August 31, 2005

Oil-for-Food... It Never Ends

Via Captain Marlow, who also has an interesting story on the execrable Mayor of London, this latest on Oil-for-Food:

UNITED NATIONS - The nine U.N. agencies involved in the oil-for-food program have agreed to pay Iraq about $40 million in oil proceeds they received in 2003 to finish their work but never spent, United Nations officials said Tuesday.

One of the largest humanitarian programs in history, it was a lifeline for 90 percent of the country's population of 26 million.

Again, meant to be.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:08 AM
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August 30, 2005

The Pajamas Hits Keep on Coming...

Who better than inimitable Baldilocks (aka Juliette Ochieng) for our third contributor profile at the PJ Media in Tranisition site? One of LA's premiere bloggers for sure.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:29 PM
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Sad Memory of New Orleans in Kyoto

We ate breakfast today at New Orleans' legendary Cafe du Monde, which has a branch in the Kyoto Railroad Station! Some of the best coffee in Japan probably... and those familiar beignets, indistinguishable from the ones I had N'Awlins. Are they there anymore?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:23 PM
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It feels as if I've been inj Japan so long....

I ought to be able to vote. (Actually I'll be home Sept.4.) According to Asahi Shimbun, it figures to be a close vote between PM Junichiro Koizumi and opposition leader Katsuya Okada. The big issue appears to be possible privitization of the postal system (which includes many things here). If I could vote, I imagine I'd go with Koizumi, but I'm not sure that's not because of his cool hair.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:36 PM
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The Seven Samurai Meet Blade Runner

Sometimes it's hard to believe Japan is one country. When you're outside the big cities, most of the time, if you're a tourist, you're looking for the quaint or the folkloric, like this fellow selling river fish in Kanazawa's Omi-cho Market.

Or maybe you're looking for the perfect period interior like this one in a samurai's house in the Naga-machi District. It also has a near perfect garden and near perfect dappled carp floating practically motionless in a near perfect stream. Trust me.

Of course the natives are onto us tourists and our lust for elegant Japanese crafts (who wouldn't be?), so they offer opportunities for us try our hands at ceramics and such for a few (or a lot of ) yen. Here Madeleine and Sheryl are having a go at yuzen silk painting at an establishment only a few hundred meters from the samurai's house. They did pretty well, but yours truly made quite a hash of it. At least I didn't get any paint on my camera.

So... yet more aesthetically minded... looking for the zen of the zen.. we headed off to the capital of it all today... Kyoto... and found... "Blade Runner"! Yes, that historic temple city has the most teched-out railroad station I have ever seen and we are literally staying inside it - at the Hotel Granvia. This photo is taken from the front door of the hotel looking across the station at the Isetan Department Store on the opposite end. There are so many restaurants and shops in this place, you could never leave it and almost never repeat yourself.

I guess if you wanted to do a little zazen, you could bring your meditaton cushion up to this skyway which crosses over the vast station ten stories up.

As I type this, I can hear the shinkansen rumbling past. More from the temples tomorrow.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:20 AM
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It's about the money

Reading the post on The Brussels Journal (via Glenn)regarding the speech by Vaclav Klaus reminded me (as if I needed it) of how much people's "ideology" is dictated by financial self-interest. Fidel Castro and Yasir Arafat made millions calling themselves socialists. So too the Eurocrats grow fat in increasingly dysfunctional societies with high unemployment. Idealism is a business.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:54 AM
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August 29, 2005

And the Ezra Pound Memorial Award goes to...

...the racist clowns in the so-called Jordanian Writers Society who, according to this AP report, would fit right in with the Stalinist wing of the Union of Soviet Writers. International PEN should really look into this.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:30 PM
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Watching Katrina on the BBC

There's something surreal about sitting in a hotel room in Kanazawa monitoring the progress of Hurricane Katrina on the BBC. No familiar faces like Geraldo are in evidence clinging theatrically to a tree for "dear life" while giving us a blow by blow of impending doom, but instead the usual array of "news readers" along with pretty decent on location coverage from New Orleans. Of course, it's impossible to tell how serious the storm is (serious enough, I'm sure) but that's always the case. The Brits do disasters well, far better than they do geo-politics. Listening to their coverage of Iraq is another matter. But we all know about that.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:05 AM
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Sissy Willis - Contributor Profile #2

The second contributor profile is up at the Pajamas Media in Transition site - Sissy Willis. Sissy is one of my favorite bloggers because she is so skilled at moving from the personal and the cultural to the political and back again, something I think often gives a blog it's authenticity. By that I mean something quite simple: If you have a sense of the person, you are a better able evaluate what they say on controversial matters. It's kind of the opposite of the cult of the anonymous journalist. Anyway, we're pleased to have Sissy aboard.

UPDATE: I note over at Sissy's site she's slightly disappointed that her profile was not as quickly noted on this site (and elsewhere) as it should have been. I extend my apologies, but point out I'm in a slightly different time zone from normal (16 hours from home!) and trying to do some final sight-seeing with my family in Kanazawa and Kyoto before returning to Los Angeles. I certainly meant no disrespect to Sissy who, as you can see from the above, I admire immensely.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:39 AM
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New Orleans Typhoon

There was a typhoon in Tokyo last week while I was here in Japan, but I didn't know about it until it was over. My guess is it wasn't much on the typhoon scale and I hope Katrina isn't all she's cracked up to be on the hurricane scale. I gather she's been "downgraded" to Category 4. Good news for now. As a lover of N'Awlins, the kinds of hurricanes I like down there are the ones that come in a glass over ice.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:06 AM
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August 28, 2005

Rockin' Out in Kanazawa

Because of its history and beauty, Kanazawa was (like Kyoto) one of the places marked off limits for our bombers during World War II. Hence it is a remarkably preserved city with many untouched monuments and parks like the famous Kenrokuen garden.

Thanks to our friends Jiro and Kazue, who lived fifteen years in the city, we ended up spending our first evening here at a taiko drum concert held outside Kanazawa Castle. We arrived early for the set up.

I had never seen taiko live before but had always associated it with male drummers. It seems times have changed. This is the local group warming up.

Here they are performing.

Music was in the air in modern Kanazawa as well. These kids were rocking out in front of the Daiwa department store.

And these girls preparing for a classical concert at the city's ultramodern railroad station.

Even Koizumi himself looks more like an impresario than a politician.

Of course, he's not the only one running for office. These characters were haranguing the crowds outside Daiwa not far from the bebopping teens.

I know where my vote is going...

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:39 AM
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A Culture of Psychopaths

Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas has a problem. He rules over a culture of psychopaths. Not more than a metaphorical ten minutes after the Israelis yanked their citizens out of Gaza, one of his is once again behaving like a certifiable homicidal maniac. Does Abbas have the guts or even the conviction to do anything about this? He hasn't shown it so far. Not even close. If I were the Israelis, I'd keep building that wall. I assume they are.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:33 AM
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August 27, 2005

Hitchens a la Mode

At this time when the press is reaching new levels of cacophony in declaring Iraq a failure we need Christopher Hitchens more than ever to put things in perspective with a little reference to Saki:

One might have thought, therefore, that Bush and Blair's decision to put an end at last to this intolerable state of affairs would be hailed, not just as a belated vindication of long-ignored U.N. resolutions but as some corrective to the decade of shame and inaction that had just passed in Bosnia and Rwanda. But such is not the case. An apparent consensus exists, among millions of people in Europe and America, that the whole operation for the demilitarization of Iraq, and the salvage of its traumatized society, was at best a false pretense and at worst an unprovoked aggression. How can this possibly be?

Childishness is one thing--those of us who grew up on this wonderful Edwardian author were always happy to see the grown-ups and governesses discomfited. But puerility in adults is quite another thing, and considerably less charming. "You said there were WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire." I have had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to intone the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus, the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million bribe in a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching examples would by no means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver. Yes, it must be admitted that Bush and Blair made a hash of a good case, largely because they preferred to scare people rather than enlighten them or reason with them. Still, the only real strategy of deception has come from those who believe, or pretend, that Saddam Hussein was no problem.

