Here's a good round-up of reactions on today's speech. I haven't had time to hear or read it in detail, but my sense is that Bush has hit the right notes: no cut and run.

November has turned out to be the third best month in terms of traffic for Peaktalk, right behind the hectic November and December months of 2004 (Van Gogh and US elections). Again, thanks for visiting and returning. If you want, you can always show your appreciation by hitting the PayPal button on your left with a little Christmas token or click a few Google ads. In the weeks ahead this blog will start to feature Pajamas Media ads - no, I won’t be able to relinquish my day job just yet - at which time I will also change a few things on the both the right and left sidebars of the blog. As for comments, all e-mails get a response and the better or pointed ones get added to a post, or if they’re really noteworthy they become a stand alone post.

Lots to read about the freedom of speech today in FrontPage magazine. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross takes a look at the freedoms we fight for, and Robert Spencer reports on what may be one of the last public performances of Oriana Fallaci. Key excerpt:

Fallaci told the audience that she faced three years in prison in Italy if convicted in her trial for hate speech. “But can hate be prosecuted by law? It is a sentiment. It is a natural part of life. Like love, it cannot be proscribed by a legal code. It can be judged, but only on the basis of ethics and morality. If I have the right to love, then I have the right to hate also.”

Hate? “Yes, I do hate the bin Ladens and the Zarqawis. I do hate the bastards who burn churches in Europe. I hate the Chomskys and Moores and Farrakhans who sell us to the enemy. I hate them as I used to hate Mussolini and Hitler. For the cause of freedom, this is my sacrosanct right.”

To be clear, I don't agree with everything that Fallaci is putting on the table, but the call for freedom from this frail and brave woman should be listened to.

To Christiane Amanpour at CNN. Key excerpts from the interview:

I am not sure you can call them riots. It's very different from the situation you have known in 1992 in L.A. for example. You had at that time 54 people that died, and you had 2,000 people wounded. In France during the 2 weeks period of unrest, nobody died in France. So, I think you can't compare this social unrest with any kind of riots.

[ ... ]

We have to say that, and it is important to also understand the real nature of these movements, there is no ethnic or religious basis of this movement, as we can see in some other parts of the world.

[ ... ]

They don't want to be recognized as Muslims, or as blacks, or as people coming from North Africa. They want to be recognized, as French and they want to have equal opportunity during their lives.

De Villepin here shows a rare political ability to recast recent events and make them palatable for his electorate. He has redifined the recent riots, turned them into a uniquely French and social issue that can easily be solved with time-tested approaches, while pointing the finger at the US as the place where one would find real riots.

With that - and Chirac's blessing - he's now positioned himself as a solid front-runner for the French presidential elections in 2007.

Canada’s minority Liberal government fell last night, setting the stage for a mid-January election. Good news or bad news?

The signs aren’t very encouraging, and my hopes for a decent debate are marginal given the experience of the last general election, barely a year-and-a-half ago. The election will not be fought over issues that Canadians should really start thinking about such as the future of healthcare, improving cross border relations with the US, security and rolling back a very expensive and highly expansive federal government.

The incumbent Liberals will no doubt play the “fear card” in order to entice voters away from the Conservative Party, while the latter will focus on the corruption and incompetence that has been the hallmark of Liberal rule. For the un-initiated, the fear card revolves around telling Canadians that a conservative vote equals privatization of healthcare and the establishment of a Christian-fundamentalist state where women and gays are set to forfeit all the rights they gained over the past century. Compare it to the 'blue state' take on 'red state' Bush last year, only in Canada such rhetoric actually produces tangible results at the ballot box.

The most interesting development so far is that the Liberals have added some star-power to their ticket by including Harvard scholar Michael Ignatieff, someone who is slated to become their leader if the Liberals lose this election. It was hard for the Liberals to actually find a riding where Ignatieff could run as “he supported the war in Iraq” which turned him into a somewhat complicated electoral option for the Ontario heartland.

