss Wasteney’s offer to pray for Miss Nawaz, and gave her a written warning for misconduct.

She continues to work for the Trust, but not in her specialist field.

She launched her own employment tribunal against the NHS in January, saying she wanted to raise awareness about the increasing difficulties experienced by religious people in the workplace and claiming the organisation had failed to clear her of wrong doing because it would be 'politically incorrect' to find a Christian innocent.

Speaking in January to the Daily Mail Miss Wasteney said: 'I'm not anti-Muslim and I'm always very mindful to be sensitive to other people's beliefs.

 'We discussed our beliefs but I certainly didn't tell her that my way was the only way. I don't even believe it's possible to force someone to convert.

'But the way it was all handled left me looking like a religious nutcase and I would like an acknowledgement that there is a negative attitude towards Christianity in some areas of the public sector.'

The latest legal bid, she argues, will have implications for the right to express religious beliefs in the workplace.

Miss Wasteney will be represented in court by human rights barrister Paul Diamond, and her appeal is supported by the Christian Legal Centre, according to The Sunday Times.

Chief executive of the centre Andrea Williams told the paper: ‘Persecution starts with marginalisation.  ‘Where countries let go of a cohesive Christian world view you get chaos and marginalisation.  ‘We are letting go of what has given us our freedom.’

She added:'The tribunal found it was inappropriate for her to engage in prayers or give her colleague a book given her senior position.  'She is just an open, friendly, kind person and had a normal relationship with a colleague and there was nothing untoward.

'We are going to the Employment Appeals Tribunal and will be arguing that the ECHR enshrines the freedom to be able to speak about faith in the workplace and not be disciplined for it and have conversations with others. 'We lodged the papers on Thursday.

'The NHS is increasingly dominated by a suffocating liberal agenda that chooses to bend over backwards to accommodate certain beliefs but punishes the Christian.'

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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