* 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

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 18, 1037 | the death of Avicenna

The death of Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina (known often by the corrupted Latin version of his name, Avicenna), the Persian philosopher, encyclopedist and physician whose works The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, also known as the Qanun, were highly influential in the Middle East and Europe in medieval times. He was born in 980.

*Ø* Blogmanac | The patriarch made me do it
Photographs of women being objectified and exploited by patriarchy. You can just see the fear in their faces, poor things, as they are forced to behave against their wills. Who can doubt that there's some armed patriarch off camera? Stop sex objectification now, sisters! Right on! Feed your anger!

*Ø* Blogmanac | World Opposed to Bush and Iraq War, BBC Poll Says
Most likely the people who support Shrub don't even know what the BBC is, so they won't get to learn how unpopular he is around the world ("World? There's a world?"):

"LONDON - A majority of people around the world view President Bush unfavorably and think the United States was wrong to invade Iraq, according to a BBC poll published on Monday.

"The poll, which surveyed more than 11,000 people in 11 countries, showed 57 percent of those asked had 'a very unfavorable or fairly unfavorable attitude toward the American president,' the British broadcaster said in a statement."
Read on

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 17 | Fisher's Ghost: Australia's most famous spook
1826 Frederick Fisher, a landholder in Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia, was murdered by George Worrell.

Frederick Fisher becomes Fisher’s Ghost
Frederick Fisher, a landholder in Campbelltown, NSW, was murdered by George Worrell, an employee, and his body was thrown into a local creek. The police arrested Worrell, who insisted that Fisher was alive and living elsewhere under an assumed name. It is said that a ghost, looking like the murder victim, appeared on the bridge over the creek close to the spot where Fisher’s body lay, and pointed directly at that spot when the authorities passed over the bridge. On the eve of his execution, Worrell confessed his terrible deed.

Ever since, that creek has been named Fisher’s Ghost Creek, and an annual festival called the Fisher’s Ghost Festival is commemorated.

Read Uncle Clarrie's version of the story, complete with glossary for the Aussie-challenged

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June 17 is the tercentenary of John Wesley. Few religious leaders in any part of the world have had more profound and lasting effects than Wesley: English preacher; 15th of 19 children born on this day in 1703; founder of the Methodist Church. He was revolutionary in the Christian church for his vision of social justice, and by the prominence of women in his organisation.
Visit the Wesley Tercentenary site

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Are you a late starter? Here's food for thought
At high school in Arnhem, I was extremely poor at arithmetic and algebra because I had, and still have, great difficulty with the abstractions of numbers and letters. When, later, in stereometry [solid geometry], an appeal was made to my imagination, it went a bit better, but in school I never excelled in that subject. But our path through life can take strange turns.
MC Escher, born on June 17, 1898; Dutch artist renowned for his geometric art
This quote was sent to free subscribers of Almost Prophetic Quotes

*Ø* Blogmanac | "Don't be shy" witch urges Nessie

"LONDON (Reuters) - Sorcerer Kevin Carlyon has performed an incantation on the shores of Loch Ness, trying to lure Britain's favourite monster into the open.
Carlyon, High Priest of British White Witches, said he had cast a spell two years ago to scare off the monster so it would not be caught by a visiting Swedish scientist Jan Sundberg.
But Sundberg is no longer a threat, he said, and now the time has come to reverse the hex on 'Nessie'."
Full story

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 17, 1867 | Henry Lawson, Australia's radical national poet

THEY lie, the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone
That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
My window-sill is level with the faces in the street —
Drifting past, drifting past,
To the beat of weary feet —
While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

And cause I have to sorrow, in a land so young and fair,
To see upon those faces stamped the marks of Want and Care;
I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet
In sallow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street —
Drifting on, drifting on,
To the scrape of restless feet;
I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.
Henry Lawson, July 1888
The rest of Lawson's poem, Faces in the Street

Henry Lawson, Australian Australian writer of short stories and ballad-like verse and noted for his realistic portrayals of bush life, born in Grenfell, New South Wales. Though he worked for several newspapers, much of the material for his writing came from wandering.

His mother was the pioneer feminist, Louisa Lawson (Feb 17, 1848-Aug 12, 1920), feminist editor of Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women (a “paper in which women may express their own opinions on political and social questions”). Unlike many suffragists and feminists of her day, she did not come from a privileged background but from the shanties of rural Australia. Dawn was a monthly journal that lasted for 17 years, employed a staff of ten and mostly published the writings of Henry Lawson’s remarkable mother.

Henry lived much of his life in poverty and in alcoholic despair, but even during his lifetime he was acknowledged as a poetic genius, much-loved by the Australian people who formerly had a strong poetic culture. With Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson (1864-1941), he is Australia's national poet and the two names are often said together. His poetry, however, like his short stories (he was prolific in both genres), has much more of a radical bent than that of Banjo. The two men were friendly rivals and a famous poetic duel (Up the Country), was fought publicly between them. Paterson's poem romanticised the Aussie outback; Henry Lawson, ever the cynic-realist, answered decrying its harshness, poverty and social injustice.

I have a poem in homage to the great man called To Henry Lawson

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A pic of Lawson at a bush camp, 1910
Current Australian banknotes do not feature Lawson, who was removed from the $10 note in 1993 and replaced by Banjo Paterson. Was Henry a bit too radical? See Banjo on the new and Henry on the old

*Ø* Blogmanac | Brothel Offers Discount for Retirees!


Canberra (Reuters) - An Australian brothel is offering retirees a five percent discount in what it boasts is a world first. Neil Campbell, owner of the Viper Room in the east coast city of Brisbane, said men in their 60s, 70s, and 80s were among regular visitors to the brothel, but many complained it was a drain on their pensions.

"All other businesses offer pensioners a discount, so we thought if we also offered pensioners a discount they might come more often," Campbell told Reuters Monday.
Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | EU Strengthens ICC Support
(Brussels, June 16) -- By adopting a revised Common Position on the International Criminal Court (ICC), the European Union (EU) reinforced its support for international justice, Human Rights Watch said today.

The Common Position is the legally binding instrument of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy. It expresses all EU Member States' willingness to support the ICC and cooperate to increase its effectiveness. The EU's bolstering of international justice comes as the ICC Prosecutor takes office today in The Hague, while the Bush administration steps up its efforts to exempt American citizens from the court's jurisdiction.
More information on the International Criminal Court

*Ø* Blogmanac | African governments must respect children's rights
Everyday, African children continue to be used as soldiers, often to fight on the front line, or as porters, messengers, guards, or cooks. Girls are used as sexual slaves or are given a gun and sent into combat. Millions of other children across Africa suffer daily violations of their rights to food, shelter, health and education.

On the Day of the African Child, Amnesty International is calling on African governments to ratify the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, where they have not done so already, and for all governments to rapidly put into practice the terms of the Charter.
More information on child soldiers

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 16 | Bloomsday
Bloomsday, celebrated annually on June 16: all of the main narrative events in James Joyce's Ulysses, took place on this day in 1904. Bloomsday is celebrated all over the world wherever people read and love Joyce.

In 1904, disgusted with the contemporary literary scene of Ireland, Joyce left Dublin and lived in Trieste, Italy. On his final visit to Dublin in 1912 his publisher, George Roberts destroyed the entire first edition of Joyce’s book of short stories, Dubliners, and the next day Joyce left the country for ever, residing in Zurich, where he wrote Ulysses. Later he lived in Paris, where he spent 17 years writing Finnegan’s Wake.

The first celebration of this secular holiday took place in 1954 and a major festival is planned for 2004 on the centenary of the first Bloomsday.

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 16 | A midsummer night’s imp

Watch out, watch out, there are imps about! Charles Kightly in his The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore (Thames and Hudson, 1987) tells us that the red-stalked Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) now blooms around English houses. (In North America, however, it is a noxious weed.) Herb Robert is also known as Death-come-quickly, Robin's eye, Robin hood, Robin-i'-th'-hedge, Stinking Bob, Stinker Bobs and Wren flower.

Weed or not, beware how you treat it, for it is Robin Goodfellow's flower and he might direct a snake to bite you, especially if you destroy it.


Robin Goodfellow is an English imp, a trickster from the woods. As a forest dweller, he symbolises the pagan (wood-dwelling) pre-Christian peoples who the Church worked hard at converting from their wicked ways. Robin is a cognate of the famous European Green Man (a name coined by Lady Raglan in 1939 for a medieval image usually found in churches), and of Robin Hood. The English sometimes called him Puck, frequently representing him as a goat, while the Irish knew similar fantastic beings as Pooka. In Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland annually on August 10-12, a goat is still the mascot of the ancient Puck’s Fair. We will recall that the forest-dwelling Pan of classical times, and satyrs like him, are part goat.

Shakespeare portrays him in Midsummer Night’s Dream as Puck. An engraving from Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranckes and Merry Jests (1639) shows him with cloven hooves and a prominent erection, surrounded by a coven of witches. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable describes Robin Goodfellow thus:

A ‘drudging fiend,’ and merry domestic fairy, famous for mischievous pranks and practical jokes. At night-time he will sometimes do little services for the family over which he presides. The Scotch call this domestic spirit a brownie; the Germans, kobold or Knecht Ruprecht. The Scandinavians called it Nissë God-dreng. Puck, the jester of Fairy-court, is the same.

Puck is the British Isles version of the lusty pagan Pan whose erotic appetites so disgusted the Christian authorities. In the Inquisition’s infamous Malleus Maleficarum (‘Hammer of the Witches’), of 1486, by the monks Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Part 1, Question 3 deals with the origins of ‘familiar spirits’. It concludes ...

Satyrs are they who are called Pans in Greek and Incubi in Latin. And they are called Incubi from their practise of overlaying, that is debauching. For they often lust lecherously after women, and copulate with them; and the Gauls name them Dusii, because they are diligent in this beastliness.

For those who fear this forest imp, putting out a cup of milk for Robin Goodfellow is one way his impishness might be placated. Reginald Scot, in Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, wrote:

Your grandam's maids were wont to set a bowl of milk before him … for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight. He would chafe exceedingly, if the maid of the goodwife of the house, having compassion of his nakedness, laid any clothes for him. For in that case he sayeth. "What have we here? Hempen, Hampen, here will I never more tread nor stampen.

Our last word today goes to the Bard, who wrote of Puck:

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow; are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they should have good luck.
A Midsummer Night's Dream ii. 1
William Shakespeare, 1594

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

This story is such a coincidental follow-up to Pip's posts on Friday 13th and coincidences, that it made me grin. Especially as nobody was hurt, apart from the obvious stress and anxiety involved!

*Ø* Blogmanac | "Reality TV" ship sinks on Friday 13th
The future of (RTE's new) reality TV show "Cabin Fever" was still being decided last night following the dramatic sinking of the boat off the coast of Tory island on Friday afternoon. Traumatised contestants were being comforted by some family members who arrived on the island yesterday morning while executives of CoCo Productions, the show's producers, decided on the next move.

Cabin Fever turned to shipwreck at around 2pm on Friday afternoon in what, ironically, were the most ideal sailing conditions the crew had encountered since they left Dublin port less than two weeks ago.

The 90-foot schooner struck rocks off Tory Island where the superstition of not going to sea on Friday 13th is still preserved by local fishermen. "People are still very superstitious about Friday 13th and no one would dream of taking a boat out on that day," said Pat Doohan.

The British-registered boat, The Carrie of Carmarthan, was built in 1947. It had originally been used for cray fishing in France.

