Australia: Black rapists of young black girl 'should be jailed'

Multiculturalists really gets themselves twisted into a knot over cases like this: Should they protect black children or black criminals? So far the criminals are winning. That everyone (black and white) should be equal before the law is just a silly old fuddy-duddy idea, of course

QUEENSLAND'S Solicitor-General has called for jail sentences ranging from one to eight years for nine males who were not sent to prison after they pleaded guilty to raping a 10-year-old girl at Aurukun, on Cape York, in 2006. The appeal against the sentence, which began in Queensland's Court of Appeal yesterday, was launched by Attorney-General Kerry Shine after the case was revealed in The Australian last year. Cairns District Court judge Sarah Bradley gave suspended sentences to three men, aged 17, 18 and 25 at the time of the rapes, and ordered that six juveniles, aged between 13 and 15, be placed on probation orders with no convictions recorded.

Mr Shine had previously described the sentences as "manifestly inadequate". Solicitor-General Walter Sofronoff, for the Attorney-General, yesterday argued there had been five "evident errors of law" in the sentencing. He said there were legal precedents that an adult who sexually assaulted a child and a juvenile who raped a 10-year-old should be imprisoned. Mr Sofronoff argued that two of the adult offenders, aged 25 and 18 at the time of the rape, should be jailed for eight years, with a parole eligibility date to be set. He said the third adult, aged 17, should be jailed for seven to eight years. He argued that the six juveniles should receive detention sentences of between one and three years.

Mr Sofronoff said Judge Bradley had not given reasons for handing down non-custodial sentences to the males and had treated all the offenders equally, despite differences in age and criminal history. He said Judge Bradley had failed to take into account the principle of general deterrence, and had placed too much emphasis on Aurukun's social dysfunction as a reason for the offenders' lack of moral standards. It was the Aurukun community's right to "have a sentence that truly deters this offence". "Members of even a dysfunctional society -- if that is what it is -- require and deserve the protection of law," Mr Sofronoff told the court.

He asked the bench -- which comprised Chief Justice Paul de Jersey, Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo and Justice Patrick Keane -- to choose a sentence that would assert a "fundamental standard of behaviour in Aurukun".

But Ken Fleming, senior counsel representing the offenders, told the court that his clients should not be imprisoned or detained and said the appeal should be dismissed. Mr Fleming said while the law said a child under the age of 12 was incapable of giving consent, "the complainant had sex with all (of the offenders) without objection". He suggested the "lack of objection" could influence the sentence of the offenders. There was an "uncomfortable tension that it was sex without objection and was actively encouraged" by the victim, he said.

But Chief Justice de Jersey said he had "great difficulty" in accepting that consent or lack of objection from the victim could mitigate the sentence. The suggestion from prosecutor Steve Carter that the girl had given consent to sex in a "non-legal sense" was "nonsense" and an "irrelevant consideration", Chief Justice de Jersey said.

Mr Fleming said there had been flaws in the case from the beginning. He said prosecutor Steve Carter did not ask for custodial sentences. He said the arrangements were made by telephone, with the judge in Cairns and the accused in Aurukun. Mr Fleming said the accused should not have been included in the one indictment, but conceded that while the prosecutor had suggested this, the defence had agreed to it.

Source



Tough solutions 'ineffective' for Australian Blacks

Nice to see proof of effectiveness being demanded. The truth, of course, is that NOTHING works. It's all been tried before. But only conservatives are capable of saying that there are some problems that governments cannot solve

THERE is no proof that "tough love" solutions, including quarantining welfare payments, are effective means of halting dysfunctional behaviour in indigenous communities, according to two leading Aboriginal academics. The challenge - from high-profile University of Technology Sydney law professor Larissa Behrendt and UTS research fellow Nicole Watson - came yesterday as the Rudd Government prepared to reveal controversial plans for a national welfare card, which would enable a percentage of a family's welfare payments be tied to necessities such as food.

The new electronic ID card, which has been slammed by the Australian Council of Social Service, is to be issued to Aboriginals in selected Northern Territory communities from July, but could be rolled out Australia-wide.

Professor Behrendt and Ms Watson said yesterday that the "most crucial but neglected question of all" was the issue of proof: "Where is the proof that punitive sanctions are an effective remedy for social dysfunction?" The pair listed a litany of concerns about the new Queensland Family Responsibilities Commission, which, not unlike the Rudd Government proposal, can order, among other things, some or all of a person's welfare payments to be managed by issuing Centrelink with a notice. From July, the commission is to be trialled in Aurukun, Hope Vale, Mossman Gorge and Coen.

Premier Anna Bligh has admitted the approach - the idea of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership which is headed by Noel Pearson - is "a bold experiment - a world first". Professor Behrendt said it was a concern that decisions of the commission - which is to have closed hearings - could not be appealed, except on questions of law. The process also paved the way for a loss of control over personal information, with the commission able to access private information from a range of government agencies.

Professor Behrendt also queried the commission's exemption from the provisions of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act. Other legal and Aboriginal advocates have also raised concerns about the commission breaching legal and human rights. ACOSS president Lin Hatfield-Dodds told ABC radio the $17 million being spent on the national ID card scheme would be better invested in services for families in need. [That response from president hyphen was predictable: "More jobs for social workers" is the translation]

Source



"Blue dogs": Fake conservatives

The Democratic party found its way back into the congressional majority by playing on the mistakes of the GOP and by drafting more conservative candidates to take them back to power. Conservative values and beliefs aren't as unpopular as the Republican party is. This group, called the Blue Dogs, claims to be conservative. They tend to favor social conservatism, and fiscal moderation with an emphasis on reducong the deficit.

