Sunday, July 31, 2011


Bosses still bullying me, says 'cross on the dashboard' British Christian

Bizarre: To get rid of the cross on his dashboard, they took away his van. What help is an electrician without a van for his gear?

The electrician who won his battle to display a cross in his company van after his plight was highlighted by The Mail on Sunday has accused his employers of victimising him following his return to work.

Former soldier Colin Atkinson was facing the sack from the publicly-funded housing association where he has worked for 15 years before a public outcry forced his bosses to back down.

But since his return to the job in early May he says Wakefield and District Housing has reneged on its agreement with him by moving him to another workplace 16 miles away, then withdrew the company van at the centre of the row and told him to travel by bus instead. He claims the company is trying to force him out.

Mr Atkinson, 64, said: ‘I thought common sense had triumphed when the company agreed I could go back to work. But I have found there is still a lot of hostility against me, even though I have done nothing more than defend the basic rights of Christians to express their faith in public.

‘My employers have broken their promises and I believe they are trying to humiliate me or dismiss me for seeking to stand up for my rights. It is disgusting what they are doing.’

He clashed with the housing association, the fifth largest in Britain, after refusing management requests last year to remove the eight-inch cross from his van.

Senior managers had insisted that Mr Atkinson was breaching ‘diversity’ policies as well as uncompromising new rules they introduced in December last year banning employees from adorning company vehicles with personal symbols.

But following heavy criticism by religious leaders, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, the firm backtracked. Not only did they allow Mr Atkinson to display his cross on the van’s glove compartment, they also dropped all disciplinary action against him.

He was also told he could return to his three-day-a-week job as a training officer overseeing apprentices at the association’s Austin Road depot in Castleford, West Yorkshire.

However, he said he was subsequently treated coldly by one of his managers, who had been one of those who had asked him to remove his cross from his van last year. About a month after Colin returned to work, the manager disappeared from the office.

Mr Atkinson, who lives in Wakefield, said: ‘The company told me that one of the reasons the boss was off was because I was in the office, though I had never been anything but civil towards him. They asked me to move to another centre, Winston House, which was about 16 miles away. I was the only person from my department working there. I agreed reluctantly at the start of this month but it was very difficult to do my job properly there.

‘Moreover, they withdrew my company van, saying that I could travel on the bus if I needed to see apprentices working on site. I was told this was part of general financial cutbacks.’

Mr Atkinson, who has been represented by human rights lawyer Paul Diamond, said he lodged a grievance procedure against the company for breaching its agreement and a week later was asked to stay at home.

He added: ‘Meanwhile, the boss resumed work three weeks ago but I feel he should be the one who should be moved, not me. My bosses have now offered me a pay-off to retire early but a condition is that I, my wife Geraldine and all my family would be prevented from speaking out publicly. That is not my style. It would be breaching my human rights.’

Andrea Minichiello Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre which is supporting Mr Atkinson, said: ‘After a public outcry, Colin was allowed to return to work and to continue to display a palm cross in his van.

‘However, since the media attention died away, he has suffered continued harassment and victimisation, and Wakefield and District Housing has not honoured its agreement to allow him to return to work. It seems that WDH hoped that Colin could be bought off and go quietly. But he will not be gagged or bullied.’

Wakefield and District Housing was unavailable for comment.

SOURCE






Mother wins right to more than half of ex-husband's £500,000 crash compensation payout as `her needs are greater'

A woman battling her amputee ex-husband for the lion's share of his £500,000 compensation has won her right to over half of his money in a landmark ruling, after the Appeal court declared her and their children's immediate needs were more important than those of the disabled man.

Lord Justice Thorpe ruled that the money Kevin Mansfield received in 1998 after losing a leg in a road smash - five years before he met his former wife Cathryn - ought to be 'available to all his family' and that her needs and those of their children are 'primary' and outweigh his own.

Mr Mansfield, 41 now faces having to sell his home, a specially adapted bungalow in Chelmsford, Essex - to meet the court's order that he pay £285,000 to 37-year-old Cathryn, so she can buy a new home for herself and their two children.

But Lord Justice Thorpe left Mr Mansfield with a glimmer of hope by also ordering that £95,000 of the money must be paid back to him by his ex-wife if she remarries a partner who can support her, or in 14 years time, once their children have grown up.

Mr Mansfield was still a student when he lost a leg and suffered serious spinal injuries when he was hit by a car in 1992. He met his now ex-wife Cathryn five years after receiving £500,000 compensation in 1998.

The couple split up in 2008, soon after having twins, Carys and Corben - now aged four - through IVF treatment. Mr Mansfield told the court that almost the whole of the family's wealth at the point of their divorce derived from his damages payout.

At a divorce hearing in May last year, he heard a judge rule that his compensation should be regarded as an asset of the marriage and divided accordingly. He took his case to the Appeal Court, but Richard Todd QC, for Cathryn Mansfield, insisted it made no difference that his damages payout pre-dated his marriage.

'No part of a personal injury award is sacrosanct. No part of the award is ring fenced, not even that part awarded under the heads of pain, suffering and loss of amenity,' Mr Todd said. 'When he took on the responsibility of a wife, and they decided to have two children, he knew that the capital would have to be used for their benefit too.'

'The court would regard it as illogical that, whilst earnings should be taken into account and thus be fully available for the support of the family, a sum paid by way of compensation should be treated otherwise. 'This is capital which replaces earnings which would otherwise form part of the marital acquest. The wife has suffered real relationship-generated disadvantage.'

Turning to Mr Mansfield's request that some of the money should be returned to him by way of a charging order over his wife's new home, Mr Todd continued, 'The husband talks of a charging order. Such an order would leave the parties locked together contrary to the spirit of the clean break and would also make it impossible for the wife to meet her long term reasonable needs.

'When confronted with competing needs, the court is required to give first consideration to the needs of the children. The court carefully weighed the competing needs of the parties. The need of the husband to be properly housed, fully taking into account his disabilities, was carefully measured against the wife's need to care for the children.' he said.

The QC added that the wife disputed that all the assets of the marriage came from her husband's damages award, claiming she had contributed £30,000 to buying the former marital home, plus the 'sweat of her brow' in carrying out a 'great long list' of DIY improvements to the house.

Mr Mansfield, representing himself, told the court, 'I love the children I think the world of them. I wouldn't be here today if I didn't care. There has been a lot of effort put into attacking me, but not a lot of due diligence. 'For me this chapter of my life should be closed. The insurance company did not just pay out the money to me on a whim.'

Giving the court's judgement, Lord Justice Thorpe said, 'This appeal raises a single point of significance - the degree to which a judge in ancillary relief proceedings should reflect a substantial award for a personal injury claim. The husband received approximately half a million pounds in his personal injury claim in 1998 before he ever met the wife.'

He added: 'I have been of a fluctuating mind during argument, but have come to the conclusion that the judge went into the conflicting needs of the parties with considerable care and found that £285,000 was the minimum needed to meet the needs of the wife and children.'

'£285,000 may be on the high side and it might be that the wife was fortunate to receive that quantification, but it would be unprincipled for this court to interfere.'

