Last year, Prince al-Waleed gave Harvard $20 million to establish the program, which is being coordinated by History Professor Roy P. Mottahedeh. According to Mottahedeh, the program will focus on "the study of the cultures of Muslims in the [past] fifteen hundred years, and across the geographical spread in which such cultures have existed.”

Al-Waleed has a net worth estimated at $20 billion and was recently ranked by Forbes magazine as the eighth richest man in the world, and the richest Arab. Nicknamed the "Arabian Warren Buffett, al-Waleed is a savvy investor and has an extensive portfolio of global stocks and real estate. Last year he also donated $20 million to Georgetown University, also for the purpose of financing Islamic Studies.

Not everyone welcomes al-Waleed's largesse. In October 2001, for example, al-Waleed tried to give $10 million to the Twin Towers Fund. But then-New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani rejected the donation after the prince said in a news release that the United States needed to "re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance towards the Palestinian cause." One more reason to vote for Rudy in 2008.

$40 million is walking around money for al-Waleed. But it's big bucks for Georgetown and Harvard. Presumably, this money comes with no strings attached. It's doubtful that either school would accept these gifts if the facts were otherwise. On the other hand, these things can be subtle. For example, Al-Waleed's gift to Harvard is scheduled to arrive in installments. What happens if one of Harvard's new Islamic Studies professors teaches something that displeases Al-Waleed?

Harvard's motto is Veritas -- truth. It's an open question how much truth seeking there will be in a department of Muslim studies funded by the world's richest Muslim.

There's no shortage of analysis available regarding what went wrong last Tuesday. Historically, Congressional elections held in the sixth year of a president's term have produced large gains for the party out of power. And certainly many people simply wanted a change after six years of George Bush and the Republicans in Congress running the show.

The war obviously was a major factor. Based on the exit polls, it's clear that many independents and conservative Democrats who supported the invasion of Iraq lost their patience with the war's alleged lack of progress. Republican candidates in many close races needed these voters to make it over the top but failed to convince them to stay the course in Iraq. In addition, the Democrats were savvy enough to run conservative candidates in many states, such as James Webb in Virginia. As a result, large numbers of independents and conservative Democrats returned to the Democrat fold.

Bush and the Republicans also alienated the Republican base by approving huge new government entitlements (prescription drugs, anyone?), expanding the size of the non-military federal government, failing to control illegal immigration and failing to push more aggressively for an up or down vote in the Senate on judicial nominees. On these issues, the Republicans acted like Democrats. As a result, a lot of Republicans simply stayed home.

And of course, the mainstream media did its part. Six years of negative headlines and disparagement of Bush and the Republicans had an undeniable impact.

Now that the Democrats control Congress again, we're likely to see a draw down of forces in Iraq, accompanied by renewed pandering to the U.N. and other efforts to regain the "respect" of the global community. These actions will be portrayed in the Muslim world as a humiliating defeat for the United States. Taxes will increase, as will regulations on businesses of all sizes. Populist Democrats will ramp up their attacks on Wal-Mart, the oil companies and other representatives of "big business." And now that the Democrats have subpoena power, there will be an endless series of investigations of the Bush Administration in order to set the stage for 2008.

Incredibly, the Republicans received little or no credit for the economy, which has rarely been better. Unemployment currently stands at an unbelievably low 4.4 percent, business is booming and tax receipts are up. The deficit is lower than expected, gas prices are below $2.00 in many places, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average recently broke 12,000. None of it seemed to matter.

The lion's share of blame for this debacle ultimately rests with the Bush Administration, which has utterly failed to communicate its goals and accomplishments to the American people. The situation in Iraq is difficult, but that's no reason to abandon the country and hand the terrorists a victory. Doing so will threaten Western Civilization as well as the national security of the United States, sooner or later. A competent White House could have explained this to the American people. Instead, Bush and his staff allowed the Democrats and their enablers in the mainstream media to frame the debate.

