Those of you who know my political bent realize this banter isn't avatar.  Collateral Damage are the buzzwords of the millennia.  From Terra Haute, to Baghdad and Kabul, loss of what we perceive as minimal and insignificant is very tangible indeed.  As real as a couple of Kamikaze Boeings obliterating the World Trade Center.  Like that would ever happen.  Oh wait...it did.
 
 Until that fateful Indian Summer's day of doom, we piddled around in our meaningless lives, worrying about the hydrobill and when to have the tires aligned on our sport utilities.  We watch Alex Trebek on Jeopardy, looking for a little braincandy, but quickly flip the channel when he's in Africa with little black kids covered in flies, and dirt covering their swollen, infected abdomens.  Similarly, we ignored Osama bin Laden even after the Embassy bombings.  It was just an image from a far of land twinkling through the 6:00 news.

 I have long feared what is truly the inevitable.  That our shallow existence only serves to find gain in the circle of life.  Lacking are we in altruistic thought and action.  By nature, we oafish Narissians boggle around in our paradoxically orderly, but chaotic lonely planet in the manner which suits us best.  Where indeed are the selfless people?  Although my own methodology doesn't seek to provide "collateral damage" insofar as I am not a prophet, but I am a profit.

 In terms of where does this leave the activist now?  In the 60s we feared political oppression, now we fear political disregard.  Whether one is a peaceful moderate leftwinger(as in politix, not Maple Leafs), or a nihilist brandishing a tire iron, the government would indeed believe it has "carte blanche" to justify a suppression of constitutionally guaranteed free volition.

 You ask whether we will be unified and tactically intelligent with our protest.  Howard Zinn describes the largest strike in U.S. history:  He quotes the New York Times(though not exactly a bastion of anticapitalist sentiment) as "The grave danger of the situation is that it will get completely out of the hands of the leaders."  From June until September of I think...1934, 421,000 textile workers reeled through months of riots, mass arrests, and death that spread from the Deep South to New England.  Once the organizers were beaten, ostracized and some quietly disposed of, the union disbanded their strike before Roosevelt got off his high horse and set up a board of mediation.

 So unless those activists who raid the G-8 summit in Alberta next year, actually go there with clear and definitive purpose, unified in a stand against social injustice, cultural rape and pillage, and "Bombs over Baghdad"(or Kabul, Israel-Palestine, Columbo, Belfast, Kashmir, Congo...yada, yada, yada) we would only fall short and be blasting our megaphones on deaf ears. (While ducking from blasting tear gas canisters).

 You question if the world will be poloarized between Allah loving Islams and God fearing Amerikans.  Does this does of Dubya Dogma I clipped from the Times say anything?

>>"The President bluntly warned foreign governments they had a choice: "You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.  From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbour or support terrorists will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

 Hostile Regime! Ha!  This coming from the guy with the most state executions under his belt in any gubernatorial period in Amerikan history.  I won't even start on the foul qualities of his pater familias.  

 In the end, the foreshadow of totalitarianism under the "Romulan Cloak" of Democracy will propagate already preordained bias.  Though individually, you and I consider ourselves evolved from this type of antiquated philosophy, collectively, by human nature and the only animal(besides ants) capable of waging war:  prejudice, hate, and the malicious apparition of judgement will endure.  This poison will leech from not only multinational captains of industry, but continue down the social hierarchy reaching the most wretched and hardscrabble of us all.

 One more interesting point in the deluge of "for profit" mediaswamp today.  Saddam Hussein stated "Iraqis are well trained in pulling victims from bombed out rubble and could have saved many of the missing(at WTC)."  Peculiar that he says it as if its some kind of lofty ideal to be proud of.  He says "Amerika has let it's people down."  Well, I think it's been letting people down since 1776, but that's another story.

 Now is the time for introspect, and where your loyalties lie it seems.  Luckily I've almost completed my Golden Yak, Maxamillion(to whom I give Thanxamillion).  Now to find some chicken bones and a cat to boil(they only boil dogs in Korea).  Whether its God, Allah, Jehovah, Cuchulainn, or a tuber that looks a lot like Mordechai Richler you believe in, I still question whether one or a million prayers and tythes will bring ataraxis and wavelength known history has lacked.  Peace, Love and "Godspeed" to all of us still searching for Epicurean Gaia and lost paradise.

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