|
WWW Kensington Review |
Links |
Contact Us |
| This Week's Commentary: | Volume VIII, Number 34 |
|
147 Killed in Iraq-Namese Car Bombings -- This journal has had little to say about the war in Iraq-Nam in the last while, largely because low intensity guerrilla conflicts are inherently boring affairs. Moreover, the Green Zone government has done little of interest. Furthermore, the leader of the Shi'ite insurrection, Muqtada al Sadr, is playing a long-term game, and he is studying to be promoted to ayatollah from hojatoleslam; it's rather like going from doctoral candidate to PhD or even professor. And yet, two car bombings killed 147 or more Iraq-Namese yesterday, reminding the world that this stupid and pointless conflict continues.
[October 26]
US Official Resigns over Afghanistan Policy -- Matthew Hoh recently joined the US Foreign Service to help Americans and Afghans win hearts and minds. He rapidly grew disgusted with the situation, and he has resigned. He denies that he's "some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love." He is an ex-Marine captain who has come to doubt the whole purpose of the fighting. In his resignation letter, he stated, "my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end." This journal fears that his doubts are fully justified and that the Pentagon and the White House are going to continue fighting this war in the wrong way. [October 27] US Should Save Just Part of GMAC -- The US Treasury and GMAC, the former lending arm of General Motors, sat down today to talk about a third helping of money for the troubled bank holding company. The American taxpayer is already holding 35% of GMAC after sinking $12.5 billion into it. GMAC needs to raise another $11.5 billion to comply with Treasury guidelines after it failed a stress test earlier this year. Uncle Sam should help out, but only if it splits GMAC in two, letting a healthy and smaller GMAC continue while a sick mirror-image GMAC loaded with bad assets goes under in a controlled way. [October 28] The Internet Turns 40 -- Today is the 40th anniversary of the first successful transmission of data by what would evolve into the Internet. On October 29, 1969, just a few months after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins returned from the Moon, a grad student by the name of Charley Kline sat at a terminal in UCLA and was going to send the word "login" to another terminal at the Stanford Research Institute. When he hit the letter "G," the system crashed. And there was no Microsoft to blame for buggy software. [October 29] Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
|
|
