Monthly Archives: November 2005

The sleep defense to sexual assault

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I knew this sort of thing happened but this is the first time I have heard it used as a defense in a sexual assault case:

TORONTO – In an unusual case Tuesday in a Toronto courtroom, a 33-year-old man was acquitted of sexual assault after a judge ruled he was asleep during the attack, the Toronto Sun reported Wednesday.

“This is indeed a rare case,” said Justice Russell Otter, as the woman who Jan Luedecke had sex with shook, sobbed and then left the courtroom.

“His conduct was not voluntary.”

…

Luedecke, a landscaper, met the woman at a party on July 6, 2003. Both had been drinking.

The woman had fallen asleep on a couch. She woke up to find him having sex with her. She pushed him off, then contacted the police.

Luedecke said he fell asleep on the same couch and woke up when he was thrown to the floor.

He only suspected he had had sex after using the bathroom and discovering he was wearing a condom, court heard. He confessed to police.

During his trial, sleep expert Dr. Colin Shapiro testified Luedecke had parasomnia – a disorder with symptoms such as sleep-walking. Shapiro testified Luedecke suffered from sexsomnia, which is sexual behavior during sleep.

It was brought on by alcohol, sleep deprivation and genetics, Shapiro said.

Luedecke previously had sex while asleep with four girlfriends, court heard.

News of the successful defence of sexsomnia may spread to others accused of sexual assault, said University of Toronto law professor Hamish Stewart.

“We may hear more forms of this defence from accused persons,” he said, adding he has never previously heard of such a case.

Luedecke has cut down on his drinking and is taking medication to stop a repeat of the incident, court heard.

It sounds to me like the correct decision was reached but the woman says she has the means and the intent to appeal the decision.  I would like to suggest she stop falling asleep in drunk stupors at parties and get on with her life.

Posted in Sex

Anti-gun makes you anti-woman as well

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It’s a little bit subtle but once you think about it and look at the numbers it’s hard to come up with any other conclusion.  Howard Nemerov didn’t spell it out quite like my posting title but that is what jumped out of his posting at me.  If you are for the restriction of self defense tools that compensate for the physical advantage men, on the average, have over women then the unintended consequence is that you increase the violence against women.  I found these numbers particularily disturbing: 

Rape Rate Trends 1995–2003 (per 100,000 pop.)

 

1995

2003

% Change

Australia

72.5

91.7

+26.5

United Kingdom

43.3

69.2

+59.8

United States

37.1

32.1

-13.5

In the time period under consideration above Australia and the UK both implemented extremely repressive firearm laws.  The U.S. made it easier for people to carry the tools necessary to defend yourself from violent attacks.

His final word is a little over the top, but it’s a thought that certainly comes to mind:

Is “Burka-ed and pregnant” next on the gun-ban agenda?

It’s sad when they are delusional

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One of the peace activists recently kidnapped by the Islamic extremists was written about in tomorrows Washingon Post.  It’s so sad to read the words he wrote before going to Iraq and what his friends here are saying now:

As Tom Fox headed toward the end of his first week in captivity in Iraq, friends said the 54-year-old musician and peace activist was well aware of the dangers he faced in the war-ravaged country.

He was so realistic, in fact, that he devised a written plan he distributed to friends and co-workers that they should follow if he were taken hostage. Don’t pay ransom for his return, he wrote in an October 2004 e-mail, and reject the use of violence in trying to win his freedom. Don’t “vilify” the abductors, he said, but instead “try to understand the motives of their actions.”

…

“We are very worried about our four friends,” Christian Peacemaker Teams said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. “We fear that whoever is holding them has made a mistake. [They] are four men who came to Iraq to work for peace and explain their opposition to the occupation. They are not spies.”

…

At the service in McLean, where Fox’s e-mail from 2004 was read aloud, his friends reminisced about his ideals. One woman said that just before Fox left for Iraq, he told her, “Too many are willing to die for war and too few are willing to die for peace.”

“Try to understand the motives of their actions”?  The motives are, “You are not Muslim or you are not the right flavor of Muslim.  You must convert or die.”  “Explaining your opposition to the occupation” isn’t going to yield the desired results.

And who has ever said they were willing to die for war?  I’ve heard or read about people willing to die for country, freedom, honor, family, way of life, and a lot of other things but I’ve never heard it said they were willing to die for war. 

