* Blogmanac | Paganism growing fast in Oz
"... the neo-Pagans continue to move from strength to strength.

"The last census proved nature religions, and primarily Wicca and Paganism, were among the fastest growing in Australia.

"And now the Melbourne-based Christian Research Association (CRA) has carried out the first in-depth analysis of the religious group that accounts for more than 24,000 Australians. According to that study, the profile of the modern Australian Pagan is a female Melburnian under the age of 35, Australian-born, living in a de facto relationship, with a university degree. What is harder to analyse is the rising political force of Paganism."
Read on

* Blogmanac | June 27, 1520 | Death of Moctezuma II
Moctezuma II (or, Montezuma II) was killed by the troops of Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortés in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (Mexico).

In the decade leading up to Cortés’s conquest of the Aztec empire, the Aztecs noticed many omens.

An incredibly bright light burned in the heavens for a year; a mysterious fire was seen in the temple of Huitzilopochtli, god of war. The temple struck by lightning; a comet hit earth in three pieces. The water boiled in Lake Texcoco, and undermined residences. A woman’s voice heard at night wailing “O my beloved sons, now we are about to go!”


The seventh omen was a crane with a mirror on its head. Montezuma II saw the heavens in the mirror, and knew it to be an evil omen. He then saw warriors approaching in the mirror and became alarmed when people brought him a number of two-headed creatures.
He believed that the leader of the pale-skinned warriors was Quetzalcoatl, a Toltec god. He sent gold to them and asked them to leave; he then sent food and captives so they could feast on their blood and leave happily. Montezuma next engaged sorcerers to cast spells on the invaders. When the conquistadors entered the city he invited them to his palace, but they imprisoned him and he died mysteriously. In 1521 Cortes’s band levelled the city.

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* Blogmanac | June 30, 1908 | The Tunguska mystery

7:17 am A giant fireball impacted in Central Siberia (the Tunguska Event). The mass of the unidentified object has been estimated at around 90,000 tonnes (about 100,000 tons) and the force of the explosion at 40 megatons of TNT. This is 2,000 times the force of the bomb exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. Even today, the exact cause of the explosion is unknown.

As old photographs show, and modern research confirms, an area as big as a large city had all its trees flattened by the awesome blast. The ‘event’ was so enormous that it has been estimated that had such an explosion occurred over Europe instead of the sparsely populated region of Siberia, the number of human victims might have been 500,000 or more.

Surprisingly, scientists of the day showed little interst in this extraordinary event and its consequences. Russia for the first two decades of the 20th Century was embroiled in war, revolution, and civil war, so it wasn't until the 1920s that anyone performed a serious investigation of what had happened on that fateful day at Tunguska.

Then, in 1921, the Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, surveying meteorite locations for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, visited the Podkamennay Tunguska River basin, where he knew from his research that something big had occurred in 1908. Here, locals told him of the great blast years earlier that had knocked people over, flattened huts and blown away roofs in its wind. Some people had been deafened and become ill or been injured. Kulik managed to persuade the Soviet government to fund an expedition to the Tunguska region. Things moved slowly in those days, especially in the Soviet union, and Tunguska even today is hundreds of kilometres from a major road, so it was not until 1927 that Kulik’s team reached the region, where, much to their surprise, there was no crater, just a large region of scorched and flattened trees.


Pictured: Leonid Kulik

Family’s experience
People that they interviewed reported that for weeks around June 30th, 1908, they were able to read at night due to the lighting up of the sky, and the blast was felt for more than 80 kilometres (about 50 miles). Ethnographer IM Suslov interviewed a family who had been sleeping 40 km (about 25 miles) southeast of the blast site when the event occurred:

“The entire group was thrown down by the force of the blast and several knocked unconscious. The wife reported that when they awoke they found ‘...the forest blazing around them with many fallen trees. There was also a great noise." Some of the children described ‘A terrible storm,’ Suslov continued, ‘So great it was difficult to stand upright in it, [that] blew down the trees near their hut.’” Source

Microbarograph records show that the atmospheric shock wave from the blast twice circled the earth. A loss of transparency in the atmosphere was recorded in the United States by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and California's Mount Wilson Observatory.


Unsolved questions
Suggestions that the object was an asteroid raise the question of the lack of crater or stony fragments left at Ground Zero. Instead, what was left at Tunguska was an impact zone 50 kilometres (about 30 miles) in diameter – and many thousands of flattened trees.

There is another question to ponder: in the 1960s, investigators identified four smaller epicentres within the larger, each with its own radial pattern of fallen trees, and each presumably caused by individual explosions during the whole event.

Was this catastrophic event just a one-off? No, according to Russian Academician Vasiliev, who is on record as having said: “The Tunguska episode marks the only event in the history of civilization when Earth has collided with a truly large celestial object, although innumerable such collisions have occurred in the geological past. And many more are bound to occur.”

Return to Tunguska (1999)


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* Blogmanac | British Admission on Niger claim
Britain was forced to admit Friday that one of the central allegations against Iraq in last September's disputed weapons dossier was based on information from an overseas intelligence service rather than a British primary source. In a blow to the government's credibility, a Foreign Office mandarin admitted that a claim that Iraq had tried to procure nuclear material from an African country had come "from a foreign service".

William Ehrman, the Foreign Office's director general of defence and intelligence, told MPs on the foreign affairs select committee: "The intelligence came from a foreign service and we understand that it was briefed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2003."

Downing Street attempted to underline the threat posed by Saddam Hussein by claiming in last September's dossier that Iraq had attempted to acquire nuclear material from Africa.

Tony Blair recently refused to withdraw the explosive claim, insisting that the joint intelligence committee (JIC) had judged it "at the time to be correct". But the remarks by Mr Ehrman, who sits on the JIC, will intensify the pressure on the prime minister to disown the African claim in the dossier.

The admission will also fuel speculation that Britain placed the allegations about Niger in the public domain at the behest of the CIA or possibly Mossad.

Read at the Guardian

* Blogmanac | Torture suspect flown to Spain
In what activists hailed as a landmark for human rights worldwide, Mexico yesterday extradited to Spain an Argentine retired naval officer accused of atrocities during the nation's 1970s military dictatorship.

Mexican authorities handed over Ricardo Cavallo, who has been in jail since 2000, to Spanish police and Interpol officers to be flown to Madrid on a Spanish air force plane. Cavallo, 51, allegedly worked in the notorious School of Naval Mechanics in Buenos Aires, which served as a secret torture center under military rule, under which 30,000 Argentinians were killed or disappeared.

Source

* Blogmanac | Long Quest, Unlikely Allies: Black Museum Nears Reality

A national museum of African-American history and culture on the National Mall may finally come to fruition.

Read this fascinating story in the NYTimes

* Blogmanac | U.S. Again Uses "Enemy Combatant" Label to Deny Basic Rights
The Bush Administration's designation of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari national living in the United States, as an "enemy combatant" threatens basic rights safeguards, Human Rights Watch said. The U.S. Justice Department has announced that it is dropping criminal charges against al-Marri and that he will instead be held without charge by the U.S. military.

"The Bush Administration has once again done an end run around the criminal justice system," said Wendy Patten, U.S. advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "It is invoking the laws of war in the United States to justify locking people up without charge and without access to a lawyer. This kind of military detention has no place in a country committed to the rule of law."

