December 31, 2005

Pajamas Media with reports of some early New Years "celebrating" on Indonesia

... doesn't sound like "fireworks," unfortunately. Also continued post-election updates from Iraq from ITM. Omar and Mohammed have been covering the story at least as well as anyone I have seen, in or out of the MSM.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:05 AM
Comments (3)

December 30, 2005

Naming names (yourself)

Neo-neocon has written again (and eloquently, as usual) of her favorite topic, political change - who makes it, why and what happens. This time (in response to an essay by "Bookworm") she is dealing with the unease many feel (especially blue staters) about coming out to their friends about their political views:

The second reason I tell friends [about my change] is actually more important, because it's not about me. It's this: if I don't speak up, and if people like me (and Bookworm, and her other crypto-con friends) don't speak up and "out" ourselves, then it simply perpetuates the myths of those who consider The Other Side to be monstrous.

It's easy to move through life in a liberal bubble if everyone around who disagrees is silent and invisible. The only way to change that is to challenge it by standing up, speaking out, and bursting the bubble. It's very difficult; but you may find, as I did, that most of your worthwhile relationships survive the blow, although many are never quite the same again.

Indeed!

And neo-neocon does not even blog under her real name. As one who does, I can tell her that the level of "sticker shock" is of a yet higher level (she probably knows that - hence the nom de blog). To be honest, however, when I started blogging almost three years ago now, I had little thought, despite whatever notoriety I had as a novelist and screenwriter, that anyone was paying any real attention. In fact, I started blogging just to promote a book and did not give whatever political change I was undergoing that much attention. I mean who could care, right?

Wrong.

A surprising number of people I knew were paying a great deal of attention. Hardly anyone I talked to in Hollywood did not know "something had happened to Roger Simon, the man who created Moses Wine." Let's leave aside for the moment my contention that they had changed but I hadn't. I was disturbed. No one likes to be a pariah, but there I was. To many of my friends I was a threatening figure, although they didn't want to admit it, so chalked my current views up to my neuroses or whatever. You'd have to ask them. Once, when blogging at the Republican convention, I ran into an old left/liberal friend covering the same event for the usual suspects. He laughed at my presence and said "You'll be back some day," meaning those views were a temporary aberration. (There were other far more insulting moments that I will go into at another time.) I winced and wondered.

Now, I don't. The truth, as I gradually learned, is there is no "back" to go back to, even if I so desired. The left n'existe pas. It's over. There's no there there, as Gertrude famously said - only a boring and aging social club trying to preserve their perks. It won't work. Neo-neocon doesn't have to worry as much as she thinks she does, nor does the yet more apprehensive, though immensely sympathetic, "Bookworm" she quotes. Although I still think "sisterhood is powerful" and all that, this is not about men and women (as Bookworm supposes). It's about common sense. Pardon my bluntness, but screw on some cojones. If you lose friends who are so pathetically stupid (and mired in projection) to think world affairs revolve around the putative lack of intelligence of George Bush (who did better at Yale than John Kerry anyway, as the New York Times, of all places, informed us), those friends probably are not nearly as bright as you thought they were - certainly nowhere near as emotionally or morally sophisticated. Also, they have a stong streak of cowardice. As neo-neocon knows well and has written extensively, these people are far less willing to examine their assumptions than the Bookworms of the world for fear of their own personality disintegrations. And maybe, if truth be told, they do have something to be afraid of in that regard. That, far more than ostracism, is the tragic dilemma which we must all confront on a daily basis.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:21 PM
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The Grey Lady predicts... UPDATED with a significant announcement

... sounds a little like "Miss Otis Regrets," doesn't it? Anyway, TigerHawk does some graphing to show us the egregious failures of the NYT when it comes to economic prognostication, a fool's game for most of us, but for the Grey Lady nach ein ander opportunity to bash the Bush administration. What does Suzlberger care that they are dead wrong again? His niche market has no memory ... or does it?

And speaking of memory and the NYT, perhaps I missed something, but I'm still waiting for someone to enlighten me on the difference between the NSA's Echelon program of the 1990s and the current "misuse" of that intelligence agency recently posited by the Xenophons of Zabars. I guess the niche market isn't listening. There are sales at Bloomingdale's.

UPDATE: Now the Justice Department is weighing in on what could emerge as one of the most bloody government/press face-offs of our time:

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the paper will not comment on the investigation.

I'm betting it's the Times that has more to lose than the government in this one. They are going to have to explain why they held onto this story for a year and then suddenly decided it was okay to release it. New York Times stock has plummeted in the last quarter. How much lower can it go?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:15 AM
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December 29, 2005

Forget Moliere ... Sleepless in Seattle from overeating

Seems like every time Sheryl and I go to Seattle (which is twice in the last couple of years), we go crazy from overeating ... at least I do. Tonight, working my way through the signature coconut cream pie at the Dahlia Lounge ... after a Manhattan straight up, a bowl of duck noodle soup, several slices of black and green olive bread and a generous portion of Snake River Farms pork tenderloin with carmelized pearl onions and (I think) braised kale ... all this after a breakfast quiche at the Macrina Bakery and a quick lunch of sukiyaki and rice at the Uwajimaya Market ... I found myself thinking back to my college production of Molière's "The Miser" (in which I played Valere, the romantic lead; how long ago was that!) and the playwright's immortal words of warning: "You should eat to live, not live to eat."

I made it well into my middle years without following his advice. And now there seems little chance I will everheed it. Yesterday we made what now feels like an annual pilgrimage to the Barking Frog in Woodinville where I ate my first ever grilled antelope (from a ranch in Texas; okay, not sensational) washed down by a complement of Washington reds (much better than the antelope, as were the oysters from Whidby Island's Penn Cove and the bread pudding with maple ice cream).

Oh, and I forgot... the homemade donuts with mascarpone at the Dahlia Lounge. (Whoever invented Lipitor is the greatest human being since DaVinci.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:55 PM
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Annals of the reactionary media

Drew Thornley of My Take writes of the honor killings in Pakistan:

The mainstream American media spent months covering in detail the "atrocities"at Abu Ghraib and continues to give negative press to allegations of inhumane treatment at the hands of American soldiers. As of December 28, 2005, Google searches of "honor killings" and "honor murders" returned 365,000 and 643 results, respectively, while "Abu Ghraib" returned 15,900,000. While few "honor murderers" pay for their crimes, those who perpetrated crimes at Abu Ghraib were dealt with swiftly. They were prosecuted and sentenced; justice was served. The saga of Abu Ghraib should have resulted in negative press for a few shameful soldiers but positive press for the military as a whole due to its response to the events. Yet the events at Abu Ghraib pale in comparison to the real atrocities that receive little or no attention by the same media, such as the crisis in Darfur, Castro's jailing and/or murder of political dissidents, the May 2005 massacre of public demonstrators in Andijan, Uzbekistan, and the hundreds of "honor murders" committed each year.

When you read this paragraph, you realize there is a deep psychological disturbance in our mainstream media, a kind of willed need to ignore the world around them. It probably was, more or less, forever thus, but modern communications, specifically the internet, have brought this willed ignorance to the surface as never before. And yet the MSM continues in the same direction, even in the face of seeming economic failure.

Sheryl and I were discussing this phenomenon this afternoon with our friend Gerard who reminded us of the obvious. Many of these media outlets that keep ignoring what is happening in the world while trumpeting every US failure are increasingly playing to niche audiences in our society. They have no real interest, financial or otherwise, in the truth - or in the future of humanity, really (that last is my observation).

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:01 PM
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Another day in the asylum - Tulkarem

Those who justify so-called "suicide" bombing on any level, even those who rationalize it through "poverty" or some other supposedly socio-economic reason, ought to examine their own sadism. The hostility of the jihadists toward their own people is monumental.

UPDATE: Speaking of sadists, Saddam's lawyer has written Bush that reinstating the former dictator who cut out people's tongues is the solution for Iraq's ills.

MORE evidence of sadism here. It's that kind of day.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:08 AM
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Off the tourist trail

Michael Totten visits Libya.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:06 AM
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December 28, 2005

All I can say is...

... bravo! (via American Thinker)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:22 PM
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You will be relieved. The elevator has been fixed...

