Burnin’

The Bush administration has been expert at framing American deaths and injuries in Iraq as a strict numbers game. Thankfully, Cindy Sheehan and Rep. John Murtha have successfully personalized our losses, and therefore have presented impressive challenges to institutional deceit.

Now, with ABC’s Bob Woodruff seriously injured by a bomb, Americans have another reason to pause.

Christiane Amanpour on CNN’s Larry King Live last night:

We have to have an independent eye on these conflicts. The war in Iraq has basically turned out to be a disaster and journalists have paid for it, paid for the privilege of witnessing and reporting that and so have many, many other people who have been there.

And I think that’s terribly, terribly difficult for us and unfortunately for some reason, which I can’t fathom, the kind of awful thing that’s going on there now on a daily basis has almost become humdrum. So, when something happens to people that we identify, like Bob and like Doug, we wake up again and realize that, no, this is not acceptable what’s going on there and it’s a terrible situation.

Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Brightness Falls and several other novels, submits to Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire:

Q. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

A. My tendency to exaggerate.

Q. What is your greatest extravagance?

A. Bespoke clothing.

Q. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

A. My tendency to get mistaken for Bret Easton Ellis.

Q. Who are your favorite writers?

A. Fitzgerald, Carver, and Austen.

Q. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?

A. Stephen Dedalus.

Q. What is your most treasured possession?

A. My first edition of The Great Gatsby.

Q. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

A. No wine list.

New Scientist: Development giants China and India “hold the world in balance”, says a new report by a US environmental think tank.

“The choices these two countries make in the next few years will lead the world either towards growing ecological and political instability — or down a development path based on efficiency and better stewardship of resources,” says a report from the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC, US.

One in every two tonnes of cement poured today will be in China — such is the country’s breakneck pace of economic development. The country also uses one-quarter of all the world’s steel, eats one-third of the world’s rice, and is the world’s largest importer of tropical timber and second largest importer of oil.

Veteran US ecologist and China-watcher Lester Brown last week warned that if China’s economy continues to grow at the present rate, average Chinese incomes will reach current US levels by 2031. At that point “China would consume two-thirds of the world’s current grain harvest and twice the world’s current paper production”.

However, the think tank warns against assuming that economic growth is an environmental problem only in poor countries. “Record-shattering consumption levels in the US and Europe” are equally to blame, stresses Christopher Flavin, president of Worldwatch. In the past decade alone, the ecological footprint of the average American has grown by the same amount as the total footprint of a Chinese person today.

But Flavin says countries like China and India have the chance to develop in a more benign way than already industrialised nations. “[By] leapfrogging today’s industrial powers, they can become world leaders in sustainable energy and agriculture within a decade,” he says.

This is not unrealistic. China recently announced plans for the world’s first “eco-city” on marshes outside Shanghai. India has the world’s fourth largest wind-power industry and plans to generate one-quarter of its energy from renewables.

Gold old Texas gal, Molly Ivins, has got some news for the fools on Capitol Hill.

I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to relearn it. It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, “Look, the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.” Bobby Kennedy — rough, tough Bobby Kennedy — didn’t do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines, who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy’s sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush’s tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes. The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do “whatever it takes” to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. Who are you afraid of?

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine that you have no idea what people are thinking. I’m telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven’t got enough sense to own the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Wall Street Journal: When Ted Koppel appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” in 2002, he plugged National Public Radio to so much studio applause that host Jon Stewart cracked, “Somebody got themselves a tote bag.”

At the time, Mr. Koppel was simply another NPR admirer. Now, the former “Nightline” anchor is getting more than just swag — he’s got a new part-time job with NPR, joining the growing ranks of television news stars who are seeking refuge at the Washington, D.C., public broadcaster.

Michel Martin (on right)

While some of the NPR recruits, like Mr. Koppel and CBS newsmen Walter Cronkite and Daniel Schorr, have joined the organization at the end of their long broadcast TV runs, other television news talent is defecting to NPR mid-career. ABC News, for example, has almost become a farm team for NPR. Last week, NPR announced it had hired Michel Martin, an ABC News correspondent, to jump-start a new program targeting African-American listeners. Last month, it reeled in Robert Krulwich, another ABC News correspondent, to join its science squad. The new hires will be greeted by a familiar face: ABC News correspondent Michele Norris signed on to NPR in 2002.

