INSTAPUNDIT HAS PASSED ITS 25 MILLIONTH PAGEVIEW and will see its 20 millionth “visitor” today or tomorrow. This is pretty arbitrary, since the counter started shortly after the move off Blogspot, but it stills seems kinda cool. Thanks to reader Drew Lee for pointing it out — I hadn’t even noticed.

If I just had a dollar for each one of those. . . . Er, well, I’d probably be blogging from here.

JOINING THE EUROPEAN UNION IS NO PROTECTION FROM FRENCH PERFIDY:

A Corsair Airbus A330 was chartered to fly troops of the Royal Green Jackets from Brize Norton, Oxon, but at the last moment the French transport ministry grounded the aircraft citing safety concerns.

Transport ministry officials were reported yesterday as saying the move had nothing to do with safety but was a result of the intervention of the foreign ministry.

The foreign ministry denied the report, saying there was “no political motive”. But British defence officials appeared to confirm that the ban was political and not technical.

Hmm. Petty? Yes. Ineffectual? Yes. Infuriating and off-putting? Yes. Counterproductive? Yes. It’s got to be a product of the French Foreign Ministry.

ANOTHER LESS-THAN-STELLAR PERFORMANCE by Homeland Security:

One of Canada’s most moderate and respected Muslim clerics was pulled off a plane Thursday and thrown in jail by U.S. immigration officials in Fort Lauderdale without any charges being laid.

Ahamad Kutty, who has preached tolerance and peace throughout North America for more than two decades, was ordered off his Orlando-bound flight from Toronto and interrogated in an airport holding cell and a local jail for 16 hours as the U.S. marked the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. . . .

An FBI spokesperson in their Miami office said two officers were called to the airport to question the men on the request of immigration officials.

“We were there for a couple of hours but didn’t see any reason to have them detained further,” the FBI’s Judy Orihuela said yesterday. . . .

In the wake of 9/11, Kutty became a beacon of reason and calm within the city’s Muslim community. In an October, 2001 column, the Star’s Jim Coyle quoted one of the imam’s sermons at the Jami Mosque in which he cautioned his congregation against Islamic extremism:

“Let us make no mistake about it: Today, Muslims have no enemy greater than fanatics in their midst.

“Let us know that fanaticism is ignorance; it is nothing but sickness and bigotry; let us know that fanaticism is opposed to both scripture and reason.”

Reader Faisal Jawdat emails: “What, are we trying to make sure only radical violent muslim leaders get in, because the moderates might encourage people to be, well, moderate?”

Well, anyone can make a mistake, I suppose, but this seems to have been based on the fact that (1) these were Muslim clerics; and (2) they were traveling on 9/11. Perhaps a (justified) lack of faith in Canadian security played a part, too, but that doesn’t excuse it. And it’s stupid. As I said right after 9/11, non-fanatical Muslims (which is most of ’em, of course) are the best defense against fanatical Muslims. It’s true, of course, that many “moderate” Muslim clerics have in fact been rather slow to denounce the kooks — I blame the influence of Saudi money — but here’s a guy who wasn’t. If things are as this story makes them appear, the White House should call him and invite him to meet with Bush, by way of recompense. And they should send a plane.

UPDATE: Don’t warm that plane up just yet. Reader Mark Fox sends this story from the Globe and Mail:

A Canadian imam who was detained in the United States last week once wrote that Muslims in Iraq should rise up to “force the occupiers to leave their lands” and called U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration a “cabal of Zionists and new conservatives.”

Ahmad Kutty said in an interview yesterday that he does not believe such statements represent the bulk of his teachings and do not explain why U.S. authorities detained him on suspicion of terrorism when he arrived in Florida from Toronto on Sept. 11. . . .

Though I suppose means matter as well as ends here, if this is what passes for a “moderate” Muslim cleric, then the whole notion of moderate Islam may have to be reexamined. I’m not sure that this gets the Homeland Security folks off the hook, though, since it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with their decision.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Well, these guys aren’t moderates, though they certainly seem to be trying to follow Kutty’s advice:

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (AP) – The United States is holding in Iraq six prisoners who claim to be Americans and two who say they are Britons, the general in charge of detention centers said Tuesday.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, said the eight were considered security detainees – those who attacked or helped carry out attacks against coalition troops – and were being interrogated by military intelligence.

Hey, keep this up guys and you’ll prove me wrong, and Ann Coulter right. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: But hey, it’s not all bad news!

WHY THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION IS INCREASINGLY A DISAPPOINTMENT:

Remarkably, the international section of the ABA didn’t see any reason to rush to condemn the idea of European courts trying American servicemen and women based on legal theories that would make every errant tank round a war crime. They asked that the resolution be delayed for more consideration.

You might have thought the individual rights and criminal defense sections would have worried about political justice in hostile jurisdictions (if you thought the Washington snipers faced bad pretrial publicity, well, you should have seen what European papers said about our armed forces). You’d have thought they’d be concerned about the idea that our soldiers would be tried as criminals for act that aren’t even crimes under US law — use of depleted uranium shells, say, or dropping cluster bombs on troops. You might have thought they’d be concerned about things like a lack of crossexamination or the “inquisitorial” system of justice our GIs would face.

And, predictably, you’d be wrong. Those sections fell into line, urging that the resolution be delayed. They had some important resolutions of their own, mainly designed to make sure that al-Qaeda members get a full measure of due process. Due process for American soldiers just wasn’t on the agenda. Maybe later, they said, but first things first.

I’m deeply disappointed with the ABA, which more and more seems to be doing its best to live up to the worst caricatures offered by its critics.

MICKEY KAUS has hit upon the obvious solution to the California recall case. He’s a genius!

UPDATE: Iain Murray writes:

The answer is not postponement, but an eradication of the cause of the discrepancy. Let the election go ahead, as required by the State Constitution, but have it done with good old paper and pencil. If the paper and pencil system works for a larger electorate in the UK, why can’t it work here, even with the longer ballot paper (see my 2000 Denver Post article here)?

Why, indeed?

A NEW HIGH POINT in the politics of victimization. Or is that low point? Well, it’s a point, anyway.

VIA ANDREW SULLIVAN, here’s a piece on Big Media corruption in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq by the New York Times’ John Burns in Editor and Publisher that’s a must-read. This isn’t journalism’s Enron. It’s journalism’s Nuremberg. Or ought to be:

There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.

In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people’s stories — mine included — specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper. . . .

We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. I think people just simply didn’t recognize it.

This sort of stuff is justified as “getting the story.” But it’s really “going along to get along.” Or being an accomplice to torture and murder.

UPDATE: Reader Kate Steffes emails:

What I don’t understand about this mindset is exactly what kind of “news” are you selling your soul for if once you’ve sold it, you still can’t print any truth? What kind of good is “access” if all you get is lies. I mean, you could get access to lies by just making stuff up in the comfort of your own livingroom and not run the risk of death or disease — with the same effect.

But no Pulitzer.

I’VE GOT SOME COMMENTS OVER AT GLENNREYNOLDS.COM ON MARK STEYN and the “culture of passivity” he addresses in his latest column. Excerpt:

Why is it that people who are quick to believe that “it takes a village to raise a child” find it hard to believe that it takes a village — or at least a few bystanders willing to take a hand — to control crime?

Well, why is it?

WHY ISN’T THE IRAQ BODY COUNT METER RUNNING IN REVERSE? Um, because then it wouldn’t have propaganda value?

So if the UN’s estimate was accurate – and if it wasn’t where’s the outcry that those who opposed the sanctions on humanitarian grounds were lying – and there is no evidence that Iraqis continue to die of privation, then, by my calculations, the war has already resulted in a net savings of over 15,000 Iraqi lives since the war’s end using the war casualty figures compiled by Iraq Body Count. By rights the odometer style counters should be running in reverse subtracting 5,000 Iraqi deaths per month.

