The piece of shit that is Dante Arthurs

Dodgy looking character isn’t he?

Dante Wyndham Arthurs, 23, was sentenced yesterday to life in jail, with a minimum non-parole period of 13 years, for the murder of eight-year-old Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu in a shopping centre toilet cubicle last year.

The facts of what he did are chilling.

He strangled her, stripped her and digitally penetrated her before propping her body against the cubicle wall and fleeing.  The court heard it was an opportunistic bid to touch the girl sexually when she appeared at the toilet door as Arthurs was leaving.  According to a psychologist giving evidence:

“He has described to me and medical practitioners it was like he was watching someone else doing it,” Mr Richardson said.

He said Arthurs admitted wanting to touch the girl sexually but denied wanting to kill her.

Arthurs recalled seeing his hands around a throat and panicked when he noticed bruising around the girl’s eyes and neck, and that she had stopped breathing.

He tried to revive her with mouth to mouth resuscitation and shook her violently when she did not respond.

“I tried to shake a response from her, then her arms broke,” Arthurs told him.

“I heard a large snapping noise.”

Mr Richardson said Sofia’s legs hit the toilet before Arthurs dropped her to the floor.

“He watched himself go across to her to remove her clothing and insert one finger into the vagina. He noticed there was blood.”

Prosecutor Sam Vandongen said Sofia’s upper arms and shins were fractured, and she had significant bruising and lacerations in the ano-genital area.

And it looked like Arthurs was a serious serial pedophile, or at least starting out on a career as one - police found a bag containing latex gloves, handcuffs, a small knife and rope, along with a collection of pictures of young girls when they searched his home.  Plus he had form on the board it seems, but a case against him for a 2003 assault on another 8 year old girl fell apart due to police incompetence.

There has been criticism of the sentence Arthurs received …13 years before he is eligible for parole, at the still relatively young age of 36.  According to WA attorney general, Jim McGinty:

“Such a brutal shocking murder I think most people thought deserved a longer non-parole period than 13 years,”

“At the moment the judge’s hands are tied, he could give no more than 14 years non-parole period because of the archaic nature of our laws.”

He also said a Law Reform Commission report has recommended changes to the State’s murder laws, including amalgamating the two homicide categories of wilful murder and the less serious charge of murder. If these changes were in place now, Justice McKechnie would have been able to rule that Arthurs never be released, or sentence him to a non-parole period of 30 years.

Hey, Mr McGinty, who’s job was it to push these laws through parliament?  Perhaps if you’d pulled your finger out a bit sooner those laws would have been in place for Arthurs to be subjected to?

Anyway, he has made his position clear on the subject of Arthurs’ fate:

“It was a light sentence and it will be up to the attorney-general of the day as to whether he is released or not.”

I suspect that 13 years will prove much longer than Arthurs’ life in prison lasts.

Another omen?

Kevin Rudd can do nothing wrong at the moment.  Today he picked the Melbourne Cup winner, Efficiency, in the office sweep as well as betting $10 on it at the TAB.   John Howard’s tip, Mahler, came third.

I expect, almost certainly, we’ll be seeing this sort of celebration on November 24.  Nothing the government can do in the election campaign seems to make much of a dent on Rudd … seems like the voters have made up our minds that Howard’s going.

Nothing says you’re a wanker more than ….

… spending $50 on a cup of coffee.  Even if it is a Kopi Luwak, made in Indonesia from coffee beans that have been eaten and excreted (whole) by a possum-like marsupial called a luwak.

Mmmm, boiled possum poo!

Die spammer die

Todd Moeller, from the USA, got 2 years jail for spamming over a million people.  He was caught in a sting operation after agreeing to send junk email advertising to around 1.2 million people.  Suck shit, Toddy.

There should be much more of this happening.  What exactly do spammers hope to achieve?  I’m supposed to read a poorly written email from someone who’s first language is clearly not English, and think to myself “oh yeah, I have been having trouble getting it up lately, better get some viagra” or “yeah, sure I could use another couple of inches”.

Scum of the internet, die you bastards! Die!

The box cartel

So Richard Pratt’s company, Visy, was fined $36m yesterday for anti-competitive behaviour.  The fine is more than double the previous penalty for price-fixing offences handed down by the court.  Sounds big doesn’t it, but when you consider that the losses from the cartel behaviour between Visy and its supposed arch-rival Amcor over the four years they agreed to fix the prices of cardboard boxes have been put at $300 million to $700 million, its not much more than a drop in the ocean.

The chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Graeme Samuel, called for cartel participants to face criminal sanctions and possible jail penalties.   Individuals guilty of destructive cartel behaviour could face jail in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and eight other OECD countries.  So why not Australia?  I’m sure its been talked about before here, but obviously there’s not the political appetite to be sending major league business people to jail.  (Despite Treasurer Peter Costello in February 2005 indicating he would amend the law so that breaches attracted up to five years’ jail but “the Government hasn’t yet got around to introducing criminalisation”, according to the judge).

According to Mr Samuel:

“Cartels are theft, usually by well-dressed thieves,” Mr Samuel said.

“Nothing concentrates the mind of an executive contemplating creating or participating in a cartel more than the prospect of a criminal conviction and a stretch in jail.”

Exactly.  The fine, at 5-10% of the benefits to the cartel partners, is just a cost of doing business for them, not much more significant than a parking ticket.  The starting point for the fines should have been 100% of the benefits to the criminal parties, then with punitive elements added …. maybe $1 billion as a starting point?  Perhaps a whole bunch of civil suits by customers of Visy and Amcor might see them paying out amounts more in line with the amounts they stole from consumers of their products.

The judge got stuck into Mr Pratt, fairly seriously.  He rejected Mr Pratt’s excuses for the cartel behaviour as being “a John le Carre defence”. And he questioned the extent of Mr Pratt’s contrition, saying it “probably has a substantial element of regret at being found out”.   Also:

“There cannot be any doubt that Mr Pratt also knew that the cartel, to which he gave his approval, and in which he has admitted to being knowingly concerned, was seriously unlawful,” the judge found.

Whats the odds now with this case having a penalty amounting to a slap on the wrist for Visy, that when the government finally does act to impose criminal penalties, it won’t be any big end of town people that end up being the first to go to jail ….it’ll be Joe Blow from No-Name Corporation, certainly not a big Liberal Party benefactor like Richard Pratt.

Nice pussy

Heidi Klum, in pussy cat costume.