You remember - the one in which former Oil-for-Food head Benon Sevan's aunt had the unfortunate accident. In her latest WSJ opinion piece, Claudia tells us for the incredible visit by Hyde Committee investigators to Cyrprus where they met Mr. Sevan himslef. [Time to go back to mystery writing.-ed. You couldn't make anything like this up. You don't have to.]

But to such sketchy accounts, investigators for Rep. Henry Hyde's International Relations Committee are now prepared to add some illuminating details--starting with their encounter with Mr. Sevan himself, less than three months ago, in Cyprus. As it happens, they were not expecting to find Mr. Sevan in person. They went to Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, trying to track down details of the case, including the fate of Mr. Sevan's deceased aunt, Bertouji Zeytountsian. By Mr. Sevan's account to Mr. Volcker, this aunt, while living in Nicosia as a retired government worker on a pension, had sent him funds totaling some $160,000 during the last four years in which he was running Oil for Food, 1999-2003. The day after the U.N. investigation into Oil for Food was announced, in March, 2004, Zeytountsian fell down an elevator shaft in her Cyprus apartment building. A few months later, she died.

The investigators turned to go, and, as one of them recounts, as they headed for the stairs, Mr. Sevan told them, "You can take the elevator. It's fixed now."

Glad to hear it.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:01 AM
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Nizar Nayouf's story

Given continued revelations about the Syrian regime (the Hariri assassination and others), I am interested if anyone knows any follow-up to my postings on here last January about Syrian dissident writer Nizar Nayouf. At that time Nayouf, a man of considerable distinction according several human rights organizations, was telling the world nefarious things about his native country. From the Washington Times coverage:

Syria's Central Bank and the Medina Bank in Lebanon are holding at least $2 billion in cash, as well as gold bullion and platinum, that was smuggled out of Iraq, according to a letter written on the stationery of the Syrian army's intelligence department.
The letter says $1.3 billion was deposited in the Syrian Central Bank in an official "presidency" account, while another $700 million was placed in the Medina Bank. The document does not state the value of the gold and platinum, although it says these are also in the Syrian Central Bank.
The handwritten letter to a Syrian exile in Europe, which also bears what appears to be the official stamp of the Syrian army intelligence department, says the deal was struck not long before a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq early last year.
The document was sent to Nizar Nayouf, an exiled Syrian human-rights activist and past winner of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Press Freedom Prize who is living in Paris.
While the claims in the letter could not be further verified, Mr. Nayouf, a journalist and democracy activist who was released from a Syrian prison in May 2001, said past information provided by the same person had proved reliable.
The letter names two members of the Lebanese parliament as go-betweens.

To what extent has this been followed up? To what extent has the possibility that Saddam outsourced his WMDs to Syria at the same time as his money been researched? You can bet our mainstream media won't waste a nickle on the task. Not part of their narrative. But this is one of the great stories of the Iraq War. And it just sits there.

(Hint: The French website Proche-Orient.info is a good place to start).

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:14 AM
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Who translates Arabic for the BBC?

Because I doubt this non-sequitur is an accurate translation of a flyer distributed to Gazans by the Israeli army:

"For your own safety, read this statement carefully and act accordingly," the leaflet says in Arabic.

"Know that the terrorists have made you hostages and human shields and safeguard your interests," it continues.

I notice some of the more militantly pro-Israeli blogs are using this situation (yesterday's problem with Islamic Jihad,etc.) as yet another opportunity to ridicule the incompentence or worse of Mahmoud Abbas. They have a point, of course, and we all know Abbas' dubious background, but history works in strange ways (call it the Nixon in China syndrome), so I don't think it makes sense to marginalize Abbas until he entirely marginalizes himsef. He's not there yet, making attemps to deal with the militants. I wouldn't want to be himat this moment, would you?

MEANWHILE: The election process in Gaza seems not yet to have "":Dozens of masked Palestinian gunmen took over election offices in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, exchanging fire with Palestinian police and demanding spaces on a list for Jan. 25 parliamentary elections.

The clashes came as the two main factions of the ruling Fatah Party — the so-called "young" and "old" guards — announced an end to an internal rift that threatened to bolster the electoral prospects of Hamas militants. Young guard members announced that Fatah will submit a single, unified list for the elections.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:38 AM
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December 27, 2005

Islamic Jihad "just says no" to non-violence

Those non-stop bloodthirsty thrill seekers at IJ have nixed Mohammed Abbas' plea to stop firing rockets at Israel, according to the AP.

Islamic Jihad on Tuesday rejected a call from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to halt rocket attacks on Israeli towns, dealing a new blow to the Palestinian leader and prompting a new round of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas traveled to Gaza on Tuesday for talks with the terror groups, in part to halt growing violence along Israel's border with Gaza. Israel has put heavy pressure on Abbas to stop terrorists from firing rockets.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:21 PM
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Another Mass Grave in Iraq

How many more are there? I don't we will ever know, even remotely. The people who dig such things don't tend to promote their presence, just as those who bury WMDs are not likely to tell us where they are (Syria? Lebanon?). All such revelations are happy/unhappy acidents. As for the WMD part of the equation, can anyone paying the slightest attention to revelations about Syrian government say these thugs had nothing to do with the disappearance of weapons from Iraq?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:20 AM
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Cuban Mystery Writers

Fausta emailed this morning to ask if I knew Cuban mystery writer José Latour who wrote his way to freedom, according to the WSJ. The answer is almost. I knew several Cuban mystery writers whom I met when I was helping form an organization called the International Association of Crime Writers in the eighties. We used to guess which of them were members of Cuban intelligence - probably they all were to one degree or another; it was the only way to be allowed to international conferences - but they clearly weren't happy members of Cuban intelligence. Every single one of them, even the ones publicly spouting the most Stalinist rhetoric, left Cuba, sooner or later, as I recall. One of them just disappeared one day in Madrid, to resurface years later as a European. Several are now living in Spain, a happier place with, alas, more crowded beaches. I became less active in the organization about the time Jos´ joined, hence I never met him. I was told he was a fascinating man and a fine writer.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:42 AM
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December 26, 2005

Some people change, others don't

I have been running around gorgeous Bainbridge Island all day with Sheryl and Madeleine, looking at cedars and Douglas fir instead of various people's blather on the internet, but now I am back on the ferry again, cruising into Seattle, and instead of looking at that city's glorious skyline, currently illuminated, addict that I am I fired up the iBook G4 and dialed into my good friend Glenn via the ferry's WiFi. I found myself blasted back into the past, to Scarsdale High School, which I attended back in the days the sputnik was launched, because I saw the subject of discussion was my high school debating team mate Robert Kuttner. Yes, Bob Kuttner and I represented Scardale High against all debating comers in those days. I remember we did okay too. We were both pure liberals then, young guys very confident of ourselves... more or less anyway. We went our separate ways. Bob went into political science but I veered off into the artier realms of Hollywood. For awhile, I outstripped Bob in my leftism, but times have changed. Now he's a tried and true member of the liberal church, bashing Bush with the best of them. Obviously he hasn't changed much at all in forty years. I wonder what he thinks about what has happened to me.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:28 PM
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Tsunami overview

As I near Bainbrdige... have just read Martin Lindeskog's excellent tsunami overview on Pajamas. I was in the air between Burbank and Seatac when it was posted. Definitely worth a look.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:26 PM
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Blogging from the Bainbridge Ferry

I know some people (not me particularly) are suspicious of ubiquitous free WiFi, but here I am blogging from the Washington State ferry which has just taken off from Seattle, headed for Bainbridge Island. The view is magnificent and I am about to dig into a salmon burger. Happy holidays!

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:11 PM
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December 25, 2005

Condi gets good press from the AP ... of all places ...

Anne Gearan, AP diplomatic writer, has a piece on Rice's rising stock:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the most popular member of the Bush administration and a potential candidate to succeed her boss in the White House, even as Americans lose confidence in the president she serves and patience with the Iraq war she helped launch.

Rice resolutely defends the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism and the expansive executive powers that Bush claims came with it. She has lately sounded more optimistic than Bush about the progress of the Iraq war and the future for that country.

