Mid-Week Post

The epicentre of the work-week...

 
Convicted terrorist Chiheb Esseghaier was removed from the court room after another outburst:

A man convicted of plotting to derail a passenger train was removed from court Tuesday after he lay down in the prisoner dock to protest the "lies" of a psychiatrist who testified the man was schizophrenic.

Dr. Lisa Ramshaw also told a sentencing hearing that Chiheb Esseghaier's delusional thoughts have developed over time, including his psychotic beliefs about the trial and his role in the court.

"He has indicated that he is not actually here as a criminal but as a visitor of the court to disseminate the information about the true ways of Islam."

Esseghaier took exception to the doctor's testimony.

Question: is his sudden insanity (a) a clever legal ploy  (b) an actual mental disturbance  (c) feature, not a bug, of one who adheres to jihad?

Related:

An Iranian immigrant who regularly raped his wife and beat his children during their 16-year marriage is going back to jail after Ontario's top court on Wednesday increased his sentence.

In doing so, the Court of Appeal said the lower court judge who handed the man an 18-month term was wrong to assume cultural differences were a mitigating factor — even though the defence never raised the issue.

The man, who cannot be identified by court order to protect his now ex-wife and children, will instead have to serve a four-year term, the Appeal Court decided.

"Cultural norms that condone or tolerate conduct contrary to Canadian criminal law must not be considered a mitigating factor on sentencing," the Appeal Court ruled.

"To hold otherwise undermines the equality of all individuals before and under the law."

In fact, the higher court said, cultural beliefs may even be an aggravating factor when it comes to sentencing.

In June last year, Judge William Gorewich of the court of justice in Newmarket, Ont., convicted the man of sexual assault and four counts of assault for offences that occurred after the family's move from Iran to Canada in 2009. The judge accepted there had been "long-standing and ongoing" abuse.

Evidence was that the man forced his wife to have sex with him by hitting her, pulling her hair, pinching her, and forcefully removing her clothes.

"The sex was painful. She cried out quietly so the children would not hear. She suffered painful bruises to her legs and sides," according to court documents.

He also abused their two children — now teenagers — by slapping, kicking, punching or strapping them. He once locked them outside on a snowy day while they were barefoot and wearing only shorts and T-shirts.

The abuse, which only came to light after the younger child talked to a teacher, continued even after he moved in with another woman.

"The younger boy became so terrified that he took to sleeping with a knife," court documents say.
In sentencing him to 18 months, Gorewich referenced the "cultural impact" of the family's immigration. 

Among other things, he took into account the wife's victim impact statement in which she expressed surprise at the serious legal consequences of her husband's conduct.

Her statement suggested a "significant cultural gap" between what is acceptable in Canada versus in Iran, Gorewich said.

"In Iran if she complained about any abuse she would be ignored — it is a different culture, it is a different society," Gorewich said.

"Those cultural differences moved with them from Iran to Canada."

On appeal, the Crown argued the judge's reasoning was flawed and the sentence manifestly unfit.

 
Nope. Culture does not matter here.

Also, let's elect our judges.


 
Because Canada doesn't subscribe to the Juche philosophy, every other crappy economy is going to have some effect on ours. Unless you want a trustifarian who thinks that budgets balance themselves, I wouldn't be so quick to abandon ship:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper went on the attack on Wednesday after the country's central bank cut interest rates to combat a shrinking economy, with his spokesman saying Harper's rivals cannot be trusted to govern in such difficult times.

The Bank of Canada cut its benchmark rate for the second time this year, driving the Canadian dollar to a six-year low, saying the economy had contracted in the first half of 2015.

"The global economy remains fragile and is being dragged down by forces beyond our borders such as global oil prices, the European debt crisis, and China's economic slowdown," Harper spokesman Stephen Lecce said in a statement.

 
To be clear:

(b) Solicitation or acceptance of tissue as directed donation for use in transplantation 
 

It shall be unlawful for any person to solicit or knowingly acquire, receive, or accept a donation of human fetal tissue for the purpose of transplantation of such tissue into another person if the donation affects interstate commerce, the tissue will be or is obtained pursuant to an induced abortion, and—

(1) the donation will be or is made pursuant to a promise to the donating individual that the donated tissue will be transplanted into a recipient specified by such individual;

(2) the donated tissue will be transplanted into a relative of the donating individual; or

(3) the person who solicits or knowingly acquires, receives, or accepts the donation has provided valuable consideration for the costs associated with such abortion.

**

Buyer: So, the main thing, well, not the main thing that Iwould like to discuss is, I’d really like to connect with people who feel theydon’t know we’re out there. They don’t know there’s this opportunity. And thatcould be a little touchy, for them more for us, and I want to be delicate toany reservations.

