Monday, July 04, 2016


Multicultural immigrant shot British Olympic diver and his wife in the head at their home in Spain

Morocco is a Muslim country



A Moroccan man who murdered former British Olympic diver David Tarsey and his wife Jean at their expat home in Spain, has been sentenced to 31 years in jail.

Painter Driss Drizi, 63, was jailed after striking a deal with prosecutors by confessing to his crimes during a pre-trial court hearing. He was facing a 42-year prison sentence if convicted killing the couple after a trial.

Judge Jose Daniel Mira Perceval ended up jailing him for 15 years for each murder plus another year for illegal possession of a firearm after his plea bargain deal.

The British couple, both 77, were found in each other's arms on their sofa in March last year at their home in Xalo near Benidorm. Both were killed by a single bullet to the head.

Mother-of-two Mrs Tarsey was shot first before her husband, a former engineer who competed in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics as well as the 1954 and 1958 Commonwealth Games, was murdered.

Drizi was arrested last September after an exhaustive police investigation.

Reports at the time said the immigrant, an acquaintance of David's, had confessed during questioning to killing the couple, originally from west London, after a row.

The horrific nature of the shootings was laid bare in an indictment released by local state prosecutors in May when they revealed they were seeking a 42-year-prison sentence for Drizi.

They said he stormed back to the caravan where he lived after an argument with David to fetch an ORTGIES 7.65mm Browning pistol he kept hidden there before returning to the Tarseys' home 'with the intention of ending the couple's lives.'

Revealing Mrs Tarsey was shot first in the face, local state prosecutors said in the indictment: 'She was sat on the sofa and taking no part in the argument and had no way of reacting. It resulted in her husband Peter David immediately turning towards her to try to protect her.

'Whilst deprived of any possibility of defence, the accused shot him in the neck, causing the instantaneous deaths of both.'

Their bodies were discovered three days later when friends they were due to have Sunday lunch with raised the alarm. It was never made clear why the killer had argued with Mr Tarsey.

SOURCE






Brexit: this was a vote against bigotry, not for it

The people have rebelled against the bigotry of the elites

What is a bigot? That term is now so overused — to describe everyone from foreigner-hating skinheads to feminist academics who question transgenderism — that we have lost sight of its meaning. It’s now basically a stand-in for ‘unpleasant’, deployed against people we simply don’t like or understand.

But bigot has a very specific meaning. It doesn’t mean gruff or un-PC or even ‘worried about immigration’. It means, as the Oxford English Dictionary spells out, ‘intolerance towards those who hold different opinions to oneself’. A bigot is someone who is so ‘obstinately and blindly devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion’ that he comes to loathe those of a different church, party, belief or opinion. Which raises a pressing and intriguing question: in Britain’s EU referendum debate, who, really, are the bigots?

The narrative pumped out by most of the media and political set, before the referendum and even more intensively after it, says that Brexiteers are the bigots. They voted for hate and xenophobia, apparently. Brexit was ‘fuelled’ by bigotry, says one observer, specifically ‘bigotry on the basis of national origin’. It was a ‘vote for hate’, pro-EU protesters claim. The victory for Brexit means ‘prejudice [and] xenophobia’ have ‘won out over common sense’, says one columnist.

All the talk among the well-connected of how out of sync they now feel with Britain, and how scared they are of the bigotry now finding public expression, is meant to give an impression of them as progressive and the others — the 17.5million people who voted Leave — as backward, hateful, possibly dangerous. Remainers are against bigotry, Leavers are for it — right?

