Thursday, July 28, 2016



Multicultural gynaecologist fondled female patients' breasts on his examination couch



The Patwardhans are high caste Indians

A ‘perverse’ consultant gynaecologist was jailed for eight years today for groping four women patients during private and NHS consultations.

Mahesh Patwardhan, 53, would typically bend them over an examination couch and fondle their breasts from behind, even asking one woman to reveal her tattooed bottom.

Patwardhan, who lived in Loughton, Essex, was said to have been turned on by rubbing himself against the women as he groped them.

The father-of-two saw NHS patients at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlton, South East London, and private patients at the nearby Blackheath Hospital and The Holly in Buckhurst Hill, Essex.

Patwardhan, whose wife, son and daughter were at Woolwich Crown Court this morning, was convicted of four counts of sexual assault between July 2008 and September 2012.

The Indian-born gynaecologist, who is married to an anaesthetist, was also convicted of two counts of fraud relating to falsely billing private medical insurers for work he did not perform.

He had been struck-off by the General Medical Council in October 2014 and publicity from that case prompted more victims to come forward.

An investigation was launched by the Metropolitan Police and Patwardhan was arrested on November 2014 as he stepped-off a flight from India at London Heathrow Airport.

Judge Alice Robinson told him: ‘You indulged in totally unnecessary breast examinations for your own perverse sexual gratification and some of the patients suffered severe psychological harm.

‘Almost the most shocking aspect was your cavalier attitude to the wholesale falsification of medical records.’

She also ordered him to sign the sex offenders register for life and he will be barred from working with children and vulnerable adults.

The judge said one victim impact statement was ‘one of the most harrowing I have ever read’. She said: ‘You knew she was vulnerable because of sexual abuse she had suffered and she’s withdrawn from the world. Another woman has attempted suicide and says you have ruined her life.’

His QC David Etherington said: ‘The entire family are standing by him, plus a large community of friends. It’s obvious he is never going to practise again as a doctor.

‘This amounts to a total destruction of this man’s career, everything he’s studied and worked for. He’s going to have to start his life again when he comes out of prison.’

Kate Bex, prosecuting, told the jury a 32-year-old mother-of-three was seen at the Queen Elizabeth in 2008, adding: ‘He came behind her and put his arms around her and onto her breasts.

‘He groped her breasts and squeezed them with his hands and she was in total shock,’ added Miss Bex, explaining that the woman made an excuse to avoid removing the rest of her clothing.

In digitally-recorded interview with police the woman explained: ‘He came behind us and that’s when he put his hands on us. He wasn’t talking, he was just groping my breasts. ‘It was horrible, I was in total shock. I didn’t know what to do, I felt sick and disgusted.

‘When he said: “Take your knickers off” I knew something was wrong. If I had lied on that couch and took my knickers off what would he have done?’

Another woman, a 37-year-old mother-of-two, said Patwardhan became more intimate after sizing her up.

‘The cuddling started after her second or third visit,’ explained Miss Bex. ‘He’d hug her goodbye and push his body into her, grab her bottom and kiss her on the cheek.

‘He examined her breasts after asking her to bend over the couch and asked her to show him the tattoo on her bum.’

A 30-year-old woman was a private Blackheath Hospital patient, who had an ovarian cyst.

Miss Bex said: ‘The defendant put his arms around her, his hand on her knee and told her she was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside.

‘He asked her to bend over the couch and she could feel his body pressing against hers from behind while cupping her breasts.

‘She thought he became aroused and she was embarrassed so put her clothes on and left the room as fast as she could.’

Patwardhan offered to investigate the back pain of a woman aged 26. ‘He felt her spine and then cupped her breasts,’ Miss Bex said.

A 35-year-old private patient gave Patwardhan the opportunity to make some extra money out of her insurers.

He performed intimate cosmetic surgery on the woman, but billed her insurers - AXA PPP - for cyst removal because they would not cover the true operation, the jury were told.

Patwardhan was cleared of sexually assaulting this patient and a 37-year-old referred by her GP after a smear test.

A private BUPA patient aged 21 came forward to report Patwardhan for making her sign a claim form for a £195 non-existent pre-surgery consultation.

She was seen at The Holly, where the defendant’s wife was the anaesthetist, and said she did not make a fuss because she was in the couple’s hands.

When questioned by police, Patwardhan mainly answered ‘no comment’ to questions, but did deny making dishonest claims and conducting sexually motivated examinations.

After the verdicts last month, Detective Constable Mark Azariah said: ‘Patwardhan is a highly manipulative individual, having used his position of trust and authority to prey on the victims under his medical care, believing that they would be too embarrassed to report such offences to police.

‘Thankfully he was mistaken and I commend the victims for their courage in speaking out despite the sensitivity surrounding their personal medical concerns.

‘I hope that today’s result and the fact he is no longer a practising doctor brings them some comfort and peace of mind in what has been a traumatic ordeal.’

SOURCE






Philadelphia: The City of Motherly Love?

It looks like Hillary Clinton plans to run on the only economy this president has improved: Planned Parenthood’s. Over the weekend, the campaign announced that abortion will be taking center stage at the Democratic National Convention this week in Philadelphia with confirmed speakers Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood (whose group enjoys at least a million dollars a day from taxpayers) and Ilsye Hogue, president of NARAL. Of course, highlighting these organizations is somewhat redundant, since the biggest cheerleader for abortion is the one running for election.

Despite the country’s growing resistance, Clinton seems intent on following the president into some of the most radical terrain on abortion ever broached. From her shameless support of taxpayer-funded abortion to her elevation of groups that illegally sell baby body parts, the former First Lady is determined to make this election about an extreme social agenda that’s increasingly out of touch with women. Meanwhile, not everyone is thrilled about the DNC’s direction — including the Democrats' own base. While Hillary shamelessly promotes abortion right up to the moment of birth, polling shows it’s a far cry from voters' position on the issue. Almost eight in 10 Americans (78 percent) would limit abortion to the first trimester — including 62 percent who call themselves “pro-choice.”

Ignoring the growing gap, Clinton is rushing to embrace what more people are calling the “abortion-ization” of the Democratic Party without any regard to the political consequences. Just how big of a stranglehold does abortion have on the DNC? Politico reports […] that the leading candidate for the DNC chairmanship is none other than Stephanie Schriock, the president of Emily’s List. And the Democrats' party platform tells a similar story. For the first time in history, Democrats have called for overturning the Hyde and Helms amendments, demanding that federal taxpayers fund abortion-on-demand at home and abroad. Not surprisingly, the Left’s radical push for abortion coverage makes absolutely no exemptions for religious groups — nor does it offer even the barest of conscience protections for anyone in the medical community.

The GOP’s platform couldn’t be more different. Under it, Republicans reiterate their support for the walls between taxpayers and the dark world of abortion, calling on Congress to make the Hyde amendment permanent in all walks of government funding — including Obamacare. The Republicans, meanwhile, insisted on defending the First Amendment rights of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and organizations when it comes to issues like abortion funding, procedures, drugs, and health insurance. The Democrats support Planned Parenthood by name. The Republicans, for the first time, call for the defunding of Planned Parenthood for committing abortions, selling baby parts, and deceiving women with faulty consent forms.

Perhaps most tellingly, the Democrats pieced together their radical platform where they like doing most of their work: in secret. Unfortunately for them, it’s no secret where the party is heading. The Left is running a campaign of “choice” — and in this election, voters have a clear one.

SOURCE






Macy's Fires Catholic For His Beliefs

Macy's has fired an employee because he is a practicing Catholic. The case is now before the New York State Division of Human Rights.

In May, Javier Chavez, senior store detective at the Macy's store in Flushing, New York, received a phone call stating that a male had entered the ladies room with a female companion. A female customer, and her daughter, were afraid to enter because of the male's presence. A security employee who reports to Chavez advised the man to leave and use the men's room. He left claiming to be a female. He then complained to store officials that he was asked to leave.

Chavez was subsequently told by an Assistant Store Manager that certain males can use the ladies restroom. This was news to him. A few days later, an assistant security manager told him that transgender persons can use the bathroom of their choice.

He said he had just become aware of this policy, stating that it was contrary to his religion and the Bible. But he hastened to say that he would nonetheless enforce Macy's policy.

Macy's would not leave this alone, and this is where it crossed the line.

Chavez was then summoned to meet with the Human Resources Manager, who suspended him. He was later terminated.

"After my employer learned that I was a practicing Catholic, with religious concerns about this policy," Chavez says in his formal complaint, "I was terminated because of my religion, in violation of the New York State Human Rights Law."

The most basic religious right is the right to believe; if conscience rights can be vitiated, the First Amendment means nothing. Macy's has no legal, or moral, grounds to stand on.

For merely holding beliefs that are contrary to the store's policy, Chavez was fired. This is what totalitarian regimes do, not American commercial establishments.

SOURCE






South Africa's free speech problem

Sara Gon says that here, as in the West, incivility kills off rational debate and discussion

When Incivility Rules, Free Speech Dies

“Incivility is not a Vice of the Soul, but the effect of several Vices; of Vanity, Ignorance of Duty, Laziness, Stupidity, Distraction, Contempt of others, and Jealousy.” - Jean de La Bruyère, 17th century French essayist and moralist.