As to the outcome, there are essentially three likely scenarios:

• The Liberals retain their minority position which means another period of instability and relentless spending in order to placate the far-left NDP which holds the balance of power;

• The Liberals win a majority, in which case we’ll see a return to Chrétien-era style politics with as a likely further downside another leadership contest halfway which also will bring about instability, and yes, more spending to align certain special interest groups;

• The Conservatives carve out a minority government in which case they will have to rely on the separatist Bloc Quebecois to stay in power. Under this scenario the furtherance of conservative policies will be subject to granting far-reaching concessions to the Bloc up to a point that the minority arrangement is no longer sustainable. If the Bloc hasn’t propelled Canada into a constitutional crisis, then another early election will surely add further, yes, instability.

Ergo, unless the Conservatives pull off the incredible and secure a majority the immediate prospects for Canada are dim, instability remains the name of the game. Canadians are sufficiently disaffected with the Liberals and will not give them a majority, but they have been doing well enough economically and won't demand drastic change by handing a majority to the Conservatives. There’s a need for change, but Canadians just can’t see why they should hand the keys to power to a relatively unknown and inarticulate conservative force while interest rates are low and the value of their homes keeps going up.

One can only hope that the campaign – which pundits view as one that will be particularly nasty – will awake the Canadian heartland and will mark at least the beginning of change. For that to happen the Conservatives, the leftist NDP and the Bloc need to make a serious effort to show Canadians the cheap opportunism and empty shell of ideas that current Prime Minister Paul Martin has been trying to sell them for the past few years, using their money. If the last campaign is any guidance, Martin has a strong ability to self-destruct, but for it to be sufficiently decisive, he needs a helping hand. And it would be nice if in the process conservative leader Stephen Harper is willing to share what he considers to be “morning in Canada”.

NOTE: Here's more on the weird dichotomy that governs Canadian politics:

Paul Martin's Liberals enter an election campaign six percentage points ahead of the Conservatives, but losing ground in Ontario and facing an increased desire for a change of government, a new poll shows.

Canadians, especially Ontarians, are less likely than they were six months ago to see Conservative Leader Stephen Harper as a scary figure with a "hidden agenda," according to a Strategic Counsel survey conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV. But the Ontarians have not embraced Mr. Harper's party, rating the Liberals as better at managing most issues.

It's going to be an interesting campaign, really.

UPDATE: It seems Harper has kicked off the campaign in a positive way and is offering a vision for Canada's future. Good news.

It’s about ten days old, but it was a highly remarkable interview in Ha’aretz with French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who in no uncertain terms diminished the economic argument to explain the French riots. Instead he put forward an ethnic-religious argument which caused a huge stir in France, prompting Finkielkraut to recant:

Only hours after publication, leftist organizations were vying with each other over who would be first to sue him or file a police complaint against the philosopher for incitement to racism.

Thursday, after receiving death threats, the philosopher decided to respond and repent. In an extensive interview in Le Monde yesterday, he said he "despised" the man who appeared in the article (in Le Monde). "He is he and I am I. To my shock, since Wednesday, it appears that he and I share the same name."

Finkielkraut, who went out of his way to praise the immigrants, said his original statements had been an attempt to force the political echelon to take responsibility for what was happening in the poor suburbs. "Integration is our obligation," he said.

Following the apology, lawsuits and police complaints were dropped.

Isn't it interesting to note how the left wastes absolutely no time to try and sue one of its own intellectuals? As the Free West concludes, it’s apparently too difficult in France to have an open discussion about the causes of the recent violence. With that, any attempt to start working on a solution is futile and as Finkielkraut noted in his original interview, the violence is likely to continue:

"I don't know. I'm despairing. Because of the riots and because of their accompaniment by the media. The riots will subside, but what does this mean? There won't be a return to quiet. It will be a return to regular violence. So they'll stop because there is a curfew now, and the foreigners are afraid and the drug dealers also want the usual order restored. But they'll gain support and encouragement for their anti-republican violence from the repulsive discourse of self-criticism over their slavery and colonization. So that's it: There won't be a return to quiet, but a return to routine violence."

