PERSONAL SAFETY MANAGEMENT

A Filipino guide has escaped from Muslim kidnappers in the southern Philippines by diving overboard. The guide was with a Swiss and a Dutchman, taken hostage by Muslim criminals off Tawi Tawi. The daring escape was successful, but just as easily could have ended up with the escaper being killed. It is a proven tenet of escape and evasion that the sooner you can escape after capture the better your chances. Once you and your captors settle into a routine of sorts it gets harder to get away, not to mention you will be further from help and in the middle of their chosen territory. While the escaper feels guilty he left the other two behind, the reality is his life, as a Filipino, is worth less than the two foreigners and most likely he would be killed to show the kidnappers mean business.

In Florida a rich man has adopted his 42 year old girlfriend to avoid losing his inherited fortune in a court case. The case was brought against him by the parents of a young man he caused the death of due to driving under the influence. Basically a court had previously ruled that the part of his fortune willed to his two biological children could not be touched by anyone sueing him or his estate. So now he has made his girlfriend just seven years his junior his adopted daughter. In most jurisdictions adopted children are considered to have the same legal standing as naturally born children. Surely such abuse of the law could only happen in America? In Australia it is rare that adoption is approved for non-minors as it is considered unnecessary for the good of the child. But this is America and it is about the good of the rich man and how he has the clout to flout the law and common decency, let alone morality.

So no doubt he has continued a sexual relationship with his girlfriend/daughter. Surely that is incest? This is a deliberate abuse of the law, the spirit if not the letter, to deny another party their due compensation or to avoid punitive action. But then what’s new? The rich are not like the rest of us, as F.Scott Fitzgerald pointed out to Ernest Hemingway many years ago. They are indeed different and they think differently and they think of us as being here to make their lives easier. We are still serfs in their minds.

I would be so bold as to say I think this rich bloke drove drunk because he arrogantly believed the law doesn’t apply to his class. He took a life or caused the loss of one and he will use his money and power to avoid paying for his mistakes. If you or I had done this we would be in jail still, and probably staying there.

What galls me the most about this is not that he has deliberately abused the laws of adoption to serve his own ends but that he probably has no inkling of how wrong this is. It will never occur to him that what he did was wrong just as no doubt his only regret about the death of the man he caused is because of all the bother it has put him and his lawyers too. I mean, why can’t these peasants just go away and be grateful we are no longer made to wear pigtails or hand over our brides on our wedding night to the lord of the manor.

A Canadian judge called the ‘honour’ killing of three girls and their mother a case of ‘twisted honour’. The two older girls had boyfriends and had told school authorities of the abuse they suffered at home from their father, an Afghan immigrant. Twisted is so very apt. As the judge said, this thinking has no place in civilised society.

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with their religion, Islam, and yet it has everything to do with it. It is a cultural aberration, much like the wearing of the niqab or burka, seen all too often in Pakistani and Afghan families, as well as Iranian, Iraqi and other Arab communities, yet there are other cultures that practise similar beliefs: Greek, Italian, Indian, African and other non-Islamic cultures have also had ‘honour killings’ of female relatives. It is brought about by the men of the culture thinking they are superior to women, that they have some ‘god-given’ right and know better than anyone else. They allege it is written in the Koran and justify their medieval and misogynistic mindset claiming their God has sanctioned their behaviour. Read this essay in support of the view that this is an Islamic thing. Nothing could be further from the truth according to others. This topic is not new and has been debated for years, so what is the truth?

The truth for me is that it doesn’t make any difference whether it is Islamic and sanctioned in the Koran and the Hadith or it is a cultural misinterpretation of those scriptures. It is wrong. There is right and there is wrong and it makes no difference what religion you are, the colour of your skin or if you are male or female, rich or poor. Right is right and wrong is wrong and if the killing of anyone, other than in self defense, is considered right then that person or society is wrong. Who gave these people the right to take another person’s life? Even though the causes of war are too often wrong, at least on one side but usually on both, from the individual soldier’s perspective it is all about self defence. This is why soldiers fight for each other, to keep themselves and their mates alive and not for Queen and Country or the flag or the cause, but to stay alive.