Sounds good, right? After all if the Democratic party were to take a major right turn we might actually get some things accomplished in Washington. But the problem is that they don't vote conservative, especially on the big votes. So what good is a conservative that votes like a liberal?

These blue dogs might bark and make a lot of noise but they don't have any bite. They're too loyal to the party line which is decidedly left wing. Rather than vote their principles, and therefore with the GOP occassionally, they do as their told and give Speaker Pelosi the majority she needs to keep up her political farce.

And a farce it is. She continues to exploit moderate and conservative Democrats to increase her majority, while refusing to give them any leadership role, and knowing that they won't break ranks with the leftist leadership to oppose her. It gives the illusion to the people Pelosi so despises- you know normal people in middle America and the south-that the Democratic party is tolerant of different ideas and is the big tent.

It's using candidates like this, Heath Shuler, and the recently elected Don Cazayoux in Louisiana, who tout conservative positions to push a left wing agenda. Cazayoux, who now represents the Baton Rouge area(an area the Democrats haven't won in decades) ran, like other Democrats, as pro life and pro gun. Senator Casey got elected over a real pro lifer, Rick Santorum, mostly by using the memory of his late father, but also claiming to be pro life. Where are all these pro life conservative democrats at voting time? They're voting the left wing party line.

The GOP needs to clean up its act and reclaim the conservative name. We need to remember what it means to be conservative, and we have to stop letting the Democrats drag the conservative name through the mud.

Source



Fascism Was Anti-Religious Too

In our age of moral relativity, leaders like George W. Bush and Tony Blair have been cast as modern Adolph Hitlers-a practice which trivializes the "moral collapse" perpetuated by the Third Reich. Weekly Standard contributor David Gelernter, in contrast, is intent on magnifying these moral differences.

Claiming inspiration from T.S. Eliot's characterization of WWII as a choice between "Christianity" or "paganism," the Yale professor said at the American Enterprise Institute that "The thesis I want to investigate, one that involves such a daunting tangle of complex issues and demands so many qualifications...this thesis is that we need to study not only the holocaust and the gulag and Japanese atrocities, but this phenomenon of moral collapse as it was connected with a doctrine of state paganism."

Professor Gelernter views World War II as a faceoff between pagan state cults (Germany, Russia, and Japan) and two "Christian" nations (Britain and America). Besides Italy, Gelernter's lecture dismissed the effects of Christianity within Spain, France, and other European nations. He describes this paganism as replacing "the idea of individuals in a nation with the idea of parts or cells in a body directed by a mind that was divine or divinely ordained or otherwise superhuman and yet present on earth." He continued,

"Group assemblies with ranting, singing, or shouting in unison are invaluable to the creation of the nation of the pagan beast, because they act not as mythical but as real, tangible, amplifiers-feed in your own voice and get back a roar."

This dehumanizing trend was true in Japan as well. "The idea of all Japanese merged into the sacred being of the Emperor is reflected in the anonymity of the individual and the irrelevance or non-existence of the individual's moral judgement," he said. "And presumably this deliberate repression of their own personalities made it easier for these men to see in their victims things and not persons," he added.

Gelernter links Italy's relative restraint towards mass killings to the nation's religious heritage, because Italy "nonetheless continued to consider itself a Christian nation throughout the fascist era." And this is true for Britain and America as well. "The violent contrast between the conduct between the two Christian, or quasi-Christian, powers on the one hand and the three pagan regimes on the other grew only more striking as the war continued," he asserted.

When asked if his theory can be generalized the modern terrorist conflict, Gelernter replied "I think it is too easy to associate Islam or Fascist Islam with Fascist Germany and Stalinist Russia." He continued, "It seems to me in many cases today Islam is more a topic than a strategy and when we see the continuity of terrorist movements that began with no religious goals at all...there's no reason they shouldn't move back again." There are "similarities," he said, but other decades parallel the World War II era than the present.

However, figures such as Rick Santorum and Pepperdine University Professor Joseph Loconte continue to classify the modern jihadist movement as "Islamofascism." Indeed, Islamic radicalism seems to exhibit many of the traits contained within Gelernter's "state paganism," albeit within a post-national structure:

1. Islamic radicals are taught to perceive themselves as members of a beleaguered Umma (Muslim community) that is in conflict with-and superior to-the infidel.

2. Palestinian children, like the WWII-era Japanese, are taught from an early age that martyrdom is honorable and a sign of loyalty to their God.

3. Radical clerics and leaders like Osama bin Laden are treated as Messianic figures or, at least, speaking for God himself. "Himmler believed Hitler's words to be pronouncements from a world transcending this one," noted Gelernter.

4. Nations such as Iran hold rallies in which masses of citizens chant "Death to America" and punch their fists in unison, reminiscent of Hitler's "Zieg Heil."

Christianity or Rationalism?

In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, reknowned philosopher Isaiah Berlin traces Romanticism-and its subsequent glorification of violent irrationality-back as far as the French Revolution and regarded it as the philosophical precursor to Hitler's Nazism. It is not surprising, then, that one audience member questioned whether the difference between Britain, America, and totalitarian societies resulted from a Ciceronian respect for reason culminating in the Enlightenment.

"Um, no," Gelernter responded. "Of course the moral significance of the individual is a biblical idea, is a Jewish invention and [a] Christian invention," he argued. Gelernter urged the audience not to underestimate the "enormous significance of Christian Puritan ideas in the creation of the liberal modern American state."

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, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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