Yet another false rape accusation in Britain

Judge attacks craven prosecutors after rape acquittal

A judge has attacked prosecutors whose decision to charge a medical student with rape was based on allegations made by a woman who had previously accused another man of the same offence. The man had subsequently committed suicide.

Jurors who took only 45 minutes to acquit Olumide Fadayomi of attacking the 21-year-old Sheffield woman were later told by Judge Patrick Robertshaw that the case should never have come to court.

Some gasped and wept when they learnt that 18 months earlier the complainant had made rape claims “lacking in credibility” against a young man who took his own life “when facing that allegation”. The judge noted that, unlike the men she accused, the woman involved “of course enjoys the full benefit of anonymity”.

Last week, the new Lib-Con Government announced plans to grant anonymity to defendants in rape trials for the first time since the 1970s.

The woman claimed that Mr Fadayomi, a Nigerian student, raped her in his shared student house after she met him while drinking in a Sheffield nightclub last October. He said the sex was consensual.

One of her friends told Sheffield Crown Court that the woman had danced with and kissed Mr Fadayomi in the club, boasting: “I’m going to have his body tonight.”

Judge Robertshaw said the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision to proceed with a rape charge was “little short of a craven abdication of responsibility for making an independent and fair-minded assessment of the case”. He added: “The evidence did not, and was never was going to, prove rape. The prime, overriding consideration in the CPS’s decision had been merely that the complainant wished the case to go ahead.

“It is quite astonishing that these decisions are made by those who simply do not have the experience of what happens in Crown Court because they never come into Crown Court. They sit behind desks in offices and make decisions that result in this sort of trial taking place.”

Speaking after Friday’s not-guilty verdict, Mr Fadayomi said his life had “been hell” during the seven months between his arrest and acquittal. He had been shunned by some of his friends and his parents were “heartbroken and very scared” for him.

“So many young, innocent men would kill themselves because of this kind of allegation. After the trial I slept properly for the first time. Now I’m starting my life over again.”

SOURCE






English flag offensive in England?

Leftists often say so -- so the bus driver below is not wholly to blame

A toddler was ordered off a bus because the foreign driver was 'offended' by his England football T-shirt, his mother has claimed. Sam Fardon, 27, was allegedly told to get off the service with her sons Dylan, two, and 10-week-old Adam as they made their way to a childcare group.

The unnamed driver, who had a Polish or Eastern European accent, said Dylan's white England shirt was 'offensive' and he threatened to turf the family out on the street. But he faced a torrent of anger from incredulous passengers, and minutes later backed down and allowed the family to board. The bus company has launched an investigation.

Miss Fardon, who also has a ten-year-old step-son, from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, said: 'He (the driver) said: "He won't be wearing that during the World Cup, will he?" 'I said Dylan would and the bus driver said: "I find that really offensive. You should dress your family in less offensive clothes."

'I was completely gobsmacked. He said we'd have to get off the bus but I argued with him and other passengers backed me up, so he let us on. 'I think it's disgraceful. I had baby Adam with me as well, but luckily he wasn't wearing his England baby-grow. 'I just think because of the nationality of the driver and Dylan being so young, he picked on him because he couldn't answer back.'

Miss Fardon's partner Chris Hall, a taxi driver, was so angry he defiantly bought England strips for all the children. Mr Hall, 55, said: 'It's just showing support for your country during a World Cup - there's nothing offensive about it. I will have England flags on my taxi.'

Selwyn Brown, of North Staffordshire bus users group Aces, said: 'It's unbelievable. Assuming it's true, the bus driver is to be condemned. 'Not just because there's nothing wrong with wearing an England shirt, but that it was a little child. It's totally ludicrous.'

First Bus said it is investigating Miss Fardon's complaint, which was made after she caught the 34A service from Newcastle Bus Station, in Stoke-on-Trent, at 9am last Thursday. Spokesman Paul De Santis said: 'We are fully supporting England's World Cup campaign and will be putting supporting material in all our buses. 'No one should have to accept those sorts of comments, certainly none of our customers.'

Last month the Metropolitan Police suggested that some pubs ban customers from wearing England shirts during screenings of this summer's World Cup matches to stop the risk of violence.