The judge went on to impose a £95,000 charging order on Mrs Mansfield's new home, to be paid back either when the couple's children turn 18, or when they finish their first degree, or if she remarries a partner who can support her.

In a statement outside court after the judgement, Mrs Mansfield said that she had brought the case for the sake of their children.

'From first to last, this case was all about our wonderful twins and how they would be housed. I am so very glad that a very wise Court of Appeal has approved the orders made by the lower courts that I should have £285,000 for housing both them and me," she said.

Mr Todd added: 'The judge achieved what he wanted to achieve which was the security of the roof over the children's heads during their minority.

Commenting on the legal importance of the case, the barrister went on: 'This case is going to be of huge importance to many other cases in future involving divorce and personal injury. 'It will now become the authority for all such future cases and emphasises that personal injury is significant factor when looking at any damages in a divorce case.'

SOURCE






Murdoch Made Scapegoat For Ills of British journalism

It shows that the country is on a downward trajectory and confirms the fact that since the age of Diana, Princess of Wales, Britain has become emotive, reactive and possibly worse. We have lost our individualism and sense of fair play, replaced by a lemming-like hysterical group reality.

I am talking about what is now becoming known as Murdoch-gate, the all consuming news story about phone-hacking that has brought down one of this country's oldest and widest-circulated newspapers, The News of the World.
The fact that the scandal has not taken on the name of the newspaper, or phone-gate or hack-gate, but has been personalised to vilify Mr Murdoch is quite telling - and quite disturbing.

Let me be clear - other than an admiration for Murdoch as one of the great captains of industry of our time, a businessman and capitalist with few peers - I have no specific brief for him. I have had only tenuous links to Mr Murdoch (talkSPORT, for instance whose chief executive at the time was Kelvin McKenzie, the former Sun editor. News Corp, I believe, was an investor, but to what extent I do not know).

Let me also be clear that I am not defending the actions of individuals, or even a possible culture - that I'm sure was not limited to The News of the World or News International titles, but probably found itself endemic - especially in the highly competitive world of tabloid journalism and even possibly the broadsheets.

There is no way of defending the indefensible act of hacking into the phone of Milly Dowler. The pursuit of a story is one thing. But those that crossed that line should be held responsible to the full extent of the law.

But there is more at play here and this has progressed from news story to an all engulfing firestorm of around the clock 24-hour coverage, fuelled by a large dose of rank hypocrisy and blown up by a storm of emotional game-play that has created a lynch-mob mentality.

We now find ourselves at a point where a newspaper is closed down in a week.
Other newspapers - who either to a lesser or greater extent may have also used dubious methods to get a story - have weighed in solely out of commercial interest.

Those on the left - such as the Independent and the Guardian are foaming at the mouth over the destruction of Murdoch - his papers and his company, for ideological reasons.

Yes, credit must be given to the Guardian for uncovering and doggedly pursuing this story in fine journalistic traditions - it goes to the heart of government and the police. But personalising it around Murdoch, or the calls for the head of Rebekah Brooks, is purely ideological.

The liberal left hate Murdoch for several reasons: He is successful, he is pro-American, he stands up for Israel, he owns Fox News and is seen and perceived as a conservative.

It is a meme of the left that they - and only they - hold the truth. Any other view is not only wrong but evil, and has no place in society. Author Jonah Goldberg wrote a book about it entitled Liberal Fascism. It really is.
In this country, a lynch-mob mentality has developed. Preening actors such as Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan are allowed to rant and rave in the most fantastical way ("all NOTW journalists are scum"... "just in it for the money") without much challenge. Parliament, instead of addressing its own faults and the fact MPs cozied up to journalists, called for Murdoch to call off his bid for BSkyB ahead of his official bid withdrawal on Wednesday - as if a private business decision is any of their business.

The police, who corruptly passed information, are now trying to pass the blame on to Murdoch. By making Murdoch, the person, a hate figure, instead of uncovering the individuals at his papers that did wrong, we are entering a very dangerous area.

I say to the newspapers that are fomenting this campaign, be careful what you wish for as you may just get it. The free press that holds governments to account will be eroded.

I am not in favour of hacking the phones of tragic missing young girls, but I am for the vigorous pursuit of stories in the public interest, blowing the whistle on malfeasance and exposing corruption and waste in government as the News of the World did a very good job of for many years.

And those of us who, as a group, have been scapegoated in the past, should be wary when it happens again - even to Rupert Murdoch.

SOURCE





The Norway Massacre and Europe's War on Free Speech

by Soeren Kern

Media outlets in Europe and the United States are accusing Western critics of Islam and multiculturalism of complicity in the mass killing of more than 70 people in Norway. The attempt to exploit this crime for political gain is not just a case of malicious opportunism. It also represents the latest and most unsavoury salvo in the long-running war on free speech in Europe.

Anders Behring Breivik, a deranged Norwegian accused of bombing government buildings in Oslo and then killing scores of young people during a 90-minute shooting rampage on a nearby camping island called Utoya, published a 1,500-page manifesto in which he vents his anger at the direction in which mostly leftwing elites in Norway and elsewhere in Europe are leading his country and the continent as a whole.

As it turns out, parts of the manifesto include cut-and-pasted blog posts from European and American analysts and writers who for years have been educating the general public about the destructive effects of multiculturalism and runaway Muslim immigration. By dint of duplicitous logic, these analysts and writers are now the victims of a smear campaign: multiculturalists are accusing them of inciting Breivik to murder.

These same analysts have, of course, been a constant bane on an unaccountable European elite determined to foist its post-modern, post-nationalist and post-Christian multicultural agenda on a sceptical European citizenry.

Unwilling to countenance opposition, these self-appointed guardians of European political correctness have laboured to silence public discussion about issues such as the rise of Islam in Europe and/or the failure of millions of Muslim immigrants to integrate into European society.

The primary weapon in this war on free speech has been lawfare: the malicious use of European courts to criminalize criticism of Islam.

Prosecutions of so-called anti-Islam hate speech are now commonplace in Europe. Some of the more well-known efforts to silence debate about Islam in Europe have involved high-profile individuals like Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, and Brigitte Bardot, a French animal rights activist.

Other recent assaults on free speech in Europe include the show trials of: Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a housewife in Austria, Susanne Winter, a politician in Austria, Lars Hedegaard, a journalist in Denmark, Jesper Langballe, a politician in Denmark, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a politician in Finland, Michel Houellebecq, a novelist in France, Gregorius Nekschot, the pseudonym of a cartoonist in the Netherlands, and the late Oriana Fallaci, a journalist and author in Italy.

In other cases, physical violence has been the preferred method of silencing contrary views of Islam in Europe. In 2002, for example, Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated for his views on Muslim immigration, and in 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death for producing a movie that criticized Islam. In 2010, Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard narrowly escaped being assassinated by an axe-wielding Muslim extremist in Aarhus, Denmark's second-largest city.

Many theories attempt to explain the rise of multiculturalism in Europe. Among these is the idea that European elites, determined to prevent a repeat of the carnage of the Second World War, embraced multiculturalism as a tool to try to dilute or even eliminate the national ethnic, religious and or/cultural identities that contributed to centuries of violence in Europe.