Al-Marri is the third person held in the United States under military authority as an "enemy combatant."

More on human rights issues in the United States

* Blogmanac | Out with the smelly socks!
Smelly socks could one day be just a nasty memory thanks to nanotechnology. Scientists in South Korea have discovered a method of impregnating silver particles into the polypropylene widely used in textiles, which give it "excellent" antibacterial properties. The particles are around 30 nanometres across. (A nanometre is a billionth of a metre.)

They have managed to make safe anti-microbial fibres with a range of applications, including socks, carpets, napkins and surgical masks. Another company is already using nano silver particles in its under-arm deodorants.

[The Prince of Wales recently prompted the British Government to launch an independent investigation into nanotechnology after he voiced fears that tiny robots could one day reduce the planet to a "grey goo". Prey, a novel by Michael Crichton, envisaged a world where people are taken over by predatory nano-scale robots. However, Lord Sainsbury, the UK Science Minister, dismissed the Prince's concerns as mere "science fiction".]

Story

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* Blogmanac | US Death Toll in Iraq Passes 200

(Thank you, Yahoo! News, but what about the non-Americans these 'boys' have been killing en masse?!)

"BAGHDAD, Iraq - After days of intense searching by ground and air, U.S. forces on Saturday found the bodies of two soldiers missing north of Baghdad, as the toll of American dead since the start of war topped the grim milestone of 200." Read about the poor American soldiers (Support our boys!!)

Meanwhile (and wouldn't it be nice if Yahoo! News and other US media reported this?), the death toll of Iraqis is around 7,000. In Afghanistan the US Adminsitration killed more civilians than were killed in the World Trade Center, and now twice as many in Iraq. When will Shrub and Rumsfeld's 'Christian' revenge-terrorism ever end?

See the Iraq Body Count at Wilson's Almanac SiteMap (about halfway down the page) for latest figures of Bush's victims.

* Blogmanac | June 29 1613 | Shakespeare's Globe Theatre burns
The Globe Theatre in London burnt down as a cannon was fired for a scene in Shakespeare's Henry VIII.

Very shortly after the blaze, Shakespeare retired back to Stratford. The play being performed at the time was also called All This is True, supposed to be a revival of King Henry the Eighth – this we know from the contemporary ballad, On the Pitiful Burning of the Globe Play-house:



Out ran the knights, out ran the lords,
And there was great ado,
Some lost their hats, some lost their swords,
Then out ran Burbage too;
The reprobates, though drunk on Monday,
Prayed for the fool, and Henry Condy.
Oh! sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and yet
All This is True.

New Globe Theatre (modern reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe)
Matt Groening the Elder Henry VIII at Simpson Court
Tudor Humour

* Blogmanac | Lawnmower Drunk Loses License - more Midsummer Madness?



BERLIN (Reuters) - A German gardener has been fined and stripped of his license for driving his lawnmower while drunk, a court said last Tuesday.

The court fined the 45-year-old man 400 euros ($460) and banned him from driving all vehicles, including his mower, for three months after police did a check on him as he was parking the vehicle, which has a maximum speed of four miles per hour.

Source

* Blogmanac | THE INVISIBLE
The human cost of the 21st century's first war is already enormous. In addition to those who have died, staggering numbers have been detained around the world in violation of their human rights and international law. Paul Vallely investigates their fate, and asks whether this suspension of due process in the name of defending democracy can ever be justified.

Privately, the Americans admit that torture, or something very like it, is going on at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where they are holding an unknown number of suspected terrorists.

Al-Qa'ida and Taliban prisoners inside this secret CIA interrogation centre - in a cluster of metal shipping-containers protected by a triple layer of concertinaed wire - are subjected to a variety of practices. They are kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles. They are bound in awkward, painful positions. They are deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights. They are sometimes beaten on capture, and painkillers are withheld.

The interrogators call these "stress and duress" techniques, which one former US intelligence officer has dubbed "torture-lite". Sometimes there is nothing "lite" about the end results. The US military has announced that a criminal investigation has begun into the case of two prisoners who died after beatings at Bagram. More covertly, other terrorist suspects have been "rendered" into the hands of various foreign intelligence services known to have less fastidious records on the use of torture.

What is perhaps most disturbing about all this is that the US officials who have leaked the information have not done so out of a need to expose something that they see as shameful. On the contrary, they have made it clear that they wanted the world to know what is going on because they feel it is justified.

Read on at Independent.co.uk

"There is a grim irony in the fact that Amnesty International can now visit any prison in the whole of Afghanistan, except one, Bagram -- the one run by that great champion of openness and freedom, the United States."

* Blogmanac | Woodstock Spirit at Glastonbury?


Glastonbury fans enjoy sunshine


More than 133,000 fans have enjoyed sunshine and music on Saturday, as the second day of the Glastonbury Festival continues.

After Friday's showers, Saturday has remained dry for fans gathering to watch acts including legendary Jamaican reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, Supergrass and the Flaming Lips.

British rockers Radiohead will headline the main stage on Saturday evening.

Police have reported a fall in crime and an increase in arrests, which they attribute to being able to search festival-goers before they enter the site at Worthy Farm, near Pilton in Somerset.

Other attractions at the annual event, now in its 33rd year, included veteran Labour politician Tony Benn taking part in a debate on oil.

-- Continue here for the rest of the story, related links, pics and TV/radio shedules for the three-day celebration.

* Blogmanac | June 29 | Eve of St Peter -- more Midsummer madness
Tomorrow in the English Christian tradition is known as the Feast Day of Saints Peter and Paul, but it is often referred to as St Peter’s Day, and today is commonly known as St Peter’s Eve. It’s another night of Midsummer revelry.

In olden times, bonfires were burnt on this night, composed of contributions called ‘boons’, echoing the old pre-Christian, pagan custom of putting bones on the ‘bone-fire’. People danced with almost frantic pleasure on this night, with the men and boys jumping through the fire, not to show their prowess as much as to observe the ancient custom.

People would go walking about the towns much of the night. “Every citizen either went himself, or sent a substitute; and an oath for the preservation of peace was duly administered to the company at their first meeting at sunset. They paraded the town in parties during the night, every person wearing a garland of flowers upon his head, additionally embellished in some instances with ribbons and jewels” (Robert Chambers, The Book of Days).

In the middle ages, about two thousand men would parade through London's streets tonight, garlanded with flowers and bedecked with jewels. The ‘watchmen’ as they were known, were provided with ‘cressets’, or ceremonial torches carried in barred pots on long poles, and there were bonfires in the streets. (See modern use of a large cresset here.)

A poet, looking back from 1616, wrote:

The goodly buildings that till then did hide
Their rich array, open'd their windows wide,
Where kings, great peers, and many a noble dame,
Whose bright pearl-glittering robes did mock the flame
Of the night's burning lights, did sit to see
How every senator in his degree,
Adorn'd with shining gold and purple weeds,
And stately mounted on rich-trapped steeds,
Their guard attending, through the streets did ride,
Before their foot-bands, graced with glittering pride
Of rich-gilt arms, whose glory did present
A sunshine to the eye, as if it meant,
Among the creset lights shot up on high,
To chase dark nights forever from the sky;
While in the streets the sticklers to and fro,
To keep decorum, still did come and go,
Where tables set were plentifully spread,
And at each door neighbour with neighbour fed.

