Sum of all fears

Using fear to win votes. It’s sickening and disgusting.

Former US homeland security boss Tom Ridge claims in a new book that high-end officials of George Bush Jr pressured him to raise the so called terror alert level before the American presidential elections of 2004. These were the elections Bush won against Democrat Kerry. It started Bush’s second, devastating term in office.

How sick is that? Use the state apparatus to spread fear, create worries and crudely play on people’s survival emotions in the hope to win the elections. If North Korea or Zimbabwe or Iran would do this, the White House would scream and shout for days and days. Threats of war and annihilation would be uttered.

What effect would such heightened terror scare have had on the US stock exchange, on people’s travel plans, on racism, on hate,…? Mad. Politics is always and everywhere a dirty game, but this is criminal.

Ridge specifically mentions Donald Rumsfeld, who was US Secretary of Defense back then, and then Attorney General John Ashcroft as the culprits in these ugly mind games. Rumsfeld warmongering and narrow-minded worldview was very public during Bush’s presidency. He only believed in God and guns. Supremacy from a fascist kind.

The pressure from the Bush aides to raise the terror alert before the poll was already back in 2004 questioned by many as a disgusting move to try to shift the attention from the failing war in Iraq to the war on terror. Hiding failing policy decisions behind patriotism, religion, and so called traditional values – whatever that really means. It’s emotional blackmail at a grand scale.

Ugly manipulation of the State’s mechanisms for simplistic electoral gain. It’s rot. Pure, stinking rot. I wonder in which chapter of the Bible Bush finds spiritual approval for such actions.

Investigate, charge, bring to justice, sentence, lock away.

And add to that Bush’s aides openly lying to the UN Security Council about Iraq’s links to caveman Bin Laden and about Saddam’s readiness to have nukes. Fabrication of lies. Rot! Taking your country and its citizens to war based on lies is a criminal act. It’s treason. As simple as that. Treason of the highest kind. And not too long in history treason got the death penalty. Back at the ranch in Texas Bush Jr is still trying to get the blood of his hands. Corrupted soul.

Human behaviour is sadly again a sadly affair.

From terror alerts to plane crash alerts is a very small step.

The fire brigade from the Dutch town of Edelburg was in full swing. Red alert. All men to station. A women had called in and said she witnessed a plane crash.

This was a tragedy the local fire boys (and maybe girls too) had never to tackle before. This was a first and it was big. So of they went full speed and with all sirens and blue lights on. Racing to the crash site and alerting neighbouring towns that extra help might be needed. This would be a long day and a long night. Stories of death, destruction, heroism and loss would be told to the next generation of fire fighters in Edelburg.

Or so it seemed.

As they drove and drove, no crashed plane was spotted. No smoke, no fire, no pieces of metal. Nothing. Nowhere. Not a living soul nor dead ones.

It all became clear soon after. The eye witness did indeed saw a plane crash. But it was a model plane that crashed. One of those toy planes that people pilot from a distance on the ground with one of those remote controls. Maybe the eye witness needs new glasses.

From plane crashes to emotional crashes. Just a heart beat away.

The newspaper calls it a date from hell. Maybe not really that dramatic, although pretty bad. Maybe the grill flamed burgers added the hellish atmosphere.

The town is Detroit (in the US) and the joint is Buffalo Wild Wings. Girl goes out on a first date with a man. It happens all the time. Sometimes it leads to love and marriage. Sometimes it ends up being a big disappointment. Sometimes there is a one night stand and that’s all. But this was a date with a differrent outcome. Less predictable.

No clue how the meal and the conversation went. But as the dinner-date comes to an end the man asks the girl for her car keys as he says he left his wallet in her Chevrolet. A real gentleman she thinks as he seems willing to pay for the dinner. Recession or no recession, the traditional rules of the game still apply.

Or so it seems.

The gentleman doesn’t come back to the Buffalo Wild Wings but hits the road with her Chevrolet. Not so gentle in the end it seems. So the girl ends up the evening with no date and no car. But justice prevails. And the not so gentle man gets caught and will face the strong arm of the law. Nice try but fools like that can spend some time behind bars thinking twice about love and life.

Speaking of an encounter from hell. A real one this time. An unbelievable one. Too much beyond imagination but sadly real. Very real. Brutally real. Criminally real. Insanely real.

If you haven’t heard of the story, you’ve lived either on Mars or in a cave over the last days. 18 Years ago an 11 year old girl gets kidnapped. Last week she is found alive. She was kidnapped by a sex offender. That’s the polite word. Call it a sexual monster. A sexual nutcase. A sexual freak. MonsterPhillip Garrido kept her in a secluded part of his Californian garden in tents and storerooms. Caged like an animal. And he raped her. Which resulted in fathering two kids with his kidnapped victim. Two kids, now teeangers, whom never been to school or an ice cream shop, or played with other kids. Two kids whom have no clue about the world out there. Madness. Delirium. So sad it’s beyond grasping.

Oh yeah, monster Garrido was married too. The wife seems just detached from reality as much as he is. But the top of all this misery is that Garrido was sentenced to 50 years in jail sometime in the 80s for sex crimes. But guess what, he was released after 11 years. Kick that! So he was released from jail after serving only one fifth of his sentence (for sex crimes!) and went straight back to his old, evil ways and kidnapped that little girl called Jaycee Lee.

Jaycee Lee has now been re-united with her family. It is impossible to even remotely imagine how that must have been. And now these 2 kids, fathered by a rapist and till now grown up like caged animals, must catch up with reality. Catch up with the world out there. Live, learn, play, feel, know, understand. How do they cope with this tragedy?

Oh yeah I forgot. Garrido claimed that he found God when he left jail after 11 years. Sorry but God wont save you this time (hopefully). I don’t think kidnapping, rape and locking people up in your backyard are anywhere in God’s scripts. Correction. The scrips of his disciples I should say otherwise I get all those religious people getting into blasphemy mode.

And for Garrido and his wife. No mercy. No mercy at all. Zero. They are not humans. They are even less than animals. Much less. Animals kill their prey, they don’t keep them locked till insanity. Castration of sexual offenders might be an option to think about. I am a strong defender of human rights, but “neutralising” their sexual “weaponry” seems an acceptable way to go for sexual predators like Garrido.

Human behavior is a mystery. Too often an insanely sad mystery.

Throw out. As I spotted some remarks about the US punkrock band Down By Law on a music blog, I dropped the band’s “punkrockacademyfightsong” (yes written like that) in my car cd recently. It’s been a while since I listened to Down By Law, but I was reminded that I indeed do like them. The album I listened to is from 1994. Down By Law was Dave Smalley’s band after his milestone efforts with so called emo-core outfit Dag Nasty more than 20 years ago. Smalley entered the underground punk scene in the early 80s with a band called D.Y.S., and besides Dag Nasty and Down By Law he also played in All and in the kind-of-mod-revival-project The Sharpshooters. For me Dag Nasty’s 1986 debut album “Can I Say” remains Smalley’s best overall. Purely amazing tunes with great lyrics. Punkrock history.

C-Ya

collateral – some day in the 36th week of 2009