Thursday, March 19, 2015


Multicultural girlfriend murderer



A father-of-five who used a hockey stick to bludgeon his former girlfriend to death in front of their children has been sentenced to life in prison.

Oral Bryan, 44, hit Nicola McKenzie, the mother of their two children, over the head with the stick 'like an axe' during a furious row.

Miss McKenzie, 37, suffered horrific brain injuries and never regained consciousness, dying two days later in hospital.

The row erupted in Moss Side, Manchester, on September 17 last year when Miss McKenzie spotted a car belonging to Bryan's new partner outside his home.

She confronted the woman, who called Bryan, and he returned to intervene.

As the two women squared up to one another, Bryan got a hockey stick from his house and cracked it over Miss McKenzie's head as she shouted: 'These are your kids, go on, show them what you're like.' 

The fatal blow, witnessed by the couple's two children, daughter Teja, 12, and son Amahri, eight, as well as Bryan's three other children, shattered Miss McKenzie's skull and left her lying unconscious in the street.

As she lay dying with blood pouring from the head wound, Bryan picked up Miss McKenzie to check for signs of life before casually dumping her back down on the pavement and running off.

Bryan initially fled the scene, but contacted police a short time later and was arrested.

He claimed Miss McKenzie had attacked him with a knife and he struck the fatal blow accidentally in self-defence, but no knife was recovered at the scene. 

He was found guilty of murder at an earlier hearing.

Diana Ellis, QC, defending, said her client was 'fully aware' of the impact of his actions, adding: 'No one wishes more that the clock could turned back.'

Sentencing Bryan to a minimum of 20 years at Manchester Crown Court today, Judge Michael Henshall said: 'Nicola McKenzie was a young woman in the prime of her life and the mother of two children of who you are the father.

'The effects of the events on that day in front of those children is almost uncountable.'

After the case, senior investigating officer Duncan Thorpe of Greater Manchester Police said: 'This was a tragic incident where the life of a woman was sadly cut short in brutal fashion by a man she was once close to.

'Oral David Bryan showed absolutely no concern about his victim and the only intention in his mind when he retrieved the hockey stick from his house was to cause serious harm.

'His lack of concern was further exemplified when he fled the scene to try and save himself rather than get medical attention for Nicola.

'I know the sentence passed here today won't bring her back or even begin to make up for their loss but I hope it will offer Nicola's family some closure and my thoughts are with them.'

Miss McKenzie's mother Veronica Fiddler, 62, a care worker said: 'Nicola was quiet and lovely and kind. She was completely dedicated to her children. She hardly ever went out without them, they were her life. She was a very, very good mother and that is how everybody knew her. The children are going to miss her very greatly.

'Myself and her father were there by her bedside when they turned off the life support machine. The whole community is in shock, she was very well-known.' 

SOURCE






Australian Prime Minister promises Islamist crackdown

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott said today the government would soon crack down on radical Islamist groups in Australia preaching hatred against others in the community.

In an interview with The Australian on Sky News, Mr Abbott also stood by the government’s proposed universities and age-pension reforms, defended his doubts on funding remote indigenous communities and said the government’s resolution rather than opinion polls mattered most.

The Prime Minister told Paul Kelly and Greg Sheridan of The Australian that many Muslim leaders internationally were speaking out against jihadist movements such as Islamic State.

Questioned about some local activities of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir that are currently legal, Mr Abbott said the government intended to crack down on hate preachers, “not next week … but shortly’’.

Asked if he would resign if government polling support did not improve after last month’s unsuccessful leadership spill motion, Mr Abbott said: “I’m determined we will not be in that position.”

He said voters did not want a return to the “musical chairs’’ of the previous Labor prime ministers but agreed he and ministers could choose their words better.

SOURCE






Meet the 19th Century American Who Warned About Big Government, Religious Liberty Assaults



2015 marks a milestone in American history. One hundred and fifty years ago, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and ended the Civil War. Shortly thereafter, Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876), a prominent journalist and philosopher, published “The American Republic,” an erudite defense of the Federal Constitution.

As noted in our Heritage Foundation “First Principles” essay, today a fresh reading of Brownson’s masterwork can give Americans a deeper understanding of their precious civic birthright, the unique federal order that guarantees their personal and political freedom.

Prophetically, Brownson warned that the greatest future threats to the Republic were internal. He called upon his fellow Americans to oppose the relentless centralization of power in Washington; a transformation fueled by a new secular ideology—“humanitarian democracy”—that would war against all prescriptions and traditions, as well as state and local powers, in the name of equality, and seek to crush all genuine diversity, individual distinctions, and subordinate even personal conscience itself on the altar of a fully secularized, and thus absolute, state.

The Founders’ genius was in devising a constitutional order that recognized the truth of man’s individuality, his flourishing in freedom, and the sacredness of his person, particularly in his relationship to God: “The American constitution is not founded on political atheism, but recognizes the rights of man, and therefore, the rights of God.”

Today, when Americans of all religious faiths have just cause to fear government assaults on religious liberty, the wisdom of Brownson—a devout Catholic—is a bounteous benefit for all. Protect the sacred, he warned, from the profane and thus preserve the moral order: “If they [government officials] could subject religion to the secular order, or completely secularize the church, they would reduce themselves to the secular order alone, and deprive themselves of all aid from religion. To secularize religion is to nullify it.”

While a journalist, urgently writing on contemporary topics in his Quarterly Review, many of his opinions, right or wrong, were exclusively relevant to his own time. However, Brownson also developed a sophisticated and consistent philosophical conservatism that imparted a timeless quality to his observations. Those hard hitting commentaries are strikingly relevant to contemporary America. For example:

On immigrants’ duty to assimilate: “It is not attachment to American soil, or sympathy with the American nationality, spirit, genius, or institutions, that brings the great mass of foreigners to our shores. No doubt we derive great advantages from them, but the motive that brings them is not advantage to us or service to our country. They come solely from motives of personal advantage to themselves; to gain a living, to acquire a wealth, or to enjoy a freedom denied them in their own country, or believed to be more easily obtained or better secured here than elsewhere. The country, therefore, does not and cannot feel that it is bound either in justice or in charity to yield up its nationality to them, or to suffer the stream of its national life to be diverted from its original course to accommodate their manners, tastes or prejudices…If I from motives of hospitality open my doors to the stranger, and admit him to the bosom of my family, I have the right to expect him to conform to my domestic arrangements, and not to undertake to censure or interfere with them.”

On crony capitalism: “Louis XI was not weaker against Charles the Bold than is Congress against the Pennsylvania Central Railroad and its connections, or the Union Pacific, built at the expense of the government itself. The great feudal lords had souls, railroad corporations have none.”

On fiscal irresponsibility and debt: ‘The journalists tell us that the country is rich, and we count our millionaires by the thousands, if not by hundreds of thousands; and yet, if called upon suddenly to pay its debts or to redeem its bonds of every sort, it would be found to be hopelessly insolvent, and the reputed wealth of the millionaires would vanish in smoke. Our present wealth is chiefly in evidences of debt, that is, created by mortgages on the future.”

On Communism’s false promises: “Communism, if it could be carried out, would not…as the communists dream, secure to all the advantages of wealth, but would result in the reduction of all to the most abject poverty—the very thing which they are ready to commit any crime or sacrilege in order to escape.”
The Civil War was a terrible trial for millions—Brownson himself lost two sons—but the calm courage of the American people prepared them for world leadership:

“With larger armies on foot than Napoleon ever commanded, with their line of battle stretching from ocean to ocean, across the whole breadth of the continent, they never, during four long years of alternate victories and defeats—and both unprecedently bloody—or a moment lost their equanimity, or appeared less calm, collected and tranquil, than in ordinary times of peace…Their success proves to all that what, prior to the war, was treated as American arrogance or self-conceit, was only the outspoken confidence in their destiny as a providential people, conscious that to them is reserved the hegemony of the world.”

That “hegemony” was moral, not militaristic. Rather it was the success, for the entire world to witness, of America’s providential mission to secure the greatest degree of human liberty under law; a unique experiment in self-government realized through the ingenious Federal Constitution, the priceless gift of America’s Founders. This was a recurrent theme in Brownson’s writings. It was a theme that, over a century later, President Ronald Reagan also expressed in his vision of America as a “Shining City on a Hill.” Brownson’s name recognition may be low, but his ideas and insights have endured.

