For years, the US government has squandered its precious talent on futile pursuits, such as enforcing the 1956 consent decree. Having survived into its third century, America has acquired wisdom. It is not only curtailing its destructive interference with the fruitful activities of domestic companies like IBM Corp, it is also embarking on a long overdue effort to defend American enterprise from nefarious foreigners. Right now, for instance, the US International Trade Commission is investigating the practices of Italian spaghetti makers. This is a very serious pursuit, considering that the Associated Press reported, on June 29, that precisely 140,591 tons of Italian pasta, not counting water, a dash of salt and a tablespoon of oil, or sauce for that matter, came to the American frontier during 1994. This represents one in six noodles eaten by Americans.

Next bowl

Please try to identify these specific noodles in your next bowl of spaghetti and mail them to the International Trade Commission, Washington DC. The US government has not confined its investigation to Italian pasta practices. On the contrary, its probe of the tortellini tort has recently been expanded to include an economic analysis of pasta production in other nations. For instance, hoping the American authorities were absorbed by the activities of Italian noodle companies, to say nothing of the 1956 consent decree, a bunch of Turks, age unknown, apparently set out to undermine the macaroni market, which Uncle Sam wants to keep as American as Yankee Doodle. Last year they breached the American pasta defence perimeter with 19,964 tons of contraband noodles, some of which may have ended up in the bowl of chicken soup you ate to cure your last cold. So far, the American Medical Association has remained on the sidelines, but the Noodle War is heating up. US authorities have dismissed a link between possible trade violations by Italian companies and those that might be made by producers of Oriental noodles. This connection was suggested by US pasta makers, possibly after testing a vodka-based sauce. It took the investigators very little time and certainly no more than a few million dollars to determine that Marco Polo, suspected of providing the connection between Italian and Oriental noodles, was now dead and that even when he was alive Columbus wasn’t. If there are unscrupulous noodle factories threatening American firms, the government should send them to the al dente inferno. But it will not have the resources to do this if it persists in wasting its time and money picking on IBM Corp, which makes AS/400s but not pasta at its Italian manufacturing facility. If you want pasta from IBM you have to deal with Integrated Systems Solutions Co, and in that case they decide on the type of noodle, the sauce and whether the waiter grinds fresh pepper. (C) 1995 Technology News Ltd.