*Ø* Blogmanac | Totally Full of Crap Awards All 'Round


Two Items From Colleen:

Who the Hell Said That?
By Will Durst, AlterNet
December 11, 2003

And now it's time to play "Who the Hell Said That?"

1. "With a healthy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them."

A) Tom Delay, revealing his secret strategy to keep Republican Members of Congress in line when they express concerns about the Bush administration's rampant deficit spending.
B) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on his feud with Colin Powell and the State Department.
C) Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spokesman, H. D. Palmer, on cutting K-12 funding.
D) Lt. Colonel Nathan Sassaman, battalion commander of the forces occupying Abu Hishma, Iraq, explaining a plan to keep the village safe by encircling it in a wall of barbed wire.


2. "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

A) Donald Rumsfeld, articulating his frustration at the Coalition's inability to find Hussein's fabled Weapons of Mass Destruction.
B) Spokesperson for the legal team of Michael Jackson's accuser speaking either on behalf of his client's case or the King of Pop's missing nose cartilage.
C) California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife, Maria Shriver making a Freudian slip in defense of her husband's groping accusations.
D) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, disputing whether the West Bank wall Israeli soldiers are erecting exists because he's banned all photographs of it.


3. "Wal-Mart is the greatest thing that ever happened to low-income Americans."

A) W. Michael Cox, chief economist of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas.
B) W. Michael Cox, a man who obviously never tried to run a household paid minimum wage with little or no benefits.
C) W. Michael Cox, a man whose portfolio apparently includes absolutely no Kroger, Safeway, Jewel or Albertson's stock.
D) All of the above.


4. "I think gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman."

A) Former Vice President J. Danforth Quayle.
B) President George W. Bush.
C) California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
D) Reality Show Star Paris Hilton.


5. "We know there are known knowns: there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns: that is to say we know there are things we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns- the ones we don't know we don't know."

A) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during a briefing on Iraq.
B) My Uncle Bud after eight hours on a bar stool at Tony's Tavern watching an entire Sunday slate of NFL football.
C) AARP directors defending their decision to endorse Medicare reform even though it may end up costing seniors more money.
D) Iowa State Elections Chairman, Bob Roberts, explaining the state's arcane caucuses regulations.


6. "Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

A) Actor Tom Cruise on the decision to portray little or no blood in the battle scenes of his new movie "The Last Samurai."
B) Condoleeza Rice, referring to the official White House policy of preventing journalists from documenting returning body bags.
C) Russell Crowe's character, Jack Aubrey, in the film adaptation of Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander."
D) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, when questioned as to why the Pentagon refuses to provide kill figures for enemy combatants.


Answers are 1. D) 2. A) 3. D) 4. C) 5. A) 6. D)


Will Durst's 2003 Totally Full of Crap Award goes to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

SOURCE


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I especially love (NOT) the military attitude of "With a heavy dose of fear and violence . . . we can convince these people . . . that we are here to help them." I don't know if sentences can be considered oxymorons, but this particular bit of military intelligence -- itself an oxymoron -- seems to fall into that category. Should we laugh or cry? And does it really make any difference if we do either? Colleen


Totally FUBAR!

[This regardless of Sunday's reported discovery of Saddam. -v]

Bush's Iraq Policy: A Quagmire of Confusion
By Jim Lobe, AlterNet
December 12, 2003

As the Bush administration searches with increasing desperation for a viable "exit strategy," its so-called Iraq policy grows more muddled with each passing day.

The latest example – and an especially spectacular one – was when George Bush personally asked key European and other leaders on Wednesday to forgive tens of billions of dollars of Iraq's crushing debt. The very same day, the Pentagon announced on its website that companies from these countries will not be permitted to bid on 18.6 billion dollars in reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

Needless to say, the Pentagon's directive and its timing were unlikely to put the leaders of Russia, France and Germany – the most important of the excluded countries – in the mood to entertain the president's request

Read 'em and weep . . . or laugh--whatever

*Ø* Blogmanac | Captain Yee's Ordeal


New York Times
December 14

"The military's mean-spirited and incompetent prosecution of Capt. James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, illustrates the danger of allowing the war on terrorism to trump basic rights. After holding Captain Yee in solitary confinement for nearly three months, and smearing him with adultery and pornography charges, the military is now uncertain whether the documents whose confidentiality he is charged with breaching were even confidential. In the interest of justice, and of resurrecting their own reputation, military prosecutors should drop the case ...

"It is already clear how much harm the military's misguided prosecution has done to Captain Yee and his family. What is less obvious, but no less real, is the threat this sort of prosecutorial mentality poses to all Americans. The specter of terrorism cannot become an excuse for the government to railroad people first, and ask questions later."

Full editorial

*Ø* Blogmanac December 14 | Beginning of the Halcyon Days

During the Halcyon Days, the Mediterranean was supposed to stay calm. Halcyon is Greek for a kingfisher (‘sea-hound’). The ancient Sicilians believed that the kingfisher incubated its eggs for fourteen days on the surface of the sea, during which time, before the winter solstice, the waves were still.

Alcyone was a Greek demi-goddess, the daughter of Aeolus, the guardian of the winds, and Aegiale. She is sometimes regarded as one of the Pleiades. More often she was thought of as the daughter of Aeolus. She married Ceyx, son of Eosphorus (Morningstar) and the king of Thessaly.

They were very happy together, but then Ceyx perished in a shipwreck and Alcyone (‘queen who wards off [storms]’) threw herself into the sea. Out of compassion, the gods changed them into the halcyon birds. Since Alcyone made her nest on the beach, and waves threatened to destroy it, Aeolus restrained his winds and becalmed the waves during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the "halcyon days", when storms never occur. The halcyon became a symbol of tranquillity.

Pictured is Australia's Azure kingfisher.

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac December 13 | St Lucia/Goddess Lucina

Feast day of St Lucy of Syracuse

(Cypress arbor vitae, Thuja cupressioides, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint)

It’s December 13 and we see that the Solstice is close, whether we speak of the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, or Winter in the Northern. As today is one of the shortest days of the year in Sweden, the locals celebrate a festival of light (which is appropriate because the root for 'Lucy' in Latin, lux, means 'light'). On this day the youngest daughter in many households, dressed in white as ‘Sankta Lucia’, wearing a headdress of evergreen leaves and a crown of lit candles, wakes the rest of the family with coffee, rolls, and a special song. Swedes begin their Christmas celebrations with this day, and traditionally her patronal day marks the end of harvest.

St Lucy (283-304), with her associations with light, is the patron saint of people who are blind or have eye trouble. She was born in Syracuse, Sicily, the daughter of noble and wealthy parents, and was raised a Christian ...

Saint Lucy/Goddess Lucina
In the Roman Empire, Lucina was an epithet for Juno as "she who brings children into light". Lucia is still honoured on St Lucia’s Day as the girl wearing the candle crown, usually the first-born daughter of the house, is symbolic of pagan symbols of fire and life-giving light. Lucina was the goddess of childbirth who safeguarded the lives of women in labour.

Juno was the equivalent in Roman Mythology of the Greek goddess Hera ...

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Bush, you turkey


Turkeys on the Moon
Michael Moore

"Dear Mr. Bush,

"Well, it's going on two weeks now since your surprise visit to one of the two countries you now run and, I have to say, I'm still warmed by the gesture. Man, take me along next time! I understand only 13 members of the media went with you -- and it turns out only ONE of them was an actual reporter for a newspaper. But you did take along FIVE photographers (hey, I get it, screw the words, it's all about the pictures!), a couple wire service guys, and a crew from the Fox News Channel (fair and balanced!).

"Then, I read in the paper this weekend that that big turkey you were holding in Baghdad (you know, the picture that's supposed to replace the now-embarrassing footage of you on that aircraft carrier with the sign "Mission Accomplished") -- well, it turns out that big, beautiful turkey of yours was never eaten by the troops! It wasn't eaten by anyone! That's because it wasn't real! It was a STUNT turkey, brought in to look like a real edible turkey for all those great camera angles.