I'm not sure Americans have lost as much confidence in the Irag Waras Gearan says, but it is startling to see someone from the AP saying anything postive at all about a member of the administration.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:23 PM
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Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukah

Same time/same station... for once. To all the wonderful readers of this blog - a great day and year. Blogging will be low today for obvious reasons, but also because I'm on duty at PJMedia. (Do I get extra credit from my colleagues? Yes!)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:59 AM
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December 24, 2005

Spy chatter from the NYT on Christmas Eve

The NYT is continuing to report (mostly anonymously, of course) on the Bush Administration's nefarious use of the National Security Agency. This time they say:

The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

Well, maybe. But haven't we always known this? Back in 1998, when someone else was in the White House as I recall, there was a lot of talk about an already-existing NSA program called Echelon, scanning just about all telecommunications worldwide. In what sense is what the NYT is reporting today actually different from the Echelon program that has been in force for all that time and maybe longer? I'm no expert in this area, but unless I missed something the word "Echelon," a program that has been around for some time, does not appear in any of the NYT's reports. Why not? A great deal more about Echelon is here. [Hasn't that stuff been on the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) site for years?-ed. No comment.]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:10 PM
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Christmas Spirit (?) at the AP

Here's how Sarah El Deeb reported on Christmas in Bethlehem for the Associated Press:

Thousands of tourists flocked to Bethlehem for Christmas Eve celebrations Saturday, bringing a long-missing sense of holiday cheer to Jesus' historic birthplace.

The festivities capped the most peaceful year since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in September 2000. But
Israel's imposing separation barrier at the entrance to town dampened the Christmas spirit and provided a stark reminder of the unresolved conflict.

Hmm... could it be that it was exactly the building of that fence that created the diminution of terrorism in Bethlehem and allowed the pilgrims to come? Nah. Impossible. Not in the world according to the Associated Press anyway.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:21 PM
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Season's Greetings from Los Angeles

When I was a kid in New York in the early fifties, I celebrated Christmas and Hanukah. Basically I thought that was a good thing (more presents), but it was also troubling in a low-grade percolating sort of way - a form of denial. Now don't get me wrong, I loved the Christmas tree, loved decorating it, loved the bulging stockings of gifts, loved the decorations in Macy's store window, the roasting chestnuts, the cider, the tree in Rockefeller Center, hearing "White Christmas" blasting everywhere (yes, I knew it was written by a Jew before I was seven) - all of it.

Yet Christmas seemed to be my mother's thing. She was from the more assimilated branch of the family and my father was going along for the ride - sometimes willingly, sometimes not - into the brave new world of American materialism. Religion, of course, was not the issue. My father, however, made us celebrate Hanukah, a relatively doughty event to me at that time with scant festivities, perfunctory decorations and fewer (mostly minor) presents stretched out over eight days. Sometimes it even felt like a chore - I have never been much of a chocoholic and to have to rain gratitude on some great aunt for distributing a few gold foil wrapped chocolate coins felt to my arrogant child self like an Old Country annoyance. Hanukah was also a guilt-provoking reminder that if I wanted to be a real Jew I had to learn this weird-looking language with unintelligible letters when I was sure in my seven-year old brain that French and Spanish would be more useful.

The odd thing to me now - thinking back - is that in the midst of all this we were considerably less than a decade from the liberation of Auschwitz, which had taken place during my lifetime. I was conscious of that from a child's point of view because several nurses in my father's office (he was a doctor) were survivors with tattoos on their arms. I knew they had been through a bad thing, but I'm not sure when I realized how bad it actually was. Maybe I still haven't. It's human nature to run away from confronting things like that and I think it's no accident that Jews (from Serge Gainsbourg in Paris to Allen Ginsburg in New Jersey) were at the forefront of the experiments in human freedom that broke out only a few years later with the Beat Generation and went on in different ways for decades. (Ginsburg's "Howl" was published in 1956, barely a decade beyond the camps.) For the second half of the Twentieth Century, everything played at warp speed. Given the pace of events, it's probably no accident that Abbie Hoffman ended up the way he did.

Sorry to have gone off on this depressing tilt in the holiday season, but it clearly has something to do with my mood, which I am trying to lift. It's eighty degrees today in Los Angeles and I have no right to be sour. I have a seven-year old daughter who, like her father before her, gets to celebrate Christmas and Hanukah. Madeleine, my sons Raphael and Jesse and, of course, my wife Sheryl are the joys of my life. I am very lucky in my immediate family and also my extended family, my sisters and brother-in-laws, niece and nephews and my mother, who remembers better than any of us those dark days of the 1930s and 1940s. Those of us who live in America don't know how lucky we are. Season's Greetings to all!

UPDATE: Tammy says we all have reason to be happy this year.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:04 AM
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Christmas presents from Moscow

From the AP: Russia's Foreign Ministry said it made a formal offer to
Iran on Saturday to move its uranium enrichment program to Russia, raising diplomatic pressure on Tehran to accept the Western-backed plan it has so far rejected.

Iran has insisted that it would enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel domestically despite international efforts to curb its atomic program

Sounds good, but we shouldn't forget Moscow's earlier present to the Mullahs, as the always-vigilant Aljazeera reminds us: In October, a Russian rocket carried Iran's first spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit. This launch accelerated Israel's plans to strike Tehran's nuclear facilities; the Jewish state is now getting ready for an attack by the end of March.

While Iran's nuclear program is Israel's main concern, its space capabilities are also considered a "point of no return", which determined the actual timing of the Israeli strike. "The Iranians' space program is a matter of deep concern to us," said an Israeli defense official. "If and when we launch an attack on several Iranian targets, the last thing we need is Iranian early warning received by satellite."

Well if Aljazeera "says so," it must be.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:36 AM
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December 23, 2005

I'm walkin'... yes, indeed... and I'm talkin'....

And let's hope it goes somewhere. According to the AP:
Iraq's leading Shiite religious bloc said Friday it is ready to discuss Sunni Arab participation in a coalition government, while thousands of Sunnis and some secular Shiites demonstrated in the streets claiming election fraud.

Reacting to growing protests over the Dec. 15 ballot for a new parliament, Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari urged Iraqis to have faith in the electoral process. He made the call after meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who announced the first of a possible series of U.S. combat troop reductions next year.

There's more from Iraq the Model on PJ Media, plus other links, including Debka.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:54 PM
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File sharing in France

From the NYT: A nearly empty midnight session of the French National Assembly voted to add amendments to an antipiracy law that would allow peer-to-peer sharing of films and music over the Internet, a move that would legalize here what is considered piracy nearly everywhere else in the world.

The amendments face a tough time later in the legislative process, since the government, which holds a majority of seats, said it opposed the move.

Pajamas Media has more.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:12 AM
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No Hooray for Hollywood

The San Diego Union-Tribune is skeptical of some recent Hollywood releases. (ht: Michael Reynolds)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:03 AM
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The messenger lives!

Kofi Annan, in his press conference the other day, tried to "kill the messenger" who brought the bad (oil-for-food, Kojo's Mercedes) news. But the messenger - James Bone - is not dead; he is alive and writing for the Timesonline.

AS A journalist, I expect my share of verbal abuse. But it is not everyday that I have my professionalism impugned by the world's top diplomat on global TV.

For months journalists were told that the UN could not answer any questions because the scandal was under investigation by the Volcker inquiry. Since the Volcker panel issued its last report in October, the UN has refused to answer any questions because it says the matter has already been investigated. Yet the inquiry raised more questions than it answered, the most important being: what did Kofi Annan know and when did he know it?

The Nixonian echoes are obvious and, as I wrote below, Kofi is in a sense the new Nixon, but he is more than that... considerably more dangerous than that... because Nixon's (ultimately smaller) actions took place in a state (the USA) that was capable of dealing with the situation, correcting itself and moving on. The United Nations evidently is not. They have used the Volcker Report to erect the mother-of-all-stonewalls around their corrupt practices and therefore resist all but the most cosmetic reform. Here,as quoted by Bone, is the conclusion of their official answer to the press.

As far as the United Nations is concerned, the IIC's reports are the final word on the management of the Oil-for-Food Programme.

The work of the IIC is exhaustive and we have nothing to add to it. For any further questions relating to Mr Kojo Annan and the car referred to in the article, the Secretary-General has directed Mr Bone, and other journalists, to his son's lawyers.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:31 AM
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December 22, 2005

Yes, but do you want to take one to bed?