Isn't it interesting how much better Hitchens writes than his critics? If he were an oped writer for the New York Times, which he obviously should be, the humiliation factor alone could change history. (ht: Rick Ballard)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:19 PM
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Pajamas in Transition

I'm sure most of you have already seen this on LGF, but the Pajamas Media in Transition - Information Site is finally up. And, yes, I admit it, Charles did all the work (well, most of it) while I goofed off over here drinking sake and taking hot baths.

But seriously, we're all very proud of this site (transitional as it is) and proud to have Evan Coyne Maloney as our first contributor profile of many to come. Evan represents well what we are trying to aggregate and encourage - the original minds of the blogosphere.

Check back with the site as new contributor profiles appear every day or so.

UPDATE: Thanks for the feedback below. This is not a "true beta" but a transitional/informational site for something much larger coming in the fall. We had included RSS feeds but they were not yet activated, should be shortly (if not already). As for the type face, we're taking it under advisement. One possibility, of course, is to provide a toggle for font size. Colors, etc., are only provisional.

Also, to the question of whether affiliated bloggers will be keeping their own blogs, the answer is an emphatic yes. The intention is to enhance those blogs and to increase communication between them, also to highlight new blogs as they develop.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:13 AM
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August 26, 2005

The Devil, as we all know, is...

...in the details. But the Iraqi Constitution does not seem to be as much of a disaster as we were led to believe only a few days ago, at least according to this Toronto Globe & Mail breakdown: Among highlights...

-Islam is the official religion and the main source of legislation.

But...

-No less that 25 per cent of the seats in parliament must be held by women.

-Basic human rights for women, for example legal equality, banning of violence, abuse and trading of women.

Twenty-five percent doesn't seem so bad compared to, say, the US Congress and most other legislative bodies in the world. And "legal equality," assuming it's real and actually overruns Sharia, is a huge step.

Other points are worth reading.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:24 PM
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Ryokan Deluxe

We are splurging on a rather upscale ryokan (formal Japanese inn) in Takayama called Nagase. The sculptor Isamu Noguchi stayed here as well as several famous Japanese novelists and poets whose calligraphic salutes to the establishment adorn the entryway. Here is my young model/daughter in our room by the television and the tokonoma - the traditional scroll shrine.

When last I stayed in one of these places (the eighties, when researching a novel) I was rather overwhelmed and uncomfortable I would be seen as some crude barbarian. Now I am quite enjoying it. The bath (ofuro) is terrific and the cuisine (served in your room) even better, including a tempura of raw rice (hard to explain) and the local Hida beef. The Japanese, I gather, are less impressed than we Americans with Kobe beef. They have many fine regional varieties, Hida being one of them. This is also a sake town because of the mountain water. I've had more than a few glasses.

Takayama is another heavily touristed region (known as "Little Kyoto") yet still there are few Westerners around. Of course none of them would use these latter day rickshaws, lest they be accused of imperialism. The Japanese themselves have no such restrictions.

One of the renowned local attractions is the Hida village where the old grass roof houses have been collected. These seemingly rustic constructions are actually quite complex and beautiful, quite large too. We ran into some Italian architects who had come all the way from Milan to study them.

This is what the roofs look like from the inside. The excellent book Lost Japan has an interesting discussion of the difficulty in trying to build such a roof today.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:45 AM
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August 25, 2005

Bolton Goes to Work

Here's something to chew on while I'm away. (ht: Rick Ballard)

Also, have a look at Cliff May's open letter to Cindy Sheehan, if you haven't seen it. (bad link fixed)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:02 AM
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On the Nakasendo Trail

Sheryl, Madeleine and I hiked almost ten kilometers of this old post road between Edo(old Tokyo) and Kyoto, which has been turned into an eco tourist attraction. Two of the old post towns - Tsumago and Megome - have been resurrected and you walk the hills between the two. At the end they give you a diploma for 100 yen. Madeleine is very proud of hers - it's a pretty long hike for a seven year old, though not too stiff for adults.

We began by staying the night at this minshuku (Matsushiroya) in Tsumago. A minshuku is a small inn, generally cheaper and less formal than the better-known ryokans.

This is the interior... courtyard, I guess you would call it.

Here are two shots of the trail.

Of course along the way it's not all little shrines and picturesque scenery....

Some have emailed asking how we planned our trip. The people at the website Japanese Guest Houses were very helpful and we booked our ryokan/minshuku reservations through them. It's a great site for armchair traveling.

Soon we will be meeting up in Kanazawa with our old friends Jiro and Kazue. At that point, we are in the hands of the locals.

I apologize to those who log onto this site for non-stop political opinion... but it's good for all of us to take some time off from that once in a while... good for me anyway. But don't worry - the zen will wear off soon.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:49 AM
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August 22, 2005

Out of the Closet and Into the Streets

I am not a Republican (not interested in joining any political party these days) and, since I am an agnostic, I am clearly not an Orthodox Jew (or orthodox anything else), but I certainly sympathize with Republican/Orthodox screenwriter Robert J. Avrech's view of working in today's Hollywood (via Atlas Shrugs). Simultaneous to publishing his analysis, Mr. Avrech has taken the brave step of "coming out" as a Hollywood Republican.

As one who was once, during my Big Fix days, considered "too left" for some Hollywood assignments and is now considered "too conservative" for overtly political projects - all without my views having changed to any substantial degree - I can certainly understand Mr. Avrech's dismay. Progressive, liberal, etc. are malleable terms which now seem to denote subscribing to the values of "Our Crowd," a crowd every bit as rich and comfortable as the one to which the catch phrase was originally assigned, perhaps more so.

One could get very upset about this if Hollywood movies meant anywhere near what they once did to the zeitgeist. Fortunately they don't.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:13 PM
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If this is Tuesday, it must be Matsumoto!

Sheryl, Madeleine and I are up in the Japanese Alps now in the city of Matsumoto and environs. Matsumoto is famous for one of the great enduring samurai castles known as the Crow Castle for its black walls. The place seemed familiar to me as the location from some Kurosawa movie or other, possibly Ran, but I could be mistaken.

The interior was quite worth visiting with the usual compliment of bizarre torture weapons. An entire floor was hidden from outside view and had no windows. In this photo Sheryl and Madeleine are in the samurai arcade, which was built wide to accomodate their armor.

In the afternoon we took a train out to the suburban town of Hotaka to visit a wasabi farm - definitely heaven for your basic California sushi maven. Tasting the genuine article at the source (most wasabi in domestic sushi bars is not even wasabi, but dyed horseradish) was great fun. They make everything out of wasabi at this farm -- chocolate wasabi (didn't try), wasabi ice cream (Madeleine loved) and pickled wasabi (sensational). The wasabi root is grown in heavily irrigated, almost muddy, land with water maintained at 13 degrees centigrade year round. Wasabi is obviously delicate suff.

The farm is a well-known attraction up here and there were a couple of hundred Japanese tourists wandering around, drinking wasabi beer, etc. Absolutely no Caucasians but us. Westerners just don't seem to travel around rural Japan in any numbers. They are missing a fabulous experience. The people are very friendly and the country, of course, well organized with superb public transportation. All you need is a phrase book and a little patience if you mix up stations like Oyama and Omiya, get off at the wrong stop and miss your bullet train connection. [You did that?-ed? Nah, it's just a rumor.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:29 AM
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August 21, 2005

Gaza Report from Japan

I watched the news from Gaza on my hotel room television last night here in Matsumoto in the Japanese alps. This was my first view of CNN Japan, which appears quite similar to CNN Europe since it is filled with Brits - Richard Quest doing his international business show, etc. - at least at the hour I was watching. What surprised me was the positive coverage the Israelis were getting from the British commentators. Ariel Sharon, whom they normally dismiss as Attila from the Negev, was being treated like a world statesmen. They had on a Palestinian teenager who evinced some sympathy for the settlers being forced to move from their homes (it was probably hard to find this kid who looked about sixteen and spoke fluent English, but still...). It seems that, for the nonce, the Israelis have made a smart PR move. Where it goes from here is anybody's guess.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:33 PM
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It's just the same old song...

