DON’T MISS THIS DAVE BARRY COLUMN on Flight 93. Excerpt:

We know that the plane went down before it reached its target – that the hijackers failed to strike a national symbol, a populated area. They failed.

And we know that the people on the plane fought back. On a random day, on a random flight, they found themselves – unwarned, unprepared, unarmed – on the front lines of a vicious new kind of war. And somehow, in the few confusing and terrifying minutes they had, they transformed themselves from people on a plane into soldiers, and they fought back. And that made them heroes, immediately and forever, to a wounded, angry nation, a nation that desperately wanted to fight back.

This excerpt doesn’t even begin to do justice to a long and sensitive column. Read it all.

UPDATE: According to the BBC, Al Qaeda sources say that Flight 93 was headed for the Capitol building.

JEFF JARVIS SAYS THAT CALIFORNIA JUST DOESN’T GET IT. I’m not so sure about that — Welch and Layne are Californians, after all.

NO MORE MR. NICE GUY? Not exactly, but. . . . UPI columnist Martin Walker writes that the United States response to the 9/11 attacks hasn’t been what the Arab world expected:

This paradox may be seen in the jeering response to America’s first black secretary of state at last week’s global summit in Johannesburg. It was on display in last week’s meeting at the Arab League of foreign ministers whose regimes often rely on American support, and can constantly be encountered in the opinion pages of liberal European newspapers that should know better. And all of them seem to assume that America will continue to sit back and take it, like the good global citizen that America has tried to be in the last 60 years of defeating Fascism, Nazism, Communism and helping spread more wealth and more freedom to more people in more places than ever in human history.

They are wrong. The real effect of Sept. 11 is that American patience and tolerance for its global critics, most of whom do rather well out of America’s benign hegemony, seems just about exhausted. And however it was that Osama bin Laden expected what he has called “the American Empire” to react to his murderous assault, if indeed he thought that far ahead, he seems not to have calculated that America might react by tearing up the old rule book of international affairs. . . .

“When the Europeans demand some sort of veto over American actions, or want us to subordinate our national interest to a UN mandate, they forget that we do not think their track record is too good,” a senior U.S. diplomat said recently in private. “The Europeans told us they could win the Balkans wars all on their own. Wrong. They told us that the Russians would never accept National Missile Defense. Wrong. They said the Russians would never swallow NATO enlargement. Wrong. They told us 20 years ago that détente was the way to deal with what we foolishly called the Evil Empire. Wrong again. They complain about our Farm Bill when they are the world’s biggest subsidizers of their agriculture. The Europeans are not just wrong; they are also hypocrites. They are wrong on Kyoto, wrong on Arafat, wrong on Iraq — so why should we take seriously a single word they say?”

If the Europeans are in for a rude awakening as America takes its own decisions over the War on Terrorism and dealing with President Bush’s “axis of evil,” then the Arab world is in for an even deeper shock.

Read the whole thing. (Via JunkYard Blog).

THE INDEPUNDIT HAS POSTED the final installment of his series on Saddam. Don’t miss it.

THE BRITISH STILL HAVE US BEAT ON STYLE. An aircraft carrier with its own Jaguar for port calls?

I GOT A LOT OF MAIL on Sweden this weekend, but it was nothing to compare in vitriol with the reaction to my linkage of an interview with Nick Cook in The Atlantic Monthly, in which he talks about antigravity, reactionless propulsion, and allegedly secret government programs. I thought I expressed my skepticism pretty clearly (i.e., when I said “I’m skeptical”) but I got scads of nasty letters from outraged scientists, several of whom urged that I retract the link. Uh, yeah. Retract the link. You know that article that’s over there? It’s not. Well, it is, but. . . . Anyway, that’s just stupid. But I make a point of linking to people who point out errors, etc., and in that spirit, here’s a link to a piece by Robert Park saying that Cook is all wrong.

