Qabali Pilau

The first time I tasted Afghan food, around 37 years ago, I doubt there were any restaurants in the U.S. that served it. In 1969, Afghanistan was in a rare period of political calm. Its long bloody history at the crossroads of empires in conflict was temporarily stalled by the Cold War face-off between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Yesterday, celebrating the launch of MyWire with several colleagues at an Afghan restaurant on the peninsula, I ordered the dish pictured above. The serving was more than I could eat; thus tonight's leftovers as dinner.

This dish is one of the signature meals of a country that for more than a quarter century has not known even a brief period of peace. The saddest thing about eating this food is remembering a moment in a country's history when there actually was hope of joining what locals called the "modern" world.

This is a place where empires from the east and the west have always met face-to-face, with unspeakably bloody consequences. Many of the legendary warriors in our collective memory swept through here. Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Tamberlane, Babur, Alexander the Great, the Moguls, the Persians, the British Empire -- all of these and so many more scaled the mighty peaks of the Hindu Kush with its narrow passages, including the Khyber Pass, onto the central Asian steppe with its valleys rich with fruits of unparalleled genetic diversity and its ancient riches of gold, lapis, amethyst, and other minerals.

When I lived there, the hostile empires of the day -- the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. -- were facing off in an uneasy nuclear detente that kept both of them from seizing ancient Afghanistan. Left to their own devices, the Afghans sought to create a democracy, where education of both boys and girls was seen as a road to a better future, where conservative religious Mullahs faced openly rebellious challenges from youth, and where the competing propaganda broadcast by Radio Moscow and its American counterpart sounded equally ridiculous as they opened each night's program with either The International or The Star Spangled Banner, both of which echoed across Afghanistan's deserts with an emptiness that the nightly prayer call in its eloquent classic Arabic so easily surpassed when it came to securing hearts and minds.

But the peaceful moment we knew was shattered by the end of the next decade, as the Soviets blinked first, and destroyed their empire by attempting to conquer this unconquerable land -- the place where empires always seem to go to die.

Such were my thoughts as I ate lunch yesterday with my colleagues, most of whom are engineers. As I looked around our table, I marveled at the diversity on display -- women and men of Chinese, Indian, Taiwanese, and European extraction. None of us were more than first generation Americans, and here we were, enjoying the cuisine of a people so remote and exotic than none of our ethnic or family histories, however diverse, could reach.

Yet, once again, an arrogant superpower has chosen to engage in battle on the plains of Afghanistan, only to face the inevitable fate of all that have gone before -- failure.

It pains me to be an American and to know that our nation's story will be ending in that cruel place where dreams die and the knife in the back is the moment you finally realize you have trusted the wrong person. As the sun sets on the American empire, my comfort comes from knowing that a more diverse and a more global society will rise in our wake, hopefully one built on sustainable values and respecting each other's frailties.

Though I fear we may endure an awful transition before we collectively get there.

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p.s. As my older children know, this ancient dish is what their mother and I settled on as their Christmas Eve dinner during their youth. I used to gather the ingredients from obscure Russian delis along Clement Street, and their Mom used an old cookbook from our Peace Corps days to make it all come together. I wonder whether any of them know how to cook it today?

Rainy Night Happiness

To my eyes, it is so beautiful, this MyWire that our team has created. The best part of working on the web is the teamwork that is possible, and indeed is necessary to create anything new of value.

I first learned about this process at HotWired in late '95 and early '96. The combination of skills necessary to launch a new website covered an entire range of talents, allowing people of wildly varying orientations and approaches to blend their ideas into an outcome that was part-art, part-product.

Nothing will make you appreciate the galvanizing power of capitalism than working in a startup that begins to take off. The sheer power of market finance rivals the feeling you get when a mighty jet lifts you off the ground.

This love note to capital might seem contradictory, or ironic, from a former Marxist like me. But the truth is I appreciate each form of social organization for its strengths and fear each for its dangers. Theoretically, I am much more drawn to collectivism; but my experience of various economic models leaves me in awe of the obvious superiority of market-based initiatives.

Without going way out where no one reading this would want me to go (the abstract expressionism of theoretical geopoliticalism), let me say that I remain deeply conflicted.

I'm in transition intellectually from my long love affair with technology and capitalism back to my roots, as a radical investigative reporter primarily concerned with global environmental issues. I can see it is time for me to revive my work in the '70s and '80s on the "Circle of Poison," nuclear terrorism, children's environmental health, "The Bhopal Syndrome," and climate change.

Back then, it always felt like no one was listening. Now, it appears everyone is worried.



Some of the best stuff we can provide you if you make MyWire a frequent stop on your browsing of the Internet is a sample of what quality publishers around the globe are saying about global concerns.

Roughly 75% of our audience at MyWire is overseas, i.e., not in the U.S. As we build out this service, I hope people all over the world will find the information they need to save our species from extinction and redirect our cultures instead into a sustainable future.

We can do it together, of that I am sure.

-30-

p.s. Thank you, J, for teaching me how to take a "picture" of a screenshot.

Winners

Whatever else happens in my "career," I always have lots of fans at home for what I do at work. These young three said that the brand new MyWire T-shirts were "cool," and they immediately put them on to prove it.

When your main, perhaps your only, role in life is to generate the resources that support your family, feeling supported in return is a pretty big deal. This might be an aspect of understanding those of us who are essentially cultural artifacts -- men who create resources on behalf of their families out of an inherited sense of responsibility -- that women of a certain age and type may wish to consider.



Luckily, in my case, I have budding artists to distract me from this otherwise depressing topic. There are few hints, and no labels, to interpret this particular piece, but I know it means something to its creator, Dylan...



Meanwhile, in the sports world, I am including a photo of the great Barry Bonds striking out in extra innings tonight after he tied the game in the bottom of the 8th with a laser shot into the Bay -- his 4th HR of this young season.

In case someone hasn't noticed, Scary Barry is back, now presumably sugar-free. And, as I write these words, the Giants have just won a 12-inning game over the defending World Series champions, thanks to Rich Aurelia, the guy who has returned to San Francisco and is batting in front of Bonds, just as he did in 2001.

In case you do not remember what happened that year, Aurelia (37) and Bonds (73) hit more home runs than any other two teammates in the history of baseball.

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MyWire!

The business I'm in requires a great deal of patience. Although it may seem to be an immediate-gratification industry, the wild.world.web in fact imposes severe constraints on anyone trying to create something new and intriguing.

Sure, you can create a micro-site, or a blog like this one, on the fly. But to build a content service that may eventually compete with the behemoths of the web (Yahoo, Google, MSN) is a dicey matter. It requires teamwork, vision, coordination of multiple skill sets, and the relentless drive of entrepreneurs who refuse to give up, regardless of the odds.

Almost as if we were insane.

For the last 19 months and five days, I've been working with a group of people in Silicon Valley to create just such a service, and today, at around 3:09 pm, our baby was born. Please visit the newly-launched MyWire and, if you have a moment, let me know what you think.

Thank you!

David Weir
Editor-in-Chief
MyWire

Crazies

Today, a man shot at least 32 people to death on a college campus in America. He wounded many others; then took his own life. The names of the victims and the perpetrator have not yet been released. Many anxious families and friends are enduring an unbearable silence tonight -- the silence of not being able to reach their loved ones they believe were on campus when the chaotic tragedy occurred this morning.

The President of the United States issued a statement that began by emphasizing his support for the "right to bear arms."

Strict constructionists of the U.S. Constitution have long puzzled me. Men, and only men, of a landed gentry who considered women, the poor, and minorities less than whole citizens, so they denied them the vote, framed the document that anchors our peculiar form of democracy.

This "sacred" document was crafted in an era that a tiny group of white men controlled the resources of what was then only a partially explored and settled continent. Virtually all of them were farmers or merchants, and they all had guns. They'd just expelled the British overlords from America. They still hunted game -- for food. They feared uprisings by the indigenous people whose world they had appropriated.

Two hundred and thirty-some years later, our mentally-challenged President still defends the "right" for pretty much anybody to carry a lethal weapon. Problem is the world has changed, big-time. These days, if you are packing a piece, you are a danger to society.

People kill each other here at a rate that if it were a poor, underdeveloped country, would probably be labeled as a society in a state of "civil war." Luckily, we Americans have fabricated the idea of the crazy loner, the person so alienated that he starts taking potshots at anyone within shooting distance, laughing crazily as he snuffs out their precious lives.

Then, he kills himself.

Sort of like a "suicide bomber," eh? Incomprehensible, unimaginable, barely human, really.

There's just one problem. These alienated loners are not much different from you or from me. Have you looked in the mirror lately? More American adults live alone than live in couples, or in family groups.

We are the nation of the rugged individual, supermen and superwomen, who don't need anybody, who deny in fact that lonely feelings even exist. Meanwhile, in our isolation from each other, anger and frustration grow within all too many souls.

Finally, the weakest links in our social chain break, and cause their brief moment of havoc. The rest of us react with numbness -- this is just another incomprehensible event to a people inured to such random horrors.

That is the real tragedy.

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Honoring the great #42

We're thrilled out on Mud Lake in rural Michigan tonight that our beloved Mafia (our fantasy baseball team) has amassed 299 points just 12 games into the season, and that this is good enough for 7th place!

That may not sound like much to cheer about, but the past two years we finished in 12th place, and before that, lower still. (There are sixteen teams in the league.)

We've been patiently building this club around the pitching staff. So far my six starters are 7-3 with a 3.39 ERA. My three relief pitchers are 10/10 in saves and have an ERA of 1.84.

Our top two hitters (Jason Bay and Andruw Jones) are cold as ice, batting .213; and our power-hitting first baseman, Adam LaRouche is hitting a microscopic .088, lower than most pitchers.

But they'll awake. Cold weather hurts hitters more than pitchers, usually. Overall, our guys are hitting .257, with our top guy over .400. For the first time in years, this looks like a fantasy baseball season to look forward to.

***

In the real baseball season, Barry Bonds has three home runs in only nine games. At that pace, if he played an entire season, he'd hit 54. He needs 19 more round-trippers to pass Hank Aaron's all-time record of 755, and if he stays healthy, he could do that by mid-season.

Bonds is also the most controversial player in the game today and many people hate him. He has been linked to the steroids scandal shaking baseball and many other sports. But he is only one of many, many players caught up in this scandal, and to date, he has not been charged with any crime, nor has he ever tested positive for steroids or any other illegal drug.

Today was Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball (MLB). When I was one day old, Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. That was 60 years ago today. By doing so, he broke the "color barrier," which until 1947 had kept black players out of the elite level of the "national pastime."

By the mid-seventies, African-Americans composed 27% of all MLB players, but as it turned out, that was when their numbers peaked. Ever since, their numbers have been falling until today, blacks number only around 8% of Major Leaguers.

To its credit, the MLB is trying to turn this decline around. In the past quarter century, other sports, especially basketball and football, have embraced black players, and captured the imagination of kids hoping to grow up and become successful athletes.

Baseball, meanwhile, has gone global, attracting players from Central America, Japan, Korea, and other countries. Today, more than a quarter of the players on MLB rosters are Latino.

Given the wonderful history of African-Americans in baseball, and how hard-fought Jackie Robinson's personal triumph was, let's hope his legacy, which is also that of many other stars, like Larry Doby (the first black player in the American League, with the Cleveland Indians, a few months after Robinson started in 1947); Don Newcombe, Willie Mays, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Willie McCovey, Eddie Murray, Tony Gwynn, Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson, Bob Gibson, and so many others, will not be lost.

It can be argued that no one, white, black, Latino or Asian, has been a greater offensive player than Barry Bonds. He has 510 stolen bases to go with his 737 home runs. No other big-time power hitter ever stole more than 300-some bases. Bonds is the all-time leader in walks, and his overall numbers rival those of Babe Ruth.

