Monday, April 02, 2012


British mother conned ex into thinking he was her child's father for 13 YEARS (and swindled him out of £50,000 for presents and private education)

This was a gross and heartless fraud and some justice has been done on this occasion  -- but there have been previous instances of mothers getting away with this with no signficant penalty

A mother who conned a former lover into thinking he was the father of her daughter for more than 13 years has been jailed.

The 47-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, swindled him out of at least £48,700 which went on private education and expensive gifts.

She admitted 15 offences of deception when she appeared at Caernarfon Crown Court, in north Wales, yesterday.

And despite a plea for leniency from her daughter, the judge told her he had no choice but to jail her for 20 months.

Sentencing, Mr Recorder Duncan Bould, said: 'The tentacles of your deception have spread emotionally far and wide. The plea by your daughter to avoid sending you to prison is heart-rending and one can understand why she makes it.

'But the court must perform a public duty to punish those who behave in this seriously criminally wrong way as you have done to a large scale over a lengthy period.

'I don’t feel I can properly accede to those pleas put forward for leniency to avoid an immediate custodial sentence.'

The judge said the mother, who is from from Conwy county,  had observed 'all these tragedies evolving - she must bear a very heavy responsibility for that.'

Prosecuting counsel Wyn Lloyd Jones said the victim and defendant had met in the 1990s. Weeks after their relationship ended, the woman rang him and they met at her parents’ home. She told him she was pregnant and lied that he was the father of the unborn child.

The man spent three days with her in hospital, awaiting the birth. 'He thought he had a daughter and immediately began to treat her as such. His family treated her as such. The real father was kept out of the picture,' the prosecutor said.

Soon after the birth the man formed a relationship with another woman who became his wife and they had children. 'The fraud that took place over the years deprived him and his family of a huge amount of money which otherwise they would have been able to enjoy,' counsel remarked.

He paid nursery and school fees, medical expenses and the mum’s £3,000 credit card debt. 'There were times when he struggled to pay. He had to work long hours to make ends meet,' Mr Lloyd Jones explained.

It wasn’t until 2008 that two mutual friends, one knowing the truth since before the birth, told the victim. 'Perhaps not surprisingly he felt shocked and numb,' the barrister said.

One of the friends had witnessed the defendant and her sister arguing when she was pregnant - the sister wanting the victim to be told he wasn’t the real dad.

The defendant had told the pal that the man had money and could support the child. 'She had been to a private school, she wanted the child to have the same.' She also wanted expensive presents for the girl, now 13, to keep up with school friends.

After the bombshell, DNA testing was ordered by a court. Mr Lloyd Jones said : 'He’s clearly been through a great deal including dealing with a very serious false allegation made by this defendant to the police.'

Elen Owen, defending, said her client had large debts and was in no position to repay the money. The fraud wasn’t financially motivated, she said.

Asked by the judge for the reason it occurred, counsel replied: 'Because she was on a rollercoaster and there was no right time to tell somebody who thought he was the father of the child. She was in an almost impossible position so far as coming clean,' counsel added.

The girl can’t be identified.  The victim, a middle-aged man, sat in court. But afterwards he declined to comment as he left with his wife.

SOURCE






How 'man of the people' Red Ken enjoyed lifestyle of a jet-setting executive - all on the taxpayer

Livingstone's lavish expenses as London Mayor - from first-class travel to cases of Puilly Fume wine, £260 shoes and a £1.89 coffee -- typical Leftist hypocrite

Ken Livingstone spent tens of thousands of pounds of public money as London Mayor on first class air travel, luxury hotels, fine wines and even a £260 pair of shoes.

Documents show that among a string of expenses claims he used a special Mayor’s credit card to pay for a £282 dinner with Ed Balls, then a Labour Minister, at a top London restaurant. Afterwards he dipped into public funds to pay for his £30 taxi home.

Mr Livingstone spent £135.94 on a desk lamp, £41.25 on a shirt, £42 for an ‘emergency passport’, and £23.87 on water at a Paris hotel overlooking the Eiffel Tower.

He bought fine wines from upmarket supplier Laithwaites, including four cases of Rioja Luis Canas Reserva 2001 (£475); two cases of Corneau Cyllene Pouilly Fumé 2005 (£199); three cases of Rovalley Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 (£299); and six half bottles of Foudre No 8 Cognac (£95). One of his Laithwaites wine sprees cost £2,884.

To ensure his drinks were chilled, he obtained a quotation for a £132 mini bar for his office.

When he attended the Davos World Economic Summit in Switzerland, he charged £256.98 for a pair of ‘heavy-duty shoes’ – presumably to cope with the snow. The summit for tycoons and world leaders features a series of free dinners and cocktail parties, yet he charged £1.89 for a cup of coffee.

