Whatever the case may be, if the aliens choose to land during the first week of February in the year 2001, this is what they will find.

An earthquake in the state of Gujarat in the country of India earlier in the week killed anywhere from 25,000 up to 100,000 people. As it unleashes the equivalent of a 5.3 megaton hydrogen bomb, the government television contnues to broadcast a Republic Day parade of weapons and missiles capable of delivering nuclear bombs into neghboring China and Pakistan. Although modern science cannot predict such cataclysmic events, thousands of people were evacuated from the city of Haicheng in China in 1975 after it was observed that the animls were behaving strangely, an ancient way of predicting such events.

The international sanctions continue in their tenth year against the country of Iraq. The war precipatating the ten year seige lasted one week. Demands for full compliance with UN Security Resolution 687 promise no guarantee for closure of this difficult issue. Doubly difficult, from the Iraqi point of view, is that all the members of the Security Council setting the standard are themselves possesors of untold numbers of WMD, or weapons of mass destuction. The additional facts that 70% of the civilian industries are defunct or operating a a much reduced level, and that there is an nemployment rate of 60-75 per cent, coupled with the prohibition of oil revenues for local investment, make a mockery of the rationalization of the sanctions as a prevention of Iraqi militarism.

The following facts tend also to point in the same direction. The countries of the West account for approximately 85% of the new generation weaponry with the USA in the lead accounting for 50% of it during the 90's. The share of of the USA in global military expenditures has grown from 27% to 37%. The Pentagon's budget equals that of seven largest nations that follow the USA. American competitive dynamism has the country involved in a tight arms race with itself as the only serious contender. Its former nemesis, Russia, has reduced its budget 90-95% per cent from its glory days, or is that gory days, as the former Soviet Union.

A revelation in an African news weekly indicates that the US intelligence were aware of the threat against the embassy in Nairobi months before the actual event. This leads one to ask why they chose to do nothing.

Newly designated American Secretary of State Powell warns China that the Bush administration will raise the issue of Beijing's poor record on human rights and do it "frankly". Meanwhile American Tibetan rights groups pressure BP Amoco to withdraw investment from the Chinese oil company, Petrochina Co Ltd, in which it has recently sunk a US$578 million investment to buy stock.

Back on the home front of the USA, President Bush and company favor continued deregulation of utility and energy companies as it is revealed in the turbulance of California's energy meltdown that energy companies are selling electricity at up to $1000 a megawatt hour compared to the $30 norm to energy starved California. Consumers in California might want to contact consumers in Great Britain and ask them how much they pay for their electricity. Consortiums Reliant, TXU, Dynergy, PowerGen and Enron are some of the consortiums involved in the California mess which also own plants in the British Isles.

The Aids situation continues unabated in Africa and recent investigations show that the crisis is exacerbated both by war and development, at least by the mining industry. HIV incidence is far lower in rural areas than it is in urban. One perecent of pregnant women in the countryside are carriers as opposed to 10% in the urban areas. Among refugee populations the rate of infection jumps from a 1.3% rate of incidence to 8.5%, a six fold increase. Although it might fly in the face of what is commonly assumed, Aids hits the richest countries in Africa, not the pooerest. To be more precise it hits those countries with resources which are currently being developed. The nine countries with a 15% rate of HIV incidence are those with the largest mines. Mining attracts high male migration to mines and industrial zones, where they leave families behind and are more likely to frequent prostitutes. The Kwazulu Natal region of South Africa has the most alarming statistics up to 26% of pregnant women are HIV positive in this heavy mining district of South Africa.

In China the government and the Falun Gong movement continue to wage a propaganda war against each other. The government seems to have won the last round in focusing public attention on the excesses of the cult when a woman burned herself to death to protest government suppression of the movement. She leaves behind a young daughter who will be both physically scared from 3rd degree burn wounds and emotionally scarred from the experience. The government is making much of the incident on television sucessfully using the exposure of the event to turn the faithful away from the path. Falun Gong has a following of up to 40 million in China and seems to have more appeal to the Chinese people than such foreign bred religions as Christianity and Islam, and is therefore more a a perceived threat to the oofficial orthodoxy of post Mao Communism.

What the aliens will make of this strange place is hard to say. It most likely depends on what they are doing here in the first place. If their secret agenda is to destroy the planet, they may just save themselves the trouble and leave it to us.