No Snitching

It's not just for hip-hoppers and urban street gangs anymore.  Catfur has the skinny.

Khurram Syed Sher Ain't Misbahuddin

Reporting on the joint police press conference detailing this week's terrorism-related arrests in Ottawa and London, Ontario -- via the Ceeb

The RCMP have charged three Ontario men for allegedly taking part in a domestic plot, and possessing schematics, electronics and explosives related to creating improvised explosive devices.

RCMP Chief Supt. Serge Therriault said Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, and Hiva Alizadeh, 30, both of Ottawa, and 28-year-old Khurram Sher of London were involved in a conspiracy to commit "a violent terrorism attack."

Therriault alleged at a news conference in Ottawa that the men conspired with three men, who they named as James Lara, Rizgar Alizadeh and Zakaria Mamosta, as well as persons unknown in Canada and in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Dubai to commit terrorism-related offences.

C'mon Khurram. Why d'ya have to go and (allegedly) make things so complicated?



*Update* By all appearances it seems that (Dr.) Khurram Sher had absolutely everything going for him in Canada -- a bright medical career and a young family.

So much for American Canadian Dreamz -- Dreamz with a Z.

"Oh Stewardess, I Speak Jive."

Of course, this isn't "racial profiling" or anything, right?

The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

[...]

Ebonics has widely been described as a nonstandard variant of English spoken largely by African Americans. John R. Rickford, a Stanford University professor of linguistics, has described it as “Black English” and noted that “Ebonics pronunciation includes features like the omission of the final consonant in words like ‘past’ (pas’ ) and ‘hand’ (han’), the pronunciation of the th in ‘bath’ as t (bat) or f (baf), and the pronunciation of the vowel in words like ‘my’ and ‘ride’ as a long ah (mah, rahd)."

No, actually it can't be "racial profiling". Black Studies departments have been promoting the idea of Ebonics as a distinct linguistic category, and have been promoting Ebonics classes in schools, for years now.

Which all brings to mind, Barbara Billingsley's comically counter-intuitive cameo in Airplane (1980):



h/t The Halls

"3478? There's an 11 in progress on Bloor St."

"Oh my God. An 11? You mean two people standing beside each other minding their own business? I'm on it, Dispatch."

Some days it seems you just can't tell the good guys from ... you know ... the black-clad violent retard anarchists. Read it and freep.

Question: Is there a Jenny Craig program for heavy-handedness?

*Update on Heavy-handedness 1 -- Two photographers of National Post are arrested and detained. WTF!

*Update on Heavy-handedness 2 -- A reporter for the Guardian newspaper web site is beaten and arrested. WTF!

*Update on Heavy-handedness 3 -- TVO's Steve Paikin is threatened with arrest if he does not leave the scene. WTF! Then he tweets:

I saw police brutality tonight. it was unnecessary. they asked me to leave the site or they would arrest me. i told them i was dong my job.

they repeated they would arrest me if i didn't leave. as i was escorted away from the demonstration, i saw two officers hold a journalist.

the journalist identified himself as working for "the guardian." he talked too much and pissed the police off. two officers held him....

a third punched him in the stomach. totally unnecessary. the man collapsed. then the third officer drove his elbow into the man's back.

*Update on Heavy-handedness 4 -- Keystone Kanuck Kops. WTF!

*Update on Heavy-handedness 5 -- Mike Brock's testimonial of 'harassment'. WTF!

Well, at least a lot of the anarchist scum were also rounded up, thanks mostly to some good intelligence work, after the fact. The UofT raid this morning was a nice touch. However, it might have been more satisfying, and certainly more reassuring, if -- just maybe -- they had cracked down hard before the criminal anarchists trashed Yonge St. After more than 20 years of this nonsense at summits around the world, the block bloc tactics could not possibly have taken them by surprise. It's "Direct Action Protest 101". I have to believe they were expecting it. And if not, they should have been. Just saying. 'Cos a lot of us are really pissed off about that.

Chutzpah

CP, via CTV

Police securing the G20 leaders' summit in the city now say they've arrested 412 people in connection with yesterday's violence.

