July 31, 2005

Some British Understatement

You'd think that by now our British cousins would be having difficulty maintaining their traditional low key approach, but it is still evident in this BBC report on Iran.

Iran has announced it will resume its controversial nuclear programme imminently in the face of a European Union appeal to wait for talks.

The UK, which is leading EU attempts to negotiate a compromise, said the move would make further talks difficult.

"Difficult?" How about... (translation from the Brit into Brooklynese)... fuhgedaboudit?! I don't know about the rest of you, but after the recent attacks in the London tube, I find the thought of a nuclear armed Iran even more terrifying than before. I don't believe the Mullahs are any more responsible than those psychopaths who were just rounded up after planting those faulty bombs in subway stations.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:36 PM
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ShrinkWrapped begins....

... what promises to be a very interesting series on political correctness here. Also an interesting exercise in point-and-counterpoint here. (hts: Rick Ballard)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:55 PM
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Dept. of Uh-oh...

According to a new report from his doctors, Bush's fitness has been judged 'superior' for a man his age. Does this mean we are going to have to endure another column from Jonathan Chait? Heaven help us!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:49 PM
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"Born In Arizona, Moved to Babylonia..."

In further pursuit of things Ancient Egyptian, Sheryl and I took our history-obsessed seven-year old daughter Madeleine to the reupped King Tut Show at the Los Angeles County Museum this morning. Our reservation was for nine a. m. but the early hour didn't stop the exhibition from being mobbed. The two most popular events these days seem to be King Tut Shows and Harry Potter signings.

I admit I'm not much of a Potter fan, but the boy king of the Nile never ceases to fascinate me. His death at age 19 remains an intriguing mystery. Back in '68, I think, the theory, based on an x-ray, was that he had been bludgeoned at the back of the head. But that has been recently debunked by a CT scan.

This time through the Tut memorabilia, I paused at a display explaining an interesting role in history played by the boy king. He overturned the religious views of his immediate predecessor Akhnaten, a sun worhsipper who is often described as the father of monotheism. Tut brought back the supposedly-superstitious polytheism of Seth, Osiris, et al. I have a suspicion, however, given what people do in the name of religion during our time, that it is not quite that simple.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:43 PM
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July 30, 2005

Homicidal Maniac Claims to Be Psychic

No, I have not gotten a job writing headlines for the Enquirer, but that is all I could think of when I read this AP article which reports terror suspect Osman Hussain is insisting the bomb he planted was only meant to scare and not to hurt anyone. Apparently, Mr. Hussain wants us to believe he can see into the future and knew exactly where all pedestrians would be in the Shepherd's Bush Subway Station when his explosives were set to go off. It will be interesting to find out just how large a bomb he thought would not hurt anybody. Academically, anyway.

MEANWHILE: Of course, we are told by Hussain and his sociopathic cronies that their actions are simply a reaction to the War in Iraq. But Arthur Chrenkoff asks an interesting question:

We are told that London bombings are a result of Tony Blair's decision to participate in the illegal invasion of Iraq. We are told that the continuing occupation of Iraq, and the carnage and humiliation inflicted upon Iraqi people by the United States, Great Britain and other occupying powers have radicalized some British Muslims to such extent as to push them into becoming suicide bombers on the buses and subways of their adopted country (in some cases their country of birth).

There are 250,000 Iraqis living in Great Britain - that's quarter of a million people, one of the biggest communities in Iraqi diaspora, and just under one sixth of the total British Muslim population of some 1.6 million.

So why, among the original 7/7 bombers, the next lot of recently captured bombers, and all the other people arrested in connection with the attacks, aren't there any British Iraqis?

Beats me, Arthur. Maybe all those Iraqis are pacifists.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:11 PM
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The Koinonia (of Blogdom)

I just learned a new word from Gerard, who - I have known for some time - has a large vocabulary. The ideas in his piece I am just beginning to mull over. More later.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:52 PM
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Ciao, Bella!

Will Islamist terror suspect Osman Hussain deign to shake hands with his new court-appointed attorney?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:32 PM
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Let the Good Times Roll?

Instapundit this morning has a remarkable assembly of links hailing positive developments in public opinion in the Moslem world. Respect for Islamist mayhem may be seriously on the wane.

Overly optimistic? Probably. But it doesn't take Dale Carnegie to tell us that killing your own is not a good strategy for winning friends or influencing people (unless by influence you mean influencing them to think you're a homicidal maniac). If all this proves to be true so quickly, all I can say is... take a bow, Mr. Wolfowitz. But don't make it a long one, because, as the cliché goes, no good deed goes un... Well, you know. And then there may be decades more of this before it really winds down. And then there will be something else. And the beat goes on.

MEANWHILE: Amidst all the optimism, this powerful post from Iraq the Model... an SOS really... is an absolute must read.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:42 AM
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Jeanne d'Arc fights back!

According to the Telegraph, the French are suddenly getting tougher on terror than the British:

The gulf between British and French treatment of preachers of hatred and violence was thrown sharply into focus yesterday when France announced the summary expulsion of a dozen Islamists between now and the end of August.

Those who have assumed French citizenship will not be protected from deportation. Mr Sarkozy said he will reactivate measures, "already available in our penal code but simply not used", to strip undesirables of their adopted nationality. "We have to act against radical preachers capable of influencing the youngest and most weak-minded," Mr Sarkozy told the French daily Le Parisien.

Strip "undersireables" of their citizenship? Can you imagine how our civil liberties organizations would react if one of our major politicians started talking that way? Those "progressocrats" (how's that for a neologism?) react like the proverbial stuck pigs when someone gets a Koran wet. And back in the day I would certainly have sympathized with the ACLU, et al, on this. But we have reached a rather extraordinary pass. The limit of free speech has traditionally been defined as "yelling fire in a crowded theatre." We're light years beyond that now. Who cares what anyone's yelling? They're blowing up people in subways. (bolds in the above quote mine)

APROPOS: From the AP, regarding the London terror bombing suspect just picked up in Rome - The Milan daily newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that two maps of the Paris metro system were found in the apartment, but it was unclear how the suspect might have used them. [A sale at the Gallerie Lafayette?-ed. No, Bon Marché]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:19 AM
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July 29, 2005

Pajamas Media interviews

While reading Hugh Hewitt's description of his recent encounters with reporters from the Washington Post and the New York Times who sought to interview him about the Roberts nomination, I started to think about how Pajamas Media should conduct its interviews when we are up and running (which won't be long now). The reporters from the Times and the Post declined Hugh's invitation to interview him live on his radio show, which is an indication, as Hugh notes, that they feared transparency. And the press, as we all know, often prefers to quote selectively. Some things are not as important as others, they tell us... and there are space limitations, after all.

Well, yes, there are. Neither PJ nor any other website could afford or indeed have the space to run an even moderately long interview in its entirety on its front page. But it can easily do one thing: it can provide all interviews - whether in text, audio or video forms - verbatim on the site. For their own reasons most of the mainstream media are not doing that. They seem to think it's necessary to tell us great unwashed what's important via selective quoting and sound bites. Pajamas Media will have more respect for the public. If I have anything to do with it (and, along with my colleagues, it seems as if I will), PJ will always have a link so that you can, in Glenn Reynolds' famous words, "read the whole thing." That's the least we can do.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:21 PM
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Joltin' Bolton

A gaggle of supposedly "progressive" Democrats is continuing to oppose the nomination of John Bolton for UN Ambassador while simultaneously ignoring the massive corruption at the UN itself, which is a thousand - make that a million - times worse than any "crime" allegedly committed by the nominee. The latest Bolton "malfeasance" that has these reactionary progressives jumping up and down is that the State Department official failed to note on a form that he had been interviewed by another State Department official on the old uraniumin Niger issue. Never mind that no one was accusing Bolton of having been involved in a crime here or even having lied or that, one assumes, all such interviews are a matter of record for anyone with the slightest interest. No, this is high partisan political farce at its purest. And like most games of its sort, it is monumentally stupid, because those very people who think they are defending the UN (or something) by keeping the reform-minded Bolton out of the international organization's corrupt and decaying halls are the very ones (not Bolton) contributing to the UN's demise or future irrelevance.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:19 PM
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The Big Fuddy-Duddy

One of the dangers of devoting your life to being cool and hip is that the rules of that game inevitably change and you ain't so cool anymore. This is particularly true of my Boomer generation, which is headed, such is human life, for fuddy-duddy status come Hell or High Bananas. And despite our hipness, we are not aging gracefully. Staying cool-at-all-costs is not easy and the harder you try, the harder it gets.