SOURCE







Marxism or Decadence? The Cause of Western Weakness

By Fjordman

I sometimes am criticized for being too focused on the left-wing of the political spectrum and ignoring the problems caused by right-wing parties. First of all, the line of separation between what constitutes “Left” and “Right” in politics now tends to become blurred. And second of all, only a fool believes that everybody on one side is always right, and everybody on the other side is always wrong. I have been consistent in pointing out that the European Union, which I loathe, cannot be explained simply as a one-sided Leftist endeavor. It also contains elements of Big Business interests, political corruption and the general desire of politicians and bureaucrats to rid themselves of the restrictions imposed on them by a democratic society.

At the time I write this, the conservative German chancellor Angela Merkel continues to push for the implementation of the awful EU Constitution, and I just read a column by a free-market activist who champions continued mass-immigration, including from Muslim countries, because his ideological convictions lead him to conclude that free migration is always good and beneficial.

It is also true that not all those who undermine Western civilization through support for Multiculturalism and mass immigration do so out of a hidden political agenda. Some do it out of plain stupidity and vanity. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s most open-minded of them all?” It’s a beauty contest for bored, Western intellectuals who use immigrants as a mirror to reflect their own inflated egos, a sport where they can nurse their vanity in the mistaken belief that denigrating your own cultural heritage is a sign of goodness and lack of prejudice.

I suspect that part of the craziness on display now stems from feelings of guilt because of affluence. I hear so many of these open border activists talk about “solidarity,” but in reality it’s all about me, me, me. They don’t show much solidarity with their own children and grandchildren who are going to inherit the Balkanized nightmare they leave behind. It’s all about making them feel good about themselves right now, without regard for future consequences of their actions. So their “solidarity” is really an extreme form of egotism and holier-than-thou self-exaltation. Besides, many of them have lived sheltered lives for so long that they honestly don’t understand that something bad can ever happen to them. They’ve never had to fight for their freedom or their prosperity, which had been ensured by others.

So yes, there is a component of decadence, materialism, hedonism and nihilism without any specific ideological agenda at work here. But still, even if I try to be as objective as possible, it is difficult to avoid seeing that a disproportionate amount of our problems come from political left-wingers and that elements of it are indeed ideological. Besides, it is sometimes difficult to define where decadence ends and cultural Marxism begins. The Marxist-inspired “revolution” of the 1960s and 70s, which both at the time and in hindsight has been viewed as a watershed in Western history, was staged by people who had enjoyed unprecedented economic growth throughout their entire lives.

I can see no connection between Islamic terrorism and poverty, but maybe there is a connection between wealth and politically correct nonsense. Western Europe has enjoyed decades of affluence and welfare state boredom, and is crazier than any civilization before it in history, even paying its own enemies to colonize it and thinking happy thoughts about cultural diversity as it is being wiped out. Is cultural Marxism caused by boredom, which is again caused by affluence created by capitalism? It would be sort of ironic if that is the case.

To quote The True Believer by Eric Hoffer:

Eric Hoffer“The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. What need could they have for ‘an inspiring super individual goal which could give meaning and dignity to their lives?’ They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement.”

And later Hoffer points out that “There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In almost all the descriptions of the periods preceding the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed.”
- - - - - - - - - -
In The Weekly Standard, Michel Gurfinkiel notes that indeed, there are intellectuals “who relish the prospect of a new French Revolution, and welcome the suburban rioters as its spearhead. Nothing is more revealing, in this respect, than the success of a feverish political novel, Supplément au Roman National (A Sequel to the National Narrative), by 28-year-old author Jean-ric Boulin. Published two months ago, it forecasts a ‘social and racial’ revolution in France in 2007. First a wave of suicide bombings in Paris. Then martial law. Then, finally, the great rebellion of the French poor: the native underclass, the Arabs, and the blacks, who unite under the green flag of Islam and the tricolor of France and march on Paris — as a sort of Commune in reverse. Boulin gallantly supports such an outcome.”

The French RevolutionThere is, admittedly, something special about France and their love of revolts and mayhem. The French still haven’t recovered from their great Revolution of 1789. It is strange that a modern nation can celebrate as their national day the birth of a bloody upheaval which paved the way for mass-murder and authoritarian rule. But the fascination with Islamic movements is far from limited to France. It is partly based on hatred of the West and a belief that the world must be “liberated” from Western civilization, which is the cause of global injustice.

