November 30, 2005

Shimon and Arik - Together Again

Never boring, Israeli politics has taken another amazing turn as long time Labour Party leader Shimon Peres has left his left-wing party to join Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who already left his right-wing one (Likud), in a new center party. These two fascinating and charismatic geezers have decided it's time to make peace before they leave the stage. Let's hope the Palestinians are listening. Here's Peres in his own words: 'To put country before party.' Can you imagine, say, Harry Reid ever writing something like that?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:12 PM
Comments (14)

PJM Ads

I'm sure everyone has noted that Pajamas Media-served ads are now appearing on this site, as they are on Instapundit today. The other blogs in our group will soon be serving PJ ads as well (as quickly as we can get to them all). I would like to echo Glenn's gracious comments about Henry Copeland's BlogAds, which also used to appear here. They are a fine system. We're going in a different direction. It's a big... scratch that... a huge and growing blogosphere, plenty of room for different models to exist side-by-side.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:58 PM
Comments (11)

Claudia Rosett in her pajamas...

... with the first Pajamas Media Special Report. She begins: Greetings, and a quick tip: Anyone in favor of censorship and internet taxes can skip the rest of this column.

OK. For those still with me, who probably agree it is not a good idea to have Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe editing your blog and then charging you for it...

Who wouldn't want to read the rest?

UPDATE: PJM will be holding an international blogjam on the question of who controls the Internet in the next few days. This should be of special interest to bloggers who are, of course, directly affected by this.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:27 PM
Comments (1)

Beating around the Bush

In his bloggy insta-analysis of the Bush Iraq War speech today, my Pajamas colleague David Corn offers some praise but mostly brickbats for the president. He backhandedly compliments Bush for finally recognizing that the comically misnomered "insurgency" (Zarqawi equals Zapata?) is a combination of unreconstructed Baathist fascists, Al Qaeda-style religious psychokillers and assembled lumpen street thugs - not just amorphous "terrorists."

Well, David, did you really think Bush - or nearly everybody else on the planet - didn't know that? Yes, there are people in the "insurgency" who couldn't be less interested in what happens in Cincinatti and, yes, there are people who believe that we are all infidels who should be sent to hell and the caliphate installed uber alles. And there are even those who are willing to play it both ways, for whatever reason (like Saddam).

The question is, as Comrade Lenin said ... What is to be done? This is something our modern reified left rarely asks or says. They don't even seem to be very interested in it. Corn skips over this most relevant of all questions, saying only that Bush's speech "won't matter." Very few speeches indeed do (and most only in retrospect). You would think left/liberals would have some positive response about the overthrow of a hideous dicator, something which, when I was on the left, I was begging our government to do (Pinochet most notoriously). But now, it would seem, since a Republican was involved, we were over-reaching. Well, maybe so. But historically, the jury is still out on that ... way out. And the soi-disant left still has no real response to the world situation other than Not Bush. Bo-ring!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:53 AM
Comments (45)

Reading Reid

It's hard to know for sure from Sen. Harry Reid's cryptic comments (via PJM) on the possible death of Osama bin Laden in a Pakistan earthquake whether the Senator was working from secret intelligence or from media reports. But whatever the case, the Senator has proven himself again "the very model of the modern Major Political Hack" (to mutilate Gilbert & Sullivan) - extremely high on partisanship and extremely low on brains (a match made in heaven).

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:14 AM
Comments (7)

November 29, 2005

Two great links for today...

Atlas Shrugs has a post on what may be (my idol) Oriana Fallaci's last speech. Michael Totten has fascinating photos of Hezbollahland. Don't miss either.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:35 AM
Comments (17)

What? And he's wearing a bathrobe too?

Early (very early) supporter of Pajamas Media celebrates his success.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:22 AM
Comments (3)

Dumbfounded in Damascus

Well, not Damascus, Baghdad really (big difference!)... but what should be surprising to everyone, given what we've been force fed, is this poll reported by Sen. Joseph Lieberman after his fourth trip to Iraq:

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

Now wait a minute, I'm told every night on television and every morning in the papers that the war is a fiasco. You mean it's actually possible the Iraqi people themselves may see it differently? Well, they're just Iraqis. What do they know? Do they read the New York Times? [At least six of them.-ed. But more important, do they read Paul Krugman? He'd set them straight. No one in Iraq wants to pay for that.]

I hope the New York Times, CBS, the LAT and the rest run this poll as prominently as they trumpet the latest debacle on Bush's domestic war numbers. Will they do it? I doubt it. But their war coverage, of course, is what is most responsible for those domestic numbers. They owe it to the Iraqi people to set the record straight. But like those neurotics who always "want to be right," I don't think our media will wander into the treacherous land of self-examination. Only mass therapy would help. But who is going to give that? (via Glenn)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:47 AM
Comments (47)

November 28, 2005

High Sierra

According to the AP:The United States defended its decision not to sign the Kyoto Protocol on Monday, saying during the opening of a global summit on climate change that it is doing more than most countries to protect the earth's atmosphere.

Well, who knows? But a short way down in the article:

Dr. Harlan L. Watson, senior climate negotiator for the State Department, said that while President Bush declined to join the treaty, he takes global warming seriously and noted that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions had actually gone down by eight-tenths of a percent under Bush.

Wait a minute. The US economy grew at a fairly good clip under the Bush administration and yet greenhouse emissions actually went down? How could that have happened? Some people, of course, as noted in the article, are skeptical:

Elizabeth May of the Sierra Club Canada, however, accused the world's biggest polluter of trying to derail the Kyoto accord, which has been ratified by 140 nations.

"We have a lot of positive, constructive American engagement here in Montreal - and none of it's from the Bush administration, which represents the single biggest threat to global progress," May said.

Fighting words from Ms. May indeed, but then words from a Canadian these days may be worth as much as a drink of water in Harbin. What's beginning to interest me in my... er... "modern maturity" (?) is how things are rarely as they seem. We residents of Los Angeles, if we're honest, are now pretty grateful we can see the mountains from our back yards and can even play a set of tennis without collapsing. Something changed. But how? Well, here's an interesting quote:

Despite a childhood in Southern California, Richard Nixon was so hopelessly disconnected from nature that he wore dress shoes to the beach. Yet, no other chief executive approved as much important environmental legislation.

The author of the monograph being described here goes on to opine that Nixon did all this only for poltical reasons and later reversed his views. Could be, but the legislation lived on and changed America. So things happen in strange ways. I used to be for Kyoto, but now find it too politically-motivated and essentially anti-environmental in its complete inability to deal with the world's fastest growing economies. But what do I know? Well, I think I do know this - morality (and ecology) is not as simple as Ms. May of the Sierra Club wants to make it. I used to be a member of the Sierra Club too. But these days I favor the older High Sierra. You remember the Raoul Walsh film in which Bogie plays 'Mad Dog' Roy Earle, the escaped con. The whole world hates him but there's something good about him too. Now there's nothing even remotely ex-connish or Mad Doggish about Bush, but he suffers from that same kind of misjudgment. Bono, of course, recognized this when he noted Bush's generosity in Africa. I guess the Ms. Mays of the world can't wrap their minds around that. They're kind of stuck in their world views and fund-raising needs. Ultimately, I don't think that's very good for the environment.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:55 PM
Comments (14)

Corruption loves company

Is it any wonder that the UN's great friend turns out to be a center of corruption? ... But speaking of the UN, here's what I think is going to be the most exciting development at PJ Media since we've started (other than taking pokes at us). Special Reports like this (see the announcement at the middle of the page) are part of what we're here for. And who better to get us started than La Rosett. She will be followed - in one or more Blogjams - by various and sundry interesting folks logging in on whether the UN (or anyone for that matter) should control the Internet. And, yes, we welcome suggestions of people to be included in our discussions.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:05 PM
Comments (5)

Hey, but I thought he was a secular leader?