Mark Oppenheimer’s experienced (Free Speech: A Vanishing Right Politicsweb, 18 July 2016) verbal attacks by self-appointed opinion-makers who belittled and insult him in the name of political rectitude.

At “Think!Fest”, a series of lectures and panel discussions held at the Grahamstown Arts Festival, Oppenheimer attended a panel discussion on the merits of a total state subsidisation of tertiary education.

The panel was chaired by Judge Dennis Davis with panellists Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes, Dr. Sizwe Mabizela, and Lindsay Maarsdorp, an activist from Black First Land First.

During the Q&A session Oppenheimer indicated he wanted to ask a question. He was asked to give his name before asking his question. When he said ‘Oppenheimer’ he was jeered. In response he made what he thought was the tongue-in-cheek remark that “I was from the Oppenheimer family who had oppressed most of the people in the room.”

At this all hell broke loose. Maarsdorp shouted repeatedly that Oppenheimer did not have a right to speak.

Anthea Garman, an associate professor of journalism and the convener of Think!Fest, said:

“Our opinions are not equal here, they are embedded in our histories, in our exclusions and in our races’ positions… When white people speak, they take advantage of the fact that the Constitution allows them an extraordinarily huge amount of privilege to continue to obscure… You are going to have to own the fact that you tried to sidestep your name and what your name means in this space… The resort to the Constitution, in which everybody has equal voice does not obtain in this moment, in this context, at this time. These voices have different weight, different histories and there is a great deal of fraught contestation about it.”

Maarsdorp proclaimed: “The status quo is anti-black, at a constitutional level, in terms of the land and in terms of this person sitting here… His whole existence, it plays out black oppression.”

Oppenheimer could certainly not be accused of “side stepping” his own name. Nor could his detractors be accused of having a sense of humour. But the event occurred at a university, an environment not much associated with self-derision or humour.

However, neither Maasdorp nor Garman had any idea as to what Oppenheimer’s opinion was nor what question he was going to ask.

Garman and Maasdorp appropriated the right to determine whether Opperman could speak or not. If anyone had similarly appropriated Maasdorp’s or Garman’s rights, there would have been howls of outrage about racism and misogyny.

Appropriation is a distinct feature of protest and argument in South Africa. Although its origins don’t lie in South Africa. They lie in the political correctness on campuses in North America and Britain. Political opinion is now in the supreme domain of a self-chosen few and is expressed uncivilly.

The Economist (The colliding of the American mind June 4, 2016) discussed as ominous the claims made by protesters for the supremacy of their subjective judgments. Examples are that black people know best when they are being racially demeaned; or that women can best distinguish between a compliment and harassment.

The Economist opined that while this may be true, a powerful riposte is that to function, society relies on impartial adjudication of wrongs, especially in an era of multiculturalism, with its attendant frictions. Prejudice may indeed abound, but for officials to intervene a claim must not merely be alleged; it must be proven. A situation cannot just be what someone thinks it is; facts must support it. Fairness demands evidence.

“The idea that any group’s experience is inaccessible to others is not just pessimistic but anti-intellectual: history, anthropology, literature and many other fields of inquiry are premised on the faith that different sorts of people can, in fact, understand each other.”

Claire Fox in Generation Snowflake: how we train our kids to be censorious cry-babies (The Spectator 4 June 2016) writes that young people who cry offence are not feigning hurt — generational fragility is a real phenomenon. They are genuinely distressed by ideas that run contrary to their worldview. Even making a general case for free speech can lead to gasps of disbelief.

But the most sobering observation Fox makes is that this generation’s hypersensitivity is often combined with an almost belligerent sense of entitlement. A self-esteem culture encourages adults to tiptoe around children’s sensitivities and accede to their opinions, lest their wellbeing be damaged.

The appropriation of opinion encourages a culture of “superior victimhood”. The sense of injustice becomes supreme through a failure to appreciate the oppression of others. The “superior victims” cannot engender empathy for any other group.

In South Africa this is exacerbated by a lack of historical knowledge and context. Knowledge of South African history is at best selective and lacks nuance, and at worst is poor. Terrible as it was Apartheid was not the world’s only, nor necessarily its worst, systematic gross human rights abuse. There are people in this country who have been affected by such other horrors.

Ironically given the evolution of social media, free speech has become the enemy. Instead of choosing not to attend talks and express views in opposition, angry students have chosen the totalitarian option of deciding to whom others should or should not listen.