From this mail and various other complaints I’ve gotten from time to time, it seems to me that people read way too much into a link. If (as I did) I link to Richard Marius’s novel and say it’s great, then that means, yeah, I’ve read it and I think it’s great. But if I link to something and say: “this is interesting,” or “I’m skeptical,” or even “this seems right to me,” it conveys precisely that, and no more. I haven’t spent hours fact-checking the item. I don’t knowingly link to stuff that seems wrong to me without expressing my skepticism (like by saying, you know, that I’m skeptical), and in the case of a not-obviously-authentic link that says something bad about someone (like the mirrored article on Scott Ritter below) I’ll try to double check it to be sure it’s authentic, but I don’t spend hours fact-checking everything I link to. If I did, I’d link one thing a day, or just give up blogging and go back to having a life. Links are directions. They don’t come with warranties. And you’re supposed to be smart enough to decide for yourself about things: if you’re taking my link to an interview about antigravity as a command to believe whatever the interviewee says, well, then you really shouldn’t be reading things on the Web at all. Or off it.

I also notice that a lot of people who complain about links don’t say that the thing I linked to is false, exactly, but essentially say that if I agreed with them about some other underlying issue I’d view it differently. Uh, okay, but that doesn’t constitute negligence or dishonesty on my part — just a different set of preconceptions. It’s a blog — my blog, actually — and you get to see things through my viewpoint. If you don’t like this particular brand of free ice cream, there are plenty of others out there, and some of them at any given moment are moaning loudly that no one pays attention to them. But that’s a topic for another post.

UPDATE: I should have linked to this statement by Ginger Stampley, which states my views pretty well. Excerpts:

Purpose: . . . The blog is primarily a forum for my opinions. I do not guarantee that anything you read here will be pleasing to any reader or in agreement with anyone else’s views, including my husband’s or my mother’s. Or yours.

Posts: I edit myself for grammar, spelling, and clarity at my sole discretion without notice. I try to update and acknowledge factual corrections, but am under no obligation to do so. . . .

If I didn’t enjoy having readers and comments and mail, I wouldn’t have comments or an email address. On the other hand, I don’t feel obliged to supply a forum to rude, annoying twits simply because I have a weblog and a web site.

Read the whole thing.

TONY ADRAGNA is observing Scott Ritter closely, and he doesn’t like what he sees.

JUAN GATO looks at what’s hot or not in the “International Community.”

BIG FAT SWEDISH WRAP-UP: That sounds like something that would be on special at IHOP, perhaps with some lingonberry butter on top for “authentic” ethnic flavor. But I’m going to try to hit the high points of a discussion that has generated a lot more interest than I had expected, though mine — and no doubt that of most readers — is beginning to flag.. (You can also enter “Sweden” in the search window on the left if you like and follow all the links. Warning: there are a lot.).

It started with my response to Eric Alterman, who held out Sweden as a “beacon of light” that we should emulate. I noted Sweden’s behavior during and after World War II, which doesn’t live up to the moralistic standard it pretends to set, and to studies (which I had previously linked to) saying that Sweden has more crime than America and is less wealthy than Mississippi. (The wealth study was from a Swedish business group, the crime from the International Crime Victimization Survey, a U.N.-sponsored study described as “the most far-reaching programme of fully standardised sample surveys looking at householders’ experience of crime in different countries.” You can criticize such studies, though the flaws in such comparisons work both ways, and I didn’t notice people raising these issues in the past when they criticized U.S. crime rates in comparison with those of Europe. It’s not as if I conducted the ICVS just to embarrass Sweden, as you might almost think from reading a few of the responses.)

Naturally, defenders of Sweden emerged from the left side of the blogosphere, criticizing the studies. These criticisms were summarized in Eric Alterman’s Friday blog, which I linked and responded to here. Alterman proposed the Netherlands as an alternative “beacon of light,” which suits me fine in light of the Dutch support for invading Iraq, which coupled with legalized drugs and prostitution makes them look pretty good to me. All they need is shall-issue carry laws and I’m there. The beer’s even good, and they like techno. (Stephen Green thinks I’m “too gracious” on this point.)

The Cranky Hermit writes that rising Swedish disability rates, which he reports as one out of six working-age Swedes, suggest that either Sweden’s economy or its health-care system is not performing as advertised. We also noted that Sweden’s birth rate is sufficiently low that its population is below natural replacement, with deaths exceeding births, alarming the government to the point that one legislator is suggesting porn broadcasts on the weekends to encourage people to have sex, which apparently they’re not doing enough, thus exploding one of my most cherished illusions about life in Sweden. Several readers also wrote about Sweden’s eugenics program, which led to the sterilization of tens of thousands of women deemed defective, as late as the mid-1970s.

Though some lefty bloggers (e.g., Max Sawicky) seem somehow to think that I demonstrated bad faith by even raising these issues, Swedish readers pointed out that with the upcoming Swedish elections, they are hot topics in Swedish newspapers. Nussdorf provided a nice summary of a recent newspaper debate on the issue, in which various Swedes raised the same points.

At any rate, here’s how I read the “beacon of light” score: (1) collaboration with the Nazis, basically unchallenged — Sawicky makes a weak tu quoque argument tiredly invoking Somoza, et al., but that’s about it; (2) crime worse than U.S. — studies challenged, but only on picayune technical grounds; (3) poorer than Mississippi — some credible arguments that Sweden is richer than Mississippi, but no credible claim that it’s economically better than the United States, and a strong case that it’s poorer than Alabama, anyway. Extra points off for the disability, sex-shortage, and mass sterilization issues.

“Beacon of light?” Not in my book. But it all depends on what you mean by “light,” I suppose. If you’re willing to sacrifice a lot of national income in the name of reducing poverty rates by half, then Sweden is the way to go. I don’t hear the reduced-income angle played up much by those who see Sweden as a beacon, though.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle has updated her post on the Swedish economy.

DANIEL TAYLOR has some reflections on blogging and convalescence.

SAMIZDATA HAS A PHOTOGRAPH illustrating the root causes of American anger.

NICK DENTON writes that the problem with the U.S. press isn’t bias, but lack of competition resulting in “hidebound gerontocracies.”

DON’T FORGET TO READ PUNDITWATCH!

JENNIE TALIAFERRO says they love Texas in Britain, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

DON’T MISS Mike Hendrix on New York, and be sure to follow the photo links.

TONY ADRAGNA WONDERS what the hell is wrong with Scott Ritter? I’ve gotten a lot of email from people telling me Ritter was paid off by the Iraqis, but nobody seems to have a solid source on it, and I couldn’t find one when I looked.

UPDATE: Balaji Srinivasan sends this link with more information on Ritter. Excerpt:

Ritter doesn’t entirely disagree. Though he claims the film is an attempt to be “objective” about the situation in Iraq, he predicted before its completion, “the U.S. will definitely not like this film.”

He acknowledges, as well, that the U.S. government doesn’t like how the film was financed. Shakir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American real estate developer living in Michigan, kicked in $400,000. By Ritter’s own admission, al-Khafaji is “openly sympathetic with the regime in Baghdad.” Al-Khafaji, who accompanied Ritter as he filmed the documentary and facilitated many of the meetings, travels to and from Iraq regularly in his capacity as chairman of “Iraqi expatriate conferences.” Those conferences, held in Baghdad every two years, are sponsored and subsidized by Saddam Hussein.

The conferences are little more than propaganda shows, designed to bash the United States and demonstrate to the world that Hussein has support even among Iraq’s expatriate community. The official conference website posts several articles condemning U.S. “terrorism and genocide” against Iraq.

Ritter says al-Khafaji had no editorial input on the film project but that without his help, the movie would not have been made. “I tried to get independent sources to fund the movie,” he says. “People can talk about the funding all they want. If I’d been able to be bought–from ’95 to ’98 the CIA paid me. Did I do their bidding?”

