PERSONAL SAFETY MANAGEMENT

Archive for the ‘Man-made Direct’ Category

A man who stabbed his girlfriend 26 times has been jailed for at least 11 years today. Read the article at the link then read on. Basically there are people out there who are mentally unstable. How else can you explain this kind of behaviour?  I was young once and I had loves and lost a few and never once did I think stabbing her 26 times then stabbing myself would sort things out.

Mental illness is the only rational explanation, otherwise we have to acknowledge that some people aren’t as good as others. By good I mean balanced, stable, smart, thinking whatever. I am so glad this nutter is Anglo-Celtic or whatever. A white, non-muslim, male heterosexual. If he were anything else the loonies on one side would scream, see, told you they were all bad while the loonies on the other side would be screaming about how its not his fault because he is a minority and so on.

Bad has no colour bar, it cares not your orientation or religious beliefs. Bad is bad. Period. It is easier to hold views that say he is bad because all (insert personal bias) are bad and it is not so comfortable or easy to accept that this is not the case in reality. That not all (insert personal bias) are bad nor are all (your own ‘type’) good.

The lesson to be earned is that we need to teach our children survival skills. Skills such as the ability to pick up on body language signs that signal the potential to cause harm. Word signals that should ring alarm bells. Just as we don’t teach them how to really handle money and what life is really about, we need to teach them to disregard the gonads and go with the hairs on the back of the neck.

We also need to acknowledge that the brain is susceptible to malfunction just as any other organ is (although technically the brain is not an organ).  let’s try and stop judging people as being less than ourselves for having mental health issues and feel some compassion for them and their loved ones. At the same time, let’s not excuse their behaviour. They may not be responsible but if only for the sake of their victim’s closure they should be punished for their actions, or else let us change completely how we as a society think about crime, punishment, health and society. Hmmm, maybe that is the answer after all.

The shooting of two criminals in Sydney’s Kings Cross over the weekend has given the media the feeding frenzy they need to sell ads and maintain ratings. A stolen car full of teenagers attempted to escape from the police and the driver drove the car onto a crowded footpath and allegedly struck a female pedestrian. The police shot at the driver to stop him, hitting him and the front seat passenger. Then they removed them from the vehicle and attempted to handcuff them, however at least one criminal was passively resisting or at least refusing to allow the officer to handcuff him and so he was punched to gain compliance. All of this was filmed, as is usual nowadays, on a mobile phone camera. The police acted decisively in a very tense and rapidly changing situation… now the arm chair experts chip in, safe from their upscale suburban homes and tax payer funded parliamentary offices.

First of all the criminals were minors. The father of the 17 year old front passenger moans how his son was treated as an adult, not a minor. I’m sorry, but a 17 year old doesn’t have a sign on him saying he is not 18 yet. He looked pretty adult and full grown to me and never forget, he was in a stolen car that was being driven on a crowded footpath. The driver was 14 and those in the back included a 13 year old. So? Old enough to do the crime, old enough to be dealt with the same as anyone else. They refused police directions to stop like adults, they stole a car like adults, they drove it on the footpath like adults and they weren’t behaving like my 13 year old does. If age is so relevant in this situation, how old was the car? Old enough to be stolen and driven into innocent pedestrians on a footpath.

The next issue is those teenage criminals were indigenous. so now the Police have to liaise with the indigenous community to keep things calm. Why? Criminals are criminals regardless, surely? Why do they get special treatment? It is the same with any ethnic community other than Anglo-Europeans. How racist is that? And we keep pandering to them so it is no wonder they feel special.

Worst of all is the Greens MP who says the Police should have shot at the tyres. Mr David Shoebridge… get real. Get real. This is not the movies. Apart from having seen bullets bounce off tyres (used as a backstop at a pistol range) tyres don’t matter when the driver still has the intent to drive the car on its rims and run over more people. Shoebridge, these officers have to make split second life or death decisions and then stand by them months later in calm, quiet courtrooms while people like you who know nothing, have never done anything and probably don’t have the guts to ever do anything have to clean up the mess made all too often by do-gooding people like you and your political party. Stay in parliament, Shoebridge because I can’t think of a single serving officer who would want you one of your ilk beside them in such a situation. Back-up? I think the only compound word with back in it politicians understand is back-stab, but I digress.