Source

I understand too that the boat in question had been re-named, which is considered very unlucky. I still haven't found out its original name - Nóra

I'm Veralynne, and I feel privileged to be on the team of contributors to the Blogmanac. In his introduction last week, Pip indicated I had wide and varied interests. Indeed! Oh, all right . . . it's true. I'd always attributed it to the Gemini factor, but "dilettante" is beginning to make more sense. LOL! Actually, I'm interested in change--changes in society and culture from music and art to politics and law, from environment and health issues to relationships and work, from media and education to the mind and inspiration.

To me, the Almanac is a welcomed opportunity to escape the flashing lights and neon of the information superhighway (when was the last time you heard THAT?) and the concerns of our reality and take a side road into another world -- a fantasy world existing in many dimensions. At the Almanac we celebrate days but, as The Moody Blues sang, they're like "Days of Future Past." We're provided with information from the past to enlighten our present and prepare us to "Seize the Day!" -- today, the next day and the next. Enjoy the journey.

Love, peace and clarity,
Veralynne

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Iowa Touts Illegal Drug Stamp Tax
By Miranda Leitsinger, Associated Press Writer

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Caught with drugs? Better have a drug stamp.
Iowa law taxes all illegal drugs -- from marijuana to cocaine. The state issues stamps, which vary in cost and color according to the drug, to be affixed to the drug to show the tax has been paid.

"It was such a horse of a different color when it first came out," said Renee Mulvey, spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance. "It was just so unusual to be selling stamps to tax illegal drugs, that we expected a lot of misunderstanding."

The stamps cost $5 a gram for marijuana, $750 per marijuana plant, $250 a gram for other drugs and $400 per 10 doses of drugs that come in tablet form, such as ecstasy. The minimum charge is $215.

Some may get a good chuckle out of the idea of drug users trotting down to the revenue department to buy a tax stamp -- only seven batches of stamps have been sold (none were sold last year) -- but the state is making a small fortune off of those who get caught without them. -- Get a chuckle through your tears at the rest of the story.

Check out the interesting "breaking news" update and followup to the above story. Top it all off with a 'toon.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Full moon in June: Poson Festival, Sri Lanka

The Poson Festival commemorates the anniversary of the introduction of Buddhism to Sri Lanka.

O great King! the birds of the air and the beasts on the earth have an equal right to live and move about in any part of this land as thou. The land belongs to the people and all other beings and thou art only the guardian of it.
Arhat Mahinda, who brought Theravada Buddhism to Sri Lanka in 246 BCE

The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demand for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life activity: it affords protection of all beings, offering shade even to the axe man who destroys it.
The Buddha

Today would be an excellent time to be in the mountainous heart of Sri Lanka at Mihintale (aka Mihinthele), the ‘cradle of Buddhism’ in that beautiful but tragic island. For two days of the full moon of June, the Festival of Poson is in full flight. It is a nationwide commemoration, but Mihintale is the place to be.

It was here in 246 BCE that the Buddhist apostle Arhat Mahinda Thero, special envoy of his father (Asoka, 264-267 BC King of India), met King Devanampiyatissa (307-267 BCE) on the full moon day in the month of Poson and officially introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka.

Devanampiyatissa was out deer-hunting in the wilderness around Mihintale. The royal party pursued a stag that fled in the direction of Silakuta (the northern peak of Mihintale mountain), and the king suddenly came upon Arhat Mahinda and his companions. The thera (elder, or saint) soon engaged the king in repartee that led to Devanampiyatissa’s conversion to Theravada Buddhism.

Today, Mihintale is one of the great sacred sites of the world, with rocky outcrops, including the great Meditation Rock, and some large statues of the Buddha, making it an awesome experience to visit the ancient town. The Ambasthala stupa has 1,840 stone steps leading up to it on the top of the Mihintale hill, a site of pilgrimage for Sri Lankan believers in this predominantly Buddhist land.

Relics of sage and Buddha
During the month of Poson, many thousands of devotees ascend the steps to pay their respects to Arahat Mahinda. The ancient monastery contains some important relics said to be from the body of Mahinda, and even some of the Buddha himself. One of Lord Buddha’s collarbones is there, and the uma-roma, a hair that grew between the eyebrows of the Enlightened One, signifying a maha purusha or ‘great being’. (Note: There is also a legendary belief that the Buddha himself three times visited Sri Lanka, which was then known as Heladiva. Heladiva is often used by Sri Lankan nationalists who oppose the Tamil citizens, whom they see as foreign interlopers.)

The Ambasthala dagaba (shrine containing relics) is known as the ‘mango-tree stupa’, deriving its name from a riddle that Mahinda is said to have posed to the king to see how clever a student of religion he would be.

Pointing to a nearby tree, the saint asked King Devanampiyatissa its name. The king replied, “It is a mango tree, Mahinda.”

“And are there any other mango trees besides this?” asked the sage.

“Indeed, there are many mango trees,” replied Devanampiyatissa.

“And are there any other trees besides this mango tree and other mango trees?”

“Indeed, there are many other trees,” replied the king, “but they are not mango trees.”

“And are there besides these mango trees and those which are not mango, yet other trees?”

“There is this mango tree,” replied the king.

“Thy wit is shrewd, O ruler of men,” laughed Mahinda.

The very place where this clever dialog took place is still marked at Mihintale and mango trees have been planted all around to memorialise the event.

At the Ponson festivities, pandals (undercover seating arrangements) are erected, there are almsgiving and religious observances mostly in the sacred monastic complex of Mihintale, but also Sri Lanka-wide. As a side note, at this time of year, the Bambara bee (apis indica), the largest bee species in Lanka, produces its honey which is harvested by the indigenous hunter-gatherers (Veddas).

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

Sri Lankan Customs, Rituals & Traditions

*Ø* Blogmanac | Tiny IDs can track almost anything
"Computer chips the size of grains of sand have become the latest trend among manufacturers seeking to track everything from automobiles to underwear to razor blades."

I don't normally like to refer to the Washingtoon Times, which is owned by the Moonies ... but this story is interesting.

" ... some privacy advocates, who fear the Big Brother technology attached to clothing will follow customers out of the store and be used to track people through the items they purchase."

Get spooked: read the story

*Ø* Blogmanac | Shelf of books for poor villages
Years ago an appropriate technology (AT) organisation called TRANET, run by Bill Ellis and Margaret Ellis from Rangely, ME, USA, used to raise money for a "shelf of books". They would send a stack of 100 books free of charge to poor villages in poor countries, and they were on things like permaculture and AT.

Bill's moved onto other work with Creating Learning Communities and tells me the TRANET work is kind of on the back burner. But it was a brilliant project, one I'd like to see cranked up again. It's long been a dream of mine to help this happen and maybe through sponsorships, the Almanac will be a catalyst. I figure that by planting this seed here something might happen.

*Ø* Blogmanac | New site gathers weather knowledge of Aussie indigenous people


Good to see that the Australian Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology has initiated a project to gather weather lore of Australian Aboriginal people. While probably driven by economic motives, the project will nonetheless enrich our understanding of this island continent, and it's also an almanackist's delight. The database is unfortunately very small as yet, so I wish the researchers well and look forward to watching it grow. I've placed a more or less permanent link in the links column at left for those interested in weather lore, Australia, indigenous peoples and so on.

Click thumbnail for climatic map of Australia

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“Australia’s climate is diverse. Monsoon tropics, desert, savanna, alpine and temperate regions can all be found in various locations. The sheer diversity of ecological zones negates the concept of a rigid European seasonal calendar for the entire continent. The Aboriginal people of Australia inhabited distinct regions that were usually concordant with geographical and ecological regions. An intimate knowledge of the environment was paramount for survival and the resulting meteorological view of the Aboriginal people is one of great diversity, where the nomenclature of the seasons is often dependant on localised events or resources.

The ability to link events in the natural world to a cycle that permitted the prediction of seasonal events was a key factor in their success. These natural barometers were not uniform across the land but instead used the reaction of plants and animals to gauge what was happening in the environment.

The presences of march flies, for example, was an indication to the Gadgerong people that crocodile eggs could be found, to look for native honey, and it was approaching the late dry season.

As a result of all this, seasonal cycles as described by the various Aboriginal peoples differ substantially according to location.

This produces a far more intricate and subtle overview of Australia’s climate than the 4-season European climate description of Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring, applied as it is across most areas of the continent.” Source

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Flying foxes move from the inland bush to the rivers during the dry season and nest in the pandanus palm trees. When this happens the onset of rains is imminent. (Yarralin area of the Northern Territory)

In the dry season, the migratory return of the brolga means that the river catfish will again become active, which in turn means that the river will soon fill with the return of the rains. (Yarralin area of the Northern Territory)

White breasted wood swallows are only found together with mudlarks for two short periods each year. These occasions signal the beginnings of the wet and dry seasons. (Northeast Arnhem Land area)

The flowering of the rough barked gum and the bunch spear grass is a sign that the winds will soon blow from the southeast and the Dry Season will arrive. (Kakadu area)

The appearance of the plover is associated with the onset of rain over many areas of central Australia. (Southwest Simpson Desert area)

Read more at the new Indigenous Weather Knowledge website

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 13-15 | Lesser Quinquatrus of Minerva, ancient Rome, kalends of June

Second day: Day of Meditation on the Salvation of all Beings
Known as the Quinquatrus Minusculae or Quinquatrus Minores, this minor festival was celebrated on the Ides of June. The tibicines went through the city in procession to the temple of Jupiter’s daughter, Minerva, goddess of thoughts, wisdom and war. The tibicines (singular form tibicen) or Tibia players were one of the oldest professional music organizations in Rome and the musicians of the state religion. They played a flute, or bone pipe, an instrument with three to four holes made from bone that eventually evolved into a double pipe of silver, ivory, or boxwood. The tibicines celebrated their own annual festival on the day of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 14 1964 | "You're either on the bus or you're not on the bus" (Kesey)


American author (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) Ken Kesey (Sep 7, 1935-Nov 10, 2001) and his band of Merry Pranksters, including Ken Babbs and Neal Cassady at the wheel, left Perry Lane in Furthur, their psychedelic 1939 International Harvester school bus, and began their legendary cross-country bus trip to the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

There they attended a publication party for Kesey's new novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, checked out the World's Fair, and paid a visit to Timothy Leary and his associates at the Millbrook estate of William Hitchcock.

They arrived in New York City in mid-July 1964 and were introduced to Jack Kerouac at a fateful party. Details of the trip came to be chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

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Some quotes by Kesey
The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer-- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things.

You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

When you don’t know where you’re going, you have to stick together just in case someone gets there.

Shop Ken Kesey

*Ø* Blogmanac | Nude comic scares shark to death?

"Was shark killed by nude comic?" asks the Daily Mail. There is no doubt about it in the minds of the staff of the Brighton Sea Life Centre, who blame the sudden death of their 12-year-old smooth hound shark on Guy Venables.

Mr. Venables apparently removed his clothes and jumped into the tank in an effort to promote his show at a local nightclub. Two days later, the shark suffered an unexpected haemorrhage. An autopsy is being carried out to try to ascertain whether the shock of encountering Mr. Venables unclothed was the cause.

"I do feel remorse about the whole thing," Mr Venables, who has visited the aquarium again to apologise to staff, told the Mail. "It is sad that something has died, and we will have to wait and see what happens next."

"In some way I am quite flattered in that I have managed to scare a shark to death," he added.

The Telegraph rather spoils things by pointing out that the creature, which belonged to a sub-species that would never have passed an audition for Jaws, was only three feet long.

