Professor Bainbridge is back with a sort of three-layered blog venture, designed to address the conundrum of general punditocracy vs. expert blogging. He may have resolved this particular issue, but it seems to me that the effort level to keep his three blogs up to date has increased considerably. Of note is his wine blog, although the professor may consider to start rating some wines at the lower end of the budget spectrum, there are days that we don't open a 1997 Silver Oak to accompany the take-away pizza. Other than that Bainbridge is quite good.

Trying to align a vigorous pursuit of the war on terror with appeasing certain minority religions is an almost a guarantee for some highly undesirable outcomes. The usual victim: freedom.

There was a time when you could devote a blog post per incident, these days we aggregate them and Fabian Tassano has compiled a list of recent occurrences in the UK, the new laboratory for burying freedom in the name of safety and security. Of the list, this one in particular is worth reading.

Of course, thanks to some of you I get regular updates on this front, and this example manages to straddle the North Sea:

Police and councils are considering monitoring conversations in the street using high-powered microphones attached to CCTV cameras, write Steven Swinford and Nicola Smith.

The microphones can detect conversations 100 yards away and record aggressive exchanges before they become violent.

The devices are used at 300 sites in Holland and police, councils and transport officials in London have shown an interest in installing them before the 2012 Olympics.

Needless to say, the apparent feature of this technology to only record ‘aggressive exchanges’ to me sounds more like a selling feature designed to get a certain privacy-invading tool implemented. It gets results however:

Harry Hoetjer, head of surveillance at Groningen police headquarters, recalled an incident where the camera had homed in on a gang of four men who were about to attack a passer-by. “We would not normally have detected it as there was no camera directly viewing it,” he said.

But it feels like we are blurring and crossing a crucial line defending personal freedom and privacy in an irreversible way.

Putting Parents First is an excellent article from the hand of Yuval Levin and it addresses a Peaktalk core issue: the tension between capitalism and family values. And not only that, it digs deeper in arguing that this is one of the key challenges for conservatism to address now that state intervention in both the market place and the family are essentially bankrupt concepts. Here's an excerpt:

The worry of middle- and lower-middle-class families arises from a genuine tension between the two things they most eagerly strive to do: build families and build wealth. That tension, and the disquiet it causes, is especially acute for parents. Indeed, Americans in the middle class and what used to be called the working class would be better conceived of today as the parenting class. Their concerns and aspirations are no longer focused on their standing in the workplace, as they were when our political vocabulary was coming of age, but on balancing the pursuits of family and prosperity.

This is the anxiety of a successful capitalist economy filled with individuals who want to lead good lives. It is an anxiety produced by the kind of society conservatives seek to promote. It therefore calls for a response from the right, from those who share the aspiration to balance families and free markets, not those who think the system is about to collapse (and deserves to fall).

Levin argues that conservative parties thus find their challenge not in being either socially or fiscally conservative, but in mitigating the clear tension that exists between these two concepts.

It many ways this could serve as a cold shower for the unabashed free-marketeers who, like myself, have put a lot of stock in capitalism as providing unquestionable results. By taking on market deficiencies, the right will be forced to take the initiative and maintain its intellectual lead without resorting to the simple textbook of cutting taxes and rolling back government. As Levin argues, much of that has indeed been accomplished, at least in the US.

Interestingly, there is a North American conservative leader who may actually get this new approach and has already started experimenting with it in the areas of childcare and income-tax splitting. His name is Stephen Harper and his adversaries on the left have discovered that they are behind in the department of ideas:

In a press conference Tuesday, Mr. Goodale, who also serves as house leader for the Opposition, described Mr. Rae as the person to best confront the Conservative government, which he said was the “most rigidly ideological government in Canadian history”.

Yes – the mere audacity to define new ideas or a new ideological direction can land you in a most difficult spot. But there is a good reason for that as yesterday’s progressives are falling behind in defining a progressive vision for tomorrow and have in desperation turned the debate between left and right into one of "no ideas vs. ideas". At least in Canada, the conservatives are beginning to manifest themselves as today’s progressives by addressing some of Yuval Levin's points.

And yes, around 3:00 AM this morning power was down again as a result of the extreme weather conditions. Luckily things were up and running this evening, but combined with limited online access at one of my key clients, it was all in all a highly unproductive day. Back to normal tomorrow. Hopefully.

You have read most of them before here on these pages, but it is still worthwhile to see the Times listing the factors that have an impact on present day politics in a number of European countries:

First, the extreme Left and Right are on the rise across most of the Continent.

Secondly, the weak centre is losing authority.

Thirdly, the social democratic Left is splintering.

As The Times correctly notes, these trends are all contributing to a vacuum in which few if any decisions will be made. And at a time when most European nations desperately need a clearly defined direction that will become a phenomenal hindrance. Next up is the presidential election in France and the last instalment of the Tony and Gordon show and neither event is expected to bring either clarity or stability.