From the AP on the Saddam Hussein trial: Dressed in black trousers and a gray jacket, Saddam was the last of eight defendants to enter the courtroom, walking with a swagger, appearing confident and acknowledging people with the traditional Arabic greeting, "Peace be upon the people of peace." He also carried a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

Come to think of it, do we even know if Bin Laden and Zarqawi are really believers or just expoliting religious belief for political gain? Of course, we don't.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:16 AM
Comments (11)

Too much too soon in China?

Ecologically-related catastrophes in Harbin, then Chongqing, now a mine blast in the northeast, killing 68 - all within days.

An explosion at a state-run coal mine in China's remote northeast killed 68 workers and left another 79 trapped underground, the government said on Monday, as frantic rescue efforts were underway for survivors.

A total of 221 miners were underground when the cave-in occurred about 21:40 on Sunday at the Dongfeng coal mine, near Qitaihe city in Heilongjiang province, not far from the Russian border with Siberia.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:06 AM
Comments (5)

November 27, 2005

Bruce Willis brings back G. I. Joe

Bruce Willis is apparently making a film based on the superb Iraq War reporting of blogger Michael Yon. From the Timesonline: It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

Okay... finally a pro-democracy, pro-US involvement feature film about Iraq. I'm placing a bet right now this movie will go through the roof, to the consternation of many of Willis' peeers. Of course, that's a risky prediction in the movie and political worlds, but considering the following from today's Washington Post (via Balloon Juice), I feel pretty secure about this one:

Seventy percent of people surveyed said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale -- with 44 percent saying morale is hurt "a lot," according to a poll taken by RT Strategies. Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale.

That's a lot of people who want to stand up and cheer for our troops.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:20 PM
Comments (22)

Signs and Portents in China

As I recall, one of the rumors running around Harbin, in the midst of their water pollution disaster, was that an earthquake was about to hit them. Turns out the quake has hit central, rather than northern, China with at least 17 killed and thousands homeless at this wee insomniac hour here in California. Seismologists are reporting a 5.5 Richter scale quake - certainly substantial but nowhere big enough, it would seem, to be producing this kind of a carnage. Of course this is rural China where people live in a manner in no way comparable to the glittering big cities of Shanghai and Beijing. But one wonders how those monuments to instant development would withstand a serious shake.

UPDATE: And now Iran. It's as if there were a cosmic conspiracy against the poor of these countries. And in the case of Iran, they are poor indeed, oppressed by a regime of religious psychotics that wants nuclear arms. for the sake of all of us, I hope they put them in earthquake secure missile silos. I hope the Europeans are starting to get the message that keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of the mullahs is not about George Bush, but about human life.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:25 AM
Comments (7)

November 26, 2005

Talking 'bout my generation

Everyone knows Boomers are, well, a tad narcissistic. They won't get off stage and it's hard to get them to slow down or age gracefully. [You're not talking about yourself, are you?-ed. Moi?] This is nothing important, all just fun and games...... until you run into one of these leftovers from that old The Cheers classic (Lieber & Stoller circa 1955) barreling down the road next to you. Then it's time to look out and hold onto your hat (or buy a helmet)! According to the AP:

Statistics show state motorcycle fatalities on the rise, with most involving riders 40 and older on bikes with the largest engines.

Nationwide, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's projected 2004 figures have motorcyclists 40 older involved in about 47 percent of 3,900 fatalities. They're also expected to account for more than 60 percent of the yearly increase in deadly crashes.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:29 PM
Comments (11)

"Beautiful people with beautiful problems..."

I remember that phrase... or something like it... as one of the catchy descriptions of Hollywood filmmaking back in the day (thirties? forties?). But I can't seem to pull its provenance out of my dim memory... or out of Google... at this moment. Perhaps some reader can. At any rate, I was reminded of it when reading this post by ShrinkWrapped on Real Estate Narcissism.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:12 AM
Comments (5)

November 25, 2005

Butterfingers in China

The Melbourne Herald Sun tells us: Just days after a 100-tonne spill of toxic benzene [in Harbin] caused a public health crisis, a second chemical plant explosion has been reported in China.

Schools closed and thousands of people were evacuated in southwest Chongqing after a blast at the Yingte Chemical Company.

This isn't rural China. These are big towns where these eco catastrophes are occurring. Harbin has 3-1/2 million people; Chongqing a mindboggling 30 million, give or take the population of Delaware. Put another way, Chongqing by itself has considerably more people than Iraq and is catching up to California. No wonder this isn't a simple situation. The Independent, a left-leaning publication, has a pretty detailed analysis of how the Chinese lied to their people about the Harbin spill.

More interesting to me are the implications of these events for the ecology of the developing world, of which China, despite its giant economy, is still very much a part. In the light of the disasters in Harbin and Chongqing (and whatever other ones the Chinese government may have succeeded in covering up) the politically-motivated (and happily extinct) Kyoto Treaty now seems almost anti-ecological in its intent. But as countries like China and India boom, genuine global approaches to these matters must be developed. The question is how to do that without the interference of the hugely-corrupt United Nations, which would most likely make matters worse. Still, this is everybody's problem. The Russians are already bracing for the pollutants from Harbin.

UPDATE: Pajamas Media has more with links to blogs inside China.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:14 PM
Comments (6)

Going shopping today?

I am, but not at Wal-Mart. Like Teddy Kennedy, I don't go there. But unlike Teddy, I don't have an opinion about it.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:12 AM
Comments (9)

I missed this on Powerline yesterday...

... too busy with family, I guess... but I just had to link it in case anyone wants to comment. (As you know, they don't have comments over there.) Frankly, I don't have anything to say. I just want to the throw up.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:40 AM
Comments (39)

Showdown in Syria

This is a Debka exclusive, so take it for what it's worth, but...

He was told: hand over the six Syrian officers wanted for questioning in the Hariri assassination by the end of Friday, Nov. 25 - or face a charge of non-cooperation to the UN Security Council.

Mehlis insists on interrogating the officers outside Syria. Assad is posing legal barriers against making them available overseas. Among the suspects are the president's brother-in-law Gen. Assef Shawqat, head of Syrian military intelligence and strongman of the Baath regime, and Gen. Rustum Ghazaleh, Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon at the time of the murder and current overlord of all Syria's intelligence agencies.

UPDATE: Maybe it's not so exclusive. According to Reuters, Mehlis is "close to giving up" on Syrian cooperation. The showdown may soon shift to the Security Council.

SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS: What's going on now isn't all that amazing. What we're seeing is a gangster regime trying to prevent some "family" (figuratively and literally) members from going to jail for life (by assuring they are tried within Syria). What always surprised me about the Syrian regime, particularly under Bashar, is how dumb they are. The whole world knows they are mafiosi, but would have been prepared to ignore it as long they stayed within their own borders, ruining the lives only of their own people. But the Allawites insist on projecting their own dubious power. How self-destructive is that.

More interesting to me: Why is the UN Security Council suddenly developing some backbone? The other day they even condemned Hezbollah. This can't all be because of the presence of John Bolton. It's also rather unlikely to be due to a sudden "moral reawakening" from the likes of Russia and China. Could it be there is some extremely embarrassing Oil-for-Food information being held in abeyance?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:59 AM
Comments (6)

November 24, 2005

High-blood pressure for Thanksgiving - Saddam's defense strategy

If you haven't already eaten too much and pushed you blood pressure to bottle-jarring heights, read this amazing post from Dinocrat about Saddam Hussein's defense strategy. On second thought, it's not that amazing. It's almost inevitable... so much so my blood pressure's going even higher (where's the Benicar?).

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:29 PM
Comments (12)

Mao is back at Pajamas Media

We're having a blogjam/criticism-self-criticism session at the Pajamas Media site. And, yes, there's a new, less corporate, logo designed for us by Amy Lopez some time back when we still had a soul. (You may have to refresh a couple of times for the logo.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:24 PM
Comments (22)

In news of the Middle East where it's never Thanksgiving...

