Manick Govinda

Arts consultant/mentor/curator/writer/eclecticist/centre-left social-democratic-libertarian sign up to my blog! it’s free 👇🏾

[Manick Govinda @manick62]

I updated a piece I wrote on a live discussion that I produced alongside @InesP4F on #AI #AIart️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️, 3 years ago in light of Pope Leo’s wise words, Woody slop
https://t.co/j5W0lMkC2f

[Network of Sikh Orgs @SikhMessenger]

The Killing of Henry Nowak

The sentencing of Vickrum Digwa to at least 21 years in prison yesterday is one step towards justice for the friends and family of Henry Nowak, who was murdered by Digwa in Southampton last December.

Digwa and his family are categorically condemned by British Sikhs, his mother has been convicted for assisting an offender, by hiding the murder weapon. His brother’s role has not resulted in a criminal conviction, but is repugnant, nonetheless. They have brought disgrace on the majority law abiding British Sikh community. The murder weapon was not a kirpan as has been incorrectly stated, but a 21 cm Persian blade known as a pesh-kabz – designed to go through chainmail. Digwa wore it as part of a Nihang (warrior-sect) subculture, and the court was clear this weapon was an offensive weapon, despite Digwa’s wrongful claims and misguided religious entitlement to carry it.

Political parties, playing to the sadly growing racism in the country are looking to ban the kirpan – despite it not being the murder weapon. Statistics show most knife homicides are carried out with everyday kitchen knives. Other groups like the Scottish also have an exemption for purposes of cultural heritage (Highland dress) to carry a dirk/sgian dubh – the latter has been used in at least one murder case.

The bodycam footage of Nowak’s last moments is harrowing, and we are alarmed as to why Nowak was handcuffed whilst dying and not believed when he told officers he had been stabbed. We hope the IOPC investigation leads to further justice for the family and we offer our sincerest condolences to the Nowak family for the loss of a young man with a bright future ahead of him.

Lord Singh of Wimbledon, Director, Network of Sikh Organisations

[ENDS]

https://t.co/SRwFOVF7Dv

[BBC Newsnight @BBCNewsnight]

“We will end up seeing more division”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says she is disappointed by Nigel Farage "wading in" with his "pure cold rage" comments in response to the treatment of Henry Nowak.

#Newsnight

[Wes Streeting @wesstreeting]

I’m not going to amplify Reform’s ad by sharing it, but the wilful misrepresentation of Kemi Badenoch - selectively quoting what she said about ‘white lives matter’ - is disgraceful and dangerous.

It needs to be challenged, including by those of us who are not Conservatives.

[Manick Govinda @manick62]

A good friend & a fellow panellist on many occasions at the @acadofideas #BattleofIdeas, @Singhtwo2 has written a most compelling piece on the vile Vickrum Digwa who has been jailed for the murder of the innocent student Henry Nowak. The Sikh community has also been put on trail.

[The Spectator @spectator]

British Sikhs have long been considered a model minority and an integration success story. The core teachings of Sikhism promote equality for all human beings. This is not merely in word, but deed. Go to any gurdwara anywhere in the world and you can get a free vegetarian meal, regardless of who you are.

Over the years, Britain has made legal accommodations for Sikhs. Turbaned Sikhs have an exemption from wearing a helmet on a motorbike, famously satirised in the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses with the 'Del Boy turban helmet'.

Baptised Sikhs (Amritdharis) are provided an exemption (and a defence) on religious grounds, under the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, to carry a ceremonial knife, known as the kirpan, as part of five symbols of their faith – colloquially known as the 5Ks.

✍️ Hardeep Singh

Article | https://t.co/Ru58CRyCi5

[Julie Bindel @bindelj]

Scumbag. Badenoch's every word were so sincere and heartfelt:
https://t.co/R2p2BM3BGm

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Identity politics divides our country whoever is doing it.

The Conservative Party rejects it.

We believe in universalism and equality under the law. We must not treat people differently on the basis of skin colour. We have to build faith and trust in our institutions.

