Thursday, September 24, 2015




Another one of Britain's fine multiculturalists



A father of two is facing life in prison after stabbing his pregnant wife to death and killing their unborn baby in front of their six-year-old son.

Tariq Khan, 27, stabbed his 24-year-old wife Nadia to death at their home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, just one week after the pair split up.

He pleaded guilty to murdering his wife and destroying the life of their unborn child when he appeared at Bradford Crown Court today.

Speaking after the guilty plea, Mrs Khan's relatives said they were relieved he had admitted the crimes but hoped he would 'rot in hell' and never be freed from prison.

Nazma Khan, Mrs Khan's aunt, said: 'I think he should rot in hell and never be allowed out of jail.  'I'm happy he's pleaded guilty, we knew he did it.'

She said the killer deserved a 'double life' sentence as he had taken away the life of an unborn baby as well as the mother.

'The baby was due around now,' she added. 'That little angel could not be allowed to come into this world because of his father.'

She added that Nadia's two young children, particularly her son, now aged six, had been left traumatised by the loss of their mother.

'He asks me to write a letter to God to say "can you give our mum back". All the other children go to school with their mums and he asks "where's my mum?".

'He cries and doesn't want to go to school and he has nightmares and is awake all night.

'He witnessed the murder. He says he wants to go to sleep where his mum is.'

Mrs Khan said the couple's daughter, who is now four, had also been left confused by her loss.

'She doesn't know what is going on. She does talk about her mum,' she said.

Pakistani-born Khan, who speaks little English, was assisted by an interpreter for today's hearing.

The court was told how Nadia was about six months pregnant when she was found dead at the family home in the Manningham area of Bradford on June 14.

Friends of the couple said the pair had separated a week prior to the killing and described Bradford-born Mrs Khan as intelligent, cheerful, bubbly and happy.

At the time of her death, her sister Anisa, 20, said she was a happy woman who was looking forward to the birth of her baby.

'She was in Mothercare just a few days ago for a Moses basket and baby clothes,' she said. 'She was a really nice person who really loved her children.'

As well as pleading guilty to murdering his wife, Khan also admitted destroying with intent the life of a child capable of being born alive, by a willful act, namely stabbing with a knife, causing the child to die before it had existed independently of its mother.

He also admitted a further charge of assaulting Mrs Khan by beating her on May 16 this year.

Khan, who stood impassively in the dock before the Recorder of Bradford, Judge Roger Thomas QC, was remanded back into custody.

Tall and bearded with cropped hair shaved at the sides and wearing a brown long-sleeved jumper, he was told he will be sentenced on October 16.

His barrister, Ali Bajwa QC, told the court the legal team was not relying on any psychiatric evidence.

Mr Bajwa said there were no mental health issues and conceded Khan would get an automatic sentence of life imprisonment.

It will be up to the judge on the day to rule the minimum term he must serve behind bars before he can even be considered for parole.

Judge Thomas told Khan: 'The sentence that has to be passed in relation to the principal charge is fixed by law.

'That will be a sentence of life imprisonment, but other aspects of the case will have to be considered.'

SOURCE




Confronting evil and defending liberty

What should one do when confronted by evil?

Walk away, shunt your eyes to the side and pretend you never saw it? Whisper to your friends and neighbors about it in an astonished tone while never doing anything? Or be an antagonist against that evil, shining a light on it, and confronting it without reservation?

What if the evil is cast in a way that many, perhaps even a majority, view it as being politically acceptable or even desirable?

Should one remain silent and quietly work to change the culture that accepts evil through good hearted, private social welfare programs in the hopes that the love offered is enough?

These are the questions facing many Americans as we view an ever encroaching big government take a wrecking ball to what were once assumed freedoms under the false guise of tolerance.

Fundamental concepts like freedom of speech are being attacked by those who see hurts in every word or utterance, and from the role of manufactured victim demand that alternative opinions be censored.

This attack on speech is an obvious step toward tyranny, but other evil is more abstract and less easy to discern.

One example is the government produced expectation that people are owed an income whether they work or not, and that denial of unearned “benefits” is an attack on their fundamental rights. The net effect of this claim against the government is that it effectively puts a demand for payment against those who produce wealth whether as an electrician, retail worker or Fortune 100 CEO making those who work subservient to those who don’t.

The very benefits created to fulfill the expectations of those who choose not to work are used to gain political leverage an ever greater unearned piece of the pie has the perverse effect of making working in entry level jobs a bad economic decision. The very entitlement of those who could but won’t, effectively makes fools out of those who can and do, as the doers are compelled to take care of the dependents further eroding their net earnings.

Another pernicious assault on liberty is the grinding expansion of the regulatory state often at the expense of the poor through higher costs for basic necessities. The EPA power plant regulation stands as a primary, but far from the only, example of this regulatory onslaught. Borne out of a claimed need to address global warming, the EPA rule actually has a negligible impact on the problem it supposedly is designed to address. Instead its impact will be to increase electricity costs by 16 percent over time — a cost that will be disproportionately be borne by those who can least afford it.

