ABQjournal: Around the Metro Area
Councilor Urges Wireless Network

City Councilor Eric Griego will introduce a proposal Monday to explore the creation of a citywide wireless Internet network.

Griego said the city should seek proposals for a contractor that would install, maintain and support such a network.

Under the plan, users would generally pay an Internet service provider, although access to the wireless service would be provided for free at certain public locations.

“I think in about 10 years, cities that are not wireless are going to be at a major disadvantage for economic development,” he said.

Yes, by all means. Just this week, I easily connected at Wyoming library and UNM Continuing Education. Note that when Philadelphia attempted this, big corporations went to the state to block their efforts. peace, mjh

ABQjournal: Communication Guru Sends a Mixed Message
By Autumn Gray, Of the Journal

Frank Luntz, called one of America’s best “communication professionals,”… said he sees Albuquerque being left behind, in the wake of Phoenix, Denver and San Diego, largely because local politics is getting in the way of development that could spur careers, rather than just jobs.

Luntz suggested developers get more involved with the political process and hold politicians as well as themselves accountable for why the city does not have many of the same business opportunities other cities have.

Albuquerque should be delighted to be left behind by Phoenix & Denver. mjh

Duke City Fix — FRAME GAMES by Marston Moore

It was Luntz who came up with much of the language for Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America.

When Bush talks about initiatives like ?Clear Skies? (translation: Gut the Clean Air Act) or ?Healthy Forests? (translation: log it like there?s no tomorrow), that?s LuntzSpeak. …

?Never, ever refer to yourselves as ?developers? he warned the developers. (The term doesn?t poll worth a damn; voters think they’re the bad guys.) ?You are designers! You are creators!?

Out West, a Paradox: Densely Packed Sprawl
By Blaine Harden, Washington Post Staff Writer

Odd as it may seem, density is the rule, not an exception, in the wide-open spaces of the West. Salt Lake City is more tightly packed than Philadelphia. So is Las Vegas in comparison with Chicago, and Denver compared with Detroit. Ten of the country’s 15 most densely populated metro areas are in the West, where residents move to newly developed land at triple the per-acre density of any other part of the country. …

Open space in the West has always seemed endless. But deserts, mountains, huge tracts of federally owned land and a pervasive lack of water make much of the region unlivable. As such, it has remained the most rural part of the country in terms of land use while becoming the most densely urban in terms of where people live.

ABQjournal: Subsidy-Laden Energy Bill Light on Conservation
By David Cargo
Former New Mexico Governor

By failing to enact measures to reduce our nation’s oil consumption, Congress has committed an unforgivable sin of omission. The technology to dramatically improve vehicle fuel economy is fully mature, and the potential savings are enormous: a modest increase of five miles per gallon would save 1 million barrels of oil each day by 2010, nearly 10 percent of our current imports.

If all U.S. cars (not including light trucks) sold today used off-the-shelf hybrid technology, the nation would save 15 percent more oil than it received from the Persian Gulf in 2002. That’s what some of us would call progress on the path to energy security .

But instead of addressing the oil efficiency issue, Congress lavished billions on tax breaks and subsidies on the oil and gas industry — an industry that is hardly in need of financial assistance. It’s a stretch to imagine how these subsidies could lead to lower costs for consumers, or to greater energy security for our nation.

To add insult to the injury suffered by America’s taxpayers, Congress has decided that our right to clean, safe drinking water is less important than the oil and gas industry’s right to drill, drill, drill. By weakening both the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, Congress has imperiled the West’s most valuable natural resource.

This should cause special concern here in New Mexico, where many communities already struggle to protect their water supplies from contamination in the oil and gas patch.

While some may trust the industry’s promises to protect our water, I’d be far more comfortable knowing that those promises were backed by the force of law. Now, it will be up to cash-strapped state agencies to protect our water from pollution. Call it another unfunded mandate from Washington.

Lonesome Dave Cargo is the kind of Republican who can’t get elected anymore. mjh

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

All About Property Rights
IT IS NOT about the wolf. It is about private property rights. …

Livestock owners do not have a dislike of any predator based upon the animal itself. Livestock owners are trying to protect their property and livelihood from the same sort of loss that retailers face from shoplifters. …

If the government forced every store owner to keep free-roaming shoplifters in the store 24 hours a day, everyone would say “don’t be ridiculous.” However, that is exactly what is happening to the business of producing food and fiber from livestock where the wolf has been forced back into the pasture . …

Now that homeowners are faced with losing their property to some special interest economic development venture, maybe they will understand the real reason that the vast majority of rural people have fought the wolf.
And maybe the urban people who are disturbed by the potential loss of property will join the rural people in efforts to control the government and the courts in their misguided attempts to violate our Constitution.
JOHN WORTMAN
Executive vice president, N.M. Farm and Livestock Bureau, Las Cruces

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

The only real issues raised by the wolf haters are livestock predation and federal versus local control.
Maybe everyone should have a look at the red wolf reintroduction program in North Carolina, which has been more successful and less controversial than here. Minnesotans, Canadians and Alaskans might also offer tips on living with wolves, bears and other wildlife.
ANNE LEWIS
Tijeras

Sunday Times: DEATH DROP: Never again, say A-bomb survivors [ 07aug05 ]

“I thought I was dying, everyone was burning, and the students who were sitting next to the windows, their faces were melted, their arms and hands were burnt,” said the spritely grandmother who remembers every aspect of the tragic day.

