Salt City Sinner

The New York Times' At War Blog is usually worth reading. It's where CJ Chivers does a lot of posting, and Chivers is a journalist I respect and follow as closely as I can. A recent entry, penned not by Chivers but by another Times blogger named Tim Arango, is called " Weapons Retrieved in Iraq Point to Iran ." In intent, it is similar to a series by Chivers that is one of the best pieces of war reporting I've ever read. If you haven't read it, it's worth reading from the beginning*. The $.25 version is that Chivers used social media and the expertise of professional weapons geeks in the following way: 1.) he took photographs of the debris left by munitions in Libya 2.) he used e-mail contacts with an expert who 3.) used Facebook to tap into a network of ordinance experts to 4.) identify the origins of the munitions, which provided strong evidence that Qadaffi used cluster bombs in Libya. Arango, unfortunately, relied on a different sort of expert with a ...

I've said before that I think that Utah's conceal-carry laws are far, far too lenient (arguably, they're the loosest in the United States of America, which would put them in the running for least restrictive worldwide, or at least in the Western world). It is entirely possible for someone who has never even held a gun, let alone fired one, to pass a CCW course and obtain a permit here. I love my CCW, and I conceal carry at my own discretion. I tried many different guns before I settled on the one I love and own, which is designed for concealed carry. This morning, the Salt Lake Tribune ran a headline that threw a scare into me for a moment: " Utah revokes record number of concealed gun permits. " Yikes! But, it turns out, not only is this new gun regulation sensible and completely reasonable, it actually doesn't go far enough (in my opinion). Quoth the Trib: For the first six months of this year, the agency revoked 539 permits. For all last year, the agency re...

The Salt Lake Tribune's editorial, " A sad day ," nails it: DeChristopher was not prosecuted because he caused harm to the government, to energy developers or to taxpayers, but because he was widely praised for his bold effort to draw attention to a crisis that has been largely ignored by our government. The lease auction that put some precious public lands on the block to be sold for development of fossil fuel energy was later deemed by courts and the federal government to have been illegal. In simple terms, DeChristopher was right. And, by his own admission, Benson punished him for pointing out something that conservatives do not want to hear: Human-caused climate change and government negligence in addressing its consequences are threatening the globe. Following the sentencing, the judge acknowledged that DeChristopher’s act of civil disobedience — for that’s precisely what it was — was “not that bad” and should not have prompted a prison term, and possibly no prosecut...

I made quite a big deal out of bamboo bikes when they started appearing on the scene - easy, zero-carbon transportation from what is arguably our most renewable resource (some varieties of bamboo grow more than 39 inches per day ). Looking at growth rates like that, I think we should be making damn near everything out of bamboo. The best science draws lessons from the processes it studies in nature. We can already produce hydrogen from water with an " artificial leaf ." Once we learn to use solar power - a virtually limitless, cost-free buffet of energy - effectively ( which is already happening ) we can join the rest of the biosphere by drawing our energy from our local star instead of relying on rotting carbon that has been locked away from the atmosphere for millions of years. The point is - there is a sub-field of science, which may even already be well-delineated in literature (I'm not a scientist), that attempts to work with nature and natural processes to help ad...

Yesterday, environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in federal minimum security prison for disrupting an oil and gas development bid of dubious legality. DeChristopher's crime was to "bog down" the lease process long enough to provide an opportunity to protect wild lands that were being sold off for resource exploitation - a sale that was of questionable legality to begin with*. I would go so far as to say that selling untouched land - for oil and gas development or for housing development - is one of the worst problems in Utah, ranking up there with air pollution. Paul Rolly, in an excellent column (but then, I've come to expect nothing less from him) makes an interesting point: So Tim DeChristopher received a sentence of two years in federal prison for his bogus bids that disrupted a BLM auction for oil and gas leases that many environmentalists believed was illegal in the first place. And rabid anti-environmentalist activist Mike Noel h...

The #bidder70 hashtag is very active right now with people chiming in on Tim's coming sentencing. Check it out, if you like.

Today's the day - Tim DeChristopher's sentencing will take place here in Salt Lake City, at the federal courthouse. A variety of peaceful solidarity actions are going to be going on - I'll be trying to update as the situation develops. I hope to see you there!

Orrin Hatch appears to be in a bit of a pickle. From the Salt Lake Tribune : In an appearance on cable television Friday, Sen. Orrin Hatch said he believed Congress would avoid the nation’s first default by agreeing to a short-term extension of the government’s debt limit, a move he supported. But just hours later, the senator from Utah gave a speech on the Senate floor reiterating his previous pledge to oppose any increase that is not tied to the passage of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. The seemingly contradictory statements came on the same day that the Senate killed Hatch’s preferred option — what the Republicans have dubbed their "cut, cap and balance" bill, supported by all five of Utah’s members of Congress, including Democrat Jim Matheson. I feel for Hatch. Like many fiscal issues right now, the debt ceiling debate left reality a little while ago, and now the Tea Party/far right is forcing Hatch to take a position (telegraphed by his speech in the Se...

