Osama bin Laden

So apparently he's dead. I'd heard from unverified sources that he'd died years ago, and I do find it a little suspicious that his body was simply dumped into the ocean without, it would seem, an autopsy, etc.. Of course, they claim to have DNA evidence, but where's the proof that they have it? It also seems just a little too convenient given that Obama's popularity had significantly fallen and now this happens shortly before the next US election, and predictably everyone's an Obama fan now.


But whatever. We'll leave all that aside. It may be coincidence after all; he really could have been killed recently. I don't know for certain, so let's go with it. And this brings me to people's responses, mostly Christians, remember.

I can't help but cry

I love The Curvature and visit it often. There hasn't been an update in a while and the last post is on the De Anza rape case, an open letter in empathy to the victim since she lost the civil suit too. I had already read it, but couldn't help myself from reading it again. Maybe because the complete lack of justice in this case hurts and I'm still trying to process it, I don't know. But I decided to read Cara's earliest post on this. It's full of rage and understandably so, but coherent nonetheless. I also read the one following it. Cara's been at this case for a while, so I imagine she's still pretty upset by this.

Remember: if the witnesses to a rape aren't male, then they are inadmissible

Came across this on the curvature. Cara's words on it are well-thought out, as I always find her posts to be, so I don't have much more to add to it, other than the criminal case itself.

There are Islamist societies where, when it comes to rape, a man must have been a witness or it is inadmissible in court, meaning a man can rape a woman in the presence of other women and get away with it. But that's hardly anything unknown. All over the media we see Muslim=misogynist, regardless of the accuracy, etc. This, one would think, should be in contrast to the West, shouldn't it? Here in the West, if there's a witness to a crime, we take that witness seriously, regardless of gender, right? Except not.

"Rape By Deception" is that by the Israeli Court System

*Trigger warning for abuse of a rape victim by the court system

So I might be a little late on this, but I'm adding my two cents anyway. According to BBC News, it turns out that that whole rape by deception case in Israel is not as many of us had previously thought.

This was in fact a "real" rape charge where the girl in question had to be taken to the hospital, bleeding and bruised and half-naked. This girl had also been sexually abused by her father since the age of six, forced into sexual slavery, and had been living in a women's shelter when she met Sabbar Kashur. She had felt safe with him, and had hoped for a relationship, not sex. So where does the rape by deception part come in? A plea bargain.

Yeah. Rather than face full sentence, Kashur took the plea bargain sentence of eighteen months in prison on the charge of "rape by deception". Thus, the whole she-cried-rape-when-it-turned-out-he-wasn't-Jewish crap came not from her at all, but from the courts.