Additionally, the higher electricity costs will have another profound impact on lower income wage earners — it will decrease the likelihood that they will find a higher paying job as the U.S. manufacturing sector recedes due to the higher energy costs. The irony is that the American energy boom, absent the Obama regulations, is expected to dramatically increase domestic manufacturing without the need to level wages with the rest of the world. It is the abundance of energy here in America that makes this possible, and if left alone, the lower costs for electricity this abundance produces will likely become a major job creator over the next decade. Yet, Obama’s regulatory assault on inexpensive electricity effectively negates this advantage.

Given the admission by the United Nation’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres that the real goal of the global warming push is not protecting the environment but instead to change the world’s economic structure, saying, “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution.”

Global elitists attempting to change the world’s economic structure away from a system that has produced more shared wealth than any in history under the guise of climate disaster at the expense of America’s poor is exactly the kind of hidden evil that needs exposure. Yet, the cost of standing up against this liberty stealing power grab is ostracism and derision.

Is it worth it?

Is fighting to keep the fundamental principles of self-determination and free enterprise as the cornerstones of our nation’s economic system worth being attacked as an antagonist and naysayer?

The fight for freedom is never easy, and liberty only exists when there are those willing to push back hard against the natural slouch toward accepting government as the keeper of the least of these, rather than taking personal responsibility for that calling.

Freedom of speech only exists when the purveyors of political correctness are rudely cast aside by those willing to mock them and break the cycle of perpetual offense that they wield as a weapon, weathering their ridicule while defeating attempts to incorporate their language cocoon into law.

Economic mobility and freedom only exists when markets are allowed to grow or contract based upon their overall value. When the federal government chooses to increase the cost of basic economic necessities, like burning fuel to generate electricity with a goal of creating scarcity out of abundance, people everywhere suffer.

Some are called to help the poor by providing bread, others to fight for secular solutions where liberty prevails and people are lifted out of poverty through the proven formula of private sector wealth creation. The two work well together, but if either lose the other cannot be sustained, and both are equal callings to confront evil.

SOURCE






'War Room' Filmmaker: 'The God of Hollywood is Political Correctness'

Alex Kendrick, the Christian filmmaker whose recent movie “War Room” is a big hit at the box office, recently told a reporter that “the God of Hollywood is political correctness, and they are going to line up with whatever the politically correct view of the day is. For me, I’m lining up my worldview with the word of God. I hope to inspire and draw people to a closer walk with God by my films.”

“War Room,” which tells the story of a marital crisis helped by the power of prayer, was made for $3 million. After capturing the number one spot last week, this past weekend the film was the sixth most popular film in America, with total grosses nearing $50 million.

The writers and directors of “War Room” are Kendrick and his brother Stephen. The two are responsible for several Christian-themed hits, including “Fireproof” and “Courageous.” In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Alex Kendrick talked about the struggles of Christian filmmakers.

Kendrick was asked if he was being persecuted in Hollywood. “Yes,” he replied. “Right now it’s verbal, and it’s happening a lot. If we weren’t heavily criticized, I’d think something is wrong.”

Kendrick was then asked if there were individuals in the movie industry who had expressed a “personal bias against you and Christianity.” Kendrick: “I’d say you already know the answer to that question, but you’re wanting names and I can’t do that. The answer is an emphatic 'yes,' but that’s not a fight I want to pick. There are people who have called us vile names, told us we need to stop making films, and have ugly names for Christians. I’m not going to give you names, I’d rather reach out and minister them."

Kendrick was also asked about Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue same sex marriage licenses wither name on them. "From what I understand," he said, "the Constitution in Kentucky that she was hired to support says marriage is between a man and a woman, but it gets really complicated when the Supreme Court votes the other way. Technically, her job is to uphold the Constitution in Kentucky, so it makes things complex. She is paying the price for standing on her faith, and I’d be willing to stand by my faith, as well. If I’m persecuted for being a Christian, I’m willing to accept that."

SOURCE






Rise of the supernanny feminists

Charlotte Proudman isn’t the only one trying to tell us what is and isn’t acceptable

It can’t have taken #fearlessfeminist Charlotte Proudman long to choose the best turn of phrase for her public scolding of Alexander Carter-Silk, the man who had the temerity to tell her that her LinkedIn profile picture looked ‘stunning’. In reaching for the word ‘unacceptable’, Proudman repeats the tip-of-the-tongue buzzword of today’s unappointed language police.

Earlier this summer, when Sir Tim Hunt made his now infamous joke about women in labs, his colleague and Nobel Prize co-winner, Sir Paul Nurse, led the stampede, declaring such remarks to be ‘not acceptable’. Channel 4 newsreader turned arbiter on all things feminist, Cathy Newman, suggested ‘he should keep his “girl trouble” to himself in future, to send a message that sexism is just as unacceptable as racism’. Back in January, former soap star Ken Morley was hoisted off Celebrity Big Brother after he was deemed to have used ‘unacceptable and offensive language’.

