Sunday, December 17, 2017







Another careless rape prosecution by British police

They are under feminist pressure to "get" rapists

AN INNOCENT student accused of rape was put through two years of hell after police withheld sex messages from the complainant discussing vile fantasies and boasting about their romps.

Liam Allan, 22, faced up to 20 years in prison after being charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault by Met Police before the case dramatically collapsed in court yesterday.

Shortly before trial, Allan's newly-appointed prosecuting barrister Jerry Hayes discovered police had a disk with 40,000 messages from the complainant which "blew the prosecution case out the water".

They showed the woman discussing fantasies about rape and violent sex as well as pestering Mr Allan for casual sex and telling friends how much she enjoyed sleeping with him.

According to The Times, detectives repeatedly refused requests from Mr Allan's lawyers to examine the evidence, claiming they were not relevant to the case.

Judge Peter Gower found him not guilty on all counts at Croydon Crown Court and demanded an investigation "at the very highest level". Scotland Yard has said it is now carrying out an "urgent assessment" over what happened.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have accused police of 'sheer incompetence' and claimed officers hadn't even looked at the texts.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said they offered no evidence in the case on Thursday, as it was decided "there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction".

Speaking outside court, Mr Allan - a criminology student at Greenwich University - told The Times: "I can't explain the mental torture of the past two years. "I feel betrayed by the system which I had believed would do the right thing - the system I want to work in."

His mum Lorraine, 46, added: "The assumption is there is no smoke without fire.”

Mr Allan was warned he faced at least ten years in jail if convicted of the six counts of rape and six sexual assault charges.

He told the newspaper how he was suspended from his part time job after his arrest and feared going to prison in case he was "placed with other sex offenders".

Police took 14 months to charge him and Mr Allan believes police and prosecutors were "over-compensating" for failing to scalp celeb sex offenders.

The judge has now warned of the risks of a "serious miscarriage of justice" after hearing material wasn't always handed to defence lawyers to save costs, The Times reports.

The woman had told cops she didn't enjoy sex, but he insisted it was consensual and she was acting maliciously because he wouldn't see her again after starting uni.

Jerry Hayes, the prosecuting barrister, told the court yesterday that he would offer no evidence and apologised for the "terrible" and "inexcusable" failure.

The former Tory MP said: "There could have been a very serious miscarriage of justice, which could have led to a very significant period of imprisonment and life on the sex offenders register.

"It appears the [police] officer in the case has not reviewed the disk, which is quite appalling.”

Speaking to the BBC this morning, he added: "I don't think they had looked at it [the texts]. It's just sheer incompetence I'm afraid. Police don't always understand it is their duty to review it."

Defence lawyer Julia Smart had only received details of the messages the night before she was due to cross examine the woman and when she told the court, the case was halted.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "We are aware of this case being dismissed from court and are carrying out an urgent assessment to establish the circumstances which led to this action being taken.

"We are working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service and keeping in close contact with the victim whilst this process takes place."

SOURCE






No justice for Justine Damond? Prosecutor says he does not have enough evidence to charge US policeman who shot dead Australian woman

Absurd statement.  The cop is a black immigrant.  That is all that protects him

The policeman who shot and killed Australian woman Justine Damond may escape punishment over the July shooting.

Mike Freeman, the prosecutor handling the case, told an activist group in Minneapolis he did not have enough evidence to lay charges.

Officer Mohamed Noor has been refusing to cooperate with investigators, and Hennepin County Attorney Freeman is yet to charge him over the incident.

A video of Mr Freeman speaking to activists from a group called Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar at an event on Wednesday was posted on Facebook.

When asked why Noor has not been charged, Mr Freeman made a series of statements about the case, but it is unclear if he knew he was being filmed.

'I've got to have the evidence, and I don't have it yet,' said Mr Freeman. 'Let me just say it's not my fault. So if it isn't my fault, who didn't do their job? Investigators. They don't work for me. They haven't done their job.'

'Fair question,' Mr Freeman said repeatedly when challenged by activists, who said they did not understand why Noor was not facing court.

'I have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, the moment he shot the gun he feared for his life, and he used force because he thought he was going to be killed,' he said.

'But he won't answer my questions. … I can't talk to her because she's gone, and the other cop just gave us s***. 'So guess what, I've gotta figure out angles of the shot, gun residues, reckless use of force experts

'But if you look at this, here's a nice lady who hears something bad outside, she calls the cops, they don't come, she calls again, they drive up in her alley, and she comes out in her jammies and she's killed by a cop.

'Sounds easy doesn't it? Can I prove that the cop shot her? I could have done that the first day.

Mr Freeman went on to say he was bound by legal procedure and had to prosecute the case in the proper manner.

'Would you like me to charge your friend just because I think maybe he did it, and let a jury decide?' Freeman said on the videotape. 'I'm ruining his life by doing [that].'

He finished by saying: 'Trust me, nobody wants it done more than me. That's the big present I want under the Christmas tree.'

Mr Freeman's reasonable doubt comments caused confusion, as he appeared to be using an argument the defence team would take - that Officer Noor feared for his life.

The lawyer for the Damond family said his clients were 'deeply distressed and unhappy' about Mr Freeman's comments, The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

'We expected a quality investigation that would be fair, complete and accurate, and apparently that hasn't happened,' he said.

