Living in the best of all possible worlds

[Ivo Skoric]

Sometimes this year Thomas Friedman wrote in one of his op-ed 
pieces for The New York Times, that if the international borders 
were opened in the world, half of the world population would flock to 
the U.S.

I don't know where did he get that impression, but following the 
passage of the various post-September-11 legislation, I doubt this 
would be the case. Certainly, Muslims would not come here that 
merrily any more.

And, Europeans would probably stay in Europe, with better health 
care, education and pension system. Not to mention more holidays!

Of course, there would still be many people in the world leaving 
their homelands. But, they might consider going to Canada, 
Australia and New Zealand, rather than the U.S.: those countries 
have more favorable immigration laws, better population density 
(less people per area), lower crime rates, and better social services.

Also, while the U.S. is still involved in its pointless, donquixotic war 
on drugs, Canada is moving towards the decriminalization of 
cannabis.
(http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/12/20/canada.marijuana.r
eut/index.html)

While the US urges other societies to become more open, it 
relentlessly works on closing its society down. Now it moves away 
from the Carnivore project - which would have enabled FBI to track 
Internet traffic at any particular ISP where the Carnivore box was 
installed - as that system would not provide comprehensive enough 
control.

The new buzz-phrase is the "total information awareness" in which 
a law would require all ISP-s to send live feed of all their traffic to 
the HSD (homeland security department). Which is as close to 
Orwellian state of thought control as the present technology would 
allow. It is also still questionable would the present technology 
actually be solid enough to enable processing of such vast amount 
of data (or would it just create an undecipherable mess). It is 
troublesome, however, that such undertaking is even considered.
(http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000407.php#000407)

And the short-lived Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence 
reportedly considered that the military might pay journalists to write 
stories favorable to American policies or hire outside contractors 
without obvious ties to the Pentagon to organize rallies in support 
of American policies. Which is precisely what Soviet Union used to 
do to promote its cause of world communism. Unsuccesfully. Now, 
democracy might be a more worthwhile cause, one can argue. But, 
then, it has to be genuine - and the T.I.A. casts a serious shadow 
on that genuineness.

In fact, the US still did not come up with a coherent plan of 
peacefully promoting its goals in both the domestic and the 
international arena. Domestically, it relies heavily on new 
oppressive policies against immigrants and on frightening 
proposals of more and more total surveillance. Internationally, it 
relies on its unquestionable military superiority, air supremacy and 
ungodly quantities of ammunition its industry can churn out daily.

Yesterday, Colin Powell declared Iraq in 'material breach' of UN 
resolutions. As of today, Iraq is eligible for getting bombed back 
into the Stone Age. Hans Blix, the head of UN inspection team, 
concurred with Powell on Iraq not being sincere in its 12,000 page 
report, but stopped short of calling it a 'material breach.'

Iraq will probably be given one more chance to comply. It is quite 
possible that they came up with the hefty report only to keep UN 
and US bureaucracies busy deciphering it, and that they willfully 
omitted things they didn't want to mention. Blix plans to question 
Iraqi officials on that points, and they may or may not give 
satisfactory answers.

Whatever answers they give, it is likely, that they won't satisfy the 
US. The hyper-power may tolerate the delay, though. The longer 
Iraqi population lives under the threat of being bombed, the quicker 
they might succumb under the actual bombing campaign. What is 
troublesome is that regardless of their actions, their country will be 
subjected to the use of very real U.S. weapons of indiscriminate 
effect in terms of the 1st Protocol additional to the Geneva 
Conventions, which are banned under that Protocol just as are Iraqi 
hypothetical weapons of mass destructions.

In short, not only that U.S. did not abandon use of DU (depleted 
uranium) after adverse experiences in Gulf War and in Operation 
Allied Force (Kosovo), but it applied use of DU to other ammo. 
Now, JDAM bombs and cruise missiles are casted of "dense 
metal" with pyrophoric qualities (expensive Tungsten and/or cheap 
Uranium - your guess), under new U.S. patents held by Raytheon 
and Lockheed Martin. The consequence may be that the future US 
adversaries will simply be turned to radioactive desserts, not by 
use of nuclear weapons, but by dumping tons after tons of 
ammunition made of DU.
(http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u23.htm)

Such a severe punishment certainly awaits any country that may 
have given a refuge to Osama Bin Laden. Today it is 459 days 
since George W. Bush promised to Americans that OBL would be 
caught 'dead or alive'. Yet, despite half a dozen countries may be 
turned to radioactive desserts in the process, I somehow doubt we 
shall see his 'dead or alive' body ever in the American hands. 

ivo