For the foreseeable future, those who covet such jobs at President of the United States and Prime Minister of Great Britain are entering prime be-careful-what-you-wish-for territory. Two days after installation, Gordon Brown was faced with a potential attack that PJM Barcelona editor Jose Guardia told me on IM when I woke this morning would have been “Madrid-level or worse”. And he should know. (Jose did his usual superb job of providing the important links ^[1] to the event – while California slept).

I imagine most of us wish this stuff would just go away and we could return to what passed for our normal lives. I know I would. Unfortunately, it’s not. The most logical prediction is that it only is going to get worse. And it has been brewing for a long time – long before the Iraq War and 9/11 or even the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. If you’re looking for benchmarks, you’re more likely looking at the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood ^[2]in 1928. But even that is just one bump in a road going back centuries. Where will it stop?