Tag: kidnapping

Some seriously U.S. wars updates

When it comes to wars, The Guys are starting to overstretch our resources. At last count we’re engaged on four fronts and with some real heavyweights, like robots, every animal in the world, extraterrestrial intelligence and the entire concept of education.

The U.S. fights a lot more wars–albeit against punier opponents like potheads and religious fanatics–so sometimes it’s hard to keep track of what our benevolent leaders are waging against. To keep you informed, we bring you A Seriously U.S. Wars Update.

Afghanistan
It turns out there may be more to Afghanistan than poppies and Muhammad fanboys who–like our own fanboys–have poor hygiene and fear the touch of women. U.S. geologists have discovered large untapped deposits of copper, iron and lithium and believe this could help draw more international aid. Because when we think of improving living conditions for a people that have been impoverished by unchecked religion, war and corruption, we think of mining.

Iraq
After over seven years of searching for chemical weapons in Iraq, U.S. forces have finally found them.

Illegal Immigration
According to an expert witness, Arizona is “the gateway to America for drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and crime.” That was Gov. Jan Brewer, who is experimenting with a new method of curbing illegal immigration: paint your state as a hellhole so that nobody will enter it.

So, in summation, America is winning!

Haiti has a police force? Who knew?

Ten American civilians–Baptists, to be exact–were arrested by the Haitian government for allegedly trying to smuggle 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic.

The Haitian Prime Minister, Max Bellerive, said they could be charged with kidnapping since the government put all new adoptions on hold until, you know, people aren’t living in tent cities and thousands of parents aren’t presumed still missing.

Other officials have objected to the Baptists’ adoption on the grounds of, “Did you see Footloose? Why would we send our children to that kind of hell?”

Update (2 Feb 2010): Parents of the “orphans” are showing up to reclaim their children. Whoops!

Must be one close family

Have you *seen* a movie about rich people and thieves?If you’re unable to identify a fake family member at your reunion, those gatherings might be a mere formality.

This was the lesson the Rockefellers, that tight-knit family of New York millionaires, learned when a German guy successfully posed as a member of their family for years, tricked his wife into marrying him and then kidnapped their daughter.

We’re not saying the “moneyed” family (Seriously? That’s an adjective?) may have brought it on themselves, but perhaps living on trust funds, senate seats and single-malt scotch doesn’t hone one’s common sense vibe.

Life can be stranger than fiction

For anyone in that case, there’s the computer game “Second Life”. However, stories involving “Second Life” always tend to be more surreal than normal. This one is no exception.

A woman wanted for the attempted kidnap of her ex-Second Life boyfriend has been caught after a search that spread across several states. 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan had an online affair with a 52-year-old man via Second Life, and when he ended the relationship, she became quite distressed … as well as demented. It always works out that way, right?

The relationship ended after the pair had met in real life (likely meaning she didn’t resemble her Second Life avatar enough), and in the beginning of August, Kimberly allegedly drove to her ex-boyfriend’s Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap the man at gunpoint. Apparently she couldn’t even manage that successfully, and had to come back two weeks later and track him down to his Delaware home, posing as a postal worker to find his address. After cutting and removing a screened window to gain entry to the man’s house, she lay in wait for him with a set of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a taser, a BB gun and her dog Gogi.

Her foolproof scheme failed after the man simply ran away, having entered to find a laser beam pointed at his chest. Kimberley had fled soon after, but her dog was discovered bound in duct tape and abandoned in the bathroom to stop him making noise. She was found an hour later in Maryland and taken into custody after a “brief struggle” at a rest stop. For all we know, being bound in duct tape like a dog may be something possible in the Second Life world.

Some things are best done by a woman

If movies have taught us anything, it is that kidnapping, while a federal offense in the U.S., is sometimes totally justified. In Italy, the same holds true. To the list of “for their own good,” “to explain a vast conspiracy to them” and “for ransom,” you can now add “to get chores done.”

A man in Genoa, Italy was arrested after police suspected him of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend and making her do chores around his house. The chores included ironing his clothes and washing his dishes.

This blog only wonders why it did not work out for those two crazy lovebirds.