The Atlantic has compiled its list of the 100 most influential figures in American history. Note these two presidents, ranked closely together:

17 Ronald Reagan
The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War’s end.

21 Harry Truman
An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic Age and then the Cold War.

Read the whole list.

From a week with relatively high temperatures and devastating storms we have now gone into winter wonderland.

This is our neigbourhood creek, covered in snow. The weather change apparently has quite an impact, so far we've been spared another power outage.

The Economist weighs in on the Dutch election and the folly of a burqa ban:

But there is something to learn from America. American laws on freedom of expression and religion are more permissive than those in Europe. Only those who mask their faces explicitly to hide themselves and intimidate others—like the Ku Klux Klan—are forbidden to cover their faces in public forums like marches. A law banning the burqa would be flatly unconstitutional. So, probably, would be a ban on headscarves in schools. And America’s success with its Muslims probably also owes something to the flexible American labour market, which gives minorities of all kinds the hope (if not the reality) of climbing the social ladder.

It's a bit of a broad brush analysis written in a hurry, but the overall sentiment is correct. Europe's integration model has failed and it is time to look for alternative approaches. If the Dutch election result is any guidance however, it may be quite a while before a more American approach is adopted.

Paul Belien analyzes the rise of the new star of Dutch politics, Socialist Party leader Jan Marijnissen. He touches on some very interesting themes, although comparing the former maoist to Pat Buchanan may be somewhat confusing to outsiders. Belien's point is: the left has an equal ability to adopt some of the themes that are usually associated with some of Europe's right. Rejecting the EU, questioning foreign cultures and opting for an outdated form of protectionism can just as well be offered in a 'left' package. And that is also why mainstream parties are losing ground and why a Weimarization of European politics is hardly a far-fetched term.

And yes, religion. One reader - like Belien - has pointed out to me that the Socialist Party cleverly embraced religious themes and that this week's losers all took a secular stance. It may be too early to qualify all this as a decisive anti-establishment vote and a return to more traditional values, but there is a notable shift in attitudes. Depending on the election, it is something that both the new left and the new right are able to successfully plug into.

Somehow I had missed the news that George Galloway had visited Canada earlier this week. It was not lost on Terry Glavin who wrote a must-read piece for The Tyee about how the anti-war left has become a convenient partner for radical Islamists:

But if you regard the United States as a greater enemy of the left than even Islamism, "what you end up with," says Hashmi, "is 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.'" And that brings us back to the degeneracy of the "anti-war" activism represented by Galloway and his followers in Britain and in Canada, in their alliance with Islamists.

I would be remiss in not offering you one of Galloway's pearls of wisdom during his tour of the north:

Galloway also weighed in on Canada's Liberal leadership contest, saying that "Anyone but Ignatieff" is a common slogan in British politics.

Of course.

Contrast this:

Out of the dining room and into the stores; the traditional day of feasting has turned into a day of early holiday shopping for some.

A spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation says some retailers are trying to find a way to take advantage of the fact that "once dinner is over, many families are looking for some kind of entertainment."

With this:

But while consuming mass quantities was once a big deal -- a splurge -- now we're all used to having plenty of food. Now the real splurge consists in getting everyone to take time from their busy schedules to all get together. It's a feast of no-other-priorities! I like it. I think that Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday, because it's all about getting the family together.

And while I am writing this Irene just quotes me a number from the newspaper which says that 36% of children below the age of six have a TV in their room. And, during last week's power outage some parents actually purchased a generator so that the kids could watch TV. Imagine that they would be forced to spend social time with the rest of their family. Or, perish the thought, creatively adapt to the situation by finding some new and alternative ways of entertainment which is what our kids did.

Yes, I know I have argued for the ability of free markets to forge great societies. But eventually we will have to pay some sort of price for offering up the family and the fun of human interaction on the altar of excessive consumerism and passive entertainment.

Things to be thankful for, here and here.

And, if you haven't seen it already, especially this one.

In random order here are some of the more important conclusions from yesterday's election:

The Establishment Lost - Remember that Fortuyn’s campaign four years ago was launched with a book against the then ruling 'purple' coalition (Labour, VVD, Democrats 66). All of these three parties lost significantly last night.

Fractionalization - In fact all the major players lost and a fringe group from the left (Socialist Party) and the right (Wilders’ Party for Freedom) were able to get serious traction at the ballot box. In addition a number of other smaller parties gained a place at the table, contributing to a process that has fractionalized the Dutch parliament to an unprecedented degree.

Instability - The latter will make governing very, very hard.

