XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU MARCH 13, 2003 20:02:38 ET XXXXX
'YOU THINK I AM THE GIRL WHO RAN AWAY,' SMART TOLD COP
"You guys think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away," Elizabeth Smart challenged police officer Bill O'Neal the moment she was found by authorities.
Smart's startling words have ignited a firestorm around Salt Lake City: Was the teen unknowingly conveying the unthinkable -- she deliberately ran away from home?!
While local and federal authorities work on the likely premise the girl was taken by force and later brainwashed, questions of a possible runaway scenario began to creep into the picture, sources said late Thursday.
One top federal source said the case remains "utterly baffling."
The other weird part is that supposedly she'd been "brainwashed" according to her family and yet this "brainwashing" was supposedly instantly broken and this girl was back with her family, playing the harp and watching "The Trouble with Angels" one SINGLE DAY after being found.
Why am I getting the creepy-crawlies about this whole incident?
Last night I decided to take advantage of the temporary lull in gas prices (so cheap! It was actually UNDER 80 CENTS!) to fill up at the local gas station.
When I went in to pay, I made the off-hand remark that gas prices are probably moving based on the belief of speculators on if/when an attack will be made, and that the speculators are starting to think an attack will never come.
"I think the Prime Minister is right and that we've won already." says the lady behind the counter, a forty-something mom-type.
"How's that?" I ask, immediately bracing for combat. It's amazing how quick I am baited by this sort of nonsense now. The constant media tension must be getting to me...
"Well, he can't do anything, can he? We've trapped him there and he can't do anything."
I don't want to fight with this woman. I pay and mutter under my breath "...as long as someone's guarding him. Chretien is SUCH an idiot."
"What did you say?"
"Saddam'll be a good little dictator and only kill his own people as long as 250,000 soldiers are right next door in Kuwait. Who'll pay to keep them there? Not us, not FRANCE." That last word I almost spat out.
I'm fully into the breach now.
"Pretend you're a farmer with chickens. You know there's a fox on the loose just outside your chicken coup. As long as you guard the coup with your shotgun the fox won't get in: but you can't stay there 24 hours a day, can you? At that point, wouldn't you just shoot the fox and eliminate the problem?"
The woman looks at me as if I was the Devil himself.
"But war and killing aren't the answer..." she's sounding unsure.
"Tell that to anyone who fought in World War 2. Supposedly we won in '91 as well, yet we're still here aren't we?"
I leave the gas station and head home for the night.
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- A German Shepherd that is kept in a kennel all the time will bite and try to run away rather than play with you.
- 80 lbs of German Shepherd defeats 80 lbs of 8-year old boy everytime, even without the illegal use of teeth.
- Bleeding and crying after getting stomped by said German Shepherd is not enough to guarantee that you won't get yelled at for letting the dog escape into the blissful freedom of a world without cages and choking dog chains.
- Opa didn't have the same last name as me or dad because he wasn't my real Opa.
- My real Opa died in the war: "You mean he was a Nazi?" This caused one big fight between my parents and my Oma, who had just open-palm slapped a 8-year old across the face, (Technically he was a Nazi, as everyone professed to be at the time "or else they would be hung on meathooks." This was the beginning of the "we weren't at fault, we were just following orders" excuse that many in my family still cling to.)
- My Opa told me I was stupid for watching Hogan's Heroes because of the way it insulted German people - like Hogan's Heroes was the reason German people were treated like shit after the war (I encountered much of the anti-German crap for much of my childhood: usually it was punctuated with a bully's fist. It wasn't right, but I do understand it considering the price paid in WW2...) On second viewing, Hogan's Heroes portrayal of Nazis is rather insulting to those that sacrificed to get rid of Hitler, making them out to be bumbling clods rather than the inhuman monsters that efficiently committed genocide. For a refresher in National Socialism I recommend this.
- My Oma and Opa weren't really as nice as they pretended to be.
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Oh, that's right: our paternalistic government would rather decide what we watch through regulatedmonopolies and Canadian thought control agencies like the CRTC.
If they'd only give us the technology and channels we actually WANT maybe there wouldn't be so much grey market stuff in the marketplace.
Last night I was taking out the trash when this Chevy Astro passed slowly by my house. As I watched this young guy leaned out the passenger window, stared right at me and then whipped a chunk of ice at me.
Lousy aim the little prick had; it missed me by a mile and shattered against the side of my house. My mind went back trying to figure out if I'd pissed someone off enough in the neighbourhood to warrant such an attack...
I got a partial plate and description, then went inside to report it to the cops. I told my wife about it and we came up with many intricate ways that these losers should be punished - hopefully involving some nice Police Officers who would be forced to gun the losers down as a service to society
A neighbour was walking her two beautiful golden labs (Rufus and Moonray) outside and I figured I'd warn her about the little bastards roaming the neighbourhood.
