The blog site Belmont Club posted a very fine piece on Friday, entitled Like a Silver Bullet, that discussed the two fronts on which radical Islam is fighting, one with the West, the other with their fellow Muslims. The point is made that the West, too, is fighting on two fronts in the war against terror:

"In Coppola's classic film, Apocalypse Now, the character Colonel Kurtz described how his A-Team had at first gone the rounds of mountain villages, inoculating the children against disease and providing medical treatment for the sick in an effort to win hearts and minds, only to find, upon their return that the Communists had lopped off the arms of each and every child who had received a vaccination. Kurtz was struck 'like a silver bullet' by the realization that the Communists weren't challenging his military capability to defeat them; they were challenging his will to win.

"The will to resist evil is the most fragile commodity in the West. It is a flame burned so low that Al Qaeda thinks that one strong blast of wind will extinguish it forever. It flickers so feebly that one American Presidential election or a single battlefield catastrophe could set the stage for the embrace of a thousand years of darkness, the darkness that Europe has been longing for this past century. The 'peace demonstrators' in London last week suggested not so much Trafalgar Square in the heart of modern Europe as ancient Gadara.

"When He came to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, two men who were demon-possessed ... were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way ... And He was asking him, 'What is your name?' ... 'My name is Legion; for we are many.' And they cried out, saying, 'What business do we have with each other...? Have You come here to torment us before the time?' Now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain. The demons implored Him, saying, 'Send us into the swine so that we may enter them.' And coming out, the unclean spirits entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank ... and they were drowned in the sea."

"The precipice has beckoned to four successive generations in the West; and now yet another master calls them sweetly to the dark."

Read the whole thing, it's admirable.

UPDATE: The following day, Matthew d'Ancona made related points in the Telegraph.

An archaeological find in northern England may re-write British history. That is, if they can keep McCain's Crisps from planting potatoes on top of it.

"This is the archaeological equivalent of finding the Domesday Book - then having it burned before your eyes before you get a chance to open it," said David Miles, chief archaeologist of English Heritage. "This site is as important as Stonehenge or Avebury. The graves, burial mounds, and houses have been left untouched by mechanized farming which has wrecked so much of the rest of our archaeology. What they can tell us is of immeasurable importance."

I think McCain's is a Canadian company. You'd think they'd know better.

The best single-malt whiskey in the world? A 20-year old Nikka Yoichi, distilled in Hokkaido, Japan. Never mind, the Scots still have haggis and bagpipes to lean on.

Aussies and Poms have it out in the Guardian. Anyone who's ever lived in a so-called tropical paradise will understand that Matthew Engel is punching below the belt when, about halfway through, he starts talking about November's mild weather.

Simon Russell Beale, says The Observer, is almost certainly the greatest classical actor of his generation.

"Perhaps, in the end, it is simply a question of presence, of the emotional energy he is able to concentrate inside himself when he stands on stage. It's because there's so much to play with that he is able to communicate all at once mediocrity and scarring self-awareness; gaucheness, petulance and the longing for love; arrogance and ludicrousness. He is not, in the end, a protean actor; as Trevor Nunn points out, 'there is a very strong core of Simon Russell Beale in everything he does. The roles bend to him more than he to the roles.' But neither is he ever casual or offhand; his performances are utterly absorbed in the moment, and because of that he generates extraordinary energy. You can't take your eyes off him when he's on stage. 'I think something about him feels incomplete unless he's acting,' says Leveaux. 'His acting is urgent and immensely honest. I think that's because acting is where he comes home.'"

This is a scenario that I am sure is being played out in places all over the world. We have a few hundred tons of asbestos in Bermuda that we can't figure out what to do with, after Greenpeace opposition pretty much wrote off our plans to sink the stuff in the deep ocean. The important question is perhaps not so much what to do with material like Bermuda's asbestos or Scanzano Jonico's nuclear waste, but who's keeping tabs on where all of it is and deciding how it should be stored.

You have to be careful not to take DEBKAfile's stories too literally, until you see what they say confirmed by at least one other source. They publish raw-ish intelligence more than they function as a news agency. But enough of their stuff turns out to be correct to make what's on their site indispensable reading.

Down at the very end of this story, a British civil servant says, of the bombings in Istanbul: "I don't think it will bring us together," meaning those who oppose the invasion of Iraq and those who support it. "I think it will force us apart, which is probably what it was intended to do." I think he's wrong. It will dampen down criticism in Britain of the American initiatives on terror. The bombings were not intended to force those two groups apart, they were designed to do harm to the only country on earth with a secular Muslim government...a hideous blight in the eyes of radical Islam.

David Warren's essays for the Ottawa Citizen are always beautifully-judged. This one was written before the two most recent bombings in Istanbul, but I don't think he'll have changed his mind in the meantime.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," he writes "and those with little knowledge of how the world unfolds, demand that America and Britain give up defending themselves against the menace made visible in the morning of 9/11/01. To what is apparently a majority of polling respondents on the European continent, little democratic Israel is the world's most dangerous country, and George W. Bush its most dangerous man."

Drinking tea with his pinkie extended? Tony Blair? Oh, the shame of it!

Sometimes, I'm tempted to resign myself to never being able to agree completely with anything the Independent carries. Robert Fisk...well, words fail me. But I wouldn't change a word of this story. Larry David is a US national treasure.

He told the New York Observer last year: "I am, in fact, a terrible interview. I'm guarded, unspontaneous, inarticulate, and exhibit very little, if any, sense of humour. Everything I say I regret, and for days afterwards I'm filled with even more than my usual amount of self-loathing. I'm flattered at your interest, but, believe me, I'm doing you and me a favour." Maybe. But he's got the most cunning sense of humour in the business...the very moment you see what he's on about, you are one hooked fish.

If I understand Haaretz's story correctly, this new plan of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's isn't designed to replace the road map, but to augment it. There seems to be a lot of footwork going on in the Middle East at the moment.

Uh oh, this means trouble. There's only one thing that will get the goat of someone from the Caribbean faster than a gay Bishop, and that's some Englishman trying to shove his backra European views on capital punishment down the throats of people who live thousands of miles away in travelling distance, and across a light year's-worth of cultural distance. You can bet the next meeting of Commonwealth heads of government is going to be a hot one.

The Guardian's food critic felt, I'm sure, pressure to find some damned thing to complain about...after all, these were meals eaten by Dubya, the great Satan himself. This is what he came up with. Actually, if you're able to overlook his disgracefully anti-American remarks about pumpkin, it sounds almost as if he wouldn't have minded being at these tables himself.

This is the way the world ends, I guess, not with a bang, but with pancake batter.

CK Williams won the National Book Award for Poetry this year. A short biography is here. And a little sample of his work is here.

This was bound to happen - politicians of whatever persuasion always exaggerate their ability to deliver before they are elected, and elected left-wing officials can no more deliver the impossible to their candidates than the right-wing brand can. But a betrayal by Lula, darling of the downtrodden, must seem worse than a betrayal by almost anyone else.

"On virtually every major issue - from Amazon deforestation and genetically modified food to nuclear power and squatter invasions of national parks - Mr. da Silva has turned his back on them, environmentalists say, in many cases abandoning campaign pledges," says the New York Times this morning.

I don't understand why most of the mainstream media seem not to want to have anything to do with this story. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency ran a series of four articles this month, entitled "Funding Hate", which documented how recipients of the Ford Foundation's largesse were using the money to foment anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic agitation in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, as well as advocacy for armed revolution in Israel.

The series sparked calls for a Congressional investigation and, eventually, caused the Ford Foundation to agree to change its grant process. "We deeply regret that Foundation grantees may have taken part in unacceptable behavior in Durban, the president of the Ford Foundation," Susan Berresford, wrote in a letter this week to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat.

Pretty good story. So where's the coverage?

Boris Johnson is a British Member of Parliament who is also editor of The Spectator. In the Telegraph this morning, he tells the story of his frenzied search for protestors against President Bush's visit to interview. There were obviously more than he found, but...

The Telegraph published two other pieces connected to the Bush visit that I thought were well worth a read.

The first is a call for the Atlantic Charter, originally written by Churchill and Roosevelt during the Second World War, to be brought up to date.

The second is a little cracker of an editorial that describes the differences between Bush's thinking and conventional wisdom in Europe.

A summary of Europe's thinking, the Telegraph says, "would go like this: (a) terrorism cannot be defeated in the long run, its perpetrators sooner or later have to be treated with, and their legitimate demands met in some form or other; (b) the Muslim world, and specifically the Arab portion of it, is culturally unsuited to freedom and democracy; (c) the Arab-Israeli dispute lies at the heart of the ills of the Middle East; (d) Israel is principally at fault in that conflict and must be pressured into making most concessions; (e) it is the EU that has played the lead role in bringing about the peace and prosperity of the Continent since 1945; (f) wongdoers on the international scene should be treated with via multilateral forums such as the UN and associated bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency; (g) endless discussion in such bodies is therapeutic in and of itself, and is invariably preferable to the use of force."

That about nails it, I'd say.

Critics of the British Home Secretary, David Blunkett's plans to reform Criminal Justice in Britain say the thinking behind them betrays either a misunderstanding of the purpose of justice or a cynical indifference to it. The House of Lords certainly seems to think so. Yet, you'd have to be blind, dumb and deaf not to agree that Britain's system of justice is in dire need of some kind of reform.

"He is Italy's second greatest poet after Dante, and regarded as the father of European humanism.

