Nathan Sharansky is on a book tour.  He must be a tough guy. A different city every day, no small feat with today’s air travel, TSA, delays, etc. A different hotel every night, bed bugs, problematic wifi, and bland hotel food.  Then there are the speeches, always the same topic constantly repackaged in an attempt to make it all seem fresh.  The audience ranges from the enthusiastic to the hostile, each equally ignorant, but from different ends of the spectrum.  The show must go on.

Compared to where he has been, Mr. Sharansky has a pretty good gig.  Mr. Sharansky is a Soviet Jew, now a citizen of Israel. He was harassed by the KGB until the Soviets put him on trial for being a CIA spy. He spent the next nine years in the Gulag system with all that that entails. His book FEAR NO EVIL and speaking tour tell of that journey and how he made it out the other side to Israel.

One of Mr. Sharansky’s stops will be Brown University.  This has pro Palestinian students upset, no that’s not descriptive, their panties are all in a wad, better. In fact there is so much social injustice at Brown that the activists are just in a frazzle. It has reached the point that the college rag took notice and devoted a story to the depravations suffered by these dedicated individuals, Brown Student Activists. 

What a perfect opportunity to compare the use of force, threats and intimidation as practiced in the East (former Soviet Union) and the West (current day Brown University).

Granted Mr. Sharansky offers a first person story that could be highly biased and self serving in his favor.  In order to test for bias I invite you to refer to similar works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Vladimir Bukovsky, among others.  Graduates all, of the gulag system. I would maintain that when you find the same pattern of behavior occurring over fifty years reported by a diverse group, then all are entitled to belief.

Here we go: loss of occupation, physical harassment, surveillance, official obstruction of daily life, repeated interrogations, sensory deprivation, false charges, sham trials, false conviction, false imprisonment, all as official government policy.

East: Yup, all that and more.

West:  Three students were interviewed for the student newspaper article.  None reported any threats, harassment, false charges, loss of occupation, or interrogations by government or outside forces.

All reported support and concern expressed by a college dean. Two apparently were disappointed that some professors did not give proper weight to a “dean’s note” requesting an accommodation for the student.  There is an appellate process that the students could use to force the acceptance of the “Dean’s Note” but no indication that the procedure was followed.

There is a rare crime out there that for much of my tenure as a police officer wasn’t even recognized as criminal activity, or at least for the criminal activity that actually occurred. It is a variation on Munchausen Syndrome and has been identified by the FBI Behavioral Science Unit.

The offense typically targets a female victim, but an Alan Alda girly man might fit. The victim is stalked, terrorized, assaulted by an unknown offender.  This offender is so persistent that attacks have been known to occur over a span of years and distance.  The one I worked covered ten years and three police jurisdictions.  As suddenly as these attacks begin, they end, usually without resolution. The amazing ability of the offender to track and target his victim despite the efforts of law enforcement is due to the fact that the offender does not exist. The injuries suffered by the victim whether to property or person, physical or psychological are all self inflicted. When confronted, the victim vehemently denies any involvement in their own persecution.

The FBI theorizes that episodes are triggered during a time when everything is going right. Graduation on the horizon, impending marriage, birth of a child, or another positive event is stressful. Trotting out the boogieman is a response to stress the victim feels.  The reward, to the victim is the circling of the wagons as friends and family converge to tell the victim how brave he/she is.

Read the college rag again.  Those three care so much and all they got was the attention of one lousy dean. With the publishing of the story their efforts and sacrifices can be better understood and appreciated by their fellow students. I guess in some circles sacrifice and victimhood, by any means, are their own reward.