You Know You Live in an Empire When …

… your government produces a list of things critical to the security of your country, and all of the things on that list are located outside your country.

In fact, every bit of infrastructure on this State Department “comprehensive inventory of [critical infrastructure & key resources]” is “located outside U.S. borders and whose loss could critically impact the public health, economic security, and/or national and homeland security of the United States.” The vast majority are sites where undersea communications cables come ashore (which is why Fiji is on the list, for example). But mines (mostly producing “battery grade” metals) across the world, from Congo to China, are on this list, as are a huge number of Western European pharmaceutical factories and “metal fabrication machines” held at unspecified sites in Europe by a “small number of Turkish companies.”

Off the list are “government facilities overseas managed by State or war fighting facilities managed by other departments or agencies.” I guess providing that would have been too taxing to the embassy personnel tasked to get the info.

I’m so glad my government is busy doing this work. I feel soooo much safer already knowing the chromite mines of Orissa state in India are being looked after in my name because they’ve been judged essential to my health and well-being.

(As an aside, the document refers separately to “national” and “homeland” security. What on earth is the difference?)

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1:13 pm on December 6, 2010