Russia karate expert kills two over lice infection

[Bill Mattocks]

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-38988620090410

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian karate expert has been charged with beating to death a 61-year-old woman and her son, whom he accused of infecting his wife with lice, an investigator said Friday.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090410/121047175.html

Investigators said the family, according to statements by neighbors, "drank constantly and were covered in lice."
"No one liked them and no one talked to them," Eduard Abdullin told the Vesti TV news channel, adding that the karate enthusiast, reported to have practiced the martial art for the past seven years, had been drinking heavily before the attack.
"The detained decided to teach his neighbors a lesson," Abdullin said, adding that the man had "used his karate skills" in the attack.

http://www.mosnews.com/society/2009/04/10/947/

 

[exile]

While this kind of thing could happen anywhere, it's the kind of thing that's to be expected in current Russian society. A new analysis of demographic and socioeconomic trends in Russia in World Affairs Journal by Nicholas Eberstadt paints a terrifying picture of one of the most dysfunctional societies on the planet. The Russian population is decreasing rapidly, and in a continuous and sustained fashion for which there's no end in sight, and has been doing so for the past 17 years. Life expectancy has been dropping continuously for even longer—the author notes that currently

Russia is below Bolivia, South America’s poorest (and least healthy) country and lower than Iraq and India, but somewhat higher than Pakistan. For females, the Russian Federation life expectancy will not be as high as in Nicaragua, Morocco, or Egypt. For males, it will be in the same league as that of Cambodia, Ghana, and Eritrea.​

and the combination of the two means that overall mortality has been increasing in a statistically significant way, leading to the following astonishing fact: as Eberstadt notes,

In the last sixteen years of the Communist era, births exceeded deaths in Russia by 11.4 million; in the first sixteen years of the post-Soviet era, deaths exceeded births by 12.4 million.​

Deaths from cancer, cardiovascular disease and, astonishingly, violence and injury, wildly exceed per capita those of any other country in Europe and a large number of Third World countries. Eberstadt trenchently notes that

The five places estimated to be roughly in the same league as Russia as of 2002 were Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. To go by its level of mortality injury alone, Russia looks not like an emerging middle-income market economy at peace, but rather like an impoverished sub-Saharan conflict or post-conflict society.​

The number one source of this public health catastrophe, expressed as a surreal level of premature mortality, appears to be what can only be described as collective alcoholism of epidemiological levels. Here Eberstadt's data are really scary:

One forensic investigation of blood alcohol content by a medical examiner’s office in a city in the Urals, for example, indicated that over 40 percent of the younger male decedents evaluated had probably been alcohol-impaired or severely intoxicated at the time of death—including one quarter of the deaths from heart disease and over half of those from accidents or injuries. But medical and epidemiological studies have also demonstrated that, in addition to its many deaths from consumption of ordinary alcohol, Russia also suffers a grisly toll from alcohol poisoning, as the country’s drinkers, in their desperate quest for intoxication, down not only sometimes severely impure samogon, but also perfumes, alcohol-based medicines, cleaning solutions, and other deadly liquids. Death rates from such alcohol poisoning appear to be at least one hundred times higher in Russia than the United States—this despite the fact that the retail price in Russia today is lower for a liter of vodka than a liter of milk.​

The story about the karateka is therefore just a sample, a microscopic cross-section, of a horrible network of individual tragedies that we in the West can hardly grasp. What's really bizarre is that these numbers have come to the fore in the post Soviet/Communist era. What the hell could be driving that level of national suicide by booze??

 

[ArmorOfGod]

Exile,
that was an excellent and interesting reaponse.

AoG

 

[exile]

Thanks, AoG. For those who are interested in the gory details—and, lurking right beneath the cold statistical overview, the details are as gory as they can get—the whole text of the article is available here:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009 - Spring/full-Eberstadt.html

As I say, I just cannot imagine what perfect storm of destructive social and historical factors could produce a mass health crisis on this scale.... but once you've read the article, the whole unbelievable incident reported in Bill's OP becomes all too believable. Those two deaths will be just one more tally in the 'violence and injury' data for the next revisiting of the Russian demographic death-spiral.

 

[jonbey]

It's funny, as if a mechanic, artist, chef, teacher, secretary or dog trainer turn out to be pychopathic, there is generally no mention of their occupation/hobbies. As soon as someone that studies martial arts is a murdering pyscho, the fact that they do martial arts is highlighted. Sad, but martial arts still has a negative image in so many circles.

 

[redantstyle]

well, he did use karroty to kill them.

kinda hard to use painting or cooking skills to do that.

 

[Gordon Nore]

well, he did use karroty to kill them.

kinda hard to use painting or cooking skills to do that.

I think he used alcohol-induced-rage to kill them. All the media reports linked here describe him as an "expert" or "master." He could just be a shlub who went to the dojo for seven years.

 

[redantstyle]

true.

 

[jonbey]

Lots of people are killed by being beaten to death, usually by people with no history of martial training. My point is that the media seem to make out that the fact he was a "karate expert" is implied to somehow be the cause of his actions. If he studied origami instead he would probably have still beaten these people to death. "used his karate skills in the attack". Hmmm. An olympic walker could have used their walking skills to take themselves to the scene of the crime. Lets focus on these evil walkers!

 

[Gordon Nore]

Lots of people are killed by being beaten to death, usually by people with no history of martial training. My point is that the media seem to make out that the fact he was a "karate expert" is implied to somehow be the cause of his actions. If he studied origami instead he would probably have still beaten these people to death. "used his karate skills in the attack". Hmmm. An olympic walker could have used their walking skills to take themselves to the scene of the crime. Lets focus on these evil walkers!

Exactly, one of the articles said he killed them with hands and feet, also known as punching and kicking. One of his victims was a 61 y/o women who drank a lot.