In 1510, England’s King Henry VIII came to watch the St John's Eve procession (June 23); a few nights after he came with his wife Catherine to see the procession on St Peter's Eve (this custom was also carried out on St Paul's Eve, January 24, and St Peter's Eve, June 28). However, later in his reign he banned it, probably in fear of such a large assembly of armed citizens. Patrick Collinson notes:

“‘Those days’ were already distant when this was remembered, in 1567. When, in 1568, a cleric of Birchington in Thanet ‘brought a faggot out of his chamber’ on St Peter’s Eve and lit the traditional bonfire this was a punishable offence.”


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* Blogmanac | Humour: Spell AC DC

Makes me so proud to be Australian.

(MP3 audio, 304kb)

Then there's International Smoking Day at b3ta.com

* Blogmanac | June 27, 1721 | ‘The Infant of Lübeck’

Christian Heinecken was born in Lübeck, Germany, and it was said that he spoke within a few hours of birth. By the age of ten months he could converse on most subjects; when a year old he could discuss most matters raised in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) and in another month had mastered the New.

At two and a half years of age he could answer any question put to him by scholars in ancient or modern history or geography, Latin or French. He became an international celebrity, and at the age of three was presented to King Frederik IV of Denmark, to whom he spoke Latin and French. Or, so it was said by a certain Herr Schoneich, his teacher.

His feeble constitution prevented him from being weaned until 1725 when he was four years old, at which time he died, as he had predicted.

* * * * * * *

Some other child prodigies

“At the age of four, Korea's Kim Ung-Yong published poetry, spoke four languages... and performed integral calculus on The World Surprise Show in Tokyo! Kim's Estimated IQ? 210. Among those with IQs of about 200: Emanuel Swedenborg, Goethe, John Stuart Mill, and former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer. (The IQ of author Marilyn vos Savant was once estimated to be as high as 228.)” Source

"Another of these pitiable prodigies was John Philipp Baratier, of Schwaback, near Nürnberg, born the same year as the Lubeck prodigy (1721-1740). At the age of five be knew Greek. Latin, and French, besides his native German. At nine he knew Hebrew and Chaldee, and could convert German into Latin. At thirteen he could translate Hebrew into French or French into Hebrew. His life was written by Formey, and his name appears in most biographical dictionaries." Source

Child Prodigies: A Poisoned Paradise?

In 1984, America’s youngest college graduate, Michael Kearney, informed his pediatrician, “I have a left ear infection”. Michael was just six months old.

William James Sidis (1898-1944)
"One of America's most famous child prodigies is also the most tragic. Aged 11, he became the youngest-ever person to attend Harvard. A professor's prediction that he would someday be the greatest mathematician of the century turned Sidis into a celebrity. But he suffered a nervous breakdown in his teens and spent the next two decades in semi-seclusion, performing menial clerical jobs until 1944 when, at the age of 46, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage." Source: TIME Asia: Prodigies - So Bright!

*?* Blogmanac | Aussie spies can now arrest and detain without charge

ASIO bill passes Senate
Spy agency can imprison 16 and 17-year-olds for up to a week
ASIO (Australian Intelligence Security Organisation -- the Aussie CIA) will be able to detain people who are not even suspected of having committed any crime, under sweeping new powers approved by the Senate last night, ostensibly for "anti-terrorism".

Now, you don't even need to be a suspect to face arbitrary detention for a week without charge. As in the United States recently, hundreds of years of traditional human rights such as habeas corpus and 'the golden thread of law' (innocent till proved guilty) are being flung aside by radically conservative governments in a contrived 'war against terrorism', which millions of people understand is a ruse to cover other agenda.

Conservative Opposition too
The Opposition party in Australia, the Labor POarty, an erstwhile left-wing party torn apart by disputes between dominant right-wing factions, has missed the opportunity to block the passage of this disturbing bill. The bill itself has received scant attention from the most concentrated media in the Western world (mostly run by two men, one of whom is Rupert Murdoch).

Never before have Australian spies had such police state powers -- indeed, they have had no police powers, as the Australian people have not permitted them. Like the Shrub administration, the neo-con econo-rat (economic rationalist) openly racist government of Prime Minister John Howard has spent millions on a propaganda campaign of fear to convince ordinary Aussies that they are under threat from Muslims.

"As you're walking out the door from your first detention you can be arrested and brought straight back in again," Greens Senator Bob Brown said of this chilling Act of Parliament.

"Any legislation that entitles a spy agency to imprison 16 and 17-year-olds for up to a week in breach of Australia's obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child should not be passed in this country and has no place on our statute books," Victorian Law Institute president Bill O'Shea said.

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More on this subject

Thanks to Baz le Tuff for this great original

*?* Blogmanac June 26, 1959 | Father Gill's close encounter

In one of the best documented and most celebrated UFO experiences of all time, Australian missionary Father William Booth Gill and the entire staff and clients of an Anglican Mission at Boianai, in the former Australian colony of Papua-Niugini, saw an aerial disk-shaped object and exchanged waves with four passengers on board. The ‘close encounters’ carried over into the next two days.

For some time, a spate of alleged UFO sightings had been reported by numerous people around the mission, and Gill’s colleague Rev. Norman EG Cruttwell had been keeping records and interviewing witnesses, while Father Gill himself had been dubious. Even a sighting by his assistant, Stephen Gill Moi, who claimed to have seen an “inverted saucer” above the mission at 1 am on June 21, had left Gill skeptical.

He wrote out a formal report on Moi’s earlier sighting and sent it to Rev. D Druiry in the Church of England (Anglican) Missions home office in Sydney, Australia. In a postscript, Gill added, “My simple mind still requires scientific evidence before I can accept the ‘from out of Space’ theory … I am inclined to think that many unidentified objects are more likely to be some kind of electrical phenomenon. I prefer to wait for some bright boy to catch one and exhibit it in Martin Place [main square in Sydney – PW].”


Waving to the strangers
This new sighting, with Gill present (though why the missionary’s testimony should carry more weight than those of the other witnesses is rather telling) began at around 6.45 pm on June 26 and lasted several hours, with Gill later estimating that length of the craft was similar to five full moons lined up end to end. The priest and at least 38 of his fellow-villagers saw four human-like figures moving about on the top of the object, occasionally disappearing below, and reappearing soon after. Later, Father Gill wrote:

As we watched it ‘men’ came out from the object and appeared on what seemed to be a deck on top of the huge disc. There were four figures in all, but only occasionally were all on view at once.

At about 7:30 pm, the disc ascended and was lost from view in the clouds. About an hour later, smaller objects appeared in the sky; then, at about 8:50, the larger one that Father Gill later referred to as the “mother ship” reappeared, and the large body of observers watched the UFOs until about 10:50 pm, when clouds once again obstructed the view. Thirty-nine witnesses including William Gill signed documents attesting to their experience.



On the following two nights, the UFOs reappeared and stayed above the village for hours at a time. Gill records that he and his companions even waved to the occupants of the craft, and on the third night (Sunday June 28) one of mission teachers flashed a torchlight at the UFO. In response, the craft “swung like a pendulum,” Father Gill wrote, “presumably in recognition ... it hovered, came quite close towards the ground ... and we actually thought it was going to land, but it did not. We were very disappointed about that.”