Just reported by Fox News: King Abdullah has appointed a new Prime Minister and directed him to wage "all out war" on Islamic extremism. Links and some authentication to come. Also, Ariel Sharon has officially registered his new centrist political party as "Forward." [He can have OSM. That's available.-ed.]

UPDATE: The AP is now confirming the Fox report on Abdullah.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:36 AM
Comments (6)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Enjoy the day. Enjoy family and friends and don't forget the Fernet Branca. Low (or no) blogging today... except providing technical help (not much necessary) to my daughter Madeleine when she chimes in on Pajamas Macy's Day Parade 2005 live-blog coverage later this morning. Photo above is the parade in 1940. We needed Superman then and he came through.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:04 AM
Comments (2)

November 23, 2005

In support of Mohammed al-Harbi

The Bush Administration, like virtually all recent US administrations, has had a repellently cozy relationship with the despicable Saudi regime. While our presidents feel free to criticize even the mighty Chinese for human rights abuses, they say hardly a word in public about the oil-rich Saudis, leaving the (usually mild) criticism to some low-ranking State Department official with a name no one recognizes. Meanwhile, extraordinary medieval abuses like this one continue in Saudi Arabia:

A teacher in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to 40 months in jail and 750 lashes for discussing the Bible and praising Jews.

Last week a U.S. State Department report criticized Saudi Arabia for its religious intolerance, saying religious freedoms "are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam."

This report was from Newsmax, not always the most reliabe source, so I rooted around the Internet to see if this bizarre tale was true. Evidently it is. Here is a Saudi website in support of Mr. al-Harbi.

Muhammad's lawyer is currently trying to appeal this harsh and unjust verdict. Many are still also waging a supportive campaign for Muhammad and his family (his mother and two sisters).

It is important to note that this website is made by Saudi citizens feeling for Muhammad and whole-heartedly supporting his cause for a peaceful world. Muhammad al-Harbi does not know about his website and we voluntarily dedicate this space to him, his family, and all who support him. We are praying that Muhammad's innocence will prevail and that those who falsely accused him will be punished.

There are quite a number of links at the bottom of the page, as well as links to similar cases. Mr. Bush, time to speak out.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:13 PM
Comments (17)

John Bolton - A Pajamas Challenge

Over at Pajamas Central we're already working on our site to make it more action oriented and generally bloggy. [I warned you it was beginning to look like a branch bank.-ed. Will you shut up?] We've heard mucho criticism that there's not enough there there, to use Gertie Stein's immortal words. Well, we're trying to put more there there. Just give us a few days and some time to gobble some turkey of our own. We did get to the name thing pretty quickly, didn't we?

Now one of the things we're planning on doing is making our site more hospitable to vigorous moment-to-moment blog debates on the issues right at the top of our homepage. We want to keep it clean, but not pull punches. Toward that, I am issuing a Pajamas blog challenge right on this page (that I would do over at PJM, if it were ready). That challenge is to two guys who I really like personally, but disagree with on a number of issues, especially in the foreign policy area - David Corn and Marc Cooper (who has been a personal friend for a couple of decades).

These guys were of the stripe that probably thought the sky was falling when John Bolton was nominated as US Ambassador to the United Nations. We were all headed for neocon Hell in a basket and about to pull out of the UN.

So I would like to know what they think of what Bolton pulled off today. From the Jerusalem Post:

Following intense US pressure, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued an unprecedented condemnation of Monday's Hizbullah attacks on northern Israel.

When asked what changed from Monday to Wednesday, one diplomatic official replied: "John Bolton," a reference to the US ambassador to the UN. Bolton lobbied vigorously for the passage of the statement.

So, fellas, was this a good thing or a bad thing? Yes or no answer, please - then you can unwind all your provisos. Does Bolton deserve praise for getting the Security Council to speak out on this kind of terror action for the first time? I'll tell you what I think ... in the parlance of the old days ... "Right on!" But then, as you guys know, I think the old "Which Side Are You On?" thing has been turned upside down.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:26 PM
Comments (22)

Was Iraq the Model correct...

... in its post yesterday, which theorized the Arab League conference in Cairo Monday calling for a timetable for a US troop withdrawal had actually been pre-negotiated with the US administration? The announcement today by Condoleeza Rice (via AP) would seem to confirm that.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the United States will probably not need to maintain its current troop levels in Iraq "very much longer," though she declined to provide a precise timetable for reduction in U.S. forces.

Rice appeared to set the stage for such a reduction, saying the Iraqi forces are doing a better job of holding their own against insurgents.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:57 AM
Comments (13)

Dept. of Our Life and Times

Daily Pundit "phones" CNN. Seneca the Younger reminds us of "that was then and this is now" of it all and Pajamas has a party with Al Jazeera.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:09 AM
Comments (2)

Will Ahmadinejad's Israel bashing backfire in Iran itself?

Roya Hakakian, writing in the Washington Post ("A Demonizing Call"), seems to think it might.

For the first time in decades, opposition leaders, no longer afraid of taking an unpopular position, are challenging the assumption that Iran's official anti-Israel stance is sound foreign policy. There's some momentum behind the idea that in a region dominated by Sunni Arabs, Israel is Iran's most natural strategic ally. Writing about a recent trip to Iran in the New York Review of Books, historian Timothy Garton Ash pointed to developments like these as evidence of the Iranians' "friendly curiosity about Israel."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:03 AM
Comments (11)

November 22, 2005

I know I link to Iraq the Model more than just about any blog...

... but that's because I think Omar and Mohammed are two best reporters extant on the Iraq War. Today Omar examines the announcement on troop pullouts from Monday's Arab League meeting in Cairo.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:57 PM
Comments (7)

Amazing doings in Israel

I am one of those who admire Israeli PM Ariel Sharon for departing the Likud to form a centrist party in his country. If there is one thing Arik Sharon has never lacked, it's guts. I also agreed with Mort Kondracke last night on Brit Hume's Show when Mort expressed some envy of the Israelis. That's what America could use, a sensible center party that actually reflects the electorate. Of course, everyone says that will never happen here. But suppose Sharon wins in Israel...? Food (make that falafel?) for thought.

UPDATE: Interesting email from reader Paul Elman:

I just got an e-mail from my second cousin Roi in Israel. His parents
(and grandmother, my deceased Aunt) are liberal, educated professionals who live in Labor Party central (aka the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Aviv) and had traditionally voted Labor. The children of both my first cousins are more conservative than their parents but since Intifada II, they (the elders and their children) have all supported Sharon.

Roi seems very excited by these political events for many reasons,
amongst them being the corruption of the Likud Party and Sharon
being the one person in Israel (at this moment) who could forge a
consensus within Israeli society that would insure security for Israel
and an equitable land division.

UPDATE: While Sharon moves to the center with the Israeli electorate, another organization (you'll be shocked, I'm sure) continues to keep Israel out of the dialogue.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:24 PM
Comments (13)

The March of the Academy Screeners

It's slowly wending its way to Oscar time and the Academy screeners - those free DVDs passed out to Academy members to garner their votes - are beginning to show up at my door like brooms in the Sorcerer's Apprentice. For a couple of years I have been flirting with being kicked out of the Academy (where I am a member of the writers' branch) for posting my reaction to these screeners online. Last year I went so far as to publish some of these reactions (hard to call them reviews) at NRO. This year they'll be appearing at another yet more "controversial" site. [You really do want to be kicked out, don't you?-ed. Ask my shrink.]

Also last year, every Academy voter was presented with his or her own SV300 Cinea DVD player. This is a high-end unit equipped to play specially-encrypted DVDs so that you can't slip some barely released blockbuster into your hard drive and upload it to your new-best-friend in Hong Kong. (And they're not joking: one Academy member has already been slapped with a 60K fine for allowing someone to pirate his DVDs.).