Patrick Frey, who has been doing a yeoman's job of criticizing the Los Angeles Times on his blog Patterico's Pontifications, has an op-ed in that paper today on the LAT's coverage of the Cindy Sheehan affair. I'm not sure, as Frey writes, that the LAT is really trying to turn Sheehan into the next Rosa Parks. If so, the paper has a long way to go (like light years). But even so their coverage of this particular episode has been boring, shallow and biased. No suprise there. But my question is this: Isn't it our job in the end to start our own outlets to tell our vision of the truth rather than expecting organs like the LAT to reform themselves according to our principles? As a wise fellow once said, "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:38 AM
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August 20, 2005

Whose "Circle Jerk"?

A media food fight to the death is in progress on the pages of tomorrow's (today's for me here in Japan) New York Times Book Review. "To the death", you ask? Well, something extreme if you read the reaction of the Times' own executive editor Bill Keller to the essay "Bad News" by Richard Posner in a previous issue of that review. (Disclosure: Keller is a friend and I would like to keep it that way.)

Apparently Posner had the temerity to suggest the near-monolithic liberalism these days of the Times and similar publications was motivated to a great extent by Mammon (in part in response to outside competition like blogs). Keller accuses Posner of making " almost no distinctions within the vast category of American media, between those that are aggressively partisan and those that strive to keep opinion sequestered from news... Hmm... The editor later continues:

The saddest thing is that Judge Posner's market determinism leaves no room for the other dynamics I've witnessed in my 35 years in newspapers: the idealism of reporters who think they can make the world better, the intellectual satisfaction of puzzling through a complicated issue, the competitive gratification of being first to discover a buried story, the pride in striving to uphold a professional code of fair play, the quest for peer recognition and, yes, the feedback from attentive and thoughtful readers. He makes no allowance for the possibility that conscientious reporters and editors are capable of setting aside their personal beliefs or standing up to their advertisers (and the prejudices of their readers) to do work they believe in.

But it does. I don't think Posner would deny any of these things. Nearly everything has some influence, but the key point is that times are changing. They always do and entrenched forces almost always resist it. Elsewhere Keller has called blogs a "circle jerk," an intemperate remark from someone who should know better - or perhaps projection, since that term just as easily applies to the world of Krugman, Rich, et al, perhaps more. But whatever the case, the Times seems on the defensive and has purchased, possibly for an excessive amount, the rather benign online information source About.Com.

There is a lot to learn from the plight of mainstream media right now for those of us in new media (hate that term). We should all remember ,first of all, not to be complacent. It doesn't take Robespierre to remind us that the "revolution eats its young." (ht: Tammy Bruce)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:30 PM
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Some photos of Nikko

Nikko is a certified "world historic" site, therefore a major tourist destination. But the vast majority of the tourists are Japanese in search of their past. Not far away is an amusement park called Edo Wonderland, which is sort of an Old West town but instead of cowboys and Indians, you get samurai, geishas, etc. - all the artifacts of pre-Meiji (pre-Western) Japan. Sheryl, Madeleine and I visited this afternoon and were virtually the only Caucasians in sight.

This is the view from our hotel room at dawn.

Everyone, of course, is taking pictures. One of the key spots is the Sinkyo Bridge. Here a Japanese family and Madeleine are being photographed simultaneously.

A side angle of the bridge...

The Nikko National Park is the home of that gilded shrine Tosho-gu, which has the famous carving of the "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" monkeys. These young students are looking at it.

The shrines here are Tokugawa Period. Some think they are too gaudy. I understand their point, but I like them anyway. Besides they are built in magnificent cedar groves that seem majestic even to this Californian used to sequoias and redwoods.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:05 AM
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August 19, 2005

Rosen vs. Bay

An interesting debate is going on over at Jay Rosen's blog between Jay and Austin Bay concerning press coverage of the White House and the war. But beneath this discussion are issues that go beyond the age-old antagonism between the White House and the press that are beginning to make that conflict almost irrelevant.

The original idea was that press, on behalf of the people, would be a check on arrogant power. But who is representing whom here? At least outside the hard sciences, we may be reaching a time when the question of "What is a professional?" in many areas should be reevaluated and probably democratized. What qualifies a journalist, what qualifies a filmmaker, what qualifies a professor of humanities? The list goes on and on. In the Internet/web age these things are not nearly as easy to define as they once were. And Pollyanna that I am, I think this is a good thing.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:17 PM
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Old Japan

I am in Nikko in the mountains only a couple of hours from Tokyo, yet seemingly much further away. I am sitting here in my yukata, having just taken a hot bath in the large communal tub at my hotel Konishi, feeling reasonably mellow and not completely dead although the digital clock in the corner of this page tells me it is 4:25AM in Los Angeles.

The Konishi is a ryokan hotel, a slightly larger version of the traditional Japanese ryokan. English is only sparingly spoken here and all of the other patrons are Japanese. They seem to be more in search of Old Japan than even this gaijin. The hotel itself is at once tatty and luxurious, something out of Tanizaki. Here is Madeleine on her way in.

Later, mother helped daughter into her yukata. Everyone walks around in their robes at ryokans, to dinner and to the baths.Of course I had no idea how to put mine on and was always afraid it would fall open at the wrong moment.

Dinner was served in the ryotei. It was kaiseki (Japanese formal dining) of the Nikko region, which specializes in yuba, a molten tofu dish I had eaten once before in Los Angeles...

... and a mountain fish described as rainbow trout (I'm sure it wasn't) plus several other dishes about whose ingredients I only have a vague notion at best. A locally grown rice, however, cooked with baby bamboo slivers was quite spectacular.

It's great not be to be thinking about politics all the time for a few days. What is going on outside the Tokugawa Shogunate? (I'll be back to it of course. Probably tomorrow.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:19 AM
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August 18, 2005

Riding the Rails in Japan

I am posting this via an Air H card from my seat in a Japan Rail train headed from Tokyo to Utsonomiya (on the way to Nikko). I have been sitting here receiving email from my Pajamas Media partners, also Instant Messages from across the world. It's pretty incredible.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:58 PM
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Waiting for Sumo

Some people have emailed to ask whether I'm planning on checking out a baseball game here in Japan. No. I'm not much of a baseball fan at home anymore, so I'm not overly interested. Sheryl, Madeleine and I plan on checking out a sumo match later in our trip.

But coming down from a jetlagged breakfast on the thirty-fourth floor (with those great Japanese eggs that have nearly rust-colored eggs), I ran into these friendly ballplayers in the lobby of my hotel.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:48 PM
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Lost in Translation

Dateline Shinjuku: I am here in that same Tokyo neighborhood where the Sofia Coppola movie was filmed, about to collapse in a bed at the Keio Plaza Hotel after having downed a bowl of the hotel's shabu-shabu. Was it any good? I'm too tired to tell. This laptop is reading 5:26AM LA time and I've slept about an hour and a half in the last twenty-four hours.

Taking the bus into Tokyo this evening from Narita Airport, the city reminded me of Blade Runner. But it always does. This is my third time here. And I don't feel I know it even faintly. This time I'm not even making an attempt. We're heading for Nikko tomorrow and then for the Japanese Alps. More to come when I can see straight.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:24 AM
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August 17, 2005

Sayonara

This blog is signing off for a while. My next blogs will be from Tokyo tomorrow night their time (eighteen hours ahead of Pacific). Sheryl, Madeleine and I are excited, but it's no big deal in this modern world. After all, we're going some place as up-to-date as we are, probably more so, where we can drink the water... at least most of it.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:35 AM
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Gaza Waza

The problem with being President of the United States is that everything is about you. This Chicago Trib article talks about how success or failure in Gaza will be pinned on Bush when in reality it will have almost nothing to do with the President or even with the Israelis (who are pulling it out). The success or failure of Gaza is up to.... believe it or not... the Palestinians.