Following his experience, the priest wrote to a friend:

Dear David,
Life is strange, isn't it? Yesterday I wrote you a letter, (which I still intend sending you) expressing opinions re the UFOs. Now, less than twenty-four hours later I have changed my views somewhat. Last night we at Boianai experienced about four hours of UFO activity, and there is no doubt whatsoever that they are handled by beings of some kind. At times it was absolutely breath-taking. Here is the report. Please pass it round, but great care must be taken as I have no other, and this, like the one I made out re. Stephen, will be sent to Nor. I would appreciate it if you could send the lot back as soon as poss.

Cheers,
Convinced Bill



More
And more
Other UFOs in the general region of Papua-Niugini


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*Ø* Blogmanac | June 26, 1963 | I am a jelly donut

Ich bin ein Berliner.
US President John F Kennedy, on this day in 1963, in a speech in Germany

It's a famous quote, and just as well known is the 'fact' that in Berlin ein Berliner is a jelly donut. But is this so, or another urban whatchamacallit?

Yesterday I heard an interview with the man who wrote the words for JFK back in '63. He was Kennedy's intepreter in Berlin, and the Prez asked him to jot down the German for 'I am a Berliner'. When quizzed by the interviewer, this gentleman (I regret I don't know his name) answered, as the poor guy has no doubt answered a thousand times before, that he is in no doubt that Kennedy's audience knew what he meant -- which didn't really answer the question.

Can you answer it? I know there are plenty of websites you can google that will say Kennedy got it wrong. But what's the truth? Did Jiggin John call himself a jelly donut in front of thousands of adoring ... jelly donuts?

*Ø* Blogmanac | Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam ...
I get a lot of spam and it's increasing (I have myself partly to blame: my email address is now on literally thousands of web pages). So I'm very pleased that today I got three spams, all from different software manufacturers, offering anti-spam solutions, which i obviously need.

I have had five anti-spam spams in 48 hours. Is this a record? My previous personal best was a spam from a Bible seller, and a spam sent from America within 24 hours of the World Trade Centre massacre, offering me discount sewage disposal. Obviously someone in very deep mourning. What's your best spam?

Some pundits predict that email as a mode of communication will be ruined within five years at the current rate of spam growth. I'm interested in your views.

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Sorry Veralynne, the Devil made me do it!

Get the latest Harry Potter book at discount from the Blogmanac!

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 25, 1903 | George Orwell Centenary

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? … Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now? … The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
George Orwell, British novelist born on June 25, 1903; Syme, in 1984

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 25, 1842 | An Gorta Mor – The Great Irish Famine

A great calamity befell the Emerald Isle in the 1840s, leading not only to immense suffering, but also to a mass emigration that greatly affected many countries including my own. A very high proportion of Australians, including your almanackist, have Irish blood. Though my great-grandparents left the Old Country in the 1880s, many were the Irish settlers in Australia and their culture still exerts a very strong influence. Many of the immigrants joined the Australian Gold Rush of 1851, just as many Irish went to California two years erlier to become 'Forty-niners'.

On this day in 1842, The Illustrated London News reported on the famine in Ireland (An Gorta Mor).

“The foregoing illustration is intended to convey an idea of the state of desperation to which the poor of Galway have been reduced by the present calamitous season of starvation; and although, according to present appearances, there is every reason to rely on the goodness of Providence for an abundant and early relief, yet it is calculated that more than another month of suffering and privation must elapse before succour arrives. The scene represented above is an attack upon a potato store in the town of Galway, on the 13th of the present month, when the distress had become too great for the poor squalid and unpitied inhabitants to endure their misery any longer ...

"“The discontent of the sufferers had been aggravated by the unfeeling, and, there was some reason to suspect, the dishonest artifices of those who had food to sell. Farmers, known to have abundant supplies of potatoes, had not only refused to part with any portion of them at the present high prices, but had actually sent into the markets and made purchases, in order to augment the scarcity.” Source

It seems there will always be speculators. As I write, I am observing a daddy-longlegs spider working to entrap a struggling moth on my desk. He reminds me of the people who profit from the misery of others, the only difference being that a spider doesn't know any better.

More reports on An Gorta Mor, from The Illustrated London News
More reports on An Gorta Mor, from The Times of London

*Ø* Blogmanac | Betrayed
From the UK
"If, as Stanley Kubrick claimed, large states often behave like gangsters while small states often behave like prostitutes, then we may at least console ourselves that we have descended to a point where we are more whore than racketeer. But the sum effect is to leave us in a world where no one will listen to us. They know we have voluntarily surrendered our wish for an independent voice in foreign affairs. Worse, we have surrendered it to a country which is actively seeking to undermine international organisations and international law. Lacking the gun, we are to be only the mouth. The deal is this: America provides the firepower; we provide the bullshit."

["When I try to understand what's going on every morning, I tell myself there's been a military coup." - American diplomat.]

Read David Hare's full article at Guardian.co.uk

*Ø* Blogmanac | LMAO - Is someone pulling my leg?


New Zealand farmers will be taxed on the flatulence of their livestock in an effort to ensure that the country meets its Kyoto Protocol commitment to reducing global warming.

The government says around half of NZ's greenhouse gas emissions are produced by flatulent livestock. Each sheep - no matter how windy it may be - will be subject to a 9 cent (around three pence) levy or "burp tax", reports the New Zealand Herald. Cows attract a charge of up to 72 cents (25p). Deer and goat farmers will have to pay, too. But not everyone supports the plan. "That's overkill," said Meat New Zealand chairman Jeff Grant. "This is a public good rather than an industry good. It should be funded by the government, not farmers."

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Critics Slam Bush for 'Ignorant' GM Foods Comments
LONDON (Reuters) - A transatlantic storm is brewing over genetically modified crops, with the U.S. extolling the benefits of biotechnology and Europeans insisting on proof that "Frankenstein foods" really are safe to eat. In the latest salvo in what is turning into a bruising battle, President Bush accused European nations of contributing to famine in Africa because of their reluctance to accept GM foods.

But critics in Europe said his comments are more about promoting the biotech business than ending world hunger.

"He can only have been informed by the multinationals, the Monsantos of this world, to make a statement which displays as much ignorance as that," Patrick Holden, of the environmental group the Soil Association, told Reuters. Monsanto Co., the St. Louis, Missouri-based agribusiness giant, is moving to commercialise biotech wheat.

"It is nonsense," Holden added. "Even serious experts on GM will concede that there is no evidence that GM can make any greater contribution to feeding the world than existing agricultural science."

Friends of the Earth, echoed his comments and accused the U.S. leader of exploiting famine to sell GM products. "GM crops will not feed the world. Indeed making poor farmers dependent on biotech companies for their seed may only make matters worse," said spokeswoman Clare Oxborrow.

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 25 | Harry Potter Mania!
From Lisa:
[This Harry Potter thing is getting out of hand! -L]


Mail Carrier Suspended For Delivering Harry Potter Book
Postal Worker Asks Buyer To Return Early Copy

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A suburban Kansas City mail carrier said she was fired for accidentally handing out the latest Harry Potter book one day too soon.

Kenia Cooper said she was just doing her job when she picked up the daily mail from the Westport, Mo., post office where she worked, sorted her deliveries and left. But inside the stash was a single copy of the new Harry Potter book that had slipped past whoever divided up the mail.

