Mid-Week Post

The intermission of the work-week...


Dzokhar Tsarnaev (America's Omar Khadr) has been found guilty on all counts:

Nearly two years after two pressure-cooker bombs ripped through a crowd of unsuspecting spectators near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, a federal jury found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 counts for his role in the deadly attacks, which killed three and injured nearly 300.

"We unanimously find the defendent Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev guilty," the court clerk said, again and again.

Tsarnaev, 21, offered no visible reaction to the charges, which were announced in a courtroom packed full of victims and survivors.

The decision came a day and a half after seven women and five men began deliberations in the first phase of the trial and after 17 days of emotional and often gruesome testimony and evidence in the case. Jurors repeatedly saw horrific photos and videos of the bloody aftermath of the bombs. They also heard heart-wrenching testimony from survivors, including the father of the youngest victim of the attacks—8-year-old Martin Richard--whose body was literally blown apart by the second bomb.

Federal prosecutors painted Tsarnaev as a heartless killer who conspired with his older brother, Tamerlan, to maim and kill Americans in retaliation for the country's wars on Muslim countries overseas. "This was a cold, calculated terrorist act. This was intentional. It was bloodthirsty. It was to make a point," government prosecutor Aloke Chakravarty told jurors Monday. "It was to tell America that ‘We will not be terrorized by you anymore. We will terrorize you.'"

Tsarnaev faced 30 charges for his role in the bombings, the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil since September 11, 2001. He was also charged with shooting and killing Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier days after the attacks and hours after the FBI released photos of him and his brother identifying them as suspects in the bombings. Though prosecutors acknowledged they were unsure which brother pulled the trigger, both were "equally guilty" of Collier's murder.

Tsarnaev has yet to be sentenced. His defense will attempt to portray him as a dupe of his elder brother. Apparently, nineteen years-olds have no idea what they are doing.

Do not extend the vote to teen-agers.


An Afghan soldier has killed an American soldier:

An Afghan soldier was shot dead after opening fire on American troops - killing one and wounding several other people.

The default disposition there is homicidal.

For some insight:

What France, and the West in general, face today is a war waged by a part of Islam against the democratic world. The most effective way for the West to deal with this situation, and eventually win this war, is to mobilize the resources of its nation-states for facing the challenge on all fronts -- political, economic, and cultural and, when needed, military. The silly slogan "this has no military solution" is self-defeating, if only because it is based on a denial of the reality that the Western democracies and their allies in the Muslim world are being challenged and attacked in a veritable multifaceted war.

Once the Western democracies have admitted to themselves that this is a war, they would be in a position seek allies in the Muslim world by posing the only question that really matters in a state of war: Are you with us or against us?

Today, they cannot pose that question because they are dancing around the issue, talking of social injustice, education, colonial heritage, racism, ethnocentrism and other fashionable shibboleths already mentioned.

The unwillingness of Western democracies to agree on a common analysis of the situation, enables opportunist Muslim powers to hedge their bets by helping or at least tolerating the terrorists under the banner of Islam. And that is bound to prolong the deadly struggle, which terrorism in the end cannot win.

I find it mind-boggling that of all religious and socio-political systems, the one that the left defends without reservation is Islamism. It has no reason for doing so. Intellectually, one understands the the leftist position is a contrary one.  The left will embrace whatever is opposite to its ideology. Pragmatically, embracing anything antithetical to the West is self-destructive. Communism didn't work. Now, its more insane mirror image of Islamism is poised to fail the left once more.


Archbishop Jean-Claude Turcotte has passed away at age seventy-eight:

Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, who oversaw the funerals of NHL great Maurice (Rocket) Richard and former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau during his 22 years as archbishop of Montreal, died early Wednesday after a lengthy illness. He was 78.

(Sidebar: I can understand the Rocket but Trudeau? That must have taken the stiffest of drinks for that fiasco.)


Families of murdered and missing aboriginal women do not have confidence in the police:

Police departments across Canada get a failing grade for their efforts at solving cases of missing and murdered indigenous women, according to CBC interviews with more than 110 family members.

CBC News has embarked on an exhaustive search for families who have lost a relative either to an unsolved killing or whose loved one still remains missing. 

So far, more than 110 families have responded to questions ranging from the efficacy of police investigations to the need for a national inquiry.

Families were asked to rate the quality of the police investigation in each case, on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being excellent. The average rating was 2.8.

 
Yes, about this:

According to an RCMP report released in May, the vast majority of murdered aboriginal women were not killed by strangers, they were killed by spouses, boyfriends, family members or acquaintances of the victims.

"Female homicide victims generally know the person who kills them -- more than 90% had a previous relationship with them," said the report. "This is true for aboriginal and non-aboriginal female victims."

A Pakistani national accused of terrorism has asked his government for help:

A Pakistani man the federal government accuses of plotting to bomb downtown Toronto has reached out to his country for help in securing his release from detention.

