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The Blogmanac: "On This Day" ... and much more
Think universally. Act terrestrially.
For in a hard-working society, it is rare and even subversive to celebrate too much, to revel and keep on reveling: to stop whatever you're doing and rave, pray, throw things, go into trances, jump over bonfires, drape yourself in flowers, stay up all night, and scoop the froth from the sea.
Anneli Rufus*
Today they will be partying off the coast of Ireland … or is it off the coast of England … or of Scotland? In the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland lies the Isle of Man, where men are Manx and proud of it (and so are the women). Man (or Mann) is famous for Manx cats and Grand Prix motor sports, and it is a small island with a big history.
The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, but a Crown Dependency. Queen Elizabeth II is acknowledged as Lord of Mann, and in 1979 she presided over the millennial celebrations of the Tynwald, the Manx parliament, which is commemorated each year on July 5.
The High Court of Tynwald, as the parliament is known, is of Norse (Viking) origin and at over 1,000 years old is thus the oldest parliament in the world to enjoy an unbroken existence. (Iceland’s Althing was founded earlier but its existence was interrupted.) Tynwald has two branches, the Legislative Council and the House of Keys.
The Legislative Council is the upper branch of Tynwald and its eleven members are either indirectly elected or sit ex officio. The principal function of the Council is the consideration of legislation. The House of Keys is the lower, directly elected branch of Tynwald and originally had 32 members but since about 1156 it has seated a constant membership of 24 ‘Keys’ with a varying size and distribution of constituencies.
The Chronicles of the Kings of Mann and the Isles(held by the British Library despite the requests of the Manx people for their return) tell us that Godred Crovan (who helped Harold invade Britain in 1066) was successful in 1079, on his third attempt, in his invasion of the Isle of Man, and ruled it for 16 years. It is believed that the institution of Tynwald was finally and permanently established during his reign.
OUR doughtfull and gratious Lord, this is the Condition of old Time, the which we have given in our Days, how yee should be governed on your Tinwald Day. First, you shall come thither in your Royal Array, as a King ought to do, by the Prerogatives and Royalties of the Land of Man. And upon the Hill of Tynwald sitt in a Chaire covered with a Royall Cloath and Cushions, and your Visage into the East, and your Sword before you, holden with the Point upward; your Barrons in the third Degree sitting beside you, and your benificed Men and your Deemsters before you sitting; and your Clarke, your Knights, Esquires and Yeomen, about you in the third Degree; - and the worthiest Men in your Land to be called in before your Deemsters, if you will aske any Thing of them, and to hear the Government of your Land, and your Will; and the Commons to stand without the Circle of the Hill, with three Clearkes in their Surplises …
We also know from records that on October 25, 1247 a convention of all the Manx people took place at Tynwald.
National symbol: the 3-in-1 The national flag of Man is a plain red field with the triskell (or triskelion or trinacria) emblem at its centre. This symbol dates back to the 13th century and is believed to be connected with Sicily, where a similar image was used during the Norman period. In Emblemes et symboles des Bretons et des Celtes (Coop Breizh, 1998), Divy Kervella suggests the triskell is a pagan Celtic symbol of triplicity in unity, and probably originally a solar symbol. Other Celtic examples of the three-in-one include the shamrock; the staff of the Celtic pantheon: Lugh, Daghda (Taran) and Ogme; the triune goddess of three aspects: daughter, wife, and mother; and the three dynamic elements: water, air, and fire.
The triskell is similar to the hevoud, another Celtic symbol, and the Basque lauburu, and might even precede Celtic origins (for instance on the cairn of Bru na Boinne in Ireland).
According to the World Encyclopedia of Flags, by A Znamierovski (1999):
The triskelion (from the Greek "three-legged") is one of the oldest symbols known to mankind. The earliest representations of it were found in prehistoric rock carvings in northern Italy. It also appears on Greek vases and coins from the 6th and 8th centuries BC, and was revered by Norse and Sicilian peoples. The Sicilian version has a representation of the head of Medusa in the center. The Manx people believe that the triskelion came from Scandinavia. According to Norse mythology, the triskelion was a symbol of the movement of the sun through the heavens.
The celebration Today, at St John’s, citizens of Man will assemble in the open air for an open sitting of the Tynwald parliament. Manx residents who have a grievance for which they have exhausted all the normal channels of appeal, may present a Petition for Redress of Grievance to the Tynwald Court. All day long there will be a fair and colourful folk dancing and carousing.
Happy Tynwald Day!
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
July 5, 1977 Sandra Mansi, a tourist at Lake Champlain, Vermont, USA, photographed ‘Champ’ the Loch Ness-like monster that lives there. The explorer Samuel de Champlain had reported seeing monsters there between 1608-12.
Five British women MPs are coping with the macho world of politics by secretly taking a male sex hormone. A Harley Street specialist yesterday revealed he has treated the mystery five with testosterone implants. Gynaecologist Malcolm Whitehead said: “They claim it boosts assertiveness and makes them feel more powerful.