There is no greater example of this Boomer desperation than Oliver Stone, recently caught DUI in his dotage. Now, on the eve of directing a major studio 9/11 film, he again reminds us... ad tedium, ad nauseum, as if we didn't know already... that he opposed the War in Iraq:

"There was an over-reaction after 9/11. Bush was given enormous powers and misused them. He created a war in Iraq that has further helped bust the economy, and has led to civil war there.

"He was the wrong leader at the wrong time. I always felt that. I wish I was wrong."

This is, of course, BS. Stone doesn't wish he was (or were) wrong. He wishes he was right. He wants the country to have made the wrong step in his view so that he can remain what he thinks is cutting edge. Oliver Stone NOT in opposition to a president is not Oliver Stone. He is just some guy who recently made a bunch of movies that tanked - in other words, anonymous. Never mind all those millions of real live Iraqis waving their purple fingers in support of democracy. We won't talk about them - and certainly Oliver won't.

Yes, being cool is really hard to keep up. You just grow old and turn into a, well, fuddy-duddy. Of course there are those few exceptions that prove the rule. Like Dennis Hopper. But as is well known, Dennis voted for Bush.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:38 AM
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Scotland Yard on the case, mate....

Sounds like Sir Carol Reed at his best... or was it just because there are now video cameras practically everywhere that British police appear to have nipped three of the four 7/21 London bombers in near record time?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:16 AM
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Applauding Frist

It's not just my own support of embryonic stem cell research that makes me applaud Bill Frist's announcement of his similar support this morning. I applaud breaking with partyline thinking in general - "My President," right or wrong, is just a plain bad idea. "My party chairman," right or wrong, is even worse!

It's especially retrograde in this internet age when information on virtually all issues is but a mouse click away. Someone like Dr. Frist is capable of backing embryonic stem cell reserach while being an abortion opponent who believes life begins at conception. He makes a distinction you may disagree with, but he has clearly thought it through. Good for him. We should all do as well.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:47 AM
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July 28, 2005

And now the son...

I know I sound like a broken record, but as someone who has spent most of my adult life working in the film industry, I remain appalled at the silence of my colleagues over the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. Doesn't it mean anything to Hollywood that a director was butchered in the streets for his work? Where's the Director's Guild on this? (big silence) Well, maybe the latest news that Van Gogh's fourteen-year old son is being beaten will wake them up.... A ver.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:27 PM
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Gasping for Air

Britain is apparently complaining that it was sandbagged by the new environmental iniative just proposed by its anglosphere allies the US and Australia. Some "environmentalists" (scare quotes deliberate) are also worried that it is meant to undermine Kyoto. The US says that it is not. We are probably being disingenuous, but that's inevitable and irrelevant. The Kyoto Protocols - increasingly a propagandistic charade - were dead in the water anyway. (It's hard to imagine many of its signers had any intention of following it in the first place.) The new proposal is at first glance more logical and effective because its main approach is sharing and developing new technologies. Unlike Kyoto, it includes the new economic behemoths China and India, without whose active involvement global environmental reform would be pointless. Perhaps that's what's bothering the Brits. The real action is moving to Asia. But we already knew that, didn't we?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:19 PM
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Dept. of Now They Tell Us

According to the AP:

The popular herbal remedy echinacea does nothing to treat or prevent a cold, new research indicates.

The federally funded study was what fans and foes of such substances say they have needed - rigorous scientific testing. It found that patients who took an echinacea plant extract fared no better than those who took a placebo.

Several West Hollywood health food stores have just filed Chapter 11.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:03 PM
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Dept. of Changing Times

Color me unsurprised that Newsweek is reporting a 15.6 percent dip in ad pages. The idea of a newsweekly seems almost quaint in the Internet Age. Soon enough the daily newspaper itself will be reconfigured beyond recognition. [I'm waiting for the Pajamas Media commercial.-ed. It's coming... it's coming...]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:19 AM
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No Term Limits in Egypt

From the Independent Online:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday confirmed that he will seek a fifth mandate in the country's first ever competitive presidential poll in September, ending months of speculation about his future.

Mubarak's announcement comes at a pivotal moment in Egypt's modern history as it copes with the aftermath of the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks which killed at least 67 people and moves cautiously towards political reform.

Very cautiously.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:12 AM
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Upstairs/Downstairs Among the Salafists

David Ignatius has an interesting column on the decidedly upscale profiles of many of the Islamic terror militants. He relates this to the upper middle class character of some of our more extreme sixties activists. [Is he talking about you?-ed. I wasn't that rich.]

Reading some of the London bombers' biographies, you realize the depth of their cultural confusion: "Shahzad Tanweer, 23, came from one of Beeston's most respected families," wrote The London Independent about one of the July 7 bombers. And according to The Washington Post, he had just received a red Mercedes from his dad.

This is not Patty Hearst or the Weather Underground - it's a far more deadly revolt of privilege. But people who were students in the 1960s will remember the phenomenon: The kids from elite public and private schools who went to college, felt guilty about their comfort amid a brutal world, and joined the Progressive Labor Party to ally with oppressed Third World workers. There is a cult aspect to this jihad - an extreme version of the logic that has always drawn disaffected kids to self-destructive behavior.

Of course this goes against the theory (hate the word 'meme', sorry) that these terrorist activities are all about the anger of an economic underclass. It's a lot more complicated that and I think stems in some degree from a form of projected cultural shame on the part of these rich kids. They and their families are indeed the true exploiters. Ignatius looks at this from another angle when he writes:

What will stop this revolt of privileged Muslims? One possibility is that it will be checked by the same process that derailed the revolt of the rich kids in America after the 1960s - namely, the counter-revolt of the poor kids. Poor Muslims simply can't afford the rebellion of their wealthy brethren, and the havoc it has brought to the House of Islam. For make no mistake: The people suffering from jihadism are mostly Muslims.

And I can't imagine that the poor Iraqis whose families are being blown away by daily suicide bombs feel a great kinship with the Saudi jihadists who have been slipping across the border via Syria, trying to slake their angst about modern life through martyrdom.

UPDATE: More from Austin of Austin on the Al Qaeda rich kids. [Aren't you getting tired of that Austin joke?-ed. Call me the Milton Berle of the blogosphere.]

MORE: Of course not all these folks seem off the "playing fields of Eton." But you never know.

AND: I don't think the new IRA non-violence pledge is unrelated to the current situation. Blowing people up is losing popularity fast.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:19 AM
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July 27, 2005

Does Castro read this blog?

