Immigrants who beat their children should get special treatment, says British judge
           
Immigrants should be allowed to “slap and hit” their children because of a “different cultural context” when they are new arrivals in Britain, a High Court judge suggested yesterday.

Mrs Justice Pauffley indicated police and social services should make allowances for immigrant groups, as she heard an application from an Indian man alleged to have beaten his wife and seven-year-old son.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said in evidence heard by the court he was hit on the back and leg with a “long belt”.

The father denied ever using a belt to strike the child but admitted he would deliver a “slap or a tap” to “keep him disciplined".

In her ruling the judge concluded: "I do not believe there was punitively harsh treatment of [the boy] of the kind that would merit the term physical abuse.

"Proper allowance must be made for what is, almost certainly, a different cultural context.  "Within many communities newly arrived in this country, children are slapped and hit for misbehaviour in a way which at first excites the interest of child protection professionals."

She added: "In this instance ... (the boy) did not appear to have suffered more than sadness and transient pain from what was done to him."

The Children’s Act 2004 made it illegal for parents in England and Wales to chastise children if blows led to bruising, swelling, cuts, grazes or scratches, with the offence carrying up to five years’ imprisonment.

Philip Hollobone, the Conservative MP for Kettering, said: “We simply can’t have a situation where different rules apply to families from different family backgrounds.  “The law of the land should apply equally regardless of the heritage of the children involved.  “Children with Indian heritage deserve the same protection in law as white British children.”

He added: “I really do wonder sometimes whether judges in our senior courts have adequate training for some of the cases that come before them.”

Mrs Justice Pauffley, sitting in the Family Division of the High Court in London, heard the boy's parents met and married in India a decade ago.  They travelling to Britain on a six-month visa but failed to return when the visas ran out and became "overstayers", the court heard.

The husband was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his wife but was released on bail and told to stay away from her and the youngster.  He then launched family court litigation in October last year asking a judge to return the boy to his care.

The judge said she had been asked to make preliminary decisions about whether - on a balance of probabilities - the man had attacked his wife and son.

The boy made "physical assault allegations" about his father and told investigators: "With his belt, he kind of hits me."  He described being hit on his back and leg with a "long belt".

The youngster was asked how he felt and replied: "Sad ... But I'm little brave ... I'm not scared of him... But normally I'm sad.”

He "nodded his head" when asked whether it hurt, or left marks and whether they "went quite quickly".

Mrs Justice Pauffley said the man denied ever striking his son "with a belt or otherwise".

Asked to describe what he meant by a "slap or a tap" the father said: "This was not to slap [the boy] badly but to keep him disciplined".

Mrs Justice Pauffley concluded the man had not physically abused his son but had subjected his wife to a "horribly aggressive and violent assault".

The judge said he attempted to strangle her and "violently pushed" her, leaving the woman extremely distressed and the boy "worried, even terrified".

Mrs Justice Pauffley gave no detail about the progress of any police investigation.

The judge, Dame Anna Pauffley, 59, has sat in the Family Division since 2003 and has one step son and two step daughters with her husband, whom she married in 2001.

SOURCE







Rev. Graham to Bruce Jenner: ‘Changing the Outside Doesn’t Change the Inside’

In reference to ex-Olympian Bruce Jenner’s pretend transition into a woman through some surgery, long hair, and lots of makeup, Rev. Franklin Graham said you can change the outside but not the inside because “no man-made modification can fix” what is broken in the heart – only God can fix that.

“In Vanity Fair’s cover story about Bruce Jenner’s gender change, the author talks as if Bruce and his newly chosen identity of ‘Caitlyn’ are two separate people,” said Rev. Graham in a June 2 post on Facebook.  “Bruce’s son Burt said, ‘I have high hopes that Caitlyn is a better person than Bruce.’”

“The article also says Jenner openly acknowledges mistakes made with his children as Bruce, ‘and expresses genuine regret,’” reported Rev. Graham, adding,  “I have news for them—changing the outside doesn’t change the inside.”

“No man-made modification can fix what’s wrong with the heart,” said the reverend.  “Only God can fix the human heart.”