Last night Westminster was rife with rumours about who might be getting the treatment. But some women MPs were outraged by the suggestion they needed a boost to compete with their male colleagues. Minister for Women Patricia Hewitt said: “It’s one of the great myths that women need to behave like men to succeed. The truth is MPs are far more likely to succeed if they use rational argument rather than hormone-fuelled rhetoric. Is there no end to the rubbish people will say about women in senior positions?”
"A poll conducted by a British film magazine has found Scottish actor Sean Connery created the worst accent in the history of cinema ...
"'Whether he's a Russian sub captain (The Hunt For Red October) or even an English king (First Knight and Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves), always that baritone Highland burr remains,' the verdict read.
"Close behind, in third place, came US actor Brad Pitt for his role as an Austrian mountaineer in the 1997 film Seven Years in Tibet."
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
[Meryl Streep's Australian accent in Evil Angels had them rolling in the aisles here. So did the Simpsons' Australian episode. Sort of American/Cockney.]
Tomorrow's Orange march at Drumcree in Northern Ireland seems set to go ahead amid appeals for calm from police and churchmen. The march has been banned by the Parades Commission from proceeding along the nationalist Garvaghy Road. This is the route marchers have traditionally taken on their way back to the Orange lodge from their church service at Drumcree on the outskirts of Portadown.
There are hopes that last year's violent attacks on police blocking the Garvaghy Road by some on the loyalist side will not be repeated. The Church of Ireland Primate, Archbishop Robin Eames, has appealed for "calmness, dignity and responsible behaviour" at Drumcree tomorrow, and in the following days.
Following a week of rumours concerning a possible resolution of the stand-off between the Orange Order and residents which has persisted since 1998, there were signs yesterday that a way forward could be found. However, it seems all but impossible that one could be finalised in time for tomorrow's march.
One of France's greatest pianists will end his career this summer by destroying two grand pianos and his recital clothes in protest at what he says is the bourgeois elitism of classical music.
Francois-Rene Duchable will drop one piano into an Alpine lake from a helicopter, blow up a second and burn his concert suit on stage. Then he will put a keyboard on the back of his bicycle and travel around France giving impromptu performances.
Mr Duchable, who has been described by the French press as 'the glorious Francois-Rene' said that he has "had enough of sacrificing my life for one per cent of the population. I have had enough of participating in a musical system which, in France, functions badly and limits classical music to an elite."
*Ø* Blogmanac | Microsoft Word bytes Tony Blair in the butt Microsoft Word documents are notorious for containing private information in file headers which people would sometimes rather not share. The British government of Tony Blair just learned this lesson the hard way.
Read the detective work here (and watch what you do with Microsoft Word docs!)
*Ø* Blogmanac | USA: Free Australians Hicks and Habib now
While Americans celebrate freedom, their gov't subjects 662 people to cruelty at Guantanamo
For 19 months, two Australian citizens have languished uncharged in America's hell-hole at Guantanamo Bay. Bush's ignorant cabal has thrown out the window the ancient human rights principle of habeas corpus -- that people cannot be held in jail without being charged. It is a crucially important principle honoured for hundreds of years by the people of all civilized countries.
They are denied access to lawyers, Red Cross, United Nations and Amnesty International representatives. They are kept in 6 feet by 8 feet concrete cells like stray dogs, under fluoresecent lights 24/7 like torture victims of the KGB. But it is not the KGB, it is the government of the USA keeping these men, like hundreds of other captives, subjected to 'cruel and unusual punishment' (against their own loudly applauded and oft-proclaimed 'best in the world' US Constitution).
Bush's lapdog Australian government will not even demand that Hicks and Habib be charged or released. Wilson's Almanac will.
"It is 19 months since American military authorities began jailing prisoners captured in the US-led war in Afghanistan at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, where they are denied all access to lawyers and their families. Among more than 660 prisoners from 42 countries in the concentration camp-style jail are two Australians, 27-year-old David Hicks and 46-year-old Mamdouh Habib."
Pictured: Australian citizen David Hicks, held without charge by USA
Latest news is that Hicks might face trial. As the US government itself has revealed, this will be a military court and they have suspended the normal fair rules of evidence and other acceptable forms of justice. (This has been done as part of the Shrub cabal's phony 'war on terrorism' which has ulterior motives: to steadily and imperceptibly remove the rights of Americans one by one.)
Please write to representatives and media to demand that Australian citizens not be illegally detained or tortured by the USA government. We especially hope our American friends will see that their own rights are inextricably linked with the inhumane treatment of non-American prisoners.
Footnote: David Hicks is often portrayed in the media by a photograph showing him holding a rocket-launching weapon. Don't be deceived by this photo. The Australian government, US government and their captive media want you to believe he is a danger to you. The photograph was in fact taken while he was a soldier on the side of the 'good guys' (Americans and Australians) supporting freedom in Bosnia. This fact is never mentioned, quite deliberately.
Vastlands of innocence (for July 4) Pip Wilson, July 4, 2002
In the vastlands of innocence, Liberty and Justice sang to a southland and we heard the call. We are torn, we’re all born on the Fourth of July, purple mountain majesty washed over all Australia’s red rocks and her blue mountain pall.
O vastlands of innocence, manifest destiny, great people, just people, people just the same. They pulled down their king for a trivial thing, and raised up another who sullied their name. O beautiful for spacious skies and Richard Nixon’s shame.