Probably not, but he could, according to this report that the Comandante has an Internet connection aboard his new Aeroflot jet, which is "identical to the one used by Russian president Putin." [I think he reads the Daily Kos.-ed.]
(ht: Charles Martin)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:48 PM
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Ivins Eats Crow

I missed the recanting by reified liberal columnist Molly Ivins on July 12, but perhaps that's because it was buried beneath some blather about deregulation and power grids. [No, it's not. Be honest. You don't read her anymore.-ed. Okay, I admit it.] Anyway, here's the recanting:

CROW EATEN HERE: This is a horror. In a column written June 28, I asserted that more Iraqis (civilians) had now been killed in this war than had been killed by Saddam Hussein over his 24-year rule. WRONG. Really, really wrong.

Ha! I could hardly have been more wrong, no matter how you count Saddam's killing of civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, Hussein killed several hundred thousand of his fellow citizens.

I don't like to use profanity on here, but my only response to that is - No shit, Sherlock! Where were you? Anyone with the slightest interest in the facts would have known this... in fact knew this... for years. So why not Ivins? I assume she has an IQ in triple digits, so the only explanation is willful ignorance - the kind that comes from ideological bias of the most extreme sort. I imagine Ivins would be appalled by the comparison, but this is exactly the kind of blindness that allowed people in the 1930s and 40s to excuse Stalin up to and even after the Hitler Pact. It is also almost precisely what has driven people like me and many readers of this blog away from conventional liberalism. The battle is now... as it was then... against fascism in its various guises. I invite people like Ivins to wake up and join. (ht: Catherine Johnson)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:43 AM
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New Environmental Proposal?

BBC environmental correspondent Richard Black is reporting on a new environmental proposal "to rival Kyoto" to be promulgated by the US and Australia as early as Thursday. The proposal would focus on free technology transfer and includes rapidly-growing China and India as sponsors. At first glance this seems much more promising than Kyoto, which barely got any votes in Congress from either side of the aisle, despite the brouhaha.

Australia's Enivronment Minister Ian Campbell said: "We're going to have a 40% increase in emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, and the world needs a 50% reduction. We've got to find something that works better."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:28 AM
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No More "Animal House"

It's sign of our media times that the lofty Guardian has seen fit to attack the blog of a "mere" Dartmouth undergraduate. (Congratulations to Joe Malchow who did a pretty thorough job discrediting the fuddy-duddy British behemoth.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:14 AM
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Politics is only skin deep... yeah, yeah, yeah....

A play on that old Temptations tune (Beauty is only skin deep...) kept going through my head as I read the reports of Hillary Clinton's speech yesterday to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. According to most reports, Hillary was making a bid to outflank the Republicans to the right:

Clinton made it clear in her speech that Democrats should take a tough stand on combatting terrorism, calling for a "unified coherent strategy focused on eliminating terrorists wherever we find them."

A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she echoed calls from the DLC to increase the size of the military, while calling for smarter decisions on deploying forces.

Hypocritical? Maybe... maybe not. (Her husband did move on Milosevic, remember?) But I'm certainly pleased she's talking this way because this is a signal to many of the tweedle-dees in the media to join ranks and paddle along behind her like so many obedient little ducklings. Anti-war? Moi? Cynical as this sounds, triangulation has its uses for all of us. If we want to win the War on Terror, we're gong to need some old line liberals at least to pretend to go along.

Of course, some people are distressed, but all the better (for the abovementioned triangulation). Big loser of the day... you guessed it!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:49 AM
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A Trip to Egypt?

Well, probably not... but what would you do with the "bomb suspect" picked up today by British authorities? One thing is certain: with other possible terror bombers roaming England, this is going to be one lengthy interrogation . Let's hope they've got the right man and that he will sing (and not just for his supper). Kudos to the police for getting this done with a taser gun. They are a billion times more humane than the terrorists. [I wonder if this will shut up their critics for ten minutes.-ed. Maybe five.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:38 AM
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July 26, 2005

Ibsen as the father of Abbie Hoffman

On the recommendation of our Rick Ballard, I just read an essay on Ibsen by Theodore Dalrymple. With his customary brilliance, the British psychiatrist demonstrates how the Norwegian playwright was one of the key progenitors of post-modern cultural relativism.

The modernity of Ibsen's thought hardly needs further emphasis. The elevation of emotion over principle, of inclination over duty, of rights over responsibilities, of ego over the claims of others; the impatience with boundaries and the promotion of the self as the measure of all things: what could be more modern or gratifying to our current sensibility?

What indeed? Read it all.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:21 PM
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Hail, Freedonia!... at the LAT...

Events at my hometown newspaper - the Los Angeles Times - are beginning to resemble a remake of the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup with everyone firing (or being fired) at will. First Steve Wasserman is out at the Book Review, then John Caroll is "retired" as editor and now Michael Kinsley, the vaunted savior of the paper's fusty opinion pages, is out after what feels like ten minutes, but must have been more like ten months. At first I thought Kinsley got the heave ho for running this nonsense, but then I read the following at Editor & Publisher:

In June, Kinsley sparked gossip and some anger among staffers when he left a copy of a power point presentation on a photocopy machine detailing editorial page shake-ups that had yet to be announced. Those included some staff changes and reassignments, plans for publication of opposing editorials, and more reader involvement.

Of course that "reader involvement" led to more troubles:

Most recently, the paper's short-lived "wikitorial" experiment blew up in editors' faces. The meltdown occurred after the wikitorial page on the Times Web site was infiltrated by online vandals who placed profane headlines and some pornography on the site, which led to its indefinite cancellation after just two days.

Well, at least somebody should be happy about Kinsley's departure. Meanwhile, after the Times surfaces from all this restructuring, I have some advice for it - Become the Herald Examiner!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:02 PM
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As if carcinogenic cellphones weren't enough...

Now this.

Also what might have been bad news for Hollywood here.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:23 AM
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The Arab News speaks out against terrorism

In case you missed it (and I did) here is a noteworthy editorial from the Arab News of two days ago in response to the bombings in Sharm el-Sheik. Excerpt:

Most of those killed yesterday were Egyptians. It is impossible to fathom the terrorists' warped thinking, but they clearly think that ordinary Egyptians, like ordinary Londoners, are disposable.

Theirs is not just a war against the Egyptian economy and government, it is a war against the entire Egyptian people, as it is against all the people of Britain, of Spain, of Lebanon, of Iraq, of Indonesia, of the US - of everywhere. The terrorist is at war with the entire world. (ht: Bruce Wechsler)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:17 AM
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Oil-for-Food ... A Remake of The Big Sleep?

Speaking of Hollywood's "willful ignorance" (see previous post), it's amusing to compare the film industry's recent incomprehensbile claptrap about the UN, The Interpreter, to the ongoing, almost nonstop, OFF revelations about that wildly corrupt organization (not Hollywood, the UN). Here's the latest from The Telegraph Oil-for-food chief 'has overseas accounts':

Investigators in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal have discovered a network of overseas bank accounts operated by Benon Sevan, the former head of the United Nations programme, who is the subject of a criminal inquiry by New York prosecutors.

Officials from investigative agencies, including the UN's Volcker inquiry, say that Mr Sevan has accounts in his native Cyprus, Turkey and Switzerland.

Ah... overseas accounts. Wouldn't we all like some of those! The way things are going who knows where this will end? And what a movie it would make. Too bad Kofi Annan doesn't look more like Sydney Greenstreet. (ht: Captain Marlow)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:05 AM
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Van Gogh? Hollywood Never Knew Him

I have written frequently on here about the curious silence of my Hollywood colleagues about the assassination (for his art) of their fellow filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamist psychokiller. I'm not sure if it's willful ignorance or just plain ignorance, but the crime has been persistently ignored by the film community, as if it never happened. No mention is made in today's Variety either of the trial of the murderer Mohammed Bouyeri who, this morning in Amsterdam, was sentenced to life without parole. Perhaps I am being hasty and something will appear tomorrow, but I doubt it. The only trial Variety seems to be paying attention to is Roman Polanksi vs. Vanity Fair, which has far more prurient value but zero social significance and, more importantly, almost no relevance to the art of film and to artistic freedom compared to the decapitation of Van Gogh.

