It must be Methodist Friday. Today Glenn Reynolds links to Bandits No More’s post about whether a “Methodist Army of Davids” can help the United Methodist Church meet the future. The term comes from Glenn’s forthcoming new book about the blogosphere and its impact, “An Army of Davids.”

I myself don’t buy into BNM’s concept that the structure of the UMC is holding the church back. It’s an old structure, yes, and certainly could use some repair work, but I do not think it needs an overhaul. The comments of the post are enlightening, though, with some excellent insights.

While on religious matters, a colleague emailed me to say that because of this court ruling, our weekly donut-and-coffee klatch can’t be banned by our bishop!

Finally, the Vatican strikes back, sort of:

PARIS (Reuters) - After backing calls by Muslims for respect for their religion in the Mohammad cartoons row, the Vatican is now urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.

Roman Catholic leaders at first said Muslims were right to be outraged when Western newspapers reprinted Danish caricatures of the Prophet, including one with a bomb in his turban. Most Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.

After criticizing both the cartoons and the violent protests in Muslim countries that followed, the Vatican this week linked the issue to its long-standing concern that the rights of other faiths are limited, sometimes severely, in Muslim countries.

Vatican prelates have been concerned by recent killings of two Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria. Turkish media linked the death there to the cartoons row. At least 146 Christians and Muslims have died in five days of religious riots in Nigeria.

“If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us,” Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome.

“We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts,” Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.

Reciprocity — allowing Christian minorities the same rights as Muslims generally have in Western countries, such as building houses of worship or practicing religion freely — is at the heart of Vatican diplomacy toward Muslim states.

…

“Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It’s our duty to protect ourselves,” Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican’s supreme court, thundered in the daily La Stampa. Jesus told his followers to “turn the other cheek” when struck.

“The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century, mostly for oil, and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights,” he said.

Bishop Rino Fisichella, head of one of the Roman universities that train young priests from around the world, told Corriere della Sera the Vatican should speak out more.

“Let’s drop this diplomatic silence,” said the rector of the Pontifical Lateran University. “We should put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities.”

Whoo-hee. Lay on again, Benedict, harder and harder.

SFGate reports of some Arab reactions to Condoleeza’s Rice’s visit to Egypt. It ain’t pretty, but what SFGate fails to point out is that public diplomacy by Arab governments is not necessarily related to their private diplomacy.

… to miss an opportunity:

In Yemen, an editorial by Muhammad al-Assadi condemned the cartoons but also lamented the way many Muslims reacted. “Muslims had an opportunity to educate the world about the merits of the Prophet Muhammad and the peacefulness of the religion he had come with,” Mr. Assadi wrote. He added, “Muslims know how to lose, better than how to use, opportunities.”

Yep.

But think of ports deal as counterinsurgency writ very large

Having read the WSJ editorial on the controversy about Dubai Ports World taking over some commercial operations of six major US ports, and having heard newscasts offering details, I am inclined to say let the deal go forward. On the face of it, DPW is just a contractor running the daily operations of the posts but not securing them. The ports are New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

DPW would be taking over the operations from a British firm, P&O Steam Navigation, that DPW bought. They may not even switch managers on the scene at the ports concerned. The contract switchover required approval by the federal executive branch, which reviewed the prospect and approved it. Jim Dunnigan, editor in chief of Strategy Page and one of the most respected defense analysts in the county, wrote, “UAE is one of our best allies over there, and no fan of al Qaeda. Stiffing them on the port deal will only hurt us.”

OTOH, Kathleen Parker at the Houston Chronicle observes by the president.

Despite bipartisan condemnation, the Bush administration has defended the sale to Dubai Ports World as not only safe, but prudent. The UAE, which incidentally served as a financial and operational base for the Sept. 11 hijackers, is an important ally in the fight against terror, we’re told.

Of course they are. And Colombia is an important ally in the war against drugs. And Mexico is an important ally in the fight against illegal immigration. Perhaps, given that much of our illegal drug supply and immigrant population come from Colombia and Mexico, respectively, we should reconsider our strategy.

The president is getting hammered from left and right on this issue; Senate majority leader Bill Frist has expressed opposition as has Sen. Hillary Clinton. Now we learn, though, that,

President Bush was unaware that a controversial deal to sell shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a United Arab Emirates-owned firm was in the works until it was approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

…

[T]he administration also said that it should have briefed Congress sooner about the transaction, which has triggered a major political backlash among both Republicans and Democrats.

This is not a strong position for a president to take. It displays, correctly or not, a chief executive not grasping tightly the helm of the ship of state and and that charges of Bush as politically tone deaf are justified. Nontheless, Bush has stuck to his guns and threatened to veto any Congressional enactment blocking the deal. Opponents, he said, “need to know that our government has looked at this issue, and looked at it carefully.”

But Republican members of Congress seem to be opposing the deal even more strongly than Democrats, while many Democrats (as others have observed) seem to see the controversy as an opportunity to get to the right of the president on national security.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and a stalwart backer of the administration, yesterday introduced a bill postponing the ports deal alongside Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). King echoed widespread criticism of the initial CFIUS review as bureaucracy-driven and overly narrow, saying administration officials “didn’t do any analysis.”

King also said he was “very surprised and disappointed by the president’s decision” for the veto threat. “However, I will continue to fight and do everything I can to stop this deal from going through,” he added.

[Democratic Rep. Nancy] Pelosi called for King’s committee to hold hearings on the deal when Congress returns from recess.

“In the meantime, Congress must put an immediate halt to this deal that the administration hastily approved in secret without input from the Congress or state officials and without a thorough review of how it might affect America ‘s security,” she said. [link]

But the president is talking about that, too.

“The country in question has been a strong partner in the War on Terror. They are helping us cut off financing. They are working side by side with military. They are sharing intelligence. If we are going to win this … we have to be adding partners in the Middle East, not subtracting,” he added.

Which is quite right. Think of it as counter-insurgency at the macro level. I think that the deal will go through, but there’s a lot of political noise to come before it does. I agree with those, however, who accuse the administration of political ineptitude here.

Having thought this over a couple of days, I am signing on to this rebellion.

Holocaust Denier Gets Three Years in Jail

By VERONIKA OLEKSYN
The Associated Press
Monday, February 20, 2006; 8:16 PM

VIENNA, Austria — Right-wing British historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison Monday after admitting to an Austrian court that he denied the Holocaust _ a crime in the country where Hitler was born.

Irving, who pleaded guilty and then insisted during his one-day trial that he now acknowledged the Nazis’ World War II slaughter of 6 million Jews, had faced up to 10 years behind bars. Before the verdict, Irving conceded he had erred in contending there were no gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Just go a check out iPod Nirvana blog:

iPod Nirvana brings you fresh, free, and legal mp3s every day. The iMonks also bring you news, reviews, fun tricks to try with your iPod & iTunes, and tips on finding even more free & legal content. We want to be more than just an mp3 blog, so we’ll also be bringing you lots of links and info about podcasts, audio dramas, audio books, etc.

If I owned an iPod, this is where I’d go!

Bin Laden Vows Never to Be Captured Alive.

We’re with ya on that one, OBL. But hey, what’s all this then?

“I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don’t want to die humiliated or deceived,” bin Laden said, in the 11-minute, 26-second tape.

“bitter the taste of death”? You lying jackal, you’ve been telling your recuits how glorious death is and how exalted it is to die as a martyr for Islam! “Bitter?” What about the 72 virgins awaiting every shahid in paradise? (Oh, yeah, I forgot!)

What a sad sack bin Laden is.

UK baby shortage will cost £11 billion.

Via Blogging Tories.

American Digest says this is “The Global Muslim Position on Everything in One Image.” I don’t agree with the extent of the characterization but I do think it is the dominating position of Muslims living in Europe. I say “dominating” rather than “dominant” because I am not convinced it is yet the majority position among European Muslims. But it certainly is a very substantial minority and it is this minority that has cowed the rest into, uh, submission, which is what “Islam” means, anyway.

OTOH, Michael Totten, blogging from Iraq, writes that “those who think of the entire Islamic religion as a totalitarian death cult, would likewise get a crash-course in reality if they ever bothered to hang out in Iraq and meet actual Muslims.”

Update: American Muslim Mansoor Ijaz writes in the LA Times,

Some Muslims have decided that burning cities in defense of a prophet’s teachings, which none of them seem willing to practice, is preferable to participating in rational debate about the myths and realities of a religion whose worst enemies are increasingly its own adherents.

This week’s events should compel those of us who claim Islam as our system of philosophical guidance to ask hard questions of ourselves in order to revive the religion’s essential foundation: justice, peaceful and tolerant coexistence, compassion, the search for knowledge and unwavering faith in the unity of God.

Is Mr. Ijaz a moderate Muslim? Reading on:

… there is no such human persona as a “moderate Muslim.” You either believe in the oneness of God or you don’t. You either believe in the teachings of his prophet or you don’t. You either learn those teachings and apply them to the circumstances of life in the country you have chosen to live in, or you shouldn’t live there.

I think that Mansoor misunderstands what American commentators mean by the term, “moderate Muslim.” I avoid the term myself, but it is used by others not to mean a Muslim who doesn’t actually believe in the basic tenets of Islam such as the confession, the hajj, alms and the rest. It means Muslims who don’t kill people thinking the killings are part of being faithful Muslims.

