To the victor go the spoils The Defense Department had apparently been thinking of setting up a GSM system in Iraq, but Issa warned Rumsfeld that such a system, which is the standard in Europe, and elsewhere in the Mideast, would benefit "French and European sources, not U.S. patent holders." On Thursday, Issa introduced a bill that would make his policy recommendations law. There are no official co-sponsors, but under the headline "Parlez-vous fran�ais?" on his Web site, a statement says that many lawmakers have already expressed their support for an American cellphone system in Iraq. By Farhad Manjoo Salon

Ah-may-ree-ka No More the Promised Land ...after the bombing started, the worm turned. We were counting on struggling masses yearning to breathe free, but video of the bombs hitting Baghdad, the video of crying children, the reports of dead civilians...these have been played over and over, sometimes with sentimental Enya-like music, and it's just been too much for the people here. They are Kurds and their identity is linked to their Kurdish culture, but, apparently, their religious identity is stronger than this. Our attack on Iraq is being seen as an attack on their Muslim brothers and sisters. It has become a religious war, and Saddam Hussein is now being called a hero, even among the Kurds. In fact, the war has given the Kurds and the Turks a common ground, perhaps the first time they've ever agreed on anything. Mother Jones

Knife fight in a phone booth With the United States' much-hyped air bombardment failing to shock and awe enough members of Saddam Hussein's military or high command into surrender, many observers remain convinced that U.S.-led coalition forces will have to win their military victory in downtown Baghdad. And they'll have to do it by waging dangerous, restricted urban warfare, often compared to a knife fight inside a phone booth. Salon

Rage or Reason The view held by some proponents of direct action embraces the romantic legacy of the '60s and sees the current war largely as a corporate-sponsored evil that defies the will of the people. For them, immediate action against the war profiteers is the necessary next step. Says the Web site for Direct Action to Stop the War, the San Francisco group that coordinated the last week's acts of massive civil disobedience in the city: "We hold corporations including Bechtel, Citigroup, the Carlyle Group and ChevronTexaco accountable for not only their profits from this war, but the fact that they made this war possible through their investments, operations, weapons, lobbying, political contributions and drive for unending profits regardless of the toll on human life, the environment or society."

Moderate groups like MoveOn.org and the National Council of Churches don't wholly disagree with this analysis, but their emphasis is on long-term goals and expansion. They see the war as resulting from a breakdown in education and democracy, and their aim is to spread the word about the Bush administration's foreign policy agenda through teach-ins, Web sites and church meetings. They also plan a parallel effort to work to elect progressive candidates who they hope will return a measure of accountability to government and start mending international institutions like the U.N.

Radicals want to shock people out of their torpor, moderates to coax them. In all likelihood, neither can do much to stop this war, but their successes or failures could help determine what follows it. Salon

Gulf war syndrome research reveals present danger What the soldiers have not been told is that about one in 10 of them are almost as sensitive to nerve agents as the pigeons. There is now mounting evidence that exposure to minuscule amounts of these chemicals can cause permanent brain damage in susceptible people, and that is exactly what happened 12 years ago when thousands of troops returning from Kuwait started to complain of debilitating symptoms. New Scientist

Water could replace spacecraft heat shield tiles Existing heat-shield technology leaves a lot to be desired. In the 1960s Apollo rockets used a heat shield that burnt off slowly - but this is no good for reusable spacecraft like NASA's fleet of space shuttles. And the silica tiles the shuttle uses are fragile and prone to damage. New Scientist

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NASA Missed Warning Signs hough obsessed with safety, NASA lost its perspective about proper operating conditions for the shuttle, justifying flights despite equipment flaws clearly beyond design parameters, an aerospace expert told shuttle accident investigators Tuesday. Discovery

Domino's driver fired for lecture of D.M. girl "I don't blame Domino's Pizza for firing me. When they told me I was wearing my uniform at the time, I pretty much knew I was going to be fired," McKillop said. "As I walked up to the house, I didn't even know what I was going to say. They have the right to have signs in their yard. I still can't believe I did that." Des Moines Register

Deadly pneumonia linked to China flu The lethal strain of pneumonia that is causing panic in the Far East was linked for the first time yesterday to the outbreak of a mystery flu-like illness in China last year by the World Health Organisation. The Chinese authorities said the disease had killed at least 34 people in China since November 31 in the south and three in Beijing, and 792 people had developed symptoms of pneumonia. Independent

Why the UN is not fading away With the growing mass of ordinary people converging in the streets the world over to protest against a unilateral war and the sudden burst of anti-war activism and "hacktivism" on the Internet, the United States simply cannot ignore the only global instrument available to confront the myriad problems facing humanity today. Daily Nation

The New Iraq A slick Iraqi-American business consultant, full of hip chatter and bogus expertise, stands ready to lead an army of global capital into the "emerging market" of his ancestral homeland. 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?
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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 of 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.