The British Medicial Journal says the didgeridoo is a cure for snoring. And in further weird news, there's this about "Alistair Cookie". (I think Grover did it.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:56 PM
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Sorry for low blogging today

I was buried in Pajamas business, didn't even realize that "More Rings Are Found Around Planet Uranus." How ignorant can you get when you're offline from ten hours. [Those rings have been there for billions of years-ed. Yes, but we didn't know about them. It's that tree in the wilderness thing...]

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:27 PM
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December 21, 2005

Kofi does a Nixon

Resembling no one more than Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate Scandal, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan imploded at his annual end of the year press conference today, lashing out at the media and accusing one particular London Times reporter who dared to ask questions about his son Kojo's "diplomatically discounted" Mercedes an "embarrassment" to his publication. From the AP:

At Wednesday's press conference, one of the most persistent questioners, James Bone of The Times of London, mentioned a Mercedes-Benz that Kojo Annan imported into Ghana using his father's diplomatic immunity to avoid taxes and customs duty, and said some of the secretary-general's accounts of oil-for-food related events, "don't really make sense."

Bone walked out and said later: "The Volcker report raises many serious questions about the integrity of the U.N., and it's important that public officials paid with taxpayer money answer these questions fully and without accusing the press."

Video of Kofi's bizarre performance is available online at CNN and ran on Fox News tonight. Annan has twelve more months in his term as Secretary General. [That's the good news.-ed. What's the bad news? He has twelve more months.]

UPDATE: Claudia logs in.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:50 PM
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He must have been wearing pajamas....

Power Line's John Hinderaker outpoints the NYT's Eric Lichtblau - at least so far.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:00 PM
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The Whys and the Wherefores

The NYT tells us this evening the "Little Progress Is Seen" in the current round of talks between Britain, France, Germany and Iran about the latter's nuclear ambitions.

Representatives of three European countries and Iran met Wednesday for the first time since negotiations over Iran's nuclear development program were suspended four months ago in bitterness. After five hours of closed-door meetings in Vienna, the delegates said the two sides had agreed to hold further talks in January.

Mr. Laboulaye said the delegates would return to their home countries for consultations "with the aim of agreeing on a framework for negotiations." But it seemed virtually certain that the two sides had failed to agree on resuming substantive talks.

Well, you would think so given the recent comments by "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he has called the Holocaust a myth and said Israel should be 'wiped off the map.'"

Despite all, however, the mammoth cooperation between France and Iran continues apace. "With the South Pars project, TotalFinaElf has become the foremost oil company in partnership with Iran and has bolstered its position in the Middle East, where the Group has been active for some 75 years." Holocaust-Shmolocaust.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:23 PM
Comments (4)

Whom do you believe?

From the AP: A witness testified Wednesday at
Saddam Hussein's trial that the deposed leader's regime killed and tortured people by administering electric shocks and ripping off their skin after pouring molten plastic on it. Later, during an extended outburst, Saddam claimed he had been beaten while in detention.

I know - let's ask Ramsey Clark. He's such a fighter for "human rights." [Where was he when the Marsh Arabs were being exterminated?-ed. What Marsh Arabs?]

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

Dorian Greyhound: A Novel

My wife Sheryl Longin's first book - Dorian Greyhound: A Novel - has just been published by iBooks. (Sheryl is the author of several screenplays, among them Dick.) The novel is from the point of view of our - alas now deceased - greyhound Dorian and details his adventures from the race track, to adoption and beyond. Written in a canine, "Wildean" style, the book should obviously appeal to dog lovers. But it is more than that and you will excuse me for being an adoring husband in saying that it is a fine work of literature too - and quite a witty one.

Greyhounds, it turns out, are among the best universal blood donors for all dog breeds and part of the profits from Dorian are being donated to Hemopets - a nonprofit animal blood bank - that is working in association with iBooks on the publication of the book.

(The above link is Amazon. This is Barnes & Noble.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:40 AM
Comments (7)

December 20, 2005

Attention, Jonathan Alter!

Did you read this before you wrote your nonsense in Newsweek? More at PJM.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:43 PM
Comments (56)

How to win an election, Israeli-style

I was listening to blather about the Israeli electoral today on NPR during which there was some thumb-sucking about whether Ariel Sharon's recent hospitalization might cost him votes. No way, I thought. And for once I was right. According to a new poll, Sharon's Kadima party has increased their percentage of the vote since the PM's stroke.

Sharon received good news on Tuesday when polls indicated that support for Kadima went up since the stroke. A Dahaf Institute poll in Yediot Aharonot found that Kadima gained a mandate since Friday while Labor went down two.

According to a Teleseker poll in Ma'ariv, Kadima has gone up three seats to 42. The poll found that Sharon's most popular potential successor was Peres, followed by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. The poll also predicted that if Livni led Kadima the party would win the race, but if Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was the leader, Labor would win.

The polls were taken before Netanyahu was elected Likud leader.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:34 PM
Comments (1)

Fore!

Tom DeLay plays a lot of golf.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:55 PM
Comments (9)

Cardiology Update

Sheryl, Madeleine, Sheryl's brother Stu and my mother-in-law Anita Longin had dinner last night for Anita's birthday at Campanile. Others may have a different favorite restaurant in Los Angeles, but this has been Sheryl's and mine for a long time (we actually got married there - mad foodies that we are). Monday nights are "family night" for which chef owner Mark Peel prepares a prix fixe meal for thirty-five dollars a person without drinks, pretty good these days. These Monday dinners are from many cuisines, but the best ones are often dream versions of traditional American cooking. Last night we had what our waitress described as "the Mercedes of mac and cheese." Indeed it was with four cheeses (gruyere, Grafton cheddar, chantal and parmesan) and four mushrooms (chanterelle, hedgehog, crimini and one other kind I forgot) all baked with elbow macaroni under breadcrumbs of LaBrea bakery bread. There was also an amazing green bean salad with walnuts and shallot dressing. I'm not going to say how much I ate, but the human being who invented Lipitor deserves the Nobel Prize.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:50 AM
Comments (4)

Bob Seeger goes underground

"Just take those old records off the shelf
I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself..."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:42 AM
Comments (8)

Is there always a reason for insomnia?

I awoke in the small hours of the morning to some disturbing news from Iraq... although it remains to be seen how disturbing.

UPDATE: We are obviously following the events at the above link as breaking reports come in from Omar.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 4:21 AM
Comments (19)

December 19, 2005

Blogs for Freedom

I mean that in the best way. Michael Totten goes bar-hopping with the Big Pharoah in Cairo.

(BTW, the Totten link is to his interview with BP, the BP link to interesting breaking news from Iraq.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:52 PM
Comments (1)

Continued Iraq election coverage on Pajamas Media

Omar reports in on the aftermath of the election. Pajamas Media will continue its coverage led by Iraq the Model through the seating of the parliament.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:17 AM
Comments (3)

Animal Farm in the US Senate?

Well, it wouldn't be the first time, but it's a weird one. Here's what happened on December 16 in an interchange between Senators Santorum (R-PA) and Wyden (D-OR) when Santorum was making a proposal on Iran to the Senate:

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I am going to propound what I hope will be two unanimous consent requests about one particular issue. The issue is on the anti-Semitic statements made by the President of Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad, who said, among other things, that the state of Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. We have been working cooperatively to try to get this resolution cleared, condemning those statements. We had some concerns raised with the resolution which I will discuss in more detail. We finally have a version cleared, and I will discuss in detail how we had to work through that. Suffice it to say that it is good to see that we are going to finally get strong bipartisan support to condemn this conduct and call for Iran to be a constructive partner in the peace process in the Middle East.
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 336, a resolution to condemn the recent destructive and anti-Semitic statements of the President of Iran which I submitted earlier today. I ask that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

So what was Wyden (who happens to be Jewish) objecting to on behalf of those Democratic Members? Well, look at the lines that were struck from the proposed legislation in order for the Iran Freedom and Support Act to pass:

1. The Senate supports efforts by the people of Iran to exercise self-determination over the form of government of their country.

2. The Senate supports a national referendum in Iran, with oversight by international observers and monitors, to certify the integrity and fairness of the referendum.

