In March, 2000, this effort will celebrate its 10th anniversary. Not as a Web magazine, of course, but in being published every week. I have taken only three breaks in publishing The World's Magazine weekly since 1990. The first was for a few months in 1992, the second was for three weeks in 1998, and this end of century break of two weeks is the last. That might lead some to observe that the 'nineties were my decade and the decade of GENERATOR 21, a.k.a. G21: The World's Magazine.

If that is so, then we are best qualified to write the post-mortem on this fin de siecle. Unlike last century's "Gay 'Nineties," I would have to call this decade the " Rant & Rave 'Nineties" --- and you can take the inference of a comparison to the "roaring" 'twenties.

• We created that ultimate appellation of glitz "Supermodel," and doomed a new generation of young women to waifdom and starvation and drug-addiction.
• We proclaimed a short-lived, frustrated musician from Seattle the John Lennon of his generation for want of a better rock 'n' roll hero.
• David Bowie took to the Internet along with everyone else, continuing his reign as the best chameleon of modern times.
• A peace, of sorts, came to both the Middle East and Northern Ireland, two of the world's most volatile hot spots.
• The "Information Age" emerged from the egg-shell of desktop computing (micro-computing?) on wobbly legs like an Easter chick and won the ardor of the "developed" world.
• The mini-skirt and platform shoes came back.
• A Bubba-Yuppie from Arkansas followed an adle-pated actor as the second U.S. President in the last half of the century to serve two full terms in office. (Just barely, some might say.) We proclaimed that the Baby Boom generation had finally taken the torch of leadership from the Great War generation.
• It was definitely proven that paisley will never be a fashion statement.
• An entire generation decided that "retro" was the source of identity. Everything from the "Swinging Lifestyle" of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack to believing "That 70's Show" was relevant to post-modern life reared their ugly heads. America's biggest film director, Steven Spielberg, went from a fascination with space aliens (ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) exhibited in the '80s to a fascination with World War II (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan) to culminate the '90s, and didn't lose any box office momentum in the process.
• Instead of buying America, as predicted in the '80s, Japan became the nation to mirror and propogate its pop cultural trends from anime to Pokemon....

For those who care about human rights, and particularly for those in the legal profession, to contemplate Northern Ireland's prospects for the next millennium, or even the next decade, compels one to reflect on the recent past, to March 15, 1999.

On that day, at 12:40 p.m., in the town of Lurgan, a half-hour drive from Belfast, local solicitor (attorney) Rosemary Nelson climbed into her car, backed out of her driveway, and set off on the short distance to her office in the city center. At the first intersection, less than 100 yards from her home, possibly as she applied her brakes, a bomb, which had been planted underneath her car sometime within the previous 48 hours, detonated. Her children, in a nearby school, heard the explosion. Neighbors and family rushed to the scene, followed by a mobile medical team, but there was little that could be done. Nelson lost both legs, suffered severe abdominal injuries, and died a few hours later after unsuccessful surgery to save her life. She is survived by her husband and three young children.

Shortly after the murder, the Red Hand Defenders, a dissident loyalist paramilitary group not in support of the Good Friday peace accord and the current cease-fire, telephoned the BBC to claim responsibility. Since that day, many questions have emerged. Did this group have assistance from a more mainstream paramilitary organization(s), ostensibly on cease-fire? Did an intense amount of British Army activity around the Nelson home in the days and hours leading up to the murder have some part to play in the deployment of the bomb? Was the attack targeted specifically against her, or as a warning to those she represented, or as a disruptive force to encourage counter-violence from republicans, thereby creating a dissolution of the peace process?

Colin Port, Deputy Chief Constable of the Norfolk Constabulary, has been brought from England to conduct an investigation into these and other questions. An international array of respected legal bodies and human rights organizations have called for an independent inquiry. To date, no questions have been resolved, and no arrests have been made.

What is known is that in the eyes of many in Northern Ireland, Rosemary Nelson was a prominent target, not because of who she was, but because of who she represented. Nelson, 40, was the first woman in Lurgan to set up her own practice, and over the years she represented many local persons and groups, on matters ranging from the interesting to the sublime, almost all innocuous in the grander scheme of life.....