Foreign Policy Archives

By Yuri Mamchur

In the 1700-s British King George III called George Washington "The greatest man in the world." American history is taught well in Russian public schools, but probably wasn't delivered as well during the Soviet times when Vladimir Putin was a boy. Had Putin looked into the history books, he would've found out that he had given up the opportunity to become the Greatest Man in Russia's history. In fact, he lined himself up to become one of the less impressive men in history, one whose personal hobbies and views, combined with age and historically long terms at the steering wheel (surpassing even Stalin) may lead to some results other than a free market economy...

What is the secret sauce for being the "Greatest Man in the World?" It is simple: be humble. Or as Bob Lefsets, an LA-based music producer says about the record industry and technology at large, "It's all about the timing." Putin failed at both. Unfortunately, his failures are much more than just his personal business. What really hurts is the fact that Putin built a strong, wealthy country and the momentum of that could have made Russia a role model to all, including the United States - responsible spending, non-involvement in foreign affairs, strong financial system, and... That's where the list ends. When talking to a Moscow friend, I mentioned Putin's accomplishments, to which he responded, "What do all of them mean if he failed at the most important thing -- grooming the leadership among the future generations."

In 1775, when George Washington accepted command of the Continental Army, he promised Congress he would resign his commission when the war was over. Once the British withdrew, he was true to his word. Just before then, Washington had been approached by the officers who pledged their support if he decided to seize civilian power. In response, General Washington scolded the conspiring officer.

Maybe the governments of Europe should curb their diplomats' zeal for obfuscation and admit that the crisis in the Economic and Monetary Union is also a political crisis. Full European Union, politically speaking, is now deader than Monty Python's parrot.

Was it a mere two years ago that the Europeans seemed eager to enter into full political union? Only the votes of a Dutch plebiscite (then the Irish) initially held it up. U.K. elites (including especially the snide media elites at organs like The Economist and the Financial Times) were poised to surrender British sovereignty, and meanwhile to give up the British pound. Supposedly, only nostalgic right wingers opposed the trend. But in a national election David Cameron required a Tory/Liberal coalition in order to govern, in part because of his failure to attract enough Euro Skeptic votes to give his Conservative Party a majority on its own. Then the current economic crisis of the Euro hit. You don't hear much about a stronger EU any more.

Even the future of the currency union is suffering as ordinary voters who never had much time for EU politics realize that the full faith and credit of their own countries have been tied to the spendthrift nations like Greece that regard debts rather differently than do the bankers in Frankfurt or London.

British writer Roger Scruton thinks that culture, indeed, is at the heart of the matter. Writing in The American Spectator, he concludes,

"It was not economics but culture that engendered the euro--a culture of a ruling class at war with the people of Europe, wishing to establish trans-national government at all costs, and hoping to wipe away yet another trace of nationhood. By destroying those ancient currencies through which the people of Europe had expressed and managed their apartness, the European elite hoped to make a decisive move toward the goal of Union. Instead they have burdened the continent with new debts, new resentments, and a looming disaster that was not foreseen only because it had been ruled out as impossible."

The need for co-operation among the developed nations has never been more obvious, but it can't come at the cost of sovereignty. Ordinary people held back the tide. Bleak as prospects are now, they could have been worse.

Late Thursday reports have it that Libyan rebels have entered the Gaddafi stronghold city of Sirte. However, Debka Files is reporting that Col. Gaddafi, two of his sons and a cadre of loyal troops have established a base in Targan, a widespread Sahara oasis far from Tripoli. Capturing it will take a lorgistical effort of which the rebels and NATO so far have not been capable. Also, Gaddafi is thought to have the backing of a least one major tribe in the area.

A Slatest column by Jack Shafer demands that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resign because of a Wikileaks report that cables "under her name" went out asking U.S. diplomats to spy on their counterparts overseas. Shafer is repeating a demand of Wikileaks' founder, Julian Assange.

Simply put, what do Slate and Jack Shafer (and Julian Assange) really know about the State Department? Are they aware that virtually every State cable not about a very specific item goes out under the Secretary of State's name? In other words, the likelihood that Hillary Clinton sees, let alone approves, any given cable of the hundreds or thousands sent daily is next to nil.

The reason for this procedure, I guess, is to make sure that whatever someone sends out from Foggy Bottom has the full force of the Department behind it. But, the custom does lead to preposterous conclusions like Shafer's. If Secretary Clinton did organize a spying expedition, the leaks would, indeed, be embarrassing. But it is highly doubtful that she would have the time, let alone the interest.

Secretary Clinton, to the surprise perhaps of former critics, has done an impressively professional job at State. Let's leave it at that. As for the news that U.S. embassies spy on other embassies, pass me my smelling salts; I'm so shocked. Next thing, we'll have foreign diplomats spying on us! You think?

We all consider it safer to live in England than in Israel. But is that assumption correct? Judith Levy says "no".

In the telling of the Russian Orthodox Church, freedom began 20 years ago when the attempted coup against Gorbachev was defeated and Yeltsin took over.

Maybe there are Canadians who knew Jack Layton, who died yesterday, and have something bad to say about him. But I rather doubt it. From this Yankee's distant viewpoint he was a gentleman of the Left who gave a fervent, yet happy, sheen to Canadian politics. The Hubert Humphrey of Canada's New Democrtatic Party, Layton was a gallant champion of labor and the disaffected. He managed in the last election to oust the Liberal Party as the nation's Loyal Opposition and did so while still suffering from cancer.

Indeed, as the campaign proceeded, Layton seemed bouoyed by the crowds, nearly throwing away his cane. He savored Parliamentary life and reveled in campaigning.

Only 61, Layton will long be honored by the Canadian Left as a heroic standard-bearer, and by everyone else as an exemplar of the worth of democratic politics. As Canada graces the free West, Layton graced Canada.

The Conservative Government of Canada should gieve, especially. They may not again have such a worthy opponent.

The fall of Gaddafi in Libya will lower price expectations for oil prices further. Libyan oil is "sweet" and accessible. Remember that when the civil war began six months ago, prices rose. What goes up, must come down.

Libya's revolution is bad news for Assad in Syria (see below), but it also is bound to be unwelcome in Venezuela, where free-spending anti-Western Hugo Chavez is wobbly, and in Iran, where the mullahs need oil money to still criticism from the masses. Less money equals less support.

In America and Europe, lower oil prices will assist economic recovery more than any government "stimulus" one can think of.

Reuters

Fighters in the early news stories out of Libya were wearing heavy jackets; now it's T-Shirts in the searing sun. But finally Gaddaffi's fate appears more certain. Tripoli is surrounded. Government ministers and military are defecting, each undoubtedly bringing new intelligence to the insurgents and deepening fear in Gaddaffi's circle.

Think of how Bashir Assad, in Damascus, must be viewing the news of Gaddaffi's peril. When Libya's prospective liberation is realized as fact, Syrian rebels will take fresh courage and determination. More arms from Iran and goons from Hezbollah in Lebanon won't change the calculus then.

If Syria goes, how long can Hezbollah hold on in Lebanon?

Pessimism is in vogue in the West today, given the economy and the seeming intractability of the Taliban. But as the tenth anniversay of 9/11 approaches, think of all the positive changes that have taken place in the MIddle East. Even the situation of Israel may be improving, thanks to its decade-long boom and an increasing technological prowess that--among other things--is allowing the tiny dynamo to create new defenses against the Iranians as well as Hamas. Bin Laden is dead. Saddam Hussen is gone and a democratic government operates in Iraq. Gaddaffi is failling fast. The end of the duplicitous Assad family would be an excellent new development.

By Yuri Mamchur (cross-posted at Real Russia Blog)

Coincidentally, I used to work for a foundation that sponsored the Fanagoria archeological expedition, and my friend, just like Putin, retrieved a similar vase; it's now resting at our family's dacha (country home) in the Moscow suburbs. A photo of our vase is coming, after my family back in Russia takes it and sends it over to Seattle where I am currently.... -- YM

What do Putin, Obama and Ben Affleck have in common? They are celebrities, and nothing more! Everybody knows them, but no one is too sure what exactly any of them is doing. Karl Rove's article in The Wall Street Journal "Obama's No Good, Very Bad Week" nails all the necessary points in regards to the American president. Obama talks, blames, and smiles i-n his white unbuttoned shirt. That, apparently, is not enough to curb the worst financial crisis in world's modern history.

Ben Affleck? He is a celebrity and a handsome man. But no one can really remember his most recent hit movie. To help out Russia Blog readers who are his fans -- the movie is called The Company Men, and features another now-irrelevant star, Kevin Costner. With a production budget of $15 million, the movie grossed only $4.9 million worldwide. An "ouch" moment for the film's investors -- a feeling similar to that which the Chinese government is experiencing in relationship to Obama's White House economic program.

However, in our weekend stardom marathon, Vladimir Putin takes first place with his new action movies of diving underwater and retrieving ancient Greek artifacts. By a pure coincidence, I used to work for a foundation that sponsored archeological expedition in Fanagoria--a Russian town that is the location of an ancient Greek city. The Russian government under back-then President Putin didn't want to do anything with the expedition, leaving the sponsorship to Russian private businessmen, some of whom fell out of Putin's favor... But that's a different story. Today, when Putin is prime minister, the government donates about 50 rubles (one dollar and eighty cents) per day to the income of each of the scientists and archeologists working on the site. That is, not much. However, uncomfortable facts and unwritten rules of ethics do not prevent the prime minister from going on a lavish vacation to the site he never supported. Meanwhile, Russia's ruble--backed by piles of gold, diamonds, gas, oil, and zero innovation--is slipping alongside the "evil" dollar (the ruble has lost 10% of its value next to the struggling dollar in the past several weeks).

One of the most intriguing political writers today is Mustafa Akyol of Turkey, a journalist and commentator in Istanbul, whose book, Islam Without Extremes: An Islamic Case for Liberty, has just been published by W. W. Norton. It is Akyol's argument that freedom in the ways recognized in the Western tradition, will be best promoted in Islamic countries if the government is in some sense Islamic rather than secularist.

He has a point, indeed, several points. Most 20th and 21st century Arab dictatorships have been secular and have feared and siuppressed Islamists--Syria, Iraq, even Egypt and Tunisia. These regimes have been ruthless, as we see now in the cities of Syria.

But we also see a different extreme in Iran, and, for that matter, in de facto daily governance in Pakistan. There Islamists cruelly attack people of other faiths and impose a tyrannous brand of Islam on their own co-religionists.

Unfortunately, Akyol's model of a best path in contemporary life is Turkey. Its government has repudiated many of the excesses of the former secular government and turned its economy, at least, toward the West. However, Turkey is also a poor model on many accounts; press censorship, for example. True freedom of religion for another.

Akyol therefore is most interested in historic examples of the kind of liberty-loving government he thinks is possible for Muslims. For these one must go back a long ways, and the record isn't clear.

On the other hand, the models of republican freedom for the American Founders were not untainted, either. Think of democratic Athens and Reublican Rome. In other words, the American Founders had to invent the system they wanted. The historic "models" were mainly points of reference.

At his strongest, Akyol holds out the hope for a brand new version of government within an Islamic context.

Yuri Mamchur, head of Discovery's Real Russia Project, is printed in The Daily Star in Beirut today.

Somehow Western media missed the demonstrations in Syria that protest the support of that country's dictatorial regime by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah (now the major power in Lebanon and a client of Iran). Muhammed Fadhil does cover it--from nearby Iraq.

Iran, at least, is also heavily involved in Iraq, but in undermining the government there--the democratic government.

One can't rely on polls, for many reasons. Nonetheless, it is sobering that a poll conducted in the Palestinian Authority territories shows overwhelming support for jihad to eradicate Israel, not live in a peaceful two-state arrangement.

Any Palestinian leader--now as in decades past--who desired to reach a peaceful two state solution faces the threat of assassination, not merely rejection at the polls.

Israel, with China and India, is one of the few countries that is growing economically. The US is mired in a budget and debt struggle, with Americans still not recognizing the extent of their exposure. Europe is even worse off. But the Arab countries, starting with Egypt and Syria are going broke right now. Masses of Egyptians could starve.

The perspicacious Caroline Glick surveys the threat from an Israeli standpoint, but the danger affects us all.

France is reporting feelers from Tripoli that Gaddafi may be willing to discuss an exile option. But there's a legal cloud over any solution.

I have advocated the prudence of providing an exile strategy for persuading dictators to step down. It has to be circumstantial; that is, you can't legislate such an outcome in advance. "Prudence", after all, entails judgement, not pre-judgement. In the case of Libya, a lot of bloodshed and treasure could be spared if Gaddafi left.

But the Libyan dictator has to be considering the possibility that a safe exit and resettlement cannot be guaranteed in the presence of the International Court at the Hague. It's things like this that cause civilization to tie itself in knots. There are people who would like nothing more than to see Gaddafi leave, and then, again, there are people (including some of the same people) who would have nothing more to once he is gone than to come after him legally.

Knowing that, he stalls--and more people die.

Brief mention must be made of Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, or whatever state will have him after redistricting, who recently went to Syria to get some headlines. Regardless of how his declarations are explained, they were inappropriate for someone in an official position. Here we have another American official who is at variance from U.S. foreign policy and is lending his credibility to an oppressive dictator. Plenty of American officials and celebrities are willing to do this kind of thing: think of the parade that visited Saddam Hussein before the two Iraq wars.

One difference is that Assad's people are in open revolt right now. They were being gunned down even as Kucinich enjoyed a personal, head of state type photo op with Bashar Assad.

Another difference is that we used to excoriate free lancers such as Kucinich. In a properly ordered political world, a stunt like his would terminate his hopes for any public office. At the least there would be public disavowals and shunning. Unfortunately, the exquisite sensitivity the media display toward celebrity wrongdoing tends to concentrate on gaffes in public utterances. It's not what you do that counts, but what you say, and especially how you say it.

Getty Images

Estonia, Richard Rahn argues, has been doing everything right since the Soviets left, except perhaps for joining the Euro. That sounds about right. The little Baltic land, upon becoming free, decided simply to skip the "middle way" that trapped so many countries into welfare state socialism and instead go right to modern capitalism. Now, with a six percent growth rate, it is prospering mightily.

Unlike Greece or most American states, Estonia's bureaucracy is minimal. Indeed, Rahn reports, the Estonians handle their business with the government on the Internet. Having lacked real banks for so many decades they also never had checks; and today they just send transfers from their accounts to whatever store they are frequenting.

They have a flat tax. Their debt is 1.6 percent of GDP.

In some ways, Estonia makes the US, as well as places like Greece, look backward.

At Real Russia Blog Discovery sr. fellow Yuri Mamchur describes a truly rotten act of cyber piracy: a group of Eastern European hackers robbed thousands of youth in that region of their chance to spend a summer working in the United States. I have encountered some of the student workers in the past--at resorts, National Park restaurants, etc. Working here is a great experience for them and for us. Now it is ruined for many.

Cyber crimes are increasing, yet it is hard to see that private companies or the government care enough to implement protective measures. Our IT guru says that protection is clumsy and time-consuming, especially if an organization has varied kinds of computers. Still....

Turkish national elections are next Sunday and the party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to triumph. A number of Westerners have noticed the tendency of Erdogan to sue critics for slander if they say anything unflattering of him--and in Turkish courts he wins a number of those suits. If you want evidence of why the First Amendment is so crucial to American democracy, Turkey today provides an answer.

We at Discovery have a couple of friends who know Turkey well, though each in a different way. Usually these days Mustafa Akyol, a columnist in Istanbul, and Claire Berlinski, an American writer living there, disagree about Turkish policy, culture and foreign policy. But both have well-considered perspectives worth knowing. Mustafa is author of a forthcoming book on the reform path Islam might take (Mustafa, of course, is Muslim). He is irenic, pro-Western and cautious, but also very hopeful for the future of his country.

Huge efforts are being made by Democrats to reconcile President Obama and American Jews who are favorably disposed toward Israel. To some extent the efforts are successful, witness the campaign of Rep. Debby Wasserman Schultz to turn conservative Jews' criticism back upon them as "partisan". The issue, you see, is not the President's call for "1967" borders, but the impudent criticism of that position.

Meanwhile, however, opinion of Obama in Israel is strongly negative, as many articles and interviews, and a new poll in The Jerusalem Post, indicate. Only 12 percent of Israelis consider Mr. Obama pro-Israel.

This subject is not academic to Israel. Egypt has just reopened its border with Gaza, making it far easier now for Hamas to get weapons to attack Israel. Indeed, rockets already are raining down on Israel.

Discovery Sr. Fellow George Gilder, author of The Israel Test, spoke in recent days in New York at The Israel Project and an American Spectator event on the Middle East, helping to show that support for Israel is not just a correct moral and military posture for America, but an extremely important for our economy. George also has an article just out in the June issue of The American Spectator, a "Special Report" on "The Arab Debt to Jewish Settlers." It's a rebuttal to the accepted account of American progressives.

Listening on the radio to President Obama's speech on Middle East policies last week, I literally didn't believe my ears. It was gratifying to hear him address the call of democratic institutions in Arab countries, even if he gave no credit to George W. Bush, as if the vision began with him. However, when he declared himself for "1967" lines in a negotiated settlement between Israel and a new Palestinian state, I assumed he must mean "post- 1967 war" lines. The NPR commentators' soothing conclusions that the speech merely covered old ground made me think my assumption was right. But it wasn't. He meant pre-1967 lines.

Anyone who visited Israel before 1967 knows that the Mandelbaum Gate that separated Israel from Jordan meant that all of the old city of Jerusalem was in Arab hands and Israelis were not allowed. Furthermore, anyone could see with his own eyes (as I did as a young journalist in 1965) that the Arab side was ill-kept. There was no "Palestine". Jordan ran what is now the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Over the whole region, the line between the lands generally could be seen from the ground or air as a desert on one side and a garden on the other. Nothing positive had changed for hundreds of years on one side, while the new state of Israel had changed the whole prospect on its land in less than a generation.

Some Muslims insist that Jerusalem is a holy site they must control. But when they did control it, the site was neglected and sparsely populated. Israel revived it. The city is holy--the holiest--for Jews and Christians alike. The Israelis allow Muslims to worship freely there. It's not just another piece of property.

President Obama now has tried to back-track on his Middle Eastern speech. Major media and Jewish leaders that are essentially pro-Democrat before they are pro-Israel have tried to obscure the significance of the President's change of long standing policy. Well, that's politics for you.

Israeli officials also are trying to give the Obama Administration a break, but mainly as a diplomatic stance. Israel must depend at some point on the U.S. The Israeli public is something else, however. Inside Israel Obama is the most unpopular American president ever.

As President Obama and his apologists try to explain away his statements, I have a question that they still have not touched. It is a kind of litmus test.

Where does Mr. Obama stand on the future of Jerusalem?

Photo: National Geographic

In The Seattle Times, former Congressman and former Ambassador John R. Miller, a senior fellow of Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism and Human Rights, observes that the sad course of Middle Eastern politics will not become truly humane until leaders develop enough humility to relinquish power at set times and peacefully.

by John R. Miller
Seattle Times, May 13, 2011

WITH all the sympathetic commentary about the chances of setting up republican institutions in revolt-torn Arab countries, one point is so obvious that it is rarely mentioned: Founding leaders of newly democratized states must be willing to give up power.

The Middle Eastern dictators who have been or are in danger of being overthrown largely came to power through revolutions, enjoyed initial popular support and mouthed democratic aspirations. Many Arab leaders, excepting the monarchs, followed the example of the United States in setting up post-colonial governments, establishing democratic constitutions, calling their governments "republics" and calling themselves "presidents."

The media buzzes with a controversy over whether the photos of the dead Osama Bin Laden should be published or not. I have a third opinion: it doesn't make any difference.

The infamous terrorist is dead. The U.S. has the DNA evidence, the man's hideout produced plenty of secondary evidence, he was identified by at least one woman present. It's the death, not the details, that matter. If there were going to be protest demonstrations of any consequence, they already would have happened. A picture wouldn't change things. As is, there don't seem to be many Bin Laden fans around, anyhow.

Further, not printing the photo won't cause any more or any fewer conspiracy theories. For years some people--the kind that gather around the tabloids at the supermarket check-out counter--believed that Hitler had not died in Berlin but was living quietly in Argentina. Did such delusions make any difference? Nope. Hitler remained quite dead.

On the other hand, we all had a chance to see the gruesome picture of Commie terrorist Che Guevara.after he'd been shot. Yep, quite dead. Nonetheless the legend of Che spread and soon spawned one of the T-Shirt businesses best selling designs.

