BatesLine

The trouble with Theodore Dalrymple is that he writes so beautifully and clearly about such a tragic topic, the decline of English character. His insight in this piece showing how Prime Minister Tony Blair both reflects and has shaped the nation, particularly the public service of Britain:

I recently met a public servant who had risen up the ranks and had about him a triumphalist air, as of a successful revolutionary. He had arrived in bureaucratic heaven. He travelled to London on the train first class every week (a ticket costs the equivalent of an annual working class holiday in the sun), and attended sumptuous functions there attended by others such as himself, under the impression that by so doing he was working. Had he been a little boy recounting a visit to Father Christmas in a department store, it would have been disarming: as it was, I found it profoundly alarming.

Here was the voice of militant mediocrity, who expressed himself even in private in the language of Health Service meetings, believing that his large salary and high living at public expense were all for the good of those who paid for them. Just as the countries of Eastern Europe once had their little Stalins, so every department of every branch of the British public service has its little Blairs.

Such a development could not have taken place overnight. My wife, who is French, was attracted to the culture of this country because, as late as 1979 or 1980, the people, including administrators in hospitals, were obviously upright, whatever else their failings might have been. A quarter of a century later, all that has changed; deviousness, ruthlessness, an eye fixed on the main chance, sanctimony in the midst of obvious wrongdoing, toadying and bullying have become the ruling characteristics of the British people, or at least those of them who are in charge of something. The old virtues - stoicism, honesty, fortitude, irony, good humour and so forth - can still be found, but only in people who are of no importance, at least in the public administration. If I may put it very strongly, good people are like a defeated class in this country.

Go read the whole thing. The disease is not peculiar to Britain; it can be found in bureaucracies at every level of government, the social services, and academia here in America.

Lincoln Allison doesn't care for Islam, but he loves traveling to Muslim countries, particularly Dubai, in which he sees hopeful signs for the future:

Is the future of East-West relations to be understood from Iraq or Iran or Algeria? Or is the real clue to be found in Dubai, a place that writers of fiction would not dare make up and academics have great difficulty in theorising. It is the non-society society where religion, ethnicity, culture, nationality are private matters, where more than 90% of the population come from somewhere else. It has the world's fanciest mosques, but also the headquarters of the International Cricket Council and the venues for global events in motor racing, horse racing, golf and rugby. It is the afterthought to empire, duplicating British Indian and Ottoman pluralisms and ethnic divisions of functioning: the Pakistanis do the work, the Brits do the organising and the Arabs collect the rent.

Ex-pats compare it to Hong Kong under the Cultural Revolution and Portugal during the war, a neutral territory where people find that pressing their normal ideological positions does not serve their interests. Rumours talk of protection money going to Al Qaeda, of Osama Bin Laden being treated in the American Hospital and of the property boom collapsing like a burst balloon if there is a single terrorist bomb.

It is a place that everybody ought to see to understand their own era - like Manchester in the 1840s or New York in the 1890s. Where will it all be in 50 years time? Globalisation will stand or fall with Dubai? I would want it to stand because I like the idea of a society where commerce is a higher reality than religion. Most people want it to stand and believe it is going to, judging from the numbers of Westerners who are buying property there, as in other Arab countries. East-West pluralism certainly works better there than it does in Burnley. But there can be no pretense that commerce and religion can be kept entirely apart: witness the recent legal nightmares which occur when the owners of real estate (fully allowed to foreigners only this century) die and their wives cannot inherit under Muslim law!

Commerce doesn't trump deep-seated anti-Israel attitudes either, as Dick Morris reports in his latest column:

But don't be fooled. Dubai, which is one of the seven princedoms of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is anything but tolerant and progressive.

To put it bluntly: They don't like Jews.

In fact, Dubai, like the rest of the UAE, is blatantly anti-Semitic. It bars all Israeli citizens from ever setting foot in the country. People from other nations whose passport have stamps indicating they've even visited Israel must notify Dubai immigration authorities of the stamp before entering.

Dubai is also actively involved in the Arab boycott of Israel: It bans all products made in Israel and even ones with parts made in Israel.

Dubai is engaged in a massive PR push to attract Western investment. One result was attracting the world HQ of Halliburton. A key agent in their PR campaign is Der Schlickmeister himself:

Dubai's PR machine went into high gear after 9/11 - in part to distract attention from the extensive use the terrorists made of the emirate. More than half of the hijackers traveled to the United States via Dubai. The 9/11 Commission noted that $234,500 of the $300,000 wired to the hijackers and plot leaders in America came via Dubai banks.

Several months after 9/11, Dubai's newest best friend began his public association with the country. In January 2002, Bill Clinton gave his first Dubai speech (for $300,000). He' been legitimizing the country ever since.

Clinton was the rainmaker who introduced the emir to his friend and employer, Ron Berkle, the owner of Yucaipa companies and a major fund-raiser for Bill and Hillary.

Last year, Yucaipa and the emir formed a new company, DIGL, for their joint ventures. So Bill Clinton is now an adviser and member of the board of directors of a company that is in partnership with the anti-Israeli government of Dubai.

The Clintons won't reveal how much the former president pocketed for setting up this deal, except to report on Hillary's Senate disclosure form: "more than $1,000."

A lot more. According to San Francisco Examiner columnist P.J. Corkery, Clinton makes $10 million a year from Yucaipa.

Morris doesn't let prominent Republican retirees off the hook either -- George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John Sununu are mentioned as helping to legitimize the country in the U. S.

Perhaps Dubai is in transition and modernization will encourage them to drop their anti-Israel stance. But it will probably take some pressure in that direction, some encouragement from the Emir's friends in America to make that happen.

Northern Ireland, the part of the island of Ireland which remained in the United Kingdom after the 1922 partition, held an election for its assembly earlier this week and the results are in. The Democratic Unionist Party won the most seats, followed by Sinn Fein. The last time we traveled to Northern Ireland, in 1995, these two parties were the also-rans, the hard-liners for their respective views -- unionist (Northern Ireland should remain a part of the UK) and republican (the Six Counties should be reunited with the Republic of Ireland). The DUP was and is led by its founder, Ian Paisley, who is also founder of his own Presbyterian denomination. But for the DUP's hard-line unionist views, it has never been allied with a terrorist group. Sinn Fein has. Sinn Fein is the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which has engaged in terror attacks on civilians and police officers and in Mafia-like organized crime within its own community.

The more conciliatory expressions of unionist and republican views, the Ulster Unionist Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, respectively, have fallen from favor with the electorate. David Trimble and John Hume, the leaders of the two parties, won the Nobel Peace Prize, but the agreement that won them that honor has not lived up to its promise.

Six members of the assembly are elected from each parliamentary constituency, using the "single transferable vote" method. This is similar to instant runoff voting in that each voter ranks the candidates in order of preference. The difference is that the counting in a way that elects multiple candidates, rather than a single candidate. I had hoped to point you to results that shows the count as it progresses, but I can't find that the detailed results on the web anywhere. The BBC has the final results and the first preference counts (how many voters chose a candidate as first choice), but not the detailed count-by-count results. This is a good method for picking representatives when you have widely divergent views mixed together in a single region. It ensures that widely-held perspectives have a seat at the table, but it allows the voters to choose which individual candidates will represent them, rather than leaving the pick to party bosses (as the party-list system of proportional representation does).

Under the rules for the Northern Ireland Assembly established by the British Parliament, the head of the first place party will be First Minister of Northern Ireland, while the head of the second place party will be his Deputy. The two leaders -- Ian Paisley of the DUP and Martin McGuinness of SF -- will have to come to agreement over which assembly member will fill each cabinet position. This is likely to work as well as that movie in which Ray Milland's head is grafted on to Rosey Grier's body.

The alternative to successfully forming a government? Control over local matters will continue to be wielded by a Minister for Northern Ireland handpicked by Tony Blair.

(I should have many more links, but I'm in a bit of a rush. Check Wikipedia to learn more.)

According to a real-time test performed through the website greatfirewallofchina.org, BatesLine is blocked from viewing in China by the Communist government. I'm in good company: So are amnesty.org, cato.org, Drudge Report, Instapundit, Harvard, Princeton, the BBC, the New York Times, myspace, CNN, and the White House, among many others.

(CORRECTED -- I had .com instead of .org, which is what I get for looking at a website on one computer and blogging about it on another one.)

A few weeks ago, CBN News anti-terrorism analyst Erick Stakelbeck visited Tulsa to talk to Jamal Miftah, the Pakistani Muslim who was kicked out of the mosque of the Islamic Society of Tulsa for his guest opinion condemning those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam. Stakelbeck also interviewed me during his visit.

The story will air tomorrow (Tuesday) on "The 700 Club," seen on the ABC Family Channel (Cox Cable channel 37) at 8:00 a.m. Central time, and again at 10:00 p.m. The story should also appear on the cbnnews.com website after it airs.

Click here to see Stakelbeck's earlier, brief report about Miftah on Hot Air.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the text and the video of Stakelbeck's report on Jamal Miftah.

I came across a very interesting piece setting out the U. S. military's eleven-point plan for victory in Iraq. Point 10 was surprising:

Electoral Reform: The old system of national parties selecting candidates for positions was believed to have unfairly tipped the balance in favor of the Shiites and led to too many Pro-Iranian, Pro-Achmedinejad candidates ( like the nutbag terrorist Al Sadr ) receiving too many seats in the parliament. A new system of local candidates simply stepping forward and adding their name to the ballot will instead prevail.

A commenter elaborates on the problem, which exists for all party-list proportional representation systems:

As someone who’s been involved with the Iraqi electoral process, I cannot stress enough just how bad the present system is.

Iraq currently has a fully proportional representation system for Parliamentary elections. Meaning, if your party (or coalition) gets 33% of the vote, you get 33% of the seats. This ensures that sectarian interests are represented in Parliament in roughly the same number as their population. Even small groups like the Yezidi or Sabeans get 1 or 2 members. This sort of ability to be “representative” is WAY big in the Islamic world.

If you want an electoral system that consolidates power in the hands of a few sectarian party bosses and prevents any representative from appealing to any population outside his narrow sectarian constituency - this is the perfect system. If you want an electoral system that makes representatives responsible to the actual people they serve, PR is very much the *worst* system you could possibly imagine that can still be called democratic.

This is because PR works by having the parties put forth “lists” of candidates. For instance “555″ (the shia coalition) puts together a list of 275 candidates (275 seats in Parliament.) They got, i think, 131 seats. That means the first 131 candidates on the list get seats in Parliament. Who determines your placement on the list? The party bosses! So you can be #12 on the list or #176 - depending on how loyal you are to the party leader. Obviously, since being an MP brings with it many perks including cash and immunity - you want to be up high on that list. Conversely, whether or not your constituents are happy with you is irrelevant, because your placement on the list is wholly dependent on the party leaders.

However, were Iraq to develop a system based on geographic constituencies (based on a census) and adopt a “first past the post” system, sectarian groupings would be represented unevenly and some groups would never be represented at all. However, the representatives elected would be forced to be much more responsive to their voters in their geographic constituency. This is because they’d need to provide their voters with enough reason to vote for them and build enough coalitions among the electorate to get to 50% +1 vote. As a result, the ability of a small group of party leaders to dictate policy would be greatly reduced.

Unfortunately, adopting this type of syetm requires two things:

1) It relies on the party leaders, who now control the legislative/constitutional process, to voluntarily put into place a system that will dilute their power. Once PR is put in place as a representational system, it is notoriously difficult to change because it is not in the interests of the power brokers.

2) It will require significant changes in the current constitution. Given that the Parliament is paralyzed over constitutional amendments of an even less divisive nature (oil revenue sharing, etc.) the chances that the Iraqi Council of representatives will puch through such an electoral change is unlikely.

A sound system of representation will allow voters to select the individual who will represent them, rather than centralized party bosses, so that the representative is directly responsible to his constituents. It is possible to provide a degree of proportionality and minority representation while retaining geographical representation and without resorting to party lists. Ireland does this with constituencies electing three to five members each (based on population), using the single-transferable vote method.

Too bad Iraq wasn't encourgaed to take this approach in the first place. As the commenter notes, once a party-list system is in place, it is almost impossible to dislodge.

To help me (and you) keep up with what's happening on the ground in Iraq, I've added several Iraq-related blog feeds to my Newsgator page: Calvey in Iraq, the blog of former Oklahoma State Rep. Kevin Calvey, news releases and daily reports from the official Multi-National Force Iraq website, the blog of the Victory Caucus, and Iraq the Model, the perspective of two Baghdad residents.

As these blogs post new entries, you'll see them pop up on the Newsgator page.

Michelle Malkin's Hot Air has added a new correspondent to its roster: Erick Stakelbeck, a terrorism analyst for CBN News. In Stackelbeck's first Hot Air report, he gives an overview of Iran's 28 years of hostilities against the US and reports that Iran is now sending its own agents to work against Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, rather than relying on local proxies.

You can read more from Stakelbeck on his blog at the CBN website.

On at least 10 occasions in the '90s, Osama bin Laden was within the grasp of U. S. operatives, but the Clinton White House (specifically Sandy "Padded Pants" Berger) refused to give the order to act. The situation was dramatized in a scene that was ultimately cut from the ABC mini-series, "The Path to 9/11":

(Video link via Danny Carlton.)

If you want to read what the 9/11 commission had to say about the Clinton administration's half-hearted pursuit of bin Laden, here's a link to Chapter 4, "Responses to Al Qaeda's Initial Assaults."

Policymakers in the Clinton administration, including the President and his national security advisor, told us that the President’s intent regarding covert action against Bin Ladin was clear: he wanted him dead.This intent was never well communicated or understood within the CIA.Tenet told the Commission that except in one specific case (discussed later), the CIA was authorized to kill Bin Ladin only in the context of a capture operation. CIA senior managers, operators, and lawyers confirmed this understanding.“We always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him,” a former chief of the Bin Ladin unit said.

In February 1999, another draft Memorandum of Notification went to President Clinton. It asked him to allow the CIA to give exactly the same guidance to the Northern Alliance as had just been given to the tribals: they could kill Bin Ladin if a successful capture operation was not feasible. On this occasion, however, President Clinton crossed out key language he had approved in December and inserted more ambiguous language. No one we interviewed could shed light on why the President did this. President Clinton told the Commission that he had no recollection of why he rewrote the language.

It's a depressing read: Over and over again, you see the people on the ground reporting a solid opportunity to act, and the people at the upper echelons tell them to stand down. In May 1999, there were three opportunities in two days, but none of them were acted upon:

Replying to a frustrated colleague in the field, the Bin Ladin unit chief wrote:“having a chance to get [Bin Ladin] three times in 36 hours and foregoing the chance each time has made me a bit angry. . . . [T]he DCI finds himself alone at the table, with the other princip[als] basically saying ‘we’ll go along with your decision Mr.Director,’ and implicitly saying that the Agency will hang alone if the attack doesn’t get Bin Ladin.”

Evidently, Bill Clinton's motto -- "The Buck Never Even Got Here" -- was taken to heart by his cabinet and chief advisers.

The message board moderators on the BBC website are banning all entries that link to articles on Little Green Footballs, a blog that focuses on the activities of Islamic extremists and anti-Semitic groups around the world.

Here is the message that is replacing the deleted posts:

This posting has been temporarily hidden, because a member of our Moderation Team has referred it to the Hosts for a decision as to whether it contravenes the House rules in some way. We will do everything we can to ensure that a decision is made as quickly as possible.

The rule in question appears to be this one:

[We reserve the right to fail messages which] Contain links to other websites which break our Editorial Guidelines

The applicable guideline on unsuitable links:

A web page is unsuitable if it contains, or directly links to, anything which is... offensive... Hate sites (on grounds of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation)

Some of the anti-LGF members of the BBC board claim that if LGF were in print, it couldn't legally be published in the UK.

One poster sees this ban as part of a larger pattern at the BBC:

That the BBC does not allow a link to LGF will come as little surprise to those of us familiar with the BBCs output and editorial tone. What has come as a surprise to me, a relative newcomer to the 'blogosphere', is the degree to which the news the BBC chooses to present to us is filtered and censored. Whole stories that cause a sensation on the blogosphere and are of undoubted public interest are either mentioned in passing or not mentioned at all by the BBC.

Towards the end of last year I saw a BBC news report on the continuing anarchy in the Paris suburbs with protests by French police against the increasing number of attacks they were coming under. This was around three weeks after the same story first began circulating on the blogs.

By now all of us will have familiarised ourselves with the anodyne Mohammed cartoons that provoked such controversy last year - not through the MSM but through the blogosphere. Would any of us know about last years riots in Windsor, the Reuters fauxtography scandal or the home office ordering 12,000 nuclear protection suits for the Met over Christmas if it wasn't for the blogs? Do you know what one of the main uses of Polonium-210 is? Look it up on the internet because the recent Panorama programme didn't tell us.

And more recently have you heard about last week's conference in London hosted by the Mayor where Ken Livingstone was debating with Daniel Pipes on the topic of 'A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations'? No? Didn't you hear about it on the BBC? Odd that, particularly since the debate was chaired by the Beebs own Gavin Esler.

However if you do rely on the BBC for your news coverage you will today know which Archbishop turned down an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother and that a photo of David Beckham slaying a dragon is on display at Disneyworld. You will also no doubt recall the story of motorists caught on CCTV driving into traffic bollards in Manchester and of the pelican that swallowed a pigeon.

Increasingly it isn't going to matter to the likes of Little Green Footballs whether or not the BBC links to them. The more pertinent question, in the not too distant future, is whether Little Green Footballs will allow links to the BBC.

Little Green Footballs was one of the blogs that inspired me to start my own. Blogger Charles Johnson has succeeded in calling attention to stories that are overlooked or deliberately ignored and in debunking stories that the mainstream media has gotten wrong. What's got Auntie Beeb's knickers in a twist is that the stories he posts interfere with their pro-radical-Islam, anti-Israel, anti-Western Civilization world view.

Phyllis Schlafly's latest column makes the claim that high-tech companies are engaged in a conspiracy against American workers by pushing the Federal government to allow more engineers to come to America under H-1B visas.

Like all visas, the H-1B visa is temporary permission to be in the United States, specifically to allow college-educated foreign nationals to work in "specialty occupations" such as engineering and architecture. I've worked side-by-side with engineers who are here on H-1B visas, and while I'm not prepared, with an early morning ahead of me, to make a detailed case in support of the program, I do want to respond to some of the things she says.

First, Schlafly denies that there is a labor shortage in high-tech fields and claims to know the hidden reasons behind the push to double the number of H-1B visas:

Three reasons motivate the tech giants to use their political clout and political action committee contributions to increase H-1Bs:

1. Cost-cutting: H-1B visa holders are paid much less than Americans.

2. The influx of H-1B visa holders depresses the "prevailing wage" for all computer techies and engineers.

3. The hiring of H-1B visa holders prevents potential competition from Americans who might choose to work for other firms or start companies of their own.

Reason 1 is false, and reasons 2 and 3 are dependent on reason 1. H-1B visa holders must, by law, be paid comparably to or better than American workers. Companies have to post notices listing the salary, job title, and experience of H-1B employees to allow other employees to verify that the visa holders aren't driving out American workers by accepting a low wage. The companies I have worked for have complied with this requirement. She goes on:

H-1B visas are not for entrepreneurs or executives. They are for employees who are tied to the company that imports them, much like indentured servants, and are supposed to depart from the United States after a few years....

H-1B visa holders cut industry costs but do nothing to improve innovation. Most innovators are Americans, and the successful immigrant entrepreneurs the industry brags about did not come here as guest workers on H-1B visas, but entered as children and were educated in U.S. universities.

Most H-1B visa holders I've known are using it as a first step to qualify for permanent residency and eventual citizenship. And the companies I've worked for are not going to Bangalore and Karachi to scout for employees, the way baseball scouts scour San Pedro de Macoris for new talent. Instead, international students who are earning advanced degrees at places like Oklahoma State University or the University of Kansas look for job opportunities that will allow them to work in their profession and stay in the US. They are not tethered to the first employer that hires them.

They may not all be entrepreneurs, but many of them are innovators. The hydraulic digital control loading and motion system -- the system that provides realistic control feel and motion sensations for pilot training -- used on hundreds of FlightSafety simulators worldwide was developed here in Broken Arrow by a Jordanian with a doctorate from OSU, assisted by a Finn who was a grad student at OSU at the time. The development of the new all-electrical version of the same system was led by the same Jordanian national, with the help of both Americans and other foreign nationals. Their contributions have made FlightSafety a world leader in the manufacture of flight simulators, enabling it to compete effectively against rivals based in Canada and France.

And these engineers are not going to steal our technology and take it back home. They love living here, their kids have grown up here, and they are here to stay. Even if they wanted to go back, "back home" doesn't have the capital to provide a place where they can do the challenging level of work they can do here.

This statement of Schlafly's just floored me:

Much of the Compete America discussion involved blaming the U.S. educational system and the fact that fewer U.S. students are going into math and computer sciences. Yes, U.S. students have figured out that our engineers have a bleak employment future because of insourcing foreigners and outsourcing manufacturing.

Isn't this the same Phyllis Schlafly who has been telling us what a bad job our schools are doing of educating our children in the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic? So now falling math scores and a decline of interest in the hard sciences are not the fault of goofy curriculum fads and too much focus on social engineering, but because engineers have a "bleak employment future"?

One of the things that makes America strong and prosperous is that the smartest people in the world want to live here, because we offer freedom, peace, and prosperity. When they come, they bring their own brains and then they sire brainy children. They buy homes here and spend their high salaries in our malls and supermarkets. They pay the same taxes (or even more) than we pay. They are building the intellectual capital of the United States of America. It's not so good for their home countries, but it's great for us.

Two more points, and then I really should call it a night:

(1) At a time when states like Oklahoma worry about a brain drain to places like Silicon Valley, talented foreign engineers help to fill the gap here in the heartland, as they're often happy just to be in the United States. Many find the slower pace and more conservative way of life here more like home and better for raising a family.

(2) Schlafly seems to think that engineering degree programs and computer programming courses automatically churn out the kind of engineers American companies need, and as long as Americans get that piece of paper they ought to be able to get a job. We do have to have a certain number of people who can do basic programming and simple engineering, but to stay ahead of the rest of the world we need people with agility of mind, with the ability to solve problems that haven't been solved before. That's a gift, a gift which can be refined and improved by education, but which can't be educated into existence. We can use all of those minds that we can find anywhere in the world.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about Jamal Miftah and his treatment by leaders of the Islamic Society of Tulsa's al-Salam ("Peace") mosque over his guest editorial in the October 29 Tulsa World. (Here's a link to the text of his op-ed.)

The same issue has another letter from Miftah, in which he makes the case from the Qu'ran that the Holy Land belongs to the Jews, and that means that Palestinian attacks on Israel cannot be justified as jihad. (It's on a page with the rest of the letters, so scroll down once you click to it.)

In the story I link to eteraz.org, a blog and web community for progressive Muslim activism. Ali Eteraz interviewed Jamal Miftah and has written several more articles about the situation. Another site of interest is the Free Muslims Coalition:

The Free Muslims Coalition is a nonprofit organization made up of American Muslims and Arabs of all backgrounds who feel that religious violence and terrorism have not been fully rejected by the Muslim community in the post 9-11 era.

The Free Muslims was created to eliminate broad base support for Islamic extremism and terrorism and to strengthen secular democratic institutions in the Middle East and the Muslim World by supporting Islamic reformation efforts.

The Free Muslims promotes a modern secular interpretation of Islam which is peace-loving, democracy-loving and compatible with other faiths and beliefs. The Free Muslims' efforts are unique; it is the only mainstream American-Muslim organization willing to attack extremism and terrorism unambiguously. Unfortunately most other Muslim leaders believe that in terrorist organizations, the end justifies the means.

Here's an interesting piece from their blog about the two faces of Saudi Arabia -- is it friend or foe to the West?

So is the Saudi Arabian government a friend of the United States or does Saudi Arabia propagate hate and intolerance among American Muslims and Muslims world wide? The answer to both of these questions is yes. The Saudi Arabian government is a great friend to the United States and at the same time many in Saudi Arabia, including some who receive government funding propagate hate and intolerance against anyone who does not share their Wahabi inspired ideology. The answers to both these questions may seem inconsistent and counter intuitive but these seemingly inconsistent answers reflect the complexity of modern day Saudi Arabia.

By now everyone has heard of the historic compact between the Saudi Royal Family and the fanatical Wahabi religious establishment. According to this agreement, the Saudi Royal family deals exclusively with matters of state while the Wahabi religious establishment deals with issues of morality which includes substantial control over the education system and the substantive interpretation of Islam. It is this division of power that produces the two faces of Saudi Arabia.

As long as my column is this week, I've got much more material that I didn't use, particularly from my interview with Jamal Miftah, and I have more research to do on Saudi funding of Islamic organizations in the West. I hope to get this material out here on BatesLine or in UTW.

Not too many farmers own an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile launch control facility, but the Neidlinger family of Hampden, North Dakota, does. When the Grand Forks Air Force Base Minuteman missile field was decommissioned about a decade ago, they bought back the site of the E-0 launch control center. A few days ago, Julie Neidlinger's dad took her for a look inside the building:

It was an eerie experience, walking through the disasterous mess that still didn't hide the evidence of a system dismantled in the name of peace. Today was windy, like all North Dakota days, the wind blowing in hard and cold from the west, whistling through the ventilation system in the kitchen. The darkened interior, only lit by my dad's flashlight and the periodic flash of my camera, mixed with the windy wail.

"It's kind of ghostly in here," dad said. I agreed. I'd been thinking that myself, feeling as if I was walking through some cold war graveyard being overrun by the animals who were already busy reclaiming an area of the country where the people were few and the space was great. I felt as if I was on the set of a horror or disaster movie. It wasn't The Day After. It was The Decade After.

In a re-run entry from summer '05, Julie tells of a tour of the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex near Nekoma, N. D., an anti-ballistic missile complex briefly operational in 1976:

Though not as large as its still very much functioning counterpart at the Cavalier Air Station, whose pyramid is monstrous with a radar so sensitive in cataloguing space debris that it once overloaded Cheyenne Mountain, Nekoma's pyramid rises from the plains like a prairie iceberg. Most of it's cyclopic structure is buried below ground, leaving only the tip to poke through and be seen. According to our tour guide, one of the few men still taking care of the abandoned site, the interior of the structure has been stripped bare, but is so huge and cavernous that many of the hallways and passages deep inside have their own atmosphere. He told of how, on certain days, some hallways have fog rolling about inside. There is also much water, particularly since the water table in the region has been high since about 1993.

Just to the north of the radar pyramid are bunkers and a flat area of weedy concrete with two types of white hatches. Housed here were the Sprint and Spartan missiles. These missiles functioned as interceptors, one long-range (Spartan) and the other in case the Spartan failed.

Both entries have photos of the facilities and links to information about the North Dakota missile facilities. Beyond the technical details, Julie provides a sense of how North Dakotans felt about having nuclear missiles in their backyards, and how they feel now that those days are gone:

The people in the towns of both Nekoma, and especially Langdon, still talk about the glory days of the missile site. You can hear it during meetings, when someone will carelessly refer to a past event with the tag "that was back when the missiles came."

I still hear of how nice the county road became when a Minuteman went in along it. Good roads are gold here, and to some, if it brought about good roads, there wasn't much to complain about.

For some reason, as I try to motivate you to read these blog entries, I keep thinking about Stuckey's. We spotted a couple of former Stuckey's and Nickerson Farms buildings on our way back to Tulsa on Sunday. These roadside businesses went hand-in-hand with the spread of the interstate highway system. (On trips down the Turner Turnpike, Dad preferred the Stuckey's near Wellston and Bristow, because they served real Coke, not Ho-Jo Cola.) They were modern in the '60s, and who would have imagined a long car trip without spotting a dozen or more along the way? Today, most of the old Stuckey's locations are closed (although Stuckey's is still in business as a franchised convenience store chain), Nickerson Farms is long gone, and the buildings have been "repurposed" as antique malls, pr0n shops, and, mostly, ruins.

In the same way, in the '60s and '70s, it was hard to imagine a world without two nuclear superpowers aiming massive numbers of nuclear missiles at each other, a world in which a good defense was considered an offense against peace, a world in which billions of dollars were devoted to maintaining a sufficient deterrent against a ruthless totalitarian regime that threatened our liberty and our existence. Today, some of that infrastructure for deterrence may be repurposed as a place where trees and vegetables may be grown, unmolested by deer. Today, America can't muster the political will to protect our borders and project power against another ruthless totalitarian movement which threatens our liberty and our existence.

If you lived through the Cold War, or especially if you didn't, read these two articles.

Fifty years ago today, Imre Nagy, Prime Minister of Hungary, declared his country's withdrawal from the Soviet-controlled Warsaw Pact. This marked the high point of a brief period of independence which had begun 11 days earlier and which would end three days later when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest. Nagy was tried, executed, and buried in secret. It was only after the 1989 revolution, when Hungary finally and completely threw off the Soviet yoke, that Nagy was given the honor due him.

Freedom Fighter 56 Oral History Project presents the stories of 56 Hungarians who were there and remember that time.

Although the Revolution of '56 was shortlived, it left a deep impression on someone who would have a significant role in Hungary's ultimate liberation, remembered by economist János Horváth:

I became acquainted with Ronald Reagan in 1974 when he was Governor of California. At the time I was head of the Department of Economics at Butler University in Indianapolis. Governor [Ronald] Reagan came to Indiana repeatedly during the early months of that year to help in the Republican primary election campaign his friend and colleague, Governor Edgar Whitcomb, who aspired to become a U.S. Senator. I was Chairman of Economic Advisors for Governor Whitcomb, and in that capacity I accompanied the two men on many campaign trips throughout the state....

[After fielding questions at a campaign stop], when we were riding in the automobile or sitting in a restaurant munching on a sandwich, I would meticulously elaborate on the theoretical as well as the institutional background of the question. Reagan repeatedly redirected the conversation to other topics. Almost always he reached back to the 1956 Hungarian revolution and fight for freedom, and he revealed a surprising acquaintance with the details.

Governor Reagan during those months repeatedly questioned me about the events and circumstances of the 1956 revolution. Frequently, he interrupted my explanation of economic matters with an unexpected question. “János, you were there. Tell me about the demonstrations on the Parliament Square. Who brought the the 300,000 people to the square? Why did the ÁVO open fire on the crowd on October 25th when it hadn’t on the 23rd? Is it really true that the demonstrators did not possess weapons initially?” And he had further questions regarding the Kilián barracks and the heroic resistance at Széna tér (Haymarket Square)....

I asked questions of Governor Reagan, too. I asked why he knew so much about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Was it because he was contemplating the future outlook of the Soviet Union? What would he do in the role of making foreign policy? From his responses and comments it became crystal clear that he was quite close to the position that had evolved during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, namely, that the Soviet Union and communism in general were not as stable as they had appeared to be.

In another account, Andrew P. Fodor, then a Hungarian Army cadet, remembers a scene of resistance that would be repeated 33 years later, half a world away:

I peeked through the factory gate. I could hardly believe my eyes. Across the street, in the dark, shadowy doorway of a rundown building, a fellow cadet from my school was standing armed to the teeth, aiming his weapon at something. But at what? I peeked out again; there was a lone Soviet tank standing about two blocks away.

Again, I looked across the street, for I thought he was going to fire at the tank - and he did. The tank immediately replied. Across the street, the whole doorway collapsed and part of the building disappeared. István and I hurriedly retreated to the basement again.

I cannot forget this cadet's face. It was partly lit by a weak, autumn sun after a rainy day, on a sad, very sad November day in Budapest. His fight was futile and hopeless, yet he was a real patriot. When István and I finally left the factory, I crossed the street and wanted to put some flowers where he stood, but there were no flowers around. I reached into the pocket of my workman's overall, where I carried my military cap and slowly placed it on the shattered plaster pieces, which were all that remained of the doorway where he stood before.

As the years passed, his image faded in my memory, but once in a while his desperate act still haunts me. The last time I remembered him vividly was when I saw the picture of a lone Chinese student in Beijing trying to stop a long column of Chinese army tanks going to Tiananmen Square…

I found this via Robert N. Going's Judge Report. Going remarked on the effect of the uprising and its suppression on the West:

First, it reminded us at just the right time that, as Dr. Fred Schwarz used to say, you can trust the communists to be communists.

We were in the early years of the post-Stalin era and, as we've heard so many times since, a new enlightened leadership was at the helm. Nikita Kruschev had denounced Stalin and his terror and all the usual suspects (who had ignored Stalin's terror while it was happening) proclaimed the age of peaceful cooperation. Anti-communism in the United States had run its course following the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, and we were back on the road to blissful ignorance.

I wasn't around in '56, but somewhere along the way I remember hearing about an after-effect of the events of October and November -- the December 6 water polo match between Hungary and the USSR at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia:

By the start of the Olympics, the uprising had been brutally dealt with, and many of the players saw the Olympics as a way to salvage some pride for their country. "We felt we were playing not just for ourselves but for our whole country" said Zador after the match. By this time, the international community had become aware of the full brutality of the Soviet response to the Hungarian uprising and the Hungarian Olympic team was cheered wherever it competed. The "Blood In The Water" match was played out in front of a partisan crowd bolstered with expatriate Hungarians, many of whom had been in the boxing arena a few days before to see Laszlo Papp win his third gold medal.

