It is greatly encouraging to watch television documentaries of the new friendlier Libya, a Texas sized nation now cautiously opening up to the west. After decades of mutual suspicion, threats by our side of terror tactics on their side, there had built much ill will. This newer sense of seeing Libya joining the larger world community is welcome.

We hear businessmen in Libya openly talking of their realization that their neighbors Egypt and Tunisia opened up very much quicker to the west and have benefited more. And now they can see how more open trade and honest dealing with strangers can create bonds of trust, that builds and creates stronger relationships in Egypt now than Libya. This, from what seem to be open discussions in city after city across north Libya, is a repeated refrain.

As it happens, Libya has perhaps the greatest collection of Roman buildings, ruins, and complete masterpieces of the finest palaces, hug entry gates, that we see in Rome. Except here, as our guide points out, there are no tourists. Now, the son of the great leader, the same one who loves European soccer, is in charge of tourism and is aware of the revenue potential with some application of their now expanding oil industry, to bring Romans and Germans back as tourists, this time to come, spend, and leave.

This healthy new mindset is very different from vini, vidi, vici. That reputation came from Julius Caesar, and seems to many to be in the mindset of George W. Bush; that weary old refrain that I came, I saw, I conquered. Or mission accomplished. This new meditative

Libya can become an eden again. It will have to be adapted and all Romans, Germans, and these days American can visit. but now, it will be on the terms to leave as they are, leave their swords and panzers back home.

About some of those Jewish type tricks to create an oasis in the desert, this one is mine. As far as I know. I look at a map of Egypt and Libya, and on the Egyptian side of the desert is the famous Quattara Depression, which is below sea level. I once read a science fantasy project book that suggested that a temporary but mighty hydro project could be created if a canal was dug from the sea to a dam, where for almost a century hydro power would be created by the sea pouring, like Niagara, into that depression and creating an inland sea in the western desert of Egypt.

And my plan would have them allow more like the Colorado river, where only the necessary Nile water reaches the sea but enough for a Nile Canal for shipping. Somewhere in that area, if the Nile was diverted over the to Quattara depression, it would also create another garden of eden with never a frost, spill over the dam on the east side, rather than the north.

So it would take the next century, science says, for this inside fresh lake to fill up. So, by the time it had created a huge additional eden of dates and figs of biblical abundance, we could eventually dig the tropical fresh water channel of life.And allow it to create its final gardens next to rich villas of now poorest peasants, and then finally into the sea.

They could build a new great Athens at this new bare desert again. With funds from the dam, the extra garden crops, the tourists, and the usual billions from Brussels to flow to each new member, as all by now know. Even chaps in Libya who love European soccer.