sfarber

And so its on… Israel’s absolutely unilateral, absolutely unconditional pullout from the Gaza Strip… David Kuttab writing in the Jerusalem Post gives us this observation of the utter confusion among Palestinian national leaders as to how to react. While some (like Hamas, for example) advocate a raucus celebration of successful resistance to “the Zionist Entity”, others realize (rightly) that Israel will likely dig in even harder on the other “drop dead” issues to Palestinians, i.e., the West Bank and Jerusalem. I don’t know how to break this: but this doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Israel (and the...

It’s a mad, mad, mad world… so a few disparate links drawn from the front page of our comrades’ in Beijing’s house organ People’s Daily: first, this lamentation from the PRC on the occasion of the assassination of the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister in Colombo (naturally, Tamil separatists are suspected). Then, we have this, proposing to shoot down Taiwan’s bid for a U.N. seat before it manages to get anywhere… We get this discussion of an American-born Chinese industrialist, who laments American waste and proposes that China develop a “recycling based” economy; and this prediction for strong, if not brilliant,...

This week’s visit to our comrades from Pravda gives us this lengthy discussion by Robert Higgs of the implications of the Bush Administration’s re-branding efforts from the Global War on Terror to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Mr. Higgs questions if Bush Administration officials can possibly be as stupid as they profess to be, that is, do they actually believe that the hearts and minds of people we are invading, bombing and torturing can possibly be won over simply because we have come up with a pithy new slogan (such as the 1962 slogan from the Coca Cola Company...

So, presumably, would one of OBL’s alleged aides, Tarik A. Hamdi, who is apparently now working for the new Iraqi government at its diplomatic facilities in neighboring Turkey. Supposedly, Hamdi provided batteries for a satellite phone used by the head Evildoer himself. Interestingly, evidence was released about Hamdi’s activities while he was living and working for an Islamic Institute in Herndon, Virginia (near the nation’s capitol). But somehow, Mr. Hamdi, regarded as a stateside contact for bin Laden and/or A.Q., was permitted to not only move around, but get a job with the new Iraqi government that we are propping...

It seems like being a blue state would be a state of mind if one’s state has any desire not to have its Air National Guard facility shuttered by the Pentagon, according to this Grey Lady piece. To demonstrate that the Pentagon’s commitment is to protect us from “threats of the present”, note that one of the facilities scheduled for mothballing (or at least, losing its main fighter contingents) is none other than Massachusetts’ Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, which was the location from which fighters were scrambled to confront two airliners that eventually crashed into the World...

In addition to continuing carnage against American (and Iraqi) security forces, a leading Shiite militia decided to fight City Hall the old fashioned way: by deposing Baghdad’s Mayor and taking over its City Hall. My guess is 95%, if not 99%, of Iraq’s actual citizenry would rather the God damned insurgents (Saudi-sponsored foreign maniacs, Saddam-loyalist dead-enders, some Iranian-sponsored opportunists, a few plain old petty criminals…) would just stop, leave them alone, and let them get on with the business of trying to assemble some semblance of an orderly country and orderly lives. But, as we know, it doesn’t take all...

The world presumably breathed a great sigh of relief upon the safe return and landing of the space shuttle Discovery at California’s Edwards Air Force Base this morning. Obviously, the same problems on take-off that plagued the Columbia were a cause of grave concern; they will have to be looked at. And indeed, our entire commitment to a manned space program will also have to be looked at: we can get far greater bang for our buck in term of scientific value and sheer cost-effectiveness through unmanned probes, like the Mars rovers, or the Pioneer out there somewhere that some...

Libby… a… er, Libya, anyway… as noted by our brief visit to our Beijing comrades at People’s Daily, who give us this quick update that Occidental Petroleum is the first major U.S. oil company to dip its toe back in Libya, as part of a relatively major U.S. incursion to seek out combustible black gunk from… Africa. Certainly, OPEC members Libya and Nigeria were (and are) major players in the oil game, but growing, growing are places like Angola and obscure islands Sao Tome and Principe and all sorts of other venues all over Africa. One would have thought it...

Israeli Finance Minister and Political Lazarus Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu resigned in protest over the now all but inevitable pullout from Gaza, to the delight of both the Israeli left and right (and m’self). Bibi was ridden out of the premiership on a rail after various scandals, and amazingly, has made it back to the forefront of Israeli politics. (I remember Bibi from a talk he gave in the mid-80’s at NYU law school, back when he was Israel’s ambaassador to the UN; man is he smart and charismatic… those aren’t good enough to cover a paucity of character, however.) There...

Maybe I’ll just go to all good news all the time. Wouldn’t that be special? Well, we’ll start with TD Brother (a/k/a The Rabid Dog) and congratulate him on his wedding; a great time was had by all, and it was wonderful to see some of the TD cousins we haven’t seen in far too long… (because let’s face it… how often does your only brother get married?) The other good news comes to us from the far Pacific, where thanks to international help led by Her Majesty’s Navy, seven intrepid Russian submariners were rescued from their trapped AS-28 mini-sub...