The book was marked with a notice that said not to deliver it until June 21, but Cooper apparently didn't see it.

The woman who ordered the book, Connie Fifer, thought the early delivery was a mistake, but she opened it anyway. One of Fifer's coworkers read two chapters, but a few hours later, the fun was over. Fifer got a call that the post office wanted the book back.

"They said they delivered it early and made a mistake, and would I mind bringing the book with me to the front desk," Fifer explained.
The mail carrier eventually got the book back, but not without repercussions. Cooper was told to go home and not to return. Cooper said she missed hearing about the hype, which is why she never noticed the book among her deliveries.

"I'm paid to do a job; I did a job," she said. "It's a book -- it's fiction -- and this is my real life. This is not fiction. Me having to fight for my job is not fiction."

The post office claimed Cooper was only suspended, and that something like this likely wouldn't warrant firing. Union leaders were out of town and unavailable for comment.

Cooper's husband was recently laid off from Sprint.


[At the Oscars Michael Moore said:

"We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape, or the fiction of orange alerts."

But those "fictions" are creating very real pain in very real lives, both within the U.S. and around the world, and now even a children's novel is wreaking havoc! No. I have nothing whatsoever against the artistic work itself, just the hoopla and, now this. -v]

*Ø* Blogmanac | Wrestling the World: A Profile of Donald Rumsfeld
A very perceptive insight into Rummy, from ABC Australia.
Audio
Transcript

*Ø* Blogmanac | Get Flashed!
Tell Kraft you don't want to be part of their experiment! Flash animation

Beautiful/funny Flash animation

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 24 | Midsummer's Day

Midsummer dancing madness
In Europe, there were originally pagan celebrations with wild dancing. Midsummer Day was Christianised as the Feast of St John the Baptist, patron of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) in Germany. There, and German people thronged there on his day, June 24, for the dancing. In 1374 the Rhine flooded and the dancing of the peasants, whose lives were sorely afflicted beyond their normal poverty, went wild. The 'dancing madness' became known as St John’s Dance.

Alicante, Spain
Tradition says that the night of San Juan (June 24) is a magical one (in Rome it is said that witches take to the air) and anyone swimming in the sea or who washes his/her face with sea water at the stroke of midnight will preserve eternal beauty.

*Ø* Blogmanac | A book found in the stomach of a cod fish

Continued from yesterday (see below)

Vox Piscis and the strange case of the ichthiobibliophage
Part the Second

We saw yesterday that on Misummer’s Eve, 1626, when a Cambridge, England fishmonger cut open the belly of a cod fish, out popped a book containing a number of religious treatises, including Praeparatio Crucem or Of the Preparation to the Cross and A Lettre which was Written to the Faithfull Followers of Christes Gospell. The original literary detective work on this strange book was done by a scholar and theologian by the name of Dr Joseph Mede, a fellow of Christ's College Cambridge. But who wrote this book, which came to be reprinted in 1627 as ‘Vox Piscis’, and how did it get inside the cod?

Much of this is still a mystery. When the book was reprinted the preface was written by Thomas Goad, a Cambridge graduate and cleric who held the post of president chaplain to Archbishop George Abbot. Goad was also the rector of the Suffolk parish of Hadleigh and a canon in Winchester Cathedral. Goad’s preface attributed the writings to the early English reformer John Frith, who was burned at the stake for his faith on July 4, 1533. Frith’s great crime had been to distribute contraband Protestant books.

The book, Goad said, had been ‘a long time drowned in the Deepes of Lyn', but now, by the design of divine providence, were `brought backe againe to land', by `a strange living vessell’ to refresh ‘thirsty soules’ once more.

From detailed detective work undertaken by modern bibliographers, who examined the typefaces and could tell exactly which printing presses had been used in the book’s publication, we know that some, but possibly not all, of the book was indeed written by Frith. This he did while a prisoner in 1532, convicted of heresy during the period of immense religious social and religious upheaval in Europe – the Protestant Reformation.

John Frith was a follower of Protestant reformers Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus. In later life he was a close associate of William Tyndale, the first person to translate the Bible into English (seen as a radical and even heretical act by the Catholic church in those days).

Like the other protagonists of our fish’s take, as a young man Frith resided in Cambridge where he and firebrand mates such as Hugh Latimer, John Bradford and Thomas Bilney gathered informally at a pub known as the White Horse, popularly called ‘Little Germany’ because of the German Protestantism exciting the young intellectuals of the day, and there they drank a pint or two and discussed the works of Luther and other contemporary reformers of the Catholic church. In other words, they were a bunch of student radicals, and, as is the wont of passionate progressives in all countries and all times, they drew the attention of the authorities, and they were labelled heretics.

For his student activism, Frith, like his comrades, was thrown into prison. Not any ordinary prison. Their underground hell-hole, deep within not Cambridge but Oxford University, was a cellar. But not just any cellar. Frith and his colleagues were confined in a cellar used for the salting of fish – cod fish, no doubt, being chief amongst them.


Vox Piscis: or The Book-Fish: Providence and the Uses of the Reformation Past in Caroline Cambridge. (Critical Essay by Alexandra Walsham, 1999)
John Frith's final year

Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
You can receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email

*Ø* Blogmanac | Comedian could have wiped out the Royal Family


Peach dress, women's shoes, bin Laden beard and turban..... how did gatecrasher slip police?
The intruder who stormed Prince William's 21st birthday party could have wiped out the Royal Family if he had been a suicide bomber, shocked Palace insiders said last night. The only senior royal absent was Prince Edward, who is in Canada. A source said: "If this had been a terrorist attack, our monarch would now be Edward IX."

Last night Wills [Prince William] was said to be "absolutely livid" that the outrageous hoaxer cheated massive security. Posing as Osama bin Laden and dressed in a peach satin gown, fake beard, turban, wig, lipstick and red shoes, "comedy terrorist" Aaron Barschak leaped on stage at Windsor Castle and grabbed a microphone from Wills' hands.

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | I know it's hard to believe, but ...
War poll uncovers fact gap
Many mistakenly believe U.S. found WMDs in Iraq.

"WASHINGTON - A third of the American public believes U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons."

It's not really so surprising given the corporate ownership of American media.

Read the story

*Ø* Blogmanac | Five years!?
U.S. Senators Say Five Years in Iraq Is Realistic
Washington (Reuters) - Leading U.S. senators said on Monday they believed American troops could be in Iraq for at least five years and knowing the fate of Saddam Hussein and his sons was key for the future stability of the country.

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Devil leaps babies

Spain (Reuters) - A man dressed as the devil leaped over babies lying on mattresses on Sunday as the small Spanish town of Castrillo de Murcia held its traditional Corpus Christi celebrations. While many people across Spain celebrate the Catholic festival with processions and mystery plays, this northern Spanish town has for centuries chosen to protect its young from evil spirits with this unusual ritual. Dressed in a red and yellow costume, the man representing the devil was pursued around the town by a Catholic priest -- leaping over the babies in his flight while the anxious parents stood nearby.
Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Protests before Biotech Meeting
Sacramento, California - Hundreds of demonstrators descended on city streets to denounce a conference on genetically engineered agriculture even before it had begun. Chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read "We Don't Want to Eat Their Corporate Creations," protesters swarmed the streets Sunday around the state capitol and nearby conference center.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the conference convene at a time when the debate over genetically modified foods has reached a fever pitch. The United States is demanding that the World Trade Organization force the European Union to end its ban on genetically modified food.

