{"id":57,"date":"2006-10-27T15:35:21","date_gmt":"2006-10-27T14:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=57"},"modified":"2010-09-19T10:27:35","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:27:35","slug":"terrorism-begins-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/terrorism-begins-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Terrorism begins at home"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a report<\/a> in the UK’s Guardian Online a couple of weeks ago about Anthony Garcia who is currently on trial in England for ‘conspiracy to cause explosions’ under the terrorism laws.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the pieces of evidence against him was that he had attended an Al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.\u00c2\u00a0 But in his defence, Mr. Garcia explains that he only attended the camp for a couple of weeks, before checking himself out.\u00c2\u00a0 And why did he leave early?\u00c2\u00a0 Because he’d learnt all there was to know about blowing up innocent people?\u00c2\u00a0 Or because he was disappointed to find they still espoused the now-ineffective ‘set fire to your shoes’ attack?\u00c2\u00a0 No.\u00c2\u00a0 He left because they didn’t have any monkey bars.\u00c2\u00a0 Really.\u00c2\u00a0 His exact comment was: “I thought, you know, it would be like the camps I had heard of, with monkey bars and stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was just a field on the side of a mountain with really high grass. It was definitely disappointing.”\u00c2\u00a0 What on earth was this idiot thinking?\u00c2\u00a0 That he’d get his Terrorism Proficiency badge and be sent on his way with a hearty handshake and a thankyou?\u00c2\u00a0 What a pillock!<\/p>\n

More recently, one evening when I got home from work, I was going through the usual routine of asking the kids what they’d done at school.\u00c2\u00a0 My daughter was particularly pleased with herself, announcing that at playtime she’d managed to make it all the way across the monkey bars by herself.\u00c2\u00a0 And that was when it hit me.\u00c2\u00a0 Monkey bars<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s training to be a terrorist.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly all of the evidence slotted into place.<\/p>\n

For a few weeks now, there has been a strong smell of chemicals coming from her bedroom, which she has been very quick to dismiss as nail varnish, but I can’t be too sure.\u00c2\u00a0 And then there are the hastily-scribbled notes in an unintelligible script left all over her room, and drawings that could easily be schematics for any number of public buildings.\u00c2\u00a0 Or aircraft.\u00c2\u00a0 Or ponies – it’s difficult for untrained eyes such as mine to tell, so I’m thinking of sending them off to CTU for pattern-matching just in case.<\/p>\n

There are other things, too.\u00c2\u00a0 She has developed an uncanny ability to move silently when she needs to; I’ve woken up in the night a couple of times to find her standing by my bed, her hand hovering over my neck (though to be fair, it could have been my shoulder as she wakes me to ask for a drink of water…). She’s also clearly undergone some kind of anti-interrogation training, because whenever anything gets broken or messed up, I can’t get anything out of her other than a stock “It wasn’t me”, no matter how hard I push.\u00c2\u00a0 Add to this the time she whacked me over the head with a wooden mallet when she was a baby, and the pattern of clear aggression against authority figures is difficult to ignore.<\/p>\n

So now I’m eyeing my five-year old daughter with suspicion, and watching for signs of radicalization.\u00c2\u00a0 Some would call me paranoid, but when we’ve got grown men wanting playtime on the monkey bars with Osama, nothing seems far-fetched anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 “Watch the skies”, they said, but I think the threat’s a bit closer to home…<\/p>\n

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There was a report in the UK’s Guardian Online a couple of weeks ago about Anthony Garcia who is currently on trial in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-life","tag-paranoia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}