There is a child in the Ontario government's care who has changed homes 88 times. He or she is between 10 and 15 years old.
Former youth in care share their stories about their experiences with the CAS, group homes, and foster homes.
Yet they don't know what is being done to ensure the 88th move is the child's last. The local children's aid society is required to have a "plan of care" for each child. Whatever it is, it's clearly not working.
The case was noted in government-mandated surveys obtained by the Star. The reports show three other teens changing homes more than 60 times.
Getting more details on how many times children change homes while in care is a murky business. A child welfare commission appointed by the government noted in 2012 that Ontario's 46 children's aid societies don't agree on how to count or record such moves.
The commission looked at two groups of children who had spent at least 36 months in care. About 20 per cent of them changed homes more than three times. The Star obtained the commission's numbers through a freedom-of-information request.
The government, while expressing concern, has done little to ensure more stable environments for children who experience multiple moves once taken from their parents. And it has not publicized data that would flag the issue.
A Star investigation has found Ontario's most vulnerable children in the care of an unaccountable and non-transparent protection system. It keeps them in the shadows, far beyond what is needed to protect their identities.
"When people are invisible, bad things happen," says Irwin Elman, the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth.
Child protection through children's aid societies costs taxpayers almost $1.5 billion a year — a 300-per-cent increase since 1999.
CAS officials say responsibility for improving the lives of children in care can't be theirs alone. The children tend to come from homes where poverty, mental-health issues or substance abuse are part of the problem. They insist government needs to do a far better job of co-ordinating services like housing, health care, education and police.
"How do we get the community to understand these are their kids, not CAS kids?" asks Rav Bains, executive director of Peel Children's Aid, noting that the main reporting sources for suspected abuse are police and schools.
The failures are shrouded by a government that collects little standardized data on the experience of Ontario's 23,300 children and youth in care, and largely keeps what it has secret.
The evidence pried from the child-protection system by the Star indicates there are reasons for concern.
A significant number of children and youth in care repeatedly change foster homes, group homes and schools. Almost half aged 5 or more are on "psychotropic or behaviour-altering drugs." More than half end up dropping out of high school. And black or aboriginal children and youth are far more likely to be taken from their parents than white children, raising concerns about cultural bias and systemic racism.
It's not known how many end up in the juvenile justice system, but Wendy Thomson, co-chair of the 2012 child welfare commission, says it is a common occurrence.
James was placed in a Hamilton foster home when she was 13, then moved to a Brampton group home before ending up in a Toronto foster home. She changed high schools nine times during four years in care.
"When you go into care, they should tell you it's going to take 50 years to recover," adds James, 26, now working as an advocate for youth in care.
In a brief last month to a legislative committee, Elman noted a case uncovered by his office of a 10-year-old boy who was physically restrained 108 times by staff in a group home during a 13-month period. The high number of restraints "did not generate any concern at either the ministry level or the Children's Aid Society and appears to have gone unnoticed until it was brought to the attention of both by the Advocate's Office," Elman's brief says.
Elman was before the committee to insist that a proposed bill giving him limited powers to investigate children's aid societies doesn't go far enough.
Senior government officials say the welfare commission's recommendations are the focus of their efforts. The government has moved to make child protection more accountable. Children's aid societies must sign agreements to stay within budget and set goals for the quality of care they should deliver.
And $122 million has so far been spent on a centralized computer system, known as CPIN, to track what happens to children in care. Implementation is technically challenging and behind schedule. Only three children's aid societies have so far been patched into the central database.
The government also promises to set benchmarks that establish standards of care and assess the performance of children's aid societies. But there is no time frame for the full implementation of these or the database. They won't happen anytime soon.
"There could have been more provincial leadership decades ago," says Nico Trocmé, director of the Centre for Research on Children and Families at McGill University and an expert on Ontario's child-protection system.
Those in continued need of protection are made "Crown wards" after a court decision. In 2013-14, about 7,000 children and youth in Ontario were wards of the government and another 1,000 were on the path to joining them.
They're placed in foster homes, group homes or with relatives, and are monitored by children's aid societies, which are responsible for their care. The government remains their parent until they're adopted or turn 18. However, youth can decide to leave care at age 16.
The century-old child-protection system received a major overhaul in 2000. Until then, the Child and Family Services Act made supporting troubled families a priority and required a "substantial risk of harm" before children's aid societies could remove children from their homes.
Tragic examples of children dying while in contact with a CAS — including a case where a child-protection worker was charged with criminal negligence — triggered province-wide alarm in the late 1990s, fuelled by coroners' inquests and media stories.
Mike Harris's Tory government responded by lowering the level of risk needed for intervention. Children could be taken from their parents if a "pattern of neglect" was found, or if domestic violence caused a child emotional harm.
The notion of maltreatment by "omission" was introduced, including almost no food in the home, unchanged diapers, peeling lead-based paint and a lack of clothes for the season, according to a detailed analysis of the changes by two Toronto university professors, York's Karen Swift and Ryerson's Henry Parada. And the duty of teachers, police and members of the public to report suspected abuse or neglect was expanded.
Swift and Parada note the changes came after the Harris government slashed welfare payments and social service funding. The result was more financial hardship for poor families as thresholds for apprehending children were lowered.
Between 1998 and 2003, family investigations conducted by children's aid societies doubled, from about 64,000 to 130,000. The number of children in care spiked, and a funding formula based on volume did nothing to rein in the trend.
Cases of physical or sexual abuse account for fewer than 25 per cent of children and youth taken into care. Seventy per cent are apprehended because of violence between parents or neglect, which includes risk of physical harm due to a lack of supervision.
The reforms in 2000 also piled on government regulations. Children's aid societies must account for a long list of prescribed actions, such as response times. Some front-line workers complain that 70 per cent of their time is spent filling out forms.
Not much in those forms accounts for what happens to children.
"The reporting system is not a child-based reporting system," says Thomson, director of McGill's School of Social Work.
In the mid-2000s, the Liberal government introduced changes to strike a better balance between protecting children and preserving families.
Agencies can respond to cases differently, depending on risk levels to children and the needs of families. Where the risk of abuse is low, families should be spared a "forensic" grilling and helped to access supports and community services.
Research hasn't been conducted on the impact of this "differential response." What's clear is that children's aid societies continue to massively intervene.
Agencies in Ontario investigate at a rate of 54 children per 1,000. Fully 53 per cent of these investigations find no evidence of abuse or risk of maltreatment, according to the most recent Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, a report that samples CAS cases every five years.
Quebec, by comparison, investigates at a rate of 18 children per 1,000, and 29 per cent turn out to be unfounded.
Senior government officials, who gave the Star a "technical briefing" about reform plans, said the statistics raise questions — "Are we doing too many investigations? Are too many kids coming into care?" But they don't have the answers.
Also unanswered are the "unexplained variations of service levels" among children's aid societies discovered by the child welfare commission. Why does one CAS, for example, place a lot of children and youth in group homes when another avoids doing so as much as possible? Which is the best practice?
"We don't know whether we're doing more harm than good," he says.
"To use a health (care) analogy, if some physician thinks he's got a great idea and starts to inject a bunch of kids with some new drug that's never been tested, people would be up in arms no matter how good his intentions were. We're not very far from that in child welfare.
"For the last 50 years, when there has been a big shift toward more evidence-based practice in many other fields, the idea that we continue to know so little about the impact of these (child-care) interventions is, frankly, unethical," Trocmé adds.
Child-welfare work looks nothing like a science. Little is black and white when trying to balance child protection with keeping families together, particularly when poverty, mental health or substance abuse is usually part of the challenge. Often, front-line workers feel damned if they do and damned if they don't.
The many saved by children's aid societies tend to go unnoticed, as do those who do well while in care. Van was 12 when she called police, fearing violence between her parents would harm her two younger siblings. All three children were placed in a foster home.
Now 20, Van attends university and lives with her partner. She's helped financially by scholarships and a government program that supports youth transitioning out of care. She also became the legal guardian of her 13-year-old brother and 16-year-old sister — the first arrangement of its kind at Peel Children's Aid.
"I would never take back the decision that brought us into care," says Van, who preferred not to give her family name.
But what many would consider a minimum requirement for success eludes a large number of children and youth in care: 54 per cent do not graduate high school.
Part of the problem is that the government is a parent without formal expectations for its children. It has allowed children's aid societies to operate without benchmarks or standards that would judge their performance based on how children in their care are doing.
Are children expected to graduate high school? What extra help should be available when they don't function at age-appropriate grade levels? When do home moves become unacceptable? How many changes in case workers can occur before trust breaks and frustration overflows? Is safety compromised when a child is returned to biological parents only to bounce back into care? How much control should a child or youth have over his or her care?
Many societies collect their own "performance" data but publicly reveal little more than head counts. They each have their own way of collecting and recording it. The result is a statistical mess. The child welfare commission couldn't even figure out how many adhere to mandated response times when a call comes in about possible abuse.
The government's record-keeping also frustrated the commission. Children's aid societies must file reports to the government on incidents considered serious — when a child is physically restrained, for example. The government was unable to give the commission aggregate, province-wide statistics about the incidents.
Children's aid societies, for their part, complain it has been years since they have seen provincial totals for information collected in annual government audits known as Crown Ward Reviews. Each CAS has a sample of their cases audited for data such as the number of times a child changes homes while in care.
The government insists its central database and promised benchmarks will eventually make things better. In the meantime, close observers see a nonchalant attitude about evidence that already exists, such as the number of times children in care change homes.
Van tells her story, a very unique situation for someone who has gone into care.
"The problem is there is no tradition in Ontario child welfare of looking at the evidence, looking at the data and saying, 'OK, what does this mean for practice?'" says Raymond Lemay, the highly respected executive director of the Prescott-Russell children's aid society until his retirement this summer.
The Children's Aid Society of Toronto has been tracking the ethnic and racial makeup of children and youth in its care for several years. Blacks are significantly overrepresented, a fact that has angered parents and led to talks dating back at least eight years between community leaders and senior government officials, including the youth minister. Yet the ministry says it has never asked the Toronto CAS for the racial data.
Of children in care in Toronto, 31 per cent were born to black parents. A further 9.8 per cent of children in care had one parent who is black.
Educational challenges for children in care suggest a similarly sluggish response. Data on this and other issues has been captured province-wide since at least 2008 in annual, government-mandated "Looking After Children" surveys known as OnLAC. They revealed the troubling high-school dropout rate and the fact that 63 per cent of 6-year-olds in care are more than a year behind the grade level they should be at.
The surveys also track barriers to academic success. They note that children and youth in care, due to changes in residence, live through several unplanned school changes: 32 per cent change schools three or four times, and 25 per cent more than five times.
There is no obligation for the new school to enrol them during the term, says Thomson, the former child welfare commissioner. "They're sometimes out of school for weeks," she adds.
Former Crown ward Dakota Hegler, 22, recalls being stigmatized when she tried to attend a new school in Brantford.
"I wasn't allowed to start until I signed papers promising to be a good kid," she says.
"You don't make all the other kids sign papers saying they're going to be good kids so why are you making me?" she asks, noting the demand delayed her entry into the school for a week.
Missing school is another barrier. OnLAC surveys reveal a significant number of absentee days are due to CAS-related work: 15 per cent for meetings with child-care workers, 6 per cent for access visits from biological parents and 4 per cent due to completing the OnLAC survey. Appointments with mental-health workers were responsible for another 15 per cent of days off school.
The figures suggest an attitude in child protection that "it doesn't matter if a kid misses a day of school," says Lemay. Absenteeism could be reduced "tomorrow," he adds, by simply having front-line workers and others meet children and youth when school is out.
Reducing the number of school changes with busing, or insisting on quick entry into new schools, also seem like easy fixes. The government promises "joint protocols" between the education and youth ministries on a range of measures to boost academic achievement. They're at the "development" phase.
The government and CASs are moving slowly. And years of inaction have left much to do.
* Children's aid societies can't do their jobs properly if services for children, including health and education, remain fragmented. Stronger integration across all services for children is needed.
* The government should define the services that must be provided by every CAS in Ontario.
* The government should set targets that encourage caring for children within their own families.
* Children's aid societies should be required to "collect accurate data about children's cultural and racial backgrounds" to better serve the province's diverse population.


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text:
Justice For The Enemy
June 17, 2018 | The Intercept
Simona Foltyn
Image by The Intercept, 2018.
One Car Bomb, Two Stories
One evening in the spring of 2015, Ahmed left his family home in a residential neighborhood of Baghdad and got into his red Toyota Corolla. Ever since his family had fled their hometown of Ramadi as the Islamic State advanced in 2014, the 20-something had been working as a taxi driver, ferrying passengers and their possessions between the capital and Anbar, a Sunni-majority province where Ramadi is located. But that evening, he planned to make a special delivery. An emir – a senior ISIS leader – had instructed him to collect a car rigged with explosives destined to detonate in the capital.
It wasn't the first time Ahmed had participated in operations aimed at spreading terror in Shia-majority areas and retaliating against government forces fighting to uproot ISIS from its self-declared caliphate further north, according to Iraqi prosecutors. Since Ahmed had pledged bay'a, or allegiance, to the terrorist group, the prosecutors contended, ISIS had tasked him with transporting two other car bombs from Anbar. As before, this latest bomb would probably target Iraqi security forces in the capital. But it also might explode in front of one of Baghdad's popular bakeries or ice cream shops, where Iraqi families sought to unwind in the cool evening air, or near a crowded Shia shrine, targeting thousands of pilgrims who had recently flocked to the capital to attend a religious festival.
Image provided by The Intercept, 2018.
Ahmed didn't know the precise location of the car; this was a precaution to avoid alerting the security forces to the operation. He called another contact, who connected him with a third person to fetch the car. This third man drove the car bomb, a Kia Sorento, while Ahmed accompanied him in his red Toyota Corolla. As they made their way through Baghdad's crowded streets, Ahmed called a fourth person, an ISIS operative who had gained a reputation for orchestrating attacks in the capital. The operative guided them to the drop-off location.
But as they arranged to meet in western Baghdad, intelligence officers were monitoring their phone calls and tracking their movements. Unbeknownst to Ahmed and the others, the ISIS operative they were talking to had been detained and forced to cooperate. He led the men and the car bomb straight into the hands of the security forces. An Iraqi government forensic team later confirmed that the Kia Sorento was indeed rigged with a bomb that could be detonated using a mobile phone.
In what the government considered a highly successful operation, Iraq's intelligence services managed to foil a terrorist attack and penetrate an ISIS cell they say was responsible for masterminding many suicide blasts in Baghdad. Ahmed and two of the other operatives confessed to belonging to ISIS.
A few months later, the driver of the car bomb was acquitted after claiming that he did not know the car was rigged with explosives, but Ahmed and the other two detainees were sentenced to death by hanging. "The details of the crime clearly show they are a danger to society," the verdict read. "Applying a harsh punishment is more suitable than being merciful."
Ahmed's verdict, condemning him and two others to death by hanging. Image provided by The Intercept, 2018.
1 Ahmed and two others were found guilty under article 4/1 of Iraq's counterterrorism laws, which mandates the death sentence for anyone who engages in acts of terrorism, whether as the main perpetrator or a minor participant. They were sentenced to death by hanging.
2 Cases that involve a death penalty are automatically passed on to the appeals court.
3 The verdict is signed by a panel of three judges.
4 The verdict states that Ahmed "confessed to joining ISIS and that he took part in delivering a number of car bombs."
5 The court concludes that "the details of the crime clearly show their danger to society and its stability. By specializing in car bombs that cause the highest causalities possible, they showed their disrespect for the lives of innocent citizens."
Justice had been served, at least according to the state. But this account represents just one version of events, laid out by institutions that many Iraqis, especially Sunnis, view with suspicion and fear.
None of it was true, said Ahmed's family, who have been fighting to overturn the conviction in a federal appeals court. They feared that speaking publicly about the case could endanger Ahmed and his family, so The Intercept agreed not to identify them, instead using pseudonyms. Ahmed had never sworn allegiance to ISIS, the family claimed. To the contrary, he helped families victimized by its brutal rule. As a driver, he often snuck cars into Baghdad on behalf of displaced people who had been forced to leave them behind when they fled ISIS. Ahmed had been framed, his father said, a victim of security forces who harbor deep hatred against Sunnis, the sect ISIS purports to champion. Ahmed hadn't known the car he had accompanied was carrying a bomb, his father said. He was to give the driver of the other car a ride once the man dropped off the vehicle. Ahmed had been targeted because he was from Anbar, a predominantly Sunni province known as a hotbed of extremism and a fertile recruitment ground for groups like ISIS.
Ahmed's 18-page handwritten confession detailing the incident was a falsehood, the family said, extracted under severe torture. They viewed the judges as complicit: The court had turned down multiple requests for a medical examination to determine whether Ahmed had been tortured, which, if true, could have nullified his confession. Because Ahmed wasn't the one driving the car bomb, there would have been little other evidence against him. If the Iraqi judiciary were fair, they said, Ahmed would have walked free.
Instead, his family had come to perceive the judicial process as deeply unjust, fraught with sectarian bias and corruption.
An excerpt from Ahmed's 18-page, handwritten confession. His family asserts that the handwriting isn't his, and that he was forced to sign and fingerprint the document after enduring severe torture. Image provided by The Intercept, 2018.
1 "Central Investigative Court"
2 "Statement of the accused"
3 In this handwritten statement, Ahmed allegedly admitted to accompanying the car bomb: "I drove my Toyota Corolla, while the accused [name redacted] drove the KIA car bomb towards Amiriya intersection near the grocery market, where the accused [name redacted] was waiting for us to receive the car bomb from me."
4 The confession mentions the full names of the other alleged participants, which have been redacted. Suspects often accuse security forces of using force to obtain incriminating statements against others.
5 The last sentence of the statement reads: "I give this confession without any pressure or force, and that's my statement."
6 The confession is signed and fingerprinted by the accused, and signed by the appointed lawyer, the investigative judge, and a prosecutor. The names of the judge and prosecutor are not mentioned.
For over three years, the Iraqi government and its Western allies battled ISIS, engaging in some of the fiercest urban combat since World War II. The grueling, nine-month operation to retake Mosul claimed tens of thousands of lives and left Iraq's second-largest city in ruins. In December, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that the war was finally over. The terror group that had once held a third of Iraq's territory had officially been defeated.
ISIS may be vanquished, but it has left behind a deeply divided Iraq. The group's victims yearn for justice and, in many cases, revenge, a practice that is legitimized by tribal laws and often directed at families of ISIS fighters. Sunnis feel unfairly branded as extremists by other ethno-religious groups, who blame them for allowing ISIS to take root in their areas. Even though many Sunnis express gratitude for having been freed from ISIS, they remain deeply suspicious of the Iraqi state and its security forces that once again govern their territories, and whom they accuse of arbitrary arrests, looting, and forced evictions.
The Iraqi government must now separate good from evil, bring perpetrators to account, and deliver justice for victims of ISIS, while avoiding the corruption and unequal treatment that fueled the group's rise in the first place. The scale of the undertaking is formidable, especially for the overburdened judicial system. Baghdad's central criminal court delivered verdicts for around 2,800 ISIS suspects in 2017 alone, a judge there told The Intercept; hundreds of others were tried in other cities across Iraq. Thousands linger in crowded prisons, waiting months and sometimes years for a trial that only lasts a few minutes.
Views on the process differ starkly. Judges and prosecutors say that ISIS has trained its members to sabotage the judicial process by exploiting their rights as defendants and alleging procedural violations that sometimes result in dismissal. Private lawyers stay away from complicated and controversial cases, fearing retribution, arrest, and social stigma. Suspects' relatives see the process as yet another tool to oppress the Sunni minority, while some accuse lawyers and investigators of financially exploiting desperate families.
Rather than mending intercommunal rifts to pave the way for reconciliation, the ISIS trials risk further polarizing Iraq's fractured society. Unlike the justice and reconciliation process in post-genocide Rwanda, for example, Iraq's state has offered little space for truth-telling and victim participation. The country's harsh counterterrorism laws don't differentiate between leaders and lowly aides, providing few opportunities for minor perpetrators to repent in return for lower sentences. Far from setting the stage for reconciliation, the rapid-fire trials of ISIS suspects appear aimed at a single goal: to purge ISIS from Iraq's society as quickly as possible, with little regard for victims or concern that innocent people could be caught up in the system. Instead of mending old wounds, the process risks tearing open new ones; the ripple effects of decisions made in Iraq's courts today could be felt for years, perhaps decades, to come.
"We All Confessed Under Beatings"
Nabil fiddled nervously with the plastic cup on the table in front of him. His dark eyes scanned the cafe, scrutinizing new arrivals as they ordered sweet tea and settled into stiff wooden chairs. This was Nabil's first time in Baghdad since his arrest in 2015. "I go from my house to work and straight back. I don't go anywhere to avoid trouble," he mumbled, his voice nearly inaudible in the crowded cafe. Like Ahmed, Nabil comes from Ramadi, where the two grew up together. When Ahmed vanished that fateful spring evening, Nabil tried to help his friend's family look for him. "We had no idea where he was. We didn't know if he was arrested or kidnapped," he said.
Nabil didn't have to search for long. A few days later, in the middle of the night, security forces knocked on the door of his temporary home in Baghdad, where Nabil's family had relocated, like Ahmed's, when ISIS took control of Ramadi. The soldiers, who wore black uniforms with insignia that read "Special Operations," didn't explain why they had come. Nor did they present an arrest warrant when they handcuffed and blindfolded Nabil, his cousin, and another friend. "For an hour or an hour and a half, they kept us in the apartment, asking questions and beating us," Nabil recalled.
The men were ushered into Humvees and driven to an interrogation facility at Baghdad International Airport, run by the Interior Ministry's Directorate of Intelligence and Counterterrorism. The days that followed were the worst in Nabil's life. The torture began around midnight and lasted until dawn. First came the beatings. Then they would hang him from the top edge of a door with his hands bound behind his back in a position known as "Palestinian hanging" because it is said to be used in Israeli prisons. Once suspended, he said, they would whip him with cables. On one occasion, Nabil told me, he was electrocuted, with wires attached to his ear and genitals. Although no witnesses could corroborate Nabil's account, a Human Rights Watch researcher told The Intercept that "there are multiple prisons at the Baghdad airport, and Human Rights Watch has heard accounts of incidents of torture there. … I have heard accounts and seen photos depicting the types of torture you are describing in Iraq."
After it was over, they would drag Nabil back to his tiny cell, where he would fade in and out of consciousness until the ordeal resumed a few hours later. After three days, he was ready to do anything to make it stop. "I told them, 'Bring me any paper you want me to sign. You can write whatever you want on it,'" Nabil said.
On the fourth day, Nabil finally saw Ahmed. He had heard his voice earlier, but thought that perhaps his mind, muddled by the beatings, was playing tricks on him. When the prisoners were brought into a courtyard to get some sunlight, the two friends exchanged brief accounts of their arrests, and quickly realized they were linked. Nabil's cousin had been taken because the Toyota Corolla that Ahmed had driven at the time of his arrest was registered in the cousin's name. Nabil, they figured, had been arrested because he was young, male, and living in the same house as his cousin.
Like Nabil, Ahmed had endured several days of torture and appeared broken.
"I confessed," Nabil recalled Ahmed telling him.
"To what? You haven't done anything."
"I confessed under the beatings."
"We all confessed under beatings," Nabil tried to console him. But Ahmed was certain that he'd soon swap his yellow jumpsuit for a red one, the color reserved for convicts. Before the men parted, Ahmed asked Nabil to promise that if he got out, he would pass a message to Ahmed's parents. He wanted them to know that he'd been detained and to ask their forgiveness for what they were about to go through.
Terrorism trials in Iraq unfold in three phases: the investigation, the trial, and the appeal. While the entire process is fraught with challenges, defense lawyers and judges say that the most serious violations occur during the initial investigative phase, when defendants are in the hands of often vindictive security forces. On paper, suspects can only be detained with an arrest warrant. Within 24 hours of their arrest, they must see an investigative judge, who determines whether there's sufficient evidence to keep them for further investigation. The judge can extend the period of detention up to a maximum of six months, at which point the suspect must be released if the case against him isn't strong enough to trigger an indictment. If there's sufficient incriminating evidence, the investigative judge, who in the Iraqi system leads the investigation in collaboration with the prosecution, refers the case to the criminal court for trial.
But the process is rife with abuses, according to interviews with human rights experts, as well as more than a dozen lawyers, judges, and prosecutors. As in the case of Nabil, security forces frequently detain individuals without arrest warrants. Arrests are often driven by tribal disputes or sectarianism, and investigators routinely extort payments from relatives in return for dubious promises of better conditions or a quick release. Suspects often don't see a judge within 24 hours, and torture is endemic, with investigators regularly resorting to beatings, electrocution, solitary confinement, and other harsh treatment. Until the investigation is complete and confessions have been written, suspects are rarely granted access to family or lawyers.
It took Nabil, his cousin, and the friend arrested with them two months to see an investigative judge, much longer than the 24 hours required by law. The investigative judge ordered their immediate release due to insufficient evidence, but it took a few more weeks, and, according to the family, about $100,000 in bribes to members of the security forces before the three men walked free. In all, they had spent three months in jail.
As soon as Nabil was released, he traveled north to the Kurdish capital Erbil, where he remained until the end of the war against ISIS. He considered it a small price to pay to avoid getting arrested again.
A Desperate Search
With Nabil's release, word of Ahmed's arrest finally reached his family. The news ended three months of uncertainty over his whereabouts, but it would also turn out to be the heaviest in a series of blows this Sunni family had suffered since the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government.
In May 2003, in a quest to eliminate all remnants of the former regime, the U.S.-led transitional government dissolved the Iraqi army. Ahmed's father, Omar, an army officer, was dismissed. With that, the family lost its main source of income. Omar was utterly humiliated. "What greater disgrace can you feel?" he asked. The disastrous policy left over 300,000 Iraqi soldiers unemployed and disgruntled. Many joined the various armed insurgencies that mushroomed across Iraq in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion to fight what they perceived as an unjust occupation.
Al Qaeda's branch in Iraq, a precursor of ISIS, thrived in the chaos, drawing recruits from among marginalized Sunnis who had been disproportionally affected by attempts to purge the country of Saddam loyalists. But Sunnis, like all Iraqis, were often victims of the insurgency against American and Iraqi security forces. Omar's youngest son was seriously injured in a suicide attack in 2005 that left him permanently disabled.
Over the next decade, the family endured as one battle after another engulfed Ramadi, a famous site of rebellion against the Americans and, after their withdrawal in 2011, against the Iraqi government. When ISIS launched a major assault on the city in early 2014, the family sought refuge in nearby Hit, which was still under government control. But as the terror group gained ground, capturing Hit in October of that year, the family was uprooted again, this time joining tens of thousands of people who fled Anbar province for Baghdad.
In the capital, the family was relatively safe, but growing sectarian mistrust fueled by the war soon began to trouble them. Sunnis who had fled former ISIS strongholds lived under a cloud of suspicion that they were ISIS sympathizers. Omar constantly feared for his three sons, especially Ahmed, whose work as a taxi driver making frequent trips to Anbar brought him into contact with vengeful Shia militias and security forces who manned checkpoints along the route and stood accused of arbitrarily arresting young Sunni men.
When Ahmed didn't return home that spring evening, Omar feared that he might have fallen into the hands of the security forces. Looking for a detainee meant approaching dozens of different armed actors, many of whom ran their own secret prisons.
Working his old army contacts, Omar spent countless hours and much of the family's fortune trying to find his son. "People started extorting us," Omar told me at the family's home in a middle-class neighborhood of Baghdad. "They would say, 'Your son is being detained in this place. Pay us $20,000 so he gets released.'" Three men who purported to hold powerful positions in the security forces promised to help in return for money. Desperate, Omar doled out one daftar — a $10,000 stack of bills — after another, driving his family to the brink of financial ruin. A total of $55,000 in bribes reportedly changed hands to find Ahmed and later, to grease the wheels of the justice system. Omar sold the family's land and his wife's and daughters' dowry gold. "I would sell anything I own as long as my son walks," Omar said.
But soon after the men received the money, all three disappeared. Their mobile numbers were disconnected, and Omar never heard from them again. He wasn't entirely surprised. He had filmed himself giving money to one of them in a futile attempt to hold him accountable.
The psychological burden and social stigma of Ahmed's arrest were far greater than the financial toll. One evening in late 2015, Omar received a distressed phone call from his brother, urging him to tune into state-run Al Iraqiya television, where an episode of a reality show called "In the Grip of the Law" was underway.
"In the Grip of the Law" started filming in 2013 to garner public support for the security forces in the wake of humiliating battlefield setbacks in the early days of the war against ISIS. The concept was controversial: Prisoners suspected of belonging to ISIS recount or re-enact crimes to which they have confessed. Relatives of victims sometimes appear at the crime scene, taking turns scolding the men they hold responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. The show has proven very popular, especially in Shia areas that are often targeted by jihadi groups. Sunnis like Omar, on the other hand, see it as an embodiment of Shia dominance, a tool for oppressing Sunnis who are forced to confess under torture to crimes they didn't commit.
There, in the glare of the cameras and for everyone to see, was Ahmed. He was led into the studio by a man wearing black fatigues and a black balaclava over his face. Ahmed wore a yellow jumpsuit, plastic handcuffs and a blindfold. It was the first time Omar had seen him since his arrest six months earlier. Dramatic music played as Ahmed was made to sit on a chair in front of a large, white poster that read "Ministry of Interior, Falcon Intelligence Cell." The man in black, presumably an intelligence officer, removed Ahmed's blindfold. Then the interrogation began.
"Tell me about your joining process. Where did you join? What year?" an investigator asked from behind the camera.
"In 2015," Ahmed answered with a shaky voice.
"And who recruited you?"
"Through Abu Jaafar, the man in charge of Baghdad, and Abu Islam. And they handed me over to Al-Mufti Abu Mohammed. I pledged allegiance with him."
"In Hit, the district of Hit."
"Why did you join the death gangs? Why did you join the Daesh gangs?" the investigator insisted, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
"The idea was to just be a driver, for material purposes," Ahmed replied.
Omar was shocked to see his son paraded on TV like a convict even though, at that time, his guilt had yet to be proven in court. He was introduced as a "terrorist" and granted no opportunity to protect his identity, a right that courts were quick to invoke when The Intercept requested permissions to film trials of suspected ISIS members during a trip to Baghdad in January. As the interrogation progressed, the conversation became increasingly one-sided, with Ahmed uttering mostly monosyllabic responses as the investigator hurled accusations.
"So you joined to do anything in the organization," the interrogator said.
"Just as a driver," Ahmed answered.
"One day a driver, another day a transporter, another day as a passenger, another day as the perpetrator of operations!"
"I was notified that I was just to transport cars."
"Whatever the case, if you're transporting a car, what is this car, booby-trapped or not?"
"Booby-trapped, yes."
"You knew it was booby-trapped."
"You knew it was going to explode on people."
"You knew, or you didn't?"
"Yes, yes."
"So in the end, you're complicit in this operation to kill people. A part of this organization that participates in murder, yes or no?"
"So, your principle is to kill!"
"What do you say to Daesh now?"
"I mean … it's injustice … harming people because … if you're still young, it's better to leave such things behind because your fate is with the police forces," Ahmed stammered.
"How did you come to realize this?"
"Because, I mean, the police forces are in control," Ahmed replied obsequiously. Satisfied with the response, the interrogator backed down, and the show cut to another scene.
Omar was convinced that just like his confession on paper, his son's televised testimony had been brought about by force. The family decided to hire a lawyer, but finding a trustworthy advocate was difficult in a country where defending people caught up in sweeping antiterrorism laws has grown into a profitable business.
Ahmed's uncle, himself a lawyer who helped behind the scenes, was unwilling to represent his nephew in court. "As soon as you go there, and the case is linked to terrorism, you will also be arrested. Even if you are a lawyer!" he told me.
Last year, at least 15 lawyers were arrested for defending ISIS suspects in the northern, Sunni-majority province of Nineveh. Two lawyers were sentenced to death in December for joining ISIS and obstructing justice, according to court records. What was needed, the family concluded, was someone with good government connections — someone who, by virtue of his background, wouldn't be suspected of belonging to ISIS.
"It's a Matter of Blood"
Mohammad Al-Khafaji, a short, round man with a meticulously shaved, angular buzz cut and goatee, comes from a family of lawyers. His office, monitored by four security cameras, is located on the first floor of an inconspicuous building just off a busy commercial street in the affluent Harthiya neighborhood of Baghdad. All four attorneys in his office specialize in terrorism cases, and the waiting room always seems to be filled with anxious families in search of help for relatives charged under Iraq's draconian laws.
Over the years, 38-year-old Al-Khafaji has acquired a reputation for taking his work seriously. He talks about his cases with such avidity and detail that there's little doubt about his intelligence or his fascination with his work. Unlike many other lawyers who are seen as merely pocketing the money of desperate families, he is known for rolling up his sleeves. That doesn't mean he isn't making a fortune. On average, he charges at least $10,000 to take on a counterterrorism defense, more than 20 times the average monthly salary of a government employee.
At first, Al-Khafaji hesitated to work on Ahmed's behalf. Even though Ahmed wasn't driving the car bomb, the investigators had built a compelling case against him. "I told the family, 'This case is lost, 100 percent,'" he told me in his office one cold day this past winter.
Al-Khafaji is Shia and well-connected in Baghdad, but even he approaches defending ISIS suspects cautiously. He has secured his career in part by avoiding cases involving men captured in Mosul, the city where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the so-called caliphate and where the group made its final stand.
But an even more important factor guides Al-Khafaji in choosing his clients. He paused, then pointed at the two golden nameplates on the desk in front of him. "Do you know who this is?" he asked. One of the plates bore his own name, the other that of his sister, Suhad Al-Khafaji, a well-known lawyer who was killed in 2011 in a high-profile case that led to a death sentence for former vice president Tariq al-Hashemi and his son-in-law. Hashemi, a Sunni, was accused of running a hit squad aimed at eliminating his Shia opponents. He, in turn, claimed the case against him was politically motivated.
"It's a matter of blood," Al-Khafaji said. "If Iraqi blood was shed, I won't accept the case. We as Muslims, we support the oppressed against the oppressors. It's not acceptable to represent the perpetrators."
In Ahmed's case, there was no blood. Omar kept insisting, and after mutual acquaintances swore by Ahmed's innocence, Al-Khafaji relented and took the case. In an effort to cast doubt on Ahmed's confession, he approached the prosecutor's office, which penned a letter to the central investigative court demanding a medical report. When the first letter went unanswered, he submitted a second request just days before Ahmed's court date. He didn't get a response to that one, either.
Although Iraq's constitution and criminal law prohibit the use of force to extract confessions, they don't explicitly mention the right to medical exams. But a spokesperson for the Higher Judicial Council, which oversees Iraqi courts in an effort to ensure the judiciary's independence, told The Intercept that such exams constitute an inalienable right for defendants. "We aren't denying that there is torture by members of the security forces. But any evidence that is brought through torture isn't recognized," said senior judge Abdulsattar Bayraqdar, the spokesperson. If a defendant claims he has been tortured, the council immediately sends him to a "medical committee" charged with examining prisoners and verifying their claims, Bayraqdar said. In reality, though, judges have broad discretion over whether or not a prisoner receives a medical exam.
At the behest of Ahmed's lawyer and family, the human rights department at the general prosecutor's office sent two requests to the criminal court to refer Ahmed for a medical exam to confirm whether he had confessed under torture. Both requests went unanswered. Image provided by The Intercept, 2018.
1 The letter was written by "Supreme Judicial Council, General Prosecutor Presidency, Human Rights Department," and addressed to "The Central Criminal Court."
2 Reminding the court of a previous request that went unanswered, the letter requests once again that Ahmed be sent to the medical committee to examine allegations of torture.
3 The letter is signed by the chief prosecutor.
Ahmed never got one. Even if he had, Al-Khafaji says, it would have made no difference in light of the evidence intelligence officers had gathered against his client. The lawyer approached a couple of defense witnesses to vouch for Ahmed, but he said they were too frightened to speak out in favor of an ISIS suspect in a public court. Ahmed's conviction seemed inevitable.
Tears streamed down Omar's face as he recalled seeing his son on the day of the trial. Families weren't allowed inside the courtroom, but the two exchanged fleeting hugs and a few words in a room next door. Then Omar was asked to leave, handing his son's fate to a justice system he had little reason to trust.
A few hours later, Al-Khafaji called Omar to his office, where he broke the news: Ahmed had been found guilty. His trial at Baghdad's Central Criminal Court lasted only a few minutes. As usual in these cases, the panel of three judges, seated on a high bench in front of the accused, hastily read out the findings of the investigation. Ahmed pleaded not guilty. No witnesses were present to testify for or against him. The verdict made no mention of allegations of torture, nor did it mention the two requests for medical exams. In line with Article 4 of Iraq's counterterrorism laws and no matter how minor his role may have been, Ahmed received the same sentence as the mastermind of the planned suicide attack: death by hanging.
The Road to Reconciliation
Since Ahmed was sentenced, the relationship between his family and Mohammed Al-Khafaji has soured. Ahmed's father, Omar, accused Al-Khafaji of sectarianism and of colluding with the investigators to exploit the family. In Omar's eyes, Al-Khafaji had failed miserably in building what should have been a straightforward defense for his son.
Ahmed's only remaining hope to escape execution was the appeals court, and, in a peculiar twist, the man who had sentenced Saddam Hussein to death. Munir Haddad, now in his 50s, rose to fame while presiding over Saddam's 2006 court case, described by some as a show trial. He personally oversaw the former dictator's hanging "because all the other judges refused to do it," he said. After he was forced out of his post in 2008 on what he says were political grounds, he opened a private law practice in Baghdad. He has made a reputation – and a fortune – defending people charged with terrorism, rebranding himself as an advocate for marginalized Sunnis and as a champion of reconciliation.
Omar found Haddad on a friend's recommendation. When I visited Haddad, who has more than 900 clients, he asked his assistant to bring Ahmed's legal file. "Maybe he is telling the truth, maybe he is lying. But he didn't kill anyone," he said as he scanned the documents. While Haddad also won't take any case that involves Iraqi bloodshed, he is ready to defend the guilty from punishment he views as overly harsh. "I may be convinced that he did it, but I may not be convinced that he should be executed," he said. "When there's no blood, it's possible to give the young man a chance." He had promised Omar that he could reduce Ahmed's sentence to life in prison.
Haddad wasn't against the death sentence per se. "If someone killed hundreds, of course he should be executed." But harsh punishments weren't conducive to reconciliation, and reconciliation was what Iraq now needed most. "Saddam is gone, the Baath era has finished, so we have to start from the beginning," he said.
Haddad knew this from personal experience. Dozens of his own relatives, including two brothers, had been killed and many more imprisoned under Saddam. Haddad himself had served almost six years in prison. "When you are released, you can have two personalities. Either you seek revenge or reconciliation."
Haddad chose the latter. He went to law school and recently ran for a seat in parliament on a platform of judicial reform. (Because of widespread allegations of fraud in the June election, votes are being manually recounted and it's still unclear whether Haddad has earned a seat in parliament.) He wants investigations to be carried out by the judiciary, instead of by security forces, so as to reduce the incidence of torture, and he has pledged to get rid of some of Iraq's harshest laws. "We are building a state, and a state cannot be built on vengeance," he said. "It must be built on forgiveness."
But few politicians in Iraq seemed to think a reconciliatory approach toward low-level ISIS members was politically feasible, especially during an election year. "It's very difficult for anyone to talk about [forgiveness] at the moment. Anyone who does will lose all credibility with the public," said Hisham al-Suhail, who heads the Justice, Accountability and Reconciliation committee in Iraq's parliament. A 2017 amnesty law could pardon ISIS members who didn't commit serious crimes, but judges have been reluctant to apply the law to terrorism cases. "Most prisoners who are released with a pardon, frankly, return to terrorist activities," Suhail said, though he did not offer evidence to support that claim.
Given the political climate, the quest to reduce Ahmed's death sentence at the appeals court seemed quixotic, the idea that he could one day be pardoned almost foolish. Yet Omar's faith in his son's innocence was unshakable, underpinned by a feeling of marginalization that had taken root in the family over the past 15 years. Omar broke down in tears several times during the hours we spent talking about his son. In the first instance, his tears were those of a heartbroken father who felt powerless to end his son's suffering. But at times, I wondered if they could also be the tears of a father who feared that his son had strayed, and who blamed himself for having failed to prevent it.
Whether Ahmed was guilty or not, the utter rejection of the judicial process by one segment of society was a sign of the justice system's inability to mend the fissures in post-ISIS Iraq, which seemed to deepen with each passing day. If Ahmed had committed a crime, the courts hadn't offered his victims an opportunity to participate, or a chance to repent in return for a lenient sentence that might allow him to eventually return to his community. If he was innocent, the state had denied him a reasonable chance to prove it.
Absent the truth, the long road to reconciliation had not even begun.
Grantee
Simona Foltyn is a journalist, writer and videographer based in Dubai. Her work focuses on in-depth coverage of armed conflict, social justice and corruption in East Africa and the Middle East....
View this story on The Intercept
Human Rights, Terrorism
"I Want to Quit ISIS"
Liberia: Does Charles Taylor's trial bring any justice?
Conflict and Peace Building

