Author: david

  • The Looming Pitched Battle for the City of Kirkuk

    I’ve been following the thread of the story of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, and it seriously looks as if in late 2007 that city is going to move Iraq into a new, bloodier, level of warfare: pitched battle for territory, with full-scale armies on the attack. It is hard to believe, even for me:…

  • The Fine Print on Direct Talks

    NYT, 5/29/06 “To avert sanctions, Iran has hinted at readiness to limit the number of centrifuge machines producing enriched uranium…. “Diplomats…say that Iranian engineers stopped pouring a raw form of uranium, called UF6, into arrays of centrifuges after just 12 days….the Iranians kept the empty centrifuges spinning, as is standard practice because slowing the delicate…

  • Mr. Dylan on Mr. Cool J

    In case you missed mention of it, Bob Dylan is DJ on a weekly “Theme Time Radio Hour” on satellite radio. This was his intro to LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” on the show with a Mother’s Day theme. (II’ll put in some line breaks.) Here’s LL Cool J Don’t call it…

  • Why we resist direct talks with North Korea and Iran

    Why does the US resist direct talks with Iran and North Korea? This may be part of it: The Bush Doctrine had two basic tenets: Preemptive Force and Regime Change. The second has gotten relatively little notice, compared with the first. The idea behind regime change is that when a country poses a serious threat…

  • “Squabbling” and “Bickering”

    I would suggest that the press should just swear off of the use of “Squabbling” and “Bickering,” especially in headlines. For a while, I thought they were routinely applied only to political differences among foreigners, especially third-world foreigners. But I see they also appear fairly often applied to political differences–even convictions–that arise within the US.…

  • The Mysterious Pyramid Coincidence

    Bosnian Hill an Ancient Pyramid, AP [Note: Joke, hopefully, ensues] So, we have yet another example of the mysteriously universal practice of pyramid building, which took hold at a certain time in every ancient human civilization, in every corner of the world. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. There was certainly no possible route of human-to-human…