The most telling excerpt from the original interview to me however was this one, one that applies equally to all western societies:

If their identity is located somewhere else and they're only in France for utilitarian reasons, then we're lost. I have to admit that the Jews are also starting to use this phrase. I hear them saying `the French' and I can't stand it. I say to them, `If for you France is a utilitarian matter, but your identity is Judaism, then be honest with yourselves: You have Israel.' This is really a bigger problem: We're living in a post-national society in which for everyone the state is just utilitarian, a big insurance company. This is an extremely serious development.

Failure to integrate is a multi-layered thing. We may have approached it from the wrong angle and implemented some flawed policies. But Finkielkraut points to something far deeper and that is the dissolution of a society that anyone can be integrated into. The blame for that can not be apportioned to any ethnic or religious group. For that, we have to take a close look at ourselves. I hope Finkielkraut didn't recant that part.

It’s not unusual for governments to share market sensitive information with key financial players who may want to adjust their portfolios ahead of certain policy announcements. As a fresh arrival in Asia in the early 1990s my moral compass was often dismissed as being not in sync with the way “markets worked” and that I better get used to Asia's huge number of “unusually wealthy businessmen” who were actually the ones that created the wealth of opportunities for western businesses. And in a way they definitely did, as I had the pleasure of restructuring one of these unusually wealthy men’s billion dollar debt after his friends in the department of finance failed to inform that the markets would start shorting the Thai Baht. He had always believed his government sources would inform him if something were to go amiss and as it turned out, this was a highly questionable insurance policy. Sometimes market forces do prevail.

Anyway, the one western nation where we can probably find a comparable level of government interference in the market place is Canada where another scandal is about to be unveiled, right at the start of a new election campaign:

As federal politicians prepare to hit the campaign trail, the Conservatives and NDP are calling for investigations of alleged insider trading arising from tax policy announcements by Finance Minister Ralph Goodale.

The Tories said Sunday they are writing to the Ontario Securities Commission to demand an inquiry, while the New Democrats want the matter turned over to the RCMP. At issue are events last Wednesday, when there was a spike in trading in income trust units amid speculation that Mr. Goodale was going to change the tax rules that applied to them.

NOTE: Ginna Dowler – who will have to keys to Peaktalk for the Christmas holidays as guestblogger – analyzed some highly unusual trading patterns and there’s more over at Kate McMillan’s. Stay tuned, the general election campaign is – absent any issues that politicians really dare talking about – going to be a nasty and empty debate that will focus almost entirely on scandals.

Last week a site called LGF Watch listed both me and Zacht Ei as the two Pajamas Media blogs that cover Dutch news, but who both hadn’t bothered to look into the murder of Louis Sévèke, a left-wing activist in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Of course the site’s point was to contrast our purported silence about this murder with our coverage of the Van Gogh killing and argue that “some deaths matter more than others”.

However it turns out that LGF Watch didn’t do its homework properly. Zacht Ei’s Arjen has an update and explains that he did discuss the murder on his Dutch site, and I actually made mention of it here on Peaktalk on the very day that PJ Media was launched. In fact it was the only post that day not related to the launch, so the significance of the murder somehow wasn't lost on me as LGF Watch seems to suggest. It’s true that I didn’t elaborate on the affair: it was a local murder, of a relatively unknown activist, the background to it was murky to say the least, and in fact the motive for it may not even have been political at all. In which case the entire affair warrants one or two posts and not more than that, or as I did, put it in one post as news illustrative of the current atmosphere in The Netherlands.

It’s interesting to see we have some fact checkers and critics out there and I am glad we can set the record straight here. And if anything material comes out of the investigation of this murder, I will of course update you on that.

UPDATE: LGF Watch posts a mea culpa, here and here.

Of course, one way to address integration and assimilation is by taking a serious look at urban planning. The French failed, the Dutch try to do better. Christopher Caldwell sums it up.

