The big news: i have a new passport!!! Valid till 2018, seemingly further into the future than i’m actually going to live. (Sorry if that seems too morbid for an otherwise upbeat news item, but if 2018 feels just around the corner to you, well then congratulations, you get to make the Hunter S. Thompson Celestial Immortality Wish for 2008.) The reason this p’port business has been such a major, stress-inducing – scratch that – utterly panic-stricken ordeal and i do mean some serious moments of intense hyperventilating, etc. is because i haven’t filed tax returns since 1999, plus some other stuff that i don’t want to elaborate on, except to say that the way the govt reps handled it was so mean-spirited - like everything’s been under the W Dick junta - it was the final straw for me in deciding to leave my country of origin fuck you and good riddance. Since i left (2001) i’ve sort of made of point of having nothing to do with the US govt: as the saying goes, Big Brother Is Watching, when you come from a country that puts hoods over children’s heads and flies them to barges or barracks beyond the bounds of google maps, being a financial fugitive (essentially) and having to ask the State Dept. for a favor isn’t the most comforting position to find oneself in. But i did it, the ordeal’s over and from micro to macro levels, i can finally get on with my life.
As my buddy Mike also discovered last month, they’ve changed the size of the photos to 5x5 cm, about a half-cm short on each side of what comes out of those automatic photo machines. Why the dimensions have changed i don’t know, but now the photo is no longer on the inside of the cover; instead, it’s kind of watermarked-hologrammed into the first page of the passport. With the “Road Map” reaching so many dead ends and Condi clearly at increasingly loose ends in her quest for a legacy (well, she’s got one but it’s definitely not one to brag about), those folks over at the State Dept have surely been desperately depressed and must’ve decided arts and crafts was just the thing to rekindle their creative energies. The inside back cover now looks like this: (One of my coworkers asks, “Does this mean we now have to get US visas to go to the moon?”)
while each 2-page spread has a different photo and quote. Here’s my cynical favorite:
Talk about misrepresenting someone’s words! (It reads: We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.) It’s enough to make me wonder whether Hillary and Bubba choose them as a way to show respect for…. the buffalo reintroduction programs on the plains of Arkansas???
Honestly, whenever some US govt PR person comes up with what they believe to be proudly patriotic, i just feel my connection to the country wither away at an accelerating pace. This particular page of propaganda first embarrassed and then angered me. i can already see the cynical glances it’s sure to engender from immigration officials just about everywhere, except maybe Estonia where we’re still given preferential parking.
Jumping back to my state of paranoia about the p’port business, i did a bit of research to see whether anyone else has ever been in my position and if so, what’s happened to them. Exact matches came up nil, but i did find some curious stuff. For example, on the FBI’s WANTED page, they present a featured fugitive of the week. Kinda cool, eh? (Another digression: they’ve got a really stylish headshot of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Caught on there; i’m starting to wonder whether terrorist numero uno has a photo agent somewhere) The fugie capital of the US is apparently Las Vegas which surprised me - i actually have always assumed it to be Miami. Spain has some 400.000 people on its fugitives list, with some highly dramatic captures and almost-captures. Interpol describes fugitives as being mobile and opportunistic, so it’s no wonder the list in Spain hasn’t diminished much over approx. 30 yrs.
It seems that AWOL american soldiers end up on the national fugitives list in the US as a matter of course, which i had not realized possible, though it would make sense that breaking one’s military contract would be considered a federal crime. Or, as in this case, they are running from both the army and criminal charges. It was quite interesting to learn that the vast majority of foreign nationals the US has been extraordinarily renditioning to Guantanamo, et al. come from countries with which it doesn’t have extradition treaties. Maybe someone reading this knows whether that means the country of origin has no legal means of complaint when one of their nationals disappears into Uncle Sam’s armpit?? Interpol has devised a color-coded alert system (where else have we seen that clever idea?) with a special insignia for members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. If you check this link, you’ll notice that they have put a disclaimer on there saying all wanted persons are innocent until proven guilty, in spite of the fact that every fugitive on their list is described in unqualified criminal terms. i know there are bad people in the world, it just seems ridiculous to pretend you're giving them the benefit of a doubt.
The last thing i’ll mention here is that there is currently a backlog of over 600.000 fugitive cases listed in the United States. This should come as a relief to anyone thinking about robbing a BofA and then hopping a boat to Barbados. No matter how much cash the government dumps into its numerous ‘Smoke ‘em Out’ agencies, they just can’t keep up. If i’d known that before, i would never have been so worried about my own situation. So let’s pop the cork and toast the bureaucrats of the 21st century, making the world save for subversives from sea to shining sea.
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