A futures market first proposed by the Pentagon that allows speculators to bet on assassinations, coups and acts of terrorism is to be set up without government involvement, it emerged yesterday.

In fact, it is a challenge more pertinent to Britain than anywhere else. For unlike Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, Jose Maria Aznar or John Howard, Blair - ostensibly - comes from the left.

"This is not a prediction but a terrible foreboding," writes David Frum, Mr Bush's former speechwriter who claimed credit for the phrase "axis of evil", in the rightwing weekly The National Review.
"I fear that President Bush's imminent state visit to the United Kingdom is shaping up as one of the worst media debacles of his presidency."

But on the cause of Mr Bush's unpopularity and the identities of his detractors, views differ greatly. Mark Steyn, of the New York Sun, puts the forthcoming protests down to "the explosive European streak that remains implacably pro-Saddam, pro-Yasser, pro-jihad, pro-Taliban misogynist homophobes, pro-anyone as long as they're anti-American... As to the derangement of the crowd, they're impervious to reason".
William Safire, a New York Times columnist, blames the "anti-any-war crowd" and "apostles of cut-and-run".
"They are reported to be planning a demonstration, including the great photo-op of pulling down a mock statue of George Bush in front of BBC and al-Jazeera cameras," he writes.


When Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia died, Limbaugh mocked tributes to the musician, arguing, "Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he's being honored, like some godlike figure." In 1995 he said, "Too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river."

"I'm not a role model," he said. "What I did, I did knowingly. What I did, I did because I wanted to do it, but I knew it was wrong the whole time. It's a powerful addiction this stuff has."