Source

Coincidences ... Anyone interested?
I had a cool coincidence happen to me a few weeks ago and I looked for a website where they can be blogged, or a message board-style thing. I found one, but it wasn't really much good. I thought maybe of starting one up. What do people think?

Maybe there is a good site already doing this ... I don't want to reinvent the wheel (been there, done that and it sunk before I got the fuse fully painted), so maybe leave a message here if you know of one. Or if you want to give me any feedback. Ta.

"When [William] Burroughs was in Tangiers, he knew a Captain Clark who ran a ferry over to Spain. One day, Clark told Burroughs that he had been doing the route for 23 years without an accident. That day, the ferry sank . . .that evening, while Burroughs was thinking about the incident, a radio bulletin announced the crash of Flight 23 on the New York-Miami route. The pilot was another Captain Clark! " Read on at Disinfo



fnord

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 13 | Friday the Thirteenth

But once on a Friday ('tis ever they say),
A day when misfortune is aptest to fall.
Saxe: Good Dog of Bretté, stanza 3

Sir Winston Churchill might have said, “Friday is my lucky day. I was born, christened, married, and knighted on that day; and all my best accidents have befallen me on a Friday”, Scots might prefer Friday for marriage, and Scandinavians might tend to see Friday as lucky, but in the traditions of most European countries, Friday is the unlucky day. When Friday falls on the 13th of the month, as is well known, the day is said to be especially unlucky and articles like these appear all over the Net and in the media, particularly if not much news is about.

The number 13 has long been considered by superstitious Westerners to be unlucky. Even today, many towns and suburbs don’t have 13 as a street number, or 13th Street, and most hotels do not have rooms with 13 on the door. Many tall buildings do not have a 13th storey, with the elevator going straight from Floor 12 to 14.

There are numerous origins given for the persistent superstition that in the West, Friday the 13th is an unlucky day. The most likely of these is that Jesus Christ was killed on a Friday, and that Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed him, was the thirteenth person of Jesus and the 12 apostles.

Just as tridecaphobia (Hyper Dictionary prefers triskaidekaphobia) is purportedly the official name for the morbid fear of the number 13, so various other fanciful terms are given by different commentators for the phobia associated with Friday the 13th, including paraskevidekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia, though one suspects these were invented by journalists on slow news days. In Australia, where people are not too bright and will bet on two flies crawling up a wall, the New South Wales State Lotteries report that Friday the 13th is always one of their biggest days, with turnover about 50 per cent up. Eric W Weisstein, by the way, shows that Friday is slightly more likely than any of the days of the week to fall on a Friday.

Frigg's day
In ancient Rome Friday was known as dies Veneris, the day dedicated to Venus, hence the French vendredi. In the northern nations, the sixth day of the week was named (perhaps in imitation of the Roman custom) for the goddess Frigg, or Freya, mother of Balder; in Old English it was called Frig-daeg.

Friday begins the Sabbath for both Muslims Jews, and Muslims say that Adam was created on a Friday and it was on Friday that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and on a Friday they died. According to Biblical lore, Noah’s Great Flood began on a Friday and the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on the sixth day of the week.

We have already mentioned Judas and the crucifixion of Christ; this has a parallel in the old ‘pagan’ religion of the North: twelve gods were invited to a banquet at Valhalla. Loki, the trickster deity, was excluded, but he came anyway and the guests now numbered 13. Loki killed the god Balder at the banquet by tricking Balder's blind twin brother Hod into throwing a mistletoe fig (dart) at the god.

The doomed Apollo 13 space mission brought the unlucky number to the forefront of the media. Apollo 13 was launched at 1313 hours (USA Central Time), from pad 39 (3 X 13) and was aborted on April 13, 1970. It is worth noting that there are 13 moons and 13 menstrual cycles in a year.

Although the Friday 13 superstition is older than the 14th century, there exists a theory that it derives from Friday, October 13, 1307, when France’s King Philip IV (le Bel, or ‘the good-looking’) had all the Knights Templar in France arrested, accused of heresy and tortured into making confessions. It is unlikely, but interesting in its way.

Be that as it may, my favourite story associated with unlucky Friday (whether the 13th or not), is repeated widely around the Net, but seemingly without substantiation. One website puts it thus, and I leave it with you to ponder:

“Sailors were particularly superstitious … often refusing to ship out to sea on a Friday. According to legend, in the 18th century, the British Navy commissioned a ship called the H.M.S. Friday in order to quell the superstition. The navy selected the crew on a Friday, launched the ship on a Friday and even selected a man named James Friday as the ship's captain. Then, one Friday morning, the ship set off on its maiden voyage – and disappeared forever.”

If I find out if there’s any truth in it, I’ll tell you next Friday the 13th when I, like the rest of the 'experts', trot out the stock article.

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


Friday 13th quiz
Friday the 13th e-cards

*Ø* Blogmanac | US Bullyboy "Diplomacy" -- plays aid card to fix war crimes exemption
The US is turning up the heat on the countries of the Balkans and eastern Europe to secure war crimes immunity deals for Americans and exemptions from the year-old international criminal court.

In an exercise in brute diplomacy which is causing more acute friction with the European Union following the rows over Iraq, the US administration is threatening to cut off tens of millions of dollars in aid to the countries of the Balkans unless they reach bilateral agreements with the US on the ICC by the end of this month.

The American campaign, which is having mixed results, is creating bitterness and cynicism in the countries being intimidated, particularly in the successor states of former Yugoslavia which perpetrated and suffered the worst war crimes seen in Europe since the Nazis. They are all under intense international pressure, not least from the Americans, to cooperate with the war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in the Hague.

"Blatant hypocrisy," said Human Rights Watch in New York of the US policy towards former Yugoslavia.

Washington is vehemently opposed to the permanent international criminal court, arguing that US soldiers, officials and citizens will be targeted for political reasons -- an argument dismissed by the court's supporters, who point out that safeguards have been built into the rules governing the court's operations.

Under President Bill Clinton, Washington signed the treaty establishing the court. But the US did not ratify the treaty and Mr Bush rescinded Mr Clinton's signature.

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | Guantanamo Bay, Australia ? Secret police given extraordinary powers
"Proposed amendments to the federal government's security legislation did nothing to address its fundamental flaw, the Australian Greens said today ...

"Greens Leader Bob Brown said the Greens would continue to oppose the legislation [which] allows totally innocent people .... to be picked up off the street, detained for a week, questioned in blocks of up to eight hours by ASIO acting as a new police force without necessarily having their lawyer there."

Read about another threat to freedom in John Howard's Australia

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 12 | Blix goes ballistic at the bastards from the Bush camp
"Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, has lashed out at the "bastards" who have tried to undermine him throughout the three years he has held his high-profile post.

"In an extraordinary departure from the diplomatic language with which he has come to be associated, Dr Blix assailed his critics in both Washington and Iraq."

Read on at the Sydney Morning Herald

*Ø* Blogmanac | Australia to send Christian refugee and others to death in Iran?
Australia's government goes from appalling to criminal in its treatment of refugees and I'm one of a growing number of Aussies who is determined to spread the word to people of goodwill in other countries. I am in a fortunate situation in that I don't work for the government, the media or any non-governmental organisation (NGO), so I am free to call a spade a spade and say what many others would like to say: the Howard government of Australia is out of control on human rights and many people are suffering under its horrendous policies. We need the voices of people overseas to help put an end to the racist Howard government, so I hope you will inform your media and politicians, and send the article linked below to all your friends.

Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, is as bad as Howard. His own daughter, Kirsty, left the country and a good job because she is so ashamed of his racist policies and the huge number of asylum seekers kept in our notorious concentration camps in the hot desert.

Now the mob in power are using terror tactics against asylum seekers who will certainly be sent back to Iran and other places to face possible torture and execution. Ruddock and his henchman have deliberately kept the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) out of the plot.

Read the transcript of the Background Briefing story here
Hear the program here

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 12, 1956 | Billy Dickson robbed the Centerville Trust
In 1965 Professor John McAleer of Massachusetts, USA received a letter from Billy Dickson, a convict, in response to an article the professor had written in the Boston Globe. The professor replied and a correspondence and friendship developed that lasted eight years; 1,200 letters passed between scholar and jailbird.

It was not till three months of correspondence had passed between the two unlikely penpals that the professor asked Dickson the reason for his imprisonment. It turned out that on June 12, 1956 Dickson had robbed the Centerville Trust and taken a woman hostage. This rang a bell in McAleer’s mind, as he recalled that his sister-in-law had been abducted on that date, and naturally enough had been traumatised by the event. The professor's penfriend was the villain who had caused his family so much grief.

After Dickson was stabbed to death in prison, McAleer helped to edit a Korean War novel, Unit Pride, that Dickson had written.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Hanged Man Cleared of Murder
London (Reuters) - A British man who was hanged for murder had his conviction quashed Tuesday, 53 years too late.

George Kelly was executed in 1950 for the murder of cinema manager Leonard Thomas during a robbery in Liverpool the previous year. Kelly's family claimed vital material was not disclosed to his defense lawyers during the trial. This included a statement to police by a prosecution witness who said another man had confessed to the crime.

Tuesday, three of Britain's top judges ruled Kelly's conviction was "unsafe." Kelly was 27 at the time of his hanging. Britain abolished the death penalty 15 years later in 1965.

Source

Amnesty International against the Death Penalty: click here

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This month, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) plans to introduce the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2003. This legislation, which is a companion bill to Senate legislation introduced by Senator Feingold (D-WI), will put an immediate halt to executions and forbid the imposition of the death penalty as a sentence for violations of federal law.


The USA has increased its rate of executions and the number of crimes punishable by death. Thirty-eight states currently have the death penalty on their statute books. More than 350 people have been executed in the USA since 1990. More than 3,300 others are on death row.

Take action here

*Ø* Blogmanac | Human "Dollies" closer
The Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, where scientists cloned Dolly the sheep, has been given the first UK research licence of its kind permitting a technique that creates embryonic stem cells from human eggs. Scientists there have been given the go-ahead to artificially stimulate donated human eggs from IVF treatment in a process known as parthenogenesis. The licence will allow the creation of stem cells for use in testing the effectiveness of new medicines and the study of congenital illnesses, such as Parkinson's disease and heart disease.

Although the licence granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) today does in no way permit human cloning, it could pave the way for improved techniques, making the creation of a human clone possible.

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 11 | Mother Shipton’s Day
The Wednesday following Whitsunday* (Pentecost), for reasons unknown to your almanackist, is said by some to go by this name. Mother Shipton, whose real name was the rather un-English-sounding Ursula Sontheil, was a celebrated soothsayer in Cambridge, England and the wife of Toby Shipton, a carpenter. To some, she is also the patron saint of women working in laundries. Ursula was born in a cave at Knaresborough, Yorkshire (where Guy Fawkes once lived) in 1488, in the reign of Henry VII just fifteen years before Nostradamus, in an era in which prophetic utterances were widely sought – and just as readily condemned.

According to Yorkshire legend (and that is probably the true origin of her ‘life’), Ursula Sontheil’s birth was the result of a liaison between her mother and Satan. Perhaps as would be expected from such a union, she was a stunning but not attractive child, at least according to one antique biographer:

Very morose and big boned, her head very long, with very great goggling, but sharp and fiery Eyes, her Nose of an incredible and unproportionate length, having in it many crooks and turnings, adorned with many strange Pimples of diverse colours, as Red, Blew, [sic] and mixt, which like Vapours of Brimstone gave such a lustre of the Night, that one of them confessed several times in my hearing, that her nurse needed no other light to assist her in the performance of her duty.

