Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

Michael Ventura’s column is as always thought-provoking. I suggest that you read and then re-read his initial paragraph. Would that the maladministration would!

Then, look at the facts he so concisely marshals: size, cohesion, history,and strategic relationships. And, in words I might have penned myself, “Thanks to Bush and his enablers the world is very, very tired of us.”

From the Austin Chronicle.

The Question of Iran

The major nations hated but tolerated the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Their interests were not directly threatened, so they could afford toleration. China, in particular, subsidized the Bush invasion with substantial loans because it’s in China’s interests for the U.S. to lose credibility, overtax its military and undermine its economy through such debacles as Iraq. Iran, however, is a very different story and for some reason that story is not being told.

The information is available in newspapers, yet even columnists on those papers — and every politician, military analyst, and TV commentator I’m aware of — seem ignorant of crucial facts. They speak of Iran within the story-line the White House has established: Iran’s interference in Iraq, Iran’s development of nukes, Iran’s extremism toward Israel, Iran’s support of Hezbullah and Hamas, and Iran’s desire to be the major player in the region — the familiar (and largely true) headlines, all of which seem to be leading to a U.S.-Iran confrontation. But Iran is not Iraq.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Secret - and government

Who isn’t fed up with misgovernment? Who doesn’t feel that government has become way too intrusive in our lives? Who doesn’t feel that our liberties are imperiled by the government’s presumption of competence and its presumption of a right to interfere in more and more areas of private life?

Liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, are equally responsible, although in different areas of life. Wars and spending to prepare for wars — known euphemistically as “defense” spending — historically produce concentration of power and growth of government bureaucracies and the parasites that fatten on them. Subsidies each ostensibly designed to solve a social problem, but each worth money to a particular organized faction of society, also produce concentration of power and growth of government bureaucracies and the parasites that fatten on them. But to understand this is not necessarily to know how to overcome these processes.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have seen and done many things that later I have read that some ass. professor at some county college says (in the name of science, of course) can’t be done.

I have no patience with scientism — worship of science as if it were an ultimate means of knowledge. What gives self-appointed spokesmen of “science” the right to say that astrology, for instance, is a pseudo-science, if they have never investigated it? Ditto ghosts, and aliens and other subjects.

Similarly, since when is it required to “believe in” evolution or the Big Bang of the other “scientific” dogma of the day? That isn’t science, it’s superstition.

This from http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/us-beliefs-in-pseudoscience-worry/20070217212109990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Read the rest of this entry »

The Secret - and ideologies

A couple of days ago I made a blog entry about the blogger for the Edwards campaign who quit feeling quite persecuted, apparently — not having a clue that her own bigotry was what had gotten her into trouble. But I see that some “liberal” blogs have taken the stance that she is a “victim” of a right-wing conspiracy to [here, insert your own particular paranoid fantasy].

Let’s continue on my theme of applying to everyday life The Secret — the law of attraction, the reality that we get more of what we focus on, even if we focus on it wishing to have less of it. Let’s devote a couple of minutes to the question of how we should deal with competing ideologies in such a way as to produce positive results, rather than negative.

This might be paraphrased as, how do we turn into positives things that are designed to make us feel negative?

Read the rest of this entry »

A theme you see more and more, once you start looking for it, is that scientists are discovering that at least in terms of climate, things move a lot faster than they thought. They used to talk in terms of decades, or centuries, and now they begin to talk in terms of years or months. As in this article taken from http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-connor180207.htm

Scientists Sound Alarm Over Melting Antarctic Ice Sheets

By Steve Connor

18 February, 2007
The lndependent

The long-term stability of the massive ice sheets of Antarctica, which have the potential to raise sea levels by hundreds of meters, has been called into question with the discovery of fast-moving rivers of water sliding beneath their base.

Scientists analyzing satellite data were astonished to discover the size of the vast lakes and river systems flowing beneath the Antarctic ice sheets, which may lubricate the movement of these glaciers as they flow into the surrounding sea.

The discovery raises fresh questions about the speed at which sea levels might rise in a warmer world due to the rate at which parts of the ice sheets slide from the land into the ocean, scientists said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Secret - and the law

One disheartening thing about the past six years in particular, and the past 60 years in general, is the progressive destruction of the checks and balances that were put into the U.S. constitution specifically to protect the liberties of the people. Seeing this process in the context of the law of attraction showcased in the movie “The Secret,” produces the following thoughts.

* The military industrial complex has achieved its goal of acquiring a stranglehold on the American economy, and therefore the American political system.

* The de facto alliance with Israel, and the cold war before it, have expanded the powers of the executive branch beyond anything envisaged by the constitution makers.

* The black-budget agencies have essentially escaped from any meaningful budgetary scrutiny — which means, again, a terrific expansion of the executive branch vis-à-vis the legislative branch.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Secret - and war

I used to be amused at stories of Republicans in the 1930s and 40s who couldn’t bear even to mention Franklin Roosevelt’s name — calling him instead “that man in the White House.” But over the past six years I have come to understand. Everything that Mr. Mission Accomplished has touched, he has turned to lead. I do not trust him, I do not trust his advisers, I do not trust their intentions, their execution, their integrity or their ability. (Other than that I have no problem with them.)

But how, then, do I square this loathing with the law of attraction as described in The Secret?

The answer, of course, is provided by the secret itself. The Law of attraction says, what you focus on, you get more of. So, let’s apply the secret to the issue of war and peace.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Secret - and the environment

It shouldn’t be any secret to anyone that our physical environment is severely stressed by industrial civilization. I am not referring to global warming at the moment, but to the broader question of the physical results of human activity that impacts, changes, the place in which it occurs.

This characteristic of industrial activity is not limited to Western society, or to modern society. It seems clear that human industrial activity has always produced disregarded by-products. However, the sheer scale of industrial activity beginning in the late 1700s and accelerating continuously for nearly 250 years, so far, has had an effect far beyond earlier activity that we know of.

Air pollution, water pollution, what might be called future-pollution (meaning, things buried away “out of sight out of mind”) obviously can reach a level at which it becomes impossible to sustain life. But what should be equally obvious is that long before we reach that life-destroying termination, we can arrive at a place where we very much do not want to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

Amanda Marcotte, a campaign blogger for presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards, quit the campaign Monday, although for the wrong reasons. She said that criticism of her language on her personal blog “was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign.” What she did not acknowledge — and i would not expect her to acknowledge — is that her language, and, more than that, her beliefs, are deeply offensive to many for good reason.

Her distasteful comments seem to me to stem from several interconnected roots:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Secret - and Politics

I woke up thinking about the movie “The Secret,” which I saw a couple of nights ago.

It is no secret that “The Secret” is about the law of attraction. That is to say, what you focus on is what you get. This sent several hares scurrying in various directions in that untended field that I call my mind.

For one thing, it struck me how divided the Western mind is. The laws that science recognizes are not those recognized by metaphysics, or religion, or politics. Since each of these various belief systems responds to the world from its own set of presumed rules about “the way the world works,” it is no surprise that the thinking of society — and of each of us individually — is confused, self-contradictory, and fearful.

I do not mean to point a finger in any direction. This is not a situation in which it is someone’s “fault.” It is, rather, a fix that we are all in together.

Read the rest of this entry »