Divisions on the Left - Wouter Bos Labour’s party failed essentially because it was not able to unite the hard and more moderate left into one coherent and pragmatic story. Tony Blair is one of the few to have managed that, but the Democrats in the US and the Socialists in France face exactly the same problem. It requires rare political talent and a unique set of circumstances to accomplish it.

And Divisions on the Right - The same applies to the right, although Dutch conservatives have in particular been quite pro-active at ruining their own chances for success. The drama within the VVD (the Rutte vs. Verdonk leadership struggle and the Hirsi Ali debacle) and the inability of the smaller right-of-center players to unite has cost the essence of Fortuyn’s legacy a chance to survive beyond his death, at least for now.

No Americanization - Wilders emphasized that he stands for more than just countering Islamization, but when you add in lower taxes and cracking down harder on crime, it all is just too much of an American deal for the cautious Dutch. They are only prepared to move to the right carefully, without losing the framework built by decades of gentle social-democracy.

Bias to the Left - That was underlined by the after-election reactions. Most parties wasted no time to distance themselves from Wilders as being ‘too radical’, a reaction that inexplicably was not applied to that other equally hard-line outfit, the triumphant Socialist Party.

Challenges Ahead - So the traditional right and left have to go back to the drawing table and seriously think how they will position themselves going forward. The Christian-Democrats in the meantime will be given the unappealing duty to form a government with, most likely, the battered Labour party and one of the untested smaller outfits. By all accounts hardly an appealing perspective.

NOTE: The Washington Post has a pretty good round-up too, if you're interested.

Also, Michael van der Galien at TMV has some worthwhile thoughts.

An Unclear Message and a Leftward Tilt

So, here's the culmination of a few weeks of analysis and poll tracking: election day. We should have a fairly good idea of the end result around 1:00 PM Pacific Time, and I will track developments with lots of links and commentary throughout the morning.

Expectation: the result will confuse all the pundits that have been writing and talking about the 'Dutch right turn', but the outcome will probably give us ample material to keep following the troubled nation for years to come.

Here's a primer for the uninitiated.

7:51 AM Turn-out among immigrants is high (maybe even reaching 78%), it is estimated that they will determine 12 seats (out of a 150-seat parliament). Apparently there is lots of interest from Arab and Moroccan TV-stations as a Labour victory would see Amsterdam councillor Ahmed Aboutaleb become minister.

9:15 AM The mainstream media are actively looking at the Dutch too. The Guardian claims that The Dutch Recover Their Courage while the Washington Times sees a welfare-cutting prime-minister cruising to victory. Both outlets could be very wrong.

9:20 AM The woman who would have run, and who now resides at AEI weighs in on the burqa ban debate.

10:10 AM The first exit poll is expected at 11:50 AM from RTL , which is stirring up a little controversy as they will be releasing these numbers ten minutes before the polls close.

11:30 AM While we are awaiting results it may be worthwhile noting that the Dutch have a proportional representation system and - as opposed to Germany - no threshold to get represenation. If indeed we end up with the Party for the Animals in parliament with one seat, you know the numerical logic behind it.

Another remarkable thing to note is that one religious party, the small Christian Union (not to be confused with the Christian Democrats) is also expected to do well. Interestingly this party positions itself to the left of the center and is therefore associated with a more socialist interpretation of the bible. And the Socialist Party - yes, the one with the maoist roots - has benefited from the participation of Huub Oosterhuis, a former priest known for the quote: "The Socialist Party is closer to the social ethics of the Bible than many Christian parties." Whoever said Europe had gone secular?

11:45 AM Look, I really like the Jerusalem Post but this heading is just ridiculous: Hard-line prime minister looks set to win Dutch elections. Hard-line?

11.58 AM EXIT POLL The Christian-Democrats of the 'hard-line' incumbent prime-minister are set to win according to RTL's exit poll. But marginally, all the large parties lose seats, the smaller parties are doing well. Here's your ticket to instability.

The NOS - Dutch public broadcaster - has its numbers here, they are different, but same trend. The big winner is the Socialist Party, the party that was born out of the split in the Dutch communist party in the 1970s. They have acquired a measure of respectability and have been clever at marketing to the undecideds. But they remain an old-style left-wing outfit, come to think of it, they are actually 'hard-line'. With some 20% (this may change) of the vote they may be holding the balance of power and actually have a say in a new coalition arrangement. Think Noam Chomsky heading up the US Treasury.

Geert Wilders does well, as does the Party for the Animals. If these numbers hold we're going back to vote sooner rather than later. The only likely coalition may be Christian Democrats-Labour-Christian Union and as I mentioned, this will be a left-religious undertaking.

It's early and a grand centre-left coalition of Christian Democrats-Labour is equally likely. But centre-right is out of the question.

The traditional Dutch right, the free-market liberal VVD (Verdonk, and formerly Hirsi Ali) is suffering a severe electoral blow. And they deserve it.

12:21 PM You can follow Dutch TV here. Just saw the leader of the Party for the Animals commenting that addressing "the castration of pigs without an anaesthetic" will be her first priority now that she has entered parliament. I kid you not.

12:47 PM The Fortuyn revolution is over, that much is clear. His intellectual heir (whom I had the pleasure of meeting a little while back), Marco Pastors will be lucky to win only one seat. The Fortuyn vote has gone to the successful Christian-Democrats, Wilders and yes, the Socialist Party. The anger and discontent are still there but they have been channeled in a different direction.

1:08 PM The numbers are updated and a Christian Democrats-Labour coalition with a majority looks unlikely now.

Prime-minister Balkenende will stay on as the nation's leader, a job that will not go to Labour's Blairite talent Wouter Bos. Bos failed to unite the left under one reformed umbrella and is paying a heavy electoral price for this tonight.

2:18 PM A very high turn-out: 80.8%.

2:24 PM Here are the most recent, probably final, numbers. In summary, the left has won marginally but as it stands divided between the moderate Bos (Labour) and radical Marijnissen (Socialist Party) it has been unable to actually win this election outright. So the default winner, Christian-Democrat Balkenende, will have the unenviable task of having to form a left-of-center coalition. In that he will have to distance himself from his own successful economic policies. What will happen with the immigration and law and order files remains unclear, but they will not be addressed from a conservative perspective, that much is certain.

More analysis about the election and its broader implications in the days ahead.

Others Blogging
Klein Verzet (which translates to 'Small Resistance') has some pre-analysis and argues that "Subconsciously, everybody feels the stakes are very high". I think he's right.

Dutch blog Sargasso runs an election cafe and has a very useful post with seat projections.

At Crooked Timber, Ingrid Robeyns has a preview and notes that the Party for the Animals is projected to win a parliamenary seat (h/t One Way Street: Aesthetics and Politics).

I will be talking to Rob Breakenridge of The World Tonight at 7:05 Pacific Time this evening. Topics will be the Dutch election and related issues such as the burqa ban.

The Dutch general election is tomorrow and here is a summary of the most recent poll numbers from three different sources:

The very latest poll is here.

No major changes from previous updates: the Christian-Democrats will probably win this election by a very small margin, a resurgent left is going to do some good business and the right will put in an abysmal performance. What is potentially even more troubling is that if these numbers end up on the screen tomorrow night it will be very hard to cobble together a workable coalition with strong parliamentary support. Still there are many undecided voters so we may be in for a few last minute surprises.

It is too early to state that this outcome will end the Foruyn-era, but it is evident that too much change and revolutionary thought falls hard on the Dutch stomach.

Of course, I will do a liveblog tomorrow and gather some reactions as well as put forward some of my own thoughts. Stay tuned.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave an interesting speech earlier this week in Denmark about immigration and she contrasted the failed socio-economic approach with the new socio-cultural approach. Key quote:

Planned immigration, law enforcement and the stimulation of the individual responsibility of the immigrants is the motto. Discrimination should be eliminated, but affirmative action must be limited as well. Customs and edicts of faith that curb the freedom of other individuals--including one’s own family members--are not to be tolerated anymore and perpetrators of crimes justified via religious arguments must be actively brought to justice. Moral and cultural relativism, in the thinking of those who favor this approach, lead more to disintegration and isolation of immigrants and not to their happiness.

There are too many variables to manipulate in this new approach, and its implementation is of course subject to political will, something not always that abundant these days. So it all depends on how various European nations will deal with the opportunities offered by Hirsi Ali, but it is clear that new approaches are the only way forward.

By the way, I am currently reading her biography which will hit the North American market in February. It is a riveting read and probably one of the best books I've read this year. More on that later.

To many outsiders it may seem odd that Muslim immigration has taken some sort of backseat during most of the current campaign. The tendency towards complacency and avoiding explosive issues is nicely described in this piece from the IHT that also wonders why a relative calm has settled over the troubled lowlands. The answer is the basic Dutch instinct to neutralize conflict:

Both Frits Bolkestein, the former European Commission member who began writing in the early 1990s about Islam as a challenge for Europe, and Halberstadt emphasize that the Dutch are weary of confrontation. Halberstadt says that the present consensus reflects a current Dutch "satisfaction with perceptions, and not wanting to spend passion on issues."

For Bolkestein, integrating Islam "remains Europe's most serious problem." He believes the Dutch are not really going to come to final terms with it until there is a constitutional amendment ending religious schooling. "Divided schooling leads to a divided country," he says.

And reigniting the schooling debate is probably the last thing the Dutch want at this juncture. That in particular goes for incumbent Christian-Democrat prime-minister Balkenende whose entire campaign was based around an issueless feelgood message, purportedly steering the Dutch back to normality.

In the final stretch of the campaign the immigration debate came back, but it was most often used as a tool of desperation in order to get some media attention and possible movement in voting intentions. The best example of course was the burqa ban which all of a sudden emerged. But even more serious attempts to frame the debate over immigration in a historical context failed to excite the Dutch. A good example is Marco Pastors who in a radio commercial compared the inability to face the Islamization of Europe to the inaction that existed in the 1930s when it came to confronting the Nazi threat. Some outrage ensued, an Islamic party even reported the comments to the police as discriminatory language, but it did not force the Dutch to debate one of the more pressing issues facing the nation. It didn’t even shift the polls and Pastors' new party so far has failed to get material traction.

Personally, I find it equally troubling that a nation that enthusiastically rejected the draft European Constitution is barely a year later able to talk about what it then wants from Europe. One can blame the various parties for this absence of a EU-discussion, but I would equally lay the blame in front of an electorate that after a communal round of venting indeed prefers to be lulled back to a consensus that artificially and comfortably covers up the key issues. And sooner or later these will erupt, from jihadist violence to unfundable pension obligations to irreversible Euro-legislation. But few appear to care about that.

Here is what I wrote about the media and OJ Simpson a year ago:

Ten years have passed. Simpson still hasn’t completed his mission to find the real killers and instead he has reappeared in California this week to market his celebrity, which amazingly is still intact for some. The failure to produce a just verdict will continue to cast a dark shadow of embarrassment and regret that even the civil trial couldn’t eradicate. And the media? They’re probably more sensation and celebrity driven than ever before, but it’s doubtful if the mindless celebration of popularity would ever embrace an icon like Simpson again.

Well, the state of the media is such that some didn't even hesitate to try and blatantly resurrect Simpson himself. It must have been another period of grief and anguish for the Goldman and Brown families, in what News Corp. now admits was an ill-considered project.

Andrew Sullivan notes the tension between markets and integrity:

With free markets comes great freedom but also some responsibility: to publish books worth publishing, to air TV shows actually worth airing, to care about content as well as ratings and sales. Those criteria are distinguishable from what the market will reward. That distinction has been lost in many places. It is not a criticism of the market; it is merely a reminder that markets also require integrity among those who work in them. That point deserves recovering.

There are no signs that the mindless celebration of stardom and the pursuit to make money off it have ended with this affair. The market continues to be too rewarding a place for this sort of work, but it is nevertheless good to see that a pre-market moral test still exists although Fox needed some outside pressure to diss Judith Regan's tasteless project.

It took five-and-a-half days but the lights are back on. While most of the neigborhood disappeared to hotels and family, we managed to keep the spirits up and brave the cold and discomfort. And that actually was not only a useful epxerience, it was a lot of fun too.

Europe Looks Inward, Tilts to the Right, according to Sylvia Poggioli at NPR. It seems Poggioli is struggling to understand what exactly is going on in Europe while at the same time not quite getting that the European Left - albeit in a state of some confusion - is still doing surprisingly well.

In The Netherlands, the case study par excellence for foreign media studying the 'Weimarization of Europe', the left is in reasonable good shape. Although a grand-left coalition is unlikely to materialize, a new center-left government is according to the latest polls the most likely outcome. The Dutch right has not been able to live up to Poggioli's simplified version of Europe, proving how fickle European electorates are in their current behaviour.

Weimarization? Possibly yes. More on that in the days ahead and when the final Dutch numbers are in on Wednesday.

There was a lot of mail and news over the past few days on the proposed Dutch ban on burqas. Various blogs weighed in too, but it was Thaddeus Tremayne at Samizdata who posed the essential question:

The more interesting question, as far as I am concerned, is whether this is (a) an unacceptable state repression of personal liberty and freedom of choice or (b) a necessary and welcome bulwark against the growth of radical Islam in Europe?

Judging from the comment section those answering 'A' are well ahead of the 'B' contingent. Unfortunately, the real answer is both 'A' and 'B' knowing that in fighting radical Islam we are poised to make steps that we will regret dearly as time passes.

David Frum has an interesting analogy as he comes out in favor of a ban:

Extremist Islam regards women more or less as the old Klan regarded black Americans: as natural slaves and as perpetual threats to a social order based upon their slavery. Like the Klan, extremist Islam conducts a low-intensity guerilla war against women who dare to assert their freedom: casting acid in the faces of unveiled, beatings and rape in the home, honor killings. In the American South, it was the slave-masters who wore the masks as they waged their war against their former slaves. In extremist Islam, the masks are forced upon the slaves themselves.