Recovering from this won't be easy. But there are still some reasons for optimism. The Democrats can't help acting like, well, Democrats, anymore than a leopard can change its spots. If the Democrats stay true to form, voters will tire of them relatively quickly. That's especially true if the economy takes a nosedive. Once can even hope that Republicans take their drubbing to heart and emerge as more principled (and electable) conservatives.

Finally, the elite media in this election abandoned its last remaining shreds of objectivity. The MSM's shameless lies, omissions and biased reporting on behalf of the Democrats were blatantly obvious, and its circulation and influence continued to decline. Meanwhile, the alternative media of talk radio and the blogosphere will continue to grow.

Unfortunately, the world won't stop spinning while the Republicans try to get their act together. The United States faces grave security threats, chief among them the spread of nuclear weapons to tyrants, petty thugs and terrorists. The central task for Democrats and Republicans going forward is to establish a bipartisan consensus on national security. If they can't do that, then nothing else will matter.

MR. SNOW: Okay, real simple question. Do the following words malign the troops? "You know, education if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make the effort to be smart, you can do well, and if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Those are the words. That's not the intention. We're sitting here trying to do mind-reading. We're not playing the "what if" game. Do those words insult the troops? Apparently, troops believe so.

And again, how hard is this? You say something, it's not what you meant to say, you apologize. You say, I'm sorry. And instead, he's coming out and accusing Republicans of dirty tricks. This is helpful advice. We're trying to help you out. We're throwing you a lifeline, buddy. Just say you're sorry. It's not hard. (Laughter.) ...

Q Have you thought about sending Senator Kerry a gift basket? (Laughter.)

John Kerry: The gift that keeps on giving.

Update: Larry Schweikert, a history professor at the University of Dayton, writes in today's New York Sun that Kerry has committed "one of the political blunders of the age."

Chinese authorities are testing the red gunk to see if it's toxic. Many Chinese are understandably upset, especially in light of last year's disaster, when an accident at a chemical plant dumped tons of carcinogenic benzene into the 1,200-mile long Songhua River. That incident virtually shut down the citry of Harbin for several days, sparked an international incident with Russia and wreaked havoc with the ecosystem.

All Communist governments have terrible environmental records. That's no surprise, considering that such governments are largely unaccountable to the people they allegedly represent. The prime example, of course, is Russia, heir to 70 years of ruthless and misguided attempts by the Soviet Union to industrialize its economy. But the days when a dictator like Joseph Stalin could create a city like Magnitogorsk and poison generations of captive workers is long gone.

In today's era of mass media, even the Chinese know they have to clean up their act. After all, a diseased and weak citizenry is an unproductive citizenry. More importantly, this is the kind of issue that leads to revolts. Even the most illiterate peasant can understand that a government that can't provide clean water has got to go.

Iran's president is urging couples to have more children to boost the country's population, state media said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his administration would reduce the working hours of women to allow them to have more children.

"It is said that two children is enough. I oppose this," he told legislators Sunday, according to the Isna news agency. "Our country has a lot of capacities. It even has the capacity for 120 million people."

Why does Ahmadinejad want Iranian women to have more babies? Here's a clue:

Ahmadinejad also said the West fears a high Iranian birthrate because other countries believe Iran "would eventually dominate them."

Ahmadinejad may be a nutcase but he intuitively understands the importance of demographics. As Mark Steyn notes in his latest book, America Alone: The End of the Woprld as We Know It, there are vast demographic forces at play in the world today and they favor Muslims. That's particularly true in Europe, where the fertility rates in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and other countries are well below what is needed to keep native populations from shrinking.

Iran has a lot of social problems, so it's unlikely that Iran's population will explode anytime soon -- at least in a non-nuclear way. But Ahmadinejad's comments show that Iran is planning for the long-term. America and its allies need to do the same.

Fernandez works for the U.S. State Department, where he is director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. I don't think he'll be getting much of a bonus this year.

Fernandez speaks Arabic, and his interview on Al Jazeera was conducted in Arabic. During the interview, which was broadcast to millions of Arabs throughout the Middle East, Fernandez claimed that the world was "witnessing failure in Iraq."

