WEEKLY WARNING WORDS
February 18, 2004 - Week 22 - Security First, Nothing Second
BY DR. BRUNO J. KEITH
A week before 9/11, I entered Canada on my great Greyhound Tour from Washington D.C. to Toronto with several 2-4 hours stops. Coming via Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, U.S. inspectors arrested a bunch of very quiet Chinese. On the other side of the "Highline", smiling U.S. officers waved our bus past as a few Canadians stood idly by.
The next day, I wondered why there were more of our inspectors with our Canadian neighbors. The search-and-seize game was more thorough. Only U.S. inspectors did the investigatory work. But they pushed six more Chinese into the arms of the unarmed Canadians. The obvious U.S. tourists submitted to an overlong and very "generous" treatment. Only 2 Arabs were treated with the utmost respect. As I kept wondering, those 2 new neighbors smiled at me, and one said: "We are no suspects to your people".
On our side of the frontier, there was no inspection this time. That made me muse: "What we couldn't do during the War of 1812-14, now is the great Bush victory: Canada is our colony". Actually, that national victory didn't surprise me. For a little more than a year earlier, this ex-historian was rattled at the Nassau (Bahamas) Airport on his return from Castro's Cuba. At that America-favored transloading, lucky passengers were only once searched after the passport and agricultural inspection by our own frontier soldiers. No inspection whatever at the Miami Airport. That was the moment I realized that the former British Commonwealth was now our colony.
My birthday cruise on a Delta Queen air-and-water polluter gave me 5 days for thinking and walking off imperial dreams. But seeing in Pittsburgh 2 different plaques witness the philanthropic rule of our first "captains of industry", brought back their use of Pinkerton guards, state militia and the U.S. Army when the workers who created their wealth asked for living wages.
My Greyhound was delayed for many hours. So I reached the New York depot in the wee hours of 9/11 when even the busiest sections rested for some time. A lonely Jamaican girl offered her help: "I will walk you to some hotel until you have a room for the night." After 3 failures the sharp-eyed young lady noticed a lanky oldster who carried a tiny pooch. "He must live nearby and might know an inn I don't know." The man was willing: "Good girl, are you late for your night job? I'll take care of your charge". She ran back north as I held out a $20 note.
My new guide could not believe that we had come from the distant Greyhound station. We soon crossed Union Square and another street. By calling me a "Viking of the Pacific", he got me the best room in the "Seafarers International". I couldn't sleep through and got up before 6 a.m. to walk through the famous park while watching out for what dogs might have left behind. Now my favorite archive with a "Bruno Keith Collection" was still closed. The sign on its entrance spelled "open at 9:00". That gave me plenty of time to limp south toward City Hall. Near it another girl from Jamaica took me for her boss's father: "I must show you my workplace at the World Trade Center. You know I work there in your computer department on 3 mornings every week and 8 hours on weekends. That way I earn my expenditures for Columbia University, and I also can support my family back home."
Elsewhere I narrated how I slowed her down until we became close witnesses to the hit of "her" tower by an enemy-guided airplane. We lost each other while we ran and ran, followed by a mass of unbelievers who heard our warning shouts.
Late in 2003 and early 2004 I visited our Guam, taken by US from Spain just like Hawaìì. The United Nations gave independence to the four Federated States of Micronesia and other island groups of the Carolines and Marianas. Yet, all the main islands seem to boast each some 20 U.S. government offices: I saw all those fine new structures with the words and emblems from "Head Start Office" to "Small Business Administration" and "Agricultural Development" to the rest. Of course, the 12 airports I had to use featured only American inspectors and insignias; nearly all underlings were Micronesians with black Betel teeth.
Since the large, extended native families needed only one representative working for US at what they considered a good income, they needed no longer work their fields, gardens and orchards. Therefore their remaining agriculture sprouts nothing but weeds. Instead of fishing for their daily fish meals, they now prefer to open tuna cans. But the official cars are used by the idlers to go nowhere in particular. What a price in ethnic glory and independence to pay for forming colonial bastions for the only existing (U.S.) Empire!