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | The Tragedy of Africa
"Virtually all African countries were at one time the colonial backyard of some European power and most have not fared particularly well since achieving their independence. They have suffered a series of military dictatorships, or puppet governments designed to serve the interests of some Western country. Rapacious economic policies forced upon them by Western nations have helped to keep them on the thin edge of total collapse. In addition, they have allowed themselves to fall into the clutches of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. As if the foregoing were not sufficient, they seem to reel through a never-ending cycle of famine, drought, flooding, disease, plagues of locusts...

Africa cannot solve these problems on its own..."

Paul Harris at Yellow Times.org. Full article here

*Ø* Blogmanac | Now Bush blames failure to find WMD on looters!
"It has taken more than two months. But belatedly, from his Democratic challengers for the White House and in committee rooms on Capitol Hill, President George W Bush is starting to feel the heat of the controversy over Iraq's missing weapons stockpiles. In his weekly radio address yesterday, Mr Bush was forced to produce a new explanation of why the US has not found Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons. He told listeners that suspect sites had been looted in the closing days of Saddam Hussein's regime."

Read Rupert Cornwall at Independent.co.uk

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 23, 1626 |
Vox Piscis and the strange case of the ichthiobibliophage

A book found in the stomach of a cod fish

Part the First

At the markets in the university town of Cambridge, England, the air was full of the sounds of expressions of amazement and wonder when a fishmonger discovered something remarkable while cleaning a cod fish caught off the coast of King's Lynn.

A certain scholar and theologian by the name of Dr Joseph Mede, a fellow of Christ's College Cambridge, was taking a stroll through the markets as it was perhaps his custom to do on a Tuesday. Hearing the hubbub, he hurried over to see what the fuss was all about. His scholastic knowledge was particularly welcome amongst the many illiterate market stallholders and shoppers, for Mede could read and identify the tiny sextodecimo book that had just been cut from the belly of the cod fish.

The good doctor took a knife and carefully separated pages from each other. The fish’s digestive organs had completely consumed the pasteboard cover and many of the pages, converting them into a ‘gelly’. However, ‘the middle parts’ were reasonably intact and Mede was able to decipher the table of contents and the titles of two items, Praeparatio Crucem or Of the Preparation to the Cross and A Lettre which was Written to the Faithfull Followers of Christes Gospell.

Only an hour or two later, Benjamin Prime, who bore the title ‘the Bachelor's Bedell’, carried this unusual find to John Gostlin, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, and Master of Gonville and Caius College. Gostlin, writes a chronicler, ‘tooke speciall notice thereof’ and began an investigation into ‘the truth of the particulars’ – a truth that still eludes us today.

Half-dissolved and covered in gelatinous matter and slime, exuding a dreaful stench, the canvas-wrapped little volume (like the ichthiobibliophage, or ‘book-eating fish’ itself) became a celebrated part of literary history, the following year republished as Vox Pisces, or The Book-Fish, contayning three treatises which were found in the belly of a cod-fish in Cambridge market, on Midsummer Eve last.

Among the Cambridge scholars, and academics and clerics throughout the length and breadth of England, the Book-Fish, or rather the Fish-Book as we might better call it, aroused huge attention. One contemporary Cambridge wit wrote:

If fishes thus do bring us books, then we May hope to equal Bodlyes library.

(The Bodleian, at Cambridge’s rival, Oxford, was, and still is, one of the world’s great libraries.) Another joker said that ‘it might be found in the Code, but could never be entred into the Digest’.

Who wrote this remarkable book, and how did it find its way into the stomach of a fish? More tomorrow.



Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
You can receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 23 | Midsummer's Eve

St John the Baptist’s Eve, how clear and bright
Sinks the broad sun upon the waveless sea!
From Barton Wilford, St John’s Eve

Marriage prognostication
In Britain, it was the custom on St John’s Eve for an unmarried woman who was fasting to lay out a cloth at midnight with bread and cheese, and sit down as if to eat, leaving open the door to the street. Along would come the man she was eventually to marry; he would enter the room and salute her with a bow, then leave - or, so it is said.

Johnsmas fires should be lit at the moment the sun sets.
Traditional English practice

Gather ye herbs
It was customary in Britain and Europe on this night, St John’s Eve, to gather certain herbs, such as St John’s wort, vervain, trefoil and rue, all of which were believed to have magical properties. St John’s wort (hypericum) does, in fact, have scientifically proven anti-depressant qualities. Studies

If it rains on midsummer-eve, the filberts will be spoiled.
Traditional English proverb

*Ø* Blogmanac | Why are the Media Silent on General Clark's 9/11 Comments?

From FAIR.org

The June 15 edition of NBC's "Meet the Press" was unusual for the buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks -- starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.

Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response "go massive....sweep it all up, things related and not."

Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the flawed intelligence -- and therefore the war -- may have been a result of deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The public deserves a fuller accounting of this story.

If you wish to encourage media outlets to investigate this story, see FAIR's Media Contact list

Check this hilarious animation out. Thanks, Kayla, for sending.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Special Olympics kick off



Dublin - The 2003 Special Olympics kicked off in the Irish capital Dublin on Saturday with a big party and a parade of athletes from 160 countries who were to compete in nine days of events. A crowd of over 85,000 watched the opening ceremony of the world's biggest sporting occasion this year in the city's Croke Park stadium.

South African former president Nelson Mandela and boxing legend Muhammad Ali were among VIPs launching the games.

Mandela called the athletes "ambassadors of the greatest of humankind". He added: "You inspire us to know that all obstacles to human achievement and progress are surmountable. Your achievements remind us of the potential to greatness that resides in every one of us. May the world learn from your example."

It was the first time the Special Olympics for people with learning difficulties have been held outside the United States.

Teams from as far apart as Albania and Zimbabwe entered the stadium, accompanied by special guests. Muhammad Ali led out the US team, and former Irish soccer team captain Roy Keane led out China. There were loud cheers when teams from Sars-affected countries entered the stadium. They had almost missed the games as a result of travel restrictions. There was also loud applause for a small Iraqi team attending the games for the first time.

Among those entertaining the crowd were Irish pop bands U2 and the Corrs, along with solo artists Ronan Keating and Samantha Mumba, and the event featured the biggest ever performance of the international hit show "Riverdance".

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 22 | World Refugee Day

There are more than 22 million men, women and children who need our help today. They are the world's persecuted who have found the opportunity to escape their country.

International law defines refugees as people who are unable or unwilling to return to their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or belonging to a particular social group. What international law does not describe is the sheer courage and hope that characterize most refugees, wherever they are.

Refugees should be made welcome where they seek asylum, for they often constitute the best of all immigrants. Why? Because they are generally seeking asylum precisely for the fact that they are strong, resourceful, and committed people -- not shirkers, but men and women of courage who have stood up for their beliefs, or not hidden their faith or ethnicity from their persecutors. Don't we want such people in our community at least as much as people who are accepted by our governments merely because of how much money and property they own?

