Do Politicians Dream of Electric Sheep?

Perhaps in Bolivia ...

Photo by Luca Galuzzi - www.galuzzi.it Licensed under CCA-SA2.5

In June last year, folks working for USAID in the Chapare region, a key drug-trafficking area, were expelled from the country. Apparently they had some success with farmers growing alternative crops to coca. The problem was they reportedly kept asking the question “Do politicians dream of electric sheep?” Eventually somebody suspected that they were up to no good; working on growing “off-world colonies” for green men smoking green coca. Green aliens smoking pot, c’mon, what can be scarier than that?

In September, the ambassador was asked to leave the country. He was in a meeting inside the ministry when he was PNG’ed; a diplomatic blitzkrieg if there ever was one. Some idjits were convinced that the embassy has now been infiltrated by Nexus-7 replicants spying for their home world Saturn.

Of course, those guys involved in the $450,000 bribery-murder scandal must also be space aliens from Saturn, in cahoots with the spies! Geez, now I’m wondering if the pro-president mob who stormed the home of a political rival in a town on the shore of Lake Titicaca and beat members of the man's family were actually part of the illegal Nexus-6 Saturnite replicants? If they were, could the blade runners be far behind? Because surely – you want them caught, right?

Recently, the embassy's second secretary, Francisco Martinez was also PNG’ed because he "was in permanent contact with opposition groups." If they keep at this, before long there won’t be any real earthlings left at that mission.

This must be a real troubling development that Senator Lugar of the Senate Foreign Galactic Relations Committee finally spoke up. Yesterday he released a statement condemning the expulsion of one more diplomat saying "It certainly does not bode well for efforts to solve our differences through honest dialogue and positive actions.”

Oh my goodness! I could write a whole series of books on this – aliens, politicians, replicants, money, bribery, murder, spies, blade runners, png’ed diplomats, coca, sex -- oops, er-- that last one is for a future news cycle.

Okay – but there’s one great formula for entertainment!