Const. Michelle Murphy says there are also people who have camped overnight outside the prisoner processing centre to protest the arrests.

Why not hold them until Monday or Tuesday, then put them (two by two) in stocks in Nathan Phillips Square, and provide the good citizens of Toronto with bushels of rotten fruit. Let's see how that goes.

Irony Alert. Activists for Asinine Cultural Marxist Group "No One Is Illegal" Alleged to Have Been Arrested

Following an afternoon of mayhem on the streets of Toronto, as G20 protests quickly turned violent (no surprises there), police have reportedly started making arrests. The arrests, however, appear to have less to do with the afternoon's rioting than with the stubborn resistance of protesters to police attempts to clear them.

From Reuters, via the Vancouver Sun:

Farrah Miranda, an organizer from community group No One Is Illegal, said she [and] Syed Hussan were stopped by officers who refused to identify themselves.

She said they threw a handcuffed Hassan into an unmarked car and drove away.

She said she was handcuffed, driven around, questioned and released on a street corner in what she called “intimidation and bullying tactics.”

Well, Farrah, sometimes the question of whether or not someone is illegal depends on which side of the handcuffs they're on.

It will be fun to listen to all of the armchair-quarterback reviews come Monday. The same people who have been causing and/or cheer-leading this chaos will be chalk-full of venomous recriminations. When you hear them rationalize and justify themselves, and hurl abuse on the (patient) behaviour of the police, remember how disgusted you are today with the thugs and their hard-left apologists.

Remember, these are the same ass-holes who are likely to tell you that the tea-partiers are violent.

**Gratuitous violence -- It's a left thing. You wouldn't understand.**

A Primer on Protesting

Lessons from Toronto and Muskoka, June 2010 edition.

This is good --

Huntsville (Globe and Mail)

This is bad --

Toronto (Toronto Star)

That is all. Class dismissed.

The Face of 'Peaceful' Activism

Live blogging of G-20 protests (cum riot) at the Toronto Star's site. Who exactly did not see this coming? Especially given that whenever activists -- be they Anarchists, Trotskyists, Eco-Marxixts, One-Worlders, Anti-Poverty agitators, Post-Colonial Jihadists, etc. -- were interviewed (for print or radio), they almost invariably refused to disavow violence as a tactic. Not to tarnish all of these idiots with the same brush, there were a couple of notable exceptions. But still, the live blogging at the Star, and the live coverage on CFRB radio is now revealing a story that most Torontonians feared but fully expected.

From the Star's live blog:

4:03 p.m. Smoke fills financial district

The police car set on fire is slowly exploding now; it is popping every now and then. The mob was trapped on the west, south and north, so everyone ran east away from the car. Smoke is whipping through the financial district.

One woman with a megaphone yelled: ”Violence is not the answer.” The mob is yelled obscenities at her. “They’re no better than the G20,” she retorts.

4:01 p.m. Police wall off intersection

 Police have walled off King and Yonge. The cops are moving up Yonge. Medics are running around, screaming “Is anyone hurt?”

3:57 p.m.

I hear people say we're headed to Dundas Square. Everyone walking north on Yonge St; the goal of reaching the fence has been abandoned, seemingly.

And then there's this revealing description, a little later on:

3:30 p.m. When it turned violent

Groups were still crowded at the intersection of Spadina Ave. near Queen St. W. when protesters began smashing a police vehicle, with an officer inside. Officers scared the protesters away with batons and managed to get the officer out. The protesters continued to smash the vehicle before heading east.

No specific group targeted the police cruiser. Protesters wearing black have broken a Nike business window, and other business windows. There was a discussion and the protesters are now going back to Spadina, most clad in black in gas masks.

Protesters are breaking windows, destroying commercial business windows. They are chanting "against police, against prison." They are refusing photos by media. Nike store window was destroyed. Foot Locker was also targeted.

Protesters are also dragging mailboxes into the streets to block them. It is beginning to get unruly.