In the vastlands of innocence, in the wide dreaming, mansions of marble and motels of mud. We marvel and wonder when we hear distant thunder, will it bring rains of plenty, or does it speak flood? Jefferson, Franklin, or movies of blood?
O the vastlands of innocence, Swaggart and Leary, they send us provisions at our own behest. Tobacco and medicine, Manson and Edison, they ship us their best but then ship us the rest. O would that their captains would heed our request!
In the vastlands of innocence, by the blue harbour, ‘W’ dared and he ventured to touch on his favourite oration, The World’s Greatest Nation. Sweet Jesus forgive him, he ain’t travelled much, and vanity in vain, isn’t vanity as such.
The vastlands of innocence, Fonzie and Whitman, adored in dark theatres and the rockets’ red glare, we never will hate them, condemn or berate them and part of our hearts is in their love affair. But we must implore that the rumours of war will wither like whispers in yesterday’s air, like the whimpers of babies, like Mary’s last prayer. The blood-spangled banner of hunger’s unfurled -- let the vastlands still sing the Pursuits, for the World.
Traditions don’t fall from the sky, the are created by people, and sometimes by good-hearted people whose simple acts of generosity become enshrined over time and bestow on their originators a place in history. The Fairlop Oak Festival (or Fairlop Fair) is a good example.
Long ago in England – the early- to mid-18thCentury – on the first Friday in July, the Fairlop Oak Festival was held. The Fairlop Oak, a large tree, in Hainault Forest, Essex was said to have a whopping diameter of 6.7 metres (22 feet) and a girth of 20 metres (66 feet). These estimates are no doubt exaggerated; however, one Peter Kalm, a student of the great Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (May 23 1707-January 10 1778), measured the tree at 9.1 metres (30 feet) in 1748.
A prosperous pump-maker named Daniel Day (1673-1767), known to his friends as Good Day (perhaps he had an Australian cousin called Gid Day), started the practice of sharing a meal with his friends (and tenants, for Day had inherited some property and this was his annual rent-collecting day) under the oak on the first Friday in July. Day was quite particular as to themeal served each year: they always ate just beans and bacon beneath the 91-metre (300-feet) circumference canopy.
The English poet John Gay (1685-1732) referred to this quaint repast:
Pedlars' stalls with glitt'ring toys are laid, The various fairings of the country maid. Long silken laces hang upon the twine, And rows of pins and amber bracelets shine.
Good Day’s friends in the pump-and-block trade, about 40 of them, used to come, accompanied by a band, from Wapping town via the hamlets of Bow, Stratford and Ilford in a huge six-horse-drawn float which was a brightly decorated boat mounted on a carriage – not just any boat, but a fully rigged frigate created by Good Day who was a keen sailor.
A circus atmosphere Day’s day developed into a major festival, complete with stalls and amusements, as more and more people became interested in the tradition. In the 1750s more than 100,000 people attended the Fair from all over London. Stalls sold gingerbread men, toys, ribbons, and there were entertainments such as puppet shows, musicians, circus acrobats and even wild beasts. Fairlop Fair enjoyed a reputation of being a very well conducted day, but as early as 1736 certain stallholders were prosecuted for gaming and illegal sales of liquor. In 1793 the Fair was banned for its bacchanalian reputation, but it emerged again the following year.
Come lunchtime, Mr Day would serve up the beans and bacon from the tree trunk, and his guests ate in booths under the shelter of the great oak. When he was old and the oak lost a limb, he took it as an omen of death and had a coffin made out of the limb, and when he died in 1767, aged 84, Good Day was buried in it. He had served his guests on this day every year for several decades. Locals continued the fair in Daniel’s absence, but nothing on this earth lasts forever.
Perhaps the great tree mourned its Good Day, for it went into rapid decline. By 1791, a sign on the oak read "All good foresters are requested not to hurt this old tree, a plaster having lately been applied to its wounds". By the early 19th Century many branches had fallen and its interior was a hollow in which several horses or cattle could shelter, with people picnicking inside the tree as much as beneath its grand canopy. They would sometimes light a fire for cooking and in June 1805 one such fire ignited ‘Fairlop’, as the tree was called, and it burnt for more than a day.
By the time Fair Day came around in 1813, the tree was almost expired and a gentleman paid a boy two shillings and sixpence to climb Fairlop and bring down the very last green sprig. Sadly, in February, 1820, the 500-year-old Fairlop Oak went the way of all Good Days and was blown over in a storm; however, in 1951, during the Festival of Britain, a new Fairlop Oak was ceremonially planted by the citizens of Essex in memory of Good Days past. The generous businessman has been remembered, too, in a play, Between Two Shores, written by Brian Kearney.
As a sad footnote, the entire Hainault Forest did not fare any better than the great Fairlop Oak. The forests of Essex had, since the times of the 11th-Century king, Edward the Confessor, been the property of the monarch with some rights accorded to the commoners.
