HERE is, in physics, a phenomenon ? some say it is just a theory ? which scientists call "the butterfly effect". According to this principle, a butterfly flaps its wings in deepest Kenya and ultimately gives rise to a breeze in New York City; a gust of wind atop Mount Vesuvius will cause a bird to flutter and fly suddenly away from a tree in Vancouver.

Everything is connected; not always predictably so, but connected nonetheless. All events are consequences of other events.

The science of politics is ultimately the study of consequences, intended and unintended, of human acts and of failures to act. What humans intend is not necessarily what comes about. According to the proverb of unknown origin, "when humans plan, God laughs".

Undoubtedly, God also cries from time to time. It is in the world of human affairs and politics that the butterfly effect often assumes added significance and meaning.

Everything changes because each day brings new events, new actions taken by people and their leaders. The world is constantly in flux. And, whether we like it or not, whether we choose to resist it or not, Bermuda changes.

Once an uninhabited collection of rocks in the middle of the Atlantic, then a small business enterprise called the Somers Islands Company; more recently, evolving and undulating between the status of colony, protectorate, associated state, and dependent territory allegedly enjoying the right of internal self-government.

I write from London, England ? home of the Mother of Parliaments, where an event has this week been taking place which may well catalyse the mother of all political butterfly effects upon places even as remote and apparently disconnected as our own island home, Bermuda.

For as I write, Britain is playing host to His Excellency the Honourable George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, Leader of the Free World, Commander in Chief and Chief Executive Officer of the only remaining superpower on Planet Earth.

President Bush was also described this week by the elected Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, as "the single greatest threat to life on our planet". This is the first official "state visit" by a President of the United States to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since President Woodrow Wilson's visit in 1918.

This week has seen major pomp and pageantry, the full red-carpet, honour-guard treatment designed to symbolise, signify and demonstrate the solidity and firmness of the alliance between the two countries ? not just their governments, but also their people. They are meant to be demonstrations, for the entire world to see, of the strength and continuity of the friendship and sense of common purpose that binds the two countries AND their people.

"And their people" is the important part. President Bush clearly hoped to use this state visit to enhance his popularity in advance of his bid for re-election. He was clearly ill-advised.

The British people appear to be saying, in no uncertain terms, that they neither trust, respect, nor admire him in any great numbers. In fact, popular antipathy towards President Bush and his policies has become so profoundly negative that pundits, political commentators and even British Prime Minister Tony Blair are openly expressing the view that British disdain for George W. Bush is in danger of translating into a contempt for Americans generally.

Such a pity; the Americans didn't even elect him.

So far as the "special relationship" ? otherwise known as the UK/US Alliance ? is concerned, something is clearly amiss at this time. If Bush and Blair thought that the festivities planned for this week would enhance their political standing, then clearly both leaders are vastly out of sync with their own people.

There have been street demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of protestors forming the Stop the War Coalition. Attempts to hide these events from the television cameras have come to nought. Bush is clearly not welcome in Britain. As if that isn't bad enough news having regard to the daily damage being inflicted on American soldiers and innocent Iraqis in Iraq, both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are still alive.

And as if that isn't bad enough news, it has only now been announced that major casualties have been occasioned at the British Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey by terrorist elements simply because the site is one of the thousands of sites worldwide which can be described as either a British or an American "interest". It is worth pointing out at this stage that the entire island of Bermuda is "a British interest".

, Governor Sir John Vereker reports to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affair, the Rt. Honourable Jack Straw. Mr Straw, unlike his predecessor Robin Cook, has been an effective global mouthpiece for Mr Blair's knee-jerk support of President Bush's militarism and his determined refusal to abide by a truly international consensus through the expressed will of the United Nations.

It is worth pointing out that the principled resignation of Robin Cook undoubtedly created a butterfly effect for Bermuda, as will be demonstrated shortly.

In invading Iraq, both Bush and Blair defied world opinion, broke the rules and norms of international law, ignored the will of the United Nations and snubbed the clear cautions expressed by their European, Middle Eastern, Japanese, Russian and African friends, partners and allies.

The world feels anything but secure. The global goodwill, which travelled faster than a 747 towards America and her people following the tragic and unforgivable events of September 11, 2001, has been squandered. This, by an administration apparently bereft of an internationalist vision or a willingness to respect for the views of anyone else but its own. The French, who fought long and valiantly for military restraint and in favour of a diplomatic solution, were ridiculed and almost lost the right to have fried potatoes named after them.

The Germans were, without subtlety, informed that they had never emerged from an old and vanished European reality; their views were irrelevant. The United Nations itself was also reduced to a vacuous debating chamber.

All because a victim of terror erroneously and paranoically thought that terror and the arbitrary deployment of military muscle were the appropriate responses to terror and failed to recognise that, as Mahatma Gandhi observed, "an eye for an eye will leave us all blind".

In the fruitless pursuit of Osama bin Laden, George Bush has encouraged the recruitment of a new generation of bin Ladens.

the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the leaders of the United States and Britain clearly lied to or at least intentionally or negligently misled their own people. As a true "friend" and "ally" of the United States, Britain under Tony Blair's leadership squandered a major and vital opportunity to caution and encourage restraint in the name of good order and security for all of us.

Now habeas corpus has been thrown out with the bathwater. People "with links to terrorist elements" are routinely imprisoned and tortured in the name of freedom without benefit of counsel or access to family, and sons and daughters are dying and maimed and raped and tortured in a war without end, amen.

We can suspect (that is acceptable), we can even expect, but we don't like to know (that is unacceptable) that our leader has lied to us or that he has intentionally misled us. To be caught in obvious lies or exaggerations or "sexings-up" renders the leader incompetent and untrustworthy.

Bush and Blair have a real problem. Bush is mired, as many critics before the war predicted and warned he would be, in the quicksand of a Vietnam-like conflict which is daily taking the lives of American soldiers and of innocent Iraqis.

Blair looks increasingly like the leader of a Great Britain which finds it difficult to accept that it is no longer that great. The conflict in Iraq is a war of "liberation" which will liberate no one; which is diverting billions of dollars of American resources away from needed social programmes.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that this war was less about weapons of mass destruction and more about oil and about filling the pockets of Mr. Bush's (and Vice President Cheney's) cronies in such super-rich multinational corporations as Halliburton and Bechtel. The propaganda efforts of multinational corporate interests have failed, abysmally.

Most significantly, President Bush's vain, obvious and desperate attempt to link Saddam Hussein with the terrible events of 9/11 and the issue of terrorism, and Blair's failure as a friend to caution restraint have thrown into disarray the entire world order and, more importantly, international order and the freedoms we hold dear in our system of jurisprudence.

Bermuda's Governor Sir John Vereker has apparently been instructed to warn Bermuda that "now the UK has an array of responsibilities that bear directly on internal security and policing".

It looks as though in the name of the war on terrorism, Bermuda will not be quite as "self-governing" as we thought we were. Premier Alex Scott's recently expressed concerns that the hands of colonial clock were going to be moved backwards were robustly dismissed by Government House at first. But now it must be asked ? remember the song? ? "Who's zoomin' whom?"

The Governor's warning must and will be taken by Premier Scott's administration in Bermuda as an ominous warning that our hard-fought evolution towards complete internal self-government is about to be reversed. There is trouble ahead.

Will unknown mandarins of Whitehall and a plumed-hatted Englishman with little or no real experience or necessary appreciation of the subtleties and difficulties of our island culture attempt greater control of our future?

IN the context of the butterfly effect, the state visit of George Bush to Britain is an opportune time to examine Bermuda's constitutional and social evolution. We are in flux. And it is my purpose to examine and discuss what current global developments portend, not so much for the world, but more specifically for Bermuda.

In this task, I am painfully aware that Bermudians have always been encouraged to believe that we should never question what is going on in the outside world; at least not as a nation. Never mind the direct and proven link between President Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto accords and the potential future environmental impact which could make Hurricane Fabian look like a summer breeze.

Never mind that a Bermudian Muslim could find himself "linked" to a "known or suspected terrorist" and as a consequence imprisoned, questioned and tortured for months on end at Guantanamo Bay without access to a lawyer or the ability to communicate with his family, as is the case with a number of British citizens.