To all of you living in that perfect world in your heads, the criminals stole a car and refused to stop, drove onto a footpath and risked the lives of law abiding citizens. When stopped in the only sensible and immediately effective manner available to the officers on the scene the criminals continued to refuse police direction. As for comments of being ‘forced to lie face first in a pool of his own blood’, the footage shows him lying there and his neck is bleeding. Punched? Yes because it is obvious the criminal is refusing to be handcuffed. Dragged? Yes, away from the car where officers have three other criminals to manage and to be searched for weapons. As for the fact these criminals are Aboriginal…so what? If they were all left handed would it rate a mention? Let’s not give the media and the midget minded fuel. The sooner we treat everyone equally the better.

If that were my 17 year old son I would be grateful the Police bullets didn’t kill him. It would hurt to watch the footage but as the father admits, his son is ‘known to police’. I would hazard he has been ‘known’ as a little criminal mongrel since he was in primary school. Don’t blame the police for dealing effectively with a lethal situation. Ask that father why his 17 year old boy was running loose in a stolen car trying to run down pedestrians and police. Where was he when the boy was growing up and needed a solid role model?

I am the first to hammer the police when I think they have over stepped the mark but I am not going to stand back and allow these officers to be hung out to dry for doing a very tough job in very dangerous circumstances simply because the world is getting soft and swallowing the line that so long as we keep spending and especially with credit cards all will be well. But that’s another blog for another time.

Robert Fenwick placed himself between the knives of a mental patient and the young 20 year old nurse he was trying to stab and saved her life. In doing so he gave his own. He has been awarded (posthumously) our Nation’s second highest award for bravery after the Cross of Valor  (other than the Victoria Cross of Australia which is for valor in the face of the enemy) the Star of Courage. Mr Fenwick SC was 63 and a father, dedicated to nursing and mental health. Once again, we forget those who serve us not just on the front line in Afghanistan, but everyday and night here in our own country. He was assisted by a patient, Brett French, who has been awarded the Bravery Medal.

These awards for courage and bravery underline how hazardous just earning your living can be for some of us. I no longer have to fear anything worse than a nasty papercut but there one was a time when going to work did not automatically guarantee returning in the same fit state one left. There are hazardous occupations throughout the community and not just police, fire, ambulance officers. AS we have seen, nurses and doctors and other medical professionals can be at risk. Security officers and bar staff all have their tales of irate punters having to be dealt with and of course bank tellers and shop assistants know the all too possible risk of being robbed at gun point.

Taxi drivers, bus drivers, train drivers, pilots, ferry crews all run risks every day just to do their jobs and serve us. Sales people who may find themselves alone in isolated situations, like real estate agents showing a house to a potential buyer or renter, who knows what that customer may have in mind? Then there are jobs that are inherently dangerous because of the work performed, like crane dog men standing under slung loads weighing many tons or fishermen out to sea in all weathers.

Pause for a moment and remember Mr Robert Fenwick SC. Consider that the nurse he saved had taken defensive wounds to her hands that included almost losing her little finger. Knives are lethal and no matter how well trained you might be, there is always the risk of sustaining injury when you have to disarm a knife attacker. I have done it more than once and never had a scratch but the difference there was the my attackers were trying to stab me, that’s all I’m sure. In this case the mental patient was intending to kill his victim and that makes it a very different thing altogether. Intent is everything when all other factors, like weapon and victim, are the same.

No doubt a microscopic examination of the situation and scene would find Mr Fenwick SC could have done a dozen things differently and perhaps the outcome would have been different however, hindsight is 20/20 and our hero didn’t have the luxury of time and distance to decide on the most likely to succeed course of action. He reacted immediately, instinctively and without hesitation. He took action in the most direct way possible, by placing himself between the attacker and the target. He did what many of us hope we would have the courage and the character to do in a similar situation. Vale Robert Fenwick, SC.