This is an almost perfect inversion of reality. If we are talking about blind and obstinate devotion to a certain outlook, and a corresponding intolerance for those who hold different outlooks, then it is the Remain campaign and its media and political backers who have behaved as bigots. Their intolerance of the opposite side, of the masses who voted Leave, has been alarming. They have written them off as ‘low information’, racist, overemotional, lacking the expertise required to make big political decisions. ‘The chavs have won’, as one Glastonbury attendee told The Sunday Times. These people are ‘mindlessly angry’, says one observer. They are ‘ignorant’. They are so lacking in basic nous and intelligence that they are ‘ripe for canny right-wing operators to manipulate’. The leaders of Leave ‘lifted several stones’ to let these kind of views out, said one columnist, as if Leavers are insects. ‘It is as if the sewers have burst’, said another, as if they are shit. Newspaper cartoons have depicted Leave advocates as rats vomiting into the sewer of public opinion, and as dogs salivating at their computers.

You want to see bigotry? Look at all of that. It has been explicit and relentless and extremely ugly. After the referendum in particular, the media set has engaged in a great, long sneer at the hoodwinked idiotic public, looking with contempt, or even worse, pity, at the knuckle-draggers who have apparently destroyed our nation. Such is their intolerance that many are now demanding either that a second referendum be held or that the result simply be overturned.

At a pro-EU — but really just anti-democratic — gathering in Trafalgar Square, where people held placards slamming white people and old people, a lawyer said from the platform that there is too much ‘mass confusion’ for decisions like this to be made by the public; instead they must be made by politicians.

That is bigotry. This intolerance for people who are different, the smearing of them as morally ill-equipped for political life, the depiction of them as animals, the attempt to override their political desires — that is the living, breathing definition of bigotry, of ‘intolerance towards those who hold different opinions to oneself’.

Observers have casually asserted that Leavers are bigots, who hate immigrants, but the facts do not bear this out: a post-referendum ComRes poll found only 34 per cent of Leave voters gave immigration as their main concern, where 53 per cent said Britain’s ability to write its own laws was their big issue.

And yet even as the media elites make their unconvincing assertion about a vast swathe of British society being bigoted, they openly express bigoted views of their own, against the poor, the old, the white working class, chavs, the mindless mass of society. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to denounce your opponents as bigots even as you partake in bigotry.

Indeed, it has become clear in recent days that the worst bigotry in Britain right now is the ‘anti-bigotry’ of the liberal elite. It is through posturing against the alleged bigotry of the little people that the political and media classes express their own bigotry. Their obstinate devotion not simply to the EU but to the idea that their way of life is superior to poorer people’s way of life, that their political and cultural outlook is better than yours, has made them alarmingly intolerant of political and moral difference. It has made them bigots.

This explains why so many leading Remainers have responded with such anger and shrillness to the referendum result: because their starting point is moral obstinacy, not openness to debate or democratic change. One of the most rewarding things about this whole process is that it has exposed the hollowness of the political and media elites’ PC platitudes. The veil has been torn aside, and we can now see the utter emptiness of their claims to care for ordinary people, to consider all views equally valid, to want to listen to us and empower us. In truth, they are bigoted towards us; they wish we would not speak.

And it is precisely this bigotry of the elites that many poorer and working-class people will have decided to strike against in the referendum. They seized an opportunity to protest against an establishment which for too long has treated them and their way of life with contempt, which has sneered at them for being too fat, unhealthy, bad at parenting, overly obsessed with flags and football, and basically unpleasant people in need of correction from on high. People kicked back against that. They protested against elitist intolerance and disdain for their way of life. Here’s the thing: their vote against the EU was far more a vote against bigotry than for it.

SOURCE





Pentagon’s Transgender Policy Defies Common Sense

On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the U.S. military is dropping its policy of treating male and female troops according to their biology—to be replaced by a policy based on a radical new gender ideology.

This change was not precipitated by military needs but by political correctness. After all, the military is not stretched so thin that it must make special accommodations to help attract the estimated 0.6 percent of Americans who self-identify as transgender in order to effectively fight and win our wars.

Moreover, people with gender dysphoria are allowed to serve, and many have served honorably, so long as their condition or treatments do not interfere with combat readiness.