Mansoor concludes,

This is not Islam. And the faster its truest believers stand up and demonstrate its values and principles by actions, not words, the sooner a great religion will return to its rightful role as guide for nearly a quarter of humanity.

Quite so, but does Mansoor understand the paradox? Peaceable-minded Muslim by definition shrink from using violence, but they are warred upon by Islamists who consider them apostate and therefore targets of violence.

Hitler’s Sturm Abteilung (SA) Brownshirts of the 1920s and early 1930s were far numerically inferior to the number of Germans who thought of themselves as authentic but non-Nazi Germans. Over time, those Germans were propagandized into ideological submission and the ones who refused that were literally beaten into submission or killed. The SA and its functional successor, the Gestapo, never faced a domestic opponent and retained an iron hand on the German people until the very end of World War II. (It’s worth noting as well that the vast majority of Germans enthusiastically endorsed most of Hitlerism even if not in the ideological purity Hitler and Himmler enforced.)

As an analogy the radicalized Muslims such as those shown waving the banners on American Digest are religious equivalents of the SA. Note well, please, I am not calling any Muslims Nazis, I am saying that the tactics the radicals are using within their own faith mirror closely those used by the SA. Just as National Socialism succeeded in setting a rigorous and exclusivist definition of what “good German” meant, so are Islamists and radicalized Muslims attempting to emplace an exclusivist definition of “good Muslim.” The difference between them and Muslims such as Mr. Ijaz is that they will use violence against Ijaz et. al. to enforce their ideology, but Mr. Ijaz and his allies will not.

In America it’s not too late for rhetoric and persuasion such as Mr. Ijaz uses to prevail. But in Europe I think it is too late. Radicalization has inflicted too many European Muslims, who have cowed the remainder. Read all Mr. Ijaz’s essay.

From the Braden Files:

George Phillips of Meridian, Mississippi was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?” and he said “no”. Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available. George said, “Okay,” hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again.

“Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now cause I’ve just shot them all.” Then he hung up.

Within five minutes three police cars, an Armed Response unit, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips residence and caught the burglars red-handed. One of the Policemen said to George: “I thought you said that you’d shot them!” George said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”

The sun has set on Tom Cruise’s airplane. The Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighter, flown by the Navy since 1974, has been retired. The plane’s last operational flight was a bomb run in Iraq. Henceforth, its mission load will carried out using the F-18 Hornet or Super Hornet. The Tomcat was a fantastic air-superiority fighter, designed to face off Soviet aircraft on the open seas or littorals. When first sent to the fleet, it could target 24 enemy planes simultaneously and engage six of them at the same time with its long-range Phoenix missiles.

But the plane got old and improved technology in newer airplanes made the Tomcat not merely long in the tooth but well behind the curve of cost effectiveness. It required an average of 50 hours of maintenance for every flight hour while the Hornet takes only 10-15 hours. Plus the Hornets are single-crew planes while the F-14 takes two, making it more expensive in salaries and crew training. As well, the Hornets far surpass the Tomcat in capability for the ‘Cat’s only mission today, bombing.

As for air superiority, the Hornet is more than capable. During the Gulf War, when the first-generation Hornet was flown, a pilot had just begun a bomb run-in when he detected an Iraqi fighter threatening him. A flip of the switch replaced his ground-attack displays with air-to-air displays, He shot the Iraqi plane down and then switched back to ground attack.

The Tomcat’s 32-year run is extraordinary, though. The US Air Corps ended World War I flying the French-designed Spad 13. If it had been used as long as the F-14, we would have begun fighting the Korean War with it!

Update: The SPAD 13 was the best fighter the Allies produced during the war, rivaled for the title only by the British SE-5. (SPAD was an acronym for the planes manufacturer, “Societe de Production d’Avions et Derives.”) The SPAD featured the technological breakthrough of having a water-cooled engine that enabled it to climb to 3,000 meters in only four minutes. Planes with air-cooled engines needed to fly level at stages on the way up to avoid overheating. Furthermore, the S-13 could dive at 250 mph, blistering in its day. America’s leading ace of the war, Eddie Rickenbacker, scored most of his victories in a SPAD 13 after starting off in a Nieuport. The Nieuprort was notorious for its weak upper wing and Eddie almost died when his Nieuport shed most of its upper wing in a dogfight.

I remember reading some years ago that the manufacturer of the SPAD 13 was ready to test fly a successor, the SPAD 15, when the war ended, “for which,” remarked a French wing commander, “let the Boche be thankful.” But the Germans weren’t standing still in developing airplanes, either. The Fokker D-7, Germany’s best fighter, was more maneuverable that the S-13 and easier to fly. In fact, the D-7 was so capable that under the terms of the November 1918 Arnmistice ending the war, the Allies required all D-7s to be surrendered to Allied control. Like the French, the war ended before the Germans could field the successor to their best fighter. The Fokker D-8 flew just before the Armistice. It was a monoplane but was not intended to replace the D-7. It was to replace the Fokker Triplane.

I should also point out, I suppose, that Tom Cruise “flew” an F-14 in his 1986 movie, Top Gun.

With the demographics of ethnic Europeans apparently at the cusp of an irreversible death spiral because 17 countries of the continent have birth rates of 1.3 or lower, here’s a peek inside one of Europe’s chief problems by Bruce Bawer, author of the forthcoming book, While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Writing in the Hudson Review last fall after living in Europe for several years, Bawer observed:

Living in Europe, I gradually came to appreciate American virtues I’d always taken for granted, or even disdained—among them a lack of self-seriousness, a grasp of irony and self-deprecating humor, a friendly informality with strangers, an unashamed curiosity, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and speak one’s mind and question the accepted way of doing things. (One reason why Europeans view Americans as ignorant is that when we don’t know something, we’re more likely to admit it freely and ask questions.) While Americans, I saw, cherished liberty, Europeans tended to take it for granted or dismiss it as a naïve or cynical, and somehow vaguely embarrassing, American fiction. I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by “experts”; they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there’s important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style “morning in America” clichés may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air. Europeans may or may not have more of a “sense of history” than Americans do (in fact, in a recent study comparing students’ historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America has something else that matters—a belief in the future.

This is the continent that is the very front line against Islamism. Whatever one might say about Osaama bin Laden, et. al., that they lack faith in the future isn’t it. They are convinced to the marrow of their bones that Islam is mere years away from dominating not just Europe, but the entire planet.

Will Europeans succumb without a fight? Well, their governments certainly will, but that the people will is not at all certain. After the brutal, Islamist murder of Theo van Gogh in Holland, some ethnic Dutch torched some mosques, which was decried as a terrible thing at the time but which we realize from the cartoon protests is actually a valid response to being made angry. In The West’s Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?, Tony Blankley speculates that the coming years in Europe may be bloody as ethnic Europeans (my term, not his) realize that their governments are determined to surrender to the Islamists. The masses, he says, may suddenly decide not to stand for it and the prospect of open battles in the streets of major cities may become reality. Or maybe not, Blankley says, because it’s far from certain as well that the masses of Europe have that kind of energy or fight left in them.

But even if they do, they will still lose. The death spiral is real, not speculative. Unless the European masses decide to accept 20 years of a dramatically lower economy so that women can leave the work force to have 2-3 babies apiece, Europe, as a European continent, is done for. What do you think the odds of the masses deciding to do that are?

Glenn Reynolds and Rand Simberg have a litany of complaints about their BellSouth internet service. Brother, tell me about it. At my home we use BellSouth phone service and Comcast cable internet. No problems with either one. But at my office we use BellSouth only and it’s nothing but problems, and that is an expensive business account:

* There are frequent interruptions of web service, resulting in dropped pages and work stoppages. Usually, but not always, these outages last only a few minutes.

* Half the time these outages take down the telephone service with them.

* Email service is uniformly pathetic. In fact, I stopped using my bellsouth.net address at church altogether and use an address under donaldsensing.com. It has sometimes taken two days for an email from my home computer to reach my office computer.

But we’re stuck, we’re on a contract.

Mark Steyn continues to explore the near-future implications of Western and non-Western demographics and birth rates. He asks two questions:

Is abortion in society’s interest?

Can a society become more Muslim in its demographic character without also becoming more Muslim in its political and civil character?

The two questions are directly related.

The reason Europe, Russia and Japan are doomed boils down to a big lack of babies. Abortion isn’t solely responsible for that but it’s certainly part of the problem. …

Seventeen European nations are now at what demographers call “lowest-low” fertility - 1.3 births per woman, the point at which you’re so far down the death spiral you can’t pull out.

There are severe implications for the West. See here.

Update: Reader Hazen D. emails a good point:

Steyn wants to talk about abortion as a demographic factor but he ignores the demographic elephant in the room, namely contraception. Clearly abortion plays a part in the decline in birthrates but I have to believe that its role is dwarfed by the effect of widespread use of contraceptives. However, due to the popularity of contraceptives, no one wants to raise that issue. However much we like being able to control the timing and number of our children (and I’m in that group too), I can’t shed the belief that the Vatican is right on contraceptives as well.

James Taranto at OpinionJournal framed abortion in political-impact terms in his essays about “the Roe effect.” And there’s no way to argue against Hazen’s observation that using contraceptives reduces the absolute number if babies born. Instead of hoping for three kids but settling for five - pretty common two generations ago - parents now plan on two and that’s that.