This has been a week to remember if you are interested in international events or even just a little bit curious about what is going on in the United States.

This week Emperor Hu of China, I mean President Hu of Communist China, came to see President Bush.

I had a visitor from Communist China myself.

He wrote that he was actually from the Internal Revenue Service of the United States.

It was a phishing exercise and it went like this :

“ After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $63.80. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

Regards,

Internal Revenue Service

© Copyright 2006, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved..”

The part where it said, ‘click here’ was highlighted in blue.

If I had clicked there a special program would have tried to steal personal information from my computer and, if possible, allow criminals to use it in order to raid my bank account, use my credit cards or create fraudulent documents like fake social security cards.

I didn’t click on the words ‘click here’.

I did look to see where the message came from, however, and here is the English version of that address :

The head office of the company is in Taiwan and the factory is in Communist China.

The United States supplies Taiwan with weapons to protect itself from Communist China.

But who is protecting Americans from them?

They make resistors and chips and things of that nature.

They put them in products that are shipped here.

But that’s not enough.

Besides that their governments encourage fraud, deceit and lying.

Are you benefiting from world trade or are you just getting your pockets picked?

We have plenty of missiles but who knows who they are pointed at these days.

We have plenty of tanks but most of them are in Iraq and need repairs.

We have plenty of guns but a lot of people here just enjoy pointing them at other Americans.

They wouldn’t mind stealing from me - what makes you think they are not stealing from you?