The summer is in its final phases and the upcoming labor day weekend is always some sort of a turning point. In a way it saddens me to leave the summer behind, but on the other hand it is good to get back to normal. I never take holidays during the summer (I reserve that for spring and fall) and work right through, and after a while the absence of people that are on holiday and the slowness of business in general (less blog visitors, lower stock market volumes) starts to irritate me in a serious way. It is nice for a while, but at some point you have had enough, a protracted contract negotiation with a French company stalled completely because France shuts down for the entire month of August. It gets on your nerves, let’s get on with it! I will be enjoying the long weekend and not post anything in the next few days, I will check back in next week. Enjoy !

This time of year will forever be the time of year when we start remembering September 11, reflect, contemplate or do anything else that somehow relates to that day. The mainstream media have apparently decided to not pay any special attention to the September 11 events and in response the non-traditional media, such as blogs, have decided to make an effort to remember and provide special coverage. The best example is Michele over at Small Victory who clearly explains in this post (with an abundance of interesting links) why she feels we should remember and commemorate. In order to do that and in order to fill the void left by mainstream media she has launched her Voices project. A visit is highly recommended and I have no doubt that many will do so in the next few weeks as we question the events of that day and their aftermath.

One person not to miss a beat in reflecting on that day is Naomi Klein who today in the Guardian explains that September 11 is used by a vast conspiracy of interests that seeks to extinguish human rights, crush dissent and further special interests. She calls it Bush’s War on Terror franchise and says:

This appears to be the true message of Bush's war franchise: why negotiate with your political opponents when you can annihilate them?

Here’s why: because September 11 taught us that negotiation was never on the cards, appeasement was never going to get us anywhere as the only thing our adversaries were after was to annihilate. To annihilate us.

Yesterday marked Peaktalk’s first six months in the blogosphere. Rather than bore you with statistics (they’re good but not spectacular), I decided to run the interview I had with IsraPundit earlier this month as it gives a good picture of my ideas about blogging, and it also is an interesting introduction to all the newcomers to this site (thanks to Colby, Glenn and Jay whose links mitigated the end of my spell on Steve’s roll).

The interview was part of this blog being Site of the Week over at IsraPundit, and they run an interview with each blogger that is selected as their Site of the Week. It usually is quite interesting to read about other bloggers’ motivations and thoughts and I make a point of reading each one, this week it is Sari’s turn.

Can you tell me anything about yourself?
I am Dutch and settled down in Vancouver, Canada, after a career in investment banking that took me to London and Hong Kong. I have retooled my financial skills to advice start-up hi-tech companies. Many think I am an accountant but I am not, I have a degree in economic history.

Why and when did you launch your site? What motivated you in particular?
I launched the site at the end of February this year. I have always wanted to write, and occasionally I did, but it never moved beyond a few little pieces for some local magazines and newspapers. Since the Florida recount, when I saw Andrew Sullivan on CNN, I started reading blogs and that turned into a hobby. All of sudden I realized that I could probably put together a good blog myself given my interests, views and experiences in different parts of the world. So, the technology provided me with something that I had more or less, unconsciously, been waiting for.

Can you spell out the objectives of your site and the target audience? Do you have any interest in influencing public opinion, for example?
I had one real objective and that was to provide original well-written content. I knew that by writing, you would organize and structure your thoughts coherently and I felt that if I just started doing it something valuable would come out of it. Anyone can set up a linking service and there are too many of these already.

I never thought about an audience, but I did want to reach as many people as possible so I alerted quite a few bloggers as well as family, friends and ex-colleagues of what I was trying to do.

One of the things that bothered me enormously about Canada is the attitude to the US and the arrogance of some of the left-of-center media and institutions here. I really vented some of that anger in my blog and to that extent blogging is therapeutic, but I do not have the illusion that I have influenced public opinion here.

What are the achievements of the site in terms of your objectives?
The link from USS Clueless was a validation that I was producing well-written original content and that was quite something, especially since it came only 2 months after I launched Peaktalk. Whenever I visited Den Beste’s site I sort of told myself that I probably would not have the quality to make it onto his roll, yet there I was, I was thrilled really.

The other thing that happened was that many Americans commented on my use of the English language and that it was so much better than many native English-language blogs. It was not an objective to prove that I could write well in English, but still it was a very positive reflection on what I was doing.

Your site takes a clear pro-Israeli stance. What are the reasons for this? How did you come to support Israel at a time when such a position is very unpopular? Have your views changed over the last year or two?
I have always been an unabashed and unmitigated Israel supporter. Things that happen in your childhood often leave a phenomenal imprint and for some reason the pro-Israel mood in Holland in the 1970s did it for me. My parents were very much informed about world events, and my father is a World War II buff so when Israel registered on my radar screen I read up on the history of the Jews and the holocaust. Really, the mood in Holland was so pro-Israel, we even had Israeli folk dances at school, I collected Israeli stamps and at one point I was deeply disappointed that I was not born a Jew and could not go to Israel and help out. I turned 10 shortly after the Yom Kippur War broke out, so I was really too young.

Also, do not forget the impact of the murder of the Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics and the raid on Entebbe. The latter was a very clear example that for Israel in order to survive and protect fellow-Jews, it had to take matters into its own hands. Negotiating with terrorists? Forget it, we will fly a few Hercules aircraft filled with commandos into Uganda and deal with the situation. And they did, I never forget that day. There was no CNN, not even daytime TV in Holland during those days, it was very hot and in the garden we could hear the radio announcing what the Israelis had pulled off. It only added to the fascination and admiration.

It never occurred to me that Israel had become so unpopular in the media, I lived in Hong Kong from 1992 to 1999 and during those days I was not really focused on the Middle East, I reconnected with Israeli events when the peace process collapsed in the final months of the Clinton administration and I started to follow the news on a regular basis again. Have my views changed? Not materially but I do believe that eventually some peace deal will see the light of day, but it will be a long, long time before that happens. Apart from the security issues both Israel and the Palestinians will start to face demographic and economic pressures and they will have to work something out, but asymmetrical deals will never work.

How do you explain the shift in Holland (government and public opinion) from strong support in the 1950's-1960's to an overt anti-Israeli stance currently, up to the point of imposing a de facto embargo on exporting military goods to Israel?
I got many e-mails about that, so many that I wrote about it in March, in a post called "Duisenberg's Antidote", following a comment from Stefan Sharkansky on his Shark Blog. Here's the link.

Do you consider pro-Israel advocacy a major objective of your site? An important objective?
Israel is an important topic but I would not qualify it as advocacy and a major objective of the site. However, Israel needs good coverage, the mainstream media have embraced the peace process during the 1990s and they have lost their ability to critically look at Israel’s opponents, that is evident. The emergence of someone like Mrs. Duisenberg in Holland with her anti-Semitic rhetoric is something that should even get the most technology adverse person behind a PC and start blogging.

In addition, I know quite a bit about its history and so it has developed into one of the regular features on my site. I am not in the business of reporting every event but, for instance, I looked critically at the appointment of Abbas and the asymmetrical nature of an arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians.

From today's perspective, do you look upon your site as a transitory initiative, or is it a task for the long term?
This is a long-term project, otherwise, for me personally, there’s no point in doing it.

Are you pleased with the traffic you get?
Hard to say. Yes, it is encouraging that there are about 100 uniques a day, on the other hand it is disappointing to see that very average sites get significantly higher volumes. You get a case of what I coined ‘bloxiety’: what is it that I do wrong? Why don’t I get more visitors? But when, in my own opinion, I posted something average, the Asymmetrical Information team links me and then you say, well, it probably takes a while but eventually people will find you, link you and direct traffic your way. John Hawkins of Right Wing News did a good guide to blogging earlier this year and he commented that it is hard work and that it takes time to develop a sizeable readership. He’s right.

Does your audience consist mainly of friends and acquaintances? Do you have many readers from the US? Can you categorize the major component of your readers?
With a few exceptions, friends and family do not really get it. They are all very astute, well educated and so on but blogging is something that a lot of them do not get.

The bulk of the readership is American (65%) followed by Canadians (20%), Europeans (10%) and 5% for the rest of the world. I find the European number astounding. The continent’s blogging culture is not very well developed judging from these numbers although people may blog in their native language. That, however, defeats the unique thing about blogging which is, the cross-border, international aspect, and let’s be honest if you want to do that, your blog has got to be in English.

It is hard to categorize the readership but I note from the visitor logs that there are quite a few university-based readers, government employees as well as some US military staff deployed overseas.

Generally, do you get feedback from many readers whose opinions differ from yours? Do they send you e-mail that leads to a dialogue?

Sometimes, but not a lot. The bulk of the e-mail is positive and they compliment me on my efforts. It’s my policy to always respond and if an interesting issue is raised I develop a post around it. I did not want to have a comments section, but I encourage people to e-mail me.

Can you point to what you consider your best post(s)? Do you still consider "My Israel, Our Security" in this category?
Yes, that was an interesting post. It had been lodged in my head for 28 years and it finally took shape. My better posts are always those where I can link to a personal event or experience, “Desecrating a Memory” is similar but Diana Moon pointed out to me that it fell flat in the final paragraph and she was right. I have a “Best of Peaktalk” section in the sidebar and there you will find the posts that I consider to be the best ones.

What distinguishes your site from the hundreds of other, similar sites?
It has to be the content, I can combine the politics and history of Asia, Holland, and North America in a creative way I guess, and from time to time I can link it to personal experiences. I think the personal part is important; I like reading other blogs where people reveal who they are, what they do and how they deal with the world around them. It is interesting and you learn from it. It also tells you how people deal with current affairs, Andrew Sullivan sometimes loses it and I can relate to that, I know the feeling.

What special challenges do you encounter in blogging?
The one challenge is the longer than 1500-word posts like “My Israel, Our Security” . It takes me very little time to write them, I map them out while I drive or work in the yard, but once it is there black-on-white I put it away and look at it the following day and I always spend time polishing it, making it look better. That’s where the time effort is and that is sometimes a bit frustrating as I have got a lot of other activities during the day, like my real business and I have a wife and two young daughters with whom I want to spend time. But I cannot post something unless it is perfect in my opinion and that includes fact checking, like: did I spell that name right? Was it 1992 or 1993?

The colours you selected for your site induce a very soothing and calm atmosphere. What were the consideration behind the selection of the colour scheme?
I have always liked blue and I know it combines well with orange so that is what I aimed at, I had no idea it would work so well, as I get many, many positive comments about it. Weblogs need to be simple and clear, websites with too many colors and too much clutter in the sidebars do not read very well, in my opinion. Maybe that contributes to the calm nature of the site as well.

Which sites are your favourites, or sites you consider well above the average? What makes them your favourites?
In terms of good content: Andrew Sullivan, Steven Den Beste, Rachel Lucas and Asymmetrical Information. Rachel is a very good writer with a very sharp wit and she brings out the personal component extremely well. Pejmanesque is also pretty good, I always look at Dan Drezner for foreign policy and Dilacerator is excellent on economics but he is posting intermittently at the moment. The Gweilo Diaries is a must for everyone with a Hong Kong background and a good sense of humour. Asparagirl is another very sharp writer and she touches on a wide variety of topics as does Damian Penny's Daimnation, whom I have started to read on a daily basis recently. I have also lived in the UK for two years and I closely follow what happens there on a regular basis, and my British favourites are Natalie Solent, Edge of England's Sword and Samizdata.

Thank you, Pieter, for your time and your insights.

David Janes has picked up on some of my comments in my post on Quality of Life and his conclusion is that you can do well as an entrepreneur in Canada, but that as a regular employee the prospects of doing well are not that great. He’s right, but it is interesting to note that the high tax rates subsidize a universal healthcare system. That in turn allows many to take the entrepreneurial route since they are not burdened by pricy monthly health insurance premiums, a reason why many in the US are so dependent on a paycheck job. The downside of this phenomenon is that very often there are just too many entrepreneurs over here, which results in many wacky business propositions, bad deals and numerous bankruptcies. So there are some significant economic costs to that great tradition of entrepreneurialism, although many deals will see the light of day that would otherwise have remained dormant in the minds of paycheck employees.

In Holland back in the old days Wednesday used to be meatloaf day, these days Wednesday is Carnival Day. This week Creative Slips is hosting the event.

The Iranian government has arrested and charged two persons directly responsible for the violent death of Canadian photojournalist Zarah Kazemi in Iran two months ago. The two have been charged with “semi-intentional murder”, which no doubt will serve as an escape clause to avoid any severe sentencing. My jaw dropped when I read who they were – somehow expecting bearded revolutionary guards - :

“The two accused were reported yesterday to be low-level medical workers, both female. The unidentified pair -- one is a nurse, the other a personal caregiver …”

The problem is that these two may well be scapegoats that were somehow involved, delivered in order to placate the international community while those ultimately responsible escape justice. This is not dissimilar to the way in which Libya offered up two secret service agents in the Lockerbie case in order to avoid any serious long-term economic and political consequences. The Kazemi case is once more proof that there are very little, if any, protections in place for those who come in harm's way when traveling abroad and the legal aftermath usually adds insult to injury for the relatives left behind.

We finally had a little bit of rain yesterday and a little more this morning, which is good news as it has been a very dry summer over here in British Columbia with devastating results. There have been an exceptional number of forest fires, last weekend the fires engulfed the suburbs of Kelowna, a city about 4 hours inland located in the Okanagan Valley which is usually very dry and hot during the summer months. Some 30,000 people needed to be evacuated from their homes over the weekend and there was very little that could be done to prevent a major loss of property in this town. The wind and thunderstorms expected for today did not materialize and that has given the firefighters and relief workers some respite.

This is pretty scary stuff, imagining that we live right on the edge of a forest here. Although I assume that the coast is not at the same risk as the inland areas, our village has now taken extraordinary measures to ensure that no hikers will enter the forest (a $2,500 parking ticket anyone?). Irene has taken me to task for suggesting that this would be an opportunity to do some serious tree-cutting, like a clear cut circle around the village, explaining to me that a real wildfire is next to unstoppable, especially when the winds are blowing in the wrong direction. In any case a few of our local firefighters have taken off to the Okanagan Valley so if anything happens we may be toast anyway.

If we are talking about Bush taking certain positions on foreign policy and sticking by them even in the face of serious criticism, then here’s another example. Playing the regional card in order to deal with North Korea seems to be yielding some results according to this piece of news (link via Conrad), with Chinese President Hu Jintao calling on Pyongyang to stop its continuous war preparation and start focusing on its economy. While the approach to ensure that China takes on a significant load of the work and responsibility of dealing with North Korea seems logical, there were many who doubted the effectiveness of this approach. It remains to be seen if it will work, but the news from Beijing is nonetheless encouraging. The Economist (subscribers only) this week underlines this development by commenting on the fact that the Chinese appear to have woken up to the fact that nuclear proliferation in Asia (North Korea, India, Pakistan) may start to have a negative impact on its own security. It is interesting to note that some of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities came directly from Pakistan which in turn benefited from complete design documents it got from the Chinese, the latter resulting in India testing its weapons in 1998.

Yesterday’s bombings in Bombay are a clear reminder that if ever there is a nuclear conflict in the making (and many seem to have forgotten about that when focusing on Kim, Saddam and Osama), the tense stand-off between Pakistan and India is probably the most dangerous one and the area of direct concern. Escalating conflicts with nuclear potential on the fringes of its empire, be it the Sub-Continent or the Korean Peninsula, is not what China needs. China is a key strategic partner for the US to stabilize the many flashpoints in Asia and it seems the new Chinese leadership is now realizing that it can play a meaningful role on the global scene. In fact, it may be a unique opportunity for them.

I hardly ever post comments on other sites but now that I regularly visit blogs that are more left-of-center, I have started to feel the urge to drop some comments here and there. This is what comments should be about, a place where opposing points of view meet and an interesting discussion ensues, very often comments sections turn into rant-fests with little creative or intellectual content. Last night I dropped a short one on CalPundit’s site where the commentary veered toward branding Bush “thoughtless” given the various obstacles and challenges his administration is now encountering in Iraq. Without trying to debunk the usual anti-Bush rhetoric I summarized succinctly what I believed is the case:

Public opinion is working against sending more troops and Bush is, justifiably, banking on more international involvement. Senator McCain will lead the charge this week to see that more troops and money are allocated to Iraq, but again, the administration is reluctant for now in the face of the public mood.

Bush is sticking to his guns in this case and Dan Drezner points out today that this is one of the key features of the Bush approach to foreign policy: the best way is to stay course, despite widespread public criticism, an approach that has worked well so far. Before radically changing course and expanding the US effort as McCain suggests, Bush is likely to use all other options available before increasing troop deployments. The first option is to continue with the current set-up, the second one is to sub-contract civilian tasks now being carried out by GIs (the Rumsfeld road) and the third option is to seek more international assistance. And then there is the scenario where a mixture of all three is applied which I believe is the most likely outcome. It will not be before all options are completely exhausted that we will see increased US troop deployments.

John Hawkins over at Right Wing News has been running a few interesting surveys among bloggers over the past few weeks identifying the best and worst. He has done so by approaching both the left-of-center and right-of-center bloggers and is juxtaposing the results of both groups. Not that this is a very scientific exercise, but it is both interesting and fun. Here’s my submission for the 20 worst people of the 20th century which features today, my picks were based entirely on the question: have they deliberately spilled the blood of innocents in a particularly cruel manner, yes or no? This explains why there are no French presidents or Clintons on the list, I just can not justify putting Bill on the same list as Pol Pot or Hillary on the same list as Stalin, sorry that just does not make sense. Here it is, I have highlighted the ones that did not make it onto the RNW list.

1. Josef Stalin
2. Adolf Hitler
3. Mao Zedong
4. Jiang Qing (Madame Mao)
5. Lavrenti Beria
6. Adolf Eichmann
7. Pol Pot
8. Charles Manson
9. Fidel Castro
10. Yasser Arafat
11. Muamar Gaddafi
12. Erich Honecker
13. Saddam Hussein
14. Idi Amin
15. Andreas Baader
16. Gerry Adams
17. Ferdinand Marcos
18. Emperor Hirohitho
19. Nicolae Ceaucescu
20. Josef Mengele

In retrospect I wonder why I forgot about father and son Kim and ayatollah Khomeini. Ferdinand Marcos, although pretty bad, was not as bad as Hideki Tojo but I put the list together in a hurry, there’s my excuse.

Environics is at it again. In one of their latest pieces of research they claim that 89% of Canadians claim that their country provides a better quality of life than the US according to this article. They are taken to task by Dale Orr, an economist with another Canadian research group, who claims that Environics’ findings are incorrect for they ignore evidence based on data compiled by various international economic agencies that report that Americans have a significantly higher standard of living than the Canadians. The latter is based on after-tax disposable income, but as we all know net cash in itself is not the sole determinant of quality of life, there are many other factors that have a material impact. In fact, quality of life and standard of living are materially different things.

When I lived in Hong Kong my after tax disposable income was pretty substantial even if I took into account the high cost of living. The flip side was that we were living in a very polluted city, were subject to a healthcare system the practices of which were often questionable and the amount of living space we had where we could enjoy our wealth was negligible. Nevertheless, we had a great life there, and at that point in time it provided the kind of life we wanted, you will never ever hear me complain about Hong Kong, on the contrary. In Canada, the reverse appears to be true with clean air, an open and reasonably well-functioning healthcare system and lots of space with housing available at affordable prices, but the income metrics however are somewhat different. As I discussed earlier it was the opposite of our previous location and our current location certainly gives you another perspective on the term “quality of life”. For lack of a good definition I would define it as reaching the optimal balance between the way in which you earn your living and the way in which you get to spend and enjoy what you have earned.

Americans rightly point to their achievements and have the numbers to support the earnings part but it is not quite clear how we can go about measuring the spending and enjoying part. There are many regional differences in the US and I know quite a few American professionals that were willing to give up A-list career opportunities in New York and settle for something less exciting in what they called a ‘second-tier city’ in order to enjoy life better.

The discussion in Canada proves my earlier point that social-economic research is often being manipulated, both by the right and the left in order to get their respective viewpoints across. The right argues in favor of the net-after tax dollars (and uses it as the argument for lower taxes), whereas the left will hammer on issues that are harder to quantify such as the environment and access to healthcare (and argues for more spending). I would fine tune my definition further and argue that quality of life is not only the optimal balance between the way in which you earn your living and the way in which you get to spend and enjoy it, but also the options, or freedom, you have to find that optimal point. It is at this point that the Americans have an edge over the Canadians as the regulated and comparatively highly taxed environment in Canada restricts flexibility and impacts economic opportunity which in turn prompts some to cross the border south:

However, the tax-and-spend policies that Canadian politicians use to boost the living standards of the 40 per cent of households at the bottom of the income ladder, mostly at the expense of the top 20 per cent, have a price, the analysis warns. In the longer run those policies contribute to the brain drain and in turn lower productivity, which in turn erodes over-all living standards, it says.

A valid comment, and out of fear and out of national pride the net result is that many Canadians, rather than argue the economic and political merits of the above, start to defend their quality of life as the determinant in why they have it better than Americans. I even know of people who have to suffer through serious economic hardship but who will say; “well, I have quality of life, that’s the price I have to pay for it”. Seems like a hefty price to me. It is this logic that helps Environics to come up with an 89% figure argument and it is why I would argue that their numbers fail to paint the entire picture. Canadians out of fear go in the mode where they define their national identity by what they are not (read: what it is that sets them apart from Americans) rather than what they are. Some Canadians are able to define what they are like this one, I do not necessarily agree with him but at least he is making it clear why he prefers the Canadian mode over the American mode. I think that many Canadians would make it a lot easier for themselves to adopt a bit more of the American free-market style economic model without giving up too much of what they enjoy now and qualify as uniquely Canadian. They may even end up with more disposable income to enjoy even better the phenomenal ‘spend and enjoy’ opportunities they have available in their own country.

The Project Free Iran website has undergone some further changes and is updated regularly with the latest on Iran. They also have a list of bloggers that support freedom in Iran with a lot of interesting links, go have a look.

Glad to see that the Blogosphere’s Ecosystem is back up and running. It is one of the blogosphere’s indispensable tools and I was pleased to see that Peaktalk is slowly but steadily climbing the ranks and is now an Adorable Little Rodent.

The Netherlands, as some of you may know, came into being during the 80-year war that Dutch Protestant rebels fought under the leadership of William of Orange against Spain, a war that lasted from 1568 to 1648. The war, which is the centerpiece of history lessons in Dutch schools, was essentially a revolt of Protestant nobility against their Catholic monarch. After gaining independence as a republic (a federal one, think about it: today the country is a highly centralized monarchy) the various religious groups continued to live under one national umbrella and tensions between them were pretty much neutralized. Over the centuries a system crystallized that came to be known as “pillarization”, where society was built on certain pillars, where each pillar represented certain religious or non-religious beliefs.

By the middle of the twentieth century Dutch society consisted of four key pillars, a Catholic one, a Protestant one, a Liberal one and a Socialist one. There were a few smaller pillars (Jewish) as well as a few sub-pillars, especially the Protestant one was known for having a few sub-groups that were not exactly tolerant of one another. The pillar was not a formal organization; it was rather a construct covering a multitude of organizations that were built around the same set of beliefs. As an example, if you were born a Catholic you would go to a Catholic kindergarten, school and college; play football at the Catholic football club; read the Volksrant, a Catholic newspaper; watch the Catholic broadcaster, KRO; workout at a Catholic athletics club; vote for the Catholic political party, the KVP; and yes, attend a specific Catholic church. In short you could spend your entire life in one pillar without even coming close to life in any of the other pillars. The pillar in this way neutralized likely tensions between the various groups, but at the same time they provided an excellent tool to control and mold the members of a specific designation. Indeed, cross-pillar traffic was very limited and right up to the 1970s marriages between Catholics and Protestants were frowned upon. Note that religious education in the Netherlands is a constitutional right and the government therefore funds all schools, including those based on a certain faith.

Things changed in the 1960s when the post-war boom created an affluent and educated middle class that started to look critically at the status quo. Student demonstrations and a liberalization of sexual mores contributed to a soft revolution that in turn helped the secularization of society. In the Dutch situation that meant a dismantling of the pillars, or “depillarization”. Institutions and media started a process of reform whereby most of them remained Protestant or Catholic only in name, although some bastions of the old remained. Some of them became more flexible in terms of membership and new ones not based on faith or creed emerged and grew rapidly. As the pillars disappeared, traffic between the various former components increased. I was born in a very secular, liberal household but my parents did not hesitate sending me to a Protestant school which had a good reputation as they felt that was a lot more important than the faith-based nature of that school. If anything, I would learn more about religion which was something I had completely missed out on. In politics the two major Protestant parties and the major Catholic party amalgamated in order to survive the storm of secularization. The latter was actually quite successful with the longest serving Dutch Prime-Minister, Ruud Lubbers (1982-94), being a Catholic. Even the Protestant royal family, blasted when in the 1960s one of the princesses married a Catholic Spaniard, is now largely exempt from religious interference. Crown Prince Willem-Alexander found little objections of a religious nature when he married a Catholic girl last year in a service where both a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister conducted the ceremony.

Yet, the process that formed the Netherlands is now being reversed in more than one way. While depillarization has opened up society and set it on a course of rapid social progress and liberalization, the abandonment of the national identity for the sake of becoming part of the European superstate seems to have unhinged Dutch society. Secularization combined with a fraying national identity is a pretty lethal mix, especially in the Dutch case when you consider how the country came into being in the first place. The secularization process is similar for other European countries as numbers today show it has reached unprecedented levels in Western Europe as opposed to North America where church attendance levels actually have increased over recent years. The Dutch often speak in derogatory terms about the US President’s claim that America is “One Nation, Under God”, forgetting that many European nation states came into being under a religious banner and that the separation between church and state is not as institutionalized as it is in the US (the Queen of England remains the Head of the Church of England, whereas the largest party in Holland still is the Christian-Democrat Union). By continuously invoking God and the nation, Bush is supporting the necessary fluids that gel a nation together and help keep it together for the longer term, especially in times of adversity. As a secular European it was something I was not used to, but it never struck me as strange or reprehensible, in a way it made sense in that it provided a message of social and national cohesion clearly absent in Europe. Given the state of secularization in the US, Americans are more receptive to these ideas and probably see the benefit of them in times of hardship. The Europeans (with the Dutch as the vanguard) however see their independence from God as an achievement of rationality over deity without fully realizing that together with the slow erosion of national identity they may have set themselves on a course into uncharted waters at a time when cohesion, sense of purpose and unity seem crucial for survival.

As I mentioned earlier the bus attack in Jerusalem left me depressed, something that I had not experienced in a long time. Maybe it was because there were so many children involved but it could also be that it delivered final and conclusive evidence that the truce and the roadmap are indeed a complete sham. We have also not received a clear indication of which direction Sharon will take following the cabinet meeting that took place earlier today, which is somewhat unusual. Whatever it was, CNN today reports that there is indeed a feeling in Israel that the latest attack was different and that it could be a turning point: either the last milestone of a fundamentally flawed peace process or the beginning of a new one. It somehow reminded me of another devastating bombing that took place five years ago, one that set a new standard in cold-blooded brutality, again underlining that attempts to achieve peace with terrorists will never work as they are asymmetrical in nature.

Free markets scored a victory yesterday in Canada where Wal-Mart workers in the province of Manitoba rejected unionization. This is not an unimportant piece of news; I have argued before on these pages (in the post An Archaic Monoply), the overpowering hold that some unions have on the economic process in Canada with the average consumer footing the bill. Legislation is very often heavily skewed in favour of unions, which has often been devastating for especially small and medium sized businesses. Wal-Mart is not exactly small but unionization would most likely have resulted in less flexibility for management and higher prices for consumers, which in turn would have undermined the success formula of the retail chain and scared away job and wealth creating investment into that province. According to the reports a majority of employees is perfectly happy with the contracts they have with Wal-Mart.

Attempts by the left-leaning city council in Vancouver to stop the construction of a Wal-Mart store in that city a little while back I believe also failed, but it was weird to see socialists taking on the cause of small businesses who claimed they would suffer from the presence of a successful low-price retail chain such as Wal-Mart. Do unions and socialists ever make an effort to really take on the cause of those who they purport to represent?

Yesterday’s attacks in Baghdad and Jerusalem left me concerned and somewhat depressed for the first time in a long while. The events highlighted the serious spell the world is in and that there is no quick fix, the victories in Iraq and Afghanistan were only the initial installments in what will be a long war. Yesterday’s events were a stark reminder of what was patently clear on September 11: this struggle will take decades.

The question is: what would happen to domestic support in the US for the continued presence of American troops had the bombed facility been American? One could argue that tight security will prevent such an attack but we are getting perilously close to what I would call the Lebanon scenario, where Reagan swiftly pulled out US Marines after a suicide bombing attack that killed hundreds of US marines in Beirut. Bush could face similar pressures and that could potentially derail the entire effort to stabilize Iraq with disastrous long-term consequences. The rebuilding effort is gigantic in its scope and the positive side effect of yesterday’s bombing is no doubt that the international community, in particular the UN, will have to go through some serious self-examination and assess its role in building a better and safer world and in doing that overcome anti-American sentiments. The US will have to stay the course and in the face of yesterday’s attacks convince the rest of the world that is the only course if we are to survive as a civilized world. The world has to join the US in that effort and the US administration has to keep American public opinion on side. Neither task is easy but they need to be accomplished otherwise terrorism will score a major victory in the long struggle ahead.

Carnival number 48 is up over at Outside the Beltway. James has themed this week’s edition and turned it into a football fest. The Carnival gets bigger every week and judging from my trackbacks James was testing it as early as Monday, which tells me that by the time the Carnival is hosted over here in November it will probably require a full week of reading and putting it together. In any case, it is a great initiative so go check in and read this week’s offerings.

Peaktalk has been around for almost six months now and I was always a bit worried that my one and only Instalanche came after I barely got started when there wasn’t that much content, and to make matters worse it came on a late Friday night. Today Glenn has not only linked me, he has also put me on his roll. Thanks, Glenn. It comes with the intrinsic realization that Peaktalk is here to stay, not that there was any question about that, but still. I have not looked at the counter but I love the way the Samizdata guys describe it in their blog glossary:

Holy shit, look at the hit counter! We must have been Instapundited!"

In addition to Iraq and Israel, Volokh today advises us of a domestic terrorist threat: animal-rights activists (link via InstaPundit). Although he comments that terror from that particular corner is not that violent I wish to refresh everyone’s memory that Fortuyn’s killer was, an animal-rights activist. The nature in which they pursue their agenda is pretty scary by inflicting damage on others’ property and alluding to the fact that it may not stop at just that. As we know from the Fortuyn case it is a very small step to actually inflict pain, injury and death on others.

Following on the heels of the attack on the UN in Baghdad, news is just in on a terror bombing on a bus in Jerusalem, killing 20, including children. On the same day: is this a coincidence? IsraPundit not only covers the event, but also assesses the way in which it is being reported by Reuters.

My father has sent me two thick envelopes with newspaper clippings from the Dutch press, arguing, debating and analyzing the situation in Iraq with a focus on the justification for going to war. The arguments against are well documented and I will not bore you with the endless analyses of US and UK intelligence reports, WMDs or the possible al-Qaeda connection and how a segment of the European press has documented these over the past few months. As I have said before, both Blair and Bush were right but they could have made their case better. Flipping through all the clippings my dad sent me, I did find some interesting stuff, some of it encouraging, some of it evidence of Europe’s continued mode of denial.

There continues to be a notion that it is impossible to bring democracy to a country like Iraq and that, in addition to all the other reasons, the whole effort was ill-defined from the very start and that the chances of bringing stability and freedom to Iraq are wishful American thinking. Maybe, but that does not mean we should not try. Establishing democracy was one of the miscommunications by the Bush team as they instead should have focused on establishing the rule of law. The rule of law, whether it find its legitimacy in a good functioning democracy yes or no, is a prerequisite for restoring civil society in Iraq while at the same time neutralizing any players that seek to destabilize the country and neighboring countries. It is frustrating to see that there continues to be a strong lobby against helping out coalition forces rebuilding Iraq by endlessly referring back to the past, similar to those pre-war objections to remove Saddam with the argument that the West put him in place and that he was an erstwhile ally. Did that mean that we should not have done anything?

What is encouraging though is that many in Europe realize that there is no quick fix in Iraq and that it in the interest of many in the West to pitch in and help rebuild the country. One of the clippings referred to the fact that even the European left is coming to its senses with this great quote from the Dutch NRC Handelsblad:

Even the left-wing parties in Europe are, after a long period of doubt coming to the conclusion that there is a problem if people advocate that a good westerner is a dead one.

The deadly attack on UN headquarters today highlights that the terrorists do indeed not make any distinction between US, UN or UK representatives. The bombing is evidence that if we fail to build up this country and pull out in the face of terror and instability the place may very well destabilize even further and become a breeding ground for terrorism for years to come. We can not flinch, if we do we give Islamist terror their greatest victory on a platter. In a way the attack on the UN underlines the need for all nations that are willing and able to get in and help get Iraq back on its feet again, if there ever is a so-called clash of civilizations then here’s our chance to help avoid and nip Middle Eastern instability in the bud.

I am not the only one trying to find out more about the deeper motivations of Schwarzenegger or about some of his psychological traits. Over at CalPundit the discussion has started over whether the man from Thal is a bully, and Robert at Priorities & Frivolities has been on to this topic for a while now, look here for a piece he did prior to Arnold announcing his plans.

The chads are, not unexpectedly, back in the limelight. This time they have hit the news even before the voting has started as the ACLU has filed a petition with a federal judge to see whether the California recall can be delayed until such moment that voting machines have been updated in all precincts. I would argue for state-of-the-art voting equipment in any election, but do not follow how the ACLU can argue that it is minorities that are likely to suffer from hanging chads. Again, the recall is providing us with a spectacle with all the right ingredients, including pre-vote chads.

The news from the recall front continues to be interesting, and it is already an unprecedented political spectacle. The vote splitting that is likely to take place on especially the Republican side make a Schwarzenegger victory far from certain. It appears that the Bustamante campaign is gathering steam, the latter taking advantage of some of the ideological rifts in the Republican camp. Yet, no matter how long I think about it, and no matter how I believe that we should not underestimate the astuteness of the voter (for my loyal readers: a recall would probably be something Fortuyn would have believed in), a recall is disrupting the government of any political entity, especially when it is based on ill-defined grievances. It could set the stage for similar ventures where the books allow such a process, opening the way for unnecessarily terminating mandates won by a regular democratic vote. It could even lead to seriously compromising political agendas obtained by a majority vote for fear of a potential recall and as a result affect the kind of decision making that a clear ballot box mandate requires. While public opinion should influence and steer the political process it should not disrupt and jeopardize it.

Although I do like him a lot, the fact that he is billed as a fiscally conservative and socially progressive Republican helps in this respect, I fear that the recall venue is not the right one for Arnold. Below my take on Schwarzenegger’s motivations in “From Thal to Sacramento”.

As an enthusiastic biography reader, I always try to read up on the backgrounds and life histories of those that move the news. In checking out Arnold Schwarzenegger last week I did not get much further than Time Magazine, a lack of time prevented me from delving into this subject further. In the Time piece we can read that Arnold was, like any other child, driven to leave the parental home as early as possible, but in his case it took a more definitive form when he abandoned his native grounds for America. The article also points out that the break with the past was fairly drastic, as he did not make an effort to attend his father’s funeral, although no one really seems to know why that happened and Arnold himself has given contradicting explanations. There may be a number of reasons for that (and no, it is probably not related to the fact that his father was a Nazi party member) but it is interesting to look for the root causes of Arnold’s drive in life.

The immigrant-leave-it-all-behind argument is a compelling one and given my own experiences in that department, I think that Arnold must have suffered some defeat or some major setback in his native country that for some reason was impossible to address adequately in the place he grew up. The move to the US was a means to show to himself and to those that he left behind that he could do better, and that he would do that in a setting of his own choice. I have not figured out the entire rationale, I am in the middle of it looking at my own life, but then I am a lot younger than Arnold and I think he knows exactly why he is where he is.

What is also telling is that he became successful and a millionaire well before his big Hollywood breakthrough. His drive and shrewdness were no doubt important factors, but also his timing to market (bodybuilding in the 1970s) was near perfect. The latter dispels the notion that he is a movie-star who has made it big and now wants to have a shot at politics. The bodybuilding, the business, the movies and now politics are subsequent installments in a journey that seeks to extinguish whatever happened in Austria back in the 1950s and 1960s. It should be pointed out that any comparison to Ronald Reagan is inherently flawed. Reagan was someone who set out to discover himself through a series of career moves and only later in life did he realize (something that I think he must have sensed all along) that his true passion was in politics, and that came together with a very clear belief and ideology resulting in a succinct political agenda that he was able to bring across passionately. That is not the case for Arnold, his movie career and business activities are far from over and I do not think his mission in life is to become a politician; his platform of beliefs, so far, is limited and hardly passionate.

As a consequence I do believe that his quest to become Governor of California is the crowing piece of that self-asserting mechanism by which he can finally put his past to bed. If elected Governor of California, he can look to Austria and say, “see, I have not only become successful, I have become successful in the place I like, and now they have chosen me as their leader”. For outsiders it may be a mystery how anyone with his fortune, married into the Kennedy family might expose himself to what could prove to be a fairly risky adventure with the potential to end in a humiliating defeat, but I think Scwarzenegger needs that crowning piece on his lifework, no matter what the cost. That proves the point that his efforts in life were not about just success and money, it was about addressing his deepest psychological and emotional needs. If he wins on October 7 he will have achieved a very large part of that, if not all, no matter how his time in office turns out.

It is time to refresh the “This Month” section. Depending on the news, links or whatever developments are taking place around the globe, I select a few blogs that I think are interesting, whether they have been around for a while or not is not really relevant. This month I have selected the left-leaning (I avoid the word liberal as I use it in its original meaning and take that word to mean someone on the right) CalPundit, written by Orange County based Kevin Drum. What attracted me to his site was this post (found via Outside the Beltway) in which he describes a number of conservative blogs the positions of which he does not really agree with, but that he finds worthwhile reading and he justifies it as follows:

Sometimes you might be surprised to find a compelling argument you've never thought of, and even if you're absolutely sure that will never happen, it's always good to keep up with your enemies. Knowledge is power.

He is right. I have been remiss in doing what he rightly suggests, so to start that process I am reading CalPundit this month. I am also interested to see how he will cover the recall events in California; I will kick that process off later today with a piece on what is driving Schwarzenegger.

The other recommendation for the month is Water, an interesting blog providing original content on an ongoing basis, written by Andres Gentry, an American who is currently based in China.

Escaping justice, Idi Amin passed away yesterday. The FT runs an interesting obituary. Anticipating this event, I wrote a longer piece about him, his reign of terror and one of his victims three weeks ago, you can find it here.

Some of you know I spent a significant portion of my career financing power plants. So, I was pleased to note that following yesterday’s blackouts some of my ex-colleagues may find themselves in a growth market yet again as a lack of investment in both power generating and power transmission facilities in North America has played its part in contributing to the blackouts. According to former Clinton Energy Secretary, now New Mexico Governor, Bill Richardson, America is a superpower with a third-world grid. He is right, as investment in power generation and distribution has lagged demand, regulatory issues as well as the collapse of Enron have turned many investors away from what is potentially a license to print money. After yesterday, that may change.

And to make my day even better, the Canadians and Americans are once again pointing the finger and trying to blame one another for the blackouts. Do these people ever grow up? I do not know who has whispered this into her ear but this is what Senator Clinton had to say about it: “Our best understanding right now is that whatever did happen to start these cascading outages began in Canada”. The Canadians in turn pointed to a fire at a nuclear power facility in Pennsylvania. Whoever is responsible, we have given terrorists yet another clue as to how vulnerable we are and that is a truly disconcerting piece of news.

Libya has apparently agreed to a settlement which results in paying liquidated damages to the relatives of those that were killed in the 1998 bombing of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all passengers and crew, as well as a number of people on the ground. American and British intelligence agencies have been able to piece together the evidence over the years leading to the conclusion that the attack was perpetrated with the help and support of Libya and after years of exercising pressure including UN sanctions Libya delivered two of its agents to be tried in a Scottish court, on Dutch soil. One was convicted to life in prison, the other was acquitted.

While at first sight this may seem as a welcome closure to a very tragic story, it is not hard to imagine the continued fury and grief by those who lost loved ones in this deliberate act of mass murder. The Libyan government has offered up two of responsible players to be tried, and is now buying its way out of the continued sanctions against the country hoping to end its status as a pariah state, but ensuring that it avoids criminal responsiblity, yet paying civil damages. Sounds like OJ doesn't it? No matter what the final payment is to the surviving families their grief and unanswered questions remain. Here’s a Brit who lost his 19-year old daughter on the flight:

"Here in the UK, the largest mass murder since World War II and we have not been granted a forum to even ask the major questions, let alone get them answered ... why our Western governments, and the agencies they employ to protect us, failed us so miserably when they had so much intelligence."

This is indeed galling, there has never been a formal inquiry and, the ones that are really responsible escape justice in a royal way. Of course, I am talking about the man in Tripoli: Colonel Gaddafi. He has been relentless in pursuing a deal that might end UN sanctions and bring Libya back into the normal world, he even went as far as condemning the September 11 attacks which is a truly remarkable move for an Arab leader known for his ties to terrorism. One father who lost his son is unequivocal about this:

"The only thing that would satisfy us more would be to have Gaddafi's head delivered on a platter over to the United States -- and let us all walk by it and spit on it," accordin to George Williams, an American who lost his son in the attack.

My sentiments entirely. Gaddafi is a confirmed madman – a flaky in Ronald Reagan’s words – and his support for terrorists was established as early as the 1970s. Although I can understand that some surviving family members will accept the money as a token of guilt and try to move on, many are furious. The addition of a milestone schedule (there is a scale that starts at US$ 4 million per victim, going up to US$ 10 million, depending on certain sanctions being lifted, such as the moment when the US lifts its sanctions against Libya, a final payment is linked if the US repeals its Iran-Libya Sanctions Act and removes Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism) is adding insult to injury and that view is shared by some of the relatives of those that perished:

Dan and Susan Cohen from New Jersey, who lost their daughter Thea, 20, in the attack, said they would not be taking any of the second staged payments. "We won't take a dime of that money and we've given those instructions to our lawyer," said Mr. Cohen.

By cutting a deal and letting the guilty ones off the hook, a great disservice is done to justice. If this deal gets accepted and UN and US sanctions are lifted we are actually bringing someone into the fold who is responsible for more terrorist victims in the west than that other madman we have just removed from his castle in Baghdad. What irony.