sfarber

There are the known knowns, and the known untruths, such as SecDef Rumsfeld’s statement that he supports the recently killed-by-Congress legislative overhaul of the nation’s intelligence apparatus. One of the killed proviswions, the darling of the 9-11 Commission, would have consolidated many intelligence functions under a national intelligence coordinator (a job left vacant over the last four years while NSC Advisor “Dr.” Condolleezza Rice took a paid leave of absence from her position that usually performs this function). To be honest with you, I was never a big fan of the intelligence “reform”. Having a national drug czar has done...

Lame duck Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Israel and the Palestinian territories for the first time in sixteen months (is it actually conceivable that an American Secretary of State has been absent from Israel for that long?) announced that he was pleased with both preparations by the Palestinians for their election and preparations by the Israelis to actually allow Palestinian candidates to move around to campaign and Palestinian voters to vote. I suppose Powell is in the area because “the quartet” (USA, EU, UN and… Russia? RUSSIA?) are meeting at the Sharm el Sheik resort in Egypt to discuss...

Recently re-elected American President George W. Bush (secret identity and day job of super-hero “Mandate Man”) met with his buddy (from The Super-Power Friends), Chinese Premier Hu Jin-tao (secret identity and day job of “Debt Buy Guy”) at Santiago, Chile as part of the twelfth Asia Pacific economic summit, and their meeting is nicely capsulized in this piece (also known as this week’s visit to our friends from Beijing’s People’s Daily). It’s an interesting study, actually. For one thing, it notes that in a virtually complete and total turnabout, George W. Bush is, hook, line and sinker, adopting the Mainland...

This week’s visit to Pravda gives us this brief discussion of the recent announcement by new CIA Director/Bush political officer Porter Goss of a “new approach” to the CIA’s work of intelligence gathering. Goss has apparently renewed his subscription to the magazine Duh!, and concluded that (wait for it) North Korea and Iran present the most serious threats to American interests, and therefore, will be the focus of the agency’s intelligence efforts. Goss, who was a CIA clandestine operative back in the 60’s, before later becoming a Congressman and loyal foot-soldier for Newt Gingrich and the more outlandish excesses of...

In some recent exchanges between yours truly and Granny, who, by profession, is a pharmacy technician, we learned from Granny that the recently-pulled-off-the-market arthritis drug Vioxx (from Merck… its stock price has suffered some…) was only the beginning. We learn today from a respected scientist (and government drug reviewer), David Graham, that at least five more FDA-approved drugs pose imminent risks, and should be pulled off the market immediately. These drugs are Meridia (a weight-loss drug which creates risks of higher blood pressure and stroke among people taking it), Crestor (an anti-cholesterol drug that causes occurrence of renal failure and...

That pun is overly used by Jim Henley, but I have learned in blogging as everywhere else, when stealing, steal from the best. And just as I have stolen the post title, so the link is… “borrowed”, or at least generously provided to us by Bruce “the Veep” Moomaw, who gives us the Grey Lady’s account of… just why our marines aren’t finding lots and lots of deceased insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq. Short answer, of course, is that in the weeks and longer of run-up to this, the smarter insurgents (and as many civilians as could) up and left, leaving...

Brief news event (apropos of the post title), thanks to Bruce the Veep, who solves the mystery of why Colin is out, and Rummy is in, with this WaPo piece. What it boils down to is that if the Colin Powell wing were to survive while the Rummy wing were to be ousted, this might be perceived as a tacit admission that the fucking disaster known as the Iraq campaign wasn’t a perfectly executed military masterpiece that threatened to undermine rather than enhance our national security. Hence, rather than admit the possibility that a disastrous policy was… the least bit...

The President seems not to be wasting any time in his cabinet shake-ups. Just hours after forcing/accepting the resignation of Secretary of State Colin Powell, the President announced his choice of National Security Advisor Incompentalleezza “Condi” Rice to replace him at State. It’s becoming clear that the President now wants to use his “mandate”, i.e. 51% or so of the population has unequivocally endorsed his agenda of deficit spending to finance tax cuts for the super-well-off, aggressive, poorly planned foreign adventures (featuring atrocities like torture and killing of civilians), locking up citizens at whim, environmental degradation and an aggressive path...

Our visit to Beijing’s People’s Daily first gives us this sometimes gushing, sometimes accurate, discussion of Yasir Arafat, his “legacy”, and, finally, the prospects for something good to come out of the Israeli-Palestinian situation now that this criminal (my words) is finally dead. While the early analyses discuss the magnitude of Arafat as a figure (having monopolized all Palestinian levers of power), as the piece goes on, a more “real-politik” approach takes hold of the Chinese analysts, and they point out that Palestinian institutions (including even Hamas and Hizbollah) seem to be behaving in an orderly fashion now, and it...

This week’s visit to Pravda (have we missed a visit somewhere back there?) gives us this brief piece outlining a possible threat to humanity from the latest strain of avian (or “bird”) flu originating in Far Eastern chickens and travelling via ducks (the old Marx Brothers bit… China? Marx? Never mind…) quite possibly into a strain transmittable to humans. The reference to the Spanish flu, of course, refers to the pandemic that broke out right after World War I, and killed well over 20 million world wide (around the same number as the world war itself). The reference to the...