But one fan said: 'We often hear of a loss of pride in Britain, and now police want to ban the England shirt. It's like saying anyone who wears one is a yob.'

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It’s Funny How Barack Obama Can’t Bear To Utter The Word “Jew” Or, For That Matter, “Muslim Extremist.”

By pro-Israel Jewish Leftist Marty Peretz

Maybe you missed it. But, earlier this week, President Obama signed into law the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act, a piece of legislation that will do nothing for anyone. And certainly not for freedom of the press.

In his tiny talk, Obama said almost nothing. “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.” Pabulum.

Actually, the murder of Pearl did not remind me at all of the value of a free press. It reminded me of the precarious places in which Jews find themselves around the world. It also reminded me that the bloodlust for Jews festers among Muslim extremists, but not just among extremists. It festers among Muslims who are not extremists at all.

Apparently, the president doesn’t believe that this killing had anything to do with Pearl being a Jew ... and an American besides. What he also doesn’t seem to believe is that Pearl was a target—like thousands of other targets, named and nameless—of the Islamic jihad.

It is appalling to have to come to grips with the raw facts of Obama’s ignorance. Or with his feigning of ignorance. Disguising the enemy is... well, you finish the sentence.

I am always a bit wary when I cite Mark Steyn. Not because I don’t like his writing, which, within measure, I do. But because my son gives me the cold shoulder for a few days after I cite him. So, here, Jesse, I court your coolness. I wouldn’t have had to do it if any liberal columnist had noticed this appalling performance by the president of the United States.

Mark Steyn: Lost in Obama’s Inagination

Barack Obama’s remarkable powers of oratory are well known...

Like a lot of guys who’ve been told they’re brilliant one time too often, President Obama gets a little lazy and doesn’t always choose his words with care. And so it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl upon signing the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act. Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it. This is what the president of the United States said:

“Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”

Now Mr. Obama’s off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. Even for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving and true. Indeed, for Mr. Obama, it’s the work of seconds because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.

Instead, he delivered the one above, which, in its clumsiness and insipidness, is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.” He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Mr. Obama could muster none.

Even if Americans don’t get the message, the rest of the world does. This week’s pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity.

But what did the “loss” of Daniel Pearl mean? Well, says the president, it was “one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination.” Really? Evidently, it never captured Mr. Obama’s imagination, because if it had, he never could have uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl’s fate, and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of therapeutic sedation: “one of those moments” - you know, like Princess Di’s wedding, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, whatever - “that captured the world’s imagination.”

Notice how reflexively Mr. Obama lapses into sentimental one-worldism: Despite our many ZIP codes, we are one people, with a single imagination. In fact, the murder of Daniel Pearl teaches just the opposite - that we are many worlds, and worlds within worlds. Some of them don’t even need an “imagination.” Across the planet, the video of an American getting his head sawed off did brisk business in the bazaars and madrassas and Internet downloads. Excited young men e-mailed it to friends, from cell phone to cell phone, from Karachi, Pakistan, to Jakarta, Indonesia, to Khartoum, Sudan, to London to Toronto to Falls Church, Va. In the old days, you needed an “imagination” to conjure the juicy bits of a distant victory over the Great Satan. But in an age of high-tech barbarism, the sight of Pearl’s severed head is a mere click away.

And the rest of “the world”? Most gave a shrug of indifference. And far too many found the reality of Pearl’s death too uncomfortable and chose to take refuge in the same kind of delusional pap as Mr. Obama. The president is only the latest Western liberal to try to hammer Daniel Pearl’s box into a round hole. Before him, it was Michael Winterbottom in his film “A Mighty Heart.” As Pearl’s longtime colleague Asra Nomani wrote, “Danny himself had been cut from his own story.” Or as Paramount’s promotional department put it, “Nominate the most inspiring ordinary hero. Win a trip to the Bahamas!” Where you’re highly unlikely to be kidnapped and beheaded. (Although, in the event that you are, please check the liability-waiver box at the foot of the entry form.)