“If we ask for His forgiveness and accept by faith His Son, Jesus Christ, He will wipe the slate clean,” said Franklin Graham, son of world-renowned pastor Billy Graham.  “The Bible says, ‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new’ (2 Corinthians 5:17).”

SOURCE







The New BDS Challenges

by HERBERT LONDON (Big Herb is in his mid 70s now. I have been reading him for around 40 years and he is still spot on IMHO)

A growing global pro-Palestinian movement to boycott Israel took on new proportions when the top executive of Orange, a leading French telecommunications company, said he would withdraw from the Israeli market if he could.

Britain's National Union of Students voted recently to align itself with the goals of the boycott movement, following a series of similar symbolic moves on American campuses.

Symbols count. For many, what they want to believe is what they consider true. Needless to say, many in the Middle East do not believe in Israel's existence. To cite yet another example, Harper Collins one of the world's largest publishing houses, sold English language atlases to schools in the Middle East that omit the state of Israel.

As a Harper Collins official noted the inclusion of Israel in a map of the Middle East was "unacceptable" to customers in the Gulf and was resistant to "local preferences." Some Customs Officers in an unnamed Gulf country only permitted the import of atlases when Israel had been deleted by hand.

There is little doubt about the motive of this deletion: An effort was made to delegitimize Israel using sales success as tactical ploy. With pressure, Harper Collins apologized for the omission and removed the doctored atlases from sale in the territories.

Yet even though Harper Collins ultimately made the right decision, there will be other attempts to delegitimize Israel. The BDS movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions) has been referred to as the latest form of anti-zionism and, yes, even anti-semitism. But while the strategy may be familiar, i.e. demonize Israel, the tactics are different. The BDS movement is a triple threat embracing politics, culture, and economics.

It has gone after Soda Stream, a company once housed in the West Bank. The BDS movement has attempted to exclude Israeli professors from international conferences. It has attacked Israeli tennis and soccer players at international tournaments. And it attempted to oust Israel from FIFA, soccer's global governing body. It has excoriated performers over their appearances on an Israeli stage. BDS acolytes have organized petitions and demonstrations at campuses across the globe.

This is in essence a systematic effort to undermine Israel as a nation, to isolate it as a pariah state. The often hostile action of proponents appears as a form of anti-semitism. While this contention is routinely denied, it is important to note that Israel is a sanctuary for Jews threated and persecuted in other venues. It is not merely a home, but a retreat against bigotry. Israel was not founded on the ashes of the holocaust, but the slaughter of six million Jews is a reminder that Israel is the last line of defense against the growing horde of terrorists.

Moreover, the BDS movement is clever and shadowy. It claims to be an extension of human rights efforts. But whose rights are being violated? Those who have challenged BDS adherents like Scarlet Johannsson and Lady Gaga are to be commended. Yet the risk for the opposition is high since the proponents of the movement are relentless and new avenues are explored each day for the expression of hate and recrimination.

Alterations on a map seem innocent enough. And who cares whether a rocker can perform in Tel Aviv. The BDS adherents are merely expressing another point of view, say some supporters. Alas, these matters aren't trivial because the assumptions that undergird the BDS movement, particularly the arguments surrounding the founding of the Israeli state, are fraught with lies and deception and are designed to mobilize public opinion and action against the only genuinely democratic state in the Middle East.

Lies, however, are not easily challenged when students at American universities are propagandized by a host of professors who assign Edward Said's Orientalism as if it were The Holy Bible. This widely disseminated text makes the claim Israel is a colonizing state exploiting the Palestinian population. Claims of this kind ignore the complicated historical record to make a point; a point used by activists to demonize the state of Israel.

BDS is now something of a rallying cry on American colleges. Seven of the ten student councils in the University of California system have adopted the BDS agenda. Opposition voices have been shouted down, in many cases with open debate on the issues considered an outmoded notion. For proponents, claims are dispositive; as they see it, it is time to stop talking and act.

The well-organized and financed Muslim Student Association is in the vanguard of the BDS movement. It is instructive that this organization is joined by Jewish groups such as J Street and the New Israel Fund that believe sanctions against Israel will lead to a more accommodative position with the Palestinian authority than the Netanyahu government has displayed thus far.