The best obituary is from The Times:

Opinion was divided between those who saw Best’s career as a shameful waste of talent and those who were simply grateful to have had the opportunity to see him grace the game.

At the end of the day, it is probably both sentiments that apply to George Best’s life and career and the way the outside world observed them. Best himself put it all in the context of being non-conformist and in a way he was right, although it probably was an after-the-fact justification for his failings. It should be noted that those who put him on the pedestal of public adulation were not given the concurrent right to relentlessly point the finger at Best’s flaws. Nevertheless, it isn’t too hard to conclude that his death was a very sad end to what once could have been a great life. Rest in peace, George.

No, I am not suggesting an acquisition of Pajamas Media by News Corp just yet, but Rupert Murdoch sees the writing on the wall for ad revenues from printed paper:

Rupert Murdoch has forecast a gloomy future for newspapers with the growth of the internet, saying he doesn't know "anybody under the age of 30 who has ever looked at a classified ad". The owner of the Sun, Times, Sunday Times and the News of the World, who once described newspaper classified advertising revenue as providing "rivers of gold", now says: "Sometimes rivers dry up".

"This is a generational thing; we've been talking about a 15- or 20-year slide on this," the News Corp chairman and chief executive tells trade paper Press Gazette in a rare interview.

"Certainly I don't know anybody under 30 who has ever looked at a classified advertisement in a newspaper. With broadband they do more and more transactions online."

A live blogjam about Pajamas Media and its identy by Adam Bellow, Tammy Bruce, Clifford May and Glenn Reynolds. Glenn thinks the whole effort needs to be bloggier. He's right and that was also the nature of my recommendation, all the right ingredients are in place, now it just needs to be made to work better. And hey, they've got a new logo!

It not just on Thanksgiving, as I have to sit through many dinners and parties where the table conversation inevitably turns to politics and more importantly, that awful and evil war on terror. Hugh Hewitt has a few instructive tips on how to conduct these awkward conversations. (via Betsy’s Page).

So I was cooking last night, preparing a free style chili-con-carne and opened up a can of tomatoes with a somewhat deficient can opener. What else can you do than suspend common sense and try and lift the half-open lid with your thumb? Well, the result was that I sliced deep into it and I instantly knew that the two band aids my five year old daughter reached for wouldn’t do the trick. But I was deeply proud of her calm resolve in the face of what was rapidly turning into a bloody mess. So, it needed a professional hand and I spent over an hour in a local clinic where a British doctor stitched the whole thing together again, all the while commenting on politics. Condi Rice was too much of a cold warrior and still fighting a war that ended years ago and the Canadian medical system was all but bankrupt. His commentary helped alleviate the pain and his expertise in stitching – going back to his doctor years in Liverpool where rival football hooligans fought one another with razor blades – helped in putting my thumb back into shape. A few pain killers to go and that was it.

There are many lessons here of course. Lids can be like razor blades so be careful. Use fresh tomatoes in any sauce or stew. Doctors know a lot about politics too. But more than anything else I was impressed by my young daughter who recognized danger and - she later admitted she was scared because of all the blood – tried to step up to the plate in a very calm fashion and help. It isn’t hard to create responsible and caring human beings. We never explicitly told her to help out in a situation like this. But she recognized it and acted. Now that’s something to be thankful for.

To all my American readers: Happy Thanksgiving!

Live coverage of the Thanksgiving Parade here.

And take a look at Mark Steyn's Thanksgiving columns.

Gerard Van der Leun has written a remarkable account of the OSM/Pajamas Media launch party in Manhattan, but then he took a full week to put it together so that probably accounts for its high quality. What’s even more notable is his bullishness about the new venture. Even I - the perennial pajama optimist - am too conservative to throw around Yahoo! and Amazon comparisons, but Gerard is unequivocally positive. And so he should be. Pity I didn’t get a chance to talk to this Dutch-American last week as we only briefly managed to shake hands.

