Many global issues have direct bearing on my personal everyday life, and even the framework of my sexual exploits.

Where America is at war, for example.

America is always at war. If there is no Cold War, then they wage war on terrorism. And if America isn't entertained by the war on drugs, they engage in a war on AIDS, or the war against the sexual exploitation of children.

America is always hypocritical. This is a direct effect from being too powerful. America only knows the perspective from above; it does not know how the world looks from below. But if you cannot take a look from below, you will always be hypocritical.

Osama bin Laden presents the bill. He is not just popular with Muslim fundamentalists. Muslim fundamentalists are less than 10 percent of those who cheer his actions. His tremendous popularity in the Third World is due primarily to the fact that he confronts what is perceived as the world's superpower of arrogance, the US, which messes with everybody else's affairs.

By and large, we live in a bipolar world. The two poles are the First World and the Third World. There is no such thing as a Second World. Actually, even the term First World has been born out of ignorance. What we started with was the "Old World" (Europe) and the "New World" (the Americas), and all the rest lumped together as the "Third World".

OK, the terms Old World and New World have gone out of fashion. Now we have a First World, which means rich countries with a Western-style political structure, and a Third World, which means poor countries, or countries with a political system that does not match American standards of decency.