Those who are constantly derided withdraw from the debate. Human nature isn’t presupposed to allowing oneself to be abused repeatedly. If opposing views withdraw then debate cannot happen.

As The Economist says activists are entitled to protest, but when they decry counter-arguments as tantamount to violence, they stray into censorship.

The Economist describes such behaviour as “the lamentable fruit of modernity’s least appetising traits: mollycoddling parenting, a sub-Freudian narcissism, a hypochondriacal sense of entitlement and a social-media ecosystem that reinforces insularity and cultivates an expectation of instant response.”

In our own student protests and much of our public debate, there is cruel harassment of people deemed “oppressors” or “racists” solely on the basis of their skin colour.

Ultimately reliance on incivility to persuade an opponent means that the aggressors lose before they start. Rational people will be wary of the merits of an argument pursued uncivilly.

The February 2016 RMF protests over the accommodation crisis at the University of Cape Town have been shown to be baseless. RMF’s appalling behaviour included throwing sewerage into buildings, an act of visceral baseness made infamous by (the now disgraced and interdicted) Chumani Maxwele at the start of the original RMF protests in March 2015.

Tactics at our universities have included assaults, threats, barging into meetings, jumping on tables, abuse and humiliation of staff, hostage-taking, and 100s of millions of rands worth of destruction including arson. This isn’t debate; it’s crime.

Most of us hold the freedom of speech to be sacrosanct: we accept the inalienable right of others to express opposing and often odious views.

However, there are those who do not accord the rest of us the same right. Examples abound: Maxwele, Garman and Maasdorp; RMF “Oxford activist” and slayer of waitresses, Ntokozo Qwabe and much of the social media, both white and black.

Even UCT management has accepted “disruption at public events and lectures…, in the interests of promoting a constructive engagement with all groups. We will continue to do this provided the engagement is lawful, peaceful and respectful.” (How UCT is stepping up transformation, Max Price, Politicsweb 11 March 2016). This is very disturbing - disruption is never acceptable.

One does wonder how the parents and grandparents of these nastily opinionated students feel about their young, inexperienced and privileged off-spring showing such disdain, disrespect and hatred for others.

Perhaps the root of the incivility is the untrammelled freedom offered by social media, particularly the ability to criticise anonymously. For centuries, if a member of the public in a democracy writes a letter to a newspaper, he or she has to identify themselves with their name and address. Further, editors reserve the right to edit the letter or not to print it at all. This discourse is democratic, but it is still subject to rules. It forces writers to structure their thoughts and wording.

Social media has no rules. A person can use a pseudonym and express unbridled, inarticulate hatred. If the discourse becomes too uncivil, the editors lose discretion and control. So sites tend to shut down their comments sections completely. Debate ceases.

The Economist quaintly calls such protest “impolite”. We refer to incivility. Perhaps the best adjective is the one used by Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Free State.

Jansen describes such behaviour as “vulgar”. In a chapter entitled “Vulgarity tip of amoral iceberg” at page 223 in his 2011 book “We Need to Talk (Bookstorm), Jansen discusses how our leaders bow to the demands of the vulgar.

Jansen was writing three years before the RMF protests but he could have been talking about the student protests of 2015/16. He uses the example of a child who throws a tantrum for not getting ice cream before dinner. Logically, good parents discipline the child and do not give in. He says the same should apply to university management of student protests. Giving in to student demands led to the bankrupting of universities in the 1990s and a culture of violent protests became common-place, vulgar.

Jansen defines vulgarity as “conspicuously and tastelessly indecent”. He says when this becomes normal in a society, the immediate consequence is that human relationships suffer and human beings begin to turn on each other. Then the rules of common decency no longer apply. Maxwele’s original act of faeces throwing is this writ large. Justice would have demanded that he clean it up. He didn’t. His act of indecency had to remedied by university employees.

A functioning society depends upon a compact between each citizen that they will accord each other the respect to live their lives, hold their opinions and vote as they so choose.

If you are intolerant and refuse to understand others, they will eventually ignore and disregard you. The RMF movement has suffered this fate but that is only after management asserted the university’s rights not to tolerate criminal behaviour.

Legendary American sports photographer John G Zimmerman said “Incivility is the extreme of pride; it is built on the contempt of mankind.”

Hillel, born in 110 BCE, was one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He founded a dynasty of sages who led the Jews living in Israel until about the fifth century AD.

Hillel formulated the one rule that encapsulated all of Judaism, which is the expression of the ethic of reciprocity: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” Hillel said that this was the entire essence of the bible. Everything else, he said, is commentary.

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

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

No comments: