Trimble’s exit takes Ulster to the brink. Sadly, it appears the Northern Ireland peace process has collapsed; if Trimble thinks his resignation will pressure the IRA to decommission its weapons as it so far appears to have failed to do, it seems very unlikely. The Guardian UK Here’s a BBC timeline of the peace process since the 1998 Good Friday accords, and websites for Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists.

And, while we’re at it, the fragile truce in the Mideast, surely a castle built on sand if ever there was one, totters in the face of the ongoing violence. Sometimes my head hurts from all our collective thinking about who’s right and who’s to blame in this strife. It’s just so unbearably sad that we keep doing this to ourselves. In retrospect, the prospects for peace in these festering hotspots always amounted to hope against hope. To paraphrase Pete Seeger, however, the reason to go on when things are hopeless is only that we may be wrong.