Read this, then shake your head in wonder. How can anyone treat anyone like this, let alone a sibling? Some might say that these people are African and Africans are still pretty savage and primitive and in many ways there is still a lot of primitive and savage behaviour found in Africa… but that isn’t the answer. This is a human thing. All of our ancestors believed in witchcraft and similar supernatural concepts. Many in our so called civilized western world still do. There are many people who do cruel things to people, even their own children and they don’t try to blame witchcraft, so let’s not point the finger, or the bone, at any race. Like I said, this is a human thing.

Run a search using words like ‘boy+tortured+parents’ and see how many articles there are. Just this past week I read two reports of parents torturing their little children. Why? The only reason I can think of is that they are psychotic, brought about by substance abuse or circumstance. By circumstance I mean they were brought up that way and know no different. The cycle of poverty, low IQ, lack of education and abuse creates a class of human who can still create life, they just have no idea how to nurture it.

How we treat each other is a major issue for us all, at grass roots level. It is not confined to any social class but it is more prevalent in low socioeconomic classes. It is not confined to any one race but it is more prevalent in some than others, but not because that race is genetically inferior, so don’t go down that path. That race is that way because of other factors, not genetics. Given a fair run anyone from any race can achieve anything. The reality is that for many, there is no fair run. Even for those where society attempts to level the playing field, too often they or someone influential near them sabotages any chance they have of making worthwhile change.

Like I always say; if you can’t be a part of the solution, don’t be a part of the problem. How do you treat other people? Start with your loved ones, then move to your friends and work outwards to neighbours and colleagues and then consider strangers and people of other classes and races. Do you give them all a fair go or lump them all into the same pile because of the actions of some? If we are going to change the way we as a society think and interact, then we need to start with the person we have the most influence and control over. Ourselves.

Perhaps the longest title I have ever had, while not recommended as good SEO, it just might get some attention. I was sent an email from Causes.org today focusing on this despicable habit of murdering girls simply because the culture they are born into has beliefs that boys are more important. How does one communicate one’s opinion without judging, condemning, abusing and basically running the all too ever present risk of being labelled ‘racist’? Frankly, I don’t care what people think of me. Here is what I think of this misogyny.

There is no place in our world in 2012 for any culture or society that believes boys are more important than girls. People who will terminate the pregnancy because the foetus is a girl when they want a boy are not civilized people. They are murderers. While I support a woman’s right to choose abortion over giving birth, I do so reservedly. If the woman was raped, has no fair chance of supporting the child and giving it a fair chance at life within its community or there is a risk to the life of the mother or child should the pregnancy go ahead, then let the mother decide. It doesn’t change the fact the foetus has been terminated or killed as you prefer, but I don’t see that as murder. Terminating the foetus because you want a boy is malicious and thus, murder. Where does this go on?

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are three countries well known for this practise, as is China thanks to the ‘one child’ policy implemented to keep the population growth in step with resources and so on. Many Asian societies place boys over girls and so too, African, American and European societies. Until fairly recently women in the USA, UK and elsewhere were chattels, property of their fathers, husbands and brothers. They had no voting rights and personal property rights were limited also, as was their movements, associations and other basic human rights. But these societies have changed. The ones where women are so horribly treated just for being women haven’t. They have remained in the past and many claim their religion permits these beliefs, even sanctions them and some claim their god told them to do it.

It’s not right. I don’t care why or who or how. It is not right. There is plenty of information on this disgusting behaviour all over the web, just look at stories about women being set on fire so the husband can remarry and get another wife with another dowry. Read how these societies make it hugely expensive to find a husband for their daughter so she can give the husband an heir, yet if she only produces girls they die, she dies and her family is disgraced.

I know, this is their way and it has been that way for eons and who am I to say anything about it. Well I am one man and I say it is wrong. These people who no doubt in many ways, if not every other way, are good people, extinguish all the good in their lives by this one thing. That is my belief. That is my opinion. I have friends from these countries who have all daughters and no sons, just like myself and they abhor the practise also. They are educated, intelligent and kind people. One can only hope the practitioners of this cultural aberration are ignorant peasants but sadly that is not so. There is an argument that this is a beat up and a hoax, read the other side of the topic, here.