Nevertheless, last year not one DVD arrived with this sort of encryption. This year one already has - Steve Martin's shopgirl from Disney. The Mouse House probably thinks it has a commercial winner on its hands. Sad-to-say, even the best art films may not be worth the encryption effort financially. Speaking of which, several prominent arty films arrived which are high on my want-to-see list: Capote, Crash and Good Night, and Good Luck.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:53 AM
Comments (7)

Sleepwear is back (and stays back)

OSM returns to its pajama-clad roots. Look for some style and content changes too. (But not a diminution of page views, we hope. We've had roughly five million since the launch last week.)

BTW, daughters think alike. Mine's happy too. She loved Pajamas and made a sad face at OSM. Now she wants to go with me to the office. Lucky pop.

AND JUST FOR FUN (Hey, it's Pajamas) a photo of PJ reader Bruce Wechsler with one of the protagonists at the Hitchens-Galloway debate (photo cred: Atlas Shrugs).

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:06 AM
Comments (48)

November 21, 2005

The Carnival of Pre-War Intelligence

It's up at the Pajamas... er...OSM....er... Pajamas site with over 50 bloggers weighing in on this key subject. (Slim Pickens photo a bonus)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:31 AM
Comments (20)

All wired up with no place to go

Tivo is now compatible with iPods and PSPs, so you can take recorded television and films anywhere. Information capability is going on overload. We already live in a world where teenagers can diss one friend via text messenger and instant messenger simultaneously talking to that "friend" on the phone or personally in the school yard. Luddites may have a point.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:12 AM
Comments (7)

November 20, 2005

Holy Harry!

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire grosses a record (for its franchise) 101.4 million dollars for its opening weekend. That's the fourth best three-day opening ever.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:39 PM
Comments (11)

Is Zarqawi dead?

Various links here. I'll be following Iraq the Model. If you see anything interesting on this astonishing story, put it in the comments below and we'll transfer to the Pajamas... er... OSM site.

JUST A THEORY: If Zarqawi has been killed... and the AP is correct that there was a tip on his whereabouts... that tip could have come from inside Al Qaeda itself or from people friendly to it. After the Amman hotel horrors, Zarqawi was the blodthirsty poster boy for the Al Qaeda Psychopath. If you believe the Zawahiri letter, they didn't need publicity like this. He had to go.

UPDATE: Ah, well...

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:03 PM
Comments (18)

Seneca the Younger says we're winning

I was at first taken aback when I noticed the formation of YARGB. Many of my best commenters were forming a blog of their own. I feared desertion.

But now I'm flattered. YARGB has turned into one of the better political blogs on the 'net (at least of those I've seen). Today Seneca the Younger... known hereabouts as Charlie (CO)... comments on the war.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:07 PM
Comments (13)

Hillary vs. Rudy?

The AP's Marc Humbert does a thumb sucker about a Hillary-Rudy race in 2008 - which is simultaneously two-minutes away and off on the other side of the space-time continuum. I admit the mathc-up would be first-rate political drama, but Hillary-Condi might be even better. Of course, we could have... reaching for the remote here... a Frist-Kerry pairing.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:44 AM
Comments (9)

Keeping you options closed

The Iranian parliament voted to block United Nations inspectors if their nuclear program is referred to the Security Council.

The bill was approved by 183 of the 197 lawmakers present at the session, which was broadcast live on state-run radio. The vote came four days before the International Atomic Energy Agency board meets to consider referring Tehran for violating a nuclear arms control treaty.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:25 AM
Comments (5)

Taking the bad with good....

Bush urged China on human rights today, but was anybody listening?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed disappointment about China's response to a U.S. request in September for action on specific human rights cases.

China's massive trade surplus is a political headache for Bush. As the president opened his visit, U.S. officials spread word that Beijing was buying 70 of Chicago-based Boeing Co.'s 737 planes.

UPDATE: As covered by the People's Daily. More here. The LAT reports the story as "mostly business."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:39 AM
Comments (4)

November 19, 2005

This is so high school

Kenton Kelly, a CPA from Ohio who used to post on this site as Dennis the Peasant, has turned his website into a non-stop assault on me, going so far as to make jokes about shooting my dog on another person's site. He attacks me in a relentless and obscene manner. Mr. Kelly believes that somehow Charles Johnson and I have knifed him in the back in a business deal. He is indeed correct that we had several discussions with him and one meeting in Los Angeles. After that nothing substantive occurred. No contracts were ever signed. No investment was made. Nothing happened. Communications dwindled to zero. It was like the many preliminary business conversations that peter out before fruition in most of our lives, certainly in mine and probably in yours. Then Charles and I developed a different approach to the business. We found investment elsewhere and Mr. Kelly, when he heard about it, turned into an online stalker. He has threatened to sue me on several occasions. I invite him to go ahead and do it. I look forward to the contents of his website being read aloud in court.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:32 PM
Comments (58)

Scoping out Scopes

Charles Krauthammer, my favorite columnist over all, strikes again at the peculiar theory called "intelligent design," which is neither very intelligent or much of a design. In fact, as I have said before, it's kind of an insult to theists - something that Krauthammer hints at from another direction by pointing out that Newton and Einstein were believers. On ID theory, the columnist is devastating:

Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:17 PM
Comments (56)

Job Hunt (Updated from Amman)

While Iran continues to make it clear they are hell bent on nukes and their buddy Zarkawi continues to incinerate every human being he can find, our narcissistic politicans continue to see the world through the perspective of their own ambitions. Nothing new here, of course, but in this age of nuclear proliferation, it's reached a new level of self-centeredness. Other than Bush hatred, I would like to hear one serious word from the Democrats (and I am still registered as one) about what we really should do about Iran, Zarkawi, etc. So far it's been deafening silence.

MEANWHILE: From the Wash Times: At least 200,000 persons demonstrated yesterday against the recent bombings of three luxury hotels, while a new online statement attributed to terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi defended the attacks and threatened to cut off the head of Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Two hundred thousand demonstrators in Amman and not a word so far from the New York Times.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:31 AM
Comments (22)

November 18, 2005

It's not JUST the Internet

People have lost control of themselves on Capitol Hill as well. Is it something in the water? From the Washington Post's report on today's quick vote on Rep. John Murtha's proposal...

But the maneuvering opened wide the chamber's raw partisan divisions and prompted a tumultuous scene, which Capitol Hill veterans called among the most wild and emotional they had ever witnessed.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:53 PM
Comments (22)

Words

I learned a few things from Judith Miller's speech at the OSM launch on Wednesday. More precisely I relearned something important from Judith's affect at one particular moment in her remarks. She was describing what it was like to be in jail without internet connection or even much access to newspapers. Friends and family would bring her printouts of news articles and blog posts, which they would hold up to the dividing glass in the visitor room for her to read. It was like in a B-movie.

Some of those blog posts, she said, were attacks on her private life and on her family from people who quite obviously would know little or nothing about it. At that point, I thought I detected tears welling up in Judith's eyes. I felt stricken, suddenly recalling a derisive post I had written about her several weeks ago, implying she had gone to jail in a weight-loss scheme. Of course, prison is no spa and I damn well knew it. That post may have been mild compared to some, but it was still out of line. And, no, I'm not linking to it - and please don't Google it - because my point is we all owe each other a lot more courtesy. I'm fully aware of Truman's immortal words about heat and the kitchen, but there are limits.

Recently my OSM colleagues and I have been subjected to all kinds of criticism, much of it well intentioned and warranted. But a fair amount has been surprisingly personal, bordering on the abusive. (My wife and I were about to allow our precocious daughter to have an internet connection, but now we think we'll postpone it.) Some of this criticism came from people my colleagues and I thought were friends who did not even give us the common courtesy of querying us on why we did a certain thing. Besides being rude, that's not very good reporting from an MSM or blog perspective.