She is generally supposed to have sold her soul to the Devil for the power of foretelling future events. Although during her lifetime she was looked upon as a witch, she escaped the common fate of 16th-century witches, and died peacefully in her bed at the age of 73, near Clifton in Yorkshire. A headstone is said to have been erected to her memory in the church-yard of that place, with the following epitaph:

Here lies she who never lied;
Whose skill often has been tried:
Her prophecies shall still survive,
And ever keep her name alive.

Despite Mother Shipton’s popularity in some quarters, the prophecies of the Knaresborough seer were most likely forgeries of the 17th and 19th centuries, and certainly some proved completely erroneous. One prophecy that can go in the ‘whoops!’ file proclaimed:

The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty one.

Not all her prophecies were duds, however, and some proved uncannily accurate (if they were not fabricated). Take, for example:

Carriages without horses shall go.
And accidents fill the world with woe.
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye ...
Under water men shall walk,
Shall ride, shall sleep, shall talk;
In the air men shall be seen
In white, in black, and in green.
Iron in the water shall float
As easy as a wooden boat.

It is said she predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and, like some others in history with a knack for seeing their own demise, she even foretold her own death which occurred in 1561.

Old and young, rich and poor, especially young women, visited the old ‘witch’ to know the future. Among the seekers was the Abbot of Beverley, to whom she foretold the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII and his marriage with Anne Boleyn; she told him of the burning of heretics that came to pass in Smithfield, and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. She also foretold the accession of James I, adding that, with him,

From the cold north,
Every evil should come forth.

On a subsequent visit from the cleric she issued another prophecy:

The time shall come when seas of blood
Shall mingle with a greater flood.
Great noise there shall be heard –
Great shouts and cries,
And seas shall thunder louder than the skies;
Then shall three lions fight with three,
And bring Joy to a people, honour to a king.
That fiery year as soon as o’er,
Peace shall then be as before;
Plenty shall everywhere be found,
And men with swords shall plough the ground.

She predicted that Cardinal Wolsey would see York, yet never go there. This in fact happened in 1530 when Wolsey was travelling to that city. Just when he climbed to the top of a tower and saw York in the distance, he received a message from King Henry VIII commanding his to return to London. The cardinal died on the way home, and thus Mother Shipton's prophecy was fulfilled.

It must be borne in mind that we know of no edition of Mother Shipton’s prophecies dated before 1641, many decades after the deaths of both the prophetess and the churchman, and the most important editions of her work were published when she’d been 133 years in the ground. These were edited in 1684 by Richard Head, from whom we get the first biographical information about her.

Her clairvoyant verses about future technology, and about the failed global apocalypse predicted for 1881, first appeared in print three centuries after her death, in the 1862 edition. Shipton-fanciers will not be delighted to learn that some claim that Charles Hindley, the editor of that edition, later admitted that he was the author of those prognostications.

Mother Shipton probably shares with the Oracle of Delphi the title of the most famous prophetess of all time. In England her fame as a seer is only exceeded by that of Merlin, King Arthur’s magician, and every year more than 100,000 people visit her cave at Knaresborough.

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

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The Ember Days
The ‘Ember Days’ were instituted by Pope Calixtus in the 3rd Century, for the purpose of imploring God's blessing on the fruitfulness of the earth, and for the ordination of clergy. The name is derived from the Saxon emb-ren or imb-ryne, meaning a course or circuit, from the ember days’ occurrence at the four quarters of the year, namely: the first Wednesday, Friday and Saturday following, respectively, the first Sunday in Lent (Quadragesima Sunday), Whitsunday*, September 14 (Holyrood Day), and St Lucy's Day.

Another possible explanation for the days’ unusual name might be that it derives from the practice of putting ashes on the head. Associated, too, with the Ember Days, is the custom of breaking of a fast with bread baked in embers, or ember-bread. The weeks in which they fall are called ember weeks.

*Whitsunday (this year, June 8)
The Christian feast of Whitsunday (Pentecost) was originally called White Sunday – one of the great seasons for baptism when the candidates wore white garments, hence the name. The period around Whitsunday is known as Whitsuntide, the suffix -tide being Old English for ‘time’. Whitsunday is the seventh Sunday after Easter, to commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Tax on Fatty Foods Suggestion
London - Hamburgers, soft drinks and cakes could be hit with a "fat-tax" in a bid to combat Britain's growing levels of obesity, doctors said Monday.

The British Medical Association is proposing a 17.5 percent VAT on high-fat foods like biscuits and processed meats to solve obesity-related problems, which cost the NHS roughly 500 million pounds ($825 million) a year.
Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Never too late!

In keeping with Pip's article on www.wilsonsalmanac.com, which you'll find here entitled "Are you a late starter?", I had to post this story from San Francisco:

A 97-year-old great-grandmother who quit school in the fourth grade to help her sharecropper parents pick cotton will receive a high school diploma after going back to school to study computers. She started taking computer classes at Richmond High in Contra Costa County in Northern California in January and is set to receive an honorary high school diploma next week.

"In my mind I keep developing good ideas. I don't want to let my mind go down, you know what I mean?" she said. "I tell my grandkids, keep your mind elevated."
Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Nigeria declares war on email scams
Nigeria's president has launched an ambitious campaign to root out the fraudsters responsible for saddling it with the reputation of being the most corrupt country in the world.

Declaring "total war" on '419' scams - a notorious advance-fee fraud in which millions of euro have been extorted from gullible foreigners - Mr Obasanjo pledged "no hiding place for these criminals who tarnish Nigeria's image."

The '419' letters, named after article 419 of Nigeria's criminal code, which makes soliciting for advance fees a criminal offence, are sent out by fax or email by Nigerian criminal syndicates posing as legitimate businessmen seeking the assistance of foreigners to transfer a large sum of money into their account in exchange for a hefty commission. The letter's recipient is then asked to make an advance payment, either as a sign of good faith or to help bribe a government official, and the businessman is never heard of again.

Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service estimates the fraud netted around Stg£150m last year in Britain alone (that's nearly $246 million US.)
Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | McDonald's foot in mouth


Young Catalan nationalists are indignant at the latest addition to McDonald's menu. The "El Cataluna" burger is, says Jovent Nord Catala, an example of the banalisation of Catalan culture. The spelling is Spanish and the fast food chain has branded the sauce as "Costa del Sol". The accompanying TV ad campaign shows Sevillians in traditional dress.

"This exotic campaign orchestrated by McDonald's in Paris shows how powerful the reductive instinct is," says Jovent Nord Catala's press release, "and how much it relies on cliches about folklore and the past." No one could be contacted at McDonalds' Paris offices on Friday, AFP reports.
Source

Last March, McDonald's introduced a new sandwich for its Arab customers via its Saudi franchise owner. The "McArabia" sandwich consists of flatbread, two pieces of grilled chicken, lettuce, onions, tomatoes and seasonings.

Sounds like a real regular Arabian lunch...

*Ø* Blogmanac | Q-Ray Bracelet useless?


The US Federal Trade Commission has charged Illinois-based marketers of a purported pain-relief product called the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet (Q-Ray Bracelet) with making false and unsubstantiated claims. According to the FTC, a recent study conducted by the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, shows that the Q-Ray Bracelet is no more effective than a placebo bracelet at relieving muscular and joint pain.

The Q-Ray Bracelet is a C-shaped metal bracelet that the defendants claim is "ionized" through a secret process that gives it pain-relieving abilities. The defendants promote their product through a (US) nationally televised 30-minute infomercial and on the Internet at www.qray.com, www.q-ray.com, and www.bio-ray.com, and it ranges in price from $49.95 to $249.95.

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 10 1580| The death of Luis de Camões
Luís Vaz de Camões (or Camoens) (1524 or 1525-1580) is widely considered Portugal’s national bard. The Lisbon-born poet studied to be a priest, but did not take orders; later he embarked on a military career, losing an eye at Ceuta. Camões was shipwrecked while returning to Goa in India after spending time in Macao. The shipwreck was a tragedy for him and the world, as he lost everything but his major poem, Os Luciados (The Lusiads, or Lusitanians - the Portuguese, 1572). The beautiful poetry is added to by a robust, realistic narrative that covers the voyage of Vasco da Gama and also much of Portuguese history.

Camões mixed Christian and pagan symbolism and themes in his epic poem, a dangerous thing to do in 16th-century Portugal. However, the ecclesiastical authorities, represented by a Dominican priest named Ferreira, examined the manuscript and gave permission for the poem’s publication, finding nothing contrary to the faith or morality in it; the mythology was regarded as poetic licence. The king even gave the poet a pension for his troubles, though not a large one.

Camões returned to Portugal living in poverty and obscurity. Lusiads was published and very successful, but Camões died poor in a public hospital. The day of his death is celebrated as the National Day of Portugal each year.

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(My ISP is still having POP server problems, so I've had no emails for 3 days. The Almanac ezines and Almost Prophetic Quotes will return as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.)

*Ø* Blogmanac | The First E-mail Of Saint Paul To The Romans


From: paul0426@tarsus.com (Paul, A Servant Of Jesus Christ)
To: allusers@rome.org
CC: s_peter@jol.com (Judaea Online)
Attachments: none
Subject: general teaching
Also posted to Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.heresy

Even using my off-line mail reader (Papyrus 6.2) the on-line and disk space charges on my local dial-up Internet provider are outlandish, so I'll have to keep this short. :)
IMHO, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness of men. }:>
U, therefore, have no excuse to pass judgment. God will judge all. BTW, Jews have no right to boast simply because of our ancestry. Circumcision :( is meaningful only if it is inward -- otherwise, BFD.
Similarly, IBM owners have no right to boast simply because of the customer support they receive. In Him we are neither IBM nor Gateway, Tandy nor Compaq. None of us is righteous. As King David wrote:

KD> There is no one righteous, not even one;
KD> There is no one who understands, no one who seeks
KD> God, no one who has not illegally copied his
KD> favorite game program for a friend.

But Abraham believed God, and so God credited it to him as *virtual* righteousness.
But does this mean we should sin all we want? No way!
We must live through the spirit. The law kills O-|-< but the spirit gives life. Offer yourselves as living sacrifices to God. Submit to the authority of your sysop and your Usenet newsgroup moderator. Pay for shareware if you decide to keep using it. And don't flame somebody for making a spelling error or failing to read the FAQ list.
Nothing is unclean to God, but if something is going to cause your fellow Christian to sin, delete it from your hard drive. Watch out for those R- and X-rated .GIF files.
I'm hoping to visit Rome later this year; save me a space on the couch. CUL8er. :)

XXX Papyrus 6.2 XXX Unregistered Test Drive Version XXX {RAH}

Author unknown

*Ø* Blogmanac | Nude Throngs Photographer Hits Record


Barcelona (Reuters) - Spencer Tunick, famous for his photographs of huge groups of naked people, beat his own record Sunday when some 7,000 people posed nude for him in the Spanish city of Barcelona. From about 4 a.m. Sunday thousands of volunteers gathered in central Barcelona to strip off and be photographed lying down and kneeling in rows.

The Barcelona photos beat Tunick's last record of 4,500 snapped in Australia and while some 7,000 posed, more than twice that number initially signed up, the project manager said. The New York-based artist has shot naked throngs around the world but his work has got him into trouble in the United States where he has been arrested several times.
Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Poland - historic vote to join EU
By a sweeping margin of almost four to one, Polish voters said yes to joining the EU in what was hailed as the country's most important decision in a generation. It clears the way for the EU's biggest expansion next May.

"We've just witnessed a historic moment. I'm deeply moved," President Alexander Kwasniewski said, amid scenes of relief and celebration in Warsaw last night. "A big, proud, and ambitious nation is moving into the European Union."