The real follow up issues are how the US and its allies pursue the rest of Al Qaeda and bring the leaders to justice. And, sadly, it also appears that the issue of Pakistan is now on the table. The government there looks either ridiculous or duplicitous, or maybe both. It also may be that there are many divisions in Pakistan. The Navy Seals will have helped the anti-terrorist faction, I'd think.

American taxpayers, already tapped for domestic bailouts for big companies favored by the Administration, are about to get another violent shaking, this time to bail out European countries. Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane is calling attention to the worsening situation at the International Monetary Fund.

Quoted by Human Events, McMorris Rodgers says, "Clearly, we hope that Spain doesn't request a bailout from the IMF, but given the direction of IMF policy over the last year, it's extremely likely. Let's remember: One year ago, we were told that Greece wouldn't need a bailout from the IMF. It happened. Then we were told that Ireland wouldn't need an IMF bailout. It happened. Ditto for Portugal. Basically, it's been a year of broken promises from the IMF and the European Union. Because Spain and Italy are afflicted with the same disease as the other three countries--too much government spending and borrowing--and since the Obama administration has made no attempt to protect U.S. contributions to the IMF, it would seem to be only a matter of time before Spain and Italy are standing in line for American tax dollars."

Already the American disbursements for earlier European bailouts are substantial. "The IMF has refused to provide a reliable number but, given America's contribution to the bailout, we estimate that our support of the package is equal to writing a check worth $600 for every man, woman, and child in Portugal," Rodgers stated. This ratio "was nearly identical for Greece and Ireland bailouts," she said.

McMorris Rodgers, Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference, and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, are proposing legislation for tighter controls to protect U.S. interests at the IMF.

Republicans in the U.S. might be wise this spring to send some agents to Canada to see how the Conservative Party there did it. Win crucial elections with minority votes, that is.

Canadian diversity is different than America's. You will see more Indians and Chinese, most notably. Regardless, Canadian Conservatives have not succeeded in the past in swinging minority voters away from the Liberal Party. This year everything changed.

For one thing, Tories this year nominated more minority candidates, including winners, not just sacrificial lambs. And Prime Minister Harper spent time building up the party's appeal to immigrant groups in urban areas--with particular success in the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Vancouver.

The National Post carries much of the story today, and in it is the tale of nine new Conservative seats in Parliament from the Toronto area, seats that provided much of Mr. Harper's new majority.

Our northern neighbor held a transformative national election Monday while the United States remained transfixed by the death of Osama bin Laden. Canadians went to the polls in slightly higher numbers (61%) than in recent elections and voted--a plurality--for a center-right government with "a strong, stable national majority," in the words of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Leader of the victorious Conservatives, and now holding a majority after five years heading a minority government, Harper won about 167 of the 308 seats in Parliament. The opposition parties plainly made a mistake five weeks ago by voting "no confidence" in Harper's government and bringing on an election.

Like Ronald Reagan, the very square Albertan, Harper, has succeeded in part because his opponents consistently underestimate him.

The formerly third ranking party, the New Democrats (NDP), perhaps did not conclude that the election was a mistake, however. The left wing NDP was persuasively more anti-Tory than the Liberals and therefore appealed more to young voters and progressive Quebec voters ready to "go national" again. Polar political magnetism therefore brought the NDP to a giddy second ranking with (about) 102 seats. The ebullient leader Jack Layton is now the new official leader of the opposition. Encumbered with a cane from recent surgery, and a recent cancer survivor, Layton seemed to treat campaigning as physical therapy and wound up at rallies waving his cane like a sword. Compared to the "Grits"--the Liberals--the NDP seemed authentic. For the first time in a long time, Canadian politics is organizing along the traditional left-right axis familiar elsewhere in the West.

Here's what else the election did:

The course of an Arab warrior often is propelled at first by a seemingly irresistible force of fanaticism, But then the pathways of these warriors, like footprints in the sand, fade away. Osama bin Laden certainly caused a reactionary jihad in Muslim countries, and it continues in several forms. But the law of unintended consequences also came into play, somewhat to Bin Laden's surprise. Indeed, Al Qaeda's major achievement in the past dozen years may have been to help stimulate the US and the West to help establish another path in the Middle East--a path to liberal democracy.

Granted, we're not there yet. But progress is being made. Still, it is interesting to read the reactions of Arabs and other Muslims to Bin Laden's death.

If the Muslim world does continue to transition to serious democracy (with all the attendant human rights recognized), the $1.3 billion we have spent these past ten years on Iraq and Afghanistan (and now Libya), not to mention quieter efforts elsewhere--and most of all, the deaths of several thousand victims of 9/11 and several thousands young heroes in the US and allied armed forces--will have been justified.

The war in Libya--the one that the President said would take "days, not weeks"--is now one month old. We got involved to stop the killing of civilians, remember? But civilians are being mutilated and killed in such numbers now that the hospital in Misrata is glutted with blood. We don't do enough to enable a rebel victory; we do just enough to prevent a government victory.

Still, the Mall in Washington, D.C. is a scene of vernal bliss. In Harvard Yard the frisbees blow, beneath the proctors, row on row. Gentlemen of Berkeley now abed can almost hear the echoes of percussion bands. "We are the grass roots, we cover all."

It turns out that the anti-war movement in recent years was never anti-war, just anti-Republican wars. A new study from the University of Michigan puts that thesis forth.

Write Michael Feaney and Fabio Rojas: "Overall, our results convincingly demonstrate a strong relationship between partisanship and the dynamics of the antiwar movement. While Obama's election was heralded as a victory for the antiwar movement, Obama's election, in fact, thwarted the ability of the movement to achieve critical mass."

Since the University of Michigan study was reported about two weeks ago there have been few commentaries, let alone denials, from the Left. NPR's coverage tried to chalk it up to the absence of a draft, which would explain why this isn't the Vietnam War, but does not explain the anti-Iraq marches of the past decade. It also is suggested that people are less interested in contesting U.S. efforts to combat terrorism than they were to contest wars. Except that Libya is not about terrorism, per se, is it?

The anti-war movement is essentially the Democratic Party taking to the streets in times when a Republican holds the White House. The same made be said of the government employee union marchers in state capitals like Madison or Columbus.

On a recent report of The National, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's (CBC) nightly news program, a group of young voters were shown pictures of all four major party candidates for Prime Minister. They couldn't recognize any of them, not even Stephen Harper, the incumbent. But shown a picture of Barack Obama, the young voters laughed; they all knew him instantly.

Canada is having another national election, the fourth in seven years, but three weeks before the election, no one is paying much attention. In contrast, formation of a new government (administration in U.S. terms) afterwards could prove very interesting.

The estimable Bernard Lewis is interviewed in the Wall Street Journal, saying that we must not expect Muslims to adopt our ideas of "democracy" and "freedom". Yet, as the Journal interviewer notes, people in Damascus nonetheless shout for "freedom".

Prof. Lewis suggests that we would be better off allowing Muslim states to develop within their own traditions of justice. It sounds right, but....

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, noted legal scholar Ca Huy Ha Vu has been sentenced to prison for asserting that the Vietnamese are entitled to freedom, too. Vietnam, of course, is not Muslim. But it is part of the world, and the people there are people. And they seem to want freedom.

It is a Western conceit, I suppose, that we think the whole world would benefit from our experience in the development of free institutions. But maybe it is is a Western conceit of another kind that other cultures are not capable of appreciating the same longings that give rise to such institutions.

Is it possible that freedom and constitutional democracy, like some version of the free market, are universal aspirations, but that it takes exposure, education and assistance to realize them fully? It surely is true that some observers of the Middle East are deluded into thinking all "rebels" are liberal, in the Western tradition. Just as false, however, would be a contention that no significant number are liberal. Surely our job, then. is to find those who are liberal, and help them.

(From today's Washington Times)

(NOTE: I erroneously transposed Elba Island and St. Helena in the story.)

Reuters reports that the Ugandans seem willing to host Muammar Gaddafi--"like anyone else"--if he seeks asylum. Uganda is more stable and the living probably is more agreeable there than in nearby Zimbabwe.

We do need somewhere to send dictators into exile these days. Switzerland some years ago decided not to play that role any more. In a place like Uganda, the terms of asylum could provide the host country with income (assuming applicants are allowed to take away some of their loot), prevent extradition as long as the former dictator behaves himself and save the dictator's home country a great deal of bloodshed by bringing about a peaceful end to his rule.

The "modalities", as diplomats call the details of an agreement, would have to be worked out, but as of now Uganda seems a good prospect for the retirement location of choice for Col. Gaddafi. Might not the same become true for other dictators on the world scene who need a little push to quit their posts?

Of course, in the meantime, the NATO allies (plus the air force of Qatar) need to increase the military pressure substantially, it would appear from news stories today. Exile is not Gaddafi's first choice; victory is.

Speculation here (March 23 and 25) about an exile outcome for Gaddafi is in print at The Guardian (UK). African sites are under discussion by NATO diplomats. No country, but surely Zimbabwe is under consideration. It's almost as much a pariah state as Libya and Mr. Mugabe is unlikely to expatriate the Libyan dictator if someone sues him in international courts. That makes a gilder sanctuary potentially more attractive to Gaddafi and his immediate retinue. Zimbabwe also has beautiful scenery and modern conveniences, if you have lots of money.

The benefit of an exit deal for the Libyan people, of course, is the saving of lives that will be lost removing Gaddafi if he doesn't go voluntarily. Italy and France would benefit from a deal by re-opening the oil spigot and stopping the new flow of refugees from Libya. The U.S. would benefit by chalking up a foreign policy success and moving on.

Oil derrick in Iraq courtesy of novinite.com

New oil contracts, construction of new pipelines to replace an antiquated national system and attendant economic stimulus to local businesses are raising revenues and hopes. The Iraqi Central Bank--whose creation the United States helped facilitate even while the nation was engulfed in terrorism in 2004--now predicts a doubling of per capita income in the next four years thanks to new oil production and rising oil prices.

Slowly it is being revealed just why (other than confusion), the US "wants Gaddafi to go," but is not prepared to attack the man personally with our military.

One reason may be a desire by the President to have Gaddafi leave as part of a deal (as I suggested here a couple of days ago), but the second and connected reason may be that just who is available to replace Gaddafi is very much at issue. If we are going to go to the trouble of intervening, at least we should be sure to get a friendly government when it's over.

Several impressive figures have named themselves or been named to a shadow government, including yesterday a well-regarded University of Washington economist, Ali Tarhouni. All of them are the kinds of liberally oriented technocrats likely to promote a constitutional republic. But some of the rebel fighters, it is now confirmed, are just what Gaddafi warned they are: al Qaeda, or at least al Qaeda connected. The London Telegraph has that story today.

So, the Obama Administration and the NATO allies are trying to make sure the Libyan drama doesn't become a tragedy. In intrigues of this kind, the people in the White House often do have better information than the rest of us. In this case, especially, let's hope so.

The President said that the US would cede operational control to some other country quickly, which we now have done. He also said that the whole operation would take "days, not weeks" and his press secretary called it a "kinetic" action, which is the least descriptive term for bellicosity since Harry Truman termed US entry into Korea a "policy action." As the history books have noted, it was the "Korean War", not just a police action, and it took years and years to end.

Vogue magazine is all fashion, but little common sense. The magazine continues to get criticism for its February 25 number that featured a homey profile of Asma, the "dynamic" wife of Bashar al Assad of Syria. It makes one uncomfortable reading it, given the news stories these days. But even before the violent repression of peaceful protests lately, Syria has been widely known as a dictatorship allied to Iran, a country that has tried to build nukes, a country that was used as a springboard for terrorists attacking US troops in Iraq.

The First Lady of Syria is very glamorous. Not so her husband and his regime.

The President is under withering criticism from many quarters for the strange dealings over Libya. The London Telegraph tries valiantly to make sense of it in a way that is at least somewhat sympathetic, saying the Mr. Obama is just being deliberative. No cowboy he.

Maybe so. So here is a way Mr. Obama might be justified. Maybe the reason he is for "defending civilians" as a military objective, and for Gaddafi leaving as a political objective (but note, not as a military objective) is that the White House is working behind the scenes to persuade Col. Gaddafi to depart the country for exile somewhere else. That would saveLibyan lives, presumably. Maybe Robert Mugabe would accept him and his kin in Zimbabwe, the way Gaddafi (briefly) took in Ugandan strongman Idi Amin in 1979. Mugabe is one of Gaddafi's few remaining fans.

A peaceful end for Gaddafi also would reassure his supporters, who include his tribesmen and many army officers, and might prevent a civil war. The way might be open then for peacekeepers, interim government, consultations, constitutional reforms, etc.

If this is President Obama's script, then good for him. I hope it works, but time is short.

If that is not the behind-the-scenes rationale, then I just have to shake my head and agree that the Obama Administration is really confused.

Shooting wars were frowned up by candidate Obama. We were going to win the world for freedom and democratic institutions through "soft power".

But it turns out that the Administration has reduced at least some of the most effective soft power efforts, those run by the two U.S. political parties in their overseas institutes funded by the US government. Instead of hiding such efforts in the CIA budget, as occurred during most of the Cold War, the Reagan Administration brought them into the light through the National Endowment for Democracy.

Overall, the two parties' international groups do a terrific job. They even work well together--when they are abroad. But the Obama Administration is cutting back these relatively meager expenditures. From the feds:

Appropriations for the National Endowment of Democracy, FY 2000-2011 (in millions)

2011 ------ $110.9
2010 ------ $118
2009 ------ $115
2008 ------ $111
2007 ------ $75
2006 ------ $74.04
2005 ------ $59.2
2004 ------ $39.57
2003 ------ $41.7
2002 ------ $33.5
2001 ------ $30.93
2000 ------ $30.87

If you believe that helping foreigners in places like Egypt--or Libya--to understand the practical workings of constitutional democracy, a few million is peanuts. Some of the best money we spent in Iraq assisted the nascent political parties there to learn how to organize and to learn why--in a republic--they should respect the rights of people that don't agree with them.

There is little hope of long term peace if this sort of program is skimped.

"Many choices: You pick the worst," says the old fortune cookie. That would aptly describe the U.S. role in the Libya war. If America has a clear policy, the Administration (a good portion of whose members are in South America) is keeping it a secret. We are for getting rid of Gaddafi as a "political" objective of our policy, but not as a "military" objective. Got that?

The Arab League also suffers confusion, having briefly decided that actually attacking Gaddafi was not what they had in mind--only stopping him from attacking "civilians". They now have decided to step back from micro-managing and are in full support again.

Meantime, however, the U.S. generals say they do not want to destroy the forces facing the rebels, merely to restrain them. That means a protracted conflict, the very opposite of the "days, not weeks" that President Obama said he was prepared to support.

But weeks, then months soon will pass if we fail to put Gaddafi & Co. out of business. Our position will grow more tenuous with the passage of time. Al Qaeda and the Iranians will find a way to get involved. What better way to pull the beard of Uncle Sam?

The wily Col. Gaddafi declared a cease fire after the U.N. resolution authorizing use of force. If he stuck by it, President Obama, speaking at his press conference this afternoon seemed prepared in turn to avoid any military action against Gaddafi, thereby leaving him in power and establishing a tense division of the country between Gaddafi and the rebels. but pursuing that half-way approach to war would be feckless and reckless. It opens the prospect that the allies, including the U.S., will do the one thing in Libya they must not do: get sucked into a long term commitment.

The old Machiavellian principle is apt: If you attack a king, make sure you kill him. Don't merely wound him and make him vengeful. In other words, either get in and win, or stay out.

We are now in. But does Mr. Obama plan on winning or just creating another military swamp for the USA?

As of this morning, it seemed the Gaddafi's forces were still trying to assault the rebel positions, regardless of the so-called cease fire. That at least gives the allies a reason--an excuse--to to set aside the mild initial approach and go in for a military victory.

As Margaret Thatcher warned at the time of the first Gulf War, "Don't go wobbly."

UPDATE (4:15 P.M. PDT): No US action. President is winging toward South America. Gaddafi troops still attacking rebel positions.

John Bolton: "I am feeling sick to my stomach.."

The dithering is over, the U.N. Security Council has voted to permit the U.K., France, the U.S. and at least a couple of Gulf states to take on Gaddafi's air force and army. There is celebrating going on in Benghazi.

China, Russia and Germany abstained from the U.N. vote.

The UN Security Council convening on the crisis in Libya

A U.N. Security Council vote on Libya is slated for tonight. If approved, U.S.-led action by NATO and maybe some Arab states could take place within hours of the vote. If China casts a veto vote, the real diplomatic crisis will start for the Western allies and the Arab League.

We have seen in the news only a dark reflection of the West's intense deliberations on Libya policy. The power struggle over this issue within the Obama Administration has been as fascinating as it is murky.

Hillary Clinton, looking at the big picture in the Middle East and the chance for the U.S. to ride the reform wave, is strongly for intervention. She has met with representatives of the rebels and apparently is satisfied that they are relatively liberal and not favorably disposed toward Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood. Defense Secretary Gates, knowing how easy it is to get into wars and how hard to get out, is strongly opposed. The Middle East, he would assert, is the very home of unintended consequences.

Only in the last day has President Obama, who haas seemed Hamlet-like, come down on the side of intervention. It is risky to help the rebels, he may have concluded, but the whole democratic trend in the Middle East will be set back if we do not. And having criticized Gaddafi publicly in the dictator's moment of peril, President Obama already has picked sides morally.

The trouble is, this Administration is still enthralled with multi-lateralism. It isn't enough that our European allies, notably France, are out in front of us for once, or even that the Arab League has urged action. The latter's support is impressive, because if Gaddafi prevails, the League will have to live with him again and he won't make it pleasant. But Obama also wants the U.N. to concur.

At Town Hall Michael Medved has described the not so subtle way the media downplayed the truly barbaric killing of a large Israeli family by Palestinian terrorists. I commented in this space yesterday, but Michael has the details.

The barbarous murder of an Israeli family, including small children, by Palestinian terrorists has been treated with a yawn by most of the "international community." Caroline Glick, writing in the The Jerusalem Post, seems almost despairing. Israelis keep asking themselves, do we have to count only on ourselves?

Well, the answer, unfortunately, is yes. Even the United States does not seem to be immune to a fresh wave of anti-Semitism. The Jewish community, and its Christian allies, still have not awakened to the seriousness of what hatred is percolating in the West as well as in the Middle East. If Israel's friends in the US are expecting the Obama Administration to help, they probably should pay more attention.

Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany has announced the closure of seven of her nation's 17 nuclear power plants. This decision either is evidence of hysteria in the government, or evidence of pandering to popular hysteria by the government, or evidence that nuclear energy is so dangerous that an accident in a nuclear plant in Japan (after a 9.0 earthquake and a 25 foot tsunami) can fry the brain of political leaders half way around the world.

Israel's gas supply from Egypt was cut off by Hamas during the recent turmoil. Getting the pipeline fixed and the gas deliveries resumed has been a high priority for Israel, since replacement fuel is costing hundreds of millions of dollars. But now there is an official corruption investigation of the deal that the Mubarak government made with Israel, and the result is probably no more gas for an indefinite time. It's the first of some potentially grim consequences.

"Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution" Muammar Gaddafi reads from the The Green Book to Professor Barber.

Prof. Benjamin R. Barber of Rutgers, a Distinguished Fellow at a progressive think tank called Demos, is a leading exponent of what he calls "strong democracy," direct rule by the people. Weak old fashioned (small "d") democracy that is set within traditional (small "r") republican institutions is objectionable to Dr. Barber. America's Founders wanted a government of checks and balances to cool democratic ardor and tame its dangerous tendencies. But Dr. Barber argues that we need strong leaders who will express democratic will directly.

Now it comes out that Mr. Barber is one of a set of intellectuals and officials who found reasons to admire the possibilities of Libya strongman Muammar Gaddafi and has served on the board of the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. He has just resigned from the board, a bit late, one might say.

Happily, his long held views are well known and on the record. Here was his opinion back in 2007: "Written off not long ago as an implacable despot, Gaddafi is a complex and adaptive thinker as well as an efficient, if laid-back, autocrat. Unlike almost any other Arab ruler, he has exhibited an extraordinary capacity to rethink his country's role in a changed and changing world."

Gaddafi, Barber proclaimed, is "flexible and pragmatic," the author of a direct democracy manifesto, The Green Book. The direct democracy angle is crucial because that is how Barber connected his hopes with Gaddafi and the aims of Brother Leader's "gifted" son, Saif al-Islam.

Why do American and European leftists have such a weakness for populist tyrants? There is a reason to tolerate authoritarian rulers whose policies arguably are the best that can be expected at a given moment in a particular country, especially if the only option is totalitarianism. But you can accept a strongman in power without celebrating him.

