I was in London a few days after the July 7 bombings and witnessed the moving two-minutes of silence in Central London. Yet something nagged at me, something was missing, was off. There were no flags. Sure, the Union Jack was on display near Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square for the commemoration of the allied victory in World War II. But those flags quickly came down. After the terror bombings, there were no displays of flags to symbolize national unity in the face of terror. Even the unity demonstration following the 7-7 bombings, which featured fine speeches from Muslim leaders, included no British flags. (Contrast this with 9-11, when Americans hung flags and signs depicting flags have available surface. Many even bought plastic little flags to attach to their cars.)

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"Who is Larry Johnson?" asks a writer at the Daily Standard. While he loomed large at the CIA in the Clinton era, he made a few boneheaded public pronouncements: telling PBS in 1999 was bin Laden was "all talk" and writing in the op-ed pages of the New York Times, less than two months before 9-11, that Americans tend to exaggerate the threat posed by terrorism. More die in bath tubs, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Anyway, I am prepared to give Johnson a pass and suggest that maybe these are cheap shots. Johnson (and Clarke) was one of the few insiders calling for a tougher line on bin Laden before it was fashionable. Of course, he didn't do much about it.

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Hassan al-Turabi, the former speaker of the Sudanese parliament—the architecture of which is nearly identical to the Israeli Knesset (I guess the architect was fairly confident that the two nations' officials would never visit each other)—and later enemy of government and inciter-in-chief of the butchers of Darfur, is now hailed as "the pope of terrorism" in the Weekly Standard.

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Some like to say that America is becoming the world's policeman, but, in fact, that job is already taken—by the New York Police Department. The city's men in blue are now stationed from Spain to Singapore, as this article in the Canada Free Press by Marinka Peschmann, makes clear. Joking aside, the NYPD is becoming a serious counter-terrorism force on its own and this postings show a strategy to coordinate with intelligence services around the world. Hiring the former head of operations at CIA is another such step. Also, as some readers already know, the NYPD has also set up its own think tank devoted to counter-terrorism—giving the force an internal analytic capability. Sounds like they are giving the FBI and the CIA a run for their money.

Ever since the 1986 divestment campaign against South Africa, reformers have been looking for another troubled democracy that they could influence by choking off private investment. Never mind that divestment is about as effective as economic sanctions—hit either does not work at all or it impoverishes the people at the bottom while giving the rulers a convenient foreign enemy to excuse their misrule. Now it is so-called mainline Prostestant churches that want to get into foreign policy, by pulling their investment from any company that does business with Israel, as my friend Eugene Kontorovich writes in the Wall Street Journal. Not being an Anglican, as I am, Kontorovich misses one vital point: there is a prayer we say every Sunday for the clergy. It is right here in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. The modern Episcopal Church has rewritten this and other prayers and forgotten the wisdom behind them. So now we have this mess, with dog-collar wearing amateurs inserting themselves into politics rather than carrying on with their more important duties of comforting the sick and the dying, teaching the young, uplifting the poor in spirit, and saving the souls of the lost.

No one in the press (except Caroline Glick in Jerusalem) seems willing to report on the legality and morality of the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to force 10,000 Israeli citizens out of their homes in Gaza in order to turn their land over to the Palestinians, who case has been pressed by a murderous band of terrorists for the past 40 years. (The Jews in Gaza built on land never occupied by Arabs, but, in most cases, empty desert.) Sharon and Bush are gambling that the pullout will provide security and put pressure on the Palestinians to adopt democratic reforms. Let's hope that they are right. If not, 10,000 families lost their homes and a nation gave into terror for nothing…

David Warren is a Canadian who has lived in the non-Arab Muslim world and now lives in a scandal-plagued, quasi-democratic land that is dividing along ethnic lines—Canada. Though I have never met him, I am sure he is a serious person. And this is a serious article from a deeply non-politically correct point of view. If the secular liberal consensus that forms the basis for all current Western societies does not come with better arguments against the ideology of radical Islam (Sayyid Qattab and so on), Warren is right, it is doomed. And Europe will see it first.

So a Swedish diplomat writes a letter to Donald Trump—the Donald, lord of the Apprentice, a swagering billionaire of bile—and asks him a simple question: How can you build a new building across the street from the United Nations for a fraction of what it will cost the U.N. to rennovate its own post-Modernist pile? Trump’s answer, as relayed in recent testimony before the U.S. Senate, is priceless. And very funny. (Hat tip: radioblogger.) It is worth reading every rambling line. The Oil for Food Scandal is just the begininng…

It's official. Chelsea Clinton, Bill's only daughter, is worth 40 goats and 20 head of cattle, at least according one Kenyan chieftain. He's hoping to marry her in the traditional African way. No word on the multiculturalist's response yet…

I will not be posting for the next two months because I will be traveling in Europe and Afghanistan. However, I will be checking e-mail occasionally while I am traveling. I expect to be back in the country by September.