Of particular concern are the meanings to be attached to apparently comprehensible equivalents such as terrorism and free trade -- which, taken in context, appear to hold other more questionable meanings, notably in relation to the concern in the text with weapons of pattern destruction. Especially worrying is the nature of these patterns and the possibility that they include ecosystemic, cultural and even spiritual patterns that tend to be damaged by some understandings on Earth of "free trade" in the globalization process. Could these understanding of "free trade" be interpreted as constituting a weapon of pattern destruction