"If Petrarch, full name Francesco Petrarca, had not written his anguished sonnets, inspired by Laura, his mystery love, scholars believe Shakespeare and Milton would have been stuck in the medieval fog.

Doesn't mean he gets to rest in peace, though.

Richard Perle admitting that the US invasion of Iraq was illegal is an astonishing turn of events no matter whether you support the US Government position or not. This Guardian story is the only account of this speech that I can find. But I'll bet it won't be the last, and I'll bet it won't be long before a different version of what he said emerges.

Separation of church and state is so fundamental to the working of a democracy that this story seems to me to signify a weakening of US resolve to encourage democracy in the Arab world.

This is, more or less, the point of the story: "...American officials are taking steps to ensure that when a Shiite-dominated government is installed next year, as most expect, religious freedom and minority rights are respected and Iraq's neighbors are reassured that the first Shiite-governed Arab country does not pose a threat to them.

"The shift in the administration's thinking laid the groundwork for the decision announced last week to accelerate the timetable for self-government in Iraq, administration officials say...

"And while administration officials believe such a government will seek to be independent of Iran's religious influence, some experts on Iran and the Middle East caution that even the more secular of Shiites will also come under at least some influence of religious leaders in Iraq, and perhaps even in Iran."

There is indeed a lot of talk at the moment about the hard-line religious scholar in Saudi Arabia who has recanted his earlier radical beliefs, withdrawn his fatwas and denounced jihadis. Arab News says it's a good thing. More than that, they say:

"Whatever we can say, Al-Khudair recanting and withdrawing his fatwas is a great step forward for the Kingdom and for the entire Islamic world.

"Religious scholars whose fatwas have been responsible for misguiding, brainwashing and corrupting the minds of other Muslims should follow suit."

I had no idea there had ever been a black Pope. But there have been three of them according to this piece at Africana. They're speculating the time may be ripe for another one, and are mentioning Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria as a good candidate.

NAFSA, or the Association of International Educators, is an American group that, among other things, promotes the exchange of students and scholars to and from the US. They've just issued a report that suggests Americans' lack of knowledge of the world outside the borders of the US is a "national liability" in the war on terrorism. Interesting thought.

This analysis of the changes Al Qaeda has been forced to go through since the attack on the Twin Towers in New York quotes an expert, Mustafa Alani of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London. He and other unnamed experts say Al Qaeda has responded to attacks on it by mutating into a more decentralised network, relying on local allies to launch more frequent attacks. Al Qaeda as an ideology, Alani says, is now stronger than Al Qaeda as an organization. "What we are witnessing now is a major shift in Al Qaeda's strategy. I believe it is successful. Now they are not on the defensive. They are on the offensive."

That seems a strange way to characterise an organisation that no longer has a cohesive headquarters, is on the run, can't communicate properly, and has lost a good proportion of its leadership. Al Qaeda once boasted of wanting to destroy America. It has been reduced to sporadically bombing soft targets like synagogues. That's not because it wants the propaganda, it's because the organisation can't get attacks on harder targets together any more. It hasn't "survived by mutating into a more decentralised network", it's been broken into pieces by being attacked by every civilised nation in the world.

The Royal United Services Institute is a well-respected organisation. I'm surprised they'd allow a piece of analysis like this one to go out over their name.

It's a fascinating defence against a crime committed on Pitcairn Island - the accused shouldn't have been charged in the first place because Britain has no real jurisdiction there - it never did have a right to claim the place as its own. But the really interesting aspect of this story is that of the total population of 50 people, 13 have been charged with rape and sexual abuse. What in the world is going on over there?

An earlier piece sheds a little light.

The European Union corruption scandal may, after nine years, finally have acquired enough momentum to change from problem everybody tries to ignore, to problem that must be fixed. Romano Prodi's latest attempt to brush it aside isn't going to cut it this time.

The Telegraph's editorial sums up the sentiment of those who've had enough of it pretty well.

There is a kernel of news that's worth knowing about in this story, but it is so surrounded by spin it is hard to find. Try the third paragraph from the end: "A spokesman for the MoD yesterday reeled off pages of statistics which he said showed that things were getting better. He said one third of people in Basra were now connected to sewage and 80% to mains water, more electricity was being generated in Basra than before the war and hospitals now had their own independent generators."

Michael Moore, according to David Aaronovitch of the Guardian, has become a leftwing version of Rush Limbaugh. Is that what happens when you get too far out onto the wing of something - you morph into some kind of half-man, half-jackass?

I mentioned this group of lunatics a few days ago. If you care about the Internet you should read this story. You know what the UN's like...

Haiti is descending into another episode of chaos as its American-installed President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, strays farther and farther into the methods of governance used by those he replaced. The Washington Post rounds it up well. The best and most persistent writer on Haiti that I've come across is Raymond A Joseph, who is published in the New York Sun. I won't link to his stories because the Sun requires a subscription, but there isn't much that goes on in Haiti that he doesn't cover.

European and Jewish leaders are meeting today to discuss how to tackle a growing wave of anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere. Canada's National Post reports that Jewish leaders suspect this is a new brand of anti-Semitism which has taken root among the large numbers of Muslims who have settled in Europe. The dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles thinks the attackers "want to cleanse Europe of Jews so that it will be all open territory for the fundamentalist Islam groups."

Liberal commentators in Europe aren't helping by blaming the victims for inviting crimes against themselves as this article published yesterday in London's Guardian does. It is an argument that has been thoroughly discredited in cases of rape, to such an extent that one wonders why people can't lift the lesson out of those particular circumstances and transfer it elsewhere.

An editorial in the Telegraph this morning gets it right on the money.

The European Court of Auditors has refused, for the ninth year in a row, to certify the European Union's accounts. "The court said it was almost impossible to track funds once they had been handed over to member states, which administer 80 per cent of the budget. Money also disappears into Russia, Central Asia, the Balkans and developing countries"...and the Palestinian Authority. Mustn't forget that little sinkhole.

Sir Andrew Green, a retired British diplomat, is chairman of a think tank in Britain which keeps tabs on the Government's management of immigation. Its figures and the Government's are substantially at odds, and officials seem to be getting more and more irritated by Migration Watch UK's claims. So irritated, that Sir Andrew is claiming the British Government has launched a smear campaign against his group. Migration Watch UK's site is here.

You'd think the man would be embarrassed. Still, if money was Al Capone's soft underbelly, I guess it can be Yasser Arafat's as well.

The Times of India says UK sauce-maker Sharwoods' new line of curry sauces is a bummer with Punjabis.

Turkish authorities have identified one of the suicide bombers who attacked two synagogues in Istanbul on Saturday. He is said to be "a Turkish terrorist with extensive ties in Pakistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan and who had also visited Dubai." The license plate on the vehicle that blew up outside one of the synagogues was registered to his older brother.

The odd light and color in Turner's paintings may have a simple explanation. He painted just what he saw. An opthalmic surgeon in England says he suffered from slight colour blindness and, later in his life, cataracts.

National Book Awards for poetry are going to be presented on Wednesday evening. All five nominees, the Christian Science Monitor says, "have wonderful moments of clarity, color, and depth. Each sings with an original voice and, page after page, conveys something insightful about the human condition."

Even Aljazeera has a sense of humour, sometimes. "With Turkey's government pushing hard towards future membership of the European Union, reforms in minority rights demanded by Brussels have recently hit a snag: the letters Q, W and X.

"'It's become a kind of comedy,' said film director Kazim Oz, one of Turkey's 12 million ethnic Kurds. 'They are committing acts of violence against letters.'"

The headline doesn't quite come off. On the other hand, the story, written by Jeffrey Fleishman, is magic.

See what drama can be whipped up by things that have the name Bermuda attached to them?

Barbara Amiel writes sometimes very good stuff for her husband's newspaper. This piece is on the influence of Arab nations at the United Nations.

Here's a sample: "The reality of the Middle East is that the very existence of Israel is considered a nakba - a catastrophe. This being so, the Israeli Ambassador could present a resolution recommending all people be encouraged to breathe - and it would be unacceptable to that part of the world. Does the UN matter? Only insofar as the record matters. Certain things must be done not because they will make a difference but to set the record straight. This week, Third Committee delegates will consider deleting anti-Semitism from the new UNHCR resolution on racial and religious intolerance, thus giving new life to old canards."

Since Yasser Arafat has made himself such a rich man, investors may be interested in knowing how he invests his money. He's obviously got the touch...

I got one of these messages this morning. Since PayPal, for some peculiar reason it wants to keep to itself, won't deal with Bermuda, I knew it must have been a fake. Others should beware.

The Brits think George Bush is stupid. It's a particularly naive view to take of a man who has turned himself into the most important leader in the world. But they may not really mean it...it's only that when they start trying to outdo each other in the viciousness and character assassination stakes, restraint and common sense absent themselves...presumably out of fear.

Here's an interesting concept. These architects "breed" buildings by feeding "ingredients" - data about the site, the building's technical requirements, the client's specifications and so on - into their computers and seeing what happens.

Zimbabwe's at it again. Taking people's money from them under these circumstances is simply theft. The country's been a member of the United Nations since 1980, but I expect it's asking too much to expect that organisation to take a constructive interest in the internal affairs of other than the usual suspects.

The Commonwealth, for those who don't know, is an alliance of countries created by Great Britain from among those which used to be part of the British Empire. You can tell from the headline on this story just how close the association is.

Somebody's had the bright idea of turning the tables on those Nigerian email conmen who succeed far too often in separating people from their common sense and their bank accounts. Here's one of the web sites dedicated to this noble task.