Murdering your own flesh and blood to preserve an abstract concept such as family honour is obscene. Not to them, but it is to me. Does that make me right and them wrong? Yes. They will never accept they are wrong and no doubt they could argue I am the one who is wrong but I will never accept they have the right to murder anyone, let alone female members of their family. These swine received refuge and a good life in our society, our culture, then they tainted it with their wrong thinking and killed four women who, no doubt, embraced our way of life. They deserve to be sent back to where they came from and buried up to their breasts and stoned to death. Surely they would be grateful for such an Islamic death? Maybe then they might see the error of their ways.

An asteroid the size of a mini-van just missed the earth by some 59,000 kilometres. OK, so how is that news? The reality is it would have broken up on entry but what if it were bigger? Think of all those craters on the moon and how they got there. A really big asteroid would be tracked for some time, allowing the rich and powerful to get to the other side of the earth when it hit, I’m sure of that. After all, civilization must go one and they are the ones with the power and the money. As for the rest of us, we are replaceable. Cynical? Perhaps but the longer I live the more cynical I seem to become. Or is that wisdom?

The reality is that if we are wiped out the earth will continue on. We won’t but the earth will. It has been here billions of revolutions around the sun and will be here for billions more. We’ll be dust but then that is the way it is. There is nothing we can do to stop an asteroid wiping us out if our number is up so don’t worry about this unlikely event. Worry instead about your elderly neighbours. Have you seen them lately or have they died, alone and unremarked in their bed? Worry about your kids or your parents. Family is all. Have you seen each other lately? Hugged? Been there for each other?

When the going gets tough, who can you rely on? It will rarely get tougher than the days between the announcement we are all doomed and the strike of the asteroid, should that ever happen. In those few days or weeks, we will see the best and the worst of our fellow humans. How will you behave?

A US university student bought a second hand text book for a course she was taking about terrorism and when she opened it a packet of white powder fell out. Her first thought was it was anthrax but the local police tested the contents and declared them to be about $400 worth of cocaine. what if it had been anthrax? What if the book mix up led to her meeting the intended recipient one dark night?

The probability of anything bad happening is pretty low but not zero. Where do you think Hollywood screenwriters get their ideas from? Real life. Then they glam them up but the original story is usually based on something they read about in the press, like this story. If you don’t want to be the subject of a screen adaptation, what do you do? There is no simple answer to that because as I said, the odds of it happening to you are pretty slim. This woman did the right thing. She carefully took the packet to the police station. I would have called the police and asked them then and there to come and collect it. If she had been stopped and searched for whatever reason enroute, telling the judge you ‘found it’ and were on your way to hand it in might not work. Especially in the USA with their draconian drug laws and zero tolerance to letting their corporate prisons miss out on one more profit center.

A recent report from the UK of a man taking his dead mum home on a 50km bus trip has made me think about what to do when someone dies. I have a cousin who is handicapped after suffering viral meningitis as a boy. Until recently he lived with my aunty, now 92 and in a home. He is 64. I can imagine him just wanting to get her home and then asking for help from the neighbours. He would be confused and very defensive… who wouldn’t?

Death has no timetable or appointment schedule. when it comes, it comes. Do you know what to do if a loved one passes away? Who do you call? What do you do first? As a former Military Policeman my first thought is to protect the scene as it may be a crime scene. In the case of an elderly relative passing away peacefully in their sleep this is not an issue but what if you were to come across them lying on the floor in a pool of blood?

First you check for vital signs and give first aid but if they are not responding, consider you may be standing in a crime scene. Forget the CSI TV hype, real forensic scenes of crime investigators don’t carry on like on TV, nor do they have the time to. Try not to spoil the scene or move too many things. Obviously giving first aid will change things but it will be clear to the SOCE officer that you did what you tell them you did, the evidence will support your story.

Once all that is in hand, police and ambulance called and so on, then what? Do you know what to do next? Are you an executor of the estate? Start thinking now about the unthinkable. What if it was a child or spouse of yours? What if it were you, would your loved ones know what to do?

