Let’s start with a little local and work our way up to the abstract international commentary this week. The GV Union ran a front page piece last Friday about the tug of war going on over the plan to build a new hotel in Nevada City. This plan has been floating around for a long time, but Friday’s front page hit was caused by a ruling in no less than the US District Court that some of the parties involved will get to fight it out in court over who has to pay to clean up contaminated soil on the sight. Where have we heard this before? Essentially, it’s whether the buyers or the sellers have to pay, but it gets pretty complicated, because the sellers, and especially the buyers are manifested in multiple corporate identities, but it’s really just a couple of guys who bought some land from another guy and want to build a hotel on it.

The Union used the opportunity to give us a chronological account of the plan. The city approved it over four years ago, even before the sale was completed, and a suit by an anti-development group was brushed off like a fly. About two and a half years ago, the buyers started moving dirt around and someone noticed some arsenic and lead was present. No big surprise. There probably isn’t much land in this part of the world where gold ore hasn’t been processed at one time or another. If that standard were applied to all development, a lot of the new houses that have gone up in the past 20-some years never would have been built. I don’t mean to alarm you, but it’s likely there’s arsenic and lead in your back yard.

Nevada City needs some more hotel rooms. The tourist traffic exceeds the available facilities, but it’s a slippery slope for developers. If these guys can get out of court with a project that’s still alive, you’ll probably be looking at $200 a night rooms. But what the heck; your house probably costs nearly that much. The site in question is practically empty land; nothing on it but a modular. If you’re coming into town from Grass Valley, it’s on your right just before you get to Hooper & Weaver. It’s adjacent to the gas station which Rusty Schuetz calls the Church of the Lube. Either Rusty or I will explain that to you on request.

Although this project has been in the works for years, I suspect local development will become a more prominent story in the near future. Considering the makeup of the county Board of Supervisors we just elected, I imagine there’ll be a perception that the county is more open to new proposals. Maybe, but having elected officials who want to build isn’t the whole game. People who want to influence the pace and the quality of growth still can fight it out in the trenches on individual projects, if they’re willing.

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Well, John Ashcroft has left the building and Yasser Arafat has left this plane of existence. Both men had considerable negative impact on the world, but I don’t know if their respective departures are likely to result in much positive change. We’ll have to wait and see if the Israelis and the Palestinians can get any friendlier with each other in Arafat’s absence, but we already know that we’re jumping from the Ashcroft into the Gonzales. There’s an abundance of reporting available everywhere but the mainstream media about how Gonzales devised the Guantanamo Bay dog pound and was complicit in the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. If as Attorney General, Mr. Gonzales pursues a similar approach to imprisoning people, we may end up longing for the days of John Ashcroft’s vicious vision of born again Christianity.

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For quite a while now I’ve been listening to people comparing Iraq to Viet Nam, and for just as long I’ve been listening to the Bush administration claim it’s not the same at all. I’ve concluded that both views are correct. It’s not the same because the economic goals of the US in Viet Nam weren’t obvious and weren’t widely discussed. There was, in fact, little in the way of natural resources which the US could have extracted in Viet Nam. A military presence with which to control the region was a much higher goal, and that’s probably true in Iraq as well, but that wasn’t widely discussed during the Viet Nam war either. Mostly what was discussed was liberating people from Communism. Communism is no longer the demon, but the Bush administration is using a variation of the same tactic to justify its warmongering. We’re supposed to be bringing American style freedom and democracy to the poor oppressed people of Iraq, while those poor oppressed people just won’t stop shooting at us.

Iraq is just like Viet Nam in that it started with the promise of being no big deal. Dub said there would be a quick in and out with no casualties. We’ve all seen how good that promise was, but the people who vote don’t seem to mind. It’s just like Viet Nam in that we’re now seeing pictures of blood and gore in the mainstream media. Body bags are piling up. Can anyone who voted for Bush explain why young people from this country are being killed trying to control a city half way around the world which they’d never even heard of a few months ago? Why does the US want Fallujah? Our government says it’s fighting against insurgents. My little desk top dictionary defines insurgent as one who revolts against established government. When did the US become the established government in Iraq? Maybe Iraq will become the 51^st state and Fallujah will be the new capitol. Hell Puerto Rico turned it down.

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