What the military did not allow before today was the disruption to morale, privacy, and readiness that results from a male serviceman demanding the “right” to dress as a female, have others address him as a female, and be granted unfettered access to showers, lockers, bathrooms, and barracks designated for females. That commonsense policy, which has served our country well, was jettisoned today.

In grappling with this issue it helps to ask why the military has separate shower facilities and barracks for women and men in the first place. As with the question of women in combat, if the answer has something to do with biological realities, privacy, and interactions between the sexes, then the implications for morale and readiness are fairly evident.

But the new gender ideology ignores these facts and replaces them with subjective self-identification, so that a person’s sex is merely an arbitrary designation “assigned at birth” and one can actually be “male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female,” at least according to new mandates from the Obama administration.

Some obvious questions arise from the new policy. Will biological males who identify as female be subject to physical fitness requirements for men or women? Will they be required to do 35 pushups or 13 pushups to pass basic training? Will American taxpayers be required to pay for expensive “sex reassignment” surgeries, including breast implants in men and shaving down Adam’s apples when that money can be spent on better weapons or more training?

Will service members who have addressed an officer as “sir” for years be booted out of the military if they refuse to address him as “ma’am?” Wouldn’t the loss and impact on recruiting offset any supposed gains of allowing a relatively few transgender troops the ability to dress according to their chosen identity? These are but a few questions Carter neglected to address in his announcement.

Instead, Carter said that:

Embedded within our Constitution is th[e] very principle that all Americans are free and equal. And we as an Army are sworn to protect and defend that very principle. And we are sworn to even die for that principle. So if we in uniform are willing to die for that principle then we in uniform should be willing to live by that principle.

This is too much.

First, it doesn’t violate equality to recognize relevant biological realities and there is nothing in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution that elevates transgender people to a protected class akin to race.

Second, whatever one thinks of the latest Supreme Court redefinition of marriage, it did not redefine what it means to be a man and a woman for all Americans, especially in the military context.

There are painstakingly detailed regulations concerning uniforms, grooming, and even tattoo placement because troops must be trained to put the mission above self-expression, as lives depend upon it. Regulations that recognize relevant biological realities help, not hinder, the mission, and as admitted by Carter in his statement, thousands of people with gender dysphoria were already allowed to serve over the years because they respected the old policies.

Finally, there are hundreds of thousands of veterans and current troops who were traumatized, wounded, or died fighting against Nazis, Communist aggressors, and terrorists, yet, believe that biological men should not be allowed into the same barracks and showers as women.

Carter dishonors their sacrifices by suggesting that these Americans who actually died for the Constitution failed to live by the Constitution themselves. This decision has nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with politics and a gender ideology run amok.

SOURCE






Vatican ecumenism leaves Egyptian Christians in the lurch

Pope Francis, who is "building bridges to build peace" around the world, has naturally reached out to embrace Sunni Muslims. Last month, for the first time after years of Vatican silence, Pope Francis summoned to his private library in Rome grand imam Ahmed El-Tayeb of Cairo's Al-Ahzar Mosque Institute. Absent a press release before this event, the Pope was quoted as saying, "this meeting is the message" - leading all to dwell on the meaning and purpose of their 25 minutes together.

Christians, especially Egyptian Coptic Christians, have observed the Catholic pope give the "sign of peace" to the grand imam who has yet been unwilling to denounce ISIS. Unity existed between the two religious branches previous to former Pope Benedict XVI condemning Islam's inclination to violence.

This message of reconciliation comes during the Al-Sisi  government which has stood opposed to the favored and protected status of an organization entwined with Al-Ahzar -- the Muslim Brotherhood - and against the ascendency of this terror network and others beginning before his presidential campaign.

Two days before their historic meeting, headlines around the world reported the violent and humiliating act committed by a Muslim mob in Upper Egypt against a Christian woman in a Christian-majority village. Homes where razed and a grandmother was stripped naked, dragged from her house and beaten in the street.

