Sunday, November 03, 2013



More multiculturalism in Britain

Muslim "honour" at work



A disqualified driver who bowled over three pedestrians in a revenge attack has been jailed for 20 years.  Aqab Hussain, 21, was already banned from the roads when he ploughed into a group of friends following a minor spat outside a club.

Shocking CCTV footage shows the attack, which during the trial was compared to a scene from the computer game Grant Theft Auto, taking place in Manchester city centre last August.

It shows one man knocked to the pavement, another catapulted over the roof of the Vauxhall Corsa and a third carried down the street before Hussain swerved to dislodge him from the bonnet.

Father-of-three Michael Ward, 29, who was thrown over the car roof, was left with catastrophic head injuries. He now cannot talk, feed himself or play any part in family life, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Mr Ward was already partially sighted and had to be helped to cross roads and get upstairs before he was injured in the incident.

Hussain denied being the driver but was found guilty by a jury of four counts of attempted murder after a trial last month and today given a 20-year jail term.

He had flouted court orders for previous convictions for dangerous driving and Hussain, himself a father of three, was serving a ban at the time of the offence.

Passing sentence Judge Robert Atherton said it was fortunate Mr Ward did not die in the attack. ‘He was very, very seriously injured. He will never recover, he will never be able to enjoy his family,’ the judge said.

‘One witness described the scene as being like someone bowling at skittles and people being flung like skittles to the side.  ‘Why you did it is extremely difficult to understand.’

During the trial, eyewitness Corey Gordon, 26, who watched the attack from inside his car, later compared it to a sequence from the violent computer game series in which users play the role of car thieves.

He said: ‘It was like ten pin bowling where you hit the skittles and they go up in the air. I can only describe it as unreal - a computer game like Grand Theft Auto - as he swerved off line to hit the men. It knocked one of the men at least 7ft into the air.’

Hussain even wobbled his vehicle so he could shake off one of the men who was still on the bonnet, Manchester Crown Court was told.

Outside court, Mr Ward’s wife of seven years, Mary Rose Ward, said: ‘What he did to my husband, you wouldn’t do it to an animal really would you?

‘My husband was never a violent person and I am not a violent person but he should not have done what he did.’

Mrs Ward said her blind husband was still receiving full-time care in a rehabilitation centre but that she cares for him during the day before going home to look after their children, daughters Montana, six, and Crystal, aged four, and son Michael, aged one.

‘He can’t play with the kids or anything. He can’t talk, he can’t walk, he can’t wash himself or feed himself, he has no memory. I’m his wife and I will care for him for the rest of my life because he is my husband.

‘He knows he was in a car accident and I try and explain but he doesn’t really understand.’

Mr Ward is still receiving full-time care more than a year on from the incident in Manchester city centre

The court heard the incident, on John Dalton Street in Manchester, started in ‘horseplay’ between Hussain, from Rusholme, Manchester, and his friends and the group with Mr Ward, from Bolton.

But it led to ‘fisticuffs’, with witnesses saying Hussain’s group coming off second best.  Minutes later Hussain jumped in the car and drove at the men in revenge.

Mr Ward was scooped up on the bonnet before being ‘deposited’ at the side of the road. He was in intensive care for 20 days and spent around four months in a high dependency unit.

Paul Hulme, 30, also suffered ‘significant injuries’ with multiple leg fractures after being carried on the bonnet before Hussain veered in the road to knock him off.

Martin Harris, 32, suffered bruises as he was side-swiped by the car while a fourth member of Mr Ward’s group, Thomas Mallanphy, narrowly escaped injury after stepping back from the road.

Hussain fled to Pakistan after the incident but was arrested at Heathrow when he flew back to the UK six weeks later.  He had a string of motoring convictions starting from the age of 16.

Hussain was also banned from driving for 15 years, which he will serve once he is released two-thirds of the way through his sentence, as is normal practice.

Mr Ward faces another major operation on December 21 to have metal plates fitted in his head.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Peach, from Greater Manchester Police, said: ‘This incident started after a minor disagreement between the two groups of men. The CCTV footage demonstrates that Hussain thought he would finish the argument by purposefully using a car as a weapon and deliberately driving into Michael and his friends.