Excellent interview with Robert Kagan, about Iraq, Bush, Merkel and US-European relations. What makes it worthwhile reading is that the questions are asked by a highly skeptical European periodical, which allows Kagan to make a few blunt statements. Key excerpt:

SPIEGEL: Will the present contempt for Europe in the US recede eventually? Or is anti-Europeanism here to stay, like the anti-Americanism in Europe that US commentators like to point to?

Kagan: My sense is that it's not such a big deal anymore. Europe is not very much on Americans' radar screens anymore. People here spend a lot more time talking about the US than Americans spend talking about Europe.

Still, I owe you a long piece about the roots of Europe's anti-Americanism. Hopefully next week.

Ralf Goergens over at Chicagoboyz has reached a limit in entertaining the thought of a European demographic collapse and the consequent Eurabia theories that sort of go hand in hand with that. The problem with all of this is that there are indeed very few solid numbers to support the various claims, and it is Tigerhawk who rightly points in the Chicagoboyz comments that long term demographic trends almost never bear out. All very true.

The fact however remains that affluent Europeans produce less babies and less affluent immigrants produce more, for now. That causes a change in the ethnic composition of Europe and without making the full stretch to any doomsday scenario for 2050, things are definitely changing. At Goergens’ blog one of his colleagues points out that it is not so much a future majority, but rather a sizeable group that has the potential to destabilize a nation, or organize itself politically.

The latter is probably the area where we need to look. It’s only a few weeks back that I highlighted the political turmoil in the city of Rotterdam. One of the leading city politicians got into trouble about making certain statements about Muslim immigrants and he pointed out that if even a small and radical portion of that group organized politically, it could help tip the electoral balance in some of the city’s districts. A big enough threat to worry about, or too small to lose any sleep over?

The risk of an organized radical Muslim political group getting electoral traction may be minimal for now; it is the way other political parties adapt to the emergence of such a force. It isn’t to hard to see the traditional left pandering to some of these groups out of a sense of political correctness and expediency, while at the same time some unsavory characters from the hard right may resort to strategies with equally troubling results. Remember in continental Europe’s predominant system of proportional representation, even 10% of the vote can get you - depending on the overall distribution of votes – some serious political influence. In short, a large enough unintegrated and unassimilated group of immigrants has the potential for political instability, or as we have seen in France, political paralysis.

It’s a theme that keeps coming back, and as I’ve discussed before the inability of the average European to make decisive choices without veering too far left or right will be as crucial as any demographic development. And some visionary political leadership would help too ...

The fifth installment of Richard Landes’ discovery of the blogosphere is up – again with a guest appearance from yours truly. One question though for Richard is: is "progressive thinking about freedom, decency and fairness" something that is unique to the left?

Today Angela Merkel was inaugurated as Germany’s new chancellor and my regular readers will now that I am less than enthusiastic about the prospects of her grand coalition. The Economist takes a similarly dim view, highlighting the difficulty of aligning two very different political cultures under one umbrella:

As soon as one of the parties senses that fresh elections might be to its advantage, it will be tempted to pull out of the government. The risk is not only that Ms Merkel’s coalition will follow wrong-headed economic policies; it may also turn out to be unstable as well. Poor Germany.

Give it two years, but not more than that.

UPDATE I: Leon de Winter and Tammy Bruce are more optimistic.

UPDATE II: The FT sees room for improvement in Germany's foreign policy, but in the same breadt gives us four reasons why on the international stage, Merkel will be restrained too.

Related Posts:
The Merkel Coalition
Chancellor Merkel
Oh Germany
Multi-Tiered Europe
Vote Again
Scheming Schroeder
Reluctant to Change
No Mandate for Merkel
Closer Than Ever
German Polls: Still Close
German Election Primer

No sooner had I posted my call to support Spirit of America’s efforts in Iraq rather than green causes, or I got a call from one of Greenpeace’s tele-marketers. No, they’re not reading my blog, but my name is on their list as an erstwhile contributor as seven years in Hong Kong can turn you into a staunch environmentalist. Anyway, I explained the caller politely that our charitable donations are now going to hospitals and schools in Afghanistan and Iraq. Without missing a beat the Greenpeace caller jumped on the importance of saving the Iraqi marshlands, which according to him was an ecological disaster waiting to happen. With that he unintentionally confirmed why I had cooled on the green cause and its highly dogmatic approach: environmental issues takes precedence over immediate human suffering or any other need. It is fine for Greenpeace to stay close to its mission, but to identify the marshlands as the key problem for Iraq, well, that’s a little bit too rich for me.