Of course, we at OSM are making all kinds of mistakes. This is something brand new and we're going to be flopping around for some time, much like a kid learning to ride a bicycle. And even when we learn to ride, we're going to run into plenty of brick walls. But frankly I've been rather upset by some of the more personal criticisms and listening to Judith reminded me of what my words could do. I don't know if she read them at the time through that glass partition. I didn't have the guts to ask her and, if she had, she was too gracious to say so. But in the future I'm going to try to be more careful about how I phrase things when they impinge on the personal. You don't have to be a Buddhist to see the karma in that.

UPDATE: In the opposite direction, in the chaos of recent events (with 2000 emails in my inbox), I missed this post. My heartfelt thanks.

And the funniest guy around puts it all in perspective.

MORE: My thanks for all the input on OSM. More to come from our side and from me personally over the weekend.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:42 AM
Comments (75)

November 17, 2005

What Do These People Mean?

Besides the obvious (getting reelected), I'm not sure what Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) means by this: "Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region."

Does he want to leave the Iraqi people in the hands of Zarkawi & co. That would a a helluva betrayal of people like this. (At the link, Mohammed writes of the new torture allegations - this time allegedly on behalf of the New Iraqi regime. Who knows the extent of it? But however much makes the heart ache.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:06 PM
Comments (110)

November 16, 2005

The Accidental CEO's Tale

This is going to be an inchoate post from one exhausted blogger who found himself an accidental CEO of a media company that launched today. If you had told me two years ago I would be hosting such an incredible line-up of people at the Rainbow Room today, I would have thought you were the reincarnation of Timothy Leary.

But to begin with, let me say that Jeff Goldstein's keynote address was brillant. We decided to use Jeff as a last minute replacement for Judith Miller when so may advocates of "free speech" attacked us for offering her a platform. (BTW, OSM will be offering plenty of people platforms with all sorts of views. Get used to it.)

Seriously, I thought Judith did a terrific job and her speech will be posted over at OSM as soon as we can get it transcribed (but not by me, because martini-fueled transcriptions tend to be...er... erratic). The general subject matter of a possible Federal Shield Law and what that will mean to bloggers and journalists (and those who go both ways) will be the subject of an on-going series of Blogjams on OSM. Many people have expressed interest in participating, among them Jay Rosen and attorney Andrew Deutsch (a specialist in this area). I even asked the Daily Kos to participate (everybody who blogs should be concerned with this issue) but received no reply. So it goes.

I also thought Sen. Cornyn, who joined our lunch via satellite from Washington, was surprisingly blog-friendly in his remarks.

And speaking of OSM... which I will often, I'm afraid... it's now my day job... special heartfelt thanks to news editor Hillary Johnson and el nino de Barcelona Jos´e Guardia from all of us here in NY for doing triple-duty keeping the site up and running while we're... er... drinking martinis at the W bar with the 5'1" Tim Blair (he's actually 5'3").

UPDATE: A special apology to the those of you who have been emailing me. So far I am unable to send email out of the hotel in NY. Working on it. Of course, there are also, inevitably, many small errors and omissions (names missing, etc.) on the OSM site, which we are working on. We will be updating for the next week at least, I imagine. [But is Tim Blair really 5'3"?-ed. Actually, he's 6'2".]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:07 PM
Comments (15)

OSM - it's up

OSM (with the little trade mark sign) is up. We beg your indulgence for all the glitches I'm too beary-eyed to see at this hour of the morning.
Streaming video... oops make that audio (it's 4:50AM LA time here)... links are at the site for this morning's events. I'm headed over for my coffee.

I am now at the Rainbow Room with my coffee, workers dashing past me setting up behid huge banners that say OSM - Open Source Media. We are seek trademark on the initials OSM and our chances seem good. We tried for osm.com, but that was taken by the Oregon Steel Mills. Maybe osm.org is just as good anyway. We're lucky as it is. Three letter urls are not easy to get anymore.

Needless to say, the naysayers are already weighing in.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:08 AM
Comments (28)

November 15, 2005

In Launch Mode - Yes, we're streaming....

Hello, everyone. This site went down several hours today for the first time from too much traffic. It had been linked by Drudge before, but even that did not bring it down. The launch of our new company and all the attendant links did. My thanks to Phpwebhosting for their patience.

I do not have time to blog now, because of last minute preparations for the launch. This is a day when I have been sneered as a "conservative blog kingpin" in New York Magazine, talked blogging with Forbes and Fortune magazines and had the pleasure of having Pellegrino with our keynote speaker for tomorrow - Judith Miller (who was also dissed in the same "thoughtful" New York Magazine article).

Sorry I don't have a link to that because it's amusing. (It's amazing what people get paid to write.)

Meanwhile here is one of Yahoo's AP top technology stories of the day. More here.

UPDATE: Yes, we will be having streaming audio of the launch event (speeches by boring me and interesting Charles, panels with Podhoretz-Corn-Rosett, etc, Glenn Reynolds and Judith Miller over lunch) starting a few minutes before 10AM Eastern. For the link, go to www.pajamasmedia.com in the morning.

MORE: Will Judith Miller become a blogger, now that she's left the NYT? It's a possibility.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:17 PM
Comments (29)

November 14, 2005

In the Big Apple for the Big Launch

Many PJ types are starting to assemble here at the W Hotel on Lex. In the house already... Ed Driscoll (with his wife PJ attorney Nina Yablok) and Tim Blair... more to come.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:10 PM
Comments (16)

"Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?"

Claudia channels Janis in Rosett's latest Oil-for-food-for-thought column.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:10 AM
Comments (9)

Saudi Arabia ends economic boycott of Israel

The Washington Times is reporting:

Saudi Arabia has agreed to end all economic boycotts of Israel, allowing the World Trade Organization (WTO) yesterday to admit the oil-rich kingdom as its 149th member, diplomats said.
Saudi officials did not comment on the Israel boycott, which had been the key obstacle during the kingdom's 12-year bid to gain entry.
U.S. and Israeli officials said the boycott issue had been resolved.
"I am very satisfied with the fact that Saudi Arabia has complied with all the rules of the WTO," said Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to the global trade body.
"I hope it opens the door to a better future on the horizon in the region," the Israeli envoy said. (via Captain Marlow)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:48 AM
Comments (20)

Vanity Fact-Checking at Vanity Fair

The following appears in a glowing December 2005 Vanity Fair article on Arianna Huffington entitled "Arianna Calling":

"As advertisers signed up for space on the HuffPost, and its content was featured by AOL and Yahoo, its audience began to grow--to some 1.5 million site visits in September and climbing. The numbers fell short of the Drudge Report's three million, but they were enough to give Huffington's critics--those who regard her as the intellectual equivalent to Paris Hilton--a reason to think again." [bold mine]

Come again? I don't have any precise idea of the monthly visitor figures of the Huffington Post, although there is corroboration for VF's numbers here. But I do know the Drudge Report's daily and monthly figures because I can read them on Drudge at any time. As of this precise moment they are:

VISITS TO DRUDGE 11/11/05

010,107,464 IN PAST 24 HOURS
264,276,475 IN PAST 31 DAYS
3,549,016,002 IN PAST YEAR

So in other words, that's closer to two hundred-to-one than the two-to-one that Vanity Fair reports. But why worry? By the time Vanity Fair gets around to correcting it, it will be somewhere in the summer of 2006 and we'll be reading it at the dentist's anyway.

[How does the Huff Post compare to Instapundit and Little Green Footballs, single author sites? -ed. Not well.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:05 AM
Comments (40)

November 13, 2005

Pajamas Sportif

All politics and no play makes John and Jill a dull boy and girl (and how!), so Pajamas Media announces one of its grooviest blogs Yay Sports! on our transition site tonight. 'Yay' will be Phi-Slamma-Jammin' with us through the launch Wedesday and from then on in. (No nasty Laker cracks, please. I'm sensitive.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:58 PM
Comments (0)

Jamie Irons examines NYT coverage of the French riots...

