Robert the Westie. My life. By me.

12. The weirdness goes global, but it's mainly American.

I've mentioned Michael Jackson earlier. He was part of my life in the sense that, as the "King of Pop", he came highly rated by Steve, mainly for his music, of course. His frequently erratic behaviour, his fondness for children and chimpanzees and his ever whiter, ever more decayed appearance were less admired characteristics.

His tabloid nickname, "Whacko Jacko," had gained common currency globally. So, when Steve came home late one February evening full of news about "Whacko," child abuse accusations and a gun battle that had left nine people dead, I feared the worst for Michael. Only later, as Newsnight shed light on my mystification, did Whacko morph into Waco, Texas and all of it shape up as another story of American excess.

Maybe the name David Koresh means little to you. In 1993 it meant a lot. He was the leader of an extreme Protestant religious cult, the Branch Davidians, one shrouded in mystery and rumours of dark sexual practices, including his practice of separating husbands and wives in order to monopolise the sexual attentions of the women. All we knew on that winter night was that the American Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had raided a compound occupied by the cult. A number of corpses resulted.

The ATF and FBI then opted to mount a siege of the compound, deploying a team of negotiators to try to bring a peaceful end to the stand-off. The siege lasted fifty-one days. A handful of youngsters and a few adults were released during this period but over eighty men, women, and children stayed in the compound. Interest in the story waxed and waned until, early on April 19, 1993, the ATF and FBI attempted to end the siege by deploying a form of tear gas. Armoured vehicles surrounded the site, smashed holes in the compound's walls and inserted CS gas. The government apparently hoped that the gas would safely drive the cult members from the compound. The occupants chose instead to make a fight of it and shot back. Just after noon, the wooden structure burst into flames. Nine people escaped the blaze, but seventy-five perished either by gunshot or by fire within the compound. Of the dead, twenty-five were children. Bearing a gunshot wound to the head, the body of David Koresh was identified amongst the corpses.

"What is it about America, the land of the free?" Steve asked, as we watched the grim film beamed from Texas. "There are so many extremist groups defined only by their hatred, regular echoes of racism from the redneck south like the Klu Klux Clan not to forget earlier crazy mass suicides like the nine hundred odd People's Temple members who died in Jonestown in 1978. It's as if this is a society still trying to grow up but still trapped in an aggressive adolescence."

"And the law enforcement teams seem just as crazy," Jason suggested. "Did you know they tried to wear down the Davidians in the compound night after night by blasting recordings of chanting, jet planes, pop music, and the screams of rabbits being slaughtered! How crazy is that?"

I wasn't sure about the dying rabbits, but the rest of their programmed entertainment activities struck me as decidedly strange. I gave a supportive woof and left them to reflect on the matter as I sought relief on the terrace. My own reflections took me back to that unfathomable contradiction between the sophistication and generosity of humans that I encountered around me everyday and its opposite force, the barbarity and violence that dominated every news bulletin and surfaced in every region of the planet. Even when peace threatened to break out and hopes rose, along came a subsequent atrocity to drive the peacemakers back into their realms of hatred and intransigence. Nowhere symbolized this better than the Middle East.

Without embarking on a history lesson, let me just summarise by explaining that the Israelis and Palestinians had, for decades, refused to accept the legitimacy of each other's nations. Wars, skirmishes and bloody acts of terrorism had raged constantly and frequently threatened to ignite a global conflict. So it was with high hopes that, on September. 13, 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and, Yasser Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organisation Chairman, shook hands after signing an agreement in a public ceremony at the White House. In theory, the so-called Oslo Accords granted limited autonomy to Palestine and signposted a path to future peace talks. Steve, tuned in to big picture international politics as usual, read to us from the New York Times that he had brought home from the office.