DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF is always good advice, and if the Berkeley Daily Planet ("covering the world of Berkeley") isn't "small stuff" I don't know what is. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if their readership for today will top the chart at "1" (i.e., me.) Still, I couldn't help noticing their coverage of a "stop the war" protest on the UC campus yesterday.
With brilliant timing, around a dozen activists decided to "converge" on the campus and hold their protest (a) during finals week and (b) *after* the war has pretty much already been won. Earth to Planet: you're too late for a "Stop the War" protest. I guess a "Stop the Mopping Up Operations" protest or a "Leave Osama Alone" demonstration, or a "Down with the Fledgling Broad-based Multiethnic UN-sponsored Afghan Coalition Government" movement wouldn't have the same ring. Or how about a "Bring Back the Religious Police" or "More Daily Beatings of Women with Lengths of Steel Cable Now" protest?
Anyway it's hard to imagine a less successful demonstration. There is a photo of some "guerilla theater" being performed in front of Moffitt Undergraduate Library: four kids, looking like they're in a high school production of M*A*S*H. "The sheer intimidation and use of police powers" is how one of these activists describes his negotiations with the campus police, who insisted on having some input on whether the entrance and exit doors of the library should be blocked by the demonstration. (They needn't have even bothered with this shocking police brutality; as it turns out, those wishing to exit the library through the demonstration could easily have done so by taking a couple of steps to the right walking around it.)
Another photo with the caption "Activists want US troops out of Afghanistan" depicts 7 people standing around at the Berkeley BART station, barely even enough to hold up their enormous hand-printed banner (apparently some kind of Time-line of US Evil.) OK, I'm being mean. Those kids are just so darn cute.