How do you find the rapist, guilty or not-guilty?

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Putting the Term "Rape" on Trial
Words are powerful. In court, they can make or break a case. But just how far should the judicial system go to control them? That's the question central to one case in Lincoln, Nebraska, where a sexual assault trial has morphed into a federal case over the First Amendment rights of witnesses and, more broadly, the language surrounding rape...

Judge Jeffre Cheuvront banned the words rape, victim and assailant from the trial — including from (the alleged victim's) testimony — arguing that such words would be "unfairly inflammatory, prejudicial, and misleading." The ban was later expanded to include the terms "sexual assault kit" and "sexual assault nurse.

Via Amy Aklon



Warning!

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...reading just one online article in The Daily Mail may lead to extreme rage and acts of violence against your computer screen.


Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%

 Think for a moment just how that claim could possibly be justified. The research required. The evidence needed. The number of psychotics who just happened to smoke a single joint earlier in their life. This is rubbish. Complete and utter tosh. But, of course, it will be eargerly welcomed by our miserablist, son-of-the-Manse Prime Minister to justify his 'gut feelings':

The Prime Minister is said to have a 'personal instinct' that the change (in cannabis classification) should be reversed, with more arrests and stiffer penalties for users.

So there we have it. What a wonderful decision making process!

Crap science coupled with Gordon Brown's bowels.

AKA: Shit in, shit out.
 

56 days?

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Haneef terrorism charges dropped
The Australian authorities have dropped terror charges against an Indian-born doctor over the failed car bomb attacks in the UK. Mohamed Haneef had been accused of giving "reckless support" to terrorism by providing a relative in Britain with his mobile phone SIM card. Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg said, following a review of the case, that "a mistake has been made".



Acts of exclusion

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The ivory tower behind the Apartheid Wall
If a boycott of academic institutions is considered unfair, what does one call the methodical destruction of an educational system? If Patry warns about potential "acts of exclusion" against Israeli academics, isn't he concerned that right now, as we speak, all but a handful of Palestinian students are excluded from Israeli institutions and that even within Palestine, the Israelis exclude Palestinian students from their own universities by refusing to issue them the necessary travel permits? Might he see the deportation and nineteen-year exile of his colleague, Birzeit University president Hanna Nasir, as an "act of exclusion"?

My own university principal, Karen Hitchcock, is committed to "defend the freedom of individuals to study, teach and carry out research without fear of harassment, intimidation, or discrimination." Do these "individuals" include Palestinians, one wonders? If so, is she prepared to address the erection of checkpoints outside of universities, such as the one outside of Birzeit that resulted in a 20-40 percent reduction in class attendance in 2001 according to Human Rights Watch? The philosopher and critic Judith Butler argues, "If the exercise of academic freedom ceases or is actively thwarted, that freedom is lost, which is why checkpoints are and should be an issue for anyone who defends a notion of academic freedom."

Margaret Aziza Pappano, Associate Professor of English at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

Read the whole article




Wank story: No blanket coverage

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Prisoner found guilty of masturbating in his cell
It is a verdict likely to cause great consternation to lonely prisoners throughout the US penal system. A prisoner in Florida has been found guilty of indecent exposure for masturbating alone in his cell. Terry Lee Alexander, 20, of Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, was sentenced to a further 60 days in jail on top of the 10-year term he is currently serving for armed robbery, the Miami Herald reported yesterday. He was prosecuted after a female sheriff's office deputy witnessed him performing the sex act in his cell in Broward County, Florida, last November.

Get that cat out of here!

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US cat 'predicts patient deaths'
A US cat that is reportedly able to sense when a nursing home's residents are about to die is baffling doctors. Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.

According to the author of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the two-year-old cat has been observed to be correct in 25 cases so far. Staff now alert the families of residents when he sits down next to their ailing loved one.



Permanent marker

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If the U.S. is ultimately leaving Iraq, why is the military building 'permanent' bases?
The supplemental funding bill for the war in Iraq signed by President Bush in early May 2005 provides money for the construction of bases for U.S. forces that are described as "in some very limited cases, permanent facilities."

Several recent press reports have suggested the U.S. is planning up to 14 permanent bases in Iraq— a country that is only twice the size of the state of Idaho.

Why is the U.S. building permanent bases in Iraq?



Via Informed Consent


Sexual Cleansing is not a song by Marvin Gaye

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Direland: New Iraqi Gay Murders Confirmed
A new wave of assassinations of Iraqi gays - part of the organized campaign of "sexual cleansing" of homosexuals that has been one of the saddest byproducts of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq - has been confirmed by Iraqi LGBT, the all-volunteer, London-based group of gay Iraqi exiles that has been documenting the grim work of the Islamist anti-gay death squads in Iraq.



Gimme, gimme, gimme!

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There’s No Limit To Internet Speed
She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg’s 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said. “In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer — many thousand times faster than most residential connection