For Poland, a country that lays fair claim to the saddest history in Europe, it is difficult to overstate the meaning of yesterday's verdict.

By far the biggest of the new members, Poland will rank among the big powers in the expanded union of 25, enjoying similar voting rights to Spain.

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | "Women triumph and men are left screaming in agony"
Dublin, Ireland -- The painting shows a woman in the throes of labour, but her face is calm, her eyes are shining and she has a secret smile playing about her lips. Look further down the canvas and it's clear that it is not a baby she is giving birth to but a man. And as he exits her body, it is the man who is the one in pain, his face that is contorted with the agony of birth.

This painting, along with 39 others like it, is artist Brian Bourke's new exhibition, which is currently on show at Dublin's Taylor Galleries.

Reminiscent of the pagan Sheela-na-Gig carvings, the pieces are a touch disturbing and more than a little fascinating. The artist himself claimed they are all about life and the tensions between the two sexes. "They depict the peculiar relationships between men and women and how ruinous it can be," explained Brian. "In the end, women triumph and men are left screaming in agony. That's why the women appear serene and iconic, while the men are struggling and desperately trying to break free," he said.

Story

Come again?

*Ø* Blogmanac | Blair threatened with 'smoking gun' over Iraq
Intelligence officers are holding a "smoking gun" which proves that they were subjected to a series of demands by Tony Blair's staff in the run-up to the Iraq war. The officers are furious about the accusation levelled by the Leader of the Commons, John Reid, that "rogue elements" are at work in the security services. They fear they are being lined up to take the blame for faulty intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.

The intelligence services were so concerned about demands made by Downing Street for evidence to use against Iraq that extensive files have been built up detailing communications with Mr Blair's staff.

Stung by Dr Reid's accusations about misinformation over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, intelligence officials have given veiled warnings about what may emerge in the two official inquiries into the affair.

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 9 | Columba and the lucky monk
Today is the Feast day of Saint Columba (or Colmcille), abbot and apostle of the Picts (Barberry, Barberis vulgaris, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint)

We know that animal sacrifice was practised in Britain at least until 1778. While scholars argue about the practice of human sacrifice in pagan Britain, some say it was customary, when starting construction on a new major building, to sacrifice a person, preferably a virgin, and place the body beneath the foundation stone. The gods were appeased by this act, as they thought mere mortals presumptuous to design and create prominent buildings. Furthermore, the spirit of the sacrificed person, because they had been honoured by being chosen as the lucky one to die, was thought to reside in the building, protecting all who went in inside.


Even after Christianity came to Britain and Ireland, the practice continued for quite some time. It is said that when St Columba (he who drove away the Loch Ness Monster) came to Iona off the Scottish west coast and began building monasteries there and on neighbouring islands, the walls of one of them kept falling down. Saying that this was because the customary sacrifice hadn’t been made, Columba’s superstitious monks demanded that a human being be buried beneath the foundation stone. Persuaded, the saint allowed the horrible practice to be performed, and a monk named Oron was chosen by lot to be the lucky one. After he was buried under the stone, the problems in construction ended.

It's interesting to note that there is a Hebridean island named Oronsay, and on it are the ruins of an ancient priory reputedly founded by St Columba. Perhaps the name of the sacrificed monk is commemorated in the name of the island.

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

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St Columba is associated with the story of how the robin got its red breast by pulling out the thorns piercing the crucified Christ’s forehead.

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St Columba's Day: the luckiest day of the year in Highland Scotland, especially when it falls on a Thursday.

Day of Colum Cille the beloved
Day to put the loom to use
Day to put sheep to pasture
Day to put coracle on the sea
Day to bear, day to die
Day to make prayer efficacious
Day of my beloved, the Thursday.
Carmina Gadelica

St Columba's herb is the St John's Wort which flowers around now in the Northern Hemisphere; if found accidentally and kept beneath the armpit (where the saint is said to have worn it) this will ward off all kinds of evil. Say this charm when you pick it:

Arm-pit package of Columba the kindly
Unsought by me, unlocked for
I shall not be carried away in my sleep
Neither shall I be pierced with iron
Better the reward of its virtues
Than a herd of white cattle.

Hypericum, or St John's Wort, is one of the few medicinal herbs to receive full validation of efficacy by Western Science. It is effective in cases of depression and anxiety.

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1838 Myall Creek Massacre, Australia
Bad day at Myall Creek
On Saturday, June 9, 1838, twelve European stockmen rounded up approximately 20 Kwiambal aborigines at Myall Creek (a branch of the Gwydir River in New South Wales), and killed them with knives and guns. The stockmen, who had accused the aboriginal people of pilfering, were acquitted at a trial on November 15, but faced trial again on November 29 and were found guilty. Seven of the twelve murdered were executed under Governor Sir George Gipps’s authority.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Viking treasure: The Cuerdale Hoard
[Following yesterday's piece on Viking raids on Britain, I thought perhaps you might find this yarn from 1840 interesting]

At Cuerdale, near Preston, Lancashire, England, the local people had an ancient tradition that there was a treasure somewhere in that vicinity. It had been said from time immemorial that if you stood on the south bank of the River Ribble at Walton le Dale, looking up river towards Ribchester, you would be within sight of England’s richest treasure. For centuries people had searched for the fabled treasure, often using divining methods such as forked willow or hazel sticks and silver chains.

Then, on this very wet May 15th in 1840, workmen walking home from repairing the embankment on the south side of the river marvellously noticed a wooden box exposed by a slump of the rain-sodden earth. The box contained a leaden casket, which in turn held a massive hoard (nearly 40 kilograms, or 88 pounds) of something highly prized by Vikings because they had virtually no mineral deposits of their own – silver.


The landowner's bailiff made certain that almost the entire hoard was secured, and the labourers, who must have been very honest, were each allowed to retain one coin. At an inquest on August 15 of that year it was declared ‘treasure trove’, the property of Queen Victoria in right of her Duchy of Lancaster, which handed it over to the British Museum for examination before it was distributed to more than 170 lucky recipients. Fortunately, most of the Cuerdale find was allocated to the British Museum where it remains.

The hoard was dated to around 905 and contained coins from as far afield as Afghanistan. The Cuerdale Hoard included 8,500 pieces of silver, including 350 ingots, weighing 36 kilograms, as well as silver neck rings from Russia and from France, a very fine gilded Carolingian buckle. Some of the coins were of Arab and Byzantine origin. Much of the other material is typically Irish or Hiberno-Viking in form and decoration.

In an article in the Numismatic Gazette (December 1966), numismatist M Banks put forward the suggestion that the hoard was not even buried by Vikings, although it was Viking treasure, or much of it was. Banks suggested that the Cuerdale Hoard might have been a gift to English churches suffering persecution in the areas, known as the Danelaw, occupied by pagan Vikings. Since so many of the coins were apparently minted across the Channel, said Banks, they were probably a contribution from the Frankish Christians to their English brothers. Many such mysteries surround the Cuerdale trove.

Other Viking hoards have been found in the British Isles, such as the Halton Moor Hoard dating from the 11th century, but this was the largest trove of Viking silver found outside Russia. The coins found with the Cuerdale Hoard reveal that it must have been buried in the years between 905 and 910, shortly after the expulsion of the Vikings from Dublin in 902.

Silver formed the basis of currency in Viking times and was often buried in times of unrest, perhaps giving us the reason for this treasure’s presence for almost nine centuries on the south bank of the River Ribble. However, the Cuerdale Hoard and other treasures of its kind might have been buried for religious reasons (though the presence of coins bearing crosses would militate against this argument), or as a strange form of ostentation. In the 13th-century Egil's Saga, the hero Egil Skallagrimsson does just that, hiding his hoard to provide a lasting talking point for other people. This kind of ostentatious destruction of wealth is paralleled in other cultures, even in the modern West – perhaps you’ve even noticed.

More
And more
Top Ten treasures in the British Museum
Viking links

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


(Oh, yeah, belated happy birthday to the British Museum ... 250 years old on June 7. More)

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Museum's broken treasure not just any old shit
Yep, that's the headline used by The Guardian newspaper ina piece on a fossilized Viking turd (coprolite)in a British museum that recently came to grief. Read about it here.

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By the way, my emails are still down, now two and a half days. There will be no ezines sent on June 9 and until my ISP get's its coprolites together.

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 8 | Lindisfarne Day: Vikings and vanquished

When I was with you, the closeness of your love would give me great joy. In contrast, now that I am away from you, the distress of your suffering fills me daily with deep grief, when heathens desecrated God's sanctuaries, and poured the blood of saints within the compass of the altar, destroyed the house of our hope, trampled the bodies of saints in God's temple like animal dung in the street …
Letter from Alcuin (Flaccus Alcuinus), Anglo-Saxon theologian and a founder of Western calligraphy, to Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne

June 8 is celebrated by Odinists (worshippers of Odin, Norse god). Odin is the supreme deity of the old religion of Norway, eldest of all the gods in the Nordic pantheon and leader of the race of gods known as the Aesir, they who live in Asgard. Odin is called All-father for he is father of all the gods.

It is the day in 793 that Vikings raided Lindisfarne, the holy island off the coast of Northumberland. The Vikings hacked the monks to death or dragged them into the sea where they drowned them. The chapels and monastery were looted of the riches they contained, much of which had been derived from the payment by the common folk for their indulgences – monetary payments to safeguard them from the torments of hell. The treasure included gold, silver, jewellery, ivory coffins and much beside.

It was not the first violent encounter between Vikings and the people of the British Isles – in 789 the crews of three Viking vessels landed at the present site of Portland, near Weymouth, England. There they were approached by a party of men led by Beaduheard, the shire reeve (from which title we derive the word ‘sheriff’) of the King of Wessex, who demanded that they accompany him to Dorchester, some nine miles away; an altercation ensued and the visitors slew Councillor Beaduheard.

Vikings at Portland: invasion, or stopping in for a beer?
In Britain, naturally enough, this incident is generally portrayed as the first Viking raid – a friendly councillor rushing to the quay to welcome what he thought was a Nordic package tour, and getting slewn … err … slain … for his troubles by a pack of horn-helmeted barbarians. However, it might well have been simply a case of Scandinavian sailors coming to port for purely honourable commercial purposes, being met by a pompous and xenophobic bureaucrat who handled the situation badly, from which a fight followed and things got out of hand [see Eelia’s Page, Chapter One). It might perhaps be thought of as a dockside brawl rather than an invasion from the north, whereas the Lindisfarne expedition some four years later was a raid, albeit more criminal than military.

Be that as it may, no fewer than four medieval scribes saw the 789 Portland incident as sufficiently significant to record it in their chronicles. Interestingly, one source, the important Anglo-Saxon chronicle, in recording the affair of 789, reveals the Britishers’ uncertainty about whence the raiders came, calling them both Norwegians and Danes:

In this year Beorhtric took to wife Eadburh, daughter of king Offa. And in his days came first three ships of Norwegians from Höthaland and then the reeve rode thither and tride [sic] to compel them to go to the royal manor, for he did not know what they were: and then they slew him. These were the first ships of the Danes to come to England.

Who knows, maybe in death Beaduheard gained immortality, all for being a jumped-up clerk with a tin badge and a somewhat capacious mouth.

If it rains today ...
Today, by the way, is also an English weather marker day with an ancient prognostication:

If on the eighth of June it rain,
It foretells a wet harvest, men sain.