But in recent years, the secular purveyors of European multiculturalism have moved far beyond their initial objective of creating an American-style "melting pot." European socialists now view multiculturalism as a means to eliminate the entire Judeo-Christian worldview. This is certainly the case in Spain, where socialists have joined arms with Islam in a "Red-Green Alliance" to confront a common enemy, Christianity, as represented, in this case, by the Roman Catholic Church.

To be sure, decades of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration have already transformed Europe in ways unimaginable only a few decades ago. In Britain, for example, Muslims currently are campaigning to turn twelve British cities -- including what they call "Londonistan" -- into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic Sharia law and operate entirely outside British jurisprudence. More than 80 Sharia courts are already operating in the country. At the same time, Mohammed is now the most common name for baby boys.

In France, large swaths of Muslim neighbourhoods are now considered "no-go" zones by French police. At last count, there are 751 Sensitive Urban Zones (Zones Urbaines Sensibles, ZUS), as they are euphemistically called. An estimated 5 million Muslims live in the ZUS, parts of France over which the French state has lost control.

In Germany, anti-Semitism (which is often disguised as anti-Zionism), has reached levels not seen since the Second World War. An April 2011 report, for example, found that 47.7% of Germans believe "Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians," and nearly 50% of Germans believe "Jews try to take advantage of having been victims of the Nazi era."

In Norway, large sections of Oslo are being turned into Muslim enclaves subject to Sharia law and to the dictates of local imams. The citizens of Oslo are also struggling to cope with an epidemic of rapes. According to recent statistics, 100% of aggravated sexual assaults which resulted in rapes over the past three years were carried out by Muslim immigrants. Norwegians are now trying to deal with the large-scale torching of automobiles, which, as in France, is being attributed to Muslim youth.

In a Wall Street Journal essay titled "Inside the Mind of the Oslo Murderer," Bruce Bawer, an American analyst who lives in Oslo, writes: "Norway, like the rest of Europe, is in serious trouble. Millions of European Muslims live in rigidly patriarchal families in rapidly growing enclaves where women are second-class citizens, and where non-Muslims dare not venture. Surveys show that an unsettling percentage of Muslims in Europe reject Western values, despise the countries they live in, support the execution of homosexuals, and want to replace democracy with Sharia law. (According to a poll conducted by the Telegraph, 40% of British Muslims want Sharia implemented in predominantly Muslim parts of the United Kingdom.)"

Bawer describes Norway as a country that stands out for its refusal to confront any of the real dangers posed by Islamic radicalism. He also says the failure of mainstream political leaders to responsibly address the challenges posed by Muslim immigration has contributed to the emergence of extremists like Breivik. Pressure cookers without a safety valve eventually will explode.

Bawer writes: "In bombing those government buildings and hunting down those campers, Breivik was not taking out people randomly. He considered the Labour Party, Norway's dominant party since World War II, responsible for policies that are leading to the Islamization of Europe -- and thus guilty of treason. The Oslo bombing was intended to be an execution of the party's current leaders. The massacre at the camp -- where young would-be politicians gathered to hear speeches by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland -- was meant to destroy its next generation of leaders."

The question remains: in the aftermath of the attack, will the Norwegian left rethink its non-interventionist approach to Islam and Muslim immigration? In a number of other European countries, governments on the center-right have been doing an about-face on multiculturalism.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have all declared in recent months that multiculturalism has failed. In June, the Dutch government announced it would abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands. In Spain, the conservative Popular Party, which is widely expected to win the next general election, has promised to enact new measures that will require all immigrants to learn the Spanish language to obtain residency permits.

Some analysts say these measures are too little too late. But one thing seems clear: European multiculturalists are feeling some unfamiliar political heat. After decades of high-handed stifling of debate, the gradual unravelling of multiculturalism in Europe explains the obsessive zeal with which many are exploiting the Norwegian tragedy.

By falsely accusing conservatives of complicity in a crime in which they had no part, multiculturalists are seeking to delegitimize and silence criticism of their social re-engineering scheme. But they are unlikely to succeed as the consequences of their worldview are becoming clear for all to see.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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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, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Saturday, July 30, 2011


Reaction to Breivik is troubling too

The impact and legacy of an act of mass violence is directly influenced by the significance and meaning that societies attach to it. Unfortunately, the task of making sense of such a senseless event often becomes complicated by competing groups of moral entrepreneurs who have every incentive to interpret the massacre from the standpoint of their own party line. Sadly, the search for answers often turns into an advocacy free-for-all as people use every violent disruption to life as an argument for vindicating their pre-existing agenda.

That is why, in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, many commentators sought to hijack this tragedy to provide a platform for their message.

Competing views about the tragic loss of lives in Norway are often informed by the speaker's political interpretation of the problems facing European society. Those who regard radical Islam as the problem could often barely conceal disappointment that the perpetrator of this act of terror was not a hardened jihadist terrorist. In turn, advocates of multiculturalism went to great lengths to remind their audience that this was the deed of a blond, white right-wing Christian fundamentalist. In Europe, where one person's fear of home-grown terrorism is dismissed by another as an expression of Islamophobia and where culture contact can be described as multiculturalism or an invasion of foreigners, the interpretation of Anders Behring Breivik's murderous behaviour is often driven by concerns that have little to do with this episode.

Almost immediately, the blame game acquired grotesque proportions. Glenn Beck, a well-known right-wing shock jock, compared the Norwegian teenage victims of the massacre to members of Hitler Youth. On the opposite end of the political divide, bloggers were implying that conservative commentators such as Andrew Bolt, Keith Windschuttle and Melanie Phillips, who were cited with approval in Breivik's 1500-page manifesto, were in some sense responsible for his violent behaviour. It is almost as if for some zealous moral entrepreneurs the massacre provided a wonderful opportunity for settling old scores.

The self-serving politicisation of the search for an explanation of this event can only promote the agenda of the perpetrator of this act of terror, which is to disorient the public.

A tragic act of misfortune always creates a demand for answers. But often individual forms of destructive behaviour possess no wider meaning for society. Whether it is the random killing of students in a school massacre, the depraved acts of the Unabomber or the methodical slaughter of young people camping on a Norwegian island, the search for meaning is unlikely to yield useful results. Society cannot second-guess which individual may participate in an act of human depravity. It is always tempting to point the finger at people and institutions that we despise, but such cheap point-scoring merely distracts attention from the fact we need to gain meaning from drawing on the moral resources of our community and not from pathologising our opponents.

A society that is confident about its values has nothing to fear from the incoherent ramblings of a mass murderer such as Breivik. The best way to respond to his demonisation of European society is by confidently upholding an open-minded, tolerant and democratic set of values and institutions. Unfortunately, all too often the response to Breivik betrays a lack of confidence in such values. So the otherwise exemplary management of this tragedy by the Norwegian government was marred by a censorious concern with insulating the world from being exposed to Breivik and his views. That is why the government decided that, to prevent him from addressing the media, he would appear in a closed court to hear the charges against him.