Gaddafi has blood--American blood--on his hands. For one thing, he authorized the Lockerbie bombing of Pam Am. He also planned at least one terror attack on Americans in Europe (Berlin). His own people in Libya have lived in fear similar to that experienced in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The most one would want to achieve with him is a formal diplomatic correctness

But Barber and others fell for Gaddafi. They probably thought they were using him. So did British prime minister Gordon Brown and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, among others. They wanted access to Libya's oil, of course. London School of Economics was happy to discuss "civil society" with Mr. Gaddafi and received a couple of million dollars for their interest. What did Benjamin Barber want? A model "direct democrat"?

Let's remember this cautionary tale the next time we hear proposals for more "strong" and "direct" democracy in the United States. The Benjamin Barbers have it wrong; the American Founders had it right.

Photo: AP

America should not strut its power before the Egyptians. First of all, our power is over-rated. Second, our overt involvement makes us a target for anyone who is disaffected in the world--and there are many.

But we should assist in the transformation to a more democratic state--one of checks and balances that protects minorities and assures safety for contrary political opinions within a constitutional order. It won't be easy.

What would that assistance look like? Consider Iraq; it is no model for democracy yet, but it would be in far worse shape if the US had not funded the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs to help the Iraqis create legitimate political institutions. These fine party based groups, chartered by Congress through the National Endowment for Democracy that originally was created by President Reagan, went about their work in Iraq quietly and with great sensitivity.

The President has a habit of speaking of everything and everyone in his Administration with a first person possessive pronoun--"my Secretary of Labor," "my officials at Defense," "my ambassador", "my policy". Regarding Egypt and almost everything else in foreign policy he speaks like a petulant autocrat: "I want the transition to begin now." "The Egyptian government must..." "I expect such and such."

George H.W. Bush had trouble using the word "I". Barrack Obama seems to choke on "we".

Who made him Pharaoh? And why do liberals who complained of supposed American imperialism under George W. Bush ignore President Obama's pretending to order other countries around? What's the point of such empty swagger?

The same proto-revolutionary activities in Egypt that terrify Israelis are giving some observers hope that a necessary encounter of Muslims with reform will be benefited from regime change in Cairo. It seems that efforts of voices of reform in Islamic circles in Egypt have gained courage in recent days and are proposing departures from the stern religious line laid down by the Mubarak establishment.

A clearer picture emerges of the religious policy followed by Mr. Mubarak and his ally, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar University. It has been to allow modest freedom, but restrain simultaneously 1) political action by Christians; 2) reform advocacy by Muslim clerics; 3) growth of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. President Mubarak and his ally, the Grand Imam, wanted all of these players kept in check. Mubarak probably reasoned that support for greater freedom for Christians or for Islamic reformers would give ammunition to the puritanical Muslim Brotherhood.

However, in recent days, notice has been taken at the Vatican of a group of Muslim scholars in Egypt who, with the demonstrations offering an opening of free speech, are calling for essential religious reforms.

The prospect grows that Hosni Mubarak will step down, one way or another, and the military will take charge temporarily in Egypt. Then what?

Caroline Glick, one of the most sage observers of politics in the Middle East, writes in the Jerusalem Post that the U. S. policy (wobbly as it seems) may result in a much worse Egyptian government. Whatever the balance of feelings in the Cario demonstrations, the great majority of people in Egypt, Glick writes, are anti-US, anti-Israel and supportive of greater Islamic influence in government. Writes Glick:

"According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.

"Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion."

Numbers like that have to give pause to all (small "d") democrats in America who think democracy will work out for the best in all situations. Our own nation's Founders enacted a constitution that protected minorities, divided power and made impulsive actions by government difficult. What chance does Egypt have of achieving such checks and balances?

The new Foreign Minister of Tunisia, Ahmed Ounaies, a professional diplomat, was at pains today to say that Tunisia is not trying to offer itself to Egypt as a model for change, even though the protests that led to the ouster of Tunisia's long term dictator ten days ago helped inspire the subsequent protest movement in Egypt, as well, perhaps, as those in Yemen, Algeria and Jordan.

Tunisia is managing quite well after its "Jasmine Revolution," as international media dubbed it. The corrupt ruling Ben Ali family has departed and its cronies were not accepted, either. A new crowd is in, elections are likely. Protests have died out and what's left of the protestors are being dispersed by security officials.

What is interesting is that there has been no sign yet that Islamists are able to exert any successful influence on the new government in Tunis. Tunisia has a relatively well-educated population, a sizable middle class and a secular tradition. Indeed, women are discouraged from wearing conservative Muslim garb and men with ambitions for government service are not allowed to grow the beards that Islamists favor.

If Egypt were to emerge from its present convulsions with a political profile like Tunisia's, many in the West would sigh with relief. However, to repeat what I've warned before, Middle Eastern countries are all different. Egypt, too, has a young population and an educated middle class. Egyptians supply engineers, journalists and teachers to oil sheikdoms throughout the Arabian Gulf region, for example. Among the Egyptian middle class there is broad religious tolerance. The country is well-connected to Western commerce. It is worlds apart from, say, Afghanistan.

But Egypt also has the Muslim Brotherhood, and that group in turn has ties to Hamas, which is virtually a client of Iran.

The revolution in Egypt is another historic product of alternative media, espeically Facebook, home to the "April 6 movement" that commemorates the brutal beating death of a young Egyptian blogger who had exposed the 2008 beating of a demonstrator in the industrial city of El-Mahalla El-Jubra. Instead of stopping the communication, the police beatings provoked a huge following. And then a revolution.

Sonia Verma reports in The Globe and Mail (Toronto), "An estimated 3.4 million Egyptians use the (Facebook) social networking site, the vast majority under the age of 25. Egypt is the number 1 user of Facebook in the Arab world, and No. 23 globally." Many have mobilized behind the April 6 movement.

Twitter, meanwhile, keeps cryptic messages pouring out, some from foreigners imposing their own interpretations on Egyptian events (such as a crowd of enthusiasts from Chavez' Venezuela), but most from Egyptians telling fellow protestors where to show up for the next demonstration. YouTube videos provide homemade news coverage that leaves international broadcasters one step behind. The Mubarak government cracked down on cell phones and the internet for a while, but tonight some reportedly are operating again.

Popular opposition to the Mubarak regime in Egypt--a government with $1.3 billion of US annual support--is on the edge of protests turning into rebellion, as happened in Tunisia. Claire Berlinski, who is affiliated with Discovery Institute, writes at Ricochet that the news blackout in Cairo is clouding developments there. But some tweets and other communications indicate a quickly deteriorating government position. The fact that protestors have not been stopped suggests that we may be witnessing a classic popular revolt: an aged autocrat is ousted by widespread steet protests and a collapse of police morale.

Then what? No matter how it comes out, there is potential trouble for the US. The Bush Administration wanted democracy for the region, but that's not how we are perceived there, even after the example of Iraq.

If Mubarak goes, the USA will be cited as weak and vulnerable. Pressure on Israel, via Gaza, will grow. If he stays, the repression will be blamed, collaterally, on us. The only happy outcome would be for the protests to be stilled, but a plan for democratic transition implemented. Even then, there is danger that the Muslim Brotherhood could regain support in an election cycle.

UPDATE: Much as the news, as in the Iranian attempted revolt last year, is coming from social media, including Twitter. For example, see: http://twitter.com/search?q=%23jan26

I never have written down this nightmare scenario before because who would want to give ideas to terrorists? But now the nightmare has been given an unavoidable real life demonstration at the airport in Moscow. The suicide bomber at Domodedovo Airport killed 35 and injured 168. That would be seen as catastrophic even in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it is unknown in recent European experience.

Very simply, a new door to terror has been opened. It leads right into the waiting areas of air terminals. Not the areas where passengers go after they have been checked by security, but the areas where people gather to meet arriving passengers or to queue up for ticketing. Sometimes there are hundreds of people in such spaces, more people than fly on a large airplane. They may have surveillance, but no baggage checks.

In the US right after 9/11 there were checks of incoming cars before they reached an air terminal. There were police inside the terminals. In Baghdad--at least when I visited there a few years ago--you were checked a mile from the airport--everything--then again when you came into the terminal, and then again before you boarded the plane. It seemed a huge, but necessary, hassle.

This attack in Moscow is setting off bells at Homeland Security and in the halls of Congress, I'm sure. No airport in the U.S. or Europe is safe from this kind of attack right now. Ultimately, the best protection against terrorists is police and FBI detective work that finds terrorists before they find their targets.

UPDATE: Yuri Mamchur, at our Real Russia Blog, describes a similar reaction. And consider: There were metal detectors at the Domodedovo Airport's waiting area, but they weren't being used. That will cause widespread questioning in Moscow. But one might question back, when it's 9 degrees Fahrenheit out, how do you get hundreds of people to queue up for the metal detectors outdoors? If they do line up, what's the keep the bomber from attacking the line?

The persecution--and prosecution--of Christians in Iran and other Muslim lands is under-reported. Here is another story that only made a ripple in the news, this time about 15 Christian converts on their way to a church meeting when the state security in Iran pulled them over, arrested them and put them in jail. Over Christmas, another 70 Christians were arrested in Iran.

Vienna always votes Socialist, but its manners are mostly conservative. In what other big European city will you see people wearing notably native costumes to work, church, theaters? Of course, the Austrian "trachten" is fashionably presented, especially for women. Moreover, the trachten-wearers show up at some of the finest opera productions, philharmonic concerts and museum exhibitions in the world. Even the churches abound in world-class music, perhaps because Vienna still attracts young musicians and they welcome the chance to share, and show, their talents.

A new most livable cities report (see this London Telegraph article) also lists other European cities highly, but somehow favors the middle-size big ones over the giants like London and Paris and Rome, which, in fact, are the most stimulating.

Yet, Vienna, through it was one of the largest cities in the world a hundred years ago, is now still charming and human scale, without the soulless crush of cities that seem to have burst their seems. For example, Vienna's multi-mode transportation system is both quaint and efficient.

Meanwhile, the current Austrian government follows more conservative economic policies than some of the EU's derelict nations and therefore is relatively more prosperous. That is evident in Vienna, where it took a half century after World War II to recover the pre-war glamor and shine. But they are back. The old imperial grandeur is seen only in the beautifully maintained palaces, but the city compensates for political excitement by hosting a constant parade of international conferences.

In North America, the clean and vibrant city of Vancouver stands out in the "most livable" report. Vancouver doesn't have Seattle's major league sports or front ranking arts groups, but it keeps improving. Vancouver enjoys a coffee culture much like Seattle and Portland and has even more rain. The city's zoning allows a mix of high rises and single family residences, providing an adequate and attractive density to support a fine transportation system and thriving shopping districts.

Peter Mansbridge of "The National", the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's (CBC) news program, interviewed Prime Minister Stephen Harper last night on his five years in office so far. It's a surprise for me to realize that Harper's Conservatives have lasted that long and that their position is as stable as it seems. From the very beginning, the Tory minority-run government in Parliament was seen as a short term reaction against corruption and incompetence among the long-dominant Liberals. Then it became mostly a popular rejection of talk of a coalition between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP). The Conservatives were, more or less, the only option left. (The Bloc Quebecois are formidable in French-speaking Quebec, but have no appeal elsewhere.)

Five years ago many Canadians were anxious about a Conservative government, mainly because most Canadians are probably center-left, not center-right. It is the splintered nature of the left--Liberal, NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Greens--that made the Conservative victory possible. One had to wonder how long a Tory minority plurality in Parliament could be sustained with losing a vote of confidence.

But in the ensuing years, despite the international recession, Harper & Company have conducted themselves with aplomb. As he said in the CBC interview, the Government under Harper has had had serious scandals and has avoided disastrous mistakes on both the domestic or international fronts. In fact, Conservative adroit economic policy has helped position Canada as a rare standout performer among developed nations. Canada's dollar (the Loony) is a cent above the US Dollar--in great contrast to a decade ago--and the housing industry is in much better shape than America's. Gas-fed exports fro Alberta help Canada maintain a healthy trade posture.

Harper is not given to chest thumping, but he rightly noted to Mansbridge, "I think arguably we are running right now the freest, the most free enterprise government in the developed world. ... We're one of the few countries reducing our taxes. Even with our deficits and debt we're at some of the lowest levels in the developed world in these areas."

This situation, he observes, is the "reality" of Conservative government, not an ideological abstraction.

Canadians don't much like abstractions, actually. Their philosophical leaning may be center-left, but they are temperamentally conservative. They don't like radical change. That may help explain their current satisfaction with Mr. Harper. He doesn't enjoy a permanent mandate or even a long term one. But Canada has mature, reliable leadership right now and the country seems to respect it. Respect is a big political advantage in any country.

Part two of the Peter Mansbridge interview of P.M. Harper is tonight--on what the Conservatives would do in the (probably unlikely) event they were able to obtain a clear majority, not just a plurality in the House of Commons.

Remember the news over the holidays about the poor Palestinian shepherd who was minding his sheep when a gang of Israeli settlers drove up, attacked him and set fire to the hillside, killing much of his flock? Well, it seemed strange, and, in any case, it was untrue.The shepherd set fire to the hillside himself, by accident, and decided to blame the Israelis.

A little hole in his story got wider with the telling. He said the settlers were Orthodox Jews wearing kippahs (skull caps) and performed their attack on Saturday. Not only was there no good motive for such an attack, but Orthodox Jews wouldn't be driving on the sabbath, or setting a fire on that day.

Caroline Glick's fine website carries analysis at length, helping to give us again an illustration of the way a lie about Israel can travel have way around the world (to paraphrase Churchill) before the truth can put on its shoes on. Indeed, I'm not sure the truth's shoes are fully on yet. While I saw the news about the initial charge, I haven't seen any follow up stories in the US mainstream media showing it to be a fraud.

The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Ali Gomaa, has denounced the terror bombings of Christian churches in Egypt, especially the New Year's attack in Alexandria. This normally might not be news, except that such high level support for anti-terrorism policy is necessary and welcome in Muslim lands. Unfortunately, it is all too rare, or is provided in too oblique a fashion--and, even then, not reported well in local and international media. The exploitation of "anti-blasphemy" laws in Pakistan, for example, is so accepted by the public there that the government dares not repeal the laws or provide reliable court interpretation to prevent capricious arrests.

Christians are under increasing private pressure and public persecution in most Muslim lands, including formerly tolerant lands like Morocco. Nowhere, except possibly Indonesia, are they safe both to practice their religion and free to open churches. This really is the scandal of modern Islam and demands action from within the Islamic community.

Meanwhile, with all the arrests in Europe and the US recently, anti-terror proclamations and news articles might seem to be called for. It would help if there was half as much attention given to combatting terrorism as there has been to supposed civil liberties violations at Guantanamo. Is one reason that Western elites are so reluctant to challenge persecution of Christians the reality that the guiding secularism of the West is itself ambivalent towards Christianity and seeks ever increased infringements on religion?

Before this year of economic hope and ideological change concludes, I would like to record World magazine's citation of two of 2010's literary accomplishments, Claire Berlinski's "There is No Alternative": Why Margaret Thatcher Matters and Ben Wiker's Ten Books Every Conservative Must Read.

Actually, Basic Books brought out the Thatcher book in 2008, but it is becoming more topical--and popular--daily in the aftermath of the Tea Party's success and Mr. Obama's failures. Regnery's publication of the Wiker work is newer, but timeless in its application.

Both authors, saluted by editor Marvin Olasky in the December 18 issue, are Discovery Institute fellows. But you probably knew that.

Reuters

The Northern European famously says, "The situation is serious, but not hopeless." The Southern European sums up his attitude as, "The situation is hopeless, but not serious." The American? Well, I always appreciated Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson's observation (I paraphrase): Some problems don't get solved, they just go away.

Take the notorious ungovernability of Italy. After World War II one kept reading news headlines screaming, "Government Falls in Italy." (As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto might say, "Look out below!") It sounded terrible, but all that really was happening was that the governing coalition was dissolving and a new one needed to be formed. Like ocean currents below the whitecaps, the actual administration of the state continued despite all the frothy turmoil at the top.

That is one of the curiosities of watching the Perils of Belusconi in Rome these days. It sounds ominous, but nothing much changes. What soap opera could compare with this saga? Premier Berlusconi has taken European insouciance over leaders' private sex lives (in contrast to supposed American puritanism) to new extremes. He not only survives revelations about a parade of mistresses, but it doesn't seem to matter that some of the young ladies are really young, like underage.

And yet he survives politically. The government does not fall. He does not fall.

Italy is ungovernable. As ever. And life goes on.

If you want to understand the bathos of the bumbled terror attack in Sweden this weekend, go see the English film, Four Lions. Mr. Taimur Abdulwahab is not a hero nor entirely a clown. His mission to blow up Swedish civilians shopping for Christmas presents failed; his bomb laden car burned instead of exploding. Shouting in Arabic, Abdulwahab did manage to blow himself up, while injuring two passersby. For this glorious deed, which also left the bomber's Swedish wife and three children back in England to fend for themselves, Al Qaeda has taken credit.

The reason to see the film Four Lions is that it follows a group of four similarly benighted young jihadis in the UK who have no commonsense, fumble everything, and likewise end up dead. Their cause is preposterous as well as wretched and even they don't understand it. Four Lions is about absurdity trying to find a purpose, a morality tale about the false god of celebrity martyrdom. The film is painful to watch, but very funny in a bitter way. (I thank our friend and colleague, the talk show intellectual and critic, Michael Medved, for recommending it.) Dr. Strangelove was an anti-war satire, Four Liions is an anti-terrorism satire.

Meanwhile, Swedes are probably wondering what got into this young man's head to try to kill them. The question will torment his family, too. What no one should imagine, however, is that the latest bumbling bomber was much more than a misled and wicked fool.

The SALT II Treaty arrives in the Senate with blessings from all the usual establishmentarians, but not with Sen. Kyl. Therefore it is in trouble. As things are going, it will not be ratified. We need to go beyond START to re-start.

At the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson sailed off to the Versailles peace talks without bothering to bring the leaders of the Republicans from the US Senate with him. He told the European allies what the US had to have, then came home and told the Senate what the Europeans had to have, which turned out in both cases to be what Wood Wilson had to have. Despite his health-destroying campaign across the country, Wilson's scheme for a League of Nations failed to gain Senate approval. The idea was flawed (it was too idealistic, as Theodore Roosevelt said), and it therefore contributed to the development of World War II.

Barack Obama, bearing Wilson's example in mind, might as well acknowledge that the Republicans, while not in charge in the Senate today, have the power to stop START. They have some good arguments, nicely described by our John Wohlstetter.

But, more than that, they have political logic on their side. We need a thorough new operating understanding with the Russians. It's not just limits on nukes. Accepting a missile shield in Europe (as the Kremlin seems more open to doing lately) could be part of that. But the array of issues is still bigger. Ultimately, treaties are expressions of mutual trust, not sources of such trust. Enlightened self-interest

Unlike many in the US, I think we can do business with the current Russian government. But here is a case where our government will have to proceed from a truly united American position. That doesn't exist now.

Older, frailer, Margaret Thatcher is still alive as her warnings about the Euro--the issue that brought her down twenty years ago--are being born out. The people in her own party, as well as on the left, who opposed her then are not much interested now in defending their reasons to the press, Peter Oborne says in tomorrow's Telegraph, "Margaret Thatcher Knew the Single Currency Would Devastate Europe."

Mrs. Thatcher lost office, but her position somehow prevailed.

Writes Oborne, "Baroness Thatcher has often been accused by her politically motivated enemies of callousness. But backers of the European project are today happy to countenance unlimited human suffering in their mission to enforce economic and monetary union. Mrs Thatcher knew this would be the result of their deranged plan, which is why she fought to stop it. Her last battle as prime minister could not have been fought in a greater or more compassionate cause."

In addition to the article by Oborne, read Claire Berlinski's Why Margaret Thatcher Matters. Claire, a Discovery fellow, turns out to have been very timely, too.

You might wonder how the newly elected House majority members have time to read, but of course busy people often read the most. So it is that George Gilder's The Israel Test and Claire Berlinski's Why Margaret Thatcher Matters are named in an article today by Tevi Troy at National Review Online. (Hat tip to Alex Lykken.)

If you are going to someone's house for Thanksgiving you might want to bring them one of those books ("It's what they are reading now on The Hill") instead of a bottle of wine or flowers. Or consider God and Evolution, edited by Jay Richards and just published by Discovery Institute Press, especially if you have a misguided relative who thinks Darwinism is compatible with orthodox Christian or Jewish faith. Guaranteed to keep the table talk lively.

Was it only a year ago that this blog, among other and lustier Cassandras, was warning Britons against the efforts to expand the reach of the European Union? Lord Pearson of Rannoch was treated as a genial but irrelevant old grouch for turning on the Tories over the issue. British sovereignty, which happens to matter to the US, whether we acknowledge it or not, was in jeopardy.