Never mind that the basic principles of human rights are being abrogated left, right and centre in the cause of "rooting out terrorism". If Sir John Vereker's warnings are to be taken at face value, Bermuda is about to be required to adopt draconian tactics towards its own people and our rights.

As a colony we have no right to speak to "external" issues and the views of any Bermudian, let alone Bermuda as a whole, is less significant than the fluttering of a butterfly's wings. Whether we like it or not, Tony Blair and Jack Straw speak for us.

We are a "British interest" with all the present danger that that embraces. We must simply not bite the hand that feeds us. If America jumps, it is our task to ask "how high"? Bermuda is, after all, the place which was encouraged by its own leaders a few decades ago to decelerate the pace of racial integration on the ground that racial mixing might "offend" American tourists visiting the island.

From another perspective, isn't it about time that Bermuda developed a voice of her own? It may well be a voice that makes no greater sound than the fluttering of a butterfly's wings. But, why shouldn't we speak out when we see injustice outside our shores?

Shouldn't we tell Mr. Bush that his insistence on sanctions against Cuba, in the name of human rights is laudable, BUT that it might be more credible if his country stopped supporting despotic regimes in other parts of the world in the name of obtaining cheaper oil? Why should we not continue to pursue the right to express our own, independent Bermudian point of view?

The quest for Independence for Bermuda may have lost much of its appeal for many. This is understandable. The departure of Hong Kong from the British imperial family meant some good things for Bermudians. I don't have to (even though I continue to do so) stand in the "Other" line at Heathrow Airport as a "British Dependent Territories Citizen" while my really British daughters walk through without hindrance and have secured their luggage 90 minutes before I do.

AS a Bermudian, I can now travel freely and without visa restrictions throughout all the countries of the European Union. And if I simply ask, Britain is now obliged to allow me to live and work anywhere in Britain AND I am also able to get a job and to work in Europe.

This, coupled with the fact that Bermuda offers no such reciprocity to other Britons and Europeans, took the sting out of the tail of much of the argument in favour of Independence for Bermuda. What's the point? We get the best of both worlds, don't we? So goes the argument.

Paradoxically, the leaders of both Britain and the United States are threatening and causing the destruction of the very alliance on which their dogged pursuit of war against Iraq and their "war on terrorism" was allegedly based. The breakdown of that alliance could make the Bermuda Independence argument a non-issue.

WINSTON Churchill was probably the greatest proponent of the British/US Alliance. In his famous "Iron Curtain" speech delivered in 1946, Churchill praised "the special relationship that exists between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States". That special relationship was of substantial economic benefit to Bermuda in the form of the lend-lease arrangements which created two American military bases in Bermuda.

That was then; this is now. As we speak, Britain is even resisting financial responsibility for the poison and toxins left on our land and threatening our waters on and near the former US bases, particularly Morgan's Point.

Since Churchill's speech in Fulton, Missouri, the "British" Commonwealth has now become, simply, "the Commonwealth". No longer "British", because former colonies (Canada, Australia, South Africa included) have a tendency to insist on being what they have become and what they aspired and struggled to be as independent nations, not what they once were.

The same Winston Churchill famously declared that "the sun will never set on the British Empire". Only a few years later, Eric Williams of Trinidad offered that that was "because God would never trust the British in the dark".

This was an unsubtle reference to years of British "diplomacy" the hallmark of which is and always has been the random deployment of a moving goalpost in all its dealings, including in particular its dealings with its colonies.

Before you could say "Mau Mau rebellion", the so-called British Empire had disintegrated into a few small diehard colonial hangers-on, of which our island curiously and arguably (apart, perhaps from Gibraltar, which is really just a rock) is the most diehard and the most hanging-on.

Primarily, therefore, a more European Britain could in the short term effect constitutional and political change in Bermuda as the result of the disintegration of the "special relationship" to which Churchill referred.

The more deeply entrenched into Europe that Britain becomes, and this will happen sooner rather than later, the less likely it will be that Bermuda retains her present status.