Of course it's not surprising Hollywood is confused. Social relevance has almost always been associated with the left. But now the game has changed. It's very hard for people in their lives to make even a small shift, particularly those who have been so rewarded, financially and narcissistically, for their views. So don't expect much in the way of cinema that relates to global reality, especially from the mainstream.

As for the Van Gogh sentencing, PeakTalk has moving comments about the murdered filmmaker. Pieter Dorsman, fluent in Dutch, has done a vastly better job than Variety covering the trial by himself at his Vancouver blog. (via Glenn)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:04 AM
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Nervous Time at the Kennedy Center

Is this really necessary?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:00 AM
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July 25, 2005

Penguins support Women's Lib...

... well Emperor Penguins anyway... in the thoroughly enjoyable French documentary March of the Penguins which Sheryl, Madeleine and I saw last night with my nephew Isaac, who is stopping in LA on his way from New York to Alaska, Korea, China and Japan. Hey, we have a peripatetic family, but not half so peripatetic as these penguins who must march seventy miles from their breeding grounds to the ocean several times in the course of the year to ensure the survival of their young. Males and females alternate in this forced march, hence the Women's Lib allusion. The film also features stunning Antarctic scenery. I stayed through the credits, riveted by the outtakes of the filmmakers braving the elements. I could say this was the best film of the summer for me, but that wouldn't be saying much. I haven't seen many. I wait for my Academy DVDs and frantically play catch-up.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:46 PM
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TigerHawk Takes on the Papacy

Well, not that Papacy. Maybe I should call it the Pape-acy. Anyway, it's pap.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:43 AM
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CNN's "Big Story" - The Ghost of Eason Jordan Lives On

One of the most significant, if not the most significant, editorial choices of any news organization is what story it selects to feature at the top of its newspaper or website. For CNN all weekend it has been the accidental shooting by London Metropolitan Police of a Brazilian those police thought was connected to the terror bombings in the underground and then later realized was not.

Regrettable as this accident is - and it is obviously tragic for the individual and his family - for CNN it has pushed the bombings themselves off their front page, as well as the subsequent bombings in Sharm el-Sheik in which many dozens were murdered (quite intentionally, not accidentally) by homicidal Islamists. Never mind that - those "goofballs" in the London police force made a mistake. That's what's important.

Unlike the actions of London police, however, CNN's decision was not an accident. It is deeply reactionary in its implications because it distracts the public from the most serious imaginable problem into the side issue of the culpability of a few working class cops and, by implication, those in charge of them, who were only trying to react in a desperate situation. When I say many in the media have become "objectively pro-fascist," this is an example of what I mean. And not as small a one as it may seem.

UPDATE: After at least forty-eight hours of distraction, CNN has finally (7:25AM Pacific) changed its front page to the London police naming two bombing suspects. The link above is now defunct. And Richard McEnroe is correct when he points out, in the comments, that this was a mistaken shooting, not an accidental one. The police were trying to stop the man. (And we still don't know why he was running.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:00 AM
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July 24, 2005

Old Fuddy-Duddies Die Hard

I can think of nowhere on the planet that is more completely a bastion of stodgy ultra-traditionalist liberal/leftist thought than the UK's Guardian, which has not varied one micro-millimeter from the 1968 weltanschauung for the last, well, thirty-seven years. Poor guys just don't have any fun when they go to this movie. And now they're mired in a controversy that makes them look like moral idiots who support terror. Well, no real surprise there. Clive Davis, as per usual, has a good tour d'horizon. Follow his links.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:10 AM
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I've said it before and I'll say it again - Oriana, Not Arianna

In the wake of the London bombings, who better than La Fallaci to focus our minds? In the face of her own terminal illness, she confronts the illness of Europe as no one else. Thanks to Mystery Achievement blog for offering a translation of Oriana's latest from Corriere della Serra. Part One begins:

Now, I ask myself: "What do you say, what do you have to say, about what happened in London?" They ask me face-to-face, via fax and email; often scolding me because up until now I have remained silent. Almost as if my silence were a betrayal. And each time I shake my head and murmur to myself: what else should I say?!? I've been saying it for four years--that I fight against the Monster that has decided to eliminate us physically and, along with our bodies, to destroy our principles and values. Our civilization. For four years I've been talking about Islamic Nazism; about the war against the West; about the death cult; about European suicide. About a Europe that is no longer Europe, but Eurabia, and that with its feebleness, its inertia, its blindness, its servitude to the enemy is digging its own grave. For four years, like another Cassandra, I've been shouting until I'm hoarse "Troy is burning! Troy is burning!" and I despair of the Danaids for whom, like Virgil in the Aeneid I weep for a city entombed in its torpor. [A city] that, through its wide-open doors receives fresh troops and joins complicit parties [inside]. For four years I've been repeating to the wind the truth about the Monster and its accomplices; that is, the accomplices of the Monster who, in good or bad faith, open wide the doors--who, like [those] in the Apocalypse of John the Evangelist, throw themselves at his feet and allow themselves to be stamped with the mark of shame.

I began with "The Rage and the Pride." I continued with "The Force of Reason." I followed [those] with "Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci," and "The Apocalypse." And in each one I preached, "Wake up, West! Wake up!" The books, the ideas, for which in France they tried me in 2002, accusing me of religious racism and xenophobia. For which Switzerland asked our Minister of Justice to extradite me in handcuffs. For which in Italy I will be tried for vilifying Islam; that is, for an offense of opinion. (An offense that carries a sentence of three years in prison; none of which will be served by the Islamist caught with explosives in his cantina). Books, ideas, for which the "Caviar" left, the "Fois Gras" right, and even the "Prosciutto" Center have denigrated and vilified me, putting me in the stocks together with all who think as I do. That is, together with the sensible and unprotected people who are defined by the radical-chic in their frivolous talk as "the riff-raff of the Right."

Right on, sister! Oriana, not Arianna! Part Two here.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:11 AM
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July 23, 2005

Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) - the disease that keeps on giving

At first I thought Jonathan Chait was joking devoting an entire column to criticizing Bush's supposedly excessive interest in physical fitness. But no, Mr. Chait is actually serious:

Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? I don't mean the fact that Bush would vet his selection for the highest court in the land in part on something utterly trivial. That's expected. What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy.

Creepy? Not projecting there, are we? I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Chait is one of those "hard-hitting journos" who previously criticized Americans for being overweight. But I don't know for sure because I wouldn't waste my time, even a minute on Google, to research anyone this banal. Nevertheless for Chait (or any of his cohorts) to change his opinion about something just because Bush is on one side or another is now the hallmark of BDS. For example, who knows what the author of this column would think of seersucker suits were someone else wearing them? Myself, I kind of like seersucker. But I don't suffer from BDS. I have other problems. (thanks to Andrew B. who pointed me to the similarities in these two silly columns)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:03 PM
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"Does terrorism exist?" - The Belmont Club examines Beeb-think

From Wretchard:

Yet on one limited point the BBC's producers may be right. There probably isn't a single controlling terrorist network in the world today; but multiple ones each with their own specific goals who may maintain links with each other, just as the multiple totalitarian movements in the 1930s formed an axis whenever it suited them. But the multiplicity of diseases does not invalidate the notion of disease. Terrorism does not exist simply because the Google search engine lets us pull together disparate threads to conceive it. The mind assisted by instruments can discover terrifying phenomena invisible to the eye. Then horror may take on the aspect of nightmare, except that it is all too real.

