Mid-Week Post

So much to say and in no particular order, either.


Temper tantrums are against the interests of justice, you moron-judge:

Ontario’s chief prosecutor has filed a formal complaint with the Ontario Judicial Council over the recent conduct of a judge who in a fit of pique tossed an entire day’s worth of guilty pleas.

John Ayre, the province’s assistant deputy attorney-general, filed the complaint against Ontario Court Judge Howard Chisvin on July 29, ministry spokesman Brendan Crawley confirmed Tuesday.

The incident happened July 21 in a Newmarket court north of Toronto, when the judge, apparently furious that an assistant Crown attorney wasn’t at his post, waited less than four minutes for him to show up, then dismissed the dozen cases before him for “want of prosecution.”

The Crown, Brian McCallion, was in his office reading a psychiatric report related to one of those cases. The public address system is audible only in courtroom halls.

All the accused people had either pleaded guilty already — and were awaiting sentencing — or were intending to do so. They were facing, or convicted, of charges ranging from impaired driving and robbery to domestic abuse and fraud.

Judge Chisvin, who was appointed to the bench in 2004 by then-Ontario Attorney-General Michael Bryant, spent 18 years as a defence lawyer.

Let's elect judges, not hand them their jobs.



Remember, the Quebecois voted for these people:

When news broke Tuesday that Ms. Turmel had been a dues-paying member of the Bloc for five years until quitting last January just in time to run for the New Democrats, she brushed it off as no big deal.

How is that orange crush now?



Somewhat related: how different are we from the Americans?

You see, because the Canadian “identity” is so flimsy—a ghostly “negative,” based entirely on what we are not—my fellow citizens are easily disoriented. Today we have a “conservative” prime minister (ha, ha) and Americans have a black, lefty president, so…wait: Who’s the bad guy again?

Culture matters and whoever is not bothered by this has either sat too long in his or her own comfort zone or has no human feeling in them:

Abdul Malik Rustam had only been in Canada for only two months before his wife, Shaher Bano Shahdady, rented a Toronto apartment of her own. Around midnight on July 22, police say, Mr. Rustam found his way in and strangled her. Neighbours reported hearing a child’s screams for 15 minutes, and then silence. Ms. Shahdady’s father discovered her body the next day. According to Toronto police, the couple’s 2-year-old son had been left alone with Ms. Shahdady’s body for more than 12 hours.

Six days later, in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, 24-year-old Ravinder Bhangu was seated at her desk at Sach Di Awaaz, a Punjabi-English newspaper. Just before 11 a.m., Ms. Bhangu’s estranged husband, Sunny Bhangu, allegedly strode through the door with an axe and drove it into Ms. Bhangu as she was attempting to flee, screaming “Save me! Save me!” News photographer Narinder Nayar jumped in to intervene, but was fought off with a meat cleaver, suffering light injuries. Ms. Bhangu “died on the spot,” said a witness.

In both cases, sources within Canada’s South Asian communities fear the murders carry the distinctive marks of honour killings. In both cases, the husbands turned themselves into police and have been charged with first-degree murder.

Honour killings are different from standard cases of domestic violence in that the killings are carried out in order to “cleanse” a family name of perceived dishonour. The practice remains relatively rare in Canada, although experts agree there is an “upward trend” in Canadian instances of honour-based violence. Between 2002 and 2010, Canada experienced 13 cases of honour-based murders, according to a 2010 report for the federal government by Amin Muhammad, a psychiatrist at Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L.

Related: Afghanistan was a broken country even before we got there:

20^th century Islamists took the ugly tribal feud and globalized it. They took backward places like Afghanistan and turned them into platforms for a global war. We may be able to save ourselves from the puppet masters behind this shadow war, but we cannot save the Afghans from themselves.

And: I was saying this the other day:

Dubai: Asthmatics who use an inhaler are ending the fast according to a Ramadan series of fatwas issued by the Dubai Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department (IACAD).

The fatwa states that because the solution reaches the throat and eventually reach the stomach, it therefore ends the fast.

The list has been released to help Muslims clarify any concerns about fasting.

If the person fasting has to use an inhaler as a matter of life or death, he or she must make up for each broken day after Ramadan. But chronic suffers who must use an inhaler daily should refrain from eating and drinking to show respect for the month and go on taking the medicine. They must then offer ‘fedaya', an amount of either money or food for each day they failed to fast.

Also related:

Nothing says “cultural outreach” like thuggish, self-appointed guardians of religious morality patrolling the streets to intimidate and harass ordinary citizens. The Breivik fallout has led to soul-searching and hand-wringing in Europe’s ongoing debate about the merits and demerits of immigration and multiculturalism. Attention-seeking charlatans such as Choudary and MAC seem determined to prove Breivik’s more paranoid beliefs—you know, the “total Muslim takeover of Europe and the known world” sort of stuff—to have some basis in reality. If I were conspiracy-minded, I might think that Choudary and Breivik were social-media buddies who played poker together on Wednesdays.

I am not making a word of the up- there are people who do not see a problem with this and even equate with other things that are completely dissimilar:

 

"Why not just leave them alone? They're not hurting you in any way. And they're certainly not coming to your neighborhood and telling you how to dress, eat, drink, or behave."

 

 

"I have never yet seen Muslims in this country try to force shariah on non-Muslims. They might frown and mutter, but you do the same thing, so big deal. "

 

"Vatican will not even allow a woman to enter if she is wearing shorts or sleeveless blouse. How is that different from your fear of Muslims?" 

 

 

"Your religion's threat of excommunication, for example, is a form of terrorism."  

 

 

Wrap your skulls around that.

Because she's Sarah Palin:

"It's all talk and no real action. Otherwise he'd be on Biden and tell Biden to tone it down a little bit. Yeah, right, independent patriotic Americans who desire fiscal sanity in our beloved nation being called terrorists. Heck, Sean, if we were real domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us, wouldn’t he? I mean he didn’t have a problem paling around with Bill Ayers back in the day when he kicked off his political career in Bill Ayers' apartment," Palin said on FOX News' 

Damn right.


The imaginary links between Sarah Palin and Governor Giffords' shooter, Jared Loughner, and Anders Behring Breivik and whatever alleged brand of conservatism/Christianity some staunch anti-semites dream up are convenient blinds for those who would ignore the obvious ties the current occupant of the White House has with a convicted terrorist.



China's draconian demographic reductions will turn to bite it:

According to the CIA World Factbook - a much more reliable source than Chinese government statistics - in China the total fertility rate is just 1.54 child per woman. Thus, it is 33% lower than what it has to be to constitute a generation replacement rate. For the US, the total fertility rate is 2.1 CPW.

China's inevitable demographic slump is partially the result of rising importance of work over family and changing lifestyles, as happened in the West decades ago, but to a large part, it's a result of China's one-child policy. As a result, during the next several decades, China is projected to face what demographers call the 4+2+1 problem: one child will have to support two parents and four grandparents.

Ontario cops will not only erase possibly incriminating photos but will also turn the other way when photo-takers are assaulted for "stealing one's soul".



(hat tips)



And now, two cats passing one another on a fence. Enjoy the gymnastics.