Wednesday, June 22, 2016



Former NYC FBI Chief: 'Get This Wet Blanket of Political Correctness off Back of Law Enforcement'

Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom, who headed the FBI’s New York City office, said on The Kelly File on Thursday that FBI agents are “petrified” of being fired apparently because of White House orders that say the bureau cannot investigate “anything to do with Muslims” in the traditional way the bureau would pursue criminals or potential criminals and terrorists.

Kallstrom also stressed that we need to “get this wet blanket of political correctness off the backs of law enforcement, off the backs of the FBI,” to better protect U.S. citizens.

When asked about apparent problems with the FBI,  Kallstrom said, “The rules of engagement, what the Bureau is being told what they can and what they can’t do. They can’t go sniffing around -- anything to do with Muslims.”

“They can’t go to mosques, they can’t do things that they normally do,” he said. “I’m not talking things that are off the charts, I’m talking about the things that would normally be done.”

“But the orders have come down from the White House,” said Kallstrom. “The same people that took all the [radical Islam] language out of the training documents and can’t be used in any memoranda. Those are the same people.”

Host Megan Kelly responded, “So they’re worried about getting fired?”

“The agents are petrified, sure,” said Kallstrom. “Just like the people are. The people didn’t call in San Bernardino. They didn’t want to be looked upon, right?”

“When the attorney general of the United States,” he continued, “when she comes out and says, look, we’re going to prosecute people for saying certain things -- which is illegal…she had to walk it back but still. That’s let everyone who knows what’s going on say ha, ha, ha, I better be super careful here.”

“So instead of leaning forward, instead of getting into the investigation and everything, just like those witnesses that said they thought the FBI thought they were being cranky or they were anti-Muslim,” Kallstrom said.

He later remarked,  It is a wet blanket. I mean, believe me, I know the agents in the FBI and I know the support people, and I know the analysts. No one wants this [terrorism] thing to happen, believe me. But they’ve got families they’ve got things that they have to be careful, so they are overly cautious.”

SOURCE





British justice at work: A serial sex offender who attacked his victim in her own bed is jailed for LESS time than a farmer sentenced in the same court who claimed his eggs were 'free range'

A victims' support group has blasted the justice system after a farmer selling barn eggs as 'free-range' was jailed for longer than a serial sex offender in the same court.

Widower Anthony Clarkson, 59, was hauled before Preston Crown Court this week after being convicted of fraudulently marketing the barn eggs as free-range.

On Monday he was jailed for two-and-a-half years after evidence from the egg standard inspectors from the Animal Plant Health Authority (APHA).

In the same court on Wednesday, serial sex offender Kerdine Ahmedi, 46, was jailed for two months less than the farmer despite admitting sexually assaulting a terrified woman.

In a victim personal statement, the unnamed woman - who sobbed in the public gallery during the sentencing hearing - said the attack had destroyed her life.

The court heard Ahmedi has a previous conviction for indecent exposure and breached his sexual offences prevention order on five separate occasions since it was made in 2011.

The disparity in the sentences has been criticised by solicitor Rachel Horman, a board director at Safenet, which runs women's refuges. She said: 'It seems that financial crimes or fraud are treated more seriously than violent crimes against women. 'This kind of situation sends out the wrong message to perpetrators and victims of violence. Sadly this happens quite a lot.

'I have seen domestic violence cases where in order to get that kind of sentence, the perpetrator could have attempted murder.

'I deal with serious cases of violence against women where the defendant doesn't get a penalty anywhere near this.

'It's not just an overhaul of sentencing guidelines that is needed - often there are powers there to impose a heavier sentence which people do not use. It's a change in attitude.'

Clarkson was prosecuted after claiming free range eggs had been produced at his farm in Whittingham, near Preston, when they were in fact barn eggs he bought in from another of his firms.

He operated a farm producing 'free-range eggs' and had an interest in another farm producing cheaper 'barn eggs'. He stamped both type of eggs with code indicating they were free range.

He was convicted of fraud by dishonestly making a false representation after a probe was launched by egg inspectors in 2014.

At his sentence hearing, his defence barrister Michael Maher said he appreciated it was a food fraud but remarked: 'It's not horse meat masquerading as fillet steak.'

A spokesman for Animal Plant Health Authority (APHA) defended the sentence saying it sends out a 'tough warning to food fraudsters.'

Sex offender Ahmedi forced himself on a woman who he knew the woman was drunk and feeling unwell, Preston Crown Court heard.

The woman's boyfriend had passed out at the kitchen table after drinking vodka which he feared may have been spiked.

She woke to feel a man behind her but when she realised it was not her boyfriend she tried to get away, as Ahmedi made sexual comments.

As she tried to get out of bed, Ahmedi put his arm around her waist and attacked her. Unable to wake her boyfriend, the woman went to a friend's house and told her she had been assaulted.  She reported the attack the following day and Ahmedi, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to sexual assault.

The Recorder of Preston, Judge Mark Brown, said when sentencing: 'She made it clear at the very start that she wasn't interested and wanted you to stop immediately.  'However you continued. That must have been a very frightening and distressing experience for her. Your victim is present in court. She is obviously extremely distressed by what occurred to her.'

