So...let's imagine a US where there are no alternative voices to challenge the Rumsfelds of the world...where would one be safe?  A destabilized mid-east and a whacked-out Korean peninsula make the entire world a very dangerous place.   I will stay here and seek to mollify the nation's imperialist impulses  Carl Remick <carlremick@hotmail.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">[From Salon] This is not America In increments, we have become a different nation. Will I have to flee my country as my ancestors did theirs? By Gregory Dicum March 25, 2003 | Pranas Ancevicius, my maternal grandfather, was intercepted by the German navy while trying to escape the Baltics for Sweden in 1944. An anti-Stalinist intellectual, Pranas had sensed the impending return of the Red Army to his native Lithuania. Caught between two loathsome regimes, he made his way to Nazi Berlin, where he hid with his family under cover of the right combination of documents. In British Malaya, Lourdes Gnanadicassamy, my other grandfather, had divined the intentions of the Japanese Imperial Army in 1940. He packed the family off to India 18 months before his country descended into four years of Japanese occupation. Enough o f my ancestors have had to make the fateful decision to flee their homes -- and have done so at just the right moment -- that I have often wondered if I have inherited their uncanny sense of timing. ... Of course, I know that I'm not the primary target of these new [national security] regulations. I'm not the one they're looking for. But then again, neither are a lot of other people who have suffered as a result of them -- or as a result of the paranoia that they seem to instill in ordinary citizens. ... In increments we have become a different nation. Each step ruffles our feathers just a bit, but the ruckus dies down quickly and we are on our way to the next. Life goes on, and we find ourselves living in a different country without ever having moved. ... In a nation of immigrants, we all have ancestors who decided it was time to go. Around the world, people make the decision every day, packing a few belonging s onto a cart and walking away from the action, as is happenin! g now in Kurdistan and Baghdad. What happens when it's our turn? Much has changed already; how much more will have to change before it becomes time for me to sell the house? Sew gold coins into the hem of my jacket as I gather the loved ones around me one last time? It's not here yet, but is the hour approaching when, once again, we might decide to bid farewell to yet another homeland? ... <HTTP: no_return 25 03 2003 feature mwt www.salon.com /> Carl _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail </BLOCKQUOTE> <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://rd.yahoo.com/platinum/evt=8162/*http://platinum.yahoo.com/splash.html">Yahoo! Platinum</a> - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, <a href="http://rd.yahoo.com/platinum/evt=8162/*http://platinum.yahoo.com/splash.html">live on your desktop</a>!