| |
|
31. mai 2006
|
|
In Brazil, a particularly gullible jury acquitted a woman of murder after the defense presented an original piece of "evidence": two letters from a spirit medium who alleged it was received from the murder victim!
Two letters said to be dictated by a ghost helped acquit a woman of murder in Brazil.
The letters, written by a medium who claimed they were from the victim, were used as evidence in a murder trial in Viamao.
The medium claimed the spirit had revealed that the woman accused of his murder was innocent.
A jury declared Iara Marques Barcelos, 63 not guilty of the killing Ercy da Silva Cardoso.
Strangely, the prosecution had not objected to the letters being introduced in court.
11:55:29 PM 
|
|
Greenpeace caught by their own PR blunder:
Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.
"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.
But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.
We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."
Just hilarious, and it couldn't have happened to a better bunch of eco-nuts.
Via Jonathan Adler.
8:29:11 PM
|
|
An email filter stopped a legal complaint because it contained the word "erection".
Commercial lawyer Ray Kennedy, from Middleton, Gtr Manchester, wrote three e-mails to Rochdale Council complaining about a planning matter.
But two messages, with the word "erection", were blocked as offensive and the third was too late.
The council said it would be apologising to Mr Kennedy.
The word "erection", of course, was used in the context of building an extension.
Unfortunately, the apology was swallowed by Mr Kennedy's email filter, because it contained the offensive term "city council."
8:23:26 PM
|
|
Swedish police has shut down The Pirate Bay:
Police have closed down The Pirate Bay, a Sweden-based file sharing site and one of the most popular websites of its kind in the world.
Three people were taken in for questioning after police raids in Sweden on Wednesday. The trio, ages 22, 24 and 28, are suspected of violating property rights legislation, police spokesman Ulf Göranzon said.
Servers connected to the site have been impounded and the site was down on Wednesday afternoon, although the operators of The Pirate Bay have set up a temporary website to provide updates on the situation.
Some fifty policemen and women were involved in raids on ten homes and offices in Sweden.
The three men taken in by police were still being questioned on Wednesday afternoon. They all have links to The Pirate Bay. Prosecutors will decide whether to detain the men after they have been questioned.
It is more than unclear, however, that the Pirate Bay, which contains no illegal software but only links to bittorrent trackers, has violated any Swedish law. The site has operated for years now, to massive popularity, and no law has changed. Many interprete this as scare tactics and harassment, but we'll see if the prosecutors come up with some creative legal angle.
The Pirate Bay is down as of now, obviously, but the "pirates" threaten to set sail and put it up elsewhere if necessary.
8:14:24 PM
|
|
British teacher's union start Israel boycott.
Britain's largest lecturers' union yesterday voted in favour of a boycott of Israeli lecturers and academic institutions who do not publicly dissociate themselves from Israel's "apartheid policies".
Delegates at the annual conference of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (Natfhe) in Blackpool narrowly backed the proposal, despite mounting international pressure from those opposed to a boycott, including a petition from more than 5,000 academics and a plea from the Israeli government. The decision was greeted with disappointment and anger by anti-boycott campaigners last night, but Palestinian groups issued declarations of support.
Presented on the final day of the Natfhe conference, the motion criticised "Israeli apartheid policies, including construction of the exclusion wall, and discriminatory educational practices" and invited members to "consider the appropriateness of a boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies".
It's no surprise the teaching unions are dominated not only by militant leftists, but extreme anti-Semites as well. Last year, the British Teacher's Union (BTU) decided to boycott two Israeli universities. A driving force behind that was the lecturer Sue Blackwell, who had links to Neo-Nazi sites on her personal web pages.
Update: In my comments, Raging Bee links to an excellent posting by Cathy Young on this proposed boycott:
Are these boycotts anti-Semitic? Maybe not, but, as I noted the other day, they are hypocritical, sanctimonious, and deeply wrong. No one is demanding a boycott of Russian academics over Russia's occupation of Chechnya and the atrocities committed there (which dwarf, to put it mildly, Israel's human rights abuses in the occupied territories). Or, as Ari Paul points out in an article at Reason.com, a boycott of Chinese academics because of the occupation of Tibet and other assorted abuses by the Chinese regime. Or ... sadly, the list could go on and on.
I totally agree, except I'm not so sure about the "maybe not."
1:34:26 AM
|
|
Sick publicity stunt in Holland:
Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage.
The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party said on its Web site it would be officially registered Wednesday, proclaiming: "We are going to shake The Hague awake!"
The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.
"A ban just makes children curious," Ad van den Berg, one of the party's founders, told the Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper.
"We want to make pedophilia the subject of discussion," he said, adding the subject had been a taboo since the 1996 Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighboring Belgium.
It's not taboo; the newspapers are full of articles about it. It's just wrong, evil and sick.
1:24:40 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.06.2006; 07:19:44.
|
|
|