Elin BrodinNorwegian author Elin Brodin wrote an essay entitled “Western values are the worst.” According to her, “Modern Westerners are the most bigoted, self-righteous and deaf-blind creatures that have ever walked the earth’s crust. This goes for the left-wing and the feminists just as much as for everybody else. We really have to change our attitudes, not just our clothes, because now the question is whether this civilization should be transformed or fall. Because the West neither can nor should endure in its present form.”

City on FireIf you want to see a really nasty example of the hatred against Western civilization on display, here’s a link from Danish blog Uriasposten. Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz projected video images of flames onto 1,000 square-metre glass screens in a museum in the central Danish town of Aarhus. The “art” exhibition was called “City on Fire – Burning the roots of western culture.” The artists assured us that “It is not actual fire that destroys actual buildings – but the idea of fire that destroys the historical and ideological roots of Western culture.” Part of their vision was “to create an aesthetic image of the deconstruction of the cultural roots of the Western world,” because as they said, Western culture was “very aggressive,” while Islamic culture has been far less so.

Bruce Thornton writes about Robert Conquest’s book Reflections on a Ravaged Century. especially his chapter on Soviet Myths and the Western Mind:

“As Conquest documents, many Western intellectuals and academics were delusional about the reality of the communist threat. For a host of reasons — a quasi-religious faith in utopian socialism, neurotic hatred of their own culture, vulnerability to an ideology that dressed itself in scientific garb, an adolescent romance with revolution, and sheer ignorance of the facts — many professors, pundits, politicians, and religious leaders refused to believe that Soviet leaders meant what they said about revolution and subversion.” Because of this, “throughout the Cold War, the Western resolve to resist Soviet expansionism was undercut by ‘peace’ movements, nuclear disarmament movements, calls for détente and ‘dialogue,’ and claims of moral equivalence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.”

According to Thornton, other parallels between Cold War Sovietophiles and today’s rationalizers for Jihad present themselves. The academic establishment for most of the Cold War “was predisposed to leftist ideology.”

Arne TreholtUnfortunately, the Soviet-appeasers never had to endure the consequences of their actions. In Norway, I heard recently several left-wingers state that Arne Treholt, a senior diplomat who was convicted of high treason in the 1980s for spying for the Soviet Union, was actually a misunderstood hero who wanted “dialogue” with the Communists. A former member of the Labor Party, he was reprieved by the Labor government in 1992. He has always claimed his innocence, but admitted later that he was both careless and negligent and “drifted into some questionable areas” when he turned over confidential state documents to Soviet representatives and accepted money for them in return.

Ban the Bomb!When US President Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, after Jimmy Carter had made a mockery out of the presidency and his inaction contributed to the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the massive Soviet military machinery placed medium-range SS-20 nuclear missiles to intimidate Western Europe and split NATO. They also encouraged massive demonstrations and campaigns within the West for unilateral Western disarmament. Yet Reagan chose to up the ante by deploying new U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe. He denounced the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” and engaged the Soviets in a military build-up that bankrupted their fragile economy. Reagan, who dared to challenge blackmail from one of the most brutal regimes in human history, was reviled and ridiculed by the leftist intelligentsia, and is still hated even a generation after the Cold War ended. Yet a man such as Mr. Treholt, who appeased the same regime, is viewed in positive terms.

Sadly, conservatives demsontrated negligence after the Cold War. We never properly denounced Marxism as an ideology as well as discredited those individuals who had supported it, the way it was done with Fascism after WW2. That was a mistake. We had a massive fifth column of left-wingers during the Cold War who sapped our strength and appeased our enemies. These very same groups have been allowed to continue their work uninterrupted, and went straight from appeasing Soviet Communism to appeasing Islamic Jihad.

The Seventh WarThe book The Seventh War, by Israeli journalists Avi Yisacharov and Amos Harel, is based on interviews with Hamas Islamic terrorist leaders in Gaza and Israeli prisons. Hamas leaders told them clearly: “It was the Israeli left and your peace camp that ultimately encouraged us to continue with our suicide attacks. We tried, through our attacks, to create fragmentation and dissention within Israeli society, and the left-wing’s reaction was proof that this was indeed the right approach.”

