Interesting factoids

[ciroccoj]

Couple of interesting articles about the coverage of this war:

• Who Covered the War Best? Try Al-Jazeera
  
• People Just Like You, by Peter Mansbridge
  

And a few interesting (to me) factoids about the defence of "provocation" in Canada.

• Historically, the only emotion accommodated by this defence was patriarchal rage (eg. man catches wife in adultery, or son being sodomized). A woman coming upon either of those situations could not claim provocation as a defence if she killed her husband, his lover, or whoever was sodomizing her son.
  
• Today, provocation is "any wrongful act or insult sufficient to deprive the ordinary person of self-control", but is still used mostly by men, frequently involving sexuality (eg. catching their wife in adultery, or being propositioned by another man.)
  
• The provocation must be sudden. The defence cannot be used by a person who has been beaten for years by their spouse and finally snaps. They can try to use self-defence, although this is rarely successful.
  
• In a study done by the Dept of Justice (Reforming Provocation, 1998) they noted that 1/6 of homicides involved a spouse, 62/80 by men, 18 by women. 60% involved a history of domestic violence – where the woman was killed, it was 90%.
  
• The study advocated several reforms, mostly to remove this defence as a way to let make men get off with 'Manslaughter' instead of murder when they killed their wives. None of the reforms have been implemented.
  

I love the law.