More multiculturalism in Britain

An Eritrean imprisoned and raped a woman EIGHT YEARS after he dodged charges for similar sex attack due to lack of evidence



An asylum seeker who escaped justice after he imprisoned and raped a 20-year-old student in his flat went on to commit another brutal sex attack eight years later.

Ybrah Haylemaryam, 26, who entered the country illegally from Eritrea in 2003, grabbed his first victim as she was walking home from a night out and forced her back to his home in Hull.  The desperate young woman eventually managed flee after he went to the bathroom.

But although the victim reported the rape in 2004, and Haylemaryam was interviewed, prosecutors said there was not enough evidence for him to be charged with the offence.

Eight years later he carried out another attack on a young mother who had been on a date with him after she spurned his advances.  Her baby was in the next room during the horrific three-hour ordeal.

The crime led to Haylemaryam's previous case being reopened and he was charged with four counts of rape, two counts of false imprisonment and three sexual assaults on the two victims.

Today, he was found guilty by a jury and jailed for 20 years at Hull Crown Court.

But police believe more women may have suffered at the hands of Haylemaryam in the intervening years and appealed for any potential victims to come forward.

His first victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said today: 'Although I’m really happy with the sentence, I’m angry that this has happened to someone else and he has been allowed to do that.  'I was upset at the time that it wasn’t taken any further but I could understand the reasons because it was my word against his.'

Now 29 and working in social care, the victim expressed her shock when she discovered during the trial that Haylemaryam was living near to her at the time of the attack.

She said: 'I can’t believe he lived just a few streets away from me, that really shocked me.  'I don’t know what I’d have done if I had seen him in the street in the years after my case. I would have probably froze in my steps.

'He pestered me and all of a sudden just flipped, and the other victim described to me exactly the same what he did to me to her. I thought he was going to kill me.

'I feel lucky that I did get out, and I have got to thank the specialist support and counselling I have had from everyone.

'I hope I get a bit of closure now, but it’s the fear of someone doing that to you again that never goes away.  'If he was deported, then I won’t have to worry about him ever again. I’m hoping to now move on with my life, knowing he is behind bars.'

Judge Mark Bury called Haylemaryam a ‘dangerous offender’.  'You have been convicted by a jury of two sex attacks on two different women, eight years apart,' Judge Bury said. 'You pose a significant risk to members of the public, and you are a dangerous offender.

'(In the case of the first victim) you took full advantage of a vulnerable victim and you were a stranger to her.

'Once inside your flat, you were aggressive to her and raped her. She was terrified, and thankfully managed to run away.

'She was very distressed in the witness box after being shown photos of the flat where the rape took place, and the memories came flooding back to her.

'The second victim’s ordeal lasted three hours, and you forced her against her will.'

Judge Bury said it is unlikely that Haylemaryam will be returned to his home country of Eritrea upon his release, and could possibly be deported to South Africa.

Paul Genney, defending, said that Haylemaryam was on his way to coming to terms with both rapes, which he initially denied at trial.

Detective Inspector Alan Bentham said: 'Officers from Humberside Police’s public protection unit are appealing to any further women who may have been subjected to attacks from Ybrah Haylemaryam to contact them.

'Haylemaryam has been convicted of numerous rapes and sexual assaults against two women.

'We praise the victims in this case for having the courage to come forward, having been put through horrendous ordeals by Haylemaryam, who falsely imprisoned them and subjected them to violent, sexual attacks.'

SOURCE





Censoring the 'Anti-Gay' Viewpoint

The media elites have never been less interested in objectivity than they are right now on "gay marriage." They don't wear rainbow flags on their lapels when they appear on television, but the coverage speaks for itself.

Even liberals are admitting the obvious. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) studied a sample of almost 500 news stories from March to May and admitted "statements of support dominate" the daily narrative.

"The study lends credence to conservative charges that the nation's news media have championed the issue of same-sex marriage at the expense of objectivity," media reporter Brian Stelter asserted at The New York Times. "Others have argued that news organizations are right not to overly emphasize opposition to what many see as a core civil rights issue."