MEANWHILE: Israel appears to be speeding things up.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:41 AM
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Hell Not Yet Frozen Over

But, as norm tell us, someone's not allowed to eat their pepperoni. (No, it's not Saddam Hussein. That was in the South Park movie.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:22 AM
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August 16, 2005

Google and the "Good Omen"

I took Google Ads off my site tonight. I took them off once before but this time it is permanent. Their system of automated word matching ended up with my running an ad for Ali al-Timimi's legal defense. You may recall Al-Timimi,according to the AP, an Islamic scholar who prosecutors said enjoyed "rock star" status among a group of young Muslim men in Virginia. [He} was convicted Tuesday of exhorting his followers in the days after Sept. 11 to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops.

Perhaps Google doesn't care about such things in their pursuit of lucre or in their "multi-culturalism," but many Americans might be slightly concerned about the following: The evidence included a 2003 e-mail in which al-Timimi described the Columbia shuttle disaster as "a good omen" that "Western supremacy (especially that of America) that began 500 years ago is coming to an end, God willing."
Google can conduct its fund-raising for this religious sociopath on another site, not this one. Hereabouts: Google no more.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:51 PM
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Gaza Update

For what it's worth, as per the Haaretz ticker...

04:33 Security sources: Resistance at Neveh Dekalim not as fierce as feared (Israel Radio)

On the other hand... nine minutes later...

04:42 Anti-pullout protester reportedly hit in head by police in Gaza (Haaretz)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:23 PM
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Pajamas Media NOT involved....

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Founders Charles Johnson and Roger L. Simon have denied any involvement in the fast-moving computer worm said to have infiltrated computers at CNN, ABC and the New York Times.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:08 PM
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In Praise of Hirsi Ali

Women's rights are the very center of the War on Terror. In fact I would argue Islamofascism at its core is more than anything else an expression of rage against women and that Islam itself is not much better on that score. That is why to me Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the great positive figures of our time, a modern Joan of Arc who surpasses the original Joan in a moral sense and is at least her equal in pure guts.

I have blogged on several occasions on my irritation (to put it mildly) with my Hollywood community for having ignored Ms. Ali and her now assassinated film collaborator Theo Van Gogh. This seemingly willful ignorance is one source of my alienation from what passes for "liberalism" in our society.

Ms. Ali's article in this morning's Wall Street Journal is another example of her courage. Wide-ranging in her coverage, the author takes us from Canada to Iraq.

It seems strange to associate the context of Canada with that of Iraq, but a closer look at the arguments used to reassure the demonstrating women in both countries reveals the similar ordeals that Muslim women in both countries must go through to secure their rights. It shows how their legitimate and serious worries are trivialized, and how vulnerable and alone they are. It shows how the Free World led by the U.S. went to war in Iraq, allegedly to bring liberty to Iraqis, and is compromising the basic rights of women in order to meet a random date. It shows how the theory of multiculturalism in Western liberal democracies is working against women in ethnic and religious minorities with misogynist practices. It shows the tenacity of many imams, mullahs and self-made Muslim radicals to subjugate women in the name of God. Most of all, it shows how many of those who consider themselves liberal or left-wing see their energy levels rise when it comes to Bush-bashing, but lose their voice when women's rights are threatened by religious obscurantism.

Those who think this war is not worth fighting chose to ignore the fate of hundreds of millions of Muslim women. Shame on them.

Do not miss reading the whole article which contains some disturbing anqalysis of the formalized oppression of women in the new Iraqi constitution.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:58 AM
Comments (56)

August 15, 2005

Dept. of I Didn't Know There Were So Many Dentists

Although circulation for newsweeklies remains flat or is dipping, I am still astonished that Time reports a circulation of 4.05 million copies. Are those real sales or do they give most of them away? I haven't read a copy outside a doctor's office in years. Newsweeklies seem almost quaint these days. Daily newspapers, even blogs, can be too slow for true news junkies who mainline the raw AP feed 24/7. [Are you talking about yourself?-ed. No, I can quit at any time.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:02 PM
Comments (20)

Dept. of Don't Hold Your Breath

Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi has apologized for his country's aggression in WWII. [That means it's safe for you to fly there Wednesday.-ed. I'm relieved.] The Chinese now should also be "relieved" since much of this sudden public atonement has been at their instigation. We shall see if their Communist Party in turn apologizes for the estimated fifty million deaths at the hands of the Great Helmsman.

UPDATE: But hasn't there been a tsunami on their North-east Coast?-ed. Only a 4-inch one.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:09 PM
Comments (24)

Today's mystery question...

Which parent will get more attention from the mainstream media... A or B? (Sorry, no prize, it's too easy -but a hat tip goes to Charles Martin.)

UPDATE: Hitchens demonstrates that those riding the Sheehan bandwagon are reactionaries par excellence.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:00 PM
Comments (23)

Security issues haunt Firefox

As Firefox user, I was disappointed to learn that security issues appear to be slowing or even reversing the new browsers seemingly irrestible rise against the dominant Microsoft Internet Explorer. I haven't had any personal security problems with Firefox the way I did with Explorer, but I'm paying attention. I would be interested to hear from readers their experience.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:04 PM
Comments (25)

"The blood of martyrs has led to liberation!"

... quote unquote an Hamas banner hailing the Israeli evacuation from Gaza. Of course that is nonsense since the Palestinians could have had Gaza and heck of a lot more had Arafat accepted... or even seriously negotiated... the deal offered by then PM Ehud Barak at Camp David and Taba. Gaza was always the first playing card in the negotiations and everybody knows it.

And so far, despite apparent the avidity of some mainstream media outlets to show the violence of incalcitrant settlers, the evacuation has been relatively peaceful, exceptionally peaceful for the Middle East. Haaretz is reporting almost all the residents of the Northern Gaza settlements having agreed to leave with most already gone. No doubt the southern settlements will be more difficult. But if events continue without a major snafu, the ball will soon enough be in Mohammed Abbas' court. Gaza will be his playground and he will have Hamas and Islamic Jihad to deal with. I don't envy him.... As we used to say on our own playground, "No backsies!"

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:48 AM
Comments (3)

August 14, 2005

Gaza - Who do you believe?

Here are ledes from two reports about the Gaza evacuation, both posted online one hour ago.

From the New York Times: Thousands of Jewish settlers defied an Israeli government order to leave the Gaza Strip by midnight Sunday, and Israel's security forces were poised to evacuate the settlers and their supporters in a huge operation that has sharply divided the nation.

From the Financial Times: Religious settlers in Gaza yesterday observed the annual fast of Tisha B'Av that recalls a catalogue of Jewish tragedies over the centuries and to which, no doubt, in future years they will append the trauma of their own expulsion.

As worshippers chanted biblical lamentations at the small cemetery of Neve Dekalim, the "capital" of the Gaza settlements, all but the most messianic appeared resigned to the reality that their government's withdrawal from Gaza, just hours away, could not now be halted.

From the first defiance, from the second resignation... Can it be both? Well, maybe. But most likely what we are reading is what the reporters wanted to see. Meanwhile, this peculiar report...

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:59 PM
Comments (6)

Visitors from another planet....

... possible costume designs for Lear's Fool... a new cure for melanoma or... Saudi swim suits?

(if you guessed the latter, you win)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:26 AM
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"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"

We all know that one well from financial disclaimers and we also know how it applies to nearly everything else in life. Captain V. - the new and fascinating blogger who is a former intelligence insider - uses it as a catch phrase to remind us that terrorists aren't so dumb as always to attack the same way. Therefore, techniques such as shutting off cellphones in parts of New York because Islamists just used those devices in London for their dirty work may not be the most effective method.

Well, okay... although I'm not sure how I would have responded in that instance. But the Captain is after bigger game in his post, shifting the blame for intelligence failure from the intelligence agencies themselves to those who employ them - government policymakers.

I won't point a finger at any single administration or any particular agency head. The problems that plague our national security apparatus are systemic. There is no shortage of suggestions on how to fix the problems (search for "Odom", "Berkowitz", "Steele" or "Treverton" on Amazon for the highlights), though an in-depth discussion is beyond the scope of this particular commentary.