Of course there is an argument for not providing terrorists with the publicity they crave. But the reaction to Breivik is not simply fuelled by a distaste for those who glorify violence. It is also underpinned by a censorious agenda that seeks to prevent unacceptable views from being heard. This was the attitude signalled by Mark Colvin, presenter of ABC radio's PM, when he boasted that he got through the Norway story without mentioning Breivik's name. The idea that news presenters should be arbiters of what can and cannot be heard is antithetical to the values of a free society.

It is symptomatic of our illiberal era that so much energy has gone into preventing Breivik's manifesto from being accessed by people online. A group of activists led by Anonymous has called on people to destroy Breivik's legacy by republishing sabotaged versions of this text. The aim of this crusade, titled Operation UnManifest, is to create so much confusion that no one will be able to work out which version of the manifesto is the original.

Outwardly, this campaign appears as a harmless bit of fun at the expense of a social outcast. The censoring of Breivik's manifesto is not a loss to European civilisation. But this act of censorship has the paradoxical effect of endowing the content of this manifesto with a mystique and significance it does not possess. It is also motivated by a dangerous illiberal impulse that suggests that because "I loathe this man, you cannot read his statement". But who gave anyone the right to prevent people from reading Breivik's ramblings?

Trusting people to make up their own minds about the content of this manifesto demonstrates that the kind of free society that Breivik seeks to destroy continues to thrive. Perversely, this act of petty censorship undermines precisely the value of tolerance that Breivik himself so despises. Yet it is precisely in a moment such as this that the tolerance of a society is tested.

SOURCE







Birmingham's historic Gun Quarter is renamed... because PC critics say it glorifies crime

It encapsulates a manufacturing heritage stretching back 250 years. During the Napoleonic Wars, almost 1.9million muskets, rifles, carbines and pistols were manufactured for the Government in the district's numerous weapons factories.

But Birmingham's historic Gun Quarter is now to be renamed because of concerns that it could be linked with the firearms crime which blights other parts of the city. Officials said residents no longer wanted to be associated with weapons of war.

Instead the district to the north and west of the city centre will be known as St George and St Chad in recognition of a local church and Birmingham's catholic cathedral.

Yesterday, opponents of the rebranding exercise said the Gun Quarter had been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, while even the Dean of St Chad's Cathedral said the decision sounded 'irrational'.

Tim Huxtable, Birmingham City Council's Tory head of regeneration, said the decision had been taken after a public consultation, although one petition received by the council was signed by just 50 people objecting to Gun Quarter.

He said: 'We listened to the local community, which is the whole point of consultation. The views of local people seem quite clear.'

Sir Albert Bore, leader of the opposition Labour group, said: 'What kind of nonsense is it when we replace the Gun Quarter with St George and St Chad? 'Like it or not, and I am not into the arms trade myself, the Gun Quarter has a historical connection with this city. This is just political correctness.'

The name change was described as a 'terrible shame' by the owner of one of the few surviving gun makers in the district. Simon Clode, managing director of Westley Richards and Co, said: 'This is an important part of Birmingham's history. The area is not well occupied by gun makers now, but it's still the Gun Quarter.'

The Very Reverend Canon Gerry Breen, Dean of St Chad's Cathedral, said the name change was 'almost as irrational as deciding not to call the Black Country the Black Country'.

Reverend Larry Wright, Rector of St George's Church, however, said he was among those who had lobbied the council to change the name. 'We wrote on behalf of our own congregation - many of whom wanted a name change to move away from any suggestion that this area was associated with gun crime,' he said. 'But they could have come up with something snappier (than St George and St Chad).'

A council spokesman insisted the gunsmith area would live on as a separately defined part of the new St George and St Chad quarter.

SOURCE






Wolf-whistling is "intimidation"?

As stereotypes go, it's a classic. And when two young builders wolf-whistled an attractive woman as she passed by they probably imagined they were indulging in a bit of harmless fun.

The woman's husband, however, failed to see the funny side, and following a complaint to their bosses the pair have been suspended.

Council officials in Royston, Hertfordshire, received a furious email from the husband, who has not been named. He accused the builders of harassing his wife, leaving her so uncomfortable that she was refusing to walk past the area again.

The allegation was passed on to the council's contractors Maylim Ltd and the alleged offenders - described locally as Albanians - were taken off the job for several days.

They will now be allowed back after their accuser decided not to take matters further, although they are still facing a `discussion' with bosses today. Maylim yesterday insisted sexist behaviour was `terrible for the company image' and it was taking the allegations seriously.

Managing director Thomas O'Mahony said: `We acted within half-an-hour of being alerted to the complaint. It's company policy to immediately suspend anyone who is made the subject of a complaint by the public.

`We don't tolerate wolf-whistling or any form of sexual harassment. It's unacceptable - we are in the public eye and our image is important.

`The two men are in their mid-20s and they have been invited in for a discussion. They denied the allegations and were frustrated to be off work. Now we know that the complainant doesn't want to take this further the men will be allowed to go back to work.'

The incident was said to have happened last week in Fish Hill Square, where £400,000 is being spent turning the area into a `civic space' with seating and a sculpture.

Locals - both male and female - expressed sympathy for the builders yesterday. Hairdresser Jane Westley said: `I don't think wolf-whistling's too much of an issue. If I got wolf-whistled I think I'd find it a compliment. It's just what builders do.'

Another woman, who asked not to be named, said: `I guess it's their bit of harmless fun while working - to admire girls walking past in the summer.' A 34-year-old man added: `Everyone thinks it's a strange complaint to make. I feel bad for the guys off work.'

Wolf-whistles originated among sailors to draw colleagues' attention to a pretty woman. A number of building firms have now banned them as inappropriate. Workmen who repeatedly make obscene comments to passers-by can also be convicted of a breach of the peace.

SOURCE





When animal activists attack!

Comment from Australia

Sometimes, you wonder who the real animals are, and what kind of condition they keep themselves in.

On the weekend, I dropped my daughter at a friend’s birthday party at Lennon Brothers Circus. Lennon Brothers is one of the few remaining Australian circuses with animals, and a group of protestors had set up shop out the front.

Never in my life have I encountered such an unruly, rude rabble of misfits, thugs and foaming-at-the-mouth ideologues. Not content to peacefully pursue their aims, they actively victimised the poor helpless children attending the circus with some of the most vile slurs imaginable.

In one instance, one of the protestors yelled through the megaphone “keeping lions in cages is like your mummy and daddy keeping you in jail”. Can you imagine how my eight year old daughter felt? Or any of the other kids walking in? How on earth does victimising children legitimise any grown-up cause – worthy or unworthy?

After dropping my daughter, I calmly approached some of the protestors to express my indignation. Part of that conversation involved me identifying myself as a journalist and pointing out that I have previously written pieces supporting animal welfare.

“Liar!” a woman wearing a lion mask screamed. A man with a spotted bow tie was even worse. Pointing at my four year old son under my arm, then pointing at the lion’s enclosure, he screamed “mammal, mammal!” as though to indicate that both my son and the lions deserved the same humane treatment.