Dr. Sanity, amplifying on Wretchard, analyzes the blindness this way:

What we see in the delusion that "terrorism does not exist", is a desperate attempt by the Left to explain-- in terms they can understand, their own fall from power and influence in the world. They would rather believe this illusional "nightmare enemy gives so many groups new power and influence in a cynical age - and not just politicians"; rather than to deal with the fact that they no longer have the power and influence they once had, prefering to believe that it has been stolen away from them by vague conspiratorial forces.

Additionally, they unknowingly demonstrate the typical cold grandiosity and arrogance of the true paranoid, by asserting that their own superior intellect allows them to see beyond the obvious facts that we mere mortals must deal with.

In ohter words, that's not Zyklon B coming through the nozzle. You're only dreaming it up.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:21 AM
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July 22, 2005

Listening to the Hollywood Bowl

Although I can't see it from where I live, I can hear the fireworks show go off at the Hollywood Bowl. It's only a mile or so away, probably even closer as the crow flies. Tonight there must be quite a display because an intermittent fussilade has been going off for the better part of an hour. Usually it doesn't bother me. I've been living here so long (16 years) I basically tune it out. But tonight it feels nerve-wracking. I listen to the pop-pop-pop and think of London and Sharm el-Sheik. We live in a very small world with carnage everywhere. Who knows when it will be here again?

I know some people blame this all on the War in Iraq. John Howard answered that hopelessly naive wishful thinking the other day. But those who choose to believe it (and it is is a choice of a certain sort) ought to consider this chronology. Islamists were blowing up tourists in Egypt back in 1997, generating 58 corpses in their own historic city of Luxor. They were also trying to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, as we know. It goes on. Yet the morally myopic like the Mayor of London continue to blame it on the West. Hard to wrap your head around that. Anyway, for now, the fireworks at the Bowl are over.

MORNING UPDATE: Of course many of us turn to our own Big Pharoah in Cairo at a time like this. He had a Instapundit link this morning also driving traffic his way. According to the live tracker of BP's site, people were coming to read from around the world... but no one from Arab countries. Sad.

United States: 44
[Israel] Israel: 2
[Japan] Japan: 1
[New Zealand] New Zealand: 1
[Singapore] Singapore: 1
Netherlands: 1

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:45 PM
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Carnival of the Chinese Blogs

Haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but this has got to be interesting.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:30 AM
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What's Next?

Seeing one of the would-be terror bombers from the recent London misfire in a "New York" sweatshirt tells me we maybe be moving into a scary new phase - religious psycho killers disguised in the costume of the society they claim to hate. If this continues, people are going to start listening seriously to the director of Death Wish.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:52 AM
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Remember John Bolton?

An admirer of Mark Twain looks at the "new filibuster."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:41 AM
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DebkaFile's private intelligence weekly has an interesting report on a split between the US and UK intelligence apparatus regarding recent events:

The two terrorist attacks on London have put a strain on the intelligence relations between the United States and Britain. The differences between America's tough treatment of terrorist suspects and British lenience are usually explained on the grounds of greater British tolerance for radical asylum-seekers, be they political or religious. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources maintain that
the differences are methodological. The two British secret services charged with combating al Qaeda hold to the view that opening the door to Muslim radicals from all over the world to take up residence in the UK's big cities is the most efficient method for getting their agents inside terrorist groups like al Qaeda. The American services, for their part, say -

B. The US intelligence community holds that the close interrelation between British undercover agencies and Muslim extremists has been harmful; it has given al Qaeda's agents easy access to Britain and exposure to a considerable body of intelligence data - not only the workings of the British agencies, but also through them of American methods of operation. At the G8 summit, in Scotland, which was interrupted by the July 7 London bombings, American officials privately rebuked the British for exposing twenty world leaders to unreasonable security risks.

Apologies to Debka for quoting from their subscription only material, but, although I am not sure of its validity, I thought this material was worth promulgating. Debka also reports that (since 7/7) the US is unilaterally freezing assets of London-based Islamic groups close to Bin Laden and Zarkawi. (ht: Rick Scot)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:24 AM
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Reporting the London News - Blogs versus Mainstream Media

It's interesting to compare CNN - the homepage to which many of us migrate when there is a breaking crisis - to a London blogger in the midst of the continuing terror crisis in that city. Both have strengths and weaknesses, but as the potential of blogs may be greater as their organization increases.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:49 AM
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July 21, 2005

The Mainstream Media Needs Psychotherapy

The first (maybe the only) thing I learned in twenty or so years of psychotherapy (hey, I wrote for Woody Allen) was one of the major psychological problems many of us have is we always want to be "right." Indeed, this need to be right can cloud our thinking to such extraordinary degrees we will cling to a view even when the results are wildly detrimental to ourselves.

The Mainstream Media are particularly good case in point for this. They continue to ask asinine self-destructive questions, as they did today to John Howard and Tony Blair, even as media popularity plummets to the lowest (or near lowest) levels ever. These MSMers desperately want their view to be correct about Iraq and the war on terror at the very moment their fellow citizens are being attacked on all sides, sort of like the people who wanted to reason with the guards as they were gassed at Auschwitz just to prove... to themselves at least... they had the right opinion five years before... or maybe ten.

Of course the "need to be right" often leads to blatant lying as we have seen recently from Reuters and the Associated Press. Of course this kind of prevarication is a huge threat to democracy, greater I am convinced than even Bin Laden and his religious fascist cohorts.

Less than half a year ago when some of us first started talking about Pajamas Media we saw it merely as a gadfly/competitor to the Mainstream Media. Since then, the situation has gotten more serious. Who knows where all this will lead?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:48 PM
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Serious People in Serious Times

John Howard responds to the press:

PRIME MIN. HOWARD: Could I start by saying the prime minister and I were having a discussion when we heard about it. My first reaction was to get some more information. And I really don't want to add to what the prime minister has said. It's a matter for the police and a matter for the British authorities to talk in detail about what has happened here.

PRIME MIN. BLAIR: And I agree 100 percent with that. (Laughter.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:46 AM
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Glenn Reynolds Speaks Truth to the Soon-to-be-Powerless

Translation: You're idiots, cowards, and political hacks. Yes! The preening, point-scoring irresponsibility of the press, which is if anything worse in Britain than in America, is one of the most striking things about this war, and it will be decades before it recovers. If it does.

Maybe simple question to these simpletons from Grub Street: Do you have children?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:02 AM
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Power Outage - I'm Back

I have been essentially (not completely) off line since two p. m. Pacific yesterday because of a power outage in the Hollywood Hills. [Spare us the obvious jokes about this, please.-ed. Okay, okay.] It gave me the opportunity to meet the real "neo-neocon" who came out from behind her apple to visit with Sheryl and me at our house while the light dimmed. More soon.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:51 AM
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July 20, 2005

Big Shake-up at My Hometown Rag

Editor John Carroll has "resigned," according to Editor & Publisher. No surprise if you read this paragraph:

But in recent years, the paper has taken a financial drubbing. Even when it won five Pulitzer Prizes in 2004, the second-most ever for a single paper in one year, the accolades were somewhat overshadowed. Two months after the Pulitzer sweep, Tribune Co. announced mandated layoffs of 200 employees, with the Times bearing the brunt. One hundred and sixty jobs were eliminated at the paper, including 60 editorial positions. Two-thirds of the departing journalists took voluntary buyouts.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:25 PM
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Ann Coulter Does Bush a Favor...