That's very euphemistic. Some argue reporters are "not to overly emphasize" opposition? No, many liberals believe whoever still refuses to endorse "gay marriage" has as much moral authority as the Ku Klux Klan.

Their voice should be ignored.

In many corners of the liberal media, the space for a social conservative to argue against "marriage equality" is vanishing before our eyes. It becomes twice as difficult the more and more anchors and reporters come out and declare themselves gay, and then the gay lobby expects those journalists to perform with perfect obedience to their agenda.

In their somewhat strange roulette-wheel method of analyzing a list of rotating media outlets depending on which day it is, PEJ analysts still found 47 percent of stories "included twice as many statements in support of same-sex marriage than in opposition. Less than a fifth of that number (9 percent) included more statements in opposition." They found zero difference in tilt between "objective" news stories and opinion articles.

In their scattershot sample, the network evening and morning news shows never produced a story with more conservatives than leftists, and "all three of the major cable networks, for instance, had more stories with significantly more supportive statements than opposing, including Fox News."

The headline on their report is "News Coverage Conveys Strong Momentum for Same-Sex Marriage." A very young or inexperienced media observer might argue that the momentum came before the media, that the media are only catching the recent wave of "justice." That would ignore how the liberal media have favored the gay agenda for decades.

In recent years, the promotion of homosexuality has gone beyond the "news" programs and became heavily entrenched in network entertainment shows, with entire programs devoted to gay characters and their struggle to overcome the alleged ignorance and oppression of religious villains. This easily explains why so many young people are dramatically pro-gay marriage in the opinion polls.

So if you're a religious conservative favoring traditional marriage, your media choices are between cultural poison and diluted cultural poison. The fierce debate within the media establishment is whether the social conservatives should be allowed to speak at all.

The official gay censorship lobbies — from the Orwellian-named "GLAAD" to the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association — define "fairness and accuracy" as being stories that try to scrape "fairness" away, treating opposition like used gum on someone's shoe. GLAAD created what they call the "Commentator Accountability Project" designed to discourage reporters and TV bookers from booking "hate" guests.

"Progressive" censors have confronted MSNBC's Chris Matthews in public and urged him to stop booking Family Research Council president Tony Perkins because of his "hate speech," like calling gay activists "vile."

The left-wing lobby calling itself "Faithful America" tried to take out an ad on MSNBC urging Matthews to keep Perkins off TV: "People of faith are speaking out, demanding MSNBC stop hosting hate."

Their argument was based on the fact that the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center officially designated FRC and other conservative Christian organizations as "hate groups." The SPLC designation became for them a handy blacklist to instruct the liberal media on which guests to ban. For unhinged (but unsuccessful) shooter Floyd Corkins, the SPLC created a hit list of people to kill at the FRC and two other conservative outfits.

To quote GLAAD censor Aaron McQuade, "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the consequences of speech." If they prevail, the "consequences" of speaking in opposition to the gay lobby equals zero bookings. In their dreamland, every "news" segment looks like the usual MSNBC "Lean Forward" gay segment where everyone embraces the equality and fluidity of "sexual preference."

But they're not censors, they insist.

SOURCE






A Flagrant Feminist Failure

Feminism as a political cause is on such wobbly knees that it must rely on charges of rampant sexism that have no basis in reality. The current Exhibit A is "Think Progress" blogger Alyssa Rosenberg, who surely scrunched up her face in disgust as she wrote the headline "Women Are Half Of Video Gamers, So Where Are The Female Video Game Characters?"

Serious long-term video game fans should laugh at Rosenberg's ignorance and laziness. This headline had all the style and finesse of a belly flop into an empty swimming pool.

To document the first half of the headline, she referred to a new report on demographics from the Entertainment Software Association, which found that women 18 and older make up 31 percent of the video game-playing population. Another study released by Magid Advisors found that 70 percent of women between the ages of 12 and 24 play video games. The study also found 61 percent of women between the ages of 45 and 64 also play games, compared to 57 percent of men in that age group.

The videogame culture has evolved, and there are many more female "gamers" now. But surveys counting more female "gamers" are very broad, reflecting that anyone who occasionally plays "Angry Birds" on their smart phone gets counted as a "gamer."

