Thursday, May 12, 2005

More News from Iraq

Seymour Hersh was great on Democracy Now today. His comment on why it's wrong to call the opposition to the US in Iraq an "insurgency" is the best I've yet seen. He says, "I'm wacko on this word “insurgency.” Just so you know, an “insurgency” means, suggests you’ve won the war and there are people who disagree. They’re rebels or they're insurgents, as I said. No. We're still fighting the war we started, folks.
He says some brilliant and frightening things here. The pace of the discussion, if you read the transcript,is dizzying: this idea of the US's appropriation of the Mukhabbarat, the Salvadorization of Iraq, Hersh's assessment of the mindsets of the President and his cronies.
There is also an intriguing story about conflict within the military-industrial complex over the division of the spoils of this war. It's interesting to see the one place where the Bush admin. wants more corporate accountability to the public sector, to government, even. Well, we all knew there were limits to the "starve the beast" ideology.
The beast is starving in NYC, as you can see from this sad article on the desperate attempts to do something about the dramatically different schools that NYers attend.
Finally, PPRM alerted me to this new article by Matt Taibbi that suggests an alternate investment plan to replace the $600 million stadium subsidy deal. Why doesn't NY just BUY the NY knicks?

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