... over at YARGB. I too have been following the French crisis reporting of Craig S. Smith, which is quite typical NYT these days. I would be prefer they label articles like his "News Analysis," but it doesn't really matter. Everybody knows their biases anyway, just as everybody knows mine. (well, most people reading this anyway)

UPDATE: Far more interesting coverage of the situation in France from Brussels Journal than the NYT.

MORE stress for the NYT here and here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It's not just France and Belgium. Holland is now involved with four cars torched in Rotterdam. Of course, in the old days the groovy Dutch were famous for not being racist. I can remember driving around Amsterdam in free electric cars that resembled golf carts. But that was a long time before Theo Van Gogh.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:25 AM
Comments (35)

It's my party and you can cry if you want to...

The Associated Press buries the lede in its report of the captured suicide bomber in Amman. It takes until the sixth paragraph for the sometimes insurgent-friendly or enabling AP (they of the Pulitzer Prize in photography for miraculous on-the-scene photographs of "insurgent" bomb attacks) to inform us that this bomb-laden woman, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, was "dressed for a party" while riding in a taxi with her husband to the Radisson Hotel. In other words, these psychopaths were intentionally headed for a Muslim wedding where they would blow everybody up, including themselves. King Abdullah had it right - "these people are insane."

UPDATE: This may be one of the most amazing pieces of live TV since Ruby shot Oswald - the woman has confessed on Jordanian television.

Looking nervous and wringing her hands, al-Rishawi described the attack on the Radisson. The Grand Hyatt and Days Inn hotels also were bombed.

"My husband detonated (his bomb) and I tried to explode my belt but it wouldn't," she said. "People fled running and I left running with them."

Another chickenhawk, I guess. I don't know about the wisdom of sticking this homicidal lunatic on television, but they did it. And we'll all be watching. Talk about reality TV! Was her husband the contemptible human being who murdered Rima Assad?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:40 AM
Comments (14)

November 12, 2005

Fear and Loathing in Lyons

The rioting "youths" hit one of the historic centers of France for the first time - Place Bellecour in Lyons - escalating the seemingly endless French disturbances yet again. The Timesonline, with characteristic British understatment, warns in its headline: Wounded Chirac 'losing grip' of riot-hit France.

The initiative came as speculation mounted over a severely discredited Jacques Chirac's ability to endure the last 17 months of his presidential term.

The violence, which started just over two weeks ago in poor suburbs, has fallen in intensity since the government announced emergency measures on Tuesday. Lyons witnessed the first riot in a major city centre yesterday, but police quickly took control by firing tear gas.

I'm beginning to hope the traditionalists who think this is all about poverty and racism and not at all about rolling history back to 1492 are right. Because if they're wrong, this is not going to be over for a long time. The problem with the traditionalist's argument is that it is a tad racist in and of itself. It assumes these "youths" are ignorant of the demographics of the country they are living in and of the rudimentary history of Christianity and Islam. As they say in France, je m'en doute.

UPDATE: According to DEBKAfiles' private report, French intelligence, despite a possible short term dimunition of violence, is extremely worried about a low-grade civil war breaking out in France similar to the one in Iraq. They also report Iranian and Syrian intelligence - angered at Chirac for cooperating in the Hariri investigation - to be using this an excuse for striking back at Chirac. If this is so, they certainly seem to be succeeding. Debka also agrees most of the rioters are secular, but sees many of them as having cultural, if not religious, allegiance to the Islamic world. Anyway, that's Debka. Take it for what it's worth

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:26 PM
Comments (32)

Mapes Japes

I caught Mary Mapes on the Neal Cavuto Show last night and this is one angry woman. She was out there flogging her new book - Truth and Duty: the Press, the President and the Privilege of Power - which I noticed is at #536 on Amazon, although that's already down from #475 yesterday. It's hard to believe anybody is actually buying this thing, unless it's as a practical joke for friends, but evidently they are. A few anyway. Ms. Mapes still insists the Rather/National Guard forgery was not proven. I guess she means in the sense that OJ was not convicted or, more exactly, no bomb ever fell on Hiroshima.

Still Mapes was out there in denial mode, blaming "conservative bloggers" through clenched teeth. Her body language was rigid and hostile. I imagined she was giving her publicist at St. Martin's Press nightmares. You wouldn't want to spend five minutes with this woman, let alone alone the time it would take to read
384 pages. Still, they had to put her out there to earn back her advance. My prediction is that's not going to happen anyway, but I admire Mapes for trying. If I had done what she had, I wouldn't have the courage to show my face in public again. [You're always looking for an excuse to move to San Miguel de Allende.-ed. That would have been it.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:53 PM
Comments (23)

Automobile Insurance in France

Can you imagine what the cost of that is going to be? Don't even think about it as the bonfire of the horseless carriages continues with 502 vehicles torched last night, up from a previous night's 463. Meanwhile:

Some 3,000 police fanned out around Paris on Saturday to prevent any attempts to attack high-profile targets such as the Eiffel Tower after a 16th straight night of unrest and arson.

"This is not a rumor," said National Police Chief Michel Gaudin. The famed Eiffel Tower and Champs-Elysees avenue were among potential targets, he said. "I think one can easily imagine the places where we must be highly vigilant," he told reporters Saturday.

So the struggle continues, as we used to say in my marxist days. But speaking of Marx, the question remains is this all motivated by economics? Of course, some of it is. We can stipulate that. And, yes, some of it is a reaction to the racisim of French society. But is there more? Would these "youths" really want to assimilate if they were given the proper chance, replete with affirmative action, etc.?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:43 AM
Comments (27)

Seymour: An Introduction

Pajamas' Man in Beirut Michael Totten has a subuded but lethal attack on The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh on his (Michael's) blog this morning. In general I try to resist "piling on,"but Hersh so perfectly exemplifies the formally-liberal mindset that I say has become reactionary that I would like to examine his comments for a moment. At the recent annual conference of the Middle East Institute in Washington, Seymour said:

"I'm exceedingly skeptical, and I have been all along, of the point of view of what happened to Hariri," said Mr. Hersh. "The American point of view is that it was Syria with the aid of some people in Lebanon. Despite all the back and forth about how the American press corps was totally manipulated, to its embarrassment, about WMD, I would still argue, we're still being totally manipulated by this administration about Syria and Lebanese involvement."

Well, that was a UN investigation (in the hands of a German) that implicated Syria in the Hariri assassination. And the UN is a well-known "lackey" of the US (witness French and Russian Security Council "cooperation" with America during the run-up to Iraq). But let's not quibble. We all have our biases. I admit to being biased against the Assad Alawite Baathist regime of fascist murderers in Syria. On the face of it, Hersh would seem to be biased in favor of (or at least in agreement with) Hezbollah, or so it might appear in the article Totten links.

But I don't really think so. Any pro-Hezbollah seeming comments made by Hersh would merely be to épater les bourgeoisie... or what Hersh conceives to be the bourgeoisie (anyone more than fifty meters from Zabar's - at least in world view). No, I think in comments like this he is trying to relive his glory days of the secret bombing of Cambodia when he, Seymour, was a hero.

I can sympathize. This is a temptation we all have. Maybe, just maybe, gold will strike again. [Well, aren't you the clever boots when you're still flogging a quote for The Big Fix right on this site?-ed. At least that's only a mystery novel.] Unfortunately, history (pace Santayana) has a nasty habit of moving on. Iraq and the War on Terror, despite Hersh's almost desperate desire for it to be otherwise, is not a replay of Vietnam, except in press response. If anything it's more like World War II - and it's not even very much like that.

In his need for things not to have changed, for him to remain dead center of the argument as he sees it and maintain his position at The New Yorker (even at the expense of that magazine's credibility), Hersh has become reified into a kind of frozen artifact of 1972. Any hint of idealism that once was in him has been drained from his body. The idea that he could get any pleasure from democracy in Iraq is so remote as to be almost non-existent. I began this post with a playful (but slightly irrelevant) reference to Salinger. Actually, this reference to Edwin Arlington Robinson would have been more apt.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:46 AM
Comments (20)

November 11, 2005

Kudlow in Pajamas? Never!