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
check_proc_cpu
==============

- Link: https://www.dennyzhang.com/nagois_monitor_process_cpu
- Code: https://github.com/DennyZhang/devops_public/tree/tag_v6/nagios_plugins/check_proc_cpu

Nagios plugin to check proc cpu usage.

```
/sshx:contact@dennyzhang.com: #$ ./check_proc_cpu.sh --help
check_proc_cpu v1.0

Usage:
./check_proc_cpu.sh -w <warn_cpu> -c <criti_cpu> <pid_pattern> <pattern_argument>

Below: If tomcat use more than 200% CPU, send warning.
Note machines may have multiple cpu cores
check_proc_cpu.sh -w 200 -c 400 --pidfile /var/run/tomcat7.pid
check_proc_cpu.sh -w 200 -c 400 --pid 11325
check_proc_cpu.sh -w 200 -c 400 --cmdpattern "tomcat7.*java.*Dcom"

Copyright (C) 2015 DennyZhang (contact@dennyzhang.com)
```

Sample output:
```
/sshx:contact@dennyzhang.com: #$ ./check_proc_cpu.sh -w 1024 -c 2048 --pidfile "/var/run/tomcat7.pid"
OK CPU used by process(11325) is 10 %|CPU=10
```

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Are you the proud owner of a fur coat that has been in the family for years? Don't just leave it in the closet, come into Holzman Furs and have it remodeled and redesigned to your liking.
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Whether you want to redesign your fur coat or buy a new one, Holzman Furs is the place for fur sales, design and storage. Call today or stop by our store.


text:
Q: Use initWithObjects on data from Array of Objects Lets say I have a number of objects:
@interface City : NSObject {
    NSString  *name;
    NSString  *country;
    int       yearFirstTimeVisited;
}

Which are stored in an Array of objects:
city = [[City alloc] initWithName:@"London":@"UK",2002];
[pickerValues addObject:city];
city = [[City alloc] initWithName:@"Paris":@"France",2003];
[pickerValues addObject:city];
city = [[City alloc] initWithName:@"LA":@"USA",2003];
[pickerValues addObject:city];

Now I want to load the cities in to a picker-wheel. Naturally I can do this manually:
pickerValues = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"London",@"Paris", @"LA",nil];

But this is results in 2 sets of data I have to maintain in the code. I'm sure that there is a better option. I have searched the web, but could not find anything.
Thanks

A: Even better, use Key-Value Coding.  -[NSArray valueForKey:] will do the loop for you.
NSArray* pickerNames = [pickerValues valueForKey:@"name"];

A: You could make a new array for the picker.
NSMutableArray *pickerNames = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:[pickerValues count]];
for(City *city in pickerValues){
    [pickerNames addObject:[city name]];
}

It's also a best practice to prefix your custom classes like VCCity instead of just City. I picked VC from your username but it's common to pick letters from the project name.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Has Prince Harry Been Secretly Styling His Wife, Meghan Markle?
June 11, 2018 14:41 By Fabiosa
Meghan Markle likes to wear elegant clothes, but it's very hard to call them boring. She's been a style icon for many, especially after her official outings with her new husband, Prince Harry.
READ ALSO: She's Royal And Ready! Meghan Markle Debuts Pantyhose Look During Her First Outing As The Duchess
Meghan's style has definitely changed and become more refined. But it seems that it's all Harry's merit. It's been rumored that the ginger royal has become the former Suits actress' secret stylist as he is personally helping her to choose outfits for the events.
Публикация от Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) 10 Июн 2018 в 4:01 PDT
Sure, Harry is not your ordinary husband and he is not being drugged all the way through Oxford Street. Instead, he is inviting high-end designers to visit him and his wife at Kensington Palace.
Some say the Duke of Sussex has been happy to give the Duchess styling tips to make her wardrobe royal-worthy.
It was stated that Meghan is always seeking her husband's opinion and he says what he thinks looks best. Harry's new influence may be seen on Thursday when the Duchess of Sussex will join the Queen on a little adventure to officially open the new Mersey Gateway Bridge in Cheshire, as well as at other events.
READ ALSO: Duchess Of Sussex Will Make Her First Solo Outing With The Queen: The Pair Will Go On A Journey Together
If the rumors are true, Harry is a really talented stylist! A lot of people like Meghan's style and even want to copy it.
Публикация от Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) 18 Апр 2018 в 9:05 PDT
Do you think the Duke of Sussex should be credited for Meghan's gorgeous outfits?
READ ALSO: Non-Royal Habits: 10 Ways Meghan Markle Wears Her Jewelry
Prince Harry Meghan Markle


Mega Web Design is a fastest growing IT company founded in 2015. Mega Web Design produces outstanding results for multiple services such as web design, web development, wordpress web development, ecommerce web development, logo design, responsive web design and more. We served our services across 70+ countries.


A good merlot wine takes more than three months to make, which you should consider if you're making wine for a special occasion. Merlot has a strong flavor, so take into account your flavor preference when making your wine. For instance, blackberry juice gives the wine a neutral flavor.
Combine the blackberry and merlot juices in one of the fermenters. Stir well.
Add yeast and Lalvin EC1118 champagne yeast on top. Let the mixture sit for 1 hour. Mix thoroughly.
Stir the mixture once per day for the next five days. Let sit for another two days.
Seal the fermenter, and let the mixture sit for 21 days.
Transfer the mixture into the second fermenter. Seal the fermenter, and let the mixture sit for another 28 days.
Bottle the wine per the instructions of the specific winemaking kit you purchase. Once you have bottled the merlot wine, let it stand for an additional 30 to 90 days.
If you like the taste of blackberries, use actual blackberries instead of blackberry juice.