"Now I know some people will say you are into props (like the one in the lower extremities of your flyboy suit), but hey, I get it, this is theater! So what if it was a bogus turkey? The whole trip was bogus, all staged to look like "news." The fake honey glaze on that bird wasn't much different from the fake honey glaze that covers this war. And the fake stuffing in the fake bird was just the right symbol for our country during these times. America loves fake honey glaze, it loves to be stuffed, and, dammit, YOU knew that -- that's what makes you so in touch with the people you lead! ..."

Found at ollapodrida, a tres cool blog.

*Ø* Blogmanac December 12, 1731| Happy birthday, Erasmus Darwin

1731 Erasmus Darwin, English physician, scientist and poet, polymathic genius; grandfather of Charles Darwin and of Francis Galton, founder of eugenics; great-grandfather of George Darwin, Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge.

Erasmus was also an inventor, coming up with a steam car ("a fiery chariot"); a wire-drawn ferry; a horizontal windmill; and an artificial bird. He invented a speaking machine which could trick some people into thinking they heard real a person saying "mama" or "papa", a copying machine and a carriage steering system later used in motor vehicles.

Darwin was co-founder of The Birmingham Lunar Society, a small group of intellectual friends who met on the full moon. “The lunar men” included Joseph Priestley (preacher, politician and chemist, the first to discover photosynthesis and isolate the element oxygen); James Watt (‘father of the steam engine’); Matthew Boulton (engineer and chemist, business man backer of Watt); Josiah Wedgwood (mineralogist, chemist and potter to the Queen; related to Erasmus by marriage as Charles Darwin and his cousin Emma Wedgwood married).

Erasmus Darwin was the first to explain how clouds form and to describe the full process of photosynthesis in plants. As a young man he expounded the theory of biological evolution (as we have come to know it), later publishing E Conchis Omnia – ‘Everything from Shells’. In this work, the grandfather of the world’s most famous evolutionist expressed his belief that all life comes from a single microscopic ancestor, a radical idea that brought him condemnation in society and perhaps prevented him from obtaining the position of Poet Laureate.

Rejection by society did not stop him, and he wrote a long, precognitive poem, The Temple of Nature or The Origin of Society, tracing the progress of life from microscopic entities in primordial oceans through fishes and amphibians to humankind, as he calls us.

His ideas sometimes presaged those of his more famous grandson, Charles:

Some birds have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as the parrot. Others have acquired beaks adapted to break the harder seeds, as sparrows. Others for the softer seeds of flowers, or the buds of trees as the finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the moister soils in search of roots, as woodcocks; and others broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes, and to retain aquatic insects. All of which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply the want of food.
Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia Book I

... He was so corpulent he had to have a half-circle cut out of his dining table so his huge stomach would fit. Incongruously, perhaps, he also became the first Englishman to fly in a large-sized hydrogen balloon.


The 'Lunatics'
Around about 1765, Darwin helped to found the Lunar Society, a discussion club of a number of prominent geologists, chemists, engineers, theorists industrialists andscientists, who met regularly in the latter half of the 18th century. The society's name came from their practice of scheduling their meetings at the time of the full moon (the better light ensuring a higher attendance as generally the streets were unpoliced and very dark.). Meeting in, among other places, a house on a crossroads outside Birmingham, England, between them they managed to launch the Industrial Revolution, discover oxygen, harness the power of steam and pioneer the theory of evolution.

Venues included Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, and Great Barr Hall.

They were a very influential group in British science and industry of the time – amongst those who attended meetings more or less regularly were the following remarkable men:

Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Samuel Galton Junior, James Keir, William Murdoch, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt and William Withering.

More peripheral characters and correspondents included:

Sir Richard Arkwright, John Baskerville, Thomas Beddoes, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Anna Seward, William Small, John Smeaton, Thomas Wedgwood, John Wilkinson, Joseph Wright, James Wyatt, Samuel Wyatt.

Antoine Lavoisier frequently corresponded with various members of the group, as did Benjamin Franklin, who also visited them in Birmingham on several occasions.


This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today, including Iceland's Yuletide trolls and more on the Virgin Mary/Aztec goddess connection at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Light brought to a halt in scientific first

"(AP) -- Physicists say they have brought light to a complete halt for a fraction of a second and then sent it on its way, an achievement that could someday help scientists develop powerful new computers.

"The research differs from work published in 2001 that was hailed at the time as having brought light to standstill.

"In that work, light pulses were technically "stored" briefly when individual particles of light, or photons, were taken up by atoms in a gas.

"Harvard University researchers have now topped that feat by truly holding light and its energy in its tracks -- if only for a few hundred-thousandths of a second ..."
Source: CNbloodyN

*Ø* Blogmanac | BATTLE LINES BEIN' DRAWN -- War and Peace

"There is nothing new in the world except
the history you do not know." -- Harry S. Truman


The 9/11 "investigation"– sometimes priorities dictate
By Kerry Tomasi
Online Journal Contributing Writer


"My father's no different than any other powerful man.
Like a senator or president."

"You know how naïve you sound? Senators and presidents
don't have men killed".

"Oh. Who's being naïve, Kay?"

—Michael Corleone in "The Godfather"


Suppose you were a detective assigned to investigate a rather brutal murder, one in which the victim had been tortured for several days prior to being killed.

At the scene of the crime you get what appears to be a lucky break—the suspect's wallet seems to have been
'carelessly' dropped. It contains his name, address, and phone number, and is someone you recognize as having connections to an organized crime family.

Problem is, you also find your name and address in there, as well as those of your children, grandchildren, and all of your nieces and nephews.

The message is quite clear, and your priorities dictate. You pocket the wallet, and any other evidence you happen upon, and the crime goes unsolved.

Now suppose you were a congressman assigned to investigate the 911 terrorist attacks. As you begin, it becomes apparent that certain members of the US government had conspired to allow the attacks to occur. In fact, it's just lying there, slightly below the surface, right out in the open. You immediately realize you're dealing with the kind of people who would—at the very least, and simply to further a political agenda—look the other way while 3,000 civilians were murdered.

And if that wasn't troubling enough, you then get a 'friendly' visit from someone you've never met before, inquiring into how well your daughter is doing at that overseas university in Dorm Room 305, and if your nephew made it into that prestigious preschool at 735 S. 4th Street in Atlanta.

You might even get a little note in the mail—laced with a powdery substance—just to help you sort things out in your head.

The message is quite clear, and your priorities dictate. When the "investigation" is complete, no governmental complicity in the crime is revealed.

As Henry Kissinger once theorized (as related in Paul Krugman's book "The Great Unraveling"), when a revolutionary power seeks to overthrow an existing and stable system, it begins first by refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of that system, or it's rules. Those living within the system do not realize this, and therefore reject the notion that anyone would, for instance, disobey 'the rules' so blatantly and permit the murder of 3,000 people purely for political gain; even though such an action (or inaction) would hand the conspirators the cover to achieve virtually everything they could have ever dreamed of politically.

Anyone who tries to suggest that they would actually do such a thing, or attempts to find out if they did, is derided as an alarmist and unpatriotic by those within the existing system, and given subtle, or not so subtle, 'encouragement' by the conspirators to 'pocket the wallet.' Thus, the revolutionary power is able to proceed unencumbered, without fear of oversight or challenge.

Could this be where we are in this country right now? Does anything else make sense? [Emphasis added. -v]

What else would justify the silence and/or acquiescence of certain 'in-the-know' members of our society to the flagrant economic, environmental, and societal devastation going on today? Why are the Democrats, the media (those not controlled by the 'revolutionary power'), the intelligence community, and even traditional conservatives, so cowed by this movement? Why won't they investigate, or at least speak up?

It can't simply be that they're worried about losing their jobs, or want a big tax cut that bad. Not with so much at stake. There has to be something more sinister in play here. Something most of us thought could never happen in this country. Not on this scale anyway.

I know this all sounds somewhat cynical and a bit paranoid. That's probably because I am quite cynical and a bit paranoid these days. I've been paying attention—I can't help but be.

But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong.

And if I am right, we are truly in a dreadfully serious situation.


Addendum:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI)—Former Sen. Max Cleland, a Democrat, has been nominated by President Bush to serve on the board of the Export-Import Bank. As a result he will have to leave the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The statutes governing the panel, formally known as The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, bar anyone who holds a federal job, like being on the Ex-Im Board.

Cleland has been one of the more outspoken members of the commission, accusing the administration of delaying access to vital documents in an effort to run out the clock on its investigation.

My best wishes to Mr. Cleland, and all of his family members.

Sometimes priorities dictate.

SOURCE

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Truth, lies, and the legend of 9/11
Part 7 of 10 parts: Polishing the legend: A new 9/11 mastermind
By Chaim Kupferberg

December 6, 2003—With the foregoing background in mind, we are now in a
position to chronicle and analyze the final crystallization of the 9/11 Legend.

Continue here, go back to the beginning, whatever; just do it!

*Ø* Blogmanac | Promises made, promises broken . . . so, what else is new?

From DUG:

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
PRESIDENT BACKS OFF PLEDGE TO FUND GLOBAL AIDS FIGHT
The Daily Mis-Leader
By the Staff of MoveOn.org


The Wall Street Journal today reports, "President Bush plans to ask Congress for relatively small funding increases to fight AIDS and poverty in the developing world, stepping back from his highly publicized pledge to spend huge sums to help fight them." The President's decision is just the latest step in a calculated effort to slowly -- but surely -- abandon his own commitment to fully fund the global fight against AIDS. [Emphasis added.]

Just last year in his State of the Union speech, the President said "I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years...to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean. Seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many." At face value, it was an historic request, with Congress and AIDS activists ecstatic about the promise to pump $3 billion a year into combating AIDS throughout the world. U2 Singer Bono, who has been one of the leaders of the AIDS fight, "hailed" the President's speech, saying "If we can turn the president's bold long term vision into near term results we're excited," adding, "any delay in increased funding means more lives lost and an even bigger check in the future."

Unfortunately, as the LA Times reported, just five days later, the President introduced a budget in which he "only sought $2 billion for the year" for AIDS -- 33% less than he had promised. The Senate later voted to increase the President's request, and Bono visited with the President to urge him to keep his promise. Nonetheless, the White House "repeated its strong opposition to any funding beyond $2 billion" while claiming with a straight face that the President was doing all he could. When questioned about the discrepancy, White House spokesman Scott McClellan simply refused to address the issue, saying only "The President has shown unprecedented leadership in the fight against AIDS."

Read the Mis-Lead -->

*Ø* Blogmanac | Statue of Iconic Goddess Needs New Home



"CARACAS, Dec 13 [sic] (IPS) - María Lionza, goddess of the second leading religion in Venezuela, has emerged from the depths of the forests and waters that she has protected since the era of the Spanish Conquest, according to her followers, to end up smack in the middle of a bitter cultural debate.

"An estimated two million Venezuelans, of a total population of 24 million, are followers of María Lionza, but most also identify themselves as Roman Catholic, the faith of the vast majority in this country.

"For the past half a century, a cement statue of this goddess, protector of nature has dominated a stretch of grass along the main highway of Caracas. María Lionza is depicted nude and muscular, astride a tapir and lifting a pelvis bone -- symbol of fertility -- to the heavens ..."
Source
Another item via Pagan Prattle, with thanks.

I'll be moving house over the next few days, and all the shite that entails. My intention is to blog and do the ezine and Book of Days uninterrupted, as well as keep up with my correspondence. But you know how it is, moving house on a showstring. If I miss a beat, fret nyet, OK? When I get settled I'll post some pix of the river, bush, beach and farms around my new "country estate". Please bear with me while I cart boxes of books in 30-degree (Celsius) heat and 90% humidity LOL

*Ø* Blogmanac | World Human Rights Day

Amnesty International:

"USA: More state killing on Human Rights Day"

"On 10 December 1948, the international community adopted a vision of a world free from state killing and cruelty. What does it say about the USA's present-day attitude to such aspirations that it is set to mark the 55th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by killing two more people in its death chambers?

"Sadly, it is business as usual for US executioners. Last year, President George W. Bush proclaimed 10 December as Human Rights Day in the USA. Seven people were put to death there that week, designated by President Bush as Human Rights Week. This year, four people [are] scheduled for execution between 9 and 11 December.

"These calculated killings are casting a growing shadow on the United States in an increasingly abolitionist world. Today 112 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. The USA's political leaders should be promoting abolition in their country, too. Their failure turns to hypocrisy when they trumpet the United States as global human rights champion.

"On 14 January this year, President Bush, whose five-year governorship of Texas saw 152 executions there and whose presidency has seen the first federal executions since 1963, issued a proclamation promising that the United States will 'continue to build a culture that respects life'. On the same day, the USA carried out its first execution of the year, and has conducted 64 more since then ... "

For more information please see: USA: A lethal ideology: More state killing on Human Rights Day as 900th execution looms
For current and background information on the death penalty please visit the dedicated Death Penalty Pages

*Ø* Blogmanac | A Helpful Guide for Surviving an Australian Christmas

Australia: Hark the Herald angels sing — your complete guide to the festive season Downunder.

Advent: One of the oldest traditions of Christmas, in which the older generation get to vent their frustration at the commercialisation of the festive season, as expressed in the Ads. An event which is renewed by the changing nature of Christmas, Advent now involves parents complaining about how presents used to be made from a better grade of plastic.

Bethlehem: The birthplace of Jesus, who brought peace on earth and goodwill to all men. Located in a disputed area between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, just next door to Iraq.

Boxing Day: Traditionally the day after Christmas, both that in which unwanted gifts are rewrapped to be exchanged and the point in the holiday season in which tired and hungover relatives sharing the same house start punching each other.

Bush Christmas: Surprise bombing of Iran.

Christmas Eve: The unhappily married female colleague at the office party who, as you pause to take out photos of the triplets, asks you to pull out a loose thread from her skirt with your teeth, your hands being full and all.

Traditional Carol: Irritating, bossy relative who insists on digging up some obscure Christmas tradition and imposing it on the entire family, i.e., This year, as they do in Bratislava, we'll hit the small children with badgers and drink cheese through straws to signify the birth of the Saviour.

Charades: Behaviour relatives display towards each other from December 24-26.

Christmas Cracker: The office-bound relative who harbours ambitions to a career in stand-up comedy and helpfully relieves tension by telling jokes for six days straight.

Epiphany: The 12th day after Christmas, traditionally the moment when you feel a sudden and all-encompassing awareness, such as the recollection that your office has a glass wall (see Christmas Eve; everyone else did).

Hanukkah, Chanuakah, C'hanakkah: A trio of Jewish celebrations held on the same day close to Christmas. A Jewish theologian has this to say about it: It's a very important celebration to do with the temple or something, or maybe it's Egypt. Can I call you back? Orthodox and reformed Jews call it the Festival of the Seventh Night, while Liberal Jews term it Christmas.

Manger: Makeshift accommodation lined with straw and smelling of domestic animals. It is now thought that Mary and Joseph were staying in a friend's son's bedroom.

Kwanzaa: A ceremony of African origin, developed by African-Americans as a Christmas equivalent. However, critics accuse it of having none of the depth and real tradition of the Christmas celebration as rooted in Coca-Cola advertising campaigns of the 1920s.

Nativity Scene: Ugly three-way confrontation that occurs in September (see Christmas Eve).

Prince Albert: The man responsible for popularising much of the Christmas activities which we now regard as traditional; also what your 16-year-old daughter announces she got her boyfriend as a present this year.

Santa's Little Helper: The big fat one you toke out back before diving into the second hour of the conversation about how great Pauline Hanson is.

Season's Greetings: Get out of the way ... That's mine ... Get out of the #%@! way ... I wanted the deluxe model ... Get out of the #%@! way you *&##$@! &!ing $$%! ... Go ##@!$@#! %$%!@#*&;! @$#!

The Turkey: Kim Beazley.

Stuffing: Simon Crean.

The Pudding: Sweet, suety mass set alight and then carved up wi ... Yes, you're way ahead of me, it's Beazley again.

