Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

Reagan took credit for it, and Bush Senior chimed in, but more than anyone else in the world, it was Mikhail Gorbachev who ended the cold war. He continues to play a constructive role in world affairs today, as this small item shows.

from http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/10/18/gorbyanna.shtml

Gorbachev Objects to Building Wall Between U.S. and Mexico

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev criticized U.S. plans to build a 700-mile (1,130-kilometer) fence on the nation’s southern border, AP reports.

Gorbachev, visiting President George W. Bush’s hometown on Tuesday for a lecture series at The University of Texas of the Permian Basin, said fixing the border requires new ideas and cooperation.

“I don’t think the U.S. is so weak and so much lacks confidence as not to be able to find a different solution,” he said in report published in Wednesday editions of the Midland Reporter-Telegram.

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She turned to the translator for help. “I accept your apology,” she said quietly. “I accept your love.” Then she put her arms around me, kissed me firmly on the cheek, put her head on my shoulder and began to cry. And so did I.

[Joan Chittister's column from http://ncrcafe.org/node/677]

Road to Damascus still a place for conversions

by Joan Chittister, OSB

The day our small delegation from the Woman’s Global Peace Initiative arrived in Syria, CNN ran a ticker tape news flash announcing that a “huge storm was swirling around the tip of Saturn.” I smiled at the sight of it. Frankly, I was more concerned about the huge political storm in Syria. Saturn, I figured would take care of itself. Syria, I wasn’t sure.

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Hello, Hampton Roads Publishing Company readers! There is a well-hidden page on our website which many of you probably haven’t seen yet: it’s our company’s Environmental Statement.

Our publishing company is a participant in the Green Press Initiative, committed to reducing the impact of the publishing industry on our environment. Publishing companies rely on a lot of paper, and so dealing with the issue responsibly takes some effort. You are invited to read our Environmental Statement for some fascinating statistics, updated intermittently, about how many trees have been saved, pounds of greenhouse gas saved, and more!

Ron Paul is a Republican congressman from Texas — yet he consistently tells the truth, and is economically literate, and is no friend of the all-devouring state. Who’d ‘a’ thought it?

Demographic Reality and the Entitlement State

by Ron Paul

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, is an investigative arm of Congress charged with the thankless task of accounting for the money received and spent by the federal government. As you might imagine, people who spend all day examining the nitty-gritty realities of federal spending and deficits might not share the voters’ enthusiasm for grand campaign promises.

David Walker, Comptroller General at GAO, has been on a speaking tour of the U.S recently – and he pulls no punches when explaining just how precarious our nation’s entitlement system really is.

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A friend (himself a veteran of World War II) sent this to me the day after Veterans Day, and I concur with his judgment that it is an eloquent piece of writing.

Reenacting War: Reflections on a Country Losing Its Humanity
By Doug Troutman
TomDispatch.com

Friday 10 November 2006

I’ve never dealt well with Veterans Day. Perhaps it’s because I knew too many men whose names appear on a black wall in Washington D.C.

In Vietnam, letters often took weeks to arrive from home, but technology has changed much about war. My son could telephone or email me instantaneously from Baghdad.

When he came home on leave, we compared experiences, sometimes laughing about things that caused his mother to leave the room. When he came home, we sometimes spoke softly under a night sky, the Milky Way above, about how small and ignorant we humans really are.

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The old formula for Democrats from Franklin Roosevelt through John F. Kennedy was labor, liberals, urban ethnics and the solid south. The solid south is long gone, partially replaced by the blacks the solid south had been so intent on keeping disenfranchised. Labor has mostly been absent for a generation, and urban ethnics were systematically alienated by far-left politics - and their numbers were decimated by suburbanization.

If labor is back in the fold, the Democrats will listen, if they know what’s good for them. But then, if they knew what was good for them, would they still be Democrats? Will Rogers, some may remember, once famously said, “I am not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

This is via Capitol Hill Blue.

Labor calls in markers for helping Democrats
By WILL LESTER

Organized labor delivered millions of votes for the Democratic Party in the 2006 midterm elections and has spelled out what it wants from the Democratic-controlled Congress in return.

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So many things in this article seem to me to demosntrate a pervasive and scarcely acknowledged sexism that blames men for being men. Very tiring. For instance, consider this paragraph from the following story:

“Behavior plays a role in some of the extra deaths and illnesses among men: they tend to be more aggressive than women and to take more risks. Men smoke at higher rates than women, drink more alcohol and are less likely to wear seat belts or use sunscreen. Men also suffer more accidental deaths and serious injuries and are more likely to die of injuries and car accidents. They are three times as likely to be victims of murder, four times as likely to commit suicide and, as teenagers, 11 times as likely to drown.”

If one were to remove from the statistics accidents and murder, one would still be faced with things that defy explanation: Not only the suicide rate remains to be explained, but differences in health that appear to be more innate than environmental or behavioral. If boys are born with delayed lung development - are we to blame that on machismo? And if boys are born risk takers - is that necessarily bad? Maybe - imagine this as a possibility! - maybe that’s how males are supposed to function! Does it make more sense to expect boys to act like girls than to expect girls to act like boys?

Anyway, an interesting article passed on to me by a friend, apparently originally from the New York Times.

Health Disparities Persist for Men, and Doctors Ask Why

By RONI RABIN

In recent years, women’s health has been a national priority. Pink ribbons warn of breast cancer. Pins shaped like red dresses raise awareness about heart disease. Offices of women’s health have sprung up at every level of government to offer information and free screenings, and one of the largest government studies on hormones and diet in aging focused entirely on older women.

Yet statistics show that men are more likely than women to suffer an early death.

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From the BBC

The valuable cargo was probably being shipped from Cadiz to Rome

Roman ship thrills archaeologists

A Roman ship, wrecked off the coast of Spain in the 1st Century, has been dazzling archaeologists with the array of historical treasures on board.

Thirty metres (100ft) long and holding 400 tonnes, it is the largest Roman ship found in the Mediterranean.

Chief amongst the goods the ship was carrying were hundreds of jars of garum - a fish sauce which was a favourite condiment for rich Romans.

It was accidentally discovered in 2000 by sailors whose anchor snagged a jar.

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Lose a War; Lose an Election

Read this piece in military.com.

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,118885,00.html

Here’s what the site says about the author.

William Sturgiss Lind, Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, born July 9, 1947. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1969 and received a Master’s Degree in History from Princeton University in 1971. He worked as a legislative aide for armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 through 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. He joined Free Congress Foundation in 1987.

Mr. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Westview Press, 1985); co-author, with Gary Hart, of America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform (Adler & Adler, 1986); and co-author, with William H. Marshner, of Cultural Conservatism: Toward a New National Agenda (Free Congress Foundation, 1987).

Mr. Lind co-authored the prescient article, “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation,” which was published in The Marine Corps Gazette in October, 1989 and which first propounded the concept of “Fourth Generation War.”

Think he might say something worth listening to?

A friend who lives in Oregon emailed me:

“You may have heard that we had a wee little storm here.

“One of my co-workers sent around a word file filled with pictures, which I am attaching. It gives you some idea of the scale of the event on Mt. Hood.

“Yes Frank, you drove this road. And that is very much a past tense now. It is going to be a little while before it is open again.”

All these photos of the Highway 35 Event (November 7, 2006) are by Doug Jones.

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