"That's not the failure of the United States alone, but it is a disaster for the region," he said.

"I think there is great room for strong criticism, because without doubt, there was arrogance and stupidity by the United States in Iraq."

A State Department flack initially claimed that Fernandez had been misquoted. But the BBC Monitoring Service confirmed that Fernandez had used the words "arrogance" and "stupidity." Needless to say, this is a huge embarrassment for the United States and a propaganda coup for the terrorists who are trying to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East.

Fernandez, 48, has worked for the U.S. government in various capacities since 1983. He is a serious Middle East scholar and has a distinguished record. But his comments highlight the yawning divide between the Bush Administration and many career State Department officials over Iraq and the War on Terror. These officials have been working to undermine the Administration's foreign policies at every turn, both for bureacratic and ideological reasons. They are entitled to their opinions but have no right to sabotage the policies of America's elected officials.

The U.S. government needs all the foreign policy experts it can find, especially those who speak Arabic. But if these experts won't get on board with the Administration's policies, it's time to throw them overboard.

This picture I am giving of world affairs may seem over-simple, and pessimistic. I wish it were. Postmodern man -- who votes, and swings the opinion polls, in the constitutional democracies -- is remarkably unable to cope with the reality of evil in the world around him. He has an attention span too short to assimilate even a sustained challenge from a single source, let alone multiple challenges. He knows little history, and what he does know tends to be seriously wrong. More deeply, he lacks tradition -- the kind of wisdom that could operate on his instincts, even when his rational mind were neither well-trained nor well-informed. Yet he is also poorly informed about current events, and his native ability to reason is vitiated by cheap and disintegrative “relativist” ideas. He is personally a coward, and a voluptuary: he lives for the day, and for pleasure, even in the absence of satisfaction or joy. His role models in popular culture are all narcissists. He is the pure consumer of morally poisonous entertainment. He lives selfishly; yet in his own loveless, self-regarding world, he avoids thinking of his own death.

As they say, read the whole thing.

The latest victim in this reign of terror is Anatoly Voronin, the business chief of the Russian state news agency Itar-Tass, who was knifed to death in his Moscow apartment over the weekend. The murder has all the hallmarks of a professional hit. No one expects the authorities to solve Voronin's murder anytime soon.

It's impossible to say whether the government of Vladimir Putin is behind any of these killings. Russian nationalist groups like Russian Will have called for the murder of at least 89 high profile journalists and human rights activists. They are obviously prime suspects. On the other hand, Putin has shown no love for media critics and has done a lot to curtail their activities. Draw your own conclusions. As young notes:

Today's Russia is not the dictatorship it was under communism: protesters at Politkovskaya's funeral could still hold up signs denouncing ``the Kremlin scum" they held responsible for her death, without being hauled off to jail. But the climate of fear is back. Increasingly, it seems that freedom in Russia will be only a short window between communist totalitarianism and a new nationalist authoritarian state.

Perhaps the U.S. could have done to ease Russia's transition from communism. Certainly the efforts to turn Russia into a capitalist democracy through economic "shock therapy" proved disastrously misguided. But Russians have always had a strong preference for authoritarianism. It's part of their character. And you can't change a nation's character overnight.

A British cabinet minister has slammed British Airways for banning a Christian employee from wearing a cross around her neck, describing the decision as "loopy".

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said he "didn't understand" the airline's ruling to suspend check-in worker Nadia Eweida, 55, for wearing a necklace with a cross to work, even though it allows Muslims and Sikhs to wear headscarves and turbans.

Eweida is a Coptic Christian. She is a deeply religious women who, like many Christians, wears a small cross around her neck as a testament to her faith. She worked at British Airways for seven years, wearing her without incident. Last month, however, a manager informed her that the cross violated British Airways' uniform code, which prohibits employees from wearing jewelry or other "adornments" while on duty, unless they receive permission. Eweida sought permission, but management insisted that she either remove her cross or cover it up. When Eweida refised, British Airways suspended her from work.

Curiously, British Airways' ban on religious apparel only seems to apply to Christians:

The airline's uniform code ... makes exceptions for Muslim and Sikh minorities by allowing them to wear hijabs and turbans.