NOTE: Greenpeace's involvement with Iraq is a little less innocent than I initially thought: Greenpeace Activists Block Military Port in Iraq Protest. Sure that wasn't about the marshlands.

UPDATE: Well, Greenpeace has known about the marshlands all along, but during the Saddam years it stayed suspiciously quiet about it:

Again, the environmental movement knows about this — and used to complain. More recently, however, they have been oddly silent. When President Bush marshaled his list of Saddam's crimes — as part of the public-relations war to rally the world against the Iraqi regime — he didn't get any help from the environmental movement. To the best of our knowledge, no statements of support were offered by the likes of Greenpeace or other such groups, urging the president to rescue the Iraqi marshlands.

To the contrary, many members of these organizations joined the peace movement, where they marched in antiwar rallies organized by far-left groups like International A.N.S.W.E.R. and Not in Our Name.

Interesting.

Of Pajamas Media.

The OSM debate rages on in the blogosphere but I will refrain from further comments as it is becoming somewhat unhinged. It's now fodder for those who do believe that blogging is a borderline phenomenon, so it's better to stay quiet and move on. But if you're interested, my positive take on the whole thing can be read here.

Yet, there are a few gems to be had and my new friend Richard Landes’ fourth installment about a debate he had in the bar during the New York launch with an adherent of the mainstream media is not to be missed. But, you have to read it in conjunction with this post from Jim Lowney - Landes' sparring partner - in which I make a guest appearance too. Both Landes and Lowney bring some humor to the whole thing, albeit from different corners. Enjoy them both.

The season of giving is upon us and the Dorsman family usually makes a few charitable donations to support some good causes. Over the past two years that has meant turning away some disappointed environmentalists in order to help build schools and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan. Your first port of call for such contributions should be the Spirit of America whose mission it is to extend the goodwill of those advancing freedom, democracy and peace abroad. But above all I think their efforts create hope for a better tomorrow. On that note, take a look at the latest photo dispatch from Michael Yon in Iraq. Give a little bit to the Spirit of America’s efforts so that a new generation can have a little more hope that things will be better tomorrow.

Whenever I lamented the power of unions in the past, readers would point to the imminent demise of America's once thriving car industry. The basic argument was, why pay extra for an average car in order to fund someone else’s healthcare and pension plan when there are far better alternatives (read Asian) on the market? Today, that particular train of thought was given further momentum when GM announced a massive job cut and factory closures. But even that may be too little to stop the bleeding as the Economist argues in a fairly depressing editorial on the issue:

Consumers will worry about warranties and the resale value of cars. What is clear is that GM’s options are steadily diminishing and its still sizeable financial resources are being drained away at a frightening rate. At the current pace, it may not have the momentum to reach a safe port.

For better or worse, this is globalization at work. Better adapt to it.

Fascinating interview with one of the original prosecuors, Whitney Harris.

My brother-in-law and his wife have taken a leave of absence to travel the world and are now in Indonesia. Here’s an interesting excerpt from their latest missive from Ubud, Bali:

What is remarkable is how few tourists there are. Or, to put it differently, the overcapacity. The bombings of about a month ago have had a very clear impact. When we checked in here we noticed that the last registered guests dated back to about a month ago. They talk about it in the stores and restaurants too, a girl who works at a souvenir-shop told us she had sold only two things over the past week. And the expectation is that things will get worse now that one of the most wanted Muslim terrorists, Dr. Azahari, has been killed in Malang. The Australian government has, as a response to that, issued a negative travel advisory for Indonesia. They fear reprisals. There are other countries too that have issued a similar advice and we often hear about people who have canceled their trip to Bali.