As for the Dutch situation I reiterate my earlier point that a blanket ban is counterproductive. A more intelligent debate, free of electoral pressures, needs to be waged about how Muslim women can be empowered and how fundamentalist incursion into public life can be neutralized. We have only just started on that journey.

NOTE: Michael van der Galien at TMV notes that some Muslim countries ban veils too.

ALSO: In the Sunday Times, 'Liberal Holland hits the cultural panic button'

The power outage is continuing over here, in fact it got worse this morning when another storm knocked out numerous trees and power lines. Of course, this has attracted media attention and on Fridaynight we got a visit from a local TV-crew interested in how we were making out.

They came at the right time, we had just grilled some great chicken on the BBQ, opened up an Australian Shiraz and getting ready to enjoy our dinner in front of the fireplace. The interviewer was trying hard to find bad news or some discord over our predicament, but even our children confirmed that we were doing fine when the camera lights were directed on them. I’ve not been interviewed on TV much, but it occurred to both me and Irene how hard some of these media outfits thrive on the negative rather than the positive. Only this afternoon some other journalists were in town soliciting quotes about how poorly the local power utility was doing in restoring services, but the contrary is true: they’re working around the clock to make things work again.

And yes, we were and are still doing fine; the absence of internet access is the only main irritant. We have cleaned up our fridges – a long overdue exercise – and been getting a lot of sleep. I am not sure if I remain as upbeat about this situation as the outage goes on into the new week, but I feel sort of pleased that we’re hanging in there.

On the eve of the general election a major cover-up by the current coalition government has surfaced:

Dutch military interrogators abused 15 Iraqi prisoners in 2003, dousing them with water to keep them awake and exposing them to loud sounds and strong lights, the government said Friday.

The allegation, first reported by a respected Dutch newspaper, shocked ranking government officials and led one opposition leader to compare it to the U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison.

Defense Minister Henk Kamp told reporters that military police had investigated the use of these tactics by military intelligence officers in Iraq in 2003 and found they did not overstep the law.

Well maybe they didn't. But Kamp has been deeply mistaken to keep quiet about only to see the issue resurface days before an election where both his party and his coalition are not exactly expected to do very well. This is an extraordinary gift to both Labour and the Socialist Party and they will milk it for all it's worth, so expect some interesting shifts in the next poll. Remember, around 40% was undecided and even if this turns out to be a non-issue, it will have a material impact on an already highly confused electorate.

NOTE: The Moderate Voice has been covering Dutch events too and here is a useful post on how the left has been changing its approach. Add the latest twist in the mix and they may edge closer to numbers that would allow a Labour-Socialist Party-Green Left coalition. More news and analysis later.

UPDATE: Yes, a burqa ban was put on the table today too. Always a tough proposition and in the current environment it will go absolutely nowhere. It's cheap last minute electioneering.

We had a massive storm here yesterday with strong winds and huge amounts of rain. Power was knocked out in our neighborhood not long after I posted my Giuliani piece below, and it looks like we will be without it until at least Saturday. The streets here resembled a total wasteland, lots of trees knocked down with most of them destroying powerlines. Our house escaped most of it thankfully, but many neighbors incurred significant damage. The rescue and reconstruction effort is impressive and having witnessed the debris and disruption I can understand why we will have to be in the dark for a bit longer. So with limited power resources, blogging will be light until at least Sunday.

Yes, there were a few die hard conspiracy theorists who had braved the cold to hand out leaflets indicating that the Twin Towers had come down as the result of bombs planted by the US government, but even they could not prevent the warmth and excitement of an evening with Rudy:

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next president of the United States, Mr. Rudy Giuliani”

I never thought I would hear this in a Vancouver theater, but last night I did and the audience was no less excited than an American one: Rudy is indeed still the mayor of the world. It is a reputation that gives him an incredible amount of currency abroad and it may be a crucial asset if this next president needs to enlist some real support in unifying the west in its struggle with global terror.

The presentation was centered around Rudy‘s principles of leadership (goals, optimism, accountability, preparation, communication and teamwork) which are all discussed in his book on the subject matter. I won’t bore you with the details as it has all been documented and equally well promoted over time, but Rudy can dive into a reservoir of endless anecdotes and turn these business and life lessons into highly entertaining stuff.

The evening was scripted and rather than have the audience fire off questions, local newspaper editor Patricia Graham probed the man who had just launched his 2008 exploratory committee. And that is where Rudy moved into more interesting territory. He was for instance quick to point out that last week’s election most likely would not represent a shift away from the major goal in Iraq: ensuring the establishment and survival of an accountable government. The one thing that differs from before was the bi-partisan nature of the effort, but the trick would be to accomplish that goal without deviating from that key objective. In that he also neutralized the expectation that Jim Baker’s Iraq Study Group would come up with any dramatic changes and he linked this argument back to his leadership principle: remain focused on your goals. So no return to Kissingerian realism and settling for some useful authoritarian partners if that would allow the US an early exit, at least that is how I interpreted Giuliani's message.

Graham then asked where he stood on stem cell research, abortion, gun control and gay marriage. Giuliani was a lot more forthcoming on this then he would be had he been performing somewhere deep in America’s heartland I suspect. He fully supports the right to opt for abortion (although using the standard qualifier that as a person he would never make that choice), he endorses stem cell research, control of handguns and did not see any obstacles to civil unions for gays. “Well, you sound like a Canadian liberal!” countered Graham which was a nice cue for Rudy to drill home his other, more conservative, side. Cutting taxes, balancing budgets and an aggressive foreign policy, Rudy’s list was even spontaneously interrupted by a round of un-Canadian applause when he insisted on a determined effort to pursue the war on terror. And the latter is probably safe in the hands of the man who tells his audience that he continues to think about 9/11 everyday, and who also quite perceptively believes that America still hasn’t fully absorbed what happened on that day.

Walking back to my car it occurred to me that the issues that some of the organizers had wanted to see addressed – urban decay and crime – had not gotten all that much attention from the man who vigorously cleaned up New York. But that was not what the smartly dressed crowd had come for. While they made their way home among the omnipresent panhandlers and drug addicts it became clear that an evening with Rudy is exactly like his term as mayor of New York: a rapid exercise in how to get tangible results with a prescient lesson in foreign policy at the tail end. Despite his perceived tendencies to ‘Canadian values’, that should position him well for his 2008 run. His track record, vision as well as his political capital outside the US is unmatched by any other candidate in the current field of contenders for 2008.

More instability ahead?

With a little over a week to go to voting day the latest poll numbers corroborate the trend of the past few weeks and they point to a remarkable outcome. The centrist Christian-Democrats remain solidly ahead of Labour which has been losing momentum over the past few weeks. Here are the numbers from Angus-Reid and they concur with most of the other polling numbers coming out of The Netherlands over the past few days:

But, what is so significant?

First, Labour (or PvdA) is failing to live up to what many believed was their unique chance to become the largest party, deliver the next prime-minister and become the dominant player in a collation of its own choosing. Labour leader Bos is starting to look too Blairite for his core constituency and voters on the left are now increasingly supporting the Socialist Party, an unreconstructed leftist outfit that stands solidly to the left of the traditionally moderate Labour Party. This trend is exacerbated by the public perception that the race over who is to become the largest party is essentially over and that a vote for Labour is increasingly irrelevant. In addition there is the so-called ‘floating protest vote’ which tends to throw its allegiance to the latest political star - Pim Fortuyn benefited from that in the past - which in the Dutch political scene today is Jan Marijnissen. Anecdotal evidence points to the fact that the Socialist leader has been able to shed his stalinist antics and is now a ‘reasonable guy’ who has become acceptable material for public office. This is political experimentation at best and the truth about Marijnissen remains quite murky, at least in my mind.

Secondly, the slide of the traditional Dutch right, the VVD, is irreversible. This party – fiscally conservative, socially liberal and hawkish on foreign policy – continues to bleed for its highly ambiguous strategy. On the one hand they are trying to appeal to the far right by parading immigration minister Rita Verdonk around as a key asset – not wise given the minister’s key role in the Hirsi Ali affair – but at the same time they are desperately trying to reach to drifters in the center with their youthful and moderate leader Mark Rutte. This two pronged approach is actually turning voters away to the smaller parties on the right and to whatever else operates in the center. Many lifelong VVD-ers are disgusted with the lack of clarity in their party and the poor campaign of the past few weeks. It does indeed look that after being part of government coalitions since 1994 they will be relegated to opposition status, and in seat numbers, humiliatingly, behind the now robust Socialist Party.

It should be noted that according to various polls some 40% of the voters is still undecided and the current projected numbers may turn out differently. Yet, there has been a very clear pattern and there are no indications that will change materially in the week ahead. If it holds the right is getting a fairly humiliating defeat and a centrist prime-minister will have no other option than look to the left to form a government. In doing that he may have to put the very economic policies at risk that allowed him to comfortably cruise through this campaign.

The debate over global warming rages on at the Telegraph:

In the climate change debate, one figure is real. The Sunday Telegraph's website registered more than 127,000 hits in response to last week's article revealing that the UN had minimised the sun's role in changing past and present climate, persisted in proven errors and used unsound data, questionable graphs and meretricious maths to exaggerate future warming threefold.

And here is a PDF-file with 200 e-mails addressed to Monckton following his controversial article in which he debunks the notion that human activity is responsible for climate change. The debate which according to some has been settled, is just beginning.

UPDATE: Conspiracy theories abound. Margaret Wente sums them up:

There's more. Tomorrow, the CBC's fifth estate airs an exposé on The Denial Machine. "Call them skeptics, deniers, or naysayers," says the promo. "They are scientists that see themselves as keepers of the truth about global warming: that it is a theory only, not a scientific fact, some even call it a hoax. Who are they? They may be small in number, but they have rich and powerful allies -- the oil industry and the U.S. government."

Yikes! I hate to debunk a good conspiracy theory, but this one is pretty nutty. So many smart people have questions about climate change that it's hard to believe they've all been bought off. They include people such as Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT and a co-author of the United Nations climate-change report. "Yes, there does appear to be warming, but the amount is hardly certain or indisputable," he says. "And the amount found does not appear that alarming."

Not alarming at all. Interesting and reason for more research? Yes.

Yes - The Economist has entered the blogosphere with its own blog, Free Exchange.

Rudy Giliani launched his exploratory committee for the 2008 election today. Tomorrow he will be here in town for a leadership event and I managed to get my hands on a ticket, so more on Rudy's run tomorrow. Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

In the wake of last week's alert from MI5, here are more warnings from the UK about an impending al-Qaeda attack:

British intelligence officials believe that al-Qaida is determined to attack the UK with a nuclear weapon, it emerged yesterday. The announcement, from an officially organised Foreign Office counter-terrorism briefing for the media, was the latest in a series of bleak assessments by senior officials and ministers about the terrorist threat facing Britain.

There can be little doubt that the frequency of missives like this will increase over time as European government struggle with stemming the tide of radicalization among its Muslims communities. The Counterterrorism Blog argues that these warnings can be interpreted as a tacit admission – in Britain at least – that the Blair government’s attempts to engage the Muslim community in a dialogue are not yielding the desired results.

Well, maybe. It seems to me that the net result of a ‘dialogue’ is always quite hard to measure and that it is simply impossible to rely on these engagement techniques to counter a severe threat of terror. Talks are always part of a larger effort and the repeated warnings from the UK this week at least gives rise to the conclusion that it is not only this engagement strategy that is failing, but that law enforcement and security may no longer be able to thwart a devastating attack on an urban center. We already knew that of course, but it is highly revealing to see the British security apparatus serving up these repeated reminders.

UPDATE: The Telegraph reports how Iran is increasingly affiliated with al-Qaeda:

Iran is seeking to take control of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terror network by encouraging it to promote officials known to be friendly to Teheran, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

According to recent reports received by Western intelligence agencies, the Iranians are training senior al-Qa'eda operatives in Teheran to take over the organisation when bin Laden is no longer leader.

Highly revealing.

It is new to me, but you may want to bookmark Fried Brains, a site devoted to the absurdity and dangers of political correctness. Some of the cartoons they run are hilarious, and some of the articles ominous. Consider this one by Munira Mirza, who has penned another scathing review of the misguided policies that attempt to manage race relations and regulate speech. Rather than deflating racial tensions, they create them where they were previously absent argues Mirza:

Where diversity schemes are introduced in an institution or community, the number of reported racial incidents often rises. The clearest example of this trend is in the USA, where diversity training is already a mature, multi-billion dollar industry populated by consultants and video and guidance literature. Its most notable achievement has been a year-on-year increase in complaints and racial harassment litigation.

Institutions are not the only targets of diversity management. Since the mid-1990s, whole communities have been subject to such policies and practices. The town of Oldham provides the clearest example of what can happen when public authorities take on the role of diversity managers.

In the 1990s, the Oldham police force began a deliberate strategy to raise awareness of racially motivated crimes in the area. Officers were so keen to demonstrate their commitment to dealing with racism that they treated crimes between whites and Asians as racially motivated, even when they were not reported as such.

Mirza makes the absolutely valid point that people today are far more tolerant and able to handle race issues than before, a point mostly lost on government-employed social engineers. It strikes me that a lot of these alarming and often absurd stories are coming from Britain. They underline some of the e-mail I have been getting that our admiration here for Tony Blair should be put into perspective. During his reign the UK has experienced a vast increase in attempts to regulate speech, behaviour and attitudes, often with bizarre and unintended consequences.

You know, the Dutch are going to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and some of them, no doubt, would have liked to have gone to the U.S., but the U.S. doesn't really have a legal immigration program. So, if you need to get out in a hurry, it's no good going to the U.S. embassy.

This and many other worthwhile comments come from Mark Steyn who is interviewed over at RWN by John Hawkins. As I have noted here before, Steyn sometimes embellishes his demographic numbers in order to get his point across, so they should be taken with a grain of salt. Yet, his basic message about the bleak future for the West and for Europe in particular stands.

NOTE: The latest demographic tally from The Netherlands can be found here.

The threat of terror:

MI5 knows of 30 terror plots threatening the UK and is k