Sunday, January 08, 2006

Aruba Herding the Innocent

They only come out at night.

Aruba acts like the kid playing hide and seek who continues to hide long after they've been found.

It's not the messenger, it's the message.

It's official, Dilbert is the spokesperson for Aruba. The ads in the U.S. say Aruba Forecast: Sun mixed with savings. Wow, a bank with a skylight.

Paulus van der sloot will hold the complicit at bay like a legal sniper terrorizing Aruba. Instead of a rifle he lobs Dutch Law books with a picture of him and Judge Smid at the minions. A legal cattle prod herding the "innocent" people of Aruba. Like the Arawak's of 500 years ago.

But bungling and blaming doesn't mean there is widespread love for the van der sloots.

His son, a boy not yet mature enough to prevent being used to tell a story about dropping a girl at the beach. These are Paulus's stories, not Joran's.

The truth isn't for sale in Aruba. You make it up as you go. A reason why lying is not an issue. Classify me in a way that allows me to lie. When classifying someone is crucial to one's ability to lie freely, who makes those decisions?

The walk from the spot where the supposed second story of Joran placed him as the last person known to be with Natalee back to the hotel is not the place where a random abduction happened without a trace of evidence.

A concocted longshot scenario and do-over attempt at an alibi from the mind of Paulus van der sloot.

Leave it to a van der sloot to have the least of your offenses dropping a girl on the beach in the middle of the night. Oops, sorry. Then adding that it was her begging for your son to stay. What kind of man would add this particularly cruel fiction to a story when Natalee can' t defend herself? The misogyny is deep. The ego off the charts.

Maybe only in Aruba can one man's ego survive an overreaching that knows no bounderies.

If van der sloot and the Kalpoe's were treated like the security guards there would be no second story.

No time to coordinate, again.

Why the new story? Unless there are only 2 security guards or 2 black men in Aruba why at that moment, did a new coordinated story come out? The hotel tapes would not have been evidence anyway. What would be different if they held on with the dropped her at the hotel story?

The new story was meant to seperate the Kalpoe's from Joran van der sloot. Seperating them could actually allow Joran to lie as a suspect but not the Kalpoe's as witnesses. Options for Paulus. Aruba really did want a prosecution, but it could not include a van der sloot. They tried everything, but only one judge had to believe them, and he did. It didn't work quite perfectly as planned so sound the alarm and head for the lifeboats.

Dropping the case?

It was inevitable.

Joran channels the truth from Natalee, speaking about himself telling us about his mistakes. He "shouldn't have gone out that night." It takes Natalee's words to get him to say something truthful. But it applies to both of them. Paulus coaxing Arubans to believe some type of moral equivalence between the two. Rallying Arubans to lessen Joran's guilt and heighten Natalee's.

Beth, Mamma Kalpoe and Anita know. They know what happened and where she is. Strip away the connections and these 3 would eventually have consensus.

Natalee exists in their minds every moment. The connection so obvious. Anita uses the legal details to not face the big picture. Her husband's abuse manipulating her to believe the law defines the truth.

But she knows. The explosive boy who repents in such a sweet and sensitive way. But she can connect the dots if she wanted to. Anita never thought, or really dreaded, it would come to this.

It was inevitable.

Paulus van der sloot, the first adult to know Natalee was gone.

The attacks, the victimhood, the anger all lashing out at different times like ammunition going off to ward away accountability. Teenage behaviour wrapped in the blanket of a Dutch legal insider.

Anita still getting pummeled by the men in her life. Yet for her, feeling valuable again requires giving up your dignity. Suffering in silence. The only female in the family and the inspiration for a teenager proud of his prodigious drinking and "pimping." A boy watching his father to learn how to treat women.

Paulus and Joran are the same person. Paulus using a teenage boy strategy to deny, distract and blame the victim. Any parent of a teenage boy knows exactly who Joran van der sloot is.

It's tough, but it's the truth. Beth and Anita wishing that it was later rather than sooner.

It was inevitable.

The van der sloot, not Natalee and Beth drive the interest and intensity in this case. The hate stronger than the love. Aruba and it's elite never cared about Natalee. They care about "image," in some ways, making the incident a referendum on their feelings about the United States. The envy and hate.

Every Aruban seems to want to give off the aura of "knowing." Like a pretentous desire to have people believe you have money in your pocket.

One local's opinion is that of surprise. Not surprise at the anger directed at the ALE but that somehow the U.S. expected more. "They do not have a sense of right and wrong, only what outcome they want." What is common understanding in Aruba seems lost on Americans. "Aruba allows people to come and work at low wages but gives them little rights so they can control them and use the law to threaten. This is how an elite like Paulus van der sloot was able to get away with murder. " He said that the people on tv claiming the U.S. would be hurting the "innocent" people of Aruba is more insulting to him than to the U.S. customers. "These people have much more to lose, I can go anywhere to make the money I make, my risk is much less."

These same people, the Julia Renfro's would throw those same "innocent" locals overboard if there was some benefit for her.

A complete boycott is the only answer to Dennis Jacobs, the lead investigator. He the one who asked Dave Holloway, "how much money do you have?" It's time for the U.S. to answer him and show him how much money the U.S. doesn't have for Aruba.

Joran van der sloot is a product of this rest stop, a place that believes it's own hype. A warped belief it's somehow an international cosmopolitan place. Joran himself is the truth. Aruba has killed before and it will kill again.

It's inevitable.