A similar formula existed in old France today, the Feast Day of St Médard:

Quand il pleut a la Saint-Médard
Il pleut quarante jours plus tard;
S'il pleut le jour de Saint Gervais et de Saint Protais [June 19],
Il pleut quarante jours aprés.

It is quite likely the English invented their jingle following the French. The British tradition concerning forecasts of rain is much more commonly centred around St Swithin’s Day, July 15.

If today’s prognostication fails to help you decide whether to carry an umbrella, the laughing call of the European Green Woodpecker (Picus, or Genius, viridis) – alias the yaffle bird – is a sure sign of a shower. This is a bird of many names, for it is also known, just in English, as: eccle, hewhole, highhoe, laughing bird, popinjay, rain bird, yaffil, yaffler, yaffingale, yappingale, yackel, and woodhack.


For lovers of illuminated manuscripts: Painted Labyrinth - the World of the Lindisfarne Gospels


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



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Culture corner
See what are the first three results you get if you google the following three search words: Vikings, Portland, and 789.
;)

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 8, 1967 | Israel attacks USS Liberty: 205 casualties
1967 In a little-known incident of aggression, Israeli aircraft and boats attacked the USS Liberty during Israel's ‘Six Day War’. The action included rocket fire, machine-gunning, napalm bombing and torpedoing for more than two hours. Israeli fighter jets machine gunned life-rafts as American crewmen put them in the water. All told, 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded, or more than two-thirds of the Liberty’s 295 crew. A ship was forbidden to go to Liberty's assistance.

The incident was downplayed by the government, and the media reported that the incident lasted only five minutes and consisted of a single torpedo attack. Some claim it was no accident – these claimants include Israeli officers and US administration members involved, such as Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Tom Moorer, NSA Chief General Marshall Carter, his deputy Tordella, White House Press Secretary George Christian, and others.

More than 800 holes were caused in the American vessel during the bombardment. “They tried to kill all the witnesses,” Phil Tourney, president of the Liberty Veterans Association, said recently. “They didn't want any one of us left alive.”

Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford
“Body of Secrets is an incredible piece of journalism, and it paints a deeply troubling portrait of an agency about which the public knows next to nothing.” – Amazon.com

*Ø* Blogmanac | No Almanacs for June 7 and 8
My ISP's email server has been down for nearly 48 hours so there are no Almanac ezines until their problem is fixed, I'm sorry.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Not in the jury's name!
The Governor of Tennessee must stop an execution scheduled for 18 June in his state because he cannot rely on the jury's original sentencing decision, Amnesty International said, releasing a report on the case of Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman.

"Having learned of exculpatory and mitigating evidence kept from them at trial 16 years ago, eight of the original trial jurors have said that they no longer have confidence in their sentencing verdict", Amnesty International said. "Governor Phil Bredesen cannot have confidence in it either."

Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman was sentenced to death after a three-day trial in 1987. He was represented by a trial lawyer who has admitted that he was unprepared to defend his client, and faced a prosecutor whose zeal for a death sentence led him into professionally questionable conduct. A federal judge has described the case as a "miscarriage of justice". A Tennessee Supreme Court judge has pointed out that "none of the judges who have reviewed this case has seriously disputed that Abdur'Rahman's trial counsel was woefully incompetent and demonstrably ineffective."

The defence lawyer, for example, failed to present any evidence of his client's history of appalling childhood abuse and mental illness. For his part, the prosecutor "engaged in a pattern of deception" that also kept crucial information from the jury, according to six former prosecutors in an appeal last year to the US Supreme Court.

Due to procedural technicalities, no court has reviewed the full range of prosecutorial misconduct claims. Meanwhile, the only judge to have heard the testimony from the wide range of witnesses and evidence not presented by the defence lawyer, concluded that Abdur'Rahman had been "seriously prejudiced by utterly ineffective assistance of counsel". This federal judge said that his review of all the evidence "compels" the conclusion that the death sentence "cannot stand".

"Due to a combination of technical legalities and harsh legal precedents, the death sentence does still stand," Amnesty International continued. "The power of executive clemency exists precisely to compensate for the rigidity of the judiciary. Governor Bredesen should use that power to commute this death sentence in the interest of justice and the reputation of the State Tennessee and the USA."

Amnesty International's report

*Ø* Blogmanac | EU extradition deal with US
European Union justice ministers agreed on Friday to sign a landmark extradition deal with the United States after nearly a year of negotiations and criticism from human rights campaigners.

The extradition pact goes hand-in-hand with another accord that will allow US and EU police officers to set up joint investigation teams, share evidence and "cut red tape" in requesting help and information in crime and terrorism cases. The agreements will be signed at an EU-US summit in Washington on June 25.

Diplomats said EU states would retain the right to deny extradition in cases where the death penalty could be applied or enforced. They can also choose to refuse extradition of their own nationals if the United States cannot guarantee defendants a fair trial in a civilian court.

But some European lawmakers and civil rights groups have said the deal is too vague on the death penalty and that guarantees of fair trials were ambiguous. The United States has said it will try foreign terrorism suspects by secret military tribunals.

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Cybermates to replace real people?
The prospect of a world without romance, in which relationships between people who love each other give way to liaisons with computer-generated cyberdates, has been advanced by Britain's best-known female scientist. Susan Greenfield, who separated from her husband last month after 12 years of marriage, suggested that advances in technology would one day enable anyone, of whatever age or sexual orientation, to become a parent in a bland society of individuals who would get on better with a computer than another person.

Speaking at the Cheltenham Festival of Science, the Oxford neuroscientist described the fate of human individuality and relationships in a future where direct modifications can be made to the brain.

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | Olympics chief attacks Irish Sars ban
The head of the Global Special Olympics Movement has called Ireland's ban on athletes from Sars-affected countries a shocking low point in the games' 35-year history.

Timothy P Shriver, a nephew of former US President John F Kennedy, said he was appalled the exclusion applied solely to Special Olympics athletes, and not to the wider population travelling from those areas.

He said it added further indignity to the daily burden of exclusion, rejection or grudging acceptance experienced by the 170m people with mental disabilities world-wide.

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | June7 1631 | Death of the woman who inspired the Taj Mahal
1631 [Sources differ as to date.] While on a campaign with her husband (Shah Jahan, Mughal Emperor of India), Mumtaz Mahal (born Arjumand Banu Begam), died.

The Taj Mahal, described by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore as "a tear on the face of eternity", is often said to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, and is her tomb. The grand Taj Mahal stands as a monument to the love of a man for a woman.

"A tear on the face of eternity"

A deathbed wish
As she lay on her deathbed, it is said that Mumtaz whispered to Jahan a dying wish for him to build a monument that would express the beauty of their love for each other. Stricken with grief, Shah Jahan remained indoors for a week; when he emerged his hair had turned white, his back was now bent, and his face lined with despair. He ordered his entire kingdom into mourning for the next two years, and it is said he was inconsolable to the point of contemplating abdication in favour of his sons.





The magnificent tomb
Some believe the great building was designed by Geronimo Verroneo, an Italian in service to the Mughal Empire, and certainly many European craftsmen were among the 20,000 workers who worked on the tomb, bringing with them Renaissance skill and vision – not that the Moghul culture was lacking in either skill or vision. Craftsmen from as far as Turkey came to join in the work. However, evidence suggests that the architect was a Persian, Ustad Isa Khan Effendi, with the detailed work being undertaken by his pupil, Ustad Ahmad, and the dome being designed by Ismail Khan.

The tomb is higher than a modern 20-storey building and was 22 years in construction. Highest quality marble was quarried for the project, at Makrana near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, and precious stones were imported from distant countries to decorate the edifice. A ramp about 3 kilometres (approximately 2 miles) long was built to lift material up to the level of the dome.

We are familiar with the tomb’s magnificent exterior, but also it was fitted with sumptuous and precious furnishings and decorations, some of which have been looted in succeeding centuries – in 1720, a sheet of pearls that covered the sarcophagus was carried off by Amir Husein Ali Khan, and two large silver doors to the entrance were tragically looted and melted down by Suraj Mal in 1764. It might be said that the pillage of the Taj continues unabated, as today acid rain from nearby Western-style industry erodes the wonder’s white marble.

On completion of this architectural masterpiece, Shah Jahan ordered the right hand of the chief mason to be cut off in order that the masterpiece of devotion to his beloved Arjumand could never be recreated. Or, so it is said.

Most expensive magnum opus set for early release Bollywood movie on the Mumtaz story
Website of the forthcoming movie, Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | Analysts question Iraqi germ trailers

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of the senior intelligence analysts who examined Iraqi trailers suspected of being used to make biological weapons doubt they were used to make germ agents, the New York Times has reported." (Another huge surprise!)
Read the story

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 6 | 1944 D-Day and the bizarre crossword coincidence
1944 D-Day: the biggest invasion in world history began - more than one million men from 4,000 ships landed on beaches in northern France, beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The day had been set for June 5, but was postponed due to impossible weather conditions.

The D-Day crossword coincidence

Poor old Leonard Sidney Dawe. All the English schoolmaster wanted to do was produce a good crossword puzzle for London’s Daily Telegraph as he did each day in 1944. Little did he expect to be raided by secret agents of MI5, Britain’s spy agency.

On May 2 of that year, one of the clues in the Telegraph’s crossword was ‘One of the U.S.’ This gave the answer ‘UTAH’. On May 12, one of the solutions was ‘OMAHA’. On different days throughout May and early June, Dawe’s puzzle solutions included the words ‘OVERLORD’, ‘MULBERRY’ (May 31), and ‘NEPTUNE’ (June 2).

So why were the British spooks interested in Mr Dawe? A remarkable coincidence had occurred in his innocent crossword. ‘Overlord’ was the Allies’ codename for the entire Normandy invasion that was planned for June 6 – D-Day as we know it now. ‘Utah’ and ‘Omaha’ were ciphers for two of the beaches on which the Allies would be landing. ‘Neptune’ was code for the naval part of the operation, and ‘Mulberry’, the artificial harbour which would be put in place after the landing. Dawe had unwittingly stumbled into one of history’s great coincidences, his pen being mistaken by MI5 as a likely tool of German espionage.

After the death of Dawe in 1984, a certain Ron French who had been one of Dawe's pupils during the war revealed that Dawe used to give his pupils the exercise of filling in blank crossword grids. French claimed that in one of his exercises he had used words he'd heard from American soldiers he knew or saw around town. French also claimed that he had been called to the headmaster’s office following the visit of MI5, and sworn to secrecy. What truth there is in this is unknown to your almanackist, but the fact of the D-Day coincidence is well established and verifiable from Daily Telegraph archives.

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 6 | 1935 His Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet

May this heartfelt wish of total freedom for all Tibet,
Which has been awaited for a long time,
be spontaneously fulfilled;
Please grant soon the good fortune to enjoy
The happy celebration of spiritual with temporal rule.
From the prayer, Words of Truth, composed by His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, born on June 6, 1935


Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.
The Dalai Lama

*Ø* Blogmanac | USA uses torture to bolster own regime

Dubya's Sesame Street themes and Rummy's favourite death metal used to break stinkin towelhead Mooslims

The authoritative and prestigious BBC News reports that American PsyOps (Psychological Operations -- read disinfo, torture and brainwashing) are using heavy metal music as one of their sleep deprivation techniques to break the minds and wills of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

We can add this atrocity to a list of barbaric practices now being sanctioned by the non-elected Bush cabal in Washington: the sequestering of captives in 6 feet by 8 feet concrete cells under non-stop electric light for more than a year; refusal of charges or access to lawyers and Red Cross, and strong rumours of physical torture.