If we are to avoid the next failure that involves intelligence, it is essential that we recognize that intelligence - and all the tools available to our national leadership - works best when it is used properly and with skill.

One need look no further than Sandy Berger's pants to see the truth in that. Yet it seems to me only part of the story - and Captain V. acknowledges this to some extent. Our intelligence agencies have evolved, like almost all bureaucracies, into giant organisms bent on their own self-presrvation above all. It's almost biological and it's very difficult to dismantle. (ht: Charles Martin)

UPDATE: Captain V.'s post, not surprisingly, refers to Able Danger, the revelation that Mohammed Atta & Co. had been noticed considerably before 9/11, but those doing the noticing couldn't get the attention of the proper authorities. Some flay the FBI and/or the Clinton or Bush administrations over this. I don't. Human nature being what it is, it usually takes something hugely dramatic to get people's attention. The US didn't get into World War II until after Pearl Harbor, although there had been plenty of demonstrations of Nazi evil before then. I do, however, condemn those who do not take this with utmost seriousness after 9/11. The 9/11 Commission deserves to be investigated themselves... and thoroughly... about the curious omission of Able Danger from its report. It would seem to have been the most important revelation in the entire process and yet it went missing. Why?

OOPS: The fault here may not be with the commission. If I have falsely accused them I apologize. Perhaps, however, making a false accusation was easy, considering the whole enterprise (the comission hearings) felt so partisan to begin with.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:11 AM
Comments (22)

August 13, 2005

First Kofi, then Kojo and now... Kobina?

Who's Kobina?

I have to admit I didn't know and I've been studying the Oil-for-Food scandal pretty closely. But according to the London Times:

The official investigation into corruption in the £20 billion United Nations oil for food programme is now looking at the brother of Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general.

The secretary-general has so far escaped censure, but the final verdict on his conduct will not be delivered by investigators until the autumn.

Father, son, brother... incredible, huh? Forget the Mafia. Pretty soon we'll be confusing the Annans with the Borgias and the Medici.

Meanwhile, how about this? Why don't we take those pompous frauds in the US Senate who thought blocking the nomination of John Bolton as UN Ambassador more important than investigating the hideous corruption destroying that very international organization and put them to work doing something fruitful... like cleaning latrines in Iraq. (ht: Rick Ballard)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:47 PM
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Welcome Back "Religious Policeman"

One of the wittiest (and most courageous) of bloggers is back - The Religious Policeman. He posts today on what may be the secret weapon that will finally do in those maniac misyogynists, the Wahhabis - Bluetooth.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:43 PM
Comments (1)

It is not often that I link to a comment from another blog.....

... my fault undoubtedly.... but this one from someone posting on LGF as zombie says it all for me.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:45 PM
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In Memoriam, Casey Sheehan

From out of the morass of propaganda, some moving and truthful writing on the subject. (ht: Charles Martin)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:53 AM
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"Acting Out" on all sides

Most op-eds are as ephemeral as the wind.... or should I say hot air?... and would be better used as fodder for disposable diapers, but something tells me John McWhorter's piece in tomorrow's WaPo - Burned, Baby, Burned - will be something more, the opening statement in a serious dialogue. At least I hope it will be, although I fear the likes of some once-great singers will accuse McWhorter of racism when it is they who are projecting their own racist feelings. McWhorter writes out of compassion for black and white - and he doesn't see the problem as simple.

The subject is the turn taken by some portions of the Civil Rights Movement at the point of the 1965 Watts Riots and where this has led us. I pick up McWhorter at what I take to be the heart of his argument:

In general, black America had been "fed up" for centuries before 1965. A useful black history must identify a different factor that sparked the events in Watts and across the land. This factor was a new mood. Only in the 1960s did a significant number of blacks start treating rebellion for its own sake -- rebellion as performance, with no plan of action behind it -- as political activism.

This did not come from nowhere, to be sure -- and where it came from was whites. In the '60s, it became a hallmark of moral sophistication among whites to reject establishment mores, culminating in the counterculture movement. The movement was based initially on laudable intentions: Few today could condemn young, informed whites for rising up against political censorship, racism and later the Vietnam War, or a newly concerned white ruling class for turning its attention to poverty and its disproportionate impact on black people.

But political rebellion always leaves in its wake people who are moved more by the sheer theatrics of acting up than by the actual goals of the protest. At the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, for example, the Free Speech Movement rose up against indefensible suppression of students' speaking truth to power. But on the same campus the following year, a new bunch started the "Filthy Speech Movement," based on emblazoning curse words on placards and watching the suits squirm. It was rebellion for rebellion's sake.

That kind of unintentional by-product of genuine activism hit black America between the eyes. Seasoned black civil rights leaders like Bayard Rustin and A. Phillip Randolph -- who had made real, if gradual, progress in the struggle -- watched as younger sorts shunned their brass-tacks lobbying and rhetorical persuasion in favor of high-profile altercations, preferably involving getting arrested on television. In 1963, Rustin told the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that "the ability to go to jail should not be substituted for an overall social reform program." But Rustin's speech didn't go over too well with SNCC that night, and three years later, the group edged out undramatic but proactive John Lewis as its leader in favor of rabble-rousing polemicist Stokely Carmichael. Acting out was now the main point.

Well, I'm not sure it was entirely the main point. But it was certainly an important one - and continues with us to this day in many guises.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:06 AM
Comments (16)

More "Discrete Charm of the (Liberal) Bourgeoisie"

I'm no fan of Tom Delay, but I almost became one reading Timothy Noah's snobbish surprise that the House Majority Leader could be interested in opera.

Abramoff is a huge opera buff, and-until now this has been a closely guarded secret-so is DeLay. The only previous public hint of this mutual enthusiasm was the revelation in June by Associated Press reporter Adam Nossiter that Abramoff persuaded the Coushatta tribe to put up $185,000 in 2000 so DeLay could treat some of his biggest donors to a concert by the fabled Three Tenors (José Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti, and Placido Domingo). Apparently, DeLay is no mere opera dilettante. He knows his spintos and his verismos and his ariosos, and I guess he must work overtime to keep that knowledge a tightly held secret lest his good-ole-boy constituents in Sugarland, Texas, conclude the Hammer is putting on airs.

Oh, really? There's no proof anywhere that I have seen that Delay (whatever his level of political corruption) hid his love of opera from his constituents, other than Noah's assumptions about the redneck residents of Sugarland and environs and what they would think of their Congressman's musical tastes. I guess the man from Slate is certain no one from Sugarland ever got beyond Dolly Parton. I would remind the hoity-toity Mr. Noah that people from the likes of Oxford, Mississippi have achieved more in literature than ten million journalists of his ilk put together. (via Michael Totten)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:06 AM
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August 12, 2005

Gazawatch

I am one of the many holding his breath that the Gaza evacuation will not create too much violence and that history will ultimately approve Ariel Sharon's decision. While the American media seems obsessed with the usual summer sideshows, Charles Johnson is providing a unique window into what may prove to be one of the more important events (pro or con) in the seemingly endless struggle for a solution to the Middle East crisis. If you haven't clicked on his Gazawatch
yet, I recommend having a look at it as the story develops.

UPDATE: But it you still insist on summer sideshows, the best version so far is here.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:29 PM
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Clive Mourns Mrs. Miniver

Clive Davis has a... superb as usual... piece today on Tech Central Station, Mrs. Miniver Is Dead, which has a dark view indeed of British attitudes towards America. As one who grew up an Anglophile and a Europhile, I find this hugely depressing. Ironically, in many ways Europe is now more provincial than America and genuinely ignorant of anything about our country other than our pervasive pop culture.

Davis naturally faults the relentless BBC propaganda machine (and other similar media outlets) for much of this anti-Americanism, but he also writes: America itself has to accept some of the blame. Even though I'm a Bush admirer, the sheer ineptitude of the administration's public relations has been astounding.