‘The CCTV footage gives an example of how fast he was driving the car and the impact it had with Mr Ward. In all my years of policing, I have not seen anything as shocking as this and I find it amazing that Michael and his friends are still alive.

‘The impact this has had on him and his family has been truly devastating. He is still receiving treatment and his wife visits him every day in hospital. Due to the injuries he suffered, he will no longer be able to play an active part in bringing up his young children. He will need care for the rest of his life.

‘Thanks to the information we received, we were able to arrest Hussain and bring him to justice.

‘However, no sentence can bring back the quality of life Michael once had, and he and his loved ones will have to live with the constant reminder of what happened in the early hours of that morning.’

SOURCE





Among Leftists, the Fascism is never far below the surface

Terrorised by union bullies: How Labour's Unite paymasters intimidated managers and their children in bitter oil refinery battle

The full extent of the Unite union’s campaign of bullying and intimidation against senior managers during the bitter Grangemouth oil refinery dispute is revealed today.

In a disturbing echo of the union militancy of the 1970s and 80s, Unite leaders deployed a dirty tricks squad to personally target and humiliate executives of the Ineos chemical company and their families.

The sinister unit – known as the ‘Leverage team’ – sent mobs of protesters to the homes of senior figures in the firm.

One director last night said he had feared for the safety of his wife and his two young children after 30 Unite protesters descended on his drive during the school holidays.

Police were called after the group approached his neighbours, telling them he was ‘evil’ in an apparent attempt to coerce him into giving in to their demands.

The daughter of another company boss had ‘Wanted’ posters denouncing her father posted through her front door hundreds of miles away in Hampshire.

The union agreed to call off the Leverage team only as part of the settlement of  the dispute.  Yesterday, an unrepentant Unite spokesman said such activities were ‘legitimate in the context of an industrial dispute’, adding that ‘bad employers should have nowhere to hide’.

Details of the bully-boy tactics were revealed yesterday as David Cameron branded Stephen Deans, the Unite organiser at the heart of the dispute, a ‘rogue trade unionist’ whose behaviour nearly sank the plant.

Ineos threatened to close the Grangemouth plant after Mr Deans and Unite refused a new pay and pension package designed to save the business.  Unite general secretary Len McCluskey brought the dispute to crisis point by launching strike action.

Unite finally caved in last Friday and Mr Deans resigned on Monday after being told he would be fired for spending a quarter of his working hours on Labour party business. Mr Deans was also chairman of the Falkirk Labour party where he had become embroiled in a Labour vote-rigging scandal.

The Prime Minister said of Mr Deans: ‘Frankly, we have a real problem with a rogue trade unionist at Grangemouth who nearly brought the Scottish petrochemical industry to its knees.’

One Grangemouth boss, who as asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, called the police after 25 Unite members working for the union’s Leverage team protested on his driveway with flags, banners and an inflatable rat for about 90 minutes on October 18.

The director was called by his wife, who was out with her children and had been phoned by a friend to say a mob had arrived on their doorstep. He rushed to the scene said he was overcome with ‘bloody anger’ when he saw they had targeted him.  ‘It was a mob, a threatening mob,’ he said. Children as young as seven who were playing on the street were coaxed into joining the mob.

‘They were trying to humiliate me,’ the director said. ‘Trying to portray me as a nasty boss, a nasty capitalist. To portray me as someone evil. Their intent was to have my neighbours thinking, gosh, what sort of a guy do we have living there.

‘It was just despicable to approach kids and try to introduce them to a demonstration against one of their neighbours. It’s hard to find words to describe the lunacy of their behaviour.’

Police were called and interviewed the director and his neighbours at length, saying they would search out the members of the group on suspicion of being in breach of the peace. Officers decided not to press charges.

The director added: ‘Their intent was to gain concessions. But taking it to someone’s home, to someone’s drive, during the school holidays, is way over the line.’

The director and his wife now fear for the safety of their children, who are both under ten.  ‘It had quite an impact on my kids,’ he said. ‘My wife is very concerned that they could turn up at any time again. They know where I live. It’s in the back of my mind.’

Leaflets denouncing company owner Jim Ratcliffe were also posted through the doors of homes in the town where he lives.

Union protests were also held outside dozens of businesses which trade with Ineos, including their bankers Lloyds and customers Sainsbury’s and Asda, in a effort to pressurise them to cut their ties with the firm.

Another Ineos director said: ‘They have send flying squads of protesters to dozens of businesses we have links with. The put leaflets through the door of pretty much every house in Lyndhurst where we have our headquarters. My daughter received a poster explaining what a terrible person I am.

‘This behaviour smacks of totalitarianism. The way they have been behaving is frankly insane.’

The Mail has seen an email, sent from Mr Deans’ email account last Wednesday, acknowledging that the Leverage unit went on the attack.

The message, written by Mr Deans’ fellow Unite convenor Mark Lyons to Calum MacLean and Declan Sealy, the two Ineos negotiators, offered the company a deal. In addition to accepting the ‘survival plan’ and ‘pensions proposals’, the Unite point man also says union bosses will ‘ensure withdrawal of leverage strategy’.

On Unite’s website, the union boasts that it uses ‘leverage’ to put pressure on ‘shareholders of the employer, competitors of the employer, communities within which the employer operates’ and ‘customers of the employer’.

‘Leverage is about the democratic right of the Union to ensure that immoral employers cannot hide behind veils of secrecy.’

The behaviour of the Leverage team appears not to violate union laws banning secondary picketing since protests are allowed if they do not prevent employers of the firms they targeted from going to work.

But the Tories last night branded the revelations ‘extremely sinister’ and called on Ed Milibad to reopen Labour’s inquiry into the activities of Unite.

A Unite spokesman said: ‘All the activities referred to are both legal and legitimate in the context of an industrial dispute. Bad employers should have nowhere to hide.

‘Of course all campaigning in the context of the Ineos dispute has now ended.  ‘However for the workers and their union to be described as “bullies” is beyond satire.’

Last night Len McCluskey denounced Mr Cameron after he used Prime Minister’s Question Time to criticise Mr Deans.  ‘The Prime Minister’s conduct today was disgraceful,’ said Mr McCluskey. ‘His rush to smear a good and honourable man will appal decent-thinking people. He should apologise at once.’

SOURCE






Nigel Farage: We must defend Christian heritage



By Cristina Odone

The boardroom at the UK Independence Party offices at the top of a smart Mayfair town house has a flip chart showing the party’s agenda. The marching orders are printed in large, green ink letters — this is the green ink party, after all: “Target groups. Focus on marginals. Gain Gravitas.”

When Nigel Farage appears, in dapper suit and polished shoes, it is not “gravitas” he exudes but rather the bonhomie of a good lunch at the French restaurant next door. Within minutes, he is entertaining me with one-liners about the RSPCA (“a Left-wing agitprop group”) and sugar (“the one vice I don’t have”) and anecdotes about his days in the City (“ratting wasn’t allowed – in fact we called it Welshing, but we wouldn’t say that now.”). It’s a winning performance: the plain-speaking politician who dares say what others don’t. But is Farage more than an act? For the next few weeks, the public will be able to judge as he stars in theatres up and down the country.

An Audience With … Nigel Farage features a stage with only a table, a chair, and a bottle of wine as props. Farage thinks it will give him a chance to “explain who I am” and, crucially, to “reach a new audience”.

The MEP is a practised showman. His famous drubbing of Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council (“you have the charisma of a damp rag”) briefly transformed the sedate chambers into Punch and Judy entertainment.

Today, he explains, winking conspiratorially, we cannot go into his office because it’s full of smoke: in order to indulge his 40-a-day habit, he has designated one room of the headquarters his “bedroom”, to sidestep the smoking ban.

The organiser of An Audience with … claims there is “huge appetite for Nigel”. Wendy Bailey won’t say how many tickets (at £16 a head) have sold, but “people are curious about this man who has come out of nowhere to reshape British politics”.

This sounds a tad far-fetched, but it chimes with Farage’s claim that Ukip “sets the agenda on everything from the BBC, green taxes and immigration control”. When I tell Farage that I have reservations about some of his policies, his smoker’s laugh rolls across the table. “So do I!” He ignores my question about which policies these might be, thumping the table instead to say that “there’s an innate prejudice against the new, whether it’s Wilberforce or Darwin or even O’Leary with Ryanair”.