Three Wise Men: Traditional Christmas figures, whose title derives from the fact that they spent the entire holiday season away from home. The wise men brought gifts to the infant Jesus, which consisted of:

Gold: Traditional present for an infant in 0th century Judea, although many complained it was a poor substitute for a jewel-encrusted ark of the covenant or the head of Salome (see Advent).

Frankincense: Low-rent Babylonian fragrance, the equivalent of picking up a stick of Brut 33 on Christmas morning and wrapping it in the car.

Myrrh: Actually the third wise man was drunk and this was not a gift, simply the only thing he said all night. Experts believe he may have brought a Black and Decker workbench.

Yuletide Log: That which is passed on December 27, after the ingestion of eight pounds of turkey, stuffing and Kim Beazley.

I'd recommend adding some hard core sun block and your favourite hangover cure to the list.

Wiser men decided that it was time to skip the pudding - The Sydney Morning Herald, 6th December 2003.

Via:The Pagan Prattle, a cool site

*Ø* Blogmanac December 10 | August Spies, Armand Hammer: No relation

1865 August Spies, German-born American labor activist, one of the Haymarket anarchists framed and hanged; victim of anti-anarchist repression.

All the men were found guilty: Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg and George Engel were given the death penalty; Oscar Neebe, Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab were sentenced to life imprisonment. On November 10, 1887, Lingg committed suicide by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth. The following day Parsons, Spies, Fisher and Engel were executed.

The Haymarket Square Bombing, May 4, 1886: A bomb killed seven Chicago, USA, police officers as they attacked demonstrators at a rally protesting police brutality the previous day at McCormick Reaper Works. On June 26, 1893, Neebe, Fielden, and Schwab, not already hanged by the state of Illinois the previous day, were pardoned by Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld. The show trial and convictions were a travesty, but this effectively ended Altgeld’s political career ...

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1990 Armand Hammer (May 21, 1898 - December 10, 1990), CEO (Occidental Petroleum), all-round villain, died at 92.


Regrets and recriminations only hurt your soul.
The Armand Hammer philosophy

New York-born Dr Armand Hammer led a most extraordinary life as an American businessman and a confidant of US presidents and Communist dictators. As a youth, he met Lenin and was the first capitalist to gain a business concession in the USSR; during the 1920s he was a courier for the Soviet government to the American Communist Party.

The new Marxist-Leninist regime in the USSR gave Hammer the rights to sell old Czarist paintings in the West, and he amassed a fortune as a young man. Many American and other art galleries and institutions as well as private collectors still own Russian masterpieces that the Communist regime and Armand Hammer shipped out of their rightful homeland.

His autobiography painted him as a philanthropist and worker for peace, though other biographies portrayed him as a liar, a Communist propagandist (and possibly an espionage agent through several US administrations), a bully and a briber. He always seemed to skirt prosecution, perhaps because his fortune and fame protected him, though he did come under investigation for a bribery scandal in Venezuela where he had oil concessions. A man of immense energy, he created the multinational giant Occidental Petroleum after he was 65 years old, and worked till 91 years of age.

In his autobiography he boasted that when he bought the corporation that owned Arm and Hammer Baking Soda Company, he was fulfilling a childhood dream of owning his namesake. He wrote that his father Julius Hammer had named him after a character, Armand Duval, in La Dame aux Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, fils. In fact, according to a biographer, his former press agent of many years, Armand Hammer was named after the arm-and-hammer insignia of the Socialist Labor Party that became, under Julius's leadership, the Communist Party of the USA.


These are just small snippets of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Buddhism intersects with Christianity in the Middle Ages

Saints Barlaam and Josaphat are the main characters of a 7th-century Christian legend, a favourite subject of writers in the Middle Ages – but the Catholic Church now acknowledges that they are entirely fictitious.

Although Barlaam and Josaphat are included in the Roman Martyrology (November 27) and in the Greek calendar (August 26), the story is actually a Christianised version of a legend about Siddhartha Buddha and the details, while slightly different, are in broad terms similar in Indian, Ceylonese and Tibetan texts.

I didn't have this story written for the November 27 Book of Days page, but it's there now. I think it's quite fascinating, so I'm not waiting till next November to tell you it's there. I hope you enjoy it.

*Ø* Blogmanac December 9 | Virgin Mary or Aztec goddess?

Feast Day of St Juan Diego, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and the goddess Tonantzin
From Mexico comes a quaint story involving a goddess and the Roman Catholic Church’s holiest lady, Mary, mother of Jesus. On December 9, 1531, a 57-year-old Mexican Indian farmer by the name of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an Aztec who had converted to Christianity, was minding his own business as he walked to early morning Mass, passing by the hill known as Tepeyac, between his village and Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). 

Juan Diego was born in 1474 in the calpulli or ward of Tlayacac in Cuauhtitlan, which was established in 1168 by Nahua tribesmen and conquered by the Aztec lord Axayacatl in 1467, and was located 20 kilometres (14 miles) north of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).

Tepeyac had for centuries been of significance to the people of what is now called Mexico – the Aztecs and their descendants – because it was the site of a shrine to the goddess Tonantzin. Tonantzin (pictured), associated with the snake goddess Coatlique (perhaps cognate with the Judaeo-Christian Eve), was worshipped in the Winter Solstice celebrations at around this time of year.

Tonantzin wore a white robe covered in feathers and seashells, which adorned her as the goddess promenaded among the worshippers and was ceremonially killed in a scene reminiscent of the apparent death of the sun of winter. The goddess was also known by the name of Ilamatecuhtli (‘a noble old woman’) and Cozcamiauh (‘a necklace of maize flowers’).

As Juan Diego walked to Mass (some sources say he was walking to the shrine of the goddess), he heard celestial music and the sound of beating wings. Presently, a maiden appeared to him, dressed in the attire of an Aztec princess, a lovely apparition who, speaking to him in his native Nahuatl language, introduced herself to the startled peasant as Maria, the Mother of God ...

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | If you watch no other TV this year ... watch this

"A compelling documentary, almost haunting at times, which takes one of the biggest political bones on the current global landscape (broadly, the war on terrorism and, specifically, its impact on Afghanistan) and chews it to pieces.

"While the public relations machinery of Western governments recycles positive imagery as a way of allaying fears about the conflicts which have engulfed the world, journalist John Pilger reports from the front line of what appears to be a new and frightening cultural and political conflict.

"Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, is a city reduced to rubble. Much of the damage, reports Pilger, has been done not by the Taliban but by the US-backed warlords who now run the country. The government functions on less than $US300 million and there is no budget for reconstruction.

"Of the millions in aid which poured into the country, only a fraction of it has been spent rebuilding the country and - astonishingly - Pilger claims a large slice of it has been spent on military rebuilding.

"Deposing the Taliban may have brought music, education and some freedom for women back to Afghanistan, but you have to wonder if there has been any real victory in a country which, in parts, still subjects women, caught outdoors with an unrelated man, to a 'chastity' check.

"Coupled with the re-establishment of the opium industry and the fact that Afghanistan's US-backed president never leaves his office without his 42 US Special Forces bodyguards, you have to ask just who is running the country?

"From there, the program broadens into an examination of the 'truth and lies' in the war against terrorism, including the training of terrorists and the funding of terrorism.

"The program is astonishing. The information it presents is as disturbing as it is compelling and, undoubtedly, some of its claims will sound long and loud after this hour ends."
Source


You won't want to miss John Pilger's interviews with some top American State Department and military officials who seem to have no idea of what's happening in the world. Then there is a former top CIA official, a friend of George Bush Sr, who has fascinating insights to what he said were always called "The Crazies" ... people such as Perl and Wolfowitz. When Pilger asks him if he agrees with Norman Mailer that the USA has entered a pre-fascist era, he says "I hope so". Because he thinks America is already in a fascist era. It's chilling, as is the whole documentary by Australia's best-known doco journalist.

You can watch it here for free online with Real Media, thanks to the good folks at Informationclearinghouse.info Please view it and spread the word.

*Ø* Blogmanac December 8 | Festival of Neith, ancient Egypt

In Egyptian mythology, Neith was a psychopomp, the beautiful but fierce predynastic goddess of war and weaving, was the goddess of the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and the patron goddess of Zau (Sau, Sai, Sais) in the Delta whose temple was at Sais on the Nile.

Ancient tradition held that the city of Sais was founded by the Greeks before the flood, and Greeks were kindly treated when in this city. As the mother of Ra, the Egyptians believed her to be connected with the god of the watery primeval void, Nun. Shrouds worn by the mummified deceased were said to be gifts from Neith. She was often portrayed holding a set of bow and arrows, occasionally a harpoon.

She was linked to with a number of goddesses including Nephthys, Isis, Bast, Wadjet, Nekhbet, Mut, Anouke and Sekhmet. As a cow, she was linked to both Nut and Hathor. She was also linked to Tatet, the goddess who dressed the dead, and was thus linked to preservation of the dead. Her son, other than the sun god Ra, was believed to be Sobek, the crocodile god ...

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there. There's also plenty on John Lennon, who was killed on this day in 1980.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Bhopal activists hacked?

http://www.bhopal-justice.com/ was a link in my December 3 ezine story (also posted at the Book of Days for Dec. 3) about Bhopal. A reader has informed me that the link sent him to what he referred to as an "adult site". I haven't bothered to closely check out the link I was sent to when I hit http://www.bhopal-justice.com/, but it sure looks like the Bhopal justice people have been hacked by someone or other. Thank you to the reader, whose name I've forgotten unfortunately, who alerted me.

Announcing Corrigenda
From today, I have placed a page at the Scriptorium called Corrigenda where I have alerted readers to the bad links. At Corrigenda I will make notifications of annoying things like that, and any errors that I have found and corrected, or important amendments made, following publication in Wilson's Almanac ezine or anywhere else. Corrigenda also has a Tagboard like the one at the top-right of this page. There, all readers are welcome to make comments and advise of errors and so on. That's for the ezine and the Scriptorium website, of course. If you want to make comments on the Blogmanac, there are plenty of opportunities on this page.

The reason for Corrigenda is that, while I can correct things on this blog, I can't amend anything kept in the Yahoo! Groups archive of the ezine. And, less importantly, search engines only index every few weeks, so there might be things showing on, say, Google, that are weeks old and contain incorrect info. It's a fine point, but I think this is worth doing. I don't want people quoting the Almanac's mistakes. So please drop into Corrigenda, say "g'day" and let me know of any errors or suggestions. You're very welcome to tell me when I'm wrong.

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

The item in Wilson's Almanac ezine, by the way, said this on December 3:

Dec 3, 1984 In Bhopal, India, more than 20,000 people were killed (over time) and hundreds of thousands injured when the Union Carbide factory leaked 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate. The US Government later blocked extradition of Union Carbide officials facing criminal prosecution in India. UC paid about $500 compensation for each victim, while denying responsibility for the accident. Greenpeace and other activists have been arrested trying to clean up the site.

*Ø* Blogmanac December 7, 1985 | Bye bye Graves

1985 Robert Graves (July 24, 1895 - December 7, 1985), English poet, novelist (I, Claudius; IV Claudius; Claudius the God), mythographer, critic and historian, died in Deya, Majorca, Spain. Graves wrote more than 140 works.

In 1946 Graves re-established a home in Deya, Majorca, and he married Beryl Hodge in 1950 and went on to a series of affairs and lesser amours with his 'muses'. In 1948 he published the controversial The White Goddess in which he explored and expounded upon a central theme: that "true poetry" or "pure poetry" has inextricable links with the ancient cult-ritual of the White Goddess and of her Son and deals with goddess worship as the prototypical religion. In 1961 he became Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, a post he held until 1966.

Just two snippets from today in the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days ... and here's another:

Happy birthday, Noam!
Born on this day in 1928: Noam Chomsky, linguist, anarchist, social critic, activist. Critic in the manner of the great IF Stone – and just as ignored and vilified by the establishment.

Chomsky learned a lot about linguistics from his father, William. Among his many accomplishments Chomsky is most famous for his work on generative grammar, which he developed from his interest in modern logic and mathematical foundations ...

*Ø* Blogmanac December 7 | St Columba and the first sighting of Nessie

Columba is the source of the first known reference to the Loch Ness Monster. According to the story, in 565 he came across a group of Picts who were burying a man killed by the monster, and brought the man back to life. In another version, he is said to have saved the man while the man was being attacked, driving away the monster with the sign of the cross ...

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | If you haven't already, meet Barry Crimmins

From A-Changin' Times (ACT):


Yippee! Some more good news!!! Our friend, Barry Crimmins, whose quips often fill this space [Words and Works at ACT -v], is a writer and commentator for the
new liberal radio network out of Boston. They (or we) couldn't ask for a better guy--the format is "comedy and content" and Barry is the cream of the crop of the genre. I can't wait to hear his words and works on a daily basis. Way to go, Barry!



This message from Barry:


Fellow Rabble,

Did you see W in the bulletproof box at the Pageant of Peace? Some jokes come pre-written.

Two major developments to report:

My upcoming book from Seven Stories Press has a title.

"Never Shake Hands With A War Criminal" should be out in time to help make the case against electing Bush (just this once) next fall.

The other development can be found in the Dean Johnson story from today's Boston Herald. I hope these two items help to explain why I've been less prolific than usual in recent weeks. A big year is headed our way and the required preparations are ongoing and extensive.

With warm wishes from a cold mountaintop,

Barry Crimmins


More from Barry:

W's Proudest Planks

Barry summarizes George W. Bush's strong suits in this essay originally read (available in audio version or text version)on the Christmas Comedy Coup Players 9/4/03 audio assault on WBAI (99.5 FM -- Pacifica in NYC). Judging by Barry's remarks, the Committee to Reappoint the President (CRAP) will have to fix a lot more than the Florida vote to keep their boy in office.


Want more?

More QUIPS

To join the CrimQuips mailing list please click: Crimquips homepage on Riseup

*Ø* Blogmanac December 6 | Will the real Santa Claus please stand up?

Saint Nicholas's Day: The origins and folklore of the Santa Claus myth

Nicholas (Nikolaus) (c. 270 - 345/352) became a Bishop of Myra in Lycia, Asia Minor when quite young. From this fact arose the old European tradition of Boy Bishops, who reigned from December 6 to 28, in a parody of church officials. More of that later.

Among Christians, he is also known as the "Wonderworker". Several acts of kindness and miracles are attributed to him ...

Saint Nikolaus or St Nicholas is celebrated in several Western European countries. His reputation for gift giving comes partly from a story of three young women who were too poor to afford a dowry for their marriages: as each reached a marriagable age, Nicholas surreptitiously threw a bag of gold into the house at night. Some versions of the legend say that the girls' father, trying to discover their benefactor, kept watch on the third occasion, but Nicholas dropped the third bag down the chimney instead. For his helping the poor, St. Nicholas is the patron saint of pawnbrokers; the three gold balls traditionally hung outside a pawnshop are symbolic of the three sacks of gold.


This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | 'Now I've Heard Everything' Dep't

Consumerism's tentacles keep reaching further into the lives of Westerners. Now, clubs exist for 'mall walkers' – people who not only love to walk, they love to do it in shopping centres. Mmmm, now there's a great way to spend an idle hour!

If you feel like taking some exercise and some window shopping simultaneously, this site will guide you, and Tips for Mall Walkers might come in handy. Need therapy? Here's a great link.

*Ø* Blogmanac December 5 | Happy Faunalia

Festival of Faunalia, Roman Empire, celebrated in honor of Faunus, the Roman version of the Greek god Phaunos, or Pan.

The Faunalia was commemorated in rural areas, as a celebration of Nature and animals. The people celebrated this festival with a dance performed in triple measure, as danced by the priests of Salii, the priests of Mars. Faunus was the son of Picus, whom Circe turned into a woodpecker for spurning her love, and grandson of Cronus (Saturn). On his tomb in Crete, according to Robert Graves (The Greek Myths, 1955), was the epitaph, “Here lies the woodpecker who was also Zeus”. Both Pan, the Greek god of the wild woods, and Hermes were also associated with this bird, and all three are rain-making shepherd gods, says Graves. Faunus was worshipped as the god of fields and shepherds, and as a god of prophecy.

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Attention, America!