During the mid-18th Century, around the time of our Good Daniel Day and his wonderful fair, many people struggling to make a living began making enclosures in the forest, there as in many parts of Britain, resulting in the forest officials tearing down their fences and prosecuting the small farmers. In 1817, on application from the monarch’s Commission of Woods, an Act of Parliament enclosed much of the forest for the Crown, doing away with ancient commoners’ rights in the woods. In 1851 the whole 1,215 hectares (3,000 acres) of Hainault Forest was cut down, apart from some small wooded areas on the lands of the richest farmers.
Make a good day.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email Happy Independence day to our American friends!
* Blogmanac | Nazi jibe at MEP provokes German-Italian row
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder demanded a full apology from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi today for comparing a German lawmaker to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
Italy's six months in charge of the European Union has begun with a ferocious row in the European Parliament over the Nazi jibe directed by Mr Silvio Berlusconi at a German MEP. The Italian prime minister was in Strasbourg yesterday morning to outline his country's priorities for the EU presidency but a number of MEPs used the occasion to criticise Mr Berlusconi's record in office.
When the German social democrat, Mr Martin Schulz, attacked the Italian prime minister's governing style, Mr Berlusconi suggested that the MEP could play the role of a Kapo, or guard, in a concentration camp. "I know there is in Italy a man producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of Kapo. You'd be perfect," Mr Berlusconi said.
MEPs booed, jeered and banged their desks in protest at the remark but the prime minister declined to withdraw it, despite an invitation to do so from the President of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox.
Berlusconi told reporters in Rome he would speak to Schroeder by telephone today but made no further comment.
* Blogmanac | UK Forces - Kenya - Institutional acquiescence in rape? Six hundred and fifty allegations of rape have so far been made against members of the UK army posted to Kenya for training over a period of more than 30 years, Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International said yesterday.
"The fact that so many rape claims over such a long period of time were neither investigated nor prosecuted shows a systemic failure of the UK army and may amount to institutional acquiescence which encouraged a pattern of grave human rights violations by members of the UK army."
Amnesty International has received information that UK Army officials in Kenya may have become aware of some of the rape allegations as early as 1977. Speaking at the launch of a new report "United Kingdom: Decades of impunity: Serious allegations of rape of Kenyan women by UK Army Personnel", Irene Khan called on the UK government to establish without delay an independent and impartial commission of inquiry.
* Blogmanac | Jupiter-Like Planet Discovered Light Years Away
LONDON (Reuters) - Astronomers searching for signs of a Solar System like our own said today they had found a planet very similar to Jupiter orbiting a star resembling the Sun, 90 light years away. "This is the closest we have yet got to a real Solar System-like planet and advances our search for systems that are even more like our own," said UK team leader Hugh Jones of Liverpool John Moores University.
The planet was discovered by British, American and Australian astronomers using the 3.9-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales. With a mass twice that of gas giant Jupiter, the planet circles star HD70642 in the constellation Puppis once every six years.
From Colleen: [This isn't about religion, but about morality, and the lack thereof, in the Bush administration, especially at the top. It's a fairly long article, but the truly important parts are printed in a different color than the main text, and offer many good ideas for getting America and Americans back on track. -C]
[And not a moment too soon! -v]
RE-LIGHTING THE TORCHES OF THE AMERICAN SOUL By Bernard Weiner, CrisisPapers.org 06/30/03
What happens when individuals or whole societies damage -- or even temporarily lose -- their soul, their spiritual anchor, their sense of themselves as moral entities?
Oh, I know that talking about "soul" and "spirituality" is anathema to a good share of the Left. Those terms often are regarded as too new-wavy or are found mostly in the camp of conservative churchgoers.
But we need to focus on the moral and spiritual aspect in our politics for a variety of reasons, including helping to re-balance our own souls amidst all the horrors being perpetrated by our so-called leaders.
Further, if we in the progressive movement avoid the spiritual field, we certainly will be crushed in 2004, and the know-nothing forces of Bush&Co. will have free rein -- read: reign -- to carry out further imperial misadventures abroad and police-state-like constitutional shredding at home. The result will be catastrophe -- to our already shaky economy, to our national treasury (and treasures: our young men and women sent to patrol the empire), to the collective soul of America.
The United States is, and likes to think of itself as, a highly moral country, dedicated to fair play and to the belief that God takes an interest in our democratic experiment. Americans, at heart, want to do the right thing.
When our society goes outside the boundaries of decent moral behavior -- as we did with slavery, for example -- those lapses are regarded as aberrations, correctable as we learn more. We are in another such moment in our history right now, but we can hope that as more and more citizens learn what's really going on behind the scenes, and face our political shadow, the pendulum will begin swinging back the other way -- if permitted to do so.
Using fear and a permanent-war scenario, the Bush Administration has been able to manipulate the American populace into turning its spiritual button to the off position. By demonizing and lying, it has put America's moral sense of itself into a kind of numbed "pause" mode.
Americans are led to wallow in the fright and negativity pushed daily by Bush&Co. and its conglomerate-owned mass media. After months and years of having this negative template laid on top of our society, it's not difficult to have one's energy sapped, to sink into a kind of fatalistic torpor, or even, because the feelings are so intense, to deny that one is having doubts at all. -- CONTINUE for this holiday must-read.
Extreme weather prompts unprecedented global warming alert 03 July 2003
In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire.
In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change.
The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out).
