Follow the Blood Trail 2

Imagine a city with two neighborhoods. It only has two neighborhoods because one of those neighborhoods expanded and conquered all the other neighborhoods. So now there are only two neighborhoods.

Neighborhood A (Alliance) is now encroaching on Neighborhood B's (The Bucks). Each neighborhood has youth gangs who represent, on the streets, the battles between the two neighborhoods. Alliance's gang is called The Valiant Warriors and the Buckians are called The Evil Terrorists. These are not the names that the gangs picked for themselves, but those that the city's newspapers and TV news (all controlled by the Alliance) pegged for them. And because the Alliance has control over all the media, it controls the message. So it doesn't matter that Alliance has the heavy weaponry, is starving and murdering Buckies, keeping them from resources to educate and employ their own, locking down the neighborhood and keeping others from entering to aid or enable them.

Yet, it's the Buckies who are called "Terrorists." And "Evil." And most people believe this to be the case because the Alliance runs the message. And in this message, the Buckians are a dangerous threat with their bats and bricks. They look different, even, then the Alliance. And they refuse to cave in to the more-than-generous relocation offers of the Alliance.

The Alliance and its Valiant Warriors need to defend themselves and their sacred land, women and children (ESPECIALLY the women and children!) from this menacing threat. And so they have bought guns and missiles and semiautomatic weapons and helicopters and fighter jets and machine guns and tankers. There are also rumors of a nuclear warhead. Just in case. "But don't worry!," we are reassured. "The Alliance is much too calm and placed and rational to ever consider actually using such a weapon. But we heard that the Evil Terrorists have all the makings of a dirty weapon of mass destruction at hand."

And it is for this possible frightening scenario that Buckians cannot get their hands on such seemingly innocuous products as toothpaste or school supplies. They can, however, get plenty of liquor cheaply. But any other supplies that so-called humanitarians wish to give to the Buckians, will have to go through a rigorous and demanding wall.

Now, imagine that some Alliance neighbors saw through the smoke, saw that their neighbors in the Bucks were suffering and badly and for no other reason than because they had what the Alliance wants. Imagine that they decide to help Buckians, despite what their family and friends think of them. Imagine that they set out to rescue Buckians, or give them aid, knowing full well that unless they make a dramatic gesture, the news of their work and the injustice of what is happening across town will not be carried by the newspapers, radio or tv stations. So they make big statements, carrying pencil sharpeners on river rafts in a doomed attempt to try to sail past the Valiant Warriors-led embargo. But that ends violently and sadly as the VW's shoot-to-kill first, board second, shoot-to-kill-at-close-range third, and detain and imprison fourth.

Imagine another group of Alliance neighbors standing in between the two neighborhoods as human shields. Trying to keep the VW's from launching helicopter, tanks, bombs and automatic weapons against the brick-wielding ET's. And as such, this ad hoc group of Alliance neighbors being labeled violent reactionaries. Because, of course, they highlight the violence that is already happening on a daily/hourly basis by placing their Alliance skins in between the Alliance grenades and Buckians' families and homes, they are somehow labeled as the perpetrators of violence and evil deeds.

Now, of course you don't have to do too much imagining. It's already happening.