PP: Yeah, you know, I don’t think it’s a reservations issue so much as a perception issue, because I think every provider has had patients who want to donate their tissue, and they absolutely want to accommodate them. They just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as, ‘This clinic is selling tissue, this clinic is making money off of this.’ I know in the Planned Parenthood world they’re very very sensitive to that. And before an affiliate is gonna do that, they need to, obviously, they’re not—some might do it for free—but they want to come to a number that doesn’t look like they’re making money. They want to come to a number that looks like it is a reasonable number for the effort that is allotted on their part. I think with private providers, private clinics, they’ll have much less of a problem with that.

Buyer: Okay, so, when you are, or the affiliate is determining what that monetary—so that it doesn’t create, raising a question of this is what it’sabout, this is the main—what price range, would you—?

PP: You know, I would throw a number out, I would say it’s probably anywhere from $30 to $100 [per specimen], depending on the facility and what’s involved. It just has to do with space issues, are you sending someone there who’s going to be doing everything, is there shipping involved, is somebody gonna have to take it out. You know, I think everybody just wants, it’s really just about if anyone were ever to ask them, “What do you do for this $60? How can you justify that? Or are you basically just doing something completely egregious, that you should be doing for free.” So it just needs to be justifiable. And, look, we have 67 affiliates. They all have different practice environments, different staff, and so that number—

Buyer: Did you say 67?

PP: 67.

Buyer: Okay. And so of that number, how much would personality of the personnel in there, would play into it as far as how we’re speaking to them—

PP: I think for affiliates, at the end of the day, they’re a non-profit, they just don’t want to—they want to break even. And if they can do a little better than break even, and do so in a way that seems reasonable, they’re happy to do that.

**

Nucatola specifically states, in fact, that these changes don’t violate the consent forms Planned Parenthood has mothers sign before their abortions. She interprets the laws guiding organ procurement broadly, saying that there would only be need for a new consent form if the “procedure may take an extra day, or I might be here extra hours.” Since changing the presentation or using ultrasounds doesn’t take extra days, she thinks she’s legally in the clear. Further, she doesn’t believe the woman who have signed the consent forms stating that there will be no changes to the procedure need to know how their abortion procedure will be changed to accommodate organ sales.

**

A number of family members of Falun Gong practitioners whodied in detention reported seeing the corpses of their loved ones with surgicalincisions and body parts missing. The authorities gave no coherent explanationfor these mutilated corpses.

**

According to Im, experiments on humans date back to the late 1960s and one of the first facilities used for chemical and biological weapons tests on humans was constructed on the military controlled island of Mayang-do, just off the east coast port of Sinpo, which is also North Korea's most important submarine base. A second facility was subsequently constructed on an island off the west coast of the peninsula, while a third is in operation alongside a political prison camp outside the city of Hyanghari, the defector claims.

"They use anthrax bacterium as well as 40 different types of chemical weapons that the regime has developed itself," Im said. "Through these experiments, they know the effects of the weapons and the amounts to be used."

To give the regime's actions legitimacy, children born with mental or physical disabilities are not taken away by force - although, in reality, few citizens of North Korea have the right to resist the authorities' will, says Im.

"They want to do it 'legally' and they don't want to lose the support of the people, so they buy disabled children from their parents for a few kilograms of rice," he said. "The officials say they will take care of the children."

And we have come full circle.
 

 
After much time-wasting debate,  the Greek parliament has passed austerity laws:

Greek lawmakers voted overwhelmingly early Thursday to approve a harsh austerity bill demanded by bailout creditors, despite significant dissent from members of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' left-wing party.

The bill, which imposes sweeping tax hikes and spending cuts, fueled anger in the governing Syriza party and led to a revolt against Tsipras, who has insisted the deal forged after a marathon weekend eurozone summit was the best he could do to prevent Greece from catastrophically crashing out of Europe's joint currency.

The bill was approved with 229 votes in favour, 64 against and six abstentions — and won the support of three pro-European opposition parties.

Some examples of how bad Greece is and why it is the way it is:

Many Greek families won’t register the death of a loved one, so they can continue to collect his or her state payments.

Civil service pensions survive the death of the bureaucrat who earned them, as well as the death of his or her spouse. They even continue to be paid to public-sector workers’ daughters for as long as they remain unmarried.

So thousands of middle-aged daughters of deceased bus drivers, teachers, civil service clerks and soldiers remain officially unmarried, just so they can collect their dead mother’s or father’s generous pension.

Many Greeks have one or more questionable sources of income.

 
Gee, I guess there was a reason to go to the Pan-Am Games:

Four Cuban rowers have defected from the Pan American Games and travelled to the United States, their coach said Wednesday.

And now, snacks for the lazy person. Enjoy.