Luckily, we're changing our name in a very few days because Larry Kudlow - one of the best dressed guys I know - generally prefers to be photographed in an elegant pin-striped suit as he is seen here in his Pajamas Media profile. We are tremendously fortunate to have Larry on our editorial board. One of the few players on cable TV to truly blog himself (as opposed to bloviating online like O'Reilly), this is a man who, by himself, could make [insert new name here] a serious source on economic opinion.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:07 PM
Comments (9)

Terrorism close to home -from Andrew Breitbart - a guest post

Last night I received an instant message from my friend Andrew Breitbart. I asked him to post about it on here.

Al Qaeda Killed My Friend

On Thursday at 2:30pm PST while not particularly paying attention to the AM talk radio feed that is my background noise, the ABC News reader droned on about the hotel terror bombings that hit Amman, Jordan the day before. I am inured to escalating death count suicide bomb followup news reports.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:22 AM
Comments (19)

Well, if the Nobelist says so...

From Reuters: United Nations (UN) nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said yesterday that he expected a deal aimed at defusing a standoff over Iran's nuclear programme to be reached within days, while Germany said Iran could be hiding something.

Schucks, I just don't know whom to believe on this one.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:28 AM
Comments (7)

November 10, 2005

Guest post coming up

Only once before has there been a guest post on this blog, but very shortly we will have one from my good friend Andrew Breitbart of breitbart.com. Andrew went to high school in Brentwood with Rima Akkad Monla who died in yesterday's terror attack in Amman. He will be posting his memories of Rima here shortly.

UPDATE: Rima's father, film director Mustapha Akkad, apparently also died in the terror attack. First reports were that he had survived, but evidently not.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:18 PM
Comments (1)

Who was Zarkawi's mother?

If it is true that Abu Musab al-Zarkawi is the instigator of the butchery in Amman, and it certainly seems to be, this young man is developing into one of history's great psychopaths, right up there with Jack the Ripper and Gilles de Rais. This boy is one sick puppy. The Jordanian people have the right to be appalled.

ABC reports of the madman's latest carnage: Significantly, the victims also included some two dozen Palestinians with roots in the West Bank. Among them were the West Bank's intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Bashir Nafeh, a diplomat and a prominent banker. Many Jordanians and Palestinians have supported the Iraqi insurgency, but the hotel bombings could tip Arab sentiment against al-Zarqawi.

If it doesn't, they're nitwits.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:03 PM
Comments (5)

"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one."

AJ Liebling's famous words are illustrated once again by France's TF1 - via the Anchoress.

MEANWHILE: John Vinocur's view of the French situation is worth a look, as is Pascal Bruckner's at the New Republic. (Sorry, under subscription wraps for now)

MORE: I notice AJ Liebling has another quote apropos for today's world - People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:03 PM
Comments (4)

La Haine

Clive Davis continues the discussion of France/Amérique with a wise caveat:

Somewhere in his book Free World (I haven't got time to look it up now - I'm on a deadline) Timothy Garton Ash talks about the temptation, post-9/11, to give in to the "hubris of the victim". He's right. It may be comforting to do that, but it's not a good idea when you're the world's only superpower.

True enough. But the very balanced Mr. Davis pointed me, in email, to this article by French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz (La Haine) - It's Hard Not to Cheer on the Rioters - which wins today's Michael Moore Award. Kassovitz replaces Bush Derangement Syndrome with Sarkozy Derangement Syndrome (SDS - how ironic is that!).... [But he's so much better a director than Moore.-ed. So it goes.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:23 AM
Comments (30)

More Chalabi Wasabi

Ahmed Chalabi is bad and back in Washington DC, causing consternation among Democratic politicians and media potentates, but garnering rounds of applause at the American Enterprise Institute. For someone who is supposed to be so evil, no one has been able to convict Chalabi of anything, not even that old standby tax evasion. Old Ahmed outfoxed them all. And now he seems to be drawing close to his life long prize (if you can call it that) - the Prime Ministership of Iraq. When asked if he was serious about that ambition, Chalabi replied with the familiar refrain "That's for me to know and you to find out." Beats Sherman. In any case, maybe he wouldn't do such a bad job. He's apparently been a big success reviving Iraq's oil industry. And he's probably better at math than any politician in the last fifty years - if that matters.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:12 AM
Comments (9)

November 9, 2005

Cliff May tries on some pajamas...

Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (they have a superb blog, by the way), has joined Pajamas Media as a member of our Editorial Board. I feel a special kinship for Cliff because he has, like me, been branded an apostate - up, down and around. He seems to wear it better than I do, though. Perhaps I should take lessons from him. Anyway, you can read his profile on our temporary site. And speaking of the site, in about a week the name will be changing and we'll be going... live!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:38 PM
Comments (0)

Is it Corbusier's fault?

A blogger who blogs under the famous name of the great Corbu at a site called Architecture and Morality investigates the unrest in the French cités.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll dealt with this subject back in August in an English context.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:59 PM
Comments (12)

Some people know how to say thanks...

The Iraqi Kurds will shortly be launching an advertising campaign to thank America for liberating their country. You can see it here. Maybe the next time they have a secret session of the Senate they should play it.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:20 PM
Comments (5)

France again

There has been a lively (to say the least) discussion on here over the last several days about the various possible motivations behind the French rioting. I would like to call you attention to this article by the French intellectual Michel Garfinkiel, which appeared yesterday in the NY Sun but I saw only today. Mr. Garfinkiel concludes:

Which brings us to a second question: How ethnic is the present violence in France? Liberal commentators, both in France and abroad, tend to say that poverty and unemployment, rather than race or religion, are the driving force behind the riots. Mr. Villepin himself tends to share this view, at least in part. He said yesterday on TV that he is earmarking enormous credits for housing rehabilitation, education, and state-supported jobs in the areas where the unrest has developed. But the fact remains that only ethnic youths are rioting, that most of them explicitly pledge allegiance to Islam and such Muslim heroes as Osama bin Laden, that the Islamic motto - Allahu Akbar - is usually their war cry, and that they submit only to archconservative or radical imams.

A third and last question is what impact this unprecedented ordeal is likely to have on France and Europe? One would reasonably expect the French government to restore its grip over the country. What matters, however, is the long-term outcome. My guess is that the crisis will not be so easily forgotten or washed away among the "non-ethnic" citizens, including those of alien stock who have fully integrated into the French society as it is. Rejection of Islam and of North African, Black African, and Middle Eastern immigration may increase dramatically. And the prospect of Turkey acceding to the European Union may get even dimmer.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:05 AM
Comments (34)

Fedora Missing

Neo-neocon asks me to put on my mystery writer hat to solve the question of Who is killing Saddam's defense lawyers? That usually takes me about a couple of hundred pages of writing to figure out - no, I didn't fully outline my mysteries - and I've been a little busy lately. But I welcome suggestions.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:15 AM
Comments (12)

Stormin' Norman

Norman Podhoretz (always required reading for everyone - especially mainstream media reporters) addresses the question of Who Is Lying About Iraq?

UPDATE: After reading Norman's article, what I first thought about was this - If I were an Iraqi citizen thankful for my freedom from dictatorship (the vast majority, I imagine), I would despise Senator Harry Reid. Reid is either hugely immoral or butt stupid. Take your choice.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:12 AM
Comments (16)

November 8, 2005

How d'ya like them Lakers?

