Dec. 8, 2006: Bud: Milwaukee Explosion

The Milwaukee plant explosion--sabotage?

I try desperately not to join the conspiracy nut crowd, but sometimes I see a possibility of government cover-up. I watched a CNN report on that Milwaukee plant explosion and wonder how a 1.5 million square foot building could be so flattened. Without any real investigation, some "authority" is hinting strongly at a propane tank exploding. You are looking at the damage that a DaisyCutter bomb might inflict; not a single propane tank. This blast blew away two and a half blocks and set fire to a nearby warehouse. If the propane excuse is true, then we are all in deep trouble, living next to neighbours who use this fuel, as does my neighbour. Unbelievably, the day after the explosion there is no news about it at all. Three people were killed and 30 injured. Yet, it has disappeared from prime news headings. Very suspicious I think. Is the government hiding a failure to protect key infastructure? It is worth thinking about.

This tragedy reminds me of several other plant explosions, about which there was, subsequently, no or little explanation. There was the oil refinery "accident" in Texas that drove up the price of oil in North America. For some inexplicable reason, America has not built any new refineries in 20-odd years. Therefore, the existing infastructure is old, but precious. The exact cause of that explosion was never made clear by the media. Then there was the chemical plant outside Atlanta which, when it blew, could have had dire consequences if the wind hadn't cooperated. I never heard the results of that investigation either. There have been others that disappear into the ether. I know that genuine accidents happen, but we shoud be told the facts. It was interesting that when the Atlanta plant blew, the authorities also called it an accident within hours.

Is it possible that the government doesn't want to alarm/alert the public? After all, the Patriot Act is supposed to protect Americans from internal sabotage. The ease of unauthorized entry into these time bomb plants was shown on 60 Minutes. Their reporters breached the security of a chemical plant which, if successfully attacked, could kill hundreds of thousands in New Jersey and NYC. Why the terrorists haven't done this already is a mystery. They must be planning something even bigger.

In Canada we were shocked to learn that professional criminal gangs operate freely in our airports and seaports. So entrenched have they become, that the Vancouver dock workers' union threatened to go on strike if their members had to submit to a criminal check. This security lapse was brought out by Sheila Fraser's audit of the situation a year ago. This week we learn that police have busted a gang at Trudeau Airport, that involved custom officiers and baggage handlers bringing in drugs. Why wasn't something done long ago to weed these criminals out? * How easy would it be to pretend you were a drug smuggler, when your real product is stinger missles? The corrupted custom agent is only interested in the pay-off. But like the Yanks we are told "don't worry, be happy. Everything is under control here." Both of our countries have to be more diligent about who man the key targets for terrorists.

© Bud Talkinghorn



Comments: FHTR

* Bud, I think the money to be made from drugs is so phenomenal that it might be easy to corrupt someone chronically short of money. One of the people who has given herself up lately is in her twenties. It wasn't many years ago that people in most villages and towns went through a lifetime not knowing about drugs, not knowing anyone whose life had been ruined by addiction. Even if they read of drugs, they lived in a world where "It's just not done". How innocent a time. Then, the kind of people seeking that life left town for bigger cities, or were so sidelined that the young were relatively safe until they grew up and moved to the big cities. Now, our children have access while at our schools. The money to be made is phenomenally high. In fact, the drug scene has grown exponentially, and the money involved is unimagineable. That fact is that this is the only arguement I could see as possibly convincing enough to consider legalizing everything. Let the heavy duty addicts overdose, the rest learn from example, and live. It is worth discussing, in view of how it has grown, is ruining our young, and is funding terrorism and our economic downfall, I believe. Children who could see a few examples who chose to pursue their vice to its end would learn the cost. I am almost reaching the point where any solution better than what is going on now, is worthy of discussion. I wish others would comment on the positive as well as the negative.

Bud, don't forget our society has been taught through various means and media that we must have it all, not later, but now, and it should come with little work, easily. Just go into debt, sign a mortgage, pay with a credit card or zip through a purchase with a bank card--none of which seem like spending money or placing oneself in hock, if not forever, then serially, for the big items, while paying off the little ones, Christmas purchases, in July.

Also, the idea of right and wrong, good and evil, have gone the way of the dinosaur. Now, the individual may justify just about any actions with a call to individual interpretation and self-actualization in a world where it is the individual who decides right or wrong for that individual at that time, that there are no eternal truths sent down from on high, though we might be able to make a case for evil percolating up from below, considering the base activities now seen as, if not mainstream, then mainstream enough that they are almost normal. Think of the raunchy videos, the online pornography, the fact that gambling is now available through or sanctioned by governments. There may or may not be a God, but I think life for the individual and for the society was better in many ways for the belief in a God. Not all of us are equipped for deep thought, having to work out the positives and negatives in every situation. Sometimes, it is good to be subject to a call to something higher than one's own instincts or personal satisfaction. Sometimes also, to be subject to strict sanctions from the society when one steps beyond the society's boundaries.

Instead, now, we have the "root causes" crowd excusing, so society's sanctions, its punishment, may mean house arrest. If the hoosegow, it comes with a television, three squares, and an education ... at least, and body building, the better to pursue your life's work when you leave. Society is as deconstructionist in its group think, its interpretations, its explanations or rationalizations, as are the individuals. But I am not really mainstream ... so I do not understand. Perhaps with my perspective I have fossilized, but am unaware ... I am stone; therefore, I am not. Ergo, my thought is not. Sounds post, post modern ... blogger as pet rock.