I don’t necessarily disagree with his sentiment. But his tone was another thing entirely. It was the wild, manic tone of someone with severe anger management issues. And it was right in the face of my frightened son.

Now, it just so happens that I’m not such a big fan of circuses with animals, for two simple reasons.

Firstly, I believe the most exciting circus acts are always the ones involving people. Indeed, my daughter came home raving about the contortionist but had little to say about the lions.

Secondly, I don’t believe that performing animals send a good message to kids. It suggests that animals are there for our amusement, which I most firmly believe they are not.

That, by the way, is an entirely different issue from the issue of animal cruelty, which is the main issue the protestors were banging on about in their vicious, mean-spirited way.

So are circuses with animals cruel? Not according to fifth generation circus man and lion tamer Warren Lennon. “The lions have exercise yards available to them from 7 am to 9 or 10 o’clock at night,” he told The Punch yesterday.

“The tricks they do are similar to the movements they make in the wild. They jump, they walk along a plank. We don’t make them jump through fire or anything like that, we don’t use whips and although we use sticks, they are used for direction, not to hit the animals.

The Punch contacted Animal Liberation, who organised the protest. They said their immediate goal is to lobby local councils to outlaw animal circuses, while their long term goal is to shift all circus animals to free range zoos. This is what happened with the elephant Arna from Stardust Circus, who trampled and killed a handler.

Animal Liberation believe the animal “snapped”, although there was some suggestion the animal was only trying to nudge its handler awake after he suffered a heart attack, and inadvertently crushed him.

Whatever the truth in the case of Arna the elephant, Warren Lennon believes free range zoos would be a death warrant for circus-raised lions. “These lions they would die in a free range zoo. They were born in the circus and they are used to the companionship of the trainers. I’d like to see these animal libbers save some species from dying over in Africa. Lions are on the endangered species list, you know.”

Lennon believes that Australia leads the world on regulations for animals in circuses and zoos. But Animal Liberation Communications Manager Lynda Stoner doesn’t see it that way. “Animals were never intended to be objects of entertainment,” she says. “At Taronga Zoo in Sydney, there are signs explaining the dysfunctional behaviour of former circus elephants, who spend much of the day swaying back and forth.”

Stoner and her colleague Emma Hurst, who helped organise the protest, were both shocked when I told them of the behaviour of many of the protestors. That’s shocked as in disgusted, not shocked as in surprised, because this was not the first report of shonky misbehaviour that had filtered back to head office.

Hurst suggested that the news of the protest went out via Facebook, and that some of the protestors might have been blow-ins who were not members of Animal Liberation. “I stand by our right to be there and hand out flyers, but Animal Liberation is a completely non-violent organisation, and we do not support any sort of abuse towards people or anything like that,” she said.

That’s good to hear. Most animal rights groups these days are reasonably level-headed. Well, maybe not PETA, but most. But those lunatic protestors out the front of Lennon Brothers circus were anything but level-headed, that’s for sure.

And with their inexcusable behaviour, they completely invalidated their cause.

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, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Friday, July 29, 2011


Norway: No Media Bias?

Gadi Adelman

This was written a few days ago but is still to the point

Anyone who reads or watches the news knows that journalism isn’t what it once was. From the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from MSNBC to Fox they all lean one way or another. All have an agenda and all follow it to the letter.
 
Although some people say I am a journalist, I am not. I write Op-Eds (Opinion Editorials). I have an agenda. Even though I use only facts when writing, anyone who has read anything of mine knows where I stand. 
 
Depending who you ask or where you studied journalism, one of the first rules is to keep your bias out of the story. So what happened?
 
Somewhere during my lifetime it seems that all journalists or to be more specific, reporters, all took sides. The way they state things or in many cases, don’t state them is a pure and blatant attempt to sway the reader.
 
Case in point, within hours of the tragedy in Norway before the authorities had even finished searching the island of Utoya and the death toll was still rising rapidly, the liberal or left wing media was happy to report  that the only suspect , Anders Behring Breivik was “a right-wing fundamentalist Christian”.
 
Interesting since I have read reports, from al-Jazeera no less, that he was a Jew hating neo-Nazi and a member of a neo-Nazi online forum, to the supposed fact that he was an Islamophobic, far-right Zionist and lover of Israel according to the Jerusalem Post.
 
Talk about your “Sybil” complex, if half of what is being reported is true this guy is the poster child of multiple personalities. Or, then again, perhaps he is just nuts?
 
But to get back to my point, let’s look at the last time a Muslim committed a crime here in the U.S. that actually made the news.
 
Saleh Ali Alramakh, a 21 year old Saudi caused a flight to be diverted to land in Cleveland. The Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, native was accused of causing a major disturbance prior to take off and twice more once in the air as well as assault on a flight attendant on United flight 944 from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany, on July 8.
 
When first reported, there was no mention of Alramakh’s name, his citizenship or the fact that he was a Muslim. This occurred on several news wires long after others were reporting his name, but why?
 
It seems we see this time and time again when the suspect is a Muslim, for some reason that is conveniently kept out of the story. I could fill a page with examples, but if you are reading this article I am sure you can think of several, so I won’t bother to waste the space or time.
 
We can go back to 2009 and Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and see this as well. After the news had no choice but to report the shooters name, the reporters were writing articles on what the possible motive could have been.
 
Reuters reported two days after the attack in an article titled “Motive probed in Fort Hood shooting rampage”, President Obama stated when questioned about possible links to Islamic terror,
 
“We don't know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.”
 
Of course not all the news agencies were yet reporting that Hassan had yelled “Allahu Akbar” while gunning down 43 people leaving 14 dead either. I say 14 due to 21-year-old Pvt. Francheska Velez who was pregnant at the time of her murder.
 
When the story first broke, it didn’t matter that Nidal Hassan was a Muslim. It didn’t matter that he was constantly stating things like,
 
“Muslims are being persecuted by the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
 
It didn’t matter that a class mate of his stated he asked him pointedly, “Nidal, do you consider Shari'a law to transcend the Constitution of the United States?” And he said, “Yes.”
 
"We asked him if homicidal bombers were rewarded for their acts with 72 virgins in heaven and he responded, 'I've done the research — yes.”
 
It didn’t matter that he handed out business cards with S.O.A. (Soldier Of Allah) printed on it.
 
No, it didn’t matter. Much like Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, even 2 days after his attempt when he was found and arrested, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. stated that,
 
“it was too early to designate the failed bombing as an attempted terrorist incident.”
 
The Washington Post reported after his arrest,
 
An overseas angle does not necessarily mean that the incident was planned or financed by al-Qaeda or another organized group, investigators said. "Think smaller," said one senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
 
Even long after the Pakistani Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing, news outlets were still reporting this attempted terror attack had nothing to do with the fact that Shahzad was a Muslim or had recently been to Pakistan to train with the Taliban.
 
He was just a poor, down on his luck normal American who was at the end of his rope. The Huffington Post reported it this way,
 
Not long ago, Faisal Shahzad had a pretty enviable life: He became an American citizen after emigrating from Pakistan, where he came from a wealthy family. He earned an MBA. He had a well-educated wife and two kids and owned a house in a middle-class Connecticut suburb.
 