No kidding! By far the best defenses of American foreign policy appear on blogs, of all places. This says worlds about the administration's hapless public relations abilities. And at a moment like this! It's time for the Bush people to look around for help. They need spokespeople with some linguistic ability. I'm serious.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:40 AM
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It could have been a movie Location Manager

They're always running around taking pictures of odd structures in this town, but these days I'm glad police are being a little careful. From NBC News LA:

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Three men who were seen videotaping the Santa Monica pier in a suspicious manner have been identified and were seen videotaping in other communities, police said Thursday.

All three men were of Middle Eastern descent, NBC4 reported. The men's nationalities had nothing to do with the investigation, police said.

The usual suspects (CAIR) are concerned about racial profiling. I'm concerned about mass murder. (ht: Rick Ballard)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:55 AM
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Ouija Board Operating

Some have inquired in the comments to a previous post if there was a ouija board operating in my house the other day. Hard to say. I didn't see one with my own eyes. One time when I went into my kitchen to make coffee, however, I heard some of the following coming from the living room. I think it was a someone named Angleton (?) talking in a distant voice about security matters with my guest who apparently believes in ghosts:

JJA: It wasn't illegal, first of all. How could it have been? The "information" wasn't proprietary, and it wasn't secret. The data came from newspapers and magazines, they just analyzed it, and apparently they analyzed it quite well. There was no legality that prevented them from pointing out the significance of the data to anyone - law enforcement or Army cook. It's just nonsense. Some prissy lawyer in the JAG undoubtedly lectured these guys about spreading sensitive information, but at the end of the day, that wasn't decisive. Their superiors blocked the analysis for a much more important reason: It didn't fit with what the policymakers wanted to believe.

JJA: That would have compelled them to take action. It's very bad for your career to tell the policymakers things they don't want to hear. But don't personalize this: It wasn't just Clinton, Berger, and the others around them; it went on for decades. Even Reagan basically didn't want to do anything about terrorism. It goes back a long time.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:42 AM
Comments (13)

August 11, 2005

"A Gift to the Nation"

From the Guardian:

Pakistan test-fired its first cruise missile on President Pervez Musharraf's 62nd birthday yesterday, in the latest escalation of the arms race with rival India.

Mr Musharraf hailed the Babur as a "gift to the nation". It would, he said, "further improve the balance of power in the region".

Wonderful world, isn't it? Meanwhile, the Mullahs continue pursuing their gift to the Iranian people. Happy, happy.

UPDATE... Dept. of Mine's Bigger than Yours: Front the Pakistan Daily Times, Musharraf "said that Babur was far more superior to the Indian BrahMos cruise missile. He said BrahMos had the capability of carrying warheads to about 290 kilometres whereas Babur could carry warheads up to 500 kilometres."

MEANWHILE... For a look at real life in nuclear-armed Pakistan, the World Education Forum reports: Official statistics released by the Federal Education Ministry of Pakistan give a desperate picture of education for all, espcially for girls. The overall literacy rate is 46 per cent, while only 26 per cent of girls are literate. Independent sources and educational experts, however, are sceptical. They place the overall literacy rate at 26 per cent and the rate for girls and women at 12 per cent, contending that the higher figures include people who can handle little more than a signature.

I was curious about the education site's report on Iran but they have none.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:50 PM
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Is it about Wolfowitz?

Maybe. Dotty old Mick says his new tune "Sweet Neo Con" is not about George Bush. I think it could be about Wolfie and is actually a covert love song (note the "Sweet") in the way they say "You're So Vain" was Carly Simon secretly lusting for Warren Beatty. [Maybe they'll think you're serious.-ed. Well, I am about Beatty.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:24 AM
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Death of the Hand-Drawn

Oddly related to the passing of Barbara Bel Geddes is this WSJ piece of two days ago on the end of hand-drawn animation at Disney. DisneyToon Studios Australia, its last bastion, will be shutting down next year. For most of us, it's not to difficult to see the difference between digital work, terrific as it can be in films like The Incredibles, and the hand-drawn leaves of Bambi. This is one of the reasons some of us are so in awe of artists like Miyakzaki who are carrying on this tradition. On my most recent trip to Japan, I accidentally visited a small museum where his individual animation drawings for Spirited Away were displayed in giant stacks. It's hard to conceive one human being could accomplish so much (maybe his day lasts sixty hours).

Why is this related to Bel Geddes? Of course there are many reasons for the cinema's decline, but sometimes I worry that, for all its vaunted ease of use and accessibility, the digital revolution isn't a part of the increasing disappearance of film as an art or even as a significant cultural institution. Others vastly more accomplished evidently have the same fear. John Canemaker concluded his WSJ article this way:

As Disney's great admirer Steven Spielberg recently said, "If storytelling becomes a byproduct of the digital revolution, then the medium itself is corrupted."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:33 AM
Comments (35)

August 10, 2005

Rest in Peace - Barbara Bel Geddes

Barbara Bel Geddes is dead at 82. Here she is in one of my favorite Hitchock films Vertigo. The link reminds us she was the first Maggie in the original Broadway version of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955).

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:14 PM
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Sandy Berger explained

For what must be reasons of their fading ideology, the major investigative journalism institutions of our country have paid little attention to the Sandy Berger affair, which has drifted out of their consciousness as quickly as you can say Valerie Plame. Nevertheless, the mystery of why the former NSA was "borrowing" papers from the National Archive remains - with the blogosphere seemingly left as the only outlet asking the significant questions.

And now , with the Able Danger revelations, Dr. Sanity has found a possible motivation. And she has a timeline. I wonder if the mainstream media will bother to check it.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:59 PM
Comments (54)

Iran Pushing the Envelope

Is Iran on the brink of an explosion? We've heard that for a long time, but they are certainly pushing the envelope these days:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that weapons recently confiscated in Iraq were "clearly, unambiguously from Iran" and admonished Tehran for allowing the explosives to cross the border.

The shipment of sophisticated bombs was confiscated in the past two weeks by U.S. and Iraqi troops in southern Iraq, senior U.S. officials said Monday.

Meanwhile, there's this "reassuring" tidbit:

Iran today broke United Nations seals on advanced uranium enrichment equipment in the Isfahan nuclear facility, as the International Atomic Energy Agency debated a resolution calling on the government in Tehran to halt such work.

`"The seals were broken, and our cameras and surveillance system is fully operational," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky in Vienna said in a telephone interview. "`They have indicated that they intend to operate all parts of the facility, in time, although it will take a while to get everything up and running.'"

Am I the only one who finds this more disturbing than the Cold War?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:54 AM
Comments (47)

August 9, 2005

"Able Danger"...

...is the name of a classified military intelligence unit that allegedly identified Mohammed Atta and three of his fellow conspirators over a year before 9/ll but were unable to get their information to the FBI. From the AP:

[Representative Curt] Weldon said that in September 2000 Able Danger recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI ``so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists.'' However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement.

Well, I'm sure the ACLU will be pleased, but most of us will have more ambivalent reactions. The New York Times' version is here.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:47 PM
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California Deamin' - on my deck

Fire season has come early this year - this time only a canyon over from me (Nichols) - as choppers whirl over my house as I type this. We longtime Californians get pretty sanguine about these things. Hey, fires, earthquakes, whatever... This one doesn't look so bad as these things go. Anyway, I'm going to Japan in a week. Nothing catastrophic ever happens there under 8.6 on the Richter Scale, especially if you stay away from the sarin..

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:24 PM
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The seedy versus the cheesy.... or is it the other way around?

This graph in the New York Times article on the forthcoming New York Senate race between Hillary Clinton and Jeanine Pirro seemed as if it were lifted from the pages The Onion:

Ms. Pirro also settled on the Senate race only after concluding that the legal problems of her husband, Albert J. Pirro Jr., would not derail her; he was convicted of income tax fraud in 2000 and spent 11 months in prison in a case that involved tax returns that Ms. Pirro signed. Democrats have suggested that the Pirros' finances could be fair game, raising the possibility that the two candidates' husbands could become proxy issues in the political warfare. Yet Ms. Pirro's advisers also believe that in a Senate race, the candidates' husband issues could cancel each other out.