... by opposing Roberts. (Triangulation, anyone?)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:35 AM
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Another Band(ar) to Break Up

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, that fixture of Washington diplomatic circles for twenty years or so, is apparently stepping down as Saudi ambassador to the US. But have no fear, he will be replaced another member of their royal family - Prince Turk al-Faisal. Al-Faisal served as the kingdom's ambassador to Britain and also as their head of intelligence. (via Macker, who is trying to see inside the situation)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:30 AM
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Schumer Humor - Tales of the Rich and Fatuous

The oh-so-progressive Senior Senator for New York relucantly took a seat with the hoi-polloi on fifty minute flight.

SEN. Chuck Schumer is still taking a back seat to New York junior Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - as evidenced by their seats on the 8 p.m. U.S. Air shuttle from Washington to New York last week. As Schumer shuffled aboard, he spotted Clinton tucked into the window seat in the first row of first class and Rep. Charlie Rangel in the aisle seat in the row behind her. Schumer then trudged off to coach, booming that he was "going to sit with the regular people," reports The Post's Ian Bishop.

Power to the People, Chuck. (from Page Six, reg necessary but don't we all already have it?)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:21 AM
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"Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return."

Guest-blogging at normblog, Eve Garrard looks at the root causes argument so often used to exonerate terrorism.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:55 AM
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July 19, 2005

Microsoft, Google and the Chinese Box

Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post Wednesday morning on a subject already touched upon by this blog:

Without question, China's Internet filtering regime is "the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world," in the words of a recent report by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The system involves the censorship of Web logs, search engines, chat rooms and e-mail by "thousands of public and private personnel." It also involves Microsoft Inc., as Chinese bloggers discovered last month. Since early June, Chinese bloggers who post messages containing a forbidden word -- "Dalai Lama," for example, or "democracy" -- receive a warning: "This message contains a banned expression, please delete." It seems Microsoft has altered the Chinese version of its blog tool, MSN Spaces, at the behest of Chinese government. Bill Gates, so eloquent on the subject of African poverty, is less worried about Chinese free speech.

At the same time, word comes of a turf war between Microsoft and Google with a Chinese twist:

Microsoft sued Google yesterday after the Internet search leader hired away a high-ranking executive whom the Redmond company described as a key player in developing its search technology and China strategy.

Microsoft said in the suit that Lee is deeply familiar with its confidential business and technological strategies, not only in the search business but also in China. Microsoft accused Google of "intentionally assisting" Lee in the alleged violation of his contract.

I have no idea if these stories are related, but they have the wannabe LeCarré side of my brain spinning. On the face of it, this is about search engines, not blogs... but still words are being sought - like "democracy." Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article linked above adds this tantalizing bit: But in an interview with The New York Times yesterday, Lee said he worked primarily on speech recognition technology at Microsoft. According to the paper, he declined to discuss the suit but said he had been seeking to return to China, where he lived as a child.

Hmmm.... (NYT report here.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:13 PM
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The Big Nomination

Until tonight, to my knowledge I had never heard of U.S. Circuit Judge John Roberts Jr., Bush's apparent nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy. But I gather some conservatives are upset. I have advice for them - get over it! The reason is very simple -- in case you haven't noticied it, we are at WAR! Quite recently fifty-five or so Britons and others were blown to death in the London tubes at the hands of Islamofascists. American servicemen and Iraqi citizens are dying every day in Iraq in the struggle for democracy. The last thing a wartime president needs at a moment like this is a divisive Supreme Court fight. And for what? I don't want George Bush spending one ounce of his credit on this and it may be that he feels the same way.

Now I admit I'm a centrist (or more precisely someone who is bored silly by people who identify with 18th Century ideologies and prefers to think for himself), but seriously, folks, what is really going in the world today? Do you want to see the attention of the U. S. President endlessly diverted by partisan bickering and backstabbing instead of focusing like a laser on what is really important - the preservation of Western Civilization?

UPDATE: BTW, I think "People for the American Way" and other knee-jerk opponents of this nomination faxing out their opposition before anyone has a chance to breath are equally dimwitted. Just where are they living?

MORE: After a short tour d'horizon, it seems Glenn Reynolds' conservative correspondent linked above was an exceptional case.

AND: For those who may have missed it, the perspicacious Political Teen has video of the Bush and Roberts statements.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:57 PM
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MEMRI sets the record straight...

...on who is really behind the London Bombings and 9-11. I'm sure you'll be shocked.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:25 PM
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"The Slave Trade Continues"

Freedom's friend pointed me to this post by M. Simon (no relation - this is a nepotism-free blog... except when it works!).

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:28 AM
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Medblogging

DocSurg is annoyed with me (in email) for devoting so much time to the Valerie Plame kerfuffle when there's our health to worry about. I'm sure my grandmother -- who always reminded me "So long as you're healthy, that's the main thing" -- would agree with him. Alas, they are both right. Check out the Grand Rounds.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:29 AM
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Shuttle Muddle

Is it just because I'm a chicken (or a "chickenhawk") that I think it's time to scrap the space shuttle enterprise and move on? I'm not sure, but I'm beginning to think so. As reports of malfunctionings on the Discovery continue, the one thing our country doesn't need.... humanity doesn't need... is another shuttle disaster.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:21 AM
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Who Goes to the Store Anymore?.... Confessions of an Online Shopaholic

That's me I'm talking about, unfortunately. I will take the occasion of Amazon's Tenth Anniversary (via Glenn, but I think I would have found out about it within the next five minutes anyway) to admit publicly for the first time that "My name is Roger Simon and I am an online shopaholic!"

Just yesterday, I ordered a $392 rug for my office from Overstock.com without having the slightest clue what the damn thing looks like other than a blurry postage stamp sized photo from Bengladesh whose colors are... well, never mind, because: "My name is Roger Simon and I am online shopaholic!" [Better than alcohol or coke.-ed. Marginally.]

Somewhere Jeff Bezos is laughing.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:28 AM
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July 18, 2005

Break Out the Chapati!

America continues to draw closer (and make deals with) our new best friend.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:05 PM
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Unite Against Terror

Sign here.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:00 PM
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More on the Plame Game

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy points us back to the real unsolved conundrums in this bizarre power struggle.

And could the possibility that Plame's cover has long been blown explain why the CIA was unconcerned about assigning a one-time covert agent to a job that had her walking in and out of CIA headquarters every day? Could it explain why the Wilsons were sufficiently indiscrete to pose in Vanity Fair, and, indeed, to permit Joseph Wilson to pen a highly public op-ed regarding a sensitive mission to which his wife - the covert agent - energetically advocated his assignment? Did they fail to take commonsense precautions because they knew there really was nothing left to protect?

We'd probably know the answers to these and other questions by now if the media had given a tenth of the effort spent manufacturing a scandal to reporting professionally on the underlying facts. And if they deigned to share with their readers and viewers all the news that's fit to print ... in a brief to a federal court.

This blog has been interested in related questions for some time.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:59 AM
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Is Bush reaching out on Supreme Court appointments?

Yes, if we are to believe the Hartford Courant whose report says substantive discussions have taken place with both Connecticut's Democratic Senators - Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman.

Lieberman said he was pleased with how the White House has handled the process so far.

Bush has been reaching out to Democrats all week.

New York Times, your turn...

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:47 AM
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The Decline of the Movies Continued

Writing in Slate, Charles Taylor says quite succinctly something I have been thinking for some time:

Except for a few remaining truly independent distributors, the major studios' specialty divisions-the arm that releases foreign films and what has been dubbed the "mid-size" movie (i.e., Lost in Translation, Sideways, et al.)-now virtually determine what audiences see of what we still think of as American independent movies. In other words, the studios nearly control the system that was supposed to represent an alternative to them. If an American indie movie doesn't have a name filmmaker or stars who have taken a smaller paycheck to work on it, if it doesn't create a buzz at Sundance (or is rejected by Sundance), its chances of getting a distribution deal are pretty much dead.