In the past couple of years, though, his life seemed to unravel: He left a job at a global marketing firm he'd held for three years, lost his home to foreclosure and moved into an apartment in an impoverished neighborhood in Bridgeport.
 
Remember the Hutaree Christian Militia? ABC reported it as follows on March 10, 2010,
 
The anti-government militia allegedly plotted to kill law enforcement officers with improvised explosive devices and projectiles before being foiled by FBI raids that started Sunday in three states that netted nine members of an extremist group, federal authorities said today.
 
Going after a group like the Hutaree can be dangerous, ABC News consultant and former FBI agent Brad Garrett said.
 
"This crowd tends to be heavily armed and they are all conspiracy theorists that the government is trying to take over," he said. "And so you have to be very careful and cautious when starting arresting people like this because you can walk right into an ambush."
 
Unless you really search it out, you probably never saw what was reported by Channel 10 WILX in Lansing Michighan on May 3.
 
Nine members of a Michigan militia will be released from jail pending trial after a federal judge on Monday harshly criticized the government's claim they had conspired to overthrow the U.S. government.
 
The decision is a significant defeat for federal authorities, who spoke in tough and triumphant terms after arresting members of a southern Michigan group called the Hutaree in March and charging them with conspiracy to commit sedition and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction.
 
She said the nine defendants in custody can be released until trial under strict conditions, including electronic monitoring. They won't actually be freed until they return to court for paperwork and other processing Tuesday.
 
So, this “dangerous” Militia group that made the headlines nationwide for days as “Right wing Christian terrorists”. But, when released after the Judge stated, “the rambling, scornful recorded conversations offered as evidence didn't prove the group poses an imminent threat,” this only makes the local news?
 
I don’t think we can call those that write the mainstream news “journalists” or even “reporters” anymore. I think maybe they should be called “exploiters”.
 
Don’t get me wrong, it is possible after all that this nut in Norway, Anders Breivik is a right wing fanatic, they do exist. But I can still count on one hand the number of right wing terror attacks since 9/11, whereas to count the terror attacks in the name of Islam or Allah I would need 17,494 fingers.


SOURCE





MSM Thuggees Run Amok Over Breivik

Edward Cline

Call me Gunga Din. Or at least the Gunga Din who stood on the pinnacle of the Temple of Kali in the 1939 movie production of Kipling’s poem, and sounded the alarm of danger for the approaching British-Scottish troops of the Thuggee ambush that lay ahead of them. Or perhaps I should hand the bugle to Adrian Morgan of Family Security Matters, or to Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, or to Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, or to Steven Emerson of IPT, or to Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish, or to Daniel Pipes and Raymond Ibrahim of the Middle East Forum….

In my previous commentary, “The Oslo Factor: Blame Free Speech” I noted half-way through that The Washington Post was leading the way to government regulation or suppression of speech by hammering its nail in the coffin of “Islamophobia,” and added:
 
There will be a chorus of hammering by the Main Stream Media (MSM), and calls for “responsible” speech. Which is not the same thing as free speech.

“Responsible” speech is not freedom of speech. Enforcement means force, with concomitant penalties, fines, and jail time. Only the government can define and enforce “responsible” speech. One is either free to speak, or one is not. Denmark, Britain, and other countries have already broken ground with overt or covert censorship, and have penalized individuals who have “irresponsibly” spoken out against Islam and against the “Camps of the Muslims” who are immigrating into their countries at government invitation in the names of multiculturalism, indiscriminate tolerance, and moral equivalence.

I noted that:
 
You see, he [Breivik] was “Islamaphobic.” He was also crazed and insensitive and insulting and perhaps even saw his country being stealthily taken over by the enemy in the guise of Muslims and Marxists. So, anyone who criticizes Islam or Muslim behavior in Western countries – or even in Muslim countries – will be branded by association with Breivik. Well-reasoned arguments, evidence of stealth jihad, connections between multiculturalism, Islamic hubris, and the Islamification of the West, impeccable scholarship, reputations for truth-telling and fact-finding, will be dismissed as “Islamaphobic,” intolerant, bigoted, and hateful.

To my knowledge, my warning was one of the earliest in the current avalanche of commentaries about the unintended consequences of Anders Behring Breivik’s act of terrorism in Norway. Critics of Islam, anti-jihadist and counter-jihadist writers and thinkers are all now the liberal-left’s “fall-guy,” having been the “inspiration” of Anders Behring Breivik to do what he did.

Now we know, courtesy of Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto, “2083,” that he was not in essence a “Christian fundamentalist,” but an alienated, nihilist lone wolf who seized upon virtually any anti- or counter-jihadist thought to buttress his psychological disorder and sanction his admitted criminality. Imagine an alleged advocate of capitalism concocting a Brunswick stew of the economics John Law, John Maynard Keynes, Adam Smith, and Frédéric Bastiat and calling it “capitalism,” and then car-bombing the General Motors tower in Detroit.

Sultan Knish has produced a brilliant and revealing analysis of what Breivik is and is not.

But, like The Washington Post, The New York Times has also fashioned its own Thuggee ambush. It began on July 25th with an innocuous unsigned but very subtly-worded article reporting the arrest of Breivik and his background.

Toward the end of high school, he joined the youth wing of the Progress Party, drawn to its anti-immigrant platform and market capitalist bent. But those who knew him from those days said that he failed to leave much of a mark.

And at the end of high school, was Breivik already being “enabled” by Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, and the English Defense League? Assuming he graduated from high school in 1995 or 1996, did Spencer’s Jihad Watch, Geller’s Atlas Shrugs, and the EDL even exist? Or the Gates of Vienna? Or any other “right-wing,” anti-Islamic or counter-jihadist blog? As he grew older, Breivik may have matured physically, but not mentally.
 
With the 1,500-page manifesto, which he said took three years to complete, Mr. Breivik endeavored to find common cause with xenophobic right-wing groups around the world, particularly in the United States. He quoted extensively from the anti-Islam writings of American bloggers, and cut and pasted a whole section of the manifesto written by Theodore J. Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, into his own, replacing “leftism” with “multiculturalism” as the object of aspersion.

Yes, “leftism” and “multiculturalism” are deserving of aspersions, considering the demonstrable and incalculable destruction they have caused. But that is no reason to suggest, as the Times article implies, that Breivik’s evaluation of those phenomena is evidence of a pandemic of unsound minds that ought to be shunned or put into the straightjacket of “responsible” speech.

That article was preceded on July 24th by the first overt attack on anti-Islamic and anti-jihadist writers, “Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.,” by Scott Shane. It would be up to lawyers and the courts to determine whether or not the article is slanderous in nature. What the article is not, however, is a news article. Its sneering tone and borderline allegations disqualify it from being treated as a sterling instance of objective reporting. Key suggestive or slanderous terms are highlighted in this sampling of Shane’s style of insisting on guilt by association:
 
In the document he posted online, [Breivik], who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.