The Geneva-based body, to which the weather services of 185 countries contribute, takes the view that events this year in Europe, America and Asia are so remarkable that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately.
The extreme weather it documents, such as record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and record storms in different parts of the world, is consistent with predictions of global warming. Supercomputer models show that, as the atmosphere warms, the climate not only becomes hotter but much more unstable. "Recent scientific assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue to warm due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples.
In southern France, record temperatures were recorded in June, rising above 40C in places - temperatures of 5C to 7C above the average.
In Switzerland, it was the hottest June in at least 250 years, environmental historians said. In Geneva, since 29 May, daytime temperatures have not fallen below 25C, making it the hottest June recorded.
In the United States, there were 562 May tornadoes, which caused 41 deaths. This set a record for any month. The previous record was 399 in June 1992.
In India, this year's pre-monsoon heatwave brought peak temperatures of 45C - 2C to 5C above the norm. At least 1,400 people died in India due to the hot weather. In Sri Lanka, heavy rainfall from Tropical Cyclone 01B exacerbated wet conditions, resulting in flooding and landslides and killing at least 300 people. The infrastructure and economy of south-west Sri Lanka was heavily damaged. A reduction of 20-30 per cent is expected in the output of low-grown tea in the next three months.
Last month was also the hottest in England and Wales since 1976, with average temperatures of 16C. The WMO said: "These record extreme events (high temperatures, low temperatures and high rainfall amounts and droughts) all go into calculating the monthly and annual averages, which, for temperatures, have been gradually increasing over the past 100 years.
"New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing.
"According to recent climate-change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/United Nations Environmental Programme Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global average surface temperature has increased since 1861. Over the 20th century the increase has been around 0.6C.
"New analyses of proxy data for the northern hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years."
While the trend towards warmer temperatures has been uneven over the past century, the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period.
Global average land and sea surface temperatures in May 2003 were the second highest since records began in 1880. Considering land temperatures only, last May was the warmest on record.
It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001.
The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality.
* Blogmanac | Independence from America Day Byron Shire Councillor calls for an End to the US Alliance
Thanx Graeme Dunstan for sending this one:
Byron Bay, NSW, Australia: Councillor Richard Staples, member of Byron Shire Council since 1995 and member of the Tweed-Byron Greens will be welcoming participants to the Independence from America Day celebrations when it assembles tomorrow. "I am deeply committed to preserving and strengthening the local economy, the local community and the local environment," he said. "The way forward in this regard for is to become independent from the influences of the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, neo liberalism and economic rationalism that corporate America is foisting upon us."
Independence from America Day will be celebrated with a carnival parade through Byron at about noon and a Speak Out outside the Byron courthouse.
"Time to speak up and speak out," says organiser Graeme Dunstan who is promising an artful event, an open mike and with some oratorical fireworks.
It will be the third annual celebration of Independence from America Day in Byron Bay.
In these Dog Days it is forbidden by Astronomy to all Manner of People to be let Blood or take Physic. Yea, it is good to abstain all this time from Women. For why, all that time reigneth a Star that is called Canicula Canis, a Hound in English, and the kind of the Star is broiling and burning as Fire. All this time the Heat of the Sun is so fervent and violent that Men's bodies at Midnight sweat as at Midday: and if they be hurt, they be more sick than at any other time, yea very near Dead. In these days all venomous serpents creep, fly and gender, so that many are annoyed thereby; in these times a Fire is good night and day, and wholesome, seeth well your meals and take heed of feeding violently. The Husbandman's Practice 1729
In olden days it was believed that July's warmth, and the associated diseases, were to do with the heliacal rising and setting of the star Canicula – the Little Dog, or Dog Star (Sirius). Thus they called the period from July 3 to August 11 ‘the Dog Days’.
Sirius comes from the Greek word seirios, meaning ‘scorching’. However, another explanation exists for the naming of the Dog Star: the Egyptians named it after Sihor, the Nile, and the Romans altered this to Sirius. According to Greek mythology, Sirius was seen as the dog of Orion the hunter, and he was also called kyon, Greek for dog.
The ancient Egyptians based their calendar on the heliacal rising of Sirius and devised a method of telling the time at night based on the heliacal rising of stars called decans. The rising of Sirius marked the beginning of the sacred Egyptian year, and was celebrated each year by a festival which did not shift with the variable official year. Sirius was venerated by them and regarded as a token of the rising of the Nile (so when Sirius first appeared they retreated to higher ground before the annual flood) and of a subsequent good harvest. In fact, many Egyptian temples were constructed in such a way that the light of Sirius reached the inner chambers. The Egyptians also named the star after Thaaut, the dog, hence the ‘dog star’.
Feeling crazy today? Ancient authors said that the day this star first rises in the morning, the sea boils, wine turns sour, dogs begin to grow mad, people get bilious, febrile, hysterical and crazy, and animals grow languid. How do you feel so far? The days are usually hotter in the Northern Hemisphere, so this was probably the reason for their superstition.
On this day, the Romans sacrificed a brown dog, to appease Canicula's rage. The Dog Star is the brightest star in the sky, situated in the constellation Canis Major, and is so bright that the ancient Romans thought that the earth received heat from it. They called the weeks following July 3 dies caniculares, a term that was translated into English in the early 16th century as 'dog days'.