Well, just when I was thinking of sitting this year out, the reupped Kobe-Phil Show seems a little more interesting than expected. The Lakers are 3-1 and the Kobester on top of the scoring derby with a Jordanesque 36 plus a game. Will this last? Doubt it. But if it does, it's going to cost me a lot of ticket money on Ebay.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:45 PM
Comments (8)

Voting the Terminator Ticket

I agree with Pajamas Media West Coast Editor Jill Stewart whose oped in the NYT yesterday explained why California voters should back Arnold-supported Proposition 77 today. In a nutshell:

Honest observers on the left and right have long complained that California's voting district map is a masterwork of cynicism that assures victories for incumbents as well as party hacks seeking open seats. The fix is so complete that in 2004 not one of the 173 state legislative and Congressional seats being contested in California changed party hands. Robert Stern, president of the liberal-leaning Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told me that California's elections are "less democratic than the Soviet Politburo."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:28 PM
Comments (26)

Party Politics is not only dead... Part II

Back on 6/13/2003 I put up a post based on that great Claudette Colbert (okay, Preston Sturges) line from Palm Beach Story: "Chivalry is not only dead, it's decomposed!" The same, I wrote then and continue to feel [You haven't matured, I see.-ed.], can be said of party politics in our country today. Witness the new so-called debate on Iraq WMD intelligence, which is now in its fourth (or is it fifth?) iteration. Democrats who once supported this war are lining up to disassociate themselves for political reasons (although no one could be truly be able to evaluate the policy's success for many years). Statesmanship? Forget it. As Senator John Cornyn points out in a noteworthy speech today, no one in Clinton's party seems to recall what their President said as recently as 1998.

"Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war against his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them."

Oh, I forgot. They didn't find the WMDs. [But what about AQ Khan's phone number in Saddam's pocket?-ed. He'd never use it.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:01 AM
Comments (42)

Pajamas Man in Manila

As we bear down on our launch November 16 (yes, under the new name), PJ Media is cramming in as many contributor profiles as possible. Up now is a very interesting one - Manuel Quezon from the Philippines. Our intention is to bring in people from as many "ports" as possible to develop a truly international network. We will be connecting up these contributors via instant messaging (Jabber) through an Apple server already installed at our El Segundo, California offices. That way we can all be in communication as events develop. This will, of course, take time.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:40 AM
Comments (1)

TigerHawk looks at the art scene

With this review. If he wants a better show, he should go here.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:31 AM
Comments (1)

The Big Simmer

Things have quieted down a bit in France. 1173 vehicles were torched last night compared to 1408 the night before. With more draconian short-run emergency powers put in by the government plus an ever-increasing police presence, it is likely (although far from certain) that things will continue to simmer down, at least for now. Of the temporary powers, one that caught my eye was "allowing police to carry out raids for suspected stockpiling of weapons." Who was doing that? Or is it that just a precautionary measure? It would be interesting to find out.

In any case, the French are going to be dealing with all this for a long time to come. One thing I hope they do not do is roll back the legislation against wearing the hijab in state schools. The oppression of women, symbolic or otherwise, should not be tolerated in civilized society. (For the record, I feel exactly the same way about extreme Orthodox Jewish women being required to shave their heads and wear wigs after marriage. It's morally repellent and psychologically disturbed. Clear enough?)

EVIDENTLY NOT: Sexism is as bad as racism, in fact arguably worse because it affects half of humanity. A cultural relativist might say it's okay to allow groups who engage in these discriminatory practices to do so privately. I disagree. Follow that out in racial, rather than gender, terms and you will see what I mean. (Is it okay for discrimination against blacks to be practiced by certain groups?) That said, I guess commenter Jeff did not notice I was talking about "state schools" above. Words, again.

UPDATE: bkochba's (b as in bar, I assume) criticism of me below makes sense. I stand corrected. [Again?-ed. When will this ever end?] Though I still loathe all sexism. [Will you shut up?-ed. Now I will.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:53 AM
Comments (54)

November 7, 2005

Back from the dead (again)

James Jesus Angleton.

But the question remains: if Ledeen didn't forge the Niger Documents, what did he forge. [Your name on the pizza take-out bill.-ed. You mean the one he was supposed to be paying?]

Another view of the Niger Documents here.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:57 PM
Comments (2)

Radio Free Europe (kidding)

I will be on Hugh Hewitt's Show at 4:20PM Pacific to discuss the situation in (where else?) France. Victor Davis Hanson will precede me, a tough act to follow.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:51 PM
Comments (3)

Singh for Your Supper

Is there anyone who who didn't make money off Saddam? Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh is apparently making the Galloway Defense in his denial that he profiteered off the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who summoned Foreign Minister Natwar Singh for an hourlong meeting at his residence, demoted him to minister without portfolio, the prime minister's office said in a statement.

Natwar Singh left the prime minister's residence without speaking to reporters, waving before getting into his car. He had rejected calls for his resignation, insisting that he received no favors or bribes from former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government or benefited from the $64 billion Oil-for-Food program.

SiliconIndia has more.

UPDATE: More interesting revelations from India: With his report on Iraqi oil deals creating a political storm in India, its author Paul Volcker, in a startling revelation, has said he agreed to change the language that referred to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son Kojo's business dealings.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:23 AM
Comments (4)

The France of the Mind Goes Up in Smoke

I grew up with the most romantic view of France - Sartre, Piaf, Jean Renoir, the Resistance. Then it was Truffaut, Godard, Serge Gainsbourg. (My mother had gone to school there.) They were superior to us. The place to go. The place for a writer to be ratified (like Ernest and Scott) as a person of substance. I was most proud of myself when my first books were translated into French by Editions Alta (a company now defunct) and profiled in a magazine called Polar (also now defunct, I believe). Quel orgeuil.

Now the country itself seems defunct, its economic system a mess, its ability to assimilate immigrants (partly through its own fault and partly through the tribal religious primitivism of the immigrants themselves) practically non-existent. Its politicians seem a collection of pompous aristos and equally pompous leftists.

And yet France is magnificent and we should all be sad, sadder still that the violence is metastasizing to Belgium and who knows where else? In continental Europe at least, France was almost always the leading factor, for good or ill. I find it highly disturbing to watch it flounder like this. Buried in another article is even more disturbing news - churches are under attack. A church was set ablaze in the southern fishing town of Sete and another in nearby Lens, Pas de Calais. Echoes of 1492 reverberate in the motor scooters of fifteen year olds. People try to diminish all this as the work of "youths", but how old were the Crusaders themselves, on both sides? I would imagine most of them were kids. Who else has the physical strength to fight wars? And that is one of the hidden nightmares in all this - the immigrants are young and the old Europeans are, for the most part, well, old.

But perhaps this is not all Armageddon, as Theodore Dalrymple, writing in this morning's WSJ, reminds us:

Of course, apocalypses have a habit of not happening. The present riots are only a temporary exacerbation of "normal" life in French lower-class and immigrant suburbs. (In all of Western society, not just France, social housing means antisocial behavior.) Even when there are no riots, such suburbs are strewn with the carcasses of burnt-out cars, like skeletons in a desert, and one can see the blackened remains of shops that have been put to the torch. Drug-trafficking goes on openly, and the hostility to outsiders is palpable.

The Paris stock exchange has every confidence that, in the end, Sarkozy or no Sarkozy, the French state will emerge victorious over the disorganized racaille, and everything can continue as before. The index has risen steadily -- or calmly, to quote the officer of the CRS -- throughout the disturbances.

MEANWHILE: Michael Totten - who went to the Middle East in search of action - notes a role reversal: Paris has become the Beirut of Europe.

UPDATE: Dept. of Not Fodor's. Some grisly photos of the recent events in France here. I was in Paris within weeks of May 1968 and saw nothing remotely resembling this. It's interesting that CNN, etc. are not showing them - at least to my knowledge. SCRATCH THAT- I have seen similar photos elsewhere, including the BBC.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:38 AM
Comments (132)

November 6, 2005

La vie continue...

One of the interesting things about the Internet is that you see writ large (via near instantaneous feedback) your own mistakes. Sometimes you even correct them. You also see people's misapprehension of what you are saying equally exposed. Although I wrote yesterday of the rioting (or whateve