“Acrimonious”? Say, rather, a principled opposition that documented the violence and stealth jihad of Islamic activists? If any acrimony was present in that opposition, it was reserved for policymakers who have allowed Islam to advance unopposed to eradicate Western civilization.

More broadly, the mass killings in Norway, with their echo of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by an antigovernment militant, have focused new attention around the world on the subculture of anti-Muslim bloggers and right-wing activists and renewed a debate over the focus of counterterrorism efforts.

So, to belong to a handful of outspoken individuals who have done their best to warn Americans of the very real peril of Islamic supremacism and the inroads it has made in this country (not to mention Iran’s inching closer to acquiring nuclear weapons with which to vaporize Israel and the West) presumably is to belong to a “subculture” of loons and hash-smoking drop-outs who regularly consult Ouija boards for their wisdom. Note that Mr. Shane does not even honor us with the term “counter-culture.” We are members of a “subculture,” untouchables or pariahs from whom to keep children away lest we infect them with a disease.

And there is nothing wrong with being “anti-government” when your government is thoroughly reaming you and your country with astronomical debt and the expansion of federal power over your diet, lighting fixtures, and speech. But the insinuation here is that to be “anti-government” is to be a bomb-throwing anarchist whose first and sole style of argument is violence, assassination, and machine-gunning a camp full of defenseless teenagers and young adults.
 
The revelations about Mr. Breivik’s American influences exploded on the blogs over the weekend, putting Mr. Spencer and other self-described “counterjihad” activists on the defensive, as their critics suggested that their portrayal of Islam as a threat to the West indirectly fostered the crimes in Norway.

“Self-described”? Mr. Shane should check Mr. Spencer’s credentials. What Mr. Spencer and his fellow counter-jihad activists know about Islam would fill a Pentagon warehouse. What Mr. Shane knows about Islam would fill a thimble. Would he accuse Barack Obama of being a “self-described president”? Or Harry Reid of being a “self-described” senator?

Mr. Spencer wrote on his Web site jihadwatch.org, that “the blame game” had begun, “as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.” He did not mention Mr. Breivik’s voluminous quotations from his writings.

“Voluminous quotations”? That should be more a credit to Mr. Spencer’s persuasive writing than an insinuated indictment of his alleged culpability Breivik’s crime.
 
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”

“Emerge”? Here it is suggested that the literature of anti-jihadist writing is a polluted “infrastructure” from which the Creature from the Black Lagoon emerges to cause havoc and death.
 
Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.” “If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.

Atlas Shrugs is just “another blog” whose owner is supposedly just as suspect and culpable as Robert Spencer, because Breivik often visited the site and posted comments on it. To be cited by a psychotic killer is presumably prima facie evidence of one’s own psychosis.

Finally, Roger Cohen’s New York Times editorial, “Breivik and His Enablers” of July 25th takes off the gloves. It is such a scurrilous and venomous screed that it bears a full reading. However, here are some highlights:
 
No doubt, that is how Islamophobic right-wingers in Europe and the United States who share his views but not his methods will seek to portray Breivik.

Translation: Don’t pay attention to anything these people say. They deny responsibility and are in denial. Anyone who criticizes Islam or Muslims is a bigoted, paranoid fruitcake, just like Breivik.
 
We’ve seen the movie. When Jared Loughner shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords this year in Tucson, Arizona — after Sarah Palin placed rifle sights over Giffords’ constituency and Giffords herself predicted that “there are consequences to that” — the right went into overdrive to portray Loughner as a schizophrenic loner whose crazed universe owed nothing to those fanning hatred under the slogan of “Take America Back.” (That non-specific taking-back would of course be from Muslims and the likes of the liberal and Jewish Giffords.)

No, Mr. Cohen, what we have seen before is the MSM in action to discredit legitimate and articulate opposition to Obama’s domestic policies, and also and also anyone who opposes Islamic jihad. If any organization was in overdrive then, it was the MSM. As it is now.
 
Breivik is no loner. His violence was brewed in a specific European environment that shares characteristics with the specific American environment of Loughner: relative economic decline, a jobless recovery, middle-class anxiety and high levels of immigration serving as the backdrop for racist Islamophobia and use of the spurious specter of a “Muslim takeover” as a wedge political issue to channel frustrations rightward.

Yes, Mr. Cohen, Breivik was a loner. And his violence was not “brewed” by any external causes, but in his own mind. And, “Islamophobia” is neither racist nor unhealthy; if one objects to Islamic beheadings, stonings, rapes, murders, car bombs, suicide bombers, and terrorism – all repeatedly committed by Muslims who have their own brand of racism – Islamophobia is a life-saving mindset. And “Muslim takeovers” of Western cities – say, of Luton, of Bradford, of Malmo, of Dearborn, even of Oslo, where a day before the Oslo bombing, a Norwegian woman was raped in broad daylight on the steps of the Norwegian parliament by a Somali immigrant – are hardly “spurious.” Or perhaps Mr. Cohen would consider moving Tower Hamlets in London, which is more or less a successful Muslim secession from London and the U.K.

Further into his editorial, Cohen manages to implicate Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, and without naming her, Angela Merkel of Germany, who stated that Muslim integration into Western societies, is a dismal and dangerous failure. In short, Cohen’s editorial is instructive only in the sense that one can see just how vile, nihilist, and hateful the left can be.

Finally, the employment of the term anti-Muslim is a package-deal, one that includes by implication any thoughtful and considered opposition to Islamic ideology. One can be faultlessly “anti-Muslim” if one knows, among other things, that Muslims regularly bow East in homage to a gussied-up meteorite, treat women as chattel, revere a murderous brigand and pedophile, and more or less surrender their minds and souls to the authority of grotty-looking imams and mullahs. In practice, the Islamic creed, whatever its sect, is so grotesque that one has difficulty satirizing it.

But the usage of the term “anti-Muslim” is wrong. Spencer, Emerson, Geller, Horowitz and other regular writers on Islam, are not “anti-Muslim,” but anti-totalitarian. Islamists themselves admit that Islam is totalitarian, and not just a Wontonka-worshipping creed.

Now, for the longest time, I had never understood what a right-winger was. Aside from the caricature of a right-winger as a gun-toting, Bible-quoting, goose-stepping, Storm-Trooperish goon wielding a night-stick, the term, I eventually realized, is an emotive one that connotes the absolute power of fascism. But fascism is simply socialism with a gun, or King Kong astride the Empire State Building beating the breast of collectivism and national “unity.”

It is Nazism, or corporatist socialism, with all businesses, industries, and all citizens working for the greater glory of the collective and taking orders from on high. It is Mussolini, and Tojo, and Nasser, and Saddam Hussein, and the Perons. Fascism can be embroidered in many different cultural and ethnic colors, but they all boil down to the surrender and sacrifice of the individual to the state or the race or the collective.