Speak out, take a stand, discuss this amongst your friends and family; don’t sweep it under the carpet and ignore it because you are not one of these people. We need to make it known that we don’t approve. If these people migrate to Australia they need to know we do not tolerate medieval misogynistic mindsets. We do not accept their attitudes to women, often expressed in how we ‘allow’ our women to parade like ‘hoori’s’ (virgins or prostitutes, depends on the context and dialect) because we don’t hide them under hijabs, niquabs and burkas. No, we control our impulses and our lust because we are civilized men who respect the 50% of our community called women and girls.

Women are half of the population. They are half of the procreation and creation of future humans. It is the male, I believe, who is responsible for the gender of the foetus as we carry the X and Y chromosomes, women only have Y. All these men who torture and kill their wives for failing to give them boys should get an education and realise they are as much ‘at fault’ in the Life Lottery as the female, if not more so. And if their god made them that way as they claim, then why? If he is all powerful and perfect then there is a reason why and that is not the fault of the women. But none of this will make any sense to these bigots and misogynists, will it?

We can change the status quo, even if it is simply more of us saying no, we don’t accept this. No, if you want to live here with us then you must change your thinking. No, we don’t want to spend our money visiting your country on vacation or business because we do not want to support your society while it continues to do this. When the governments of these countries take action, then by all means vacation there and show your support for their efforts. This post is not about inciting racial hatred but addressing a very serious issue of human rights. Whatever you do, don’t gang up on some poor individual just because you think they are from one of these societies and that maybe they also think boys are better than girls.  You just might be beating up my mate, and I won’t like that.

A Filipino guide has escaped from Muslim kidnappers in the southern Philippines by diving overboard. The guide was with a Swiss and a Dutchman, taken hostage by Muslim criminals off Tawi Tawi. The daring escape was successful, but just as easily could have ended up with the escaper being killed. It is a proven tenet of escape and evasion that the sooner you can escape after capture the better your chances. Once you and your captors settle into a routine of sorts it gets harder to get away, not to mention you will be further from help and in the middle of their chosen territory. While the escaper feels guilty he left the other two behind, the reality is his life, as a Filipino, is worth less than the two foreigners and most likely he would be killed to show the kidnappers mean business.

A Canadian judge called the ‘honour’ killing of three girls and their mother a case of ‘twisted honour’. The two older girls had boyfriends and had told school authorities of the abuse they suffered at home from their father, an Afghan immigrant. Twisted is so very apt. As the judge said, this thinking has no place in civilised society.

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with their religion, Islam, and yet it has everything to do with it. It is a cultural aberration, much like the wearing of the niqab or burka, seen all too often in Pakistani and Afghan families, as well as Iranian, Iraqi and other Arab communities, yet there are other cultures that practise similar beliefs: Greek, Italian, Indian, African and other non-Islamic cultures have also had ‘honour killings’ of female relatives. It is brought about by the men of the culture thinking they are superior to women, that they have some ‘god-given’ right and know better than anyone else. They allege it is written in the Koran and justify their medieval and misogynistic mindset claiming their God has sanctioned their behaviour. Read this essay in support of the view that this is an Islamic thing. Nothing could be further from the truth according to others. This topic is not new and has been debated for years, so what is the truth?

The truth for me is that it doesn’t make any difference whether it is Islamic and sanctioned in the Koran and the Hadith or it is a cultural misinterpretation of those scriptures. It is wrong. There is right and there is wrong and it makes no difference what religion you are, the colour of your skin or if you are male or female, rich or poor. Right is right and wrong is wrong and if the killing of anyone, other than in self defense, is considered right then that person or society is wrong. Who gave these people the right to take another person’s life? Even though the causes of war are too often wrong, at least on one side but usually on both, from the individual soldier’s perspective it is all about self defence. This is why soldiers fight for each other, to keep themselves and their mates alive and not for Queen and Country or the flag or the cause, but to stay alive.

Murdering your own flesh and blood to preserve an abstract concept such as family honour is obscene. Not to them, but it is to me. Does that make me right and them wrong? Yes. They will never accept they are wrong and no doubt they could argue I am the one who is wrong but I will never accept they have the right to murder anyone, let alone female members of their family. These swine received refuge and a good life in our society, our culture, then they tainted it with their wrong thinking and killed four women who, no doubt, embraced our way of life. They deserve to be sent back to where they came from and buried up to their breasts and stoned to death. Surely they would be grateful for such an Islamic death? Maybe then they might see the error of their ways.

