Star Wars VIII: A Disturbance in la Force

When, at minute 1:10 of the Jimmy Kimmel Live special on the eighth Star Wars film, the host asks Rian Johnson, "Is Jedi in the title of this film singular or plural?", the writer-director of the The Last Jedi replies that it is singular.

Fair enough, but in France, the message does not seem to have gone through — or else, it's due to the ever-lasting love-hate relationship between les Français et les Anglo-Saxons — as the title there is Les Derniers Jedi.

Rian settles the debate over whether or not Jedi is plural in this movie's title

Le Figaro's Jean Talabot has an entire article on the issue, saying that a translation error might be involved.

Il se peut également que ce titre français soit du à une erreur de traduction, ce qui ne serait pas la première fois comme l'a soulevé le Huffington Post .

Police Corruption in the UK: Manchester force ‘took bribes from organised crime gang’

No good news for the police and the authorities of the United Kingdom days after the breaking of the scandal of an innocent student almost jailed for up to 10 years for rapes he did not commit, based on the lying testimony of his petulant former lover, an ignominy that is but the tip of the iceberg.

Now it turns out, writes Crime Editor Fiona Hamilton, that a Times exposé of corruption in the Greater Manchester Police has found allegations that Britain’s fourth-biggest force ‘took bribes from organised crime gang’, effectively causing its £3.5m investigation to collapse.

A £3.5 million inquiry into one of Britain’s most notorious crime gangs collapsed after multiple claims of police corruption, an investigation by The Times has revealed.

Officers from Greater Manchester police were accused of taking bribes from associates of Paul Massey, the underworld “Mr Big” who was murdered in Salford two years ago. The allegations emerged during Operation Holly, a five-year inquiry into money laundering, fraud and tax offences, which centred on a security company for which Massey, 55, was a consultant. Detectives believed that he was a “shadow director” for 21st Security Ltd and that it was used to launder funds and disguise the gang’s gains. …

Confirmation bias in this alarmed age says that because some teachers have been abusers, some men have raped, and many victims weren’t believed, it follows that assuming guilt is the safe bet

The ordeal of Liam Allan must not have been in vain

writes Libby Purves in the Times (see Teach British Women Not to Lie About Rape and The case of an innocent student put on trial for a rape hoax is just the “tip of the iceberg”).

The torrent of public and legal outrage following the student’s two years on bail and instant acquittal must not die away. Police and CPS failures must be analysed, punished and made unthinkable. This was a young man facing a 12-year sentence and lifelong stigma for multiple rapes, and it took the prosecuting barrister to save him.

Jerry Hayes was left spitting rivets of indignation at being put in a position of nearly wrecking a life simply because bad training and lazy procedure meant the police ignored, or never looked at, clear evidence that the accuser lied. She was, as Allan pleaded, out for revenge and had long pestered him for sex after he ended the liaison. Hayes, new to the case but an old warrior in the law, demanded her phone record (previously denied to the defence as “very personal” and not relevant). The defence sat up reading the woman’s texts, and in court the next day Hayes announced that there was no case.

Every detail is dismaying. The accused had asked for the woman’s phone to be checked because he had lost his own; police archived it or ignored what was staring them in the face. A report this year by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service indicates that the “scheduling” of evidence is

“routinely poor, while revelation by the police to the prosecutor of material that may undermine the prosecution case or assist the defence case is rare”.

Liam Allan, vindicated and angry, suspects that in sex-offence cases convictions have become “like sales targets”. We know about the psychology of confirmation bias, in which the mind selects evidence that reinforces its prejudices. But to find it in the criminal justice system is horrifying. The director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, driven by missionary zeal over real unpunished sexual abuses, has caused unease by referring to complainants — once even after the acquittal — as “victims”. The message from police, in a backlash against decades of disgraceful nonchalance, is a soupy “You will be believed”, which has led in some cases to believing fantasists and liars.

It is hard not to see confirmation-bias culture in this case. …

Confirmation bias in this alarmed age says that because some teachers have been abusers, some men have raped, and many victims weren’t believed, it follows that assuming guilt is the safe bet. Yet just because it has long been a dangerous world for women, that is no reason to make it so dangerous for men. It’s happening, though. And the risk is that proper rage at the system’s abuse of Liam Allan will be smothered by fashionable truisms about sexual assault: “OK, he is innocent but lots of men do get away with it.” Exposure of real sexual misconducts lately has aggravated this feverish anxiety, and a dismaying willingness to punish and smear without investigation. Aled Jones, of all people, is now off the BBC while it pokes suspiciously at a decade-old allegation reported as “inappropriate contact and messages”. This he has strongly denied. The new wisdom says that we women are perpetual victims: abused, coerced or freezing in dumb terror.

