BA caught in a downward spiral of correctness

They started off being very correct by allowing hijabs and turbans. That made their attempts to ban crosses unsustainable. Now they get to the situation below. If they accomodate this guy -- as they probably will -- they will then have to allow their Muslim employees to break for prayer several times a day. If they had originally had the guts to insist on one rule for all, they would have been better off. But all they are good for these days is losing luggage so they may end up going broke anyway

A Jewish man has claimed that British Airways banned him from taking Saturdays off to observe the Sabbath. Daniel Rosenthal, a customer service agent at Heathrow, refused to work after BA told him that he could no longer have the day off.

The London Beth Din, the court of the Chief Rabbi, sent Mr Rosenthal a letter, which read: "We find it extraordinary that your employers are not prepared to respect your wish to continue observing our religion." Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said that he was "very sad" about the situation.

A BA spokesman said: "If he chooses to stay in this job he will sometimes have to work on Saturdays. But in the meantime we have offered to sit down with him again and find another job." Last year BA was forced to back down after suspending a Christian airport worker for wearing a cross in breach of its uniform policy.

Source



LIFE AND DEATH IN NEW JERSEY

By Jeff Jacoby

When Governor Jon Corzine signed legislation repealing New Jersey's death penalty on Monday, there were quite a few people for whom he had good words. In the course of what The New York Times called "an extended and often passionate speech," Corzine praised the members of the Death Penalty Study Commission who had recommended the repeal. He saluted the "courageous leadership" of the state legislators who had voted for it, mentioning eight of them by name. He thanked New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an activist group, for having "put pressure on those of us in public service to stand up and do the right thing." He proclaimed himself "eternally grateful" to other anti-death-penalty organizations, especially the New Jersey Catholic Conference and the ACLU. He acknowledged "the millions of people across our nation and around the globe who reject the death penalty." He noted politely that there are "good people" who support capital punishment and opposed the bill. He even quoted Martin Luther King Jr.

But there were some people Corzine forgot to mention. The governor forgot Kristin Huggins. She was the 22-year-old graphic artist kidnapped in 1992 by Ambrose Harris, who stuffed her into the trunk of her car, let her out in order to rape her, and then shot her twice -- once in the back of her head, once point-blank in the face. The governor forgot Irene Schnaps, a 37-year-old widow butchered by Nathaniel Harvey in 1985. After breaking into her apartment and robbing her, he killed her with 15 blows to the head, using a "hammer-like" weapon with such violence that he fractured her skull, broke her jaw, and knocked out her teeth. The governor forgot Megan Kanka, who was just 7 years old when she was murdered by a neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas. A convicted sex offender, Timmendequas lured Megan into his house by offering to show her a puppy. Then he raped her, smashed her into a dresser, wrapped plastic bags around her head, and strangled her with a belt.

Indeed, the governor forgot to mention *any* of the victims murdered by the men on New Jersey's death row. He signed an order reducing the killers' sentences to life in prison, and assured his audience "that these individuals will never again walk free in our society." But he spoke not a word about any of the men, women, and children who will never again walk at all -- or smile, or dream, or breathe -- because their lives were brutally taken from them by the murderers the new law spares.

That's the way it so often is with death-penalty opponents like Corzine: In their zeal to keep the guilty alive, they forget the innocents who have died. Their conscience is outraged by the death penalty, but only when it is lawfully applied to convicted murderers after due process of law. The far more common "death penalty" -- the one imposed unlawfully on so many murder victims, often with wanton cruelty -- doesn't disturb their conscience nearly so much. Nor do their consciences seem overly troubled by the additional lives lost when capital punishment is eliminated.

A widening sheaf of studies (some by scholars who personally oppose the death penalty) have found that each time a murderer is executed, between 3 and 18 additional homicides are deterred. To mention just one of these studies, University of Houston professors Dale Cloninger and Roberto Marchesini studied the effect of the death-penalty moratorium declared by Illinois Governor George Ryan in 2000, and Ryan's subsequent commutation of every death-row inmate's sentence. Result: an estimated 150 additional murders in Illinois over the subsequent 48 months.

New Jersey hasn't executed anyone since 1963, so the new law may be largely symbolic. But there is nothing symbolic about all the blood shed since the death penalty was abandoned 44 years ago. In 1963, there were 181 homicides in the Garden State. By 1970, the annual death toll had topped 400, and by 1980, it was over 500. The number has fluctuated, but state officials calculated in 2002 that on average, a murder was committed in New Jersey every 25 hours and 41 minutes.

While the murder rate since 2000 has declined modestly across the country, it has "jumped 44 percent in Jersey, up from 3.4 murders per 100,000 people to 4.9," writes Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute. "Jersey's increase in murders has been the sixth-highest in the country." That may explain why 53 percent of the state's residents opposed the death-penalty repeal, according to a new Quinnipiac poll, while 78 percent favored retaining it for "the most violent cases." Perhaps they grasp the truth that eludes the politicians in Trenton: When the death penalty is unavailable, more innocent victims die.



WaPo Columnist Compares Christians to KKK, Says They Love 'Torture'

After catching Harold Meyerson's latest Washington Post hatemongering against religion in general, Christians in particular, and Republicans especially, all I could say was just WOW! This thing is nearly unhinged and if you took the word Christian out and replaced it with any of the favored, protected minorities that the MSM guards like mother hens, it would be indistinguishable from the kind of pure bigotry that would result in Meyerson's utter ostracizing should it have been written about those protected classes. Calling Republicans/Christians torturers, abusers of immigrants, members of the KKK, bigots and even mean, Meyerson skipped only the Nazi and Hitler references making one wonder if his hatred for Christians isn't fully sated after all in this piece and if there is more seething bile that he decided it was better not to air?

