America: Land Of The Free
And Home Of The What?By Stan Moody
02 January, 2008
Countercurrents.orgWe have all heard of the occasional 7-yr. old kid who brings a plastic squirt gun to school in his backpack (sans water) or draws a picture of a firecracker. The local version of Homeland Security is alerted, dispatches its terrorist unit, puts the second grader in shackles and takes him away. The Principal then suspends him for 30 days, and the parents file a lawsuit that goes nowhere.
Let's hear it for the humorless who keep America safe.
Then there is the other extreme – Presidents and wanna-be's protecting us from "them," "them" being folks far enough away so as not to look like us, talk like us, worship like us nor shop like us.
Over the weekend of Dec. 28, candidate Fred Thompson, his eye glued to the monitor, ran an ad in Iowa, expressing his desire to "talk quietly" with the voters. Quietly, he reminded them that "…most Americans know that the terrorists won't rest until a mushroom cloud hangs over one of our cities." [1] If we can stop the kid with the squirt gun we may go a long way toward preventing that from happening. It's something akin to putting a condom on an AK-47.
As the New Year gets underway, I found myself giving some thought as to the extent of terrorist activities worldwide. So I ran a search and came up with a website that flags all the terrorist acts in the world and updates every 310 seconds. [2] The information there is nothing less than riveting.
As I write, a bomb blast is reported in the Philippines, injuring an undetermined number of people. In Thailand, three bombs explode simultaneously, injuring 27. In Sri Lanka, the army intends to kill 10 Tamil rebels a day. In India, police recover 6 crude bombs on a bus. In Pakistan, 30 railway stations, 12 coaches and 9 bridges are torched, 4 children are killed, a school is bombed and a police checkpoint is attacked and 10 military police kidnapped.
In Baghdad, a bomb hidden in a minivan kills two. In Egypt, Hamas holds 1700 passengers of two ferries hostage in the Gulf of Aqaba.
I wondered what might be happening here in the US where, according to Thompson, terrorists won't rest until there is a mushroom bomb over one of our cities.
In Texas, a bombsquad responds to a suspicious device. In Oklahoma, a suspicious device causes street closure near a Federal office building. In Oregon, max rail service is disrupted when a suspicious device is found. In California, a teen allegedly shines a laser beam at an airport bus and a helicopter. In Florida, a plane is diverted to Miami because of an unruly passenger – same thing in PA. In Massachusetts, an arrest is made in a flag burning incident. In New York, a suspicious white powder spurs probe at a Saratoga County office building.
In New Mexico it is reported that abortion clinics are always on alert in the aftermath of violence. In Missouri, the Lenexa post office re-opens after a threat. In DC, police investigate a suspicious vehicle at Reagan Airport. In S. Carolina, police discover a grenade in the parking lot at Hardees Restaurant near Wal Mart. In Virginia, explosives are found in Suffolk.
How we get from there to preventing the mushroom cloud is not quite clear, but it seems more or less like business as usual in River City. I am reminded of an old Bob Newhart routine from his album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart. It begins like this: "You have heard of heroic teams of experts disarming a bomb. I wondered what it would be like for a team of not-so experts to disarm a bomb."
He pictures a lazy town on the ocean, where a deputy calls in about a "shell" on the beach. "Do you think that's unusual, Wally, to find a shell on the beach? Oh, it's not that kind of shell. What kind of shell is it, Wally? Oh, I was hoping that was your watch ticking." It goes downhill from there, and the shell eventually sinks a fishing trawler.
I have no idea what Fred Thompson's plan is for averting mushroom clouds, but somehow there is an awfully big disconnect between an exploding bus in India and baby powder at a Saratoga County office building.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VblJq4j0_SE[2] http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
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