Sirius was called Loki’s Brand in the Northern Tradition, after Loki, the trickster deity. In England, magistrates sometimes ordered dogs to be muzzled from the beginning of July.
Sirius in South Pacific astronomy In Tahiti’s legend of the Birth of the Heavenly Bodies, Ta'ura (‘the Red One’) a name for Sirius, took a wife of whom princes were born, Matari'i (Makali'i) being one. Then were “created kings of the chiefs of earthly hosts on one side, and of chiefs in the skies on the other side”.
In New Zealand Maori myth, Takurua is the name of Sirius. The Tuhoe people say she is a woman who ushers in Winter, and on cold nights her shining warns of heavy frost. Winter is also often known by the name Takurua. It’s referred to as Hine-takurua, Winter Woman.
Sirius in Africa The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa, have a ritual associated with the appearance of certain stars, including Sirius. When Sirius appears; the people call out to one another: “Sirius comes yonder! You must burn a stick for us towards Sirius. Who was it who saw Sirius?” One man says to another, "Our brother saw Sirius.” The other man says to him, “I saw Sirius.” The other man says to him: “I wish you to burn a stick for us towards Sirius; that the sun may shining come out for us; that Sirius may not coldly come out.”
The other man (the one who saw Sirius) says to his son: “Bring me the small piece of wood over there, that I may put the end of it in the fire, that I may burn it towards grandmother; that grandmother may ascend the sky, like the other one, [the star] Canopus.”
The child brings him the piece of wood and the father holds the end of it in the fire. He points the burning brand towards Sirius and says that Sirius shall twinkle like Canopus (which is in fact the second-brightest star in the sky). He sings about Canopus and Sirius; and points to them with fire, that they may twinkle like each other. Following this, he throws fire towards the stars and completely covers himself up from head to toe in his kaross (a blanket made of animal hide) and lies down.
Soon he arises, and sits down; he does not again lie down, because he feels that he has worked, putting Sirius into the sun's warmth; so that Sirius may come out in the sky and shine warmly.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
* Blogmanac | US Should End Bully Tactics against ICC With the expiration of its July 1 deadline to cut off military aid to states supporting the International Criminal Court, the Bush administration should end its ill-conceived campaign to weaken the court, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA) revokes military assistance to countries that have ratified the ICC, unless they concluded a separate bilateral agreement with the United States by July 1, agreeing never to hand over U.S. personnel to the ICC.
Despite a year-long campaign by the U.S. diplomatic corps, only about 48 countries have signed such agreements so far -- the majority of them small and poor countries that have not ratified the ICC treaty anyway, and therefore have no obligation to transfer U.S. personnel to the court.
"U.S. ambassadors have been acting like schoolyard bullies," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice program at Human Rights Watch. "The U.S. campaign has not succeeded in undermining global support for the court. But it has succeeded in making the U.S. government look foolish and mean-spirited."
"U.S. officials are engaged in a worldwide campaign pressing small, vulnerable and often fragile democratic governments," said the Human Rights Watch letter, signed by executive director Kenneth Roth. "Because most ICC member states are democracies with a relatively strong commitment to the rule of law, the threatened aid cutoffs represent a sanction primarily targeting states that abide by democratic values."
The exact number of countries that have signed bilateral immunity agreements is unclear, since some of the agreements are "secret." But at least 38 of them are classified as "less developed" or "least developed" countries by the United Nations Development Program index.
Most of the ICC's 18 judges come from countries closely allied with the United States. Luis Moreno Ocampo, an Argentine national who was most recently the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies at Harvard Law School, has recently been sworn in as the court's Chief Prosecutor.
"No one really believes that Moreno Ocampo is likely to indulge in unwarranted prosecutions of American citizens," said Dicker. "It's really time for the Bush administration to wake up from its own nightmarish delirium."
* Blogmanac | The Top-Secret Joke One of the CIA's deepest and darkest secrets -- a classified report about a plot by the 'Ebenezer Scrooge' terrorist group to attack SantaClaus and his reindeer -- has finally been revealed after almost 30 years. Researchers who recently uncovered the report say the joke memo warning about a potential terror attack on the North Pole, which had been classified 'secret' for decades, speaks more about the U.S. government's obsession with keeping information from the public than it does of the black humour of the spies who wrote it.
Schoolchildren working as extras on the new Harry Potter film have been forced to give the money they made to their school, it emerged yesterday. Fourteen children from Lochaber high school in the Scottish Highlands were told by headmaster Donald Campbell that work they did on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban during school hours counted as work experience and that the money should go to a school fund. Warner Bros accordingly made a donation of £1,370 to the school. The children were, however, paid for working on the shoot over weekends.
Children from nearby Kinlochleven high school were allowed to keep their earnings, which the 'Sun' puts at £35 a day.
* Blogmanac | So this is freedom The US military have launched a huge operation to crack down on insurgents in Iraq as the civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, promised that America would "impose" its will upon the country.
In a candid interview on the BBC's 'Breakfast with Frost', Mr Bremer said pockets of resistance in Iraq would be crushed. "We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order upon this country," he said.