From the start, the match was a very physical encounter with kicks and punches being exchanged. Star Hungarian player Zador scored two goals to the cheers of the crowd. Leading 4–0 going into the final minutes, Zador was forced to leave the pool after being punched by Valentin Prokopov. Zador's injury was the final straw for a crowd which was already in a frenzy. To avoid a riot breaking out, the match was abandoned with 1 minute to go and police entered the arena to shepherd the crowd away. Pictures of Zador's injuries were published in the press around the world leading to the "Blood in the Water" name, although reports that the water did actually turn red were probably an exaggeration.

The Hungarians went on to beat Yugoslavia 2–1 in the final and win their fourth Olympic gold medal. Following the Olympics, half of the 100-member Hungarian Olympic delegation defected.

Zador went on to coach American Olympic champion Mark Spitz, who is narrator of a just-released film about the match, Freedom's Fury.

(Unrelated except chronologically, Going has a sweet personal reminiscence about being a five-year-old budding contrarian in 1956.)

You need to read Dan Paden's latest entry, Karate Ni Sente Nashi. The phrase means, "There is no first attack in karate," but it's a phrase that is easily misunderstood. Dan uses an anecdote about two karate brown belts to illustrate what it means to recognize and respond to the first attack, whether in self-defense or national defense.

It's been on my mind all day, but I'm only just now getting the chance to sit down and collect my thoughts about the events of September 11, 2001.

Hot Air has clips of CNN's coverage from the morning of 9/11. There's something about seeing a repeat of the live news coverage -- it strips away the 20/20 hindsight and lets us remember the confusion and shock of the moment.

The third clip on that page deserves your attention, especially if you've been hearing the wild claim that no plane hit the Pentagon. It features a phone interview with a pilot who had a view of the Pentagon crash from his high-rise Arlington apartment building. Later in the same clip, CNN reporter Jamie McIntyre describes the debris on the scene. These are contemporaneous eyewitness accounts of the crash and its aftermath.

I watched the beginning of ABC's "The Path to 9/11" last night, up through the explosion of Ramzi Yousef's lab in Manila. Very powerful, very well organized and presented -- it reminded me of Ron Howard's Apollo 13 in that regard. I don't normally get riled up watching TV -- it's a "cool" medium, after all -- but the opening sequence showing the terrorists checking in for their flights and going through security made my blood boil.

I can't be the only Oklahoman who was struck by several things in the section about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing: the rented Ryder truck, the type of explosive used, and the central clue, the discovery of a bit of the frame showing the vehicle identification number of the otherwise vaporized truck. The Oklahoma City bombers also filled a rented Ryder truck with a fertiliser and fuel oil bomb, and it was a piece of the axle that allowed law enforcement to track the truck back to a rental location in Junction City, Kansas.

Two years ago I wrote about one of the victims of the 9/11 attack, Jayesh Shah. Jay was a native of India, but he and his younger brother Niloy went to Memorial High School and then on to the University of Tulsa. I met the Shah brothers through Hal O'Halloran's "Sports Night" talk show on KXXO 1300, sometime around 1979 or 1980. They were fierce competitors in Hal's weekly trivia contests. I remember Jay as the quieter of the two, but he had a mischievous streak. In the late '80s, post-college, the two brothers made a number of trips with others in our circle of friends to play blackjack in Las Vegas. Both brothers wound up in Houston with their families, working for Amoco. I'd see them on holiday visits to Tulsa.

When I heard that the World Trade Center towers had been hit and then that they had collapsed, I had no idea that I knew anyone who might have been in there. It was only later that day that I learned that six months earlier, Jay had left Houston to take an executive position with a division of Cantor Fitzgerald. His office was in the north tower, on the 103rd floor. Niloy had tried to call Jay as usual that morning, but hadn't been able to reach him. Niloy and family left Houston for to New York as quickly as they could and began days of searching for Jay, hoping that somehow he had made it out. I remember scanning survivor's lists online and the moment of false hope when someone with the same name turned up on one of them -- but it wasn't him. (Here is a note that was sent out sometime around September 20, 2001, about the status of the search for Jayesh and plans for a prayer service.)

As part of a worldwide effort to remember the victims of the attack as individuals, not just a number, nearly 3,000 bloggers are each remembering one of them. Judge William of Right Indignation has posted this rememberance of Jayesh Shah.

The terrorist organization that has been in the news for its attacks on Israeli civilians and for using Lebanese civilians as human shields is called Hezbollah, sometimes spelled Hizballah, sometimes there's an apostrophe -- Hizb'allah. It's Arabic for "Party of God."

My friend Redsneakz has decided that Hizb'shaitan is a more accurate title. (You can decode that, can't you?) I agree and intend to follow his example.

Although, given their devotion of sacrificing their own children and the children of others in the name of their false god, Hezb'moloch would be appropriate, too.

It is reported that Fidel Castro has "temporarily" stepped aside as misleader of Cuba because of health problems.

Babalu Blog is the place to be to follow Castro's demise and the succession as it unfolds.

From the Wall Street Journal:

[Mexico City] was voting to fill six seats, including that of the president and the mayor. Voters presented identification cards and were handed six large ballots, one for each open office. The names of candidates were also color-coded to assist the illiterate. Voting booths were small, waist-high writing tables enclosed by hanging plastic sheets printed with the reassuring words, "The vote is free and secret." Voters emerged from the booths, folded the ballots and slid each one into the box corresponding to the contested seat. To complete the process, thumbs were marked with indelible ink and ID cards were returned. Observers from each party monitored the flow.

In Oklahoma, parties are not allowed to have observers at polling places, ID cards are not required, and no effort is made to mark voters to prevent them from voting at multiple locations. These simple steps would be inexpensive and unobtrusive and would not present an obstacle to any voter. While they wouldn't eliminate the potential for intentional voter fraud and unintentional voter irregularities -- aspects of the registration process would still need to be addressed -- they would make a positive difference.

Another election in a former Soviet satellite, another win by a slim margin for the status quo, while foreign observers report that the election wasn't on the up-and-up. Protesters spend long, cold nights on the main square. That was Ukraine in December 2004; that is Belarus in March 2006.

Ivan Lenin, a native of Belarus, is blogging about the situation in Minsk, translating into English the live blogging being done by those on the scene, and adding his own perspective, such as this entry explaining why he doesn't want Belarus to follow the path of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. (You may remember Ivan as V. I. Lenin in the Communists for Kerry satirical protests in 2004. The same group is responsible for The People's Cube website.)

Keep Belarus in your prayers.

(Hat tip to Alarming News.)

Right Wing and Right Minded has a seven-question interview with Lt. Col. Brett Perry, husband of Hooah Wife Greta Perry. He is with the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, and was a part of the reconstruction effort in Iraq, which is the focus of the interview.

Also, the Perrys' seven-year-old son is up for a Weblog Award -- Best of the Rest. You can vote once a day, every day between now and the 15th.

Discoshaman, who thrilled us a year ago with live blogging from the Orange Revolution in the streets of Kiev, has been on hiatus for a while, but is back blogging at Le Sabot Post-Moderne and at a new blog, Religion of Peace?, which has the subhead, "Ignore the corpses behind the green curtain." It's also described as "One-stop shopping for War on Terror news." Here's his introductory post.

Mel at Engine of the Future commends our public officials for their concern about refinery capacity, but he thinks their proposals need a little (ahem) refining.

Regarding Congressman John Sullivan's Cushing megarefinery proposal, Mel likes the idea of a Cushing refinery, but it shouldn't be the only one:

If we were dependant on one �megarefinery� anywhere as our lone reserve capacity, I can imagine one �megatornado�, causing �megadamage�, leading to another �megacrisis� in energy. Megabad idea in my opinion.

With respect to our energy infrastructure, if Katrina is to teach us anything, it is this: We must diversify the locations and their capabilities.

I do applaud Congressman Sullivan though, at least he�s thinking along the right path.

Regarding Corporation Commissioner Denise Bode's proposal to provide tax incentives for increasing refinery capacity, Mel says tax breaks won't budge oil companies who are quite happy with reduced capacity.

By the way, of Tulsa's two refineries, only the Sinclair Refinery produces gasoline. The Sun Refinery produces lubricants, waxes, and aromatic oils for industrial uses.

Keeping up with the latest commentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

Mister Snitch! has several more informative links today, including one to a "fingerpointing-free timeline of the Katrina response" by Rick Moran. Moran lists what actions were taken, by whom, and when, and avoids questions of what might have been done but wasn't. Snitch's entry has the Readers' Digest version, and a link to a masterful Mark Steyn column on the culture of passivity and New Orleans' response to Katrina.

Louisiana native and New York resident Ken Wheaton compares the situation and leadership in New York on 9/11 with the situation and leadership in New Orleans now. He says that unlike NYC in 2001, NO lacks "a functioning political system," and he thinks what happened may wind up improving the lot of many of the poorest New Orleans residents:

I don't think any human on the face of the earth could have busted up New Orleans slums and fixed the city, not even Rudy G. And, as harsh as this may seem, I think this natural disaster may have served as a radical chemotherapy for one of the last big malignant tumors of extreme poverty in this country. Free from a useless government, predatory criminals, lack of employment options, and a barely-there-but-still-addictive social net, I expect a lot of those evacuated will indeed move up in life.

Oklahoma City's Downtown Guy notes that the city has a large supply of vacant housing in public hands and suggests fixing it up and making it available at a nominal cost to hurricane refugees. Some of the comments echo Ken Wheaton's sentiment, for example, this from "PapaJack2":

My experience with New Orleans indicates a lot of the evacuees wanted to get out of New Orleans, but lacked the means to do so. Many will never return. A friend of mine at Express Personnel said they were contacted by evacuees as early as last Friday looking for jobs in OKC. People with that kind of initiative are always welcome.

Speaking of personal initiative, Charles G. Hill links to Baseball Crank, who writes that Katrina proves there's a lot to be said for having the means to move yourself to safety.

The lesson here is that anybody who can afford a car is crazy not to have one, the dreams of bicycle-riding environmentalists and central planners the world over to the contrary. In addition to its other virtues, a car can get you out of harm's way without having to depend on the government in a time of crisis.

There's an interesting (and, for Dustbury, unusually heated) comments thread on Charles's entry, in response to his closing remark:

And there remain those who are anxious to point out that poor people don't have all these options. This is, of course, one of many reasons why it sucks to be poor, and if you have any ambition and any sense, you'll reorient your life so at some point you become not poor. (Waiting around for the government to do things for you, incidentally, is neither ambitious nor sensible.)

Oklahoma Baptists are ready to welcome 3,000 refugees at Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center near Davis, but the refugees haven't arrived, and there's no word on when they're likely to show up. Yesterday the highway patrol had to turn away volunteers, who drove from all over the state to help.

Finally, the intrepid DirectNIC crew has more news and photos from the heart of New Orleans, where they have been keeping a data center operating through the entire crisis. They're offering to help those who have fled but have an office in their building or nearby -- they will check on your office or even try to hook up your computers into their network to allow you to access your data.

I'm happy to see that Oklahoma Baptists have taken the initiative to welcome and house refugees from Hurricane Katrina at Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center, near Davis in south-central Oklahoma, home to one of the largest church camps in the country. Falls Creek has a cafeteria, a conference center, and a hundred or so "cabins" owned by local churches, most of them air conditioned, each housing between 20 and 200 campers. It should be a pretty comfortable situation.

Mister Snitch! links to the fascinating Survival of New Orleans blog, written by someone with DirectNIC, a New Orleans ISP which has managed to remain running and connected to the net since Katrina struck. He also links to Brendan Loy, who wrote about the impending disaster as the hurricane bore down on NO, and who says it could have been much worse.

Lance Salyers notes that Dennis Hastert wasn't the first to question the wisdom of rebuilding NO after the devastation of a hurricane. The first was a city official. (UPDATE 10/25/2005: Had to remove the link, as Lance has taken down his blog and the URL has been hijacked by a spammer.)

David Warren is optimistic about New Orleans' future:

If I may be so insensitive as to continue looking on the bright side, the experience of Katrina was just what was needed, to reconsider the city's environmental defences. After the expenditure of a few more billion dollars (the kind of government spending in which I exult), it ought to be possible to make the whole levee and pumping system good to withstand Category Five. It is an engineering challenge, the sort of thing Americans love, and can afford....

Indeed, one of the things that makes great disasters so exciting is the prospect of recovery -- of restoring what was best and building what is better. It is a moment in which the cost-benefit analysis swings out of view, and in which we confront the elements with what is elemental in ourselves.

Vanderleun of American Digest Modestly Proposes that America take a year off from helping the rest of the world to rebuild itself.

Amidst all the finger-pointing about the mismanagement of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the blogosphere is digging for the facts.

Don Singleton has been tracking down the emergency response plans, and the timeline of official actions and responses. I haven't had time to wade through it all, but he's put it together here. Bottom line is that New Orleans wasn't prepared to execute and didn't execute its own plan.

Don links to JunkYard Blog, whose site has maxed out its bandwidth. JunkYard Blog has aerial and satellite photos showing hundreds of New Orleans school buses that were abandoned to the flood waters, rather than being used to evacuate NO residents before the hurricane hit, as the hurricane plan called for.

Since JYB's site is down, I'll point you to the key photos. This is a photo of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority's bus facility, less than a mile from the Superdome, with 146 buses, enough to ferry at least 9,000 passengers out of the city before the hurricane, if city officials had followed the evacuation plan.

This photo is of 255 New Orleans school buses, a site that's been dubbed the Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool. There are enough buses here to have carried 13,000 to 17,000 passengers out of New Orleans (depending on bus capacity) prior to the hurricane.

JunkYard Blog has maxed out its bandwidth, but you can find the information in Google's cache for now.

UPDATE: Be sure to read W.'s comment on why the buses weren't used.

Refugee. What a strange word to apply to Americans. Refugee is a word for people in Ethiopia or Bangladesh. It's for people who have had to leave their homes behind because of war, famine, or natural disaster, and they may never be able to return.

There may be as many as a million refugees from the New Orleans area alone. Their homes are gone or uninhabitable. Their jobs are gone. If they aren't out of money already, they will be soon enough. These people will need to start over in some other part of the country -- find a place to work, find a place to live. In the meantime, they need places to stay and food to eat.

The Presbyterian Church in America's Mission to North America is seeking volunteers and financial contributions to help with the recovery effort. The Southern Baptist Convention have deployed feeding units in cooperation with the American Red Cross and Salvation Army. Oklahoma Baptists have a feeding unit deployed to Baton Rouge.

Glenn Reynolds has a long list of relief organizations recommended by bloggers, including the two mentioned above.

UPDATE: Bumped the date to keep this at the top of the page.

Ken Wheaton has posted a lengthy report from his friend Felicia, who has been talking with New Orleans refugees at the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana. She relates one story from a man who watched National Guard troops drive away, rather than assist New Orleans police in a fight with looters. This same man tells of a private initiative to get people out of the city that was thwarted:

The man who witnessed this from his windows also stated that the owner of the Montleone Hotel charted 10 buses and paid $25,000.00 out of his own pocket to get the people out of hotel because he was getting no assistance. The witness was offered a ride and packed up. He said that when the buses got there, he looked out of his open window and watched as a Guard walked up to the owner and asked what the buses were for. When the owner explained and asked for assistance in getting the guests onto the shuttles, the guard laughed and said no. They confiscated the buses. The witness didn't even get a chance to get down to the street and they were gone. Where they went he didn't know. He immediately went back upstairs and bolted himself in. He's still up there.

Just getting in on the tail end of Katrina Blog Relief Day:

Here are some links that have helped me understand the extent of the damage caused in New Orleans and the central Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina.

Referring to the city's distinct accent, New Orleans writer John Kennedy Toole called New Orleans "that Hoboken near the Gulf of Mexico." Hoboken, New Jersey, local-blogger Mister Snitch! has a good round up of links, including links to charities working in the area and to a slideshow of aerial images of flooding in New Orleans. He links to an affecting personal account on Slate, "Mourning My New Orleans" by Josh Levin. Levin writes:

As the endlessly looping aerial footage shows little more than a giant lake with highway overpasses peeking out, I'm glad I wasn't there and terrified I never will be again. A friend from high school told me he took the scenic route out of town on Sunday morning so he could remember the places he needed to remember: Molly's at the Market, the Warehouse District, the Uptown JCC, the corner of St. Charles Avenue where he drank his first beer. I squint at the screen, searching for some kind of landmark to say goodbye to, but the only thing that's recognizable is the Superdome, which now looks like a potato with the skin peeled off to reveal the rotten insides.

Mister Snitch! also has a well-researched and level-headed article asking who's to blame for the flooding of New Orleans. Is it because the levees haven't been maintained? Is it because the levees are there at all? Is global warming to blame for the apparent increase in higher-intensity hurricanes?

The Truth Laid Bear has a special page set up to track blogging about Katrina and relief efforts.

Here's a blog devoted to reporting on damage around Slidell, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

The Times-Picayune has evacuated the city, but they're still publishing online. Here's their special Katrina section. The paper also maintains a blog-like breaking news column.

Can New Orleans be rebuilt? Should it? In his weekly "Vent" column, Charles G. Hill responds to the idea of abandoning the site:

New Orleans is there, not because of some accident of fate that plopped it down in a suboptimal location, but because, over the years, millions of people have wanted it there. And one of the great privileges of living in this land is being able to live just about anywhere you want.

Jessica of The New Vintage says that federally-subsidized flood insurance encourages people to buy homes in high-risk areas.

Areas where insurance only costs a couple of hundreds dollars from the feds should be costing closer to a couple of thousands from a privately owned insurance company. So now cheap insurance is causing more people to move into high risk areas which ends up costing even more money for the government in a disaster's aftermath which ends up coming out of whose pockets?

Ken Wheaton, a Cajun transplant to New York City, has a collection of useful links to insurance companies' catastrophe information and to FEMA. He's got much more news and commentary.

Ken links to Slate's Explainer: What is sea level and how did New Orleans get built below it?

I took down the entry called "Overblown Coverage," which linked to David Szondy's satire of news network hurricane coverage. Although the target of the satire is the news media, not the victims of the hurricane, it seemed insensitive to leave it up.

MeeCiteeWurkor has an entry about how you can help the hurricane victims.

It appears that the problem with tracking "recently updated" blogs isn't going to be fixed anytime soon, so in order to encourage you (and me) to vary your blog diet, I've reconfigured my main blogroll to display in random order.

So for the first time in a while, I visited the blog of the Social Affairs Unit, a British non-profit that "addresses social, economic and cultural issues with an emphasis on the value of personal responsibility." Their blog features long-form analysis and critiques of popular culture from that perspective.

Often the articles there paint a bleak picture of modern British culture, particularly the violently dysfunctional multigenerational welfare class documented by Theodore Dalrymple, but one essay from about a week ago was hopeful and heartwarming and gave me goosebumps. It's an account of an afternoon, two days after the July 7th London bombings, at a "living history" museum in London's St. James Park, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. The exhibit featured re-creations of an encampment in Burma and a performance of wartime popular music.

S. J. Masty writes that the crowd that day was as interesting as the exhibit -- young families and WW II veterans, but "no sign of the English youth that one grows so accustomed to seeing in London nowadays, none of the slovenly, the slouching, the surly, the ill-mannered, the dead-eyed."

I don't want to spoil the essay for you, but it was touching to read. I had heard that patriotism in Britain is dead, deconstructed along with the monarchy and the nobility, the Established Church, and hunting to hounds. I had heard that British traditions are regarded as quaintly embarassing and are being overwhelmed by cultural influences from America and Europe. But it appears there is a remnant who are still proud to sing of their country's glories and blessings, and perhaps the terror attacks of last week, which were attacks on a culture with a heritage of liberty, have given them the confidence to cherish their country openly and unabashedly.

As I said, I got goosebumps when I read this. I am a sap when it comes to patriotic songs -- even those of other nations, particularly the UK. (For the full lyrics and a MIDI file of the song which is the focus of the essay, click here.)

Via Manuel L. Quezon III, I learned of the passing of Jaime Cardinal Sin, the retired Archbishop of Manila, who died early Tuesday morning.

Cardinal Sin was the de facto leader of the opposition in the Philippines during the autocratic rule of Ferdinand Marcos, who declared martial law in 1973 and remained in power until forced from office and the country in 1986. Under Sin's leadership, the Catholic Church in the Philippines was a safe haven for those working for democracy and in opposition to human rights abuses.

Following [Benigno] Aquino's assassination [in August 1983], Cardinal Jaime Sin, archbishop of Manila and a leader of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, gradually shifted the hierarchy's stance from one of "critical collaboration" to one of open opposition [to the Marcos regime].

A prominent Catholic layman, Jos� Concepcion, played a major role in reviving the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) with church support in 1983 in order to monitor the 1984 National Assembly elections. Both in the 1984 balloting and the February 7, 1986, presidential election, NAMFREL played a major role in preventing, or at least reporting, regime-instigated irregularities. The backbone of its organization was formed by parish priests and nuns in virtually every part of the country.

That's an excerpt from a web article called "From Aquino's Assassination to People's Power." The article goes on to mention Sin's behind-the-scenes role in uniting the opposition to fight Marcos's February 1986 "snap election":

Cardinal Sin, an astute negotiator described by one diplomat as "one of the best politicians in the Philippines," arranged a political alliance of convenience between Corazon Aquino and Salvador Laurel, who had announced his own candidacy but agreed to run as Aquino's vice-presidential candidate. Aquino had immense popular support and Laurel brought his superior organizational skills to the campaign. Their agreement to run together was arranged just in time for the deadline for submission of candidacies in early December. The church hierarchy gave its moral support to the opposition ticket. Cardinal Sin, realizing that poor people would not refuse money offered for votes and that the ethic of utang na loob would oblige them to vote for the briber, admonished the voters that an immoral contract was not binding and that they should vote according to their consciences.

After massive voter fraud was uncovered, pressure mounted for Marcos to step aside. When Marcos's Minister of Defense and the head of the national police force called for his resignation and garrisoned themselves near Manila, Cardinal Sin used a Catholic-run radio station to call on Filipinos to support the rebel officers and obstruct any effort by Marcos to attack them. Within a few days, the Marcoses had left the country, and Corazon Aquino took her rightful place as president.

Sin's leadership illustrates a key difference between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. In an authoritarian country like the Philippines under Marcos, strong, independent institutions are still permitted to exist and to operate with a free hand. Under totalitarian rule, such institutions are decimated and brought under control of the regime if not abolished outright. Under the right kind of leadership, an independent institution can provide protection for dissidents and can engage in some degree of direct criticism. Jaime Cardinal Sin was the right kind of leader.

During my summer in the Philippines (1983), the archbishop's name was fodder for many bad puns, and it didn't help that the hit movie of the summer was a locally-produced "bold" film called "Mortal Sin." (The Cardinal's brother, perhaps?) Through his leadership in the People Power Revolution of 1986, his name became associated in my mind with courage rather than comedy.

Some may criticize the Cardinal for using his position of spiritual leadership to wield political influence, but he used it sparingly and wisely to defeat injustice and oppression. I imagine he saw that God had placed him, like Esther, in that position "for such a time as this," to help his people, despite the risk -- how could he refuse to act?

Ave atque vale.

UPDATE: MLQ3 has links to coverage of Sin's death in the Philippine press.

The end of a three-centuries-long era: Reuters is moving its head office from London's famed Fleet Street to the Docklands. Reuters was the last major news organization headquartered there, once home to all of London's newspapers, broadsheets and tabloids alike. Former editor Bill Hagerty remembers the Street of Shame in its heyday. Mostly he remembers the pubs:

I spent around a quarter of a century in and around Fleet Street; 25 years roaming a film set of a workplace stocked with larger than life characters and larger than average drinks in The Stab in the Back or The Cock Tavern or El Vino.

Outside the buildings where the production of newspapers filled some 22 hours of most days of the year, The Street was one great watering hole, which, if you walked fast enough, could be traversed pub-to-pub during a rainstorm without getting very wet. ...

Features chief sub Des Lyons, cigarette ash tumbling down the front of his worn blazer, was another Stab pianist, especially on Thursday evening "Nights of Magic" when songs were sung, insults and sometimes punches exchanged and marriages crumbled in the heady atmosphere of booze, news and nothing-to-lose.

Hat tip for that item to Manuel L. Quezon III, who files the news in the Sic Transit Gloria Mundi department. He's covering a scandal involving another Gloria -- Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, under pressure to resign after the release of a tape that implicates her in voter fraud. (That's what I gather, anyway. I'm still working my way through his archives and trying to sort out what's happening.) Blogs have played a role in exposing the tapes to the widest possible audience. I think it'll be worth keeping an eye on Mr. Quezon's blog as the story develops. For that, and also because he was kind enough to add me to his rotating overseas blogroll (Maraming salamat!), you'll find Manuel L. Quezon III on mine.

One more quick link -- double-checking if I remembered that bit of Tagalog correctly from 22 years ago (I did!), I found this handy website on the Tagalog language.

UPDATE: Here's the Wikipedia article on the 2005 Philippine Election Crisis. Note the disclaimer at the top of the article -- what you find when you go to that link may be quite different than what I'm seeing right now.

Over the weekend, French voters defeated a referendum to ratify the 300-page European Constitution, and yesterday the Netherlands voted no by an even larger margin, about 62%-38%. In both countries, nearly all major political parties and civic organizations supported passage. Instapundit linked to Netherlands-based, English language blog Zacht Ei, for results and commentary. Looking back through entries before the vote, I find this one, expressing optimism that not only will the Dutch defeat the Constitution, but that the defeat means something more profound for democracy and public discourse in that country.

As far as the Netherlands are concerned: in the past few days I've often wondered what worries Dutch politicians most: that a majority is considering to vote 'no', or that the country is finally engaged in the most intense political debate since the assassination of Pim Fortuyn. Indeed, the one thing that seemed to annoy most politicians about Fortuyn is that they suddenly had to debate issues which a large part of the electorate had wanted to address for years, and thanks to Fortuyn, they no longer could avoid it (though Ad Melkert famously tried).

I've felt strangely hopeful for the past few weeks, as the voice of dissent gradually increased in strength, that the tide may indeed be turning, and that this is the first step towards a better way of governing, in which politicians rule on behalf of the people rather than over them from a pedestal of feigned moral superiority.

My understanding of Dutch politics is limited, but it's my understanding that two or three parties have dominated -- trading places in the cabinet but operating under an unquestioned consensus. You get to an unstable political situation when no dominant party addresses an issue that matters to a large percentage of the population. In the Netherlands, immigration (particularly Muslim immigration) and European integration are two issues that had been ignored by the traditionally dominant parties.

The Netherlands sounds a lot like Tulsa: a powerful political elite confronted by upstart voices challenging the conventional wisdom, and a growing sense among the public that politicians should make government work for all the people, not just a favored few.

Kevin McCullough has the low-down on the six ways Newsweek got the story wrong about Koran-flushing at Guantanamo.

Kevin's radio station, WMCA, is now providing a 24-hour stream of the best of conservative talk radio, including Kevin his own self at 5 pm Eastern time, and they're advertising the fact here on BatesLine. Click the ad at right to tune in.

The counting for Northern Ireland's 18 seats at Westminster is underway, and while I work I'm watching BBC Northern Ireland's coverage of the results. The results notwithstanding, it's fun to hear Ulster's distinctive accent again -- something I haven't heard in person for nearly 10 years -- to hear each candidate talking about how "proyd" he is of the "campeh-un" he ran.

Unionists -- those who favor keeping Northern Ireland as part of the UK -- are split between two major parties, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The UUP has been the leading unionist party for many years, representing the unionist side in negotiations over self-government, security, and cross-border institutions. Continued violence in NI has led unionists to prefer the DUP, a party with a tougher negotiating stance. The UUP had 10 of NI's 18 seats at one time, were down to 6 after the 2001 election, and may end up with only a single seat. David Trimble, UUP party leader, 1998 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and, briefly, first minister of NI, just lost his Upper Bann seat to DUP candidate David Simpson, who announced an end to "pushover unionism." (UPDATE: Here's a column in the Scotsman outlining Trimble's rise to power, his involvement in peace talks, and his fall from favor. Hat tip to Slugger O'Toole, who blogs about Northern Ireland politics and culture.)

On the nationalist side -- those who want the Six Counties united with the rest of Ireland under Dublin's rule -- voters are shifting from the once-dominant Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) to Sinn Fein, a radical party with close ties to the terrorist Irish Republican Party. It's likely that when all the votes are counted the DUP and Sinn Fein will have the most representation at Westminster.

You'll find the latest results from Northern Ireland here.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I was excited, when watching the 1992 British election results, to see that Michael Bates, a Conservative, had been elected as MP for Langbaurgh. He was turned out in the Labour victory of 1997 (for the renamed seat of Middleborough South and Cleveland East). Tonight I found out there was more to like about him than just his name.

I googled to see what had become of him, and it turns out that he writes a "Thought for the Week," published on the website of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, an organization that seeks to reconnect British Christians with the political process.

The other Michael's columns are meditations on living out the Christian faith in the world. They are a bit lengthy, but thoughtful, and lead the reader in unexpected directions.

His most recent essay starts with the Senate confirmation hearings for UN ambassador-designate John Bolton, and the complaints about his temperament and management style, and asks how should a Christian manage people. A Christian manager should be a servant to his subordinates; a visionary leader; a casting director, matching people to the jobs that fit them; a skilled navigator, setting realistic short-term goals to maintain morale over a long-term project; and an encourager.

You'll find links to column archives at the bottom of that page. The most recent archive, from March and April, includes an essay on spiritual healing, a piece called "Thank God for Politicians," an account of an epiphany in a New York jazz club, and some thoughts about town criers, the men of Issachar, and the Internet. I've just begun to read through it, and I think you'll find it worth your time.

The piece on healing starts with a phrase from Isaiah's prophecy which Jesus reads in the synagogue at Nazareth: "He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted...." Bates writes that we don't respond to inner pain as we ought. We try to numb the pain, but it always comes back, because we don't look to the One who can heal it:

Today we see certain symptoms of inner injury prevalent amongst Christians and non-Christians alike: anxiety, guilt and depression. These symptoms define our sense of self-worth, our relationships and our work. Yet our approach to remedying them differs substantially from physical injury. The instinct is to struggle on in the hope that it will heal itself, or to blame people or circumstance and as such transfer the power to change our hearts into the hands of other human beings. If you have ever carried an injury physically we know that perhaps sitting in a chair and resting you can appear fairly normal-like Agnes Sanford's domestic appliance--and be fairly comfortable, but the extent of our injury is revealed when we try to exert ourselves in even the most minor tasks: climbing the stairs, lifting a box etc.

There is a purpose in pain and that is to get us to rest the injury. There is a purpose in spiritual and emotional pain and that is for us to seek inner healing. Tragically, many of us wander through life in denial never pausing to rest and realise that there is an injury to our soul, which requires the healing touch. We have become expert in believing that all that is required to alleviate the symptoms of the injured soul is more money, a new job, a new relationship, alcohol, food and entertainment. In other words anything which distracts us from facing up to the pain which lies within. Whatever distraction technique we try our cloud re-appears in the morning. The message is this God wants to replace our anxiety with His peace; our guilt with His forgiveness, our depression with His joy and to restore our relationships beginning with our relationship with God. It was for this very reason that Jesus came, that we may again be at one with our Lord and enable Him to bind up the wounds of our broken hearts.

In "Thank God for Politicians," Bates calls on Christians to reject cynicism and rather to appreciate those who serve as politicians:

For many if not most of our politicians politics is a vocation, a worthy calling to serve the 'common good,' not a career designed to serve themselves. Few, except the foolish, would ever seek elected office to make money. Few would seek elected office in pursuit of an easy life. Few would find the experience of canvassing of receiving abuse and having doors slammed in their faces an effective boost for the ego. Most people enter politics because they rather like people and are proud of their communities and want to serve them. Politics involves sacrifice and often those who pay the highest price are the spouses and children of elected representatives.

He calls on Christians to thank those who seek office and assure them of our prayers, to consider the values and character of a candidate when they go to vote, to pray for Christians in public office, and to pray for spiritual awakening in the nation. And how should a Christian respond when a candidate knocks on the door?

[W]hen a canvasser comes to your door to deliver a leaflet or enquire after your voting intentions, don't berate them because they are disturbing you in the middle of an episode of 'Eastenders,' or because they have woken the children who have just been put to bed. Don't be aggressive or defensive, don't enter into an argument over some aspect of policy, but be reasonable in your conversation. Listen to what they say and ask genuine questions that will help you decide how to cast your vote. Thank them for treading the streets in the rain, for giving of their time and for playing their part in upholding our freedom, serving our community and enabling us to be better informed about those who seek to represent us.

Here I am in Oklahoma, where Christian involvement in politics is a given, and it seems strange to read this website telling British Christians that politics is a noble pursuit, urging them to get involved and to commit to being involved in the process over the long haul. Then I remember that 30 years ago, American Christians needed the same prompting to get involved, and it took groups like the Christian Coalition not only to urge the involvement of Christians in the system but also to instruct them in how the system works. I remember attending a seminar at Grace Fellowship in Tulsa, back in the late '80s, at which we learned about precinct caucuses and county conventions, platform and rules committees, and door-to-door canvassing -- all the nuts and bolts of party activism and campaigning.

The Conservative Christian Fellowship appears to have learned from the successes of the conservative Christian movement in America and from its shortcomings as well. Have a look at its mission statement. The CCF doesn't believe that revival will result from political victory. It understands that what ails Britain (and read anything by Theodore Dalrymple if you don't believe that Britain is ailing) is a spiritual problem at the root, and the state must leave room for the church to play its role in society. The CCF isn't about achieving a laundry list of legislative goals, but about getting people with a Christian worldview involved in politics, culture, and education.

I'm struck by the parallels between the uphill task faced by Conservatives in Britain and Republicans in Blue America, and the role that the committed Christian remnant could play in transforming politics in these evidently post-Christian realms. Republicans in the Blue States can learn from the CCF how to involve and energize Christians who now sit on the sidelines, disheartened because both major parties ignore their concerns. We Red Staters have something to learn from the CCF, too: A broader understanding of what it means to live out the Christian life in a democracy.

I'm happy to learn that a group like the Conservative Christian Fellowship exists and to learn that someone named Michael Bates is a part of it.

George Galloway, MP, expelled from the Labour Party in 2003, has won Bethnal Green and Bow, an east London constituency, from Labour incumbent Oona King. Galloway was elected for the Respect Party, a party that opposes Britain's involvement in the war in Iraq. Galloway was implicated by documents discovered in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein suggesting that he had been on Saddam's payroll, receiving funds diverted from the corrupt Oil for Food program.

BBC World Service just played a an interview between BBC Newsnight host Jeremy Paxman and Galloway. Here's how Paxman began the interview: "Are you proud of having driven out one of the few black women in Parliament?" Galloway refused to answer such a loaded question, but Paxman persisted, and Galloway terminated the interview after Paxman called him a demagogue.

I'm no fan of Galloway, but I don't blame him for walking off.

UPDATE: The BBC has posted a transcript and video of the bout with comments.

The United Kingdom is holding a general election and local elections today. The polls are closed, and the first results are expected to be declared at about 5:30 p.m. CDT. Iain Murray will be live-blogging the election. Writer and Conservative MP Boris Johnson has a list of key constituencies and when they are expected to be declared. (British Summer Time is one hour ahead of GMT, six hours ahead of CDT.) The University of Keele has a comprehensive page of British politics links, including links to results and party manifestoes (platforms) from past elections. The BBC news website has comprehensive election coverage, but I can't get to it right now.

There was a time when I followed British politics very closely. In the run-up to the 1992 general election, I read through a book analyzing the electorate in every one of the 659 constituencies and made my own guesses as to the outcome. Labour, led by Neal Kinnock, had their first real chance to beat the Tories, in power since 1979, but torn apart over Margaret Thatcher's ouster and Britain's relationship with the European Union. I was especially interested in the fortunes of Michael W. Bates, a Conservative running for the second time in a seat with the lovely name of Langbaurgh. (It was changed before the next election.)

C-SPAN was going to carry the BBC's election night coverage, but in Tulsa it would be preempted by the live broadcast of the City Council, so I called around and determined that C-SPAN would be on uninterrupted in Claremore. I found a place I could watch the broadcast, but when I arrived I discovered to my disappointment that while C-SPAN had not been preempted, the BBC broadcast had been -- the House of Representatives was in the middle of a lengthy debate. I returned home and listened to some of the coverage on BBC World Service, which the cable company offered through a special FM antenna adapter. (This was in the days before the World Wide Web.) C-SPAN ran the BBC TV election special late that night; I taped it and watched it the next night and rejoiced to learn that Michael Bates had won.

John Major and the Tories won, too, just barely, and they spent the next five years crumbling: Financial scandals, sex scandals, deepening divisions over Europe. With the advent of the web, I was able to follow the decline via the Electronic Telegraph. The Tories were blown out of the water in 1997, did a little better in 2001. The Tories began to resemble the '62 Mets, and my interest in following their fortunes faded.

They've made some impressive showings in other elections -- in the June 2004 European Parliament elections, the Conservatives received the most votes of any party, and they made significant gains in local elections on the same date. Tony Blair has been under a fierce media attack over the UK's involvement in Iraq, and after eight years any politician has begun to wear out his welcome with the voters, so you might think that the Conservatives would be competitive this time around, but the expectation is that Labour will be returned to power for a third time, but with a smaller majority.

A British general election is really 646 separate contests, like our biennal battle for control of the US House of Representatives. The only people who can vote for or against Tony Blair live in his constituency of Sedgefield. Nevertheless, campaigns are waged on a national scale, and British voters are more aware than Americans of the national impact of their vote.

I had a browse through the manifestoes for this year's election. What's striking is the absence of America's hot-button social issues in the campaign literature of the three major parties. One of the reasons I think the Tories have failed to generate much enthusiasm of the voters is that they've accepted certain issues as settled matters, despite significant numbers of potential voters who care passionately about those issues and are looking for a major party to take them seriously. Should Britain continue as a member of the European Union? Are abortion laws too liberal? Are government welfare policies undermining families? What is the impact of mass immigration on British society? Where the major parties are silent, minor parties have sprung up to respond. The UK Independence Party came in third in the 2004 European Parliament elections, ahead of the usual third-place finisher, the Liberal Democrats.

I came across the website of a new minor party, the Christian Peoples Alliance, which is trying to address some of those issues, but I'm off to a baseball game -- more about that later.

I've recently blogrolled Publius Pundit, a group blog with the ambitious mission of "blogging the democratic revolution." There's a lot of material today on the situation in Venezuela, photos of the crackdown on a protest in Belarus, and this entry about protests in Mongolia, pointing to a Gateway Pundit item, pointing to this News 24 story. The protests were inspired by the successful revolution in Kyrgyzstan and are over government corruption and the diversion of public money. Publius Pundit will be a regular stop on my daily tour de blogs.

Hooah Wife lives in the Tulsa area. Her husband is being deployed to Iraq with the Corps of Engineers. She wrote a few days ago about the effect of deployment on kids:

Anyway, back to children. Sometimes you want to beat them but they really need a hug. That is how it has been at my house lately. I gave all the info for deployment to the counselor at my boy's school. But, unless you have ever lived it, paper can't prepare you for the possibilities. Children go through a rollercoaster of phases with a missing parent. Let me tell you, it can be trying at times. Often times the only ones that really understand it completetly are other military parents. We just expect kids to lash out at some time or have nightmares or anxiety during deployments. I even have a friend whose 10 year old stopped eating. I bitch & gripe a lot on my blog, but that is my healthy outlet. Kids can't necessarily funnel their anger appropriately.

This is a slight revision of an entry that appeared a year ago. It will stay at the top of the home page through Saturday night -- scroll down for more new entries.

Please read this, read the earlier articles linked below, and please pray for the Litle family and the families of the other victims through this season of remembrance. And pray for real, lasting peace in Israel.

Saturday is the second anniversary of a suicide bombing of a city bus in Haifa, Israel, which took the life of 16 innocent people, including Abigail Litle, the 14-year-old daughter of Philip and Heidi Litle, college friends of mine. In memory of her, I invite you to read an article I wrote shortly after the bombing, and an article by her dad, written a month after the attack, about Abigail's triumphant faith in Jesus.

Remembering Abigail, a victim of hate

Remembering Abigail, a victor in faith

In a letter to friends and family just before the first anniversary, Phil told us how Abigail's school planned to remember her and a classmate who died in the attack:

Specifically, Ukraine said:

Фальсифікаціям. Ні!
Махінаціям. Ні!
Понятіям. Ні!
Ні брехні!

"Ні" ("Ni") is Ukrainian for "No." Those lines are from the theme song of the Orange Revolution -- no to fraud, no to machinations, no to prison rules, no to lies. Saying "Ni!" didn't do much good for the legendary knights of ancient Britain, but for Ukraine, "Ni!" felled a corrupt government and reversed a fraudulent election, which is much better than a shrubbery.

The latest results from Sunday's presidential rerun show that, with the count 93% complete, Yushchenko leads Yanukovich 53% to 43%.

Discoshaman is live-blogging from Kyiv -- most recently from Yanukovich HQ -- and Orange Ukraine has lots of election news. Exit polling, which was conducted throughout the day (rather than just in the morning as the American exit polls were) show about a 15-point blowout for Yushchenko. There was a report of violence at one polling station. Polls closed at 8 p.m. Ukraine time.

Press releases in English on Yushchenko's site can be found here, but it's very slow to load. They are relaying reports of fraud -- ballot box stuffing, "dead souls" voting, busloads of soldiers going from one polling place to another. This time it may not be enough.

And I can't imagine a political leader in the world that combines toughness and loveliness better than Yulia Tymoshenko, co-leader of the Orange coalition. Wow.

A couple of weeks ago a college fraternity brother of mine, who just came across my blog, wrote with a question about my support for the demonstrators and a new election in Ukraine:

I see a lot of material there devoted to the current situation in the Ukraine. One certainly hopes the best for those people struggling against a cold war era attitude for a fair and reformed democratic government. Nevertheless, as "blue" voter (in a very blue county in a rather red state), I find the support for protesting close election results in other countries on your obviously "red" website bemusingly ironic. By extension, should all those of us who live in large cities (all very blue in the north and west) be out en masse to protest that things didn't quite go our way?

Still, recalling our debates on theology in college, I refuse to believe that the aims and hopes of Americans are as starkly divided as the manipulators of elcetoral dynamics on both sides would have us believe. But how do we proceed? We have in the past in this country worked through compromise and consensus, even if that leads to such despicable temporary solutions as counting slaves as 3/5 of a person. Despite Bush's first term promise to be a "uniter not a divider," I see little evidence that he means to seek consensus on any issue.

So I ask you to consider if our roles were reversed in this election. What would you do? Should I be marching in the streets like the Ukrainians?

In my friend's mind, the situations are parallel -- both countries elected a president of the party in power by a slim margin, disappointing a large number on the other side, who believe that the victor is part of a corrupt system. Supporters of Yushchenko are protesting, in his view, because "things didn't quite go [their] way."

There are some aspects of the situation in Ukraine that my friend may have overlooked:

• The runoff election was marked by massive fraud, particularly in the region of Donetsk, where Prime Minister and government-supported candidate Victor Yanukovich was once governor. Yanukovich supporters were bused from one polling station to another to cast multiple votes. Thugs stole ballot boxes and threatened opposition supporters. The Central Election Commission never released results by polling station. The Ukraine Supreme Court ordered a rerun of the runoff election because the runoff was too marred by fraud to make it possible to determine who actually won.
• The opposition presidential candidate was poisoned with dioxin, probably while dining at the home of the head of Ukraine's Secret Service.
• The Ukrainian government under President Kuchma has shut down opposition media, and may have ordered the 2000 murder of Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze.
• According to Jane's Intelligence Digest, 500 Russian Spetsnaz special forces were deployed to the vicinity of Kiev during the election aftermath, at the request of current Ukrainian President Kuchma. Twenty of the Russians serve as his personal bodyguard. (Hat tip: TulipGirl)

I don't remember anything like that happening in the US presidential election. Opposition media outlets, including federally-subsidized NPR and PBS, were going full-blast at the President all the way to the election. John Kerry wasn't poisoned. Thugs didn't steal ballot boxes. "Voter intimidation" was limited to poll workers who didn't smile with sufficient warmth when asking for picture ID. And if there was a busload of voters being driven from polling place to polling place, it probably wasn't full of Republicans.

If Yushchenko had lost a close vote in an honestly run election, there wouldn't have been hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets of Kiev. The Orange Revolution is about more than an election. Discontent with years of gross corruption and suppression of basic civil liberties is finally surfacing. Ukraine is a great nation and it could be a prosperous and free nation if the hands of the "oligarchs" are finally removed from the national till.

Ukraine may be headed for a rerun of the runoff election. That at least is the likeliest, happiest outcome of the current crisis. Discoshaman and TulipGirl continue to post regularly. Discoshaman has some photos up on his blog, as well as the third installment of his series on how and why the election was stolen. TulipGirl links to a wonderful story about a revolutionary babushka, an answer to the misapprehension that Ukraine is a mere pawn in a struggle between Russia and the west.

They link to many more blogs and news sources, including SCSU Scholars blog (which has some interesting maps illustrating the likely pattern of voter fraud) and Orange Ukraine, which has a comparison of Russian and American involvement in the Ukraine election.

Amelia Hunt has created some logos you can display to show support for democracy for Ukraine. I'm displaying one above. You can find them here. Hat tip to Fire Ant Gazette.

Ukraine is in crisis following the presidential election runoff. Reform candidate Viktor Yushchenko is believed to have won the election, but election officials have proclaimed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner. Yanukovych is backed by the political establishment and the Russian government. There are reports of voter fraud, particularly in eastern Ukraine, which has a higher concentration of ethnic Russians. When I say voter fraud, I don't mean vacant lots voting, but soldiers shooting election officials or stealing ballot boxes. Not to mention pre-election intimidation -- shutting down opposition newspapers and TV stations, replacing election officials with allies of the government, poisoning Yuschenko.

There are pro-reform demonstrations all over Ukraine, perhaps a million people on the streets in Kyiv, the capital. There are reports that Russian special forces (spetznaz) flew into the airport and are in the city.

The situation reminds me a lot of the Philippine "snap election" of 1986, in which long-time President Ferdinand Marcos attempted to cheat Corazon Aquino out of her election victory. Clerks at the central election office walked out to protest fraud, and people took to the streets in support of two military leaders who turned against Marcos.

TulipGirl is there in Kyiv and has links to news reports and commentary. Here's a link to her most recent entry, about reports of a $21.6 million bribe paid to the head of the Central Elections Committee. Start there and work your way back.

Her husband, Discoshaman, has been out on the streets with the protesters. He's just posted the first in a series of entries to try to explain to the rest of the world what this conflict is all about. A couple of excerpts:

You have to understand the situation in Ukraine. The country is run by a series of oligarchic clans that actually found their beginnings in the Soviet Union, and then grew fabulously rich during the early days of "privatization". ...

Do you start to see how life works here? This isn't about a few stolen votes. It's about an entire system of fine control over the political, social and economic life of the people. Economics and politics are incestuously fused here in a way that is difficult to imagine for those in the West.

The BBC has a Q&A piece up with the basic facts of the election crisis.

Keep praying for Ukraine.

Blog de Connard is blogging the Ukraine presidential election and has photos of the voting process (start here and go on to later entries) and passes on an AP report of an exit poll giving reform candidate Yushchenko an 8 point lead, but not a clear majority, which would mean a runoff in three weeks.

(Hat tip to TulipGirl.)

Keep praying for Ukraine.

In just a few hours, Ukraine will go to the polls to elect a president. TulipGirl, who lives there, asks us to keep the country and election in our prayers. The republics of the old Soviet Union have great potential but are still suffering from the legacy of 70 years under totalitarian rule, which prevented normal economic development and decimated civil society.

She links to this NRO article by Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett has this spot-on description of the economic disaster that is socialist central planning:

And because of communism, the Ukraine�s economy never developed naturally so as to exploit those industries and businesses most appropriate for its location and resources. Under central planning, production was guided by political whim, with the result that much of the industry located in the Ukraine at independence was inherently unviable in a free market.

There is a reformer in the race, and Ukraine would be blessed to have Viktor Yushchenko as president. Bartlett writes of him:

[As head of the Central Bank], he was one of the few Ukrainians who was trusted by foreign investors. He has a reputation for honesty as well as competence � the former perhaps more important than the latter, given the widespread corruption in the Ukraine. (A new report from Transparency International ranks the Ukraine as one of the most corrupt nations on Earth.)

In December 1999, Yushchenko was named prime minister. By all accounts, he did an excellent job, helping to implement economic and political reforms. This did not endear him to President Kuchma or the oligarchs who have robbed the country blind, so he was sacked in April 2001. Since then, he has been a member of the Ukraine�s parliament, where he has continued to press for reform.

Hmm. Reformer sacked by oligarchs who are running the country for their own enrichment. Sounds like my hometown....

TulipGirl links to a few articles that will give you a sense of what things are like in the run-up to the election. One article reports a plot to have a mob pose as supporters of the reform candidate and create a disturbance to discredit him. There has been violence targeting supporters of Yushchenko. Government agencies have used their enforcement powers to harass opponents of the current president's handpicked successor.

Ukraine has the potential to be a great and prosperous nation, but only if there is an end to corruption. Pray for Ukraine.

UPDATE: TulipGirl has another post up with links to blogs on the Ukraine election, and she links to her husband's comments on the election, in which he says:

Please be in prayer, that the people will make the right choice, and that their choice will be honored.

Will do.

MORE: Ukrainian author Oksana Zabuzhko wondered if free Ukraine has only one week left. She wrote this essay last Sunday -- week's almost up. Worth reading. (Published on Ukraine, Russia, Europe, the US, Oh My!, which was linked by TulipGirl.)

Just noticed a couple of items that Discoshaman posted before he and TulipGirl and family left for two weeks' holiday in Egypt. Discoshaman has a way of getting right to the point, for example, putting Arab complaints about the Crusades into perspective:

Liberals, and the 3rd World bigots they pander to, can't shut up about the Crusades. Listening to them, one would think Western Europe decided to annex the Holy Land on some sort of ecclesiastical lark.

