The journalist, wife of slain Wall Street Journal Reporter Daniel Pearl, is taking Al Qaeda, other radical groups and Pakistan-based Habib Bank Ltd to court over the 2002 abduction, torture and murder of her husband.

From the statement of claim:

“Plaintiffs seek to hold responsible those terrorists, terrorist organizations and the supporting charitable and banking organizations for the senseless kidnapping, torture and murder of Daniel Pearl.”

The suit seeks an unspecified amount of money, or ‘whatever the court deems appropriate’ to prevent the defendants from committing a similar act.

An incredibly brave woman, to be sure. My guess is Al Qaeda won’t be showing up in court, what with the constant threat of airstrikes. But it would be extremely interesting if they nailed Habib Bank – one of Pakistan’s largest – with supporting terror. A precedent setting case that could have poorly-behaved Middle Eastern bankers squirming. Thanks to CS for the link.

I just wanted to thank everyone for supporting the new Nunc Scio through its first two months of existence. The site has wracked up some decent stats during tha time- 6,191 page views in 3,010 visits by 1,205 unique visitors.

Please, continue to visit and (hopefully) enjoy the site. I’ll try to make it at least moderately worth your while.

Cheers!

Add this to the ‘how’d you get a research grant for that?’ file.

An Edinburgh University-based team has discovered that men are unreasonably optimistic about the effectiveness of their pick-up lines.

To begin with, the researchers divided pick-up scenarios into four categories:

They ranged from attempts to appear cultured (“It’s at moments like these when I am reminded of Byron”); to the meaningless compliment (“Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?”); the sexual reference (“I may not be Fred Flintstone, but I bet I can make your bed rock”), to the humorous (“Hi, how do you like me so far”).

When the researchers compared responses to these scenarios by men and women, they discovered something surprising.

“Despite being deeply unpopular with women, men are unreasonably optimistic about how well their sexually explicit lines will go down,” said psychologist Peter Caryl.

The study suggests males may use bad pick-up lines to rapidly assess a women’s personality. Presumably, if she kicks you in the groin after saying, “is that a mirror in your pocket? Because I can sure see myself in your pants”, she may not share your sense of humour and/or propriety. The lines may also serve as a way of assuming an archetypal personality that women quickly respond to. According to the researchers, these archetypes include the ‘nice guy’, the ‘provider’, the ‘leader’, and everyone’s perennial favourite, ‘the bad mate’. Said Dr. Caryl:

“I can’t imagine anyone being turned on by this “bad mate” kind of guy, but some women seem to be less put off than others. If you look like George Clooney, you may be able to get away with a whole range of things.”

Darn it.

The PM vowed today not to ‘interfere politically‘ if Lord Conrad Black, convicted felon, seeks to return to Canada while on bail, or regain his Canadian citizenship. An important point to make, since a criminal record has a way of complicating a visa application.

Still, Harper’s statement is interesting in its specificity. Sure, he won’t interefere politically, but there are still a lot of other ways he could get involved:

1. Emotionally. A tearful Harper wails at border guards until they let Black through.
2. Heroically. The PM leads a JTF2 mission to recover the troubled former press baron from an American prison. Canada carpet-bombed the next day.
3. Geometrically. Harper befuddles immigration officials with sketches of intricate shapes. Black sneaks by dressed as a dodecahedron.
4. Whimsically. Harper recounts the glory days when we protected and encouraged our corporate criminals, not put them in jail. Canada converts to a corporate kleptocracy, and Conrad Black is our new king.

And the list goes on. So as you can see, ol’ sneaky pants Harper may have a few more tricks up his sleave.

Some disturbing news in the Globe and Mail today- 13 Russian journalists have been murdered in the past decade, and none of the cases have been solved.

This alarming statistic comes from the Committee to Protect Journalists. The murders include the brutal slaying of Anna Politkovskaya, a crusading reporter gunned down in her apartment buidling. She was an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin’s government, particularly its conduct of the war in Chechnya.

So who’s doing the shooting? The answer is entirely unclear, but likely lies somewhere in the shadowy nexus of authoritarianism and organized crime that characterizes modern politics in Russia.

“Whenever someone follows the path of money, they get stopped,” says Nina Ognianova of the CPJ.  

There also seems to be an unwillingness to investigate crimes against journalists in Russia. Andrei Kalitin was shot last June, after writing a book probing the mafia domination of the Russian aluminum industry. He survived the attack, but his assailant is still at large.

“[The Police] wouldn’t open a criminal case on a contract murder because I wasn’t shot dead,” said Kalitin.

The brutal silencing of Russian journalists is just another example- albeit a particularly bloody one- of Russia’s slow slide away from democracy. A nation that does not protect the freedom of expression of its citizens cannot hope to have a free and open political system. And if your country is also overrun by violent criminals, then the prospects are even worse.

Photo: Slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya