Community should support a
pro-active vision for development
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Do you remember the last war?
The holocaust in the Horn

By Thomas Mountain

As the US prepares to invade Iraq, I think we should all ask each other this question: “Do you remember the last war? The one that took place a little over two and a half years ago?”

You remember that one, don’t you? It wasn’t a little war. No, not little at all; it was a great big war. Probably the last great land war in history. In this war an army of at least a million invaded a little country, carrying out a policy of scorched earth everywhere it went: Murder, rape, looting, planting booby traps in peoples’ homes, and poisoning the water supplies. Soldiers even dug up graveyards and scattered the bones of war dead in the wind.

Of course you know what war I am talking about, right? The one where one poor, small country got invaded and almost half of the people in the country became not “refugees” mind you, but “internally displaced persons”? That's right, almost two million people were forced from their homes by this war, and you know which one I am talking about ... right? No, not the Kosovo war, not the war against Yugoslavia. Only 800,000 were “internally displaced persons” in that one. No, I am afraid that I am talking about the war where the little country being invaded had the UN put an international arms embargo against them. Ring a bell? No?

How about the war where the big country that invaded the little country was “allowed” to divert at least $3 billion in western aid to arms purchases? Aid that was supposed to be meant for some 15 million people facing famine?

Start to ring a bell? Where the big country went on an arms shopping spree noted in all the “Centers for Stategic Studies,” spending hundreds of millions, even billions of your tax dollars in Russia, Bulgaria, Israel, and ... North Korea? Now you remember, don't you, how US and European Union aid got converted to hard cash to buy weapons from that member of the “Axis of Evil,” North Korea?

Where the latest Soviet-era upgrades got bought, enough to arm 15 armored divisions with the latest non-US hardware money could buy?

Still don't know which war I am talking about? The one where waves of invading soldiers attacked trenches? The one were at least 150,000 soldiers died in a matter of weeks? You mean you missed all the television footage of lines of dead soldiers stretching off into the distance, dessicating in the desert heat?

By now you probably think I am making this all up, that this never happened, not in the last two or three years. How could it have happened and you never heard about it?

The war I am talking about I prefer to call the Holocaust in the Horn -- the Horn of East Africa. It's one of the largest covert military operations in history. The war known so disingenuously as the Ethiopian-Eritrean “border war.” The war where the CIA set out to get rid of a pesky little independent role model without generating any bad publicity. Where the little country that got invaded is still blamed for the crimes committed against her.

Where the pretext for the invasion by Ethiopia was supposed to be a “border dispute” that some how got out of hand. That little, resource-poor nation Eritrea, population 3.5 million, supposedly instigated a war with giant Ethiopia, population 60 million, with the largest, best-equipped army in Africa ?

Yes, that war.

Maybe if we had cared enough to learn what really happened in that war we wouldn't be about to let the US go start another one -- this time with another little country in the desert who for some reason or another does not meet with the approval of those whose judgment we must never question.

So when I ask you if you remember the last war, and you don't, then maybe it's time to start paying closer attention to what is going on in the world.

At least the world's wars, anyway.

Thomas C. Mountain is a human rights organizer in Hawai'i.

Source: CounterPunch

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Community should support a
pro-active vision for development

By Brownie Newman

The way Asheville grows and develops is, by almost anyone's measure, one of the most important issues facing our community. What is sometimes overlooked, however, is how our pattern of development affects so many seemingly unrelated concerns. In fact, our pattern of development is one of the most powerful factors affecting the affordability of homes, the quality of our air, the preservation of farmlands and open spaces, neighborhood integrity, and the degree of economic and racial integration in our community. 

We often hear the term "sprawl" thrown out when land use issues are brought up. But what does it mean? Typically, sprawl is thought of as a development pattern in which most of the growth occurs in medium to low densities on the fringes of existing town limits. In spite of the revival of our downtown, most of the growth in the Asheville area continues to be sprawl development. Over the past two decades, over 90 percent of the population growth in Buncombe County has occurred in areas outside the existing city limits.

Why should progressive-minded people care if most of the growth is occurring outside the city rather than inside the city? There are at least four reasons. 

u Sprawl is destroying our rural communities. Sprawl consumes family farmlands and natural areas at an incredible rate. Buncombe County is expected to grow from its present population of about 206,000 to about 240,000 over the next decade-a gain of 34,000 people. If most of this new growth occurs in a sprawl development pattern (one house on two acres of land), we will lose almost all of the remaining farmland in Buncombe County.

u Sprawl is a fundamental part of our air pollution problem. With the passage of the NC Clean Smokestacks Act, pollution from the state's coal-fired power plants will dramatically decrease over the next several years. The primary local cause of air pollution in our future will be automobiles. People who live in downtown neighborhoods drive half as much as people living in suburban type developments. In the Asheville area, the total traffic (technically referred to as Vehicle Miles Traveled or "VMT") has been increasing at about 4 percent per year while population growth has grown at about 1.5 percent per year. This means that air pollution created by cars is increasing three times faster than it would be if auto use were growing at the same rate as population growth. If we can just "level-off" the growth of VMT, our air will get cleaner because new cars pollute much less than older cars.

u Sprawl creates a need for destructive highway projects. I have been involved in the effort to minimize the impacts of the I-26 Connector as it is built through the city. It is clear that DOT has a predisposition towards constructing over-sized highways. However, our pattern of sprawl development does create a real need to build bigger highways. Most of the people living in the new subdivisions built out in the county still work in the city. Big highways are required to allow commuters to get in and out of the city at peak traffic hours. Building an eight-lane highway, as proposed by DOT, would be devastating to West Asheville. Continued sprawl development will only increase the pressure to build more big highways in the future.

u Sprawl creates a scarcity of affordable homes. Asheville has the least affordable housing market in North Carolina. This is one of the central challenges facing working families in our community. The price of housing is determined by supply and demand. Because Asheville is a desirable place to live, demand is high (driving prices up). Unless Asheville has policies to encourage the creation of new homes in the city, rising demand will create a greater and greater scarcity of affordably priced homes. If this continues, Asheville is likely to become known as a nice place for tourists to visit but a hard place for people to live and work.

Some people seem to think that all you have to do to be a good progressive is be against the developers. It's not that simple. People are not going to stop moving to Asheville. The progressive community needs to support a vision for Asheville's future that encourages community redevelopment instead of sprawl. Here are two principles important to such a vision:

u In-fill development is good. There are many places in the Asheville city limits that can support in-fill development. Redirecting growth to these areas will mean that vehicle miles traveled will grow at a rate similar to the population growth rather than several-fold faster. Attractive, high-density in-fill development which is located in areas that can be well served by public transportation and include affordable homes should be especially encouraged.

u Infrastructure is key. Good infrastructure, including sidewalks, well maintained streets, high-quality transit service, public parks, and greenways. With proper infrastructure, communities can support higher population densities without lowering the quality of life.

Rather than simply opposing new development in the city, the progressive community should be insisting that adequate resources for infrastructure be allocated to support redevelopment. We should be working to create policies that further encourage the integration of attractive, affordable homes throughout our community.

If we fail to create a pattern of growth focused on community redevelopment, we are going to turn our rural communities into a sea of subdivisions. We will lose the opportunity to create a more viable economy for working families and encourage more economically and racially integrated neighborhoods. We will miss the chance to restore clean air, which should be the birthright of all people living in these mountains. Transforming the way Asheville grows will be one of the hardest but most important challenges our community will face.

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