Matt Taibbi has an excellent blog post up about this Murdoch/tabloid phone hacking fiasco. It includes the best sentence of political writing I've read so far this year: Given the monstrous political influence of Murdoch and his companies – this idiotic game of chicken our government is now playing with America’s credit rating is one of countless policy disasters that I believe can be traced directly or indirectly to the insane propaganda that is a consistent by-product of Murdoch's nihilistic quest for profits – [the hypothetical indictment of Murdoch] would be a world-shaking development. I couldn't agree more. We have a free press (much, much freer than Britain's), and I believe in absolute freedom in that regard. However, the court of public opinion can and should hold purveyors of dangerous, toxic crap like Murdoch responsible - and in this case, if the law was broken (as it increasingly looks as though it was), then Murdoch should be held fully accountable.

Veteran climate activist Bill McKibbon, the man behind 350.org, among other things, has sounded off about local monkeywrencher Tim DeChristopher. As Peaceful Uprising * put it: Friend and ally Bill McKibben wrote a piece on our friend and co-founder Tim DeChristopher. He also wrote the first novel for a general audience on global warming, and founded 350.org, which staged the most widespread day of political action in history. It's an excellent read. A choice bit: It’s easy to tell [that the government's goal is to stifle civil disobedience], because of the charges the feds decided to bring. DeChristopher’s crime was disrupting a BLM auction of oil and gas leases. It was—by absolutely every account—a political act, part of the long tradition of civil disobedience in this country that stretches back at least as far as Henry David Thoreau, who spent a night in the Concord jail for refusing to pay his taxes. But that’s not what the federal government went after DeChristopher for. ...

Tonight (7/13/11) Peaceful Uprising will be hosting a music/performance event at their paint-stained, much-beloved warehouse - the "Goathead Preserve" - at 1361 S. Main. The line-up looks pretty snazzy, and includes my little sis Flora, who is a god-damned amazing singer/songwriter. $5, doors at six.

i09 has published their list of "The 10 Greatest Mentally Ill Superheroes." The honors, of course, go to the A#1 dark superpsycho, and my personal hero, Batman: Okay, maybe Bruce Wayne hasn't always been depicted as a loon, but he certainly often has. Especially in the last couple of decades, when Bats was ground zero for the move to "deconstruct" superheroes. Alan Moore had Batman sharing a demented laugh with the Joker at the end of The Killing Joke. Alan Grant and other writers played on the idea that Batman was as disturbed as the baddies he hunted - and Grant even had that Skinnerian psychotherapist, Arkham, lock Bats up in Arkham Asylum with the rest of the crazies. More recently, Grant Morrison had Batman creating a fantasy "backup personality" for himself in case he ever got drugged and driven over the edge. A crazy plan for a crazy situation, or just the ultimate proof that Bats dances over the edge? Perhaps most tellingly, back in the late 1...

Via Andrew Sullivan , Freddie deBoer talks about Libertarianism and power: When libertarians argue endlessly about the tyranny of paying taxes and the poor, oppressed state of enormous, multinational corporations, while remaining consistently silent on the plight of the urban poor (on the material dimensions of their freedom), they reveal an ideological framework that is stunningly incapable of reflecting the world as it is rather than as ideal theory would prefer it. They have no vocabulary of power as experienced, so even if they were inclined to help those on the bottom, they would lack the understanding capable of doing such a thing. They have nothing to say on the issue. I'll go one step further. The reason why libertarians do not speak to these issues is not because they have nothing to say - perhaps it's because what they have to say is HORRIFYING. I remember getting into a discussion with a libertarian (a hard-core, Chicago School neoliberal economics nerd) about negat...

Given the alarming statistics regarding the widening gap between the ultra-mega-rich and the rest of us poor humans, I've decided that "boot straps" are no longer a good metaphor for the American Dream. Henceforth, I will think of an atomic wedgie from the invisible hand of the market as the primary means by which people are "lifted" out of their lowly stations. Or, it could go something like this: That seems about right.

Those wacky cats at Anonymous are acting in support of Food Not Bombs in Orlando. Raw Story reports : Keith McHenry, who helped found [Food Not Bombs] 30 years ago, was one of the activists arrested last week and is still imprisoned [under an Orlando ordinance that bans feeding the homeless in public parks]. McHenry's view is that food is a right, not a privilege, so he and the group refused to abide by the law. In response to the arrests, Anonymous toppled the websites of the Orlando Chamber of Commerce, the Orlando International Airport, Orlando's fraternal Order of Police, the mayor's reelection site and two popular tourist and events websites featuring the city's attractions. They have also sent an image (pictured) of Walt Disney mascot Mickey Mouse, face covered by a Guy Fawkes mask, to tens of thousands of fax machines and Orlando-based email addresses, in an effort to drum up support for feeding the homeless. That's just awesome. The fact that Orlando has pas...

I have to say, I have a love/hate relationship with fireworks (unlike my relationship with the Fourth, which is strictly platonic love, although the Fourth and I might make out once or twice over the long summer evenings behind the bandstand). Scratch that - my relationship with fireworks is all love, but my relationship with idiots using them is all hate. This mostly stems from an incident when I lived in Tulsa, OK. There, a group of dirty feral children thought it was good fun to light off bottle rockets from an empty Big Gulp container. This allowed them to sort of crudely "aim" the bottle rockets, predominantly at my friends and I, who were trying to enjoy some Ground Bloomers, Whistling Petes and Keystones Light nearby. Anyway, feral Okies aside, this is an exciting year for Utah - we are now allowed to use big-boy fireworks . I was very excited to hear this, because there is a directly proportional relationship between my love of something and its capacity to go "...