Take The New Yorker’s short story Cat Person currently overexciting the western world, in which a flirtatious woman enjoying her power suddenly cools off, but proceeds with coupling through a mixture of politeness and vanity (“Look at this beautiful girl, she imagined him thinking. She’s so perfect, her body is perfect . . . The more she imagined his arousal, the more turned-on she got”). Some seize on even that soft-porn fiction as evidence that we are always victims of male domination because, after brushing the poor mutt off with an abrupt text, the heroine gets in return one which irritably ends in the word “whore!”.

Well, that’s rude of him. Very rude. On the other hand, it is not nearly as bad a response to rejection as crying rape and trying to get your former intimate jailed for a decade, reckoning that officialdom will believe you and not him.

It should be emphasised that false accusations of sexual assault are very rare. Home Office figures suggest 4 per cent. But they do happen, and the present atmosphere of suspicion, and neurotic magnification of minor male clumsinesses may encourage more. Women are not all angels, and a sense of our historical powerlessness may make this particular weapon horribly tempting.

It mustn’t be. There have to be consequences, because sexual crime is too serious, lying about it too wicked, to be used as a weapon of the petulant. In the Allan case we know nothing of the vulnerabilities or mental problems of the woman who lied, but it will be dismaying if she is not promptly charged with perverting the course of justice. Or, at least, wasting police time. Certainly she should lose anonymity. That privilege of real victims is far too precious to be brought into disrepute.

Update: Police Corruption in the UK — Manchester force ‘took bribes from organised crime gang’

Betrayed by the UK System of Justice: The case of an innocent student put on trial for rape because police withheld evidence is just the “tip of the iceberg”

At the Times of London, Ben Gurr has more on the UK man — nay, the UK men — who are betrayed by the UK system of justice:

This must be brought to a stop. There is only one way to do that, and that involves two common-sense steps.

There must be divulgation of the identity (yes, that's right, shaming) of, lawsuits against, and trials and punishment (including jail time) for the drama queens involved in the crime of falsely accusing others of a specific crime (in these cases, rape). Don't the potential future lovers or boyfriends of these crybullies deserve to know the identities of those with whom there is danger of hanging around with?!

There must be divulgation of the identity of, lawsuits against, and trials and punishment (including jail time) for the police officers and government lawyers involved in assisting (even unintentionally) people (men as well as women) in the crime of falsely accusing others of a crime (whether rape or any other offense).

Needless to say, the above is as much, if not more, about setting precedents by dissuading others (other vixens, other police officers and prosecutors) from the temptation of engaging in similar "mental torture" stories in the future as it is about punishing the guilty in this particular case. Pour encourager les autres.

Many will notice, no doubt with the greatest of astonishments, that this "extreme" solution used to be… the rule before the left swept through society with all their fairy tale takeovers of history, of the culture, and of the law.

I will be pleased if a reform movement will include criminology student Liam Allan.

Update: Confirmation bias in this alarmed age says that because some teachers have been abusers, some men have raped, and many victims weren’t believed, it follows that assuming guilt is the safe bet

 … There have to be consequences, because sexual crime is too serious, lying about it too wicked, to be used as a weapon of the petulant. In the Allan case we know nothing of the vulnerabilities or mental problems of the woman who lied, but it will be dismaying if she is not promptly charged with perverting the course of justice. Or, at least, wasting police time. Certainly she should lose anonymity. …

But back to Ben Gurr of the Times of London:

The case of an innocent student put on trial for rape because police withheld evidence is just the “tip of the iceberg”, senior barristers said last night.

Dozens of cases have collapsed in the past three years because of serious police failings over the way they handle evidence, according to an inspection report obtained by The Times.

In one case, a man accused of robbery spent six months in jail before a prosecutor found evidence confirming that he had been robbed by the “victim”, who was a violent drug dealer.

Yesterday The Times revealed that Liam Allan, 22, spent almost two years on bail and was on trial for a series of alleged rapes before police handed over text messages that exonerated him.

Angela Rafferty, QC, chairwoman of the Criminal Bar Association, said yesterday that without the intervention of the barristers in court Mr Allan “would have suffered an appalling miscarriage of justice” because of the failure of police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

She warned that the failure was “not an isolated incident” and said that police and the CPS may be “unconsciously bias[ed]” towards people who report sex offences.

