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Justice denied
Bettina Arndt
 November 24 2024 at 06:48 am
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This week’s arrest of Alan Jones shows just how we have strayed from the principles of justice, with our media and police heavyweights flagrantly ignoring the rules we have in place to ensure a fair trial. This has all the earmarks of a hit job, led by feminist journalists determined to take down the man who for decades was king of the airways, hugely influential, with a massive following. Centre stage is SMH journalist Kate McClymont revelling in her ongoing #MeToo campaign targeting prominent men. She was glowing as police acknowledged that her four-year vendetta against Jones had prompted the police campaign to go after him. In classic trial by media, McClymont published an article last year full of graphic allegations of sexual misconduct. The NSW government followed up with a task force, which has spent months beavering away digging up dirt, with the help of McClymont’s efforts to recruit more “victims”. Do taxpayers really approve of the spending of hundreds of thousands from our police budget trying to prove some decades-old claims of gropes of bottoms or other bits of husky young men by this 83-year-old man? If Jones was not such a prominent figure, would police have expended these resources on allegations of this nature? For the #MeToo mob, Jones is the biggest scalp of all. “The left has long despised Jones for his contempt for progressive politics, uncompromising social attitudes and influence over national and state politics,” wrote Aaron Patrick in The Nightly. “The Get Jones campaign is nothing new in my life,” commented Jones last year, as he emphatically denied the allegations when they first surfaced. The presumption of Innocence? What a joke. This week we saw the media alerted in advance of Jones’ arrest and public shaming, which allowed the feral journalists and photographers to go on the rampage, staking out his apartment and police station where he was ultimately charged with 24 charges of indecent assault and sexual touching. There have been press conferences, with the Assistant Police Commissioner commenting the bravery of the “victims” and the Commissioner Karen Webb keen to encourage more: “There is no better time to come forward.” Even The Australian descended into the gutter, leading their news with a tragic video of Alan Jones pursued by the media scrum. And now he is out on bail - but under house arrest, which is a most unusual, draconian move, my legal friends inform me. At the heart of it all is this extremely popular man who has spent much of his life getting up the noses of the chattering classes by campaigning for causes they despise, while endlessly putting himself out to help charities. Alan Jones first interviewed me over 40 years ago, and he’s supported me and my work ever since. He was one of the very few to give me a platform after attempts to cancel me. I’m incensed at this gleeful targeting by the State and the media of this decent, principled man. And the underlying message makes me shiver. We are being shown that no one is safe in a system where accusers are celebrated as victims and allegations suffice for evidence. The bigger they are, the harder they fall; and the louder the celebration. It was timely that just this week I interviewed a former NSW police prosecutor who contacted me because he was concerned about our dysfunctional justice system. Richard McDonald spent 22 years in the police, mainly working as a legal consultant in the sex crimes squad. He’s now a lawyer in private practice in Sydney. Richard revealed a system captured by ideology, where police are discouraged from properly investigating sexual assault and domestic violence claims. “Let the court decide” is the adopted philosophy, as even the most dubious allegations end up before overworked magistrates, judges and juries who often aren’t presented with the evidence they need to properly assess the validity of these very serious complaints. I’ve made two videos with Richard, the first talking about sexual assault claims and the next domestic violence allegations – the two crimes now dominating our criminal justice system, largely due to feminist tinkering with our laws to try to ensure more male convictions. Here’s our discussion of sexual assault. Fabricating rape But back to my riveting conversation with Richard McDonald. His revelations blew out of the water some myths being promoted about these crimes – such as the notion that false allegations are rare. In his initial letter to me, Richard explained that, in his role as a legal consultant to the sex crimes squad, he analysed hundreds of sexual assault matters to determine whether there was a reasonable prospect of a conviction. His startling conclusion: “I provided advice in the range of over 90% not to commence proceedings because of the complicity of women involved in sexual relationships with men and their motives to lie.” In the video you will see Richard talking at some length to me about women’s motivations to concoct or fabricate allegations: including embarrassment after regret sex, saving face when a casual hook-up runs counter to the woman’s cultural beliefs, or the “scrum down” when female friends help rewrite the history of what happened. Richard is a man who has never been afraid to stick his neck out. Asking around, I discovered he had quite a reputation for fearless advice in his role as police prosecutor. He refused to support applications for AVOs which he felt were just to assist family law matters. Domestic violence has taken over In the second part of the main video, on domestic violence, Richard tells the story of turning up at the scene of a domestic violence dispute and finding the man in handcuffs. He asked whether anyone had interviewed the man to learn his side of the story. Surprise, surprise. No one had bothered. As we know, this is standard practice. But as Richard points out, official domestic violence policy requires police to determine “whether sufficient evidence exists to support criminal charges.” That is simply not happening. The