A once thriving and peaceful island is starting the pay a hefty price for jihadist violence. And the pain is felt where it will hurt most in the long run: the economy.

Related Posts
Bali Round-up
Why Bali?
Bali, again

Yes, he’s been dead for over three years now but when I posted on Hirsi Ali’s intent to produce a sequel to Submission, I started looking for a Fortuyn quote in order to give a bit more depth to the post. Instead when I flipped through his 1997 book “Against the Islamization of our Culture” (which I think has only been published in Dutch) I found the following remarkable quotes:

People who are structurally in an underprivileged situation have two possibilities. They either accept their position and try to make the best of it, or, they remove themselves from their situation by resisting or by finding ways that are illegal. A situation like this is not only a breeding ground for criminal behavior, but for resistance. That resistance will be characterized by placing a focus on one’s own identity and culture. Here’s the opening for potential fundamentalism, even in our society.

And:

If we fail to integrate these groups, economically, socially and culturally, than there can belittle doubt we will be confronted by militant fundamentalism in our own society. A form of fundamentalism that will surely be supported internationally. France, for instance, is not far away from a situation where the struggle between fundamentalists and secular groups will be relocated to its own territory.

Note how Fortuyn emphasizes “our society” in order to make clear the danger and the feeling that violence, war and terror were unlikely to be concepts that would apply to far-flung regions only. He wrote this in 1997, a time when his ideas were largely relegated to the sidelines as politically incorrect alarmism, populism or in a worst case, a new brand of fascism. Today, they’ve gone mainstream in European politics, but in the intervening years the focus was largely on why ideas like Fortuyn’s should be dismissed or - for those knew he was right – how best to look the other way. In France, that inaction is now paying some very bitter dividends.

NOTE: Oslo-based American writer Bruce Bawer - one of the better commentators on this topic - has written a very good piece on the reasons many of Europe’s Muslims do not want to integrate. You have to wonder whether Fortuyn was able to foresee the complexity of implementing some of his recommendations. My guess is he did.

UPDATE: Had a discussion about the use of the term "intifada" with an Englishman in New York at the OSM launch. Not sure if we managed to reach a conclusion about it, but he did have some first-hand experience with integration-related issues.

Is in the works and it will prove to be every bit as controversial as the first edition. Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali has started working on the sequel which will focus on Islam’s hostility towards gays. Being well aware of the dangers to contrast hard won western freedoms and rights with Islamist religious dogma, the moviemakers are taking no chances:

“ ... the threat to everyone taking part is deemed so great that there will be no faces shown on screen, no end credits, and the entire production team will remain anonymous.

There’s probably one name they can use, or no, actually two. Both Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh paid the ultimate price for being honest and prescient. For them, there's nothing to fear anymore.

A right-leaning, pro-business, quadriplegic has won the race to become Vancouver's new mayor yesterday, beating a left-wing Vietnam draft dodger. From a political perspective, great news, but it’s even better if you consider the odds that Sam Sullivan had to overcome:

From his boat, Sullivan can also see Cypress Bowl, where 25 years ago while trying to ski through a friend's outstretched legs, he tumbled and broke his neck.

"Happened right up there," he says, gazing up at the North Shore mountains. "Oh yeah, I do think about it out here. Hard to forget.

It's a place where my new life started." Now 44, Sullivan can proudly reflect on how far he's come since that day in January 1979, which sent him into a spiral of depression, suicidal thoughts and living on welfare for seven years.

A lesson for all of us. Inspiring.

It’s time to get back to normal here, but I still want to round-up the OSM launch with a few concluding remarks now that I am back from New York. And it seems it’s time to bring forward a few positive points among the avalanche of negativism and unhinged attacks that are spreading around the blogosphere like a wildfire. Sean Hackbarth has rounded-up a few of those comments here, alternatively you can visit that well-known Wisconsin law blogger and keep scrolling.

