sfarber

That would be referring, of course, to the latest Al Qaeda video, which featured the obligatory visit by “AQ2” Al-Zawahiri, and a man believed to be an American (who made his first AQ video appearance in July), Adam Yehiye Gadahn. The video called on Americans to convert to Islam, and for American troops in Iraq to switch sides, and didn’t threaten any particularly imminent terrorist strikes or even jihad in general. I’m a little baffled by the timing, as by my own reckonings (at least here and here), I didn’t think we’d be hearing from Al-Zawahiri for another few weeks,...

The Washington Post treats us to this story of an “investigation” of the FBI’s handling of the recent supposed terrorist plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago by a group of criminal misfits (the “Sovereign Moors” and/or the “Moorish Science Temple”) in Miami that even the FBI conceded had no possible means whatsoever of carrying out their plot. Now, to be sure, infiltrating and uncovering plots of this nature is absolutely essential to combatting terrorism. Indeed, pains in the ass like myself would point out that in many cases, this sort of infiltration is the only way of...

I know… it never gets old… And now that the shtick has a national radio audience, I fear I’ll keep saying it. But there you have it; today is August 31st, the day that the U.N. Security Council had set as a deadline for Iran to stop enriching uranium and start talking about dismantling it’s uranium enrichment program (as said on “Wait Wait,” We definitely should talk about your proposal, but I can’t take your call right now… I have to finish enriching this uranium, and I just can’t hear you over my uranium enriching machine…”)… yes’ it’s official… Iran...

When confronted with any… unpleasantness… the President quickly shifts into his favorite position (probably complete with camouflage-patterned underwear, though I have no evidence of this)… that being “the War President TM.” This week, the President was forced to deal with the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the… less than fully effective… federal response, both at the time and with respect to clean-up (our friend Kevin Hayden of American Street has a multi-media compendium on Katrina matters)… and the blogosphere in general has many other discussions of the subject. Not to worry. There is always an answer: the President,...

The Grey Lady treats us to this discussion of the fact that American real wages are now at their lowest levels measured in appropriately “real” terms, to wit, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, than at any time since they have been measured since the measuring began in 1947. “Worst ever” seems extreme even for me (I mean, even George Dubya can always point to Buchanan… James, not Pat…) so we’ll just say “the worst in 60 years”, and leave it at that. Which is pretty bad, all things told. By contrast, corporate profits appear to be at their...

For people with an incredibly long attention span, you may listen to this week’s edition of NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”, in the second question of the second “Who’s Carl this Week?”, somewhere around 45 minutes into the program,and you will hear a quote attributed to this blog (derived from this post.) (Thanks to Linkmeister, our man in Honolulu, for the heads up.) I’m sure the show is on hundreds of radio stations across the nation (at least one of which would seem to be in Hawaii), and if it’s not… I’m certain to say it is, anyway. Whether...

Yes, everyone is well aware who the uncharismatic-but-nose-to-the-grindstone frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is… none other than my own state’s Junior Senator (with whom I share a birth day). Ah, but it seems that at least in some circles, especially in the land of his fathers (Kenya) my college class-mate (and Illinois’s Junior Senator) Barack Obama… is the man. Urging citizens of HIV-ravaged Kenya to get themselves tested for AIDS and HIV, Obama gave what amounted to a victory lap of Kenya, including visits to the village from which hailed his late father and grandfather, Obama was greeted with the...

It would appear that German born Turkish national Murat Kurnaz is scheduled to be released from Guantanamo and returned home to Germany, by tomorrow. Kurnaz is one of numerous detainees (the overwhelming majority, actually) against the whom the evidence of terrorism connections is… attenuated at best, and in reality, ludicrous. My interview with Baher Azmy, one of Mr. Kurnaz’s attorneys, is here. Kurnaz is easier to release than most of the prisoners: we’re not likely to see Germany imprison or torture him, unlike, for example, Saudi Arabia or Yemen where many or most of the Gitmo prisoners are from (or,...

The Grey Lady gives us this further discussion and analysis of the President’s press conference, wherein the President made it very clear that “the Democrat Party” wants to cut and run from Iraq, and, let’s face it, if you vote for a Democrat in the mid-term elections, Osama bin Laden will personally follow you home and murder your children. As we come up on the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, look for the fever pitch of this kind of argument– which, when you look at it in the light I just presented it, is incredibily asinine. But, in substance,...

For those of you not familiar with it, here is a link to Sy Hersh’s latest in the New Yorker about the really, really special relationship between members of our government and members of Israel’s government that appeared to signal two things: (1) Israel was really peachy keen on having an excuse to take on Hizbollah, and the kidnapping of the two soldiers last month served its interests to do so, and (2) the United States was really peachy keen on Israel having an excuse to take on Hizbollah to show Iran all those handy dandy new bombs that could...