These people are living in an alternate reality.  It’s sad their introduction to reality will likely be in the form of a box full of sand covered body parts.  Don’t expect it will convert many of them.  They are prime canditates for When Prophecy Fails mention.

Boomershoot 2006 is filling up

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The online entry has been a big hit.  Some women have purchased gift entries for their husbands and numerous other entries have resulted in a big rush.  I have a total of 19 slots filled now.  In 2003 that many positions weren’t taken until February 7th.  In 2002 it wasn’t until February 28th.  Get your entries in soon unless you just want to be just be a spectator.

Unless you sent a snail mail in the last week everyone should have received their confirmation email by now.  If not let me know.  I was really slow in getting some of the confirmations out and there’s a remote possibility I lost one or two.

Xenia’s gone to Southern Idaho

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State drama competition is in the state of Southern Idaho and that’s where Xenia is going to be for a couple days.  It snowed last night (see her pictures of it here) and that made the roads very slick.  Barb and I are somewhat worried about all the road travel but it’s really important to her and it’s not very often that kids on a school trip are injured–the drivers know they have an extra responsibility and have commericial drivers licenses.

I talked to her a little bit ago.  “Good luck!”, I said.  Then I remember that was wrong and followed up with, “And break a leg!”

Quote of the day–National Strategy for Victory in Iraq

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The terrorists have identified Iraq as central to their global aspirations. For that reason, terrorists and extremists from all parts of the Middle East and North Africa have found their way to Iraq and made common cause with indigenous religious extremists and former members of Saddam’s regime. This group cannot be won over and must be defeated — killed or captured — through sustained counterterrorism operations.

National Strategy for Victory in Iraq
From the Whitehouse

Kidnapped, beheading stats in Iraq

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I ran across these stats in a UK newspaper:

  • Insurgents in Iraq have kidnapped more than 200 foreigners since the invasion in 2003
  • Of these, 52 are known to have been killed by their captors — 41 in 2004 and 11 in 2005
  • Of those killed, three were American and two were British
  • Margaret Hassan, an aid worker, was kidnapped on her way to work in October 2004 and is believed to have been shot. Kenneth Bigley was beheaded after being kidnapped in September, 2004
  • Approximately 55 foreign nationals are currently being held hostage in Iraq

With stats like that it’s amazing to me there are leftist “peace activists” that complain about U.S. soldiers putting a “holy book” on top of a toilet.  I’m with Clayton on this–the left is completely “losing it”.

You would think the “religion of peace” and peace activists would get along well.  But currently the extremists for the “religion of peace” are holding some Western peace activists with a sword hanging over their heads:

AN ELDERLY British man and three other Western peace activists kidnapped in Baghdad appeared last night in a video released by an unknown insurgent group that labelled them “spies of occupying forces”.

…

Friends of Mr Kember dismissed the spy claim as outrageous. “He would never ever dream of doing anything like spying,” Bruce Kent, the veteran peace campaigner, told the BBC. “The last thing he would do would be working for the British Government.”

…

Mr Kember’s family released a statement yesterday saying that he had gone to Iraq “for a short time to join a peace group that’s talking and listening to people of all persuasions, believing that dialogue not confrontation should help to bring about conciliation. He feels very strongly that the occupation in Iraq is a mistake.”

These naive fools need to read a little bit of what Osama bin Laden has to say about things.  He is very clear on things–convert, submit, or die.  Think about it.

Retirement income

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I would have never have guessed.  Perhaps it’s only true in Australia:

Some rural sex workers, male and female, are aged over 70, a new study has found.

The study by the University of New England, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, interviewed 20 NSW rural sex workers.

It found the numbers of female and male sex workers in the state’s country areas had risen in the past 10 years.

While there had always been brothels in country areas, escort services had only taken off since the early 1990s, project leader Dr John Scott said.

And male escorts had only begun to appear in rural centres in the past five years, he said.

The study also found country sex workers were more educated and much older than those in the city.

The interviewees were mostly aged between 20 and 58, but there were a few – male and female – over 70, he said.

Posted in Sex

Kim du Toit’s new blog

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In case you hadn’t already heard Kim has a new blog up.  In his email he said, “I got sick of anonymity.”

The new blog promises to show another side of Kim–a Kim more presentable to corporate America.  I understand the sentiment.  I have had my own problems with that.

Quote of the day–Hermann Goering

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Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis- German National Socialism.