Should I have titled this "Which Side Are You On" yet again?

UPDATE: More here.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:12 AM
Comments (23)

"What did you do in the war, daddy?"

I feel sorry for people like David Corn who have put themselves in such a box that they de facto are rooting for failure in Iraq, no matter how much they deny that. This is the fate of the modern fuddy-duddy liberal who was formerly in the "cool" position and now finds himself allied with most reactionary forces on earth just because he loathes George Bush on stylistics. Yes, that's what it seems to come down to. What a brutal historical joke.

Meanwhile, these men on the scene have much more to tell us than the entire Congress and Beltway pundits (Nation or National Review) rolled into one:

I think the worst scenario we can have is a religious She'at domination but this is not likely to happen considering the current facts; the UIA will certainly fail to achieve the number of seats they got last time and their ambitions cannot exceed the 90 seat-ceiling (140 last January).
From what we saw and heard so far, the results of the elections In general will be pretty much similar to what we had expected in this election preview from ten day ago.
It is now a fact that many other parties are willing to show more flexibility and unite their efforts to face the UIA especially because they know now that no one list can confront the UIA alone.
The next couple of weeks are going to be very interesting and full of activity.

Anyway, from taking a look at the history of nations and in a simple comparison between Iraq and experiments in other countries I think Iraqis have the best record in making substantial progress in a short time in a tough environment.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn helps "liberals" to define themselves:

George Clooney, the matinee idol, made an interesting point the other day. He said that "liberal" had become a dirty word and he'd like to change that. Fair enough. So I hope he won't mind if I make a suggestion. The best way to reclaim "liberal" for the angels is to get on the right side of history - the side the Iraqi people are on. The word "liberal" has no meaning if those who wear the label refuse to celebrate the birth of a new democracy after 40 years of tyranny. Yet, if you wandered the Internet on Thursday, you came across far too many "liberals" who watched the election, shrugged and went straight back to Valerie Plame, WMD, Bush lied.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:17 AM
Comments (77)

December 18, 2005

An Academy Member talks out of school - Part 2

(cross-posted from Pajamas Media so you can all have at me... it's a tradition)

This week let's get straight to my most recent viewing of Academy screeners. So far I have been restricting myself to films about which there is Oscar buzz. I will get to others later, because I understand there are some surprises.

Narnia

We are in a period in cinema history when "family films" seem more creative and enduring than adult movies. Who has been more consistently interesting in recent years than Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)? And of course there is the long line of Harry Potter films, Shreks, etc., all of which show considerable originality and richness of storytelling seemingly abandoned in grownup filmmaking. I'm not sure what this tells us, but the latest triumph in the family area is Narnia, clearly one of the best movies of 2005 and I would say, of the ones I have seen so far, the film most likely to last.

Disney has struck long-term gold once again with this excellent adaptation of C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. On every level, co-writer/director Andrew Adamson (of the aforementioned Shrek series) has delivered a handsome, well-crafted production that is clearly faithful to its highly regarded source material - or faithful enough. Especially good are the performances he has gleaned from his child actors, notably Georgie Henley as little Lucy. She's too adorable for words. James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus, the Faun, and Tilda Swinton (as always) as the White Witch also do superb jobs. "Tech creds all fine," as the say in Variety.

What the Academy will think: Not sure. This is excellent work but the Academy membership skews (seriously) geriatric and this will be perceived as a kids' movie. Such films are usually relegated to the animation category where, obviously, Narnia doesn't fit. Still, I predict nominations, but not as many as deserved.

Good Night, and Good Luck

George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck is more an act of self-congratulation than it is a movie. Bracketed by an awards ceremony that seems like an afterthought added to emphasize the importance of what we will be seeing, this film purports to tell the story of broadcaster Edward R. Murrow's 1950s crusade against Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. But in their zeal, Clooney and his collaborators forgot to write a fleshed-out screenplay with any real conflict or development, nor have they given us much historical context. The result is a dull enterprise oddly resembling a Nineteenth Century melodrama in which we are supposed to applaud the hero - the hard-charging, hard-smoking Murrow - and hiss the villain - the perpetually unshaven 'Tailgunner' Joe. But we don't care much about either of them. In violation of Screenwriting 101, neither Murrow nor McCarthy has what is known in Hollywood as a "character arc" (e. g. some personal growth or change from the movie's action), so they both remain largely stick figures, though David Strathairn as Murrow labors mightily in his imitation of the broadcaster. In fact, though Murrow is the dominant figure in the film (McCarthy hardly appears) we learn virtually nothing of his private life, who he is or where he gets his determination. It's one static newsroom scene after the other punctuated by soporific interludes by a blues singer that give you plenty of time to go out for popcorn in a short 93-minute movie that feels padded.

Now I admit, having lately left the liberal "church," my views of this film may be suspect. I did find peculiar, however, (though not surprising) the movie's complete omission or ignorance of newly revealed details from that period, including the discovery of KGB files indicating Hiss, the Rosenbergs, etc., actually did spy for Stalin, passing atomic secrets to a regime that murdered tens of millions of its own people. Although this does not exonerate the repellent and opportunistic McCarthy, it makes for a more complex vision of those times and a much more interesting film.

How the Academy will regard: Though several members have told me in private they share my view, the "church"-going Academy will applaud this film and reward it with several Oscar nominations, probably including screenwriting. Go figure.

Crash

Initially, I found Paul Haggis' dark vision of multi-cultural Los Angeles with every ethnic group at each other's throat disturbing, even a little dishonest. Perhaps I am naive, but I don't regard the city where I have lived for over thirty years to be as much of a hotbed of racism as he does. I have been many places far worse. Indeed, the extraordinary melting pot of Southern California can be seen more as a symbol of hope - and perhaps that is what Haggis is getting at in his way, because by the end of the movie he was winning me over. The story surprises you - Haggis is a fine writer, as he showed in last year's Million Dollar Baby - with the ability to go deeper into his material. Tragedy occurs. Racists redeem themselves. Grace is achieved.

If you haven't seen this movie, rent it, but don't expect a "pleasant" experience. (Oh, and Haggis, a first timer, directs well. But then, as most of us know, pace the auteur theory, writing is more difficult.)

How the Academy will regard: Another well-deserved screenwriting nomination for Haggis.

(Pajamas Media co-founder Roger L. Simon is a member of the writers branch of the Academy.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:04 PM
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Sharon's stroke worrying

I am not normally overly concerned about the health of individual politicians, but Ariel Sharon had shown great courage of late in the search for a solution to the perpetual Israeli-Palestinian crisis and his leadership is vastly more important than most. I hope his stroke is indeed "minor," as Haaretz is reporting.

UPDATE: Arik seems to be okay - "I feel fine," Sharon was quoted as saying by aides. Israeli television said he had quipped to doctors: "You're not getting rid of me yet."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:28 AM
Comments (6)

From the "Lebanese Political Journal"

This one is worth reading. (Cross-posted as a PJMedia Best of the Blogs).

MEANWHILE: Dept. of I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it... The EU says it may cut aid to the PA if Hamas wins their election.

AND: In case you missed this while you were sleeping - the Mullahs think genocide should be up for discussion: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust is a matter for academic discussion and the West should be more tolerant of his views, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

UPDATE: Dartblog discusses the EU and Hamas.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:34 AM
Comments (1)

Rodney Whitaker, aka Trevanian, passes

One of my favorite contemporary thriller writers, the pseudonymous Trevanian, has died. In their obit, the NYT writes of the deceased author:

After John Leonard in The Times called "Shibumi" quite silly, he hastened to add, "It just happens to be the most agreeable nonsense in commercial fiction this spring."

Well, yes, and, ironically, my guess is that twenty years from now people will most likely still be reading Trevanian, but virtually no one will have heard of Times critic Leonard. I'm not sure "Shimbumi" is finally so silly.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:49 AM
Comments (8)

December 17, 2005

Life in the asylum continues

From the AP: TEHRAN, Iran - Bandits killed a guard of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hours before the leader visited southeastern Iran this week, state-run television reported Saturday.

Bandits, huh? Okay. Pajamas Media has more.