"They already got me in the leg," she yelled across the street.
"Damn punks." I muttered, hearing my father in my tone. In many ways I have become him when it comes to my opinions about little shits roaming the neighbourhood causing damage.
Then today on the radio I hear about this and wonder if I have somehow used psychic powers to nail these little bastards from a distance.
Should I feel bad about this? Turns out that this incident happened before I saw those punks so it couldn't possibly be them, but I don't think I'd be sad if it had turned out to be those little shits and that the collective psychic powers of their targets had done them in.
"But they're just boys!"
"Maybe mommy should have hugged them more!"
I don't care.
Too bad it wasn't that loser with the ice ball who fell out of the van on the 401.
It's funny how the words "Concentration Camp" have come to be only associated with one specific meaning. Auschewitz, Dachau etc. were more correctly "Death Camps": the purpose of which was the liquidation of the undesireables of the Nazi regime - Jews, Gypsies, gays, communists, etc.
There are Concentration Camps in the world today: but they are given names such as Refugee Camps etc. My mother died in 1992 after a long bout with Cancer. I was much younger when she told me this story and she was much younger when she lived it. I can't say how perilous her experience was - I don't think she could either. That is the beauty of youth: kids can bounce back so much quicker from things that would scar an adult terribly...
My mother told me a story once when I'd lost my student ID (at 12 years of age the only thing a student ID was good for was discounted fries at the local McDonald's so naturally I was frantic.)
In 1944, fleeing their homes in Romania from the advancing Russians, my mother Maria, her sister Dora and my Grandfather (whom I'd never met and whose name I don't even know - that's how much my mother hated him! But that's another story...) were heading west. They were stopped by German infantry ("not really German" said my mother. "many were eastern European conscripts. They looked like they didn't like us very much.") At this point, it's discovered that my Grandfather does not have papers for himself or his daughters. Whether he forgot them or had them taken from him earlier my mother didn't know. At this point she has realized that this was the first time she had ever seen her father afraid.
They are sent to a local town hall which is being administered by an SS officer. Several blocks down the street is the train station, where several hundred people are being "escorted" onto trains for the local concentration camps, then eventually heading "east" for "resettlement."
The SS officer hardly looked at the people in front of him. My grandfather protests that he is an Austrian, a citizen of the Reich (true), and that a simple phone call to the next village will clear up who he is and who his daughters are. The SS officer is about to stamp the orders that would take my family to that train - he hesitates for a moment and then looks closer at my Grandfather and his daughters...
[editors note: Now at this point, the Nazi apologist would write a little thing about how this heroic German officer would secretly be doing anything, looking for any way to save the people who come before him, that he was only following orders, was afraid of being shot by his peers if found out etc. etc. BULLSHIT!]
He looks at my Grandfather and laughs:
"Well, my friend, let us make that call. This train is almost full and tomorrow there will be another. If we don't know who you are by then..." he let the implication die off there.
I've seen pictures from the time. Many families probably have these pictures as well, but they don't show them publicly because of the reaction they will produce. My grandfather was wearing a rather stupid-looking Hitler mustache, which was probably the only thing that prevented him from being automatically loaded up on that train and sent to whatever fate awaited.
So I'm on the platform at 8:30am yesterday to take the Go Train in to work yesterday. I figured it would be smarter than trying to drive with all the other losers who still have summer tires on their cars considering the 10 inches of snow that has fallen overnight.
I'm on the cellphone with my boss, informing her that I'll be about an hour late and mention that the Go Transit line out of Milton is an hour late and 3 trains behind (had nothing to do with the Lakeshore line, but I didn't know that at the time.)
This guy in a business suit is trying to not listen in but I catch him looking at me. He's tall, thin and slightly strange looking - kinda like Kramer from Seinfeld minus the interesting hair. In my brain I've already labelled him KRAMER-LITE
"Excuse me," he says. "Did you say that the train is an hour late?"
"No." I say. "The Milton line is an hour behind."
"Oh." He looked relieved. "I usually take the 8:05, but the snow put me behind." He goes on to talk at length about the train, the conductor's wisecracks and how everyone who takes the 8:05 has a real sense of community...
I'm getting tired of this conversation. I decide to say one or two sentences, then move down the platform to where I normally board the first passenger car.
"I was here on time, but there wasn't any parking." says I. "So I took my car home, then walked the twenty minutes to get here."
"Well, there's other lots around here to park."
"I didn't feel like leaving my car to be buried by a snowplow." There. Nice final sentence. If I can just move before he starts talking again...
The guy then feels the need to explain all the different parking lots close by. Dammit. He's hijacked the conversation...I'm looking at my watch, annoyed at someone giving me advice that I didn't ask for at a point when the advice does me no good...
I interrupt. "Well I didn't feel like driving considering that no one in this town knows how to drive in the snow." I start to walk away...
