By SYD BAUMEL
EDITOR
As I write this late in November, the New World Consciousness continues to shift and turn, as September 11 shock yields to October 7 bombardment and an uncertain November 12 road to freedom in Afghanistan. Today, we are left to wonder whether the future will bring us closer to a globalisation of peace and justice or drag us deeper into global disharmony. In Canada and other Western democracies, zealous, hastily drafted anti-terrorism legislation raises the spectre of practitioners of rowdy civil disobedience or members of suspect minority groups being inappropriately branded as terrorists, stripped of basic legal rights, and detained and prosecuted in secret at the whim of any government.

We have a crisis of global reach. But we also have an opportunity of global reach to play catch-up with our consciences.

We've been coming close.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, grief and outrage soon overflowed in the hearts and minds of many Americans and other Westerners into a probing, "why us?" inquiry. For a moment, it looked like the de facto ruling powers of the world, not unlike the amiable, but tormented Mob boss Tony Soprano chafing and twisting in a psychiatrist's chair, might experience a moral awakening. The tension kept building; and "the conversation" kept (cautiously) flowing. But then suddenly on October 7, the wind changed. America sprang out of its seat, shouted f—k this! to the dissenters rooting around in its subconscious, and (ahhh . . . what a release) started ejaculating heavy metal on Afghanistan. And with that, "a rhetorical fog," as journalist Robert Fisk puts it, descended like a cloud of Valium upon the coalition. Committed now to (at the very least) getting Osama bin Laden no matter how much collateral damage and intentional destruction of pitiless Taliban zealots and hapless conscripts alike it would take, that fog fell heaviest upon the plight of millions of hungry Afghans at risk of freezing and starving to death on the snowy sidelines.

Then came the breakthrough of November 12. Kabul fell, Kandahar seemed to hang by a thread, and beards and burqas disappeared like tails between fleeing Taliban legs. 

Yet in the days that have followed, there has been grave concern that what seemed like a triumph that would clear the path for humanitarian aid and freedom from tyranny threatens to degenerate into a New National Disorder for Afghanistan. The imminent nation-building conference in Germany may quickly tell if the country will or will not reap the promise of "Enduring Freedom." Regardless, the U.S. administration (with the possible exception of the conscientious Colin Powell) appears willing to press on with the white-knuckle car chase that is Operation Enduring Freedom, never mind the consequences, good or bad, for anyone else's freedom or survival. The end justifies the means is the coalition's toughminded philosophy. It is also the defining rationalization of every terrorist.

Yet something much more fundamental than a tactical war on terrorism has been awakened by 911. The suicide bombers hit the guilt and denial steeped First World where we live, simultaneously igniting both our primal instincts and our higher potentialities of bereavement and empathy, rage and conciliation, selfishness and altruism, bias and impartiality, complacency and responsibility. Many have heard the sound of a still, small voice of reason: 

For lack of global governmental institutions of law, order, and justice, we are a Global Afghanistan, a Worldwide Wild West where peace and security are forever held hostage not only by terrorists, but by hustlers (bottom-line corporations), warlords (armed and belligerent sovereign states), dangerous demagogues (totalitarian Islamists and other religious and political enemies of human rights), and vigilantes, like the posse presuming to dispense justice in Asia today, as it did ten years ago in Iraq (where half a million babies and children have died as a consequence).

The Second World War gave us the United Nations. Will 911 be the wakeup call that lifts us to the next level: a global constitutional democracy capable of legislating and enforcing a New World Order where neither terrorist crimes nor weapons of mass destruction are allowed?

While some people fear the perils of global governance – of a Hitler or a Big Brother seizing power – others, from Albert Einstein to Walter Cronkite, say look at the alternative, look at the status quo. Look especially at the swamps where terrorists breed, at the troughs where the overprivileged feed, and at the killing fields where they  meet. And fear that.