Eighty per cent of the world's refugees are women and children, and on this special day in particular, we celebrate the tenacity and quiet strength of the millions of mothers and wives who hold their families together in the most difficult circumstances. They are true heroes, and they deserve our respect. We also celebrate the men who have suffered so much yet remain strong. Let's not just welcome refugees, let's meet them and get to know them. Let's learn from their cultures -- I have become friends with many and because I have accorded them respect, they have taught me more than I can say, and boy, some of the great ethnic meals they've treated me to!

Let's write to our political representatives and the media and urge that refugee intake numbers be increased dramatically, even if it means reducing other numbers of immigrants. We need refugees as much as they need us.

Read about World Refugee Day

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Australia, under the extreme right-wing John Howard government, has a racist policy against refugees, keeping many hundreds of them in world-notorious desert concentration camps (such as Woomer, pictured at right) for year after year. Wilson's Blogmanac is dedicated to the 353 men, women and children who drowned in the SievX disaster because of Howard's policies. Even most Australians don't know about the SievX (pictured below), so please spread the word far and wide so that our national disgrace becomes known internationally.

Important links on the Australian refugee crisis -- not a crisis because of the asylum seekers, but for them.

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 22, 1957 | Early Beatles gig

The Quarrymen (later the Beatles) played one of their first gigs – on the back of a coal truck.

“It was on the 22nd June 1957 when they played on the back of a coal lorry to celebrate a street party. The story goes that the girls took a fancy to John, who had steeled himself with a few drinks, and the local lads got jealous and threatened the Band. They all had to hide in one of the houses until things had quietened down.” Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Aha! :: Synchronicity Central ::

Announcing a new forum and a place to log your coincidences, synchronicities, premonitions and similar phenomena, and those you have heard of or read about.

We've all had these experiences. Remarkable co-events and weird stuff that shred our minds or just make us wonder. Sometimes, it's a big "Aha!" Sometimes it's a bit spooky. You might have read such a story, and maybe you saw it on a website. Maybe your brother-in-law told you. No matter, Aha! is a place to jot them down and meet other people who also find such things interesting. I'm one of them and there are lots of us.

There's room for all sorts of weird stuff at Aha!, You can even log a premonition that hasn't been fulfilled yet, so when it does, you can prove that you didn't make it up.

Aha! is a project of Wilson's Almanac, and I really look forward to enjoying this fascinating topic with you. Tell us about your own private Twilight Zone experiences.

Log in and become a regular at Aha! :: Synchronicity Central :: See you at Aha!

*Ø* Blogmanac | Brave women stood up to Coalition of the Killing
This was a great interview by (my favourite) Phillip Adams on Thursday night. Three women politicans in governing parties from Oz, UK and USA, all of whom voted against the war. Highly recommended.
Claire Short from UK lost her job, as did Carmel Lawrence in Oz. Not sure about Barbara Lee who was the only one in US Congress to oppose the war. Adams interviews all three together.
Listen to the interview (Real Media)

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 21-22 | Solstice!
Sun enters Cancer, 4th sign of the Zodiac (June 21 – July 22)

Festival of Alban Hefin (Druids)
Festival of Litha (Anglo Saxon) Wicker man
Seventh Station of the year
Festival of Li, Chinese Goddess of Light

At Stonehenge, the heelstone marks the rising midsummer sun as seen from the centre of the circle.

Northern Hemisphere: Summer Solstice June 21 at 7:10pm UT
Southern Hemisphere: Winter Solstice June 22 at 5:12 am Australian EST

From bright'ning fields of ether fair disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent Summer comes.
Thomson: The Seasons (Summer)

Laylat al-saratjan/The Night of the Crab
The Copts celebrate the night (15 Ba'una) when the Sun enters Cancer, by hanging charms on their walls in order to drive away insects.

Is June 21 (Summer Solstice, Northern) ‘Midsummer’s Day’?
No. Traditionally, Midsummer is June 24, St John the Baptist’s Day, although it also refers to the week or so round about the Summer Solstice (21 June). Another name for the solstice of summer is ‘aestival’.

What are the solstices?
The solstices are the longest and shortest days of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, Summer Solstice (June 21 or 22) occurs when the sun is farthest north. In the Northern Hemisphere, Winter Solstice (round about December 22) occurs when the sun is farthest south. In the Southern Hemisphere, winter and summer solstices are reveresed, so my family, friends and I are enjoying Winter Solstice, or Yule, as it is known in the Celtic tradition. Meanwhile our northern friends are enjoying Litha.

Germanic Midsummer lore

A solstice and equinox calendar, Fajada Butte, New Mexico, USA
On Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, NM, Anasazi Indians 1,000 years ago used three stone slabs to create a still-useable calendar. On the four stations of the year, the sun shines through gaps between the slabs, either dividing or framing spirals carved on rocks behind.

Sacrifices of the Incas
In the city of Cuzco: on winter and summer solstices, sacrifices of children were made in olden days. Incas bathed in a sacred waterfall that was on one of 41 ceques or magical, invisible lines radiating out from the Temple of the Sun.

Solstice Project
ArchaeoAstronomy



Check out my article, How to make a sundial for your ceiling. Summer Solstice is a great day to begin your ‘spotdial’. All it takes is a small birdcage mirror worth a buck or two. When you have a working spotdial on your ceiling, why not send me a pic or two and we can share it with the Almaniacs.

Send a free Summer e-card

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

What does Solstice mean to you? Are you celebrating it this year? Leave a comment, I'd be interested to hear.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Myanmar - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi must be released immediately
Please add your name to Amnesty's online petition!

HERE

Amnesty International expressed its concerns at the news that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is being held in Insein Prison under the 1975 State Protection Law, Section 10(a). "We strongly reiterate calls on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi," the organisation said June 20.

"We also call upon the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to release U Tin Oo, National League for Democracy (NLD) Deputy Chairman, and the at least 130 people who reportedly have been held on account of their peaceful political activities after the incident on 30 May 2003."

Amnesty International is particularly worried by the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi is being held under an administrative detention law which allows people to be detained arbitrarily, without charge or trial, without access to legal counsel or judicial appeal for up to one year on order of the executive. These orders are renewable for a period of up to five years.

The use of torture in Myanmar, particularly in incommunicado detention, has been extensively documented by Amnesty International. While Daw Aung San Suu Kyi appeared to be in good health when she was seen by UN Special Envoy Razali Ismail on 10 June 2003, there remains a pronounced risk of torture and ill-treatment for the scores of others in detention.

Further information here and here

Just a couple of WWW funnies for your weekend:
I Can't Colour In
THREAT ALERT JESUS

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 20-28 | Hogueras de San Juan: the bonfires of St John, Alicante, Spain
In Alicante, Spain, bonfires involving truly artistic monuments, with figures satirising local people, are set up at this time and burned in a ceremony known as the crema.

Today's activities began in 1928 with their origins dating back centuries and even millennia to pagan pre-Christian times, as is the case with Solstice bonfire events all over the world. The festivities begin with the pregón (proclamation), following which huge satirical monuments of papier mâché and wood are set up all over the city tonight (plantà). On the night of June 24 (St John’s Day), known in Alicante as the Nit del Foc, following a huge palmera (a firework display that can be seen all over the city) at St Barbara Castle, the monuments are fuel for the cremà. Alicante hosts something like 200 bonfires and burning monuments, which are also customarily used to dispose of old furniture.

