V for Vendetta is set in Britain sometime in the near future. While the United States has fallen into chaos after years of war and civil unrest, Britain has voted for tyranny: a grotesque local version of fascism. Strict curfews are enforced by patrolling thugs while the face of the apoplectic leader, played by John Hurt in a nice reversal of his role as the victim in 1984, beams from giant screens everywhere. Anyone racially or morally questionable is sent off to become an experimental subject in the quest to find newer and nastier biological weapons. -- Stephanie Bunbury Gunpowder, treason and plot

Iraq is not the only breeding ground for civil war. The whole world is.

While Dubya the Dumb, with his cretinous accent, continues to insult the world by claiming all is well in Iraq, his Secretary for War, arch-war-criminal Donald Rumsfeld, has admitted that a belated and no doubt half-arsed "Plan B" -- on dealing with the very real civil war taking place in Iraq -- is about to become official policy.

Thanks to the American Imperialist Empire's "Plan A," the original, illegal and brainless invasion of Iraq three years ago today, it's neo-conservative anti-social ideology and the concurrent rise to power of Christian fundamentalism, the whole world has been destabilised.

Every person in every nation, city and village and on every street is polarised. No one knows what is coming next. The funeral yesterday of Slobodan Milosevic shows how dangerously divided Serbia remains. But thanks to the madmen in Washington, the rest of the world is just as divided. We are all a hairs-breadth from turning on each other.

The ongoing riots in Paris, over industrial relations legislation meant to give employers feudal power while reducing student employees to fodder, are a beacon of hope for the polarised half of us who still claim to be social beings.

In Australia, the new powers Workhouse Minister Kevin "I may be a feeble little twit, but God works for me" Andrews has handed himself, in effect turning the Industrial Relations Commission into a spy agency, are as bad or worse.

Both the French and Australian legislations constitute a return to the Dickensian world of masters and servants. The ideology behind these deforms is one of singular hatred for the working classes and more importantly, humanity in general. They are, in a word, misanthropic.

The Christian fundamentalists, who profess to believe in "family values" (code for a desiccated patriarchal misogyny dressed up in wholesome square dance couture), are perhaps the greatest threat to family values since the Nazis.

Typically, they joined financial forces with the Liberal Party (representing the lords of big business) in Tasmania to run a scare campaign against the Greens just when that party had a good chance to neutralise main party corruption and take the balance of power. In Tassie, this Satanic branch of Christianity is called the "Exclusive Brethren". Scary, eh? Like the pod-people in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" who, sensing you are still human and not one of them, point their finger and utter a horrifying screech. The name "Exclusive Brethren" sums up Christian fundamentalism and the neo-Liberal, neo Conservative governments currently ruling the world: Exclusive. They are in; all others are out.

Are we heading for the turmoil we had to have? Looks like it. Only a fool, that is, someone who has devoted all their time during the last week to "being in the spirit" of the Commonwealth Games, would be unaware of civilisation caving in around them.

V for Vendetta opens here in Melbourne on 30 March. I'll be the first in line at the earliest showing.