At least there's more evidence on the audience than on the silly second half, the question "Where are the Female Video Game Characters?"

Rosenberg turned to feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, who reported that the makers of the new Xbox One console were harassed at the recent E3 electronic-entertainment expo for failing to promote games with female characters (which in itself isn't evidence of a lack of female characters). But for Rosenberg, this apparently underscored "why it's so hard to convince the branches of the entertainment industry that they ought to try harder to offer up female characters and characters of color."

What's hard is to get Rosenberg to try a simple Google search. Type in "female characters in video games" and you're sent to a Wikipedia page where it reports on 110 entries on female characters, and that's only a fraction of them.

Just how wrong is Rosenberg? Even her ally Sarkeesian admits in one of her YouTube video lectures that "we have seen a moderate increase in the number of playable female characters."

In many "role player" games, characters can be customized by their gamers; and in many games, there is the option for a female character. Take the popular action game series "Mass Effect," where the Commander Shepard character can be either male or female. The game's manufacturer, BioWare, boasted in 2007 how its female fighter was "very strong, in a way you'd expect from a real-life military officer. She's not a caricature of the idea of role-playing as a female, but instead she's very impressive as a strong female character that's sensitive yet extremely confident and assertive."

BioWare even labored to appease the loony "Think Progress" crowd by offering "same-sex romance options" for Commander Shepard regardless of gender in "Mass Effect 3."

Many role-player game series these days offer female protagonists, including "Dragon Age," "Dragon's Dogma," "Elder Scrolls, "Fable," "Fallout" and "Saints Row," as well as "Halo 4." Most if not all Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games (including the popular "World of Warcraft" and "Star Wars: The Old Republic") also have female-character options.

Fighting female protagonists aren't remotely new:

--Even non-gamers remember "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," which debuted in 1996. Lara Croft was played by Angelina Jolie in a 2001 movie. The game series is still popular.

--The TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" inspired an Xbox video game version in 2002. Before that, there was a "Buffy" game for Nintendo Game Boy Color in 2000.

--Joanna Dark is the protagonist of the "Perfect Dark" series, which debuted in 2000. She's nicknamed "Perfect" in honor of her "flawless performance in training tests."

--Jill Valentine appeared as a playable protagonist in the U.S. police force in the first version of "Resident Evil" in 1996, and many versions (including movies) thereafter.

--Samus Aran was the first popular female action star in the game "Metroid," which was first issued in 1986 and remains a popular character over a quarter-century later. The creators were inspired by Sigourney Weaver's character in the movie "Alien."

Angry feminists can certainly criticize how many female characters are scantily clad and designed for sex appeal. They could argue that too many female characters not listed above are merely damsels in distress. They could argue that violent video games normalize or trivialize violence against women.

But that's not what Rosenberg argued. She suggested female characters were nearly nonexistent. That, like so much of feminist boilerplate, is fraudulent.

SOURCE






Free Speech Goes Down to Defeat in Australia

Student newspaper members at Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra have recently learned the hard way how various Muslims do not accept criticism and condemnation like adherents of other faiths. Amidst the ecumenical satire of ANU's Woroni, the outrage and disciplinary threats provoked by the school newspaper's mocking of Islam suggests that this faith shall enjoy a privileged position among all beliefs.

As the Woroni editors explained on the newspaper website on May 26, 2013, the "'Advice from Religion' infographic on the back page" of the year's Edition 5 from April 18 "caused a flurry of activity." This infographic mocking Islam "was the fifth in a series that satirized facets of different religions; chronologically, Catholicism, Scientology, Mormonism, and Judaism." Many readers "condemned the piece as insulting and offensive to Islam and to religion in general." The editors acknowledged being "accustomed to receiving heated feedback," but "in this instance the extent of interference" by university officials "was unprecedented."