Interestingly, on the issues, the two women are not that wildly different either.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:47 AM
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It looks as if I will be in Japan in interesting times...

From the Japan Times:

Monday's rejection by the House of Councilors of the postal privatization bills has left the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party sharply divided as it faces a general election in the coming weeks and a possible fall from power.

The LDP, which has enjoyed almost uninterrupted single-party rule since 1955, has seen its power wane since the early 1990s. It has only managed to hang on to the reins of government through coalitions and, since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's inauguration in April 2001, his charisma and popularity.

Perhaps not all my blogging from there will be about "best sushi bars" after all (though there will be some of that, I promise). On the other hand, Forbes is reporting a jump in Koizumi's popularity after the PM called for a snap election.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:33 AM
Comments (28)

August 8, 2005

Koji and Kofi - The Still Unsolved Case of the "Main Mentor"?

This blog has taken a certain interest in the relationship of the Annans père et fils. Today, buried deep in the Volcker Committees latest report (after the predicted defenestrations of Benon Sevan and Alexander Yakovlev) was the following tidbit, according to the Guardian:

The report touched briefly on Mr Annan and his son, Kojo. The inquiry said new emails suggesting that Kofi Annan knew more than he had said about his son's involvement in the programme "clearly raises further questions" that would be answered in the final report.

The final report is scheduled to be published at one of the worst possible times for Mr Annan. It threatens to overshadow a special UN summit in September, to be attended by heads of government, to discuss UN reform and meeting goals for reducing poverty.

How far will that final report go? Time will tell. But I wouldn't want to be Paul Volcker at this moment, trying to concoct a "judicious" wrap up to his investigation while an Internet's worth of bloggers wait to examine his every word, weighing them for posterity. Volcker would be well to remember that the rules have changed. The media is returning to the citizens. And we are more dogged than the press. We have more eyes.

UPDATE: A pdf file of the Volcker Committee's third interim report is here. Portions relevant to Kojo can be found on page six. Also of interest, if only for entertainment value, is Appendix B in which Kofi lieutenant S. Iqbal Riza, he of the busy shredder, complains of being harshly treated by the committee.

MORE: The Globe and Mail reminds us that Kofi's new right-hand man is covering for his boss. Mr. Annan's chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, told reporters that the Secretary-General was disappointed that the Volcker committee had raised the new questions, and then left them hanging for a month.

Mr. Malloch Brown noted, however, that Mr. Volcker indicated there was no evidence to dispute the committee's earlier findings that Mr. Annan had not interfered with the awarding of the Cotecna contract.

Technically, perhaps. But if you read page 6 of the report as noted above you will see there already has been lying about the cited email. More to come, doubtlessly.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:16 PM
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Faster, Please

The low blogging on this site today can be ascribed to summer doldrums and also to continued Pajamas Media work, but is most due to a visit by my friend "freedom's friend" Michael Ledeen.

Michael had driven all the way from DC with his son Marine Second Lieutenant Gabriel Ledeen.

Second Lieutenant Ledeen is on the way to a Marine base in Hawaii and thence, at some point, to Afghanistan and/or Iraq. If this is the kind of young man who is going to represent America, we are in magnificent hands. This blog wishes him all the best!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:10 PM
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Annals of the blogosphere

Charles answers former CU President Elizabeth Hoffman in David Harsanyi's Denver Post column today. I suspect these duels between the academicians, politicians, MSMers and bloggers are still in their first phase. They are going to increase and perhaps get even more bloody as blogs continue to grow in stature and economic power.

Meanwhile, another example of Charles-bashing today can be found on the fire-breathing Salon...Yes, they are still there... under the "highly-sophisticated" blog title World O'Crap. The wannabe Mencken who blogs under that moniker attacks Little Green Footballs for linking a story from The Independent about a possible 100,000 trained terrorists now in Britain. Never mind that The Independent is one of England's leading liberal-left publications... someone who names his blog World O'Crap could be ignorant of such niceties... or that the article raises significant issues for Britain and for the West: the importance is to bash Charles. Yet this man knows Charles from Adam. He assumes Charles is conservative on all subjects because he is militant on the WoT. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the kind of childish partyline thinking that makes bloggers like this blind to new ideas and has turned Salon, an Internet pioneer, into an old fashioned publication scarcely worth reading.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:49 AM
Comments (29)

August 7, 2005

Is the Orgone Box making a comeback?

Now neo-necon is amplifying on the essay by Dr. Robert Harman linked earlier.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:00 PM
Comments (3)

The Netanyahu Perplex

As an agnostic, I am not greatly moved by religious arguments for the drawing of borders by Israelis or by anybody else. National security concerns are another matter. Those make sense to me. Finance Minister (and former PM) Benyamin Netanyahu has just left the Israeli government because he thinks the Gaza pullout will be seen as a victory for terror and create even greater problems for Israel and the West in general. I hope he is wrong, but he makes cogent points in this interview with Carolyn Glick.

UPDATE: Atlas Shrugs backs Eliot Jager's argument in support of Sharon.

MORE: My view has always been closest to Dafydd's. But who knows?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:17 PM
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The Media and Iraq continued...

Apropos yesterday's post on General McCaffrey's report, ShrinkWrapped analyzes a New York Times piece "Where Are the Heroes?" supposedly bemoaning the lack of public interest in the courage of our military. From ShrinkWrapped:

If most Americans have never heard of Sgts. Smith, Hester, and Peralta, perhaps it is because the New York Times and the rest of the MSM have ignored the stories. Those of us who surf the blogosphere, including the Milblogs, have had ample opportunities to read about and marvel at the exploits of these wonderful young men and women. Unfortunately, most Americans still get their news from the MSM.

I'd take the "perhaps" out of the first sentence.

UPDATE: A reporter on the scene shows empathy for our troops.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:23 AM
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August 6, 2005

How Can Pajamas Media Top This? Dining at Google

When you're a successful Internet company, evidently you need to treat your employees very well - especially at lunch.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc., a company that had long employed the former cook for one of the world's most famous rock bands to keeps its employees well fed, launched a worldwide search on Thursday for two new chefs.

Google said it would sponsor a cook-off between its top four applicants before the two hires would start preparing offerings which in the past have included "sweet potato jalapeno bisque with corn" or "grilled petite New York sirloins seasoned with Creole spices."

We hadn't been thinking so much about lunch at the new offices of PJ media slated to open in a month or so in El Segundo, CA. We'd been focusing on such things as Internet connections and servers and whether there'd be any decent parking in the building. But maybe we have our priorities wrong. Maybe Google could spare one of their also-rans in the chef competition, even though I have a feeling we may not be able to afford him or her, especially if they too worked for the Grateful Dead. We don't have money for those kind of luxuries. As the Dead's great songwriting duo of Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia warned us about "Uncle John's Band": "Well the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry anymore..."

MORE on dining at Google here.

(ht: Sheryl, who is a pretty good cook herself)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:17 PM
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Gen. McCaffrey Reports In

Via Jack Kelly's well written and charmingly illustrated blog Irish Pennants comes this link to retired US General Barry McCaffrey's report on his recent trip to Iraq. McCaffrey, drug czar under Clinton, was an early critic of the war, but here he seems more optimistic than most in that guarded way that makes you believe him. He has an interesting suggestion:

6. Coalition Public Diplomacy Policy is a disaster:

4th - Military leaders on the ground are talking to people they trust instead of talking to all reporters who command the attention of the American people. (We need to educate and support AP, Reuters, Gannet, Hearst, the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:14 PM
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Mullahs Play Hardball (Again)

From Bloomberg: Iran rejected as "unacceptable" a European Union proposal that calls for the suspension of uranium enrichment in the country, the Iranian foreign ministry said.

"The Europeans' proposal lacks the criteria enshrining Iran's interests and runs counter to the non-proliferation treaty's spirit," Hamid-Reza Assefi, a ministry spokesman, said, the state-run Iranian new agency reported today on its Web site.

