informage

In one sense it was indeed paradise. There's a particular glee induced by awakening just before sunrise to watch the glowing blood-orange of the sun ascend over a warm and clear sea, and refreshing oneself with a quick dip before returning to the dusty pousada for breakfast. We travelled there stretched out on the tarp of a languidly yawing nondescript boat, backpacks clutched near, slowly toasting in the sun.

Surely this is as close as I'll get to The Beach without a trip to Thailand and a temporal backflip to sometime before Garland precipated the saturation of an already rapidly expanding tourist scene. Tomas and Catherina - the Hamburgers on the trip - had their own Thai tales to tell, which only heightened my sense of fantasy. Diego, the gratuitously sunburnt Argentinian, recounted a long hot walk to Praia Lopes Mendes (pictured above) capped by the "surrealistic" experience of encountering a lone pair of women ardently playing tennis. You'll have to imagine his batball sound effects and swivelling eyes.

I couldn't help but notice however that my comfortable and mundane upbringing has left me ill-prepared for the rigours of the remote island life. The overbearing heat of our baking bedroom, unpunctuated by the reassuring oscillations of a "ventilador", together with the stealth mosquitoes, rendered the short duration of our stay also somewhat welcome. Now I don't wish you to think me a whining old westerner, but I guess I'm observing my decreasing tolerance for material discomfort as I rapidly approach 30. I can still do it, and I still loved it, but don't be surprised if next time I opt for the adjoining beach with an all-night generator and fans in the roof.

As to the title we were in fact considerably more sensible than the wide assortment of prawnish gringos and gringas we encountered, includingly the aforementioned Diego. One presumed Australian had to be physically kicked into life before his back spontaneously erupted in flames, much as one hopes the burning tyres on the beach were ignited without human intervention. A hope in vain I might add. As Santos our ex-military misanthropic pousadarista lamented, the whole beach went to pot when an electric light shed it's presumptuous first ray.

I would say, is it not better that we are driven by the greed of the gas and oil people, the so-called junta, the Bush's and Cheney's and so on, who have taken over our government. At least they're going over something palpable, which is other people's oil.

We fought in Vietnam for almost a dozen years and nobody could think of a reason why we were there. So maybe they're wiser -- the weapons of mass destruction is immediately springing to my lips as I thought of that - - but suddenly there is a motive, and it has been a motive all along.

Notice the way that we shifted over from the fight on terrorism and al Qaeda, which I think we all were in favor of that. We suddenly muddled it up with Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9-11. But he's got the second largest oil reserves in the world in Iraq. That's a good motivation.

That also sets us in line -- Sharon said before the last Israel election ". and after that, we," -- don't know who he means by we -- but, "we are going after Iraq."

And, finally, Brizinski, former national security advisor to President Carter -- Brizinski wrote a little book about six years ago which I highly recommend to you, and if you want a shorter version of it, you could read "Dreaming War" by me, in which I give a general (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of it, how the United States -- the world will be out of oil by 2020. The United States, in order to stay number one, must get its hands on Eurasia -- that's all of those countries whose names end in "-stan," former Russian republics.

So the March is on for oil, and that is corporate greed or national greed or the greed of individuals. I'm not selecting, choosing or naming. I'm just explaining.

VERJEE: The march is on. Is anything going to stop it?

VIDAL: One always hopes so. Peculiar things are happening.

We have a president that has an extraordinary gift to unite people. He's united 1 million Muslims against us. He's united practically all of Western and some of Eastern Europe against us. He may very well unite the entire world and we will not be allowed to go to war.

Meanwhile, he has seen to it, by uniting the 1 percent that own the country behind him and pay for political campaigns, by giving them vast tax cuts just at the moment when we're going to need the money for the war, the war which (UNINTELLIGIBLE) say it will cost of $1 trillion as now projected.

So between the genius of this president at uniting people against him, something might happen. Let us pray.

VERJEE: Gore Vidal, we have a number of viewer questions here for you.