Network news is increasingly generating prospects for NPR in part because some broadcast journalists think the networks are veering away from serious, in-depth reports. Many television journalists say they are fed up with the move toward consumer-friendly news-you-can-use and away from weightier subjects like foreign affairs and government.

“When I started at ABC News, it was a large division of a communications company,” says Ms. Martin, recalling the days before Walt Disney Co. bought the company. “Now, it’s a small division of an entertainment company, and that creates different pressures.”

Marin Independent Journal: This hilltop site in Corte Madera was once home to the late rock impresario Bill Graham.

Today it holds what its designer says is probably the largest “green” – ecologically correct – house in America.

Designed by Inverness architect Sim Van der Ryn and under construction for more than five years, the 15,000-square-foot house was built for owner Michael Klein, a passionate environmentalist and board member of the Rain Forest Action Network. It replaces the Graham house, which has been razed.

It will be open to the public for the first time on Jan. 21 when a Marin committee of grassroots political activists hosts a fund-raiser for Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders, an independent candidate for the Senate seat to be vacated by Sen. Jim Jeffords, also an independent.

The house has an assessed value of $17.8 million, according to the Marin County assessor’s office.

The Atlantic is 150, and alive to tell about it.

According to the magazine, “fifteen decades is a long time; only a handful of publications anywhere have exceeded that benchmark. A great deal has occurred since a small group of writers and editors met in the dining room of a Boston hotel to plan the first issue of what would become The Atlantic Monthly. The economy of the United States at the time was smaller than Britain’s, and its armed forces lesser than those of France. Germany and Italy didn’t exist, and Das Kapital and The Origin of Species hadn’t been written. American territory already stretched from coast to coast, but there were only thirty-one states in the Union. The vote was restricted to men, and a system of public education was a thing of the future. The most salient fact about this country was that slavery remained legal in the United States. The Atlantic’s founders were leaders of the abolitionist cause.

But if some things about The Atlantic Monthly have changed in 150 years, the most important things have not. First, the founders of the magazine understood that breaking news was not always worth paying attention to, and in fact could distract the public from important stories that needed to be told–and that took more time to tell.”

Globe and Mail: Argentina’s defiant “no mas” to the International Monetary Fund does more than confirm its painful return from financial ruin.

Its repayment yesterday of its debts to the Washington-based lender marks a symbolic rejection of everything the fund represents — the United States, market reforms, privatization, free trade, foreign investment and globalization.

The leftward shift is occurring, to varying degrees, throughout the region. Right in the United States’ backyard, nations are rejecting the region’s once-dominant economic and political influence. The vacuum is increasingly being filled by the likes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose anti-American rhetoric has become the region’s rallying cry.

Bolivia’s new socialist leader, President Evo Morales, for example, has threatened (and since stepped back from those threats) to cancel foreign-held oil and gas contracts and nationalize the industry.

This year could mark a further populist shift to the left in several more countries. Elections are slated for nearly two dozen countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean. Among them: Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru.

Mexico, Brazil and Chile are still tentatively holding out against the leftward tilt, says Mauro Guillen, a business professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. But nearly everywhere else, political leaders are growing skeptical of free trade, foreign investment and free-market pricing.

I found this bumper sticker in a store on Lexington Avenue in Asheville on Sunday. I like the attitude it brings and the question it begs. Hemp is not pot. It’s a plant that can revolutionize farming in America, as well as the textile and energy industries. There’s nothing to fear here. It’s a plant that has been in cultivation for the past 8000 years, yet it is outlawed in this nation today. We need to change that.

After purchasing this sticker, I crossed Lexington Ave. and entered Terra Diva, where I was lucky to find a great pair of hemp pants in my size (a miracle in its own right). The pants are from Of The Earth–headquartered in Bend, Oregon–which strives to be the premier resource for fine natural fiber apparel in the world.

There is a great mountain town less than five hours to the north and west of here.

Here’s how USA TODAY described Asheville, North Carolina in 2003:

This once down-on-its-heels city of 70,000 nestled in the Appalachian Mountains is morphing into one of the South’s hippest hangouts. Coffee bars, trendy eateries, music clubs and galleries have taken up residence in the glorious art deco buildings that fill the downtown. And artists and musicians are arriving in droves.

Santa Fe of the East, some call it.

I see more similarities with Boulder, CO, but I digress.

