Category Archives: Criminal Injustice

In Memory Of Murdered Men & Women For Whom Kennedy Never Spared A Thought

Africa, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Media, South-Africa, The West

Ted Kennedy (see “Ted’s Dead: Sacred Cow Syndrome Strikes”), the great humanitarian, never piped up about the craven carnage of murder and mayhem in my homeland, South Africa. Why would he? The slaying is done by Africans; the worst fate is often reserved for Afrikaner and English men, women and children, who’re being culled preponderantly and disproportionately to their population numbers.
Kennedy excelled at perpetrating the narrative of the officially excluded and oppressed. His worldview did not expand to accommodate Un-PC realities. As the obscene orgy over the passing of Kennedy, at a ripe age, proceeds shamelessly, mull over a truly tragic waste of lives.

Silent Acquiescence In Daily Terror
Written by PARATUS
Friday, 28 August 2009

South Africa is experiencing extraordinary levels of violent crime. Since the country’s democratic transition in 1994, some 300,000 South Africans have been murdered. Much of this crime is unprecedented in its brutality and is directed at the elderly and the young. Bizarrely, much of the Western media are silent about the calamity which has befallen South Africa. Is this an intentional oversight to avoid accusations of racism or denigrating one of the few African democracies? Or, are the Western media – and, by implication, its consumers – disinterested in accounts of murder and bloodshed far removed on the southern tip of a forgotten continent?

Marinda O’Dell was a compassionate and hardworking occupational therapist at a school for disabled children in Krugersdorp, an hour’s drive north west of Johannesburg. In early August, two young men entered her house just after lunchtime, bludgeoned her 17-year-old daughter unconscious, and cut Marinda’s throat. Marinda became one of the 50 people murdered on an average day in South Africa.

Last month, Cobi Venter, a dedicated anti-apartheid campaigner, and her husband George, an 78-year-old entrepreneur, were brutally murdered in their middle-class suburban home in Port Elizabeth. Six men forced their way into the Venter’s home, which had been barricaded after a previous robbery attempt. George was struck several times with a hammer, tortured and dragged by his feet from room to room, and then killed. After witnessing the terrifying events, Cobi was gang-raped and fatally beaten to death.

According to the Venter’s son: “Blood was on the walls of every single room in the house; it was on the ceilings. It was like evil just exploded there – I mean, all eight of the main windows were smashed as well.” Veteran policemen cried at the scene.

More than ten years ago, Anne Paton, the wife of the celebrated late anti-apartheid author, Alan Paton, fled South Africa in terror. A number of her friends had been murdered, and she was almost killed by two robbers who throttled and assaulted the then 70-year-old as she was enjoying an afternoon nap. Realizing that the government was unwilling to protect its taxpayers and citizens, she finally left South Africa . At the time, she wrote:

I love this country with a passion, but I cannot live here any more. I can no longer live slung about with panic buttons and gear locks. I am tired of driving with my car windows closed and the doors locked, tired of being afraid of stopping at red lights. I am tired of being constantly on the alert, having that sudden frisson of fear at the sight of a shadow by the gate, of a group of youths approaching—although nine times out of 10 they are innocent of harmful intent. Such is the suspicion that dogs us all…

While some people say I have been unlucky, others say: “You are lucky not to have been raped or murdered.” What kind of a society is this where one is considered “lucky” not to have been raped or murdered—yet?”

While difficult to believe, it appears that the level of brutality employed by criminals is on the rise in South Africa. Deputy national police commissioner, Andre Pruis, recently announced an investigation into the excessively violent nature of crime in the country.

Especially at risk are the elderly and the young. According to official South African Police Service (SAPS) figures, in 2007/08 (the latest 12-month period for which data have been released) an average of 30 children were murdered every week. During a typical year, as many children are murdered in South Africa as the number of all people murdered in both the United Kingdom and Germany , notwithstanding the fact that the latter two countries have a combined population of 141 million, compared to 48 million in South Africa.

The risk of being murdered in South Africa today is almost six times as high as in the United States . Compared to the United Kingdom , the risk is 19 times higher, while the risk is an incredible 40 times higher than in Germany.

Sexual crimes are also at intolerably high levels in South Africa. Gang-rape and the rape of toddlers and even infants has become a common occurrence. Only countries at war suffer as much sexual violence as South Africa , Doctors Without Borders said in March in a global report on rape.

According to the SAPS, children are the victims of 41 percent of all rapes and attempted rapes reported in the country; approximately 60 a day. Over 15 percent of all reported rapes are against children under 11, and another 26 percent against children 12-17 years.

Given that a large proportion of all violent crime – but sexual offenses in particular – go unreported, the true figures are likely to be substantially higher. A bizarre belief among some African black men that sex with a virgin can cure HIV/AIDS is further fueling the high levels of child sexual exploitation in South Africa.

According to Max Coleman’s authoritative book, “A crime against humanity: Analyzing repression of the Apartheid State ”, published by the South African Human Rights Committee, 21,000 people died in political violence in South Africa during apartheid. Included in Coleman’s figures are deaths due to SA Defence Force actions in Angola , security force action in South Africa , and intra-black (or “black-on-black”) killings.

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, over 300,000 people have been murdered in South Africa . To put this horrifying number into perspective, it is sobering to recall that the United Kingdom suffered 383,000 military deaths during World War II, after years of intense fighting across France , Germany , and the Mediterranean basin.

An epidemic of criminal violence has afflicted South Africa since its first non-racial franchise in 1994. Yet, as one astute observer points out: “This story has been largely ignored by the mainstream media in the United States and the Western world, in order to perpetuate the Mandela myth of the wonderful New South Africa.”

Why are the Western media largely silent about South Africa ’s crime wave? Is it for fear of being thought ‘racist’, notwithstanding the fact that most victims of violent crime in South Africa are black? Is it for fear of blemishing the miracle of South Africa ’s (relatively) peaceful transition to democracy, having to admit that the value of reconciliation on which the “rainbow nation” was built has given way to mistrust and animosity? Whatever the reason, the Western media is doing its consumers a disservice by ignoring the tidal wave of violent crime which has engulfed South Africa.

“My child has been murdered; he lies in the room at the back and there is blood.” With these words the father of the 29-year-old Gericke Smit, an attorney, had to report his son’s death to an ex-policeman. Gericke was killed in Pietersburg last month by two men who battered him to death, striking him across the head with shovels more than 18 times.

Every day – every hour, even – men, women, and children in South Africa are being murdered in their homes. They share the faces, the names, the broader history of the best in the West. When will this daily terror be reported in the daily news of the West?

[This writer, WND.COM, and a woman named Adriana Stuijt are the only journalists I know who’ve covered the killing fields of South Africa with any consistency. My near-complete book does justice to the topic. Please read our Articles Archive and blog entries under “South Africa.”]

Libyans Are Not The Villains

Britain, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, Terrorism, The West

Not in the saga of the Lockerbie mass murderer released into the loving arms of his countrymen and coreligionists. According to the neoconservatives, Bush’s deft diplomacy had won Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi over to the West, but you know better. By welcoming Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi home as a hero, Libyans and their leaders were showing their true hue to the West. Cry baby victims and their leaders demand sensitivity to their plight; the Arab world gives them a macho display of antagonism. Frankly, I can respect the latter more than the demands from the West that Gaddafi be more like Oprah.

Al-Megrahi was convicted of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, and killing 270 people—259 people on the plane and another 11 who died on the ground.

The Boeing 747 blew up at 31,000ft, approximately 38 minutes after taking off from London’s Heathrow airport bound for JFK in New York.
Large parts of the aircraft fell on Lockerbie, devastating parts of the Scottish borders town and setting in train the UK’s biggest mass murder inquiry.

The contemptible parties in this fracas are the Scottish authorities, responsible for releasing the man on compassionate grounds citing the certitude of their moral values and Al-Megrahi’s impending death from cancer. A befitting description for the values of Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, are the words deployed by family members: “Perfidious, repulsive and sickening”—that pretty much sums up the quality of Scottish justice.

Update II: The Gall Of The Media Ghouls (Arrested Development?)

Affirmative Action, Celebrity, Criminal Injustice, Healthcare, Intelligence, Justice, Law, Media, Music

Following the death notice are a few apropos excerpts from my “Mad Dog Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson,” one of the few trenchant defenses of Michael Jackson, written at the time of his trial. Michael J. was accused of molesting a big hairy “child,” three times the size of the frail singer.*

“Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.”

Now Keith Olbermann eulogizes Jackson, but back in 2005, “Olbermann, expecting a prosecutorial touchdown, aired a rather cruel segment on his consistently cruel ‘Countdown With Keith O.’ The segment was called ‘Prepping for the Pokey.’ In that bit of “comedy,” the awful Olbermann “pondered how Jackson would fit his prosthetic proboscis in jail.”

“The only man (Jon Stewart disappointed),” other than yours truly, “to have distinguished himself from the pack was Geraldo Rivera. The Fox News reporter conceded Jackson’s conduct was creepy and said as much (as did I). But he understood that creepy is not necessarily criminal.”

* “Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson” was rejected for publication by a leading libertarian website. Much to the proprietor’s disgrace, the rejection was based on a dislike for the column’s author.
Speaking of whom, if you appreciate her work, please support it. And do visit WND on Fridays for the weekly column. If not for those courageous evangelicals, the cultists in mainstream media and among my own ideological faction would have seen me banished from larger audiences for good.

Update I: “Thriller” was undoubtedly a musical triumph, Jackson’s only one, perhaps. The Jackson of that era had achieved a good look in his life-long plastic-surgery odyssey. The songs were very tight, accompanied by enormous talent: Eddie Van Halen played guitar on the song “Beat It,” and Steve Lukather, studio musician from Toto, did guitars on the remainder. It was an exciting, polished effort, with a hard-core manly sound, attributable to the guitar greats cited. (Here is another one worth a listen.)

Update II (June 27): ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. At the time a 911 call was placed from the Jackson home, Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson’s cardiologist, had been performing CPR on the already dead MJ for the better part of an hour. If that doesn’t strike the medical profession (the media is even less inclined to think critically) as odd, perhaps the position chosen to administer the life-saving procedure will: the singer was splayed on a bed.