I read with sadness and anger that another teenager had committed suicide due to being bullied. This included ‘cyber bullying‘ and the report made a big deal about how the bullying never stopped. When the girl got home it was there on her social network page. OK, this is where it gets a little hard for me to follow. If the bullying was going on online… why not close the account? Why not change name and password? Why not simply stop going online? Sooner or later the bully would get the hint and lose interest.

I am sorry, it is a tragedy for sure but the biggest tragedy has to be that the girl valued her social network more than her life. She would rather kill herself than go without her Facebook or whichever social network it was. This is ridiculous! Don’t blame the social network or the internet, don’t even blame the bully. If the bully intended her to kill herself, then charge him and take him through the courts. If the bully was just another mental midget, troubled teen with issues, then that is sad but the choice to end it all was hers, nobody else’s.

Which makes me think that some people are predisposed to dealing with stress and pressure that way, rather than fight back, confront the bullies or simply switch off the computer. It is sad, no argument but I think we need to keep things in perspective and not get too wound up, too ‘you poor thing’. We are tending to get softer and softer as we conquer more and more of the every day risks life has for us. We will never totally eradicate all risk and that is a good thing because danger is the best instructor there is.

If there is one thing that really twists my Wa it is ignorant bleeding civilians who haven’t a clue about anything military except the rubbish they get off the glass toilet. Media types loosely calling themselves journalists are the worst. I despise them when they call every sword or long knife used to scare or skin, a ‘samurai sword,’ as if it is the only sword ever made. Most idiots who wield swords nowadays don’t use ‘samurai’ swords, or even anything remotely Japanese, but who cares when ‘samurai’ and ‘ninja’ are so emotive?

The same for AK47 assault rifles. The Kalashnikov AK47 hasn’t been made for decades, not since AKMs and AK74s and a whole range of other newer models hit the streets. Worse is when they call it an M47 or an AK16 and mix it with the US weapon, derived from the Armalite AR15 (and now called an M4, a derivative of the M16A2). It gets worse with AFVs, or armoured fighting vehicles. If it has tracks it is a tank. If it is big and armoured it is a tank. Not an armoured car or an APC, armoured personnel carrier, tracked load carrier, self propelled gun or any one of a plethora of AFVs. No, it is a tank.

Even more ludicrous is the slant the media seem to give a story by using the word ‘military’. When they relate how something happened with ‘military precision’ it is obvious they were never in the military. I was and believe me, most of the time things got cocked up and we had to muddle through as best we could, regardless. This story made me cringe, too. For some reason a ‘military knife’ is sharper and far more deadly than the 8 inch cook’s knife most commonly used to murder and maim. Following that, cheap Stanley knives (razor knives) and screwdrivers tend to get used far more often than purpose designed ‘fighting knives’. But really, they used a ‘military knife’? So what? The victim shouldn’t have gotten out of the car and as there were two coming at him, why didn’t the driver get out sooner? We can second guess this incident to death but the fact remains, the type of knife is irrelevant compared to the fact the knifer had the intent to use it, and use it he did, repeatedly.

I mean what are we supposed to infer from this? That because they use the words ‘military style’, the knife was more dangerous? That the user was more determined? What? I had three knives issued to me when I was in the army. The biggest was a machete. Then there was my bayonet and the edge on that would barely part butter, as in there wasn’t one and if you tried to put one on it you would be charged for damaging government property. The other knife was a ‘Knife, Pocket Clasp, with lanyard’. It had a deer foot blade (meaning not pointy at all), a vicious tin/bottle opener and a marlin spike for getting young Diggers out of the tracks of APCs and it was on a lanyard so you wouldn’t lose it. Fight with it? Not while I had any ammo left for my L1A1 SLR (Google it). Failing that, if it came down to fighting with a military knife I think using the rifle’s butt or an entrenching tool would have been more effective, I was in the Engineers and later the Military Police, not the bloody Gurkhas!

The thing is, the type of weapon (or the lack of one) is irrelevant. Deadly is deadly. It makes no difference that the inland taipan can kill 40,000 mice with one dose of venom and the coastal taipan can barely manage 20,000 mice. That is still a lot of dead rodents and dead is dead, afterall. What counts every time is the intent. The intent of the attacker to drive home their attack and the intent of the victim to defend themselves or not. Usually the most aggressive person wins. If that person is bigger, more numerous and or armed, then the odds are in their favour even more. Intent is everything, believe me. I should know, I used to have a military knife, remember?

This woman certainly can’t. She was disfigured for life in a 2004 meth lab explosion and she was recently found right back at it, cooking methamphetamine in her trailer. The meth cooking process is extremely dangerous and claims many lives and hundreds of homes every year. The chemicals and process used in making meth is volatile and dangerous at the best of times in proper facilities, doing it in the kitchen with home made equipment is a recipe for disaster.

So why do they do it? The answer is money. It is easier to make meth and sell it as crack than to get a job and work hard. In the USA where someone like her with not education would be making $2.75 an hour as a waitress plus tips (and the IRS presume you will make $X an hour in tips and tax you regardless) or less than $8 an hour minimum wage in other industries it is often worth the risk. America carries on about communism and socialism and what have you, yet unless you are making $250K a  year some experts say there is little value voting Republican. Make no mistake, the land of milk and hollywood is one tough place to make it in. If you keep your head above water it can be a wonderful place to live your life in. But if you have some bad luck and fall through the cracks, then you are doomed.

The middle class is scared stiff of becoming poor and it is no wonder. They are the tool of the rich, keeping the economy going with their consumerism in response to the conditioning of Madison Avenue on behalf of the Wall Street 1%. Will Rogers said back in the Great Depression that alone out of all the people in the world, only Americans would drive to the poor house. Poor takes on a different meaning in a developed nation like the USA and while you should make no mistake there are some 30% or more of the population considered officially poor, they do have it better than the poor of a third world country. It is relative after all.

Part of the affect of poverty is the poorer nutrition that contributes to lower average IQ levels. Garbage in, garbage out and if the baby and child don;t get the nutrition they need, their brains are not going to develop to their full potential. Then there are other factors like the school boards being partly funded by property taxes so if the district is full of slums, there won’t be as much funding as there will be in a more upscale area. But then this is the user pay capitalist way. Let’s not even start on health care. If anything, the amazing thing is how many Americans manage and even thrive. How many people, despite the draconian laws and political motivation behind so much they mislabel as ‘justice’, the one sided bias towards the haves at the expense of the have nots and the societal shame placed on those less fortunate through cultural mores that are no longer present in other western societies, manage to stay alive and well and keep consuming and using their credit and keeping the dream alive, albeit a dream that sees the top few percent enjoy by far the majority of the wealth and prosperity of the world’s richest nation. Personally, the vast majority of Americans I have known through my military service and as an expat overseas have been brave as lions and generous to a fault. Particularly when you are on their turf in the USA, they are some of the most hospitable people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. I like and respect Americans and love vacationing there, I just would not want to live in the place.

While this is all going on, many just take the initially easier road and turn to crime. Violent crime is rife but so too fraud in various forms and larceny. Desperate people do desperate things and the system is such that it is easy to become desperate in the US of A. We here in Australia can learn from this because we follow the USA more or less, sooner or later. We need to be selectively tough on criminals and selectively compassionate, too. Not hammer everyone into the ground for a mistake usually caused by a circumstance change beyond their ability to control or manage. Not give them the keys to the candy store and pay for dental check ups while apologising for rotting their teeth. No, a happy medium needs to be struck.

Keep in mind not everyone is as smart as you and even if you are just average, with an IQ of 96-98 for Australians and Americans, there are plenty who are dumber than you and many of those end up in prison. Being dumb is not a crime but too often it leads to a life of it. If we are smart enough to know better and keep out of trouble we should spare a thought for those too dumb to know better and try not to judge them. Don;t trust them, but don’t tread on them and make it any harder for them either. By all means give them a fair go if you can, but don’t turn you back at the same time. Maybe in time they will realise that they don’t have to exploit everyone who isn’t busy kicking the crap out of them. Maybe they will learn to trust society and society can lower its guard and trust them. Maybe.