The documents also suggest that  Mr Livingstone spent £130.73 on taxi trips to the dentist.

A Mail on Sunday investigation has uncovered details of his lavish expenses during his last term of office from documents published recently by the Greater London Authority, in addition to secret receipts.

The disclosures come only weeks before the London mayoral election. Mr Livingstone, who was Mayor from 2000 to 2008, is hoping to grab back the post from Tory Boris Johnson.

The claims for his second four-year term from 2004 are likely to dent his self-styled ‘man of the people’ image, revealing extravagance closer to the lifestyle of a jet-setting executive.

They also give a revealing insight into the role of his wife, Emma Beal, recruited as his £45,000-a-year ‘office manager’ when he became Mayor.

Confidential invoices show how she took charge of paying for expensive wines and luxury airline flights for Mr Livingstone and his entourage.

Ms Beal arranged for him to fly first class to Florida in 2007 at a cost of £6,404, while the orders to drink supplier Laithwaites bore specific instructions that they were to be delivered to Ms Beal at the Mayor’s office – and that she would settle the bill.
Alcohol graphic

The couple met ten years ago and married in 2009 after he had left office. Explaining why he took her to City Hall, Mr Livingstone said in his autobiography that in her previous job running a newspaper office she was good at handling ‘difficult’ people and their ‘extravagant expenses claims’.

According to a list of published personal expense claims for his last four years as Mayor, he ran up a £66,000 bill, about half of which were filed under ‘Livingstone K, corp card’ (corporate credit card).

Ms Beal booked Mr Livingstone a £4,234 club class seat on a flight to Miami – while his spin doctor travelled economy class on the same flight for a fraction of the price.

Two weeks ago, Mr Livingstone said that if he regains the mayoralty, he will embark on a ‘round the world’ tour to drum up investment for London.

GLA Tory leader James Cleverly last night wrote to the authority’s anti-sleaze monitoring officer, Ed Williams, demanding an inquiry into Mr Livingstone’s expenses by the GLA Standards Committee. He claims Mr Livingstone may have breached the GLA’s code of conduct on three counts: Serving the public interest; accountability; and prudent use of public funds.

Referring to Mr Livingstone’s election slogan, Mr Cleverly said: ‘The only person “better off with Ken” is Ken. At a time when he was increasing council tax by 152 per cent he was happily abusing the London taxpayer.’

Mr Livingstone’s image is of a man who gets about London on the Tube and buses. In 2007, he said: ‘Politicians should resist the temptation to glide around in chauffeur-driven cars, and stay in touch with issues that matter to Londoners.’

But documents show he clocked up £6,893 on taxis for him and his personal staff. On a trip to Los Angeles in 2006, he hired a car and driver for £180.

His choice of London restaurants reads like an Egon Ronay guide. In 2008, he and an aide took Ed Balls, then Education Secretary, to Shepherd’s, a top Westminster restaurant. The £282 bill was charged to Mr Livingstone’s corporate credit card.  The documents suggest that afterwards, he got the GLA to pay his £30 taxi fare home.

Mr Livingstone’s travels took him to the luxurious Taj hotels in India, including the Taj Lands End in Mumbai, a favourite of Pierce Brosnan, and the Taj Mahal Palace in the same city.

He stayed at New York’s Hotel Jumeirah Essex House, rated as the second best in America by Global Traveller Magazine.

Mr Livingstone enjoyed lunch in London with American actor Kevin Spacey, at a cost of £220.28, and dined royally with senior Labour figures including Tessa Jowell in 2007 at London’s Mon Plaisir, known for its foie gras. And he spent £466.35 on dinner for his Cuban translator during a trip to Cuba.

Mr Johnson was forced to trim his own spending after being accused of over-reliance on expenses-funded taxis in his early days as Mayor.

And he was hit by a credit card scandal in 2008 when one of his deputies, Ian Clement, received a suspended jail sentence for abusing his City Hall corporate credit card. Mr Clement admitted using it to buy lunches for himself and his lover. A judge said Mr Clement had ‘flagrantly and arrogantly’ misused public money. He was forced to quit his £127,000-a-year post.

As a result, Mr Johnson banned all GLA staff from using such cards. His aides say he has never used one himself. They state he has only ever bought economy-class tickets as Mayor, though he has occasionally been upgraded and received a ‘small number’ of free flights. They say he uses few taxis and prefers to use his bicycle. An official said Mr Johnson rarely dines at public expense and publishes all details of such events.

Mr Livingstone recently faced charges of hypocrisy after claims he avoided at least £50,000 in tax through a company set up with his wife. He denied any impropriety.