A bookcase that becomes a coffin, I want one!

I read with sadness and anger that another teenager had committed suicide due to being bullied. This included ‘cyber bullying‘ and the report made a big deal about how the bullying never stopped. When the girl got home it was there on her social network page. OK, this is where it gets a little hard for me to follow. If the bullying was going on online… why not close the account? Why not change name and password? Why not simply stop going online? Sooner or later the bully would get the hint and lose interest.

I am sorry, it is a tragedy for sure but the biggest tragedy has to be that the girl valued her social network more than her life. She would rather kill herself than go without her Facebook or whichever social network it was. This is ridiculous! Don’t blame the social network or the internet, don’t even blame the bully. If the bully intended her to kill herself, then charge him and take him through the courts. If the bully was just another mental midget, troubled teen with issues, then that is sad but the choice to end it all was hers, nobody else’s.

Which makes me think that some people are predisposed to dealing with stress and pressure that way, rather than fight back, confront the bullies or simply switch off the computer. It is sad, no argument but I think we need to keep things in perspective and not get too wound up, too ‘you poor thing’. We are tending to get softer and softer as we conquer more and more of the every day risks life has for us. We will never totally eradicate all risk and that is a good thing because danger is the best instructor there is.

If there is one thing that really twists my Wa it is ignorant bleeding civilians who haven’t a clue about anything military except the rubbish they get off the glass toilet. Media types loosely calling themselves journalists are the worst. I despise them when they call every sword or long knife used to scare or skin, a ‘samurai sword,’ as if it is the only sword ever made. Most idiots who wield swords nowadays don’t use ‘samurai’ swords, or even anything remotely Japanese, but who cares when ‘samurai’ and ‘ninja’ are so emotive?

The same for AK47 assault rifles. The Kalashnikov AK47 hasn’t been made for decades, not since AKMs and AK74s and a whole range of other newer models hit the streets. Worse is when they call it an M47 or an AK16 and mix it with the US weapon, derived from the Armalite AR15 (and now called an M4, a derivative of the M16A2). It gets worse with AFVs, or armoured fighting vehicles. If it has tracks it is a tank. If it is big and armoured it is a tank. Not an armoured car or an APC, armoured personnel carrier, tracked load carrier, self propelled gun or any one of a plethora of AFVs. No, it is a tank.

Even more ludicrous is the slant the media seem to give a story by using the word ‘military’. When they relate how something happened with ‘military precision’ it is obvious they were never in the military. I was and believe me, most of the time things got cocked up and we had to muddle through as best we could, regardless. This story made me cringe, too. For some reason a ‘military knife’ is sharper and far more deadly than the 8 inch cook’s knife most commonly used to murder and maim. Following that, cheap Stanley knives (razor knives) and screwdrivers tend to get used far more often than purpose designed ‘fighting knives’. But really, they used a ‘military knife’? So what? The victim shouldn’t have gotten out of the car and as there were two coming at him, why didn’t the driver get out sooner? We can second guess this incident to death but the fact remains, the type of knife is irrelevant compared to the fact the knifer had the intent to use it, and use it he did, repeatedly.

I mean what are we supposed to infer from this? That because they use the words ‘military style’, the knife was more dangerous? That the user was more determined? What? I had three knives issued to me when I was in the army. The biggest was a machete. Then there was my bayonet and the edge on that would barely part butter, as in there wasn’t one and if you tried to put one on it you would be charged for damaging government property. The other knife was a ‘Knife, Pocket Clasp, with lanyard’. It had a deer foot blade (meaning not pointy at all), a vicious tin/bottle opener and a marlin spike for getting young Diggers out of the tracks of APCs and it was on a lanyard so you wouldn’t lose it. Fight with it? Not while I had any ammo left for my L1A1 SLR (Google it). Failing that, if it came down to fighting with a military knife I think using the rifle’s butt or an entrenching tool would have been more effective, I was in the Engineers and later the Military Police, not the bloody Gurkhas!