Then came the British election and David Cameron was surprised by the UK Independence Party's strength in England's Southwest ridings that helped deny him an outright Conservative majority (granted, that wasn't his only problem). Soon after came the Greek collapse, featuring riots by pampered public employees, with creeping fiscal ruptures opening in Portugal and Spain--Italy wobbling close behind.

This morning (it is morning in London) Telegraph readers are enjoying a bit of schadenfreude at the expense of Germany and France for the simple reason that the Brits still at least have the pound sterling. Ireland, that had to be cuffed and shoved into a second vote on acceding to the expanded Europe, now stands ready to demand fiscal rescue by her new family.

If President Obama implied--and unnamed CIA operatives stated explicitly--that an American intelligence officer who defected to Russia would be hunted down inside Russia by the CIA and killed, how would Mr. Putin react? Would he like to welcome the CIA killers to Moscow?

Well, the reverse situation is at hand in the famous Anna Chapman (no relation!) spy ring saga. The Kremlin infiltrated several agents into the US in truly mundane, petty positions and they were caught. Well, that's spying for you. They all made it home in an exchange and were toasted by Mr. Putin as heroes. The fetching Ms. Chapman has followed her spy career with what appears to be a more, shall we say, exposed livelihood as eye candy for men's entertainment magazines. Well, I guess a girl's gotta work.

But now the Russian agent who exposed her and the rest of the team of Spies Who Couldn't Spy Right has defected successfully to the US. And Prime Minister Putin makes it clear he is a marked man. And an unnamed intelligence officer says a "Mercader" is being sent to eliminate him. "We know who he is and where he is," the Kremlin source said. "Have no doubt that a Mercader has been sent after him already."

Really? Ramon Mercader was the assassin that Stalin sent to Mexico to kill Trotsky. Are we supposed to be impressed that the current Russian government might be using Stalin as a model? Are Americans supposed to accept the necessity of the Kremlin's coming over here to break our laws and indulge itself in killing people? If so, the State Department should be asking for a "clarification". At the least.

Sorry, Mr. Putin, but you are not allowed to have people in the US killed. That would change this whole spy farce into something much more consequential.

We are ending a nearly year long vacation from international affairs as the US of A swam, waded, waddled and frolicked in the mid-term election campaigns. Nothing wrong with that, except that Iran, Israel and....al Qaeda are not issues we can neglect further.

Michael Ledeen continues to offer superb and unique access to all these topics, especially the problem of Iran. His writing is well worth your attention. In the very near future we are going to be back--mentally speaking--in the Middle East. Arm yourself.

Start with what is plain now, if only suspected before, that Iran is assisting in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

by Claire Berlinski

I recently interviewed Turkey's former ambassador to the United States, Faruk Loğoğlu. He is appalled--like many in Turkey--by the soft-headedness of the Obama' Administration's diplomacy in this region. He finds Obama's speeches about his personal warmth toward Islam ludicrous and inappropriate. "Obama can't play the religious game," he said. "He should be playing the security game. His policy toward Turkey is a bad imitation of the worst parts of Orientalism."

It's not merely the ideological color of the Obama Administration's diplomacy that worries me, but its incompetence. I've lately been examining in very close detail the events that led to Turkey's "No" vote on the Iran sanctions package in the UN. I'll be writing about this elsewhere; and the details are too complicated to summarize here. But one thing leaps out: our incompetence. How could there have been any ambiguity--and obviously there was--in our communication with Turkey about our negotiating position on the nuclear fuel swap deal? How is it possible that Turkey was receiving critically different messages from the White House and the State Department on an issue as significant as the Iranian nuclear program? It's inconceivable, but on looking closely at the evidence, it is clear that this is just what happened.

In case the frenzied American mid-term elections find you feeling anxious, it is nice to know that other people are fretting, too. For example:

The European Union's "Open Europe" news service has compiled an array of stories today about the confusion found nearly everywhere in the Old World about the future of the Eurozone. In the UK, where cost-cutting Prime Minister David Cameron was cheered by news improving economic growth, the PM is offering to ditch the idea of an EU referendum in his country in return for restraint on EU spending. Politically, that will not go down well in large parts of England and Wales where voters long for a chance to express themselves on further EU integration.

Meanwhile, the Germans increasingly are annoyed at plans to stick them with the bill for the financial derelictions of Greece and other big-spenders. The Czechs and Austrians aren't exactly thrilled, either.

A wise approach now might be to consolidate around a more limited and defensible EU that abandons its ambitions to run everyone's life out of Brussels bureaucracies and instead concentrates on least common denominator agreements on such matters as trade and economic development.

Here is the full Open Europe report:

by Claire Berlinski

The Chief of Turkey's Religious Affairs Directorate, Ali Bardakoğlu, has issued an admirable statement about the prime minister's efforts to involve Turkey's religious authorities in political debate. Leave us out of the discussion , he said. We're happy to advise you how to get right with God, but making the law, that's your problem.

"Don't leave the headscarf issue to us, let the politicians solve it through dialogue," Bardakoğlu told daily Habertürk on Friday.

Erdoğan had previously called for a solution to the issue through the involvement of the Religious Affairs Directorate, a department within the Prime Ministry.

Bardakoğlu responded by saying the directorate does "not make statements on order."

... "We can only comment on the religious aspect," he said. "It is up to the government to draw the lines of personal freedom ... Islam does not allow for the forcing of any beliefs or behavior upon people."

It's a robust rebuke, and good for him. This is the voice of the highest Islamic authority in Turkey. A perusal of his writings --which discuss, among other things, the historic relationship between the secular state and the Religious Affairs Directorate, or diyanet--suggest that his commitment to the separation of mosque and state is long-standing, deeply considered, and deeply held.

I certainly don't agree with all of his views, and if you look for hints of sloppy thinking, you'll find them. But on the essential and allegedly theologically impossible point--the separation of mosque and state--he's quite solid, and he is no marginal figure.

Most political observers and public policy wonks are thinking hard about the elections. But war and terrorism won't less us take much of a domestic break.

1) The new Bob Woodward book helpfully forces us to ask (with him) about our nation's resolve in fighting terrorism abroad: "The president's committed to 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan but in these secret meetings in the Situation Room in the White House, he repeatedly says, 'We need a plan to get out. There can be no wiggle room. I'm not going to do 10 years.' He is out of Afghanistan psychologically and the question is, for a commander-in-chief, don't you have to be kind of the guy who's up there, 'Yes, we can, we're going to win.'?"

If you or a family member is a member of our military in Afghanistan, how does this make you feel? Are you willing to be the last man to die in Afghanistan (to paraphrase John Kerry)? Are you "out of Afghanistan psychologically" while still in it physically?

2) There is a similar strain of self-fulfilling defeatism in current Administration policy on preventing terror attacks. In today's Wall Street Journal, former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey is matter of fact in describing the recent success in thwarting a series of airport attacks in Europe--based on human intelligence gathered in Afghanistan ("How a Bagram Detainee Foiled the Euro Terror Plot"). But he warns that this rare kind of intelligence is imperiled by the Obama Administration over-reliance on electronic intelligence and unwillingness to employ "military commissions or other special purpose tribunals that can be established by Congress." We are left with a "choice that we kill them with drones or give them Miranda warnings and access to a 24-karat justice system designed for conventional criminals."

All of these suggests a defense policy fuse that leads to very possible, maybe even likely, bombs. Criticism is right out in the open. It's just that the average American is thinking about something else right now.

A YouGov poll in Britain shows a plurality of voters (47 percent to 33 percent) would vote to extricate their country from the European Union.

A YouGov press release notes, "The older generation appear particularly keen for Britain to leave its EU days behind. A substantial 57% of those over 60 say they would vote to leave the EU, compared to 31% of the younger 18-24 age group."

"This comes," the YouGov report continues, "as Conservative European MP Daniel Hannan launches a cross-party campaign to demand a referendum on Britain's EU membership, the promise of which has made and broken by multiple prime ministers during election campaigns."

Trouble is, none of the major parties supports reducing the UK's role in the European Union. But poll results like these certainly will retard any efforts to expand that role.

Does anyone surpass the Brits for staging ceremonial occasions? This short You Tube video shows the BBC Proms audience joining in the Benjamin Britten arrangement of the National Anthem, "God Save the Queen." The performance is poignant, gentle, yet strong. Note the regional flags along with the Union Jack.

Maybe if a dozen or so ships attempted to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, that would work. At least, so thinks a coalition of anti-Israeli groups, including the well-financed Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) and something called the Free Gaza Movement.

The Israelis believe that they can deal with this threat, even if they have to intercept the ships well out to sea.

In any case, it is hard to make a souffle rise twice, and the public relations tricks of the first flotilla last May 31 probably will be met by more adroit Israeli prevention techniques. It bears repeating to anyone who will listen, that Gaza is not destitute, nor deprived of medical care and foodstuffs. Any of these, once inspected by Israeli officials on land, can enter Gaza. The problem is military equipment.

Stratfor is reporting that Iran is busy funding still more rockets and other weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah. You have to deny this reality to persist in demanding that Israel drop its blockade.

Fortunately, like previous efforts to launch a new flotilla, this new one is more in the constant planning stage than in imminent likelihood of watery launch. Since some of the organizers are anti-Israeli Jews, and much of the support is from anti-Israeli Islamists, the situation should make for interesting late night scheming.

Pardon my cynicism, but I suspect that on such evenings various sets of spies mainly will wind up talking to one another. Who would you trust in such an operation?

There are still cars zipping around America's bluer neighborhoods with bumper strips from way back in 2003: "No War for Oil."

That was the Iraq war, of course. There is no need to belabor the memories of the marches, the snide TV and radio commentaries, the alternative media fits about the supposed conspiracy. The idea that George W. Bush and his evil buddy, Dick Cheney, were sending American boys to die for oil was simply taken as a proven truth.

Only now, seven years later, as US combat troops leave Iraq, is oil production in Iraq finally back to its pre-war levels of production of 2.5 million barrels a day and easing upwards. Electricity production is doing better, but not great.

And the US oil companies that benefitted? Well, Exxon is there, but the biggest players are the Chinese. Does anyone remember the Chinese sending any troops to Iraq? Or the Russians?

Hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars have been spent on the Iraq war. By no conceivable accounting will anyone in the U.S. get that much back in Iraqi oil revenue--ever.

The Iraqis, meanwhile, do have oil as their big economic hope. The country's reserves are nearly those of Saudi Arabia and already supply 90 percent of government revenue. The big danger, simultaneously, is that oil will corrupt a country already steeped in traditions of corruption.

But it is long past time for those "No War for Oil" bumper strips to come off, don't you think?

Talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas supposedly are going to take place shortly. Poor Benjamin Netanyahu has to behave as if he really believes success is possible, even if, in truth, the possibility is slight to none.

George Gilder of Discovery Institute, and author of The Israel Test, spoke a few days ago upon return from a recent trip.

This short video is part of of his trip report.

By John Wohlstetter

This past week saw tougher lines taken re Iran....

The Washington Post reports that European countries are imposing tougher sanctions on Iran. Reuters reports that tensions rose between Russia and Iran due to Russia signing on for stronger UN sanctions. But Reuters reports that Russia hedged its bets Tuesday, condemning the European moves Monday to impose new sanctions outside the UN. Reuters noted that Iran fuel imposts took a nosedive" in July. And on Sunday ex-CIA chief Gen. Michael V. Hayden said that he sees a greater chance of a military strike being launched against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Russia's terrorism problem is real and under-reported, including inside Russia. But yesterday's successful attack on a power plant in southwest Russia is an ominous sign of changed terrorist tactics and the Russian government's continuing vulnerabilities. It should cause Americans to wonder about copy-cat actions here. We prepare for airplane attacks, but not adequately for airport attacks, and for explosions in Times Square, but not for attacks at university football games in the middle west.

David Klinghoffer has an excellent article in the Jewish Daily Forward. However, I can't imagine who his "ardently pro-Israel, Catholic friend" is.

At the (George) Gilder Telecosm Forum we learn that Evogene, Ltd. (TASE:EVGN), a genetic engineering company, claims that its Israeli castor oil plant-based biofuel product is suitable in composition and chemistry as a raw material for producing bio-jet fuel. Evogene's US subsidiary is collaborating with NASA on to create jet fuel from plant oils.

The tests of the product were conducted by Honeywell International Inc.Co. (NYSE: HON) petrochemical and refining unit UOP LLC, which is now developing a range of biofuels for various uses.

Writes GEORGE GILDER,

"I am suspicious of any green energy breakthrough that depends for its appeal on low emissions of "greenhouse gasses." But Evogene is significant as an existence proof for the value of Compugen (CGEN) in silico platforms for drug discovery.

"In Israel [last week], one of the most impressive public companies I saw
(among 12 private companies) was CGEN, where my host Jeffrey Grossman introduced me to the management. In the last year they have launched four further platforms,
the last two in March and April of 2010. Martin Gerstel has reportedly gone euphoric on the company's prospects, talking of not 10X but orders of magnitude larger potential beyond 10X and predicting that half of all the future pharmaceuticals in the industry will be based on his silicon genetic models and platforms.

I blogged twice last month about the plans of Iran and its client in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to provoke the Israelis by sending "aid ships" against the blockade of Gaza.

It turns out that Iran thought better of it. This would be a bad time to confront the Israelis. They are still more powerful than their enemies. (Hat tip to Michael Ledeen.)

By Yuri Mamchur

An American friend wrote to me about the current Russian spy scandal in America: "Not good PR for you and [your friend] if he decides to go to Harvard... this is all hilarious... I'm loving all the coverage of a bunch of Russians getting paid to befriend Americans. I wish the U.S. had a program like this, I'd totally do this! Can you imagine?! I'd get my rent and tuition paid just to blurt out stuff that you can automatically look up (in even more depth) on the internet."

This ordinary American summed it all up in the brief four lines: this is funny, embarrassing, wasteful, and - most importantly - hurtful to many Russians like me--to those who honestly fight through American immigration hurdles, challenge the financial crisis to earn income, pass application tests and study hard to get American college and graduate degrees, make new life-long friends, fall in love with America's culture and natural beauty, and by default share their knowledge (and income) with Russian and American friends, families, businesses, and government agencies.

Stories continue to pour forth about the Russian spy scandal. Everyone seems a bit embarrassed. The Russians pretend to be indignant, but they don't deny that the eleven folks caught with lots of spy equipment, fake identification and other espionage giveaways, were, in fact,....well,....spies.

What really should embarrass the Kremlin is the apparently farcical quality of the spy craft. References have been made to John LeCarre and James Bond. A much more appropriate comparison is to the cartoon characters of Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale in the Rocky and Bullwinkle TV show that was popular from the 60s to the 80s. See, for example, an excerpt from "Boris and Natasha Take Washington."

Some think that all the Kremlin really wanted was what they got, impressions of life in the USA and what people close to government think. If so, it is another example of wasteful government spending. The Russian public need something comparable to the Tea Parties to demand better value for their tax monies. This pitiful excuse for spying is what about we would expect of the American government under Obama. It is the exact sort of soft power intelligence the Left here seems to think is important. Only it is hidden.

The Kremlin would be better off following the Internet, including our own Russia Blog! Given what they appear to be after, the Russian government should sponsor more conferences and exchanges right out in the open where people of different views and experiences from the US and Russia can learn from one another.

That would prove more productive, cost less and lead to fewer arrests.

Our Senior Fellow John R. Miller makes good sense in The American Spectator with his critique of the Obama Administration's interest in public opinion overseas. It is mostly an abstraction and often misleading.

We all are addicted to polls and "public opinion", I'm afraid. It goes back a hundred years, when the craze began. Theodore Roosevelt once quipped, when asked what he thought of the new concept of public opinion, "I agree. I think the public is entitled to know all my opinions."

The G-8 conference on the international economy is about to take place in small town Muskoka, Ontario, followed by a G-20 meeting this weekend in Toronto. Together they offer at least as big an opportunity for the world's traveling tribe of protestors to show off as they do for economically prosperous Canada.

The trouble is, whenever some city or country decides these days to boast a bit, the leftist furies assemble to undercut the effect. Remember the WTO in Seattle? As happened in Seattle, much of Toronto will be closed down.

Expenses for the international meetings in Ontario already are estimated at $1 billion. There will be a sightseeing and cell phone and airspace limits imposed for part of the time. To protect VIPS from agitators a $5.5 million fence has been erected--sure to be likened to that along the US southern border or the line between Israel and Gaza. Today a man was arrested for attempting to plant a bomb at the conference site.

Meanwhile, the conferences themselves are likely to be relatively boring. That is because international leaders don't agree yet whether a recovery is underway and sustainable, and are uncertain therefore whether to goose spending or reverse it. Our President wants to spend. But you knew that. The other G-8 leaders think deficits have to be reduced.

Last week it was reported that "aid" ships already had left Iran to test the Israeli blockade of Gaza. It seems from reports today that the ships were delayed. Now they supposedly are ready, as is a ship from Lebanon. It still seems odd that this has attracted so little attention in the MSM. One wonders if the Iranians and Lebanese will be treated as true humanitarians or as the advance guard they are for breaking the blockade so more weapons can get in.

Meanwhile, US warships have passed through the Suez Canal on their way to the Red Sea. There is speculation that they may intercept the Iranian ships.

The role of Egypt becomes delicate. It does not like Iran and it let the US warships through the canal. Presumably, it would be prepared to let the Iranian ships through, going the other way. But the paperwork for approval might take a long time!

The world is not yet paying much attention, but ships apparently departed Khorramshahr, Iran on June 12, bound for Gaza. Iran is threatening to retaliate if Americans, or, presumably, Israelis, attempt to stop them on international waters. That is likely to spark a new crisis at sea.

Lebanese ships, possibly linked to the Iran-sponsored terrorists, Hezbollah, also appear to be headed to Gaza.

Israel has announced that it is relaxing the flow of goods into Gaza, but not, of course, to the satisfaction of Hamas. That is because the real purpose of the efforts to break the blockade has nothing to do with humanitarian aid--which can get into Gaza after Israeli inspection--but to set the stage for arms shipments into Gaza and escalation of violence by Hamas against Israel. That's what this is all about.

Strange to tell, the reality of the blockade's purpose, and the purpose of the would-be blockade busters, has not gained much attention in the international press. The imminent arrival of the Iranian ships is still not in the news at all.

Peter Hitchens of The Mail in London says America doesn't like England, and he is whining about it. (Or, as he would put it, whinging.)

He's wrong; someone please hand him a tissue and pat his hand. President Obama and some old pals like Bill Ayers may dislike England, or rather, condescend to her. They have imbibed a lot of radical rot in universities. But the striking thing about American opinion is something else. It's this: Most Americans probably like the British more than you all like us.

A relatively new development in American politics and foreign policy is the increase in the number of liberal American Jews who have become pronounced critics of Israel.

The Obama Administration feels free to pressure Israel today because of the change in sentiment among this segment of opinion. And liberal American Jews undoubtedly have become critical of Israel, or at least ambivalent, because many are first and foremost liberals, and, hence, devoted supporters of President Obama.

These are some of the observations made in the June issue of Commentary. Within the magazine's symposium on "Obama, Israel & American Jews" is this excellent essay by Michael Medved, cultural critic, talk-show host and Fellow of Discovery Institute:

"At his core, Barack Obama is a leveler-an eraser of distinctions. Most Americans savor his unique ability to blur divisions based on race, or to demolish barriers between the impoverished and the privileged. In other areas, the president's leveling instinct creates far more controversy, particularly when it morphs into a stubbornly nonjudgmental form of moral relativism.

Claire Berlinski, an American writer in Turkey, makes me feel better about my confusion on the Peace Flotilla matter. I am not confused about the Israeli actions, but the reasons for the strange official reaction of Turkey. What is Prime Minister Erdogan up to and what are the implications?

In an article for City Journal, Claire at least makes one's uncertainty better-informed.

We should have seen it coming. Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to throw in with the despots of Iran and the terrorists of Hamas long before the phony "Peace Flotilla" tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza this week. Even in April Erdogan was describing Israel as the "main threat to Middle Eastern peace."

Today, Erdogan is quite plain. Israeli, he says, is guilty of "inhuman state terror", while Hamas is "fighting for their own lands."

Here is what you are not getting right now, even from that section of the media in America that is still pro-Israel: Israel is as important to the U.S. as the U.S. is to Israel. To the extent we damage our most reliable Middle Eastern ally, we are damaging ourselves.

George Gilder's The Israel Test is the one book out now that tells, extensively, how Israel matters to both the U.S. economy--especially in the cutting edge high tech field--and to America's strategic aims. It treats the cultural and historical reasons for U.S. support of Israel, but others do that, too. What matters, and what is missing from our national discussion, is how vital Israel is to American inventive prowess, manufacturing relevance and national defense. Israelis even have invented a device to let soldiers see through walls to activities that might be going on in a building they are about to inspect!

UPDATE: One of the most thorough analyses of the background of the Flotilla, including a report from the Danish Institute on International Studies that reveals the terrorist nature of several Flotilla sponsors, is by Melanie Phillips.

Iran and Hamas--and Islamists in Turkey--have a keen sense of Western media and how to play them. The Peace Flotilla is a good example. The flotilla was trying to break a blockade, and that is dangerous by definition. Like 60s radicals in the U.S. confronting the police or military, the whole idea was to provoke a reaction from Israel and sympathy from Western media.

That they succeeded is too bad for them and, because of the crocodile tears of Western governments, unfortunate for Israel.

But instead of "deploring" the Israeli reaction, the West should be deploring the intentional provocation. To the extent that the U.S. fails to back Israel in its insistence on security terrorists will continue to probe. They are probing the resolve of the U.S. at the same time.
---

Weapons Found Aboard the Vessel Mavi Marmara: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvS9PXZ3RWM

The history of Communism is not over, it continues in North Korea, Cuba and--in a hybrid form, in China. It may be struggling to be born in Venezuela. But the chief international agency for Communism in the past 100 years was the Soviet Union. The full story has not yet been told.

Claire Berlinski describes some remarkable documents--scores of thousands of them--that Soviet dissidents managed to copy and distribute in the West as the Communist system was crumbling. They mostly are being ignored. Liberals don't want to be reminded of the true state of the system whose threat they underestimated for decades, while today's conservatives seem to want to move on to other topics.

David Cameron had to get elected in a Britain, a nation more addicted to welfare statism than is the U.S., and then, in order to form a Government at all, he had to form a coalition with a left of center party, the Liberal Democrats. So it probably would be too much to expect him to proceed with what is needed to revive the sagging, heavily indebted British economy: a Reaganesque agenda of spending cuts, tax cuts directed at growing the economy, and regulatory reduction.

Cameron does seem to have a mandate to make some cuts and is using it. But he not only lacks a mandate to cut marginal tax rates and capital gains takes--changes that would provide a stimulus to investment and new jobs--but he also is moving instead to raise capital gains taxes.

Technically, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Clegg have five years to rebuild the economy, but it will be slow going and more painful than necessary. It's a bit like having two doctors, one who says, cut out the cancer and another says, don't cut out the cancer, and agreeing to compromise by cutting out half the cancer.

A "Conservative-Liberal Democrat" government is a political oxymoron.

In the final days of the British election just completed the Conservative candidate for Prime Minister, David Cameron, finally began to speak out in a gingerly way about the need to limit the reach and intrusive power of the bureaucrat-dominated European Union.

Perhaps that is because he knew full well that there were a number of swing constituencies, especially in the Southwest of England, where Conservative chances of unseating Liberal Democrat incumbents hinged directly on the subject of UK relations with the EU. Cameron's comments helped, it would seem, in several (Truro & Falmouth, for example), but were too weak to matter in others.

The UK independence Party (UKIP), whose party chairman is Lord Malcom Pearson of Rannoch, saw its number of votes rise 50 percent over previous elections, making it the fourth largest party in the country. UKIP still has not elected a Member House of Commons. But what it did accomplish was the attraction of enough votes in the Southeast to make the potential difference between a Conservative defeat and a Conservative victory in about seven constituencies. And those seats, had they joined a couple of others in the Southeast that moved to the Tories anyhow, might have made the difference now between a hung parliament and a narrow Conservative majority.

For example, in Plymouth-Moor View the winning Labour candidate got 37 percent of the vote, the Conservative 33 percent, Labour 17 percent and the UKIP 7.7 percent. Had the UKIP votes gone, hypothetically, to the Tories, the Conservative margin would have been 40.7 percent. They'd have the seat now.

2:38 Pacific Daylight Time; 10:38 in London.

The polls closed at 10, the exit polls of the SKY/ITV/BBC show a hung parliament, the Tories with 305 seats (19 below a majority), Labour with 255, Liberal Democrats with a surprisingly weak 61, the rest to minor parties. All of that will be adjusted as actual votes are counted. The Conservative Party strategists are saying that the final numbers will be better than the exit polls suggest--for the Liberal Democrats, but also for them.

An amazing thing for an American is that the election campaign of only four weeks is concluded today (Thursday), and only one hour after the polls close the first complete results will come in. Within another few hours is will all be done.

It helps, of course, that there is only one race (for member of Parliament) on the ballot, of course.

____

David Cameron has borrowed many public relations ideas from Barack Obama and had one of Obama's 2008 advisors, Anita Dunn, help him with TV debate preparation. but the conservative (and Conservative) London Telegraph is warning Cameron against emulating Obama.

Memo to the State Department Consular Office in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq:

You have in your Kurdish neighborhood of Northern Iraq an Iranian student dissident of prominence who is a "Green" refugee deserving of an entry visa to the United States. Ali Shamsei has been imprisoned and tortured in Teheran and faces death when he returns. The mullah regime has labeled him an "Enemy of the People." The Iraqi government, nonetheless, plans to return him soon. He should be allowed into the U.S. instead.

The 30 year old Shamsei has skills in computers and financial management and is fluent in English. He can succeed here and remain of assistance to former colleagues in Iran.

The Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C., under former Reagan aide Morton Blackwell, is considering him for an international internship. Here in Seattle, Discovery Institute is prepared to welcome him for a speaking engagement--people need to know first hand about conditions under the Almadinejad regime.

The British election is so Americanized this year that Conservative David Cameron is borrowing from the political playbook of Bill Clinton (circa 1992) by campaigning right through the night before the Thursday election, while, for example, the more traditional candidate, Labour's Gordon Brown, went home to Scotland Wednesday to rest up and await the verdict of the voters. Tediously, all the candidates have tried to wrap themselves in Barack Obama's imagery, doing look-alike campaign posters (Lib Dem's Nick Clegg) and a retread slogan of Hope and Change (Cameron).

Thing is, as the Brits will find out, Hope and Change is a superficial feeling, not a program.It's not even a noble sentiment, like, say, "Land of hope and glory, mother of the free."

Latest polls put Labour a bit back up above the Liberal Democrats, with Conservatives still ahead by about seven points. That seven points would be a near-landslide in the U.S., but not necessarily in the U.K.

The most probable outcome in Britain's election Thursday is a narrow Tory lead. With what is being called (as in the U.S.) the "progressive" vote split between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives stand to prevail, but not with much of a mandate.

The vultures already are circling Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Some of his own supporters are speculating on the party leadership battle that will follow a widely anticipated Labour's defeat. It could well be that Labour will come in third in popular votes while still winning more seats than the ill-prepared and underfunded Liberal Democrats.

Polls still do not indicate that the Conservatives will earn a clear majority of seats in Parliament later this week. The assumption has been that, in such a situation, Tory leader David Cameron would seek a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in return for a pledge of support for proportional representation--what the Lib Dems consider "reform".

But now it appears that Cameron may be willing to form a minority government, much as Stephen Harper's Conservatives have done--with considerable success--in Canada. They key is that the other parties, though they may have the votes to bring down the Government in such a situation, will be afraid to do so. The public, after all, will not be eager for another election any time soon.

British voters go to the polls next Thursday with more potential for a true three way split among the leading contenders than has been witnessed in decades. Moreover, the three way split could change the very nature of British politics if it means that in order to form a Government the "winner" has to compromise with one of the "losers" on fundamental rules of political governance. That prospect is the hidden issue of the current campaign.

Simply put, if David Cameron's Conservatives come in first in the number of seats won, but lack a majority, the only way they can govern in a stable fashion is in coalition with, presumably, the Liberal Democrats. (Barring the unforeseen, no one will want much to be associated with discredited Labour, whose leader probably will resign about eight days from now.) But the price the Lib Dems, led by Nick Clegg, may try to extract from the Conservatives is a "reform" (treacherous word) to institute proportional voting in future elections.

But other than surrendering still more sovereignty to the European Union, nothing would so weaken the British Parliament as proportional voting. The centrifugal forces of factionalism and regionalism would grow, spelling the end of purposeful government. The winner-take-all rule is rough on minority parties, but it does make strong governing possible.

Here is one of the most recent polls.

Gordon Brown was caught on a live mic describing a Labour supporter he encountered as a "bigot". He later apologized, but it was the kind of gaffe that can sink a campaign. Already in trouble for all the reasons the supporter, Mrs. Gillian Duffy, a widow and pensioner, mentioned on camera while Brown chatted with her, Brown now also comes off as a hack (which he is not): insincere, haughty (he is that) and quick to blame his staff instead of himself.

The negative images are especially damaging because they re-enforce tropes about him that have been established loosely heretofore.

The campaign encounter with a polite, but relentlessly critical voter, is the kind of nightmare that would cause any politician to cringe. But it would not even have been a memorable news item except for Brown's mistaken belief his mic was turned off while he maligned 66 year old Mrs. Duffy. Now, however, the whole interview will be read, and seen on video, endlessly, including not only Mrs. Duffy's remark that politicians are afraid to talk about immigration, but also her comments that the Labour Government has run up such a huge deficit that it will be "tax, tax, tax for 20 years" to pay it down.

The tax issue, as I have written here before, is the achilles heel of Labour, and even a weakness for the LIberal Democrats. The only question is how adroit the Tories are in pursuing it. Happily for the Conservatives' David Cameron, a sensationally covered Labour voter has helped make the case for him.

The story is damaging when covered by the London Times, of course, but it also is nearly as damaging as carried by The Guardian. Rupert Murdoch owns the Times, and he also happens to own Sky Channel TV, and it was a Sky Channel mic that caught the P.M. jabbering unawares to aides as they drove from the scene, and it was a Sky Channel scoop the launched the story.

If you got the impression recently that the Russian government was ending adoptions of Russian orphans by US citizens, you should know that that is not the case. There was understandable--if over-stated--annoyance in Russia when a young boy whose adoption had failed in Tennessee was sent back to Russia alone on a commercial plane. "Outrage" would be a better description than "annoyance", however.

At the time, there was media speculation that the Russian authorities would cancel further adoptions to Americans. Then, unfortunately, the story dropped out of the news.

However, the National Council for Adoption, a coalition of well-established adoption organizations in the United States and an able public policy advocate for adoption, pointed out a few days ago that the Russians have not stopped adoptions to the US.

Today, the New York Times describes some Western R & R for Russian orphans.

It helps to remind us that sensational news, especially about Russia, is often incomplete and, for that reason, misleading.

Fidesz, led by the mediagenic Viktor Orban, has won a sensational 67.9 percent of the vote in the final round national election. The party that started as a libertarian protest twenty years ago (see post, April 12) is now fully in control, with 263 out of 386 seats in Parliament. It crushed the incumbent Socialists (15.3 percent) and destroyed the dreams of the far right Jobbik (12.2 percent), not to mention the Greens (4.2 percent).

Fidesz promised tax cuts and ends to little tyrannies--such as the prohibition of home distilleries that make the beloved plum brandies of Central Europe--and, more ominously, an end to the confinements of fiscal discipline imposed--responsibly-- by the Socialists.

All of Europe needs tax reductions and encouragement of investment. (So does the U.S). But it cannot avoid simultaneously a reduction in spending. To the extent that Americans notice, Fidesz will warm conservatives' hearts. But what about the spending? That's what could chill those same hearts in the years ahead. Even a Government with a mandate cannot flout the problems of a massive debt.

Who won the second British election debate depends on which poll results one reads. The point, in summary, is either that people's views are volatile, or that you can't trust polls.

The British Parliament has overspent, over-regulated and over-taxed. That is what needs changing in the U.K. It's that simple, and yet none of the candidates for prime minister seems able to say so clearly.

The current election matters, of course, to to British, but also to the West, generally. The U.S. needs a European partner and NATO needs a leader. Unfortunately, British party leaders still can't find their way. Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats has shot up in the polls, entirely because of a good showing in the first TV debate. But underneath his attractive appearance is a lack of substance. Moreover, the built-in national weakness of his party in various ridings (districts) means it would be hard for it to win a majority of seats even with a majority of votes. The Conservatives--who seem to have raised the taxation issue only to let it slip away--still lead in polls but are offering one plastic phrase after another. So is Labour. The Liberals are retreading Obama's posters and offering "Hope."

They all want "Change", of course. But no one seems serious about it.

The leader who takes on spending, taxes and regulations in a convincing way may not get an instant response. The British public may be too divided into special pleading factions to appreciate the message at once. But leadership is about looking ahead and seeing the truth that others avoid. At some point in the campaign the voters will respond positively.

Most disappointing is David Cameron of the Tories. As Theodore Roosevelt said of William Howard Taft, "He means well feebly." His abstract chatter about "The Big Society" is numbing.

The great English Conservatives of the past--Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher--were brave as well as prescient. They trusted their principles. They took chances, not surveys.

The first of three TV debates in the British national campaign brought Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg to the considered attention of many voters for the first time. He made a strong impression as the reasonable man in beteween two parties that, for various reasons, fail to inspire. By most accounts he "won" the debate.

The last time the Liberal Party constituted a majority in Parliament was in the 1920s when it was eclipsed on the Center/Left by Labour. Since then the Liberal ticket has been a kind of retirement home for protest voters and those too fastidious to back a party with a real chance of governing.

Could that change in 2010? Clegg'ssupport grew by three percent after the debate, according to one poll, while Labour P.M. Brown's vote dropped a point. The Conservative leader David Cameron did well enough in the debate to sustain the overall plurality the Tories enjoy in current surveys, but not well enough yet to secure a solid Parliamentary majority and avoid a hung Parliament.

If Cameron merely emerges with a plurality it would be very hard to form a Government. It might be even worse for them long term if they do form a government and have to compromise their principles even more than they do now.

The former president of the Seychelles Islands is in New York to warn of increased piracy in the Indian Ocean along the Horn of Africa. James R. Mancham will speak at Columbia University and later at the Discovery Institute-sponsored World Russia Forum April 25-27 in Washington, D.C.

Piracy also was also discussed in Seattle last night at an appearance by Koshin Mohamed, a Somali-American who recently returned from combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mohamed, 31, a community leader in Seattle whose childhood was spent in Somalia, said that international military aid is needed to stop the pirates and drive out the Al Shabaab (al Qaeda linked) terrorists that control 80 percent of southern Somalia. The country also needs development of economic options for youth if the opportunist crime-wave of piracy is to be stopped. As is, Mohamed said, impoverished and uneducated young men are easy prey to ideological Islamist encouragement to defy international law and raid innocent trading ships far out to sea.

Koshin Mohamed spoke at Seattle Pacific University

David Cameron has just revealed a manifesto that finally adds spark to the election campaign underway in the U.K. The spark is the Tory pledge to reduce taxes.

Without the tax cut issue, the Conservatives would appear as little more than the familiar budget slashers, and while slashing does need happen, the take home pay of the electorate probably matters more to the economy and to the fate of the Tories.

The rest of the campaign will revolve around the sad stories of (mostly) Labour MPs who abused their expense accounts--a juicy, but old scandal--and the sheer weight of growing government control of ordinary people's lives.

One of the most successful campaign posters in history was that for Fidesz, the party of youthful, free market and pro-Western Hungarians in 1990. In an election that year to establish a new constitution that would mark the end of Communist rule, Fidesz' message was that voters should make a choice between the stolid old Communist ideology and the freedom policies promoted most strongly by the Fidesz Party. "Choose!", the poster insists, with a hilarious picture of two Communist leaders (the Soviets' Leonid Brezhnev and East Germany's Erich Honecker) giving each other an airport greeting smootch. The "choice" in the lower panel was an attractive young Hungarian couple wearing Fidesz buttons.

Fidesz originally was libertarian and limited to members under age 35. Over the years it eliminated its age restriction and moved toward overall center-right policies, emphasizing a pro-growth, lower-tax. After the primary elections just completed, the party seems to be set for a majority victory, not just a plurality, in the final round. The Socialist opposition that united most of the left is fighting for second place with a far right, populist party, Jobbik. The Socialist collapse and the rise of Jobbik is what seems to have captured most press interest, but the real story is Fidesz and its program.

The Government of Gordon Brown and his Labour Party is frazzled and care-worn as the Prime Minister, at the end of his mandate, finally calls an election for May. But if you are expecting inspiration from the nominally Conservative opposition of David Cameron, you will be relegated instead to retread Obamaisms, such as "Hope, Optimism and Change", as if the original "Hope and Change" didn't connote false optimism enough. Then there is the Tory leader's wobbly spin on JFK, "It's no good asking what can government do for me but what can we all do together to make our society stronger."

What next from the sloganeers? "A Chicken in Every Wok"?

Labour is bureaucratic, sclerotic and divided. But Cameron's Conservatives seem to offer mere marginal improvements to an economy that is grotesquely over-regulated and nearly strangled with taxes. In recent weeks Mr. Cameron has lost a big lead in polls, thanks perhaps to his failure to offer any relief, or even sympathy, to taxpayers. Neither party seems much interested, either, in defending Britain from the greedy reach of Brussels' EU pests. The election choice therefore will be fought out on familiar, flatter ground: the Ins versus the Outs.

Conservative leader David Cameron

We read that the Obama Administration is proud that America finally has "professionals" in charge of foreign policy. Such an improvement over G.W Bush, they tell the Financial Times, in a much-noticed recent article. ("U.S. Foreign Policy: Waiting for a Sun King," by Edward Luce and Daniel Dombey, available online only for registered subscribers.)

So where does all the vaunted Obama Administration "professionalism" come from? Why, from the very top.

"For better or for worse," say the authors, "Washington has grown used to the fact that Barack Obama runs the most centralised -- or 'White House-centric' -- administration since Richard Nixon. When Nixon wanted foreign policy advice, everyone knew where he got it from: Henry Kissinger, variously his national security adviser and secretary of state.

Rachel's Tomb in Jerusalem

Americans tend to assume that all Muslims are anti-Israeli. Americans--or at least the media--also often fail to see through the stratagems of Iran's meddling in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and, for that matter, Iraq.

Two examples of outspoken Iranian expatriates who defeat the stereotype are Nirs T. Bom and Ido Mizrahi. They published "On Tombs and Rage" originally in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, and then in The Caspian Weekly, a journal that covers various events in the Middle East/East Asia.

In this article, the authors examine the ploy of taking umbrage over Israeli efforts to preserve two historic sites that actually are worth protection for the heritage of Muslims, as well as Jews and Christians. The Palestinian Authority could have used these projects to illustrate a willingness to cooperate on matters of common interest; eventually, after all, the restored sites could attract pilgrimages and tourist support. But at the least the Palestinian officials could have ignored the prservation developments. Instead, they chose to make propaganda out of distorting the issue, as the writers explain.

The national election in Iraq was almost a tie among the two leading parties, with plenty of minor parties gaining seats. The losers are complaining, the "victors" celebrating, but the reality is that no government can emerge quickly from the results. A coalition will develop, and that slowly.

Let us pause, meanwhile, to admire the reality that Iraq has held another relatively solid and fair election. For its part of the world, that is a major accomplishment. Real contests took place, real politicking went on. What other country in the region has such freedom?

Well, sure, Israel. But, who else?

There is hand-wringing about possible violence, even "civil war", in the days ahead. But Iraq has horrible bombings all the time. They come from terrorists who didn't want this election to happen, not from the democrats of various allegiances and persuasions.

One other thing. For several years after the Coalition invasion, we were told that sectarianism would dominate Iraq. The refreshing thing about the elections just completed is how diminished a role sectarianism has played. I admire the Iraqis. They may be the pivotal power (again, other than Israel) in the region in years to come. It is partly because whatever government comes about now, it has ballots behind it.

Two friends (of each other and of mine) have written well-publicized articles about the true condition of Turkish democracy today. They both seem reasonable and they overlap a bit, but they also clash.

First, look at Claire Berlinski's article from the Wall Street Journal.

Then read Mustafa Akyol's article from Newsweek.

I want Mustafa to be right. I am not sure that he is. I do know that the United States has not handled Turkish relations well for some years. For those of you who think it doesn't matter, Claire and Mustafa both could set you straight.

Sometimes, educational experiences are unpleasant. Vice President Biden was in Israel this week to cheer his "old friends," declare his joy at being "home" and, oh, by the way, encourage Israel not to build any more settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. But during his visit the Israelis announced (by cooincidence or the unilateral decision of a faction in the Netanyahu government) that they were going to allow another 1600 new settlement housing units in (East) Jerusalem.

This provoked Joe Biden to rebuke the decision, and his mission more or less ground to a halt right there.

In The Israel Test, George Gilder argues that Jewish settlements have not hurt the Palestinian economy of the West Bank, Gaza or Jerusalem, but have greatly improved it. Before the intifadas of the 90s, Palestinians moved into the areas where Israelis settled and gained greatly from the collateral prosperity. Palestinian per capita income tripled in the period.

The Obama Campaign in 2008 opposed George W. Bush's efforts on behalf of free trade, including the permission of qualified Mexico truck drivers to bring their goods into the United States. The reason was simple: big labor was opposed; in the Mexican case it was the Teamsters.

Now we are experiencing a near collapse of free trade progress and, in the case of the Mexican trucks, strong retaliatory measures by Mexico that, according to the Wall Street Journal, already have cost us $2.6 billion in export trade and some 25,000 jobs.

CNN interviewed Winnie Maneda, divorced spouse of Nelson Mendela, today and made the woman who once advocated "necklaces" of burning tires for inadequately motivated revolutionaries in South Africa seem proper and almost prim. But another interview, in the U.K., printed in the Daily Mail, gives a truer sense of the woman and her poisoned perspective.

Invictus, the film starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, did not get much attention at the Oscars show last night, but it deserves to be listed in the pantheon of films of political redemption. Whereas Winnie's hatred pointed in one direction, the suffering and reflection of Nelson Mandela headed him--and South Africa--in another, and history was transformed. It is not perfect, but, still, it is one of the quiet, beautiful triumphs of our time.

Some German parliamentary members are advancing an idea for their country to to obtain a base on "Mittelmeer"-- at last, after all these centuries, a seaport on the sunny Mediterranean. It is a proposal to the Greeks to help them alleviate their notorious national debt by lightening their real estate.

Bismark would be astonished and delighted. However, since Germans today are mostly pacific (pardon the pun), do not expect them to build a naval base near Athens. Instead, Germany's new possessions probably will sport casinos and resorts where die Frauen can frolic as Nature intended, outside the gaze of formerly native Greeks. (Not that the Greeks have ever minded.)

Would you like a little spanakopita with your Kielbasa, Mein Herr?

Reserve used to be a characteristic trait of Canadians. Not patriotic. Defined by what they weren't--that is, not Americans.

No more. Canadians these days can't stop singing, "O, Canada" and painting their faces red and white. They shout and carry on like, well, I can't help noting, Americans.

Tonight they deserve congratulations and thanks. They have staged a magnificent Winter Olympics in the fabulous world city of Vancouver and the superb modern resort of Whistler-Blackcomb. They could have been stumped by the unseasonably warm weather, but they weren't. They could have been undone by the pressure of media and transportation. They weren't. Their guests are flying out of town feeling happy and grateful.

Especial praise goes to our Cascadia ally, British Columbia. What incredible strides the province has made in a generation or so!

Some said that Canadians should feel chagrined that they didn't win as many medals as the U.S., or even the Germans. Nonsense. Canada is a fraction of the population of the U.S. (even if you only count the states that have winter sports), and yet they managed a huge haul, including, of course the men's hockey gold, which was about all they seemed to care about this sunny Sunday afternoon.

Well, let them have it. We, in turn, are fortunate to have such fine, fun neighbors. They are excellent hosts and friends.

Americans remain justifiably concerned about al Qaeda and related terror groups, but it is worth pausing to note the considerable progress that already has been made in Muslim countries since 9/11 to undermine the jihadis. G.W. Bush correctly insisted that democracy should be promoted in the Middle East, even though democracy is not always an unmixed blessing.

Fareed Zakaria has a good wrap-up of the situation in Newsweek that actually provides some credit to Bush and to King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, where real and potential terrorists are being re-schooled or, if necessary, physically thwarted. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, huge efforts are made by the West to promote republican institutions (not just democracy, but ordered liberty, including minority rights and free speech). Economic development is included, but mainly on the basis of infrastructure. There is no particular emphasis on free markets, though all you have to do is look at the Kurdish region to see the relevance--how free markets encourage peace as well as vice versa.

However, one of the most interesting and under-appreciated models within the Muslim world is Turkey. There the old guard are the Kemalists who are such ardent secularists (though not as bad as the Baathists of Syria and Iraq) that they persecute Muslims as well as other religious peoples. Mustafa Akyol has written extensively on Turkey's history, politics and culture, and has tried to help the West understand that while the arch-secularists control the bureaucracy, the military and most of the media and academia, the pro-Muslim party in Turkey is actually the more tolerant of diversity of religion and of political opinion. Most crucially, Akyol is showing that the Kemalists are mercantilists (though that is not the word he uses) who advance business activities through government connections, while the conservatives--almost all of them Muslim--promote free enterprise. You can get much of the story from Mr. Akyol's frequent columns and articles, but watch also for his forthcoming book on the topic.

George Gilder's op-ed article, "Why Antagonize China?" appears in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal. There is much to criticize China for, but the Obama Administration seems to have made finding fault with the Chinese a strange pre-occupation. This is not the way to get ahead. As Gilder asks, "How many enemies do we need?" in a world where we are challenged by implacable foes such as al Qaeda, not to mention Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.

Technology is an especially crucial arena for careful interaction with China. Notes our colleague Bret Swanson,

"From 2000 to 2009, the number of Internet users in China rose from 23 million to 338 million. http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/cn.htm

China passed 700 million mobile phone users in fall 2009.

China and Taiwan together produce about 650+ million of the global annual total of 1.2 billion mobile phones. Still trying to pin down exact numbers. (China ~550 million; Taiwan ~100 million; Korea probably another 300 million)."

"As China becomes a larger portion of the global Internet community," Swanson continues, "it would be wise to keep them within the fold of global standards and (American private-sector led) governance (ICANN, etc). Pushing them away could lead to unpredictable fragmentation of the universal Net fabric. Not to mention possible disruptions to physical supply chains and knowledge flows in this seamless tech market.

"It is true China has stepped up enforcement of its previously ineffective 'Great Firewall' and blocked Twitter and Facebook on several occasions over the last year. China this winter also restricted new registrations of domain names to registered companies, blocking many individuals from acquiring new domains. But the overwhelming evidence suggests the Internet in China still mostly thrives."

Nir Booms of Cyberdissidents and Shayan Arya, Seattle-based Iranian-American activist, describe the increasing use of kidnapping and hostage taking to intimidate foes of the theocratic regime in Iran. Hostage taking is a barbaric practice to which the Iranians have added modern police state methods.

From Nir Booms' blog site is the article reprinted from The Washington Times.

If there is any cheer in the article it is the description of 21st century ways that have developed to resist the dictators.

Time magazine, often accused of being a cheerleader for the Obama Administration, has been striking some questioning poses, including lately on Iran. Writes Massimo Calabresi:

"Now Obama faces the unpleasant reality that neither the engagement track nor the sanctions track appear to be going anywhere. His defenders at home and abroad say it was the right way to proceed, but skeptics of Obama's policy are emerging, even in his own party. 'What exactly did your year of engagement get you?' asks a Hill Democrat."

It is not at all convenient for anyone that the string is running out on Iran. Even the Administration would like to focus on domestic issues, or Haiti relief, or even al Qaeda. But Iran either is getting nukes or it is not. If not, then the U.S. can bluster indefinitely, as Iran's government is doing. But if the nukes are coming, it will be very hard for the U.S to look away. The entire region that Iran aims to dominate could come apart.

Discovery senior fellow John Wohlstetter is all over the issue of whether it is wise and just to try terrorists like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Underwear Bomber, in American civilian courts. His article today at The American Spectator takes apart the idea that this is another policy traceable to Bush.

During the Cold War there were people on the democratic Left in the U.S. and (especially) in Europe who, practically speaking, were more antagonistic toward anti-communism than to communism. In virtually every respect they were sanctimonious, self-dramatizing and tragically wrong.

The Underwear Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

We are now dealing with a similar liberal mindset on terrorists and the struggle against them. The former most-liberal member of the U.S. Senate is now President and beginning to realize what he--and we--are up against. He still cannot bring himself to use the phrase "war on terror." He does speak, belatedly, of a "war with al Qaeda."

Well, if it is a war, why is the al Qaeda recruit who tried to blow up an airliner Christmas Day being tried--at great cost and at great propaganda risk--in a civilian court?

Frustration finally is getting hotter in chilly Britain tonight as more snow is predicted for Sunday and ordinary citizens are put to increased inconvenience and even hardship. The supposed political news is about rump Labourites nagging Gordon Brown on military matters and legal questions that are being raised about Conservative fundraising. But the real political news surely should be the conspicuous failure of the central government to provide backup supplies of salt and "grit" for roadways (one of the two big salt mines says its supply runs out tomorrow). The same may apply to natural gas, an even more serious matter. In general, the Government seems lax on preparedness.

Prime Minister Brown has been very keen about the dangers of global warming, but he still appears rather absent-minded about the serious and more immediate British Cooling. That, more than inside-Parliament squabbling, could hurt him with the public. It actually affects people's lives in ways they experience.

I'm a long way off and don't see anyone else coming to my opinion about this yet, however. Let's see.

Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Cristina Kirschner of Argentina (and Nestor, her husband and predecessor as President) have been the most powerful opponents of the United States in South America for the past decade. The Bush Administration tried to ignore them. The Obama Administration tried to mollify them.

Both Administrations' policies erred. But, never mind. "Historical necessity," as the Marxists say, seems to be catching up to the two bullying regimes. This not only is encouraging for the cause of freedom in the Western Hemisphere, but a potential blow to Iran, Cuba and other pals of the two South American far leftists.

The latest examples of political decay and financial impotence are Chavez' decision Friday to devalue the Bolivar by 50 percent and the failure of the Kirchners--so far--to force out the chief of Argentina's Centeral BAnk, Martin Redrado. (Redrado has refused to let President Kirchner raid foreign-currency reserves for her own agenda.)

It is one of the ironies of economics that these ardent foes of capitalism-- Chavez and the Kirchners--suffer when their adversaries do, only perhaps worse. Their governments are even more reckless and spendthrift than ours. And our recession leaves them in even worse shape.

Not being in England during the worst weather in at least fifteen years, it is hard to know whether the stories of breakdowns in road operations (the government is flying SALT in from Europe and the U.S.), gas shortages and rampant transportation delays make much difference to the average Brit. But they mattered so little to the Labour Party that it chose this moment to battle with itself over leadership issues. That high priority apparently couldn't wait.

UPDATE: Weather conditions don't seem to be getting any better today in Britain and P.M. Gordon Brown seems still to regard the matter as relatively routine. Entering the coldest night in 15 years, The Telegraph reports on the shortage of "grit" for roads, and much else:

"Cheshire's Winsford salt mine also said it only has a few days' supply of surface salt left as a No 10 spokesman said there was no provision for central Government to take control of stocks.

"The National Grid issued its second gas alert in three days as the UK's freezing weather pushed demand to record levels.

"The operator's gas balancing alert came with gas demand expected to hit 454 million cubic metres today - higher than the all-time record of 449 million in January 2003.

"Roads, trains and airports were subjected to another day of havoc."

Prime Minister Brown is one of the world's most outspoken alarmists on global warming. He presently is one of the quieter spokesmen on the subject of his freezing country.

Labour has been running behind the Conservatives in British popularity polls, though lately the Tories have been fading a bit. But that was before a record-breaking and determined blast of cold and snow descended on the Sceptered Isle, and before the taciturn Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, failed to find the weather very invigorating.

Mr. Brown's reported response is a classic: "I think Britain can deal with these problems. There are always difficulties when we have a long spell of bad weather. But we can cope."

That may not be exactly what people want to hear, however. The U.K. is in the one of the worst winters in a century. Local governments are running out of "grit" to put on roads. The National Grid energy authority has warned that gas supplies are running low. People are losing income because they cannot get to work. Businesses are hurting. Some lives are being lost. What a leader needs to do in a situation like that is to show personal involvement.

Of immediate concern is that later today the U.K. may be getting still more snow. That, not political responsibility for governmental inadequacies, is what is on people's minds.

Nonetheless, looking ahead, one might observe that freezing weather has put more than one political career on ice in America, and the same might happen in the U.K. The powerful Mayor of Chicago, Michael Bilandic, was defeated in a Democratic primary election in 1979 after his perceived inattention to a stiff blizzard a few months earlier. Something similar happened to Greg Nickels, an otherwise politically well-situated Mayor of Seattle, who endured criticism after the Emerald City was shut down for several days during a December, '08 storm. He failed, though only narrowly, to survive a primary election challenge late the next summer.

Water, if not ice, damaged the re-election chances of George W. Bush when the President was slow to react strongly to Hurricane Katrina.

These are American examples, of course, but human nature and democracies share much in common on both sides of The Pond.

Maybe Gordon Brown should take a turn shoveling snow.

The Weekly Standard does a good turn in its New Year's issue by highlighting the work of Spirit of America, the philanthropy that provides funds for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to use as they sit fit in encouraging the local population.

One of the long standing frustrations of even top U.S. government officials who try to prosecute a war is the rigidity, red tape and second-guessing of bureaucracies when asked to supply funds quickly to troops on the ground who see first hand a need and want to fill it. You can rail against this sort of thing, but it has been the case for many years. No bureaucrat wants to make a mistake--by trying something new that isn't predictable and commonplace--the very expenditures, often small, that can make a big difference. The rule book is at hand to punish those who deviate.

That is why private groups are important. They can get things done--especially in building community support for U.S. objectives--in ways the government is not well organized to accomplish. Spirt of America is such a group. It warrants our financial support.

President Obama has tried to deal with Iran on the basis of reasoned diplomacy. Now we see a regime that has its vehicles run down demonstrators and blame "Zionists" and the Americans for the popular protests.

The President aims to empty Guantanamo prison and either prosecute the terrorists in U.S. courts--at enormous cost--or to send them back to their country of origin, such as Yemen. This approach is becoming an embarrassment as we learn that many returnees released by the Bush Administration (under pressure from Congress, please recall) have rejoined al Qaida.

Presumably the underpants bomber will be treated as a mere criminal, too, and given all the rights afforded to American citizens. He will be allowed to make grandiloquent propaganda statements along the way.

What makes President Obama think that the rest of the world understands and appreciates his policy of diplomatic niceness for dictators and criminal court cases for terrorists? After all, even most Americans don't understand--or agree--with it.

You would think that our northern neighbors would be glowing with cheer these days. Contrary to the backbiting on television and in the blogs, Canada's economy is better off than ours and the Conservative party government of Stephen Harper seems reliable, if (in the classic Canadian manner), dull.

Dull is good, actually. Meet someone who complains about the dry cleaner ruining his shirt and his teen-ager denting the car and you are in the presence of someone who really should be counting his blessings instead.

Canadians on the cusp of the 2010 Olympic Games in Whistler/Vancouver, B.C., similarly, should be counting their blessings. There are reports that the country will benefit greatly--to the tune of "billions and billions of dollars"--and there are reports of the Games being of little or no benefit (and little popular enthusiasm), and reports that indicate "modest" benefits. But, what is lost in all the pseudo-economic models and opinion surveys is that no one really knows how much the province of B.C. and Canada generally will benefit--or lose--financially in the short run.

What they should know is that hosting such a prestigious event will confer lasting, positive attention on Canada as a first ranking winter tourist destination and a highly desirable place to work and do business. That usually has been the history of such events. Several billion people will watch the proceedings on TV. Journalists from around the world once again will admire the host country and the people. And British Columbia will acquire some good new infrastructure and sports facilities. (Another nice development is added passenger rail service to the U.S., via Seattle.)

If I were a Canadian looking for something to worry about right now, I would focus on something very practical: assuring airline security coming into the country and venue security for those Games.

Afterwards, relax and bask in the glory.

The President should acknowledge that there is, after all, "a War Against Terrorism". Authorities should be plain, of course, that the enemy is not Islam or Muslims, per se, but radical Islamists--and that that includes not just al Qaida, but also Iran, through its paid surrogates, Hamas and Hezbollah, assisted by the totalitarian communists in North Korea that ship nuclear and other armaments and the dictatorship in Venezuela that attempts to destabilize democracies (Honduras, Colombia) and makes common cause with Iran. Islamist radicals in Europe (especially the U.K.) and now inside the U.S. have been recruited, so they are properly identifiable as foes. What these allied terrorist groups and terror-supporting regimes have in common is hatred toward freedom and democracy as Westerners understand them. They hate Jews and Christians and will kill them in Iraq, Pakistan or wherever they can find them. They also have no compunction about killing fellow Muslims, so CAIR, et al, should spare us the argument that targeting Muslim extremists is targeting Muslims in general.

Be grateful for Muslims who have joined in the fight against the Islamist radicals, reporting them to authorities. They often do so at personal peril, which is why you don't hear about them much. We need to protect and encourage such people. Muslims arguably are suffering more than anyone from the radicals in their midst.

The uncommonly intelligent and courageous Iranian people are trying hard to get the attention of the world as they open new lines of protest against the dictatorial theocratic regime. The British seem to find a way to reply. What is holding up the Americans? Moral support is surely the least we can provide!

The people of Iran do not want the dictators. There will be a way found to extricate them from the hold of the authoritarians. We need to be with them when they do.

The Copenhagen climate summit has certain elements of conspiracy theory to it, including an attempt by IPCC Vice Chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele to blame the Russians for release of the ClimateGate emails. Why? Because a Russian server may have been used.

Here is a report by the London Telegraph writer James Delingpole on the pathetic attempt to turn the whole U.K./U.S. fiasco into an international spy story. (It was Delingpole who coined the "ClimateGate" name, by the way.)

The motive that the ClimateGate defenders attribute to the Russians is a desire to distract the Copenhagen negotiators from their work. It is hinted, moreover, that the Russians could have been paid. However, surely the ClimateGate defenders can come up with something better than that. For example, they could speculate that the Kremlin wants to keep oil usage respectable, since Russia is the world's number one producer. Natural gas, too. Or, just as likely, the Russians really would like the world to get a little warmer. A longer growing season, as V. Putin has joked. And perhaps the prospect of January picnics in the park outside the Kremlin.

If Congress and the British Parliament were doing their duty to their respective publics, hearings would be held in each body on the nature and extent and possible answers to man-made climate change. Opponents would be allowed to call an equal number of experts to testify. Put the whole thing on television and let the public see and hear it all.

There is a spectrum of informed voices on this topic, ranging from those convinced of global warming and its man-made aspect (these are the folks invited to Copenhagen); to critics who think warming is real and man is responsible, but that the CRU was irresponsible; to those who think warming is real and man may have contributed, but that the proposed cures are inappropriate and extreme; to those who think global warming is real, but not man made; to those who doubt that long term global warming is underway and therefore, human beings are not crucial agents. All these voices should be heard.

Meanwhile, trying to blame the Russians for hacking the CRU computers is so phony that it suggests desperation.

I am not even Russian, but I cannot help being overcome by a sense of melancholy, nostalgia and loss when I see these glorious century-old color photographs of Imperial Russia and her people. These were taken in the decade before the First World War ruined so much that is here presented.

The pictures by the intrepid chemist and photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, who departed Russia in 1918, were purchased by the Library of Congress in 1944 and appeared recently on the Denver Post blog site ( brought to our attention by Mike Averko).

The conservative candidate for president won in Honduras and it is likely now that the United States will recognize his government, as will Panama and Costa Rica. The way the Washington Times plays it in early reports (big, legitimizing turnout, show of rejection for the ousted Zelaya) versus the Washington Post story (small turnout, many voters not happy with choices) is telling, isn't it?

Mainstream media, being liberal, are unhappy that the Hondurans upheld their own constitutional ban on added Presidential terms and--with united Honduras Supreme Court and congressional backing--ousted Manuel Zelaya. T They also aren't very happy that Zelaya's antics thereafter, backed by Hugo Chavez, failed to sway either major party in Honduras or that country's courts.

Actually, the election results are a big victory for democracy and freedom in Latin America and a setback for Latin America's authoritarian regimes like Chavez' and Castro's. Had Zelaya come back, Honduras could well have been muscled into a situation like that afflicting Venezuela.

Iran is now more isolated than at any time in over three years as the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors, meeting in Vienna, rebuked the theocratic Muslim regime for its disregard of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and efforts of the international community to find a peaceful resolution. Russia and China voted with the West, as did India. Only Cuba, Venezuela and Malaysia voted with Iran, while a number of Iran's neighbors bravely abstained--Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan among them.

Russia's growing impatience with Tehran is the big development here, especially if it leads to a Russian vote at the Security Council that backs the IAEA position with real sanctions. Give some quiet applause to the Obama Administration (quiet, because matters are still delicate) and also credit Russia's increasing realism about economics and terrorism.

On the other hand, Iran's contemptuous reaction to the IAEA resolution and its announcement that it will build even more centrifuges is hardly a laudable achievement for Obama Administration diplomacy, is it?

When it comes to technology, entrepreneur Jonathan Medved told George Gilder's Telecosm 2009 conference in Tarrytown, New York this week, Israel is the world's "startup nation," now eclipsing everyone else in the world (even the U.S. on a per capita basis).

There was great enthusiasm for Medved and other speakers at this year's Gilder show, which was built around The Israel Test, George's new book. A video greeting from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened the conference.

On "Street Insider" at CNBC TV later, Jonathan Medved also described the remarkable prominence of Israel in green technologies, including desalinization, geo-thermal power and electric cars (thanks to Shai Aggaziz, who spoke last year at Discovery's Cascadia conference, "Beyond Oil".)

Another Medved, radio star/author/Discovery senior fellow Michael, was also a resounding success at Telecosm 2009. We hope to have his and other speeches at the event posted soon.

Two trends of Russian government policy seem to be shifting, as witnessed by President Medvedev's major address today in Moscow. The first is the tendency in recent years for government to punish those individuals and companies deemed guilty of economic misbehavior. Now, it seems, the Kremlin is taking a more free market approach.

In foreign policy--connected to business, as well--the Kremlin seems eager once again to bring foreign capital back into the country, and to protect it. Russian leadership also seems to be warming a bit to the U.S., and cooling to Iran.

At least that is the interpretation many are putting on the fairly general statements in the Medvedev speech. See the following report from Stratfor:

Thursday, November 12, 2009
A Speech, the Russian Economy and U.S. Relations

"AS RUSSIAN PRESIDENT DMITRI MEDVEDEV was preparing to make his second State of the State address on Thursday, some major shifts in Russian domestic and foreign policy appeared to be taking place. Those shifts seemed destined to affect not only the speech, but Russia as a whole."

I can't join those denouncing moderate Muslims for not disassociating themselves from the Islamists, because I know a number of moderate Muslims who have done just that. In the Middle East and Central Asia, of course, many moderates are standing up to the Islamists, to the extent of losing their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On the other hand, one might demand that supposed Westerners who learned the lessons of the Holocaust might be counted upon to resist anti-Semitism. But, as a story from Sweden points out, the ancient bigotry has a way of re-gaining fashionability.

Two Muslim Americans of Iranian background (Shayan Arya and Nir Boms), meanwhile, publish in the Jerusalem Post what should be a source of great anticipation; namely, the hostility of the people of Iran to the theocrats who currently rule.

George Gilder's Telecosm annual conference on technology and society is underway today in Tarrytown, New York. The theme is technology in Israel and what it signifies for America's economy and the defense of the West. If you haven't purchased Gilder's The Israel Test yet (and are not at the Telecosm conference), you can order directly from the Discovery.org website.

Ingratitude is part of human nature. So, too, is the convenient memory lapse. In Germany itself we see reports recently of East Germans who mourn the loss of the old DDR, though they quickly add that they surely wouldn't want the old system to return. West Germans, in turn, are quick to count the cost of rehabilitating the East after reunification, but they fail to mention the priceless gift of increased national unity and security.

Our friends at CEI have made a perfect short video to help us all remember and keep this anniversary of the Wall's fall in historic context.

Meanwhile, this afternoon at Discovery Institute we are hosting Steven Hayward, whose truth-telling chronological history of the Reagan Administration--The Age of Reagan--is a riveting reconstruction of a period too often represented now in a kind of gauzy glow. In fact, as Hayward shows, the Reagan years were tumultuous and sometimes even frightening for those who fought its battles. The judgement that they had been hugely successful was not clear until well after President Reagan left office. Unfortunately, human nature also can create a false nostalgia.

Hayward's book is like a splash of cold water in the face in the morning. It wakes you up. It is not agreeable at once, but then it refreshes and encourages. It helps you face the pessimism of now.

Patrick McDonald, whose regular job is with the Elections Division of the Washington Secretary of State's office, is a member of a 200 member Washington National Guard unit that just returned from a second tour of duty in Iraq--helping train elections officials and providing logistics for its Iraqi hosts. Master Sergeant McDonald has two Purple Hearts from his tour three years ago, but this time he came home in much better shape, healthy and happy. Among the things he told us in a speech this week at Discovery Institute:

* Safety is much improved, despite the recent violent bombings. You can drive from the airport ("Route Irish") without fearing for your life, you can shop on Haifa Street, you can dine out--unless you look like a really good target. A few years ago, none of this was possible.

* The crucial oil industry has recovered to pre-invasion levels of production and shipment, about two and a half million barrels a day, enough to fuel many of the needs of the new government.

* Electricity is up to about 20 hours a day, far better than even under Saddam--before the war.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli prowess in technology is the subject that started George Gilder on the path to writing The Israel Test, and it is the subject also that Gilder will emphasize in the upcoming Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 20009 conference in Tarrytown, New York November 10-12.

In Israel last week to promote his book and to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gilder talked to many old and new friends in the remarkable Israeli technology industry that now is second only to America's. Among the topics he investigated was the invention of new long life batteries at Technion, "the MIT of Israel."

The batteries seem destined to revolutionize electronics and eventually to lead to the long-sought, long term electric automobile battery that was discussed this past week, also, at the "Beyond Oil" conference sponsored by the Cascadia Center at Microsoft's Redmond, WA campus.

(Reminder to the media: Gilder is director of Discovery Institute's Technology and Democracy program, and Cascadia is a center within Discovery Institute.)

"Bibi" Netanyahu, in his meeting with Gilder, apparently expressed enthusiasm about the varied themes of The Israel Test, which he recently read; not just the explanations for Israel's dramatic contributions to technology in the past decade, but also Gilder's original insights about Jews, Israel, capitalism and the nature of creativity.

Gilder has lined up a stellar cast for Telecosm 2009, a project co-produced with Forbes, and he says he expects the political and cultural vibrations to nearly equal the investment and technology interest this year. The annual Telecosm conference is not a program of Discovery Institute, although a number of our fellows, in addition to George Gilder, take part.

In Israel, The Israel Test already is the number one book (in English) on Israel.

Western fears that Russia may use its dominance in gas production and distribution to influence political decisions in Europe are dealt another blow with word that the Azeris and Turks are making considerable progress on an alternative route.

The Russian "threat" thereby diminishes.

Slim Pickens rides a missile down in Dr. Strangelove

Discovery Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter, author of The Long War Ahead, is working increasingly on the topic of nuclear proliferation. Here is a lecture that he gave at the Discovery headquarters in Seattle on September 30. I asked John to "terrify us", but also "give us some hope at the end," and he complied beautifully.

The political left is looking for a safe and relatively easy way to continue the war in Afghanistan while lowering American casualties. Strategist Max Boot shows why that won't work (except to exasperate the American public further), and why painstaking counterinsurgency is the way to go. Over time, the hard way is the shortest way.

It is helpful when the media cover major industry conferences, for seemingly boring meetings sometimes reveal real news. That is what happened at the World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires recently, as reported by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph in England.

The confirmation of new gas supplies is cheering Americans eager to diminish the nation's reliance on foreign oil and Europeans who feared over-commitment to Russian resources.

By the same token, it is upsetting to some Russians, understandably.

"Needless to say, the Kremlin is irked. 'There's a lot of myths about shale
production,' said Gazprom's Alexander Medvedev.

"If the new forecasts are accurate, Gazprom is not going to be the perennial
cash cow funding Russia's great power resurgence. Russia's budget may be in
structural deficit."

We wrote about the Canadian and U.S. potential supplies years ago. Now the visions apparently are coming true.

Those who say that President Obama has achieved nothing in foreign policy are wrong. He has achieved the Nobel Peace Prize. That's something.

In the real world, however, we are left with terrible indecision on Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan. (On Israel, we are left with a terrible double standard.)

Charles Krauthammer is at his best when things are at their worst. I can only laud this column.

America's national interest and the safety of the world lies in successful prosecution of the war on terrorism--by whatever name you call it. Accordingly, a full year before the next Congressional election it ought to be possible to forge a bi-partisan consensus on a crucial element in that struggle: the war in Afghanistan. This is not just about tactics. It is about political will and a determination to sustain it.

If the two parties in Washington, DC can get their respective acts together, the public will agree. In to win--and there is no other reason to be there.

Silva de Lula of Brazil is coming under well-deserved domestic criticism for his bizarre decision to allow former Honduras President Manuel Zelaya--a pal of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro--to use the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa as his campaign headquarters in a running dispute with the current leaders of Honduras.

Why the U.S. is playing along with Zelaya and his far left cronies is a mystery. Zelaya defied the Supreme Court of his country when it ruled his actions to perpetuate his rule unconstitutional. There has been almost no discussion of the reality on the ground, except by Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal and the paper's editorial writers.

Silva de Lula plainly is pandering to his otherwise-neglected far left base; he has not proven to be the demagogue he first appeared--except in this instance. In so doing, he gives assistance to Hugo Chavez who usually is his hemispheric foe.

The role of the USA is even stranger, part of a general policy, it seems of attacking our friends and giving comfort to our foes.

Instead of abating, terrorist threats have increased in recent weeks and months as allied resolve in the face of Muslim extremists' pressures has wavered. In an effort to influence the Sunday elections in Germany, the Taliban and al Qaeda are proposing attacks on that country--naming today's Oktoberfest crowds in Munich as a prime sensitive spot--unless the Germans remove troops from Afghanistan. Most famously, a terrorist attack in Madrid in 2003 led to a change in Spain's government and the removal of Spanish troops from Iraq. In other words, the tactic is known to work.

Meanwhile, the FBI is busy rounding up terrorism suspects in Dallas, New York and Seattle, among other places. A Dallas plot was at the point of execution when foiled--the FBI had had a secret agent in place.

In Seattle, we heard as early as 2006 of efforts locally to recruit for al Qaeda among the population of immigrants from Somalia. So, fortunately, did the FBI.

On the world stage we have the spectacle of Iranian perfidy and the biggest terror plot possible, the development of nuclear weapons and a stated desire to see Israel and the U.S. destroyed. Now the Russians are noticing, which could be progress. (However, this commentator thinks the Russians will never get serious about Iran because their own purposes are better served by distracting and weakening the U.S.) We'll see. Actions will speak louder than words now.

But what about "words"? The Obama Administration has all but banned use of the phrase "War on Terror". A lot of good it has done. Does anyone still really think we merely are facing assorted criminals?

One of the most important elections not covered much in the (US) media in recent years is the one taking place this Sunday in Germany. The question seems to be whether Prime Minister Angela Merkel's conservative coalition can manage a substantial enough victory to claim a clear-cut mandate or whether the P.M.--who sought headlines at the G-22 Summit in Pittsburgh as her best last-minutes chance for publicity back home in Germany--will be forced into another coalition with the Social Democrats.

I'll be watching to see if the Linke leftists, successors to the old communist party of East Germany, as well and the Greens, continue to pick up the support slipping away from the lackluster Social Democrats.

The outcome matters more than people here in America seem to have noticed. Even though Merkel has joined the panders blaming the greed of bankers for the current recession, her real causes are tax cuts that can revive the German economy (and indirectly help ours) and continued support for NATO's war in Afghanistan.

The linked story from The Independent ends with some funny combinations that victory might bring, depending on the various political parties' traditional colors. Here in America, we are stuck with basic red (state) and blue (state) imagery, and even that isn't very well-established. I'll still take our two party system to the confusion of theirs.

A developed country does not cancel its regularly scheduled census of population, especially when one is constitutionally required. So it is not a surprise that the decision of Rosstat, the Russian State Statistical Service, to "postpone" the 2010 census on budgetary grounds was taken over the objection of Rosstat's highly regarded professional staff and at the behest of politicians in the Kremlin. The political leaders don't realize the seriousness of their mistake.

This may seem like a minor matter, except that it reflects high-level confusion about reality--the kind of reality a census captures. Indirectly, it damages economic prospects because it shows that public statistics cannot be accepted as reliable for planning and marketing purposes. If the Kremlin hopes that a several year delay will help it disguise negative demographic trends, it is deluded. Observers now will imagine far worse than an accurate census would show.

The decision is particularly unfortunate in light of the notorious statistical deceit that characterized the USSR. In that grim era statistics might as well have been another branch of state propaganda. Population and other numbers were so decrepit that the best analysis of the true condition of Russia demography probably came from Dr. Murray Feshbach, a brilliant analyst at the United States Census Bureau and, later, the State Department.

Feshbach, an amiable, chatty person in private, was amazingly adept at collecting and deconstructing official Soviet numbers, cross referencing with odd information--such as train schedules and shipping notices--to gain an insight into the truth that the Kremlin in those days hid. He was so good that Soviet statisticians repeatedly sought him out at international conferences to obtain copies of his reports to help them fill in the holes in their own. Feshbach was able to give them the kinds of data that they were not allowed to collect, or--in some cases where they did collect it--data they were not allowed share with their own domestic colleagues.

Are we going back to those days? Dr. Feshbach, now 80, retired in 2000, but maybe he can be pressed back into service--not service to the US government, but to beleaguered statisticians and businessmen in 21st century Russia.

Iraq--other than Egypt, perhaps--is the essential Arab country. With a free, democratic Iraq you have the potential for serious long term peace in the Middle East. Afghanistan is important and Iran must be prevented from gaining nukes, but even victory in Afghanistan and a peaceful revolution in Iran would not generate the dynamic and models that a stable, Western-friendly Iraq would provide the region.

Iraq has a relatively educated population with a long, noble history. Iraq has oil--the fourth largest supply. It has water (the Tigris and Euphrates of storied past) and therefore agriculture. It has sunshine--albeit with the liability of terrible heat in summer. It has fishing in the south and pasture land in the rolling green north. It has access to the sea and shipping lanes. It could be peaceful and prosperous. It could provide leadership for peace in the Middle East.

Our friends at "Iraq the Model", the popular, prize-winning Iraqi blog-site, Drs. Muhammed Fadhil and Omar Fadhil, with their bother, Dr. Ali Fadhil--have matured in the process of reporting on developments in Iraq in a style and with a sensibility that should bring encouragement to Americans. They have a faithful following of about 1000 visitors a day.

It was a mystery to me over the years how they kept safe. But, in fact, they were not safe. The terrorists eventually found and killed their brother-in-law. So it was that the Fadhils joined their political ally, Mithal al-Alusi (a member of Parliament) in making blood sacrifice for their country's future. (Mr. al-Alusi, as I have reported in the past, saw his two sons killed before his eyes and has been attacked himself many times and nearly went to prison for daring to travel to Israel. Fortunately, the new Iraqi court system has protected him from his enemies.)

I met with Muhammed and Omar today and concluded that their admirers in America need to help them establish a permanent program. If you have any ideas how to do so, contact me. There needs to be an American outlet for their talent that will assist them in promoting the cause of liberty in their part of the world.

Despite the hundreds of billions the US government is spending on the Iraq war and reconstruction, there apparently is almost nothing to build the civil society that needs to emerge now. This is a call to the private and non-profit sector. Who will answer?

Russian authorities are happy, Czech and Polish officials feel as if they have been used and abused by the United States, and Republicans are outraged that President Obama has decided to scrap plans to build a missile defense in Eastern Europe. The stated purpose was to guard Europe against intimidation by a nuclear Iran, but Russia professed to feel threatened and encircled. Now, presumably, Russians don't feel threatened and Iranians feel liberated to move ahead with nuclear development.

But here is the real test of this decision: did the U.S. gain anything by it in terms of protection of Europe (and Israel) against Iranian nukes? The next few months will tell.

The USSR and the USA were strangely but truly united in working against nuclear proliferation for a couple of decades--the 70s and 80s. In my time as US ambassador to the UN Organizations in Vienna in the 1980s this was the one field of relations in which mutual cooperation was sincere and real. Indeed, the way in which the United States came closer to the USSR at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine in 1986 may be cited as a key turning point in the Cold War. The Soviets realized that we really didn't want to humiliate them, but only to help them deal with a real crisis. It led to a breakthrough that extended beyond the nuclear realm.

In those days the Soviets were clear that they did not want Iran to develop nuclear arms. Now, with the new Russian regime, oddly, the government's posture is not so sure. If the Russians really do think that Iran--snuggled right up against them--poses no nuclear danger, their leadership surely has lost its sense of long term strategy.

As is, it appears that the Obama Administration has managed to offend our Eastern European allies and to make a unilateral concession to Russian sensibilities. Other allies are sure to take note and become cautious. Maybe (as I believe) the missile system was over-rated and presented in a strangely maladroit manner. Still, it hardly makes sense to give it up for nothing in return.

But what if there is a background understanding between the White House and the Kremlin? If there is, and Russia comes around to joining Europe and the US in firmly opposing Iranian nuclear ambitions, it will be a major Obama accomplishment as well as a real "reset" of US-Russian relations.

If nothing is given in return, just more weapons sent from Russia to Iran, well, that will say something, too, won't it?

Think, meanwhile, of that recent, very quiet visit to Moscow by Israeli P.M., Benjamin Netanyahu. No comments were made by any of the participants.

(Cross-posted on RussiaBlog.)

There is much to be grateful for tonight here in Washington. Our senior fellow John Wohlstetter, who is writing on nuclear proliferation, a public policy topic so old it is new again (or going to be), just held an exquisite book party to celebrate his Discovery colleague George Gilder's The Israel Test (#590 on the Amazon list, #1 on the subject of Israel). In John's apartment in the famous Watergate, looking over the Potomac at sunset, George described the inspiration of his father, who visited Germany in 1936 and vowed to come back to the U.S. and do all he could to defeat Hitler. His father did that--a mere 22 year old, but well-connected in New York society--and then enlisted as a pilot in what became the Second World War, and died.

In The Israel Test, George has written an astonishing love letter to Israel that somehow also manages to be a new treatise on his long time theme of capitalism as a system that prizes human exceptionalism. He sees the need to defend Israel and the potential for Israel truly to become again a light to the nations.

Human exceptionalism is also the theme, as it were, of Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell. As George Gilder says, Meyer's book is a debate changer, the most comprehensive examination yet of the issue of Darwinism versus design. No one can claim to understand that debate without it. (The American Spectator reviewer, Dan Peterson, described himself as "Blown Away".) It's 700 on Amazon's list, and tops in at least two science categories.

Then there are all the books that have come out lately from Ben Wiker (Darwin's Myth) and Jay Richards (Money, Greed and God), among them, and hold your breath for David Berlinski's forthcoming The Deniable Darwin. Senor fellow Wesley J. Smith's current cover story in National Review, on Creeping Euthanasia, is a prelude for his new book this winter.

I add the film on the Cambrian Explosion of life forms 580 million years ago--"Darwin's Dilemma"--by Illustra Media that is just about to premier at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, featuring many Discovery fellows. Adolescent-acting Darwinists are trying to disrupt the opening, but their Acorn-style agitation only will add to the piquancy of the film's signal achievement. I was a guest at an early screening and conclude that it is going to be another winner.

The materialist Left is losing out.

One walks down Sixteenth Street near the White House and sees the monstrous, four story posters for "card check" and "full employment" on the lobbying organizations that now sidle up to power. One hears the stories, on the other hand, of the plain folk who showed up on the Mall in the hundreds of thousands last week to protest government health care, and one sees the cracks in our social consensus.

But that is the present. The future is in the minds--and writing--of colleagues like Gilder and Meyer, et al. In a gloomy time, they are a reason for gratitude and good cheer.

The prospect of an election in Canada was put off another indefinite period as the Bloc Quebecois decided to vote in favor of the Conservative Government's budget. But a no-confidence vote could be raised by the Liberals in a couple of weeks anyhow. This can't be good for the Conservatives--to have their position determined entirely by the opposition parties.

That's what you get with a minority government.

Parliamentary government has its strengths. And its weaknesses.

Turkey had a serious, Katrina-like major flood last week, that somehow has not been much noticed in in the rest of Europe and U.S. The scene apparently was messy and residents are complaining that Prime Minister Erdogan, when he was mayor of Istanbul, bears some responsibility for faulty planning.

Turkey also has been hit by a number of earthquakes recently that, likewise, have not been reported much outside that country. Claire Berlinski, author, has seen the hand of corruption in certain building failures and worries that a big quake could be disastrous.

If the flooding hasn't made the news in the US, I have to imagine
that the series of small earthquakes we've had here in the past few
weeks hasn't, either.

It's hard to know what this means. Seismologists are divided. Some
think it's good news (pressure is being relieved in small quakes,
making a bigger quake unlikely); some think it's very worrying -- a
sign that things are unusually active below the ground. The building
I'm living in now was recently renovated to bring it into compliance
with earthquake safety codes. A few days ago I spoke to the engineer
who supervised this work. He told me that every day he walks through
the city and feels unspeakable dread."