Under rules drawn up by BA's 'diversity team' and 'uniform committee', Sikh employees can even wear the traditional iron bangle - even though this would usually be classed as jewellery - while Muslim workers are also allowed prayer breaks during work time.

Eweida is suing British Airways for religious discrimination. She has the support of at least 200 of her co-workers, as well as several prominent British politicians. I think she has a pretty good case.

British Airways' behavior in this case is craven and disgusting. In doesn't even make good business sense. Why go out of your way to placate Muslim travelers at the cost of enraging Christian travelers? On the other hand, it's unlikely that mobs of Christians will take to streets and call for the death of British Airways' chairman. It's so much easier to just surrender one more little bit of freedom. The problem is that those little bits are starting to add up.

At approximately 10:35 p.m. EDT, seismic monitors measured a sharp jolt of about 4 on the Richter scale originating from North Korea. South Korea, perhaps in an attempt to downplay the looming political crisis, claimed that the blast was equivalent to 800 tons of TNT. But Russia, which has considerable experience in these matters, said that the blast yield was much higher, between 5,000 and 15,000 tons of TNT. That would put the North Korean nuke in the same class as the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I'm strongly tempted to put the blame for this disaster on the Clinton Administration, which wasted eight years trying to engage the Kim Family Regime (KFR). That effort included a visit by then Secretary of State Madeline Albright, hundreds of millions of dollars in food and oil shipments, and assistance in the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors. None of this did anything to moderate the KFR's belligerance and threats. Nor did it stop the KFR's nuclear program, which forged ahead even after Kim agreed to "suspend" his nuclear efforts.

However, the Bush Administration hasn't done much better. It's studied indifference to Kim's increasingly strident threats and bluffs has also failed to moderate North Korea's behavior.

The fact is that there are no good answers to the North Korea problem. The costs of any military action would be high, even if it only involved conventional weapons. Now the costs would be much higher. Any military planner worth his salt has to assume that Kim would use his nukes in extremis. On the other hand, the risk posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of bizzare, erratic and cash-starved North Korea is intolerable. Does anyone believe that the North won't sell a few of its nukes to the highest bidder?

There's still a chance that North Korea could be starved into submission. That would require the cooperation of China, which is reluctant to do anything to do anything to precipitate the North's collapse. That's understandable; a collapse would probably send thousands of refugees fleeing into China. In the long run, it would also probably result in a united pro-Western Korea on China's border, which would be a severe strategic setback for China. Then there's the political problem: China suffered 900,000 killed and wounded defending North Korea in the Korean War, making it difficult to turn on its Communist "comrade." But the prospect of having a nuclear criminal-psycho state on its border has got to be rattling the Chinese. We'll know soon enough if they are finally ready to get serious.

Update: President Bush has issued a warning and a thinly veiled threat to North Korea:

The North Korean regime remains one of the world's leading proliferators of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria.

The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.

Tough talk. But as they say, talk is cheap.

The Czech Republic's leading newspaper quoted unidentified sources close to intelligence agencies as saying the captives would have been held in a Prague synagogue while the captors made broad demands that they knew could not be fulfilled.

When those demands -- which were not specified by the sources -- were not met, the extremists would blow up the building, killing all who were inside, the paper added.

This chilling act of terrorism may have been scheduled for September 23. On that day, the Czech government deployed armed guards around buildings throughout Prague based on intelligence that an attack was imminent. No attack took place.

This is not the first report of jihadis operating in and around the Czech Republic. The Czech government has repeatedly asserted, for example, that 9-11 terrorist Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi government official in Prague in the spring of 2001. The two may have discussed an attack the headquarters of Radio Free Europe, which is located in Prague. Or not. It's hard to know what's true, and Czech intelligence isn't talking -- at least publicly. They're also being tight-lipped about the latest thwarted attack.

One thing is very clear. There are some very bad people out there, and they are still trying hard to kill us. Can we all stop talking about gay sex scandals in Congress and other political stunts, and focus on what's really important?

