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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (90508)	4/6/2003 1:23:43 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

SirR, psychology is a peculiar thing. I've been to the USA lots of times and am quite comfortable there. But based on reports I've read and other stuff, since 11 September 2001, I would feel nervously expectant of hassle and something going wrong. A bit like the elderly, retired, English civil engineer being bunged in prison in South Africa and forgotten because some idiot FBI person in the USA got the names mixed up and didn't positively identify the person. What if some looney Sier with a grudge against me pots me to Homeland Security as a terrorist threat and when entering the USA I get 'disappeared' and shoved off to Guantanamo Bay for a decade as an enemy combatant or something, with no habeas corpus, legal contact, any other contact, human rights and stuff, with a bit of 'face slappy' thrown in to get me to admit to my Evil Axis associations. Risk of random criminal attack while in the USA seems benign by comparison. That's probably statistically silly [a moment's reflection makes me realize it is] but that's how emotions work. There's something especially scary about big powerful governments getting a snitcher on one. One starts to think of Siberian salt mines, Gulags and the KGB. Irrational I know. Maybe I'll take my next trip to China and see how cdma2000 is going in Shanghai and get the lay of the land and see if it's really full of evil commie totalitarians and whether they are more scary than Homeland Security. If I'm pondering stuff like that, I bet hordes of other people are too. The reduced loadings on international flights shows that's true [I doubt it's just because of the Biotelecosmictechdot.com bust and reduced corporate spending]. Maybe having the whole world scared of one is a good idea, but in my experience, scary people end up somewhat isolated and rejected. Just worrying out loud, Mqurice