The black-clad protesters are leaving independent shops alone. They hit Subway hard, throwing pieces of cement and reusing them again. CIBC was just smashed. Others are tagging walls and moving on. People are blocking cameras’ lenses.

There is a man with a hammer, he is taking out windows.

"Protesters wearing black" and "black-clad protesters" -- where have I heard that before?

Oh, yes. Most recently from Jonathan Kay in the National Post. When revisiting the events of the Summit of the Americas, held in Quebec City in 2001. Kay recalls:

Many of the legitimate protesters I interviewed insisted that the Black Bloc was a violent fringe with its own militant agenda. And there was truth to that: As the weekend conference unfolded, I saw that it was the same few dozen black-clad protesters who were throwing bricks at police and generally acting like criminals. But it was also true that the rest of the protesters often acted as the Black Bloc’s cheering section.

Chris Boutet is also live-blogging for the National Post here.

While police have shown considerable restraint, by all accounts, there will invariably be questions in the coming days about whether the police could have prevented any of the damage and mayhem. And there will be questions about arrests that were made (in pre-dawn raids), and arrests that may not have been made during the rioting and vandalism.

As we go through the post-mortem of the G-20, let's spare a few words of contempt and ire for the militant 'black bloc' wannabes, the radical revolutionary poseurs, and their assorted throng of 'cheerleaders' from some of the 'peaceful protest groups'.

*Update* There are now reports (as of about 5:00 pm) that tear gas has been used for the first time in Toronto's history. At this moment it's still unconfirmed.

"Revenge Is Like Cold Cuts"

An Ontario judge has ruled out the 'Soprano gambit' in family law.

Justice Ellen Macdonald decided against a Toronto woman who sought to have her husband's choice of counsel removed because she had a brief conservation with the lawyer months earlier, ruling that if such a minimal amount of contact were sufficient to declare a conflict, then a divorcing spouse could pre-emptively handicap their wife or husband simply by talking to the best lawyers in town.

In fact, the strategy was employed on the television show The Sopranos, when Tony Soprano wanted to restrict the choice of lawyers his wife might hire. The fictional mob boss, on the advice of his lawyer, called some of the most feared divorce attorneys in New Jersey in order to have them disqualified from acting for his wife.

Bada Bing.

Global Warming -- "An Ecological Pie in the Face"

According to renowned East Anglia Climatologist Emmett K. Bozo (pictured above).

See Iowahawk, "The Miming is Settled," for the details.

Oh, and just to be clear ...



... self-immolation raises your carbon footprint significantly. We are a carbon-based life-form, you moron. Seemed like a good idea at the time, right? I weep for this generation of idiot activist youth -- every bit as dumb as every other generation of idiot activist youth.

"The Supreme Court This Week Effectively Made the Jewish Religion Illegal"

In the Telegraph (U.K.), Charles Moore comments on the implications for religious freedom in the face of a daunting Human-Rights-addled legal orthodoxy. The case in question -- whether an orthodox Jewish school may exercise its discretion in determining, based on ancient Jewish law and custom, who does or does not qualify for admission.

Actually, it goes wider than that. The court is effectively saying that a religion's way of defining its own membership, practised over 3,500 years, is illegal. This is an acute problem for Jews, who are at great pains to maintain their own rules while respecting the law of the land. It will also be used by anti-Jewish groups, which are growing in strength, to bolster their argument that Judaism is racist and that the state of Israel is the equivalent of apartheid South Africa. So the Race Relations Act, set up to help minorities, ends up punishing them.

I would argue that the judgment goes wider still. It is part of a current idea of equality and of human rights which, in the name of freedom, is beginning to look like tyranny.

The whole article: Charles Moore, "Our human rights culture has now become a tyranny," Telegraph (U.K.), 18 December 2009.

*Related*

Christian Horizons, anyone?

'Abusive Dad of the Year' on Trial in Sweden for Holding Children Prisoner, And Denying Them an Education

A 58-year-old father of four is currently standing trial in Uppsala, Sweden, for imprisoning his wife and children, and subjecting them to a sustained regimen of abuse. The children in question are now between 16 and 22 years of age. The children claim that not only were they denied an education, but between September 2003 and March 2004 they were not even allowed to leave the family apartment. The denial of education is corroborated by local school authorities who are now questioning how the children's involuntary truancy went undetected for so long.