* Blogmanac | European ruling on Finucane Amnesty International, British Irish Rights watch, and the Committee on the Administration of Justice yesterday welcomed the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Patrick Finucane.
[Patrick Finucane, a prominent criminal defence and civil rights lawyer, was shot dead in February 1989 in front of his wife and his three children at their home in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Soon after the killing, claims of official collusion began to emerge - N]
The European Court of Human Rights has found that Patrick Finucane's right to life, which is protected under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, had been violated in a number of ways.
It concluded, "the Court finds that the proceedings for investigating the death of Patrick Finucane failed to provide a prompt and effective investigation into the allegations of collusion by security personnel. There has consequently been a failure to comply with the procedural obligation imposed by Article 2 of the Convention and there has been, in this respect, a violation of that provision."
The human rights groups call on the [British] government to take immediate action to give effect to the judgment of the Court.
A spokesperson for the three groups said, "this judgment confirms that there has been no effective investigation of the collusion in this murder. The Finucane family have been waiting fourteen years for justice. It is time the government stopped aiding and abetting those who have engaged in collusion and cover-ups, and allowed the full truth to be told about this case by establishing a public inquiry."
* Blogmanac | Mystery monster from deep July 2 2003 "Chilean scientists were baffled today by a huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on the southern Pacific coast and were seeking international help identifying the mystery specimen.
"The dead creature was mistaken for a beached whale when first reported about a week ago, but experts who went to see it said the 12-metre mass of decomposing lumpy grey flesh apparently was an invertebrate."
Maybe it's a marlin -- Brando. Read on Thanks, Baz le Tuff for sending this one in. (Waddaryanutz??!!)
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10 Million Sign Up for 'Do Not Call' List "Ten million U.S. phone numbers were placed off limits to telemarketers over the weekend as Americans signed up in droves for a new "do not call" list, the Federal Trade Commission said on Monday." Source
Given the form of Tony Blair and John Howard, this good idea will be taken up with alacrity in the UK and Australia. Perhaps a Coalition of the Ringing?
“There’s a couple of hazards in Voluntary Simplicity. One is arrogance. Another is success (artistic, commercial, personal) which leads to temptations which lead back again to Involuntary Complexity.”
~ Stewart Brand, creator of The Whole Earth Catalog, in the Co-Evolution Quarterly, Summer 1977
WHILE BROWSING THE BEST SELLERS in my local bookstore recently, I was shocked to find tomes on money and success displayed alongside guides for simplifying your life and enriching your spirit. How-to-be-happy titles sat next to treatises on saving-the-earth.
“What kinds of people,” I asked my bookseller, “buy these different kinds of books?”
“The same people,” she said, smiling sweetly. I must have looked perplexed, because she leaned forward, touched me gently on the arm and said, “There’s a convergence of interests, dear, a kind of shared vision is emerging.” I thanked her and left wondering if she was right.
Researcher Paul Ray thinks so. He claims 24 percent of adult Americans are “Cultural Creatives” interested in psychology, spirituality and self-actualization. Most are strong advocates of sustainability and simpler lifestyles. Ray says this group could herald the birth of an “Integral Culture” – a synthesis of modern and traditional values and practices. However, he warns, “Our future is not ordained.”
Though the possibility of an Integral Culture is exciting, Ray rightly urges caution. It’s too easy to assume “the transformation” is happening just because we read and talk about it. We’ve heard predictions like these before. A 1977 report, Voluntary Simplicity, documented similar findings to Ray’s and predicted that, by 2000, there could be 90 million Americans practicing voluntary simplicity.
Instead, we got the eighties.
What happened? Why did we tell pollsters one thing then do another?
[The "Cultural Creatives" are a fascinating anthropological/sociological field of study that I find exciting. Those who choose to leave the rat race to pursue what they enjoy, stay-at-home dads, activists for peace, human rights, civil rights and the environment and many others all are examples of cultural creatives. Many live simplistic lifestyles by choice, others had a little help from the economy. Regardless, they (we) are here to stay and our numbers are growing. If we could just get to know each other--what a powerful activist and lobbying force we would be! Let's work together to create a network among us, shall we? Email Pip , Nora or myself with any ideas you may have to facilitate connecting--perhaps we could arrange for "meet-ups" as is proving successful for the progressive U.S. presidential candidates, Dean and Kucinich. Awaiting your reply, -v]
* Blogmanac | Downing St, BBC row continues Just as Australia's taxpayer-funded national broadcaster, the ABC, is under attack for its fair reporting of the Iraq invasion, so the BBC is copping flak from ultra-con pollies in the UK.
Thank God for the ABC and BBC, which were scarcely wild-eyed radicals during the illegal invasion, but at least they presented differing views and provided some sort of sanity in the multi-million dollar propaganda war waged by Shrub & Co and their giant network of transnational PR corporations.
"A row between senior figures in the British Government and the BBC shows no sign of abating.
"MPs are split over Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications director Alastair Campbell's attack on the BBC for what he says were acusations the government sent back intelligence dossiers or Iraq, demanding they be "sexed up" to support the US-led war."
