Monday, October 11, 2004

You say "war for oil" like it's a bad thing. Got any better ideas? It's the way we do business around here. Carter said it in 1980, Bush pere did it a decade later. And for the foreseeable future, we are going to have to keep doing it. "The American military is increasingly being converted into a global oil-protection service," writes Michael Klare, author of a book called Blood and Oil (scroll down this page for his article, Oil Wars, which goes into some detail in support of that case). Related: "Bogota, Colombia, Oct. 10 - The number of American military personnel here will double, to 800, in the coming months, based on a weekend vote in the United States Congress." -- NY Times. The historian Niall Ferguson, who doesn't think "empire" is a dirty word, notes that empires do this sort of thing. Comparing us to our imperial antecedents, the British, he wrote in Foreign Affairs about our experience and theirs in Iraq: "And in both cases, the presence of substantial oil reserves -- confirmed by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1927 -- was not a wholly irrelevant factor, despite protestations to the contrary." Why deny it? People aren't stupid. They know oil is not the only reason we fight, but everyone gets the economics involved. You don't have to be Michael Moore to understand that oil supply is a vital interest of the United States. We can't be a beacon of democracy if we can't turn on our lights. Yes, we should disdain McMansions and eschew SUVs and use the gentle power of the sun and the wind while developing new fuel technologies...but none of that is going to change our dependence on foreign oil for some time to come. You say war for oil like it's a bad thing. Got any better ideas? 12:38:39 PM    comment []

The Greensboro Civil Rights museum won't open on schedule in February, says Justin Catanoso in the Business Journal. But when it does open in, say, July, it's going to have "Smithsonian-quality artifacts" in it, which sounds worth waiting for. Justin spoke to Amelia Parker, the museum's executive director. Imagine downtown Greensboro late next summer, with baseball action in the Hopperdome and the opening of this new museum a few blocks away on Elm Street. Good stuff. * * * The column actually ran on Friday, but the Biz Journal doesn't post their new stuff online until Monday, which strikes me as a quaint old-fashioned way to go about brand-building. Blog ads would be a good idea, too. 10:41:16 AM    comment []

"BloggerCon is an unusual conference. We don't have speakers, panels or an audience." The rules for the Stanford event will sound familiar to anyone who came to our Piedmont blog conference in August. That's because we stole, er, learned them from BloggerCon. 8:15:02 AM    comment []

"The living part of the Web -- the constantly-being-updated part  -- is reaching a critical mass." So begins a new book about online social, political, and business networks, The Power of Many, by Christian Crumlish. 8:11:29 AM    comment []

Rachel Lea Hunter has pushed the boundaries of egotism by running for the North Carolina Supreme Court after living in the state for just a few years, and by referring to herself as "Madame Justice" although she is in fact a lawyer for Pre-Paid Legal Services. Now she's comparing herself to Maggie Thatcher. Hubris. The scary part is that given the low profile of judicial races, she could win. 8:05:19 AM    comment []

Lies of action, not just words: according to this LA Times article, the Bush plan for Iraq is to delay major military offensives until after the US election in order to avoid political costs. "'When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously,' said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications' of a large-scale offensive, the official said." 8:00:16 AM    comment []