The Dividing Line Between Wish And Need

Europe And North America, We Are Told, Are Less Dependent On Energy-intensive Heavy Industry Than In The 1960s And 1970s. It Seems We Squeeze More Gdp Out Of A Barrel Of Oil Than In Those Benighted Days.

For All Their Current Prestige, Osama Bin Laden And The Suicide Bombers Are Still Regarded In All But The Most Desperate Districts Of Gaza Or Peshawar As Romantics With Little Chance Of More Than Symbolic Victories, However Bloody And Brutal. That Gives Both The Middle East And The West A Small And Distant Hope Of Security.

The Rise To Prominence Of The Saudi Novel In Arabic Is The Great Man-bites-dog Of Recent World Literature. Saudi Arabia Is A Country Without A Free Press, Where European Styles And Forms Are Distrusted And Where The Female Half Of The Population Became Literate Only In This Generation.

When Gordon The Brown, In London In 1997, Commissioned A Great Inquisition Or Survey Of His New Realm, The Result Was The So-called National Asset Register (nar), Which Was Immediately Dubbed By The Boomers Of The Uk Treasury "the Modern Domesday Book".

One Of The Consequences Of The Iranian Revolution Has Been An Explosion Of History. A Country Once Known Only From British Consular Reports And Intrepid Travelogues Is Now Awash With Historical Documents, Letters, Diaries, Grainy Video, Weblogs And Secret Police Files Of Questionable Authenticity.