If there is one thing that should come from Henry’s death, it is that we make things better, so that this does not happen to any of our boys again.

That is what I am committed to.

I do not want his death to be in vain.

Let’s do this for Henry. Let’s get this right.

[Dr Luke Evans MP @drlukeevans]

Hi Rob, you missed a bit on your edit.

Hope this helps.

You are welcome.

[Conservatives @Conservatives]

Reform’s attack on @KemiBadenoch is a straightforward lie, and everyone can see it.

Here’s what Kemi actually said this morning ⬇️

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

A university student murdered by a Sikh man pleaded with police “I can’t breathe” nine times while being handcuffed in the minutes before he died

Vickrum Digwa jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years for the murder of 18-year-old student 👇
https://t.co/9RvqbzbZFU

[Manick Govinda @manick62]

Reform’s attack on Kemi Badenoch is truly nasty, stirring up racial tensions.

[Hannah Barnes @hannahsbee]

This is really low. Kemi Badenoch was visibly and audibly emotional when discussing the horrendous murder of Nowak on GMB. She actually said: "I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter. I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter. We all matter. Enough of this nonsense…”

[Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1]

This is wrong. It doesn't matter who you vote for, but Kemi Badenoch expressly stated that ALL lives matter and it shouldn't be about someone's race. This sort of "attack ad" isn't about facing up to important issues, it's just a lie.

[The Jewish Chronicle @JewishChron]

Jewish Museum announces interim exhibition space at JW3

https://t.co/IFEeUqjzcs

[spiked @spikedonline]

The bodycam footage of Henry Nowak’s arrest is truly harrowing. Henry says ‘I can’t breathe’ nine times. He says ‘I’ve been stabbed’ four times. Yet the cops drag him across the ground and cuff him. This is the barbarism of wokeness, says Brendan O’Neill

https://t.co/QmkcunSicH

[Melanie Phillips @MelanieLatest]

The first of another series of tips of the kind found in my new book, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege. https://t.co/BQo4vLDh3P

[Suella Braverman @SuellaBraverman]

This body cam footage is extremely shocking.

You can hear Henry Nowak’s pleas about being unable to breathe.

And you can hear how the police dismissed them and failed to take action to try to save his life.

This is not just about knife crime. This is about police failure, poor police training and anti- white racism.

Who is going to be held accountable for this scandal?

[facts about @destinationXIX]

One of the biggest problems in discussions about Israel is that most people have never heard of the Cairo Geniza.

And yet it may be one of the most devastating pieces of evidence against many of the myths surrounding the conflict.

The Cairo Geniza was a storage room in a synagogue in Egypt where Jews deposited old documents for nearly a thousand years. When scholars finally examined its contents, they discovered roughly 300,000 manuscript fragments dating from the 9th to the 19th centuries.

Not religious texts - Real life:
Letters.
Contracts.
Tax receipts.
Court cases.
Business records.
Marriage agreements.
Personal correspondence.

In other words, not propaganda.
Not nationalist history.
Not modern politics.
The actual paperwork of ordinary people living a thousand years ago.

And what does it show?
First, it destroys the claim that Jews are foreign colonists with no historical connection to the land.

The Geniza contains countless references to Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, Safed, Ramle, Acre, and other towns throughout the Land of Israel.

Before the twentieth century.
Before Herzl.
Before Zionism.

Centuries before any of those things existed.

The documents show Jewish pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem, donations being sent to Jewish communities there, rabbis corresponding with scholars in the land, and families moving between Egypt and the Land of Israel.

The connection never disappeared.
It never had to be "invented."

Second, it shows that Jewish identity remained tied to the land even after centuries of exile.

The Jews of Cairo, Baghdad, Yemen, Morocco, and Spain did not view Jerusalem as some distant historical curiosity.

They viewed it as the center of their civilization.

A place they prayed toward.
A place they supported financially.
A place many hoped to return to.
Long before modern nationalism was invented.