Despite the fact that the children are born in Sweden, two of them needed interpreters in court. They testified about abuse, fear and never having attended school.

The father warned of the dangers of Swedish society, telling his children they would be raped and lobotomized and that all Swedes were racists.

So the father, a native of Iran, chose to raise his family in Sweden, so long as his family had nothing whatsoever to do with Swedish society. To say the least, it begs the question -- then why live in Sweden?

The only encouraging thing about this story, is that the action against the abusive father appears to have been brought by the children themselves. They undoubtedly feel cheated, abused, deceived, and deprived of opportunities.

Three of the children have sought compensation totaling 148,000 kronor ($20,000) for deprivation of liberty (frihetsberövande), including missing out on their education.

If there's any justice, the court should multiply their compensation by a factor of ten.

Saudi Family Suing a Genie for Harassment

The shariah court is taking this seriously.

Via CNN

A family in Saudi Arabia has taken a genie to court, alleging theft and harassment, according to local media.

The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.

An investigation was under way, local court officials said.

"We have to verify the truthfulness of this case despite the difficulty of doing so," Sheikh Amr Al Salmi, the head of the court, told Al-Watan. "What makes this case and complaint more interesting is that it wasn't filed by just one person. Every member of the family is part of this case."

But, then again, the Supreme Court of British Columbia declined to throw out a suit by a man who alleged that the RCMP was reading his mind.

Is It "Culture Shock" When Saudi Students "Behave Badly"?

In February 2009, a female exchange student from Japan was attacked in the women's washroom of the international student residence run by the YMCA on South Park St. in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She struggled, fought back and managed to break free of her attacker. Her screams alerted other residents and staff, who restrained her attacker until police arrived. Her attacker was 19 year old Khaled Al-Hardbi, who was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court on charges of "assault, forcible confinement and wearing a disguise."

This past week, he was found "not criminally responsible" for the attack. As CBC News reports: "On Wednesday, Halifax provincial court Judge Jamie Campbell found that Alhardbi is seriously mentally ill, and sent him to the East Coast Forensic Hospital for a 45-day psychiatric assessment."

Al-Hardbi is a Visa student from Saudi Arabia, although this detail was conspicuously missing from the Metro News Halifax report in February. Not so for the reporting of this story in the English-language Arab media out of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In fact, for The Arab News ("Coping With Culture Shock") this detail is not simply incidental, but rather germane to their story. Notwithstanding the recent determination in a Halifax Court that Mr. Al-Hardbi suffers from undisclosed psychiatric problems, Arab News reporter Laura Bashraheel muses about another troubling thematic pattern that she says the Kingdom finds "embarrassing". While her story begins with Khaled Al-Hardbi, it doesn't end there.

Another recent case in Bournemouth, UK, involves a 23-year old Saudi student who has been "found guilty of public intoxication, stripping naked and chasing a 36-year-old woman through the streets." He was sentenced to 24 weeks in jail.

Bashraheel is quick to point out that "criminal bad behaviour" is confined to a small minority of "bad apples" among the roughly 600,000 Saudi students who study abroad on generous government scholarships -- costing the Kingdom half a million riyals (about $1.3 million U.S.) per student. So it merits pointing out, by way of boilerplate, that not all male Saudi visa students behave inappropriately (or even criminally) toward women while studying in western countries. That said, it has become an issue of concern for Saudi authorities. Most Saudi visa students, according to Bashraheel's article, study in the United States, the UK, and Canada.

Bashraheel notes that when Saudi students get into trouble with the law abroad, there seems to be an almost predictable pattern of offense.

Most reported cases of Saudi students behaving badly abroad involve men who abuse alcohol or drugs and cross boundaries when relating to women. When it comes to women, they perceive the law (and the women) to be more lax in these countries than they are in Saudi Arabia.