My life is comfortable -- like many of my forebears were, I am a happily married homeowner, a contributing member of civil society. I have suffered somewhat during this economic malaise, but there is food on the table, the occasional vacation, and talk of having a baby. My personal experience of life has been one of security and happiness, but for the first time my genes are getting nervous. As I examine the family histories and read each day's darkening headlines, I find that the question is no longer so abstract, or so leisurely: If it came right down to it, would I know when to go?

By the time my grandmother's family left Siberia, where they had been homesteading when she was born, the Bolshevik revolution was in full swing. Secret denouncements, property seizures, and disappearances were the order of the day. Surely if it came to that, I'd have been packing my bags too, right? Yet under the PATRIOT Act and sundry new regulations, secret military incarcerations, politically directed police forces, and whispers of torture have become daily news in our country. And here I still am, making mortgage payments, buying organic vegetables, listening to Wilco CDs. My great-aunt Anele Tamulevicius, whose husband was "disappeared" in Soviet-occupied Lithuania the day after their wedding, believed to her dying day that the violent vanities of the Old World should never infect the New. It may be too late for that wish.


Stasys Tamulevicius, my great-uncle, perhaps lacked the gene for political timing. A fatalist, he stayed on in Lithuania through the darkness of Soviet rule. In his day, the authorities kept a file on everyone -- following not just their political activities but also the most banal details of one's life, whatever they could get from neighbors or co-workers. It's hard not to think of him when I read about the Office of Information Awareness and its plan for a centralized database that would make a dragnet through all Americans as easy as a Google search. This kind of technology is already being used to screen passengers on Delta Airlines, which, in cooperation with the new Transportation Security Agency, checks passenger credit records and other seemingly irrelevant data prior to letting them fly.


And airlines aren't the only ones eager to facilitate the awareness of information. Recently, eBay's director of "law enforcement and compliance" announced that the company would turn over any of its volumes of information about users -- what they might have bought, or even just looked at -- to government agents without waiting for a subpoena. When the pretense of privacy evaporates, is it time to start pricing (offline) one-way tickets to New Zealand? Could be, but I haven't done it.


Of course, I know that I'm not the primary target of these new 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. It seems darkly comical when a man is arrested for wearing a "Give Peace a Chance" T-shirt. But it's horrifying when a crowd at a Chicago nightclub is so on edge that they kill 21 people while fleeing what they thought was a terror attack. Is this just our own version of the kind of malignancy that led to my great-uncle Vaclavas' death in 1943? He had constructed a clever escape tunnel beneath his house, but when the time came to use it, he found the exit had been blocked by a jealous neighbor. His body was found in a well a few days later. This is where the escalation of fear leads, and I wonder how far we have already gone down that murky path. Have my economy-class seatmates ever glanced at my dark complexion and silently considered how they might wield a plastic spoon against me to thwart my evil intentions? (I confess I've wondered how I might do the same to them.) Has anyone noticed the stream of leftist fundraising appeals that comes into my mailbox? In what files do essays like this get placed?


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 belongings onto a cart and walking away from the action, as is happening 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?



For each of us, the point of no return is at a different place -- the subtle moment beyond which you are the one they're looking for. For the hundreds of Pakistanis seeking asylum at the Canadian border, that point has passed. For the desperate mobs jamming the Kuwait City airport, the moment is upon them. For me, it remains just a possibility. Salon

Oscar winner Kidman could do it all again next year Nicole Kidman has one Oscar and this time next year she could have two. The Australian actress has three quality films - Cold Mountain, The Human Stain and Dogville - coming out late this year and any one of the three could score her another invite to the Academy Awards. The Age

Vietnam moves to counter 'cyber-dissidents' on the Web One of Vietnam's best-known dissidents was arrested last week for trying to post documents on the Internet, in a sign of the regime's growing fear of losing control of the Web.
Pro-democracy activist Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, a thorn in Hanoi's side for the past three decades who was released from nearly 20 years' jail in 1998, was arrested at his home in southern Ho Chi Minh City on March 17. Nando Times

Sun's Output Increasing Confounding efforts to determine the Sun's role is the fact that its energy output waxes and wanes every 11 years. This solar cycle, as it is called, reached maximum in the middle of 2000 and achieved a second peak in 2002. It is now ramping down toward a solar minimum that will arrive in about three years. Yahoo News

Andean Glacier Threatens Flooding in Peru [AP World News]

Ontario to double West Nile funding [The Globe And Mail - National]

Canadian laboratory zeros in on SARS virus [The Globe And Mail - National]