Sunday, August 21, 2016



Multicultural driver in Britain



Footage has been released that shows the terrifying moment a driver, who was banned for killing a friend, lead police on a high-speed chase through a city’s suburbs.

Zahoor Hussain, 29, from Almondsbury, Bristol, was jailed for 32 months and stripped of his licence in 2012 after a horror smash which killed 17-year-old friend Zoe Smith.

Police spotted him behind the wheel of a Mercedes last month and Hussain led them on a six-mile pursuit, reaching 80mph through 20mph zones.

Bristol Crown Court heard it was only through luck that no-one was killed or seriously injured in the 15-minute chase through the busy streets of Bristol.

Dashcam footage from one of the police cars shows Hussain swerving and hurtling past other vehicles at breakneck speed.

At one point he goes through a no entry sign and speeds the wrong way down a residential road.

He also shoots across junctions and careers around sharp corners in an attempt to evade cops before crashing into a bus and van.

Two officers leapt from their cars and dragged him out as smoke poured from the engine of the Mercedes C430.

Hussain admitted dangerous driving, failing to stop for police and driving while disqualified and without insurance.

He was jailed for 18 months at Bristol Crown Court on Tuesday following the incident on the evening of July 22.

Recorder Andrew Maitland heard it was Hussain’s fifth conviction for driving while disqualified since 2004. He told him: 'You have displayed you are a menace to the public when you are behind the steering wheel. 'Anybody who has watched how you drove would be aghast. 'It is a miracle that, on the way, other persons nor vehicles were damaged.  'It was inevitable there would be a crash at the end, given the manner of your appalling dangerous driving.'

Hussain was disqualified from driving for four years and nine months and told to pass an extended driving test. He was told to pay a £140 victim surcharge.

Hussain was jailed for causing the death of his friend, Miss Smith, when he crashed his father’s Mini Cooper while speeding at 50mph in a 20mph zone in September 2010.  Her family branded the sentence 'a joke'.

SOURCE






A veiled truth revealed about America

A cautious Boston view of Trump

FIFTEEN YEARS ago, my son, David — adopted from South Korea — got off a school bus and appeared at our front door with a black eye. A bully named Scott had told him to “go back to China where you belong.” A fight ensued.

Some 20 years ago, at a college reunion, a classmate, later to be honored as alumni of the year, sat at a bar and told a joke about blacks. The rest of us abandoned him mid-sentence.

Fifty years ago, one high school classmate labeled me a “kike.” Another called me “Shylock.”

And in town, a barber — the barber — refused to give a black classmate a haircut.

None of this can be blamed on Donald Trump.

Donald Trump didn’t bring bigotry to America. It has always been there. He has merely brought it into the light. We may have disdain for him because of his words and his positions, but we cannot hold him responsible for the sentiments held by millions of Americans who feel disenfranchised and threatened by profound demographic shifts in American society. Trump is just another in a long line of American demagogues — figures like Father Charles Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, and George Wallace.

His adherents are not all poor, uneducated white
men, as we so desperately want to believe. They cannot be so easily dismissed as “losers,” a breed apart from
the rest of us. Some wear pinstripes. Some work in banks. Some teach in universities. Many are faithful churchgoers. They are our neighbors. Many are decent people in other ways.

It is a fool’s errand to rant against them, or to pretend that we are shocked and surprised that such a figure as Trump could command the loyalties of so many. Of course he can. Men such as Trump always could. The real question is whether we pretend that he is an anomaly, someone that we should merely wait out, or whether we see him as an opportunity to confront all those American demons whose existence we largely deny, choosing instead to celebrate our mythical exceptionalism.

Trump boasts that he is the Master of the Deal. Actually, he is the court jester — clownish, foppish, pathetically delusional. But he is right about one thing. We must deal with him, not simply content ourselves with his defeat. He should be seen as the catalyst for a long-overdue public debate about who we are as a nation, what our identity is to be, and what it is we value about our culture and society. We must move beyond easy platitudes and kumbayas, recognize the legitimacy of others’ discomfort, and not be so fast to brand them racists and bigots. We must hope for more than a racial armistice or a tolerance of differences.

Here, political correctness has done us no service. Suppression of speech and the policing of expression can only drive the offenders underground in the short term. Over time, it makes them more brazen, energized by denial, coercion, and resentment. The true liberal — the likes of John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell — understood that robust and unfettered speech was the ultimate change agent, that to overcome societal resistance and apprehension we must confront them, openly, unabashedly, and without constraints. At its truest, democracy is a contact sport.