The thing is, the type of weapon (or the lack of one) is irrelevant. Deadly is deadly. It makes no difference that the inland taipan can kill 40,000 mice with one dose of venom and the coastal taipan can barely manage 20,000 mice. That is still a lot of dead rodents and dead is dead, afterall. What counts every time is the intent. The intent of the attacker to drive home their attack and the intent of the victim to defend themselves or not. Usually the most aggressive person wins. If that person is bigger, more numerous and or armed, then the odds are in their favour even more. Intent is everything, believe me. I should know, I used to have a military knife, remember?

This woman certainly can’t. She was disfigured for life in a 2004 meth lab explosion and she was recently found right back at it, cooking methamphetamine in her trailer. The meth cooking process is extremely dangerous and claims many lives and hundreds of homes every year. The chemicals and process used in making meth is volatile and dangerous at the best of times in proper facilities, doing it in the kitchen with home made equipment is a recipe for disaster.

So why do they do it? The answer is money. It is easier to make meth and sell it as crack than to get a job and work hard. In the USA where someone like her with not education would be making $2.75 an hour as a waitress plus tips (and the IRS presume you will make $X an hour in tips and tax you regardless) or less than $8 an hour minimum wage in other industries it is often worth the risk. America carries on about communism and socialism and what have you, yet unless you are making $250K a  year some experts say there is little value voting Republican. Make no mistake, the land of milk and hollywood is one tough place to make it in. If you keep your head above water it can be a wonderful place to live your life in. But if you have some bad luck and fall through the cracks, then you are doomed.

The middle class is scared stiff of becoming poor and it is no wonder. They are the tool of the rich, keeping the economy going with their consumerism in response to the conditioning of Madison Avenue on behalf of the Wall Street 1%. Will Rogers said back in the Great Depression that alone out of all the people in the world, only Americans would drive to the poor house. Poor takes on a different meaning in a developed nation like the USA and while you should make no mistake there are some 30% or more of the population considered officially poor, they do have it better than the poor of a third world country. It is relative after all.

Part of the affect of poverty is the poorer nutrition that contributes to lower average IQ levels. Garbage in, garbage out and if the baby and child don;t get the nutrition they need, their brains are not going to develop to their full potential. Then there are other factors like the school boards being partly funded by property taxes so if the district is full of slums, there won’t be as much funding as there will be in a more upscale area. But then this is the user pay capitalist way. Let’s not even start on health care. If anything, the amazing thing is how many Americans manage and even thrive. How many people, despite the draconian laws and political motivation behind so much they mislabel as ‘justice’, the one sided bias towards the haves at the expense of the have nots and the societal shame placed on those less fortunate through cultural mores that are no longer present in other western societies, manage to stay alive and well and keep consuming and using their credit and keeping the dream alive, albeit a dream that sees the top few percent enjoy by far the majority of the wealth and prosperity of the world’s richest nation. Personally, the vast majority of Americans I have known through my military service and as an expat overseas have been brave as lions and generous to a fault. Particularly when you are on their turf in the USA, they are some of the most hospitable people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. I like and respect Americans and love vacationing there, I just would not want to live in the place.

While this is all going on, many just take the initially easier road and turn to crime. Violent crime is rife but so too fraud in various forms and larceny. Desperate people do desperate things and the system is such that it is easy to become desperate in the US of A. We here in Australia can learn from this because we follow the USA more or less, sooner or later. We need to be selectively tough on criminals and selectively compassionate, too. Not hammer everyone into the ground for a mistake usually caused by a circumstance change beyond their ability to control or manage. Not give them the keys to the candy store and pay for dental check ups while apologising for rotting their teeth. No, a happy medium needs to be struck.

Keep in mind not everyone is as smart as you and even if you are just average, with an IQ of 96-98 for Australians and Americans, there are plenty who are dumber than you and many of those end up in prison. Being dumb is not a crime but too often it leads to a life of it. If we are smart enough to know better and keep out of trouble we should spare a thought for those too dumb to know better and try not to judge them. Don;t trust them, but don’t tread on them and make it any harder for them either. By all means give them a fair go if you can, but don’t turn you back at the same time. Maybe in time they will realise that they don’t have to exploit everyone who isn’t busy kicking the crap out of them. Maybe they will learn to trust society and society can lower its guard and trust them. Maybe.