A spokesman for Mr Livingstone refused to comment on individual expense claims and defended his foreign trips, claiming they won valuable business for London.

‘They were part of a campaign to promote London, win the bid to host the Olympics, and open new markets to London business. The visit to Miami sealed the first official NFL [American football] game for Wembley.’

The spokesman claimed Mr Johnson had failed to publish details of his own flights and expenses.

SOURCE





Scathing anti-Semitism pervades 'Holey Land' exhibition in Sweden

Art exhibition at Stockholm church accuses Jews and Israel of being inherently destructive.  Sweden has long had strong Fascist tendencies

By Anna Ekström

A picture of a Bible converted into a tank hangs before my eyes. The book with its cannon is on a rampage. No enemy can be seen. In the background is a meandering wall: the West Bank barrier.

I am visiting an art exhibition called "The Holy Land – The Holey Land” in Immanuelskyrkan, a church in Stockholm, and I am astonished. Anti-Israel propaganda is common, but this is something else. The artist accuses Judaism of being inherently destructive.

The organizer of the exhibition is the Swedish Christian Study Center, a non-governmental organization with an office in Jerusalem. Before the event, the Simon Wiesenthal Center protested the Christian organization’s publicity poster, which portrays Israelis as rats and the West Bank as cheese. While that cartoon was withdrawn, the Wiesenthal Center's gesture did not make any difference.

Artists Stefan Sjoblom's and Larz Lindqvists’ imagery is a fusion of anti-Jewish myths from Christianity, Nazism, the Left and Islamism. Both artists are pastors in the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden, and Sjoblom also works as a prison pastor. Meanwhile, Yusuf Aydin, spokesman for the Byzantine and Oriental Orthodox churches in Sweden, has written a letter of protest in which he declares his intention to review the duo's relations with the SCSC. The NGO has several member churches, including the Catholic Church. Fredrik Emanuelsson, spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese in Stockholm, tells me that the Church has committed itself to fighting anti-Semitism. He will inform himself about the context, he says.

The painting “Golden parachute” alludes to both greed and dishonest covenants. With his black hat as his parachute, the huge dark Jew is descending toward land. In other pictures, the effect of the influence of the mythical Jew is all too apparent: Jesus weeps tears of blood over the riches of Israel and the trees of Palestine are dead. A bank note cast in concrete – the wall again – carries the words “Bank of Sweden”, “false “and “wallet”.

Another black hat covers one of Jerusalem’s city gates. The stone face has soulless eyes and the gate is its mouth. “The Jew” has devoured the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the only colorful object in the picture. As a more materialist sort of gangster, the stereotypical Jew appears in a black hat, black sunglasses, a gun belt and a Magen David instead of a sheriff’s star - or the yellow star.
The imagery recalls an international conference on Saint John Chrysostom hosted by the SCSC in 2008. Chrysostom wrote eight homilies against the Jews. He accused the Jews of being evil ravagers, bandits, murderers and devil worshipers, and he declared eternal holy war on the Jewish people.

The pictures repeat Chrysostom's accusations, only the devil is missing; Satan has gone out of fashion and been replaced by the Nazi. In the darkest picture of them all, “Our god is a mighty fortress,” the victims and the perpetrators of the Holocaust are merged into an idol and its worshippers. At the center is a watchtower built of wall segments. One of the soldiers on guard wears a Nazi style officer’s cap. The tower is also a bomb and a crematorium. Its lighted fuse rises from a chimney. Soldiers with helmets and guns are praying to the idol. Barbed-wire letters compose the words ”God ” and ”Security.”

Jewish self-defense is as evil as the Holocaust and will kill the Zionists who, having turned away from God, are guilty of the holocaust to come, and perhaps of the Holocaust that was, the picture tells me. It reminds me of a chilling report by the Washington Post in 2005, which quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling the Holocaust a myth. "They (the Jews) have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the prophets," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

I turn back to the walls of this Stockholm church and what do I find? Israeli flags without Stars of David. The white field is clean; it is Judenrein and "Zionistenrein."

As though all this were not enough, an image of Joseph, Mary and Jesus as Palestinian refugees perpetuates the myths of deicide and child-killing. A sad, long line of refugees march alongside a wall with barbed wire and a watchtower. It reminds me of concentration camps. Graffiti on the wall behind the holy family says “refugees since [no date].” It is as though human beings, perhaps humanity, have been running away from the Jews since Jesus was born. The artist robs the Jews and the Christians of their Jewish history, and, alluding to the flight from King Herod, he accuses the Jews of both infanticide and the intention to kill God.