Turkey has suffered worse than most nearby countries from the current international recession. Putting it all together, a major U.S. ally could be in for inevitable political upheaval in months to come, in addition to its other woes.

In something of a surprise, Canada seems to have turned the corner on jobs, adding 27,100 this past month, according to Statistics Canada. That's not a lot and they are all part-time and the unemployment rate still climbed a notch, to 8.7 percent. But new jobs represent a kind of fresh breeze in a long, stale recession. They point up the fact that Canada has done better on the jobs scene than the U.S. American unemployment is up to 9.7 percent now.

Even some limited good news in the economy will be a boon to Conservatives if, as expected, the Liberals force an election this fall. (See my post below, from September 3.)

The Israel Test by George Gilder continues to get stunningly positive reviews by conservatives, such as this one today by Clifford May in National Review.

Somehow, however, the liberal media are pretending not to notice.

Canadian Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, lacking patience, has decided to force a vote of no-confidence in the Stephen Harper-led Conservative government, and thus precipitate a national election this fall. He may succeed in winning that election.

But then what?

The latest poll shows the Liberals and Conservatives tied at 32.6 percent each, with the balance supplied by Canada's three other contending parties--the labor-left oriented New Democrats, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Greens. Even last spring, as the international recession worsened, the Conservatives held a strong polling lead, largely because Canadians had just had a string of national elections that had led to more, rather than less, turmoil. Canadians don't like turmoil. They wanted to give the Tories more time.

Now the boredom factor may be setting in, however, and a jolly election campaign might be just the thing to enliven the lengthening autumn gloom. If the vote were to take place, oh, say, next week, one suspects that the Liberals might win it. Ignatieff is the most articulate politician in Canada, with real intellectual heft and campaign stump appeal. He looks good, sounds good and inspires confidence.

That doesn't mean, however, that he necessarily wears well or is a magician who can turn thin gruel into Beef Stroganoff. Upon inspection, the Liberal complaints against the Tories seem small, if not contrived. Supposedly the Harperites are responsible for raising the budget deficit from an expected $32 billion (Canadian) to $52 billion and have done to little to promote international trade. They also are said to be deficient on issues as pension insurance and limiting ATM fees. As a platform, these planks appear too weak to carry the burden of even Canada's relatively short federal campaign of six weeks' duration.

Anyone want to go to the barricades over ATM fees?

Of course, the real issue, as everywhere, is the economy. But 1) Canada is hardly alone in suffering from the recession and it just doesn't ring true to blame the Harper government for--say--the auto industry's woes. 2) Harper has avoided the wild budget spree of the Obama Administration in the U.S., while nonetheless giving the economy a big Canadian goose of stimulus spending. In all this, Harper (correcting an earlier inclination) has consulted with his opposition a lot more than previous prime ministers in similar situations.

Mr. Ignatieff reproaches the p.m. for not doing more for trade. Mr. Harper has been in office four years and yet "he's never visited China," Ignatieff charges. An outsider might observe that it is hard for a prime minister to tour the world when he has a minority government whose opposition threatens an election at any moment. As for China, Mr. Ignatieff just cancelled his own China tour because of election considerations.

The Conservative campaign has its own problems. Tory TV ads trying to paint Ignatieff as a elitist dandy don't seem to have worked at all. But, eventually the Tories will figure out that people care about interests closer to home. Expect Stephen Harper to jab Michael Ignatieff hard on his current promise to close the budget deficit without added taxation, a position that is especially suspect in light of his statements a few months ago that more taxes might be needed. Blaming Conservatives for the deficit is not persuasive. Worrying voters that the Liberals will raise their taxes potentially is persuasive.

So why do the Liberals pine for the polls? Well, even Canadians, as I say, get bored and there usually is great fun in the prospect of a big fight.

Yet, if the big fight is merely tendentious, public boredom can turn to annoyance. And even assuming that they do win, the danger for the Liberals is that, once back in office, but as a minority, they may find themselves even more hogtied than the Tories today. How patient will the public be then with the currently impatient Liberals?

by Mathias Brucker

All smiles in the CDU

This month may see one of the world's most important elections for the year. Germans will decide on September 27 whether their country--by far the largest economy of Europe--will get a relatively conservative government (with lower taxes and spending and support for the Afghan war) or another "Grand Coalition" of the Conservatives and their current government partners, the Socialists. Not only would spending and taxation remain high, support for the allied cause in Afghanistan would continue to erode. The Conservatives (the CDU) would be under constant pressure to slip further left in order to keep the Social Democrats (the SPD) from going on the attack.

Today the CDU forces seems to be on the path to victory, but the scene was much the same during the 2005 campaign, when the actual election turned out to be so close that a coalition government became necessary. What helped the SPD close the gap in that campaign was a barrage of claims that CDU tax reform was "socially unjust".

A similar thing seems to be happening now. In addition, public support for the Afghan War is dropping

So there are two possible outcomes: the conservative parties (CDU and the Free Democratic Party, the FDP, its smaller ally) will get a majority and form a conservative government. The other possibility is that the same will happen as it did in 2005, and the conservatives won't have a majority of seats in the Bundestag, and neither will the SPD and its Green Party allies. The party making the difference would likely be Germany's fifth party, the post-communist "Linkspartei" (literally, the leftist party). As no one wants a coalition government consisting of three parties, especially with the communists, a Grand Coalition would be the only option.

Ominously, the Linskspartei did pretty well in the state elections that were held last Sunday, whereas conservatives as well as social democrats lost votes. This surely adds momemtum to the leftist party's federal campaign. However, it should not be exaggerated; the left won in the former East as well as the party leader's tiny home state of Saarland, "the Delaware of Germany." Its standing in the far more densely populated western Germany is still small.

A more conservative government in Germany might help slowly to move Germany as well as Europe to the right, but there will be no sizable conservative revival, even then. The German "conservatives" are just too centrist to instill enthusiasm for true conservative reform. Come to think of it, Germany is probably one of the most leftist countries in Europe, with but a few conservative strongholds here and there. The incorporation of formerly communist Eastern Germany really hurt Germany as a whole. It made a conservative country -- and one of the richest in the world, one might add -- much more leftist. Since reunion the German economy has been doing not as well as before, with the country spending some 6% of its GDP on "structural reform" in the former East (more even than the entire American defense budget as a percentage of GDP). Also, many formerly eastern Germans still have communist sympathies and perspectives. Overall, whatever else it accomplished, reunion has damaged the right.

Americans will want to watch the German elections closely. The policies that are adopted after it will bear greatly on the German contribution to world economic recovery and NATO support for the War in Afghanistan.

The best book reviews are the ones that add not only to what one knows about a subject, but also to what the book author knows. That is what characterizes Sol Stern's City Journal review of George Gilder's The Israel Test. Stern knows how Tel Aviv is faring in the current economy--which is, great--and how French Jews are buying condos on the new Israeli Riviera. And how, if the Palestinians had some control on their rage, Gaza's sandy beaches could become a huge tourist draw, too.

Needless to say, this all supports Gilder's themes in The Israel Test, and Stern, needless to say, thinks Gilder's book itself is outstanding. He goes on to express an amused observation about the likelihood that Gilder's "stark, almost apocalyptic terms will bring out all the old Gilder haters." Who might they be? Discovery Institute friends will know.

"Just as his seemingly elitist defense of the traditional capitalist virtues and of the nuclear family infuriated them, just as they were enraged by his objections to modern feminism and, more recently, his evangelizing for Intelligent Design, they will surely reject out of hand (Gilder's) understanding of the underlying factors behind the current conflict in the Middle East. That's too bad."

I'll say. But for all those who appreciate the full Gilder canon, The Israel Test will prove an exciting adventure.

The news from the election in Afghanistan, as was true in 2005 in Iraq, is not accurately reflected in the major media reports. As in Iraq, the Western media mainly are interested (as one reporter told me when I was in Baghdad) in explosions and blood. Here is an interesting report from a serious journalist on the ground, living in Kabul.

Notice once again the quality of courage in the population.

The release of Abdel al-Megahi, the Lockerbie bomber, to Libya--where he was given a hero's welcome--may just be the beginning of another damaging scandal for the Labor Party in the U.K.

At first it looked like a naive good-will gesture to Muammar Gaddafi, who, instead of welcoming it in a low-key way, made a humiliating homecoming display of the bomber-terrorist. But now questions are being asked about what deal may have been involved between the Government led by P.M. Gordon Brown and Gaddafi. Was there some quid pro quo, and if so, what?

Americans understandably are upset at what looks like appeasement of terrorism. But there is silence from the White House itself. This raises the question of whether our British cousins bothered to consult on this one and what assurances were given them--and on what basis.

This has the feel of a story with legs. Even if the U.K. Government did not have efforts going to secure gas rights in Libya, as some have charged, the whole episode seems to have been a first class blunder.

The battle over privacy issues that has delayed creation of standard I.D. cards for Americans should be drawing to a close. After all, whatever privacy we enjoyed in the past, the safety requirements of the post 9/11 world have overridden them. As a plain fact, you cannot fly in a commercial airplane or transact other business without a driver's license or similar official identification. What a uniform I.D. card would do, of course, is help establish citizenship and the rights that go with it. A driver's license does not. And a passport is issued only to those who request it, mainly for foreign travel.

In this light, it is interesting to note that the Mexican government has few of the scruples that have held up an I.D. card for Norteamericanos. The government of Mexico is on the cusp of requiring the same for everyone. I don't think anyone on this side of the border has begun to think through the consequences of this development.

John Wohlstetter is prejudiced in his praise of The Israel Test; he's a friend of the author, George Gilder. Of course, a review by an author's friend has never happened anywhere else, has it?

Regardless, John is a friend and colleague of mine, too, and I know what he does when he disapproves of a friend's views: he goes silent. This article in The American Spectator is, in fact, a very good introduction to the George Gilder's book.

The best lines are these, at the end:

Israel could be the economic engine for the entire Mideast. This is the new Israel, no longer a financial ward of America. It is this Israel that most Americans know not of. "Israel Inside" would be a great slogan for an ad campaign educating Americans about the new Israel, and its supreme value to America and the West. In lieu of an ad blitz, Gilder's book does the job beautifully.

Israel does need an "ad campaign" right now because its foes seem to have a great many people intimidated. George is fearless. His book goes where many media voices seem afraid to go.

See also this interview in National Review online, with Kathyrn Lopez. The Daily Telegraph's Stephanie Guttman just blogged her review, available here.

Russia is being accused of support for Hezbollah in the terrorist group's war with Israel. The pro-Israeli Debka file makes the assertion in a dispatch from earlier this week that ought to cause serious concern in Washington. If it is not true, it should cause some efforts in Moscow to contradict the claim.

Unfortunately, the Kremlin cannot yet see straight in the Middle East. The interests of Moscow are not the oil lines, but the ideological lines that divide the region. By allowing Hezbollah to roll up Israeli spy rings in Lebanon the Russian intelligence agency FSB may have made Israel more vulnerable to attack from the North. In the end, that means the Israelis will have to punish Southern Lebanon yet again when Hezbollah rockets rain down on Israel. If the Kremlin has facilitated this future, they should be held to account. If Debka's report is a slander, let's hear a reply, please.

Here is the Debka story:

Russian secret service helped Hizballah bust Israel's Lebanese spy rings
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 5, 2009, 10:16 PM (GMT+02:00)

Russian FSB agent in action
Western intelligence sources in the Middle East have disclosed to DEBKAfile that a special unit of the Russian Federal Security Service - FSB, commissioned by Hizballah's special security apparatus earlier this year, was responsible for the massive discovery of alleged Israel spy rings in Lebanon in recent months with the help of super-efficient detection systems.
Those sources report that the FSB and Hizballah have amassed quantities of undisclosed data on Israel's clandestine operations in Lebanon and are holding it in reserve in order to leak spectaculars discoveries as and when it suits their purpose.
This disclosure, if borne out, would indicate that the Russian agency, which specializes in counterespionage, is engaged for the first time in anti-Israel activity in the service of an Arab terrorist organization. An Israeli security sources describes this turn of events extremely grave. It also cast an ominous slant on Moscow's deepening strategic involvement in Syria.
It was generally assumed until now that new electronic devices supplied by France to the Lebanese army were instrumental in uncovering the suspected Israeli spy rings. It now transpires that the Lebanese army was not directly involved; it only detained the suspects handed over by the Shiite Hizballah.
Those same sources disclosed that FSB agents, by blanketing every corner of Lebanon with their sophisticated surveillance systems, were able to detect the spy rings one by one and additionally hack into Israeli intelligence data bases.
The Russians dated Israel's massive clandestine infiltration of Lebanon to shortly after its 2006 Lebanese conflict. The Lebanese Shiites sustained heavy casualties and, fearing an Israeli surprise attack at that point, began conscripting thousands of young Shiites as fighters pell mell, without checking their backgrounds. In their haste, they also rounded up Syrian and Egyptian migrant laborers in Lebanon.
Israel used the opportunity to recruit large numbers of agents in both these groups, especially among the conscripts sent to Revolutionary Guards camps in Iran and Syrian military facilities for training.

Maybe Aljazeera is a Sunni operation, or maybe it just feels the need to acknowledge the reality of Iran's governmental disaster. This essay by Berend Kaussler tells the tale.

The essay also may say something about the changing personality of Aljazeera.

George Gilder's new book, The Israel Test, is starting to get around. We ourselves have already filled over 1,000 book orders in house. (Actually, we recommend that purchasers go to Amazon.com to order. For both orders you can still come to us.) Mona Charen had a terrific column a few days ago on George's appearance at the AEI. David Pryce Jones has a fine article out in the National Review, and The American has published a long excerpt of the book.

The growing buzz may have somthing to do with the fact that there really is an Israel test going on right now in international affairs. We definitely are on the case -- led by George.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, killed in 2006 in what appeared to be a contract murder.

Political killings have declined in recent years in Russia, but still tend to blot Russia's image in the filed of human rights. Several recent contract murders have been tied to Chechnyan politics, where complex rivalries have been taken to Moscow in a violent manner.

Now comes the story of an apparent murder attempt that was foiled by police. A plausible suspect seems to be in hand. If so, this gives the Russian government a chance to show its determination to strike back at terror-tactics, regardless of their source.

I am skeptical of assertions that the Kremlin itself has backed such political terror tactics. But now--with a live suspect in police hands--is the time and the chance for the national government as well as the police to demonstrate their true resolve. It also is time for the international community to pay more attention to these matters.

If there is no domestic constituency that is offended, a gaffe is not treated as a gaffe. But Vice President Joe Biden's snarky remarks about Russia fall into the gaffe category anyhow. What is the point?

You haven't seen much at all about the elections just held in the Kurdish region of Iraq, perhaps because they were relatively uneventful. But that should be big news. Not only were the elections apparently fair and free of violence, but all sides seem to agree that a new third party, "Change", captured the second highest number of seats. As usual, the distinguished Iraq the Model blog has the report (two, in fact). http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

Contrasts should be drawn with the continuing disgrace in Iran.

A new Kremlin plan to teach students religion or secular ethics is meant to combat the aimlessness of youth.

Perhaps it will--to some extent.

The approach is probably unique--teach what is again the dominant state religion (Russian Orthodoxy) as the one acceptable Christian faith, and also teach--according to student desires--Islam (the religion of a sizable minority, particularly in the South), Buddhism or Judaism, and give the students the alternative of a coarse in secular ethics. It will seem fair to many, maybe most, Russians. It is quite different, obviously, from the "scientific atheism" of Soviet days.

The program will get a lot of criticism, however. First, the most eager evangelists in Russia today are probably the various kinds of Christian pentecostals, and there is a sizable Roman Catholic population in certain ethnic centers. So the government apparently is starting a new struggle with these groups in schools, of all places.

Then arises the question of how smart it is to have Islam taught in state schools. Who is going to teach it? What is going to be taught? Might the government find itself trying to deal with hostile Friday mosque sermons because of the kind of Islam it promulgates in the schools? Where does that lead? How will populations in areas where Islam is a majority faith react to state school classes that offer instruction as well in other faiths?

Regardless, the new Russian model is so jarringly different from what is on offer in the United States that it may be worth careful monitoring by Americans. We no longer provide much at all in schools of the old, slightly Protestant civic religion of yore. The struggle in the U.S. is over whether to allow any expressions of faith in schools, whether in Commencement speeches by students or in after-school religious clubs.

Overall, America has benefited by a general separation of religious instruction and public education, as in other fields. A state religion gets lazy. It becomes synonymous in students' minds with state politics, which cannot be good.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for students learning more about the religious heritage of their country. If the Russians are erring on one side of that objective, Americans may be erring on the other. If nothing else, comparisons of results should be interesting.

One place where the outcomes may be studied closely is....China.

I don't know The Caspian Weekly, but two writers there, Nir Boms and Shayan Arya, are making a good case that the West should impose economic sanctions against the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran. The reason is that the Iranian government seems determined to defy the international community and its own agreements regarding nuclear weapons development. Even the U.N. seems clear on this.

The question is, would sanctions hurt or help the cause of peace? Very likely help, in my opinion. President Reagan certainly confronted the Soviets on many subjects in many ways, but he also was willing--and did--negotiate with them. In the case of Iran, we could negotiate after imposing sanctions, at least in theory.

But the truth is that it doesn't matter much whether we want to negotiate: the theocrats in Iran have made it clear they are not going to indulge that fantasy. Therefore, all the "realists" recommending caution actually are recommending inaction. One way or another, as the authors say, the Iranian regime must be pushed--hard. Maybe they will respond to real pressure. Maybe the people will find a successful way to rebel. Regardless, there is not much time left. The present drift is not a strategy.

The Ahmadinejad regime in Iran has been wounded internally, thanks to the brave advocates of freedom who took to the streets, but it probably will try to stabilize its position by foreign policy truculence and a "breakthrough" on nuclear weapons.

It is in this incendiary environment that George Gilder's incredibly timely book, The Israel Test, is coming out (pub date, July 23). It already is getting noticed.

Here is a tiny excerpt--and an admonition at the end!

"The central issue in international politics, dividing the world into two
fractious armies, is the tiny state of Israel.

"The prime issue is not a global war of civilizations between the West and
Islam or a split between Arabs and Jews. These conflicts are real and
salient, but they obscure the deeper moral and ideological war. The real
issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism,
between creative excellence and covetous "fairness," between admiration of
achievement versus envy and resentment of it.

"Israel defines a line of demarcation. On one side, marshaled at the United
Nations and in universities around the globe, are those who see capitalism
as a zero-sum game in which success comes at the expense of the poor and
the environment: every gain for one party comes at the cost of another. On
the other side are those who see the genius and the good fortune of some
as a source of wealth and opportunity for all.

"The Israel test can be summarized by a few questions: What is your
attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other
accomplishment? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it?
Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it
and seek to tear it down? Caroline Glick, the dauntless deputy managing
editor of the Jerusalem Post, sums it up: "Some people admire success;
some people envy it. The enviers hate Israel."

". . . . Today in the Middle East, Israeli wealth looms palpably and
portentously over the mosques and middens of Palestinian poverty. But
dwarfing Israel's own wealth is Israel's contribution to the world
economy, stemming from Israeli creativity and entrepreneurial innovation.
Israel's technical and scientific gifts to global progress loom with
similar majesty over all others' contributions outside the United States.

"Though Jews in Palestine had been the most powerful force for prosperity
in the region since long before the founding of Israel in 1948, more
remarkable still is the explosion of innovation attained through the
unleashing of Israeli capitalism and technology over the last two decades.
During the 1990s and early 2000s Israel sloughed off its manacles of
confiscatory taxes, oppressive regulations, government ownership, and
Socialist nostalgia and established itself in the global economy first as
a major independent player and then as a technological leader.

"Contemplating this Israeli breakthrough, the minds of parochial intellects
around the globe, from Jerusalem to Los Angeles, are clouded with envy and
suspicion. Everywhere, from the smarmy diplomats of the United Nations to
the cerebral leftists at the Harvard Faculty Club, critics of Israel
assert that Israelis are responsible for Palestinian Arab poverty. . . .
Denying to Israel the moral fruits and affirmations that Jews have so
richly earned by their paramount contributions to our civilization, the
critics of Israel lash out at the foundations of civilization itself--at
the golden rule of capitalism, that the good fortune of others is also
one's own.

"In simplest terms, amid the festering indigence of Palestine, the state of
Israel presents a test. Efflorescent in the desert, militarily powerful,
industrially preeminent, culturally cornucopian, technologically
paramount, it lately has become a spearhead of the global economy and
vanguard of human achievement. Believing that this position was somehow
captured, rather than created, many in the West still manifest