A few weeks ago, Christopher Lydon’s Radio Open Source (in-depth public radio talk show) discussed The Cities of the Future. The discussion began with the History Channel’s challenge to architects and engineers to design the U.S. cities of the 22nd century. Jumping off from their historically-oriented Engineering an Empire, the History Channel asked designers to create cities of 100 years in the future (2106) informed by the engineering leaps of the past. Winners have been chosen for Los Angeles (”multiply the purposes” of existing infrastructure), Chicago (focus on water recycling), and New York (”vanes” built over flooded streets). Voting ended over the weekend to chose a winner among the three, to be announced next month.

What strikes me about all of these cities of the future is the focus on water. The earliest cities we know of in human history grew near major waterways. Water in place was necessary first for agriculture, then for transportation. Thousands of years later, these major U.S. cities were also built near water. What will change in 100 years? The assumption is either that there will be too much water (due to rising sea levels due to global warming) or too little (due to changing weather patterns spreading deserts).

All of the winning designs assume climate change. Most of us assume climate change. With the release last week of the UN report “Climate Change 2007″ from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, more people are acknowledging the reality of what is happening around us. Headlines on the report scream:

• worrying report
• wrenching change
• shock the world
• calls for drastic, speedy change
• millions to go hungry, waterless
• warming to continue for centuries
• raise seas for 1,000 years

.

And, yet, some still find the report:

• too rosy

.
Who isn’t yet acknowledging the inevitability of climate change? The executive branch of the U.S. government, of course. Climate scientists report pressure to change or suppress what they find. The Bush administration and their friends in the energy industry don’t find climate change in their best interest (except when melting ice reveals more land for energy exploration). The American Enterprise Institute (funded by ExxonMobil) are willing to pay scientists to speak out against the new climate change study, continuing the policy of Exxon and other energy companies of spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) to confuse the public.

In the future, water will be our issue. Those of us in the desert already understand water is an issue, but we can expect worse than we can imagine. I don’t think the technological utopias created by vanes above New York City or repuposing highways of Los Angeles are the answer. I think the water recycling greenways of future Chicago give us the best chance of survival.

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Are you going to a party tonight to listen to the empty ritual of State of the Union speech? Me? No. I’ll be watching or listening, whatever I think I can handle in a given moment. I’ll be trying to avoid shallow, inane commentary. I can’t guarantee the following won’t be shallow or inane, but I’m fairly sure they won’t be part of the confused 33% (or 28%, depends who you read).

I’ll be at home, grumbling, and choosing from among these possibilities.

• Think Progress blog “will respond in real-time to the President’s speech. They will fact-check the Presidentís statements and provide sharp, detailed analysis of the facts behind the rhetoric.”
• Mic Check Radio, the American Progress “Action Fund’s daily online tear-sheet for radio hosts and producers, goes live from our own radio studio, broadcasting a Progressive Talk Radio Special. Christy Harvey, a frequent Al Franken show contributor and founder of MicCheck, will host the program, offering insight, analysis and humor.”

Tomorrow, among the thousands of radio signals, you will find the following.

• John Podesta will be on the Diane Rehm show. Listen on NPR or online.
• George Lakoff will be on the Brian Lehrer show on New York Public Radio. You can listen from their website if you aren’t in NYC.

The Center for American Progress has published a series of in-depth stories and talking points on the topics likely to be covered in the speech.

• State of National Security.
• State of Health Care.
• State of the Economy.
• State of Energy and the Environment.
• Then finally, today, a summary of all four areas letting us know what Bush will say and what we need to know. This one in particular provides great crib notes for the evening.

At least by listening, watching, and typing with Progressives during the speechifying, you might be able to convince yourself that it isn’t your fault that so much of the world thinks so little of the U.S. You know it is the unstable George Bush who continues to unite the world, against him. Even he seems to smirk less and acknowledge more lately, even while he has yet to acknowledge the deteriorating state he has caused within our union.

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I may have been half asleep, but I was sure this is what I read in the Salt Lake Tribune this morning: GOP vows to be more evil in ‘07. I didn’t question it, but I thought, good for the Tribune for daring to print it. Then I stood up and looked more closely at the headline.

Oh. GOP vows to be more civil in ‘07. That, I will have to see to believe. I heard the name “Chris Buttars” this morning on the radio. I shivered.

It’s the opening day of the Utah Legislative Session.

Unlike other state legislatures that work all year (or at least meet all year), in Utah we have just 45 days in January and February of every year to spend our abundance of money and legislate righteousness. (Chris Buttars says don’t prohibit the right to religious expression but he and others want to prohibit expression of solidarity through Gay-Straight Alliances at high schools. It’s important to be selective in order to create [self-]righteousness.)

Thanks to Green Jenni for pointing out that the League of Women Voters of Utah provides an email update during the session (as well as radio and online updates).

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“3,000 deaths in Iraq, countless tears at home,” said the New York Times headline.

“Iraq braced for unhappy New Year,” said the BBC.

Every big number is shocking, no matter how it is calculated, so let me offer this one.  More than 650,000 Iraqis dead.  For what?  I know the justifications given.  I’m still asking.  For what.  Is life really so expendable for the people willing to make decisions to send soldiers to kill and be killed?  Well, yes, of course it is–at least some lives are.

What I wonder is how life could become precious enough to these decision makers that they would look to nonviolent means to settle differences in the world.

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Can they see our hand in this? That’s what Richard Nixon asked Henry Kissinger immediately following the September 11, 1973, coup in which Augusto Pinochet lead a military overthrown of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Which question was Nixon really asking Kissinger?

• Can THEY see our hand in this?
• Can they SEE our hand in this?
• Can they see OUR hand in this?
• Can they see our HAND in this?
• Can they see our hand in THIS?

I want to answer all of the above. Despite their decades of protestations, it has certainly been clear for a long time that WE SEE THEIR HAND IN THIS.

Like many young Americans and others, I first learned a few details about the Chilean junta nearly 10 years later when Costa-Gavras’ film Missing was released. In the film, an American journalist, Charles Horman, finds out more than he is meant to about U.S. involvement, then he comes up missing. Most of the film follows his wife and skeptical father as they work their way through the Chilean and U.S. bureaucracies to find out what happened to him. The film implied that the hand of the U.S. was at work, and subsequently declassified documents have confirmed this.

There was plenty more to learn than even an Oscar-winning film can tell. I have learned some of that history and politics since. I have sent students into libraries to find their own answers. I live with the illusion that I know something about the hand of the U.S. in Chile.

Even now, though, after Pinochet’s death yesterday on International Human Rights Day, I think of the people with whom I first saw Missing. I was a student at la Universidad de Puerto Rico at the time, and I saw the film with members of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. (If you don’t know who they are, think of them as one of the three big targets of the FBI’s CoIntelPro program, along with the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.) My companeros took it upon themselves to give me the education in U.S. foreign policy that my high school hadn’t managed to. I was skeptical of their claims, but I was also more skeptical of the U.S. government from that point on. I count this as an important moment in my seeing their hand in so much of the world.

So, if you consider Augusto Pinochet this week of his death, maybe you could consider the ways in which YOU SEE THEIR HAND IN THIS. This what? The possibilities are broad. Fill in the blank with any foreign relations incident of the 20th or 21st century and see what hands you can see.

Where to start? Some of the most interesting documents on the hand of the U.S. in Chile and elsewhere can be found at the National Security Archives, housed at my alma mater George Washington University. Nixon’s comment from a telephone conversation with Kissinger was part of an interview today with Peter Kornbluh on Democracy Now. Kornbluh is the author of “The Pinochet File.” You can read that at the NSA, too.

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