system has been totally perverted, he told me, bemoaning the fact that most domestic violence matters end up with the man in court without any attempt to examine his evidence, facing overworked magistrates who basically rubber stamp the AVO application. Even with alleged sexual offences, he reports it was an uphill battle to try to ensure both sides of the story were properly heard before the accused was charged. Like the man who was up on child pornography charges, based on photos of naked children. Richard discovered the photos in question were of the man’s own kids, amongst many taken as part of normal family life. They were innocently produced. But the police hadn’t bothered to put these photos in context and ignored the fact there was a lawful defence. He’s pessimistic about the chances of changing the system, given the disproportionate influence of feminist stakeholders, including the many domestic violence support groups. We discussed a story I heard last week from a man who achieved a miracle in getting his ex charged with making false allegations – with the help of a very senior police officer. But then she went along to the Domestic Violence Service Management who, even when presented with evidence of the criminal charges against her, still choose to help the woman and child hide from the father. Richard confirmed this bias is commonplace. It says a great deal that this experienced former police prosecutor has chosen to speak out about his concerns that the system is out of control. He was shocked by the antics of his former bosses in relation to the Alan Jones case this week, posting on his Facebook page his concerns about senior police commenting publicly about live cases, and referring to witnesses as “victims”. “The police just seem to want to keep reversing the onus of proof,” he wrote. But many current officers of the court no longer appear to sufficiently adhere to the principles and traditions underpinning our justice system. The NSW Chief Prosecutor Sally Dowling is fighting a mighty battle trying to restrain judges who, fulfilling what they perceived to be their duty to the proper administration of justice, chose to speak out about cases being sent to trial unsupported by sufficient evidence. She’s made three complaints about judges to the state’s judicial watchdog. And only last week, Lucy McCallum, Chief Justice of the ACT Supreme Court, spoke at a legal conference about not understanding why jurors “find it so hard to believe” allegations of sexual assault. If the Chief Justice is pushing a believe-all-women line, what hope is there for the accused man appearing before her? And then there’s the state of our family law system. Those of you who attended our Restoring the Presumption of Innocence conference will remember Nadine Taylor, who took part in our final Call to Action session. Nadine has spent 20 years advocating for family law reform in the UK, working recently as a professional “McKenzie Friend”, providing support for people representing themselves in court. Here’s a little of her speech: For the past year she’s recently been helping a friend in Australia who’s fighting a massive family law battle, complete with the usual onslaught of false allegations of domestic violence. She wrote to me summing up this experience: “I never thought I would say this, but the Australian family court process makes our UK court process look positively caring, compassionate and efficient.” She mentioned particularly the AVO system “sought with alarming frequency and lethal application in what appears to be pretty much most cases, issued by police officers without any background checks or evidence, and then exploited to prevent contact with children.” Nadine concludes that even though the UK system has problems “I would rather be a father in that system that the Australian one, and I would use every breath in my body to fight against the UK implementing such a system. The Australian family court process is far more complex and unnecessarily drawn out than it needs to be, unless of course the purpose is to wear you down to the extent you give up and walk away, financially and emotionally bankrupt minus your children and sanity.” It is not an overstatement to say that our system of justice is under serious threat in Australia. It is so very important that we make our voices heard about where this is all heading. Before it is too late.
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For a pregnant woman - Imagination
Florin Dragos Minculescu
 December 03 2024 at 01:01 pm
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What a blessing! A woman is closest to God when she is pregnant. She is a soul that contains a soul. In Christianity, we Christians know that God the Son is a person of the Trinity and distinguishes Himself by having two hypostases - one completely human and one completely divine. The entire creation is the human hypostasis of God the Son, which means that we are created in this hypostasis of the Son. And because we are created "in Our image and likeness" and also " And God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.", this means that the potential for our deification is implicit in the meaning of our existence. By analogy, in the field of our consciousness, in our imagination, our world happens. When we go to church, especially in Orthodox churches, we are exposed to a context where our imagination reflects not ourselves, but God - in the sense in which we were created - one of the roles of the liturgy being this. Architecture, music, painting, priests' clothing, and everything that happens there during the liturgy mirror in us this potentiality. Thus, because the liturgy shows us how best to use our imagination, I think it would be good for both you and the child to use your imagination in this sense. Just as everything that happens in Creation impacts us all, I think that you, as an expression of creation- an expression that is not accessible to men and that positions you in an exclusive way close to God- everything you do impacts the child. May God bless you and grant you an easy birth. Amin!
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