Where for art thou, Falling Cow?
Yeah, well, by Chinese standards that was very funny and probably qualifies as Joke of the Year. And, like all great comedy (and trust me on this one, that really was great comedy. It had them rolling in the aisles in Hefei) it contains more than an ounce of truth.
I reckon anyone who says "Man go through airport security sideways going to Bangkok" must know what he's on about.
But he was a funny old geezer, that Confucius. Mad as a hatter, of course, and like all great Chinese in history, as bent as a nine bob note. He wore a dress, did you know that? And kept a small stable of young boys for his, ahem, entertainment. And he was forever going around saying things like "Man with one chopstick go hungry". No one understood him then, and no one understands him now.
Despite this, however, Confucius apparently did understand his fellow Chinese rather well, as illustrated by this wee gem: "If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame". "An oppressive government is more feared than a tiger" is another tasty morsel at his feast of wisdom.
The so-called 'Confucius Peace Prize' was created by the mandarins in Peking last week in order to show the world that people from Norway are bad. Or something along those lines; it never was terribly clear what the award was actually for, which is just one more reason why my friend's joke is so apt. Something about the Chinese viewpoint of peace, I think, which means putting people in prison if they look at you funny.
The nominees were: the 11th Panchen Lama (selected by Peking after the real 11th Panchen Lama was made to disappear), a Chinese poet no one has ever heard of before (but who conveniently holds a post at the Ministry of Culture), and six 'international figures' who were not actually named. But the winner, who was selected after a nationwide online poll that organisers later admitted didn't take place, was former Taiwanese vice-president Lien Chan. Chan wasn't there to receive the prize, because he "was unaware he had been chosen or even that there was such a prize named after the famed Chinese sage", according to his office. And so, his prize was given instead to a six-year-old girl. No one knows anything about her, except that she is the daughter of one of the committee members, and he is now taking care of the RMB$100,000 prize money for her. Questioned by reporters as to the nominee selection process, the committee chairman replied it was "a very long and complicated process. We can discuss this in the future". He then departed hastily.
Confucius would have loved it. And the Nobel Committee will have the last laugh of all.
But nobody goes away empty handed at MyLaowai (the internally-renowned and very-famous-in-the-world award-winning scholarly resource). And so I dedicate this Falling Cow Award to the assclowns in Peking who seem to think the rest of us are all too stupid to see them for the yellow-tailed bamboo monkeys that they are. China, the joke's on you.
And my deepest respects to Liu Xiaobo and the thousands of other genuine peace activists who are now either under house arrest or are languishing in Chinese prisons. Because if this country is to have any future at all, it lies with them and not with the thugs and criminals who are currently in charge.
It's June 4th. But no one actually seems to either know what that means, or care if they do.
At least it's also a Friday.
It seems the Chinese take a dim view of bribery and corruption, and want to be seen to be taking a hard stance. Strange, therefore, that all news of the Nuctech case is being blocked.
THE Chinese Embassy has declined to comment on the $3.7 million X-Ray equipment fraud involving Chinese manufacturer Nuctech Company, despite the fact that it is headed by Hu Haifeng, the 38-year old son of Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The charges are connected to a contract for the supply of security scanners to the Ministry of Finance. It was awarded to a Chinese company, Nuctech Company, and was marred by alleged corruption and the payment of kickbacks to the tune of as much as a third of the contract price of some $3.7 million.
Search engines in China, including Google Inc.'s local site, are blocking news on a graft case in Namibia involving a company once headed by the son of President Hu Jintao.
Hu Haifeng is the former president of Beijing-based Nuctech Co., a maker of security scanners involved in a corruption probe in Namibia. Investigators want to talk to him to get information about the company.
The restrictions show the extent to which the government is working to contain news of the case, which may embarrass President Hu as he cracks down on official corruption. A Beijing court this month gave a suspended death sentence for bribery to Chen Tonghai, former chairman of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Asia's largest refiner.
MyLaowai calls on the Chinese Government to treat the Nuctech case properly, and to respect Namibia's judicial independance. Oh yeah, and hand over Hu Jintao's grubby-fingered boy at once.
There's this big company – let's call it Company R – that produces a product a certain country needs to build things, including weapons and military infrastructure. Other companies also produce the product, but Company R is one of the biggest and the best.
Due to a temporary fall in the share price of Company R, the 'Government' of this country quietly puts up the cash for a domestic competitor to buy a large, controlling, stake in Company R. However, the domestic competitor and the 'Government' take months arguing and complaining and trying to squeeze Company R for every concession they can get.
Eventually, the share price of Company R increases back to the point at which it makes no commercial sense to go forward with the deal, and Company R's investors call the whole thing off. They do, however, pay the foreign competitor (and thus the foreign 'Government') a very generous sum of cash in order to soften the blow.
Company R subsequently announces a 33% price cut in it's products for the markets in Japan, South Korea, and the un-named country mentioned above.
The so-called 'industry' of the above-mentioned country, which is in reality the so-called 'Government', refuses to pay the same amount that Japanese and South Koreans pay, claiming that they deserve a better price. Why this should be is not clarified.
Company R sends it's negotiating team to a major city in the foreign country, in order to straighten things out. They offer a generous compromise, setting the contract duration at just half of what Japanese and South Korean customers must commit to, and offering as well to sell their product at the daily rate set by the markets – whichever is cheaper.
The self-proclaimed 'Government' of the afore-mentioned country then sends in the security forces to kick down the door, arrest the negotiating team, ransack their local office, steal their computers and sensitive commercial data, and pack the victims – who are now hostages – off to a remote prison cell.
This is a perfect example of why it does not pay to negotiate with terrorists.


4. To repeat all calls for posts more distant from the guardhouse than my own.
6. To receive, obey, and pass on to the sentry who relieves me all orders of the Commanding Officer, Command Duty Officer, Officer of the Deck, Officers, and Petty Officers of the Watch only.
11. To be especially watchful at night and during the time for challenging, to challenge all persons on or near my post; and to allow no one to pass without proper authority.


text:
Q: Equality operator issue (C++) I'm getting the error

no match for 'operator==' in 'MyNestedClassPointer->MyClass::MyNestedClass::NestedVar == s'

Where s is a reference to a string, and NestedVar is a pointer to a string.
The offending line of code is an if statement comparing the two to see if they're identical.
if(thePointer->theVar == s)

I have no overloaded operators, but I don't think I should have a need for them, seeing as these are just string pointers we're dealing with.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, since I'm more than a little rusty, but can't I do this?

A: As one of the comments has mentioned, the correct syntax to compare a pointer to string object and a string object is by dereferencing the pointer.
Therefore in your code, it should be:
if( *thePointer->theVar == s )