The request by Jahanzeb Malik comes in a letter to Pakistan's consulate general through his lawyer.

"As a Pakistani national, Mr. Malik has asked us to reach out and secure any assistance you may be in a position to advance," Anser Farooq writes on behalf of his client.

"This assistance can be in the form of financial, and/or bonds person's required to secure his release from detention."

Canada Border Services Agency arrested Malik, 33, on March 9 following an undercover investigation amid government accusations that he supports the Islamic State and planned to attack the U.S. consulate and other financial district buildings.

The permanent resident of Canada remains in detention in expectation the government will move to declare him inadmissible and deport him — a process that could take months — rather than prosecute him.

At previous detention reviews — in which no one came forward to act as a surety — the government's lawyer declared Malik to be a flight and security risk.

"The outcome of Mr. Malik's inadmissibility hearing should be of the highest priority to your government," Farooq wrote in the letter sent to the consulate last month.

No one from Pakistan's consulate general in Toronto nor its high commission in Ottawa returned calls seeking comment.

Perhaps Mr. Malik's government does not want to deal with him.

Culture- it matters:

A Toronto-based dating website for married people seeking affairs has dropped its lawsuit against the government of South Korea after a court in that country overturned a decades-old law banning adultery.

Ashley Madison filed the suit last year after its newly launched Korean website was shut down by authorities who alleged it incited immorality.

At the time, adultery was illegal in South Korea.

The company denied the allegations in its statement of claim, describing itself as "a social networking website facilitating communication between like-minded adults."

A spokesman for the company says the website has now been restored following a February decision by the Constitutional Court of South Korea to strike down the more than 60-year-old statute.

The CEO of Ashley Madison's parent company Avid Life Media says the website's presence in South Korea — and its challenge of the ban — helped speed up changes to the legal landscape there.

Noel Biderman says he believes the data Ashley Madison collects on adultery will help "change society's perception about non-monogamous behaviour" around the world.

(Sidebar: what a presumptuous butthole.)

How it must stun the clueless citizens of the politically multicultural post-modern West that not everyone is into their brand of decadence and to believe that their little crusades matter a damn is just gob-smacking.


An American aid worker has been expelled from North Korea on charges of conspiring against its state:

North Korea said on Wednesday it was expelling an American aid worker for engaging in what it said was a conspiracy against the state, just weeks after the country ejected a German aid worker.

The North's official KCNA news agency said the U.S. citizen it named as Sandra Suh had "produced pictures and videos with an aversion to the Republic under the disguise of 'humanitarianism' and used them" in a propaganda campaign against the country.

"Sandra Suh admitted ... her criminal activities and apologized, seeking generous forgiveness. Out of generosity, the related agency took into consideration her age and decided to expel her from its territory," KCNA said.

What? No ransom?

This seems weird to me.


Copies of "The Interview" are being air-lifted into North Korea:
 

Thousands of DVDs of a Hollywood film about a plot to assassinate the North Korean leader have been sent into the country via helium balloon.

North Korean defector-turned-activist Lee Min-Bok said he had undertaken four launches since January, the last being on Saturday.

Each time, he tied bundles of The Interview DVD and anti-Pyongyang leaflets to the balloons, and then released them from the back of a lorry.

"I launched thousands of copies and about a million leaflets on Saturday, near the western part of the border," Mr Lee told AFP news agency.

Pyongyang has described the comedy about a fictional CIA plot to assassinate leader Kim Jong-Un, as a "wanton act of terror" .

(Sidebar: is the acting that bad?)

It's a good thing no one pulled the plug on him:

On July 11, 2011, then-22-year-old Matthew was heading to work on his motorcycle when he collided with an illegally parked car while merging onto a highway.

He suffered a long list of serious injuries, including multiple fractures of the femur, multiple jaw fractures, a fractured rib, lacerated liver, fractured collar bone, skull fracture, and a severe traumatic brain injury.

He was in a coma with only a 10 per cent chance of ever regaining consciousness. His chance at a full recovery was even smaller, just 5 per cent.

About a week after Matthew’s horrific accident, doctors told Danielle to consider taking her husband off life support.

She refused.

“I prayed a lot and chose not to take him off of life support,” she wrote on their blog. “The next day Matthew opened his eyes. Exciting as this is I later learned that eyes open without consciousness is typical of a vegetative state.”

Matthew was transferred to a rehabilitation centre in an attempted to “wake up” his brain. While his eyes started tracking the people in his room, he showed few other signs of movement or response to commands.

Danielle had him moved to her mother’s home where she could care for him in a familiar space.

At home, Matthew began what has become a remarkable recovery. First, he regained some movement in his limbs. Then he started grunting. After three weeks of around-the-clock care from his wife and mother-in-law, Matthew “emerged from the coma” and began a nearly three-month rehabilitation program that included hours of daily speech, occupational and physical therapy.