The bright light of the blast, centred 1.7km away above Hiroshima’s Industrial Promotional Hall, brought Mrs Ginbayashi to her feet, “then the building collapsed around me and I fainted”.

Seconds later — though she thought hours had passed because of the darkness caused by the atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud — “I woke up and everybody was screaming”.

As a member of the final generation of atomic-bomb survivors, known in Japan as “hibakusha“, Mrs Ginbayashi is one of a dwindling number who can provide personal accounts of the horror unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three days later.

CTV.ca | Hiroshima survivor recalls flight from death

Setsuko Thurlow and a few others ran to the countryside. It was a surreal flight. Though it was just before 9 a.m., the girls fled in complete darkness.

“Perhaps it was because of the dust, smoke and particles in the air that blocked the sun,” says Thurlow, who now lives in Toronto. “It was the strangest feeling.”

The girls joined a small stream of people fleeing the city. “The people were burned and blackened. They could hardly see because their eyes were so swollen. They didn’t have the strength to run or scream for help. They just whispered, ‘Help me. Help me.'”

Thurlow remembers stepping over dead bodies as part of the “ghostly procession.”

That night, she and other survivors sat on a hillside looking down on the city that had been their home.

“We watched the entire city burn,” she says.

The bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, in Hiroshima killed an estimated 140,000 people — roughly half the city’s population at the time. On Aug. 9, a second atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki.

Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending the Second World War in the Pacific.

To this day, historians debate whether the bombings were necessary, with some saying even more would have died had the war raged on.

Buffalo News – Two bombs, two nations, two views By JOSEPH COLEMAN

The people of Hiroshima that day witnessed the apocalypse: Dropped from a B-29 named Enola Gay, the bomb flashed above the city, then consumed it with power equal to 12,500 tons of TNT. The center of the blast burned at 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit – double what it takes to melt iron.

The blast obliterated the city center, igniting infernos. Survivors suffered agonizing deaths from burns and radiation poisoning; many who appeared unscathed later succumbed to cancer and other ailments. The death toll in Hiroshima was 140,000; in Nagasaki, 80,000. [Nagasaki … was only bombed after cloud cover made the preferred choice, Kokura, too difficult to hit accurately.]…

Critics – among them many Japanese and also some Americans – believe President Harry S. Truman’s government had other motives: a wish to test out a terrifying weapon, the desire to defeat Japan before the Soviets arrived and the need to strengthen Washington’s hand against Moscow in what would become the Cold War. …

“They could have dropped it on an island or a military base, I don’t know, but they chose an untouched city,” said Hataguchi. “Why did they choose in that way? It’s hard to say it was an experiment, but it wasn’t necessary.” …

A recent joint poll by the Associated Press and Kyodo News agency found widely diverging views: 68 percent of Americans but only 20 percent of Japanese believed nuclear weapons were needed to end the war quickly.

The poll, conducted by Ipsos in the United States and the Public Opinion Research Center in Japan, questioned 1,000 Americans and 1,045 Japanese and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

On both sides of the Pacific, however, older respondents were more likely to believe the bomb was unavoidable, while younger people tended to be more questioning.

The historical debate has focused on several questions: How many would have died in a U.S. land invasion? Might the Japanese have surrendered if offered better terms? Was Tokyo already too exhausted to fight on for long? Should the bomb have been demonstrated over an uninhabited area before it was dropped on a city? …

Adm. William D. Leahy, chief of staff to the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army and Navy, opposed the bombings and in his memoirs considered them on par with “the ethical standard common to barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

ABQjournal: Valle Vidal Drilling Has High-Profile Opponent
By Adam Rankin
Journal Staff Writer

A past president of the state’s oil and gas lobbying group says he is speaking out against energy development in the Valle Vidal.

He’s taking his message to the radio even though he’s usually an advocate for drilling.

“I am pro oil and gas; I made my living in oil and gas and that is where my friends are,” said Gary Fonay, former president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.

But, he said, oil and gas development, as important as it is for the future of New Mexico, shouldn’t be allowed on the 40,000-acre Valle Vidal.

A unit of the Carson National Forest, the Valle Vidal has been under consideration for coal-bed methane drilling since Texas-based El Paso Corp. expressed interest in doing so….

Fonay said he thinks the energy industry has done a good job of being sensitive about protecting the environment, but that drilling, with all the associated roads, trucks, pumps and water tanks, would alter the experience of being in the Valle Vidal.

“It just changes what you have and changes the experience for people who are looking to see what Rocky Mountain life is all about,” he said.

Ah, Wilderness!: County Paving the Way to Chaco

Chaco is in the middle of nowhere. That is part of the wonder. With pavement, the journey becomes only a little shorter, but a sojourn becomes a drive.