Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

I like Ron Paul’s ideas and respect his sincerity. Some of the company he keeps makes me nervous - Grover Norquist, for instance - but in this it reminds me of the genesis of the Republican party in 1854. The Republicans knitted together Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, Know-nothings, and a whole ragtag and bobtail coalition - and won the White House in 1860 primarily to do one thing: to stop the endless erosion of the barriers to the spread of slavery.

Dare we hope that the same process is occurring around us today? Clearly, the Democrats as constituted and the Republicans as constituted neither one support individual freedom, economic opportunity, limited government, a curtailment of militarism and disguised imperialism, or an end to overseas adventures. That being so, how much difference is there between the, other than that Democrats are somewhat less efficient in expanding Big Brother’s domain?

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When you read Ventura, you always learn something, even if it’s something you would rather wasn’t true. I’ve never seen anyone who could get more out of a newspaper than he does routinely. In a sense, he’s using the newspaper as a huge reminder sheet, so we remember what happened the day before yesterday.

MICHAEL VENTURA

LETTERS AT 3AM –

ISSUES ’08: RUSSIA

Austin Chronicle – August 29, 2008

Once upon a time there was a Russian named Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Was he a gangster? Some say no, some say yes, and some say, “Sometimes.” Was he a democratic visionary? “Yes!” chants America’s press; others are not so sure. But all agree that by 2003 he was Russia’s richest person, the 16th richest man in the world according to Wikipedia, owner of that great and powerful Russian enterprise, Yukos Oil Co. Then came October 25, 2003 – a day sad for some, joyful for others, but an historical turning point for all: Vladimir Putin, president (now prime minister) of Russia, whose soul George W. Bush claims not only to have seen but to have approved, ordered the arrest of Khodorkovsky.

The West was shocked, shocked, do you hear?! Arrest the 16th richest man in the world?! That could never happen in a free country! The charges must be false! Well, we’ll likely never know whether the charges were false, half-false, or one-sixteenth false. We’ll likely never know whether the trial was even one-sixteenth fair. But off to jail went Khodorkovsky, and in jail Khodorkovsky remains. The Western press, as with one voice, declaimed that Putin is but a czar in blue-jeans (true, he often wears blue-jeans); as for Khodorkovsky, they say he was framed for his love of free markets, truth, democracy, and, you know, that stuff.

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This is from the PEERS http://www.WantToKnow.info/008/080825_greatest_good

The excellent essay below from Greater Good magazine by J.K. Rowling, author of the renowned Harry Potter books, implores us to open our sphere of awareness to all who share our world. The moving description of her younger years working with Amnesty International can inspire all of us to work towards the greatest good, so that we might make this a better world for all. I also recommend subscribing to Greater Good magazine for lots of uplifting and inspiring stories and essays which invite us to join together in working for the greatest good. Thanks for caring and please help to spread the word to all who want to join in making a difference

Magic for Muggles
by J.K. Rowling

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.

This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

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Michael Ventura can make any subject interesting, and on any subject that is already interesting, he always has a new slant. His column for the Austin Chronicle, August 15, 2008

MICHAEL VENTURA

LETTERS AT 3AM –

UNIDENTIFIED FRAKKIN’ OBJECTS

Saw one once. Summer of 1981. It was unidentified, flying, and definitely an object. My brother David and I were visiting friends who lived in an adobe home without plumbing in the mountains 50 miles northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. True I’d had a beer, maybe two. I was a little buzzed, but far from drunk; nor had I imbibed hallucinogens, pot, etc. (I never do). Having to pee, I stepped out into a very black night brilliantly canopied by what seemed the entire universe. The adobe was in a small, deep valley, flanked on the east and west by steep, high ridges. I was facing east, contentedly relieving myself under the stars. My gaze panned from north to south — and there it was.

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A report from an English paper on a study that originated right here in Virginia. From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/08/14/scideadzone114.xml via a friend.

Ocean dead zones free of oxygen double every decade
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 7:01pm BST 14/08/2008

Dead zones that are free of oxygen have approximately doubled in number each decade since the 1960s, with many in the coastal waters around Britain.

Map showing areas of the world’s seas and oceans that have “hypoxic” dead zones

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Most of the bad habits the American government learned were learned under the stress of World War II. I sometimes think that the worst legacy of evil is that it calls up the forces that will destroy it: In other words, it changes those who have to fight it, as in the old saying “you become like the worst in those you fight.” But sometimes life doesn’t give you much choice. This story from the London Times — http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4535088.ece

August 15, 2008
US finally names army of spies who helped bring down Adolf Hitler

From The Times
August 15, 2008

Newly released files from a shadowy wartime American spy network reveal some household names who were leading double lives to fight the Nazis

Ben Macintyre
In peacetime they were cooks and lawyers, bankers and housewives, athletes and teachers. In wartime they were spies in the ferocious espionage battle against Nazism. Sworn to secrecy, few ever divulged the crucial part that they played in winning the war.

Yesterday these members of a wartime intelligence network created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and modelled directly on the British MI6 were revealed when the US Government opened the files on 24,000 people who spied for America during the Second World War. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which would later evolve into the CIA, played a key role in the war but the personal details of the men and women, civilian and military, who fought America’s secret war against the Nazis have never been made formally public before.

Officially the OSS employed 13,000 people in various clandestine activities during the war. The personnel files, declassified yesterday and now accessible at the National Archives in Washington, reveal a far larger organisation that recruited from every walk of life. The ranks of America’s spy army included soldiers, academics, historians, geographers, actors, anthropologists, diplomats, scientists, society hostesses, sportsmen and philosophers. There were two Nobel prizewinners, four future directors of CIA and a number of communist sympathisers. A quarter of the force were civilians, and more than 4,500 were women.

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This is from http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080813192458.ud84hj9h&show_article=1, kindly sent me by HRPC author Robert Bruce. At some point science is going to have to conclude that the brain is not the mind is not the spirit, and I do suspect that experiments such as this one may be leading them in that direction.

A ‘Frankenrobot’ with a biological brain

Aug 13 03:25 PM US/Eastern

Meet Gordon, probably the world’s first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.

Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon’s primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.

Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told AFP.

“The purpose is to figure out how memories are actually stored in a biological brain,” said Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading and one of the robot’s principle architects.

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The buzz keeps on building on Midnights with the Mystic! Cheryl and Sadhguru have been signing books and discussing their experiences tirelessly ever since Midnights was published this past April. One of their most recent interviews is a wonderful introduction the teachings of Sadhguru and how he came into Cheryl’s life and changed it forever. You can find it here. Check it out!

“Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

“If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

“This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.”

Thursday, June 8, 1978

When are 50 million fleas more valuable than one elephant? When the fleas are volunteers and the their efforts are coordinated. As this article demonstrates. People doing something for the love of it, directed by those who know how to coordinate their efforts, are accomplishing more than the professionals alone could do, just out of sheer volume. You’d almost think there was a lesson in there somewhere….

From http://news.aol.com/article/sky-watcher-spies-gassy-cosmic-ghost/119539?icid=200100125×1207156595x1200357017

Sky Watcher Spies Gassy ‘Cosmic Ghost’

CHICAGO (Aug. 5) - A Dutch primary school teacher and amateur astronomer has discovered what some are calling a “cosmic ghost,” a strange, gaseous object with a hole in the middle that may represent a new class of astronomical object.
The teacher, Hanny van Arkel, discovered the object while volunteering in the Galaxy Zoo project, which enlists the help of members of the public to classify galaxies online.

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