Hermann Goering (1893-1946),
German Nazi leader, air marshal.
Speech, 9 April 1933, Sports Palast, Berlin.
[“Progressives” and “Liberals” should never be allowed to forget the roots they share with the Nazis.– Joe]

D.C. or Iraq?

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Where would you be less likely to be killed?  As a resident of Washington D.C.?  Or an american serviceman in Iraq?  Don Kates has the answer:

Drastically increasing homicide led Washington, D.C., to ban handguns in the 1970s. So useless was this that D.C. soon had (and continues to have) the nation’s highest murder rates. Today, its residents have a 25 percent higher chance of being murdered than American troops in Iraq have of dying from enemy action.

Lots of other great stuff in the article too.  This, from the same article, is basically my Just One Question posting:

In a study published last December, the National Academy of Sciences, having reviewed 43 government publications, 253 journal articles, 99 books, and its own research, could not identify even one example of gun control that reduced murder or violent crime.

Update: It’s been pointed out to me the article quoted has been updated.  The information was wrong.  Apparently monthly casualty rates in Iraq were being compared to yearly rates in D.C.  Sorry about that.

Gun control glamor

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Stunning photo:

And high praise:

Still on guard

Gun-control advocate keeps up the fight 16 years after Montreal massacre

TORONTO — Wendy Cukier didn’t stand by and weep for the 14 young women who were murdered by a lone gunman on Dec. 6, 1989, in Montreal.

Instead, she formulated a plan to eradicate the use of illegal firearms, and has been working tirelessly towards that goal ever since.

The Ryerson professor, and founder and president of the Coalition for Gun Control, was lauded for her initiative 14 years ago when she was one of 10 winners at the Sun Media’s annual Women on the Move celebration in Toronto.

Today, Cukier is still a prof at Ryerson, as well as an associate dean of its business school, which is the largest business undergraduate school in Canada.

And she’s still involved in gun-control issues.

Cukier, mother to a 17-year-old daughter, says there’s still a lot of work to do in light of all the gunplay Toronto is witnessing.

“It’s important to continue the fight and ensure gun legislations that have been implemented are properly enforced, and not watered down,” says Cukier.

“It’s clear you can strengthen the laws in your own country, but if you are next to a country with as many guns as people and no effective gun control, you remain vulnerable,” she adds.

Currently, the dynamic activist is doing a lot of work at the United Nations level trying to establish international standards.

“Canada is often recognized as a model for other countries – they think we’ve done a good job. Amnesty International recognizes Canada’s gun laws as a model for preventing violence against women with guns,” says Cukier.

And even though there has been an increase in homicides by guns in Toronto this year, the death and injury rate by guns in Canada is at the lowest it’s ever been.

“Gang-related murders are definitely a problem and shows there is more work to do. Yet murders of women with guns is down 75%,” she adds.

“The big thing is, even though it’s been 16 years since the Montreal massacre, we’re still having to fight very hard to preserve the gains we’ve won,” says the author of The Global Gun Epidemic: From Saturday Night Specials to AK-47s.

“The gun lobby is fighting every step of the way and my message is for people … to speak out. Victims of violence and police officers are trying to get the attention of our politicians, but if the public doesn’t get engaged in the solution, then they become part of the problem.”

No mention of what really is important–the overall death and injury rate in Canada since they implement their “model” gun control.  Further questions include “How many people were injured or killed because they didn’t have the appropriate tool to defend themselves?”  And “Would the nearly two billion dollars spent on the failed gun registry have been better spent on more police officers, equipment, and prisons?”

And finally, “Has this paper ever given a pro-freedom advocate high praise similar to what they give this anti-freedom advocate?”

Quote of the day–Niccol Machiavelli

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The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms . . . you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.

Niccol Machiavelli
(1469-1527)
Italian political philosopher and statesman
The Prince, ch. 12 (1514)

Quote of the day–Paul Peake

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The problem is that private firearms ownership in Australia has fallen victim to a narrow, authoritarian mentality which substitutes the lowest common denominator, irrational fear, for sensible debate. The fundamental freedom to protect one’s life and property has been replaced by a policy which ignores the fact that no matter how well resourced a police service may be it cannot prevent violent home invasions. Ultimately, individuals must be given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own safety.

Paul Peake
Self Defence (November 1998)
From http://www.ssaa.org.au/ilanov98.html (as of December 1, 1998)