I think, though, that it should be “thanatometer,” not “odometer.” Maybe I should ask Dr. Weevil. . . .

THE NINTH CIRCUIT HAS POSTPONED THE CALIFORNIA RECALL until March. Punch-card voting, apparently, is a violation of civil rights.

Is this a victory for Davis? Maybe. Maybe it’ll just extend the agony. Here’s a link to the opinion, via Election Law. I haven’t read it yet — it’s 66 pages.

UPDATE: Reader Mark Carstairs emails:

Since I moved to LA County 6 years ago, I have voted with punch cards. I voted for Bush in 2000 with a punch card. I voted against Davis in 2002 with a punch card. Please tell me why they suddenly care so much that they have to postpone this election by 5 months.

Hmm. Well, Calblog observes: “Not coincidentally, March is the Democratic primary, expected to increase Democratic turnout.” Porphyrogenitus comments: “Regular readers know I’m against the Recall on general principles. Still, three judges have decided that the voting machines which were good enough to elect and re-elect Grey Davis are too error prone to recall him. No partisan agenda there, I’m sure.”

Unless there’s some awfully compelling legal principle that’s not making it into the press accounts, I predict a reversal on this one. It’s just too explosive.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Robert Tagorda has lots more. And visit PrestoPundit, too. And Mickey Kaus is all over it, of course.

IT’S ABOUT AS SOUND AS FOX’S SUIT AGAINST AL FRANKEN: Former Senator James Abourezk is suing a website that called him a “traitor.” Roll Call reports:

Legal experts are in seemingly universal agreement that Abourezk’s case will not succeed. Law professor and First Amendment specialist Eugene Volokh, who has joined an amicus brief filed on Marino’s behalf, calls it “one of the 99 percent of all cases that will never be assigned a precedent,” arguing that the case covers “settled law” on free speech.

Broadly speaking, politicians are among the last public figures protected from even the most baseless charges. Abourezk, nevertheless, has cast himself as the champion of free speech in this matter. “You can’t use the First Amendment to club someone else over the head so they can’t speak,” said Abourezk’s lawyer, Todd Epp, who likened the charge of “traitor” to that of “child molester” and other such criminal ilk.

Calling people names isn’t “silencing” them. Abourezk is a traitor to the First Amendment, at the very least. Here’s my earlier post on his suit. Meanwhile the South Dakota Politics blog has an update, with links to the briefs.

WORLD TRADE TALKS FAIL, poor hardest hit, reports Ron Bailey:

The only winners at Cancun are the vested interests such as moribund protected industries, highly subsidized rich country farmers, and anti-globalization ideologues. The real losers are hundreds of millions of poor people who would have benefited from the jobs, the higher incomes and lower prices that liberalized trade brings.

Richard Tren, meanwhile, comments:

The failure of the Cancun meeting means that progress towards trade liberalisation is even further away than it was. If African countries want to escape poverty they have to embrace open markets and free trade. Unfortunately among the negotiators there seems to be an almost unanimous attitude that trade is a zero — or even negative — sum game and that liberalisation only ever incurs costs, never benefits.

It’s a very unfortunate day.

SOME REPORTS FROM IRAQ via families of the Fourth Infantry Division.

TOM MAGUIRE has a spiffy new TypePad blog with a new URL. Check it out!

Meanwhile Daniel Drezner offers advice to new bloggers.

ADAM NAGOURNEY AND PIRANDELLO: “Today there is much more to learn from the great Italian playwright than on the front page of the New York Times.”

Not just today.

IAN BURUMA HAS A POWERFUL ESSAY on the hypocrisy of the chattering classes:

Strengthening civil society. Well, that would indeed be a fine thing. Perhaps more could have been done to strengthen civil society in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or perhaps in Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea too. What is astonishing here is not the naivety, but the off-handed way well-heeled commentators in London, California, or New Delhi, talk about the suffering of the very people they pretend to stand up for. Vidal dismisses it as “not my problem”. Tariq Ali calls for more violence. And Arundathi Roy prattles about civil society.

That’s because these people are poseurs, who aren’t worthy of the (steadily diminishing) attention they receive. But they’re also, as Buruma notes, the latest example of an old trend — members of the nobility and the haut-bourgeoisie heaping scorn on those willing to work harder than them, and insufficiently respectful of their assumed authority. I wrote a bit about this here, and linked to this essay by David Levy and Sandra Peart that seems more relevant all the time.

Read this essay on anti-Americanism by Fouad Ajami, too.

UPDATE: Tim Blair on Gore Vidal: “I’d argue with him, but he’s not my problem.”

PREMATURE IRAQIFICATION: Reuel Marc Gerecht warns against getting out of Iraq too soon. I think he’s right. So do both Oxblog and Colin Powell. And, in a not-entirely-cheerful take on the Iraq situation, Jim Dunnigan observes that the Ba’ath remnants are counting on us giving up too soon:

What is going on in Iraq is a continuation of the civil war between the Sunni Arabs and the other groups (who are 80 percent of the population), with coalition troops doing most of the fighting. The coalition prefers it that way, for the alternative is Shia, Kurd and Sunni Arab militias fighting it out.

Defeating the Sunni Arabs and its Baath Party organization won’t be easy, for many Sunni Arabs have a major incentive to resist. They realize that once a democratic vote is held, the Shia will be in charge and they will proceed to insure that Shia get the economic benefits long monopolized by the Sunni Arabs. By attacking rebuilding efforts and oil production, Baath believes it can trigger an uprising by Shia militias, increased fighting throughout the country and eventual withdrawal of coalition forces. In a civil war, Baath could take over again. Now if this sounds far fetched, it’s not much different than any of the other schemes Baath has gotten behind over the past half century.

Dunnigan goes on to suggest that a year of this sort of effort will reduce the Ba’ath holdouts to the level of other criminal gangs in the area. I’d say that if Baghdad in 2004 looks like Chicago in 1934, that’ll be a success.

UPDATE: A reader suggests organizing Shia militias under U.S. supervision and “quartering them” upon the Sunni population. Such an approach would likely end Sunni resistance, along with a lot of Sunnis, but in fact the situation isn’t nearly bad enough to require such strong methods, nor is it likely to be. But the classic approach would be to do just that — organize a big and not-terribly-restrained force of hostile ethnic or religious groups and turn them loose. It works, but it’s not pretty.

THE AXIS OF NAUGHTY RULES. (If you’re wondering what all this silliness is about, read this. Or, if you’re smart, ignore the whole thing!)

UPDATE: And whatever you do, don’t go here and click on the link.

ANOTHER UPDATE: D’oh! Now the Alliance has won! Oh, wait — I foresightfully joined the Alliance on Friday, so I’m still on the winning side! Say, maybe there’s something to this whole French approach after all. . . .

MICKEY KAUS ON ECONOMIC JOURNALISM: “Up-bad. Down-bad. Capitalism can’t win with this guy.” Not with a Republican in the White House, it can’t!

WINDS OF CHANGE IS MOVING HOSTS, and in case the DNS isn’t working for you yet, here’s a set of links to their roundups of war news, Iraq news, etc.

MATTHEW HOY doesn’t think that Dick Gephardt is serious about national security. I actually tend to like Gephardt, which is why I find his current, rather inept, posturing particularly disappointing.

“THEY DO NOT WANT THE WATER TO FLOW, IF THE TAP IS TURNED BY PAUL BREMER:” Martin Peretz writes on how the international relief agencies — putting politics ahead of principle, again — are bugging out of Iraq. He notes:

One more telling irony: While the idealistic abandoners of Iraq move on to their safe-haven podiums in Kuwait City and Amman, the entrepreneurial corporations Bechtel and Fluor, drawn to the country by contract for massive construction and oil-field projects, have plans to evacuate no one.

Imagine that.