I balk at the comparison with the giants who vanquished slavery and introduced the concept of evolution — but the Michael O’Leary analogy is apt: a maverick who breaks ranks. Unlike the budget airline’s boss, though, the Ukip leader “can only be obnoxious about the French”. He imposes the same restriction on all party members. When Godfrey Bloom MEP referred to developing countries earlier this year as “bongo bongo land” and later, at the Ukip conference, to women who didn’t clean behind their fridges as “sluts”, his leader knew “he had to go”.

Farage insists Bloom was an exception. “When people say Ukip is racist, it makes me laugh. Look at our intern,” and he points to the young woman who delivered us a cup of tea. “She’s half Hindu!”

He ignores my discomfiture and proceeds blithely: “For 40 years we have believed that if you even discuss issues like border control, or the make-up of society, you are innately a bad person because it is a front, a cover for a deeper and darker motive.”

Fear of causing offence drives the “Notting Hill claptrap about diversity”. “We need a much more muscular defence of our Judaeo-Christian heritage. Yes, we’re open to different cultures but we have to defend our values. That’s the message I want to hear from the Archbishop of Canterbury and from our politicians. Anything less is appeasement of the worst kind.”

Yet he speaks not as a defender of the faith — he ventures to church only four or five times a year — but of “our identity”.

This is the joker’s trump card, and he plays it ably, voice throbbing as he speaks of “the working classes who bear the brunt of excessive immigration”. It is not just the number of immigrants. Their “calibre” matters too. Who doesn’t meet his standards? “Criminals. There are 9,000 eastern Europeans in British prisons. I don’t think they should be here.”

Later, I can’t find evidence for that statistic anywhere. Nigel apologises, he thought he’d said foreign nationals, not east Europeans. In fact, the real figure is 10,786 foreign nationals in prison.

His list of those who will have no place in a Ukip Britain also includes Muslims who speak no English and wear the veil. “It makes people feel deeply uncomfortable. We go on about equality but under our noses, female genital mutilation has been going on in this country. Tens of thousands of women a year, but is anyone talking about it? It’s brushed under the carpet.” This slick eliding of veiling and mutilation is a typical Farage-ism.

“We have,” he says, “some very mixed values”. These include the “betrayal” of the family. “This has been the most anti-family government we have ever seen. The very fact that they pushed for gay marriage, and thought that it was important at a time when not even Stonewall was campaigning for it, shows you their twisted sense of priorities.” He is “100 per cent” supportive of stay-at-home mothers.

He has two sons from a first marriage and two daughters from his second, with Kirsten Mehr. Farage married the German-born broker in 1997. She forgave him when a Latvian blonde told a tabloid about their one-night stand in 2006.

When Farage’s son Thomas, 21, was cautioned last May for being drunk and disorderly, his father refused to comment. He still does.

Farage has always kept Mehr and his children from the public eye. “I don’t think you can have this both ways. There is Blair standing on May 4 on the steps of Downing Street posing as the perfect family. Then when Euan is 16 he gets p____d and collapses in Leicester Square. If you parade your family on the public stage, they become fair game.

“A lot of people in Ukip have said to me there would be electoral advantage in parading wife and children. But I’m not doing it.”

Does he think Samantha Cameron and Miriam Clegg have proved electoral assets? “They are wealthy and well-dressed and yes it probably does help the image. But I feel very passionate about this.”

Farage lives in a village in Kent and says that the Countryside Alliance has deserted David Cameron because “the Tories have completely lost touch with the rural community”. Wind farms? “I’d like to blow them all up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single issue in my life more insanely stupid than despoiling our green and pleasant land and our seascapes with ugly bird- and bat-chomping monsters that don’t work.”

He adds: “How could I do a deal with Dave? Look at what rubbish he comes out with every day!”

I ask if he sees himself as the little guy who takes on the big giants of Westminster: “I hope so. I’ve got the sling and the stone.”

Wilberforce, Darwin, now the Biblical David slaying Goliath: Farage’s view of his role is somewhat inflated. But then, I suspect this, too, is an act.