In fact, Bonds is the black Babe Ruth. Both men were controversial in their own ways, especially near the end of their careers. I admire Bonds and the way he is shutting out all the noise around him in pursuit of his goals. A federal grand jury continues to investigate him, in what has to be one of the longest-running efforts to nail a star athlete in American history.

Given what we now know about earlier baseball stars and their proclivities imagine how their legacy would appear had ambitious prosecutors (not to mention reporters) tried to catch them in, among other technicalities, perjury traps, tax evasions, and "performance-enhancing drugs."

Not to mention what should be the cardinal sin of prosecutorial misconduct -- using one's ex-girlfriend against a man. We all know how ugly breakups can be, and perhaps there are no uglier ones than those between a rich, famous, married man, and a younger woman not otherwise distinguished by anything other than her sexual relationship with said fellow.

Don't read me wrong. I consider Bonds, and every other attached man who cheats on the woman who loves him a jerk. In my mind, he created a far worse crime than some petty IRS violations or some fancy dancing around what he knew when about the creams and potions his "trainers" cooked up for him in their "laboratories."

He broke his wife's heart. I watched her lovely face, holding their tiny daughter on her lap, throughout the magical 2001 season, when Bonds hit 73 home runs and broke the single-season record. She was there every time, on the road and at home, holding her baby and cheering for her man.

Meanwhile, he was cheating on her with another woman who, once he dumped her, turned against him with a vengeance, and told prosecutors every bad thing she could think of about him. All of his confessions, including some that allegedly involve his steroid use.

Ever since the story broke, revealing this girlfriend's existence, Bonds has played his game alone. His wife never comes to the ballpark any more. His little daughter is sometimes there, accompanied by a friend; his mother, his sons. But never that lovely wife.

No one writes about her, nothing is said.

Yes, I hope Bonds breaks all the records in baseball. He deserves to; he's the greatest hitter of our time. I've seen them all, these past 50 years, and he is the best.

But he is not the best example of a man. I don't want him to go to jail. I want him to dedicate himself to healing the awful wound he created in the woman who loved him. To my mind, that is his greatest crime.

Violating the trust of those we love is the lowest any of us ever can sink to -- trust me, I know, from both sides now.

***

There are brighter lights in my universe, none sweeter than my grandson, James, who smiles his smile and talks his talk. Babies draw us to them because we see how innocent we all begin; yet we know how much trouble and pain we may all create. This young man, with his excellent parents, will hopefully grow up with values to help our world be a better place.

Even if he makes mistakes along his way, which he will, I hope he always keeps his steady gaze on his future, with hope, love, and compassion for everyone around him.

New Days

It's the first new day of a new decade in my time. This one has been hot and sunny, in sharp contrast to the windy, rany, cold days we've had recently. Much of the rest of the country is being whipped by a mighty winter storm; it's seems almost (but quite) criminal that our weather is so nice here.



Lots of people throw themselves birthday parties, but I'm not one of them. Though I commonly disclaim caring about my birthdays, that isn't entirely true. As each one approaches, it's a perfect excuse to feel life slipping away, to indulge regrets about my lifetime of errors and wrong turns taken. It's simply an easy time for the sweet sickness of self-pity.

None of that happened this year. I felt peaceful, secure that I'm loved, grateful to all my children, a few close and special friends, and even a couple ex's who remembered that it was a big round number and therefore a vulnerable transition moment.

So, rather than any of the self-destructive sadnesses of times past, this year I enjoyed my current situation in the city I love. I've been cutting down bamboo stalks that are dead but still green. I don't know why. Maybe I just like the look of them, plus how they feel as I slide my hands along them.

Tomorrow is a big day at work. We relaunch our company under a new name with a newly designed website and renewed hopes that what we've built will find an audience. We've been anticipating this for months. The official cutover is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. tomorrow...

The Detroit Red Wings have won their first two playoff games. My extended Weir family are all hockey fans, reflecting our Canadian roots, and there's no town like Hockeytown when the race for the Stanley Cup is joined.