Hmm. What did Ritter’s positions on Iraq look like from 1995-98? Reader Steven White sends this link to a mirror of a Washington Post story that also says Ritter got $400,000 from Iraqi-born American Shakir Alkafajii to make a documentary. I’m not sure I’d call that being paid off by the Iraqis, exactly, though the Standard’s description makes it look worse. I checked the story via Westlaw and it’s genuine. I also found this NPR transcript involving Colum Lynch, the author:

Mr. LYNCH: Well, let’s talk about the Iraqi businessman. That’s sort of an interesting point. This is a fellow that he met at a congressional hearing that was put on a few months back by Representative John Conyers. And Scott Ritter will, you know, admit to you that this gentleman, Shokeroff Alka Fauki(ph), has interest in developing good relationships with the Iraqi government. I mean, he already has relationships, he already has contacts, but he wants to be

able to profit off of business with Iraq once the sanctions are lifted. He has sort of an economic interest in changing US policy.

And Scott Ritter’s position is, ‘That’s fine. That’s his position. He can do whatever he wants, but I’m my own man. As far as I’m concerned, I have total independence on the positions taken in this documentary. We needed money and this is the only place it came from.’

In terms of inadvertently supporting the Iraqi government’s sort of conflict with the United States, he seems to take the position that, ‘Listen, I’m the truth teller. I’m going to go in there and I’m going to lay this dispute out in very clear terms and I’m going to leave it to the outside world to decide what to do.’

So there you are. I’m very surprised I didn’t find the Post story when I tried to look for this a few weeks ago, because it has the search terms I plugged into Google, and it certainly didn’t show up. I should have tried Westlaw then, but I don’t like to search things I can’t link to. See this Jay Caruso post, too. Oh, and Charles Johnson has a lot of interesting reader comments.

MORE ON THE SWEDISH ECONOMY: I’m going to try to do a sum-up post later, but Megan McArdle says that Swedes are worse off than they’re pretending.

UPDATE: More from a Swedish reader:

Hi again, Glenn,

I mistakenly excluded missed one sentence in the translation of the article, which is why McArtle might have misunderstood. It goes as follows, and should
explain the “gem” that she included in her article:

“Average US income, not median this time around, in 1997 and distributed along income groups (adjusted to 1998-dollars) :

The 1% in the top: $869 000, The following 59%: $64 000, The remaining 40% $13 700.”

Then comes the conclusion (the “gem”) that I translated:

“Conclusion: 40% of the population earns just 1% of what the remaining 60% is earning! No wonder the median income is high. This is why, the author argues,
it’s not correct to say that the poorest segments in Sweden have lost out compared to their American counterparts.”

Sorry for that mishap.

Best regards

ZACH BARBERA has found something interesting on a website operated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Basically, it’s a call for removing Saddam, circa 1998.

OH, THIS really gives me confidence on Homeland Security efforts:

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 6 — The government mistakenly gave alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui classified documents related to al Qaeda, ABCNEWS has learned.

The material — both on disk and as hard copy documents — was sent to Moussaoui as part of discovery for his legal defense, said several legal sources, including one at the Justice Department. . . . It is not clear if all the classified material has been retrieved.

And yet, no one will be fired. Will they?

AIRBRUSH AWARD: Check out Eugene Volokh’s report on how VH1 turned post 9/11 boos aimed at Hillary Clinton into cheers. Volokh asks: “I suppose one shouldn’t expect great history from VH1, but isn’t there still some expectation of accuracy when someone distributes what purports to be a DVD of an actual concert? Or has the whole music business become Milli-Vanilli-ified?” Pretty much, I think.

UPDATE: Andrew Stuttaford notes, “This is something to remember the next time you hear about the ‘suppression of dissent’ post-9/11.”

STUART BUCK ANSWERS A QUESTION asked by the editors of the New York Times. I don’t think it’s the answer they wanted.

THE BRITISH BLOGGER BASH last night featured gorgeous women and lots of booze. But, naturally, they were talking about InstaPundit and the Swedish economy. Ben Sheriff sends these observations gleaned from conversation:

Glenn, one of the outcomes from the British Blogger’s Bash was this thought on relative poverty measures. If you still care about Sweden, then the EU defining most of their population as being poor is probably a cause for concern.