Meanwhile, what's going on in the USA regarding investigations into the Bush Administration's nearly two years of blatant lies? Buzzflash's Maureen Farrell gives a good update today:
"The Attack Has Been Spectacular Regardless how anyone frames it, the White House duped us. From 'they hate us for our freedoms' to 'solid evidence' of Al-Qaeda/Iraq connections, the Administration skirted some issues and manipulated information on others. In short, Bush Inc. lied and pressured others to do the same. The game plan succeeded, however, as polls repeatedly indicated that more than half of all U.S. citizens were consistently conned into believing Iraq was an immediate threat and that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, millions of well-intentioned souls, unaware of how deeply Bush cronies are lining their war-profiteering pockets, still trust promises of Iraq's "liberation" -- even if hourly ambushes on US soldiers suggest Iraqis aren't exactly dancing in the streets." Read on
Around 30 people have staged a naked protest against GM food. The protesters spelled out "no GM" with their bodies in a meadow at Forest Row, in East Sussex, UK. Organiser Mike Grenville said he hoped it would send a message to the Government of people's concern, particularly over commercial planting of GM crops.
Mr Grenville, 51, a self-employed business consultant from Forest Row, said: "I think people were very pleased to have the opportunity to express how we feel, how frustrated we are about what seems to be the foregone conclusion, and the question many people are saying is 'What do we do next?'".
"We hope others will follow our lead and find other ways to express how we feel. We do not want GM crops planted in the country at all."
A researcher at NUI in Maynooth, Ireland, has discovered a new strain of the AIDS virus which could have major implications in the search for a cure. Dr Grace McCormack, at the university's department of biology, made the discovery during research into the molecular evolution of HIV about three weeks ago.
Her discovery was made in blood samples from a region in Malawi, in central Africa. She had been working on the research for the past three years.
Dr McCormack submitted her findings to the official journal of the International Retrovirology Association, AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses. The findings are published in the May 2003 edition of the journal.
Significantly, the discovery was made in blood samples from the 1980s, implying the strain is one that did not survive. "We have found it in samples from the 1980s but have not seen it in any from the 1990s," she said. "It might be a strain of the virus that failed. Because of that it may give us information on how to defeat the virus. If it has failed, why has it failed?"
Dr McCormack said her discovery suggested the AIDS virus was a lot more complex than had been thought.
Her work also involves her monitoring viral changes in HIV positive people surviving over long periods, though without access to drugs or treatment. She has found "exciting changes" in the virus in such people living for 10 years and more. "Either the virus is defective in some way in these people or they are finding ways to fight it. Perhaps we can find ways to replicate that in other systems," she said.
* Blogmanac | More Brain Power Needed for Mandarin Than English LONDON (Reuters) - Mandarin speakers use more areas of their brains than people who speak English, scientists said on Monday, in a finding that provides new insight into how the brain processes language. Unlike English speakers, who use one side of their brain to understand the language, scientists at the Wellcome Trust research charity in Britain discovered that both sides of the brain are used to interpret variations in sounds in Mandarin.
"We were very surprised to discover that people who speak different sorts of languages use their brains to decode speech in different ways; it overturned some long-held theories," said Dr. Sophie Scott, a psychologist at the charity.
July weather lore A shower of rain in July, When the corn begins to fill, Is worth a plough of oxen, And all belongs theretill. In this month is St Swithin's Day, On which, if that rain, men say, Full forty days after it will For more or less some rain distill, Till Swithin's Day is past and gone There may be hops, or there may be none. Traditional (St Swithin's Day is July 15)
July July is the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 31 days. The seventh month of the year was named by Mark Antony for Julius Caesar. The Roman calendar had previously called it Quintilis, as it was the fifth month of their year.
The Dutch called this month Hooy-maand (‘hay-month’), and the old Saxon name was Maedd-Monath (because the cattle were sent to the meadows to feed) and Lida aeftevr (the second mild or genial month). Just to confuse things, the Saxons also called this time of year Hen-monath (probably ‘foliage month’), a word most likely derived from the German hain, meaning ‘wood’ or ‘trees’. Another Saxon term was Hey Monath because at this time they mowed and made hay.
The old Irish name is based on Julius, namely, Iuil. The Frankish name for the month of July is related to Hewimanoth, meaning hay month, a name that continues in modern Asatru as Haymoon. In American backwoods tradition, this is Buck Moon.
In the French Revolutionary calendar it was called Messidor (harvest-month, June 19 to July 18).
Until the 18th century, July was pronounced as the girls' name 'Julie'. Even as late as 1798 Wordsworth wrote:
In March, December, and in July, 'Tis all the same with Harry Gill; The neighbours tell, and tell you truly, His teeth they chatter, chatter still. Goody Blake and Harry Gill
July begins on the same day of the week as April every year and also as January in leap years. Astrologically, this is the month of the house of Cancer (June 22 - July 22) and that of Leo (23 July - August 23). July's birthstone is ruby, signifying contentment and courage, and cornelian, signifying content.
The glowing Ruby shall adorn Those who in warm July are born. Then will they be exempt and free From love's doubt and anxiety. Traditional
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
* 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.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
* 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.”
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
* 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.
* 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.
* 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."
* 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".]
(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.
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.
* 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.
"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."
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.
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