There is absolutely no substance to Meyerson's piece at all. It is filled with lies, mischaracterizations, blatant spin and name calling. In fact, it is nothing but a 12 paragraph excuse to call Christians names, so I won't waste time trying to refute his garbage as it is so bigoted and full of lies that it defies reply -- that and it would take far more time than I'm willing to give it. But, here is a list of all the names he calls Christians and Republicans and just some of his outrageously off-base "analysis" in this piece of trash

* As Christians across the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's a fitting moment to contemplate the mountain of moral, and mortal, hypocrisy that is our Christianized Republican Party.

* Rather, it's the gap between the teachings of the Gospels and the preachings of the Gospel's Own Party that has widened past the point of absurdity, even as the ostensible Christianization of the party proceeds apace.

* Likewise his (George Bush's) support of torture, which he highlighted again this month when he threatened to veto House-passed legislation that would explicitly ban waterboarding.

* It's not just Bush whose catechism is a merry mix of torture and piety.

* But it's on their policies concerning immigrants where Republicans -- candidates and voters alike -- really run afoul of biblical writ. Not on immigration as such but on the treatment of immigrants who are already here.

* Yet the distinctive cry coming from the Republican base this year isn't simply to control the flow of immigrants across our borders but to punish the undocumented immigrants already here

*The push to persecute the immigrants already among us comes distinctly, though by no means entirely, from the same Republican right that protests its Christian faith at every turn.

* We've seen this kind of Christianity before in America... At its height in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan

* But nativist bigotry is strongest in the Old Time Religion precincts of the Republican Party

* The most depressing thing about the Republican presidential race is that the party's rank and file require their candidates to grow meaner with each passing week.

* And now, inconveniently, inconsiderately, comes Christmas, a holiday that couldn't be better calibrated to expose the Republicans' rank, fetid hypocrisy.

See what I mean? There is no "debate" here, nothing to say in reply to this hater because there isn't a single sentient point made by Meyerson. His just let lose a stream of hate that is as baseless and lacking of real proof as any a bigot ever devised against his most hated segment of humanity. In the final analysis, Meyerson complains about the right's "hypocrisy" yet so revels in his own that it makes your head spin. After all, as he complains that the right is so overly concerned about religion in politics, he wants it utterly eliminated from the public sphere, then he complains that the right isn't "tolerant" enough. Yet, he so pummels Christians and religion showing he is just as intolerant in the opposite direction as those he claims to hate so much.

Like I said, reading Meyerson's piece boggles the mind. It really has to be read in its entirety to be believed. This kind of hatred would never be allowed by a newspaper should it have been leveled against Jews, blacks or gays, et al. This is the kind of stuff you'd see from the presses of dictators and tyrants' in their efforts to discredit their enemies. This is a China's or a Chavez' style, not that of a level headed democrat. All you can say is just WOW!

Source



Australia: Prohibition for blacks?

Once condemned as "racist" by Leftists, it is a Leftist government that wants to bring alcohol prohibition back. Up until the 1970s prohibition was a policy of long standing -- based on the readily observable difficulties that Australian Aborigines have with alcohol. But Leftists were wiser than all that of course. I myself believe that totally equal treatment of blacks and whites (including abandonment of all "affirmative action" programs) is the only way forward for blacks but it is amusing to see a clear example of how our "compassionate" Leftists really do not have a clue

PROMINENT indigenous leader Noel Pearson says Queensland's Alcohol Management Plans have failed because of poor management by the State Government. Mr Pearson has backed Premier Anna Bligh's call to consider prohibition after she this week acknowledged the AMPs had failed. Mr Pearson said "taking grog off the black fella" would make communities and leaders responsible for their own actions, with AMPs initially succeeding and then failing only because of poor management. The Government had failed to address demand reduction strategies like addict treatment centres and loopholes exploited by sly-groggers.

"The other part of the solution is Aboriginal people and leaders facing up to problems in the community and, to date, we have not done that," Mr Pearson said. "In Hope Vale, bootleggers have been using back roads to dodge police, and young ones have written F- - - Off on signs warning of alcohol restrictions. We can't have the law being mocked like that."

Mr Pearson did not see prohibition as an unfair law imposed by whites on blacks. "White fellas don't live with 800 relatives in the same township. Black fellas in these communities have got hundreds of relatives living around them, and when you add grog into a kinship system, it becomes a very ugly, dangerous thing."

But evidence detailed in Alcohol Management Review reports obtained by The Courier-Mail shows banning alcohol is unlikely to work, with drinkers prepared to go to extreme lengths to get their liquor of choice. One review states young men in five communities are endangering their lives by going on "grog runs" to Thursday Island and returning drunk at night in boats overloaded with liquor. On Mornington Island residents are brewing alcohol in unsanitised bins and charging up to $50 for a two-litre bottle. In Napranum residents are carting banned liquor across crocodile-infested areas.

The town is one of seven communities which connect an increase in petrol sniffing among children with introduced alcohol restrictions. A spokeswoman for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Partnerships Minister Lindy Nelson-Carr said the Government had taken many initiatives to bolster the effectiveness of AMPs in indigenous communities. She cited the introduction of a night patrol on Mornington Island. But a community spokesman said the patrol was infrequent.

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, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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