Egypt's courts are not officially Sharia but street justice involving private matters is strictly Islamic doctrine (coercion of non-Muslims), and violence has no real consequences in the courts.

No words came from either of the leaders in the "Jubilee of Mercy" meeting (its official title) to address this incident, which by the nature of this attack holds deeper, more serious implications in Egyptian culture. An elderly woman in Egypt is considered sacrosanct, and practically speaking, this means across sectarian lines she is universally respected for her tenderness and kindheartedness toward others. Even codified barbarity had had this limit before now.

Evidence of Al-Sisi's attempt at reform of Islamic doctrine met by Al-Ahzar reluctance is seen recently in the Institute's insignificant changes to public school textbooks and mosque preaching. Presently, President Al-Sisi is stifled in his efforts to expunge religious supremacy from Egypt without cooperation from Al-Ahzar and apparently even with its assistance. As these particulars are the cultural foundation used for oppressing Christians, it is now hopeful that Francis will focus on such issues.

Although Francis has not been terribly outspoken on Coptic Church destruction, he has grieved with the Orthodox of Egypt and offered his prayers over the spilled blood of Christians in Libya recognizing the Coptic Christian martyrs.

Solidarity (a hug and kisses) shown in this re-connection of Cairo's Sunni grand imam with the Catholic Pope followed by silence (no official statements) helps to bolster and propel the position of the Institute's goals for Egypt, which are far from optimal in the cause for freedom of religion and speech and the subject of human rights.

It is not likely that Francis will meet with President Al-Sisi, if he hasn't first already done so, even though by contrast Al-Sisi projects real hope for Egypt's future in his committed struggle for freedom and equality.

This we see in regard to Egypt's deep state (the tentacles of Al-Ahzar religious brainwashing), from which Al-Sisi seeks to disentangle and de-program out of the administrations of the state. He rose to office on that claim and until now has produced evidence of genuineness along with impossible odds.

It is logical to assume by Francis' exclusion of Al-Sisi and, for that matter, Coptic Pope Tawadros II, who represents 20 million Christians, that building bridges was not foremost on the mind of Pope Francis. The absence of these key figures in the room does in itself shed light onto the meaning of the meeting; in effect, by this oversight, Francis acknowledges only the deep state.

For Pope Francis, ecumenical zeal is more his quest than a real concern for solutions to the rise of jihad. However, the Vatican's ecumenism comes at the expense of Egypt's human rights. This encounter may symbolize for many an affirmation of peace attained through submission. After all, Francis now reached out to El-Tayeb in an apologetic mode for the public "insult" in denouncing Islam's violence some years back. But Francis intends his appeasement to speak for the entire Christian world.

Last year, remarking upon the slaughter of 21 Coptic Christians by Sunni Muslim jihadists in Libya, Francis told leaders of the Church of Scotland that, "I ask that we encourage each other to go forward with this ecumenism which is giving us strength, the ecumenism of blood." In that emotional moment Francis capitalized on martyrdom to bind together Christian protestant denominations under the Roman Catholic umbrella which in turn extends a hand to Islam.

 The pope's ecumenical fanaticism is blurring the lines of theological differences for the sake of one spiritual conglomerate without much thought to religious minorities preferring to remain divided from certain doctrine and the indoctrinators linked to the throat-slashers of Libya.

In the end, we are left with questions and speculation of what to expect in the aftermath of this meeting. Will the world see less vengeful opposition to the Roman pope's 12th century crusade? Will we see a new edict declaring that jihad is inappropriate for today's civilized world or Al-Ahzar denounce ISIS? Will we see a public statement by the two heads condemning the use of religion to commit violence?

And finally, might all this potential good we await be based on a designation called "heavenly," which the pope may have bestowed upon the Sunni sect during this meeting? For many decades, Cairo's Muslim authorities have sought this label to prove religious equality with the faiths of Christianity and Judaism and have looked to the Roman Catholic pope for this ultimate seal of approval.

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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