And for that, we may, in hindsight, owe Donald Trump a debt of gratitude. He has taken a wrecking ball to political correctness, to the facade of a post-racial society, to the complacency of so many. And he has inadvertently opened the door for a more open and honest discussion of pluralism in America.

SOURCE
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/08/18/veiled-truth-revealed-about-america/wN3C5iIBlqsAWQX35ioDwK/story.html




Dangerous to criticize feminism

Feminism is taking the shape of a new religion

Tory MP Philip Davies is being threatened with suspension from his own party. No, he didn’t fake his expenses or get caught in flagrante, wearing nothing but a replica Chelsea top. All Davies did was criticise feminism.

Davies chose to vent his anti-feminist spleen at a meeting organised by Justice for Men and Boys, a typically sad group of men’s rights activists. ‘In this day and age’, Davies said, ‘the feminist zealots really do want women to have their cake and eat it. They fight for their version of equality on all the things that suit women – but are very quick to point out that women need special protections and treatment on other things.’ This prompted a deluge of annoyed tweets from feminists featuring cake-eating selfies. But others were not satisfied with just giving Davies a dressing down on social media – they decided Davies should lose his job.

An open letter from Angela Rayner, the shadow secretary of state for education, denounced Davies and called on new prime minister Theresa May to suspend his party membership, pending an investigation into his comments. Rayner warned: ‘There is no place for these views in modern Britain.’

Many have praised Rayner for calling out Davies’ putative sexism, most notably Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Tweeting his support for Rayner’s call for a party suspension, Corbyn said Davies’ comments ‘show utter contempt for women’.

Yet is Davies really deserving of this scorn? For a start, as most women will no doubt be aware, men’s rights activists meetings are pretty lame affairs. The comments made at such gatherings are scarcely interesting enough to be considered threatening. But Rayner seems to think differently. ‘[Davies] endorses and legitimises the inflammatory and toxic rhetoric of groups who are misogynistic to their core’, she writes. Davies’ speech, she is saying, actually poses a threat to women’s safety and wellbeing.

This isn’t the first time criticism of feminism has been treated like a criminal offence. For example, an EU statute ‘for the promotion of tolerance’ lists ‘anti-feminism’ as a viewpoint that ought to be eliminated. In a wonderful display of Orwellian doublespeak, the statute claims to ‘promote tolerance within society’ by ‘condemn[ing] all manifestations of intolerance based on bias, bigotry and prejudice’. In other words, we must promote tolerance by not tolerating intolerance. And we must tolerate feminism, not as a political ideology, but as a protected human right, as a personal belief.

Feminism has become untouchable. Criticise feminism on the internet and you’re branded a troll; speak out against the latest feminist campaign and you’re labelled a misogynist; disagree with the idea that we live in a rape culture and you’re called a rape apologist. The treatment of feminism’s critics as heretics, to be sacked, silenced and excluded until they repent, shows how contemporary feminism is taking the shape of a new religion. We are treating feminism as if it is infallible.

This is a big problem, not only because so much of contemporary feminism deserves criticism, but also because it threatens freedom of speech. The freedom to criticise all ideas and scrutinise all beliefs in the public realm ought to be the foundation of any civilised, democratic society. No political ideology should be elevated above public discussion and debate, and presented as sacrosanct.

Philip Davies should not be suspended. And Kevin Roberts, the Saatchi and Saatchi boss who said that there was no gender inequality in the workplace, shouldn’t have been effectively sacked. But, more importantly, no woman should accept the idea that we should censor in the name of protecting women. From the most abhorrent women-hating rants to the mildest of criticisms, there should be nothing that we cannot say about feminism.

The funny thing about Davies’ outburst is that he has a point. Not about feminists plotting to thwart sad men’s rights activists, but about contemporary feminism being contradictory. Feminists do fight for their version of equality in certain areas, but they are also quick to point out that women need special protections and treatment in other areas. This does women no favours. Fighting for women’s equality by arguing for special treatment because we’re vulnerable puts us in a position of weakness. By censoring debate about feminism, we paint women as too vulnerable to handle criticism.

All free-thinking women must stand up for freedom of speech. We must defend the right of men who rant about misandry and other mad theories to say their piece, not because we agree, but because to censor speech is to admit that we are not able to win the argument. The danger to freedom doesn’t lie in isolated gatherings of small-minded men; rather, it lies in the paternalism of those who think we need to protect women by censoring opinion.

SOURCE
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/anti-feminism-the-new-heresy/18653


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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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