The day after publication, ANU Chancellery members met with Woroni's entire editorial board to discuss a "formal complaint submitted by the International Students Department" (ISD). As the Chancellery later stated to Woroni, the Islamic infographic violated "University rules" and Australian Press Council (APC) principles. The Chancellery added that the "University has a large international footprint and is mindful of maintaining its reputation of providing a welcoming environment for a diverse student and academic population." Referencing the 2005 Danish Muhammad caricatures and September 15, 2012, Muslim protests against the Innocence of Muslims film in Sydney that turned violent, Chancellery officials expressed concern about ANU's reputation and security.

To Chancellery calls for an apology and the infographic's official retraction, Woroni reacted "in a similar manner" to past complaints. A published "apology" would follow "to any readers who felt victimized... stressing" the infographic's "satirical" intent. The subsequent April 19, 2013, Woroni public response expressed these sentiments and denied any intention "to make anybody feel uncomfortable."

Yet the Chancellery remained unappeased. Regular uploading of Edition 5 as a PDF to the Woroni website archive and Facebook pages prompted a second meeting with Woroni editors and the three infographic authors. The Chancellery therein warned that the continued presence online of the Edition 5 PDF would lead to disciplinary action under Section 3.1(b) of the ANU Discipline Rules condemning as "misconduct" behavior that "unreasonably hinders other persons in the pursuit of their studies in the University or in participation in the life of the University." These disciplinary measures, along with threats to Woroni's ANU student funding, prompted removal of the back page from the Edition

As The Australian reported (subscription for original story required), the infographic at the origins of the controversy asked from a mockingly Islamic perspective "How should I value women?" The "answers referenced Aisha, the prophet Mohammed's nine-year-old wife, and described the 72 'houris' -- women depicted in the Koran as large-bosomed virgins who are a reward in paradise -- as a 'rape fantasy'." The Australian added that someone from ISD effectively told one of the authors, Jamie Freestone, that he did not "understand the seriousness of this. In Pakistan, people get shot for this kind of thing."

Yet, as the May 26 explanation indicated, Woroni "regularly features material that is challenging, and even at times confronting," befitting universities as "forums to critique ideas and beliefs." Edition 1's premiere backpage "Advice from Religion" infographic, for example, asks "I'm a man. Can I have sex with this person?" Sarcastic answers from "Catholicism" included molesting priests and lack of female consent.

Edition 2 references various conspiracies and esoteric beliefs in presenting the answers of "Scientology" to "Should I be candid and tell the truth?"

While Edition 3 only has its cover page uploaded, Edition 4 shows "Judaism" giving answers of "Exterminate them" (Old Testament) and "Segregate them and claim what's yours" (modern Israel) to the question "How should I treat other cultures?"

Nonetheless, pages 10-11 of Edition 6 posted on the Woroni Facebook page document the controversy the Islam infographic generated in reader letters. ISD President Muhammad Taufiq bin Suraidi bemoaned that the student-funded Woroni had not shown a "certain level of cultural sensitivity" amidst ANU's student body, a quarter of which is from abroad. Bin Suraidi promised, though, that the ISD would "work closely with the Woroni... such that an incident of this nature does not reoccur."

Nadiatul Akmal Mohd Radzman from the executive committee of ANU's Muslim Students Association (MSA) also took issue with Woroni. She, for example, contested various assertions of the infographic such as the "myth" of "72 virgins in Paradise," something controverted by Freestone in his adjacent letter with Koranic verses (55:56, 56:22, 78:33).

Radzman called "making fun of others... bullying" and falsely equated Islamic beliefs as a "way of life, not just a religion" with ethnicities like Asians. "We have racial tolerance, why can't we have religious tolerance?" she mistakenly analogized. "There are many other funny things that you can make fun of," she superficially concluded, "like botox and iPhones."

In contrast, Freestone's Edition 6 letter, also published on his personal website, saw no "reason to have a special standard for established religions that we would never conscience for any secular group, political party or new religious movement," even though "it's highly unsettling and confronting for believers to have their faith mocked."

In the future, though, Freestone will no longer make this principled stand for open debate at Woroni, for he described this letter as "my last contribution to Woroni." As the May 26 explanation noted, though, the evident "implications of these events for freedom of speech" will remain.

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,  DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine).   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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