On Saturday night we dined at Zambra Tapas, by far the best tapas bar we’ve ever entered. We opened with a truly wonderful wine–Periquita Terras Do Sado from Portugal. Created by Jose Maria da Fonseca in 1850, Periquita is made primarily from the Castelao Frances grape, an indigenous variety that thrives in southern Portugal. Some of the tapas we enjoyed:

~ artichoke, poblano and queso dip with housemade flatbread
~ pan fried trout with hazelnuts, orange, and brown butter
~ grilled hanger steak with cilanto chimichurri, cana de cabre

After dinner, we walked to Barley’s Tap Room for an organic beer, then headed across the street to The Orange Peel for Donna The Buffalo.

In the morning we made our way to Everyday Gourmet, an espresso shop opened by a Seattle transplant. In other words, it was the real deal. Before we left today, we had a terrific lunch at Thai Basil. I could go on and on…the place has galleries galore, unique shops, natural beauty, charming neighborhoods and interesting people. Asheville is a great place to visit, and I imagine the locals love living there.

Lyricist, internet freedom fighter and former cattle rancher, John Perry Barlow, hadn’t written a blog post in nine months. As of a few days ago, he’s back. Here’s some of what he has to say:

I began numerous BarlowSpams and blog entries only to have them slam, half-written, into the next improbability, where, beached with awe upon the present, I no longer felt like reporting yesterday’s apocalypse. (Perhaps one day I will bundle up some of these half-vignettes and post them here.)

Certainly, pioneering the electronic frontier is no longer the riveting mission it once was. While there remains much to be done, and the liberty of our descendents still hangs in the balance, that world has become too complex for me to think I can change it, as I once could, with the help of a few smart friends. Now I leave it more to the professionals at EFF. They’re smarter than I am and a lot more diligent with the details. Of course, I will go on toiling in the vaporous vineyards of Cyberspace, but without the same grand sense of personal urgency. Like any old mountain man, I’ve become just another settler, filling in the margins and grumbling about the government.

Previous passages through these interstitial storms felt like my own lonely struggle. Now, everywhere I look, I see others in the same condition. Fundamental life confusion – generally endured invisibly with a toxic sense of private embarrassment – is pandemic. Your personal mileage may differ, but my guess is that you are presently more riven with doubts and questions than you’ve letting on.

Most of the people I know who are still conscious enough to back away from their televisions are in a kind of life-shock. Metanoia, anomie, paralysis, catatonia, existential dread – whatever you want to call it, it’s wide-spread. Everywhere I look, I see people white-eyed and still as though caught in the Headlights of God.

Serious stuff. And then he turns to politics, which for Barlow brings to mind William Butler Yeats’ famous poem, “The Second Coming,” written in 1919.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

It’s hard not to equate the end of the first stanza with today’s religious right, which is what Barlow does, and in that analysis he has many sympathizers, myself included. He does manage to conjure up some hope for the future, as well as some appreciation of the present, in his new post. Perhaps, the best do not lack all conviction, rather they lack convinction all the time

My buddy, DK, has penned an eloquent treatise against capital punishment for the Salt Lake Tribune. Here’s an excerpt:

Proponents of capital punishment often argue that, on the basis of retribution, punishment and offense ought to be connected. In the case of murder, death is appropriate.

This principle, in legalese, is Lex Talionis, and dates back to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, restated in the Old Testament as “If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

Aristotle and Aquinas used it as the basis for their commentaries on punishment. Dante based much of his depiction of the suffering of sinners in hell on the premise that divine penalty is determined by the sin committed. So, in the Inferno, gluttons are masticated, instigators of civil strife are dismembered, and so forth.

But, in order to be logically consistent, defenders of Lex Talionis must argue that rapists ought to be raped and torturers ought to be tortured. Can you imagine anything more ludicrous and reprehensible than the Department of Corrections hiring officers to rape rapists and drub wife-beaters? Lex Talionis is indefensible.

I’ve always thought the banishment concept practiced by Native Americans was a good answer. Maybe we could send our most vile to a distant island where they fend for themselves, or perish.

c|net: A Scottish university is testing solar-powered streetlights that also deliver wireless Internet access.

The Project Starsight technology is being tested as part of a deal between Compliance Technology, a company based in Fife, Scotland, and the Abertay Center for the Environment (ACE) at the University of Abertay in Dundee.

The solar panels provide a free energy source for the streetlight and also for the Wi-Fi or WiMax connection.