The latest appropriation is that his “loss” “reminded us of how valuable a free press is.” It was nothing to do with “freedom of the press.” By the standards of the Muslim world, Pakistan has a free-ish and very lively press. The problem is that about 80 percent of its people wish to live under the most extreme form of Shariah, and many of its youth are exported around the world in advance of that aim. The man convicted of Pearl’s murder was Omar Sheikh, a British subject, a London School of Economics student, and, like many jihadists, from Osama bin Laden to the panty bomber, a monument to the peculiar burdens of a non-deprived childhood in the Muslim world. The man who actually did the deed was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who confessed in March 2007: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi.” But Mr. Obama is not the kind to take “guilty” for an answer, so he’s arranging a hugely expensive trial for KSM amid the bright lights of Broadway.

Listen to his killer’s words: “The American Jew Daniel Pearl.” We hit the jackpot. And then we cut his head off. Before the body was found, the Independent’s Robert Fisk offered a familiar argument to Pearl’s kidnappers: Killing him would be “a major blunder ... the best way of ensuring that the suffering” - of Kashmiris, Afghans, Palestinians - “goes unrecorded.” Other journalists peddled a similar line: if you release Danny, he’ll be able to tell your story, get your message out, “bridge the misconceptions.” But the story did get out; the severed head is the message; the only misconception is that that’s a misconception.

Daniel Pearl was the prototype victim of a new kind of terror. In his wake came other victims, from Kenneth Bigley, whose last words were, “Tony Blair has not done enough for me,” to Fabrizzio Quattrocchi, who yanked off his hood, yelled “I will show you how an Italian dies,” and ruined the movie for his jihadist videographers. By that time, both men understood what it meant to be in a windowless room with a camera and a man holding a scimitar. But Daniel Pearl was the first, and in his calm, coherent final words, understood why he was there:

“My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California, USA.”

He didn’t have a prompter. But he spoke the truth. That’s all President Obama owed him - to do the same.

SOURCE






IN GERMANY IT IS BETTER TO BE A MUSLIM THAN A BAPTIST

The Federal Republic of Germany is a democracy. It is no fun, however, to be a Baptist in Germany. For the past two decades, the German authorities have been clamping down on Baptists who want to raise their children in accordance with their own religious principles. In Germany, the state rather than the parents is considered to be primarily responsible for the well-being of children. Hence, the draconic measures taken against Baptists. When, however, it comes to meeting the demands of Muslim the German state is far more lenient.

In 1938, Germany outlawed homeschooling.[1] The ban is one of the few bills introduced by Adolf Hitler that is still on the books in Germany today. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, hundreds of ethnic German families from Southern Russia and Kazakhstan emigrated to Germany. Many of them were Baptists who had been fiercely persecuted in the Soviet Union for their religious beliefs.

Following their arrival in the West, the Baptists soon became unhappy with what their children were learning in the secular German public schools. They decided to homeschool their children. This move led to fierce repression by the German authorities who took the parents to court on charges of Hochverrat und Volksverhetzung (high treason and incitement of the people against the authorities). Some parents were imprisoned, some were robbed of their parental authority, some had their children taken away from them. Some children who sided with their parents, such as 16-year old Melissa Busekros[2] in 2007, were placed in a psychiatric ward[3] because, as the psychiatric evaluation report stated,[4] she "considers herself healthy and her behavior fully normal" and, hence, needed "urgent help in a closed setting" where she would get "special education treatment to ensure schooling." Some families, having fled from the Soviet Union at one time, fled again, from the Federal Republic of Germany to Austria,[5] Britain,[6] or other countries with a more lenient approach to homeschooling. Some parent, however, complied with 'Hitler's law' and reluctantly sent their children to school.

Two years ago, a Baptist couple from Eastern Westphalia kept their two sons, then 9- and 8-years old, home from school on two specific days, namely when the school was going to take them to a sex-education theatre play called Mein Körper gehört mir (My Body Belongs to Me) and when the school was having a carnival party. The authorities immediately clamped down on the parents and took them to court. Following two convictions of the couple, the case made its way up to the Bundesverfassungsgericht, Germany's Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, the highest court in the land, which last week also convicted them.