Taylor is writing about Kwik Stop, a movie I haven't seen. But I certainly understand his point. The vaunted American independent film movement is close to dead in the water while studio filmmaking is at its most mundane. Alternative film distribution on the internet has not kicked in in any serious way. We are not at a high point in the history of the cinema, to say the least. The subject of yesterday's discussion -- that film stars mouth off excessively about politics -- is only, at best, a minor aspect of this decline. Actors and writers were doing that when movies were great too (the 1930s and 40s). Much more important is the rise of other distractions - computer games, cable television, even blogging. [No, not that.-ed. Okay.]

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll writes of the hopeful signs from new cheap and easy technologies. He's right. But unfortunately, you still need distribution and, er, a good script.

MEANWHILE: When it comes to distribution, don't mess with Treacher.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:28 AM
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"The mood of how this war is going in Baghdad and Arab capitals is better than in Washington and London."

Our friend Austin of Austin reports on his recent encounter with General Abazaid in Iraq in this must-read Weekly Standard story.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:17 AM
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July 17, 2005

Attention Charles Schumer!

Some disappointing news for you today in the Financial Times:

Karl Rove, deputy White House chief of staff and the top political adviser to US President George W. Bush, did not reveal the name of a covert CIA agent at the centre of a politically charged investigation, according to grand jury testimony from a Time magazine reporter.

But Mr Cooper told the grand jury he was certain that Mr Rove had never used the name of Mr Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, and never indicated she was a covert operative.

Ho-hum. Next scandal.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:08 PM
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In the wake of 7/7...

Reuel Marc Gerecht explores the situation in Europe with his characteristic brilliance. This time the results are scary:

In Europe as elsewhere, Westernization is the key to the growth and virulence of hard-core Islamic radicalism. The most frightening, certainly the most effective, adherents of bin Ladenism are those who are culturally and intellectually most like us. The process of Westernization liberates a Muslim from the customary sanctions and loyalties that normally corralled the dark side of the human soul. Respect for one's father, an appreciation for the human need to have fun, a toleration of eccentricity and naughty personal behavior, the love of art and folk music--all are characteristics of traditional mainstream Muslim society wiped away by the arrival of modernity and the simultaneous spread of sterile, esthetically empty, angry, Saudi-financed Wahhabi thought. In this sense, bin Ladenism is the Muslim equivalent of Western totalitarianism. This cleaning of the slate, this break with the past, is probably more profound in the Muslim enclaves in Europe--what Gilles Kepel called les banlieues de l'Islam--than it is in the urban sprawl of Cairo, where traditional mores, though under siege and badly battered by modernity, nevertheless retain considerable force. Cairo gave us Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's great intellectual; it's not unreasonable to fear that London or Paris or Berlin will give us his successor.

(ht: Jamie Irons)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:22 PM
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In My Backyard

Victor Davis Hanson is not quite as brilliant as he usually is in his analysis of celebrity leftism - "Elegant nonsense." Professor Hanson blames in part the lack of education of the likes of Sean Penn and Cher for their knee-jerk "liberalish" pronouncements, though plenty of high school drop-outs have a pretty good instinctive grasp on national and international politics.

But where I really disagree with the professor is his contention that because Robert Redford plays Bob Woodward, the actor thinks he is a mega-journalist with great investigative powers. Au contraire, Dr. Hanson. Every movie star I have ever met or worked with deep down thinks to one degree or another that he or she is a fraud and that his or her life has been an accident - from having (often temporarily) a pretty face or from some mysterious charisma they themselves do not understand. The insecurity of the actor is one of those true clichés, and it reaches all the way to the top - to the highest star.

By making the pronouncements they do, they are trying to convince the audience of their own seriousness and their own goodness (their own value). But most of all they are trying to convince themselves. Fragile egos, not inflated ones, are at work here.

The psychodynamics can be more complex than that, and to dump all celebrity "leftists" in one pot is grossly unfair, but that is, I think, close to the essence. And this, of course, does not exonerate these people for their often peurile opinions. It only indicates why they are not thought through. Most Hollywood liberals of this sort will not engage in a substantive discussion of the issues because they have no real desire to. Thought, or even truth, is not the point. Stance is.

Hanson is on firmer ground when he talks of liberal guilt as one of the motivating factors. When you're living on a twenty million dollar Brentwood estate, you naturally want to be well thought of, lest someone take it away. You might even go so far as to turn in your Mercedes for a Prius (though you keep an Aston Martin in your garage for special occasions).

But the professor again steers off course when he concludes: In this regard, we could learn again from the Greeks. They thought the playwrights Sophocles and Euripides were brilliant but not the mere mimics who performed their plays.

As a Hollywood screenwriter, I regret to inform Dr. Hanson that although not one of us is even remotely the equal of Sophocles and Euripides, virtually all of us (present company and a very few others excepted) have completely adopted the politics of our actors.
(via Paul Mirengoff)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:12 AM
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July 16, 2005

Terrorists got their heart's desire in Spain...

According to Barcepundit, a smoking gun has been found on the computer of one of the March 11 Madrid terrorists:

The document was recently found by police, according to the Cope radio network who has seen it. It says: "those who were suprised for our quick claim of responsibility in the battle of Madrid, let them know that there were other circumstances. In the case of Madrid, the time factor was very important in order to put an end to the government of Aznar the ignoble. [bold mine]

So the goal of the Islamofascists was to put Zapatero in office. Well, they got what they wanted. But maybe I over-stated when I wrote it was their "heart's desire." Their hearts are more likely stuck back in 1492 and their real desire is "Al Andaluz."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:04 AM
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"Wheels Keep on Turnin'"

Those wild and crazy guys at the UN apparently don't know when to quit:

UNITED NATIONS - The man who abruptly retired as Kofi Annan's cabinet chief after shredding papers related to the Oil-for-Food program has been shredding still more documents at the United Nations, an eyewitness told FOX News.

Iqbal Riza, who has been working on a $1-a-year salary as a special advisor to Annan, has been shredding large quantities of unknown documents in his new 10th-floor U.N. office across the street from the U.N. Secretariat building, the source said.

I guess that's what we'll all have to look forward to when those great international public servants take over the Internet. Personally, I'm getting my bribes in early. Iqbal, baby... lunch? (ht: Fausta)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:40 AM
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Our New Best Friend

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is on his way to the U. S. for meetings with President Bush. From ExpressIndia: Singh said, "India attaches the highest importance to further developing and strengthening the strategic partnership with the us, both in the bilateral context as well as to strengthen our partnership to meet global challenges. As the world's two largest democracies, we have common values and interests."

On the agenda: terrorism and, interestingly, United Nations reform. China is, of course, watching. And the world goes on, Europe slippng imperceptibly off the radar screen.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:43 AM
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Stop this man before he sins again - Chiraq the Model continued

In one of the more entertaining political implosions of our time, French President Jacques Chirac continues to shorten the distance between foot and mouth to microscopic lengths, this time assuring a fascinated world that the French are "better than the British," according to the Torygraph.

Le President has issued a denial, however, of his previous pronouncement on English food. "No, no, I did not say that," said Chirac. The Torygraph agrees: "a factually correct answer as far as it went, as he had put British cooking second from bottom, above Finland."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:22 AM
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July 15, 2005

Busman's Holiday

From Israel21c: An Israeli surgeon - on vacation with his family in London - sprang to action following last week's terror attacks and helped save victims' lives.

"I have heard enough explosions to know what they sound like, and when I heard the boom I sprung into action," he told The Post.

I'll bet he has. (ht: Sheryl)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:09 PM
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Party On, Reuters Dudes!