Lost somehow is the fact that the Crusades, while not politely conducted, were only a minor counter-offensive in a 1400 year history of almost unbroken aggression against Christians by militant Islam. Do these idiots never stop and ask HOW there were Arabs in a former Roman colony to begin with?

He provides details and makes the connection to the Western left's impulse to cultural suicide.

Then there's a nice, concise five-point breakdown of what Rathergate was really all about. Hint: It wasn't just an "oopsie, my bad" on the part of CBS. The item begins with this paragraph, which concludes with a wonderful turn of phrase:

It's possible to interpret Rathergate as a mere journalistic fumble, but it requires a childlike faith. A more rational interpretation is this: it's a clear-cut example of what conservatives face every election cycle -- a constant headwind from the blowhards of the Fourth Estate.

Nice. The shaman and his girl should be back and posting again any day now -- looking forward to it.

And you thought Tulsa politics was rough....

Discoshaman of Le Sabot Post-Moderne is back from his blogging hiatus and is covering the election in Ukraine:

The Ukrainian people are facing an incredibly decisive election in a few weeks. Unlike in Russia, they've actually been blessed with a clear choice between an oligarch-supported thug (Yanukovych) and a genuine, if flawed, reformer with a proven record (Yuschenko.) And I really think they're going to elect the thug.

Yanukovych's people have hired criminal gangs to beat Yuschenko supporters. They have attacked pro-Yuschenko journalists and arsoned their offices. They own most of the TV stations, and issue Soviet-style temniki to tell their pet journalists exactly what to report. They've hired Nazi groups to march in support of Yuschenko. It looks now like they organized a fatal bombing in a local market in order to discredit Yuschenko. They have used the organs of government to arrest, harrass and investigate Yuschenko's major supporters. And then there are the "accidents" involving Yuschenko people and Kamaz trucks.

The Ukrainian people by and large know that there is a massive disinformation campaign going on. They know that Yanukovych's oligarch friends are stealing the election. The outrage factor? About two on a ten scale.

He goes on to put forward an explanation for this lack of outrage.

There's more about the campaign here:

We hit the big Yushchenko rally yesterday in European Square. He had been poisoned, and spent last week in a Vienna hospital recovering. His opposition is suspected in the attack. His voice was still weak and his jaw seemed tight as he spoke. It was in Ukrainian, so I didn't perfectly understand, but it was awesome when he called out to the crowd, "But they can't poison all of us!"

Let's keep Ukraine in our prayers.

UPDATE 9/25: More on Ukraine from NRO here.

I've already touched on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks over the last few days, but I cannot let the day pass without pointing you to the New York Times' "Portraits of Grief", a collection of brief profiles of the people who died in those attacks.

Here's a link to the profile of my friend Jayesh Shah, which highlights the close relationship between Jay and his younger brother Niloy. You have never seen two closer siblings, and no one can ever remember seeing a cross word pass between them. Close in age, they came from India to America as small boys, and made the adjustment to the new world together. They went to high school, college, and grad school together, and both ended up working for Amoco in Houston. They were separated when Jay took the opportunity of a lifetime -- an executive position with Cantor Fitzgerald in New York -- but they still spoke daily, talking over the previous night's sports news or their kids' latest antics. Was it the affection between two brothers, the love of a husband for his wife, the love of a dad for his children -- is that what the terrorists set out to extinguish?

Jay and the Shah family are of the Jain religion. At the heart of that religion is a n avoidance of violence against any living thing. Jains are vegetarian, and some Jain monastics go so far as to sweep the ground before them to avoid crushing an insect as they walk. Ironic that someone of that faith should be the victim of such an extreme and deliberate act of violence.

The Shah family went through sixteen days of hoping against hope that Jay had survived. Jay's name showed up on a survivors list on the Internet. The family got to New York as quickly as they could, and went from hospital to hospital. Through the whole process, Niloy communicated with friends and family via e-mail, sharing his hopes and fears.

All the searching was in vain. On September 27, Jay's body was recovered and they had the comfort of certainty about his fate. The family was now able to hold the traditional last rites. A memorial prayer service was held a couple of weeks later in Houston, which I was privileged to attend.

This is the story of one man and his family, and the profound loss of a brother, husband, son, father, and friend. I tell it because it is important to remember why we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may find ourselves fighting in other places that harbor and sponsor terrorists. Although we desire to live at peace with all men, governments have a divine commission to use force to oppose evil. We cannot hope to enjoy peace as long as there are those who would seek our deaths for the crime of being alive and free.

Before I close, let me point you to a couple of places to stir your memories and your resolve:

• Tom Junod's Esquire article about "The Falling Man" -- the search for the man captured on film as he fell from the World Trade Center. (Hat tip to Matthew for the link.)

• Here Is New York, an extensive online gallery of photographs of the day and its aftermath.

So right, Karol:

Headline: Madonna Dedicates 'Imagine' to Russia...

No religion, no possesions? I think Russia may have tried this already.

Hat tip to World Net Daily for the link to this story:

Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, a bond trading firm that lost two-thirds of its workers in the World Trade Center attack, has sued Saudi Arabia for allegedly supporting al-Qaida prior to the Sept. 11 attack through financing, safe houses, weapons and money laundering.

The company, in a $7 billion lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and made public Friday, also named dozens of other defendants, including numerous banks and Islamic charities, in a bid to hold them accountable for its losses in the terrorism attack.

Jayesh Shah, who was a Tulsa Memorial High School and University of Tulsa graduate, was Vice President of Technology for Cantor Fitzgerald's eSpeed division, working on the 103rd floor of the north tower on September 11, 2001. I knew Jayesh through, of all things, Hal O'Halloran's radio sports talk shows in the late '70s and early '80s. He was a very smart guy with a great sense of humor and very devoted to his family and he is missed by all who knew him. I'm happy to see that his employer is pursuing those parties who may bear some responsibility for the attack, but who have yet to be held accountable in any way.

If you've missed the news about the taking and murder of hostages by Islamist terrorists at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russian Federation, you will want to read this timeline by Michele at the Command Post.

And many people, including Charles of Little Green Footballs, are linking to a remarkable Daily Telegraph opinion piece by the general manager of Arabic satellite TV station Al-Arabiya, which begins like this:

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.

Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.

What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement". Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?

This piece was originally run in Arabic in a pan-Arabic newspaper.

Charles Johnson has posted a slideshow of images from September 11th. We all need a reminder of what is at stake. Charles's blog will give you daily reminders, with news of islamofascism around the world -- make it a regular stop as you surf the web.

Maybe we should lobby to have Charles speak at the Republican National Convention.

Also on the Southern Appeal blog, we are given a peek (words and pictures) inside Abu Ghraib's prison and the "death row" used during Saddam's reign:

When it was time for the prisoners to die they would be lead down the above corridor, past an open room used for the harvesting of body parts, so they could see what would ultimately happen to them, into the above room with the concrete loft. This is the room where the prisoners were hung. Ropes were attached to the two metal hooks fastened to the ceiling so that prisoners could be hung two at a time.

Why dwell on this? It's to remind us for years what we all knew about Saddam's WMD program but seem to have forgotten lately:

The above pictures and description are not intended to titillate but rather to show the depraved nature of the Saddam regime. Keep in mind, as you ponder these images, that, prior to the invasion, the landlord of this hell on earth had failed to account for nearly four tons of VX nerve agents, Growth media for 20,000 liters of biological warfare agents, 15,000 shells for use in biological warfare (some of which have been recently found) 6,000 chemical warfare bombs, and the tools with which to reconstitute his nuclear program. According to the terms of the cease fire to Gulf War I, to which Saddam agreed, the burden was on him to establish that he destroyed the aforementioned weapons. His defiant refusal to do so demonstrated his consciousness of guilt. Simply because we have not found all of these weapons nicely arranged in a convenient location does not mean that they did not exist.

Remember Saddam expelling the weapons inspectors? And when the inspectors were allowed back in, their movements were restricted and they were prohibited from interviewing government scientists alone? Saddam had something to hide -- otherwise why risk the punishment he ultimately received?

The coalition was right to go to war against Iraq, and the world is safer because there is one less government working to develop WMDs, one less government acting as a state sponsor of terrorism, one less government supplying WMD technology to terrorists.

There's an interesting juxtaposition just now on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2. On C-SPAN 2, there's Ralph Nader, looking and sounding like he just crawled out of bed (did he have a stroke recently?). He's peddling the Michael Moore / Democrat Party / International ANSWER / Islamofascist / moonbat line about the war in Iraq -- Bush is engaged in "Messianic Militarism", and the war was all about contracts and cheap oil for his evil corporate buddies.

Meanwhile, C-SPAN 1 has Rand Rahim, the representative of Iraq's interim government to the United States, speaking and taking questions at the American Enterprise Institute today. In response to a pointed and hostile question, Ms. Rahim said that the war to depose Saddam Hussein was a humanitarian necessity for Iraq and a necessity for the stability of the region and the world. Asked about the somewhat clandestine handover -- if that undermined the idea that a real transfer of sovereignty had occurred -- she pointed to the reality of the security situation and expressed pride that the US and the interim government had stolen a march on the terrorists. Asked if the war in Iraq had made Americans less safe, she said that Iraq has become terrorism's last stand, which is unfortunate for Iraq, but she believes that, in Iraq, terrorism will be defeated. She said that the terrorists are not a resistance against the coalition, they are against Iraq and Iraqis, a fact demonstrated by their actions against contractors who are not from coalition countries, and their threats against the transfer of sovereignty. She said that the interim government needs to communicate this fact effectively to the Iraqi people.

Ambassador Rahim's only criticism of the coalition's now-ended oversight is the focus on reconstruction efforts that were capital- and technology-intensive, and thus out of reach for Iraqi firms and workers. Wages have improved dramatically, but only for those who are employed. In order to make more Iraqis stakeholders in a rebuilt Iraq, there should be a focus on labor-intensive reconstruction efforts that can make use of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi businesses and workers. That made me think of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided a structured environment for young men who would otherwise have been at loose ends, helped them earn money (most of which was sent directly home to their families), and resulted in the construction of needed infrastructure as well as public amenities. The need is infrastructure and the available resource is unskilled labor. While some infrastructure needed to be rebuilt quickly, and thus needed the technology and capital that Western firms could bring to bear, much of the infrastructure could be rebuilt at a slower pace, using old fashioned techniques that take advantage of a large labor pool.

Seeing rumpled Ralph Nader reminded me of an "internal memo" in National Lampoon's fake letters column sometime in the late '70s. It said something like this: "The last Robert Hall store has died in captivity. For now, have Ralph Nader, et al., buy their suits at K-Mart." Robert Hall was a discount clothing store -- Tulsa had one on the southwest corner of the Traffic Circle at Admiral and Mingo. It apparently was also a shorthand way to say that someone wore cheap clothes. Nice to see that Ralph still disdains haute couture.

Sorry to use an unspeakably rude word in the header, but I need to get your attention.

You remember hearing about that group encouraging Christians to resettle in South Carolina, in order to reestablish "godly, constitutional government" in one state? Or the libertarian Free State Project, which aims to locate enough libertarians in New Hampshire to take over the political system there?

Well, an Islamofascist has come up with a similar idea for taking over a small European country and suicidal American leftists are swooning over this fellow. Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs blog (the chronicle of Islamofascism's war against the west) has excerpts from a Salon puff-piece on Belgian Islamofascist Dyab Abou Jahjah. Here's the Salon article's subhead:

Dyab Abou Jahjah�s Arab European League calls for sharia law, celebrates 9/11 and warned Belgian Jews to break with Israel or else. Is he defending Muslims� civil rights � or inciting hatred?

Well, duh.

Audible.com offers for download five and a half hours of Ronald Reagan's radio commentaries from the late '70s, with introductions from cabinet members and associates like George Shultz and Ed Meese. This is going on my wish list. (Amazon offers an abridged CD version.)

We had a lengthy dinner table conversation about Reagan's legacy with my seven year old son. The toughest part was explaining the background: communism, the Cold War, ICBMs, inflation, the energy crisis. Later, Joe let me read to him from Reagan's autobiography, which begins with a sketch of his 1985 first meeting with Gorbachev. We read that and the opening chapter, about his first seven years, moving around Illinois as his dad followed job opportunities. He mentions that the course of his own life would have been very different had he been hired by Montgomery Ward to run the sporting goods department in their new Dixon store. That closed door kept him free to pursue his dream of radio broadcasting, which in turn led to everything else.

I was raised to believe that God has a plan for everyone and that seemingly random twists of fate are all a part of His plan. My mother -- a small woman with auburn hair and a sense of optimism that ran as deep as the cosmos -- told me that everything in life happened for a purpose. She said all things were part of God's Plan, even the most disheartening setbacks, and in the end, everything worked out for the best. If something went wrong, she said, you didn't let it get you down: You stepped away from it, stepped over it, and moved on. Later on, she added, something good will happen and you'll find yourself thinking -- "If I hadn't had that problem back then, then this better thing that did happen wouldn't have happened to me."

Charles Krauthammer writes that the liberal media are focusing on Reagan's sunny and optimistic personality as a way to trivialize his real accomplishments. But they miss the heart of the matter:

Optimism? Every other person on the No. 6 bus is an optimist. What distinguished Reagan was what he did and said. Reagan was optimistic about America amid the cynicism and general retreat of the post-Vietnam era because he believed unfashionably that America was both great and good -- and had been needlessly diminished by restrictive economic policies and timid foreign policies. Change the policies and America would be restored, both at home and abroad.

He was right.

Krauthammer reminds that, in his presidency, Reagan's optimism was interpreted by the media as a sign of dangerous simple-mindedness. Now it's being used as a way of praising this beloved leader without acknowledging that the man they derided has been vindicated by history.

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for the link.

• One of the nice things about state events -- funerals, inaugurals, and such -- is that it's a rare opportunity for good music to get some public exposure. Choral music usually takes a back seat to orchestral works and opera. It was a treat to hear choirs at the Capitol, at the National Cathedral, and at the Reagan Library. Peter Wilhousky's arrangement of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is a favorite. William Harris's "Faire is the Heaven", which preceded the entry of the casket into the Cathedral, was a perfect fit for the occasion. And there's something thrilling about hymns and baroque music played by a brass ensemble.

• It's also a treat to watch the replay of the services on C-SPAN, without commentary. I listened to the Cathedral service on the radio while at work, and found myself switching back and forth between KFAQ, KRMG, and KWGS trying to find the station with the least amount of annoying chatter. Brian Gann did a fine job of describing without being obtrusive as KFAQ simulcast the audio from Fox News Channel, but when they switched to Fox News Radio, we had to listen to John Gibson speak in all the wrong places. Announcers please note: Hymns and anthems are not bumper music or filler. They are an integral part of the service. Likewise, the liturgy is not fluff. You can wait until former Senator John Danforth is done with the opening words of the service ("I am the resurrection and the life") to tell us that John Danforth is speaking. American broadcasters could learn a few things from the way the BBC covers these sorts of events.

• John Derbyshire, on NRO's The Corner: "It was, as the English say, a lovely funeral. The British, in fact, used to boast that they did this kind of thing -- pomp and circumstance -- better than anyone. I don't see how that boast can any longer be maintained. This was done as well as it possibly could have been." But I think that the pomp and circumstance was a reflection of President Reagan and in accordance with his wishes, as he understood the importance of tradition and the place of formality and manners. Recall his first inaugural, when the dress code was not business suits but morning dress. (And many of us learned for the first time that black tie is not appropriate for formal events in midday.) Insisting on the full pomp and circumstance of tradition for his inaugurations, rather than trying to remake the ceremony in his image, was not an act of egotism but an act of respect for the nation and the institution of the presidency.

• Along the same lines: A reader's e-mail to The Corner: "So I'm sitting in my home office, lump in throat, tears on cheeks. Watching the precision of the honor guard and the unbelievable reverence and beauty of the moment. And it dawns on me: he's done it again. He has an entire nation realizing again how beautiful this country is. Its people. It's respect for things great. Tradition. Class. There could not have been a departing gift so powerful. His first lesson to me in 1980, when I was 10. His last, today."

• The most often played soundbite from President Bush Sr's eulogy was the moment where he says, his voiced choked, "As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life." But I think it was the words immediately preceding that got him choked up, because they choked me up too:

  And to the Reagan kids -- it's OK for me to say that at 80 -- Michael, Ron, Patti, today all of our sympathy, all of our condolences to you and remember, too, your sister Maureen home safe now with her father.

  That heaven is a place where we are in the immediate presence of God ought to be overwhelming enough, but the thought of heaven as home, where we are reunited to those who passed on before us, touches something deep. And I wonder if President Bush's thoughts turned just then, as mine did, to the little one who's been waiting for him there for fifty years.

Much of the focus of the last week has been on Ronald Reagan's role in the demise of Soviet Communism, but his economic achievements are just as impressive. If you're my age or older, you remember the '70s when double-digit inflation and double-digit mortgage rates seemed to be a fact of life, when gas prices skyrocketed, and it seemed like things would only get worse. Now we take the absence of inflation and low interest rates for granted, and gas prices are well below their 1970s levels in constant dollars.