The West and Westerners in general are treated as the “global oppressive class” by our Marxist-inspired academic elites. From historical experience, in Socialist societies, those deemed a part of the “oppressive class” have at best been deprived of their property, at worst been physically eliminated. Western Leftists really believe their own rhetoric about the West being the cause of most of the problems of the world, and want to “liberate” the planet by bringing down the oppressive class, aka the West.

We could go into long debates as to whether this is compatible with the doctrines of classical Marxism, since most Islamic and Third World nations are far from industrialized. It is true that Karl Marx initially stated that capitalism was a necessary transitional stage for Socialism. Most Socialists before WW1 believed that the Marxist revolution would start in Germany, precisely because it was a more advanced capitalist and industrialized economy. But Lenin decided to start in Russia after the opportunity provided by the first revolution in 1917, despite the fact that it was far from a developed capitalist economy at that point. Marxist strategies have thus changed considerably during the past century. By far the one element that has remained most consistent is the tendency to view society primarily in economic terms, through the prism of groups exploiting other groups. In general, Marxist tools for analysis have survived far better than their practical solutions and are still influential.

Karl MarxIt is, in my view, impossible to understand Multiculturalism without taking into account this profound influence of Marxist thinking. Marxism states that culture is only of minor or secondary importance, while the primary moving factor is the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors. This leads to treating cultural differences as insignificant, and thus the conclusion that major differences in performance between groups are caused by poverty and exploitation. This is exactly the picture we are presented by our media as the source of the difficulties in the Islamic world.

Moreover, the very idea that it is ok to stage massive and risky social experiments involving millions of people is one that was passed on from Marxism to Multiculturalism. As Friedrich von Hayek warned: “We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately ‘create the future of mankind.’ This is the final conclusion of the forty years which I have now devoted to the study of these problems.”

Antonio GramsciThe Frankfurt school of cultural Marxism, with such thinkers as Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs, aimed at overthrowing capitalist rule by undermining the hegemonic culture. According to Gramsci, the Socialist revolution, which failed to spread following the Russian Revolution in 1917, could never take place until people were liberated from Western culture, and particularly from their “Christian soul.” As Lukacs said in 1919, “Who will save us from Western Civilization?” This could be done through breaking down traditional Judeo-Christian morality and family patterns and undermining the established institutions from within. In 2007, we can see clearly that this strategy has been quite successful in Western media and academia, which are not only neutral or lukewarm in defending our civilization, but are in many cases actively aiding our enemies. The irony is that most Westerners have never heard of Gramsci, yet ideas similar to his have had a huge impact on their lives.

In Scandinavia, it is a well-documented fact that journalists are much more left-leaning than the general populace. In France during the Muslim riots in 2005, several journalists stated openly that they downplayed the problems caused by immigrants in order not to boost the support for “right-wing parties,” and in Britain, leading figures from the BBC readily admitted that they actively champion Multiculturalism in their coverage. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, himself from the Labour Party, complained in the January 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine about relations with Muslims that “many in Western countries listen to the propaganda of the extremists and accept it. (And to give credit where it is due, the extremists play our own media with a shrewdness that would be the envy of many a political party.)”

Daniel Pipes notes that “Significant elements in several Western countries – especially the United States, Great Britain, and Israel – believe their own governments to be repositories of evil, and see terrorism as just punishment for past sins. This ‘we have met the enemy and he is us’ attitude replaces an effective response with appeasement, including a readiness to give up traditions and achievements. Osama bin Laden celebrates by name such leftists as Robert Fisk and William Blum. Self-hating Westerners have an out-sized importance due to their prominent role as shapers of opinion in universities, the media, religious institutions, and the arts. They serve as the Islamists’ auxiliary mujahideen.”

Pipes warns that “Pacifism, self-hatred and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties. Only after absorbing catastrophic human and property losses will left-leaning Westerners likely overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat. The civilized world will likely then prevail, but belatedly and at a higher cost than need have been. Should Islamists get smart and avoid mass destruction, but instead stick to the lawful, political, non-violent route, and should their movement remain vital, it is difficult to see what will stop them.”

In short: You know you live in a Western country when the media is cheering for your enemies, when your schools and universities teach your children that your civilization is evil and when your politicians think it’s a sign of “extremism” if you want to protect your nation’s borders.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said that “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” Perhaps we will win this struggle for liberty only when Western left-wingers decide that love their children more than they hate Western civilization. If they have children in the first place, that is.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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

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


No comments: