Category Archives: scum of the earth

Yep, guns sure do make everyone safer

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American gun nuts often argue that arming the civilian population makes them safer, because if they had more reasonable gun controls in the US, regular people would be defenceless because the criminals would still have their guns, and that giving everyone the ability to arm themselves makes criminals think twice before attacking or robbing someone who might be armed and fight back.  Right!

How come then, whenever there is a gun massacre in the US, the only armed person there is the nut with the guns.  Never do you see any of the targets fight back.  Why is this?  Impeccable planning by the nuts who go on these rampages so they never pick any victims who are armed themselves and likely to defend themselves?  You’d think one lunatic at some stage in some attack would be unlucky enough to run into someone who fights back.  Just doesn’t happen in real life though.  Why?  Because the reality is that loose gun controls just make it easy for the nutjobs who have some gripe with the world, or some bizarre fantasy about themselves as some sort of guntoting super warrior, to arm themselves to the teeth admirably equipped to do their worst.

Sure, the gun advocates will say guns don’t kill people, people do.  Well, to a point thats right, but guns do make it a hell of a lot easier.  Maybe the nuts would take out their rages some other way without their guns, but how many mass knifing or baseball bat swinging rampages do we hear of where 6,8,10, 13, 20+ innocent victims get killed?

On Friday, someone with a grudge about his inability to speak English took out 13 people, and himself, in Binghamton, New York.  Authorities there identified the gunman who killed 13 people and himself at an immigrant services centre as Jiverly Wong, 41, a Vietnamese immigrant who had taken English classes there. Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski today no motive for the shooting had been determined, but he confirmed reports that Wong, who also went by the name Voong, had felt degraded by his inability to speak English and by a recent job loss.

"From the people close to him … this action he took was not a surprise to them,"

Mr Zikuski said.

"He felt degraded from his inability to speak English and he was upset about that,"

he added. Mr Zikuski said Mr Wong was "heavily armed" and had held a permit since 1995 or 1997 for two handguns recovered at the scene.

I wonder if any of those who subsequently thought his actions weren’t a complete surprise thought about telling the police that he was some sort of time bomb waiting to go off.  Perhaps reasonable gun laws would have empowered police to confiscate weapons from a person like this?

Then, yesterday, another guy, in Pittsburgh, started shooting at police who attended a domestic disturbance call, killing 3 of them and wounding another.  The gunman, 23-year-old Richard Poplawski, was arrested after a four-hour standoff. Friends say the gunman had recently been upset about losing his job and that he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.   He apparently lay in wait for the police, armed with an AK-47 assault-style rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a revolver and wearing a bulletproof vest. Before surrendering, he exchanged hundreds of rounds of gunfire with SWAT officers from his bedroom window, while taking time to call friends and tell them he was going to die, that he had been hit in his bulletproof vest and leg, and that he loved them. 

Poplawski was a dishonourably charged Marine who adhered to a number of right-wing conspiracy theories and expressed fears of a "Zionist nation" revoking his right to own guns.  I heard a friend of his on the radio news this morning, ranting on about something like 30 states had declared sovereignty from the central government …I just love the paranoid rantings of the lunatic right in America – talk about bizarro world!

Again, it was evident the shooter was a nutcase with plenty of history of psychological/behavioural problems – how is it a good thing that the gun laws in America enable him to be armed to the teeth?  Someone please explain this to me.  And while you’re at it, what possible justification is there for civilians to be owning AK-47’s and similar assault weapons?  Worried about killer super rabbits and deer fighting back while you’re out hunting or something?

The shootings in Pittsburgh were the 6th mass shooting in the past month in the US, including one in Alabama (10 dead + the gunman), and another in Oakland, California (4 police killed).  All this in the land where guns make everyone safer!  Yet the US has something like 9 times the rate of gun murders than Australia, where guns are much less prevalent – and is way out in front of the rest of the civilised world.  Just where are all those citizens in America using their guns to defend themselves against the gun toting criminals? 

Why not try something radical in the US?  Loose gun controls, and widespread gun ownership are obviously failing to protect the people at large.  How about this?  Try doing what the rest of the western world does, and restrict gun ownership.  Its not like things are going to get worse than they have been, is it?

I don’t expect this to happen.  The gun lobby in the US seems to find it acceptable that a few thousand people a year are murdered by people using guns – and their politicians are so much in the pocket of that gun lobby that they are not willing to do anything but token gestures at the margins of gun control.  Clearly they think a few thousand murders a year are ok too?

You know something else I found disturbing in one of the articles I linked to.  The resigned acceptance of these murders.  This was said of the Oakland killings of the 4 police officers:

"We lose officers about every 57 hours in this country,"

"But seldom do you have one of this magnitude."

Thats about 150 police officers killed each year.  Fact of life in America!  Just something they accept as business as usual.  Wow!  I can’t find the equivalent numbers for Australia, other than that 731 officers have died in the course of duty since 1803 (which includes car accidents, plane crashes etc as well as criminal killings), and that 45 have died in the last 10 years, and in Victoria some 30 of the 150 who died since 1803 were murdered. 

 

Just not cricket

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A few months after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, the attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore, Pakistan this week bears many similarities in the way it was carried out.  A number of gunmen armed with grenades, assault rifles and a rocket launcher attacked the team’s bus while they travelled to the Gaddafi Stadium where a cricket test match was being played.  According to a witness to the attack:

“As the Sri Lankan team was approaching the stadium for the test match this morning, about a half a kilometre away from the stadium, two cars entered the roundabout… and fired a grenade,”

“As they did this, three other gunmen ran into the roundabout, where the bus was, opened fire on a police vehicle – where a police officer was killed – and then opened fire on the bus, spraying the bus we understand with machine gun fire,”

A number of Sri Lankan players were injured in the attack, and 6 Pakistani policemen and 2 civilians.  The gun battle went for about 15 minutes.  The driver of the Sri Lankans’ bus is being hailed as a hero for driving the bus at speed away from the scene of the attack despite having tyres shot out and other damage, and being shot at himself.  He got the team into the stadium from which they were subsequently evacuated by helicopter before returning immediately home to Sri Lanka … abandoning the game and rest of the series against Pakistan.

There are some suspicious things about this attack, including:

  1. apparently the route the Sri Lankans took to the ground was changed, yet the attackers knew where to intercept the bus
  2. all of the terrorists escaped after the attack
  3. the very fact that a dozen or so men with heavy weaponry were able to get into the heart of the city, with the cricketers supposedly being afforded high level security
  4. the Pakistan team which normally travelled at the same time as the Sri Lankans delayed its departure to the ground on the day of the attack.

I would be completely unsurprised if it emerged that elements of the Pakistan military/security forces were in cahoots with the terrorists.  Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence agency has fostered Islamist militant groups in Kashmir and Afghanistan over decades, and there are suspicions that some ISI elements have links to militants inside Pakistan. This is essentially what ICC match referee Chris Broad has suggested in his comments when he returned to England.

It had been thought previously that cricket, being almost a religion in Pakistan, would be sacrosanct from attacks by terrorists – clearly this is not so.  Having already had a number of teams cancel tours to their country due to security concerns, this attack means no international cricket will be played there for many years, if ever again.  It is almost certain that Pakistan’s role in co-hosting the 2011 cricket World Cup will be revoked, and casts doubt over hosting the event on the subcontinent at all.

Pakistan seems to be a the root of all the Islamist extremism in the world today, or at least the Pakistan/Afghanistan border regions.  Many terrorists either come from there, train there and enjoy refuge and support there.  Pakistan needs to grow the backbone, and to have the international support, to stamp out the militants and their support base.  To date the government there has shown little appetite for this.  Pakistan will continue to be ostracised by the international community, sporting and generally, until it does tackle the insurgents in a meaningful way, which to my mind means using massive military and police force, and not coming to compromises with the Islamists like they did recently in the Swat Valley region of their country.  Here they signed a ceasefire agreement with the militants allowing them to apply Sharia law in the region (and given the influence of the Taliban in the insurgency here, it will be the strict interpretation of the Sharia such as was imposed in Afghanistan under Taliban rule).

Of course, the diversion of the war on terror from the relevant fight with Al-Qaeda and their harbourers the Taliban in Afghanistan, to the somewhat less relevant war on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, has not helped.  Saddam Hussein was an evil oppressor, but did not present the same threat to the world in general as the terrorists based in Afghanistan.  The US and allies should have completed the mission there, rather than going on what became a bigger, misguided mission in Iraq.  Perhaps proper focus on the original purposes of the war on terror may have stamped out, or at least seriously curtailed, the militants in the Afghan/Pakistan border areas.  Instead, it has failed to capture or kill bin Laden, eliminate Al-Qaeda and its support base, and indeed has pushed many insurgents over the border into Pakistan, worsening things there.  Not to mention that Afghanistan remains a failed state some 7 years after the Taliban were ousted from power, and shows no real signs of being able to function as something remotely like a functioning, well governed country that you might actually choose to go to, or live in.  Large parts of Pakistan are in a similar state, and there is a danger that the whole country will collapse.

It seems to me that solving the problems of Islamist extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan is the world’s biggest security challenge.  It has been for a number of years.  This week’s events in Lahore perhaps serve to focus more international attention on it.

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Firebug

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One of the regrettable, and I suppose, inevitable, truths about the Victorian bushfires, is that some of the fires were undoubtedly deliberately lit.

Now, one alleged arsonist has been arrested and charged by police.   Brendan Sokaluk, 39, of Churchill, is alleged to have deliberately started the fire at Churchill in Victoria’s Gippsland region.  This fire has killed 21 people and burnt out more than 30,000 hectares.  The arson charge against him carries a maximum penalty of 25 years, with a related bushfire charge carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years. 

A couple of things I find amusing about Sokaluk’s arrest and charging:

  1. the bonus “possessing child pornography” charge they slugged him with – as if being a murderous firebug isn’t bad enough, he is also now tagged as a kiddy fiddling sicko
  2. the fact that his name is made public but publication of his address is suppressed – as if 2 seconds research by anyone couldn’t figure that out, and the locals are sure to be pointing out to anyone who asks where he lives.

Of course, now the man is charged and named, we have the usual vigilante reaction with all sorts of threats being made against him.  He was whisked out of Morwell on Friday as enraged locals pounded on the doors of the police van, has been brought to Melbourne for his own safety and to defuse the community backlash in Gippsland.  Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon had warned people not to threaten Mr Sokaluk, despite emotions running high after last week’s devastating bushfires. She said:

"Coming to court and protesting is not an appropriate thing to do,”

"Obviously, we will make sure this person is well protected.”

“We hope that we don’t have to deal with a gang of people who are angry and concerned about this arrest. We know people are.”

"We will make sure he is protected and can go before the justice system, as he should, and be dealt with through that process.”

Apparently his mother and brother have left their Gippsland home, fearing for their safety after Sokaluk’s name became public knowledge.

firebug

(sorry, couldn’t resist the image – is it possible to find a more representative picture of a feral redneck bogan from Morwell, or Moe, than this guy? He’s got the lot, mullet, flanno shirt, beanie and dirty tracky dacks)

Of course, someone who goes around lighting bushfires is bound to be some sort of nutcase, and details emerging about Sokaluk certainly suggest this.  Among other things:

  • he was rejected as a Country Fire Authority volunteer fireman
  • neighbours say he often lit fires in his backyard
  • he was rejected recently by a girlfriend
  • his writings on social networking sites suggest he is poorly educated and barely literate
  • he once worked as a gardener, and is now a scrap metal collector
  • he was pre-occupied with falling in love and getting married.
  • he was an oddball loner, according to acquaintances
  • he had a “bit of an unusual” personality.

So, Brendan Sokaluk looks to be some sort of weirdo.  Maybe the type who gets his jollies by lighting fires.  But the people threatening him and his family need to calm down.  His guilt still has to be established -  this is what the criminal justice system is supposed to do, in good time.  If he’s guilty I do hope he gets 40 years in jail (although I suspect that if guilty any sentences for different crimes will run concurrently and he might get 25 years).  Personally, if guilty I’m all for dropping him out of a helicopter into the middle of the next available bushfire. But that doesn’t need to happen right now, and while his guilt is unproved.

When he was charged and remanded in custody last week, his lawyer stated he was in a very mentally fragile state.  I’m sure his mental state will come out in his defence when he gets to court.  I’d hope it doesn’t carry too much weight in the trial and sentencing (if guilty) … at the end of the day he exercised free choices to do what he is alleged to have done, and should bear full responsibility.  I just don’t buy that someone could be driven by things completely outside their control to do evil things like he is claimed to have done.  He would have had a certain level of control and discretion.

 

Lagos calling – plenty of people listening

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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.

 

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Suck shit fatboy

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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.

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Disgusting, evil (eeeeewwwww!!! part 2)

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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.

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Meanwhile, out in Deliverance country ….

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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?

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Megalomania

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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.

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Interesting defence

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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.

Bilal Skaf - sentenced to a maxium of 55 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.

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WTF? This has got to be a joke

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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?