Naim Ateek, president of the SCSC’s Palestinian partner Sabeel and co-organizer of an upcoming conference in Bethlehem on the Kairos Palestine Document, has produced a similar fusion of the myths of deicide and genocide. ”Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him… The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily,” he wrote in Sabeel's Easter message 2001.

My lasting impression of the Holey Land exhibition is that it unveils the anti-Semitic nature of what many call "criticism of Israel." Unfortunately, I think most visitors fail to recognize that their perceptions of Jews as evil and mythical characters, actually is racial hatred. They have become too used to identifying Israel-bashing as goodness. No wonder the exhibition guestbook is full of messages by visitors who were grateful the SCSC was spreading a message of peace, love and understanding.

SOURCE





Blindsided: 9/11 Was the Rule, Not the Exception

    Michael Youssef

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and America woke up to the terror of jihad. I use the words “woke up” because jihad existed long before that terrible morning. And it continues to cause much of the world’s violence today.

On 9/11, we were blindsided. But we never should have been.

The word jihad literally means “struggle,” but it’s often used to communicate the concept of holy war. It is on the lips of violent terrorists, but it is also shouted by Egyptian mobs who assault Coptic Christians. And it’s the first word that Palestinian children learn from their reading primers.

It is critically important to understand the permeating motivations of Islamic extremism. For that reason, I wrote Blindsided: The Radical Islamic Conquest,which is being released on April 1.

I was born in the Middle East. I was raised within its culture and return there often. I have had many long conversations in Arabic with Muslims, including Islamist hardliners. I have witnessed Islamic practices and understand the thought processes. Because of that, I know that jihad is an unavoidable and pervasive reality.

In Blindsided, I write:

 "Many scoff when jihad is declared by a small group of extremists from a tiny Islamic nation about which little is known. The imperative to subjugate non-Muslims, however, runs deep among Muslims around the world—not just in the hills and caves of Afghanistan or the remote sands of Yemen.

    Jihad is an essential ingredient of Islamic philosophy, and all who truly love the Koranic faith are devoted to jihad. The concept of jihad is the nail on which hangs all rationales for the use of political power, military force, and terrorist violence to advance the Islamic cause."

Although the Koran decries murder and urges mercy in general, mercy is not to be extended to those who stand in the way of Islam’s domination.

The Koran states: "When the sacred months are past, kill those who join other gods wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them with every kind of ambush; but if they convert and observe prayer and pay the obligatory alms, let them go their way" (Koran 9:5).

September 11 turned over a rock to expose the horror of jihad against Americans—the “infidel crusaders.” But the recent uprisings across the Middle East have exposed the everyday occurrences of jihad.

Its overthrown dictators, although ruthless and violent themselves, had kept a check on Islam’s militant urges. But now, without that restraint, it is a very dangerous time to be a non-Muslim.

After 9/11, President Bush and others declared that Islam was a “religion of peace.” But every day, that statement is proven to be false.

On March 4, 1,500 Muslim villagers, brandishing swords and knives, converged on a school in Egypt. Chanting Islamic slogans, they trapped nuns, who were volunteer teachers, and threatened to burn them alive.

Last week, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, reportedly declared that it was "necessary to destroy all the churches" in the region. Al-Asheikh’s words supported the belief that no other religion except Islam should be tolerated.

Because of the constant stream of jihad-inspired attacks, Christians throughout the Middle East are fleeing for their lives. According to Raymond Ibrahim of the Stonegate Institute, half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians have fled. Approximately 100,000 Christian Copts have escaped Egypt. And up to 95 percent of Christians in Yobe, a state in Nigeria population have left that country. Now, as al-Qaeda and others fight the Assad regime in Syria, Christians living there are coming under attack.

Norman Geisler, co-author of Answering Islam, writes: “What Islam engages in is consistent with the teachings of the [Koran] and Muhammad, while what some Christians did in the Crusades is contrary to the teachings of the Bible and Jesus Christ." Geisler says that although violence is the “illogical” result of Christianity, "Violence is the logical outworking of Islam"

That is why, in Blindsided I write:

 "Some Americans believe that by rounding up hundreds or thousands of Al-Qaeda leaders and fighters, we can end Islamic terrorism. But this would be like washing blood with blood. No matter how many terrorists you kill, there are always more lining up to take their place. Though the War on Terror is critically important to restraining the jihadist onslaught, war alone is not the answer."

We must also fight for the hearts and minds of Muslims. Jihad is at the core of Islam. It is the method through which militant Islam tries to rule the world. It is the rule, not the exception.

Until we confront that reality, victories over terrorism will be short-lived. Peace will be elusive.

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 WATCHAUSTRALIAN POLITICSDISSECTING 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.  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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