Man ‘cooked’ to death in Australian prison van

SYDNEY (AFP) — The family of an Australian Aboriginal elder who died after being “cooked” in the back of a scorching hot prison van may sue after a coroner branded his treatment inhumane.

A coroner Friday described the treatment of the 46-year-old man as a “disgrace” and inhumane, saying he would ask prosecutors to consider criminal charges over his death from heatstroke in Western Australia in January 2008.

His shirt here reading "Zen - Awakening - Mind", and looking like a terrible menace, we can all rest easier that the evil Mr. Ward was dispatched promptly by our overlords

The elder, known only as Mr Ward as his first name was withheld for cultural reasons, was transported 360 kilometres (225 miles) to jail in temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 F) in a van with faulty air conditioning.

Ward, who was arrested a day earlier for drink driving, spent four hours in the searing heat between the mining towns of Laverton and Kalgoorlie, suffering third-degree burns where his body touched the metal floor, the inquest heard.

Western Australia Coroner Alastair Hope found that Ward was effectively “cooked” to death and heavily criticised the state prisons department, the private security firm that operated the van and the two guards who escorted Ward.

“It is a disgrace that a prisoner in the 21st century, particularly a prisoner who has not been convicted of any crime, was transported for a long distance in high temperatures in this pod,” Hope said.

The hearing was told that when Ward eventually arrived unconscious at hospital in Kalgoorlie, his body was so hot that staff were unable to cool him down. After an ice bath, which failed to save him, he had a body temperature of 41.7 degrees Celsius as opposed to a normal temperature of 37 degrees Celsius.

Mr. Coroner Alastair Hope has it wrong, of course. The disgrace is that the uniformed gangsters roaming the countryside being paid with money stolen from innocents and kidnapping people, throwing them in chains and metal boxes in order to take them to larger cages made of concrete and steel where they’ll be kept like animals, all without said kidnap victims having harmed anyone, don’t wake up one fine morning to find their severed heads mounted on pikes along the palisades of the free cities.

But, oh, geez, I forgot. That wouldn’t be “civilized”, now, would it?

I’m sure it’s a great relief for the people of Occupied Australia that the two outsourced thugs from G4S aka Group 4 Securicor contracted for prisoner kidnap victim transport, “have now been suspended,” a year and a half later.

Bhumibol, usually referred to as “revered” by the Thai people, seems to be in the habit of pardoning foreigners convicted of lèse majesté, as he did in the case a few years back of a Swiss man sentenced to ten years for spray-painting over posters of the King’s face while drunk. Not so lucky, it seems, are native Thais, who for uttering a few words or putting together a series of images or any number of other otherwise innocuous acts can find themselves in prison for three to fifteen years under some of the most horrible conditions imaginable. Hang in there, Harry.

Fuck kings, and fuck Bhumibol. There, I said it. Further, the images here should make me persona non grata in Thailand so long as the idiotic lèse majesté law survives. Placing images of other people above that of the King: verboten. Juxtaposition of King with feet: offensive. Thirteen feet: unlucky.

Now I gotta think up some way to insult Turkishness…

Australian writer Harry Nicolaides in a detention cell at Bangkok's Criminal Court, 19 January 2009

13-foot mandala for King Bhumibol

Italy to fingerprint all citizens in order to avoid discriminating against the filthy, thieving Roma (gypsies). Ah, the smell of equality…

Australia introducing online “code of conduct”. What’s voluntary today will be mandatory tomorrow.

A fine essay entitled “Diffusion of reaction and obedience to authority” by Jerry Mazza at Online Journal. Worth reading.

Were the nobles who gathered round an earlier king to sign the Magna Carta striving, too, to silence The Voice of Authority? Has our time here on this planet, the evolution of our consciousness, been to free us from apathy, indifference, random violence, to see our humanity in the looking glass? Can we find that original responsive self or are we doomed to be robots?

Think about it. You don’t need to continue with the experiment. It is not absolutely essential that you continue. You have another choice. You don’t have to go on, soldier, politician, policeman, priest. You can always find freedom, original choice, in the space of your imagination, in your heart’s compassion, in the willingness, the courage to disagree. One might say your life depends on it, not to mention your soul.

Old news, but while following up on the essay above I read the Wikipedia page about the Milgram Experiment. Scary stuff and very instructive if you’ve not heard about it before. What was mind-boggling, though, was this news story from a few years ago, referenced in the wiki page:

From April 1995 until 30 June 2004, there was a series of hoaxes, known as the strip search prank call scam, upon fast food workers in popular fast food chains in America in which a phone caller, claiming to be a police officer, persuaded authority figures to strip and sexually abuse workers. The perpetrator achieved a high level of success in persuading workers to perform acts which they would not have done under normal circumstances. (The chief suspect, David R. Stewart, was found not guilty in the only case that has gone to trial so far.)

Do read “A Hoax Most Cruel“. Do it now. OBEY!

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, that tax-fattened champion of all things virtuous, brings us “Planet Slayer“, a kid-focused enviro-website which, alongside the usual eco-alarmist rubbish, invites Australian children to “Use our greenhouse calculator to find out when you should die!”

Apparently I spend too much money, as this was the factor that led to the greatest growth of my piggy over the size of the “Average Aussie Pig”.

It’s all in the name of saving the planet. So kids, go internalize the notion that you should have died years ago. As for me, I’m off to find out how many carbon offsets I need to purchase in order to purge Mother Earth of my stinking corpse. Have fun!