And in the context of today’s peril, aside from fascist tendencies in this country, it is the Islamic Ummah, or Muslim “community,” which will not find “peace” until it embraces the whole globe, when believers and unbelievers alike are in thrall to it. In essence, a “right-winger” is not a champion of individual rights, private property, freedom of speech and other liberties. There are secular “right-wingers” and religious ones and they are all enemies of freedom. The term is a misleading misnomer, measured on a scale whose origin dates back to Revolutionary France and the Reign of Terror. But on its own terms, a “right-winger” is simply a “left-winger” in disguise, seeking the same repressive, totalitarian ends.

So, the standard spectrum of political ideology has for decades been established and perpetuated by an invalid premise. The whole yardstick is leftist. Please, people, stop being fooled by it. Reality beckons. “Right-wingers” are simply “Left-wingers” in drag.

Conservative writers, such as Ron Radosh and David Horowitz, perpetuate the fallacy by defending “conservatives” against charges of nascent “right-wing” terrorism.

Perhaps more importantly than diverting attention away from the legitimate concern with Islamic jihad and the stealthy introduction and imposition of Sharia law in Western nations, is the blank check the MSM is handing our government to monitor and perhaps repress legitimate criticism of Islam. Many of these “Islamaphobic” websites are sponsored, edited and written for by Christians. Because Breivik was initially alleged to be a “fundamentalist Christian,” ergo, goes the illogic, all Christian and other critics of Islam are potential mass murderers and must be reined in. And if not actual mass murderers, then they are ideological “enablers” of them who must be taught to be “responsible.”

If censorship comes to this country, it will be by the invitation of the MSM and the left-liberal political and intellectual establishment. Then we shall see the true “right-wingers” at work.

In the meantime, I shall continue blowing my bugle, and be thankful that I number among the “blackfaced crew” of “bhistis” who carry the water of reason. We oppose the Thuggees of Islam and their enablers on the Marxist-liberal-left, who carry the strangling cloths of multiculturalism and the burial picks of political correctness.

And, should someone object to my use of the term “Thuggee,” I recommend going here for the etymology and history of the term. He will see that not only would Breivik have fit into the mindless fanaticism of the cult of Kali – he was willing, after all, to ally himself with Islamic “extremists” and inaugurate a reign of violence – but that the Hindu cult had Islamic origins.

What a coincidence!

Or not.

SOURCE





American-born Muslim attempts to attack army base

An AWOL Muslim soldier who refused to be deployed to Afghanistan because of his religious beliefs admitted to an alleged "terror plot" to attack Ft Hood, Texas, the US Army said in a memo overnight.

Pfc. Nasser Jason Abdo was arrested Wednesday afternoon by the Killeen Police Department near the Texas base, which was the site of a November 2009 massacre, allegedly committed by another Muslim serviceman.

The alert, obtained by FOX News Channel and sent to all Army units, said the 21-year-old suspect was found with a large quantity of ammunition, weapons and a bomb inside a backpack, adding that he admitted to planning the attack during police interviews.

Chief Dennis Baldwin of the Killeen Police Department confirmed that, based on statements Abdo made during questioning, "military personnel were a target of this suspect" and said he would characterise the absentee soldier's plans as a "terror plot."

Abdo was being held by the Killeen Police Department pending federal charges, Mr Baldwin said, describing him as "a very dangerous individual" and adding that, "as far as we know, he acted alone."

Abdo, a Texas native, entered the service in March 2009 but applied for conscientious objector status in June 2010, on the eve of his first deployment to Afghanistan, citing his religious beliefs as a Muslim. Just days after his application was approved, Abdo was hit with 34 counts of possession of child pornography and his military discharge was put on hold.

Abdo adamantly denied that he put child porn on his government computer and claimed the charges were the military's way of retaliating against him. He told WSMV-TV last month, "I think that all sounds pretty fishy."

The soldier then went AWOL on July 4.

SOURCE




Murderous Muslims again

You dare not disagree with them about religion

An Indonesian court has sent a "chilling message" by giving Muslim extremists light sentences for a vicious mob attack in which three sect members died, rights activists say. Twelve people stood trial but none faced murder charges in what human rights campaigners say is a travesty of justice in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country.

The sentences range between three and six months' jail - less than prosecutors had sought and well below the maximum penalty of 12 years.

Dani bin Misra, a 17-year-old who repeatedly smashed a victim's skull with a stone, was sentenced on Thursday to three months in jail for manslaughter. Idris bin Mahdani, who led the 1500-strong mob in the February attack, was convicted of illegal possession of a machete and received five months and 15 days in jail.

Most of the convicted men are likely to walk free within weeks, observers said. "The Cikeusik trial sends the chilling message that attacks on minorities like the Ahmadiyah will be treated lightly by the legal system," Human Rights Watch deputy chief for Asia Phil Robertson said. "This is a sad day for justice in Indonesia."

In rare criticism of its Southeast Asian ally, the United States said it was "disappointed by the disproportionately light sentences", which came within days of a visit to Indonesia by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"The United States encourages Indonesia to defend its tradition of tolerance for all religions, a tradition praised by President [Barack] Obama in his November 2010 visit to Jakarta," a US embassy statement said.

The Obama administration resumed military ties with Indonesia's notorious special forces unit last year, citing improvements in the human rights situation in the country.

The European Union delegation in Jakarta expressed "strong concerns" over the light sentences.

The violence against the Ahmadiyah sect members in Cikeusik, western Java, was one of the most horrific in a long line of attacks on the minority group in Indonesia in recent years. Ahmadiyah, unlike mainstream Muslims, do not believe Mohammed was the last prophet and are regarded as heretics and blasphemers by conservatives in countries such as Indonesia and Pakistan.

A secretly filmed video of the Cikeusik rampage sparked international concern when it appeared online within days of the attack. The reaction in Indonesia, however, was muted. The footage shows police fleeing the scene as the enraged mob - armed with machetes and knives and shouting abuse at the "infidels" - launched an unprovoked attack on a house owned by an Ahmadiyah follower.

A handful of Ahmadiyah men tried to defend the property with stones and slingshots but they were quickly overwhelmed. Then the killing began. The mob clubbed and stoned their defenceless victims to death in front of police, then stood around and joked over their shattered bodies. Several Ahmadiyah tried to flee but were hunted down and badly beaten.

Robertson said the appalling "savagery" demanded a strong response from a country which has ratified international covenants on freedom of religion and claims to have a pluralistic religious tradition. "But instead of charging the defendants with murder and other serious crimes, prosecutors came up with an almost laughable list of 'slap-on-the wrist' charges," he said.

Prosecutors managed to convince the court that the video justified a reduced sentence for the killers.

Meanwhile Ahmadiyah member Deden Sujana is facing up to four years in jail on charges of incitement, disobeying police orders and maltreatment because he ignored police orders to evacuate the house.

Ahmadiyah spokesman Zafrullah Ahmad Pontoh was cautious in his response to the sentences. "Let the legal power handle the case. It's only a worldly punishment," he said. "We'll forgive those who ask us for forgiveness, but so far we haven't heard them asking us for forgiveness."

The graphic footage, which is available on the video-sharing website YouTube, was filmed by an Ahmadiyah follower who mingled with the attackers and watched his friends being murdered. The man is now in hiding under police protection, fearing for his life.

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, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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