The recent QANTAS grounding is just one event in many that show how the rich 1% are totally disconnected from the 99% of the rest of us. Alan Joyce is a classic example in my eyes. I have no idea why QANTAS needed to hire a foreigner to head our national airline. There is an old Irish saying; ‘If you are going on a journey,never take an idiot with you, you’ll always find one when you get there’. I’m not saying Joyce is an idiot, far from it. He is, however, totally out of touch with the reality that is our lives. I believe the last time he worked in Australia was for another airline, Ansett and that went out of business around that time! He is a hatchet man, brought in because he is not Australian, doesn’t have to live here and can always scuttle off somewhere else with his golden parachute once he has done the dirty work needed to make a few rich people richer. The same thing happened with that other former public entity, Telstra and the yank Trujillo. No connection to Australia, do the dirty deeds and disappear. Surely we have an Australian citizen as able as this bloke?

He was paid $3.8 million a year to be the CEO. A disgusting amount of money when you think how half of that could make a huge difference to many old age pensioners, or anyone on a low income for that matter. Then during the worst period of industrial disputes in the airline’s history, he gets a $1.7 million pay rise! The very next day he strands 68,000 people around the world and blames it on the unions. He makes all sorts of mouth noises about being forced to do this or suffer a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ as industrial action would otherwise drag on but the truth is he had other options. I think pilots are paid too much and so too many of the staff of QANTAS but then they would disagree and fair enough. I definitely think CEOs and politicians are paid too much, too. Look at the woman in charge of Westpac Bank. She used to be the boss of St George Bank, then switched banks right before the new employer bought out her old one. And of course we are expected to believe she knew nothing about it, didn’t bring over any confidential info to help the buyout and so on. Then, like all the big banks they make phenomenal profits at our expense and still have to sack people and take jobs offshore as well as refuse to lower interest rates because of the cost of money or whatever! The truth is it is all about the dividend to the share holder and they hold a lot of shares themselves, these CEOs. They don’t care about lost jobs, they think people can just get another one right away but they can’t. These people, the disconnected 1% are different to you and me in many ways. Not necessarily smarter or more hardworking but definitely more focused and ruthless and without a care for anyone but themselves. They are a form of corporate sociopath.

The problem lies in the mindset these huge salaries help create. If I was making $150,000 a year I would not worry about being ripped off at the petrol pump for ten cents or more a litre for my imported, luxury vehicle. A few years ago when the AUD$ was worth US$0.70 and oil was US$150 a barrel we were paying up to $1.50 a litre. Today the Aus dollar is worth the same or more than the US$, oil is US$90 a barrel and we are still getting stiffed up to $1.50 a litre except for a day or two a week when Woolworths, Coles and the big oil companies play footsie with us and drop it a few cents. The government will say nothing because they would lose billions in tax revenue. Instead they create an overpaid bureaucrat and give him a budget and cost us millions a year and he has done nothing to watchdog petrol prices like he is supposed to. He has probably watched them but that is all. He, like the politicians and the corporate executives are disconnected. Big Time.

The ‘Occupy’ movement is reminding them of this but they see it merely as a nuisance. The rest of us are being manipulated y the media into siding against the Occupy protestors because a few long hairs will agitate the protest beyond common sense and stir up the police and make good television with violence and so on. I support the Occupy concept, but I think once you have occupied and disrupted you have made your point, no need to give the other side any sympathy by overstaying your ‘unwelcome’.

Times are a’changing and we will see more and more civil disobedience as ordinary people, the 99%, finally have too much. The ignorance and arrogance of the 1% and those who suck at their teat will be their undoing. As we trend more and more towards fighting hot wars in smelly, remote places, we will find the new cold war will be an economic one and between  the haves and the rest of us who have not as much and never will, thanks to the haves owning everything, including the politicians we think we voted for to represent us. Mark and Engels will be laughing their beards off.