Items up for sale include a Romulan Praetor's throne (Lot No. 14); a Borg alcove (Lot No. 44); Geordi La Forge's engineering pad (Lot No. 60); and -- my favorite -- an 8 foot long model of the U.S.S. Enterprise, including its own power supply console, used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Lot No. 1000).

Ah, yes ... the classics.

By the way, that last item is expected to fetch somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000. That's dollars, not Quatloos. The actual sale price is likely to be much higher.

Racial Clashes Hit Windsor

Extra police are being drafted into the Windsor area today after three nights of violent clashes between white and Asian youths.

Gangs have fought battles in the streets using baseball bats and pitchforks. A Muslim-run dairy which wants to build a mosque was petrol bombed.

Pitchforks? Howling mobs torching buildings? Where have we seen this before?

The trouble apparently started when the dairy in question applied to convert one of its offices into a mosque for its workers. The office was already being used informally for that purpose. That didn't sit well with local white youths.

Nearby, one hooded youth claimed the problems had started after the previous owners, Express Dairies, left.

The 17-year-old said: "I've been here all my life and there were no problems with the old owners, they used to give us milk and stuff.

"We have had a couple of fights with this lot before, but now they're taking it seriously. We want them out of Dedworth."

Dedworth is the neighborhood in Windsor where the dairy is located.

The British press frequently refers to Muslims as "Asians." That's arguably correct when the Muslims in question hail from Pakistan, although it's not clear this is the case in Windsor. In any event, this terminology allows the Brit press to portray anyone who criticizes Muslim activities in Britain as a racist. Framing the issue this way effectively makes any discussion of Muslim immigration and its related problems taboo. It also allows the press to portray conflicts like the one in Windsor as "race riots" when in fact there's a lot more going on.

Thomas P.M. Barnett, a military strategist and author of The Pentagon's New Map, recently gained notice by dividing the world into a functioning "Core" comprised mainly of liberal, capitalist countries and the "Non-Integrating Gap" where violence, disease, war and poverty are the norm. He proposes that Europe and the rest of the Core create a well armed intervention force to transform the "Gap" countries and bring them into the "Core." It's an idea that simply won't work, says Mark Steyn.

Whatever the defects of the Continent's elites, the real problem isn't the lack of leaders but the lack of followers. The demographic reality is that Europe is running out of Europeans -- the deathbed fertility rates of the French, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, etc. is a continent-wide suicide bomb, a kind of auto-genocide in which one population is gradually yielding to a successor population unlikely to share American foreign policy goals in any parts of the world likely to catch Washington's eye in the next decade or three. Rather than the Continent's leadership class helping move countries from the Non-Integrating Gap to the Core, it's more likely that parts of Europe will be doing a Bosnia and moving from the Core to the Non-Integrating Gap.

Steyn could be wrong, but I doubt it. Events like the Windsor riots do not augur a happy future for Europe.

Is Kaplan right? Well, the behavior of North Korea's diminutive dictator, Kim Jong-il, seems more eccentric than usual. For example, the Telegraph is reporting that Kim "has hired doubles to carry out his more mundane tasks."

While Kim himself attends major state occasions, two men stand in for him for more routine visits to tractor factories or farms.

"They are the spitting image of Kim — the same age, same height and with the same bouffant hairstyle and pot belly," a South Korean news agency quoted an intelligence official as saying.

"They are trained to behave like him and even had plastic surgery to enhance the resemblance."

The official also said that assassination was a fear for Kim, an indication of the troubles that lie beneath the surface of North Korea's totalitarian politics.

Kim is also believed to have been ill with diabetes and kidney disease.

Kim is not the first dictator to use body doubles. Adolph Hitler allegedly used at least one body double, leading to decades of conspiracy theories and "Hitler sightings" following World War II. And Saddam Hussein had at least five doubles who stood in for him on occasion. And let's not forget this guy, who was recently spotted riding the Moscow subway.

Best of luck with your doubles, Kimmy. Somehow I don't think they are going to help very much when the revolution comes.