Critics of Reagan's record charged that the gap between rich and poor grew, that the jobs created were low-paying, that the tax cuts helped only the very wealthy, that homelessness became epidemic because of his policies, and that the Reagan years were a decade of greed and neglect.

National Review Online now features the contents of its 1992 special issue, "The Real Reagan Record", which answers those charges. The articles are chock-full of numbers, graphs, and analysis from economists. Well worth revisiting.

Maybe I should have titled this "a cult gathering to worship the career of 6-6-6", which was the heading to one of two negative replies I received to my notice of the gathering at Paddy's to toast the life and work of Ronald Reagan. We partook of the cultic food (jelly beans), and passed around graven images of our departed leader. The big tables in the back of Paddy's would have been large enough for sacrificing a liberal in memory of Ronaldus Magnus, but it would have been out of keeping with the spirit of the event.

About 30 folks showed up. I was sick abed most of the day but managed to recover sufficiently to attend, and anyway I figured Guinness and camraderie would complete the recovery.

A couple of people present actually met the president and more than just once. Architect Joe Coleman was a delegate to the 1976 and 1980 Republican national conventions, and he brought along some wonderful pictures -- one of him with President and Mrs. Reagan, and several from the time he escorted Nancy around Tulsa during a campaign visit.

Former County Clerk Joan Hastings brought some photos of her with President Reagan. She told about a fundraiser held at the Fairgrounds, where the organizers severely underestimated the number of tickets that would be sold. It was $100 a plate for a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Joan's solution was to send a runner out to McDonald's and come back with 100 Big Mac certificates, which Reagan signed. Naturally, people were happier to have Reagan's autograph than chicken, mashed potatoes and a spork to eat them with. One gentleman (Joan mentioned the name, but I can't remember who) went away emptyhanded, but later received a handwritten note: "Good for one Big Mac. Ronald Reagan."

Ron Barr called our attention to a remarkable aspect of Reagan's effort to defeat the Soviet Union -- hurting the USSR's source of hard currency by working with Saudi Arabia to drop the price of oil and sabotaging the Soviets' ability to deliver fossil fuels by selling them and allowing them to steal flawed technology. He mentioned two books by Peter Schweizer: Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism and Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union.

State Rep. Pam Peterson told us of a wonderful surprise she received earlier this year. An ORU student at the time, she was part of a crowd of students that met Ronald Reagan in 1976, when he came to Tulsa to campaign for Jim Inhofe. (Inhofe was running for Congress that year.) She had no idea that a picture existed of that moment when she was getting Reagan's autograph. But Tony Lauinger, head of Oklahomans for Life, was there too, that day in 1976, not far away, and someone had snapped a black-and-white photo of the scene, probably for the school newspaper or yearbook. Earlier this year Tony thought he recognized her in the photo and gave her a copy of it. Pam didn't have a copy with her Thursday night, but she's got a copy framed on the wall of her House office.

The rest of us present never had that brush with greatness, but all had been inspired by Reagan's courage to stand for the truth. In the mid '70s, conservatism was homeless in American politics. Conservatives felt their concerns were being ignored. No one was calling for the rollback of communism, and even containment was a thing of the past; instead the USSR's expansionism was a fact of life we'd just have to accommodate. No one was calling for shrinking the federal government or reducing the tax burden, and no leader expressed a realistic hope for ending our economic doldrums. Both parties supported abortion, and driving religion out of the public square, and the decline of the traditional family was seen as unavoidable. Neither of the national parties held out hope for significant improvement.

That's why Ronald Reagan was such a breath of fresh air. For a younger generation, it was the radio commentaries that first brought Ronald Reagan to our attention. Someone was affirming our understanding of the world, validating our hopes, and assuring us that our hopes weren't impossible. That someone was capable of carrying those hopes to the White House and leading us in making them a reality. That revival of hope was even more profound for those behind the Iron Curtain, when Reagan's clear rhetoric cut through the usual diplomatic blarney. I'll close with this tribute from Natan Sharansky in the Jerusalem Post:

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth � a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

At the time, I never imagined that three years later, I would be in the White House telling this story to the president. When he summoned some of his staff to hear what I had said, I understood that there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil. Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong.

In response to the previous entry, Steve Carr sent in this eloquent tribute:

Ronald W. Reagan was indeed a good man and a heroic figure in times when the United States of America had begun to question where it was going - he was truly a moral compass for us and the world in the manner in which he led, and more importantly, in the manner in which he lived. He treated everyone as if they were his best next door neighbor. We in Tulsa would do well to live that and treat all Tulsans as our neighbor and to continue building our shining city.

This excerpt from negotiations at the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit is on CNN's website for its "Cold War" miniseries. I got a smile out of it.

Secretary General Gorbachev: We are for parity in general. In the information field, for example, or in film. Almost half of the movies showing in our theaters are American. Soviet movies are hardly ever shown in the United States. That is not parity.

President Reagan: We do not have any ban on your movies. The film industry is a free business, and if someone wants to show your films he can do it.

Secretary General Gorbachev: I see that the President avoids this question and goes into talk about business.

President Reagan: Our government cannot control the film market. If you want to inundate us with your movies go right ahead. How our movies get to your country, I do not know.

Secretary General Gorbachev: It is an interesting situation, simply a paradox. In your country, the most democratic country, obstacles arise to showing our movies, while in our country, a totalitarian country, almost half the movies being shown are American. How can you reconcile this, that the Soviet Union is an undemocratic country but your films are being shown?

President Reagan: There is a difference between free enterprise and government ownership. You have no free enterprise, everything belongs to the government and the government puts everything on the market. In the United States we have private industry, and other countries have the right to sell their goods, movies and so on. You have the right to set up a rental organization in our country to distribute your movies, or to lease some theater. But we cannot order it.

Recently, John Derbyshire called us to look back 25 years, to 1979. He recounted the seismic shifts of that year, including John Paul II's visit to Poland, Margaret Thatcher's election as Prime Minister of Britain, and Reagan's announcement in November that he would seek the presidency.

The miserable shuffling retreat had been stopped. Western civilization had turned to face its enemies, both those inside the walls and those without. The war that then commenced is not yet over. Perhaps it never will be; but it was in 1979 that we got our nerve back, picked up our discarded weapons again, and resolved to fight. This was the year it all changed, the year the ice cracked.

How amazing that God would bring those three leaders to power in three successive years. All three of them survived (were preserved through) assassination attempts. All three of them were ridiculed as throwbacks, out of step with modern realities. Each of them worked to push back the forces of totalitarianism threatening the West from without and the forces of despair, relativism, and moral collapse that were eroding the vitality of Western culture from within.

Now one of these three giants has laid down his earthly burdens and entered in the glorious presence of his Lord. The other two are no doubt soon to follow, frail and afflicted as they are. It's a good time, 25 years after that momentous year, to reflect on how different the world is today because of their strength and determination.

It must have been on the minds of a lot of folks this Sunday morning. It was certainly on my mind. There are so many reasons to be thankful to God for the life and work of Ronald Reagan. Here's one that came to mind Saturday night, and filling in as worship leader this morning, I wanted to share it with the congregation, but in a way that didn't detract from the purpose of our gathering together, which is to glorify and worship God, not to glorify man.

During announcements at the beginning of the service, I called attention to the list on the back of the bulletin of the missionaries our church supports. Notice how many times you see Ukraine in the list. Twenty years ago, the idea of Christian missionaries openly preaching the gospel and planting churches in any part of the USSR would have been unthinkable. But, in His providence, God raised up a leader who called evil by its real name and worked to defeat it. And because of that, hundreds of millions of people are free to hear and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ. God willing that will happen again, and the door will open for a billion more souls. We ought to give thanks to God for bringing this to pass.

I didn't mention his name; for those who were old enough to remember, I didn't need to.

President Ronald Reagan, the man of faith who led this country out of malaise and into prosperity and secured victory in the Cold War, passed away a couple of hours ago at his home in California, surrounded by his family.

Tributes are pouring in all over the web. Visit National Review's The Corner, Kevin McCullough's blog, the Town Hall C-Log, and the Heritage Foundation's tribute site for remembrances. I'll have more later.

You may have been puzzled as I was about the raid on the home of Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, on friendly terms with the US, and once seen as a prime candidate to lead the new Iraq. Chalabi has been accused of involvement with Iranian intelligence, and his apparent fall from grace is being applauded loudly by anti-war voices on both the left and the right. These same voices are claiming that the Bush administration and the "neocons" in the Defense Department (that's code -- what they seem to mean but won't say out loud is "the Jews who are subverting American interests for Israel's interests") were duped by Chalabi, who used bad intelligence to persuade America to go to war with Saddam, to the ultimate benefit of the regime in Iran.

On closer examination, these events in Iraq, and the corresponding debates among American talking heads, appear to be mere proxies for power struggles back in Washington. William Safire wrote last week:

The three factions controlling Iraq - long suspicious of one another - are now on the brink of open tribal warfare. Not Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds - I mean the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA.

Reporter Joel Mowbray, who has kept a close eye on the State Department's game of footsie with uncooperative Arab regimes, writes that the State Department's careerists opposed the war and want to see the President fall from power -- discrediting Chalabi helps the overall goal of discrediting the war. Meanwhile, the CIA was embarassed by Chalabi a few years back.

Chalabi, you see, has been hated by State and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for different reasons, for years.

State�s diplomats have long resented the Iraqi�s promotion of a war against Saddam that none of them wanted. And Chalabi�s push for a strong, secular democracy in the heart of the Arab world would threaten the most cherished of all State Department objectives: stability.

Although the CIA largely shares State�s worldview, its contempt for Chalabi is personal. In the mid-1990�s, the CIA organized a ham-handed coup attempt against Saddam. Chalabi warned them it wouldn�t work. He was right�and said so publicly. The CIA fumed. Bad blood has existed ever since.

In striking Chalabi, State and CIA are not simply attacking him, but his allies inside the administration, the decision to go to war in the first place, and most significantly, President Bush himself.

And that�s not unintentional.

Mowbray goes on to illustrate how career bureaucrats at State are working to undermine the President's foreign policy objectives:

When international watchdog groups say our troops are "degrading" or "humiliating" prisoners in Iraq, it's natural to assume they are referring to behavior like that uncovered at Abu Ghraib prison. But is that assumption correct?

Samizdata features an enlightening letter from Gabriel Syme, writing from Basra, Iraq, about Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross, in their function as watchdogs over the treatment of prisoners.

He praises the concept of independent civilian organizations keeping an eye on the military as a brake on social pressures within the military, pressures that unchecked could lead to abuses. These private organizations serve as a backup in the event that the military's internal checks fail. He suggests that this is an example of the robustness of the Anglosphere's institutions. "In this context, one could think of Amnesty International checks as a sort of moral separation of powers."

But he goes on to say that AI and the ICRC have "completely lost perspective" in their reporting on prison abuses, which will ultimately undermine their moral authority and thus their effectiveness in performing their vital role. Syme cites this example:

As an anecdotal example that [I] know of from a man working on the reports AI compile on us: They complained that Iraqis in Umm Qasr (British/US administered detention facility in the South) where being degraded because their food was handed out in plastic bags rather than delivered on some kind of trolley or plate. The Iraqis were not bothered, the food was perfectly good, but this was thought to be "degrading". This is an important point - when one of these reports comes out and accuses anyone of "degrading" or "humiliating" behaviour, etc, it is essential to dig deeper and see exactly what they mean.

Syme goes on to analyze how this loss of perspective has come about. The groups seem to apply skepticism only to statements by military personnel, not to claims from Iraqis, even though there are powerful incentives (including financial) and no penalties for claiming to be a victim of abuse.

Go read it all, and browse through the latest offerings on Samizdata.

Possibly the best use of Photoshop to commemorate the capture of Saddam:

It makes a nice bookend to this photo from 1975, when Chirac took Saddam on a tour of a French nuclear reactor:

Nice eye contact. You can almost hear "Some Enchanted Evening" playing in the background.

The authoritative source for news about the war on terror is the oddly-named Little Green Footballs blog. Scrolling back a few days you'll find excerpts from and links to dozens of news stories and columns about Saddam's capture, as well as Israel's ongoing fight against Palestinian terrorism. Recent entries will point you to Iraqi and Iranian weblogs. I won't attempt to reproduce what LGF proprietor Charles Johnson has accomplished. I'll just encourage you to surf his way on a regular basis. And if you appreciate the service he provides, you can hit his Amazon and PayPal tip jars -- donations allow him to spend less time on web design (his real job), and more time providing his comprehensive news service.

Meryl Yourish links to no-holds-barred interview with U. S. Ambassador to Egypt David Welch by a panel of Egyptian journalists. Welch not only defended U.S. policy in the region but politely challenged the assertions of the Egyptians. At one point in the interview, a journalist brings up the "humiliating" video of Saddam Hussein getting a dental exam:

[Welch:] With respect to the display of Saddam Hussein, can I be honest with you here? I am stunned that you would say this. I did not see any problem with his treatment whatsoever. What is wrong with a medical examination?

Shukrallah: But why the medical examination on TV?

Welch: Give me a break, folks -- this guy is an unbelievable war criminal. He did not deserve dignified treatment; he did not give any of his victims dignified treatment.

Shukrallah: Torture torturers and assassinate assassins...

Welch: He was not tortured. He is receiving medical examinations. Look at the facts. That was a DNA test. Had he not been put on TV, it would have been said that we did not have him... There was a prominent Al-Jazeera journalist who was on TV yesterday saying it was not Saddam Hussein.

Shukrallah: Still, this does not prove anything. The object seemed to be to just humiliate him.

Welch: He is now a prisoner and he will be dealt with as a prisoner.

Khalil: Then why were the Americans up in arms when the Iraqis showed US POWs on TV? You said POWs should not be treated this way. Why are you doing that now -- isn't he a POW?

Welch: Yes, there is a difference. Look at Saddam Hussein. I cannot believe you guys are defending this guy.

Shukrallah: We don't accept it, and if you've been reading the Weekly carefully, you'd have found out that we never found it justifiable that someone who is arrested for the most heinous terrorist acts in this country should be mistreated or tortured. And if you've read the Weekly you would have seen how much the Weekly has exposed and given coverage to a whole range of mistreatment and abuse.

Human rights conventions are very clear on this. The criminality of a criminal does not justify his abuse and mistreatment by a state, or this would mean that we would say goodbye to all human rights and all due process of law. Americans should hear themselves talking -- you are flaunting the very principles on which the American Revolution was based.

Welch: There is a basic difference in the facts. Implicitly, your position is that we are abusing this person, and I say we are not. So we have a difference of views. You interpret videoing while he's getting his teeth checked as abuse, and I don't.

Nyier Abdou: Whether or not you want to call it abuse, there certainly is a distinction between showing somebody in this manner and showing them in a more dignified way. I think what makes people angry is that the US fails to see how this kind of imagery will inflame people, and that they do it anyway, and that's what really makes people angry. It is a misunderstanding of what is going to convince people.

Welch: I think your moral compass has gone crazy. I think you should be looking at the Iraqi people and their reaction to this. Your reaction puzzles me to be honest. Can we move on because this is boring...

There are several more exchanges just as lively. It's good to know that the US is represented by someone who isn't inclined to diplomatic weasel words.

The CounterRevolutionary features New York Times articles saying that America is losing the peace, occupation is failing, and the enemy didn't have the weapons we thought they did. Of course, these articles are from 1945 and they're about Germany. Interesting reading -- start here and keep scrolling down. (Hat tip: Clayton Cramer.)

Little Green Footballs linked this story of Palestinian family life a few days ago:

Rofayda Qaoud - raped by her brothers and impregnated - refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she bought the unwed teenager a razor with which to slit her wrists. So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family's "honor" through murder. ...

Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid succession. "She killed me before I killed her," says the 43-year-old mother of nine. "I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family's honor."

And in India, the Scotsman reports that affluent urban families are adopting what was once mainly a practice among poor rural families: female feticide and infanticide.

A new report published by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has revealed that the practice of female foeticide, in which an unborn baby is aborted or killed at birth simply because it is not a boy, is now spreading from India's poor and rural classes to affluent urban families.

The report said that far from helping women win equality, increased affluence had brought little change, and that sex discrimination had in fact spread through all levels of Indian society. And it is estimated there are between three and five million girl babies, born or unborn, "disappearing" each year.

India has a shocking history of child-killing due to gender, but the tradition has largely been among the uneducated and rural classes. However, the new figures reveal that the sharpest fall in the number of female babies being born is now in Delhi. ...

The methods used in the past to get rid of unborn or newborn girls have been varied and shocking. Opium has been used as well as over-salted milk, which causes a slow and painful death in a baby. Midwives have also been known to hit newborn girls over the head or throttle them.

Anyone care to argue that all cultures are morally equivalent?