From DUG:

The IRS Claims New Patriot Act Type Powers
to Punish Political Dissenters

By Robert R. Raymond


In a precendent-setting case, the IRS wielded new power
to punish the political speech of those who "espouse views"
the government considers "inconsistent" with government-
held beliefs.

In a hearing originally closed to the public in a secret tribunal on a military island, but moved to a public location after protests from the press and the public, the IRS wants to wield this power against a former IRS whistleblower, who was forced to resign upon his discovery of fraud in the agency.

After monitoring and taping the whistleblower's appearances on Sixty Minutes, talk radio shows, and political publications where he rebroadcast his findings of IRS fraud, the IRS initiated this inquisition against their former whistleblower. [At right: One very fear-filled fear mongerer. -v]

This new power may find new political targets soon enough.

The IRS, through the small office of "Director of Practice," claims the authority to wield carte blanche authority over all the other powers of government -- the authority to monitor, surveil, and eavesdrop on political dissenters, the authority to pry into the private financial records of banks, businesses, and taxpayers, the authority to conduct secret investigations under a criminal grand jury, and the authority to censure political dissenters by branding on them a badge of infamy and stripping them of governmentally-protected licenses.

In short, under the guise of a "practice" investigation, the IRS claims the right to wield all intrusive and invasive powers of government available.

A "license" to practice before the IRS -- even for people who have never requested such a license or actually practiced before the IRS, but are given one as a matter of law if they are accountants -- "licenses" the IRS to conduct private audits without notice to the taxpayer, confer with criminal prosecutors without disclosure, and bring special
"disbarment" proceedings against disfavored dissenters, even if the alleged "disreputable" conduct has nothing to do with any "practice" before the IRS.

The IRS now claims it can use these so-called "practice" investigations of anyone who Congress licenses to practice before the IRS -- regardless of whether they actually practice before the IRS -- to surveil the public appearances of dissenters, eavesdrop on the political conversations of dissenters, benefit from secret grand jury investigations, hold secret conferences with the criminal investigators, surreptiously tap the private database of taxpayer information, including taxpayers who merely have some financial "connection" to the accused, audit the political dissenter's personal financial records, and use all this information against the dissenter in the "practice" proceeding.

Under the guise of a "practice" investigation, the IRS can ignore all the normal procedural protections against an illicit audit while it conducts such an audit.

Simultaneously, the IRS can ignore all the legal protections afforded a person accused of a crime while conferencing with the people conducting a criminal investigation.

Indeed, the IRS can even ignore the sunshine laws, as the records of such "practice investigation" are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, as are grand jury proceedings.

The IRS claims it can exercise this authority in a secret proceeding without allowing a person the opportunity to cure any alleged mistakes, the opportunity to prepare a defense by knowing the exact facts they are accused of, without any opportunity for discovery, without any opportunity to call witnesses necessary for their defense, without any opportunity to cross examine their accusers, without any opportunity to testify at their own hearing about the merits of their position, without being forced to testify against themselves without such an assertion being held against them, and without even an opportunity for a hearing on the evidence.

This power of this little office with a Napoleonic vision goes even beyond the Patriot Act type authority and stories of FBI monitoring of war protestors.

Too Hoover-ish to be true in modern America?

Just read the case of the IRS against Joe Banister scheduled for a "hearing" -- a hearing where the IRS prohibited Banister from introducing any witnesses or presenting any evidence as to his defenses, and even discussing the sincerity, the truth or the "reasonableness" of his positions -- on December 1 in the city by the bay, in the Tax Court chambers of the federal courthouse in San Francisco.


History is being made.


Robert R. Raymond is the past Independent candidate for the U.S House of Representatives for Wisconsin's 5th District in the 2002 elections.

Please forward to any interested parties.


SOURCE

Joe Banister's web page

Sierra Times Homepage

*Ø* Blogmanac | So funny I forgot to laugh!

From Colleen:

As Lily Tomlin's little girl character used to say,
"And that's the twoofthphbbbttth!!!"


The Grownups Have Left the Building
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
December 2, 2003

AUSTIN, Texas – Call them – irresponsible ... Call them – unreliable ... Throw in – undependable, too ... Yes, it's undeniably true – the Congress of the United States makes Bart Simpson look like Averell Harriman.

The grownups have left the building. Good grief, what a horror show.

Just when you thought you'd seen the worst of the scams . . . .


* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Who Tried To Bribe Rep. Smith?
Stop Protecting Him, Congressman.
By Timothy Noah, Slate

Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., says that sometime late Nov. 21 or early in the morning Nov. 22, somebody on the House floor threatened to redirect campaign funds away from his son Brad, who is running to succeed him, if he didn't support the Medicare prescription bill. This according to the Associated Press. Robert Novak further reports,

On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, [Rep.] Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.

Where are the RICOH laws when we need 'em?


* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Colorado Justices Overturn Voter Districts
By the Associated Press

Redistricting case could influence 2004 national elections

In a decision that could have national implications, the Colorado Supreme Court threw out the state's new congressional districts Monday because the GOP-led Legislature redrew the maps in violation of the constitution. The General Assembly is required to redraw the maps only after each census and before the ensuing general election -- not at any other time, the court said in a closely watched decision. A similar court battle is being waged in Texas. [Emphasis added.]

Under the ruling, Colorado's seven congressional districts revert to boundaries drawn up by a Denver judge last year after lawmakers failed to agree.

The same power grab in my state gives Repugs seven seats!

*Ø* Blogmanac December 4 | Feast day of Saint Barbara

St Barbara was a beautiful maiden from Asia Minor; her father Dioscorus imprisoned her in a high tower, where she was tutored by philosophers, orators and poets, and Origen and Valentinian converted her to Christianity. In folklore, her imprisonment has led to her association with towers, then the construction and maintenance of them, then to their military uses.

Dioscorus brought many suitors of his choosing but by then Barbara had lost all interest in marriage. Once, when she refused one of his unfair requests, he grew enraged and she turned a flock of sheep into a plague of locusts.

During many years in the tower, Barbara obtained her food and laundry by way of a basket on a rope. One day, a stranger put a book in the basket from which Barbara learned about the new religion. Barbara so longed to know more about Christianity that she grew ill and her father sent for a doctor but the doctor turned out to be, in fact, a priest, and Barbara was baptised ...

St Barbara’s weather
In Germany on St Barbara’s Day, it is the custom to cut Barbara twigs from fruit or nut trees and to place them in a warm place. Weather prophecies are made depending on the date and extent of the blossoms that come. Every member of the family puts his or her Barbara twig into water so that it will have blossoms on Christmas day. The child whose branch has the most blossoms on Christmas is supposed to be Mary's favourite. The vase or glass containing the St Barbara twigs may be placed on the family altar.

The hoped for date of blooming is Christmas, according to a tenth century legend that said that all the trees blossomed and bore fruit on the day Jesus was born.

St Barbara’s Day, Lebanon
Christmas season is said to begin with the feast day of Barbara, and wheat is today’s symbol. A special dish of kahmie is served. The head of the household will tell the legend of St Barbara as the wheat is being prepared. Blackburn and Holford-Strevens (Oxford Companion to the Year, Oxford University Press, 1999) tell us that in southern France, especially in Provence, wheat grains are soaked in water, placed in dishes and allowed to germinate from this day. The wheat is carefully tended, because if it grows quickly, it is an omen that crops will prosper in the coming year. Also on this day, cherry branches are brought into the house and placed in water, prognosticating good luck in the coming year if they bloom by Yule (December’s Winter Solstice).

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Barbara, Babel, barbarians and confusion
In the symbolism of Barbara, we have lightning or fire, and a tower side by side. From the very earliest printed Tarot cards, one card shows a tower struck by lightning, with human beings falling from it. Its title is ‘The Tower’, although early on it was often called ‘Fire’, ‘Lightning’, ‘Thunderbolt’ or ‘The House of the Devil’, or sometimes ‘Hell’.