Mr Allan’s acquittal comes as concern grows over a series of rape cases involving young men that have fallen apart because of fears about the quality of the evidence.

A report in July by HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, seen by this newspaper, found that police and CPS staff blamed “limited resources and lack of time” for the poor disclosure of evidence.
 
The inspectors found that the failure to deal with issues early meant that unauthorised disclosure between lawyers, unnecessary adjournments and discontinued cases “are common occurrences”. The report said that at least 56 cases had been scrapped because of failure to disclose evidence between 2013 and last year.

 …/… Critics said Mr Allan’s case showed that lessons had not been learnt. Ms Rafferty said: “The case should never have been brought. Public funds were wasted, he spent two years on bail, and no good has come of it. The authorities do not appear to have learnt lessons from the joint report by HM Inspectors of the CPS and Constabulary in July 2017, which highlighted systemic failures and offered remedies.”

Dapinder Singh, QC, who specialises in complex frauds and serious crime, said the failure to disclose evidence in Mr Allan’s case may be “just the tip of the iceberg”. He added: “Disclosure is the backbone of the criminal justice system and a defence team must be able to trust the prosecution to properly discharge their disclosure duties.”

Among cases to have fallen apart recently are those of George Owen, a 21-year-old trainee accountant, who was cleared in September by a jury that took two hours to find that he had not forced himself on a 19-year-old student as they left a bar in Manchester.

The previous week, two young men were cleared of raping girls after nights out. Bartolomeo Joly de Lotbiniere, 22, a student at York University, was reported to police when he appeared on University Challenge — 14 months after having sex with his accuser. Joshua Lines, 23, was accused by a fellow student who had invited him into her bed. Both said that the sex was consensual and were found not guilty, prompting questions about why they had ended up in court.

The woman who accused Mr Allan faces investigation for attempting to pervert the course of justice. The detective involved will be questioned about the failure to hand over the vital evidence. The accuser told police that she hated sex but wrote hundreds of text messages to friends saying she was devastated when Mr Allan said that they could not meet again and discussing in detail her enjoyment of sex.

The CPS and Scotland Yard are reviewing why 40,000 text and WhatsApp messages from her phone were not handed over until after the trial had begun at Croydon crown court. Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, has apologised in a letter to The Times today for the failure to hand over the evidence earlier.

In Mr Allan’s case, the phone records were handed over only when a new prosecutor agreed to a request from the defence barrister to see any material from the woman’s phone. Judge Peter Gower said on Thursday it was clear that Mr Allan would not have been charged if the messages had been seen, and demanded an inquiry into the failure to produce them.

Mr Allan, who is in the final year of a criminology degree at the University of Greenwich, had been warned that he faced at least ten years in jail and would be on the sex offenders register for life.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokeswoman said: “We know how important it is to get disclosure right and in the light of the recent HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate report we are reviewing our disclosure policies and practices with police colleagues as a matter of urgency.”

The ‘victim’s’ messages

The woman who accused Liam Allan of rape told police that she hated sex, but hundreds of messages sent to friends during the preceding months detailed her obsession with the student and her love of sex.

The messages were downloaded by police from the woman’s telephone shortly after she was interviewed in January 2015. Police then stated there were no messages of interest to either the prosecution or Mr Allan’s lawyers.
 
Edited examples of some of her messages were read out in court. In a message to a friend after Mr Allan told her he was going to university she described how she had called him in a panic and begged him to see her, writing:

“Honestly I was just a mess and I was like I’m asking for one last chance to show you how much you mean to me.”

Writing to a friend about having sex with another man:

“After the initial pain of the train getting into the tunnel it’s not that bad, after a while it’s alright and it’s fun . . . everyone knows I enjoy it but it still hurts me to this day but no pain no gain. It’s worth it.

“It’s always nice to be sexually assaulted without breaking the law. You clearly don’t love me because you keep revoking my sexual advances, have I got to drug you.”

In the comments section, Richard Strickland writes that

You can't trust the police, they're more interested in their social engineering and politically correct duties than solving crime.

More interested in chasing people for saying mean things on twitter and facebook than protecting white girls from the muslim rape gangs.

More interested in arresting someone for leaving a rasher of bacon outside a mosque than dealing with FGM.

They should be stripped of their pension rights en-masse and be investigated on a personal level, and made to pay damages on a personal basis to those that they have failed.

Related: Teach British Women Not to Lie About Rape — Accused man who went through “mental torture”: "I feel betrayed by the system which I had believed would do the right thing"

Update 2: Police Corruption in the UK — Manchester force ‘took bribes from organised crime gang’