SOURCE






Proof perfect that supermarket food waste is not a problem

Tim Worstall

One of the more difficult things, as Douglas Adams pointed out, is to keep a sense of proportion about the world. It is easy, of course it is, to point to something or other and shout "That's a massive problem!" It's rather more difficult to look at something and ponder on whether it's actually an important problem. It is once we do the latter that we can actually work out whether this is something that we should devote efforts to sorting out or not.

And so it is with food waste from supermarkets. We're told that this is one of those massive problems. There are even those who insist that supermarkets themselves are the problem as a result of this waste. Consideration is necessary here:

Tesco has revealed that the amount of food waste generated by the supermarket giant increased to 59,400 tonnes last year – the equivalent of nearly 119 million meals.

119 million meals! That's a massive problem!

Well, no, not really. It's two meals a year, a little under that in fact, for each inhabitant of these isles. Interesting, certainly, but not exactly massive. And then there's this:

The amount wasted was the equivalent of one in every 100 food products sold by Tesco during the last financial year.

Or as we might put it, 1% of throughput. At which point it's worth going and looking at parts of the world that do not have the supermarket logistics chain. And that is the correct way to think of supermarkets. Not as simply shops that we go to, they're just the retail outlets of the logistics and production chain that stretches right back to the planting of the fields.

The FAO and others have pointed out that in countries reliant upon more traditional practices some 50% of food gets wasted between farm and fork. It is this which explains the reason why the world grows enough calories for all yet not all can eat enough calories. The supermarkets reduce that waste considerably at that cost of the trivial losses at the supermarkets themselves. No, it's not quite true that the net gain from having supermarkets is 49% of the harvested crop but it's getting on for that number.

Sure, distributing that 1% to the needy is a worthwhile thing to do, why not? But we do need to understand that it's not an important point. What is important is bringing that industrial logistics chain to those places which do not have it in order to save that 50% of the harvest.

Supermarkets, properly considered, are the cure for food shortages and waste, not the cause of them.

SOURCE






LGBT Activists Enraged Over Beach Patrol Bathroom Email

Consider the plight of Captain Butch Arbin, a 40-year veteran of the beach patrol in Ocean City, Maryland.  He’s facing the wrath of City Hall and militant LGBT activists over his handling of a bathroom controversy involving male and female lifeguards.

Female lifeguards had complained that male lifeguards were using their dressing rooms. The male lifeguards are not transgender. They are presumed to be men who identify as men, which in PC parlance is called “cisgender.”

Some of the guys were apparently using the ladies room out of convenience — seeing how there are more male lifeguards than female.

So Arbin fired off an email to set things straight by referencing a recent dustup over President Obama’s decree that men who identify as women should be able to use the porta-potty of their choosing.

“WE are NOT Target,” he wrote to the lifeguards. “USE the locker room that corresponds to your DNA … If You’re NOT SURE go to Target.”

Now, that right there is funny, folks. Target is the national retailer that set off a firestorm when it announced customers could pretty much use whatever bathroom suited them.

It’s just too bad that the LGBT activists in Maryland don’t share our sense of humor.

Someone leaked the captain’s email to the news media and — well, let’s just say the veteran lifeguard landed in some mighty hot water.

“It’s nothing short of making fun of transgender people, and it’s absolutely unacceptable for a city employee or a public employee to make fun of transgender people at all,” Equality Maryland Executive Director Patrick Paschall told The Washington Post.

Paschall accused the beach patrol captain of demeaning transgender people and suggested the email might result in physical harm to the LGBTQ community.

“No one should be surprised when the increased drumbeat of harassment increases to discrimination and even violence against LGBTQ people,” he said.

Oh, please.

Arbin said the email had nothing to do with transgender people. “I used humor to make the point,” he said. “I was ONLY looking out for the women of the patrol and was not attempting to put down any group or individual, only maintain a nice facility for the women who choose to use a gender specific facility.”

He told the Baltimore Sun that the guys were leaving the toilet seats up — and that was an issue for the ladies.

“I don’t care about being politically correct,” he told the newspaper. “That’s one of the problems in the country right now.”

So the LGBT activists and left-wingers are trying to politically water board this poor guy simply because he was looking out for the female lifeguards.

Facing a tsunami of illegitimate outrage, Arbin issued a public “heartfelt” apology.

Still, City Hall threw him under the cabana.  Ocean City spokesperson Jessica Waters called his actions “completely inappropriate.”  “He just stepped way out of line,” she told the Post. “It’s not a reflection of Ocean City in any way, and we welcome all types of people.”

That’s a lovely sentiment, dear. But does that mean it’s city policy to let men who identify as men leave the seat up in the ladies room?

Ocean City Today, the official newspaper in those parts, issuing a brilliant defense of Arbin.

They suggested that he should tell his critics to pound sand — writing in a stinging editorial about having to “take special care that we don’t put a toe over the line of hurting anyone’s feelings.

"Butch Arbin ought to tell those who would see him disciplined for a recent email to take Ocean City’s 10 miles of sand and pound it.”

They sound like my kind of people.

“One thing wrong with society in these turbulent times isn’t Arbin or anyone like him, but is the increasingly delicate dance of public discourse at a time when those who seek tolerance are themselves intolerant,” the newspaper wrote in a staff editorial.

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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