Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

Something curious and perhaps important is happening behind the scenes here. In case you haven’t become aware of the news item, this from last week, from news.com http://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9858436-57.html?tag=nefd.pop

January 25, 2008 12:22 PM PST
Anonymous steps up its war with Scientology
Posted by Robert Vamosi

Images of the Earth and nature are used in a video address to major news organizations.

A group of vigilantes–calling themselves Anonymous, or Anon–are escalating their attacks against the Church of Scientology in what they consider to be Internet censorship by issuing new video challenges. In one video posted to YouTube, Anonymous addresses the many news organizations covering the war, stating that the group has been watching. While the individuals behind the effort generally support the coverage, they also severely fault the media.

“We find it interesting that you did not mention the other objections in your news reporting. The stifling and punishment of dissent within the totalitarian organization of Scientology. The numerous, alleged human rights violations. Such as the treatment and events that led to the deaths of victims of the cult such as Lisa McPherson.

This Cult is Nothing but a psychotically driven pyramid scheme.

Why are you, the news media, afraid of discussing these matters? It is your duty to report on these matters.You are failing in your duty.”

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Antarctic ice loss between 1996 and 2006, overlaid on a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) mosaic image of Antarctica. The colors indicate the speed of the ice loss. Purple/red is fast. Green is slow. Image credit: NASA

Antarctica looks to us, on our maps, as one roughly circular continent. Ground-penetrating radar, however, shows it as two parts — to the East, the largest part, an elliptical-shaped mass. To the West, the Palmer peninsula and adjacent territories, actually an archipelago. Between the two, land that is actually below sea level. In other words, the ice conceals the fact that what seems to be one land mass is actually a land mass and adjacent islands.

I’m no scientist, but the map above seems to say that the ocean is reclaiming its own, melting the ice that does not sit on land. What does it say to you?

By my math, Edwards has 1.28%, Obama 2.62% and Clinton 2.37% of the number of delegates they need to win the nomination. Regardless of the talking heads crowning Obama, as previously they crowned Clinton, it isn’t QUITE over yet!

This from the Charlotte NC News Observer http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/908102.html

Edwards to focus on 10 Super Tuesday states

By Barbara Barrett, Washington correspondent

WASHINGTON – Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards will focus his campaign dollars, staffers and personal visits on 10 of the 22 states coming up in next week’s Super Tuesday primary Feb. 5.

A few other states will see resources in key congressional districts, but overall, Edwards’ campaign strategists want to continue the delegate-gathering journey that they see as their best hope for winning the Democratic presidential nomination. “If we can compete (in the 10 focus states) and be viable in the remaining 12 states, then we’re going to have a very good day on Feb. 5,” said U.S. Rep. David Bonior, Edwards’ campaign manager.

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This story means more to me than most because I remember Miles Lerman as a prominent businessman in my small hometown as I was growing up. A remarkable story, a remarkable man. From The Jewish Week http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a3568/News/New_York.html

Miles Lerman: A Holocaust survivor, he made a bond with younger, American-born Jews and non-Jews. Getty Images

The Man Who Kept Remembrance Alive

The legacy of Miles Lerman, partisan fighter and driving force behind the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

by Irving “Yitz” Greenberg
Special To The Jewish Week

The loss of Miles Lerman is more than another devastating experience of the passing of the survivor generation.

Miles is almost the last of the unique band of survivors who played a central role in the extraordinary rise of Holocaust remembrance in the United States. Until the 1960s, there was widespread unwillingness to hear about the Holocaust. Now 80 percent of American Jews say that remembering the Holocaust is the hallmark of a good Jew. In national polls, a substantial majority of Americans say that knowledge of the Shoah is essential for all Americans. The Shoah has become the incontestable touchstone of evil and of moral norms in a relativistic world. This is in no small measure the legacy of Miles Lerman and the survivorswho built the institutions of Holocaust memory in the United States.

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I am passing this along as a friend passed it to me. This requires a little readjustment - a big readjustment - if this is your first exposure to it. After you realize what has been going on, though, you realize that your TV “news” and increasingly your single-source newspaper is more like entertainment-cum-diversion than actual information. (Yes, even NPR, though that seems to be by far the best broadcast journalism left in this country.) That’s why I stopped paying attention to the news as reported, even though I began my working life as a news reporter. If you want to understand the world, you can’t rely on TV or newspapers or newsmagazines or anything that is owned by corporations or depends on repeat business.

Go to books, the internet, and the actual world around you. Go to multiple sources with multiple conflicting agendas of their own - THEN add in “news’ from TV, radio, newspapers etc.

This is a lot of work, however, and few will do it. Be one of the few, or be manipulated; those are really your only choices.

Well, there is one other choice, one many of us choose at least intermittently, and that is to tune it all out and concentrate on our personal affairs. This line of conduct has its plusses and minuses too.

Frank

Top Censored Media Stories of 2007

“The world is a dangerous place to live;
not because of the people who are evil,
but because of the people who don’t do
anything about it.”
- Albert Einstein

Media Censorship
Top Censored Media Stories of 2007
http://www.WantToKnow.info/080117mediacensorship

Dear friends,
Project Censored specializes in covering the top stories which were subjected to media censorship either by being ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year. Project Censored is a research team composed of more than 200 university faculty, students, and community experts who review about 1,000 news story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources, and national significance. The top 25 stories selected are submitted to a distinguished panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. The results are published each year in an excellent book available for purchase at their website, amazon.com, and most major book stores.

A summary of last year’s top 25 media censorship stories provided below proves quite revealing and most informative. After the headline of each news story is a link for those who want to read the entire article. These links contain the sources for the censored news. For whatever reason the major media won’t report these major stories. Thanks to the Internet and wonderful, committed groups like Project Censored, the news is getting out to those who want to know. By revealing these examples of media censorhsip, we can stop the excessive secrecy and work together to build a brighter future. Please help to spread the word, and have a great day!

With best wishes,

Tod Fletcher and Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team

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Michael Ventura shows what journalists could do if they had historical perspective, literacy, brains and eyes, and used them. I’ve never read a journalist who could do so much by mixing press reports with his brains.

From his column Letters at 3 a.m. in the Austin Chronicle.

MICHAEL VENTURA

LETTERS AT 3AM –

A PRIMARY MISCELLANY – Austin Chronicle – January 18, 2008

Quote quiz: “I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated myself to discovering his truth and carrying out his works.” Mike Huckabee? Nope. Barack Obama (The Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 2007, p.49).

Quote quiz: “The whole model of our health-care system is upside down. We really don’t have a health-care system, we have a disease-care system… The real problem is that our model, both in the insurance model and the health-care model, waits until people are catastrophically ill before it intervenes. And we really have to change the concept to a preventive focus rather than an intervention focus. And that means the entire system starts working on health and wellness, because 80% of the 2 trillion dollars that we spend on health care goes to chronic disease.” John Edwards? Nope. Mike Huckabee (Jan. 6, ABC debate).

Money quiz: Which candidates rake in the most from the health care and insurance industries? Hillary Clinton, $2.7 million. Barack Obama, $2.2 million. Nobody else comes close (The New York Times, Oct. 29, 2007, p.1). Not to worry. A noble woman like Clinton and a pure soul like Obama, they wouldn’t give service in return for all that money, right?

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From http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16jan_newlanguage.htm?list908317

Radical New Lab Fights Disease using Satellites

Jan. 16, 2008: A group of atmospheric research scientists at NASA’s National Space Science and Technology Center felt a little like they were in a foreign country when they first met with University of Alabama at Birmingham’s School of Public Health representatives to discuss a research partnership.

“When we first got together, it was as if we were speaking entirely different languages,” says NASA’s Dale Quattrochi.

But very soon both parties began to realize how NASA satellite data could translate into vital public health information.

“We started seeing how it was really a great fit. It was wonderful. The lights clicked on!” Quattrochi said.

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John Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate and a former senator from North Carolina, says he doesn’t like to advertise his faith.

Andy Nelson – staff

John Edwards: working-class values and a closely held faith

While Christian beliefs help gird his antipoverty campaign, he believes that politicians who identify closely with one religion cannot be inclusive.

By Ariel Sabar | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 20, 2007 edition

Manchester, N.h. - A major address on poverty would seem an ideal place for a Democratic presidential hopeful to toss in a mention of religious faith, particularly if he was on a ticket that narrowly lost the 2004 election to so-called “values voters.”

But in long speeches on his signature issue this spring and summer, John Edwards said nothing about the Christian beliefs he says help underpin his antipoverty campaign.

He instead chose the more universal language of ethics and public policy. Poverty is as much “the great moral issue of our time,” he said, as a practical threat to the economy and national security.

For Mr. Edwards, a Southern Baptist-turned-United Methodist, faith is deeply felt but intensely private, a refuge after family tragedy and a daily source of wisdom, but not a platform for politics.

“It’s a very dangerous business – that intersection” of religion and politics, Edwards said in an interview with the Monitor. “I don’t like to talk about my faith openly. I do in answer to questions, but I don’t usually bring it up myself.”

His reticence owes as much to a Baptist upbringing that cast faith as a private relationship with God as the belief that a politician too closely identified with one religion cannot be inclusive in a diverse America.

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Focus on freedom: Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has long been studying economics and world markets.

karin cooper/face the nation

Ron Paul: an absolute faith in free markets and less government

The 10-term congressman from Texas has been a strict constitutionalist since he came into public life some 30 years ago.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the January 2, 2008 edition

Berlin, N.H. - Ron Paul still looks surprised when his calls to follow the Constitution and restore a sound currency set off whoops of approval at a campaign stop.

The 10-term GOP congressman from Texas has been making these points for 30 years, with little to show for it beyond hundreds of House votes on the short end of 434 to 1. Critics called him a crank.

But lately, his views and values – the product of a lifetime of intense, self-directed study – are finding an audience. His message is basic: freedom and limited government. Repeal the welfare-warfare state. Get out of Iraq, now. Abolish the income tax. End the war on drugs. Put the dollar back on a more solid footing.

“Unlike some others, I wasn’t really anxious to run for president,” he tells supporters at Tea Bird’s Café and Bistro in Berlin, N.H. “I didn’t believe the country was ready for a strict constitutionalist.”

When he says “strict,” he means it. As a member of Congress, he refuses to vote for any bill not explicitly set out in the Constitution, earning him the nickname “Dr. No.” He routinely votes against new taxes, deficit budgets, government surveillance, gun control, war funding, and the war on drugs. He would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Reserve, the US Departments of Education, Energy, and Commerce as well as other “unconstitutional domestic bureaucracies.” He has called for America to withdraw from the World Trade Organization and the United Nations.

At the heart of Paul’s worldview is a conviction that people are born free and should govern themselves – and that free markets make better decisions than governments do.

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From http://news.smh.com.au/solar-power-used-to-produce-clean-water/20080117-1mjp.html

Solar power used to produce clean water

January 17, 2008 - 2:20PM

Clean water with free energy is the goal of German scientists who are using the sun’s rays to power small water treatment plants for developing countries.

The system is designed for arid areas of Africa and Asia where a lack of electricity makes it impossible to use large industrial plants for the desalination of seawater, like those in the Middle East.

“The regions have a very poor infrastructure. Quite often there is no electricity grid, so conventional desalination plants are out of the question,” says Joachim Koschikowski.

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