Related Posts

The Beginning of the End

The October 2006 issue of Vanity Fair contains two important articles, which are worth reading: Empire Falls, by Niall Ferguson, and Under Egypt’s Volcano, by Scott Anderson. In Empire Falls, Fergusson uses historian Edward Gibbon’s theories on the decline and fall of Rome to make an interesting, if not convincing, case for the same state of conditions currently in play in the West. Gibbon’s blamed Rome’s decline on external military overreach, internal corruption, social decadence, religious transformation, and barbarian invasion. Fergusson counters with the War on Terror, the cult of personality, superficiality, reality TV, cultural decline, immigration, and the rise…

inna lillahi wa inna ilahi raji’un – for Mumbai

Starting yesterday afternoon, New York time, Mumbai (Bombay) came under a terrorist attack. Currently more than 100 people are dead and over 300 are wounded, with multiple hostage situations. I can offer nothing that the news is not giving, except a prayer for the souls of the deceased; a prayer for the wounded; a prayer that those who perpetrated this act face wrath of the God whom they so easily defame. Choose your mainstream news source: I’m using BBC, both for the local coverage, and to get some sense of distance from it all. Sepia Mutiny links to sources of…