The favorite tactics of BDS proponents is generally fear. In order to create anxiety, flyers are distributed in student dorms telling undergraduates that as a result of administration decisions, they must leave their rooms by the following morning. Presumably this is an attempt to illustrate the horror associated with those who were obliged to leave their homes at the outbreak of the 1948 War for Independence. On every level this is a reenactment of the theater of the absurd. It is designed to instill emotion instead of reasonable analysis and it misreads the historical record.

But analysis doesn't count in the hothouse of resentment. BDS is on the march at many universities that largely cave into the well-financed voices of anger

SOURCE







The case for Israel is rooted in more than security

by Jeff Jacoby

NOSES WENT out of joint and knickers got in a twist when Israel's new deputy foreign minister delivered her inaugural speech to the Jewish state's diplomatic corps.

"We need to get back to the basic truth of our right to this land," said Tzipi Hotovely, who is running the foreign ministry's day-to-day operations, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retains the title of foreign minister. The land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, she declared, and their claim to it is as old as the Bible. "It's important to say this" when making Israel's case before the world, and not to focus solely on Israel's security interests. Of course security is a profound concern, Hotovely observed, but arguments grounded in justice, morality, and deep historical rights are stronger. She even quoted the medieval Jewish sage Rashi, who wrote that Genesis opens with God's creation of the world to preempt any subsequent charge that the Jewish claim to the land was without merit.

Needless to say, Hotovely's message was scorned on the left as primitive zealotry. "Her remarks raised eyebrows among many in the audience," the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. One diplomat said his colleagues "were in shock" at the suggestion that they should cite the Torah when advocating for Israel abroad.

Diplomacy is not Bible class. Yet why should Israel and its envoys shrink from making the fullest defense of Jewish rights in what was always the Jewish homeland? Though modern Zionism didn't arise as a political movement until the 1800s, the land of Israel has always been at the core of Jews' national consciousness. Even during 19 centuries of exile, Jewish life in Israel (renamed "Palestine" by the Romans) never ceased. In all those years, no other people ever claimed the land as their country, or built it into their own nation-state.

Jewish sovereignty wasn't regained by downplaying the historical and religious bonds linking the Jews to the land. World leaders and opinion-makers didn't regard those links with patronizing disdain; many found them intensely compelling.

In 1891, alarmed by reports of Jews being massacred in Russia, hundreds of prominent Americans signed a petition urging the restoration of Palestine to Jewish rule. "According to God's distribution of nations it is their home, an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force," declared the petition, among whose signatories were the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the speaker of the House of Representatives, future President William McKinley, and scores of influential industrialists, bankers, educators, and journalists. (One of them was Charles H. Taylor, the first publisher of the Boston Globe).

Twenty-five years later, when Britain famously committed itself to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," its motives were not only strategic and pragmatic, but religious. Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour spoke feelingly of Jewish history. "I could tell you all the kings of Israel," Lloyd George said, recalling his school days, "but I doubt whether I could have named half a dozen of the kings of England."

President Woodrow Wilson, whose father was a Presbyterian minister, also endorsed the Zionist cause. "To think," he later exclaimed, "that I, the son of the manse, should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people!" Still more enchanted with the revival of Jewish governance in the Jewish homeland was Harry Truman, whose lifelong study of the Bible strengthened his conviction that the Jews had a legitimate historical right to Palestine.

The immemorial Jewish bond with the land is even enshrined in international law. When the League of Nations set the terms of the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, it unanimously recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and the justice of "reconstituting their national home in that country." It was essential, wrote Winston Churchill at the time, to stress that the Jews were "in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance," and that the Jewish national home there "be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection."

Israel has gained nothing from its unwillingness to vigorously assert the Jewish claim to the land as a matter of historical justice and biblical legitimacy. It has only made it easier for its enemies to promote a false narrative of Zionist aggression and illegal occupation. Hotovely may have "raised eyebrows" in exhorting Israel's diplomats to focus unapologetically on Jewish rights and history, but the record is clear: Those are the arguments that have always gained the most traction.