Now, a CPR recipient has to be lain on a hard surface — “because it is difficult to compress the chest on a soft surface.” How can you deliver an awakening thump to the heart on a surface that gives?

Yet it was the 911 operator that had to tell “the staffer to ‘get him on the floor,'” a message the latter presumably conveyed to the inept doctor.

What is it about these celebrities that makes them seek out such incompetence in their care-givers? If you recall, Anna Nicole Smith too was surrounded by an incompetent team of husband and wife nurses at the time she died.

Kanye West’s mother died under the knife of a trendy plastic surgeon. West was celebrated as a woman of some intelligence, yet she appeared to have chosen a surgeon based on his celebrity. “Dr. Jan Adams, who is being investigated by the state medical board, has been the target of malpractice lawsuits and has paid out nearly $500,000 in civil settlements.”

The fact that Adams happened to also be an Oprah-endorsed Brother might have contributed to his appeal to the late Mrs. West.

Dare I suggest the following? The common thread in the specter of wealthy celebrities choosing manifestly incompetent care givers is their own patently low intelligence.

Identity Theft, Document Fraud, & Illegal Employment

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION

A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies, an independent research institute that examines the impact of immigration on the United States, has uncovered some alarming facts about identity theft:

WASHINGTON (JUNE 25, 2009) – In May of this year, a Supreme Court decision severely impeded the use of identity theft charges as an immigration enforcement tool. In June, several people were arrested after a fraud scheme was uncovered at a Florida driver’s license bureau. In July, a new Utah law targeting illegal aliens and document fraud will take effect. As these examples show, illegal immigration is inherently tied to document fraud and identity theft. As states continue to search for answers, it is apparent that the Federal government has not yet found a working legislative solution to deter these crimes.
A new Backgrounder by the Center for Immigration Studies considers how illegal aliens perpetrate document fraud and identity theft, the effects on the victims of this crime, as well as some proposals to deter it. “Illegal, but Not Undocumented: Identity Theft, Document Fraud and Illegal Employment,” is written by Ronald Mortensen, PhD, a retired career U.S. Foreign Service Officer and former Society for Human Resource Management senior executive.

The findings include:
• Illegal immigrants are not “undocumented.” They have fraudulent documents such as counterfeit Social Security cards, forged drivers licenses, fake “green cards,” and phony birth certificates. Experts suggest that approximately 75 percent of working-age illegal aliens use fraudulent Social Security cards to obtain employment.
• Most (98 percent) Social Security number (SSN) thieves use their own names with stolen numbers. The federal E-Verify program, now mandated in only 14 states, can detect this fraud. Universal, mandatory use of E-Verify would curb this and stop virtually 100 percent of child identity theft.
• Illegal immigration and high levels of identity theft go hand-in-hand. States with the most illegal immigration also have high levels of job-related identity theft. In Arizona, 33 percent or all identity theft is job-related (as opposed to identity theft motivated simply by profit). In Texas it is 27 percent; in New Mexico, 23 percent; in Colorado, 22 percent; California, 20 percent; and in Nevada, 16 percent. Eight of the 10 states with the highest percentage of illegal aliens in their total population are among the top 10 states in identity theft (Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, Nevada, New York, Georgia, and Colorado).
• Children are prime targets. In Arizona, it is estimated that over one million children are victims of identity theft. In Utah, 1,626 companies were found to be paying wages to the SSNs of children on public assistance under the age of 13. These individuals suffer very real and very serious consequences in their lives.
• Illegal aliens commit felonies in order to get jobs. Illegal aliens, who use fraudulent documents, perjure themselves on I-9 forms, and commit identity theft in order to get jobs are committing serious offenses and are not “law abiding.”
• Illegally employed aliens send billions of dollars annually to their home countries, rather than spending it in the United States and helping stimulate the American economy. In October 2008 alone, $2.4 billion was transferred to Mexico.
• Tolerance of corruption erodes the rule of law. Corruption is a serious problem in most illegal aliens’ home countries. Allowing it to flourish here paves the way for additional criminal activity and increased corruption throughout society.
• Leaders support perpetrators and ignore victims. Political, civic, religious, business, education, and media leaders blame Americans for “forcing” illegal aliens to commit document fraud and identity theft. No similar concern is expressed for the American men, women, and children whose lives are destroyed in the process.
• The Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service facilitate illegal immigrant-driven identity theft. Both turn a blind eye to massive SSN fraud and take no action to stop it. The Social Security Administration assigns SSNs to new-born infants that are being used illegally. The IRS demands that victims pay taxes on wages earned by illegal aliens using their stolen SSNs, while taking no action to stop the identity theft.
• State and local governments need to adopt tougher laws to supplement federal efforts. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is targeting large document fraud rings and the most egregious employers, but their resources are limited and stretched across multiple priorities. In 2007, identity theft cases represented only 7 percent of the total ICE case load.
• Employers must do their part. They can ensure that they have a legal workforce by using a combination of the federal government’s E-Verify and Social Security Number Verification Service systems and by signing up for the federal government’s IMAGE program or privately conducted audits.