(Michael Ledeen, who has contacts within the Iranian freedom movement, informs me these "bandits" were also, like Ahmadinejad, messianic believers in the 12th imam - hence it's an inside job. Who knows?)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:02 PM
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Panic in Wheedle Park

I don't condone our government spying on its citizens, but excuse me if I am a little more than skeptical about the recent revelations that Bush asked the NSA to do domestic surveillance and about the sudden appearance of this information.

Let's start with this: For years now, anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to such matters knows that the internet is being digitally crawled by spy agencies - the NSA, the CIA, the governments of Russia, China, England, France, Israel, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia or anyone else with the technological capability. Who knows where the list begins or ends? They have been looking into our email and instant messages, pulling out key words and scanning the contents, reporting to their superiors and so forth.

Hello! These communications are domestic and foreign. Very often they are both. They are all being examined by the same search engines. Unless you're on a seriously closed company system, if you think your email of IM is private, you're either an idiot or totally disinterested.

Meanwhile, most of the aforesaid entities are flying satellites over our heads. These have been monitoring phone conversations for who knows how many years, but The Puzzle Palace - the seminal work about the NSA - is copyright 1982. The book details the formation of an electronic intelligence cartel in the Anglosphere back in 1947. Anyone who believes this spying ended inside our country, that the NSA wasn't monitoring phone, wire, internet and every other sort of communication between the US, the Middle East, Europe and Asia is a number one candidate for a Brooklyn Bridge contract. (How successful they were or are at this is another matter.)

If there is any kernel of truth in this "shocking" revelation it is that Bush - after 9/11 - reminded (or endorsed) the NSA to do what he and every other President knew they were already doing. In other words, he was just trying to make sure someone was listening in when the next Mohammed Atta called home. Wouldn't you? (Well, it's not pretty, but I would wager most of us would in the President's position - no matter what our political party.)

So why publish this now?

Well, besides economic desperation (everyone knows the New York Times, like most of the print media, is in miserable shape), there's obviously this. Of course, the nixing of the Patriot Act is not final and may ultimately backfire on the naysayers, but for the moment they seem to have won a victory. It was all they could do in the face of the Iraqi election. With the risk of that being a huge success (and it was - at least for now), they had to do something to salvage their position without seeming to be against democracy. The Times and their fusty allies are indeed in a desperate situation. Panic in Wheedle Park has set in.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:42 AM
Comments (166)

December 16, 2005

Hinderaker on the money

Power Line's John Hinderaker is of course correct in his call for a Plame-style investigation of the CIA leak that showed up (yet again) in the New York Times. The Times has become something of a playground/dumping ground for disaffected (and almost always anonymous) intelligence agents. Do they have a special 800 number for Langley, VA?

In fact, you don't even need the Plame case to wonder what's going on at our country's most prominent intelligence agency that many of its employees are spilling their versions of the beans to the press on a regular basis, if not to the NYT, then to the New Yorker. Are these the kinds of intell agents you would trust? Not me. Not for a second. They are also not the kinds of people I would trust to do the nation's covert business, no matter what rationale or public good they think they are serving in blabbing to reporters. Furthermore, although I have never read a CIA contract, I would be astounded if they were not in complete violation of it through their behavior.

As for the Times, I don't blame them for publishing these leaks - they're just trying to make a buck and push their ideological views like any other routine media organization. And I certainly don't worry people assume something to be true because it was published in the New York Times. That was over long ago.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:00 PM
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Is it real or is it Memorex?

To us (relatively) normal folk, it's hard to imagine that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually believes there were green rays coming out of his head (or some such), but if he does, we better start taking some of his threatening statements at face value. Think about it - it's going to be like having a paranoid schizophrenic as head of state, sort of like Caligula but with nuclear arms. Anyway, aljazeera reports his latest prouncements. Even they sound a little nervous.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:17 AM
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I've been reading...

Michael Mandelbaum's The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the 21st Century. The book is - obviously, from the title - a benign look at American hegemony and seems particularly apropos after yesterday's election. The substance of Mandelbaums argument is they (meaning the rest of the world) may hate or pretend to hate us, but they really want us to continue to run things for everybody's benefit. From my more psychoanalytic perspective, it's something of a parent-child relationship with America in the role of D. W. Winnicott's "good-enough mother." The book is worth a look - Mandelbaum and Winnicott.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:59 AM
Comments (25)

December 15, 2005

PJ Media Iraq Election Coverage (UPDATED)

UPDATE: Elections Iraqi style - Several polling centers distributed sweets and soft drinks to the voters while men and women cheered and sang celebratory songs.

That doesn't happen in Los Angeles. Of course, someone like this doesn't want to celebrate for obvious (and sad) reasons. I guess the election doesn't merit comment.

MORE: Don't miss Mohammed's 8:50PDT election wrap-up.

MEANWHILE: Seneca gets younger every day.

BIG LOSERS of the day so far: Howard Dean, Jack Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the reactionary, fuddy-duddy leadership of the Democratic Party. (To call them "liberals" is absurd because they have no ideology whatsoever.) How will they spin this? Of course the second big loser is the Mainstream Media - again without ideology, really.

BREAKING: The Iraqi election has been extended for an hour because of large numbers of voters waiting to vote, Mohammed reports on PJ Media at 6:45AM Pacific. Did Pajamas Media Scoop? Hard to say but I have not found earlier mention. Perhaps AP... Well, yes AP. They filed one minute before Pajamas.

A great many posts are now up at Pajamas from all over Iraq. To get more, use the nav bar on the left side of the site - even more at the archives button. Sorry that some of this is kludgy, but we are in the process of improving site, which could not be accomplished before the election. Please post your criticism/reactions to our coverage here.

UPDATE: Was just on the Tammy Bruce Show. My thanks to Tammy for helping to promote our coverage.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 5:55 AM
Comments (168)

December 14, 2005

Iraq, Hugh Hewitt and a Pajamas Media announcement

I am on the Hugh Hewitt Show right now to discuss the special Iraq election coverage on Pajamas Media, which should start to trickle in late tonight Pacific time (if not when everyone gets up in the USA on Thursday).

What's going on?

Omar and Mohammed of Iraq the Model have done a remarkable job lining up reporters in eight provinces for PJM: Erbil, Kirkuk, Mosul, Babil, Najaf, Kerbala, Samawa, Basra as well as Baghdad of course. For those of you who don't know, the newspapers have been closed in Iraq for security reasons. Some of their reporters will be working for Pajamas Media. A translator has been hired to translate their material from Arabic into English. Omar and Mohammed have the first (Reynolds blessed) Sonys sent to bloggers in the field by PJMedia. Several of the reporters will have rented cameras. We have no idea what we are going to get. This is an experiment. Purple fingers crossed.

UPDATE: The first post from Omar in Baghdad (on his way to vote) is up at Pajamas Media. Much more to come. We're excited and waiting for reports from all eight provinces. Will blog-reporting have something special to contribute to this historic event? We shall see.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 3:42 PM
Comments (5)

I blame Ahmadinejad

I have been unable to post on this site since yesterday (Tuesday) at about four p. m. Nor have readers been able to post comments. According to my hosting company, Phpwebhosting, this may be the work of "comment spammers." Personally, I blame Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad who could well be concerned that I am the screenwriter of a film about the supposed Holocaust, which he deems to be a "myth".

I wish he were a "myth."

UPDATE - The Merkel Connection: What the Mullahcracy may not have banked on is the recent "regime change" in Germany. Angela Merkel is not the same person as the compliant Gerhard Schroeder. According to Expatica, the new German Chancellor...

"has described the denial of the Holocaust by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as incredible, her spokesman said on Wednesday in Berlin.

"I cannot avoid saying that this damages bilateral relations and puts a strain on the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear programme," he told the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs Wednesday.

Let's hope it's a big strain. Also, Der Spiegel has an interesting interview with Iran expert Ali Ansari. Here's a key bit:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Internationally, the only times we hear from Ahmadinejad are when he talks about Israel. What do people in Iran think about him otherwise?

Ansari: I think where he really crossed the line where the domestic audience is concerned is when he said a green aura was coming out of his head during his speech to the United Nations. This conversation got filmed, and people can watch it on DVD. Ahmadinejad came home from his speech and told an ayatollah that everyone at the General Assembly -- all these world leaders -- didn't even blink for thirty minutes (out of awe). Lots of people have seen this in Iran, and it makes him seem a bit too superstitious.

