Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

Somebody want to remind me what the advantage to us is of pretending that things aren’t rapidly changing? Yes, we don’t know if it’s a natural cycle or if it’s the result of human industrial activity or both, but the only people who don’t recognize that things are chainging are those who don’t want to recognize it.

Some don’t because if it turns out to be human activity causing it, it’s going to cost them money and inconvenience.

Others don’t because — mainly — they don’t like politics of the kind of people who are warning against it.

Others are unimaginative, and literally can’t imagine that things could change — despite the fact that everything in their lives has been changing, drastically, and faster and faster, every year they have been alive.

Denial is more expensive than openness. The old saying has it that experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn in no other. This story is from the Independent

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Via James DeMeo’s OBRL-News-Bulletin OBRL-News-Bulletin@yahoogroups.com. An optimistic note. Let’s hope something meaningful comes from it.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54570

GLOBAL JIHAD
Muslims try to change Islamic killing machine
‘To live in the Middle East and say what we’re saying is a death sentence’
Posted: March 6, 2007

By Art Moore

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A group of reformists from Muslim societies who have become accustomed to death threats upped the ante yesterday with a declaration they hope will spark a popular movement across the Islamic world to “fight back” against fundamentalist interpreters of the faith.

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When it’s about women, you’ve gone too far

by Joan Chittister, OSB

Try to remember this: It is possible to go too far. Remember this, too: It will all depend on what you’re talking about whether it turns out to be too far or not.

I got another lesson on that one recently. Last week, in Ireland, Trocáire, the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland, began its regular Lenten ad campaign.

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Peace in Ireland sometimes seems about as likely as peace in the Middle East, yet it does seem that slowly, slowly, there is real progress. This piece, by Peter Hain,Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and for Wales, is from http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2031401,00.html

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I don’t know if it is too late or not to save the Republic, but it certainly is late in the day. If the Republic is to be saved, the only way is to return to the constitutional limitations on power. That is why they were put there. But whether an egg can be restored to wholeness after being broken remains to be seen.

In any case, John Whitehead’s commentary is right on the money.

It’s Time for Congress to Get a Moral Backbone

By John W. Whitehead

March 15, 2007

Speculation over a possible U.S. military strike against Iran has moved from questioning whether the U.S. will launch an attack to questioning when it will do so. Despite denials by the Bush Administration that a future offensive is planned, the present military build-up in the Persian Gulf of aircraft carriers, fighter jets, missiles and minesweepers and the stockpiling of oil reserves suggest differently.

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You should read this entire article, to be found at

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=174764

You might consider emailing this column to your congressional “representative” as a sort of reminder of what Congress used to do. Possibly, too, to your local “news” media outlet, as a reminder of what real media do, or did.

A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…
And No One Notices
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an “informal” meeting of “veterans” of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal — holding positions in the Bush administration — was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the “lessons learned” from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others — and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success — and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President’s office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney’s office.

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This from http://www.inform.kz/showarticle.php?lang=eng&id=149152 via a friend.

I am reliably informed that neither Halliburton nor any member of the Bush administration is being investigated in connection with this.

Part of Earth’s mantle cover is missing

CARDIFF. March 8. KAZINFORM - Welsh scientists are investigating a startling discovery in the Atlantic Ocean: Part of the Earth’s mantle cover is missing.

Cardiff University scientists discovered an area extending thousands of square miles in the middle of the Atlantic in which the Earth’s mantle — the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many miles thick — is exposed on the sea floor, nearly 10,000 feet below the surface.

Marine geologist Chris MacLeod of the university’s School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences said: “This discovery is like an open wound on the surface of the Earth. Was the crust never there? Was it once there but then torn away on huge geological faults? If so, then how and why?”

The team intends to use sonar to image the sea floor in the area midway between the Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean and take core samples.

Progress of the cruise can be monitored via a live web link to the ship at noc.soton.ac.uk/gg/classroom@sea/JC007/.

The public, and especially school children, are encouraged to ask questions of the expedition’s scientists by using the on-line e-mail link, Kazinform has learnt from UPI.

It’s not every day that I find myself in agreement with The New York Times, but this time, for sure. This was published more than a month ago, on Sunday, Feb. 4. Anybody think that any of the items on the liast have become obsolete?

Editorial
The Must-Do List

The Bush administration’s assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

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Sister Joan’s letters may be found at http://ncrcafe.org/blog/5

Christian, Secular or Something Else Entirely

From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB

Here’s a tip: If you want to know before your friends do what may well be one of the major questions of the 21st century, keep your eye on two new documents. The first is the Berlin Declaration to be released by E.U. President Angela Merkel within the month. The second is the Brussels Declaration, a statement by prominent European academicians, community leaders, and national and European politicians, which disagrees with the tenets included in the Berlin Declaration and which has already been released in response to it.

These two declarations could engage Western society for years to come — and with no small consequences. But don’t expect either one of them to raise too much discussion at the club next week.

The fact is that the most important things going on in the world are often neither the most obvious things nor the most publicized ones. I doubt, for instance, that the Enlightenment philosophers whose ideas were the undergirding of either the revolutionary American Constitution or the bloody French Revolution that followed it were much in the news before either of those events.

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Nice world we live in. This, via Schwartzreport, from http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2932083320071129?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

World faces “cyber cold war” threat
Thu Nov 29, 2007 12:24pm EST

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) - A “cyber cold war” waged over the world’s computers threatens to become one of the biggest threats to security in the next decade, according to a report published on Thursday.

About 120 countries are developing ways to use the Internet as a weapon to target financial markets, government computer systems and utilities, Internet security company McAfee said in an annual report.

Intelligence agencies already routinely test other states’ networks looking for weaknesses and their techniques are growing more sophisticated every year, it said.

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