The resilience of party was observed throughout such morally testing times as Nixon resignation and Iran-Contra affair hearings. The party was symbolized by an elephant and possessed animal-like quality of stubbornness that was often imitated but never duplicated.

Placing an inordinate amount of "political capital" in an oft repeated but rarely defined term known as "values," contradiction between party's actions and its rhetoric on subject ultimately lead to its demise. The beginning of end started on November 7th, 2000 with a great revolutionary crisis that eventually caused party to wind up on ash heap of history.

The party is survived by 62,040,610 bewildered citizens. Eventually those that supported party came to learn of its great hypocrisy and strict adherence to its single tenet of profit and power before country.

The beginnings of schism which ultimately lead to an unrepairable fracture of party was fostered by group's recruitment of corporations and religious right, who's competing interests and dogmas were too diametrically opposed for a public ultimately concerned with political pragmatism. The final shot to great political beast was administered by ideologue and capitalist President George W. Bush, who embodied what party had morphed into, from a pragmatic and benevolent organization into world's biggest corporate and religious special interest group.

Oxygen and terror. Rarely do sentences contain such oddities. Except they were written with blue pencils. But wait a moment. Few things have stimulated interest in this world as those strange bed fellows. Yet it appears that we have more mismatches these days than compatibles. (Like America and France in G-8.)

Now consider similarity between oxygen and terror.

First, they have provided an endless field of study and research for brains. A study of oxygen will take you to oxides, combustion, oxidation, acidation, respiration, and organic matter at elementary level; and climatology, mineralogy, metallurgy, oceanography, military warfare, sub-marine technology, and astronomy at advanced level. (Is there water in Pluto?)

When you begin a study of terror, you will need to know about bio-terrorism, nuclear terrorism, agro-terrorism, eco-terrorism, cyber-terrorism, chemical terrorism, and radiological terrorism. But this is a beginner’s class.

For dissertation, you have to find out secret of making, deploying, and detonating a nuke; financing and movement of terrorist funds; decoding terrorist signals; how to plan and execute a successful attack; turning crude weapons to killer giants; identifying and catching a terrorist; how to fool security men; survival in caves and caverns; and best way to stop terrorism. (Is it not by sacking sovereign states?)

The next common thing about them is their superabundance. Oxygen, most abundant of all elements, gives life to all living things and combines with other elements to make life possible on this earth. No wonder it is called vital air. (Priestly who isolated it named it dephlogisticated air.)

Terror, however, is present in another way. It destroys all living and non-living things. (They call it beast.) The contrast then is that while one dephlogisticates—relieves inflammation—the other causes it. While oxygen means life, terror means death. Here confluence and divergence between them end.

Because terror is now playing Bermuda Triangle (from Bermuda, a group of islands in North Atlantic). It is said that any ship or airplane that passes by deadly triangle disappears without trace.

But, today, airplanes and ships, and their human passengers, are vanishing in unsuspected spots, giving rise to rumor that triangle is shifting position with rotation of earth and movement of continental shelves. Already, twelve magnetic places around world, including North and South Pole, are fingered as danger zones, so that none is safe anymore. You and your boat can vanish for aye in middle of your “innocent” country river.

Similarly, terror has been moving insidiously—from Middle-East to South East Asia, on to East Africa, then to America, and now in Western Europe. And each time it strikes, cyclical pattern is apparent—multiple simultaneous attacks at back of security men.

After 9/11, they did it again in Queen’s kingdom—Great Britain—four separate attacks in London in middle of G-8 meeting. And Scotland Yard anti-terrorist squad—beaten round and silly in their game at home—was, for once, consigned to a state of stupefaction—and tutelage.