Simultaneously, the Mullahs are orchestrating their propaganda campaign via their mouthpiece the Tehran Times:

Nuclear energy is an undeniable right of the Iranian nation which cannot be compromised, a group of students from the Central Province said in a statement on Saturday.

The students underlined that the world is aware of the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities...

Allowing a religiofascist state to have nuclear weapons is sort of like giving a loaded gun to a three-year old.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:40 AM
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The Russkys Call Dad

It's obviously not such a simple matter that US and UK teams have been invited by Russian officials to aid in the rescue of their trapped submarine. Oleg Schedrov writes for Reuters Canada:

The coastal waters off Russia's far east have highly sensitive installations and there were suggestions the military was not keen to have foreign navies getting so close to its secrets.

At home, the AS-28 incident has become a reminder of the Kursk disaster five years ago and which led to fierce criticism of President Vladimir Putin.

This is a reminder of what we have always known - Russia remains a pivot point between first and third world - in some ways fantastically advanced, in others terrifyingly primitive. Here they manifest shame at calling dad in an emergency. And yet they have done it. This is like the tsunami revisited. When disaster struck, who was there? The whole world knows and it makes them crazy. The good dad just smiles and moves on.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:36 AM
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'ere's Galloway!

Austin channels Lord Haw Haw.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:08 AM
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More Monroe

Further to last night's post on the Marilyn Monroe/shrink transcripts published by the LATimes.... No, I do not know if they are real, though I wouldn't be surprised if they were, because I will now write something that, on first glance, may seem yet more incredible: I am typing these words from the very spot where Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe slept for most of their brief marrige. Yes, my office was once their bedroom and my desk is exactly where their bed would have been.

No joke.

I bought this house in 1989 and when the realtor told me of its earlier inhabitants.... no, it's not a particularly big movie star place.... I just thought it was the usual realtor yadda-yadda. George Washington slept here, etc., etc. But years later... for reasons I will detail in the memoir I am writing for Encounter Books [You're still doing that?-ed. How can you write this blog, help start Pajamas Media and write a book all at the same time? Just call me "Snuppy".]... I found out that it really was true and that, as a previous owner told me, "the studio" had saved her from bankruptcy by "renting the house for Joe and Marilyn."

Of course the vibe of that short marriage wasn't particularly good (Marilyn talks about it sadly in the transcripts), with Joe even rumored to have been a batterer, so I do my best not to think about it while working. And, in fact, I rarely do. But having read those passages in the LAT late yesterday, I couldn't keep it out of my mind and woke up early this morning with those immortal words ringing in my ears: Happy Birthday, Mr. President... Happy Birthday to you!

Those were indeed different times.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:18 AM
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August 5, 2005

Marilyn Monroe to her psychiatrist in today's Los Angeles Times

But Bobby, Doctor, what should I do about Bobby. As you see there is no room in my life for him. I guess I don't have the courage to face up to it and hurt him. I want someone else to tell him its over. I tried to get the President to do it, but I couldn't reach him. Now I'm glad I couldn't. He is too important to ask. You know when I sang Happy Birthday for him ... Maybe I should stop being a coward and tell him myself. But because I know how much he'll be hurt I don't have the strength to hurt him.

I don't know for sure if these transcripts are real, but one thing I do know... in this case you most certainly should READ THE WHOLE THING!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:54 PM
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Oil-for-Food: Fall Guys 1 and 2

It's only the beginning of August (autumn still nearly two months away) but chief Oil-for-Food investigator Paul Volcker already has two fall guys lined up for the coming season - Benon Sevan (whom we have known about for the better part of a year) and Alexander Yakovlev (whom we have known about for a shorter time, but is still no surprise). Even though the schedule has been sped up by a day or two, something seems very orchestrated here, Mr. Big emerging unscathed as he does in the more cynical Mafia movies.

And speaking of Mafia movies, Volcker appears to be stepping into the Sterling Hayden role of the corrupt cop, arresting peons while protecting the higher ups. Meanwhile...

... loads of important information remains buried in the U.N. records to which the Volcker committee claims monopoly rights. Much of what has leaked from the U.N., or even been released by Volcker, appears in formats every bit as difficult to search as the artificially constricted files to which the frustrated Sevan would like easier access. Volcker released a set of "company tables" last fall, which gave at least some official confirmation of the names of some of the Oil-for-Food contractors, and totals for some of the deals. But Volcker apparently struck off the list some of the contracts, and in some cases the contractors, that turned up on Saddam's agenda late in the program - and following Saddam's overthrow were then dropped, in some cases because the contractors ran for the hills. In other words, gone missing from Volcker's presumably comprehensive list are some of Saddam's fishiest U.N.-approved deals.

To date, almost every important disclosure about the billions in Oil-for-Food scams has been driven not by the U.N., or even by the Volcker inquiry, but by the press, by Pentagon auditors, by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, and by congressional investigators. Among these, only Congress wields direct leverage over the U.N. by way of funding. If Sevan is serious about opening up U.N. records, his best bet is to pay a call to congressional investigators, and start by opening up himself - not just in his own defense, but about the inner workings of the entire Oil-for-Food program, including the complicity of his boss, Kofi Annan. Had the UN come clean years ago, this colossal scandal might never have happened.

Quote-unquote... Claudia Rosett. Who else?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:24 PM
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Pajama Man Slimed

My partner in pajama crime Charles Johnson and bloggers in general were under attack in Denver yesterday, according to this Denver Post report:

Former University of Colorado president Betsy Hoffman said Thursday it became increasingly difficult to make ethical, principled decisions while a "perfect storm" of media fired upon her.

Hoffman said the spread of rumors on Internet blogs creates an instantaneous "trial and conviction" before both sides are heard. She announced her resignation in March amid scandals involving the school's football recruiting program and professor Ward Churchill's essay comparing some victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to a Nazi official.

Now that was not just any "official," as we know, but Adolph Eichmann himself, one of history's great mass murderers. But let's not linger on that "minor" point because the Post (in its euphemistic reporting) doesn't. Here's what they report Ms. Hoffman had to say about Charles:

One of the first mentions of Churchill's essay [the one that compared 9/11 victims to "little Eichmans"] appeared on a blog called "little green footballs" after the professor was invited to speak at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. Within 10 minutes, people were calling Gov. Bill Owens and asking him to tell Hoffman to fire Churchill, she said.

"Ten minutes - that's how fast things happen today," she said. "There was a period there when I was measuring my e-mail in boxes and pounds. You cannot manage and lead by the number of e-mails you get. You really have to think about what is best for the institution."

Of course what the Post and Ms. Hoffman omit in all their condemnation of Johnson's alacrity is that he was one hundred percent correct in his post about Churchill's appearance on the Hamilton campus. Ms. Hoffman is engaging in the old practice of killing... or sliming... the messenger who brings the bad news. But she's not even remotely successful. Little Green Footballs is thriving and Ms. Hoffman is canned. Perhaps she would have done better to have studied Mickey's Feiler Faster Principle. But I will give her credit for speaking in public though. If I had been humiliated as she had, I would have moved long ago to South America.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:25 PM
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Orgonomy Metonymy

I don't know what that means exactly, but it sounds good. Anyway, check out Posse Incitatus' gloss on the essay by orgonamist Robert Harman, M. D., the subject of an earlier post.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:02 PM
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Spy Games

This blog is in a "holding pattern" regarding the new indictments of two former employees of AIPAC, the influential Israeli lobbying group. Too much information is as yet hidden. In fact the truth may never be revealed here, though this is clearly not a Big Spy Case. For now, I would commend to you Voice of the Taciturn - a blog from a former member of the intelligence community (ht: Charles Martin) - and the Ha'aretz coverage. But I plan on consulting with James Angleton on this matter. The dead sometimes know best and he will be visiting with me "personally" on Monday. More later.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:04 AM
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Eurocrats Ignore Washington Post

It seems European leaders were no more impressed by the Washington Post's self-servin