In large part, Bashraheel ascribes this behaviour to "culture shock," suggesting that some young Saudi men are unprepared to cope with the more liberal social mores in Western countries, and mistakenly assume that anything goes. They would be wrong.

While some students receive orientation classes prior to leaving on "how Saudis should behave abroad," and some instruction on western customs and mores, these classes appear not to be universal nor required. In some cases, Saudi embassies in host countries may endeavour to provide a bit of orientation upon the students' arrival. Still, for young men who have had little exposure to outside cultures, who are unaccustomed to dealing with women in public, who are uncomfortable in the presence of women who don't 'cover up', and who are unfamiliar with western laws and customs, according to Bashraheel, the prospect of integrating can be daunting, and severe homesickness can easily set in. Or conversely, the newly-found 'freedom' can lead to all sorts of wild and eratic behaviour. (Take an ordinary North American frosh living away from home for the first time, and multiply it by a factor of 10.)

Of course, none of this excuses the bad behaviour, particularly as it relates to sexual crimes and assaults against women (unless, of course, a Court makes a finding of "not criminal responsible by reason of mental illness"). The Saudi Ministry of Higher Education advises students studying abroad that "while the government will provide legal counsel, students will be responsible for their conduct and will be liable for all legal expenses if they’re found guilty of committing crimes."

But as much as this rationalization of 'culture shock' attempts to explain, it also serves to evade. Missing in Bashraheel's report is any discussion of the attitudes toward women that are implicit in these sorts of bad and criminal behaviour, usually toward women. The 'culture shock' argument avoids any discussion of the real attitudes about women that may be fostered in Saudi society -- for instance, a predisposition to regard women as subordinate to men, in the service of men, for the pleasure of men. The sorts of behaviour described by Bashraheel seem to signal an astonishing misunderstanding of the autonomy and the self-sovereignty of women that has evolved in the West. Sexual assault for instance, being at its core a crime of violence, is rooted in a misplaced sense of male privilege, entitlement, contempt and misogyny. Sexual harassment (in public or private) is similarly rooted. While Saudi society, like western society, does not tacitly tolerate sexual offenses against women, the Shariah courts treat it very differently from secular courts in the West.

If these are cases of 'culture shock', then surely the shock for some of these offenders must be that their acts are actually considered serious criminal offenses, and that they (and not the women they assaulted) will ultimately be punished.

That must be a real shock. After all, that's not quite the way it works at home.

Burglary and Bile, or DNA and Dumb-Ass

(with half-hearted apologies to Jane Austen for the format convention of the title)

A thief in Sweden broke into an apartment. As he was going about his pillaging, he helped himself to some left-over pizza. When he was finished his snack, he chewed a piece of gum and returned to his casual larceny. Before leaving with his newly acquired booty, he deposited the masticated piece of gum in the empty pizza box.

Later, he broke into another flat. And as he was scavenging for more 'collectibles' he began to feel a lumpy, heavy discomfort in the pit of his stomach, shortly followed by gassy gurgling, followed thereafter by a sharp stomach pain. He began to sweat feverishly, then he felt dizzy and nauseous. (I'm embellishing a bit. But, anybody who has ever experienced food poisoning knows what I'm talking about.) This pizza he had consumed earlier was two weeks old.

He succumbed to vomiting. Right there. In the flat he was burglarising. Leaving a nice little token of his visit for the rightful occupants. And leaving an important clue for the police.

It's crime lab time!!! Linking the DNA from the masticated piece of gum at the first address, with the DNA from the large puddle of bile at the second, police were able to link the 'vomit voleur' to both home invasions.

CSI Sweden. Who knew?

You just can't make up stuff like this.

Can the RCMP Read Minds? C'mon.

From CanWest News Service:

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has refused to dismiss a B. C. man's lawsuit that claims RCMP officers read his mind.

[...]

RCMP Sgt. Dale Kjenhus had previously told the court that RCMP officers cannot read minds.

In his ruling, released Friday, Williams said he found Kjenhus's testimony "that he is unaware of the technique is not by any means proof positive that it is not used."

