This week’s visit to our friends at Beijing’s People’s Daily will give us a brief look at all three members of the Axis of Evil TM. First, from Iran, we see that the Iranian foreign ministry is quibbling with the recent purported agreement with European powers Britain, France and Germany to suspend uranium enrichment activities, though Iran (“with the support of nations from the non-aligned movement”) is seeking to modify aspects of the agreement, including keeping 20 centrifuges “for research”. Note that the USA continues to accuse Iran of developing weapons. Our problem here is that (1) we have no...

The potentially explosive situation in Kiev, Ukraine following the hotly disputed presidential election rolls along. According to this piece (representing this week’s visit to Pravda), time is not on the side of the opposition, whose candidate Victor Yuschenko managed to get Ukraine’s supreme court to hold up certifying the election results. Pravda’s take is that we have an especially interesting situation in Ukraine, where the Kremlin has sided with the sitting government of outgoing current president Leonid Kuchma along with the government’s candidate, Victor Yanukovich, and the European Union has clearly sided with challenger Yuschenko. Naturally, Yanukovich is looking to...

While America’s “morality-obsessed” voters get ready for their national day of gluttony (to be followed by our national month or so of avarice), yours truly would like to give thanks… to the people of Ukraine for taking democracy seriously enough to threaten an armed revolt when an election is clearly stolen right from under them (we’re obviously hoping this works out peacefully and orderly, with no loss of life; still, I am heartened by the enthusiasm all around) . While EU and Russian leaders are urging a peaceful resolution, its good to see that there are things in this world...

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...