Lost Pages

It is certainly not the White House. Earlier this week I read that there has been a staggering 35 breaches of the White House perimeter since the mid 1970s. The latest incident involves a decorated Iraq War veteran who scaled a fence on last Friday night and got into the White House. It was later reported that he had more than 800 rounds of ammunition in his car and was arrested in July with a sniper rifle and a map marking the executive mansion. In truth, there is no place on earth that is truly safe because the safety of the place depends on the people who protects it. The Great Wall of China is thousands of miles long, 30 feet high, and 18 feet thick and was built as security against the northern invaders. It is a massive construction, and was intended to be impenetrable. In fact, impressive as it was, the wall was breached not by physically breaking the wall down but by a simple ruse: the gatekeepers were bribed.

On 3 October 2013, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the small Italian island of Lampedusa. Many of immigrants had come to Libya from other parts of Africa. When the Libyan uprising begun they sought to find greener pastures. Around 360 perished, with Italian Coast Guard rescuing 155. A week later another shipwreck occurred killing 34 people.

During the Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s the Israeli army decided to punish a village near Bethlehem for not paying its taxes (which, the village claimed, simply financed their occupation). The officer in command rounded up all of the village animals and placed them in a large barbed-wire pen. Later in the week a woman approached him and begged him to release her flock, arguing that since her husband was dead, the animals were her only source of livelihood. He pointed to the pen with hundreds of animals and quipped that it was impossible because he could not find her animals. She asked that if she could in fact separate them herself, would he be willing to let her take them? He agreed. A soldier opened the gate and the woman’s son produced a small reed flute. He played a simple tune again and again—and soon, sheep heads began popping up across the pen. The young boy continued his music and walked home followed by his flock of twenty-five sheep. The boy knew his sheep — and h...