Thursday, August 19, 2004

RACE ATTACK

Man bashed for 'going out with our women'

By Peter Wex

THREE thugs yelled racial abuse while beating their defenceless victim in an unprovoked street attack, a Cairns court heard yesterday. One of the indigenous assailants later told police the assault on the Caucasian man was "in order to teach him a lesson for going out with our women", public prosecutor Michael Connolly told Cairns District Court. Robert Paul Demaine was set upon while he sat with his Aboriginal de facto wife at a McLeod St bus stop at lOpm on December 14 last year. The victim, who lived with his de facto at a Chinaman's Creek camp for homeless people, was punched to the ground then kicked repeatedly. He later required hospital treatment.

The first assailant punched him twice in the head, shouting "white motherf--ker", Mr Connolly told the court. The next joined in, saying: "Take that you f--king white c--t". Edward Philip Mimi, who faced court yesterday, was the last to join the fray, kicking Mr. Demaine about the head while he lay prone on the ground. He too shouted abuse at the complainant, he called him a 'white f--king p---k'," Mr. Connolly said. Mimi was jailed for nine months after pleading guilty yesterday to a charge of assault occasioning bodily harm in company.

The court heard the incident took place just two days after Mimi, 37, had absconded from an alcohol rehabilitation centre. He was also on probation at the time. Warrants were issued for the arrest of the two other offenders after they failed to front court yesterday.

Defence counsel Jeremy Darvall said Mimi had previously shared a room with Mr Demaine at the Quig]ey St night shelter and did so again after the attack, at which time he had apologised. "Alcohol does seem to have been the problem," Mr Darvall said.

In sentencing, Judge Sarah Bradley said it was an unprovoked, brutal and cowardly attack.

Mimi will be eligible for release in two and a half months because he has already spent 188 days in custody on remand.

The above article appeared in "The Cairns Post" of Friday, August 13, 2004, p.1 but I could not find in on the news.com.au site, where it should have appeared, so I have posted it in full above. If the racial roles had been reversed, the offender would no doubt have got nine years instead of nine moths



IS ISLAM BECOMING AN ESTABLISHED RELIGION IN THE USA?

If not quite established yet, it is certainly privileged

"We've been following a most intriguing story out of Orlando, Fla., where a woman says she was fired from her job because she ate a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich at work, offending Muslim employees.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Lina Morales has filed a religious-discrimination lawsuit against Rising Star Telecommunications, saying she lost her administrative position because she violated a policy banning pork and pork products from the workplace.

She says the rule "constitutes religious discrimination because it is based in Islamic law for the benefit of some Muslim employees who were offended by the presence of pork — and at the expense of non-Muslims such as Morales, who is Catholic," explains the newspaper. "I felt I was being discriminated against because I was not Muslim. I wasn't trying to make somebody else eat it," the woman reasons.



THE DESTRUCTION OF BRITISH EDUCATION

He led British sailors to a stunning victory over the powerful Spanish Armada in 1588. He is renowned for his naval cunning. He is a true British hero. He is Gandalf.

Well, not really. But in the minds of one out of every 20 British young adults, J.R.R. Tolkien's white-robed wizard has replaced Sir Francis Drake. This and other wildly wrong answers in a recent survey here about British history (half of 16- to 34-year-olds did not know that the Battle of Britain took place during World War II), point to a staggeringly poor grasp of cultural heritage.

The survey is prompting noisy accusations about the dumbing down of the nation that gave the world such luminaries as William Shakespeare, Charles Babbage, and Stephen Hawking.....

Educators point to failings in the school system. History courses, for example, focus too heavily on the 20th century, they say, neglecting earlier periods. Shakespeare students often do not have to read the full play - they just watch a video and read a few scenes that may come up in examination questions.

Exams are a pale imitation of the tests set 20 or 30 years ago, according to teacher Chris Brotherton. "Exams are getting easier," he says, anticipating another set of inflated results when marks are awarded for 16- and 18-year-olds later this month. "Because we have 45 percent going on to university now, compared to 15 percent a generation ago, it has to be easier to get an 'A' grade."....

A surge in university admissions suggests that youth see value in acquiring knowledge. But Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, says professors complain that the academic standard of incoming students "is nothing like what it was 10 or 15 years ago."... "Undoubtedly, traditional standards in this country have dropped markedly over the last 20 or 30 years and a lot of it we would put down to the cultural change in the education system where content has been thrown out in order to allow more young people to achieve success," Mr. Seaton says.

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