Yes, you read that right. The grandson of Ayatollah Khomenei, himself a Shiite Muslim cleric now living in Baghdad, is hoping for American initiative in the overthrow of the Islamic theocracy established by his grandfather. Christopher Hitchens interviewed Hossein Khomenei for Slate:

In any event, added Khomeini, there was an important distinction between what the Quran said and what an ayatollah as head of state might say. "We cannot nowadays have executions in this form." Indeed, he added, it was the policy of executions that had turned the Islamic revolution in Iran sour in the first place. "Now we have had 25 years of a failed Islamic revolution in Iran, and the people do not want an Islamic regime anymore."

It's not strictly necessary to speak to Hossein Khomeini to appreciate the latter point: Every visitor to Iran confirms it, and a large majority of the Iranians themselves have voted for anti-theocratic candidates. The entrenched and reactionary regime can negate these results up to a certain point; the only question is how long can they do so? Young Khomeini is convinced that the coming upheaval will depend principally on those who once supported his grandfather and have now become disillusioned. I asked him what he would like to see happen, and his reply this time was very terse and did not require any Quranic scriptural authority or explication. The best outcome, he thought, would be a very swift and immediate American invasion of Iran.

Hat tip to Clayton Cramer for the link.

Periodically I check out a global news weblog called Winds of Change, which features a twice-weekly roundup of news from Iraq. The latest roundup included a link to an item about the challenges posed by Iraq's tribal social structure, which is reinforced by the practice of cousin marriage.

There was also an item about a new weblog. Blogger Frank Fleming, voicing the widespread frustration in the Blogosphere with the Western media tendency to trumpet bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan, has launched a new website called Front Line Voices. Here's what it's all about:

Since, as the saying goes, perception is nine-tenths of reality, those who control what we learn about the war in Iraq and other conflicts have an immense power. They can spin a victory into a failure, and a perceived failure in the fight against tyranny can only strengthen the resolve of tyrants.

It has increasingly been the complaint of many troops that the picture that the media is painting of the progress in the War on Terror is far from reality. The mission of this site is to get out the full story by posting first-hand accounts as written by men and women who have actually been to Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no editing or commentary by those who run this site, and we will print any letter or story submitted by a legitimate source who has served overseas. Our only goal is to offer you the opportunity to read these stories and to find out what the reality is.

They have already gathered a number of stories from months past that have been published on various weblogs, including many letters written in response to care packages from the US. Here's an excerpt from a letter written by a Navy corpsman to his mom, who had written asking if he would mind if she joined an anti-war demonstration in Hollywood:

Dear Mom:

It's really your decision to march if you want to or not. You are the one who has to decide if what we are doing out here is right or not. My opinion is not yours. I do, however, have things I would like for you and Grandma and everyone else at home to know. ...

We live in a country where people feel secure with their daily lives. They do business like usual and don't worry about the thought of terrorism actually happening to them.

The people of 9-11 thought the same thing. We now know that it can happen to anyone at any time.

Yet as Americans we're afraid of losing our soldiers to defend our security. I can only speak for myself when I say that my life is an easy expense to ensure that my family and friends can live in peace. I strongly believe in what we are doing and wish you were here to see for yourselves the honor and privilege that American soldiers aboard this ship are feeling, knowing that we are going to be a part of something so strong and so meaningful to the safety of our loved ones. Then you would know what this potential war is about. We will stand tall in front of terrorism and defeat it. We as soldiers are not afraid of what may happen. We are only afraid of Americans not being able to understand why we are here.

This site will be worth our attention.

It's a familiar story: The newspapers nag relentlessly, the politicians and the political parties trumpet their support. Everyone is voting yes. It's all about jobs. Only kneejerk naysayers would be so selfish, so unpatriotic as to oppose this progressive measure.

No, not Tulsa. Sweden. And today the Swedish people voted overwhelmingly against joining the European Monetary Union, which would have meant discarding their own currency and control over their own monetary and economic policy and adopting the Euro. The Euro has now been rejected by voters in the two countries (Denmark and Sweden) that allowed their voters to make the decision. In both cases, well financed "vote yes" campaigns, with the support of the establishment, the major media, major political parties and big business, were defeated by grass-roots opposition campaigns which cut across ideological lines. But the pro-Euro forces in Denmark are already plotting a second attempt, and will no doubt keep trying until they wear down the populace and get it passed.

In Sweden, the opposition withstood a wave of sympathy following the death of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, who was stabbed in the chest in a Stockholm department store last Wednesday. Lindh was a leading spokesman in favor of adopting the Euro.

Before the vote, left-wing British newspaper the Grauniad had this to say about the two sides:

The yes camp has most of the money. In the seat pockets on trains, there is a free glossy magazine, designed to look like "OK!" or "Hello!". It is called "Yes!" At yes rallies, young women wearing Yes! anoraks and carrying Yes! satchels hand out free sandwiches and bottled water to voters. Business leaders stand four square behind [Prime Minister Goran] Persson. Unlike Britain, almost all the other mainstream political parties are backing the yes campaign. Unlike [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair, Persson has not had a pack of viscerally anti-EU newspaper proprietors, editors and columnists snapping at his heels. There's no Daily Mail in Sweden.

There has been a problem. While the ruling business, media and political elite has been marching towards the single currency, the majority of the voters, and many of the members of the pro-euro parties, have been marching in the opposite direction. The social democrats have been split; Persson's party has a No! campaign as well as Yes! campaign, and in an act of some humiliation for the leader, the party treasury was forced to allocate funds to both sides. Five of Persson's own cabinet ministers have publicly said they are against Sweden joining the euro, although they have agreed not to take part in the no campaign.

The other parties are split as well. And what should make Britain's political establishment sit up and take notice is that opponents are not divided, and allies not united, along traditional, right-left lines. Something remarkable emerged in Sweden's euro debate, the crystallisation of a new set of political dividing lines, in which right-wing and left-wing activists find themselves in alliance against powerful, cross-border, private-public bureaucracies. On one side, the small, the local, the personal, the individual, the accessible, the familiar, the inherited; on the other, the big, the transnational, the impersonal, the mass, the remote, the alien, the acquired.

Drawing the comparison to Tulsa's recent vote: Some high-ranking politicians in Sweden's ruling party were willing to oppose their own prime minister for the sake of principle. Here in Tulsa, the only open opposition from elected officials came from one State Senator and one Glenpool City Councilor. A lot of high-ranking elected officials from our "ruling party" privately opposed the tax measure, but either out of fear of political reprisal or out of a desire not to undermine Mayor LaFortune, they remained silent.

As in Sweden, this campaign polarized Tulsa's politics in a way that brought left and right together on both sides of the issue, with the more activist-minded in both parties fighting against country-club Republicans and country-club Democrats.

What would Whirled editorial page editor Ken Neal's counterpart in Sweden have to say about all this? Thanks to the Babelfish Swedish Chef translator, we don't have to guess:

Emeed zee smesheeng veen ooff Feesiun 2025 lest veek, zeere-a vere-a sume-a deeseppuintments.

Zee fuoor meesoores iech vere-a epprufed by et leest 60 percent ooff neerly 129,000 futers. Boot ceefic leeders hed tu puny up mure-a thun $700,000 tu prumute-a zee prugrem und persooede-a futers tu epprufe-a a 1 percent increese-a in zee cuoonty seles tex.

Thet sooggests thet mooch muney oor mure-a veell be-a needed uny teeme-a zee ceety oor cuoonty needs ceefic imprufements. It tekes thet mooch tu oofercume-a ebuoot 50,000 ceetizens vhu veell fute-a egeeenst elmust unytheeng. Bork Bork Bork!

Bork bork bork, indeed. That makes more sense than it did in the original.

This morning at 8:46 am local time, Trinity Episcopal Church will host a choral concert to remember the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Coventry Chorale and singers from other Tulsa choirs will present Gabriel Faure's Requiem. Admission is free.

It's the weekend, and Andrew Stuttaford is doing his usual fine job of keeping NRO's The Corner group-blog full of interesting material while all the Yanks take the weekend off.

He links to "Footnotes to History", which features the stories of short-lived and little known nations. Some are exotic:

Redonda- The island of Redonda is currently within the nation of Antigua, but it was briefly an independent kingdom. In 1865, Matthew Dowdy Shiell, who resided on the nearby island of Montserrat, proclaimed himself King of Redonda, as no nation had bothered to extend a claim yet. Four years later, the British Empire annexed Redonda, but allowed Shiell to retain the title of King. The kingship was passed on to his son, and from there things get fuzzy. There are currently several claimants to the throne, who maintain a barrage of mutual invective.

Some are right here in the USA:

North Dakota- In 1933, William "Fighting Bill" Langer took office as Governor of North Dakota. Although he was hugely popular, he soon exhausted his support when he demanded that state employees contribute to the state Republican party. As some of these salaries were paid with federal money, he was convicted of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government in June of 1934. Langer refused to accept the verdict or to resign from office. Ole Olsen, the lieutenant governor, asked the state's Supreme Court to order Langer to resign. On July 17, 1934, the Supreme Court of North Dakota declared Olsen the legitimate governor. Langer's reaction was not what the Supreme Court expected- before the Court's order was filed on the 18th, Langer met with ten of his friends and declared North Dakota's independence. He then barricaded the governor's mansion and declared martial law. Not until the Supreme Court met personally with Langer did he relent, revoking his declaration and bringing North Dakota back into the Union.

Incredibly, Langer was later re-elected. From all accounts, he served out his second term in a much quieter fashion.

There is a nice collection of links to related sites, including official sites of some of these micronations.

Tulsa has a connection to one such ephemeral nation. David Arnett of Tulsa Today recites the story of New Utopia and its founders. Nearly five years after that story was written, New Utopia's web site is still up and running.

Which presidential administration first raised the alarm that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to America? The Clinton Administration. Rich Lowry has them warning of the danger in their own words. (Thanks again to Dave Russ for the link.)

In NRO today, David Klinghoffer (who is Jewish) argues that there shouldn't be objections to Christians communicating the Gospel as they bring supplies and help to the Iraqi people. After all, Abraham, revered by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, was a missionary for monotheism, and used hospitality to create opportunities for his message:

Abraham was pretty aggressive. In another cryptic verse in Genesis, he's said to have planted an "eshel" in Beersheba (21:33). If that is just a kind of tree, as many translators say, who cares that he planted one? According to the Talmud, this eshel refers to an inn Abraham established in the wilderness, a hospice where he taught wayfarers to acknowledge God. The patriarch would give them food, then ask them to say grace.

Sound familiar? As Christian missionaries understand, food creates fellowship. We eat with our friends. And it is friendship that, more than food itself, leads to conversions.

How could any religious believer, who thinks his faith has the answers to ultimate questions, not share those answers with others? The patriarch operated in a free market of ideas, where he was able to share his conception of the One God. Part of his legacy is missionary work. Another part is the liberty to make friends by offering food, and then to tell them about your God.

Not a day goes by without a report that employees of our State Department (motto: "To protect and to serve... Saudi interests") is in some way undermining the policies of their nominal boss, President Bush.

Donna M. Hughes, Women's Studies Professor at the University of Rhode Island, reports on NRO that the State Department seems to be touting legalized prostitution to foreign countries as a solution to the problem of global sex trafficking:

Last week, the State Department took a Southeast Asian delegation for a tour of a brothel in Nevada. As a part of the International Visitor's Program, nine people from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia visited the Moonlite Bunny Ranch and heard lectures on legal prostitution....

Taking foreign visitors to brothels in Nevada seems to be an ongoing practice of the State Department. In August 1999, I gave a presentation on trafficking of women and children for prostitution to a group of U.S. Information Agency visitors from East Asia. They told me they too had visited a brothel in Nevada as part of their tour....

The purpose of these particular State Department visitors' tours is to teach the participants about human trafficking and how the U.S. is combating the problem. One might conclude from the program of a visiting brothel and a pro-prostitution organization that the State Department is telling international visitors that legalization of prostitution is a solution to trafficking.

Meanwhile, the Washington Times reports on morale over at State Department HQ:

Walk the halls of the State Department's main offices in Washington these days, and you'll encounter an abundance of political cartoons � something you could not have found even three years ago. It's not that the diplomats at Foggy Bottom have suddenly developed a sense of humor, but rather a newfound contempt for the leader of the free world. The cartoons overwhelmingly lampoon President Bush as a simpleton who doesn't understand the "complexities" of the foreign policy.

Foreign Service sneering at a president is nothing new, of course, but such open disrespect for a commander-in-chief hasn't existed since Foggy Bottom's diplomats decried Ronald Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." But at least then-Secretary of State George Schultz was able to keep something of a handle on his lieutenants and foot soldiers. Colin Powell has not.

Consider an example with deep policy ramifications. On March 31, representatives of the North Korean government told State Department officials, for the first time, that they were reprocessing plutonium, a key step in developing nuclear weapons. The Pentagon and the White House did not learn of this stunning announcement until Pyongyang told them during previously scheduled talks with North Korea in China on April 18. The State Department intentionally withheld this vital piece of information, fearing that, if the White House knew, officials there might call off the meeting. The White House was reportedly furious about this deception, but it has done nothing concrete to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And if you want more reason to get mad, read through NRO's archive of reporting by Joel Mowbray, who has relentlessly covered the State Department's policy of expediting visas for Saudi nationals, obstructing efforts to release abducted American children being held in Saudi Arabia, and undermining our relationship with Turkey.

Does the State Department exist to represent U. S. interests abroad, or to influence U. S. policy for the benefit of foreign countries? Is there corruption -- bribery -- behind this behavior? Or is it that people attracted to the Foreign Service are more likely to be enamored of foreign countries and disdainful of America? Does the glamour of jetting around the world and attending peace conferences in fancy hotels lead to a preference for "peace process" over real peace (which usually only results from the measured application of military force)?

Perhaps we ought to fire the whole lot and start from scratch. A government agency charged with representing our interests around the world ought to by manned by people who identify with those interests. Yes, Foreign Service employees should have an appreciation for foreign cultures, but they ought to passionately love our culture, our way of life, and our traditions of liberty and rule of law, and seek to defend them against all threats.

If someone views himself more as a "citizen of the World" then as an American, let him go join the French Foreign Legion. He doesn't belong in the U. S. Foreign Service.

A hat tip to Little Green Footballs for the link to the Washington Times op-ed. LGF is another source for a long litany of State Department outrages.

There's more to the story of Abigail Litle. About a month after her murder by a terrorist, her father Phil, a friend of mine from college, collected his thoughts and remembrances of his daughter, of learning of her murder, mourning her death, and celebrating her victory over death through her faith in Christ. With Phil's approval and encouragement, I want to make her story known as widely as possible. The full text is below. (You can also download the original PDF from Phil. It's a large file, 961 KB, which included some color photos, but the text is identical to what you see here.)

Here's a quote from Phil's introductory letter, which is an apt summary of the article.

The measure of our love for Abigail can be found in the depth of our pain. How it hurts that we can no longer hold her, that our partnership in the dreams she dreamt is broken and that our dreams which included her being here on earth with us are over. But we are finding comfort and strength in the Lord through the prayers of the multitudes who are interceding for us � many who we have never met. We are thankful that we can know that we will hold her once again as we share together in our Heavenly Father�s Kingdom.

We have tried to record some of the events and our experiences beginning with the moments we first heard of the bus bombing in Haifa. Our desire is that the Lord would enourage your hearts and strengthen you as you pray for us in the weeks and months ahead.

Charles Johnson is reporting that there has been another terror attack in Jerusalem, in addition to a bus bombing earlier today. There is no negotiating with these people, and it is time the US stopped pushing Israel into committing national suicide.

If you care about the Middle East and want the unvarnished truth about our "partners in peace", you should visit Charles Johnson's website, Little Green Footballs, every day.

What follows is an article I wrote back in March, which was published on tulsatoday.com. The article was written two weeks after the daughter of some dear friends of mine was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist on a bus in Haifa, Israel on March 5, 2003. I am re-publishing it here for the convenience of the readers of this weblog, who may not have had the chance to read it before. I also wanted to make a couple of corrections to reflect some better information that I received subsequent to its original publication. Here's a quote from the article; follow the link at the end of this entry to read the whole thing:

Two American young women died violent deaths in Israel in recent weeks. Much has been written about Rachel Corrie, the 23 year old radical, killed accidently when she chose to throw herself in front of a bulldozer as she tried to protect tunnels used by Palestinian terrorists. For some reason, the media hasn't given as much attention to the other victim, a teenage girl riding a bus. Let me tell you about her.

Wednesday, March 5, 2003, Abigail Litle, a 14-year-old American living in Haifa, a Christian attending a predominantly Jewish school, was going about her routine. She was taking the bus from her high school to a tutoring appointment for help with her dyslexia. Riding with her was a schoolmate, Juval Mendelevich. Juval was on his cell phone, telling his dad how his day had been. It was their last conversation.