9/11 merely gave it a new form and substance. I could never see how world trade & open borders could ever take off while we had rogue states like Iraq, NK, Zimbabwe, and reactionary extremeists like the Taliban etc: etc:.

Openess can only happen in a climate where there is an accptable level of demoracy even if it is dumbed down from what a benevolent dictator can achieve. They never last & too often turn nasty.

The thing about world trade & open borders is that it is both evolutionary & a notion whoose time has come. But could be devestated by any committed group of marginalized unhappy people through acts of terrorism. It seems that as long as everyone gets a chance to participate in a growing trade, then the open trade & borders promote common wealth (e.g. mfg moves to China which is boosting that countries wealth & shifting quite large numbers of people up the income tree).

Unhappy people want to tear down the symbols that they associate with their own poverty or emptiness or lack of self worth. Extremist Islam & Christianity thrive in poverty & despair (their religion fills the gap).

In Oz we really have no terrorists - many years back we had Serbian & Croation groups here that did their own paramilitary training & hated each other so much that their local football clubs were 'ordered' to adopt names that had no ethinic or regional association - purpose was that when Zagreb soccer club defeated a like names Serbian team the emotions ran so high that we had knifing deaths in the regular melees - that has more or less passed these days.

The aboriginal community are a passive natured people who will protest but tend to do so quite peacfully, some part-aboriginal people can get nasty but even they are mild by international standards.

Maybe though Australia & NZ might go to war (grin) over rugby, cricket, yachting etc:

Cheers

Doug Marker