Officer Noor's lawyer Thomas Plunkett also expressed concerns about the prosecutor's statements, calling the death a tragedy, but not a crime.

'No lawyer wants their client placed under a Christmas tree as a present to a vocal segment of the community,' he said. 'Investigators gather evidence, they don't create it. That is their job. I am concerned by any supplemental investigation — especially if it is directly overseen and influenced by the county attorney.'

Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar was formed after the November 2015 death of Jamar Clark, who was shot and killed by police during a struggle.

Group organiser and union member Sam Sanchez told Daily Mail Australia local official lack accountability for the deaths of Ms Damond and many others. 'We as community members and Union members in the public and private sector are not happy,' he said. 

Ms Damond, 40, from Sydney's northern beaches, was shot as she stood outside the officer's patrol car in her pyjamas just before midnight.

She had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault near her home and had come outside to speak to the police.

Officer Noor was in the front passenger seat and shot across his partner and out the driver's side window, hitting Ms Damond in the stomach.

SOURCE





E Pur Si Muove

Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me.  I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco.  I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was China, after all—just more comfortable than at home.

That showed me just how bad things have become, and how much things have changed since I first got started here in 2005.

It seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every year.  Debating a controversial idea, even if you 95% agree with the consensus side, seems ill-advised.

This will be very bad for startups in the Bay Area.

Restricting speech leads to restricting ideas and therefore restricted innovation—the most successful societies have generally been the most open ones.  Usually mainstream ideas are right and heterodox ideas are wrong, but the true and unpopular ideas are what drive the world forward.  Also, smart people tend to have an allergic reaction to the restriction of ideas, and I’m now seeing many of the smartest people I know move elsewhere.

It is bad for all of us when people can’t say that the world is a sphere, that evolution is real, or that the sun is at the center of the solar system.

More recently, I’ve seen credible people working on ideas like pharmaceuticals for intelligence augmentation, genetic engineering, and radical life extension leave San Francisco because they found the reaction to their work to be so toxic.  “If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment, so people working on this must be really unethical” was a memorable quote I heard this year.

To get the really good ideas, we need to tolerate really bad and wacky ideas too.  In addition to the work Newton is best known for, he also studied alchemy (the British authorities banned work on this because they feared the devaluation of gold) and considered himself to be someone specially chosen by the almighty for the task of decoding Biblical scripture. 

You can’t tell which seemingly wacky ideas are going to turn out to be right, and nearly all ideas that turn out to be great breakthroughs start out sounding like terrible ideas.  So if you want a culture that innovates, you can’t have a culture where you allow the concept of heresy—if you allow the concept at all, it tends to spread.  When we move from strenuous debate about ideas to casting the people behind the ideas as heretics, we gradually stop debate on all controversial ideas.

This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel things about physics. [1] Of course we can and should say that ideas are mistaken, but we can’t just call the person a heretic.  We need to debate the actual idea.

Political correctness often comes from a good place—I think we should all be willing to make accommodations to treat others well.  But too often it ends up being used as a club for something orthogonal to protecting actual victims.  The best ideas are barely possible to express at all, and if you’re constantly thinking about how everything you say might be misinterpreted, you won’t let the best ideas get past the fragment stage.

I don’t know who Satoshi is, but I’m skeptical that he, she, or they would have been able to come up with the idea for bitcoin immersed in the current culture of San Francisco—it would have seemed too crazy and too dangerous, with too many ways to go wrong.  If SpaceX started in San Francisco in 2017, I assume they would have been attacked for focusing on problems of the 1%, or for doing something the government had already decided was too hard.  I can picture Galileo looking up at the sky and whispering “E pur si muove” here today.


[1] I am less worried that letting some people on the internet say things like “gay people are evil” is going to convince reasonable people that such a statement is true than I fear losing the opposite—we needed people to be free to say "gay people are ok" to make the progress we've made, even though it was not a generally acceptable thought several decades ago.

In fact, the only ideas I’m afraid of letting people say are the ones that I think may be true and that I don’t like.  But I accept that censorship is not going to make the world be the way I wish it were.

SOURCE






Bill Donohue: Another Liberal Chef Predator Reportedly Exposed

On election night 2012, New York City restaurant icon Ken Friedman co-hosted a party for liberal Democrats. "I'm very political," he told the New York Times. By that he meant he champions women's rights. Now he is accused of preying on women, just like his liberal buddy, Mario Batali.

Friedman likes to travel in elite celebrity circles, serving the likes of Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair; they even own restaurants together. One of Friedman's prize possessions is the Spotted Pig, known by Zagat for its "celeb sightings." The Pig is also home to male pigs.

The third floor of the Pig, fondly known as the "rape room," is where fat cats like Friedman and Batali strut their stuff. This is where a drunken Batali was caught on video molesting a gal in 2008.

Ten women have reportedly accused Friedman of all sorts of sexual misconduct. Some say they were required to pull "all-night shifts at private parties that included public sex and nudity." Friendly's never sounded so attractive.

Some of the women are also gems. One woman who objected to Friedman going too far said she didn't mind being groped. "There is a grab-ass, superfun late night culture—I love that part of the industry." So do the men.

Liberals, of course, deplore Catholic sexual ethics: exercising restraint is a taboo. But not rape. Which is why liberal celebs from Hollywood studios to Big Apple restaurants are finally paying the bill for decades of cultural corruption and sexual debasement.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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