I think I may be some sort of genius. Six weeks ago - at the beginning of the Rugby world cup - I put £10 on England to win the tournament at 33-1. Now England are through to next weekend’s final against South Africa. Just one more win and I will have the satisfaction of picking up £340 from Ladbrokes of King Street, Hammersmith. I never bet online, since I like to see the look of defeat in the bookmakers’ eyes when they hand over the money.

I would not claim genius simply on the basis of this one bet. But I’ve done this sort of thing before. Before the 2002 soccer World Cup I made a winning bet on Ronaldo of Brazil to be top scorer at 25-1. (He was long odds because he had been injured for two years). I did it again at the 2006 World Cup, where I bet on Miroslav Klose of Germany, who was mystifyingly well-priced at 28-1. On that occasion - to my infinite satisfaction - the bookie actually said "well done, sir", as gave me the cash. If England beat South Africa, I may finally get the courage to abandon journalism and become a professional gambler.

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Who knew that the US had such a powerful Armenian community? Nobody doubts it now - after the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee voted to label the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The vote has already caused a minor diplomatic crisis - with potentially serious implications.

But it also underlines something really important about US foreign policy - the extent to which it is driven by ethnic lobbies. The most famous is the Jewish lobby - call it the Israel lobby, if you want to be more precise and less controversial.

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To Britons of a certain generation - my generation - the name George Soros will always carry a certain mystique. In the US he may be regarded primarily as a billionaire with liberal views and in Eastern Europe he is associated with the Open Society institutes. But in Britain he will always be thought of above all as "the man who broke the Bank of England". Soros’s successful speculation against the pound in 1992 is widely believed to have caused "Black Wednesday", when Britain was forced out of the European exchange rate mechanism. The whole experience was a memorable crash course for the British public (and indeed the British government) in the power of global financial markets.

Curiously, perhaps, very little odium attached to Soros himself, after this unfortunate incident. He might have humiliated the government and forced a devaluation. But nobody seems to hold it against him. On the contrary, he is widely admired in Britain and is regarded as a something of a guru. I am as vulnerable to the Soros mystique as the next man, so I was intriuged to meet him for the first time at a small(ish) dinner for the launch of the European Council on Foreign Relations last week.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in the impromptu Iraq discussion. I was pleased to see that the contributors span the ideological spectrum from "Bush is a war criminal" to "secure the oil and let the hopeless Iraqis slug it out" (I paraphrase obviously). Since much of the blogosphere seems to be chopped up into the ideological equivalent of gated communities, it’s good to see such a range of opinions.

As for myself, I think the discussion helped clarify my thinking a bit - although I don’t think I’ve yet found "the solution". Rather than comment on each and every posting, I thought it might be useful to react to groups of ideas that cropped up.

First - Belgium. I’m fond of the place myself, since I used to live there. And a couple of correspondents seem to regard it as a possible model for Iraq - as does Volker Perthes, whose article I linked to. I’m not convinced however. The temptations of federalism or even partition are obvious - and that may be where we end up eventually. But any attempt to force the situation might involve further mass movements of people and killings - which looked more like the partition of India and Pakistan than the creation of Belgium (which I seem to remember is the only revolution ever to have started in an opera house.) Also partition might invite outside intervention and therefore a wider war. Would Turkey tolerate an independent Kurdistan? How would the Saudis feel about an Iranian-linked Shiastan in the south?

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In a recent book John Mueller, an American academic, notes that the number of his fellow-countrymen killed by terrorists since 1960 “is about the same as the number killed over the same period by accident-causing deer”.

I was upset when I read this. Hitherto, I have always rather enjoyed watching the deer in Richmond Park in London. But now I find myself looking at them with suspicion and resentment. Of course, we must be careful not to generalise about deer. Most of them live peaceful lives. But surely it is foolish to blind ourselves to the murderous threat posed by a small, but fanatical, minority of the deer community? A vicious ideology has lodged itself between their antlers. They seem to be willing to kill and die in pursuit of a deadly fantasy – returning to a golden age when deer controlled the forests of medieval Europe.

The remainder of this column can be read here; comments can be made below.

I have written a lot about Iraq in the FT. But readers of my column might have noticed that - while not slow to dish out criticism - I have usually dodged the big question: so what would you do?

There is a simple reason for this evasiveness. I don’t know really know what I would do. Like most people, I am better at defining the question than providing the answer. So once again, I would like to turn to the readers of this blog for ideas and suggestions.

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Going straight from New York to Blackpool is a disorientating experience - a journey from the centre of western civilisation to its very edge. There are a couple of similarities, however. They are both seaside towns, full of tourists and neon lighting. After that, I’m struggling.

I was in Blackpool for the Tory Party conference. The main topic of conversation there is the possibility of an election in Britain. But the most interesting event I went to (apart from the Foreign Policy Centre event I spoke at, obviously) was a fringe meeting on "interventionism - and the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan." The big draw there was John Bolton, America’s former UN ambassador, who can usually be relied upon to offend large parts of the audience.

Over the years, I’ve seen most of America’s leading neo-cons in actions - and their styles differ markedly. Paul Wolfowitz is diffident and rather bookish in manner. Richard Perle is a bully, but can also speak persuasively. Bill Kristol is combative  - but also intellectually agile and keen to engage in debate. John Bolton, however, had always struck me as a charmless thug. I once saw him addressing a high-level conference, full of reasonably sympathetic Europeans. Even they were shocked by Bolton’s raw nationalism and open contempt for much of his audience. On that occasion, even some of the Americans in the audience were embarrassed. One of them said to me afterwards, "I think John has forgotten that technically his job description is diplomat."

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On my first visit to Burma in the early 1990s, I met an elderly man who had fought with the British in the second world war – and who rolled up his sleeve to show the scars left by a Japanese machine gun. The old man was scathing in his contempt for his country’s military government. But when I asked him if he wanted tougher sanctions against Burma he looked alarmed: “No,” he protested, “we are far too isolated already.”

Fifteen years have passed since then and the military junta is still in charge – and once again has resorted to murderous repression in the streets. The western world is aghast. At a meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last week, Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, got a wry laugh when he announced that something must be done, but he had no idea what that something might be. Under such circumstances, “something” usually turns out to be economic and political sanctions.

Pushing through new sanctions would be an understandable reaction to the horrifying sight of the Burmese military massacring its own people. But sanctions would probably achieve nothing in the short term – and be actively damaging in the long term.

Read the rest of this week’s column (FT.com subscribers only). Comments can be made below.