Ya think?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:10 AM
Comments (28)

December 13, 2005

Et tu Time Magazine?

Dead trees keep falling as Time Magazine joins the LAT and the NYT in laying off personnel:

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Time Inc. today slashed 105 employees from its rolls, including longtime company heavyweights such as Jack Haire, exec VP in charge ofcorporate ad sales; Richard Atkinson, exec VP in charge of the news and information group; Eileen Naughton, president, Time magazine; David Kieselstein, president, the parenting group; Fred Poust, who ran corporate ad sales under Mr. Haire; and Steve Buerger, who also worked in corporate sales.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 1:34 PM
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"Fight Fiercely, Harvard!" (You're financed by the Saudis)

I wish Tom Lehrer were around to write new lyrics to his amusing song about our most distinguished university, whose Islamic Studies department is now the recipient of a multimillion dollar donation from Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal. This is the supposedly-progressive prince who, you might recall, has also bought heavily into Fox News. Of course the absolute racist nature of his regime (where, among many other Medieval laws and traditions, including institutionalized misogyny, religions other than Islam are banned) is conveniently overlooked by these companies and insitutions. Of course, for Harvard this is particularly... what would Tom Lehrer call it?... "unseemly"?... I would call it reactionary.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:13 AM
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Moving on from Tookie

PJMedia has a roundup of blog reaction to Tookie's last day, but you won't get much from me. I thought Williams was the exact wrong person around whom to base discussion of the death penalty. Glamour and celebrity turn a debate on a serious issue into a form of media pornography. In a situation like this, the maunderings of self-promoting narcissists like Mike Farrell turn opponents of the death penalty into supporters. Enough of this.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:37 AM
Comments (12)

December 12, 2005

More Syria - I am Syrias Yellow

The indispensable MEMRI has more info from the Syrian propaganda machine/comedy hour, including a "report" from the Independent Syrian Judicial Website that UN Security Council investigator Detlev Mehlis's "Mother was a Jewess".

MEANWHILE: That "Son of a Jewess" Mehlis and his UN colleagues have identified six Syrian suspects in the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon's former Prime Minister, according to the Financial Times.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:36 PM
Comments (2)

To Die in Lebanon

MEMRI has the final words of journalist Jubran Tweini: "...Lebanon Never Was and Never Will Be Part of Syria..." Let's hope he's right, because he clearly paid for it. Meanwhile, from the NYT:

The German prosecutor conducting the United Nations investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon said today that fresh evidence reinforced his earlier judgment that Syria's intelligence services were behind the killing and that Syrian officials were obstructing his investigation.

Here's a thought. When Saddams's trial (see the blogjam now) is over, why don't they just keep the court open and try Assad? I know - wrong country. But the Syrians seem to be running over the border to Iraq all the time anyway.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:17 PM
Comments (1)

Will Israel attack Iran?

The whacked-out rhetoric of new Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made it more of a possibility. The Timesonline had a pretty thorough discussion yesterday, which concluded:

Since Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, "it has been understood that the lesson is, don't have one site, have 50 sites", a White House source said.

It is believed Israel would call on its top special forces brigade, Unit 262 - the equivalent of the SAS - and the F-15I strategic 69 Squadron, which can strike Iran and return to Israel without refuelling.

Lots of "sources" are suddenly doing a lot of talking about this. For whose benefit? I doubt for the nutty Ahmadinejad, but perhaps for his "handlers."

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 12:04 PM
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Harry Reid no puede hablar ingles

Harry Reid never fails to amaze me with his responses to Bush's speeches. This time he said:

"I regret that the American people have still not received a plan that identifies the remaining political, military and economic objectives that must be met in order to succeed."

Huh? The plan in Iraq has been the same from the beginning - to build a democracy in Iraq that is defensible by the Iraqis themselves. As that gets completed, we withdraw troops. Difficult to do, yes, but to understand?

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 11:37 AM
Comments (14)

Voting in Iraq has begun

Cross-covered here and here. Full election December 15.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:39 AM
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StandWithUs

Last night, a Talk Show Hostess Friend - don't forget to buy her book - invited Sheryl and me to the annual benefit for StandWithUs. I'm certainly glad we went - and not just because of some pretty good standup by Jeff Garlin, not to mention a cantor who sang "Ole Man River" - but because StandWithUs is an organization well worth supporting. They are countering the anti-Israel propaganda (with all its anti-Semitic overtones) that seems to be pervading US campuses today. In fact, they are working world wide on this issue. Have a look at their site and consider a donation.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:02 AM
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Four More Years!

Kesher Talk, one of my favorite blogs, is having its fourth anniversary on the net. Judith Weiss does a great job with this important resource. If you don't know it, you should.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:59 AM
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Bad News from Beirut

Car bombings are back. Pajamas Media's man on the scene Michael Totten has an up-to-date report. Michael has been doing some brilliant reporting from the Middle East. Scroll down on his site if you've not been reading it.

UPDATE: The AP has more specifics from Lebanon.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:07 AM
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December 11, 2005

Remembering Richard

Some time in 1979, shortly after I had done The Big Fix for Universal, the studio called to ask if I would like to write a movie for Richard Pryor. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Pryor was at the top of his game then, acknowledged by many to be possibly the greatest standup comic of all time. Not only that, he was a cultural icon of extraordinary proportions, the very voice of black America, "Daddy Rich." What more could a Jewish white boy who grew up on Miles Davis want than to work with this man?

When I first went out to Pryor's spread in Northridge with Thom Mount and Sean Daniel, the "baby moguls" then running Universal, Richard was dead drunk. It was a harbinger of things to come, but I never blamed Richard for his legendary substance abuse problems. He was, as the cliché goes, his own worst enemy. His famously turning himself into a human torch while freebasing cocaine is proof enough of that.

When I actually started to work with Richard, I would drive afternoons out to that Northridge place - a sprawling Spanish estate with its own boxing ring and Shetland pony that wandered wild around the grounds - where I would be greeted by his housekeeper. "Would you like some quiche?" she would say, ushering me into the kitchen. "Mr. Pryor's asleep." It didn't take me long to figure out that was a euphemism for "wired to the ceiling" on coke. After a while, sometimes hours, I would be ushered up to his office and we would talk about the script.

The project we were working on was then called "Family Dream" - a story idea by Pryor about an ex-con who is forced by his parole officer to drive a dozen orphans from Boston to Washington State on an old bus so they could attend a new school. With them on the trip was the children's strict teacher (always to be played by Cicely Tyson, in Pryor's view). Naturally the teacher and the ex-con are at loggerheads at the beginning, but ultimately brought together by their adventures with the kids - "African Queen on a bus," as Universal exec Verna Fields described it. (The studio marketing department subsequently changed the title to Bustin' Loose, probably to take the "family" onus off a Richard Pryor movie.)

After a few weeks of these meetings, Richard, perhaps because I wasn't judgmental, began to trust me. Despite intermittent bravura, part of him was embarrassed by his drug habits, by the daily visits of his dealer, known as "The Rev," in a brand new Rolls I assumed had essentially been paid for by Pryor. In actuality, Richard was one of the sweetest people I have ever met, always empathic and extremely generous. I once sat in his office as he gave hundreds of thousands to a hospital in South Central Los Angeles on the strength of a phone call, as long as they promised not to mention his name. And while the drug problem undoubtedly made it difficult, he was quite loving toward his kids, several of whom I came to know, especially his daughter Rain, who years later launched a standup career of her own.

On a couple of occasions, I drove up with Richard to an orphanage in the San Gabriel Mountains for research for "Family Dream." This was an odd event for several reasons. The idea that Pryor would have to do research about children from disadvantaged backgrounds was ludicrous. His father had been a pimp and his mother a prostitute. But he wanted to go to be with the kids himself - and maybe to humor his middle class white boy screenwriter. It was on those jaunts I came to experience up close what Richard meant to the African-American community. When black people saw us pulling up at a stoplight in his red Mercedes convertible, it was as if Jesus Christ himself had just come up beside them. "Daddy Rich! Daddy Rich!" they would shout through tears of excitement. It was unlike anything I have seen before or since with any movie star or even rock singer. I would feel awkward, but I knew that it was Richard's remarkable humanity they were reacting to, his ability to express a people's pain without rancor or anger, with a forgiving grace that finally defused all rage in laughter and put everything on a different, even strangely color-blind, level.

