UFO Info Week-End

No wonder mums ferry the kids to school in their four- wheel drive all but armour-plated vehicles accounting for two-thirds of the

No wonder mums ferry the kids to school in their four- wheel drive, all but armour-plated vehicles, accounting for two-thirds of the rush hour congestion in our towns and cities.
Reports like yesterday’s warning on “stranger danger” from the NSPCC can only fuel such parental fears. No wonder concerned dads follow their offspring around the corner. What do you see? A potential child molester tracking his next victims? Actually, it was my neighbour following his children the first time they were allowed to the corner shop by themselves, making sure they were safe crossing the road. We parents labour under a huge burden of worry about our kids in the modern world of car accidents, child abductions and murders, and careless or even violent childminders.

If boom turns to bust and America remains as callously unforgiving of its losers as it is today, and as incurious about what ails them, it could have many more Mark Bartons to contend with, and not just in Atlanta.. PICTURE THIS. A man in his mid-thirties, bearded, wearing slightly scruffy jeans, is following two children of about eight and six down a suburban street. They are oblivious to their pursuer – if they seem on the point of turning round to look, he ducks out of sight into a garden The little convoy turns around the corner. But America is wrong to beat its breast so fervently about the first, while averting its gaze so speedily from the second.

When guns are within reach, the mix of family instability, misguided risk-taking and thwarted ambition is just as pernicious as the murderous fantasies of two embittered adolescents. Mark Barton of Atlanta, in short, was what every American strives not to be: a loser on all fronts. As such, he drew scant sympathy; his victims, tarnished by their association with day trading, with Atlanta, and with him, fared scarcely any better.Yes, there are differences between the killings in Littleton and Atlanta. He had left a job as a chemist to take up electronic day trading, a pursuit openly derided by the salaried classes as gambling, and – even as the United States seemed awash with cash – he failed to make money. Stable family relations were not his forte: his second marriage was already on the rocks.More to the point, Mark Barton was a risk-taker, and a misguided one at that. Mark Barton, we learned even before his capture and suicide, had a criminal record and a dubious past that may have included the murder of his first wife and her mother. But that praise also masks elements of condescension that help to ensure that its known problems remain untackled: its poor city planning, its daily gridlock, its de facto segregation into white and black districts, and its persistent violence.

While overall crime in the city has fallen recently – as it has elsewhere in the US – the number of murders has actually risen.For America, a new murder in Atlanta – or two, or 12 – was not the same as a murder – or 13 – in Littleton And nor was the killer the same. It is a city which – unjustly perhaps – already had the wrong kind of reputation even before the unsolved, and mishandled, Olympic Park bombing three years ago.As a majority black city that is flourishing, Atlanta is often lauded for its success in attracting black professionals from all over the United States. While the white establishment saw Littleton as familiar territory, it sees Atlanta as “other”. As President Clinton said, voicing – as so often – the inner feelings of Americans, if such a tragedy could happen in Littleton, it could happen anywhere.When complete outsiders sent flowers or wrote notes of condolences to the next of kin, and when they watched the first funerals, often in tears, they were weeping for their cherished dream of America, and for themselves.How different, to the American eye, were the shootings in Atlanta. This was a place for winners on their way further up, not for losers scratching a living.