Several cavalcades parade through the city, including the Cabalgata del Foc, representing the cult of fire in different periods; the Coso Infantil, in which costumed children take part; the multicoloured Cos with a ‘flower battle’, serpents and confetti. The inhabitants of the city have a parade of bands as well as a folklore demonstration, in which the different regions of the province are represented.

All over the city are parades, processions, bullfights, musical performances, and sports events, as well as a firework competition and various religious rites, outstanding among which is the floral offering to Mary, the Virgin del Remedio, Patroness – and Mayoress – of the city of Alicante.

Juas, in grotesque caricature of this or that public person, are large cloth figures filled with sawdust, paper and similar materials. These are set alight at the climax of the festival at midnight on June 23.

Alicante’s San Juan festival continues until June 29, overlapping with the Feast of San Pedro, featuring colourful processions, fantastic fireworks and revelling in the popular barracas, makeshift fiesta houses in which locals and visitors are all welcome to join in the celebrations.

Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details

Bonfire links (British emphasis)
Also with a UK flavour: Bonfire Society Webring

*Ø* Blogmanac | Speak Out on Chechnya, Blair

Recent Human Rights Watch research and Russian government statistics show that the situation in Chechnya is steadily worsening, with some 60 people being "disappeared" every month. Russian officials have also recently admitted the existence of forty-nine mass graves, containing the remains of almost 3,000 people.

President Vladimir Putin is to arrive in London on June 24 for a three-day state visit. In an open letter to the British prime minister, Human Rights Watch called for Tony Blair to press for an end to abuses and to ensure accountability for those implicated in rights violations.

Read the open letter

Speaking of Patriarchy:

*Ø* Blogmanac | Ireland - 'Barbaric' operations on women

Stranglehold of (exclusively male) Church
New evidence has emerged that a "barbaric" operation, carried out as an alternative to Caesarean section, was practised on a much larger scale in Irish hospitals than previously thought. A support group of women who underwent 'symphysiotomies', which involves the permanent widening of the pelvis, has obtained figures which show that 348 of the operations were carried out in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda between 1950 and 1983. Several hundred such procedures were also carried out at maternity hospitals in Dublin, according to official figures.

Many of the women say their consent was never sought for the operations and they are now suffering from a range of conditions including incontinence, acute back pain and mobility problems.

Apparently there is evidence to show the operation was carried out for religious rather than medical reasons. Documents show some doctors feared women faced with the prospect of repeated Caesarean sections when giving birth might opt for contraception or sterilisation. The Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, however, says that while religion may have played a role in the practice, it was used chiefly as an alternative to the Caesarean section, seen as more dangerous 50 years ago.

The Taoiseach (PM) said today that the Minister for Health was examining a report from the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and would "bring forward his conclusions". Describing the practice as barbaric and mutilation, Sinn Fein's leader in the Dail, Mr Caoimhghin O Caolain said it was used because "a very strict Catholic ethos operated" in these hospitals that women "should go through this procedure rather than have Caesarean sections".

Sources: Irish Times and Parliament of Ireland

*Ø* Blogmanac | Aussie flasher on the loose
I've just put up a Flash-animated front door to the Scriptorium.

Let me know what you think, it's my first shot at this confounded software. I might never do another one, my brain hurts so much.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Why is the news all bullshit these days?

We all know modern journalism is pathetic. Not only do the journalists not know a criterion from criteria, drank from drunk or a clause from a participle, what they're reporting is mostly effete crap. Most intelligent people know it, and figures show that educated consumers are leaving traditional media in droves.

The question is, why are the news and current affairs stories so insipid, so conservative and so untrustworthy?

Phillip Knightley has been an investigative journalist for much of his 60 years of pushing a pen. In fact, he is the doyen of investigative journalists. If you read or listen to only one item of media analysis this year, tune into Knightley's online speech (transcript online as well), Reflections of a Warhorse. His fast-paced catalog explains some of the pressures faced by today's journalists, including corporate power, government coercion and stupid defamation laws. I strongly recommend this speech given earlier this year by a highly respected member of the fourth estate. It will not only give perspective to that nagging feeling that investigative reporting seems to have declined in recent years, it will help you shield yourself from the current state of affairs, and the current affairs of the State.

Read and/or listen to Phillip Knightley: Reflections of a Warhorse

*Ø* Blogmanac | Brother of Jesus: his ossuary a 'hoax'


"FUNNY BONES: Last November, Israeli consul general Meir Romem examined the James Ossuary during its unveiling at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The inscription on the ancient box has now been proved a forgery, Israel said Wednesday.

"JERUSALEM – The first archeological link to Jesus - a stone box said to hold the bones of his brother James - and a tablet detailing repairs to the ancient Jewish Temple are fakes, say officials of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

"The announcement Wednesday ended months of professional speculation about the veracity of the timeworn relics, hailed as discoveries of stunning religious, historical, and contemporary significance."

What 'Jesus hoax' could mean for Mideast antiques | csmonitor.com

James ossuary 'a fake' - Globe and Mail

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 19 | Niman Kachinas: Hopi Indian ‘going home’ ceremony
(Kachinas are spiritual messengers who listen to prayers of the priests and elders and convey them to the gods. They have human forms and distinctive personalities. Kachinas are benevolent in the main, if treated respectfully. They taught the sacred dances to a group of youths who became the first priests.)

A sixteen-day event begins around the time of the Summer Solstice. The Niman is one of the most solemn and dramatic of all Kachina rituals. It is time to say goodbye to the Kachinas who return home to the San Francisco mountains for another Winter. The Niman is similar to Christmas: children receive gifts from the Kachinas before they leave.

*Ø* Blogmanac | West Papua: Indonesian military atrocities
The struggle for independence in West Papua, one of Australia's nearest neighbours, continues.

"As the Indonesian military (TNI) is attacking civilians and burning schools in Aceh in the far west of Indonesia, they are committing similar atrocities at the opposite end of the archipelago, hidden in the remote highlands of West Papua."
Keep up to date at IndyMedia UK webcast news

*Ø* Blogmanac | Inquiry into accuracy of WMD intelligence

American and British readers will be pleased to hear that Australia is also currently embroiled in a controversy about its government's continuing lies to the people it 'represents', regarding the pretexts for its invasion of Iraq.

"An inquiry will be held into the accuracy of Australia's intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability before the outbreak of war.

"The inquiry will go ahead after the Democrats today supported Labor's call for a joint committee inquiry.

"The move followed concerns Australia could have gone to war on flawed intelligence information about Iraq's weapons capability.

"Coalition of willing allies the United States and Britain have already initiated inquiries into the issue."
Read on at Sydney Indymedia webcast news

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 18, 1178 | What did the medieval astronomers see?


About an hour after sunset, according to Gervase of Canterbury (c. 1141-1210), the famous medieval chronicler, a band of five eyewitnesses watched as the upper horn of the bright, new crescent Moon “suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out … fire, hot coals and sparks … The body of the moon, which was below writhed … throbbed like a wounded snake”. The phenomenon recurred another dozen times or more, the witnesses reported.

A long-held belief has it that a meteor collision witnessed by these 12th-Century Englishmen resulted in a violent explosion on the moon, so creating the moon’s Giordano Bruno crater, named after the 16th-Century astronomer burned at the stake for heresy in 1600. However, this notion doesn't hold up under scientific scrutiny, says Paul Withers of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
Read on