text:
Model T bill ready for House
The companion bill to the one recently introduced to the Senate for Model T commemorative coins is expected to be introduced to the House soon.
Sponsor of legislation calling for a Model T commemorative silver dollar in 2010, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, meets with State Representative Steven Bieda Feb. 21 in the Caucus Room of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing.
She holds a copy of the legislation introduced Feb. 14. A companion bill is expected to be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Dale Kildee. Proposed mintage of the new coin is 500,000.
Bill calls for Model T dollar
egislation calling for a silver dollar commemorating the Model T Ford and the 100th anniversary of that firm
Park Service bill in House
Gold, silver and clad commemoratives are being sought to mark the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. Legislation introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. of Tennessee calls for up to 100,000 gold $5 coins, 500,000 silver dollars and 750,000 clad half dollar coins.
By NMN Jun 27, 2012
House passes coin program bills
It seemed like it was raining coinage legislation on Capitol Hill in May as the House of Representatives passed bill after bill that sets up new coin programs.
National Parks bill passes House
A bill calling for honoring National Parks on the U.S. quarter dollar coin beginning in 2010 unanimously passed the U.S. House of Representatives July 9.
Model T commemorative coin a good idea
Should the United States issue a commemorative silver dollar to honor the Model T Ford and mark centennial of the Highland Park Plant, where the automobile assembly line made its mark on American life and on the rest of the world starting in 1910?
House passes anthem commem bill
If the U.S. House of Representatives has its way, a $5 gold piece and a silver dollar would be issued in 2012, commemorating the 198th anniversary of the writing of the National Anthem – free verse that was then, as now, sung to the tune of an old British beer ballad, "To Anacreon in Heaven."
By NMN Sep 18, 2009
Disabled vet bill sent back to House
Senate action June 10 should have moved H.R. 634, the American Veterans Disabled for Life Commemorative Coin Act, a presidential signature away from law. Instead, a committee amendment sent the measure back to the House to figure the next legislative move, which was to accept on June 18 the Senate changes.
House approves Tuskegee medal
House action on a rare congressional gold medal, to be awarded to the Tuskegee Airmen, was approved Feb. 28 on a 400-0 unanimous vote. H.R. 1259 was then sent to the Senate, which already had a parallel bill awaiting consideration.
Gettysburg commem bill introduced
Sen. Arlen Spector, D-Pa., introduced a bill on Feb. 11 to require the Treasury secretary to strike commemorative coinage recalling the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 2013 and the address that President Abraham Lincoln made famous.
By NMN Mar 22, 2010


text:
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Manila prosecutor junks Kris Aquino's criminal complaint against Nicko Falcis
Photographs from Nicko Falcis and Kris Aquino's Instagram accounts
Culture	Spotlight
In the Kris vs Nicko case, it's now Nicko 4, Kris 1. Although Nicko was indicted for estafa and fraudulent use of access device in Taguig City.
Bam Abellon | Jul 08 2019
On Sunday, July 7, 2019, ANCX received a full copy of the resolution stating the dismissal of the qualified theft and access device fraud filed by former TV personality and now online celeb Kris Aquino against Nicko Falcis. Nicko is the former managing director of Kris's online company, Kris Cojuangco Aquino Productions (KCAP).
It was on October 12, 2018, when Kris formally filed a complaint for 44 counts of Qualified Theft and Violation of Access Devices Regulation Act of 1998. The cases—which accused Nicko of stealing Php 1,270,980.31 million via credit card transactions using KCAP's account—were filed in these seven cities: Makati City, San Juan City, Taguig City, Mandaluyong City, Pasig City, Quezon City, and Manila.
The resolution received by ANCX was dated April 10, 2019, and was signed by Assistant City Prosecutor Geoffrey H. Llarena.
"Lack of probable cause"
It states that according to Kris (referred to as the complainant), Nicko allegedly spent a total amount of Php 49, 584 in unauthorized credit card transactions, in Manila. The said transactions included one for Cathay Pacific Air and two for TIEZA (Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority).
The resolution states that the "complainant failed to establish the personal property that was supposedly unlawfully taken by respondent [Nicko] from complainant or from KCAP." It adds, "While it may be argued, as part of the expanded definition of personal property, that it is the credit line extended by BDO [Banco de Oro] which was the object of the unlawful taking, we must not lose sight of the fact that such credit line was issued in the name of respondent."
The eight-page document further explains that Nicko's purchases were "lawfully and presumably in compliance with the terms and conditions" of BDO, the bank that issued the credit card.
A criminal complaint for estafa, the resolution says, would have been "more appropriate under the circumstance." However, it states that the complainant failed to show that a "demand to account for and pay for" the alleged transactions were made. This demand is necessary to allow the parties involved to distinguish which among the transactions were made for KCAP and which among them were for the alleged personal use of Nicko.
The respondent, says the resolution, was able to sufficiently explain the expenses incurred in Manila that are in question: 1. "additional airfare charge for KCAP Staff (for production)" for "business class upgrade of complainant's personal nurse, Ruby "Bincai" Luntayao;" 2. "airport terminal fees for KCAP Team (Falcis)" for Tolak Angin TV Commercial Shoot in Indonesia; and 3. "airport terminal fees for KCAP Team (7 People) – Juan Sarte [makeup artist], Kris Aquino, Alvin Gagui [Kris's chief of staff], Jonathan Velasco [makeup artist], Nante Alingasa [hairstylist], Elias Jack Salvador [Kris's assistant], Ruby Bincao Luntayao" for the Tolak Angin TV Commercial Shoot in Indonesia.
On the account of access device fraud, the prosecutor did not find probable cause to hold Nicko criminally liable, citing the similar reason that the credit card was issued in the name of Nicko. The resolution adds, "Also, there being no proof of showing that the expenses incurred in Manila using the said card were made with intent to defraud, and intent to gain and fleeing thereafter…"
Nicko leaving the country for Thailand late last year can "hardly be considered as fleeing," for many reasons, according to the document. First, Nicko already issued a check "in favor of complainant." The check was supposed to pay for the disputed transactions. Second, Nicko went to Thailand upon the instruction of Kris (it can be remembered that Kris asked Nicko to go to Thailand to enroll in a short course). Third, Kris did not deny Nicko's allegation that she threatened his life should he return to the Philippines.
In the last page of the document, it concluded, "Wherefore, in view of the foregoing, the present criminal complaint is DISMISSED for lack of probable cause."
Kris Aquino's complaints against Nicko Falcis has already been junked in Pasig City, Makati City, and Taguig City. However, Nicko was indicted for estafa and fraudulent use of access device in Taguig City.
In April 2019, the Quezon City Prosecutor's Office junked the grave threats case filed by Nicko and his brother Jesus Falcis against Kris.
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Every now and then, we hear this seemingly humourous but actually misdirected statement from people who work long hours at the office or at home. The truth is, not getting enough sleep has a debilitating effect on our lives. Lack of sleep is known to lead to fatigue, grumpiness and lack of focus. But that's only the beginning. Keep reading for more unsettling facts about sleep deprivation and what you can do to fix your sleeping habit.
The NHS (National Health Society) in the United Kingdom says that sleep deprivation can cause high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and heart disease.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, during sleep, your muscles are repaired, the body tissue grows and energy is restored. Also, a study shows that the brain removes toxic materials from your body when you are asleep. These toxins are responsible for Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders. The brain's cells also shrink so that waste is removed efficiently.
How much sleep should we get each night?
Research states that you need 7-9 hours of sleep every night to function optimally. Most successful people all over the world get this range every night, while there are some who get 5-6 hours (with one person getting a frighteningly-small 3 hours!). This gives the body enough time to perform the necessary bodily functions that will prepare it for the next day's activities. We wake up with alert, with our energy restored, ready to take on the day. Sleep is also linked to our metabolism: sleep less hours, and your body burns carbohydrates slower, making you fat.
– Stick to a consistent sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day (including weekends).
– Perform your nightly routine (putting your phone on airplane mode, putting out tomorrow's clothes, brushing your teeth, etc) at least an hour before actually falling asleep.
– Keep your sleeping area cool, quiet and dark. Your brain does not shut down when you sleep, making you sensitive to noise. Have the air conditioner on, or leave the windows open (hopefully there is a net to keep mosquitoes out). Turn off all lights and close all curtains – you don't want to be awakened by the sun. Let your body sleep for as long as it needs to.
– Before you sleep, write down 3 things you are grateful for that day and 3 things you would like to accomplish the next day. When you wake up, your body and mind are ready to accomplish those tasks.
– If you read before you sleep, try reading an actual book, not an e-book. The blue light from an electronic device decreases melatonin production in the brain (melatonin is the hormone that makes us sleep).
What has helped you sleep better? Let us know in the comments.


text:
using BookArena.Data.Interfaces;
using BookArena.Model;

namespace BookArena.Data.Repositories
{
    public class CategoryRepository : GenericRepository<Category>, ICategoryRepository
    {
    }
}


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