“One of the factoids that has been raised is that the US median income is $40,000, relative to $27,000 in Sweden. Some of his antagonists have been trying to shift the debate from income levels to poverty rates. So, let’s take them at their word.

The EU apparently; defines poverty in relative terms as “50% of the median income. (The median comes half-way up the income distribution).” So, the US poverty line, on this definition, is $20,000. Or, 187,300 Swedish Kroner (per the Universal Currency Converter).

The most recent (maybe), and easy to find (says google), graphing of the Swedish income distribution is the first graph on this PDF document

As you can see, plenty of Swedes earn over 187,300. Admittedly, these numbers are from 1998, but out of date stats are a perennial irritant in this kind of thing. Let’s just wave that away. Because the interesting thing is that there are huge numbers of Swedes who, if they lived in the US, would be defined by the EU as living in poverty.

Looking at the graphs, I’d say that 60-70% of Swedish women are poor Americans, and that about 40-50% of Swedish men are. The graph doesn’t carry the information cleanly enough for a straight comparison, but I think Sweden should be concerned…

Of course, this mostly shows up the flaws in relative measures of poverty. The counter-example I thought up last night at the Blogger Bash was that of Bill Gates – what happens to a countries poverty level if Bill Gates moves there?

If you use median incomes, not much. But if you use some measure based around a mean, quite odd things happen. According the Bill Gates Net Worth Page, Bill has “earnt” $1.79 billion per year since 1986.

Lichtenstein has a population of 32,000 and a GDP (in purchasing power parity) of $713m. If Bill moves to Lichtenstein, GDP per capita goes from $22,281 to $78,219. In other words, the vast majority of the Lichtenstein population will now be poor on a measure such as “a third mean income” or some such.

Of course, this is a small country. But anywhere with a population of one million and a GDP per head of $1,789 or less will get you the same results (in those countries, GDP per head will more than double). The lesson? Get Bill Gates to leave your country before he does any more harm. What advantages could there be to having him there?”

Chortle. I’m just amazed that he could concentrate on this kind of stuff in the presence of the lovely Claire Berlinski, especially as she appears to have been wearing a see-through blouse.

UPDATE: Ms. Berlinski emails: “The garment in question was neither a blouse nor transparent. Tight, I will concede.”

MORE ON DUTCH SUPPORT FOR THE WAR: Here’s a link to an article confirming what I posted last week. Reader Michiel Remers provides this summary:

Article suggests that new minister wrote a letter to parliament outlining his position, (parliament subsequently supported his position following a debate called by the left). Position is that route through UN would be preferred, but not a strict necessity, as would support US and UK on action vs Iraq.

The Netherlands: A beacon of light to the world.

MARY ROBINSON IS LEAVING, but she’s managed to say a few more typically dumb things. Misha has a response.

UPDATE: Charles Martel won’t miss her either.

LITTLE CHANGE IN A SYSTEM THAT FAILED: That’s the New York Times’ assessment of the FBI, CIA and other counterterror bureaucracies over the past year. It seems right to me.

I’ve said it before, but I don’t understand why the Democrats haven’t made an issue of this, since by attacking this issue they’d (1) be providing a needed critique; and (2) be saying something that everyone knows is true. I can only conclude that attacking bureaucracies is just too alien to their nature, or too offensive to key constituencies.

As Ken Layne points out:

An interesting hobby is watching where the intelligent dissent is coming from, because it’s mostly coming from the right side of the spectrum. While the far left stays on the steady path it marked on … oh, about Sept. 12, the neo-conservatives and moderates and even old-school GOP mouthpieces have carried on detailed inquiry into the stuff we’re all worried about. Are planes any safer? What the hell was that “TIPS” nonsense? We’re still handing out visas through Saudi travel agencies? That goddamned Saudi prince is lounging at the president’s house and we’re supposed to buy this “axis of evil” gibberish? Can you people get your story straight about Atta’s trip to Prague?

This seems mostly right. But it’s also kind of odd.

UPDATE: Here are my thoughts on the issue from a Homeland Security perspective.