Surely, if RCMP officers in B.C. were clairvoyant, the tragic Robert Dziekanski tasering case never would have happened. I could imagine such a ruling on "admissibility" at the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT). But at the Supreme Court of British Columbia?

'Yemen' is an Anagram of 'Enemy'

From Arab News -- Yemenis rally for release of cleric jailed in US

US prosecutors charged Al-Moayad with providing money and weapons to Al-Qaeda and Hamas, and with recruiting new members for these groups.

A US court sentenced Al-Moayad in 2005 to 75 years in prison and Zayed to 45 years over alleged financial support to Al-Qaeda. The two men were incarcerated at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. “He (Al-Moayad) is an innocent prisoner, the judiciary of the country that has arrested him conspired against him has acquitted him, your duty is to exert your effort at your disposal,” Sheikh Abdulmajeed Al-Zendani said.

Protesters carried banners condemning the continued detention of the two men and demanded their repatriation to their country. “Obama! We need action, not just words,” read one placard. The rally was attended by leaders from the ruling and opposition parties.

Oh, Mr. President. Appeasement merely begets more demands for appeasement. It will never be enough.

Yeah, I'm Convinced. No Threat to Society At All.

"If that is what it takes for the judge to know my son is not a threat to society, then it's a good thing." So says Veronica Henwood, after learning that her son is going to undergo court-ordered psychiatric testing.

After all, Ms. Henwood's son is actually a good boy. Yes, indeed. No threat to society at all. His own defense counsel even said that his behaviour in pre-trial custody "has been exemplary" and he's really, really sorry.

Tyrel Kurt Henwood, 22, has "pleaded guilty to beating an 18-year-old sex-trade worker with a field-hockey stick and living on the proceeds of a 14-year-old's prostitution" just like all good boys who are not a threat to society.

And it could have been worse for the young Mr. Henwood, soon to be nominated for citizen of the year. No doubt his vocation as a pimp will merit a sizeable government grant to boot. After all, Tyrell Kurt Henwood was only "initially charged with luring a teenage girl into prostitution, Internet luring, human trafficking and more in connection with the 14-year-old, who previously lived with her mother in a city on the mainland."

So, when this issue was voted upon a year ago in parliament, who was it again who opposed raising the age of consent from 14 to 16?

'Dine and Dash' Euro-style

A German couple 'ditched' three kids in an Italian restaurant.

A German couple abandoned three young children in Italy because they had run out of money, a police official said Friday, adding that the mother had been charged.

[...]

Caterina Remhof, 26, and Sascha Schmidt, 24, who is not the father of the children, walked out of a restaurant in the northern town of Aosta on Sunday after ordering a pizza for the children.

Oh, it gets better. Don't get too weepy about the financial struggles of this poor young couple trying desperately to raise three young kids in these tough economic times. They weren't just vacationing when they ran out of cash. Schmidt was "on the lamb" from German authorities for parole violation, and his girlfriend Remhof was apparently aiding and abetting his evasion of justice willingly.

P.S. Seeing as Schmidt is not the father (as Maury Povich would say) of Remhof's children, this of course begs the question -- where is their father? Will their real father step up and sue for custody? And will German courts ever actually grant the real father custody? Or, will social services (who now have the children) work to reunite them with their obviously loving, responsible and stable mother. The youngest of the children is eight months old.

"Misunderstanding" -- Is That What We're Calling Honour Killings Now?

Sri Lankan strangles wife to death over ‘misunderstanding’

KUWAIT CITY : A Sri Lankan national in his 30s strangled his wife to death in a building under construction in Abdullah Mubarak area on Thursday.

A guard of the building discovered the crime and alerted the Operations Room of the Interior Ministry.

Security officers arrived at the scene and referred the corpse to the forensics for autopsy.

Meanwhile, the police managed to arrest the suspect who admitted to committing the crime. He also said they had a misunderstanding when he lured the victim to the place and strangled her until she died. (Arab Times)

Of course, the fact that the (dis)honour killer in this instance is a foreign national (and likely an itinerant worker), it is highly unlikely that the courts will go easy on him.