Psychologist Carl Jung attached importance to the Tarot, regarding its cards as representing archetypes, fundamental types of person or situation embedded in the subconscious of all human beings. The similarity of the Barbara legend and the symbolism of The Tower card (lightning juxtaposed with a tower) is striking and seems to indicate more than fortuitous association. Among numerous interpretations, The Tower stands for catastrophic and irreversible change, and the whole scene, including the falling bodies, suggests confusion and even panic.

Twin Towers
If the tower, fire from the sky, and falling people are indeed strong archetypes in the collective unconscious, little wonder it is that the September 11, 2001 tragedy at the Twin Towers in New York resonated so deeply with people around the world. Many people have wondered why Americans reacted so strongly to that event (far larger numbers of people are dying around the world each day in situations as dramatic and tragic), and it might be that the answer to this puzzle is not simply that Americans value the lives of Americans more than those of other peoples (often seen as ‘barbarians’), and it is possible that we might look further than the cynical uses to which ‘America’s Reichstag Fire’ was put by the US Administration and media. The ‘tower-fire-people falling’ image’s power might go much deeper than this.

The card’s fire or lightning shooting down from the heavens, indicates divine punishment, bringing to mind thoughts of the Tower of Babel and its destruction by God. According to a story in Genesis Chapter 11, the Tower of Babel was a tower built by a united humanity in order to reach the heavens. To prevent the project from succeeding, God confused their languages so that each spoke a different one and the work could not proceed. After that time, people moved away to different parts of the earth. The myth was used to explain the existence of many different languages and races. Babel has become a potent symbol of overambitious projects destined to end in confusion. The word Babel has several meanings. It is the name of a city, which translates to ‘the gate to god’, and in Hebrew there is a similar sounding word, which means confusion. In English, the word 'babble' is obviously similar.

One notes the similarity of ‘Babel’ to the name ‘Barbara’, she of the tower, and also the possible connection of both to the word ‘barbarian’ ...


This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Governments must tackle the "pain merchants"

Amnesty International
2 December

"Governments' failure to control the expanding trade in and use of security equipment is contributing to the incidence of torture and ill-treatment, reveals Amnesty International in its new report 'The Pain Merchants'.

"The latest research by the human rights organization highlights how a wide range of police and prison services are misusing old technologies and being encouraged to use new ones despite a lack of rigorous testing to establish if they are consistent with international human rights standards:

· Steel batons with spikes have been offered for sale at a police equipment fair in China.

· A metal and plastic projectile fired by a police officer permanently injured a woman in Switzerland in March this year, leaving fragments in her face which cannot be removed for fear of paralysis. This occurred before any other means of control had been attempted.

· More than nine tonnes of leg irons (an implement banned by UN rules for the treatment of prisoners) were exported from the USA to Saudi Arabia during 2002.

· Since the report went to press AI has discovered a South African government tender notice of 31 October 2003 calling for bids for the supply to the Department of Correctional Services of leg irons and belly chains, as well as electronic riot shields.

· The UK government has authorised trials on Britain's streets of the taser gun -- which delivers a 50,000 volt electric shock through two darts fired from a distance, or can also be used up close as a stun gun. In AI's opinion it has yet to publish full medical tests on the taser's effects.

· Sedative chemical incapacitating agents such as the one which killed more than 120 hostages when Russian security forces ended a siege in a Moscow theatre last year should be banned unless it can be proved that people will be protected from any indiscriminate or arbitrary effects.

"'Just because security equipment may be described as 'less than lethal' does not mean it cannot be abused, nor that it cannot injure or kill, said Brian Wood, Amnesty Internationals expert on security equipment. "We are extremely concerned that in many countries devices are being authorised for use on the population without sufficient investigation of their effects on human rights.' ...

Background:
Amnesty International reported torture by police or security forces in 106 countries last year.

There are now at least 856 companies in 47 countries involved in the manufacture or marketing of weapons described as being a "less than lethal" alternative to firearms, many of which easily lend themselves to torture.

Stopping the Pain Merchants, take action!

For more information see "The Pain Merchants: Facts and Figures"

THE PAIN MERCHANTS -
Security equipment and its use in torture and other ill-treatment
The full report online

*Ø* Blogmanac | EU accused of covering up its anti-Semitism report

Irish Times, 3 December

"EU: The World Jewish Congress yesterday made public a disputed anti-Semitism report kept under wraps by the European Union.

"The Congress accused the EU of not facing up to anti-Jewish sentiment among Muslim immigrants in Europe.

"The WJC and Jewish community organisations in the 15-nation EU put the report on their websites even though it has not been released by the EU's European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), which commissioned the study.

"The report was also posted on at least one European news website, that of Danish television station TV2 (http://gfx.tv2.dk/images/Nyhederne/Pdf/report_en.pdf).

"The EUMC has denied accusations in the European press that it had shelved the report because it singled out Muslim immigrants and pro-Palestinian groups as the main culprits.

"'We think the failure of the EU to release it until now was an act of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice,' said Mr Elan Steinberg, executive vice-president of the New York-based WJC. 'To be candid, I think they are not prepared to deal with the sensitive subject of anti-Semitism among Muslims, who constitute Europe's largest minority.'

"The WJC and the affiliated European Jewish Congress said the EUMC report was being published in English on websites including those of the French umbrella group CRIF (www.crif.org), Britain's Board of Deputies of British Jews (www.bod.org.uk) and the Central Council of Jews in Germany (www.zentralratdjuden.de)."

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Bits and bobs that caught my eye ...

Rumsfeld Ramble Wins 'Foot in Mouth' Award
[But Arnie is learning fast]

LONDON (Reuters) -- "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's curious statement at a press briefing was named on Monday as the year's most baffling comment by a public figure.

"Rumsfeld, usually renowned for his uncompromising tough talking, was awarded the 'Foot in Mouth' award for a confusing message which probably left his audience in the dark as to its meaning, Britain's Plain English Campaign said.

"'Reports that say something hasn't happened are interesting to me, because as we know, there are known unknowns; there things we know we know,' Rumsfeld told the briefing. 'We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.'

"John Lister, spokesman for the campaign which strives to have public information delivered in clear, straightforward English, said: 'We think we know what he means. But we don't know if we really know.'

"Rumsfeld, whose boss President Bush is often singled out by language critics for his sometimes unusual use of English, took the booby prize ahead of a bizarre effort from actor-turned politician Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"'I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman,' was the odd statement from the new California Governor.

Source

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New Anti-Drug Weapon: Bras and Thongs

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- "They have tried aerial assaults and stiff jail sentences. Now Colombian officials have a new and unlikely weapon to combat the cocaine trade: push-up bras and thongs.

"Some 900 peasant women in Colombia are set to make racy lingerie and sell it to French supermarket chain Carrefour under a U.N.-backed program aimed at encouraging impoverished farmers and their families to stop growing drug crops.

"'We thought it was a very original idea. These are regions where there are drug crops and people need legal jobs,' said Thierry Rostan of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Bogota.

"Despite a fierce U.S.-backed campaign to spray drug crops with herbicide and impose longer jail terms, Colombia remains the world's No 1. producer of cocaine. Poor farmers, many of them coffee growers gone broke, have turned to drug crops to make a living.

"The lingerie, which includes bras and lacy panties, will be made at clothing and shoe plants in the southern coffee-rich province of Cauca, which has seen a spike of cocaine crops due to the collapse of world coffee prices."

Source

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Palestinian Baby Born in Bethlehem Draws Crowds

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) -- "A baby born in Bethlehem is drawing crowds by the thousands. Palestinians in the West Bank town revered by Christians as Jesus' birthplace have been thronging to the adjacent Aida refugee camp for a glimpse of the 11-day-old infant many are calling a 'miracle baby.'

"The boy has gained attention for being born with a large birthmark across his cheek that roughly forms in Arabic letters the name of his uncle, Ala, a Hamas militant killed by Israeli troops after he was alleged to have planned a suicide bombing."

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Eureka Stockade Day, Australia

1854 The Battle of Eureka Stockade, an uprising of gold miners against the State of Victoria, Australia; six troopers and 34 miners died in the civil revolt by gold miners against the officials supervising the gold-mining regions of Ballarat. Although the revolt failed, it has endured in the collective social consciousness of Australia.

