| January 16, 2006 | Shows | Recipe Calendar | Archives |
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Recently finished Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman. Traces beginnings of totalitarian regimes of last century and shows how Islamism (as different from Islam) is just another pathological mass movement, not so different from Nazism or Stalinism. How liberal thinkers like Chomsky believe that political movements are rational. How these totalitarian movements start out as the wish to return to some mythical golden age, then turn into murder-suicide cults as they must kill off members who aren't true believers. I've just started William Greider's The Soul of Capitalism. I used to read him years ago in Rolling Stone.
Here in the middle of winter, arrangements to go anywhere are never simple. You have to watch weather forecasts and travel in the light when it's not icy. Just a simple trip the other night to a Gandalf Murphy concert meant kenneling the dogs and staying over in Ellsworth. A $15 concert ends up costing $150. To my shows this year, I've recently added Old School Freight Train and a Cape Verdean singer called Lura. Jim Bahoosh has a winter crush on her and put us on to her. Every year there seems to be one album that gets me through January commutes. This year it's Girlyman. Cute children, good songs, great harmonies. Here's what's on the January Mix Calendar recipients, please accept apologies for the absence of Saturdays in November. I wish they had been added to better months like August, but no, they are just missing. Fully functional version of November exists in the online version. I often read the New York Times in bed at 5 am. This morning (1/21) Thomas Friedman is urging the US to get an energy policy and introduce a gas tax that would set prices around $4 a gallon. His reasons (right panel) show how interconnected everything is to our dependence on oil. |
—First, we are in a war against a radical, violent stream of Islam that is fueled and funded by our own energy purchases. We are financing both sides in the war on terrorism: the U.S. Army with our tax dollars, and Islamist charities, madrasas and terrorist organizations through our oil purchases.
—Second, the world has gotten flat, and three billion new players from India, China and the former Soviet Union just walked onto the field with their version of the American dream: a house, a car, a toaster and a refrigerator. If we don't quickly move to renewable alternatives to fossil fuels, we will warm up, smoke up and choke up this planet far faster than at any time in the history of the world. Katrina will look like a day at the beach. —Third, because of the above, green energy-saving technologies and designs - for cars, planes, homes, appliances or office buildings - will be one of the biggest industries of the 21st century. Tell your kids. China is already rushing down this path because it can't breathe and can't grow if it doesn't reduce its energy consumption. Will we dominate the green industry, or will we all be driving cars from China, Japan and Europe? —Finally, if we continue to depend on oil, we are going to undermine the whole democratic trend that was unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because oil will remain at $60 a barrel and will fuel the worst regimes in the world - like Iran - to do the worst things for the world. Indeed, this $60-a-barrel boom in the hands of criminal regimes, and just plain criminals, will, if sustained, pose a bigger threat to democracies than communism or Islamism. It will be a black tide that turns back the democratic wave everywhere, including in Iraq. |
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