‘Confessions of a Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater’ (extract)

I am not, thank God, Thomas de Quincey (or Coleridge, Baudelaire, Cocteau, Huxley, Paul Bowles, Carlos Castenada, William Burroughs, Ken Kesey or Hunter S. Thompson, to name but the more usual of the usual suspects), and the irreparable harm that revealing my identity inevitably would inflict, not only upon my professional reputation but upon those whom I love and care deeply for, simply is not commensurate with the benefits liable to redound to me in so doing. Perhaps some day, one day when we all of us are more—what?—grown up? Grown up enough, at least, to be less hysterical and apocalyptic about the subject at hand. But for now, more’s the pity, no..” Granta

Bringing the Holy War Home: ‘Opponents of the “clash of civilizations” thesis are half right. There is such a clash, but it is not between East and West. The struggle of democratic secularism, religious tolerance, individual freedom and feminism against authoritarian patriarchal religion, culture and morality is going on all over the world…’ The Nation [thanks, David]

“The U.S. federal government will begin the work of drawing a “map” of the Internet next month, in an attempt to improve the country’s ability to better respond to future cyber-attacks, according to Richard Clarke, President Bush’s advisor on cyber-security.” Yahoo!

The Decline and Fall (cont’d.): Road Rage Driver Guilty of Murder: Two years ago, a Chicago cyclist and an SUV driver had words after the driver cut off the cyclist. What happened next had been in dispute, but the bicyclist ended up dead under the wheels of the truck several blocks later after what witnesses described as a swerving game of cat-and-mouse. Now a jury has concluded this was a wanton deliberate road rage murder. The webmaster of the Chicago Critical Mass (a bicycling advocacy group) website comments:

“I think the decision was a just one, and that it took a lot of courage for the jury to make it. They could have taken the easy way out by returning the reckless homicide verdict.

“But I don’t feel like celebrating — seeing someone convicted of murder is not a pretty sight. His family committed no crime, but they will suffer just the same.”

‘Plus ca Change’ Dept.: America’s Cup champion sailor Peter Blake, 53, dead. “Peter Blake, who headed the New Zealand crew that won the America’s Cup in 1995 and 2000, was shot and killed by pirates during a robbery of his boat on the Amazon River.”

Gore Vidal: ‘We don’t know where we’re going’ “The United States does not have an interest in Afghanistan. The Bush family does. Oil. As does Vice-President Cheney and Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld. We have a bunch of oilmen running the country. It will be like Vietnam in the sense that it is unwinnable. I suppose we could put in a government in Kabul, but as the guerrilla warfare continues and we have no national interest, we’ll drift away; though Bush can keep the war going until 2004, so he can be re-elected president.” Guardian UK

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ 11/01 policy statement on media violence “contains many misstatements about social-science research on media effects. Your organization’s views about the mass media’s impact on children are entitled to respect, but professional opinion should not be confused with scientific evidence.” An open letter from members of the National Coalition Against Censorship finds that the AAP misreports study results, draws undue inferences, is loose and imprecise in its definition of violence in the first place, and is misleading on crime data, in conclusions about the impact on social violence of media influences.

“Buck

Bush and you buck the era, buddy…” Michael Wolfe in New York magazine: Saint George —

‘To get the willies from George W. Bush, to distrust the man, to have your stomach roll a bit when you hear him speak, is to feel like the most churlish and sullen of adolescents. He’s the unappealing uncle — with his cold eye on you — whose house you’re stuck at this holiday season. While you’re trying to shut out his existence, everybody else is sucking up to him.

If you knew it was just pretend, just a holiday bit — everybody being phony and polite — you could handle it; the problem is in thinking that all this affability, this undisaffected appreciation for the guy, is honest feeling on everyone else’s part. What if 85 percent of the American people actually, deep in their hearts, approve of him — dig him? What does that say about you and where you fit in?’

…makes me want to write a short story called something like “Why I Want to Buck George Bush”…

By 2020, the World Health Organisation expects depression to be the number one health problem, says Oliver Bennett, senior lecturer in cultural policy studies at Warwick University and the author of Cultural Pessimism: narratives of decline in the postmodern world New Sstatesman essay at consider.net

“Osama bin Laden “breached the taboo” limiting the scale of terrorist attacks because he has no state controlling him, an Israeli terrorism expert said Monday in Denver.

Yoram Schweitzer, a researcher at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Inter-Disciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, was in Denver Monday for a seminar for local emergency personnel.

State sponsors of terrorism generally have national interests they want to protect, and that puts limits on just how far they are willing to go in terrorist attacks, Schweitzer said in an interview at the Rocky Mountain News.”