"This is an issue that seriously concerns us. If there is a prolonged period of sleep deprivation, it could well be considered torture"

Amnesty International spokesperson

The Psychological Operations Veterans Association tells this and similar stories. There, former US PsyOps agents with no political agenda talk openly about the kinds of propaganda and "mindbending" (their word) operations their craft employs. A similar UK website is interesting as well -- check out the hokey leaflets dropped over Afghanistan. (That brings to mind George W Bush's leaflet dropped over Iraq, as reported exclusively in Wilson's Almanac at the time of the illegal invasion.)

*Ø* Blogmanac | But Channel 9, everyone thinks you sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not giving a tinker's cuss about the struggling artist. So sue everyone in Australia
A humourless media mega-corp with a loathesome spotty behind, no sense of humour and a desire to squeeze blackheads and any dollar out of anyone it can get it from, has the temerity to sue another media mega-corp. So sue me, Kerry, and the whole world for giggling.

Read more about Australia's richest man whose media mega-corp, ACP, dishes out unrelenting midless crap to a largely accepting Australian public. And how ACP makes hundreds of millions in profit and the tax goes south.

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 5 | 8498 BCE Atlantis drowns
8498 BCE Today is a traditional date of the natural calamity that destroyed the supposed ancient civilization of Atlantis.

One wonders what is the origin of the human love of the unlikely, the irrational, the bizarre and the preposterous, but no amount of wondering will solve the puzzle. The chance that an advanced civilization lies beneath the ocean, undetected by 21st-century oceanography, satellite imaging, geology and any number of modern scientific aids, is slim indeed, but here we have a persistent legend that is probably believed by more people today than in the Middle Ages. I confess to having my own imp of fascination for many things to which I give no credence whatsoever. A hobgoblin, a tale from the crypt, or a UFO or two can brighten the dreariest evening.

Atlantis, or so it is said, was a huge island lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules (now known as the Straits of Gibraltar) and its culture had dominated the Mediterranean nine thousand years before Solon, the lawmaker of Athens. From its ideal condition as an advanced culture it deteriorated into a military aggressor, so the gods resolved to punish the civilisation. We have this on authority of Plato in his Timaeus and Critias (c. 350 BCE). He learned the story from his cousin, who got it from his grandfather, who heard it from his father, who got it from Solon himself, who heard it from the priests of Sais in Egypt in 590 BCE.


The story was known in Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, (c. 2040-1640 BCE). It might be related to the c. 1500 BCE eruption of the volcano on the Minoan-related island of Thera, and 40 years later its collapse into the sea. Crete’s civilisation might have perished at this time in the cloud of ash and the tsunami. (There was a huge volcanic eruption on Santorini in 1628 BC, calculated at between three and four times more explosive than Krakatoa in 1883. Plato says the island of Atlantis had a structure of concentric rings, which are discernible on Santorini.)

Over the centuries, the position of Atlantis has been postulated by various scholars and pseudo-scholars as being in almost every corner of the planet. That said, it is true that many unsolved mysteries remain with regard to the languages and cultures, myths and legends of peoples of all nations, and the search for connections is a fruitful one. Why are there pyramids in the Americas and distant Egypt? How do we explain the similar gods and words across the continents? The search for these threads of connection isn’t new: in the period of 1913-1925, English explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett searched for a fabled Atlantean outpost in the Amazon River basin. Fawcett, his companions and the fabulous lost city of quartz buildings that they were seeking, all vanished in 1925.

As an interesting sidelight, one of the most prominent 19th-century Atlantist authors (he made his fortune with Atlantis: the Antediluvian World) was Ignatius Donnelly (born Philadelphia, November 3, 1831), an idiosyncratic and somewhat quixotic American Congressman whose writings, particularly the utopian sci-fi novel, Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century, profoundly influenced the working class in pre-federation (1901) Australia. Perhaps ironically, he died in Minneapolis on January 1, 1901 (precisely 100 years before this Almanac was founded) on the first day of the century, the very day that Australia’s federation took effect.

Donnelly is perhaps better known for his The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in the So-Called Shakespeare's Plays about an alleged code in Shakespeare's work that reveals that Francis Bacon wrote much of Shakespeare’s work.

Ignatius Donnelly and the End of the World
Atlantis in Myth and Religion
Theories about Atlantis
More
More

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | British soldiers questioned over Iraqi PoW deaths
The role of British troops in Iraq came under further scrutiny today amid two fresh allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war. In the most serious case of its kind so far, the Ministry of Defence has announced an inquiry into the deaths of two Iraqi prisoners in British custody.

The military police's special investigation branch have questioned British soldiers in Iraq over the deaths, the MoD confirmed today. The two civilians were being held by the Black Watch at a detention centre in Basra when they died, according to reports quoting relatives of British troops. "There is an investigation by the special investigation branch," said a spokeswoman for the MoD. "Any death in custody is looked into as a matter of course."

The latest allegations emerged just days after military police questioned a British soldier in custody over photographs which allegedly showed troops torturing Iraqi PoWs. Photograph developers in Staffordshire called police after they became concerned about a number of pictures on a roll of film handed in to their shop for processing. One of the images allegedly showed an Iraqi PoW gagged and bound and hanging in netting from a forklift truck driven by a British soldier.

A further special investigation branch investigation is also under way into Colonel Tim Collins, who led the Royal Irish regiment in Iraq, over allegations by a US reserve officer that he mistreated Iraqis.

Story

*Ø* Blogmanac | Welcome Veralynne, new co-moderator of the Blogmanac

Now we are four. It's with great pleasure that I announce that Nora, J-9 and I are being joined today by Veralynne Pepper as a co-mod of Wilson's Blogmanac.

Veralynne (Vee) already has a strong Internet presence with her popular ezine, ACT and her new weblog, A Changin' Times. Like J-9, Vee hails from America, Houston, Texas, to be precise. She brings to the Blogmanac a great deal of expertise and commitment in social justice, and I'm sure that will be seen here, along with whatever else her broad-ranging interests reveal. Welcome, Veralynne, and thanks for joining the team!

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 4 | 1989 We shall never forget Tienanmen

As many as 2,600 people were killed and 10,000 injured in Tienanmen Square, Beijing, when the Chinese Communist government cracked down on pro-democracy protesters.

Click the thumb for the larger animation, and here for a dramatic photo gallery

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Iris Bath Event, Japan (June 4-5)
The Yamashiro Spa at Kama, Japan, is opened today for a special ritual called the Iris Bath Event. Bales of iris leaves are thrown into the spa in order to expel evil. The eaves of local hotels and homes are decorated with iris leaves and red lanterns; meanwhile geishas dance to the sound of drums played by young men.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Guess who's Geek of the Week!

And I'm one very proud nerd!



I don't know who nominated me, but it made my day, so thank you, whoever you are. I'm always delighted when readers nominate Wilson's Almanac for awards. Not that it's ever happened before. But I would be.


See Wilson's Almanac's award at Geek of the Week

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 4 | A saint from Cornwall and a connection with King Arthur
The sixth-century Celtic saint, Petroc, was the son of a Welsh king and remains the most famous saint of Cornwall. One antique document described him as being “handsome in appearance, courteous in speech, prudent, simpleminded, modest, humble, a cheerful giver, burning with ceaseless charity, always ready for all the works of religion because while still a youth he had attained by watchful care the wisdom of riper years”.

Petroc’s name was given to many places in Devon, Cornwall and Wales. In his old age he withdrew to a hermitage on Bodmin Moor. Petroc was buried at Padstow, which became the center of his cult. There are 18 churches dedicated to him in Devon, plus others in Cornwall and south Wales. By the eleventh century Bodmin had become the centre of his cult, which also flourished in Brittany, France. St Petroc may even have taken Christianity to Brittany, where more than 30 churches are dedicated to him (under the name Perreux). He is also the titular saint of a church in the French canal province of Nivernais. However, it might be that his many disciples carried his cultus across the Channel.

In 1178, by a disgruntled canon named Martin stole his relics (body parts) and gave them to Saint-Méen's Abbey near Rennes, Brittany, but were returned to Bodmin the next year at the request of Roger, its Prior, after the intervention of Bishop Bartholomew of Exeter and King Henry II. During the Reformation, the saint’s head was hidden from marauding Protestants, and was not rediscovered until the 19th century, no doubt an occasion of huge rejoicing throughout Cornwall.

In art, Petroc is generally portrayed with a stag, harking back to one he sheltered from hunters

St Petroc’s Church at Bodmin figures in the legends associated with King Arthur. It is often presumed that the first we know of the tales of the 6th-century Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table was written, centuries after the supposed king’s life, in 1146 by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his monumental work, History of the Kings of Britain. There are earlier sources, but Geoffrey’s is the one with the greatest number of tales. However, there is a piece of evidence that appears to predate the History, at least by a few years. A chronicle, written in 1146 by one Hermann of Tournai, named De Miraculis S. Marie Laudunensis (‘On the Miracles of Our Lady of Laon’) relates certain events that took place in the year 1113.

Hermann relates that a group of nine canons from the church at Laon, France, visited the town of Bodmin in Cornwall. Proudly told by locals that they were in the “Lands of King Arthur”, the clerics were shown various local sites that were associated with the fabled king, such as Arthur's Chair and Arthur's Oven.

During their sojourn at St Petroc’s abbey, a man with a withered arm came to them requesting healing. During their conversation with the man, he mentioned that King Arthur was still alive. The Frenchmen ridiculed him for saying such a thing, but a crowd of onlookers supported the man's strange belief and a brawl broke out.

The fact that these events were supposed to have happened in 1113 refutes the view that Geoffrey of Monmouth invented King Arthur as a fiction. Historia Brittonum, written in the 9th century by the rather unreliable chronicler, Nennius, who possibly had access to documents dating back at least four centuries, also refers to someone who might have been the legendary king.

Nennius and the British Chronicles
More on Arthur at Wilson’s Almanac

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | Virus-Writing Course Stirs Controversy
Two prominent groups of anti-virus professionals on Monday condemned the recent decision by the University of Calgary to offer a course that includes instruction on coding viruses. The groups said that teaching such skills "is completely unnecessary" and undermines the work being done to counteract viruses.

"It is simply not necessary to write new viruses to understand how they work and how they can be prevented. There are also enough viruses on the Internet already that can be dissected and analyzed without creating new threats," said a joint statement released by the Anti-Virus Information Exchange Network and the Anti-Virus Information and Early Warning System.

Read here

Seems crazy to me...

*Ø* Blogmanac | Why we are still on Planet Earth
In case you were wondering whether the poles of the planet shifted on or shortly after May 15 this year, apparently the Zeta aliens deliberately gave a phony date. Now I get it. That's why all the calamities didn't happen. I see. But they will. Oh.

You can catch all the latest (so you can prepare for the calamities) here and here. The actual date stuff is here and some light-reading background is here. Nancy's a Wilson's Almanac kind of channel, so please give her your support.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Australia's tallest tree devastated by fire:

ForestryBiz goes "whoops!" again







Environmentalists in Tasmania, where the Greens party attracts 20% of the vote, have accused Forestry Tasmania of being unfit to protect one of the world's most diverse rainforests.

El Grande, Australia's tallest tree on the island state of Tasmania has been devastated by a routine fire which went out of control, forestry officials have said.








Full story

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 3 | What did Billy Joe throw off the Tallahatchee Bridge?
It was the third of June,
Another sleepy, dusty Delta day;
I was out choppin' cotton,
And my brothers were bailin' hay.
Bobby Gentry, Ode to Billie Joe

Louisiana, USA, year unknown: Today is the day that the parents of Billie Joe McAllister’s girlfriend made some insinuations about what their daughter had been doing recently with Billie Joe at the Tallahatchee Bridge. It’s a mystery. Each year the question comes up in my mind, and I ask my friends: What do you think Billy Joe and his girl threw off the bridge?

