Lagos calling – plenty of people listening

According to police, Australians are losing $36m a year to Nigerian scammers.  And the problem is more extensive than that, because similar frauds are going through other countries.  The police say they struggle to get a handle on the issue because many incidents went unreported – no doubt people being scammed are often too embarrassed to own up to their stupidity.

It just staggers me to see people still falling for these scams.  To not know about them, you’d need to be living in a cave or something, or be incredibly stupid, gullible, greedy or all of those.  Hard to protect some people from themselves, it seems.

Suck shit fatboy

An inmate in the US is claiming he’s too fat to be executed, because the executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that the drugs used would be reduced in effectiveness due to his weight.

Richard Cooey, 41, is sentenced to die in the US state of Ohio for raping and murdering two young women in 1986. His execution is scheduled for October 14. Cooey is 170 cm tall and weighs 121 kg.

Tough shit, fatboy. My advice to the prison authorities is put him on a starvation diet, say no food for a month or so. Then when he reaches goal weight, strap him down and needle him.

Technorati Tags: Richard Cooey, death penalty, capital punishment, obesity

Disgusting, evil (eeeeewwwww!!! part 2)

Yesterday’s post was about something unbelievably disgusting, but here’s another thats on a par with it.

A 26 year old Perth man has been accused of raping a 4 year old girl he was babysitting.

The officer in charge of Western Australia’s Child Protection Squad, Senior Sergeant Gordon Fairman, said the girl had suffered serious injuries “of a sexual nature”.

“Princess Margaret Hospital staff called the police when the girl’s mother took her to casualty yesterday,” he said today.

“She was sedated and examined and then underwent emergency surgery.”

This morning, 26-year-old Stephen John Cracknell appeared in Perth Magistrates Court where he was not required to enter a plea to a charge of aggravated sexual penetration of a child under the age of 13 years.

Capital punishment anyone? Or at least a good daily arse reaming with a large uncomfortable object (something with the texture of a pineapple?) for the next 20 or 30 years.

Technorati Tags: child rape, Stephen John Cracknell

Meanwhile, out in Deliverance country ….

Well actually, this happened in Brisbane, but its the sort of thing you’d expect to see only in those far flung redneck hillbilly valleys in the Appalachians, or the Deep South of America.

A couple has been jailed for the sexual abuse of their daughter. The 35-year-old stepfather received an eight-year prison term. The girl’s 39-year-old mother was sentenced to six months’ jail and three months’ probation.

These charmers, surely candidates for parents of the year, made a pregnancy pact to inseminate their 15-year-old daughter after bearing two biological children with congenital diseases. They wrote up a “contract” with the girl, and then tried to impregnate her using the man’s sperm, which he had masturbated into a syringe. When that didn’t work, the man began having sexual intercourse with his stepdaughter up to three times a day. And Mum wasn’t exactly passively ignoring what was going on - she offered her daughter advice on the best positions to achieve their objective of getting her pregnant.

And not only that, but prosecutors told the court that he had been sexually abusing the girl since she was 12.

The couple were eventually arrested in August 2006 after the girl confided in the family of a friend who encouraged her to go to the police. As he was being arrested, the man indignantly declared: “Did you not see the f—ing contract?”

Yet another argument for compulsory sterilisation …. there are just some people who should not be allowed to breed. Actually, these people are a strong argument for retrospective abortions, even 30 odd years after their own birth.

I don’t suppose I should be surprised at the leniency of the sentences the parents got, after all Courts have been dishing out pissweak sentences forever, but I am. Hard to imagine worse cases of abuse, by both parents, so why wouldn’t this pair of delightful human beings have gotten the maximum possible sentence?

Technorati Tags: sexual abuse, pregnancy pact, stepfather, stepdaughter, sexual abuse by both parents, incest

Megalomania

As if to confirm he’s a nutcase, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has come out with these gems.

“The MDC will never be allowed to rule this country - never ever,”

“Only God who appointed me will remove me, not the MDC, not the British.”

“We will never allow an event like an election [to] reverse our independence, our sovereignty, our sweat and all that we fought for … all that our comrades died fighting for,”

Umm, why bother having the election then, Robert? Even if it is a total sham? Why all the violence and intimidation of opposition supporters? Worried that having turned Zimbabwe from the “breadbasket” of Africa to a shithole, your people won’t vote for you without a bit of arm twisting? Must have been a worry for you in the first election - clearly your vote riggers got complacent and let Morgan Tsvangarai win … so the extra effort’s going in now to make sure the people don’t make that mistake again.

Lets face it, the only way Mugabe will surrender power is when he’s carried out in a box. CIA, Mossad or someone, get in there and do the people of Zimbabwe a big favour, sooner rather than later.

Technorati Tags: Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe, elections, vote rigging, Morgan Tsvangarai

Interesting defence

Convicted gang rapist Bilal Skaf was in court again appealing to get one of his convictions quashed or the sentence to be reduced. Skaf of course was notorious after getting sentenced to 55 years jail for his lead role in a series of gang rapes in Sydney a few years ago. This sentence was later reduced on appeal to 38 years.

In fact he has become so notorious for his crimes that according to his lawyer:

”(Skaf’s name) has become synonymous with rapes committed by people of the Muslim faith in western Sydney and … with gang attacks on young women.”

“If an advertiser were trying to achieve a brand name for a gang rapist, Bilal Skaf has achieved this aim. The product for gang rapist in western Sydney is Bilal Skaf,”

The lawyer went on to say no potential juror could have escaped his notoriety, and it was impossible for him to have ever received a fair trial. Well I say, too bad Bilal, whose fault was that? The fact that you committed so many vicious crimes got you too well known, for being a rapist thug, and now you want to cry because of it. Should have thought of that before you went out and raped all those young women, dickhead.

The second part of his argument, to have his sentence reduced, was even more bizarre, and disturbing. His lawyer said:

“The Gosling Park incident appears to take place over less than one hour,”

“There was no significant harm caused to the complainant, no significant physical injury.”

This is bordering on saying she was up for it, it was just a bit of fun with the boys that got out of hand, and by the way, it didn’t last long and didn’t hurt her. I wonder if the lawyer had enough conscience to go out and vomit after court at the thought of having to use that as an argument in Skaf’s defence?

Skaf’s younger brother Mohammed, 25, is also appealing his conviction and sentence. He has lymphatic cancer and was not present at the hearing. Hopefully he suffers a lingering and painful death from the disease.

Technorati Tags: Bilal Skaf, Sydney gang rapes

WTF? This has got to be a joke

Shakeel Mirza, a medical student at the University of Queensland, tried to give an 11-year-old boy a penis massage.  The Pakistani-born medical student had been appointed as a mentor to the 11-year-old boy under the Lions Club’s “Aunties and Uncles” program when he tried to force his hands down the youngster’s pants at the family’s Brisbane home.  In court, it was said he had been rubbing the child’s head to relax him when he offered to massage the child’s penis instead because “it would feel better”.  The boy managed to fend off Mirza’s advances.

Mirza escaped with only 12 months probation.  No criminal conviction was formally recorded after his defence lawyers successfully argued that a black mark against his name could prevent Mirza, 27, from getting a government Blue Card - or security clearance - allowing him to treat children in hospital. Mirza’s defence barrister Brad Farr argued that in some cases, shame was enough to deter people from reoffending, and that a jail sentence - even a wholly suspended one - was not warranted.  He also maintained that a criminal conviction would cast a pall over his client’s promising future as a doctor.

What about the fact, entirely within Mirza’s control, that maybe he should have thought about the consequences before trying to grope the boy?

Regardless, the judge bought the defence’s arguments.  Piss weak!  Why not look at the alternate view that Mirza’s actions revealed a character flaw that should disqualify him from being a doctor?  Or anything involving contact with children?

At least in this case, the State has appealed against the inadequacy of the sentence.  Its barrister asked the court to resentence Mirza to 12 months’ jail - albeit wholly suspended - and record a criminal conviction.  Still pretty soft, but better than nothing I suppose … I think he needs at least some jail time to send a message that his behaviour is completely unacceptable.

Why does the legal profession always seek to justify the unjustifiable, mitigate the unmitigatable, defend the indefensible?   Does a client ever get told - “you fucked up, no excuses, front up and cop your medicine”?  And when they get appointed as judges, why do many seem so inclined to accept (often farfetched and lame) excuses for people’s bad behaviour?  Do their standards get distorted by constantly dealing with the scum of the community …. so that compared to the worst criminals, most seem halfway decent and reasonable?

Time to bring back the stocks

Two teenagers, 16-year-old and 14-year-old have been remanded in custody after being charged with numerous offences including break and enter, for looting houses that had been evacuated in the Queensland town of Emerald during the recent floods.

The police say the teenagers will be flown out of Emerald tonight because of widespread anger in the community.  Inspector Lyle Mitchell said:

“We will be taking measures and certainly one of those measures will be remanding in custody for their own personal safety to ensure their safety.”

“That might sound a bit soft but certainly there’s an obligation there to make sure that no harm comes to them.”

Yep, soft.  Chaining them to a lamp post in the main street for a few days would have been more appropriate.  With the flooding I’m sure there’s plenty of spoiled food around town, so plenty of rotten tomatoes and stuff to chuck at the little bastards.

OH&S - for suicide bombers

Let this be a lesson to all suicide bombers.  Be careful where you tread - slips and trips are a hazard in the suicide bomber business, and workplace accidents can have deadly consequences.

A would-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say.

I can see the merits in using the local village idiot as a suicide bomber.  No point wasting more skilful and valuable resources on such missions.  However, evidently there is an intelligence threshhold below which the idiocy endangers the mission’s objectives.

Clearly the Taliban need to do some OH&S training for their insurgents.  After all, they don’t want their suicide bombers to die stupid accidental and pointless deaths.  (No, they want deliberate and pointless deaths).

Al-Qaeda = A Gentlemen’s Club

Al Qaeda linked Pakistani militant commander Baitullah Mehsud denied his involvement in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Mehsud heads the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan (TTP), a newly launched united movement of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

A spokesman for Mehsud said:

“This is absolutely wrong to say that the Taliban or any member of the Taliban were involved in murder of Benazir Bhutto,”

“I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don’t strike women,”

Nice and gentlemanly, aren’t they?

I suppose this means that suicide bomber training includes instructions to separate the women from the men before detonating, or choosing men only targets (toilets, changing rooms, etc). Also that the 9/11 hijackers screwed up their orders in not first ensuring that the planes used were male only and that all women had been evacuated from the World Trade Centre and Pentagon before crashing into them.

What suicide bomber training should include is a live practice in their barracks before they get sent out on their real missions. After all, they clearly need as much etiquette training as possible to become the gentlemen that Al-Qaeda thinks they are.