"You know what the problem is?" he says conspiratorially leaning in, looking both ways, like he's about to tell me the meaning of life.
I can guess what's coming.
"It's all the darkies and ragheads that have never seen snow that cause all the accidents. These people are everywhere!"
Why do all the racist fucks always want to talk to me when I'm standing around waiting somewhere? I think to myself as I turn wordlessly away from him. I have no idea what the look on my face is, but it can't be nice as Kramer-lite looks disappointed.
Guess he was expecting me to pile in when some witty racist shit-speak of my own. Either that or he was trying to pick me up...
When I was younger I used to argue with these assholes, some of whom were related to me by blood. (I'd be embarassed if everyone didn't have an Archie Bunker somewhere on the family tree.)
Then when I got older I'd ignore them, as they were old (at least in my family they were...) and they would die soon, and anyways they would put up such a wall of ignorance that no amount of arguing or reason could sway them. They'd always end the conversation with how because I was so much younger than they were, I didn't know what I was talking about. Then I'd get it from my parents for "not respecting my elders."
I figured that if we waited long enough, eventually everyone would come around without the pervasive influence of the racists that have come before us.
Now I'm getting the urge to fight them again because THEY ARE NOT DYING FAST ENOUGH! And, even scarier, they're finding replacements. The only thing stopping me is that old parable about getting covered in mud when you fight with pigs. But my patience is wearing.
Yes, these racist goat-fuckers are everywhere...
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A friend phoned last night and said that for a class she had to write 500 words about an immigrant's experiences in Canada. I will write far more than 500 words...
The only other thing that I will say before the story begins is that throughout the twentieth century the Americans have been liberators. Despite current mistaken opinions to the contrary, the Americans have not been interested in Empire-building. Germany and Japan were conquered, yet rebuilt for the Germans and for the Japanese: if the result of World War 2 had been reversed, would Britain be rebuilt for the British? In this day and age it would do us well to remember this fact...
Eastern Germany 1945
My father Kurt, not yet 16 years of age had spent a lot of the war being sick. Living rough, he developed pneumonia, but because the quality of medical care during the war had deteriorated substantially he was put in the typhoid wing of what was left of the local hospital. Guess what he developed next? When he recovered, it was his turn to help the old farmer who had tended to him in the ward while he was delerious.
Seperated from his mother, his father killed in France 3 years earlier, he had spent most of the war alone working on a farm. The old farmer who had taken him in spent his time brewing moonshine for bribes should any soldiers happen by: first the Wehrmacht (German Army regulars), then the Red Army troopers who had occupied the land on their march towards Hitler's bunker in Berlin.
The scenario was always the same.
Kurt is told to hide. Young able-bodied youths are being shipped East when found. Many will never return.
The farmer waits in his kitchen with a newly-filled bottles on the kitchen table. The soldiers arrive and make noises about searching the farm. Maybe one or two soldiers actually make a half-hearted effort of poking into the surrounding barn and immediate fields: the farmer tells my father that these are usually the soldiers that have pissed-off the leader of the troopers somehow - they are not allowed to drink this time and are sullen. They sometimes break things and are disciplined by the troop leader. He doesn't want to jeapordize his alcohol supply. He knows that he could take the bottles by force: but if he's nice to the farmer he knows that he will get the better blends and a larger quantity every week than if his men ransack the place. Golden goose eggs indeed...
Germans, Russians - the soldiers get drunk just the same no matter what language they speak...The farmer expects that soon he will have to deal with American soldiers, for of course the Americans will push the Russians back. They just have to. The Americans and Britons cannot let Communism spread over all of Eastern Europe. The allies will have a falling-out and the Russians will be pushed back to the Urals...It made perfect sense to everyone in Eastern Germany occupied by the Red Army. They just have to wait. Even when at war, the Germans knew that America shared their distaste of Communism. It was only a matter of time.
When Kurt returns from the fields in the breaking dawn the soldiers have left and the farmer's face is grim: "You'll have to leave." he says to my father.
"What have I done wrong?" Kurt asks, fear gripping him now. Though hard, this life was better than most, better than lots of homeless youngsters wandering the countryside with no food, family or possessions.
"The Americans are not coming." spits the farmer. "The war will end soon. The Russians will stay and they shall have my farm. They will take my land, but allow me to work on it for next to nothing - all for the glory of Mother Russia!" My father has told me that the farmer looked more grim and resigned to this than anything else: as if he knew that the Americans would turn on their allies was a story the villagers were telling themselves to give themselves hope.
"The soldiers said this?" my father asks.
"No they didn't have to...I had family in Russia. I know what Communists do. It's too late for me to start over. But you: you're young and you can make it to the West. The Russians and Americans will meet in Berlin and then they will carve us up as so much veal. The Soviets will get their share: they suffered in the war too much to not make us suffer afterward."
The farmer looks at my father. "Come let's bake some bread for your trip."
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[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
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