Michael, in Germany, wants to ask you this: "Should a leader stay the course when the majority is against him"?

VIDAL: It depends on seriously you take democracy. The United States is not a democracy. It never has been. The constitution was founded so that white men of property could do business. Everybody else was excluded from the vote.

So we really aren't much of a democracy, and we don't pay much attention to the will of the people.

Then when the 1 percent that owns the country also owns the media, you can get -- I think the most terrific lie of my lifetime I have watched, it's better than anything Hitler ever did -- they were able to shift the blame from Osama bin Laden, who did a terrible thing on 9-11, to Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with it.

70 percent of Americans now believe Saddam Hussein was behind the attack on the United States. Well, he wasn't. So, as he's done nothing to us, how do they justify what they are doing?

That's why, somewhat cheerfully, I said, well, let's at least give this administration credit for greed.

CLANCY: You know, we've gotten just an avalanche of e-mails coming in, Mr. Vidal, asking -- you know, they want to put questions to you. A lot of people familiar with your work.

Vicki (ph), from Greece, writes in to ask this: "Who besides the White House is culpable? The Hill (meaning Congress), the media, U.S. citizens themselves"?

VIDAL: I'd say, short-hand, it would be the ownership of the country. It's in fewer and fewer hands, just as the ownership of the media, not just in the United States but all around the world, is in fewer and fewer hands. That's why so many newspapers print the same sort of news when even more interesting news is going on that we are never told about.

We've had a number of marches here in the United States, all under- reported. The "New York Times" finally got around to one of the biggest ones, and neglected to say how many people were there. Usually they divide by 50 and say practically nobody but the usual malcontents were marching.

Millions of people are marching in the United States, but word doesn't get out. We do hear about Europe, because they're not as tightly censored as we are.

CLANCY: Gore Vidal, nobody challenges your intellect. They look at your writing and you lay out a great case, but admit it, it's reverse engineered, and it's brilliant. But in order to assert that President Bush came up with all of this idea to go into Baghdad to get the oil, doesn't it fall on it's face when you say, well, France is against the war with Iraq, and yet it stands to lose $60 billion in oil contracts if it is a war. It's trying to support peace to support that $60 billion in interest.

VIDAL: Well, because one guy is a crook doesn't mean that the other guy isn't a crook too. I mean, this is a crooked world we live in. France has its interest.

George Washington gave us some good advice when he left office. He said nations should not have special friends or special enemies. Nations only have interests.

If you stay with that, you don't go around demonizing people. I love the way Bush suddenly was swaggering around saying how much he personally hated the little fat man who runs North Korea. Why did he say that? That little fat man is a dictator. He doesn't like that. What's wrong with him?

Well, he got his job because his father had been the dictator, just as Bush got his job because his father had been the president. So they have more in common than not, I would think.

But to go around saying how much you hate people, how much you hate countries, evil empires, they do things because they're evil-doers, they're evil-doers. Prove it. There is evil in the world, but we were not assigned by God to go around and root out all evil on earth, and if we were, I would say start at home.

CLANCY: You have said that you could solve all the world problems if they'd just listen to you. Very briefly, what's the answer here?

VIDAL: At last, my favorite CNN word: briefly.

What is the meaning of life, Jim? Briefly, tell me.

There are a lot of things that we could do around the world. First of all, I would stop trying to be a military empire. We haven't got the brains for it, we haven't got the manpower.

And you don't start what could be the third world war with a huge tax cut, not just for the rich few -- lucky they. Corporate America only provides 8 percent of the revenues of the federal government. They used to provide, back in the 50's, something like 45 percent. Corporate America no longer pays tax on its earnings, on its profits. I would tax them and then we would have a lot of money for such frivolity as healthcare, education and so on, and less for these wars for which we are deeply ill-suited.

It goes against our grain and it goes against everything that the founding fathers had in mind for us. So regard me as a constitutionalist.

VERJEE: OK, Gore Vidal, it's a pleasure to have you here on Q&A. Thanks a lot for talking to us.

VIDAL: Thank you.