As a card carrying member of the CofE - at least, I would be if we had cards - I have serious problems understanding anyone who claims to be a fellow believer and thinks that - somehow - 'it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven' doesn't apply to them. Sorry, all this 'riches are the reward for the devout' palavar is heresy and should be viewed as such.

The problem with the American fundamentalists is that they have bought the Francis Fukayama thesis wholesale - after all, it strokes them the way they like to be stroked - and don't begin to realise that it is - like so much populist American 'academic' theory - so much crap. History hasn't ended developing (how can it? If it had, it would be dead, like any other organism. Maybe it is, but I don't think that's what Francis meant) The Texan wing of the GOP is not the Krown of Kreation (to borrow a phrase from my flowerchild youth). In fact, they resemble none so much as the Bourbons (no, not the biscuits)

As for the fundamentalists of Riyadh, well, at last somebody has displaced Lord Home. If you looked at every trouble spot in the world from Munich to Zimbabwe you would have seen the grinning skull of Sir Alec, stirring it as though his name was Palmerstone. Since 1967, however, he has been usurped by some anonymous Wahabi cleric paid for by that friend of freedom and democracy everywhere, the theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With friends like Fahd and his children, nobody has any need of enemies, but they'll be getting them.

As for your conspiracy theory, Charles, it is entertaining but - like all conspiracy theories, ultimately diverting (speaking of which, it look as though the IRA wasn't involved in the Bank of Ireland raid - at least, not the political wing (let's not get into that divide just now) - any more than there was an IRA spy ring at Stormont - all charges dropped.

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow proposes a similar conspiracy, but pins it on crypto-hippies.

In 1979 I was> a Trotskyist living on lentils in a squat. Well, near enough. That wasn't a big year for defections, real or pretended. And if there were any ex-Trots among the British libertarians or young conservatives I think I might have spotted them. The Brit pro-war left are all journailsts, professors or blogging stock-brokers, not crafty political activists.

The US ex-Shachtmanite neocons started out as Cold Warriors of the Left, a very easy move from Shachtmanism in my opinion. The whole of international Social Democracy were Cold Warriors of the Left.

The no-longer-Living-Marxism lot are a bit hard to figure out. My current theory is that they are still Marxists but are trying to save capitalism for the revolution rather than fuck it up. Post-1989 people are wimps. They are neither capable of sustaining a dynamic economy (if they're capitalists) or taking it over (if they're proles). Instead they cower before imaginary terrors, whether WMD in Iraq or holes in the sky. Hence there is no class struggle and no progress until the Western bourgeoisie gets its act together, whereupon normal service will be resumed. Or not, in which case we're all fucked anyway and Green barbarians will caper on our ruins.

In case you're wondering, yes that was the story in my Fall Revo books.

Reality imitates "The Star Fraction": now that's a terrifying thought!

It surely is...the only good news about the Star Fraction
future is that you don't have to go very far for an
alternative government...

-- Andrew

<i.As David Brin puts it, the worst case scenario is that the simulation argument is true, and we're living in an egocentric simulation that exists solely for the amusement of whatever entity is playing the role of George W. Bush.</i>

Well, hell, Charlie, now I'm really worried. The world has just about reached the point where I'd simply start again if this was Civ3 or Civ4.