SOURCE




Jezebel, the 'Mainstream' of Feminism

Feminism isn't just a brutal philosophy for millions of unborn children. It's brutal on the Internet. Take the website Jezebel.com, a reference to the prophetess in the book of Revelation who was "teaching and beguiling my servants to practice immorality."

This summer, a Catholic priest in Gainesville, Va., took to Facebook to help find an adoptive home for an unborn child with Down syndrome. It spurred a little press boomlet when hundreds of people called or emailed the church, volunteering to raise the child.

But Katie J.M. Baker of Jezebel thought this story was disgusting.

"So many mistreated babies and kids with Downs live terrible lives," Baker wrote. "Instead of throwing resources at a nonviable fetus, why can't the church help children with Down syndrome who are already alive? Because anti-abortion folks care more about fetuses with fairytale narratives than actual babies."

Two days after this putrid piece, Planned Parenthood honored Baker with a "Maggie Award" for her "ongoing original coverage of reproductive health news and legislation." Now Baker has been hired by the folks that currently own Newsweek, prompting her to write a departure blog headlined "Goodbye to the Coven."

The jaw drops. This was an actual baby, not a doomed "nonviable fetus." Most people who say, "Downs kids live terrible lives" are making excuses as they kill them.

This Down syndrome dissing was just another day at the office for the Jezebel coven. They've also mocked women obsessed over when to choose pregnancy by offering instead, "When's the Best Age to Have an Abortion?" How about under 18? "Well, duh. This one's a no-brainer." At 30? "If you saved up a little, you could probably afford a designer abortion. A Marc Jacobs abortion, in teal."

For feminists, any age is perfect.

Now this website has been transformed into a book, "The Book of Jezebel," a snark-loaded feminist encyclopedia. It can be repetitive. The condom is "a must-have accessory for protection against two potentially life-threatening conditions: AIDS (among other STIs) and babies."

You read that sentence correctly.

"Children" are defined as "the side effect of sex," and "nephew, niece" is defined as "child of a sibling, a partner's sibling, or a dear friend. They work well as both practice kids and as reminders to use birth control." A "zygote" is "too young to be a slut, so way more entitled to civil rights than you are."

The Jezebel entry for "misogyny" is "Exemplified by God, Aristotle, Phyllis Schlafly, Rush Limbaugh, The Republican Party, Allen West."

Unsurprisingly, our leftist media elite love Jezebel. The Huffington Post announced, "If these short posts are a sampling of smart womanhood, we're sold." The Daily Beast proclaimed the book a "coffee table bible for middle-class feminists everywhere." USA Today noted the "encyclopedic tome filled with hilarious, female-centric definitions on everything from popular movies, to virginity, to acne." CNN host Jake Tapper not only promoted the book and Jezebel founder Anna Holmes on air, he attended her book party.

No one loved this book like National Public Radio. They published at least three book reviews and interviewed Anna Holmes at least three times -- on "All Things Considered," on "Marketplace," and "On Point with Tom Ashbrook." No one asked Holmes about trashing God or mothers who choose to have more than two children. No one even asked why she lists her name on Twitter as "SATANna Holmes." (Emphasis hers.)

NPR.org reviewer Annalisa Quinn proclaimed: "Jezebel is the closest thing we have to an engaging and mainstream (!) feminist news outlet. That is something to be grateful for. (It) may sometimes be mean, petty, biased, and irresponsible -- but it is utterly necessary."

Mean, petty, biased, and irresponsible. That could also be a liberal's sales pitch for NPR donations.

But on "Fresh Air," NPR reviewer Maureen Corrigan took the cake in celebrating this tome of "jolly feminist cultural commentary." The book "is packed with gorgeous graphics and photos, as well as witty and unruly entries on everything from Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House on the Prairie' books to speculums. Most gloriously, this is an encyclopedia with a voice. Take, for instance, the entry on conservative commentator Ann Coulter, which notes that she 'subsists on a diet of kittens.'"

Notice how NPR liberals love to think of themselves as the guardians of civility and the gentle moderators of a national discussion. Baloney. They delight in laughing at the "glorious" notion of Ann Coulter eating kittens.

This is NPR's only recent mention of Ann Coulter. Her latest book didn't receive three gooey book reviews and three fawning interviews. She just gets Jezebel-slapped.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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