I also spent time with Richard on the road when he did his incredible standup. At a certain point, we were getting along so well Pryor got the idea I should direct "Family Dream" as well as write it. This irritated the studio that wanted to pick the director and not long thereafter I was fired from the project with nary a word from Richard. (He had a tendency toward washing his hands of the power struggles around movies, which may account, in part, for why his standup is so much better than his films.) But a couple of months later I was hired as writer once again. Then I was fired a second time when Cicely Tyson complained I gave all the funny lines to Richard. (Who wouldn't have?) The movie was then rewritten again and made with a first-time director named Oz Scott who had directed For Colored Girls on Broadway. I heard second-hand that Richard chewed him up on the set. The film was a botch. Scott was fired and Michael Schulz, who directed Richard in Car Wash, brought on. Schulz read my first draft and hired me a third time on the film. I worked with Michael on a new draft and two-thirds of the movie was shot all over again. By this time Richard, too embarrassed or too worn out from his freebase-burning episode, which occurred in the midst of all this, wasn't speaking to me.

Still, the film got completed. When it came out, it was, with Alan Alda's Four Seasons, one of Universal's two biggest box office hits of 1981. It also won the first Image Award of the NAACP and the organization's screenwriting prize. (I never liked the finished version of Bustin' Loose much. Like most screenwriters, I preferred my early drafts.)

After that, I only ran into Richard a couple of times at parties, before he fell ill and essentially became a recluse. One of my regrets is that I never got to discuss with him the ins and outs of our experience. But he had other things on his mind, like multiple sclerosis.

Rest in peace.

(Cross-posted at Pajamas Media)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:01 AM
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December 10, 2005

Richard Pryor dies

Richard Pryor, one the greatest comic artists of the modern era, has died after a long illness. I had the honor of working with Richard for about eighteen months off and on as a screewriter on the movie Bustin' Loose. Besides having been, as most know, an extraordinary talent, he was also an incredibly compassionate man with a remarkable capacity for empathy. Working with Richard was among the most memorable experiences of my life.

UPDATE: I will post some memories of Richard tomorrow.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 2:25 PM
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"These are the times that try men's souls..."

Norman Podhoretz channels Tom Paine in his latest essay for Commentary, "The Panic". Regarding Iraq, Norman, as always, looks behind the curtain:

...my twofold guess is that the real fear behind it is not that we are losing but that we are winning, and that what has catalyzed this fear into a genuine panic is the realization that the chances of pulling off the proverbial feat of snatching an American defeat from the jaws of victory are rapidly running out.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 9:46 AM
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Politics as religion revisited

Politicians, for the most part, have a vested interest in "my party right or wrong," but the rest of us probably have the opposite. Society's interest would seem to lie in the best policy regardless of where it comes from. In the latest case of religous political thinking, the Democrats appear to be about to "rub" Joe Lieberman "out of the roll call," as Mary Martin used to sing. Of course Lieberman may be as liberal as most of them on social issues, but he isn't adhering to the party line on foreign policy, so he's a pariah. No matter that some of us draw a connection between liberal social views and a hawkish foreign policy positon. Such individualistic thinking is not countenanced by the modern political party with its Animal Farmish overtones.

Meanwhile, in my inbox, an advanced reading copy of Michael Mandelbaum's The Case for Goliath: How American Acts as the World's Government in the 21st Century. I'm going to have a look at it.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 8:58 AM
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December 9, 2005

Memories of our greatest vacation

Sheryl and Madeleine at the Golden Pavilion, Kyoto, September 2005

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 10:24 PM
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Another Death Penalty Post - Tookie continued

As I wrote a couple of days ago (and on other occasions as well), I oppose the death penalty except in the rare cases of political mass murderers like Saddam, Stalin, Zarqawi, etc. Those people have too many adherents eager to spring them to allow them to live. They could too easily resume their homicidal activities. I regard this (thankfully) small category as a practical "public safety" exception to my generalized opposition to the death penalty on what ultimately come down to personal moral grounds.

Even so, I find particularly repellent the cause celebre around sparing the life of Crips co-founder Tookie Williams. Why him? We are told after many years in jail, he has repented. But since he has never, to my knowledge, publicly acknowledged he actually murdered four people, how is this possible? What kind of repentance is that? But even if we accept this dubious pronouncement, making a "celebrity exception" on an issue of the magnitude of the death penalty strikes me as another example of narcissism run amuck in our culture. Tookie is "cool." Hollywood stars like him. Therefore he should get off, while other faceless folks rot on death row before finally being shuffled off for lethal injection. Frankly, I have more sympathy for the faceless ones than I do for Tookie. But maybe that's just me. In any case, adding glamour to the death penalty discussion is tasteless in the extreme and disrespectful beyond words to the families of the victims whose corpses lay face down on the floor of that convenience store, blown to Kingdom Come by Tookie's sawed-off shotgun.

UPDATE: Newsweek has just published a "Web Exclusive" interview with Tookie conducted by Karen Breslau. Williams still maintains his innocence in the murders. This interchange (or non-interchange) is revealing regarding the repentance issue:

Newsweek: The prosecutors told the governor that your refusal to "debrief" or, as your supporter have said, "to become a snitch" about the Crips sends the wrong message to young people. Why don't you tell them to cooperate with police? To tell them if they are witnesses to a crime? To help them solve crimes?

Williams: Let me say this to you and to the world. I have transformed my life. I am no longer a violent man. I will not, I will never do anything to cause harm to any human being on the face of this planet. If I feel that opening my mouth will harm another a human being, it does not matter who they are, what their color or creed is. I can't do it. I can't do it. That is something I have vowed to God. My vow to God is more important than what I say to any human being on the face of this earth.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 6:53 PM
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The Big Hostage

Americans were famously held hostage for months at our embassy in Teheran some years ago, but it is the Europeans who have been held hostage by the Mullahcracy for decades via their dependency on Iranian oil. Now it seems the Mullahs are over-playing their hands, their new loose cannon President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad having pushed over the line with his public racism and Holocaust denial. Germany has summoned the Iranian ambassador in Berlin.

The German Foreign Ministry said on Friday it had summoned Iran's ambassador to protest against suggestions by Iran's president that the Holocaust might not have happened and that Israel should be moved to Europe.

Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said at a government news conference the decision to deliver a formal protest to Iran's envoy in Berlin was meant to show that Berlin was taking the president's comments very seriously.

What is the explanation for this Iranian diplomatic idiocy? Perhaps the Mullahs are now so confident of their bomb, they are preparing to circle their wagons and go completely adversarial with the West. Or maybe it's just mass religious hysteria at work. Who can tell?

MEANWHILE: The Mullahs still have greedy friends in Russia. Ynetnews sees Israel and Iran in a new arms race.

UPDATe: Even the Saudis are complaining about Iran's "New Stalin." The UN also issued a condemnation.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:53 AM
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Better than Your Usual Best

The Best of the Blogs currently up at the Pajamas site is worth more than the usual mention. It is an interview with Lisa Ramaci by Fayrouz Hancock of the Iraqi in America blog. Lisa, whom I had the honor of meeting at the Pajamas/OSM launch in New York, is the widow of the superb American journalist Steven Vincent who was murdered in Basra last August. She is an extraordinary woman in her own right.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:28 AM
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A letter from a soldier in Iraq

Will Nancy Pelosi read it? I don't think her staff would let this one through - unless Atlas Shrugs were on her staff. (Now there's a thought.)

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 7:11 AM
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December 8, 2005

How to win the Nobel Prize for literature...

Be on the left, it seems. The NYT all but comes out and says it in its article on Harold Pinter today:

The playwright, known in recent years as much for his fiery anti-Americanism as for his spare prose style and haunting, elliptical plays like "The Caretaker" and "The Homecoming," was awarded the $1.3 million Nobel literature prize in October. In its citation, the Swedish Academy made little mention of his political views, saying only that he is known as a "fighter for human rights" whose stands are often "seen as controversial." It mostly focused on his work, saying that Mr. Pinter "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."