Eureka has been variously described as the birthplace of Australia's democracy, republicanism and multiculturalism. Its heroes include an Italian writer, a freed American slave, a former German soldier and sundry American democrats, Irish rebels and British chartists.

The miners held a series of huge peaceful meetings demanding fairer treatment (their main complaint was about miners’ taxes), but following the murder of a miner, those calls for non-violence were pushed aside. A 27-year-old Irishman, Peter Lawlor, who'd never before addressed a public meeting was thrust into leadership; his first word: “Liberty”. The flag the miners flew, bearing the Southern Cross constellation, is still a national symbol of anti-authoritarianism.


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*Ø* Blogmanac December 3 | The naughty feast of Bona Dea

Men need not apply

At around December 3, and also around May 4 (though as early as May 1; called the Tarentia), the ancient Romans commemorated the “Good Goddess”: Bona Dea, which is the most popular name by which the goddess Fauna or Fatua (Fate) was known. She is also an aspect of the goddess Artemis Calliste, the Lily of Heaven. Angitia, a deity of the Marsii might have been the same goddess, and the Good Goddess is also identified with Cybele, Maia, Ge, Ops, Terra, Tellus, Semele, Marica and Hecate, and was thus a fertility and earth goddess. Her priestesses grew medicinal herbs and the sick were tended to in the gardens outside her temples. She was associated with the cornucopia, snakes and coins and her image frequently occurred on ancient Roman coins.

It was said that her father, Faunus, (known to the Greeks as Pan), had tried to seduce her but failed, despite having got her drunk on wine and having whipped her with a myrtle branch. Eventually, he father turned himself into a serpent and in that form succeeded in penetrating his daughter. Another legend says that Faunus was her husband and became incensed at Fauna's drunkenness, so he killed her, but then deified her ...

Not a lot is known about the nature of the Bona Dea mysteries. We do know that a sacred serpent appeared alongside the goddess and that her tabernacles were covered in vine leaves. The Roman satirist Juvenal said that the rites were orgiastic. A pig was sacrificed (a sow is the usual sacrifice for deities such as Ceres and Tellus), wine under the name of milk was offered to the goddess, the congregation danced to the sound of harps and flutes. Plutarch wrote that myrtle was excluded from the private use in the cult at home, because it was sacred to Venus and could have overtones of sexual impurity, and Macrobius tells us that myrtle was banned from use in the temple ...

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Catholics 'should challenge Church'

Irish Examiner, 2 December

"Catholics have been urged to challenge their local priests over controversial Vatican claims that condoms cannot prevent the spread of Aids.

"Nothing less than a grassroots Catholic rebellion is needed to counter the 'misleading and dangerous' claims, according to Liberal Democrat Euro-MP Chris Davies.

"His call came as fellow Euro-MPs tabled a motion in the European Parliament urging EU governments to denounce the claims as unacceptable.

"The cross-party motion, signed by MEPs from Italy, Holland, Greece and the UK, says millions of lives are being put at risk by a declaration from senior Vatican spokesman Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo ...

"The World Health Organisation has already described his views as 'dangerous' in the face of a disease which has killed 20 million people."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac December 2, 1793 | Coleridge becomes Comberbeck

1793 English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 - July 25, 1834) enlisted in the Light Dragoons, fleeing his creditors.

Coleridge used the alias Silas Tompkyns Comberbeck, to retain his initials. A legend has it that when a drill sergeant asked, “Whose dirty rifle is this” Coleridge asked in return, “Is it very, very dirty?” The sergeant answered that it was. “Then it must be mine,” Coleridge replied. His only real service was in a military hospital, from which possibly he found the imagery for the dead sailors in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Later, after his parents had paid off his commission, at Cambridge University he came into contact with political and theological ideas then considered radical. Motivated by the heady political and intellectual atmosphere of the early years of the French Revolution, he dropped out of Cambridge without a degree and joined the Oxford poet Robert Southey (the two poets later married two sisters, Sarah and Edith Flicker) in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian communist-like society in the wilderness of Pennsylvania, called ‘pantisocracy’, to be established on the banks of the Susquehanna on land bought by the radical Joseph Priestley after his exile from England. Southey later became a conservative and was appointed Poet Laureate.

Coleridge’s life was plagued by opiate addiction.

Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner


This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Global Warming Still a Priority -- Just Not for U.S. Prez

League of Liberals Showcase Nominee Reminds us that Without Our Mother Earth, Nothing Else Matters

Damage -- Highlighting On-Going Problems Faced in the World Today


Category: Humanitarian / Endangered Species / Environmental
Year: 2003
Title: Global Warming Catastrophe - New Evidence
Full Story: Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment

Global warming over the next hundred years could trigger a catastrophe which rivals the worst mass extinction in the planet's entire history, according to new evidence unearthed by scientists at Bristol University.

The researchers have discovered that a mere six degrees of global warming was enough to wipe out up to 95% of the species which were alive on Earth at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago. Up to six degrees of warming is now predicted for the next century by UN scientists from the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if nothing is done about emissions of the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, which cause global warming.

Related Article: Guardian Unlimited: Shadow of Extinction: Only six degrees separate our world from the cataclysmic end of an ancient era.

*Ø* Blogmanac | The Internet Patriotic to Whom?

Expanded Patriot Act Reach Would Hit The Net, Too
By Charles Farrar

WASHINGTON - A bill approved by Congress last week to extend the reach of the Patriot Act would expand the FBI's business document and transaction power to cyberspace stations like eBay, Internet logs, and Internet service providers, and without requiring a judge's approval.

It's part of the new bill's redefinition of the term "financial institution" and "financial transaction," according to Wired, and allows the FBI to get such records by handing itself a national security letter saying those records are relevant to a terrorism investigation.

"The FBI doesn't need to show probable cause or consult a judge," the magazine said. "What's more, the target institution is issued a gag order and kept from revealing the subpoena's existence to anyone, including the subject of the investigation."

This bill follows a stalled attempt earlier this year by the Justice Department to write and push the so-called "Patriot II" act, but a leak of the draft provoked such an outcry that the department backed away from that proposal, but Wired said the newly passed bill involves one of Patriot II's most controversial aspects.

According to Duke University law professor Chris Schroeder, that shows those who wanted to expand the FBI's powers didn't want to stop despite the hoopla over Patriot II. "They are going to insert these provisions on a stealth basis," Schroeder told Wired. "It's insidious." [Emphasis added. -v]

He has an ally in the Center for Democracy and Technology's executive director, James X. Dempsey. "On its face, it's a cryptic and seemingly innocuous amendment," he told the magazine. "It wasn't until after it passed both houses that we saw it. The FBI andd CIA like to try to graft things like this into intelligence bills."

But don't tell those things to House Intelligence Committee chairman Porter Goss (R-Florida), who calls the new definitions of financial institutions and financial transactions bringing them up to date "with the reality of the financial industry. This provision," Goss said in a House floor speech, "will allow those tracking terrorists and spies to 'follow the money' more effectively and thereby protect the people of the United States more effectively."

Protect them from what -- strip clubs? The current issue of Newsweek, which hit the stands Nov. 24, includes a report saying that a little-enough known Patriot Act portion already redefined "money laundering" to the point where the FBI is suspected of using it to investigate anyone it pleases on pretexts having little to do with terrorism investigations. [Emphasis added. -v]

A recent case nicknamed Operation G-String, in fact, found the FBI using the money laundering provision to investigate whether the owner of a Las Vegas adult club was trying to bribe top city officials. They used it to look at all the financial records of those officials, Newsweek said. And that isn't all, potentially.

"Treasury Department figures show that this year the Feds have used the Patriot Act to conduct searches on 962 suspects, yielding ‘hits’ on 6,397 financial records," the magazine said announcing the Nov. 24 issue. "Of those, two thirds (4,261) were in money-laundering cases with no terror connection. Among the agencies making requests, Newsweek has learned, were the IRS (which investigates tax fraud), the Postal Service (postal fraud) and the Secret Service (counterfeiting). One request came from the Agriculture Department -- a case that apparently involved food stamp fraud." [Emphasis added -v]

Source of reports on mis-use of new laws

Related article: "Are You A Patriot?" by John Kaminski