Some people howled like stuck pigs when I called certain people in the media "objectively pro-fascist" in Orwell's terminology, but I thought maybe I was understating and the "objectively" should be removed when I read this account of a "going away party" at Reuters.

Close buddies? Top terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi made a "guest appearance" in a video prepared by the staff of Reuters news agency in Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a "going away" gift for a colleague, Ynetnews has learned.

"All of a sudden, at the end, there is Zakaria Zubeidi, playing the head of Reuters. Zubeidi was sitting in Reuters' Jenin office, saying he was Reuters' chief," the official said.

Maybe he already is. (via LGF)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:30 AM
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Chiraq the Model

Apparently, Jacgues Chirac - hard to believe it but he's still around - has finally seen the handwriting on the wall and is actually considering reforming the dysfunctional French economic system.

"There's now a willingness to give priority to employment, instead of merely helping the unemployed," Chirac, 72, said in an annual television interview with French journalists in his Paris office on the Bastille Day holiday.

(Pretty good title pun, huh? Unfortunately for blog fans only.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:21 AM
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Man of Science, Man of (Some?) God

It's not surprising in our world, but scary and depressing nevertheless, that individuals like the just arrested Magdy el-Nashar are being trained in our and British universities:

An Egyptian scientist who police want to speak to as part of the London bombing inquiry has been arrested in Cairo, it has been reported.

The FBI had been called in to help search for el-Nashar because he attended North Carolina State University in 2000, ABC News said.

I'm still naive, I guess, since I have difficulty wrapping my mind around the idea that individuals like this use their modern scientific education in the service of a bizarre fantasy that a person blowing themselves up will instantly pass through a door into "Paradise." Pure terror for political ends I could understand, but that is cognitive dissonance of an order I cannot comprehend. And from educated people. The rage and shame must be extraordinary.

UPDATE: More on related matters from Clive Davis' blog (always a must-read for me).

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:30 AM
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July 14, 2005

The Plame Rove Affair is One of the Biggest Wastes of Time of My Lifetime...

... and that's saying a lot! But when it comes to absurd non-scandal scandals this one may beat the band. Not only is the media treating as if it were a serious issue with catastrophic implications whether a woman who within days of her "unmasking" as a CIA agent (or not, depending on who you believe or how you define it) appears as a Bond glamour girl consort to her prevaricating husband on the pages of Vanity Fair... now we learn that the whole Grande Scandale may have been createdinternally by the press itself.

Presidential confidant Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he learned the identity of a CIA operative originally from journalists, then informally discussed the information with a Time magazine reporter days before the story broke, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

So according to this "source"... and oh boy are we in the world of "sources" here... Rove learned about Plame from Novak. The NYT implies the opposite, or sort of the opposite, claiming Rove said "I heard the same thing" to Novak after the journalist informed the presidential adviser that he (Novak) had heard Plame was a CIA agent (something apparently half of Washington knew anyway... and she only had a desk job in the first place.)

Who knows and who cares? Forget a tempest in a teapot. This is a tempest in a thimble. But that doesn't stop the likes of Charles Schumer from treating this like Watergate II while people are being blown up in London Tubes. What a fatuous creep!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:29 PM
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Which Side Are You - Part On & On & On

This recording reminds me that I didn't leave the "liberal" side - they left me. Don't miss it. (ht: Andrew B.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:16 PM
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The folks that brought you the biggest heist in history are now moving in on the Internet

Yes, I am referring to the United Nations, of course. The gang that brought you the Oil-for-Food scandal now wants to regulate life online. [Well, you can kiss this blog good-bye. ed. Hey, I can fall back on screenwriting.] But don't panic. Among other reassuring comments in the CNET article:

At issue is who decides key questions like adding new top-level domains, assigning chunks of numeric Internet addresses, and operating the root servers that keep the Net humming. Other suggested responsibilities for this new organization include Internet surveillance, "consumer protection," and perhaps even the power to tax domain names to pay for "universal access."

That would bring "taxation without representation" to undreamed of levels. (ht: Wichita Boy]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:36 PM
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The Psychopathology of Everyday Life - Gaza Style

I'm sure this article on the etiology of suicide bombers would tax even the good doctor's powers of insight:

The bomber's family and the sponsoring organisation celebrate his martyrdom with festivities, as if it were a wedding. Hundreds of guests congregate at the house to offer congratulations. The hosts serve the juices and sweets that the young man specified in his will. Often, the mother will ululate in joy over the honour that Allah has bestowed upon her family. (ht: Ed Driscoll)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:59 PM
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The Mehlman Delivers

Okay, awful pun (even for Karl Mallone fans), but an interesting speech today by RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman to the NAACP National Convention. In it, Mehlman (refreshingly) even admits that his party was wrong at different times in the past on civil rights. Of course so was the other party:

The history of the other party is a different one. Democrats were the party of Jim Crow and Democratic filibusters blocked progress for decades.

And it's not healthy for the country for our political parties to be so racially polarized.

The whole thing's worth a look.

UPDATE: It's interesting to consider Mehlman's approach in comparision to Howard Dean's hortatory pronouncements.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:34 AM
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Dept. of Oh, Please!

Senator Charles Schumer has taken political grandstanding to a new level (well, maybe not a new level, but certainly up there) calling for the suspension of Karl Rove's security clearance while investigators get to the bottom of the "nefarious" Plame Affair. (Maybe they can tell us who hired the photographer to take the "secret" agent's photo for Vanity Fair. That's a potential indictement, isn't it?) It's so interesting to find the Senator from New York coming to the defense of Joseph C. Wilson. Perhaps the Senator is not aware of the "Ambassador's" peculiar background. But then, partisan politics makes strange bedfellows indeed. It even turns liberals into reactionaries.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:59 AM
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Breaking News!!!

Replacement suggestion for Oliver Stone on 9-11 flick!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:51 AM
Comments (2)

July 13, 2005

The Big Filter

Does legacy media report the news or does it filter it? I know that's a loaded question but an interesting case is a article from tomorrow's New York Times - "Report Discredits F.B.I. Claims of Abuse at Guantanamo Bay" - by Neil A. Lewis. The story begins:

A high-level military investigation into complaints by F.B.I. agents about the abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded in a report released Wednesday that their treatment was sometimes degrading but did not qualify as inhumane or as torture.

General Schmidt told the committee that his investigation could not substantiate some of the F.B.I. accusations. His report said that some of the practices that evoked criticism among the F.B.I. agents were approved interrogation techniques, like stripping detainees, forcing one to wear women's lingerie and wiping red ink on a detainee and telling him it was menstrual blood.

It then goes on to cite some Republicans who see the report as exonerating the military and some Democrats who see it as further indication of military malfeasance before concluding with at least the implication of a military cover-up:

"It is clear from the report that detainee mistreatment was not simply the product of a few rogue military police on a night shift," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's senior Democrat. "Rather, this mistreatment arose from the use of aggressive interrogation techniques."

General Schmidt had recommended that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the Guantanamo prison in 2002 and 2003, be reprimanded for failing to exercise proper supervision over the Kahtani interrogation. But Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the commander of the United States Southern Command, overruled that recommendation.

But wait... there's something missing in all this -- the report itself! We the readers of the New York Times are not offered access to the source material used by Mr. Lewis. We must rely on him (and his editors) as a filter for this material even though, during this Internet age, posting the report along with the article at the NYT website would be a relatively simple matter. As of this hour, I cannot find it.

Interestingly, the reviled Fox News is beginning to post source documents along with their online articles. Pajamas Media will make a habit of it.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:13 PM
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Normblog keeps getting better and better...

Now, in the wake of the London bombings, Norm speaks of the "Apologists among us."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at