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 3 | 1969 HMAS Melbourne's second disaster
South China Sea at the height of the Vietnam War | The Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, which had gained notoriety for its disastrous collision with HMAS Voyager (February 10, 1964) in which 82 sailors died, crashed again, this time ramming American destroyer USS Frank E Evans amidships, killing 74.

*Ø* Blogmanac | King Blames Trousers for World's Ills
MBABANE (Reuters) - Swaziland's absolute monarch has singled out women wearing trousers as the cause of the world's ills in a state radio sermon that also condemned human rights as an "abomination before God."

"The Bible says curse be unto a woman who wears pants, and those who wear their husband's clothes. That is why the world is in such a state today," Mswati, ruler of the impoverished feudal nation of about one million, said late last Thursday.

The Times of Swaziland reported that the monarch, who reigns supreme in the landlocked country run by palace appointees and where opposition parties are banned, went on to criticize the human rights movement.

"What rights? God created people, and He gave them their roles in society. You cannot change what God has created. This is an abomination before God," the king told an audience of conservative church leaders.

Women on the streets of capital Mbabane were not impressed.

"The king says I am the cause of the world's problems because of my outfit. Never mind terrorism, government corruption, poverty and disease, it's me and my pants. I reject that," said Thob'sile Dlamini.

Mswati is Africa's last absolute monarch. He is currently married to nine wives, with a wedding pending for wife number 10, and has chosen an additional fiancee after reviewing videos of topless maidens performing a traditional Reed Dance ceremony.
Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Bookburning next?
President George W. Bush today issued an Executive Order banning sales of the book “1984” by Englishman Eric Blair. The order was made on the grounds that the book was subversive of the War on Terrorism. Copies will be withdrawn from public libraries in the US over the next few weeks.

Commenting, the President said, “I thought he was my friend when we zapped Saddam. It just shows how wrong you can be about a guy.”

The book was stated to subvert the Patriot Act by criticising extended surveillance, and impugn the invasion of Iraq (and any other invasions under consideration) by claiming that an ongoing state of war was necessary to continue the President in office. It was also said to cast aspersions on the articulateness and intelligence of the President, by implying that the American language was being simplified in order to confine it to concepts within the President’s understanding.

The President said that the author also appeared to confuse him with the Governor of Florida by frequent references to “Big Brother”.

The White House stated that the Executive Order was not without precedent, as a similar book by Englishman George Orwell had been banned from Miami public libraries in the 1950s as being politically subversive.

Source

Third Annual Nigerian EMail Conference
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Let's make a Big Noise!
Archbishop Desmond Tutu just became the one millionth person demanding fairer trade rules by signing up to the Big Noise petition to make trade fair. On September 10th 2003, Oxfam will present the petition to world leaders at a meeting of the world's richest nations in Cancun. Sign up to the 'Big Noise' petition to make trade fair.

Pip is posting nudes for June, but I'm sticking to "Safety at Work"

*Ø* Blogmanac | Burmese Junta Re-Arrests Nobel Laureate
Burma's military junta yesterday closed all schools and colleges indefinitely, two days after detaining pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her party's leadership.

Suu Kyi and 19 members of the NLD (National League for Democracy) have been placed under "protective custody", the military government said on Saturday. Offices of the NLD across the country have been closed over the weekend and their telephones cut off. The spate of arrests has incarcerated the party's executive committee.

Suu Kyi has been drawing crowds of up to 20,000 on her travels around the country - the spark for the regime's latest move, diplomats believe.

The school and university closures take Burma back to the years following Suu Kyi's victory in elections in 1990 -- which the military never recognised, instead placing her under house arrest. Educational institutions were reopened and Suu Kyi released from house arrest for the second time just over a year ago, amid hopes for fresh dialogue and promises for the charismatic Nobel prize winner's freedom of movement and assembly.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, expressed concern about the situation and said the developments underlined the urgent need for national reconciliation.

More than 1,000 of Suu Kyi's party members are in jail; some have been there for years.

Story

Further details

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 2 | Chopped with his own chopper
1581 James Douglas, Fourth Earl of Morton, Regent of Scotland, was beheaded at Edinburgh.

Justice for Douglas
After ruling Scotland for ten years under the auspices of Queen Elizabeth I, Morton fell foul of factionalism at court and found himself on the scaffold. What is striking about his execution is that he was beheaded by a device known as ‘the Maiden’, or ‘Scottish Maiden’ (aka ‘the Widow’), a forerunner of the guillotine (not to be confused with the Iron Maiden, a hollow device like a sarcophagus, with spikes in its interior, in which the victim was confined). It is believed that Douglas himself had introduced the contraption into Scotland for the purpose of beheading the laird of Pennycuick. Records show that the Maiden dates to 1564 (one Thomas Scott, a murderer, had been executed in Scotland in 1566), so an old reference that “He who invented the maiden first hanselled it” is erroneous.

The Maiden was modelled on the Halifax (Yorkshire) gibbet, which was a feared guillotine-like device used on felons who stole property worth at least thirteen and a half pence. It is believed it severed its last head in 1650, but it found a new incarnation in the invention of a French physician, Joseph Ignace Guillotin (May 28, 1738-March 26, 1814), who came up with the idea of the guillotine because he sincerely desired to reduce the suffering of those condemned to death. The belief that Guillotin was also executed on his own device is erroneous as well, as he died of ill health. It is interesting to note, with regard to Guillotine, that his family, ashamed of the good doctor’s invention, petitioned the parliament to change its name. When this was refused, they changed their family name instead.

Anti-capital punishment resources

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

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June 2 is the day of St Elmo, the early Christian saint and patron of sailors for whom the electrical phenomenon known as St Elmo's Fire was named. Keith C Heidorn, the Weather Doctor, has a great article here.

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Factoid: It's possible that the Hindenburg airship disaster of 1937 was caused by St Elmo's fire.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Our first T-shirt -- Carpe diem!

Nora has kindly allowed the hosting of Blogmanac images at her fine site. She's away for the weekend, and when she gets back I'd better duck for cover, because this image is ginormous. If you have time to kill, have a sneak preview of the design of our first-ever T-shirts. The new design features a globe that is deliberately bent, just like the Almanac. It's inside a Copernican zodiacal wheel, and I think you'll like the design and colours. It has unique scientifically designed features that enhance the chest size of both men and women! My own chest is becoming quite womanly! Yours can as well! Click the thumbnail to see the image, and click Cafe Diem! to see the T-shirt sitting pretty next to our mug.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Terence McKenna on the Voynich Manuscript
Readers of the Almanac will possibly know that I have an interest, albeit new and very amateur, in that "elegant enigma", the mysterious Voynich Manuscript. You might be interested to listen to the late and lamented Terence McKenna who, in 1983, was recorded in interview on the topic. He gives a rollicking overview of Voynich and has some insights that were new to me. There are numerous other McKenna audio files on that page as well. If you google Voynich, too, there's a growing body of Web material if you want to read more.

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 1 | Festival of Carna, or Cardea, Roman Goddess of Doors
Today is the kalends of June, and we should repair doors, door hinges and locks today (they might be tested by Tempestas, the weather goddess, whose day this also is.) In the Green Rose tradition this day is sacred to Circe. The Romans, always good at having a deity for almost any aspect of life, had Carna as a tutelary domestic goddess of door hinges.

However, it seems the Romans themselves might have been confused about this goddess. The Roman writer, Ovid, in Fasti, his work on the Roman calendar writes: “June 1st. The first day is given to thee, Carna. She is the goddess of the hinge: by her divine power she opens what is closed, and closes what is open.” One source, though, mentions that the goddess was Cardea, and says “It is doubtful whether she is to be identified with the goddess Carna, who is said to have taken the larger organs of the body – heart, lungs, and liver – under her special protection.”

*Ø* Blogmanac | Now, get the Blogmanac by email

Just above the seaside mog shot (no, not Mug Shop, though you can go there too) of your almanackist (in the right-hand column), there's a new subscription box. There, you can take out a free sub to all the good stuff that is blogged here each day by me and the growing team. It's a daily ezine and I think you will like it. Get all the news and positive ideas "on the run" for those times you can't check into the Blogmanac.

The Blogmanac ezine is not the same as Wilson's Almanac free daily ezine (you can subscribe to that just above the Blogmanac sub box by clicking the pic). What you will get in the blog zine is what is posted here each day. Take out a free sub and see if you like it!

*Ø* Blogmanac | June 1 | The month of June, sacred to the goddess Juno

The sixth month of the year derived its name from the Roman Junius, a gens or clan name related to juvenis, meaning young. The Roman writer, Ovid, in Fasti, his work on the Roman calendar, writes: Junius a juvenum nomine dictus (v, 79). Another possibility is that it might derive from the goddess Juno – perhaps both explanations are correct.

Juno was the Roman Mother Goddess, known to the Greeks as Hera, and her original name to the Romans was Junonius. Among her attributes, she is queen of heaven, approximating Frigg in the Northern Tradition, and Mary in the Christian. She is ruler of the high point of year, when there is maximum light and minimum darkness (in the Northern Hemisphere). On June 22, the northern Summer Solstice will occur, and here in the south, we will have our shortest day.

Juno is a counterpart of Janus and the divine watcher over the female sex, so this month is considered the best time to marry. As Juno Moneta, guardian of wealth and money, she had a temple on the Capitoline hill in Rome where the empire’s coins were minted. The folklorist Nigel Pennick writes, “This theme of wealth can also be seen in the runic year cycle: the half-month of Feoh, the time of wealth and abundance, begins on 29 June”.

The most likely derivation is that the month was dedicated a Junioribus – that is, to the junior or inferior branch of the original legislature of Rome, just as May was a Majoribus, or to the superior branch.

The Saxons called it Weyd-monat, because their beasts did then weyde into the meadows, meaning that they went in and fed (cf the Tutonic weyde, a meadow). Another explanation is that June was Woedmonath, and that woed means weed. June was called Medemonath, Midsumormonath and Braeckmonath (breaking of soil). Another name was Lida erra (Icelandic Lida = to move, or pass over): the sun passing its highest point. Another Anglo-Saxon calendar term for the sixth month was se Ærra Liþa (Aerra Litha – the earlier Lithe-month), ‘before Liþa (Litha)’ – Litha means midsummer, and is a term for the solstice used today by many neo-pagans. The Saxons also called it Seremonath (dry-month)

The old Dutch name was Zomer-maand (summer-month); in the French Revolutionary calendar the month was called Prairial (meadow month, 20 May to 18 June).

The Irish used to call this month meitheamh, and the Franks called it Brachmanoth, meaning ‘break month’. In modern Asatru, it is called Fallow. The backwoods (Amerindian) name is Hot or Strawberry Moon.

June is ‘the door of the year’, the gateway to inner realms. In the goddess calendar the first 12 days of June belong to Hera.

European folklore tells us that: good weather in ‘Flaming June’ is required if there is to be a good harvest; bats flying on a June evening are a sign of hot, dry weather, and if swallows fly near the ground in June it’s a sign of coming rain.

In the south-west of England, there was still in 1826 the old pagan custom of throwing flowers into a stream at this time of year.

What is today’s date in the Anglo-Saxon calendar? Click here to find out. You’ll need your latitude and longitude, which you should be able to get in the masthead of Wilson’s Blogmanac.

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

The Wheel of the Year
See also http://www.equinox-and-solstice.com