To repeat: Diplomacy isn't Bible class. But the strongest case for Israel is rooted in something more transcendent than security. Even now, according to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of American adults — and 55 percent of American Christians — believe that Jews have a God-given right to the land of Israel. A backward superstition? On the contrary. The Jewish nation's ties to its homeland are an enduring element of the human story, and an asset that Israel underrates at its peril.

SOURCE







The LGBT Lobby: Not The Same Thing as People Who Are Homosexual

by Benjamin Harris-Quinney

I was railed against last week for being “homophobic” for suggesting last year at a Christian conference that the “LGBT lobby” had become an overly influential facet of British public life, independent from the reality of the wishes of desires of the nation, gay or otherwise. That was before “Gay Pride” banned LGBT UKIP from attending their annual march, whose members, despite being gay, were not deemed to be “LGBT friendly.” It served to underline my point.

In the media today, we hear often of the views of “the black community”, “the gay community”, “the Polish community”, but despite this identity politics being so prevalent, these so called communities simply do not exist.

There is not a single viewpoint that unites all gay people, black people or Polish people, that doesn’t unite all of humanity. It is the madness of our age that concludes equality and cohesion can be achieved by separation and unequal treatment.

The “LGBT lobby” comprises a number of groups, perhaps most notably Stonewall, The Peter Tatchell Foundation, and Pink News, who between them have an estimated budget of more than £10 million. These organisations have clearly defined aims, which they intend to spend their money on persuading politicians, celebrities and media outlets to agree with. This is how politics works in Britain, and it is how we have allowed minority advocacy groups a grip over the majority of our citizenry.

The fact is, the “LGBT lobby” does not speak for gay people, it speaks for itself. The great trap for lobby groups is that once they are founded and funded, like any bureaucracy, they go far beyond their initial, often single issue scope, chiefly in the cause of maintaining their new found power in the political spectrum and the careers of those involved.

The message went out in 2012 from self appointed spokesmen like Peter Tatchell, that gay marriage was the final step in achieving equality for gay people in the UK. Same Sex Marriage has been passed, and yet there are more LGBT advocacy groups in Britain than there have ever been, with more funding than they have ever had.

The danger of lobbying more generally is that it grants disproportionate influence to issues and groups because they have money, not because they speak for many people, or even any people.

Sir Ian McKellen, a founder of the Stonewall lobby group spoke this week, in a moment of disarming truth, of the power of Westminster LGBT lobbyists: “It’s astonishing for a Tory Prime Minister to insist on gay marriage, dragging the party behind him.

“It’s possible because we live in a small country and you only have to persuade about 50 people, all of whom live within sight of this window, and if they agree, they can have it in law within a year. Americans have to slog through every state.”

Many gay Christians have experienced the same exclusion from LGBT groups and events as UKIP has experienced this week, and I have had a large number of conversations and debates with members of LGBT advocacy groups where they refuse to accept that anyone who is gay might not support same sex marriage. Such is the vitriol and hysteria of their politics. I was told that any gay person who does not support gay marriage is “either not really gay or insane.”

And much of the “LGBT lobby” is defined by being exclusive, not inclusive. These are groups advocating tolerance, but by their own newfound hubris display their clear intolerance of any viewpoint or background that differs even slightly from their own extremely narrow view and desire for society. They have become an even more extreme version of exclusivity and elitism than their founding thinkers initially set out to break down.

It has reached the point of such ridicule where many in the movement believe they have the ability and right not only to decide if an individual is worthy of taking part in their purportedly inclusive events and organisation, but to decide if they are worthy of even being considered gay.

Today’s liberals speak off the cuff about the importance of hearing everyone’s views, but then appear disgusted when they learn that there are other views.

Almost every public figure is terrified of challenging both the unchecked march of LGBT lobby groups and the rise of the fascism of “liberal intolerance”, for fear of being labelled a “homophobe”, “racist” or any number of other modish, progressive buzzwords.

It would be a fair assessment to suggest that the “LGBT lobby” is more powerful now in terms of influence than it has ever been, more so even than the Christian lobby, which dominated the governance of this nation for a thousand years.

Times change, power shifts, but the measure of the powerful is how they treat those who are not, and I would suggest the “LGBT lobby” is, in record time, well on its way to learning the ancient political tale of hubris: nemesis.

SOURCE

*************************

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. 

***************************