The Waco thing was aired on Oz TV a few months ago (non-commercial telly
here is terrific between about 11.00 and 2.00am - which suits non-sleepers
like me - and our least-funded station (SBS - multilingual, soccer, world
movies, more soccer, and often surprisingly radical stuff) goes in for lots
of those relatively cheap US video-docos (there was a beauty on the Panama
slaughter, too) that don't make the technical grade for US networks (or are
just not gonna get on - as per those filters Chomsky and Herman outline in
chapter one of their terrific *Manufacturing Consent*).

Anyway, a wholly convincing show on yet another of those episodes that
gives meaning to that 'only in America' slogan.  That big-time murder went
on (those twisted little charred corpses of kiddies killed by cyanide fumes
shall stay with me forever) seems beyond doubt to me, but the thing we
never got to hear was what *really* caused the trouble in the first place.
In a landscape dotted by charismatic would-be christ-figures and
armed-to-the-teeth 'citizens' militias', what was it about Koresh's mob
that stood out to the authorities?  I never really understood that.

Cheers,
Rob.



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