Unsurprisingly, this rush to label words – and, let’s be honest, the people who utter them – as ‘unacceptable’ breeds within universities. At Washington State University, cultural studies students risk failure if they use words their lecturer has decided are ‘unacceptable’. The list of outlawed expressions includes ‘the words “males” and “females” to refer to men and women’. Students studying women’s studies at North Carolina State University have been told they will be marked down for using ‘unacceptable’ vocabulary such as ‘mankind’ in their essays.

At students’ unions throughout the UK, Safe Space policies warn members of the need to ‘be aware of the connotations of your language’. At Goldsmiths, part of the University of London, ‘racism, homophobia, biphobia, sexism, transphobia, disablism or prejudice based on age, ethnicity, nationality, class, gender, gender presentation, language ability, immigration status or religious affiliation is unacceptable’. Students must not ‘make assumptions about anyone’s gender, pronouns, sexual preference, abilities, ethnic identity, survivor status, or life experiences’. For those wanting to remain within the limits of acceptability, conversation must be very difficult indeed.

Describing the words someone uses as ‘unacceptable’ can appear politically neutral, unemotive and simply commonsense. It allows the speaker to take the moral highground by suggesting there are ways of speaking and behaving that all right-thinking people agree upon. Those whose words are labelled ‘unacceptable’ are deemed to have crossed a line and committed a transgression against such normal codes of decency and politeness. As we have seen with Charlotte Proudman’s calling-out of the supposedly sexist solicitor, and all those who rushed to decry Tim Hunt’s joke, the biggest infringement against the acceptable is to commit speech crimes against feminism. The feminist war on unacceptable language now encompasses everything from jokes and compliments to mildly flirtatious comments.

The roots of this obsession with policing language began at least as far back as the 1980s. A social constructionist view of gender as performative rather than biological met an emerging postmodernism that assumed discourse constructs not just perceptions of reality but reality itself. This led feminist theorists, such as Julia Kristeva, to argue that it is language that constructs power relations and the conditions for oppression.

According to this view, women’s oppression could be challenged by changing the language and images through which people constructed the world. Today, when young women are seemingly quicker than ever to declare themselves victims of everyday sexism and casual misogyny, the notion that words are pre-eminently important in shaping reality has remained. Only now it has been joined by the notion that language can inflict mental harm on women, who are seen as vulnerable to everything from adverts on the Tube to clapping.

Offending words are now found everywhere. According to modern feminists, exposing them simultaneously challenges sexism and, perhaps more importantly, confirms that it still exists. The importance of language is overstated at the same time as the capacity of women, as autonomous individuals capable of taking responsibility and making independent choices about their own lives, is played down. This leads to an increase in what Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, writing in Professing Feminism, have termed ‘ideological policing’, both inside and outside of universities. Modern-day feminists have much in common with their bourgeois Victorian fore-sisters, whom Patai and Koertge suggest saw it as their job ‘to monitor language and enforce norms’ of what was socially acceptable.

Today’s constant calling-out of what is considered unacceptable to feminist sensibilities is a demand to censor language deemed threatening to women – who are presented as a homogenous and vulnerable group. It is a patronising way for a recently emergent social elite to dictate who gets to be heard as they enforce new values, social norms and codes of conduct. This is why the cry of ‘unacceptable’ is most often used against a generation of older white men whose very existence is a sin against the new etiquette.

The phrase ‘this is unacceptable’ was made famous a decade ago by television’s self-described Supernanny, Jo Frost. Frost’s parenting programme centred on the advice: ‘It’s important to give your child boundaries and let them know that certain behaviour is unacceptable.’ Weekly plotlines all revolved around parents being taught how to look their child in the eyes, point a finger and declare ‘That is unacceptable!’. Duly reprimanded, the guilty child would be sent to sit on a naughty step until they were prepared to proffer an apology for their misdemeanours. At this point, parent and child would hug and all was forgiven. Today’s feminists prefer to punish unacceptable behaviour through Twitter-led public humiliation rather than naughty steps. But the narrative arc of crying ‘unacceptable!’, followed by punishment, apologies and, occasionally, redemption, is all too familiar.

We need to stand up to the supernanny feminists before more careers and lives are ruined. The idea that young women are victims of a patriarchy that conspires to keep them low paid, powerless, objectified, sexually harassed and out of the top jobs is ludicrous. The idea that women are offended and their sense of self-worth shattered by jokes and compliments is far more demeaning than any unwanted flirtation. It’s time to turn the tables and call out the unappointed coterie who take it upon themselves to tell the rest of us what is and isn’t acceptable. And if we really want to police language, let’s start with the overused and ill-defined word, ‘misogyny’.

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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