As someone with both a venture and blogging background, allow me to add the following to the debate. Firstly, any content-based venture that is able to raise a significant amount of early stage financing in the post-internet boom world is pulling off a significant feat. These days, investors look for solid revenue models or at a bare minimum for ideas that have a tangible potential for revenue. OSM has lined up a few seasoned Silicon Valley investors and take it from me, these are generally not the easiest people in the world to deal with. Probably few of the relentless critics in the blogosphere have the background to assess the incredible value and validation that has been given to the entire OSM project. The smart money says: an investment in blogs and alternative media has the potential for huge returns. Can anyone out there really negate the significance of that statement?

Well, there are quite a few and they use one of the blogosphere’s key tools – instant commentary – to start taking down the new venture. It brings me to my second point. Of course, mistakes are made and the very public nature of the whole OSM venture has made it an extraordinarily easy target. It was to be expected. Yet, it’s hard not to get the impression that a lot of the negativity is driven by resentment and, equally important, fear that something that started out as a free and rebel movement is now getting "institutionalized". But some level of organization or formalization in order to establish a viable business is unavoidable if you want to expand the potential and deepen the quality of what blogs have to offer.

Apart from the part-time ranter or irregular commentator, and there are lots of these, there are bloggers that want to take their efforts seriously and do indeed strive to live up to certain journalistic standards. There’s an inherent cost to achieving that as I can’t imagine that Michael Totten is going to do multiple tours of duty in the Middle East free of charge. At the same time, I can assure you that even I look critically at the risk/reward equation of providing content on a regular basis on this blog. The passion to do it requires effort, which demands time, which ultimately has a price tag. With only a very few exceptions – the Instapundit or Daily Kos come to mind - some form of aggregation or collaboration is unavoidable, even Andrew Sullivan announced that he had found a corporate home earlier this week.

The claim that blogs are now going mainstream and abandon their revolutionary roots is tenuous. Yes, the media landscape is undergoing dramatic reform and if you want to carve out a significant niche alongside the established media (who by the way will not disappear) you at the very least will have to do it on their turf. That means adopting some mainstream tools in order to get that unique voice out and if that means abandoning some of the freewheeling ways of the nascent blogosphere, so be it.

It’s beyond the scope of this post to take on the critics point by point – why even bother - but it is important to highlight what is right about OSM and why criticism is premature. OSM has now brought together a group of talented and committed individuals, capital, a technology and an idea on which it can build further. These are the essential ingredients for a journey of which no one knows where it will end. Most technology ventures end up in a place very different from where they were originally headed and still turned out to be huge successes nevertheless. The trial-and-error ingredient of that process is incredibly high and it makes life for the founders often far from pleasant, it's the proverbial bumpy ride. But, in this case, they’re off to a head-start and that is unpalatable for some.

NOTE: Although there are many good posts of the events in New York, there are a few I wanted to highlight since they really captured the spirit of the event. Neo-neocon has probably one of the best, but do also check out Fausta, The Urban Grind, Asher Abrams and The Young Curmudgeon. And Richard Landes, who has been given the urgent advice by many last week to start his own blog sooner rather than later.

But without my cellphone which mysteriously disappeared between La Guardia and Toronto where I had to transfer. I am catching up with business and many e-mails today and hope to get back to regular updates as well as some afterthoughts about the OSM launch over the weekend.

The OSM launch party was nothing short of phenomenal, I spent some five hours talking to other bloggers, writers and media people. I left Richard Landes, Glenn Reynolds, Pamela, Pedro Zuquete, Mary Madigan, Judith Weiss and Sense of Soot behind in the bar at around eleven o’clock, it was time to get some rest. I’ll board a flight shortly and upon my return some more thoughts on this interesting event. Thanks Roger, Charles, Jill and Magnus for delivering a spectacular launch.

Posted at 08:35 AM by Pieter Dorsman | Permalink | Blogosphere | TrackBack (0)