On 11 August, Germany's Supreme Court ruled[7] that "the religious conviction of a minority" is subordinated to "a contradictory tradition of a differently inclined majority," even when the latter tradition is incompatible with the religious principles of the minority. The Court sentenced the parents to a fine of 80 euros because on two occasions they had violated their legal obligation to have their children attend school. The Court stated that the right of religious freedom of the parents does not take precedence over article 7, par. 1 of the German Constitution which explicitly states that "The entire education system is under the supervision of the state." The Court declared that "Consequently, the paternal right to raise children is restricted, in a constitutionally permissible way, by the concretization of the state's obligation to ensure a universal duty to compulsive school attendance."

The relentlessness with which the German authorities consistently clamp down on Baptists who want to raise their children according to their own Christian beliefs, contrasts strongly with the leniency of the same authorities towards Muslims. While forcing 8-year olds to attend plays such as "My Body Belongs to Me" can only be considered a fairly recent "tradition" of the Germans, eating sausages and other types of pork definitely is an old German tradition. Nevertheless, in the past years, several public German schools have removed the traditional pork dishes from their menus. Last year the Käthe-Kollwitz-Schule in Minden announced that it was introducing halal[8] food for everyone "to ensure that also Muslim children can have lunch at school." Though the measure was clearly taken with regard to "the religious convictions of a minority" and went against the "contradictory tradition of a differently inclined majority," the German authorities did not clamp down on the school, nor on the parents who had been demanding halal lunches for their kids.

While Baptist children are being forced to attend carnival parties at school, a 1993 German court ruling stated that "as long as separate sports classes for boys and girls are not being offered" Muslim girls do not have to participate in the obligatory sports sessions at school. The parents of the girls had explicitly invoked Koranic prescriptions to object to their daughters participating in the co-ed sports classes. Strangely enough, the German school authorities did not appeal the 1993 court ruling and failed to bring the case to the Supreme Court. Instead, they accepted the ruling, which has since become a legal precedent accepted by all school authorities.

Likewise, last May a court in Münster ruled[9] that, though Muslim schoolgirls are obliged to participate in school swimming lessons, they are allowed to wear so-called "burqini" swimsuits that cover their entire body and hide their figures. Wearing the burqini has never been a "tradition" of the majority in Germany — a country with a long tradition of Freikörperkultur or nude sports activities. On the contrary, it is a practice which results from "the religious convictions of a minority" which is less indigenous to Germany than Christian Baptists. Nevertheless, the German school authorities have accepted the Munster ruling. They have not taken the case to the Supreme Court in order to have Muslim children forced to swim in regular swimsuits. Muslim children do not have to comply with the "contradictory tradition of a differently inclined majority" in the same way as Baptist children, whose parents are fined if they do not attend the school carnival.

The difference in treatment of the so-called fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims by the German secular school authorities and courts gives rise to the suspicion that in contemporary Europe some religious minorities are "more equal" than others. While Christians are prosecuted and fined, Muslims are appeased. It makes one wonder if the school authorities would also have prosecuted if, instead of the sons of a Baptist couple, the 8- and 9-years old daughters of a Muslim couple had been kept from school on the day of the sex-ed school play?

The answer to this question is probably "No." Baptists are a peaceful minority, who want to be left alone and live according to their own values without trying to impose these values on others. Muslim fundamentalists are aggressive and demand that everyone live according to their values. Saying "No" to Baptist demands is not a security risk for a school; saying "No" to Muslim demands is. The German school authorities are well aware of this. Three years ago, the teachers of the Rütli-Hauptschule in the Berlin borough of Neukölln, asked the authorities to close down their school in order to protect them and the native German students who suffered threats and physical violence by Muslim students. Following the appeal of the staff at Rütli College several other schools in Berlin and other German cities complained that they were facing similar problems.[10]

Meanwhile, despite the Baptists' hatred of German schools, Baptist violence against German school authorities is a non-existing phenomenon. Perhaps this explains why Baptists are bullied, prosecuted and fined by the German authorities, while the same authorities grovel to Muslims with ludicrous demands such as burqini swimsuits. On the other hand, if anyone ever opposes Muslim thugs who want to impose Islamic law on others, it will more likely be the Baptists, who — non-violently but firmly — will defend their own values, than the representatives of the German secularist establishment.

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, 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 or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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