Third, it destroys the fantasy that Jews and Muslims lived in some utopian age of perfect coexistence before Zionism arrived and ruined everything.

The Geniza records periods of cooperation and prosperity.
But it also records jizya taxes, discrimination, legal inequality, extortion, restrictions, persecution, and the vulnerability of Jewish communities living as dhimmis under Islamic rule.
The reality of a subordinate minority.

Forth, the Geniza also challenges another popular myth: that Hebrew was a "dead language" resurrected out of nowhere by Zionists.

The Geniza contains countless Hebrew documents - letters, contracts, legal rulings, religious texts, poetry, and correspondence between communities separated by thousands of miles.

For centuries, Jews used Hebrew as a common civilizational language connecting communities from Morocco to Iraq and from Yemen to Jerusalem.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda did not resurrect a dead language. He transformed an ancient, continuously used literary and religious language into a modern spoken one.

The Cairo Geniza proves that Hebrew never disappeared. It evolved, adapted, and survived long before modern Zionism emerged.

Fifth, it reminds us how sparsely populated and underdeveloped much of the region was before modern times.

The Land of Israel was not some densely populated "Palestinian" nation-state waiting to emerge. It was part of a larger Ottoman and earlier Islamic world, with small communities of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze, Bedouins, and others living across the region, that was vastly abandoned.

Perhaps most importantly, the Geniza reveals something that infuriates modern anti-Zionists:

The Jews never left history.
The Jewish people did not disappear from the land.
They did not forget Jerusalem.
They did not suddenly arrive from Europe one day and invent a connection.

The connection is documented continuously across centuries by the people who actually lived it.

It proves that the story told by activists - that European Jews arrived in a foreign land with no roots there - is historically indefensible.

The Cairo Geniza is thousands of voices speaking across a millennium.

And together they tell a story that modern ideologues desperately wish did not exist:
The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel was not created by Zionism.
Zionism was created because that connection never died.

[Lisa Mckenzie @redrumlisa]

This is very simple to understand the people who run the Trade Unions are activists with degrees who dont understand the Trade Union history and their politics are liberal progressive identity politics this is at odds with their working class members who want the old left politics of class & community, decent work, and good standards of living for themselves, family & community.

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

Ed Davey has written to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson demanding she WITHDRAW official EHRC guidance protecting female-only spaces in toilets and changing rooms.

Let that land.

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission — a statutory body — has produced legally grounded guidance telling employers and public bodies that biological men should not access women’s single-sex spaces.

This is not opinion.
This is not politics.
This is the settled legal position following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on the meaning of “woman” under the Equality Act.

And Ed Davey wants it gone.

His stated reason?

The guidance is not “compatible with long-standing British values.”

British values.

He used those words to argue AGAINST protecting women’s single-sex spaces.

The same Liberal Democrats who lecture the country about tolerance, inclusion and human rights are now lobbying a Labour minister to tear up statutory guidance that protects every woman in Britain who walks into a changing room, a refuge or a hospital ward.

This is not a fringe position within the Lib Dems.

Their leader wrote the letter.

The party has chosen its side.

It is not the side of women.

Repost if you think women’s single-sex spaces should be protected.

[The Spectator @spectator]

Europe’s largest hub of the performing arts, which great musicians the world over once called home, is now a grim laboratory, obsessed with a ‘diversity’ that taints everything it touches.

We hate, thought Keats, things that have ‘a palpable design upon us’. Under the direction of Misan Harriman, chairman of trustees, the Southbank Centre increasingly resembles a political boot camp, where slackers are herded for re-education.

✍️ Michael Henderson

Article | https://t.co/j3gechOG8i

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Energy bills are rising again. Labour will blame Iran, but you’re paying more because of Ed Miliband’s net zero taxes and refusal to drill our own oil and gas.

Our Cheap Power Plan would cut bills by 20% by scrapping the green taxes, scrapping VAT and drilling in the North Sea.